POLICY COUNSEL
SEPTEMBER 2022 POLICY COUNSEL SPEECHES
Father Frank Pavone
National Director
Priests for Life
Thank you! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Thank you so very much.
Eleven and a half years ago, I stood at the bedside of a man who was dying in his home apartment in New York City. You saw him in that video. He was an abortionist who became pro-life. In fact, as he described it, he uncaged the abortion monster in the United States. He was the key architect of the abortion industry, and I knew him well: Dr. Bernard Nathanson. When I went into his room that last time that I saw him, he could hardly talk. I had to put my head down to his, and the first words he said to me in that whisper that took every ounce of his energy were these: “Father Frank, how goes the crusade?”
He wasn’t thinking about himself. He was thinking about you and me, and all those on the front lines of this movement trying to undo the evil he had unleashed, as he himself was trying to undo it. “How goes the crusade,” a crusade launched by that Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that said we could not protect the unborn, at least not until viability, because there was a constitutional right to abortion. A decision that took away not only their right to live, but our right to legislate on it and to protect them if we wanted to. It launched a crusade for life that prayed and marched, taught and preached, and published and broadcasted, and gave counsel through the pregnancy center movement, and gave healing through the healing movements after abortion. A crusade that worked to elect pro-life candidates and to lobby them, and to pass pro-life laws, and to directly intervene in front of abortion facilities, and to do legal work and research, all these different varieties of the movement. A crusade that you yourselves have been involved in down to each and every member without exception.
All of you have been at the heart and soul of this movement and an encouragement to those of us who are in it on a full-time leadership basis. Every one of you and so many CNP members who have gone on before and are observing this victory from the life to come—we can think of Phyllis Schlafly as one outstanding example, and Jack and Barbara Wilke—they sat with us at these tables at CNP meetings. And so many others. We all rejoice tonight.
But brothers and sisters, I don’t want you to be surprised that Roe v. Wade has come to an end. You know why? Because it wasn’t a mighty fortress. Roe v. Wade can better be understood as a dilapidated building, standing on a fake foundation, that was in disrepair, that had already been partially dismantled, that was crumbling and unoccupied. That was Roe v. Wade. And it became more and more dilapidated as the years and the decades went on.
It was very weak right from its inception, not only because it had the waves of American history against it—there was no right to abortion ever conceived or recognized in any American law or state or federal court or state or federal constitution or scholarly treatise—it came out of thin air when Roe v. Wade came about. The winds and waves of American history were against it from day one. Not only that but it was very weak in its foundations. Did you know it had no record? The Roe v. Wade case had no record, and it had no appellate review either. It went from the District Court straight up to the Supreme Court and many of the justices were confused about what they were going to be arguing about because many of them thought it was about the question of federal jurisdiction and intervening in state criminal proceedings. They didn’t think they were going to decide whether there was a constitutional right to abortion. Roe v. Wade, when it comes to viability which was a clear defining line both in it and in the Casey decision, you know when viability came up? Not in the oral arguments, not in the briefs, it came in a memo circulated among the justices one month before the decision.
Casey came along, of course, in 1992 and largely dismantled Roe throughout the trimester framework, changed the standard of review, invented a new one that was similarly disconnected from the Constitution, did not endorse its reasoning, came very close to overturning it, but kept it around simply because it had been around. There was a growing national outcry against Roe v. Wade. In the decade before Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the United States as Amicus Curie in five different cases—you know the Supreme Court ruled on abortion related matters about two dozen times since Roe v. Wade—in five different cases the United States argued to reverse Roe, including in Casey itself. And then, of course, President Reagan 10 years after Roe v. Wade, wrote Abortion in the Conscience of the Nation. You remember that? And in it he said, “I am convinced if the Supreme Court re-examines Roe it will change its mind and correct its course.” And how right he was.
Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing—have you seen Created Equal, the movie about his life in his own words—Justice Thomas says there: the Judiciary Committee, headed by a certain Joe Biden, was concerned above all with one question. “How would I rule on Roe v. Wade?” Well, God bless President George Bush 41 for putting Clarence Thomas there. Those who stuck with him and defended him and what he has done through the years. Then, of course, with the election of George W. Bush and his reelection, how many voters were motivated by the fact that the Supreme Court was in the balance? And of course, he gave us Justice Alito who wrote the Dobbs opinion. And then the election of 2016 rolled around. Remember the CNN exit poll said that 20% of the voters said the most important motivating factor for them was the Supreme Court! In October of 2016 candidate Donald Trump was asked, “Well, do you want to reverse Roe v. Wade?” You remember his answer? He says, “If I get to appoint” —these were his exact words— “if I get to appoint two or three justices to the Supreme Court, the reversal of Roe v. Wade will happen automatically.”
