Our Screenshot Q&A with Doomberg on the reality of our fight against climate change. We discuss energy policy failures, the need for Nuclear, where investment opportunities might present themselves, and how Doomberg has grown a big following in a short period of time. You can find them on Twitter @DoombergT.

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1. The U.S. dominates fossil fuel production and China dominates battery production. Is the U.S. doomed?

The U.S. is never doomed. First, the U.S. has huge structural advantages from a macro perspective that are just impossible to replicate.

Enormous resources, the Mississippi River system, deep-water ports, two oceans separating itself from any plausible enemies, enormous farmland, freshwater resources, and excellent relationships with Canada and Mexico who bring their own resources to the table.

China has cornered the market on solar and some aspects of wind and batteries. If the U.S. ever decides to get its act together, there's very little it couldn't do.

2. How would you rank the U.S., the EU and China in terms of renewable energy policies?

I think the European Union has gone off the deep end of insanity and is almost suicidal in its obsession with the cult of climate change.

China is using the EU's fixation with climate change and some aspects of the U.S. political system's fixation with climate change to its great advantage. They have been brilliant, if not brutal, in the way they have positioned their economy to take advantage of these trends.

The U.S. is stuck in between. It’s an energy superpower in coal, oil, natural gas, fertilizer, food; all the important things. While it has wasted an enormous amount of money pursuing the green energy utopia, unlike the EU, it has not done so at the expense of real stuff that matters as it pertains to protecting economic power on the international stage.

In the long run, we would be bullish on the U.S. over the other two for sure.

3. What is an example of the EU’s delusion?

They produce no commodities that matter anymore. They produce 0.4% of the world’s oil, less than 3% of natural gas and less than 4% of coal.

Europe is borderline irrelevant. The European Parliament held a conference in May called Beyond Growth on this whole degrowth movement. There were 18 hours of platitudes and nonsense being spewed by professional politicians and think tank occupants.

We counted nobody who spoke or sat on a panel over those 18 hours who had any relevant experience working at a company that makes stuff.

It's quite amazing to see the EU philosophize itself into irrelevance.

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4. Does the net-zero campaign, in general, have a leadership problem?

We coined a term called Magical Thinking, which is prevalent among decision makers in government.

There's a disproportionate number of people in our political class who have never worked a day in industry, never worked at a company that makes stuff, never worked for an enterprise that needs to make payroll, has inputs, creates product, markets that product, tries to eke out a profit, pay dividends; all those things.

In a world of magical thinking, the distinction between possible and plausible gets muddied. The reason why central planning doesn't work is because everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face, as Mike Tyson famously said. The world doesn't care about your imaginations.

It cares about reality. In the battle between platitudes and physics, physics is undefeated.

5. Can you give examples of the contrast between what countries say and do when a crisis hits and they get “punched in the face”?

Germany, of course, retreating to the coal mines with the speed and efficiency of the evacuation of Dunkirk at the first sign of crisis.

Joe Biden, at the first sign of elevated oil prices, emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve ahead of midterm elections. Starving the world of primary energy usually leads to political upheaval. Even though Biden has radical environmentalists as part of his political coalition, he correctly calculated that allowing gas prices in the U.S. to exceed $5 or $6 a gallon would be politically unacceptable.

He took unprecedented, historic evasive action to avoid the consequences of the energy crisis as it pertains to the U.S. consumer.

The developing world, having watched what these countries have done, aren't going to listen to what they're saying anymore. They're going to see what they have done and replicate it themselves.

6. In a net zero world, how big should the role of nuclear energy be? Can the US lead on this front?

There won't be a net zero world without a massive renaissance of nuclear energy. On its current trajectory, the U.S. cannot lead. There are countries far superior to the U.S. as it pertains to implementation, regulatory framework, technology and so on.

If the U.S. made a commitment to it, of course, it could lead. The first thing it would have to do is radically restructure the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which doesn't seem likely. Countries that are far ahead of the U.S., we believe, include Canada, Russia, and South Korea.

Having said that, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Area) does have everything needed for a massive renaissance in nuclear power, including CANDU reactor designs, massive uranium deposits in Canada and enrichment technology that the U.S. military undoubtedly has expertise in.

With the right political backing, the U.S. could lead. As it stands today, the U.S. is a laggard.

7. What do you think is the biggest hurdle for more nuclear adoption?

Regulation is the biggest hurdle to nuclear power. We know how to build nuclear power. We've done it for decades. Starting in the late '70s, Canada added a gigawatt of nuclear power every year for 20 years. And this was with 50-year-old technology.

