You may not know me personally, but you know what I do. I’m so proud to be in the oil and gas business that I put my name on the door of a start-up company now operating in four states and Mexico. 

There is a negative perception of our industry today, and exaggerated rhetoric often overshadows facts. Let’s start with the facts. We know that 8.0 billion people are burning fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—contributing to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. We know that CO2 is one of the causes of the earth’s warming. 

The earth has warmed about one degree Celsius in the last 120 years. This warming and melting of polar ice caps have caused oceans to rise about eight inches in the same period. 

This perception has taken a financial toll on our business and my conscience. Institutions and banks that once invested in companies like mine are no longer interested.  They lump us into taboo categories with alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and pornography.

While acknowledging the current climate status, let us also understand that today is the best time in human history to be alive.

Yes, natural disasters around us are getting the most attention in the media. What deserves equal attention is that human ingenuity and resilience have proven that we can, must, and will do more to protect ourselves from nature. Below is some good news that gets less coverage:

• Life expectancy on the planet today is 73 years. In 1900, it was half that. The improvement is mostly due to a drop in infant mortality.

• Humanity has reduced infant mortality by 89 percent due to better sanitation and access to medicine and medical care. In 1900, two children out of five would die before their fifth birthday, but that is rare today. 

• We have seen a substantial increase in education worldwide. Over 86 percent of people over the age of 15 can read and write, compared to only 21 percent in 1900.

• Gross Domestic Product increased by 1,200 times in the same period, and people are doing better than ever financially. 

The reason for all this good news: Energy.

Energy enabled humans to replace horses with machines like tractors, cars, and trucks. We replaced water pails with water pumps. We replaced shovels with ditch-digging machines and earth movers. Machines improve life by freeing us to innovate further, and energy constantly feeds those machines. It’s a miracle of human ingenuity and persistence to get to the quality of life that we live today.

Please take a moment and try to name a low-energy, high-income country. Do any names come to mind? Probably not. The truth is that countries that use more energy have higher GDP, cleaner water, cleaner air, more forests, and higher education levels.

The biggest problem that humanity faces today is energy poverty. 

Author Vaclav Smil, the world’s leading energy thinker, writes that economic growth and energy consumption are linked. We see this on the island of Hispaniola. On one side is Haiti, and on the other is the Dominican Republic (“DR”). You will find a similar population on the same island but very different energy economies.

The DR uses fossil fuels as its energy source, as we do in much of the developed world. Haiti uses wood and dung as its energy source. The Haitian section of the island is deforested, and its GDP is nine times less than that of the DR. Haiti has higher infant mortality and shorter life expectancy. At night, it is dark, while the DR is lit by electricity.

The United Nations is focused on eliminating poverty as its number one “Sustainable Development Goal.” The UN defines poverty as living on less than $1.90 a day. The U.S. government defines poverty as living on less than $35 a day. American’s access to uninterrupted, affordable energy sets a standard of living that too many people worldwide simply cannot access. 

Almost half the people on Earth—46 percent of us—live on $5.50 a day or less. We can—we must—lift those people closer to $35 a day. To accomplish this, we will need energy, a lot of it. 

For most of human history, energy has come from our environment: wood, dung, crop tailings, and what we now call biomass. Around 1800, humans started burning coal during the Industrial Revolution. Coal was a game-changer. By 1900, we had doubled the world’s population. During the 20th century, we added crude oil, natural gas, and hydro. Today, we can make electricity with those sources plus nuclear, wind, and solar energy. 

Still, most of the energy we use on the planet comes from wood and fossil fuels, which provide more than 85 percent of the energy we use. We use more wood for heating and cooking today than at any time in human history. Remember that energy is not just electricity given that only 20% percent of the energy we use is from electricity. Today, most energy is used for transportation, agriculture, and industrial uses.

So, we continue to face a moral dilemma: 

Do we want to deliver more energy to people to lift them out of poverty and help them adapt to climate change? Or do we want to restrict energy expansion, keep people in poverty, and hope to change the climate?

When I think about those questions, my conscience clears. Energy use equals human flourishing. To be pro-energy, pro-climate, and anti-poverty is to be pro-human.

Since 2018, I have been working to transform my company, Howard Energy Partners, to meet this energy challenge. We are helping Mexico transition from dirtier coal and fuel oil to natural gas through our pipelines. We have built the first and largest renewable diesel logistics facility in Texas. Our hydrogen production facility is on track to be the lowest carbon-intensive hydrogen production facility on the Texas Gulf Coast. We are also working to build a major natural gas dispatchable power plant to help stabilize the grid in Texas. Through innovation, we are proving that there is a way to deliver more energy responsibly. 

We are just one company in the oil and gas business, but together with other fossil fuel companies, we deliver most of the energy that the world uses, and we will continue to do our part to lift people out of poverty.

Yes, I am in the energy business, but I am also proud to be in the human flourishing business. They are one and the same.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.