Brothers and sisters, there has been a national outcry against this decision, and it fell because it was destined to fall. In the Dobbs case, 26 states called for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the largest number of sitting members of Congress ever to call for the reversal of Roe did so as they approached the court in this Dobbs case. 398 state legislators, some of them right here in this room, from 41 different states, likewise, sent a brief to the court asking for the reversal of Roe and asking that they could do their job to legislate for the protection of the unborn. Brothers and sisters, the Dobbs case, having reversed Roe for multiple reasons, constitutionally you can sum up their argument about the right to abortion in three words—it isn’t there! They went through a lot of very good reasoning, but it boils down to—it isn’t there!
In the text, in the history and the structure of the Constitution, all American history, in our concept of ordered liberty, and as far as stare decisis goes—stare decisis is at its weakest when it’s a question of constitutional interpretation. If the court makes a mistake that affects the American people so deeply as this did, how do the American people correct that mistake? Unless the court corrects it, we have to amend the Constitution, and that’s a pretty steep hill to climb. So, the court said, “We have to correct something that was egregiously wrong from the start as this was.” This was an act of repentance by the justices. They said, “We made a mistake, we did damage.” They also said, “It’s not up to us. We’re not capable of resolving this for the American people. Let the American people and their elected representatives resolve it. It’s not up to us to impose a decision like Roe v. Wade did.”
Brothers and sisters, what a marvelous victory this is. Read the Dobbs decision if you haven’t read it already. You will be so encouraged, because this is a victory not just for the unborn, it’s a victory for America and for self-governance. That’s what this victory is.
We celebrate tonight, the day before Constitution Day. Tomorrow is September 17th. The date September 17th is in our Constitution. Because 235 years ago tomorrow, 39 men, in an interest to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, signed a glorious document that we defend, that we live under, that the Dobbs decision defends, a document in which we can rejoice again tonight and renew our resolve that we will defend all the days of our lives and all the days of this Republic. Let us celebrate, let us defend life, and let us save America. God bless you.
Matt Beienburg
Director of Education Policy
Goldwater Institute
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me. As mentioned, my name is Matt Beienburg. I’m the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. We are focused on a number of issues including school choice, parental rights, and stopping the woke crusade through K-12 and higher education. And I have for you some good news.
We hear a lot about the problems in the country, but I’m here to share a success story that can be replicated across the country for our kids and for our future. So, I’m going to share with you a few slides about a new piece of legislation that Arizona recently put in practice, which every state can model. We’ve recently passed universal school choice for all kids in the state, and I’m going to talk about how we got there.
First, I want to back up. I’m going to play Jacob Marley here, with a sort of ghost of Christmas past, present, and future– sharing with you three pictures. These images speak mostly for themselves. This is the recent past: we have 2020, the pandemic hits, and we have our schools emptied of students. We have students sent home. The learning loss began to accumulate, as kids were basically pushed out of school and not able to be there learning. So, this is image number one.
This is the present: Spring 2022, when schools finally started having kids back. Even after the vaccines had been available for those who wanted it, we’re still seeing that kids are forced to undergo draconian COVID mandates. They’re not based in science but based upon political influence.
Finally, the future. I want you to compare this last image with the first two. This is the future. This is Arizona just a few weeks ago. This is the signing ceremony for the ESA program—Empowerment Scholarship Accounts—in Arizona. This is Governor Doug Ducey signing into law legislation that gives every student in Arizona access to the schooling opportunity that works best for them. What you see here is not an empty school. It is not kids forcibly masked. It is kids from every background, every race, every income distribution at a private school. This is a Christian school in Arizona where we saw this enthusiasm. These are kids who are excited to be there, excited to have opportunity.
