Daily Inspiration Quote by John W. Snow

Snow’s line reads like a tidy, technocratic permission slip for an old American impulse: drill, dig, burn, and call it prudence. The surface message is pragmatic optimism - the country is rich in energy, we’ve been underusing it, and smarter policy can unlock prosperity. But the real work happens in the framing. “Abundant” and “natural” smuggle moral comfort into what is, fundamentally, an argument for doubling down on extractive fuels. Scarcity breeds restraint; abundance invites entitlement.

The phrase “burn coal in a clean way” is the rhetorical hinge. It borrows the language of environmental responsibility without conceding the environmental premise. “Clean coal” functions less as a scientific claim than as political solvent: it dissolves the conflict between growth and climate by implying that innovation can erase trade-offs. Snow doesn’t need to prove it; he just needs the public to want it to be true. As an economist and former Treasury Secretary, he speaks in the idiom of feasibility - if the technology exists or could exist, the country should treat it as destiny.

Then comes “improve the grid,” a line that signals modernity and competence. It’s a crowd-pleaser across ideologies, and it launders the coal pitch by attaching it to infrastructure renewal rather than culture war. Context matters: in the 2000s, energy security, price volatility, and post-9/11 vulnerability made “use what we have” sound like patriotism. Climate urgency was rising, but not yet politically hegemonic - the perfect moment to promise a future where fossil fuels remain central, only newly polite.