When ignorance isn’t bliss

Thank oil and gas for concrete, fertilizers, and plastics.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

The New York Post’s Dec. 9, 2024 article contained exclusive polling taken in November of that year showing that most Americans don’t understand the risks of wind and solar or the benefits of oil and gas. Not only are oil and gas responsible for a wide array of essential products but the drawbacks of wind and solar harm grid reliability.

The U.S. is “at an elevated risk of energy shortfalls,” but as many as 57 percent of U.S. voters in the Post’s poll were not aware of that risk. North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released its long-term reliability assessment for 2025 to 2029, and it’s not looking good: half of North America is at risk of blackouts in the next five to 10 years. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), of which Minnesota is a part, is at a high risk for blackouts under normal peak conditions beginning in 2025.

Center of the American Experiment has well-documented the risks of energy shortfalls and grid instability, especially in its modeling of Tim Walz’s Blackout Bill. Unfortunately, in 2023, the legislature passed its mandate for a 100 percent renewable Minnesota electric grid, which our modeling found would lead to a 55-hour blackout in January 2040.

The blackouts could be coming much sooner. The NERC reliability assessment finds that “resource additions are not keeping up with generator retirements and demand growth” in MISO. The report points out an uncomfortable fact: Coal-fired generators are being prematurely retired to comply with the state’s 100 percent clean electricity mandate as well as the Biden administration’s unworkable greenhouse gas standards for coal-fired power plants. Solar and wind aren’t being built fast enough to keep up with demand — and their weather-dependent and intermittent technology would be unable to provide enough electricity anyway.

Aside from affordable and reliable fuels for electric grids, most respondents to the Post’s poll were unaware of other benefits of fossil fuels. Only 41 percent of respondents were aware that oil and gas can be used to preserve baked goods, 46 percent were aware they can be used to formulate medicines like aspirin, and 49 percent knew that they help create ammonia for fertilizers. Other common fossil fuel uses, such as plastic production (60 percent) and concrete (63 percent), were better known by respondents to the Post’s polling.

The poll provided to the New York Post was conducted by the American Energy Institute, a 501(c)(3)-designated nonprofit dedicated to representing “energy producers across the United States, all with one united goal: spreading the message of abundant, reliable and affordable energy.” The polling was exclusively shared with the Post and sampled 1,600 registered voters between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25 with a margin of error of ± 2.45 points. Men comprised 48 percent of respondents, and women comprised 52 percent. Thirty-one percent of respondents were Republican, 36 percent were Democrat, and 33 percent were independents.

The respondents perceived the most valuable uses of fossil fuels to be gas for heating homes (60 percent), gasoline (50 percent), electricity for cooling (49 percent), concrete (34 percent), plastics in medical devices (30 percent), and ammonia used for fertilizers (27 percent).

While most voters knew that oil and gas are used in plastic production and concrete, about 40 percent didn’t know those uses. According to the Department of Energy, the manufacturing of over 6,000 everyday products is possible due to petrochemicals and natural gas constituents.

Consider the medical field, in which only 30 percent of the Post’s respondents saw plastics for medical devices as the most valuable. Do you have a knee or hip replacement, a pacemaker, or an artificial heart valve? Durable plastics make it possible to save lives and reduce human pain and suffering.

The invention of the disposable plastic syringe and hypodermic needle revolutionized human and veterinary medicine by ensuring sterility, reducing infections, and cutting countless hours sterilizing glass needles in an autoclave. Everyday medications like Novocain, acetaminophen, decongestants, antihistamines, and antibiotics rely on petroleum derivatives. If you wear contact lenses, thank fossil fuels — and if you opt for eyeglasses, thank fossil fuels again.

Two more products depend on fossil fuels, according to the Department of Energy: solar panels and wind turbine blades. Steel, cement, and glass are integral to both technologies. Solar panels require high-temperature blast furnaces to smelt metals and melt silica into glass. Wind turbine blades are usually made from composite materials like fiberglass, which require lubrication during the manufacturing process. If the blades are made of carbon fiber instead, they are made of polyacrylonitrile, a polymer petroleum derivative. Wind turbine gearboxes need gallons of oil that are changed about once a year. That ignores the mining of raw materials, which can be energy-intensive, especially in foreign countries with lower standards for environmental protection and worker health and safety.

Ultimately, the Post’s polling reveals that the benefits of oil and gas and the drawbacks of wind and solar are too often ignored.