As the world continues to descend into a chaos of our own making, Jennifer Granholm exemplifies the state of our world.

After over a year of beating the drum of “reduce fossil fuels” “climate catastrophe” and “only renewables can save us”, she and the Biden administration can’t fathom why energy companies wouldn’t ramp up. But…. please!! The world needs you! Forget all those mean things we said, why can’t we all just get along with our “Fellow Americans…” Sound familiar? SOTU? COVID? Hmmm…

Maybe, just maybe, we aren’t really that interested in helping you. Could it be the cheerleading of the “divest fossil fuels” movement that increased the cost of capital and made companies prioritize debt repayment so that banks couldn’t foreclose?

Could it be that Saule Omarova, a Cornell University law professor who was nominated for Treasury, said to tackle climate change we need to bankrupt the oil companies?

Could it be that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC constantly beat the drum of profit gauging by billionaire shale folks?

Could it be that the President has no idea how supply-demand works or what happens when you shut down coal and nuclear plants and rely on intermittents?

I mean… maybe. I just can’t imagine why industry or Saudi or the UAE wouldn’t return their calls.

Disastrous energy policy has consequences. You can not build a grid based on intermittency. You can’t shut down the world with no back up plan and break supply chains. You can’t fix equipment that was held together by duct tape when oil was $30/bbl overnight. You must own your role in creating investors that demanded flat production, huge cash returns and balance sheet restoration. Forget that Wall Street cheered as Engine No. 1 got 3 environmental activists on Exxon’s board.

In short, my not very polite answer to the Administration that no CEO can actually say out loud: “Good. I hope oil goes to $300/bbl. This is your mess. You figure it out with your wind and solar friends.”

If the Administration wants industry to play ball, they must unwind every single anti energy policy they have, eliminate the production tax credit and preferential purchase agreements for wind and solar, demand that all new projects have sufficient battery storage on site to generate name plate energy capacity for 24 consecutive hours, and put bonding in place to cover the $500,000 cost to decommission each and every windmill at the end of it’s 15-20 year life. Oh, and enforce the migratory bird act on wind companies, just as they did on oil and gas companies historically.

But of course, that will never happen. As a result, we will need to rely on Saudi, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and the UAE for a significant portion of the world’s oil until we truly run out of it.

Perhaps, politicians should start staying the quiet part out loud. If you want more energy security, you need to reduce CONSUMPTION. Drivers must drive less, live in smaller houses, only order Amazon once a week, match demand (washers, dryers, thermostats) to supply (when it’s windy and sunny). Stop buying new cars every two years. Stop buying the latest and greatest iPhone. Stop encouraging 18% credit card debt. And stop running up the national debt from $5 trillion to $30 trillion in under 25 years.

Consumption is the only answer and for obvious reasons (fundraising) it’s why Jennifer Granholm would rather look like a hypocrite than tell consumers to change their behavior.