Recap of Energy Humanism Publications This Week

Week of August 24–30, 2026

This week I stayed on the Tribute Series and original commentary that advance Global Energy Plentitude, Low Cost, and Fairness. Five tributes honored practitioners who refuse the greenwishing consensus—an Oklahoma midstream veteran, a weather maverick, an engineer-humanist, a Heartland engineer, and a market-design scholar. Three original pieces examined unverifiable carbon-capture credits, the long slide from Enlightenment reason into green dogma, and the green industrial complex’s profits from influence. I also curated a full week of energy humanism stories from an all-star group of writers and named U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum the Energy Humanism Midwest MVP.

Tributes

1. A Tribute to Steve Reese: Oklahoma’s Steady Voice for Energy Sanity

Four decades from the wellhead to the burner tip. Founder of Reese Energy Consulting and Reese Energy Training. Audits, contracts, and instruction that keep real gas moving and real money with the people who produce it.

2. Joe Bastardi: Weather Maverick’s Skeptical Legacy

Forecaster who treats weather as physics and history, not a morality play, and who has spent a career refusing to let models outrun the atmosphere.

3. Cyrus Brooks: Engineer, Humanist, and Energy Visionary

Engineer who treats energy as a humanitarian project—practical systems, tribal and regional opportunity, and abundance instead of managed scarcity.

4. A Tribute to John Shanahan: Heartland Engineer

The unglamorous work of keeping plants running and grids honest. Engineering first, slogans never.

5. Lynne Kiesling: Energy Sanity Scholar

Market-design scholar who insists that prices, institutions, and reliability—not central plans—are what actually keep the lights on.

Original Commentary

1. Carbon Capture: Unverifiable Credits Fail Markets

2. Enlightenment to Green Dogma: Reason vs Ideology

3. Green Industrial Complex Profits from Influence

Curation

A full week of energy humanism stories by an all-star group of writers, curated by Stephen Heins.

Special Recognition

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum Named Energy Humanism Midwest MVP

Burgum, former governor of North Dakota and now Interior Secretary, spent a career proving that a state can produce energy at scale and still keep clean air, clean water, and working communities. From the Bakken to the Department of the Interior and the National Energy Dominance Council, he treats abundance as a Midwestern duty, not a slogan. The award recognizes that stance.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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by Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Joe Bastardi has spent nearly half a century staring at maps, wrestling with the atmosphere, and telling people what the weather is actually doing—not what the narrative requires. Born July 18, 1955, in Providence, Rhode Island, he grew up with weather in his blood. His father, Matt Bastardi, earned a degree in meteorology from Texas A&M. Family lore goes even further back to a great-great-grandfather who served as the town weatherman in a Sicilian village. Young Joe moved from Rhode Island to Texas to Somers Point, New Jersey, absorbing the storms of the mid-Atlantic and Gulf Coast along the way.

At Penn State, he earned his bachelor’s degree in meteorology in 1978 and, remarkably, lettered on the varsity wrestling team. In an era when meteorology programs produced more “weather weenies” than tough competitors, Bastardi was the rare walk-on who stuck it out under Hall of Fame coach Bill Koll. Teammates nicknamed him “The Rasslin’ Weatherman.” That grit never left him. In his free time, he became a drug-free bodybuilder, winning NABBA American championships in the over-35 and over-45 categories and later the overall title. He has served as strength and nutrition coach for Penn State wrestlers, including Olympic hopefuls. The same discipline that built the physique built the forecaster.

The day after graduation, he reported for duty at AccuWeather in State College. He stayed 32 years, rising to expert senior and chief long-range forecaster. He built a substantial private-client business serving energy, retail, agriculture, and winter-maintenance companies that needed actionable forecasts, not probabilistic fog. His daily columns and videos—“The Big Dog” and “The Long Ranger”—became required reading and viewing for anyone who made real decisions based on weather. He claims he has not taken a day off since 2002, including Christmas and Easter. In early 2011, he left AccuWeather and, within weeks, joined the newly formed WeatherBELL Analytics as chief (later co-chief) forecaster alongside Joe D’Aleo. He has been there ever since, delivering frequent video briefings—“The Atmospheric Avenger,” “The Raging WeatherBull,” “The Saturday Summary”—and specialized products for commercial clients who still value accuracy over ideology.

Bastardi’s method is straightforward and old-school. He masters global oscillations, teleconnections, and historical analogs. He looks for patterns that have occurred before and asks what followed. Computer models are tools, not oracles. When the analogs and the models diverge, he has often preferred the history. Energy companies, hedge funds, and supply-chain managers have paid for that preference because results matter more than consensus. One-third of U.S. economic activity is weather-sensitive; Bastardi’s clients treat his work as a competitive edge, not a press release.

He is also an unapologetic skeptic of the claim that human-emitted CO₂ is the primary control knob of the climate system. He argues that the sun, ocean cycles (Pacific and Atlantic multidecadal oscillations), and stochastic events such as volcanic activity form a “triple crown” that dwarfs the radiative effect of a trace gas that constitutes roughly 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. He has pointed out that the 1930s were warmer in many U.S. records than recent decades, that extreme weather events are not unprecedented when one studies the full historical record, and that many of the most severe American heat waves, droughts, and hurricane seasons occurred well before the post-1970s rise in atmospheric CO₂. In his view, the atmosphere is being “weaponized”—every storm, every heat spell, every cold snap enlisted in a political and cultural campaign rather than examined as weather doing what weather has always done.

He has put those views in two books: The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear from Al Gore—And Others and The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate War. Sean Hannity wrote the foreword to the second. Bastardi has debated Bill Nye on television, appeared regularly on Fox News and other outlets, and spoken at Heartland Institute conferences. He is a policy advisor to Heartland. Critics label him a “denier.” He replies that he is a meteorologist whose job is to forecast correctly for people who pay for correctness, and that climate history is one of the essential tools of that job.

For those of us who care about energy abundance, reliability, and human flourishing, Bastardi’s work matters in concrete ways. Accurate long-range and seasonal forecasts help energy companies manage supply, generation, and demand. They help utilities prepare for cold snaps that drive peak loads and heat waves that strain air-conditioning demand. They reduce the surprise factor that drives price spikes and blackouts. When policy is built on the assumption that every extreme is “unprecedented” and therefore proof of a crisis requiring rapid, costly transformation of the energy system, a forecaster who keeps the historical record in view performs a public service. He reminds us that weather has always been extreme, that cycles are real, and that treating every event as novel evidence of catastrophe is a form of historical illiteracy.

Bastardi is 71. He still produces daily and weekly videos, still digs through analog charts, still talks about the Pacific and the Atlantic flipping phases, still challenges the idea that CO₂ is the master variable. He still lifts. He still shows up. In an age when large institutions reward narrative conformity, he has chosen the harder path of pattern recognition, accountability to clients, and willingness to be wrong in public if the atmosphere proves him so. That is the opposite of activism. It is the work of a professional who loves the weather enough to study it on its own terms.

Energy humanists should take note. Reliable energy systems require reliable weather intelligence. They also require people willing to say that the past is not optional, that models are not scripture, and that the atmosphere does not take orders from press conferences. Joe Bastardi has spent a lifetime making those points, one forecast at a time. The maps keep changing. The man reading them has not.

Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant

Sheboygan, WI

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) finance had been sold as a revolutionary approach to investing: The term ESG was first coined in 2004 by the United Nations Global Compact that theoretically aligns capital with ethical, sustainable, and socially responsible outcomes.

I will leave a discussion of the UN environmental efforts for another day, although I would call them un-UN.

Proponents claim it offers a path to a better environmental world while delivering competitive energy returns. But beneath the glossy rhetoric has always had a fundamental flaw: ESG’s core components are impossible to measure or verify with any accounting rigor. This lack of clarity and accountability has made ESG finance an increasingly shaky foundation for investment decisions, prone to political manipulation, greenwashing, and Greenwishing.

The Continuing Measurement Problem: A Complete Lack of Objective Standards

From the start, ESG finance hinged on assessing companies or projects across three pillars: environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance quality. It sounded noble, but the devil’s in the lack of details: subjective metrics, political interference, inconsistent standards, and a troubling absence of verifiable data plague each pillar.

Take the environmental component. How do you quantify a company’s “carbon footprint” when supply chains span the globe, emissions data is often self-reported, self-aggrandized, under-reported, or lacking accounting methodologies? One firm might claim net-zero status, as several large tech companies have, by purchasing dubious carbon offsets, while another, with identical operations, reports higher emissions due to stricter accounting.

The result? Investors are left comparing apples to oranges, with no universal benchmark to ground their decisions. Studies, like one from the MIT Sloan School in 2022, have shown that ESG ratings from different providers often diverge significantly for the same company, reflecting the arbitrary nature of these assessments.

The social pillar is even murkier. How does one measure “social responsibility”? Is it discredited diversity quotas, community engagement, or labor practices? And how do you weigh these against each other? A company might score high for employment diversity but rely on exploitative supply chains or slave labor abroad. Without a standardized framework, these metrics become a feel-good checklist rather than any kind of reliable gauge of impact.

Worse, much of the data comes from corporate disclosures, which are rarely audited for accuracy. The 2023 collapse of certain ESG-focused funds exposed how firms inflated their social credentials with little scrutiny, leaving investors burned. And, the ESG value continues to shrink.

Governance, the third pillar, is no less problematic. While it’s easier to evaluate board structures or executive pay than, say, a company’s “social impact,” governance scores still suffer from massive subjectivity. Is a company with a strong anti-corruption policy but a history of regulatory fines “well-governed”? Different ESG raters will certainly disagree, leaving investors to continue navigating a maze of conflicting and conflicted signals from afar.

Verification: The Trust Deficit Has Never Disappeared

If measurement is ESG’s Achilles’ heel, verification is its fatal wound. The entire premise of ESG finance rests on trust—trust that companies report accurate data, that rating agencies are impartial, and that regulators enforce accountability, which brings to mind China. But time and again, this trust has been betrayed.

Greenwashing is rampant. Companies routinely exaggerate their environmental credentials, knowing that third-party verification is either nonexistent or superficial. A 2021 report by the European Securities and Markets Authority found that many ESG funds in the EU failed to align with their stated objectives, with some investing heavily in fossil fuel companies despite “green” branding. Without robust, independent audits, investors have no way to confirm whether their money is funding genuine sustainability or just clever marketing.

Rating agencies, the supposed gatekeepers of ESG integrity, are part of the problem. These firms often rely on proprietary and financial models that lack transparency, and their ratings can be swayed by corporate clients who pay for their services. A 2023 investigation by Bloomberg revealed conflicts of interest in the ESG rating industry, with some agencies allegedly boosting scores for high-paying clients. This undermines the credibility of the entire system, leaving investors with little more than expensive guesswork. Speaking of conflicts of interest, Bloomberg has many.