So, how did we get there? Time to back up again. How many of you are fans of the teachers’ unions? I don’t see any hands. Nobody is standing up. Well, I want to share with you a quote from them from a couple years ago, and I want you to just listen very briefly. “The National Education Association”—this is the largest teachers’ union in the country—“the NEA will rededicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America by putting a renewed emphasis on quality education. NEA will make student learning the priority of the association.” Now, it’s focused on public schools, but that’s actually a pretty good message, right? Students learning…students are the priority. I think even most of us here would agree with the union on that. The problem is the union didn’t agree. They rejected that. They literally voted down that resolution.
So, it’s no surprise that when you get into COVID and the pandemic, we saw things like this: headlines from The New York Times about unions threatening to strike if classrooms reopened but also pushing back against live remote teaching. I’m not sure what that leaves for the students, but that’s apparently the position. We saw in states like Arizona the teachers’ unions telling their members to write fake obituaries to the governor protesting the idea that they should be required to do their job and make education accessible to students. That was the lay of the land, but Arizona said we can do better.
This spring our Governor Doug Ducey, in his State of the State address, outlined two education priorities, both of which were pioneered by the Goldwater Institute, and both of which every state needs to adopt: 1) the idea of academic transparency that pushes back on the woke indoctrination of our public schools and 2) school choice, giving every kid access to a better education. Governor Ducey said in his speech, “Send me the bills and I’ll sign them.”
This is the first point I want to make: we need leadership at all levels, but there must be support from those in power. Our Governor stood out there and said I don’t care what the unions say. They may have priorities that are not focused on our students, but in Arizona, kids come first. He made this very clear. This is something every governor in every state should make clear. We’ve seen those who oppose this in Virginia and elsewhere, their political faith being written at their own hand.
The other piece of this is parent advocacy. We have had an ESA program in Arizona. This is the Empowerment Scholarship—or education savings—account program. We’ve actually had it there for about 10 years, but it’s only been open to about 1/4 of Arizona students. This new bill says every kid in the state is eligible for it. It provides about $7,000 per student. It gives it to the family and says, instead of the money that we were going to send to your public school, we’re going to give it to the family. They can use it for tutoring, private school tuition, at home curriculum textbooks. We’re going to trust parents. We’re going to empower parents to make the best decisions for their kids. We have parents in this program already who have gone down to the legislature testifying on behalf of their kids saying, “This is important. This changes the lives of my children, of our students.” This is not just politicians or a think tank. You know, not policy nerds going up there and talking about what a great program this is. These are real families, real kids, and real lives that have been changed by this.
We had in Arizona legislative leaders. Arizona has a reputation for being a very red state, but we have only a one vote majority of the conservatives in both chambers, our House and Senate. One vote, meaning you must have every single member, and a tie does not get broken by a lieutenant governor. If it’s a tie, it doesn’t pass. Every single member of the majority had to be on board to get this passed, and they were. That means, every member in the House and in the Senate who calls himself a conservative voted for this legislation.
This was also a coalition of those more conservative and more moderate members, those who believe school choice is a huge solution and those who don’t really focus much on education policy. But our leadership in Arizona in our legislature brought them together and said this is a priority. And so, they got it passed.
We also help provide the data and the evidence about this program because, obviously, you need leadership, you need ideas, but you also need data. We at Goldwater have put out policy reports based on the ESA program and its history over the last ten years. We put one out called “Decade of Success,” for instance, on how Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts have saved students and inspired a national movement. We shared this with lawmakers in Arizona with quotes from actual ESA parents. This is not teachers’ union talking points. These are real kids, real lives. This is from an ESA mom testifying to our State Board of education: “I’m a parent of three children on ESA. I have a master’s degree in elementary education, and ESA has saved the educational lives of my three children. We had tried public, private, and charter schools. And my child was able to meet some of her IEP goals in four months that no school would help her to achieve in four years.” With the ESA program, families can go to private school, they can do home education, whatever is going to work best for their kids. They’re not ordered and dictated and pushed around by bureaucrats. They get to decide what’s going to work best for their child.
We have other reports out there, because we hear from the unions, “This will destroy public schools. We couldn’t possibly do this.” We’ve put out reports documenting how this impacts public schools, because they actually tend to end up with more funding per pupil as a result of the way the school funding formulas work.
They say this is just for families who don’t need help. We’ve shown that kids under the current program in Arizona benefit across the economic spectrum. We’ve shown that we have kids on a Native American tribal reservation in rural Arizona who are benefiting from this program. Kids in the inner cities and urban areas have taken advantage of this opportunity when every public school around them is rated D or F.
