Ronald Stein

Credentials

B.S., Electrical Engineering, California State University, Northridge (1962 – 1964).“¹

Background

Ronald C. Stein is a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, and the founder of PTS Advance where he is “known as a leader in delivering staffing solutions to major oil refineries.”²

Stein is the co-author of two books with Todd Royal: Energy Made Easy (2019), and Just GREEN Electricity (2020). According to his profile at Heartland, “Over the last decade, Stein has become the private business spokesperson for the energy and infrastructure industries through his more than 100 published op-eds.”³

Stein has regularly appeared to discuss California’s gasoline prices, claiming “environmental compliance costs that are not transparent to the public” are a significant contributor to gas prices.⁴

According to one profile, “Many of Ron’s Op Ed articles are on the subject of the economy that cannot run on intermittent electricity from wind and solar alone, as the military, aviation, and cruise liners industries rely on fossil fuels for their energy, and our citizens rely on all those products and chemicals manufactured from fossil fuels that make up our lifestyle as they are NOT manufactured from solar panels or wind turbines.” It also describes Stein as “the unofficial private industry spokesperson for the fossil fuel infrastructure.”⁵

Stance on Climate Change

December 9, 2019

Stein wrote at CFACT:⁹

“I have two problems with that 97 percent claim, 1) common sense tells us that no large group of people on our planet could ever reach 97 percent agreement on anything, even the world being round, and 2) shockingly, none of the scientists of the 97 seem to have a name, it’s just a holistic group of no-names!”

[…]

From the extensive data available on temperatures, weather, sea levels, emissions, etc. that several scientists have shared, I don’t see the cause for such a dismal outlook for the earth and its civilization. I suspect that classifies me as a ‘denier’. I’m willing to join the doomsday parade, but only if the tweeters would come out from behind their tweet machines and “show their cards”. Looking forward to face-to-face discussions.”

April 16, 2019

Via Twitter, Stein described the 97% consensus on climate change as “fake news”:¹⁰

October 27, 2019

Writing at CFACT, Stein described organizations that were part of the USCAN Climate Action Network as “pseudo scientists” with supporters as “public out-criers who lead the Far-Left (Antifa, etc.) and the New Progressives (Democrats in Congress, etc.)” using “fake environmental data sound bites extracted from lengthy studies to upset society’s mental acuity”:¹¹

“If they can blind you with confetti and cotton candy, they can make you think what they say is real. But after an hour when the effects of the sugar and pretty colors wear off the real world still exists. So it is with this anthropogenic global warming (AGW) nonsense that is now being exposed as such,” Stein wrote.

[…]

What we should be alarmed about is the perverse and widespread brainwashing efforts to get our young people as well as many naive and gullible adults to believe that the ‘contrived end’ of a planet’s natural cycle that’s been happening for 4.5 billion years is all of a sudden the direct result of a species that’s only been around, relatively speaking, a little less than the last two minutes, when we portray the worlds’ total existence into a 24-hour clock.”

July 10, 2019

Stein wrote at CFACT:¹²

“The difference in the global warming scare and the Y2K crash that started in 1998 was that Y2K had a definite end date which proved it to be a marketing ploy by software companies to sell unnecessary updates to data backup systems whereas the climate change hype could go on indefinitely and that is what allows it to build and fester.”

[…]

We’re constantly being bombarded with rhetoric that 97% of all scientists believe that mankind has played a role in changing the earth’s climate, but common sense tells us no large group of people on our planet could ever reach 97% agreement on anything, even the world being round!”

Key Quotes

July 29, 2020

On Alex Epstein’s Power Hour podcast, Stein commented:¹³

“You know, if you want continuous, uninterruptible and reliable electricity, it’ll most likely be from coal, natural gas, and nuclear generation as backup for the windless and sunless days that make wind and solar useless.”

June 2, 2020

Stein criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci for his response to the coronavirus pandemic in the US, suggesting “Fauci and [Deborah] Birx have yet to provide the President and the White House with the ‘science’ numbers to support the efforts being expended to shut down the American economy”:¹⁴

“The elderly and those with pre-existing conditions have been and continue to be the most vulnerable and should take extra precautions to avoid exposure to the virus, but is it fair to the other 280 million residents who are the least likely to be a fatality statistic from the virus?

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx owe an explanation to the White House and the entire 330 million residents of America as to why they focused on a microscopic data point of the 2.8 million annual fatalities and did not share the CDC science numbers that demonstrate that flu virus fatalities have been constantly in the single digit percent of all fatalities, and continued to use their medical expertise influence to virtually kill the American economy.”

