“Certainly, the path of energy transition has never been clear. Five climate summits have taken place over the past 30 years, and progress has always fallen short. This latest setback may just be the latest in a long series of halfway measures and setbacks.”

“For critics of the European Union’s climate policies, the sudden focus away from greenhouse gas emissions and on existing fuel reserves is validating.” (NYT, below)

Let history note that the February 23, 2022, print edition of the New York Times admitted that “net zero” was a long shot. This breaks the narrative that Net Zero was the inevitable future with politics and business and high technology leading the way. Forget energy density; energy reality would be remade by a shared narrative of hoping and wanting it to be remade.…

A historical oddity is how the U.S. government and Exxon “knew” about the ‘greenhouse signal’ and perilous anthropogenic climate change when climate scientists did not. But such is the state of the debate where PR and lawsuits overwhelm a rational view of knowledge. (below)

“In my expert opinion, in the period shortly after President Carter took office in 1977,” states James Gustave Speth, “there was a growing sense of concern and indeed urgency within the federal government that fossil fuel burning was heating the planet and causing the climate to change in many ways that could be catastrophic….” [1]

“Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue,” stated an article in Scientific American. “This knowledge did not prevent the company … from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation.”…

“’Why would President Biden want to increase the misery of people already trying to keep up with the inflation he caused? It’s absurd that he wants to increase their misery by reducing the flow of oil into the Great Lakes region at the onset of winter,’ said Project 21 member Emery McClendon.”

Energy affordability, accessibility, and reliability is color-blind and income-sensitive. Wealthy persons can pay for home generators and drive or fly away from trouble. Poorer people are stuck in their circumstances. For the latter, energy-price setbacks mean budget cuts elsewhere.

This was the basic theme of a November 2021 press release by Project 21, “Biden Betrays ‘Environmental Justice’ Claims By Risking Energy Poverty” concerning the Biden Administration’s potential closure of Line 5, a dual Wisconsin-to-Canada-to-Michigan pipeline currently in operation.…

The false, wasteful crusade of anti-capitalist, anti-energy deep ecologists needs to be demoted. And Chris Tomlinson needs to get off the hate train as energy density continues to drive the world market.

Climate change is a political issue. A business issue. The climate does not need to be saved; in fact, humankind needs to be saved from a political and intellectual elite pushing authoritarian climate policy.

Perhaps Chris Tomlinson should get fired, not the oil executives and ministers that promote their products in the face of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation. And perhaps it is Tomlinson who needs to take his blinders off and start over with his understanding of energy and of government intervention, not to mention climate science (or the lack thereof).

The Houston Chronicle business editorial writer has long been prone to hyperbole and astringency.…