“[The Paris Accord] would have taken away our wealth…. We had to pay money to other countries that are very substantial countries. They wanted to take away your wealth. They didn’t want you to drill. They didn’t want you to frack.  They didn’t want you to do steel.”

But what we want now is not independence; we want American energy dominance. Dominance

– President Donald Trump, August 13, 2019

At the construction site of Royal Dutch Shell’s Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in western Pennsylvania last week, President Trump delivered an industrial speech that clearly distinguished his energy exceptionalism, energy dominance, energy optimism theme versus the climate-doom, keep-it-in-the-ground, Green-New-Deal worldview. The backdrop is Beaver County, Pennsylvania where a badly needed, long-awaited manufacturing revival is in process.

Shell Project

Shell’s multi-billion-dollar project will turn low-cost ethane from the Marcellus and Utica basins into polyethylene, a building block for many plastics.

“I withdrew our country from the job killing and very expensive Paris Climate Accord. Last year coal exports were up 92% compared to 2016. 92%, do you believe that? You’re shipping it all over the world. To Vietnam. I was in Vietnam and they said, ‘We get coal from Ohio. We get coal from West Virginia. It’s the finest coal in the world.’”

MasterResource has documented the energy/climate views of President Donald Trump both before and after his election in 2016 (here). The historic nature of his views requires constant updates, particularly with the other side declaring war against oil, gas, and coal and waging lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies.

Here are his words from the Cincinnati, Ohio rally earlier this month:

• Our shared Republican agenda is pro worker, pro jobs, pro family, pro growth, and 100% pro American.

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. (Please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Cost-Effective ‘Renewable’ Energy Is A Fictional Construct
There is no conservative momentum for a carbon tax
Bill Gates: The hidden costs of unreliable electricity
Why should we subsidize tomorrow’s rich in the name of the climate?

“One thing … which is going awry generally – is the money being wasted on electric cars for which there is no market. Or rather, which there’s no money to be made from the making.”

– Eric Peters, Eric Peters Autos, July 25, 2019

There are nearly always multiple realities that impinge on economic events in the mixed economy. The recent report that Nissan Motors may go out of business by 2020 due to a sudden deterioration of its razor thin 1% to 2% annual profit margin is attributed to:

• Alleged financial misconduct of Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn; 
• Continuing technical problems with Nissan’s shiftless transmissions,
• Nissan’s problems with partner and co-owner Renault’s declining sales due to US steel tariffs;
• The structural alliance between Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi;
• A substantial, sudden drop off in US sales;
• Republican-spearheaded federal tax reform, not cited by the media, which reduced tax refunds on wealthier households beginning in 2019 due to limits on deductions for property taxes, state and local taxes and sales taxes resulting in lower car sales.