I want to share just a couple of quick charts. This is going to be a picture very similar to almost every state in the country. We always hear this solution: what our kids need is just to pour more money into the bucket. And yet, few people recognize how much we actually spend on public education. In Arizona, we spend about $13,000 a year for each K-12 student on average. That is more than it costs a family to pay the full-sticker price of tuition at a four-year university. Now, we don’t usually hear anyone say that tuition is too cheap, and we just had a big bailout of student loans. Right. And yet, we’re spending more on our public schools per K-12 kid than it costs a family to pay for tuition at college. The difference is families have the choice whether or not they think it’s worth it when it comes to college. They have a choice to pay that tuition or not. But if all that’s available to a child is a district school offering in K-12 and that’s the only place that each student’s funding allotment is allowed to go, those kids are essentially forced to go there. That doesn’t make sense.
The bar on the left shows the typical ESA award value, about $7,000 in Arizona—this would be similar in other states—versus the cost of spending on students in the public school system, regardless of whether they end up being able to read and do math at grade level. On this chart here, you can see the black line shows over the last ten years when Arizona first started our ESA program, the increase in funding that our public schools get per pupil. You see that’s gone up at the same time those gray bars have increased. That’s the enrollment in our ESA program. So, at the same time our ESA program has grown, and families have found new opportunity through it—just among those kids who are eligible—the state’s been putting more money into the public schools. Right, the unions say, “It’s going to destroy our public schools. We can’t possibly do it.” History shows otherwise.
Lastly, one chart here, again based on that idea that “we can’t possibly do school choice, we can’t do ESA, we can’t put families in control. That’ll destroy our public school system!” The chart on the far right, that bar—$15 billion—is how much is spent on Arizona public schools each year. The one on the left, that tiny little sliver, that’s the estimated awards of the ESA students, that is hundreds of millions of dollars. That sounds like a lot, but when you compare it to the $15 billion that our public schools get, it’s essentially a rounding error. You can see Arizona legislators gave more money to public schools this year in a one-year increase that now is permanent than the ESA is projected to give to families in total each year.
To claim that this program is somehow incompatible with other opportunities is simply wrong, and the Arizona legislature said, “We’re going to do both. We will continue to fund our public school system, but we’re also not going to demand a union monopoly.” Every state can look to Arizona and generate headlines just like this.
Finally, this last slide I want to show: The Heritage Foundation just put out last week the “Education Freedom Report Card” based on school choice and academic transparency as the two main measures. You see Arizona and states like Florida. Every state can become like those who are in green. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
Hon. Jason Isaac
Director, Life:Powered
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Good afternoon. Again, I’m Jason Isaac. I’m the Director of Life:Powered, a national initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ. I live a high carbon lifestyle, and I think the rest of the world should, too. I’ll explain why here.
Are you questioning your high carbon lifestyles? If so, I want to know which of these you’re willing to do without, because I know a lot of people on the left are willing to do without none of these. (video)
I think one of God’s greatest gifts to us has been stretch pants. Man, if you don’t own a pair of Lululemon, they’re made with fossil fuels and they’re the most comfortable pair of pants I’ve ever owned. I can’t attest to any of the women’s clothing that they make.
This is some interesting data I want to share with you. It’s from the United Nations about CO2 emissions per capita, and this is where they harp on us because we’re high emitters of CO2 per capita. They put CO2 emissions are “too high.” I added the stuff in parentheses. Shhhh, that’s where human flourishing exists.
Look at those countries: the United States, Canada, Singapore, some of the most environmentally protected countries on the face of the earth. Those countries are the ones that lead in environmental protection, lead in air quality, and lead in access to clean and safe drinking water. They actually put those at the bottom that have low CO2 emissions—where energy poverty exists—and another way to put energy poverty is just poverty. Look at Malawi. Is that on anybody’s bucket list to visit Malawi anytime soon? I hear the tourism is not blooming in Malawi. But I love what they put at the bottom.: “The long run goal is that net emissions decline to zero.”