Regulators, meanwhile, have been slow to act. While the SEC and EU have proposed stricter ESG disclosure rules, enforcement remains patchy. The absence of global coordination means companies can shop around for lenient jurisdictions, further eroding accountability. Until there’s a unified, enforceable standard—backed by rigorous audits—ESG’s verification gap w persists.

The Growing Risks to Investors

The inability to measure or verify ESG components doesn’t just undermine its lofty ideals; it poses real risks to investors. Capital allocated based on flawed or inflated ESG metrics can lead to mispriced assets, unexpected losses, and missed opportunities. The 2022 underperformance of several high-profile ESG funds, as reported by Morningstar, highlighted how overhyped “sustainable” investments can lag behind traditional portfolios when market conditions shift.

Moreover, the subjectivity of ESG invites political and ideological bias. What one investor sees as “socially responsible,” another might view as performative or even detrimental. This lack of consensus can lead to volatility as market sentiment shifts, leaving ESG-focused portfolios vulnerable to sudden sell-offs.

An Urgent Call for Skepticism

ESG finance, as it still stands, is a noble sounding idea crippled by practical flaws. Its components—environmental, social, and governance—are simply too subjective, too inconsistent, and too easily gamed to serve as a reliable basis for investment. Without standardized metrics, transparent methodologies, and robust verification, ESG remains an energy mirage: alluring from a distance but insubstantial up close.

Investors in 2026 and going forward deserve better. They will demand hard data over hazy promises, and prioritize financial fundamentals over feel-good narratives. Until ESG can deliver measurable, verifiable results, it’s little more than a well-intentioned energy experiment that won’t go away—one that risks further economic development collapsing under the weight of its own ambiguity.

Let’s no longer bet the energy future on a system that can’t even demonstrate it is successful and punishes over half of the world’s population living with some form of energy poverty.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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A Tribute to Lynne Kiesling: The Knowledge Problem, the Grid, and Energy Sanity

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Out here in the Midwest, we still respect people who do the hard thinking before they do the talking. Lynne Kiesling is that kind of scholar. She grew up intellectually in Ohio—at Miami University in Oxford—and then earned her Ph.D. in economics at Northwestern. She has spent the better part of a quarter century asking a question most energy politics would rather dodge: how do you keep the lights on, prices honest, and innovation alive when no one person can know the whole system?

That is not a slogan. That is energy sanity.

Kiesling is Director of the Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics at Northwestern Pritzker’s Center on Law, Business, and Economics. She teaches Energy and Sustainability Market Foundations in Northwestern’s Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability program. She is a Research Professor at the University of Colorado Denver, a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and president of Knowledge Problem LLC.

She sits on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee. She served on NIST’s Smart Grid Advisory Committee and is an emerita member of the GridWise Architecture Council.

Those titles matter less than the idea that runs through all of them. Electricity is a network of people, machines, contracts, and prices. It is not a political campaign. It is not a religion. It is an energy coordination problem.

She named her long-running project after F. A. Hayek’s most important insight: knowledge is dispersed. No central planner, no utility commission, no control room, and no climate ministry can hold in one head what millions of customers, providers, engineers, generators, and devices know in their own corners of the system. Prices are how that knowledge travels.

When you smother prices, you smother information. When you smother information, you get blackouts, wasted capital, and a grid that cannot adapt.

In 2002, she started the Knowledge Problem blog, one of the earliest serious public conversations about electricity markets, regulation, and technological change. She kept it going for eighteen years. Then she carried the work onto Substack. That is a long time to write in public without becoming a pundit. She never did. She stayed an economist.

Her 2008 book, Deregulation, Innovation, and Market Liberalization, put the argument in hard covers. The old regulated monopoly made sense when the technology was big, slow, and one-way: a power plant, a wire, a meter that only counted. Digital technology broke that world into quadrillions of quadrillions of complexity.

Smart meters, distributed generation, storage, controllable loads, and two-way communication have turned the grid from a one-way road into more of a marketplace. A smart grid that is not transactive is just expensive hardware. If customers cannot see prices and devices cannot respond to them, you have built a museum, not a market.

She said it plainly more than fifteen years ago: a smart grid is a transactive grid. Devices should be able to bid and offer. A water heater, an air conditioner, a battery, a rooftop array—each can have a preference and a limit. Coordination happens at the edge, not only in a downtown control room. That is not science fiction. It is what the Olympic Peninsula GridWise testbed began to show, and what she has been explaining to regulators ever since.

Her other standing argument is just as Midwestern in its common sense: quarantine the monopoly. The wires are still a network with natural-monopoly features. Generation and retail are not. If you let the regulated wires company keep a chokehold on the competitive parts of the business, you get what we have too often gotten—slow retail markets, timid experimentation, closed access and incumbents protected by the rulebook.

She has taken that case to FERC, the California PUC, the Illinois Commerce Commission, and the New York PSC. She does not shout. She shows the incentives.

With Andrew Kleit, she co-edited Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story. Texas did not invent perfection. It did invent more customer choice and more wholesale competition than most of the country was willing to try.

After Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, the easy story was that “the market failed.” Kiesling and Stephen Littlechild wrote “Hayek and the Texas Blackout” and refused the easy story. The freeze exposed weatherization failures, fuel-supply failures, and a scarcity-pricing framework that regulators had already begun to distort.

Calling every disaster a market failure is a way of never learning. Institutions failed. Equipment failed. Policy implementation failed. Pretending otherwise is how you get the next freeze with the same speeches.

That honesty is why she belongs in this series. Energy humanism is not a team jersey. It is a refusal to lie about trade-offs. Reliability and open access are not a slogans you print on a press release. It is a service people will pay for in different ways if you let them. Kiesling has argued for years that reliability is not a pure public good.

Some of it can be differentiated. Some of it can be contracted. Some of it is a common-pool problem that needs better rules, not just more central command.

Now the test has changed again. Data centers and AI are arriving as a demand shock—the kind of load growth this country has not seen in decades, if ever. Suddenly every governor, regulator and every utility is talking about “the grid.” Kiesling’s recent writing in Reason, at AEI, and in Dispatch Energy keeps returning to the same unfashionable point.

You cannot just plug a hyperscale load into a 20th-century tariff and hope. You need better forecasts, better interconnection rules, better commitments, and prices that reflect scarcity. Microgrids and on-site generation will grow because regulation slows the incumbent path. That is not a morality play. It is transaction-cost economics.

She also does work that never makes a headline and matters more than most headlines. At IRLE, she runs workshops for state public utility regulators. She gives commissioners the economic tools to consider technological change rather than freezing the last decade’s cost-of-service model in amber. That is slow work. It is also how institutions actually improve—one mental map at a time.

She has written The Essential Ronald Coase. She has co-edited a Princeton volume on institutions, innovation, and industrialization. She has published on everything from Victorian poor-law labor contracts to household energy-demand models to the platform economics of a retail electricity market that looks more like Airbnb or Uber than a 1950s electric company.

The through-line is always the same. Institutions shape incentives. Incentives shape innovation. Innovation dies when regulation pretends the future is already known.

I like that she is not an energy romantic. She rides bikes, skis, knits, and reads. She does not perform urgency. She does the next piece of analysis. In a field crowded with greenwishing and with people who treat “the transition” as a completed sentence, that temperament is a public service.

This Energy Humanist Thinks:

Lynne Kiesling reminds us that the grid is a knowledge problem before it is a technology problem. You can hang all the solar and batteries you want on a system that cannot price scarcity, cannot let customers choose, and cannot let new firms experiment.

You will still get brittle service and political rationing. Abundance requires institutions that can learn and expand. Learning requires prices, contracts, and the right to try. That is not ideology from either coast. That is the same lesson a Wisconsin manufacturer learns when a supplier is late, and a price has to move.

Best of the Above energy—gas, nuclear, coal where it still earns its keep, hydro, and competitive renewables that can stand without a permanent subsidy—needs a grid that can take all of them and still keep the lights on at 2 a.m. in January.

Kiesling’s life’s work is the institutional half of that sentence. The wires can be a platform. The monopoly can be quarantined. The customer can be a participant, not a captive. If we fail at that, no amount of climate poetry will keep a hospital warm.

Thank you, Lynne, for treating electricity as a living market and regulators as people who can still learn. The country needs more scholars with energy sanity on their minds, and fewer sermons about a future that has not been paid for.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Yes — the doomsday language keeps getting more shrill and panicked. No — that is not proof that “strict green” is taking its last breath or even its second-to-last breath.

It is closer to the Green movement losing the steering wheel and grabbing for the three-county siren formerly used for tornadoes.

The catastrophic pronouncements have not stopped. In 2025–2026 you still get Hothouse Earth pieces, “billions of deaths” actuarial scare notes, coral-and-ice-sheet tipping-point reports, UN five-year “record-smashing” temperature forecasts, Greenpeace “1.5°C can still be saved” campaigns, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists folding climate into the Doomsday Clock. And, most recently, “Climate change is supercharging El Niños, coral records show”, and “What Role Did Climate Change Play in the Deadly Nepal Flood.”

Some of it is institutional (WMO, UNEP emissions-gap reports). Some of it is activist media. A shrinking fringe still talks near-term human extinction by 2030. That form of Green doom did not vanish when energy policy became more pragmatic and when practical environmentalism became more important.

What actually changed is the official worst-case story and the politics around it. The high-end pathway that powered a decade of headlines — RCP8.5 / SSP5-8.5, the coal-explosion stress test often treated as “business as usual” — has been pulled from the next IPCC scenario set as implausible. Central estimates now cluster nearer 2.5–3°C by 2100 under current policies, not 4–5°C. That is a real scientific and modeling update, not an outrageous press release.

Vox put it bluntly: “The apocalyptic future is off the table”; and, I added “a real dinner for all 8 billion people is being served.”

Media “climate crisis” language has also thinned in U.S. and global coverage even as a shrinking group of activist outlets insists the crisis is “more dire than ever.”

Energy policy has moved toward what has been called energy sanity — meaning reliability, cost, and security — not toward climate denial as a governing program. The U.S. has left the Paris Agreement, pressed the IEA, UN, and EU to drop net-zero road maps as the default, and rolled back large pieces of the prior climate-regulatory over-reaction, thanks to Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and Lee Zeldin.

Europe is delaying or softening ICE-car rules, heating mandates, and parts of the Green Deal while finally talking competitiveness and security. Corporate net-zero banking and insurance interventions have cracked and broken. Fossil fuel use, including coal and natural gas, is still rising globally. Carbon-free energy’s share of total energy is growing, but quite slowly if nuclear is excluded.

