Chip Roy Hosts a FASCINATING Town Hall

"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
But when a wicked man rules, the people groan."
Proverbs 29:2

[Note: We lost the piece of paper on which we took notes.  This blog post is written from memory.  We ask your indulgence.]

We attended Chip Roy's town hall last night, hosted by TPPF:



During his introductory remarks, Roy discussed the border, health care, and energy.  All standard stuff for Roy.  The Q&A with conservatives audience members was also pretty standard.  But the Q&A with left-leaning audience members was where it got interesting.

While talking about energy, Roy made the point that lower natural gas prices were a direct consequence of the shale revolution.  Because of those lower natural gas prices, the United States is the only country in the world to reduce its carbon emissions over the past five years.  If you want to accomplish something on climate change, increasing U.S. natural gas exports should be your #1 goal (at least in the short/medium term).  Chip Roy literally made this point in his prepared remarks.

But that wasn't good enough for some audience members:

• One woman assailed Roy for questioning some of the doom and gloom scenarios, but couldn't come up with a policy ask.

• A guy who couldn't acknowledge that Chip Roy was answering his question even as Chip Roy repeated what he said above about natural gas.

• Another guy who asked Roy "where do you get your information" about climate issues.  Roy specifically cited a UT-Austin professor and Texas state government statistics.  The man said Roy refused to answer the question.

Therein lies the fascinating part.

It's one thing to argue that there have been unintended environmental consequences from the increase in carbon emissions over the past 200 years.  That might very well be the case.  In that context, a discussion about reducing carbon emissions might be worth having.

Likewise, in that context, you have to acknowledge that collapsing natural gas prices have done more to reduce carbon emissions than anything else.

That will never be good enough for the global warming cultists.  And that's fine.  Don't waste your breath.

But natural gas prices are a wedge that should be driven between those concerned about the unintended environmental consequences of carbon emissions and the global warming cultists.

And Chip Roy showed us how.

Bottom Line: This distinction is an important one to make moving forward, and it's good to see Chip Roy doing so on his own.