June 1, 2020

“Never mentioned by the green leadership is the worldwide ecological destruction from the mining of precious minerals to support renewables that leave lands uninhabitable and worthless for plants and trees” — Article at Fox & Hounds.¹⁵

May 28, 2020

Writing at Fox & Hounds, Stein discussed his views on the COVID-19 pandemic:¹⁶

“The population age 65 and over [in California] represent about 15 percent of the population. It does not make a lot of statistical sense for our elected leadership to be blind to the ‘real science numbers’ and hold the other 85 percent of the population (approximately 34 million) hostage, which results in catastrophic damage to the economy.”

May 3, 2019

Stein wrote at CFACT that California’s pursuit of green energy was a “a National Security Risk to America”:¹⁷

“[I]t is no secret Putin is well aware that whoever controls the sale and distribution of deep earth minerals and fuels controls the world’s military, transportation, and commerce. Russia wants to be that one country, and is willing to put its rubles behind the deception of intermittent electricity from wind and solar being the way to save the world from itself.

California’s blindness to the real solution of the energy wars, whether ignorant or willingly, is assisting Putin-led Russia in its mad goal toward world dominance.”

October 24, 2019

Appearing in an interview on KUSI–TV, Stein commented:¹⁸

“Renewable energy is not renewable energy. It’s only renewable electricity. Wind and solar can only produce electricity. They can’t produce the thousands and thousands of products that come out of fossil fuels. […] The situation is electrical is fine for some items, but electrical doesn’t support aviation, the military cruise ships, merchant ships.”

[…]

“It actually gets worse, because the compliance cost with some of these environmental regulations [in California] is getting more and more expensive, so it’s going up.”

February 13, 2019

Stein wrote at CFACT that U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has advocated for the Green New Deal, “may be a Russian ploy”:¹⁹

“Is the new Cold War about energy control rather than information and weapons control? Could U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) be an unwitting dupe or a Putin plant? Evidence suggests the answer to the first is yes. The second question may not be answerable, but the facts suggest the answer is a definite maybe.”

[…]

“it appears the answer to the question is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her well-publicized New Green Deal, may be a Russian ploy. She’s right in line with Putin’s desire to encourage the “leaders” of the 184 ratifying countries of the Paris Agreement, and California, to delay and eventually stop any further exploration of deep earth minerals by diverting those countries’ efforts toward intermittent renewables of wind and solar for electricity.

Key Actions

February 14, 2022

Stein published an op-ed in the Eurasia Review titled “The Similarities Between ESG And Fascism Are Scary” that criticized Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG), including the divestment from fossil fuels: Stein claimed ESG would lead to “extreme shortages” that “will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.”²⁰

“The similarities between the effects of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) divesting objectives and fascism are scary as efforts to cease the use of crude oil could be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change,” Stein wrote.

April 6, 2021

Stein wrote an article at CFACT arguing “products from fossil fuels are lifesaving, and one of the best ways out of poverty.”²¹

“In the poor world, replacing fossil fuels with new intermittent electricity sources like wind and solar power is hard because most people desperately want much more power at lower cost, not fickle power at high cost,” Stein claimed.²²

He also argued against electric vehicles (EVs), saying “exotic minerals and metals for EV batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, and fossil fuels are functionally irreplaceable, but there is a worldwide abundance of fossil fuels in virtually every country, but the minerals and metals for a ‘green’ society are limited to a few countries.”²³

As DeSmog has noted in its past debunking of similar statements by anti-EV campaigns, “gas-powered vehicles require some of the same ‘toxic’ rare earth metals” as EVs, while EVs are overall much cleaner than the alternative even when the production stage is considered.²⁴

August 24, 2020

Ronald Stein was interviewed by KUSI News where he talked about the book he had recently co-authored titled Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels. During the interview, Stein described California’s energy policy as “dysfunctional” for having shut down many nuclear and gas power plants, and similarly the state’s decision not to drill for oil offshore.²⁵

Stein also denounced electric vehicles, repeating a common talking point about the materials used to make them:²⁶

“Not only the electric vehicles, its wind and solar. Because all the minerals and metals required to make solar panels, wind turbines, and any batteries or metals that are coming from foreign countries,” Stein said. “And they have no environmental controls. They have no labor controls. A lot of these minerals and metals are being mined by kids. And the labor atrocities are humongous and the environmental degradations around the world are something we don’t see.”