Today, nuclear is expensive and takes a long time to build because environmentalists have created the conditions for those two things to be true. The regulatory gauntlet that providers of nuclear power must run through is enormous and unnecessary.

Environmentalists have done everything in their power to make nuclear as expensive and as slow as possible. And then they turn around and say, nuclear can't be part of the decarbonization solution because it's too expensive and it takes too long.

8. Are there promising nuclear development examples that you can think of?

There are no technology developments standing in the way of a renaissance.

In the UAE, they have just had their third of four reactors go critical. They have created the workforce they need for sustainable development of their nuclear technology. It's a real poster child for how nuclear could be done well and done correctly.

But we have it just north of the border, as well. Ontario has one of the cleanest, decarbonized grids in the Western world. If you drive through Ontario, there's nothing unusable there. The highways are nice. The people are polite. The country looks civilized. All these fears of nuclear power don't seem to manifest in any changes in the day-to-day life of the citizens of Ontario. They simply get to enjoy one of the greenest electricity grids in the Western world.

It's very clear that this is the path we need to follow. Either we reconcile with nuclear power, or we choose not to decarbonize.

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9. What is most under appreciated by investors about commodities as an asset class?

Commodity producers. The amount of technological know-how and future cash flow generation potential of commodity producers are, broadly speaking, deeply discounted relative to those of the ‘next shiny thing’ companies that never produce any cash flow.

Over time, given the critical role that commodity producers play in securing our way of life, I do think they will come back into favor. Alternatively, they will continue to shift into the private markets where investors will be paid in dividends as opposed to equity appreciation.

10. What's the best way investors can deploy capital to advance towards decarbonization?

We don’t think decarbonization is possible absent a complete renaissance in nuclear power. We would deploy capital ahead of the necessary reengagement with the nuclear sector.

If the question is, how can you make money off the anticipated government action in a failed attempt to decarbonize, there's a lot of different answers to that question.

The Inflation Reduction Act is a perfect example of how regulation can boost the returns of an industry, in this case clean energy suppliers.

You can invest in companies that are supplying shovels to gold miners as an analogy. The owners of high-barrier pinch points that are necessary to make wind and solar and battery storage and electric vehicles work.

Or, you can believe that eventually, we will regress to the mean and invest in old-time commodity players.

11. Switching to your media experience. You started Doomberg in May 2021 and have quickly grown to over 150k subscribers. How have you built a strong brand in a short period of time?

By focusing relentlessly on four questions:

• Who are our ideal clients?

• How do we find them?

• How do we entice them?

• How do we delight them?

When our piece arrives in your inbox six to eight times per month, we want your gut reaction to be, "Ooh, I get to read that."

We have studied, experimented, and focused relentlessly on, are we inducing that feeling? If so, how come? If not, why not? How do we improve it?

We never publish a piece until it's ready. We focus on all aspects of our production process. We keep asking ourselves whether our ideal clients would be delighted by this. We will go several days without publishing because we feel we don't have a piece that will delight our ideal clients. We think that's far more important than volume.

12. What structure do you use when writing articles?

One of us will see something interesting in the news. That observation will trigger two things. It will trigger a fun fact or a story that we recall from the past. Then it will trigger three to four conclusions from that observation that we think our readers will be interested in.

That becomes the genesis of a piece.

Once we have the observation, the story and the consequences, the next thing we do is we spend a lot of time thinking about the title. The title makes the piece. The title is what grabs people's attention. In fact, the title makes the piece easy to write.

That's the structure. An observation, which triggers an insight that makes for a good opening which will get people's attention. We then cut it to paid and deliver the goods on the back half behind the paywall.

13. How do you balance free versus paid content?

Most people will never pay you. 90% of the people who might enjoy reading you won't ever pay you for it. For that reason, many people pursue an advertisement-based model. Users will never pay you directly, but they're happy to stare at an ad for a second to be able to read your full product.

Our ideal clients are willing to pay us, don't like ads, and don't like to be pestered. Since most people won't pay you, you shouldn't listen to most people. You should listen very carefully to the people who are willing to pay you.

Our customer journey is impression to engagement to free e-mail to paid. If somebody decides to give us their e-mail address, on average, it takes five to eight previews for them to decide whether they will ever pay us.

For us, publishing full free pieces doesn't really convert to new customers, whereas our approach of publishing the first 1/3 of every piece and cutting it to paid at the moment of reasonable interest works best.