A Dozen Talking Points to Use with Your Kamala Supporting Friends Who Don't Believe She Would End Fracking
Alex Epstein has, from the beginning of his advocacy for fossil fuels, been way ahead of the fossil fuel industries themselves. When I first involved, in fact, in speaking up0 for natural gas, many producers didn’t want to hear about Epstein. He was too bold, too honest and too talented. He made the staid and strait-laced PR departments of the majors uncomfortable with his forthright appeals to the simple facts. They preferred a cowering ‘me too’ approach.
It’s now many years later, and Alex Epstein has been proven correct. You cannot win the battle by talking about hydraulic fracturing and refusing to say ‘fracking,’ for instance, as many in the industry used to advise. Fracking opponents were then winning battles emotionally precisely because they captured others’ imaginations and no amount of logic could dislodge the falsehoods. The only way to win was to go on offense and appeal to those imaginations using simple truths. Epstein helped do that.
Now, Epstein is out with some great talking points with which to confront potential voters for Kamala Harris who might be inclined to believe her when she says she no longer opposes fracking despite this just four years ago:
Read his post on the subject here but, provided below, are some prime examples of his excellent points:
To know what to make of Harris’s reversal on a fracking ban, we need to first recognize that banning fracking would have been one of the most harmful policies in US history. It would have destroyed 60% of our oil production and 75% of our natural gas production.
Fracking is very likely the single most beneficial technological development of the last 25 years. By extracting cheap, abundant oil and natural gas from once useless rock, it has made energy far cheaper than it would otherwise be.
Fracking and agriculture: The availability of food is highly determined by the cost of oil, which powers crucial machinery, and gas, which is the basis of the fertilizer that allows us to feed 8 billion people. Thanks to fracking, the world is far better fed than it would otherwise be.
Given how life-giving fracking is to humanity and how essential it is to the prosperity and security of the US, any politician who has ever suggested banning fracking should be considered an energy menace until and unless they issue a deeply reflective apology.
Someone who comes to understand why it’s wrong to ban fracking—because the benefits you would destroy are far greater than the harms you would avoid—should also understand that the same problem exists with the broader anti-fossil-fuel, “net zero” agenda.
Harris has not apologized whatsoever for her support of a murderous fracking ban. And far from questioning the anti-fossil-fuel, “net zero” agenda, she has remained 100% committed to it.mWhich means she’s an enemy of not just fracking but all fossil fuel use.
Given that “net zero by 2050” requires banning virtually all fossil fuel activity, the whole conversation about whether Kamala Harris wants to ban fracking is absurd.
You can’t be for fracking and for net-zero anymore than you can be for penicillin and for banning all antibiotics.The Biden-Harris administration has already shown us that they will try to do everything they can to ban fossil fuels in pursuit of net-zero—and that they will only be limited by pro-fossil-fuel political opponents’ opposition and the resistance of voters.
Both Biden and Harris made it clear when campaigning that their guiding energy goal was “net zero by 2050” and that meant rapidly banning fossil fuels. Biden: “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel.” Harris’s cosponsored Green New Deal called for banning fossil fuels.
When they entered office, Biden and Harris continued to make “net zero by 2050” their guiding goal by rejoining the Paris Agreement that committed us to it and by announcing a “whole of government” focus on “climate”—code for: rapidly getting rid of fossil fuels.
In action after action, the Biden-Harris administration has shown us that it will do anything it can get away with politically to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels: pipeline blocking, Federal leasing bans, LNG prohibitions, power plant shutdowns, EV mandates, SEC rules, etc, etc.
The only way Kamala Harris can validly convince the public that she’s not an energy threat is to renounce not only her support of a fracking ban but of the “net zero” agenda—and to correct the anti-fossil-fuel bias that leads to both of these murderous policy ideas.
Read the entire post! Alex Epstein speaks the truth and shows us how to fight.
#AlexEpstein #KamalaHarris #Fracking #NetZero