Why we should be inspired by both.

As I write this, our family is experiencing our fourth summer beach vacation on quiet and beautiful Dauphin Island, near Gulf Shores in Alabama. We always get a house right on the beach, where we can see the kids play on the beach from our porch. We can also occasionally see the fins of dolphins swimming by. We can also see the outlines of a number of large drilling platforms on the horizon. I find inspiration in both.

Almost everyone finds inspiration in seeing dolphins. For my granddaughter Emma’s thirteenth birthday, we arranged a trip to Florida to swim with dolphins. They are beautiful and fascinating creatures.

Fewer people find inspiration in ocean drilling platforms. The oil and gas industry has been demonized in recent years by clueless politicians, journalists, and the Hollywood elite in an attempt to validate their morally bankrupt existence, all the while hypocritically enjoying the unrivaled prosperity that has resulted from all this drilling. Why do I say ‘morally bankrupt’? This hypocritical ‘virtue signaling’ is necessary because they have abandoned our time honored Judeo-Christian moral code, and must fill that void by appearing virtuous. I go into more detail in my book Modern Paganism, if you’re interested. Fortunately, this absurd trend is rapidly disappearing.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday (July 29, 2025) reported on “Climate Regulation Liberation Day”, in which the current EPA rolled back many of the Obama and Biden administrations burdensome regulating and throttling of our energy industries in the name of stopping supposed global warming. The article states,

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday declared Liberation Day from climate imperialism by moving to repeal the 2009 so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions.”

Don’t you love the phrase, “climate imperialism?” This latest action represents the current trends in place in public sentiment, which was never fully behind the climate hysteria being fed to us.

These regulations were always about posturing, and never about the climate. In an interview on Fox News, Oklahoma Senator Mullin commented on the bill, stating ‘these harmful regulations had “no discernable impact on the climate…”, as China and India have many more coal plants than we do, and produce much more carbon dioxide.’

In case you’re still confused, and believe we may have a ‘climate crisis’, you can link to my article for more facts on this here. The science never supported this ridiculous assertion that CO2 was bad for us.

Like many current pagans who worship ‘the environment’, these regulations were always more about punishing free market prosperity and progress than ‘saving the environment’, whatever that means.

As a Christian, who has a Christian worldview, I recognize that both dolphins and drilling platforms glorify God. Dolphins reveal the beauty and diversity of nature. Who doesn’t love dolphins? On our vacation, we paid a good amount of money to go out into the bay to get up close to them, as the photo we took below illustrates.

But… inspired by drilling platforms? Many see them as ‘blights’ on the horizon. They should be inspired however by these rigs. Most of them are fascinating examples of technological genius and tenacity. These particular rigs drill down some 20,000 feet. Our modern way of life would not be even remotely possible without ‘fossil fuels’. If the pagans want to go live in the woods and live without air conditioning, so be it. For me, I’ll say ‘thank you’ for my Dodge Ram Hemi and hot showers.

Drilling platforms reveal a small part of God’s genius imparted to man, Who has given us dominion over all creation, for our good and provision (see Genesis 1:26). Thus, today, the humblest citizen in the United States and many other advanced nations lives better than kings did centuries earlier. God placed all these marvelous oil and gas reserves deep in the earth to be discovered and utilized in the fullness of time for our good. And He has given man, unique in all His creation, the ability to do all of this. That’s why we honor those whose hard work and genius provides these abundant resources, but we also give glory to the One who set it all in motion. Very inspiring indeed.