Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin are on a mission to reduce federal overreach, to allow states to develop the resources needed for the nation's future.
Energy is the key to success, they said, and Alaska is at the forefront of the effort to safely and efficiently expand and maintain U.S. energy security.
The trio shared the specifics of their mission in remarks to the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference June 3 in Anchorage, a day after completing a North Slope tour with Gov. Mike Dunleavy and U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.
"You can't continue to have the exceptionalism we've had as a country unless we have the energy to power it," Burgum said. "That's part of our job here, working with governors like Mike to make sure that America is in a position to have energy to solve all these problems and to help everybody again reach their fullest potential wherever you live in this country."
"There is no force more transformative in human history and in human time than energy, and we've really gotten off track on energy," Wright said. "We are on a mission to get us back on track."
"There's no point in producing energy if you're not going to better people's lives," he said.
Lee Zeldin traveled the world while serving on the board of a free market environmental group based in Bozeman, Montana.
"I went to 55 countries and my passion is about people that weren't born lucky middle class United States of America like I was," Zeldin said. "What's the road to improve their lives? It's energy, energy, energy... because energy enables everything else they need next."
"If you go to poor and low-income countries or poor and low-income parts of our own country, what you will see every time is the lower income of a society is -- which means lower energy consumption per person, the worse the environmental quality is," he said.
In remote Africa, the energy source is wood, which has powered the world throughout all of human history, he said.
"You have deforestation, you have problems with water quality, you don't have sanitation," he said, "Roughly 3 million people die every year from indoor air pollution because they cook their meals and heat their homes with wood, just like our ancestors did."
"Energized, wealthier societies have massively cleaner environments and massively smaller footprints on the environment," Zeldin said.
Burgum said some rulemaking made under the previous administration wasn't about the environment, it was about killing the energy industry, adding, "If you care about the environment, then you should want every drop of oil, every cubic foot of gas, every electron made in the United States because we do it cleaner, smarter and safer than anybody else in the world."
"The leaders from the North Slope, they care deeply about the land or water, soil health -- all the things they care about, they care about more than any bureaucrat ever could," Burgum said. "We talked about the issues -- they would say this is an issue my grandfather was working on."
"Whether it's for 45 years trying to get the land transfers done to your state, getting roads built and basic infrastructure, these are things that the Trump administration, the three of us are charged to do," Burgum said.
The trio agreed that if U.S. production declines, demand still goes up.
"We just let our adversaries become the suppliers," Burgum said.
"During the last administration, production in Iran went up," he said. "Production in North Dakota -- my home state -- went down from 1.5 million barrels a day to 1.2, Alaska went down, Iran went up."
It seemed the United States was sanctioning Alaska rather than sanctioning Iran, Burgum said.
The promise and challenge of Alaska
Alaska has a tremendous opportunity, and it has a challenge, Wright said.
"The opportunity is that Alaska is a large energy exporter right now," he said, "It's a very important energy state."
With just governance like Gov. Dunleavy, President Trump, Secretary Burgum and Zeldin at the EPA, "it is not a stretch at all to quadruple Alaska's total energy production in the next 10 years -- 100% achievable."
"This is probably a doubling or more of oil production; this is building a natural gas pipeline to supply the world," Wright said. "It's not just Alaska that wins, it's America that wins; it's the world that wins."
The challenge that Alaska faces is that its riches are not resources unless you put wells in the ground and take them out of the ground and turn them into resources, he said, adding, "When they're underground, they're just like they were a million years ago -- they're not helping anyone."
Alaska is further challenged by the expense of delivering energy in state.
"People are leaving Alaska; industry is not coming to Alaska; Alaska is not going to have this manufacturing renaissance that President Trump is driving through the Lower 48, but it should," Wright said. "And of course, we have both communities and Alaskan villages that have incredibly expensive energy. Incredibly expensive energy limits their lives."
The building of infrastructure such as the natural gas pipeline, roads for the North Slope and mining, and creative energy projects involving wind and solar will transform the quality of life, economic opportunity and jobs, he said.
"The next 10 years should see an explosion of Alaskan energy production with the economic benefit of everyone and massively lower costs of energy for those that live in Alaska, wherever they live in Alaska," Wright said.
Energy and innovation to the rescue
Energy is the direct link to innovation and an electron today could do something never done in history: turn energy into intelligence, Burgum said. We're literally at a point in human history where we can manufacture intelligence.
"We can take the best software coder in the country and then we can make 1,000, then we can make 1,000 more, I mean, the AI coder today is coding better than 99.5% of all programmers in America," he said.
"We need more energy, but we also need to have people stop weaponizing the federal government," Burgum said.
As a governor -- "like all western governors do" -- Burgum had to deal with the weaponization of the Endangered Species Act.
"I said how many of the things that go on endangered species list ever come off?" he said. "It turns out that 97% of the species that have gone on since the inception of it 140 years ago have never come off."
"I'm calling it the Hotel California to check in, but you can never check out," he said.
"We should be celebrating as a society when things come off the list -- right now it's so interesting we celebrate when they go on the list -- sometimes with science that maybe wouldn't hold up to scrutiny and peer review."
When you have more energy, things get better for prosperity, for humanity, and the environment, he said. Some people are concerned about a degree of temperature change in 2100.
"I'm telling you AI will come up with 1,000 things because the AI will supplement human intelligence, it will augment human intelligence, it will accelerate human intelligence," Burgum said.
"Human innovation is the core of American greatness," he said. "We will solve the problems that are coming in the year 2100; if we have the energy, the physical energy to do it and to power AI to do it, we will solve all of those."
