Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein

It’s said that in politics there’s no silver bullet that’ll make everything better.

But we do have 1 silver bullet in the chamber: the opportunity to unleash American energy, which Donald Trump has rightly vowed to do.

• The single most important thing government can do to make our lives better—something that will lead to a better economy, a lower cost of living, more job opportunities, a lower deficit, greater security, and a better environment—is unleash abundant, affordable, American energy.
• If we unleash abundant, affordable, American oil, natural gas, and coal production from the anti-energy policies holding it back, we can go from crippling inflation—substantially driven by energy costs—to affordable food, housing, transportation, and heating bills.
• Unleashing American energy will take us from nationwide electricity shortages to affordable, reliable power for all—and from losing good job opportunities to China, which we’ve allowed to outcompete us on energy costs, to creating millions of new well-paying jobs here at home.
• Unleashing American energy will take us from begging OPEC+ for oil, depending on Russia for uranium, and being at China’s mercy for critical minerals, to producing an abundant and secure supply of these crucial commodities at home.
• Many Americans are hesitant to embrace policies that unleash abundant, affordable energy because they think it will harm environmental progress—progress in air and water quality, safety from climate, and enjoyment of nature. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• Environmental progress isn’t in conflict with abundant, affordable energy; it requires abundant, affordable energy—to afford pollution controls, to clean up natural environmental hazards, and to protect ourselves from the always-dynamic and dangerous climate.
• Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, America has been wealthy enough to innovate and adopt pollution controls that make our air far cleaner—which is why America was able to increase its fossil fuel use 25% since 1970 while reducing air pollution 78%.¹

• Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, America has been able to clean up natural environmental hazards such as undrinkable water, which requires affordable, reliable energy to purify, or mosquito-infested swamps, which require abundant, affordable energy to drain.
• Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, we can protect ourselves from the always-dangerous climate by powering heating and A/C systems, storm warning and evacuation systems, and irrigation systems; witness the 98% drop in climate-related disaster deaths over the last century.²

• Thanks to abundant, affordable energy we have the wealth we need to enjoy and preserve the most valuable and beautiful parts of nature—which is why America is able to be both the world’s economic superpower and a place of unsurpassed access to the great outdoors.
• The key to supporting America’s energy abundance and environmental progress is maintaining steadfast support of individual and economic freedom, including the protection of property rights.
• Property rights allow our energy companies to produce and innovate as they judge best. The shale revolution happened here because we alone protect underground property rights. Producers used this freedom to figure out how to extract abundant oil and gas from once-useless rocks.
• Property rights allow us to care for our environment on our own property—and people tend to care best for what they own. And property rights are the basis for laws protecting our air and water from dangerous levels of pollution.
• America has shown time and again that pro-freedom energy and environmental policies drive energy and environmental progress. And we can do it again, if we reverse the anti-freedom policies of the past several decades and embrace the following “energy freedom” policies.
• To aid America in unleashing American energy, I’ve created the Energy Freedom Plan—a comprehensive plan that includes hundreds of high-leverage policy changes for every aspect of energy, from drilling to pipelines to electricity to nuclear to rare earth elements.
• The Energy Freedom Plan is based on 5 game-changing goals:
  1. Unleash responsible development
  2. End preferences for unreliable electricity
  3. Set environmental standards using cost-benefit analysis
  4. Address climate danger through resilience and innovation
  5. Unleash nuclear energy
• Unleash responsible development

  Anti-development policies prevent the drilling, mining, transporting, and building all energy needs to reach its potential—from natural gas to nuclear to solar.

  Liberating responsible development will create unprecedented US energy abundance.

• End preferences for unreliable electricity

  Our grid is being ruined by systemic preferences for unreliable electricity, which cause prices to rise and reliability to decline.

  Ending these preferences and prioritizing reliability is needed to make power cheap and reliable again.

• Set environmental standards using cost-benefit analysis

  The EPA harms prosperity and health via emissions standards that impose huge costs for little or no benefit.

  Real cost-benefit analysis, including objective health science will promote prosperity and environmental quality.

• Address climate danger through resilience and innovation, not punishing America
  “Climate policy”” that singles out US emissions makes us poorer and less resilient while global emissions go up.

