Trim Your Sails

What you’ll get in this episode of Energy Thinks

Climate activists have overplayed their political hand with righteous language, inflexible targets, and clear villains.

But you don’t have to look far to see industry supporters displaying a similarly overconfident absolutism—just pro-fossil and anti-renewables.

We can do better—much better—than an energy politics focused on accumulating temporary wins. Especially when the next swing of the pendulum is always coming.While this political environment rewards performative certainty, savvy industry leaders are setting their sights past the zero-sum story. Their discipline? “Trim your sails,” focus on the destination, match tactics to strategy, and refuse the intoxicating certainty of being “finally right.” That’s how they’ve always built durable outcomes—and this time will be no different.

I wanted to explore these ideas with a thought partner who would challenge my point of view. So to kick off Energy Thinks for 2026, I sat down with Daniel Raimi, fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF) and host of the Resources Radio podcast.

Why Daniel?

Daniel acknowledged something many in our audience know well:

If anyone thinks the energy transition is going to be easy, that’s totally a myth.

Daniel is a rare voice in our polarized landscape. He lays out why the work ahead is hard—technically, socially, and politically. He encourages all of us—climate hawk to industry stalwart—to check our hype and focus on building durable progress instead. Which starts by talking about what’s hard.

That’s what we do in this episode: discuss the scale of the system, the political hurdles, and the pressures—for affordability, reliability, and decarbonization—that shape public sentiment and policymaker reactions. In other words: crosswinds.

Listen and learn why it’s time to trim your sails.

Some of Daniel’s insights

* On oil and gas in the future: “I think there’s a big role for oil and gas in pretty much every scenario that I can envision, but the role is different under different policy assumptions.”

* On the Problem Solvers tack to climate realism: “I think there has been this correction and a return to realism that some of these super-ambitious climate goals are just not really achievable, and in many ways, they’re actually not desirable. They’re not realistic. They would involve trade-offs that I don’t think are acceptable to most people.”

* On the intensity of the polarization: “I think there is room for people on both sides of the argument to try and trim their sails a little bit and really focus on the things that actually make sense from an economic and a scientific perspective. I think there’s going to continue to be energy from the political left on climate. I don’t think that’s going to go away. I think it might actually become more intense.”

Bonus content!

Check out my appearance on Resources Radio next week.

My book: The Myth and The Moment: From Polarization to Progress in the New Energy Landscape.

Report: RFF’s Global Energy Outlook 2025.

Book: Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition.

Bill Gates’s memo, “Three Tough Truths About Climate.”

Watch on YouTube or listen on Substack to hear Daniel and me discuss The Myth and The Moment.

What to do next in The Moment

Let me help you trim your sails and shape realistic energy solutions:

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To leaders who work past the zero-sum story,

Tisha

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