The Free Market Can Solve America's Energy Needs | Interviews

Well, we have here today Ian Pryor, who is the spokesperson for Empowerment Alliance. Thank you so much for joining me and being here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Empowerment Alliance before we get started? Sure. Yeah. The Empowerment Alliance, we started about a year ago. And simply put, we're about harnessing American ingenuity, free market principles, and the abundance of low cost, clean natural gas to have a realistic and effective approach to energy consumption in contrast to the Green New Deal. So for the past year, what we've been focusing on is building up a coalition of political leaders, thought leaders, and grassroots folks that we can give information to, give facts to, educate them about the benefits of natural gas, and about the costs and dangers of the Green New Deal. So in many ways, it's bigger, but we're focused on providing information and education about natural gas, and clean, efficient, and low cost energy. I think looking at the free market is really I mean, I use this example a lot. Something like the flash drive, which has saved millions of trees. It was something created in the free market. You no longer need to carry all these papers around. You can put it on a device. And that was something created in the free market. It seems like when the government tries to get involved in helping climate change, quote unquote, it seems that they mess everything up. Are you seeing that same type of thing? Oh yeah, absolutely. And look, we're not against any other kind of energy per se. It's not like we're against renewable energy, or against that as a concept. But it's just not practical right now. It's extremely expensive. And I think that you see the results in California as sort of this mini Green New Deal, and what comes with that. I saw a tweet today. And it's funny, I follow a few people on Twitter that have a column where it's Ilhan Omar, AOC, basically the squad. And it'll make you crazy if you have that column. So I would not recommend doing that. But it was a tweet saying, let's save the Earth, let's keep fossil fuels in the ground. Well, that's just not realistic right now. Maybe in 100 years or 200 years, we'll be looking at a different calculus on how things work. But the bottom line is, you're looking at natural gas specifically. I mean, we have the cleanest air we've had in over 50 years, in part due to the natural gas revolution. 30% of America's energy needs are supplied by natural gas. It's a low cost solution for people who, right now, especially with COVID, especially with all the shutdowns, the last thing people need is for their business costs to go up. The last thing they need is for their household energy costs to go up. So switching to something that is just wholly inefficient, and look, we're not all wealthy enough to put solar panels on our roof. It strikes me and it strikes a lot of people as dangerous for this country. And speaking of California, I mean, we've been having blackouts here, power outages across the state, I mean, the fires and everything. What is the main reason why this is happening? Well, it's got the worst electrical grid in the country. I mean, they have essentially adopted what many people want to have throughout the country, which is sort of a green New Deal light. And you cannot rely solely on solar power. You cannot rely solely on wind power for electricity. Because what happens is if it gets too hot, if you don't have the right energy mix, and it crashes, then you don't have the ability to provide energy on a backup system that's powered by natural gas or coal to provide people and businesses with the electricity they need. And so what happens is the prices skyrocket, and people are left without energy. So you have to essentially ration that energy, which is I understand is what's happening in California. I mean, I'm curious to hear your take. You're out there. What is it like on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, I mean, it's been completely smoky here in California. I had a lot of friends who had blackouts. Luckily, I wasn't affected where I lived. But a lot of other people lost power over the weekend when it was so hot. And what I found to be the funniest part was that you got a guy, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles. And he comes on and says, it's time for everyone to set their thermostats to 78 degrees to stop climate change and so that we don't all have our blackouts. And it's like, I can guarantee you that he is sitting at home with a cool 65-degree temperature in his house, but he tells the rest of us that we need to set ours to 78 degrees. When you're looking at these people in charge, these elitists, and they put things like renewable energy in place when it doesn't actually have the capacity to power the entire state on itself, why do you think that they do this? Could you repeat that again? I'm sorry. Basically, these politicians and elitists, they want renewable energy to be the only thing to power the state, even though the renewable energy, as you just said, isn't enough to power the entire state without other types of energy coming in as well. Why do you think they push for these renewable energies so hard when they have proven basically that they're not going to work right now? Well, I think it's a combination of things. I mean, I think they truly believe in their own rhetoric that in some cases, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't switch from fossil fuels. I also think like anything