“It will be an amazing day,” announced Dr. Tim Huelskamp at the start of the America First Energy Conference (AFEC) held on August 7 in New Orleans. “You’re going to learn a lot… about so many issues, issues many in the media do not want us to know about.”

Indeed, we did. For, as Huelskamp, former Kansas Congressman and now President of The Heartland Institute (the conference organizers), explained to the audience of 225, packed into that single day were presentations from leading representatives of government, science, and think tanks determined to set the record straight on where America stands and where it needs to go on energy. Here are samples of what we learned.

In his morning keynote address Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry talked about the benefits of energy independence. “An energy independent America creates a safe America; it creates a prosperous America. It builds the middle class,” said Landry. “It provides good jobs, good schools…It secures the safety and liberty of the entire world.”

Using the electricity required to power the Houston metropolitan area as an example, Landry discussed the impracticality of trying to replace fossil fuels with alternative energy. To produce that power using corn ethanol would require over 21,000 square miles of corn fields. To generate the same amount of electricity from wind power would take almost 900 square miles of wind turbines, or 150 square miles of solar panels, Landry told the audience.

Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist University of Alabama in Huntsville, was an ever-present voice at the conference receiving an award for valor in the face of extreme opposition to his work on satellite measurements which show that carbon dioxide (CO2) has played no significant role in altering the temperature of the planet.  In his panel presentation on CO2, he explained that there are no negatives for the increasing amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.  It is a miracle molecule which makes life possible on planet Earth.

Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment, Texas Public Policy Foundation, talked of the impact her book “FUELING FREEDOM – Exposing the mad war on energy”, coauthored with Steve Moore of the President’s transition team, has had on the energy picture in the United States. She focused on the terrible outcomes forced upon the poorest in the world by depriving them of inexpensive, efficient fossil fuels in favor of costly solar and wind energy.

Sterling Burnet, editor of the Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News told the audience that we must end the war on fossil fuels by continuing to explain the economics, safety, and efficiency of coal, oil, and natural gas. In particular, coal needs to be brought back as a great American resource in the hearts and minds of the American public.

Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, lead the Trump administration’s transition team on energy regulation. At AFEC he reviewed the many regulations being eliminated.  He noted that President Trump called for two rules to be eliminated for every new rule that would be established in his administration, but that in fact we have managed to eliminate twenty regulations for every new one established.

Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington D.C.-based Climatedepot.com, disclosed the fact that many of America’s most strident leftist environmental activist groups are heavily financed by Russian money in an effort to hurt the U.S. economy through inhibiting the use of fossil fuels and the waste of government funds supporting research into implausible man-caused climate change.  Morano’s new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change is considered one of the most complete guides to the true history of the greatest fraud in history, man-caused climate change.

In his keynote address at the conference’s closing session, philosopher and President of the Center for Industrial Progress Alex Epstein, explained how to win the debate by first establishing an agreement on the correct framework, one that was even handed, precise and valued human flourishing. Then the facts in support of fossils fuels are more likely to be well-received.

Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, showed a video of his exchange with Senator Barbara Boxer of California at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Boxer wondered what a philosopher was doing lecturing the committee.  He smoothly answered “to help you learn how to think clearly,” to which Boxer replied, “You don’t have to teach me to think more clearly!” This brought the house down.

The America First Energy Conference was a day to remember.