Mark Mills: Energy Realism and Geopolitics

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2022

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has put the dangers of European reliance on Russian oil and gas into sharp focus. The debate on energy policy in the West is, however, too often built on wishful thinking—particularly regarding our ability to make a transition to a carbon-neutral economy in the next few decades. According to Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, it simply is inconceivable that the world could move away from hydrocarbons on the time frame casually advanced by politicians in the West. Mills explains—from the vantages of science and economics—that attempting to do so would pad the coffers of the world’s most dangerous regimes, like Putin’s, without meaningfully reducing carbon emissions. Instead, Mills calls for a two-pronged strategy: In the short term, America and its allies should dramatically ramp up production of oil and gas to increase geopolitical strength. While doing so, we should be more ambitious with investment in R&D for better methods of production and extraction, more efficient consumption of energy, and new technologies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Mark Mills,
0:20.3	Experimental Physicists and Developmental Engineer, Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute,
0:27.2	Faculty Fellow at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He's got
0:33.1	a lot of experience in government and the private sector and really one of our leading experts and
0:38.4	scholars and analysts of energy policy. Among other things, author of a very recent book that goes
0:43.3	way beyond energy policy, the cloud revolution, how the convergence of new technologies will unleash
0:49.7	the next economic boom in the roaring 2020s. And I've talked with Mark enough to know that we should
0:54.7	also do with some time a separate conversation on science, technology, innovation and a lot of other
1:00.7	topics which are related to energy. But since energy is in the news and is important, I thought we
1:07.6	would take to get the benefit of Mark's thoughts on an analysis of where we stand on
1:13.5	the energy and energy policy. So, Mark, thank you for joining me today.
1:17.1	Oh, Bill, thanks. Thanks for having me on. I apologize in advance for my voice, which is still
1:21.2	recovering from Laranjitis, which I wish I could say was due to a night of hard cigar smoking and
1:27.1	liquor, but it wasn't, it's just whatever's going around, screaming it, screaming it, you know.
1:31.6	You only got the green new deal advocates on the one hand.
1:35.3	Or raging at the machine, as I said. I'll add one correction to your generous introduction.
1:41.0	I used to be a useful person doing experimental physics research, invent stuff back in the dawn of
1:47.1	time at Canada's Bell Labs, and I did semiconductor research, worked in the fab. It was a cold warrior
1:54.0	of the classic kind. I worked on missile defense systems and anti-tank weapons, smart weapons,
2:01.0	all that fun stuff. Then I got dragged into the energy debates in Canada, early in my career,
2:06.0	working in uranium and nuclear energy stuff. And so, I've lived the schizophrenic life ever since
2:11.6	of being fascinated by and writing about the two worlds, the world of what people call tech,
	...

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