Mike Conaway: “I would say as kind of a spin-off of your comment earlier, I think our colleagues on the other side do have a plan, but…”

“I would say as kind of a spin-off of your comment earlier, I think our colleagues on the other side do have a plan, but they are not explaining the plan fully to the American public. Their plan is to promote anything but oil and gas and fossil fuels. And that is fine. We can have a legitimate philosophical debate and argument and disagreement as to whether or not we should continue to explore for and exploit fossil fuels. But in that conversation ought to be the cost of changing to a non-fossil fuel environment. So I would argue that the policies that have been put in place over the last 15 months have been specifically garnered to reduce America's production of fossil fuels. They have been specifically put in place to raise those costs and make other alternatives more competitive in the market. But what they have not done a particularly good job of is explaining to the American public that these alternative sources have a cost. If it were already cheaper to produce electricity any other way than the way we are currently doing it, we would be doing it that way. That is the American model. If it were already cheaper to power our automobiles and trucks and planes any other way, we would be doing that.”