The clean power plan is something that Senator Sanders has said he would delay implementing, which makes absolutely no sense. We need to implement all of the president’s executive actions and quickly move to make a bridge from coal to natural gas to clean energy. That is the way we will keep the lights on while we are transitioning to a clean energy future. And when I talk about resilience, I think that is an area we can get Republican support on.

"Carter's renowned 1979 "malaise speech" [...] is little remembered for what it actually was: a call to arms for fixing our nation's dire energy future. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 — never" [...] Carter was going to use all the weapons at his disposal: import quotas, public investment in coal, solar power, and alternative fuel, and [...] "a bold conservation program" where "every act of energy conservation ... is more than just common sense; I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Well, I would like to say one thing to start with, that the people of California are my constituents just as much as they are the Governor's constituents, and I have just as deep a concern about the future prosperity and good life of the people of California as the Governor or anyone else. I've never had any disagreements with Governor Brown. So far as I know, he's never mentioned the western leg of the pipeline to me. If he corresponded with some of my staff members and I'm not familiar with it, then, of course, that would be understandable. I've been with him several times this year, both in California, and he spent a night with me at the mansion. We've had long discussions, but I did not know he was dissatisfied with the arrangement at all. One of the problems, however, with the El Paso route, which was the alternative, was the reluctance of California to provide some means by which oil or natural gas could come into the State to be used there and also to be transported to other parts of the country. I don't say that in a spirit of criticism, because I'm concerned about environmental questions and possible oil spills and, also, the deterioration in the quality of air, because of heavy shipping transport, as well. But I would expect that Governor Brown and I and other State and Federal officials would eagerly search for a basis on which we could assure California adequate energy supplies in the future. My decision to go with the Alcan route was one of great importance to our country. But certainly none of the factors involved was to damage California people whom I care about very much.

Dolph Briscoe is my friend, and I don't want to get into a personal interrelationship with him except on a basis of mutual understanding and friendship. I think it's accurate to say that Congressman Krueger and several other Members of the Congress have adequately put forward the so-called Texas plan for energy development which, in my opinion, is primarily based on a complete deregulation of the price of oil and natural gas, which I think at this time would be inappropriate and a devastating load to the well-being of the consumers of this Nation. I also think it's unwarranted. The degree of deregulation which we have advocated, a substantial improvement over what it is now, would result in the natural gas field alone in a $15 billion increase in the income of the natural gas companies between now and 1985. There have been assessments made by the Library of Congress and by the GAO and other groups who advise Members of Congress, that the so-called Krueger Plan--I haven't seen the Briscoe Plan; I would guess they are similar and perhaps have a similar origin--would cost the consumers of our country maybe $70 billion more than what we advocate. But I think that this is a crucial question in the overall energy concept-whether or not we should have extremely high prices to be established by the oil and natural gas companies without constraint and accept their proposition that exploration would build by leaps and bounds, that we would have unlimited supplies of oil and natural gas as a result, and that this is the best approach, or our own proposition on the other hand. I don't think that a crash program to extract oil and natural gas in a hasty fashion from American supplies is advisable under any circumstances. I think that the emphasis on conservation and a shift toward coal, which we advocate, is the best approach. I also don't think there would be substantially increased exploration if oil was worth $20 a barrel and if natural gas was $3 or $4 a thousand cubic feet. I think the present rate of exploration would not be substantially enhanced, but it would be a great windfall to the oil and natural gas companies of our Nation. As I said in the letter that Dolph Briscoe has, as I said in my speech on the energy proposal to the Congress back on April 20, our first move toward deregulation is one that will be followed later by others. It's a first move to carry out my commitment. But I can't bring myself to accept the proposition it ought to be done peremptorily. We've advocated, by the way, a $1.75 price for natural gas to be moved in interstate and intrastate supply lines, which is a substantial increase over interstate price now, and I think is adequate.

The winning candidate, now the president elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.

Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump's top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama's temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the world's largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trump's victory, registered a 50 percent gain.

