WOW. I Never Meta-Hypocrisy I Didn’t Like, or, Who is Robert Bryce and Why Does He Write Such S***?

I confess that Robert Bryce sets me off. Who is he? Here’s his own capsule biography:

I am an author, podcaster, and filmmaker. I’ve been reporting on the energy sector for more than 30 years. My credo: Energy realism is energy humanism. Spotlighting the essentiality of affordable energy and power to modern society is my purpose and my passion. I am particularly focused on electricity and electric grids.

Here is another way to think of him, which is as a fossil fuel shill. The big question is why he’s set himself up against renewable energy and the answer could be because he somehow thinks he’s right, or the answer could be because he’s making a living creating and disseminating specious arguments that—intended or not—serve the interest of the fossil fuel industry. Normally I don’t really care about one nutley opinion or another, but the science is clear on the existential threat of climate change and on the significant role fossil fuels play in causing or exacerbating global warming. In fact, scientists, even at the very hand of fossil fuel corporations, had established the contribution of fossil fuels’ greenhouse gases to climate change many decades ago.

The work of supplanting fossil fuels power sources with renewable energy power sources is well underway, with sufficient technologies already mature and many practical problems of the renewable energy transition already solved. And yet the fossil fuel corporations and their think tanks and PACs fight on. The funding for the fight is from the handfuls of multi-billionaire individuals and corporations that have made (and continue to make) fortunes with fossil fuels.

So how much better would it be to counter clean energy efforts with lies and rhetorical slights of hand?

Here is an example of absurdly abusive rhetoric in the service of Big Oil by Robert Bryce, found in a recent Substack article published on January 16, 2024, with this alluring title: The Billionaires Behind the Gas Bans. This title is followed by this short deck: The hypocrisy of the billionaires who are funding anti-hydrocarbon campaigns, including bans on gas stoves. Natural gas bans are more about class than climate change.

Let’s, as we used to say in English Lit classes, explicate this article.

Just so you know, the “hypocritical” billionaires Bryce references in the title of his article include John Doerr and Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs), as well as Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos. These get pictures posted in the article’s rogues gallery, but there are others mentioned, if not posterized. The main organization discussed by Bryce is introduced this way:

The Climate Imperative Foundation is the newest and richest anti-hydrocarbon, anti-natural gas group you’ve never heard of.

How rich is Climate Imperative? According to the latest report from Guidestar, the group took in $221 million in its first full year of operation. (Guidestar calls the income “gross receipts.”) That means that Climate Imperative, which is less than three years old, is already taking in more cash than the Sierra Club, which bills itself as the “nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.” According to Guidestar, the Sierra Club collected $180 million in its latest reporting year. Climate Imperative is also taking in more money than the Rocky Mountain Institute which collected about $130 million in its latest reporting year. I use those groups for comparison because they are pushing anti-gas initiatives across the country.

So, The Climate Imperative Foundation is “pushing anti-gas initiatives” too, or at least that’s a point Bryce makes, although CIF describes its mission as “cut[ting] global carbon emissions at speed and scale—to secure a better future for all,” so a bit broader than bans of gas stoves. The focus of CIF seems a bit bigger than trying to pry our gas stoves from our cold dead fingers, but Bryce includes the hot-button issue, nonetheless:

First, [CIF] shows that the effort to “electrify everything” and ban the use of natural gas in homes and businesses—and that includes gas stoves—is part of a years-long, lavishly funded campaign that is being bankrolled by some of the world’s richest people.

Some of us—and this includes anyone and everyone who understands that a transition away from fossil fuels necessitates “electrifying everything”—sees the quote above as good news. Yay! Some very rich people understand the need to move away from fossil fuels! I mean, we could tax their absurd and immoral gobs of wealth and others’ equally absurd wealth to help fund the war against climate change, but Bill Gates and his ilk helping is better than nothing. But in this Bryce sees a nefarious plot among special interests to take away your Amanda range. But really, he is trying to show us an even more terrible fact:

Second, despite numerous claims about how nefarious actors are blocking the much-hyped “energy transition,” the size of Climate Imperative’s budget provides more evidence that the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex has far more money than the pro-hydrocarbon and pro-nuclear groups. Indeed, the anti-hydrocarbon NGOs (most of which are also stridently anti-nuclear) have loads of money, media backing, and momentum. As can be seen in the graphic below, the five biggest anti-hydrocarbon NGOs are now collecting about $1.5 billion per year from their donors. (All data is from Guidestar.) That sum is roughly three times more than the amount being collected by the top five non-profit associations that are either pro-hydrocarbon or pro-nuclear.