That is not “green won.” It is “green no longer has much control over the energy budget, unless it makes economic sense.”

So are the louder noises of doom a death rattle? Partly yes, partly no. But the 4 billion people, 2 billion of whom are women, have stopped letting Green rhetoric enter their living, breathing languages.

It is a death rattle for strict green as an uncontested orthodoxy: the idea that fossils must be phased out on a political calendar, that 1.5°C is a hard cliff, that RCP8.5 is the future, and that dissent is immoral.

When a movement loses courts, agencies, industrial policy, and second- and third-world countries, it often escalates its Green language into the hyperbolic.

Dates slip (12 years become “this decade,” 1.5°C becomes “limit the overshoot”), the metric shifts from temperature to tipping points to “lives,” and where every heat wave becomes biblical. That is how the Green moral movements speak and behave when they lose their monopoly of thought or even their credibility.

It is not a last breath for environmental politics as such. Climate remains a live scientific, economic, medical, and insurance problem. Coral bleaching, ice-sheet risk, and regional worries do not disappear because RCP8.5 was retired. Green parties, NGOs, EU climate law, Asian industrial policy, and school-and-media culture still exist.

They will adapt: more adaptation and “loss and damage,” more litigation, more “just transition,” less honest talk about energy poverty, economic development, and grid physics.

What I think after looking at it: we are in a divided era, not a funeral. The physical climate will keep changing for a long time because some scientists tell us CO₂ stays in the air and developing-world energy demand is real and rapidly expanding. The political climate of the West seems to have shifted from “sacrifice now or civilization ends” toward “keep the lights on, build what works, argue about the rest.”

Doomsday copy will keep arriving because it still raises money, still disciplines allies, and still fills a vacuum when the old environmental policy machine stalls. Treat the volume of sermons as a poor indicator of power. Treat retired scenarios, delayed mandates, collapsing net-zero clubs, and the return of reliability as the better indicator.

Energy sanity does not require pretending there is no warming. It requires refusing to govern a civilization on discarded worst-case scenarios of Green and crisis slogans that cannot provide the energy for human flourishing. The sirens will keep sounding.

The energy operators and consumers who actually dispatch power for consumption have already stopped listening to such outcries of inhumanity.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

Energy Picks Are Refreshingly Competent

If confirmed, Chris Wright and Gov. Doug Burgum will have the opportunity to prioritize innovation and deregulation to the benefit of taxpayers and the environment.

Jeff Luse

11.20.2024 4:08 PM

LOUIS LANZANO/UPI/Newscom, Gage Skidmore

President-elect Donald Trump has selected North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum and Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, as his nominees to lead the Department of the Interior and Department of Energy (DOE), respectively. Though other staff picks have been head-scratchers, the selection of Wright and Burgum signals a possible return to energy realism in the federal government.

Assuming they’re confirmed to head these agencies, Wright and Burgum will serve on the National Energy Council (to be chaired by Burgum), which will work with federal agencies to streamline permitting, reduce regulations, and get out of the way of private sector energy innovation. As head energy advisers, it will also be their job to direct Trump away from using state power to prop up favored industries or attack technologies he doesn’t like.

The Energy Department manages the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads, energy and technological research and development, and environmental cleanup at former nuclear weapons and nuclear research sites. Through legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the department has received billions of dollars in new funding, which have been directed toward pet projects. President Joe Biden’s DOE also paused exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in January.

Whether or not Congress repeals the Inflation Reduction Act (a full repeal is unlikely), Wright will set the spending priorities of the Energy Department, whose budget reached nearly $50 billion in FY 2024. If Wright wants to eliminate redundant and wasteful programs, he will need to work with lawmakers. Reducing red tape and reversing Biden’s pause on LNG exports are other actions he could take in his capacity as energy secretary.

The Department of the Interior facilitates oil and gas leasing and manages mineral extraction and renewable energy development on federal lands. In his first week in office, President Joe Biden paused new oil and gas leasing on federal lands. The ban remained in place until April 2022. The department also issued a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,000 acres of mineral-rich land in Minnesota.

With approximately 12 percent of the nation’s oil production and 11 percent of its natural gas production occurring on federal lands, Burgum will play a large role in shaping U.S. energy policy over the next four years. Holding quarterly leases for oil and gas (which are required by law) and working with Congress to reduce regulations for mining on federal lands will be under his purview. The latter move would reduce dependency on China, which controls a large portionof the critical mineral supply chain.

While many environmental groups oppose the nomination of an oil executive and a governor from a top fossil fuel–producing state, Wright and Burgum’s records suggest a holistic and innovative approach to energy policy.

As the CEO of Liberty Energy, Wright played a key role in boosting fracking, which is the leading cause of emissions reductions in the United States. Wright is also a board member of Oklo, an advanced nuclear energy company specializing in microreactor designs. And while media outlets have labeled Wright a “climate skeptic,” he has called climate change a problem that can only be addressed by making energy more affordable. His company launched the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, which increases access to propane cooktops in developing countries to reduce indoor air pollution, which causes an estimated 3.2 million premature deaths annually.

Since being elected governor in 2016, Burgum has embraced an “all of the above” energy approach; 55 percent of North Dakota’s electricity comes from coal and 36 percent from wind power. As the state has remained a large oil producer, it has also adopted net-zero greenhouse gas goals that will be accomplished through a mix of carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen fuel.

To be sure, whatever positive actions Burgum and Wright take to help lower energy costs will likely be offset by Trump’s economic agenda; tariffs, industrial policy, and reckless government spending increase prices for consumers and stifle economic growth.

With many of Trump’s staff picks being bizarre–or downright terrible—Burgum and Wright are refreshingly competent. Together they have the opportunity to prioritize energy realism, market-led innovation, and deregulation, all of which would be a win for taxpayers, consumers, and the environment.

The post Trump’s Energy Picks Are Refreshingly Competent appeared first on Reason.com.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

There is a particular kind of quiet grit that comes from working with heavy things—concrete, steel, reactors, and the stubborn equations of thermodynamics. It is the kind of pragmatism forged in the Midwest, where the earth expects you to look it in the eye and make something that lasts.

John Shanahan belongs to that rare breed of engineer and energy humanist whose life’s work has been measured not by fleeting trends, but by the enduring weight of structural integrity and energy reality. When Marquis Who’s Who honored John for his decades of expertise in energy solutions and engineering, it did more than validate a resume; it tipped its hat to a career spent building the backbone of modern energy civilization.

To understand John Shanahan, one must first look at the his foundation. Born of an academic and technical rigor that traces back to the storied halls of the University of Notre Dame, where he earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in civil engineering in the early 1960s, John was already preparing for a life of consequence.

Those years in South Bend instilled a deep-seated discipline, a Midwestern appreciation for craftsmanship and clarity that would guide him whether he was calculating load-bearing thresholds or analyzing complex software architecture.

Following his time at Notre Dame, that sense of duty took him across the Atlantic.

As an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stationed in Germany from 1964 to 1966, John traded textbook problems for real-world responsibilities, managing infrastructure and engineering logistics with the steady hand of a young officer who understood that people depended on the safety and reliability of his work.

That European chapter deepened when he pursued and earned his Doctor of Engineering from Ruhr University Bochum in 1969. It was a rigorous academic crucible that cemented his status as a life member of the Sigma Xi Engineering Honor Society and set the stage for a sprawling professional journey.

For anyone who spent decades in the trenches of heavy industry, the names on John’s early career read like a blueprint of American engineering might. From 1969 to 1973, he honed his craft with heavyweights like Bechtel Power Corporation and Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, before stepping into a senior engineer role at Stone & Webster Engineering Ltd. from 1973 to 1985.

In an era when America was aggressively expanding its industrial and power-generating capacity, John was there, doing the unglamorous, vital energy math that kept the lights on and the turbines spinning. Later, as an independent consultant through John Shanahan Consulting, Civil and Software Engineer, and via pivotal stints with Professional Analysis Inc. (PAI), he bridged the physical and digital worlds long before the modern tech boom made it fashionable.

Yet, true to the eclectic spirit of those who refuse to be pigeonholed, John’s career defied simple categorization. Demonstrating sharp financial acumen, he transitioned into finance as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley and Raymond James from 1996 to 2012. He understood that engineering principles—efficiency, risk management, capital allocation—are fundamentally tied to economic reality. Basically, if you cannot finance a project reliably, you cannot build it, and if you cannot build it affordably, you cannot lift people out of energy poverty.

It is this philosophy that ultimately brought John to the vanguard of the energy humanism movement. As the decades turned, he saw the public square increasingly dominated by magical thinking, expensive mandates, and a profound misunderstanding of energy density. Instead of retiring quietly, John doubled down on his civic duty.

From 2011 to 2012, he served as president of Go Nuclear Inc., and from 2013 to 2018, he led Environmentalists for Nuclear, US. He became a tireless advocate for nuclear energy and natural gas, recognizing that reliable, high-density energy is the single greatest equalizer for human health, prosperity, and environmental protection.

In 2019, he crystallized this mission by founding and editing AllAboutEnergy.net. Built as a comprehensive clearinghouse of pragmatic energy information and hard truths, the platform stands as a testament to his enduring commitment to public education and energy sanity. It is an endeavor born not of corporate lobbying, but of intellectual curiosity and a genuine care for the future.

Even his fascinating correspondence with figures like former presidential science advisor John Holdren underscored John’s approach: respectful of differing paths, but unyielding in his insistence on scientific realism and thermodynamic truth.

Beyond the dynamos and the balance sheets lies a man of surprising cultural breadth and deep-rooted philanthropy. John’s curiosity has never been confined to the slide rule or the power grid. Between 2014 and 2015, he stepped into the classroom to share his passion as a Spanish history and literature teacher and as a private tutor of Latin American history for Hispanic students in the United States.

His philanthropic footprint is equally staggering. For over two decades, from 1996 to 2022, he served as a dedicated volunteer fundraiser for Archbishop Stepinac High School. Simultaneously, from 1995 to 2024, he spearheaded nationwide fundraising efforts for education-related charities, spanning the United States, the remote mountain communities of Nepal and Tibet, and the classrooms of Guinea.

John Shanahan’s life is a masterclass in what happens when rigorous technical training meets a boundless civic conscience. He is an engineer who understands history, a financier who values human dignity, and an advocate who refuses to let ideology eclipse engineering reality.