We must cure our addiction to foreign oil. Not only does the administration claim we face the gravest crisis since World War II, they also claim they are making hard decisions to meet that crisis. Long before Afghanistan, they proposed a stand-by gasoline rationing plan, and that is all they propose today. The time for a stand-by plan is over. The time for a stand-up plan is now. We must adopt a system of gasoline rationing without delay – not rationing by price, as the Administration has decreed, but rationing by supply in a way that demands a fair sacrifice from all Americans. I am certain that Americans in every city, town, and village of this country are prepared to sacrifice for energy security. President Carter may take us to the edge of war in the Persian Gulf. But he will not ask us to end our dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf. I am sure that every American would prefer to sacrifice a little gasoline rather than shedding American blood to defend OPEC pipelines in the Middle East.

Two days from now, I will present to the Congress my energy proposals.. Its Members will be my partners, and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war," except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy. Now, I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gas lines are gone, and with this springtime weather, our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It's worse because more waste has occurred and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act. The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about 6 percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last 5 years. Our Nation's economic and political independence is becoming increasingly vulnerable. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980's the world will be demanding more oil than it can produce. The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day, and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every 9 months, or a new Saudi Arabia every 3 years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

Now, the second major challenge I want to discuss with you this morning is energy. The energy crisis is the greatest domestic challenge that our country will face in our lifetime. I still find it almost incredible that our country has no coherent plan for dealing with it until this year. We have now proposed such a plan to the Congress and also proposed a new department to deal with the energy question. This plan is based on three inescapable realities. There's no way to get around them. The first is that we are simply running out of oil. The second is that oil will, nevertheless, have to remain our primary source of energy for many years and must not be wasted. And the third principle is that unless we begin soon to prepare for the transition to other sources of energy, the consequences on our society and our way of life will be very severe. We could face massive unemployment, crippling inflation, social and political instability, and threats to our freedom of action in international affairs. We cannot just rely on increased production. While finding more oil is important, we would have to discover a new- Alaskan oil field every year just to keep pace with the annual growth in world consumption. No matter how strong the financial incentives, that is simply not going to happen. We must save oil and gas for uses where there is no good substitute. One obvious example is moving vehicles. We must shift to other sources when possible, and we must develop new sources, such as solar energy. There are no workers in America whose future jobs depend more than yours on a good energy program based on strict conservation. Now, you know and I know that meeting our energy goals is not going to be easy. It will require sacrifice from everyone in the country. We cannot use the fuel crisis as an excuse for not cleaning up our air. I have proposed tough but fair air pollution standards. We've got to improve the efficiency of our cars, and that's why I proposed a gas-guzzler tax. Now you and I have honest differences of opinion over some aspects of my proposals. But I don't hesitate to call on you for help, because I know what you've done in the past. You've never lost sight of the broader interests of our Nation. Walter Reuther helped to make possible the Clean Air Act as it was originally passed. And your members are already building cars highly efficient, getting more than 30 miles per gallon. It's absolutely inevitable, no matter who's the President of the United States, that we will have to shift to more efficient automobiles with a clean exhaust. This past quarter, unfortunately, a larger percentage of Americans bought foreign-made cars than ever before. Now, I know that you agree that the solution is not to erect trade barriers to keep out foreign competition because it only leads to trade wars, to retaliation, and added inflation. The solution lies in using our great American ingenuity to design and produce the right cars for the future. I can think of no more disastrous assumption for the American automobile industry to make than that we cannot successfully compete with foreign companies that produce and sell such cars. We can compete, and we will compete successfully.

Responding to withering public criticism of the state's chaotic and disastrous response to a killer winter storm, Abbott fumed, "What happened this week to our fellow Texans is absolutely unacceptable."... Abbott pointed his outrage at ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency charged with maintaining a reliable flow of electricity... But wait... ERCOT merely administers policies set by the Public Utility Commission... And who appointed the three members of that commission? Why, Greg, it was you! In fact, the chairwoman and one of the two other members of PUC are former top staffers of the governor... Abbott has been governor for six years, and not once has he proposed legislation to require that the corporate owners of electric utilities protect the grid from freezes... he also claims that the 2021 winter vortex was unprecedented and therefore couldn't have been anticipated. Oops ... wait again. A notorious rolling grid failure in a 2011 snowstorm left millions of Texans in deadly darkness.

