Breakthrough! Houston Chronicle Published Non-alarmist Climate Op-ed

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 15, 2026

Ed. Note: Today’s post provides the background and significance of Robert Bradley’s op-ed in The Houston Chronicle, “World Should be Optimistic About Our Fossil Fuel Future.”

For more than a decade, my once regular site for climate/energy opinion-page editorials has been off limits, with only a few letters-to-the-editor published. Examples from the good-old-days:

“ExxonMobil on Right Path” (June 14, 2009)
“Climate-Change Alarmism Runs into a Reality Check” (January 9, 2009)
“False Alarms and Climate Change” (March 30, 2008)
“Al Gore’s Telling Whoppers Again” (June 4, 2006)
“Shoppers: There is a Bright Side to Rising Gas Prices” (April 18, 2002)
“President is Correct to Ignore Climate Alarmists” (May 14, 2001)
“Fear Not: The Energy Malthusians Are Wrong” ( April 21, 2000)

That changed completely when the well-monied Progressive Left captured the Chronicle, probably via grants from Big Green nonprofits that ensured that pro-wind, pro-solar, pro-“energy transformation” reporting was the regular fare–and contrary articles such as my mine kept out (with nary an explanation, much less simple acknowledgement).

Perhaps I should thank energy reality and Donald Trump’s energy/climate policy for bringing me back from the politically incorrect.

The Blackout

My banishment began soon after the Trump was first elected where “resist” seemed to be the order of the day. I emailed the-then-editor asking for a editorial-board meeting where I could explain and defend free-market energy/climate policy. (I had done such before.) First came no answer. I send it again only to receive the reply that “we cannot accommodate all comers.” Insult me twice, sir.

I had reason to both request and be invited. I had had previous editorial board meetings–three to my recollection. And I was a lifelong Houstonian who founded the Institute for Energy Research, and IER’s president Tom Pyle had been chosen as the transition leader for Trump’s U.S. Department of Energy.

At MasterResource, I brought attention to the anti-fossil-fuel bias of the Chronicle in fossil-fuel-capital Houston. I particularly criticized business editorialist Chris Tomlinson, whose rants against fossil fuels doubled as PR for his wife’s multi-million-dollar income as an originator of renewable energy projects. Tomlinson statements (here and here) such as

Looming over the industry and the congress is the question of the long-term viability of fossil fuels as climate change becomes a greater threat to humanity.

…by 2025, electric and autonomous vehicles will be in full production, and many energy companies question whether demand for crude will remain at current levels, thus making such investment worthwhile.

They [oil executives] don’t want to discuss winding down their industry, even if that is the only sustainable and efficient future for the planet.

Humanity, though, needs visionary business leaders committed to supplying reliable, affordable and clean energy. We don’t need unimaginative hacks looking for ways to keep pumping oil and gas with bolt-on technologies that benefit their business plans but not the planet.

We fundamentally have to transform our economy in ways that are unimaginable to people who are over 40. We have to cooperate, innovate and compromise, and most of all, we have to set aside our pride.’

were too much to bear.

Published!

My Houston Chronicle op-ed came out in the Print edition today. This breaks a decade-plus-long drought when the Progressive Left Chronicle ignored my submissions.

A new editor with a more inclusive editorial policy (thank you Trump Nation), Evan Mintz, reached out to me after seeing my MasterResource posts critical of the paper’s bias and my documentation of the conflicted business editorialist Chris Tomlison, whose wife is a very successful renewables rainmaker (see Appendix B). In any case, I was published online and last Sunday in print.