Have you noticed that the phrase “disinformation” has displaced the “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated”, “15 days to stop the spread” and “You’re racist.” It’s truly amazing to watch propaganda in action.
Political strategists pick the phrase of the month and hammer it home using the media machine. Putin? A war of brute force and disinformation. Really? I feel like…. “NO QUESTIONS!!!”
COVID - did you hear that the CDC reclassed 72,000 deaths as a clerical error…. “Erroneous! Disinformation! They didn’t want the data to be misinterpreted.
Climate change? “Don’t you tell me that climate related deaths are falling or that the average sea level rise is 3 mm a year which doesn’t make it an emergency! It is! Because I say it is! You are full of Disinformation!!!”
It’s frustrating. It’s hard. And it feels hopeless. But it isn’t. The best thing that you can do for your kid’s future, the preservation of your opportunities and for your mental sanity is to start posting on social media. I know, counterintuitive, right? Post about the energy trade offs. Post about supply and demand. Post that EVs are unlikely to have wind turbines on them to make a perpetual motion machine anytime in our lifetime. But post, and post often. Voices need to be heard to move the conversation forward.
If you want material for posts, start here and here. And the entire HTOTD archive is searchable. Take your favorite paragraph or two and post it. Talk about it. Like posts that talk about this topic. Engage in conversations to spread the word. And talk! To neighbors. Co-workers. Not about undercutting politicians, but explaining the true costs of the climate emergency narrative. The impossibility of transition. In accessible terms. Politicians are using the narrative to garner votes. When polling shows people aren’t voting for climate change, it will fade away.
Every day, I post the #hottakeoftheday and I am so grateful to each of you that read it, comment and come introduce yourself to me. But my voice can only go so far. Your voice, to your network, is the only way to expand the conversation and combat the real disinformation: the omission of discussion.
Energy policy is flawed and will cost you and your kids a huge amount of opportunity. The cost of it will crush the economy. And it will make their lifetime less prosperous than yours. We need honest conversations by real people to develop real solutions.
Howard Roark said “Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.”
That is the role energy plays today. And despite the physics, the economics and the trade offs, the narrative is so powerful so as to burn you at the stake for speaking up. Do not be afraid. I’ll be right there with you.
And so, I write. You should, too.
Still reading? Here’s the best of the weekend from Glenn Greenwald.
Joseph Pulitzer on the media Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.
“Post that EVs are unlikely to have wind turbines on them to make a perpetual motion machine anytime in our lifetime” … I listened to the podcast when this was mentioned by your guest as part of EV efficiency and cost gains she mentioned compared to ICU costs. The thought of cars “tacking” along the freeways and highways searching for the wind in much the same way a sailing boat seeks the wind is an interesting concept, the drag effect of a turbine protruding from the body of a car must have the F1 Teams engineers scratching their heads wondering what they are missing. The madness is actually disturbing.