  Becoming more resilient and unleashing innovation are the keys to climate safety.

• Unleash nuclear energy from pseudo-scientific restrictions
  The strangulation of nuclear has made it 10 times more expensive than it needs to be.

  Unleashing nuclear, including getting rid of pseudoscientific policies like LNT and ALARA, will make possible a nuclear renaissance.

• This week I will be releasing the FULL Energy Freedom Plan, including over 100 SPECIFIC game-changing policies that can unleash American energy like never before.

  To make sure you see the whole plan, follow me @AlexEpstein and especially subscribe to alexepstein.substack.com.

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Stephen Moore

Envy is an ugly thing — one of the seven deadly sins.

The Europeans have long been dripping with jealousy that American firms dominate the tech sector — cell phones, search engines, social media platforms, AI and robotics.

As a consequence, the U.S. economy as measured by net worth is now 50 percent larger than Europe’s  and even the residents of our poorest states like West Virginia have a higher income than the average European.

One reason: The United States innovates while Europe regulates. Instead of fixing their economies in Euroland, the EU bureaucrats want to kneecap America’s tech success stories with fines and lawsuits and regulatory barbed wire fences to keep American firms from competing on a level playing field.

A case in point is the rash of expensive antitrust lawsuits against Google search engines.

Even worse is that a few years ago the European Union enacted “the Digital Markets Act” under the guise of trying to “ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital sector.”

Whenever government officials talk about promoting “fairness,” it means they are looking for expanding their own power.

Under this Act, Europe’s regulators are seeking to rein in successful technology companies like Apple through a new regulatory principle called “interoperability.”

Interoperability calls for third-party developers throughout the world to be given access to Apple’s private operating systems — iOS and iPadOS. In this framework, Apple is treated like a public utility with features that can be leveraged by other companies.

This is a sore-loser concept. Apple is a highly dynamic company that has achieved its market-leading status by developing wildly popular trailblazing products.

The European regulations, could require iPhones to offer competitor products. This makes as much sense as requiring McDonalds to offer Burger King fries with their “happy meals.”

The iPhone amenities and apps are part of a package deal that have made these devices the most popular in the world with billions of customers. This hardly sounds like monopolistic behavior. For people who don’t like Apple’s aps, there are many other cell phone products, such as Galaxy that consumers can turn to made by T-Mobile, Google, or a handful made in China.

For all the talk about Apple’s monopoly, they now control slightly less than 20% of the global cell-phone market.

Yet Europe’s bureaucrats have declared that Apple cannot charge product developers who are given access to the company’s operating systems. It is like getting to ride the train for free.

Interoperability is a dangerous concept — especially when it comes to security and privacy. Apple places a premium on maintaining the integrity of its devices and protecting its users’ data. But there is no guarantee that third parties given unfettered access to the Apple platform will have the same high standards.

That is going to leave Europe’s users of Apple products at greater risk of getting hacked. The results could be “disastrous,” points out Dirk Auer of the International Center for Law and Economics. “Users’ identity could be leaked, their money stolen, and their data could be compromised.”

Social media companies that want access to Apple’s operating systems could also gain access to I-phone users’ data and information. Apple warns that outsiders could “read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more.”

Even Apple doesn’t access this data in order to protect the privacy of their users.

The danger here is that if companies that spend billions of dollars innovating to build a better mousetrap can’t own and control their own products and reap the financial rewards, innovation will be stifled — in which case everyone loses. Sharing patented information with competitors in the name of “fairness” is a socialist idea that has rusted the Eurozone economy.

If Europe wants to get back in the tech game, EU bureaucrats should focus on what made these companies so successful in the first place — and then try to create a public policy environment that will foster innovative companies that can compete and win — rather than run to the courts for protection. Punishing the winners is a good way to keep producing losers.

In the meantime, let’s hope the incoming Trump regulators at the FTC and FCC and the Justice Department defend American companies against aggressive and hostile lawsuits to hobble our made-in-American companies. In other words, put America first and don’t let Europe take a bite out of our Apple.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a co-author of the new book: “The Trump Economic Miracle.”