else when we're talking about this, money talks. I'm sure there's interests out there that are pushing people on the left to move to renewable energies because it'll benefit certain companies, certain industries, if they have their side pushing those policies. Ultimately, that may work for the cylindras of the world, although I guess it didn't work for the cylindras of the world, but it's not going to work for everyday Americans. I mean, look, moving it back to natural gas, I believe it's $121 billion has been saved by businesses from 2008 to present. That $121 billion allows businesses to invest in new things like jobs, for example. There's all kinds of different ways that they can innovate, that they can make energy more efficient. What we don't have is ways right now to make wind power or solar power more efficient, which is why you see so much in the way of government intervention, political intervention to try and make these things go when they're just not there yet. Again, they may be there at some point, but let the free market decide that because if we keep letting government get involved in this top-down regulation, it's ultimately going to hurt the people that rely on this, whether it's a business who employs hundreds of people or whether it's a household where four to five people live and require those energy needs. I think that's the perfect thing is letting the free market handle it. If the renewable energy was good enough and it worked and it was cheap and abundant, there would be no reason why everyone wouldn't use it. There would be no debate. It's not like people are anti-renewable energy like that just because they hate it and they want to stick to fossil fuels. They are because it's just not good enough. It doesn't work well enough and it's not cheap enough or abundant enough. What do you see as the future of energy in this country? I think that over the next hundred years, you're going to see a greater reliance of natural gas or on natural gas. There's a century's worth that we know of usable natural gas in the ground. It's low cost. It's extremely affordable. An interesting story came out a couple of months ago where Jesse Jackson is in Illinois pushing for a natural gas pipeline in a low-income area because they recognize that this is important for consumers. This is a consumer-friendly energy source. It's cleaner than most other energy sources. It will eventually serve as a bridge for 100 years down the line or 75 years down the line where we become more diverse in our energy portfolio. I want to go back to something you said earlier. Putting your thermostat at 78 degrees. I remember when I had my kids. You're not supposed to have your thermostat at 78 degrees if you have a newborn baby. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Daddy's Home 2. It's one of my favorite random Christmas movies. There's a scene where they're just fighting over the thermostat. I feel like that's the way I am with my wife or when I go to my mother-in-law's where the thermostat's at 74. I'm like, no, no, no. At 68, it's the highest we're going to go. I cannot imagine having to keep my house at 78 degrees when it's 90 degrees outside. It's not healthy. It's not safe. It's not the way it should be. There are solutions to that, which is using available, low-cost, clean energy like natural gas. I'd also add that for these folks that they promote clean energy. I've heard you talk about it. I think it applies to so many different areas that the left put forth their agenda. If you're against that agenda, then somehow you're for dirty energy, you're for pollution, you're for all these things. That's just not the case. We're just trying to come to a reasonable solution that works for as many people as possible and allows us to develop energy in a cost-effective and smart way for the future, as opposed to just tanking the economy or tanking people's livelihoods in order to get to this pipe dream of total renewable energy now, as many advocate. It's a religion to these leftists. The climate change movement is a religion to them. Something like recycling your plastic straw is a tenet of their religion. If you don't do that, it's not that you don't care about the environment. It's that you're a morally bad person if you don't do these kinds of things. They put that on all facets of this, whether it's using renewable energy versus fossil fuels, all sorts of different things that they try and shame people for having a difference of opinion. I'm really happy that you're speaking up about the free market and the environmental things that you're talking about. We're going to keep doing it, PragerU. Ian, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great. Where can people find more information about what you guys are doing? Sure. They can go to empoweringamerica.org. There, they can join our Blue Energy Nation, which is our grassroots network, or they can also sign our Declaration of Energy Independence, which really talks about the four pillars that we ask our signers to really focus on, which is energy independence for national security, low-cost energy, abundant energy, and clean energy. Natural gas really provides all those four. If we stick with those four principles, we're going to get things done in the way that we should, which is going to provide everybody with clean, affordable energy. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. Make sure you check out the Empowerment Alliance, and I really appreciate having you on. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Will. Thanks. Take care.