So, let me show you what net zero looks like. This is a video put out by UNICEF. I’m surprised that they haven’t taken it down as soon as they found out that someone who supports fossil fuels is using it to their advantage. But this is a 13-year-old girl. Her name is Aysha, and if you can’t see the timestamps, Aysha will walk eight hours a day to collect water for her family. Aysha doesn’t get to do homework. Aysha doesn’t get to go to school. Aysha is living at net zero, net zero prosperity, net zero flourishing. I showed this to a congressman’s office in DC recently and one of the staffers said, “Oh, I did missionary work in Ethiopia. Do you know what technology the United Nations makes available for girls like Aysha?” And being a naive American I said, “A cell phone?” And she said “No, the UN provides implantable birth control for girls like Aysha, because they know at some point in time they’re going to be attacked on their journey.” And that was heartbreaking to me. That is criminal. What the UN won’t provide, nor the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, they won’t provide funding to countries that are developing infrastructure based on fossil fuels. It’s inhumane, it’s criminal. And this is net zero, this is what the left wants us to live like. Even Jane Goodall of the World Economic Forum said we need to get back to a population that we had in the 1500s. That would be a 95% reduction from today’s population. This is heartbreaking. This is this criminal.
Here in Texas, we stand over the key to ending global poverty. That key lies under our feet. Fossil fuels. We produce that more responsibly than anywhere else on the face of the earth. Not only does expensive energy hurt people like Aysha, but it also actually hurts people here in the United States. One in six families will get a disconnect notice from a utility in the next 12 months, and that’s only getting worse. There’s a group—and I’m sure none of them are represented here—it’s over 200 civil rights organizations in the state of California. These leftists are suing the California Air Resources Board saying California’s climate change policies have caused and will cause unconstitutional and unlawful disparate impacts to California’s minority populations. This is The Two Hundred v. California Air Resources Board, saying their environmental policies violate the Civil Rights Act.
Finally, the left is waking up and realizing that these policies don’t improve the environment. And I joke about living a high carbon lifestyle, but I do, and for those of you in the front row: you’re safe. I just ingested some CO2, higher concentrations of what’s in the atmosphere, and I didn’t spontaneously combust. CO2 is necessary for life on earth. It’s .04% of our environment. and yes, higher concentrations right here. And unfortunately, I tried to get to Topo Chico, but I couldn’t find any here, so I went with the stuff from France, of all places, where Paris originated, the Paris accord. This is a French story since 1863. Paris is a French nightmare since 2016 trying to get us to net zero.
So, if the US lived up to net zero by 2030 the temperature differential on the face of the earth would be… “get your jackets out,” less than 2/10 of a degree cooler. If every single country met their commitments to Paris, the temperature differential by 2100: .14 degrees cooler. All of that, and we decimate our way of lives. We’re seeing it play out in Sri Lanka right now. The first ever candidate on the face of the earth to run as a net zero candidate, he immediately when he got elected in 2019 banned the importation of nitrogen, fossil fuel-based fertilizers, food production went down 50%. They went from exporting rice to having to import rice and now one in five families in Sri Lanka is suffering from hunger. “Net zero,” as Alex Epstein says, “Net zero is mass murder.”
We lead the world in environmental protection. We’ve reduced harmful pollution 78% in the last five decades. During the COVID shutdowns, I heard an electric vehicle lobbyist say, “Because we took 40-50% of the vehicles off the road, our air quality improved so much we need to mandate 100% electric vehicles.” Well, funny enough, we’re a research-based organization. So, we looked at air quality monitors throughout the country, and during the first two months of the COVID lockdowns, with 50% fewer vehicles on the road, the air quality, where this comment was made, in the city of Austin, got worse.
Our air quality is practically near a natural state here in the United States. We could take 50% of the cars off the road and see no improvements, because we’re world leaders in environmental protection. Actually, when we increase regulations, what we do is we export jobs and then we import that pollution. I testified a few weeks ago at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and talked about how 80% of the mercury deposits in the U.S. comes from Asia. They don’t care about the environment; they don’t care about human rights, and we know that. If we really wanted a clean environment in this world, we would manufacture and produce everything in the United States. But we increase regulations beyond anything that improves human life and drive those jobs overseas.
I love talking to groups of kids, and I share some of these slides with me. You talk about warming, the person in that suit right there (photo) is probably going to pass out of heat exhaustion, but I love that they use polar bears. If polar bears are the barometric measurement of climate change, then we need to fly the banner that says mission accomplished. Because the facts are that in 1970 there were 7,000 polar bears. Today there are over 40,000. In fact, this may be the reason why Russia invaded Ukraine, because polar bears have been invading towns in northern Russia. There are so many polar bears. They’re bears, and they are going to go to where the food is, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. Because they’re so plentiful. So, again, if this is the barometric measurement of climate change, mission accomplished, kids should be happy.