Marquis Who’s Who has cataloged many notable lives over its long history, but in celebrating John Shanahan, it honors a quintessential builder—a man who has spent over half a century measuring twice, cutting once, and always ensuring the structure holds firm for generations to come.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

The Fort McKay First Nation, located in Alberta’s oil sands region, exemplifies a First Nation that has achieved remarkable economic success through natural resource development, particularly oil and gas, setting it apart from many other Canadian Indigenous communities. Here’s why it stands out:

1. Strategic Location in a Resource-Rich Region

• Fort McKay’s Advantage: Fort McKay is in the heart of Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands, one of the world’s largest crude oil reserves (estimated at 165 billion barrels). This proximity to a global energy hub has allowed the community to engage directly with major oil companies like Suncor, Syncrude, and Shell. The band’s reserve lands and traditional territories overlap with lucrative extraction zones, giving them significant negotiation leverage.

• Contrast with Other First Nations: Many Canadian First Nations, especially those in remote or resource-scarce regions (e.g., northern Quebec or parts of the Maritimes), lack access to high-value resources like oil, natural gas, or minerals.

For example, the 2024 Indigenous Economic Progress Report notes that First Nations on reserves often face a 22.8% wider labour force participation gap than non-Indigenous Canadians, mainly due to limited economic drivers in rural areas. Fort McKay’s location is a rare advantage, enabling direct participation in a $100 billion+ industry.

2. Innovative Business Models and Equity Ownership

• Fort McKay’s Approach: Unlike many First Nations that rely solely on royalties or federal transfers, Fort McKay has pursued active ownership and business ventures. The Fort McKay Group of Companies, established in 1986, provides services like construction, logistics, and environmental management to oil sands operators, generating over $500 million in annual revenue by 2023.

The band also secures Impact Benefit Agreements (IBAs) with industry, including equity stakes in projects (e.g., a 34% stake in a Suncor storage facility). These agreements provide long-term revenue streams, unlike the volatile royalties standardelsewhere.

• Broader Context: Most First Nations historically received passive royalties (e.g., 5-15% of production value) under the Indian Act, with limited control. The First Nations Oil and Gas and Money Management Act (FNOGMMA, 2005) allows opt-in control, but only a few, like Fort McKay, have fully capitalized on it.

For example, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) highlights that many communities lack the capital or expertise to develop such enterprises, leaving them dependent on government funding (over 80% of on-reserve budgets sometimes). Fort McKay’s entrepreneurial model, with 100% Indigenous-owned businesses, is exceptional.

3. Economic Outcomes and Community Wealth

• Fort McKay’s Success: The community’s median household income was $61,248 in 2016, surpassing Canada’s national average ($53,431), a rarity for First Nations. Fort McKay reinvests profits into housing, education, and infrastructure, achieving near-zero unemployment and funding cultural preservation. Their businesses employ over 1,000 people, with 70% Indigenous workers earning wages above the national average ($115,400 in oil extraction).

• Contrast with Others: The 2024 Indigenous Economic Progress Report shows that First Nations on reserves earn the lowest incomes among Indigenous groups (Métis and Inuit often fare better), with employment rates 19.9% lower than non-Indigenous Canadians.

Systemic barriers like underfunded education (per capita funding on reserves is 30% less than provincial schools) and limited infrastructure (e.g., 20% of reserves lack reliable internet) hinder economic development elsewhere. Fort McKay’s wealth and self-sufficiency are outliers.

4. Strong Governance and Negotiation Power

• Fort McKay’s Leadership: The band’s leadership has prioritized economic self-determination, leveraging court rulings (e.g., the 1990 Sparrow case affirming resource rights) and the duty to consult (stemming from the 2004 Haida Nation case) to secure favorable deals. Their proactive engagement with industry and government contrasts with communities facing internal governance challenges or distrust of resource development due to environmental concerns.

• Broader Challenges: Many First Nations face governance issues under the Indian Act, which imposes elected councils that may conflict with traditional systems, leading to disputes over resource decisions. The AFN notes that some communities reject resource projects outright due to fears of environmental damage or inadequate consultation (e.g., Oji-Cree resistance in Ontario’s Ring of Fire). Fort McKay’s unified vision and skilled negotiators make it an exception.

5. Recent Trends Amplifying Success

• Industry Partnerships: Recent trends show Canadian First Nations increasingly securing equity in significant projects, like the 2020 purchase of 15.1% of TC Energy’s NOVA Gas Transmission by 72 First Nations and Métis groups. Fort McKay has pioneered this model, starting earlier and scaling larger. Their partnerships align with Canada’s push for Indigenous reconciliation, supported by programs like the Indigenous Natural Resource Partnerships (INRP), which invested $6.2 million in BC projects in 2025.

• Policy Support: The First Nations Land Management Act (1999) and FNOGMMA give opt-in communities like Fort McKay greater control over land and resources, bypassing Indian Act restrictions. Only about 100 of Canada’s 600+ First Nations have adopted this framework, making Fort McKay’s early adoption notable.

• Contrast with Others: Many First Nations lag in accessing these programs due to capacity constraints or opposition to resource extraction. For instance, some coastal BC Nations prioritize environmental stewardship over oil and gas, limiting economic gains.

6. Exceptions Beyond Fort McKay

Other First Nations share similar success but remain outliers:

• Membertou First Nation (Nova Scotia): Transitioned from poverty to a $400 million economy through fisheries, real estate, and service contracts, focusing on education (95% high school completion vs. 70% for on-reserve First Nations).

• Osoyoos Indian Band (BC): Generates $30 million annually from vineyards, tourism, and real estate, leveraging its Okanagan Valley location.

• Tlicho Government (NWT): Benefits from diamond mining royalties and IBAs, with $50 million in annual revenue.

Unlike most First Nations facing economic disparities, these cases are exceptions due to unique geography, leadership, or market access.

Why This Matters

Fort McKay and similar First Nations demonstrate that strategic location, proactive governance, and modern legal frameworks (e.g., FNOGMMA, IBAs) can transform resource wealth into community prosperity. However, they are exceptions because:

• Systemic Barriers: Most First Nations face underfunded education, poor infrastructure, and historical trauma, limiting their capacity to replicate Fort McKay’s model.

• Resource Dependency: Oil and gas revenues are volatile (e.g., Alberta First Nations’ energy compensation fell from $250 million in 2011-12 to $55 million in 2018-19).

• Environmental Tensions: Unlike Fort McKay’s balanced approach, somecommunities prioritize land protection over development.

Comparison to U.S. Tribes

To tie this to your earlier question, Fort McKay’s success outshines many U.S. tribes (e.g., those outside the Bakken shale like the MHA Nation) because Canada’s legal evolution allows greater First Nation control and equity stakes, compared to the U.S.’s federal trust model.

However, U.S. tribes collectively generate more total revenue ($1 billion vs. $104 million in Canada for oil/gas in recent years). Still, Fort McKay’s per capita wealth and self-determination are exceptional even globally.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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Posted on April 20, 2021 by Natural Gas Now Guest Blogger

germanygermany energy

[Editor’s Note: Europe’s focus on biomass in the form of wood pellets to produce electricity is a step backward on CO2 and shows green energy is anything but.]

When most Americans think about “green power” and Europe, they conjure up pictures of wind turbines and solar panels producing emission-free power. The truth, however, is that Europe makes more energy from wood than it does wind and solar. Policymakers around the world, including the United States, have declared that burning wood to generate electricity is not a climate threat, but a “green” power solution. In Europe, “biomass power,” is counted and subsidized as zero-emissions renewable energy. As a result, European utilities import millions of metric tons of wood from U.S. forests every year, and Europe’s utilities generate more energy from burning wood than from wind and solar combined. Biomass power is a $50 billion global industry, and growing.

The idea that generating electricity from wood could be carbon-neutral is bewildering because biomass emits more carbon dioxide than coal at the smokestack, plus there is additional carbon dioxide released by logging, processing logs into small pellets, and transporting them overseas. The argument, accepted by the world’s politicians, is that the carbon released while trees are burning should not count because it is eventually offset by the carbon absorbed while other trees are growing, making the power from it carbon neutral.

Deforestation is a major climate issue. Climate scientists would prefer the trees to grow and absorb carbon dioxide, indicating that converting wood into power is a forest destroyer and an inefficient way to generate energy. For example, solar panels can produce 100 times as much power per acre than biomass. And, supplying 2 percent more global energy from biomass would require doubling total global wood harvests.

Europe Is the Largest Consumer and Producer of Wood Pellets

The global wood pellet market is segmented into five major regional markets: North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. Out of the five markets, Europe accounted for the major share in 2019. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the European Union consumed an estimated 27.35 million metric tons of wood pellets in 2018, up from 24.15 million tons in the previous year—a 13 percent increase. Wood pellet consumption in the region was estimated to increase to 30 million metric tons in 2019, with imports increasing to 12.2 million metric tons from 10.355 million metric tons in 2018—an 18 percent increase.

The European Union had 656 pellet plants in 2017. In 2018, the United Kingdom was the largest consumer of wood pellets in the region (8 million metric tons), followed by Italy (3.75 million metric tons), Denmark (3.5 million metric tons), Germany (2.19 million metric tons), and Sweden (1.785 million metric tons). Europe’s efforts to achieve its emission targets committed to in the Paris climate agreement contributes significantly to its dominant usage of wood pellets. Supportive government initiatives and incentives also drive the growth in wood pellet consumption. For example, the Drax facility in England, which was the U.K.’s largest coal plant before it switched most of its operations to wood pellets, receives over $1 billion worth of annual subsidies.

United States Supplies Wood Pellets

The southeastern United States produces one-sixth of the world’s timber from its highly productive forests; about 4 percent are turned into pellets. The U.S. wood-pellet industry has built 23 mills throughout the southeast over the past decade, and is branding itself as a 21st-century “green” energy business. A facility in Northampton County, North Carolina, ships wood to the world’s largest biomass plant, in England. The United States exports over 4 times as many pellets as it consumes and its exports of wood pellets are growing. Wood pellets are consumed in highly efficient heating stoves in the United States, as well as in barbeque smokers and in the industrial and electric generating sectors.

The world’s leading pellet manufacturer, Enviva, built its first pellet mill in 2011, after Europe’s renewable energy mandate created lucrative incentives to burn wood. Enviva operates nine large mills around the Southeast that can debark and crush and process logs into more than 5 million tons of pellets a year, and there are three more mills in development. It also operates five ports to ship its pellets abroad, and has 1,100 employees, not including the loggers and truckers who supply its wood.

Enviva tries to be an environmental steward, requiring the landowners who supply its wood to replant their forests, and using GPS technology to track each harvest to see if the landowners are in compliance. Reforestation in the Southeast is very common and is considered an agricultural activity. The company has also committed to help protect 35,000 acres of threatened bottomland hardwood forests and restore 5,000 acres of natural longleaf pine. U.S. tree cover increased about 2 percent from 2007 to 2017.

wood pellets

Conclusion

The wood pellet industry is growing because politicians see wood consumption as carbon neutral with new trees absorbing the carbon dioxide released by combusting wood. Europe is the largest consumer of wood pellets due to its incentives and desire to reach its Paris climate commitments. Europe produces more energy from wood than from wind and solar. The U.S. wood pellet industry is growing and is a major supplier of wood pellets to European countries.

