Green Energy Zealots Just Like Democrats About Whom Reagan Joked in His Last Speech

I was recently on a Reality Check Radio podcast out of New Zealand that I’ll share with everyone in the near future, During it, I had occasion to briefly discuss one of my favorite books. It is the “Pensées,” accurately described on Wikipedia as “a collection of unfinished notes by the 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal.” I related the substance of some of my favorite lines from the book, which always stick with me.

Here is the one:

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

And, here is the other:

Reason never fully overcomes imagination, while the contrary is quite common.

The following short cartoon video sums it up rather well:

Imagination, in other words, tends to trump reason, at least for a while, which brings me to the very funny joke Ronald Reagan told in his last public speech:

Reagan used the joke to illustrate that Democrats and other leftists generally advance themselves through imagination, by telling us how wonderful the green energy transition will be, for example, while ignoring the real life increases in energy costs and the threats to energy security. They operate on the premise advanced by Oscar Wilde, who defined a cynic thus:

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

When I was young I supposed this was brillant, an invitation to be a change agent and make the world such a much better place. Looking back I realize how incredibly shallow it was as one can never appreciate the value of anything without grasping the costs as well as the benefits. When, today, you hear a Greta Thunberg or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez say fighting climate change in the way they propose is a necessity regardless of cost, they are channeling Wilde. It “covers them with glory”and they use the opportunity to cover us with shame.

This is the power of imagination versus facts and logic. Imagination wins every time until the recipients of the messaging realize, for themselves, that what they absorbed was either true or false. Yet, industry typically responds to the imagination of green transitioners by arguing facts and logic, which is a failing strategy.

Blause Pascal

No, imagination must be fought with imagination, and Reagan did just that when he spoke repeatedly of America as a shining city on a hill. He recognized the hollowness of foolish imagination but also the incredible power of wise imagination, and he used it to great effect. So, why aren’t we doing it? There are many reasons, of course, but it’s primarily attributable to the fact we live in the worlds of facts and logic and are uncomfortable moving beyond them.

Yet, we must. How so? Well, there are several possibilities and here are a few that come to mind:

1. Talking about the potential for oil and gas development to save farms, protect open spaces and preserve rural character. Given current technology, we know fracking can recover the energy from underneath several square miles of land from a few acres of development, providing the economic rent that allows land to stay open, rural areas to stay rural and farm families to stay together. There's no better tool for accomplishing these goals with so little. Imagine what could happen to the declining communities of New York's Southern Tier if only fracking were permitted.

2. Talking about the capacity for oil and gas development to similarly raise the quality of life in Third World countries where dung is still used as a fuel. It's a stunning opportunity given the extreme poverty and one can easily imagine the heart-warming appeal of such a message properly delivered.

3. Talking about climate change in a totally different way and, indeed, the only way that makes any sense, which is adaptation rather than mitigation. Imagine advertising and other messaging which focused not on CO2 emissions but, rather, on the ability of oil and gas stimulated economic development to empower adaptation to extreme weather events, regardless of the cause of those events. It's a matter of rising above the arguments over cause to reach solutions most can agree upon.

4. Talking about the role of oil and gas and pipelines, in particular, to deliver low-cost energy to new housing projects designed to make the American dream of home ownership by young families possible.

Much of this is a matter of playing offense rather than defense, but with a positive spin. We keep getting drawn to the negative and, let’s be honest, it's fun poking at the utopian foolishness of climate cultists who tell us how good it’s all going to be, as you can see from my writing here, but we need to do better. We need to rely much less on facts and logic and defense in general and we must grab imagination by the horns and wrestle it in our direction.

#Imagination #Climate #Democrats #Reagan #Facts #Logic