“Each year, the Progressive Policy Institute publishes its list of ‘investment heroes’ – non-financial companies that are investing the most in the U.S. economy. Of the 25 companies that make up the Institute’s ‘investment heroes’ list this year, 10 are involved to some degree in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas or involved in energy distribution and power.”

“For decades now, the United States has pursued energy policies based on the fear of scarcity. The thinking in Washington, D.C. – and even at some energy companies – was that reviving domestic energy production was a dream…. Now, we need energy policies that are designed for this new era of abundance.”

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson recently addressed the Greater Houston Partnership on the State of Energy. He paid homage to Houston, where ExxonMobil’s far flung operations are about to be brought together at one campus.…

Two weeks ago, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) hosted a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital of Houston. The global warming establishment may have stayed away, but a large crowd was treated to a sound, multi-disciplinary review of the physical science, political economy, and resource economics.

The evening keynote for At The Crossroads: Energy & Climate Policy Summit was an address by Texas Governor Rick Perry. While Perry’s general public policy positions are free-market–and thus pro-consumer and pro-taxpayer–his energy security, don’t-import-but-export argument smacks of Mercantilism and U.S.-side protectionism. Furthermore, Perry pulled his punches regarding the conference’s major themes on climate and energy policy. It was a timid, uninspired keynote just when the momentum dictated going the other way.

Soft on Climate Propoganda

Perry could have, should have, reiterated the conference’s major themes: the 15–20 year ‘pause’ in global warming; lowered climate sensitivity estimates (and explanation for the same in the peer-reviewed literature); the desperate, speculative tie-in’s between anthropogenic climate change and extreme weather events (if there has been no warming, how can ‘climate change’ be involved?);…

“But while the IPCC chooses to look the other way, the scientific evidence supporting low equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to pile up…. This is all around good news, for it means that we can focus more on expanding energy access (via fossil fuels) around the world rather than curtail our energy growth.”

There are basically three key parameters that determine the pace and magnitude of future climate change: 1) how much carbon are we going to emit, 2) what percentage of those emissions will remain in the atmosphere (as opposed to being taken up by the biosphere), and 3) how much will the climate warm as a result of what remains in the atmosphere. We understand these things a lot better than we often let on.

The first parameter seems difficult to assess on timescales that exceed a couple of decades.…

“In the past ten years the world has added three-quarters of a billion people to the middle class. For more than two centuries the United States has helped lead many of these advancements by spreading our ideals of free markets, free trade, rule-of-law, and limited state involvement that allow private initiative to innovate and drive advances.”

Chevron CEO John Watson’s pro-energy emphasis in public forums has been featured at MasterResource before. His latest speech was made before the Economic Club of Minnesota in Minneapolis on September 16, 2014. It is reproduced (subtitles added) in its entirety.

Minnesota is home to so many great companies…3M, Target, General Mills, Cargill and others that play a very important role in our country’s economic growth. These companies and the other members of the Economic Club of Minnesota are providing jobs and opportunity for this community and serving as an example of leadership for the entire Midwest.…