Editor’s Note: This fact-based and relatively neutral article demonstrates the absurdity of supposedly green energy. The argument that making, transporting and burning wood is somehow CO2 neutral is factitious at best. If burning wood pellets simply substitutes for decay in the forest, then why are new trees planted? And, aren’t the trees planted to be harvested? The fact is that burning of biomass generates tremendous CO2 and makes a mockery of the idea burning natural gas is somehow dangerous when the wood pellets, which require vast acreages to produce, must be manufactured and then shipped as far away as Europe using equipment running on fossil fuels.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Natural gas is the quiet workhorse of American energy. It heats homes, powers factories, backs up intermittent renewables, fuels the data centers driving the AI boom, and supplies the LNG cargoes that strengthen allies abroad. For more than a decade, Dena Wiggins has been one of its most effective and consistent voices in Washington.

As President and CEO of the Natural Gas Supply Association since 2014, she has defended competitive markets, pressed for the infrastructure that delivers molecules to customers, and reminded policymakers that abundance and reliability are not optional extras—they are the foundation of modern life.

Wiggins came to the role with deep roots in the regulatory trenches. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Richmond and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. Before taking the helm at NGSA, she was a partner at the law firm Ballard Spahr and served as General Counsel to the Process Gas Consumers Group. For decades she has represented producers and marketers before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

She has been involved in every major natural gas rulemaking since Order No. 436, the landmark 1985 decision that began opening the interstate pipeline system to competition. That kind of institutional memory is rare and valuable. When FERC considers capacity allocation, pipeline certification, or market rules, Wiggins brings both the legal detail and the practical consequences for supply.

NGSA itself is a focused organization. Established in 1965, it represents major producer-marketers whose members account for roughly one-third of U.S. natural gas production. Its mission is straightforward: a competitive U.S. natural gas market supported by sensible regulation, reliable transportation, and policies that expand supply to American customers.

Under Wiggins, the association has stayed disciplined. It does not chase every headline. It shows up at FERC, on Capitol Hill, at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and in the rooms where state regulators meet through NARUC.

Her work at NARUC’s Committee on Gas has been especially important. She has argued, year after year, that natural gas belongs in any serious lower-carbon energy future because it is dispatchable, scalable, and already delivering emissions reductions when it displaces higher-emitting fuels.

She has also pressed the practical point that gas and electric systems must be better coordinated. Winter storms expose the seams between the two markets; when gas is needed simultaneously for heating and for power generation, the system needs clearer rules and adequate infrastructure. Wiggins has been a steady participant in those discussions, including work connected to NARUC’s Gas-Electric Alignment for Reliability efforts.

At the CFTC, she chairs the Energy and Environmental Matters Advisory Committee. That role has allowed her to examine how infrastructure constraints affect natural gas markets and derivatives. In an era of growing demand from LNG exports and power generation, physical bottlenecks matter. Markets cannot clear what pipelines cannot move. Wiggins has kept that reality in front of regulators who sometimes treat molecules as abstractions.

She is a frequent presence with congressional staff, White House officials, and the media. Outlets from Reuters and S&P Global to the Houston Chronicle and Natural Gas Intelligence quote her as a clear industry voice. In recent years she has emphasized that natural gas is no longer merely a “bridge.”

It is foundational. Record production—hovering around 102 to 103 billion cubic feet per day—has met rising demand from data centers, manufacturing, and exports while keeping prices more stable than many expected. The constraint is not geology. It is permitting, pipeline capacity, and the political will to build.

Wiggins has been a consistent advocate for permitting reform. Without faster, more predictable approvals for pipelines and related infrastructure, the United States cannot fully capitalize on its resource advantage or meet the electricity needs of the AI economy.

She has also highlighted the importance of natural gas storage as a reliability tool and the value of competitive markets over heavy-handed mandates. In earlier years, NGSA became the first natural gas trade association to support a price on carbon as a market-based tool, reflecting a preference for transparent price signals over command-and-control approaches.

The through-line is practical: policies that expand supply and let markets work tend to deliver better outcomes for consumers and the economy than policies that restrict supply and markets.

Beyond the energy brief, Wiggins serves on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Council of Manufacturing Associations, the British-American Business Association, the Advisory Council of New Mexico State University’s Center for Public Utilities, and the American Bar Association’s Infrastructure and Regulated Industries Section. She also sits on the board of The Washington Ballet—an interesting counterpoint that suggests a person who values both precision and grace.

For energy humanists, her contribution is clear. Affordable, reliable natural gas underwrites manufacturing in places like Wisconsin and across the heartland. It supports the grid when the wind is not blowing, and the sun is not shining. It powers the economic growth that lifts living standards. It provides the feedstock and fuel that keep American industry competitive.

When environmental activists and some policymakers treat natural gas as a temporary inconvenience to be phased out on arbitrary timelines, voices like Wiggins’ matter. She does not romanticize the fuel. She insists that the system work—that molecules reach the customers who need them, that markets remain competitive, and that infrastructure keeps pace with demand.

In a capital city often captured by short-term narratives and long-term wishful thinking, Dena Wiggins has practiced the unglamorous craft of regulatory advocacy and market defense. She understands the rulemakings, the committees, the storage reports, and the winter outlooks. She shows up with facts about supply and demand rather than slogans. That is the kind of steady competence that helps keep the lights on and the factories running. American energy abundance has many architects. Dena Wiggins is one of the quiet ones who has spent years making sure the pipes stay full and the markets stay open.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

European politics, philosophy, science, and communications were radically reoriented during the long 18th century as part of a movement whose participants called it the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change.

The movement produced books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. Its ideals directly inspired the American and French Revolutions. Then it faded into 19th-century Romanticism.

That history is not a museum piece. It is a measuring stick. Hold it up against today’s dominant green ideology, and the contrast is stark. What began as a confidence that reason, evidence, and human ingenuity could lift people out of misery has, in the hands of modern Green Ideologues, become something closer to its opposite: a moralized, anti-growth dogma that treats energy abundance as the problem rather than the solution.

The Enlightenment’s core claim was simple and radical. Knowledge is power.

Observation beats superstition. Progress is possible if we test ideas against reality instead of against sacred texts or court fashion. Newton’s laws, Locke’s arguments for limited government, Voltaire’s assaults on orthodoxy, the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence, the scientific method itself—all rested on the premise that the human condition is not fixed by fate or original sin. It can be improved by understanding nature and applying that understanding.

Energy was always part of that story, even if the word was not yet used as we do. The Industrial Revolution that followed the Enlightenment was not a betrayal of reason; it was reason applied. Coal, steam, later oil and electricity turned muscle power into machine power. Life expectancy rose. Famine receded in industrializing societies.

Ordinary people gained time, mobility and material comfort that would have looked like magic to their grandparents. The Enlightenment bet that rational inquiry plus practical application would better the human lot. For more than two centuries the bet paid off.

Today’s Green Ideologues have reversed the polarity. They still speak the language of improvement and planetary stewardship, but the substance is different.

Moral absolutes have replaced rational change. Traditional authority—once the target of Enlightenment critique—has been reconstituted as climate science consensus, NGO orthodoxy, and regulatory fiat. Question the models, the timelines, or the opportunity costs, and you are not a skeptic practicing Enlightenment habits; you are a denier. The very method that once demanded evidence is now used to police dissent and name-calling.

Consider the practical results. Net Zero timelines and renewable-only mandates treat intermittency as a minor technical detail rather than a fundamental engineering constraint. Reliability is subordinated to symbolism. Grid operators in Europe and parts of the United States have already faced the consequences: higher prices, strained capacity, and the quiet reintroduction of coal, nuclear and gas when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

In the developing world, the cost is measured in continued energy poverty. Hundreds of millions still cook over open fires and live without reliable electricity. Women and children bear the heaviest burden of indoor air pollution and the daily labor of gathering fuel. A philosophy that claims to speak for the planet while accepting that outcome has abandoned the Enlightenment’s concern for actual human welfare.

The same pattern appears in the treatment of nuclear power. An energy source with high energy density, near-zero operational emissions, and the capacity to run for decades is frequently sidelined or delayed by the same movement that demands rapid decarbonization. That is not reason. It is aesthetic preference dressed up as science.

The Enlightened mind would have asked which technologies deliver the most energy per unit of land and also practical environmentalism. The Green Ideologue often asks which technologies feel pure.

Romanticism, not the Enlightenment, supplies the deeper emotional current. Nature is treated as sacred and fragile rather than as a system to be understood and managed.

Human ambition is viewed with suspicion. Economic growth is framed as a threat rather than the historical engine of longer, healthier, freer lives. The older Romantic impulse to flee the machine and return to an imagined pastoral harmony has been updated with satellite data and carbon accounting, but the underlying posture remains. Progress is the problem.

Heins Energy Humanist Thinks:

This inversion matters for a straightforward reason. Energy is not a lifestyle accessory. It is the foundation of modern health, sanitation, food production, communication, and the capital formation that funds everything else. Abundant, reliable, affordable energy expands the realm of the human possibility. Scarcity strangles it.

Policies that deliberately raise the cost of energy in the name of planetary virtue act as a debilitating tax on people experiencing poverty and the working class—exactly the people the Enlightenment project was supposed to liberate from arbitrary limits.

The Midwest understands this in its bones. We have lived through the benefits of reliable power and the costs of its absence. We have watched factories close when energy prices spike and when regulatory uncertainty makes long-term investment foolish. We have also watched the same voices that demand sacrifice from American workers remain strangely silent about the coal plants China continues to build and the absolute carbon emissions that keep rising even as intensity targets are met.

Rational accounting would notice the difference. Green ideology prefers the narrative.

None of this requires denying that the climate is changing or that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It requires refusing to treat those facts as a blank check for any green policy that claims the climate label. The Enlightenment standard was always higher:

Does the proposed change actually improve the human condition when measured against evidence, alternatives, and trade-offs? By that standard, much of today’s green program fails. It substitutes moral urgency for engineering realism. It privileges modeling exercises and obscure environmental studies over economic development and operational experience. It treats dissent as heresy rather than as the necessary solvent of error.

The way back is not nostalgia for powdered wigs and coffeehouse debate. It is the recovery of the original confidence that reason, applied to the physical world, can still expand human possibility. That means treating energy as a system to be optimized for abundance, reliability, and cost rather than as a moral ledger.

It means keeping nuclear, natural gas, and, where appropriate, coal and hydro in the mix while demanding that intermittent sources compete without permanent subsidy.