On the face of it, he’s probably right in terms of CIF’s funding providing evidence that the—and I love this characterization for the pure hutzpah it represents—NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex has far more money than the pro-hydrocarbon and pro-nuclear groups. Let’s say “so stipulated,” and not even consider whether Guidestar’s information reporting is comprehensive or categorizing is accurate. Instead, let’s consider two other areas of pro-fossil fuel financial support: dark money and fossil fuel direct and indirect subsidies.

The wonder of dark money—the result of the coup that Citizens’ United decision represents—is that the money is dark, which is the cute way of saying there is no reporting on what amount an organization might receive from any particular source, whether wealthy individual (say, for purpose of illustration, Charles Koch) or corporation (e.g., Exxon). There is no specific reporting mechanism, but digging can reveal sums.

Here is one example of dark money sums spent on capturing the United States Supreme Court, as unveiled by U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, of Rhode Island, in a series of speeches from the Senate floor, collectively called The Scheme. In The Scheme, Part 17 speech, Whitehouse said this:

The Washington Post did a very good review of them several years ago and calculated, based on information they could get at the time, that this was a quarter-billion-dollar project—$250 million. Well, the research continued, and folks kept digging. When I held a hearing about this in my Judiciary court subcommittee, the number had climbed to $400 million spent on the Court-capture enterprise. They have kept digging and kept digging, and now it turns out the number is over $580 million. Over a half a billion dollars was spent in this effort to capture and control the U.S. Supreme Court. I don’t think you spend over $580 million unless you have a purpose, and very often, the purpose is to make that much money back and more.

Keep in mind that this half-a-billion-plus sum (and counting?) was spent on one goal, and based on the many amicus briefs submitted by the various front groups Whitehouse has named, much of the effort is aimed at deregulation cases before the Supreme Court. The fossil fuels industries stand to make billions more in profit if further deregulated.

Keep in mind that there also is much more fossil fuel interests spending over the decades, including efforts to generate climate change doubt and denial, efforts that continue, in a variety of mutated forms, to this day. Keep in mind all those efforts toward deregulation for fossil fuel industries in addition to the specific campaign to capture the Supreme Court. Keep in mind those efforts to retard or destroy competitive threats to fossil fuel, whether by battling wind projects or solar projects or renewable energy infrastructure projects such as smart grid buildouts. Bryce wrote about the nefarious outside groups battling grassroots anti-renewable local efforts in another post, and that one is also laughable, although I’m not laughing. What I am doing is calling him on the bullshit, as can be seen in my post Who is Lying? Those Who Say Fossil Fuel Companies Engage in Misinformation and Influence Campaigns against Renewable Energy, or Those Who Say Renewable Energy Advocates Have Pants on Fire?

Anyway, Bryce’s conclusion that poor old fossil fuels is being viciously outspent is laughable, except, of course, not so funny, really, with the stakes so high.

There’s dark money, and then there is the dark hand of political sway over law in the form of tax advantages, accounting permissions, and other mechanisms (e.g., under-market Federal land leases) of direct subsidies that advantage the fossil fuel industries. Add to this the much bigger pool of indirect fossil fuels subsidies in the form of ignored externalities, where the law excuses the fossil fuel industries from responsibility for the costs in the production and use of the fossil fuels industries’ products in resulting pollution and climate change. The fossil fuels companies make profits with undeniable costs to all others, whether in the additional millions of people who die prematurely or are sickened by fossil fuel pollution or in the growing catastrophic losses in lives and property damage directly tied to climate change.

The International Monetary Fund, which I can’t ever really think of as a bastion of progressive policies, has been tracking the direct and indirect (or explicit and implicit) subsidies for many years now and the numbers are staggering. Here is the summary of IMF’s latest update, from August 24, 2023:

This paper provides a comprehensive global, regional, and country-level update of: (i) efficient fossil fuel prices to reflect supply and environmental costs; and (ii) subsidies implied by charging below efficient fuel prices. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP. Explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) have more than doubled since 2020 but are still only 18 percent of the total subsidy, while nearly 60 percent is due to undercharging for global warming and local air pollution. Differences between efficient prices and retail fuel prices are large and pervasive, for example, 80 percent of global coal consumption was priced at below half of its efficient level in 2022. Full fossil fuel price reform would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to an estimated 43 percent below baseline levels in 2030 (in line with keeping global warming to 1.5-2oC), while raising revenues worth 3.6 percent of global GDP and preventing 1.6 million local air pollution deaths per year. Accompanying spreadsheets provide detailed results for 170 countries.

By the way, “efficient fossil fuel prices” has nothing to do with gas mileage, but rather “efficiency” refers to economics— the sum of supply, environmental, and other costs, as opposed to retail prices.

And now hold on to your hat: For the United States, in 2023, total fossil fuel subsidies came to $786 billion. But hey, what does the IMF know?

