Climate Realism and a Positive Vision for American Energy

• Author: C. Boyden Gray
• Position: Amb. C. Boyden Gray served as White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush, where he was one of the principal architects of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, and as Ambassador to the European Union and Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy under President George W. Bush
• Pages: 149-186

Climate Realism and a Positive Vision for

American Energy

C. BOYDEN GRAY*

ABSTRACT

Everything that is grown, made, used, or moved needs energy. We want our

energy to be affordable, available, secure, and sustainable. Twentieth century

America is largely a story of achieving the first three qualities, and the last fifty

years has been an attempt to achieve the fourth. To that end, climate idealists

have presented data on the unsustainability of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear to jus-

tify climate and energy policies that categorically reject these disfavored forms

of energy while subsidizing favored forms: wind, solar, and batteries. But cli-

mate idealists have failed to appreciate the full benefits of fossil fuels: how fos-

sil fuels have been critical to powering industry, producing modern materials,

and securing the United States’ geopolitical position. At the same time, they ex-

aggerate the unsustainability of fossil fuels, ignoring the strides we have al-

ready made in pollution reduction and conflating the reality of climate change

with evidence of an imminent apocalypse. Such an approach is myopic and thus

fails to see the costs of the energy transition, not just to the affordability of

energy, but to its availability, security, and even sustainability.

This article argues that technological prescriptivism is not the most efficient

way to accomplish our energy or climate goals. The United States’ greatest cli-

mate successes have come from setting aggressive goals and allowing them to

be reached through technology-neutral and market-based means. Our energy

policy should focus on setting realistic goals for energy availability, security,

and sustainability and allow American ingenuity to find the most affordable

path forward. In this way, the United States can reduce global greenhouse gas

emissions while providing for American workers and families. Four pillars support

a positive and realistic energy policy. The first is setting availability, security, and

sustainability objectives directly rather than with prescriptive command-and-con-

trol regulation or subsidization of specific technologies. The second is lowering

other regulatory barriers to speed new development of next-generation energy

technology. The third is modernizing other non-carbon emission regulations to

account for the changing technological and increasingly international landscape.

The fourth is investing directly in the protection and improvement of our domestic

natural resources. This positive approach will give America and Americans the

energy needed to build a better, more sustainable future.

* Amb. C. Boyden Gray served as White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush, where he

was one of the principal architects of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, and as Ambassador to

the European Union and Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy under President George W. Bush. © 2023,

C. Boyden Gray.

149

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

I. THE ADVANTAGES OF THE HIGH-ENERGY AGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

A. Fossil Fuels Launched the High-Energy Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

B. Abundant Energy Availability Enabled Industry and

Prosperity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

1. The Collapse of United States Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . 156

C. Fossil Fuels Provide Energy Security and Foster Geopolitical

Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

1. Energy Security is Key to Geopolitical Influence . . . . . . 157

D. The United States’ Environmental Progress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

1. The United States is as Clean as it has Ever Been . . . . . . 159

2. The Challenge of Climate Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

3. Current Evidence Does Not Point to Catastrophe . . . . . . 162

II. THE COST OF A TRANSITION TO WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERIES . . . 166

A. Wind and Solar Will Make Electricity More Expensive and

the Grid Less Reliable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

1. The Intermittency of Wind and Solar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

2. The Cost of Wind and Solar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

B. A Transition to Wind, Solar, and Batteries Will Damage

American Industry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

C. A Transition to Wind, Solar, and Batteries Will Limit

American Geopolitical Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

D. In Many Ways, Wind, Solar, and Batteries are Less

Sustainable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

1. Supply Chain Issues With Wind, Solar, and Batteries . . . 176

2. Land Use Concerns Plague Development . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

III. A POSITIVE VISION FOR AMERICAN ENERGY POLICY . . . . . . . . . . . 180

A. Set Availability, Security, and Sustainability Objectives

Directly Rather Than Through Technology Specific Subsidies

or Prescriptive Command-and-Control Regulation . . . . . . . . 180

150 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 21:149

B. Lower Other Regulatory Barriers to Speed New Development

of Next Generation Energy Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

C. Modernize Other Non-Carbon Emissions Regulations to

Account for the Changing Technical Landscape. . . . . . . . . . . 185

D. Invest in Our Natural Resources—and New Technology to

Preserve Them—Directly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

INTRODUCTION

Policymaking is an exercise in confronting reality. At the heart of this enter-

prise is the difficult work of weighing relative costs and benefits and deciding

how to balance many competing goals. These evaluations, however, are only as

good as the data on which they are based. Policy based on incomplete or faulty

data rarely achieves its goals.

The dangers of this approach are evident in the current debates surrounding

energy policy, as climate change towers over all other considerations.

Consequently, despite (and in some ways because of) the effort and resources

devoted to this matter by scientists and policymakers, discussions by politicians

and the press about climate change and energy policy are often only tenuously

connected to the available scientific evidence.

1

Indeed, misleading and down-

right false claims in reporting on climate change are endemic.

The American people have noticed, and, unsurprisingly, public opinion has

never coalesced to the point where significant legislation addressing climate

issues has been politically achievable. In light of this, climate idealists have

sought to drive American climate policy through strategies that are often demo-

cratically unaccountable and legally dubious. These strategies may be in the po-

litical and financial interests of climate idealists, but, as shown below, they are

not grounded in sound science.

There is a better way—one that recognizes the need to make policy changes

considering climate change but that is also grounded in climate realism and bal-

ances sustainability with energy affordability, availability, and security. We have

done this before. Previous environmental crises like acid rain, the depletion of the

ozone layer, and lead poisoning have been handled through more democratically

accountable and market-based methods. To confront climate change, we first

must accept what the scientific evidence shows about the risks of climate change

and the costs of decarbonization. This article gives an account of that data and

1. Scientific inquiry itself has become more politicized in recent decades. See Lief Rasmussen,

Increasing Politicization and Homogeneity in Scientific Funding: An Analysis of NSF Grants, 1990-

2020, CSPI REPORT NO. 4, (Nov. 16, 2021). This is a significant problem, but one that is outside the

scope of this article.

2023] A POSITIVE VISION FOR AMERICAN ENERGY 151