It means measuring success by whether people in Africa, Asia, and the American heartland gain access to modern energy services, not by whether Western governments hit arbitrary percentage targets on a spreadsheet. There is an inhumanity about it all.

The Enlightenment did not promise utopia. It promised that systematic inquiry and practical application could make life less nasty, less brutish, and less short. That promise is still the right one. The Green Ideologues of our time have borrowed the language of improvement while discarding the method that once made improvement real. Restoring the enlightened methods is not nostalgia. It is the only humane path left.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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A recent study found most of the REDD projects, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, looked at did not reduce deforestation.

CHRIS LANG

AUG 25, 2023

In January 2023, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial published the results of a nine month investigation into forest carbon offsets. They found massive overestimates of the number of carbon offsets generated from the projects.

The research focussed on Verra, the world’s largest carbon standard, and found that “94% of the credits had no benefit to the climate”.

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The investigation used the analysis in a preprint paper that had not yet been peer reviewed. The paper has now been peer reviewed and publishedin the journal Science.

The authors looked at 26 REDD projects in six countries on three continents and found that “most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation”. Some of the projects did reduce deforestation, but “reductions were substantially lower than claimed”.

Keerti Gopal, a journalist with Inside Climate News sums up the findings of the Science paper:

Only 18 of the 26 projects had sufficient publicly available information to determine the number of offsets they were projected to produce. From project implementation until 2020, those 18 projects were expected to generate up to 89 million carbon offsets to be sold in the global carbon market. But researchers estimate that only 5.4 million of the 89 million, or 6.1 percent, would be associated with actual carbon emission reductions.

The problem is the counterfactual baseline, which is a story made up about what would have happened in the absence of a particular REDD project. It’s impossible to check whether the story is accurate or not, because the project did go ahead.

Even REDD proponents agree that this is the case. Everland is a company created by Wildlife Works Carbon, a REDD project developer, to market REDD credits. Obviously, Everland claims that REDD is effective. But Everland also acknowledges that,

“Fundamentally it is impossible to ‘validate’ a counterfactual simply because by definition it is what did not happen.”

In other words, Everland admits that Verra has been creating carbon offsets out of hot air since it was set up in 2007.

Writing in 2016, Larry Lohmann, who writes about climate justice at The Corner House, highlighted the problem with baselines Lohmann emphasised that this is not a problem with particular REDD projects, but with REDD and all other offsets:

So when academic and policy authors say that this or that REDD project is bogus or a fraud because it is non-additional, they are talking nonsense. No REDD project could ever be either additional OR non-additional. To put it yet another way, the problem is not “bad baselines” but the concept of counterfactual baselines itself. That reality does more than invalidate any particular REDD project. It invalidates REDD (and all other offsets) as a whole.

Predictably enough, Verra disagrees with the claims of worthless carbon offsets made by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial. But not long after the investigations were published, David Antonioli announced that he would be resigning from his US$345,272-a-year job as CEO of Verra.

Prices and sales of REDD carbon offsets have crashed this year.

A recent report from Barclays found that the price of carbon offsets has fallen to about US$2, down from about US$9 at the start of 2022. According to Barclays, the overall value of the voluntary carbon market this year is US$500 million, down from US$2 billion in 2021.

The Guardian reported on the Science paper under the headline “Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’”.

Naomi Klein commented that, “Speculators may lose billions but the rest of us have lost decades to these predictably scam-laden ‘market’ ‘solutions’.”

Human rights and REDD

But it’s not only dodgy baselines, phoney carbon offsets, and hot air that bedevil REDD projects. There are also reports of human rights abuses in REDD projects.

In 2017, the Centre for International Forestry Research put out a paperlooking at allegations of human rights abuse in relation to REDD. The paper found “multiple allegations of abuses of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) readiness and implementation”.

CIFOR’s paper also noted that, “grassroots and international movements (and related media like REDD-Monitor) have successfully publicised claims of rights abuses, likely preventing others”.

In June 2023, Verra stopped the issuance of carbon credits from the Southern Cardamom REDD project in Cambodia. The suspension followed a letter from Human Rights Watch about the brutal form of fortress conservation imposed by Wildlife Alliance, the project developer, on local communities living in the project area.

Trafigura Group is a multinational commodity trading company incorporated in Singapore. It’s the largest metal trader and the second largest oil trader in the world. It is also the world’s largest trader of carbon removal credits.

Bloomberg reports that Trafigura recently bought carbon credits from the Southern Cardamom REDD project. Trafigura had a contract to sell these to a large retailer.

As a result of the human rights allegations, Trafigura offered its client the option of buying credits from a different project. The client accepted, leaving Trafigura with the Southern Cardamon REDD credits stranded on its books.

Hannah Hauman has been Trafigura’s global head of carbon trading since April 2021. Before that, she was an oil trader, working for Shell, Puma Energy and other oil companies. She joined Trafigura in 2019 as a crude oil trader. She told Patrick Greenfield of The Guardian that,

“Coming from oil trading, it is strange to see units in carbon markets become invalid overnight. But I think it is in their nature to be constantly evolving with science. It is inherent in the asset class.”

But carbon offsets are not “constantly evolving with science”. They don’t become “invalid overnight”. All carbon offsets are always invalid. Always have been and always will be.

It’s time to scrap this dangerous false solution.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Out here in the Midwest, we still know the difference between folks who talk a good game and those who have spent a lifetime in the trenches making things work. Steve Reese belongs squarely in the second camp. For more than four decades he has lived the practical realities of American oil and gas—from the wellhead to the burner tip—while too many others chased slogans, greenwishes and subsidies.

In an industry too often talked about by people who have never negotiated a contract or audited a gas plant, Reese has been the quiet, reliable energy authority who gets it done.

Born and raised in the energy culture of Oklahoma, Reese cut his teeth at Getty and Texaco before striking out on his own in 1994. That year he founded Reese Energy Consulting, building a lean, expert team with offices in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. The firm has never been about empire-building or flashy press releases.

It has been about one hard-earned skill set: helping independent producers, midstream companies, and end-users squeeze more value out of the molecules they produce, transport, and sell. Over the years, that work has touched every major U.S. basin and extended into Mexico. Reese and his people have managed thousands of natural gas transactions involving billions of cubic feet.

They have audited more than five billion cubic feet of gas per day over a decade and recovered more than twenty million dollars for producers who were being shorted on price, fees, or measurement. Those are not theoretical numbers. They are real money that stayed in the pockets of the people who actually produce the energy America needs.

At the same time, Reese launched Reese Energy Training. His courses—Natural Gas Basics, Gas Midstream and NGL Basics, Gas Processing Agreements—have reached more than ten thousand industry professionals. In an era when too many young people enter the business with more ideology than experience, Reese has insisted on teaching the energy fundamentals the old-fashioned way: how gas is measured, how processing plants actually work, how contracts are written and negotiated, and why the details matter.

He has taken that same clear-eyed teaching on the road to groups like the Oklahoma Marginal Well Commission, the National Royalty Association, the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association, the Natural Gas Society of Oklahoma, and the Permian Basin Gas Society. When the industry needed someone who could explain the real world without apology or jargon, Steve Reese showed up.

He has never been content to stay only in the conference room or the classroom. Reese has become a respected voice on LinkedIn, where tens of thousands of followers find his posts free of the usual corporate fluff. He is a frequent guest on energy podcasts, including Stuart Turley’s Energy News Beat and the Sandstone Group platforms, where he talks plainly about LNG markets, data-center demand, pipeline constraints, and the simple truth that abundant, reliable natural gas remains the backbone of American prosperity. In an age of greenwishing and policy theater, that kind of steady energy realism is rare and valuable.

The energy humanist in me sees something deeper in Reese’s work. Energy poverty and its many cousins are still a daily reality for billions of people around the world.

Women and children still carry the heaviest burden of hauling water and firewood, dirty cooking fuels, polluted interior air and unreliable power. The only serious path out of that poverty runs through more energy, not less—through the full toolkit of natural gas, oil, nuclear, and whatever else can be made reliable and profitable without permanent subsidies.

Reese has spent his career making the American side of that equation work better. Every contract he improves, every plant he helps optimize, every young professional he teaches is a quiet contribution to the larger project of energy abundance. That is energy sanity in action.

Personal trials have tested him as well. In recent years, the Reese family walked through the loss of their daughter Angelina and Steve’s own serious health battles, including cancer, heart failure, and the long road toward a kidney transplant. In 2024, the Natural Gas and Energy Association of Oklahoma presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He accepted it on behalf of his staff, his clients, and the friends who had sustained the family through hard seasons. That kind of gratitude, humilty and resilience is the same character that has marked his professional life. He does not pretend the work is easy or the road smooth. He keeps showing up.

This Energy Humanist Thinks:

Steve Reese reminds us that the energy industry is still built by people who understand molecules, contracts, capital formation and cash flow more than they understand press releases. His record shows what happens when expertise is placed in service of producers and midstream operators rather than political narratives. In a time when too many voices treat natural gas as a temporary inconvenience on the way to some pure and perfect future, Reese treats it as the practically environmental, low-cost, high-reliability fuel it actually is. That is the difference between energy humanism and energy ideology.

He has also shown that teaching the next generation the fundamentals is not optional. You cannot manage what you do not understand, and you cannot improve what you have never measured. Ten thousand professionals who have sat through his courses carry a little more of that practical knowledge into the field. Multiply that across basins and companies, and the cumulative effect is real. Market worthy energy and environment trades must be able to measure and verify what is being and sold using strict accounting.

Finally, Reese’s life quietly undercuts the caricature of the oil-and-gas man as somehow separate from ordinary American values. He is a husband and father from Edmond, Oklahoma, who has buried a child, fought illness, and still found the strength to keep building.

That is the kind of character the Midwest in me recognizes and respects.

America’s energy future will not be secured by those who only critique from the sidelines. It will be secured by people who have spent decades buried in the details—negotiating the contracts, auditing the meters, training the workforce, and speaking plainly about what actually works.

Steve Reese has been doing that energy sanity work for more than forty years. The rest of us who care about energy abundance, reliability, and human flourishing are better off because he has.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

From a farm town in Arthur, North Dakota, to the Secretary’s office at the Department of the Interior, Doug Burgum has lived the kind of American story that still makes sense in the Midwest. He swept chimneys to help pay his way through North Dakota State University. He earned an MBA at Stanford.

In 1983, he mortgaged family farmland to put seed money into a small Fargo software company called Great Plains. He grew it, took it public, sold it to Microsoft for more than a billion dollars, and stayed on as a senior vice president. Later, he co-founded venture and real estate firms that put capital and buildings back into the same prairie towns that raised him.