But if you’re worried about attacks from polar bears, the one thing that we need to be most concerned about is the attack from financial institutions like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, JPM Chase. Corporate collusion is drying up access to fossil fuel producers, to American energy producers while shifting it over to Asia, to China. In 2016, there were 59 funds used to raise money, capital for investment in energy production. Fifty-nine funds raised $46.6 billion. Five years later because of ESG—environmental, social, and governance scoring—that 59 had dropped to 11 funds. The $46.6 billion had dropped to $4.6 billion, a greater than 90% reduction in access to capital for fossil fuel producers.
This is Bank of America last year saying that oil could hit $100 a barrel next year, and Bank of America even admitted it’s because lack of access to capital. Bank of America is one of those evil banks that’s denying capital to American energy producers. Socially responsible investing: ESG, it’s another acronym, certainly gaining momentum. Now you see the Securities and Exchange Commission looking to require companies to disclose their emissions. BlackRock to step up sustainability, companies could face pressure to disclose more ESG data. This is social credit scoring that the Chinese have been doing for years and now you have woke financial institutions that are trying to do it to us here in the United States.
I love this: “BlackRock proposals, climate activists align” and then what happened? Facing Texas pushback, BlackRock says it backs fossil fuels. They’re changing their narrative. They actually came to Texas. I’ve had multiple meetings with BlackRock executives. So, it’s kind of fun. What we did here in Texas, we said if you’re going to boycott fossil fuels then you’re no longer welcome to do business with the state of Texas. And since that time, that same legislation has passed in West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. We’re hitting them in their pocketbooks, and it’s not just about doing business with Texas, it’s about doing business with the municipalities. So, $400 billion of municipal debt in the state of Texas is off the book for banks like BlackRock because just two weeks ago our controller, our treasurer here in the state of Texas put BlackRock on our blacklist because they are boycotting fossil fuels.
So, I want to give you a little bit of activism here—what you can do in your states to push back. You can do that Eliminate Economic Boycotts Act, which basically says if you discriminate against a certain industry (it could be agriculture, because believe me, they’re coming after agriculture, it could be forestry, because believe me, they’re coming after the forestry industry, it could be oil and gas, it could be coal, it could be nuclear—you can say that if you’re discriminating against those industries then you’re no longer welcome to utilize our tax dollars to your benefit, to weaponize those tax dollars against the very interest of your state like they were doing in Texas. We pushed back.
You can require state financial officers to have fiduciary responsibility in their investments. I know Senator Hughes is here. Just in May, we discovered that our employee retirement system voted against shareholder recommendations and voted against fossil fuels for four companies. Senator Hughes called them up at a hearing, and just two weeks later, our teachers’ retirement system voted for pro-abortion policies before several companies. We are putting them on alert that they’re going to utilize our tax dollars with fiduciary responsibility, first and foremost.
One thing I tried to do when I was in the legislature, I tried to work with colleagues on the left. I didn’t compromise, I just tried to persuade them, and I was successful a lot of times. We don’t have to compromise; we just have to be persuasive in our messaging. So, I hope I shared some persuasive messaging with you today. But one I thought would be fun is like, let’s bring the left and right together. Let’s do the green new deal and secure the border at the same time. Let’s build a wall of solar panels all along the southern border. This is brilliant. We’ll build the wall. We’ll get electricity. I mean, all the panels are manufactured in China. So, a wall along the southern border of solar panels would provide 10% of the electricity that this country needs when the sun was shining and if that wall was a mile wide… let that sink into you about energy density and what’s the most dense energy? Nuclear. What’s after that? Our fossil fuels. That’s why we need to be utilizing them, because we produce them more responsibly in this country than anywhere else. Expensive energy hurts the poor. Energy powers life. Reliable energy is central to our daily life. We can’t take it for granted. We can’t let the left continue to push on this. We’ve got to fight back, and fossil fuels are essential for a modern life.
Lastly, environmental policy should serve mankind and not the other way around. God bless you. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Resources: The War on Energy PowerPoint