“We have to produce more power plants that provide continuous power. And that’s something that California’s is against every possible plant. They’re against natural gas plants or against nuclear plants. We’re against coal. You know, China and India, they got like almost 6000 coal plants and they’re building 600 more. You take France, they get 85 percent of their power from nuclear. But California is against all those and it puts us in a precarious position. You know, we’re basically relying on others. And we’re becoming a national security risk for America being the fifth largest economy in the world. We rely on foreign countries for our oil and now we’re relying on the northwest and southwest for the power.”²⁸

July 29, 2020

Stein appeared on Alex Epstein‘s Power Hour podcast to discuss “California’s Energy Nightmare, ‘energy privilege,’ and resisting oppression.”²⁹

During the interview, Stein said that after reading Epstein’s book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, he had an “aha” moment where he “realized that folks had very little energy literacy to fully comprehend what the industry has done for developing societies, economies and lifestyles.”³⁰

“And that began my passion and focus on authoring numerous op ed articles and two books, that attempt to provide in layman’s terms, an explanation of the great things that fossil fuels have done and are doing for societies and economies,” Stein added.³¹

Some additional quotes below:

Ronald Stein: [00:29:08] The motivation for doing my latest book, because renewable energy, all the politicians talk about renewable energy, renewable energy, renewable energy, but renewable energy is only renewable electricity and intermittent electricity at best. You know, modern life is 100 percent dependent on fossil fuels not only from electricity generation that would power civilization, but for land, sea and air transport, in the manufacture of fertilizers and a host of pharmaceuticals, and indirectly, almost every other modern product comes of fossil fuels.

Take away fossil fuels, you take away our modern way of life and send us back to subsistence farming. Wind and solar, renewables, they’ve been the primary driver for residents of Germany and Austria, that those two countries now have the highest cost of electricity in the world. And second, most important, electricity alone is unable to support the militaries. Can’t support the aviation, can’t support the merchant ships and all the transportation infrastructure. Nor can electricity make those 6000 products that are the basis of our lifestyle. In fact, in fact, all the parts… you know, electricity came after fossil fuels. And all the parts of wind and solar are made from products that are made from petroleum derivatives.”

Stein also repeated common talking points on EVs, suggesting the mining of “exotic minerals and metals” lead to “worldwide environmental degradation”—without noting that EVs are only one of several industries relying on many of those same metals, or that fossil-fuel-powered vehicles also rely on those same minerals.³²

Ronald Stein: [00:38:08] “There is currently much as 70 percent of the respondents have a four year college degree, which explains the average household income of the EV buyer is around two hundred thousand dollars. If you’re not in that higher educated echelon, in high income range society, there may not be an appetite for an EV.

“In addition, EV the interest, as you mentioned, may be impacted negatively as people begin to understand the worldwide environmental degradation, as you mentioned, the atrocities occurring to mine the stuff worldwide. Those exotic minerals and metals, they’re in developing countries that you know don’t support clean energy. They’ve got no environmental controls and they’ve got no labor controls.” [00:38:54]

Ronald Stein: [00:45:04] Well, you know, COVID-19 was kind of a semi-prelude to life without fossil fuels. Because life without fossil fuels, you would have no airlines. We’ve pretty much shut down airports. You’d have no transportation, automobile transportation, by choice. You know we’re locked in our house, we’re not travelling much and the freeways are empty. The one big caveat, the one change, is we may not have the transportation. The cruise liners aren’t running, the airplanes aren’t flying, and most people aren’t driving their vehicles very much anymore is we have the benefit of those 6000 products. That is supplying the medical industry, supplying the communication electronic industry. We wouldn’t be able to work virtually if we didn’t have all the electronics and the WIFIS and the etcetera etcetera, all those all those are derivatives from the fossil fuels. Now if we go back before nineteen hundred, we get rid of all that stuff too [00:46:06]

Affiliations

Heartland Institute — Policy advisor.³⁴
PTS Advance/Principal Technical Services (PTS) — Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure (1995).³⁵
Universal Studios — Project manager, Jaws Attraction (1987 – 1990).³⁶
Fluor — Project management “on various petrochemical projects, nationwide and internationally” (1964 – 1983).³⁷
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card — Committee Chairman. ³⁸

Publications

Books

Todd Royal and Ronald Stein. Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels, Archway Publishing, June 17, 2020.
Todd Royal and Ronald Stein. Energy Made Easy: Helping Citizens Become Energy-Literate, Xlibrus US, August 8, 2019. (Note that Xlibrus is a self-publishing company).

Sample Articles & Op-Eds