Former Shell Exec Talks To WITF's "Radio Smart Talk"

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

The former head of the Shell Oil Company was the guest on witf’s “Radio Smart Talk” this morning.
John Hofmeister is the author of a book called “Why We Hate The Oil Companies” – a title you wouldn’t expect from a guy with his resume.  He’s also the founder of a group called Citizens For Affordable Energy.
As witf’s Scott LaMar writes, Hofmeister tackles some interesting topics in his book:

For example, Hofmeister says politicans in Washington are the least equipped people to make energy policy because they are constantly looking toward the next election.  Hofmeister says political time is a two year cycle while energy companies have to be thinking ten to twenty and maybe even fifty years down the road.  He also is critical of the energy companies for not being transparent and providing straight talk about energy challenges to the public.  Hofmeister claims the U.S. will go through an “energy abyss” by the year 2020 unless everyone comes together for a pragmatic solution to the nation’s and the world’s energy issues.  Hofmeister says global warming is not the problem but that unless the world makes an effort to clean up gaseous waste, human health will suffer before the seas have a chance to rise.

Shell has made a major investment in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation, spending $4.7 billion on more than a million acres in land rights last year.
You can listen to the full program here.

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