If we get energy right, many parts of American life, national security, our economy and our environment will improve. With a new administration on the way in there is a lot of focus on policy, surely a necessary requirement of success. What may be overlooked in the rush to “fix” the policies of the previous administration is the equally necessary need to tell a better story.

From members of Congress and grassroots activists to climate protestors, all struggle to articulate a compelling vision. Most often we are left with two camps, either falling into either the caricature of “drill, baby, drill” or “fossil fuels bad, oil companies evil.”

Good policy without a compelling narrative is difficult to wield. The leftist environmentalists are at least united in their hatred for the industry that currently powers their lifestyle. The energy industry’s narrative is diluted with a this or that, us or them, mine’s better than yours mixed up hash of interests all trying to “talk their book”.

This lack of a unifying and compelling story about the essential value of the energy industry and just how much remains to be done limits everyone’s ability to embrace the massive opportunity that lies in advancing our ability to harness more energy for humanity. We all require affordable, reliable, clean and sustainable energy. The inability to bring this message together in a unified manner leaves the energy industry’s story to be told by others.

As an industry, and a country, we need a unifying narrative that does not pick winners nor mandate particular solutions that benefit one industry sector or one regional economy over others. We can’t be pitting coal miners in Kentucky against oil drillers in Texas. We can’t rave about how cheap and reliable natural gas is now in Pennsylvania while bashing the nuclear folks about runaway project costs. We also shouldn’t attack the wind and solar crowd just because they attack everyone else. Don’t fall into that trap of us vs. them, it doesn’t work, most people not in the business glaze over and move on to another topic.

The mix of energy resources in each town, city, state, region and country is different for good reasons. Dismissing those reasons because a different mix fits your perspective of what’s “right” is such a massive oversimplification of the situation that it just makes everyone look cartoonish. It seems that one of the most important elements lacking in the story being told today is humility.

Humanity’s energy production has certainly been growing rapidly in the past two hundred years. Recently we passed a notable milestone, we consumed 180,000 TWh of primary energy. For reference, the latest chart from Our World in Energy is provided below from the Energy Production and Consumption report. But why is this a notable milestone?

The earth receives roughly 170,000 TWh of solar energy from the sun each hour. Until this year this was more energy in an hour than humanity used in an entire year. Now this is often where solar energy advocates state that if we would just go all solar then clearly this would solve our energy needs forever. This is not that kind of post and I hope we can move beyond those kinds of “stories”.

The point of these two data points is to hopefully induce a bit of humility to our conversations about energy. We are barely scratching the surface, well one might call it more of a smudge, than a even a scratch. All of our efforts, struggles, inventions, creations and so far all that our hopes and dreams have been capable of producing is one hour’s worth of energy. One Hour.

Should this grand achievement induce the smug commentary we hear so often about how one sector or another is the answer to our energy needs? Sure, we have made some amazing progress. For most of human history we produced and consumed in a year about 4 minutes worth of total solar energy received. On that historical scale eclipsing an hour is a meaningful milestone relative to where we started, but it is surely a fairly humble milestone.

The next time you read a story or listen to a speaker that is trying to pigeonhole your perspective by claiming their sector of the industry is all we need perhaps pause to ask them, “remind me just how many minutes again are you contributing to our one hours worth of life giving energy today?” More importantly, “how many hours could you contribute?” Ask this with the humility it deserves, because no matter their answer or where your personal favorite stacks up, it’s all just a smudge.

Energy is more than just an industry or an interest group, energy is life. Unleashing life on a far grander scale and at levels of comfort and capability we can scarcely imagine today requires that we start by understanding the scope of the opportunity and where we stand today. Just think about what we could do with a day instead of just an hour.