Just a few minutes ago, I signed a proclamation of emergency in Indiana so that we can provide help. And last night, I did one for Ohio. This will permit the legal use of military forces, National Guard, and others, to alleviate the traffic conditions and to reach stranded motorists and others. Well, we're trying to approach the energy question on a comprehensive basis, and it's a very complicated and difficult and politically divisive issue. The first natural gas deregulation bill that was vetoed, I think, was by Harry Truman, 27, 28 years ago, so that this is not something new. But I think for the first time the Congress has made tremendous progress in trying to resolve these major differences. I just finished having lunch with Senator Talmadge, who's on the Finance Committee of the Senate, who's also chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and we discussed farms and energy primarily. I think that we're flexible enough in the executive branch to deal with almost any reasonable solution that the House and Senate conferees can evolve. There are only three prerequisites as far as I'm concerned. One is to have an increase in conservation, an increase in production, be fair to consumers and, at the same time, not break the Federal budget. So, within those bounds, which are quite general, I'm flexible. There are some deeply felt opinions on both sides of this issue, based on 20 or 30 years of voting record, and it's hard to get people to accommodate those differences. They've never been able to in the past. So, I think we have a good chance to have a comprehensive energy bill this year that will at least let the American people know where we are going. I think the uncertainty is one of the crucial problems that we have.

As there are now over 70 people confirmed dead and over 1,000 missing, the fires in CA are a horrific tragedy. I’m praying for all involved! I’m posting this in speculation because there are too many coincidences to ignore, and just putting it out there from some research I’ve done stemming from my curiosity over PG&E stocks, which tanked all week then rallied Thursday night after CA official announced they would not let PG&E fail. I find it very interesting that Roger Kimmel on the board of directors of PG&E is also Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm. I also find interesting the long history of financial contributions that PG&E has made to Jerry Brown over the years and millions spent in lobbying. What a coincidence it must be that Gov Brown signed a bill in Sept 2018, protecting PG&E and allowing PG&E to pass off its cost of fire responsibility to its customers in rate hikes, and through bonds. It also must be just a coincidence that the fires are burning in the same projected areas that the $77 billion Dollar High Speed Rail Project is to be built, which also happens to be Gov Brown’s pet project. And what are the odds that Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum is the contractor to the rail project! Geez with that much money, we could build 3 US southern border walls. Then oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires, and pictures and videos. I don’t know anything about that but I do find it really curious PG&E’s partnership with Solaren on space solar generators starting in 2009. They announced the launch into space in March 2018, and maybe even put them up before that Space solar generators collect the suns energy and then beam it back to Earth to a transmitter to convert to electricity. The idea is clean energy to replace coal and oil. If they are beaming the suns energy back to Earth, I’m sure they wouldn’t ever miss a transmitter receiving station right??!! I mean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don’t know. I hope not! That wouldn’t look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown who sure does seem fond of PG&E. Good thing for Solaren that Michael Peevey is on their board since he is former President of California Public Utilities Commission, California’s most powerful energy regulatory agency. Great connections right there! Also I will say whoever was able to buy that PG&E stock at the bottom before that announcement was made when stocks rallied sure did well on their investment. I wonder how you get privy to that kind of info? You must have to know somebody right? Seems like there’s a lot of connected people in this crowd. And with these space solar generators, I really hope they have very good aim beaming the suns power down to Earth … But what do I know? I just like to read a lot.

[On Dick Cheney's Halliburton severance package] He's a guy who's in charge of determining our energy policy, and he's doing it with $31 million of oil company money in his pocket. Is anybody fucking home?

Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the Government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems-wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both problems at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, by making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and by developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, and every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve just as consumers will. The energy. producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way that we can buy a barrel of oil for about $2. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement cost of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that Government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason that I'm working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption, as we do now, when they only make up 7 percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal, while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth and last principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy that we will rely on in the next century. Now, these 10 principles have guided the development of the policy that I will describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday night.

I think we recognize that current low prices are good for us. We are seeing our families pay less and, thus, they can devote to other priorities. The underlying message here is the energy industry is an important component to how we move to this phase of economic recovery. What can we do to help this industry and, thus, the broader economy recovery? It was interesting because we had a panel of five witnesses before us. Several of those witnesses all pointed to the same piece of legislation as one of the answers as to how we can help the economy recover, and that is a bill that those of us on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee developed throughout last year. We called it the American Energy Innovation Act. We refer to it as our energy bill. It will ensure that the United States remains a global energy leader while strengthening our national security, investing in clean technologies, and securing our Nation's supply chain.