That is not a résumé padded with talking points. It is a man who knows what it costs to bet the farm and what it takes to make the bet pay off for other people.

In 2016, North Dakotans elected him their 33rd governor. They re-elected him in a landslide. Under Burgum, the state passed the largest tax cut in its history and cut red tape that had been strangling growth.

Forbes named him America’s Best Entrepreneurial Governor. Real GDP grew faster than in any other region of the country. Unemployment hit the lowest rate in the nation. The Bakken kept producing. Air, water, and soil health rankings remained near the top of the national lists. Burgum’s point was simple and Midwestern: you can have energy and stewardship at the same time if you treat both as practical jobs instead of moral theater.

He is now the 55th Secretary of the Interior and chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council. The portfolio is huge—public lands, minerals, offshore waters, tribal relations, parks—and the mandate is equally clear. Get America’s resources working again for the people who own them.

On his first days in office, Burgum signed orders that treated energy supply as an emergency, not a luxury. The Bureau of Land Management has held lease sales that brought in more revenue in a single month than the previous four years combined. Applications for permits to drill have reached 15-year highs.

Federal and Indian drilling permits are running more than 60 percent above the prior administration’s pace at the same point. Royalty rates on new onshore leases were returned to the historic 12.5 percent minimum so that more wells are actually drilled. Offshore sales in the Gulf of America are back on a regular calendar; the first mandatory sale under the new law generated more than $300 million in high bids.

More than 13 million additional acres of federal coal have been identified and made available. Preferential regulatory treatment for subsidized, weather-dependent wind and solar projects has ended, allowing dispatchable sources—natural gas, coal, nuclear—to compete on cost, reliability, and domestic supply chains.

These are not abstract policy wins. They are barrels, cubic feet, megawatts, and paychecks. They are the difference between a factory that stays open and one that moves, between a family that can afford heat and one that cannot, between data centers that power the next wave of American industry and blackouts that do not.

Burgum has said the same thing in Bismarck and in Washington: North Dakota proved the country can produce energy at scale without turning the place into a sacrifice zone. Public lands are not a museum, and they are not a cash register for whoever shouts loudest. They are an asset that belongs to every citizen. The job is to get a fair return while keeping the lights on and the air breathable. Technology and responsible operators have already made the old trade-off obsolete. Pretending otherwise is just another form of scarcity politics.

Energy humanism is not a slogan invented in a faculty lounge. It is the recognition that abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the foundation of human flourishing—health, mobility, clean water, jobs, and the chance for the next generation to live better than the last. Four billion people still live with energy poverty. American families still feel the pinch when policy treats electrons as a moral test instead of a necessity.

Burgum’s record, first in a producing state and now over the nation’s public estate, is the working demonstration that the two goals are compatible when you put results ahead of rhetoric.

That is why he is the second winner of the Energy Humanism MVP Award. He did not just talk about “all of the above.” He delivered more of what actually works, on land that belongs to the public, in time for the country that needs it.

This Energy Humanist Thinks:

• Public lands are a balance sheet owned by the people, not a preserve locked away from them.

• Reliability and cost beat intermittent virtue every time the lights need to stay on.

• The cleanest energy policy is the one that lets technology and markets do the work instead of mandates and subsidies.

• A farm kid who bet the farm and then ran a state and a cabinet department understands both dirt and dollars. That combination is rare and useful.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

stephenheins@Substack.com

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

Support Stephen’s Energy Mission on GoFundMe

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Recap of Energy Humanism Publications

Week of August 17–23, 2026

This week I concentrated on the Tribute Series and original commentary that advance Global Energy Plentitude, Low Cost, and Fairness. Four tributes honored practitioners who refuse the greenwishing consensus. Four original pieces examined job-creation claims that do not survive contact with reality, the reliability of Chinese emissions accounting, the green industrial complex’s extra-constitutional influence, and the human cost of Net Zero when European hospitals lose reliable power while Asia keeps building coal. I also curated forty-nine stories from an all-star group of energy writers and named U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright the inaugural recipient of the Energy Humanism MVP Award.

Tributes

1. A Tribute to Douglas Sandridge and His Substack Energy Ruminations

Oil-and-gas veteran, founder of Oil & Gas Executives for Nuclear, and author of Energy Ruminations. Sandridge documents energy addition rather than the advertised “transition” and argues from physics and field experience.

2. A Tribute to Scott Lathrop: Bridging Tribal Sovereignty and Nuclear Opportunity

Work connecting tribal land, sovereignty, and advanced nuclear as a path to economic self-determination rather than another round of extractive promises.

3. A Tribute to Ken Yagelski: From Purdue to the Power Grid

Engineer’s path from Purdue to practical grid reliability and the unglamorous work that keeps the lights on.

4. Marc Morano: The Relentless Archivist of Climate Realism

Climate Depot founder who has spent two decades compiling the record the legacy media prefers to bury.

Original Commentary

1. The Temporary Jobs Mirage: Why Renewable “Job Creation” Claims Don’t Hold Up

2. How Much Longer Can China Be Trusted for Carbon Emission Information?

3. When Are We Going to Stop Treating the Green Industrial Complex Like the Fourth Branch of Government?

4. Europe’s Hospitals Roast While Policymakers Quibble and Asia Builds Coal: The Inhumanity of Net Zero

Curation

49 energy humanism stories by an all-star group of writers, curated by Stephen Heins.

Special Recognition

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Named Inaugural Recipient of the Energy Humanism MVP Award

Wright, confirmed February 2025, has spent a career in shale, nuclear, geothermal, and now the Department of Energy arguing that abundant, reliable, affordable energy is a humanitarian project, not a luxury. The award recognizes that stance.

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net • 920-917-8644

Support Stephen’s Energy Mission on GoFundMe

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By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Londoners are waking up to “horrendous” cracks in their walls and floors. Five successive heat waves have dried out the clay soil under much of the city, and the ground is shrinking beneath their feet. Insurance claims for subsidence have hit historic highs. Average payouts are running around £20,000 a claim.

Rail lines laid on the same clay are at risk of movement and derailment. The British Geological Survey has long called clay shrink-swell the most damaging geohazard in Britain. This summer is proving the point.

This is not abstract future risk. It is happening now. London Clay behaves like a sponge. It swells when wet and contracts hard when dry. Prolonged heat and drought pull the moisture out. Foundations shift. Walls crack. Roads and tracks settle unevenly. The southeast of England sits on a lot of this stuff, and successive dry, hot stretches have turned a seasonal annoyance into a structural emergency for homes, hospitals, and infrastructure.

The same heat that is cracking foundations is baking people alive inside buildings that were never designed for it. Roughly 90 percent of England’s hospital buildings are vulnerable to overheating, according to the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and the Climate Change Committee.

Some wards have recorded indoor temperatures above 30°C when the outdoor air was only 22°C. NHS guidelines say wards should stay under 28°C, and sensitive areas like recovery rooms or maternity under 25°C. Reality is routinely worse. Overheating incidents in English NHS sites nearly doubled between 2016-17 and 2021-22.

During recent heat waves, operating theaters have become unsafe, the hundreds or thousands have canceled surgeries, IT systems have failed, and staff have collapsed from heat exhaustion. Patients—especially the elderly, infants, and those with chronic conditions—suffer the most.

Europe as a whole pays a steep price for treating air conditioning as an American extravagance or a climate sin. Only about one in five European homes has air conditioning. In Britain the figure is even lower. In the United States it is around 90 percent. Japan is similar. The result is measurable in excess deaths.

The 2003 European heat wave killed tens of thousands. The 2022 summer alone was linked to more than 60,000 heat-related deaths across the continent. Recent waves continue the pattern: hundreds to more than a thousand excess deaths in single stretches, disproportionately among the old and those without cooling. Many die indoors. A simple window unit can cut a person’s heat-death risk dramatically. Europe largely chose not to install them.

The costs are not just financial. They are measured in human lives and suffering that never show up cleanly on a government balance sheet. Expensive hospital upgrades are needed. Retrofitting older buildings for cooling is costly. Strengthening foundations against shrink-swell soil is expensive.

Insuring against repeated claims drives premiums higher. Yet the alternative—continuing to treat reliable cooling and resilient construction as optional or ideologically impure—keeps producing the same predictable results every hot summer: cracked homes, canceled operations, overwhelmed emergency services, and unnecessary deaths.

Much of the official conversation frames this as an inevitable consequence of “climate change” that can only be solved by accelerating Net Zero timelines and restricting energy use. That framing is incomplete and, in practice, counterproductive. Europe is warming, and hotter, drier summers do increase the frequency of these events. But the deadliness and the property damage caused by Clay in construction are heavily amplified by policy and cultural choices.

Buildings were designed for a cooler past. Energy systems were constrained by cost and ideology. Air conditioning was discouraged or restricted in the name of emissions and aesthetics. The result is a continent that is poorly adapted to the temperatures it is already experiencing.

From a Midwest vantage point, the practical lesson is straightforward. People need reliable, affordable energy to stay cool, to power hospitals, and to maintain the the infrastructure of buildings that keeps cities livable. Treating cooling as a moral failing or an emissions problem first and a life-safety tool second is a recipe for preventable harm.

Places that installed air conditioning widely saw heat mortality drop even as temperatures rose. Spain increased its AC penetration and cut the risk of heat deaths on hot days by 30 to 60 percent. Europe’s low adoption rate is a choice with a body count.

Subsidence risk and hospital overheating are not abstract climate indicators. They are concrete (pun intended) failures of adaptation and energy realism. Clay shrinks when it dries. People die when buildings overheat, and medical systems cannot function. Insurance claims rise. Railways become less reliable. The upgrades will be expensive. The human costs of delay are already being paid in lives and in the quiet misery of elderly residents suffering through heat they cannot escape.

This Energy Humanist Thinks: Abundant, reliable energy is not the enemy of resilience. It is the foundation of it. Cooling saves lives. Strong foundations and functional hospitals require power and practical engineering, not ideology.

Europe’s successive heat waves are exposing the gap between climate rhetoric and lived reality. The cracks in the clay and the overheated wards are telling the same story. Fix the practical problems—energy supply, building standards, cooling capacity—or keep counting the costs in pounds, cracks, and excess deaths.

The ground under London is not waiting for better narratives. Neither are the patients in those wards.

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

NYSERDA and Governor Hochul’s team are out again touting the economic benefits of New York’s offshore wind projects. South Fork Wind and Sunrise Wind, they say, have already injected more than $460 million into the Long Island economy. Sunrise alone is credited with creating more than 870 direct jobs. Local businesses are feeling the lift. Skilled workers have new pathways. New York is becoming a “national clean energy and climate leader.”

