Mark Zuckerberg Visited North Dakota’s Oil Patch and Found an Undeniable Truth About Oil: We Need It
Earlier this week Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visited Williston, North Dakota. He specifically took a close look at the oil industry there, coordinating with the North Dakota Petroleum Council to visit an oil rig. He also discussed life in the oil patch with a group of residents there, then wrote about it.
On Facebook, naturally. His post has some factual errors, as Renee Jean noted in her report about the visit for the Williston Herald, but is worth your time to read:
Zuck’s visit to the oil fields didn’t exactly turn him into a fossil fuels convert. “It’s interesting to see this perspective,” he writes of being confronted with pro-oil sentiments, “when science overwhelmingly suggests fossil fuels contribute to climate change, which is one of the great challenges our generation will have to deal with.”
But despite that, he did hit on a bit of truth: “They believe competition from new sources of energy is good,” he says of the people he talked to, “but from their perspective until renewables can provide most of our energy at scale, they are providing an important service we all rely on, and they wish they’d stop being demonized for it.”
Exactly.
Like it or not, America runs on fossil fuels. Oil. Coal. Gas.
If we stopped development of those energy resources, as so many in the environmental movement want, it would be devastating for the American economy. It would be awful for the average American’s quality of life.
As Zuckerberg notes, we all rely on oil. Until something better comes along that can match oil (or coal or gas, for that matter) in abundance, price, and reliability then what we have to do is pump oil.
We need to do is responsibly. We need to do it safely. But we need to do it, or face consequences I don’t think any of us wants.
To demonize the oil industry, and oil workers, for providing a product everyone uses is absurd. And yet, environmental activists and left wing politicians do it every single day.