The trouble I have with Robert Bryce is his cherry-picking of facts. He’s a big proponent of EROI, for example, where his argument is that the energy return on investment is much better for fossil fuels than for renewables. It looks to me like every EROI effort falls short in adding up all relevant costs, and that fossil fuel costs, where a large and long-established infrastructure buildout can’t be realistically amortized for true EROI comparisons with renewables. Furthermore, I don’t see any effective discussion on EROI over time, where a gallon of gas gets used and must be replaced through a complex and ongoing industrial process ranging from exploration and drilling to refining and transporting (and a few other things in-between), while the cost of solar panels is upfront, but produces energy for 25-30 years once in place with nary further investment. But the EROI debate is for another time.

In the article being explicated in this post, Bryce is happy to point to some big donations by some billionaires to move away from fossil fuels, but he doesn’t bother to mention the huge sums being provided to the fossil fuels industries through dark money and subsidies. Add all that up and the anti-hydrocarbon billionaires start looking poor.

And then, of course, add in the class issue and the triggering “surrender-your-gas-stove” crap, which is wrong—the talk is about building code prohibitions going forward—and he might as well add something about the Illuminati while he’s at it.

I’m going to go do my breathing exercises in the hopes of calming down, or maybe I should just stop reading Bryce’s posts. It would be good for my blood pressure, sure, but how the facts and arguments get twisted—such as the ones that are the focus of this post—is simply too fascinating to me.

Yeah, right. Fossil Fuel is being outspent by nosy parker billionaires who are hot under the collar about people owning gas stoves. Well, this rhetoric works for the fight about gun control, so, well, why not?

I can see the bumper stickers already.

2 Comments on “WOW. I Never Meta-Hypocrisy I Didn’t Like, or, Who is Robert Bryce and Why Does He Write Such S***?”

  1. David: I’m pro-climate change mitigation, but I do not find Bryce’s views inconsistent with my own. I can see that his approach to the subject pisses off some people, but I still think he makes a valuable contribution to the discussion. So I find it unfair to suggest that we should think of Bryce as a fossil fuel shill. I also find it unfair of you to imply, as you do in your writeup, that Bryce is somehow denying the science behind global warming. He is not.

    Like Bryce, I find the whole idea of mitigating climate change by shutting down new sources of fossil fuels to be ill-conceived and even dangerous. Purposely causing energy shortfalls will drive up energy prices. I know may environmentalists think this a good idea since high prices will drive down energy consumption. But the reality is that it will also kill the political will to mitigate climate change while putting the biggest burden on those with the least resources. (Hence the class argument.) A far better approach is to drive down fossil fuel use by making low-carbon energy sources far more abundant and affordable.

    As Bryce has also pointed out, these NGOs keep trying to kill nuclear power–insane given they supposedly think climate change is an existential crisis. These NGOs tried to shut down Diablo Canyon here in California (where I live) 20-to-40 years early, even though it is CA’s largest source of low-carbon energy in the state. And they have also worked to shut down other plants as well (with NRDC crowing about shutting down Indian Point early, which has driven up GHG emissions in that area for many years to come).

    As for natural gas: so far it has been a big win for the climate in terms of displacing coal, oil and biomass burning–much more potent sources of GHGs. I would be thrilled if natural gas replaced as much coal, oil and biomass burning as possible ASAP while we ramp up sources of energy that have even lower GHG footprints. And, yes, forcing people to stop using natural gas for cooking is a loss for climate mitigation and will continue to be for quite some time due to lower efficiency of electricity generation. It is a foolish area to focus on right now for political reasons too.

    By the way, EROI correlates with energy density. There is simply no way that wind and solar can have more reasonable EROIs. That’s one of the reasons nuclear is so important. As the IPCC models show, we need to increase nuclear by as much as 5x by 2050. That will greatly reduce the amount of wasted overbuild (and associated GHG emissions) of wind and solar and batteries needed to cover for intermittency. If only we could get the NGOs to get on the side of the IPCC and the climate instead their feel-good posturing.

    1. Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I’ve followed up with an additional post that is in part in reaction to your comment, and that can be found here https://davidguenette.com/climate-change-and-class/.

      The EROI point deserves more attention and I have a post in process to do just that, but basically, my argument is that EROI is too often used to denigrate renewable energy and favor fossil fuel energy, and that is a misapplication of the EROI argument through an apples and oranges error (as well as the complexities of assigning costs for determining EROI. The future development and progress of solar, wind, and storage technologies is reasonably expected, although we are likely in agreement about nuclear power playing an important role in our move away from fossil fuels. The issue of greenhouse gas production in the so-called “wasted overbuild” solar and wind manufacture is more canard than real problem as renewable energy becomes the more common energy source for manufacture processes. But, yes, we are talking about complex systems and interactions, and I have plenty more thinking and studying on this issue of intermittency resolutions, mostly due to my lack of omniscience.

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