It sounds impressive. It is also the same story we have heard for years about wind and solar: these projects create jobs. Lots of them. The problem is that the story carefully mixes temporary construction work with the far smaller number of permanent positions that remain after the turbines are spinning and the construction crews go home.

This is not a minor distinction. It is the central flaw in the renewable jobs mythology.

Construction jobs are real. Building an offshore wind farm requires ironworkers, electricians, pile drivers, mariners, and a long list of specialized trades. South Fork Wind, America’s first commercial-scale offshore project, mobilized more than a thousand workers across multiple states and generated roughly 1.5 million union labor hours during construction. Sunrise Wind has put hundreds of Long Island tradespeople to work on its onshore and offshore scopes. Those paychecks matter to the families that received them. No serious person denies it.

But those jobs end. Wind farms are not built slowly over decades like traditional power plants. The heavy lift of foundation installation, turbine erection, and cable laying is concentrated in a relatively short window. Once the project reaches commercial operation, the large construction workforce disperses. What remains is a much smaller operations and maintenance (O&M) crew.

Look at the numbers that actually stick. Independent analyses of offshore wind consistently show construction-phase job-years running many times higher than permanent O&M positions. Ratios of 10-to-1 or 12-to-1 are common. For South Fork Wind, developer materials and state reports indicate roughly 1,000 construction-related positions that came and went.

Permanent staffing is far leaner: dozens of wind turbine technicians, transmission technicians, and control-center operators, not hundreds. Sunrise Wind’s regional O&M hub in East Setauket is expected to support longer-term skilled work, with some estimates of around 100 permanent roles for the broader New York projects, but that is still a fraction of the construction spike now being advertised as transformative job creation.

Advocates paper over this gap by talking in “job-years.” One permanent technician working for 25 years counts as 25 job-years. A two-year construction stint for 400 workers counts as 800 job-years. Add them up, and the total looks enormous. Present the same data as ongoing employment, and the picture shrinks dramatically. This is not accounting transparency. It is a dishonest marketing choice.

The same pattern appears nationwide and internationally. Manufacturing jobs for turbines and components are heavily concentrated overseas, especially in China. The direct manufactured components requirement help, but they have not changed the fundamentals of the economics. Once a project is operating, the labor intensity drops sharply to 10 to 12 percent of original employment.

Intermittent generation does not require the same steady, year-round workforce that a coal plant, natural gas combined-cycle facility, or nuclear station needs for continuous operation, maintenance, and fuel handling.

There is also the cost side that rarely makes the press releases. These projects are heavily subsidized through tax credits, above-market power purchase agreements, and state mandates. When taxpayers and ratepayers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per job-year created, the net economic contribution is far less impressive than the gross job counts suggest.

European experience has already shown that forced renewable build-outs can raise electricity prices and shrink overall employment once the higher energy costs work their way through the broader economy. American ratepayers on Long Island and across the Northeast are now discovering the same mythical arithmetic.

Midwest common sense has always understood the difference between a temporary construction boom and lasting employment. Building a highway creates jobs. Maintaining and operating the transportation system that uses that highway creates careers. The same holds for energy. A modern natural gas plant or nuclear facility supports skilled operators, technicians, and support staff for decades. Those jobs anchor communities. They do not evaporate when the concrete trucks leave.

This Energy Humanist Thinks: Abundant, reliable, low-cost energy is the foundation of modern prosperity and the only sustainable source of lasting employment. Temporary construction spikes financed by subsidies and mandates do not build anything close to that foundation.

They create a boom-bust cycle that leaves workers scrambling when the next project is delayed, canceled, or finished. Real energy policy measures success by the lights that stay on, the factories that stay competitive, and the families that can plan for the long term—not by the number of temporary hard hats counted during the build phase.

The NYSERDA numbers are not fabricated. Construction activity is happening. Local spending is real. However, the mythology is the claim that these projects deliver large numbers of permanent, high-quality jobs that justify the higher costs, the intermittency, and the policy favoritism. They do not.

Once the turbines are up, most of the jobs are gone. That is not a bug in the renewable model. It is a feature of technologies that require a short, intense construction effort followed by relatively light ongoing labor.

American workers and ratepayers deserve better than inflated job-year tallies and temporary payrolls sold as permanent economic transformation. They deserve energy systems that deliver both reliable power and durable employment.

The current offshore wind narrative delivers neither energy savings or permanent employment in the proportions renewable mythology advertised.

#####

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-stephens-energy-mission

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

steve@heins.net

920-917-8644

Weekly recognition of the individual who did the most to advance energy humanism that week.

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Criteria for Winning

The winner is the person who most clearly advanced the core principles of energy humanism in the preceding week. Judging emphasizes measurable or highly visible contribution, not volume of commentary.

Primary criteria (in order of weight):

1. Abundance and Reliability – Concrete action or analysis that expands practical energy supply, improves grid reliability, or advances “Best of the Above” (nuclear, natural gas, coal where appropriate, competitive renewables, and emerging firm power).

2. Human Flourishing and Energy Poverty – Work that reduces energy poverty, expands access (especially for women and in developing regions), or demonstrates the human cost of energy scarcity.

3. Truth Over Narrative – Clear, data-driven correction of alarmist claims, flawed modeling, or policy that raises costs without corresponding human benefit.

4. Infrastructure and Capital Formation – Advocacy or achievement that strengthens the physical or financial foundations of energy systems (pipelines, transmission, permitting reform, private investment, or profitable technology).

5. Courage and Independence – Willingness to speak or act against institutional pressure when the evidence points toward abundance and humanism.

Secondary considerations: originality of insight, reach and clarity of communication, and consistency with long-term energy humanist principles. The award is not given for volume of posts, media appearances, or ideological signaling.

Initially, the founder selects the winner. Over time, a simple public tally of reader nominations and votes will determine the weekly recipient.

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 18, 2026

Energy Humanist Launches Weekly “Most Valuable Player” Award to Honor Champions of Abundance and Human Flourishing

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — Independent energy writer and curator Stephen Heins today announced the creation of the Energy Humanism’s Most Valuable Player Award, a weekly recognition of the individual who did the most to advance practical energy abundance, reliability, and human flourishing in the preceding seven days.

“For more than twenty-six years I have argued that the world needs energy plentitude, low cost, and fairness,” Heins said. “We have no shortage of people willing to lecture the rest of us about scarcity and sacrifice. We do have a shortage of public recognition for those who actually expand the energy supply that makes modern life possible. This award is a modest attempt to correct that imbalance.”

The Energy Humanism MVP Award will be announced each week. The winner will receive a formal citation and a graphic plaque that can carry a photograph and a short description of the contribution that earned the honor. Heins will select the initial recipients. A transparent public nomination and voting process will be introduced once the series is established.

Criteria focus on concrete advancement of energy abundance, reduction of energy poverty, defense of reliable infrastructure, and honest analysis that prioritizes human outcomes over narrative. The award is deliberately not limited to any single technology, political affiliation, or professional category.

Heins, who publishes under the name “The Word Merchant,” has curated and published nearly 9,000 energy-related articles and Op-Eds on Substack over the past three years without missing a day. He has written over 70 tributes to some of energy humanism’s most important voices and has written over a 100 energy sanity articles. He has self-funded his work for the last eight years.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-stephens-energy-mission is underway to sustain the research, tributes, and daily curation.

“Energy is not an ideology,” Heins said. “It is the foundation of health, prosperity, and freedom. The people who expand that foundation deserve to be noticed.”

Media contact:

Stephen Heins

The Word Merchant

Sheboygan, Wisconsin

920-917-8644 or steve@heins.net

Graphic Plaque Visual

Here is a clean, formal award plaque template designed for weekly use. It leaves clear space for a photograph of the winner and a short citation paragraph.

WRITTEN BY JACK HELLNER ON AUG 22, 2023. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS

AUG 22, 2023

WRITTEN BY JACK HELLNER ON AUG 22, 2023. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS

The Bloomberg-Funded Scheme To Ban Planes, Cars, Meat And More In 14 US Cities

The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a globalist enterprise with at least 14 partners right here in the U.S., and they have set an “ambitious target” to convince the masses to give up meat, dairy, and private car ownership, as well as almost all flights to supposedly save the planet and control temperatures forever around the current level. [emphasis, links added]

From RedState yesterday:

Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the ‘C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,’ which has an ‘ambitious target’ by the year 2030 of ‘0 kg [of] meat consumption,’ ‘0 kg [of] dairy consumption,’ ‘3 new clothing items per person per year,’ ‘0 private vehicles’ owned, and ‘1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.’

…

The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.

So, 14 leftist cities in the U.S. have signed on to this commitment to take away freedom of choice from their citizens, while people suffer under rampant crimeand children perform poorly in schools, but their priority is to take away milk, meat and gas-powered cars. Got it.

Major funders and partners of the organization include George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Clinton Foundation, and The World Bank.

Michael Bloomberg, the president of the group, is himself transported via gas-guzzling private jets and limousines to his many mansions around the world.

From Fox News:

Flight records show that Bloomberg’s private jets took more than 1,700 trips and emitted at least 10,000 metric tons of CO2 from August 2016 to August 2020, a Business Insider analysis found. A typical car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year.

Bloomberg has access to multiple private jets, but he wants to limit us to one short-haul flight every three years.

He probably pretends he cares about his carbon footprint by buying worthless pieces of paper called carbon credits.

His real estate portfolio consists of “at least 11 homes” and he owns a fleet of luxury personal vehicles:

To suit his luxurious fortune, he owns a Mercedes-Benz Maybach sedan. His Audi R8 is the one that shows athletic personification. Like a mandated SUV in the home of every celeb, Cadillac Escalade is tuned in black color. After not getting satisfied with one, he owns another full-size SUV from Chevrolet.

Bloomberg and other green pushers tell people their gas-powered cars are destroying the planet, yet he has a massive car collection of gas guzzlers.

They want to outlaw milk; does that include breastfeeding? Pretty sure that’s a dairy product, and women and babies breathe out that vicious CO2, a non-pollutant clear gas that makes plants thrive.

These billionaires generate massive pollution and pollute people’s minds with talking points to indoctrinate the people to fall for pure propaganda.

What you will never see in these articles or in these policies is scientific datathat shows a direct correlation between milk and temperature, cars and temperature, meat and temperature, the population and temperature, crude oil consumption and temperature, or CO2 and temperature.

The temperature fluctuates no matter what the other variables do.

You will also not see any correlation between any of these variables and storm activity or sea levels.

When there is no correlation you can’t assume causation. It is all a scam.

The sole purpose of these big government policies by leftists is to control our lives.

These billionaires and other leftists pretend they care about the poor and middle classes and small businesses, but every day they show that is a blatant lie.

They are extremely dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country, as are all the journalists who regurgitate the talking points without asking questions or doing any research.

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