Energy Realism: Climate Policy Meets Actual Economics

Cato Podcast

Cato Institute

Politics, Unknown, News Commentary, 424708, Libertarian, Markets, Cato, News, Immigration, Peace, Policy, Government, Defense

4.6 • 949 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

Cato's Chad Davis and Travis Fisher examine the gulf between symbolic climate pledges and the real-world complexities of energy use — from EV carbon costs to fossil-fueled resilience against natural disasters. They argue that the “climate homicide” narrative misreads the data, and that abundant, affordable energy remains humanity’s greatest defense against climate risk.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. My name's Chad Davis. I am vice president for public affairs at the
0:09.3	Cato Institute. I'm here today joined by Travis Fisher, director of our energy and environmental
0:15.7	policy issues. Did I get that right, Travis? Nailed it. All right. There we go. We are here to talk about COP 30 and the policies around it and what that might mean to everyday people, to businesses, to a whole host of groups.
0:33.9	I guess, Travis, first, do you want to introduce yourself, give a little bit of better crap?
0:41.1	Sure. So, I mean, I've been working on energy issues for 20 years now. I started my career at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which kicked off a lifelong obsession with electricity.
0:51.9	But along with every other energy issue, climate keeps coming up.
0:57.3	So, you know, the context of the recent conversations are all about this conference of parties,
1:01.6	the 30th annual conference of the parties, which is, you know, some people call it a climate party.
1:07.8	Everybody took private jets to Brazil to talk about the climate. Um,
1:12.8	and that's, uh, that's the most recent thing. There's a, there's plenty to talk about in this
1:17.3	space. Okay. And, uh, just to be fair, uh, for everybody's background, again, uh, as I said,
1:24.1	I lead the public affairs team. Uh, We do government affairs, communications, external affairs.
1:31.6	I spent a long time on the hill, bounced around through a few federal agencies.
1:35.6	So that's the background we both come from.
1:38.7	You touched a little bit on what COP 30 is, you know, for everybody's benefit.
1:45.0	It's the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as you said, it was in Brazil this year.
1:51.1	Can you give a little bit maybe more background on how this came to be, what it is, what
1:57.6	it's supposed to accomplish, what it has or has not accomplished just in the history.
2:02.8	And then we'll talk moving forward.
2:04.5	I'd love to steel man this and say in an ideal world where we're all, kumbaya, countries
2:10.9	coming together, we would come up with some sort of plan to deal with the international,
2:16.3	the global issue of climate change.
	...

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