Scorched earth policy

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A WORD, IF I WILL

Don't wear yourself out trying to understand, analyze, or process the veritable flood of executive orders on climate and energy matters that Trump has signed this week. Yes, a lot of it is bad. But keeping up with all of it would be impossible. Deciphering it all would be impossible. A lot of it isn’t even intended to make sense or form a cohesive strategy.

Most of it is either an effort to:

• Test the extent of his executive power. I.e., where’s the limit?

• Appease his top supporters and enrage his top detractors.

• Be spiteful.

Beyond that, as Robinson Meyer expertly analyzed, much of it is also designed to increase demand for U.S. oil and gas. While the national emergency order was framed as a production problem, production is already sky-high and grew significantly under Biden’s Administration and even more significantly (88%!) during Obama’s two terms.

Here’s what Meyer wrote in a great post for Heatmap:

So, besides the above, what is the strategy? What’s the goal?

It is expressly to wear you out. To overwhelm you with so much information that it's impossible to act on any of it if you pay attention to all of it. It’s designed to distract you by trying to keep up with everything so you end up able to focus on nothing. And it’s an effective strategy. It disorganizes opposition. It disorients coordinated resistance efforts.

Here are my quick two cents on how to cloak yourself from the strategy, though. You are the ultimate arbiter of the sovereignty of your mind (if little else at this point). It’s hard, but you don’t have to pay attention to it all, let alone try to parse it or act on all of it.

Headlines or head fakes?

Here’s what happens when you try to take in all the information from the information overload (or assault) strategy I described above. It happened to me!

Take, for instance, the executive order to halt new leases for both offshore and onshore wind. When I first saw that, I was pretty shocked. Offshore made sense to me and wasn’t surprising. The offshore wind industry has long been struggling in general. Especially in the U.S., offshore wind has struggled to gain any, say, tailwinds; in terms of operational capacity, the U.S. has ~50 MW. For context, that’s less than a tenth of the capacity of the East River Generating Station (fueled by natural gas) across the river from where I’m writing this. Scotland (a small country!) has almost 3 GW (note the gigawatts versus megawatts here). Offshore wind auctions in the U.S. have already drawn no bids at times. There was a high-profile turbine failure at a project being developed in Massachusetts. The economics of manufacturing are dismal for many global turbine makers right now. That’s not to say I don’t care about offshore wind; it probably is an integral part of a diversified, low-emission future U.S. power grid, even if it remains small proportionally. 

The onshore wind part just surprised me more. Why? For one, I pass lots of onshore wind turbines often when I drive from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, one of my favorite places to escape to. But also because there’s way more of it in the U.S.; onshore wind actually still generates more electricity in the U.S. than solar does, though that will flip soon (independent of Trump’s influence).

One state, Iowa, actually generates more than half its electricity from wind! As I tweeted in an overly hasty reaction to the executive order (though there’s still some validity to the gist), Trump carried the state that produces the majority of its electricity from wind energy by 13% in the general election.

Texas is another good example. It generates more electricity from wind than any other state, even if wind’s share in its total generation mix isn’t as high as Iowa’s. Texas was also a Trump +14% state.

Here’s the head fake, though. Upon further parsing, I realized the executive order only applies to leases for wind on federal lands. Developers can still develop on private land. That matters a great deal, because the vast, vast majority of existing onshore wind in the U.S. is on private land. Per Utility Dive:

So we’re not talking about a death sentence for onshore wind here. At least not yet. The executive order alone might not impact onshore wind that much at all. The headlines sure gave me a head fake, given my lack of insight into the split of how much onshore wind in the U.S. is on federal land versus not.

I’m also sure a lot of people with influence and incentive to keep federal lands open to wind farms, including people who voted for Trump, will cajole him not to ban development there. I’m not sure they’ll be successful.

What I do know is I’m in no position to be effective in influencing any outcomes on that front. Which brings me to my next point: Some of the executive orders will matter a great deal, whether on climate and energy or otherwise. Some are purely performative. Some won’t stand up once they go to the courts. Some are dog whistles. Some may be dramatically consequential. I’m not saying not to care. I’m saying to protect yourself and your attention first. From there, we’ll get to my proposal for a path forward.

The riches are in the niches

I will keep this section very short. The best strategy is not to try to pay attention to everything, let alone take action on everything. Home in on where you can make an impact or where your curiosity leads you most. Causes you care about. Areas where you have expertise. I celebrate folks like Quincy Lee, CEO of Electric Era, who’s embodying this approach (see what I mean in the information sharing and proactively inherent to posts like this one and this one).

The net-net

To close, I’ll build on two great quotes from two fantastic artists, albeit of different crafts. The first is a quote I stumbled on serendipitously yesterday from Nick Cave (the musician):

This quote was a good reminder for me and rings true to my life (and yes, to be able to say that, I recognize how marvelously blessed I am). But it pertains to the topic at hand, too. Beyond overwhelming you to the point where you find yourself unable to keep up and act on anything, the other inherent strategy behind Trump’s executive order tirade is to take you “out of the game.” The essence of the quote from Cave, as I read it, is to remind yourself of all the reasons to “stay in the game.” To, as I described in the “The riches are in the niches” section, find your niche for impact, or at least people, places, and spaces that bring you life.

The second quote, from Ben Hunt, an investor and also a marvelous writer, crystallizes this point further:

For our purposes here, we can extend what Hunt refers to as capital N ‘Narratives’ to what Trump is doing in the first few days of his second presidency. His actions aim to make you feel powerless. To take you “off the board,” as Hunt puts it, or “out of the game,” as I do.

I’m not here to tell you whether or not to stay on the board or in the game. If you opt out of whatever game you have in mind while reading this, I won’t stop you. In fact, I’ll tip my hat to you and shake your hand or hug you as we part ways. But do consider turning off all the noise first. Once you understand the underlying motivations of Trump’s strategy (which, btw, many other powerful people and institutions also employ) and how they implicitly (and often subconsciously) work on you, then do whatever you see fit. I trust you.

Ciao,

— Nick