Michael L. Beatty is chairman of Beatty & Wozniak, PC, a thirty-five-attorney law firm headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and dedicated exclusively to the energy industry. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School, Beatty currently serves as a director of two publicly traded energy companies. Beatty served as chief of staff to Colorado governor Roy Romer, and was chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

Excerpt:

Green energy policy has now taken on the same moral connotation as
homeownership. America has made a moral choice for affordable, abundant,
carbon-free energy and doesn’t want to hear dissent. Unfortunately, turning
the energy debate into a moral issue instead of a policy discussion is
destructive and keeps us from exercising prudent judgment. Fossil fuels can
represent the values of either George Bailey or Henry Potter. Fossil fuels have
enabled America to become the most powerful nation in the world, given us
the highest standard of living, enabled our agricultural industry to feed the
world, and saved us from destruction at the hands of the Kaiser, Tojo, and
Hitler. Coal, oil, and natural gas continue to provide steady, dependable, and
affordable energy for our nation’s homes, commerce, and industry. Likewise,
we can argue that fossil fuels are not only destroying the planet, but also
dehumanizing humanity. These “fuels from hell” and their greedy sponsors
have bankrupted our nation, increased our trade imbalance, fueled Middle
East terrorism, funded the Taliban, exploited labor, created monopolies, and
precipitated every ill from the Ludlow Massacre to 9/11.

After more than a century of being cheap, plentiful, and ignored, fossil
fuels are either the root cause of every problem or the foundation for every
solution. Fossil fuels heat our political rhetoric as well as our homes and
fuel partisanship as effectively as automobiles. Nowhere is the fight more
acrimonious than Colorado. Our plentiful natural-gas resources and strong
environmental ethic have caused a bitter fight with no middle ground. Making
energy policy a moral choice has polarized the vocabulary such that
reasoned discussion is now impossible.

For the great majority of citizens, the contradictory claims create paralysis,
typified by the shopper who drove her car home to get Whole Foods
cloth bags because she was unwilling to choose between paper or plastic.
We need to have a serious discussion about energy policy and we need to
make hard choices, but we also need to start that discussion with a clear
understanding of the facts and a willingness to be rational.