Power The Future Energy Hour Recap: Must Read Alaska’s Suzanne Downing

September 2, 2020

Every Tuesday night from 5:00-6:00 PM local time, Alaska State Director Rick Whitbeck hosts the “Power The Future Energy Hour” on KNVT (92.5 FM, 1020 AM and online at 1020KVNT.com).  The show (also replayed during the same hour on Saturday night) is heard throughout Southcentral Alaska communities, and acts as a recap of Power The Future activities in Alaska, as well as an opportunity to hear from various members of Alaska’s energy community.

Since the show’s inception in January 2018, its guests have included members of Congress, Alaska’s Governor, Lt. Governor, State Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners, members of the Governor’s leadership team, members of the press and blog/website hosts, executives from organizations throughout Alaska who fight for jobs, opportunities and progress alongside us (The Alaska Support Industry Alliance, Resource Development Council, Alaska Oil & Gas Association, Alaska Miners Association and others), state legislators from both parties who have a role in energy policy as part of their legislative duties and executives from many of Alaska’s leading resource development projects (both current and potential).

This week, we caught up with Power The Future’s founder and Executive Director, Daniel Turner in segment two.  As always, the focus was on national and international energy topics, including the inability of Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden to decide whether he is for or against fracking!  With millions of energy workers threatened by one of those paths – especially since his campaign is surrounded by anti-development eco zealots – keeping our listeners up to date on the Biden campaign is something we’ll do regularly between now and November.

The rest of the show was spent in a conversation with the founder and editor of the extremely popular Must Read Alaska website and newsletter, Suzanne Downing.  Suzanne led off by telling listeners about the reason she came to Alaska as a young girl: Her father tried mining in the Bering Sea outside of Nome in the 60s!  (That explains why Suzanne is so interested in the many mining opportunities throughout the state, and why her eyes light up when she talks about the amazing mining jobs and projects throughout Alaska.)  We spent the first segment talking mining, and how prospects including Pebble, Donlin and the Ambler District have enormous potential to be generation-life-changers for so many Alaskans.

The last segment with Suzanne focused on the results of Alaska’s primary elections from last month.  We specifically talked about Senate President Cathy Giessel’s defeat at the hands of Roger Holland, and what Suzanne had learned about Holland’s thoughts on responsible development.  We stayed focused in East Anchorage and chatted about longtime House member Lance Pruitt, and his battle against eco-Left-backed Liz Snyder, whose husband works for the Alaska Center (for the Environment).  Finally, we talked about Congressman Young’s race against recently-Nancy-Pelosi-endorsed “independent” Alyse Galvin, and what that campaign might turn out to be (nasty!).  We thank Suzanne for coming on the Energy Hour, and invite our listeners to subscribe to her newsletter, as well as follow her on Facebook and Twitter.  She is a wealth of information on all topics related to Alaska politics.

Wednesday and Thursday this week, Rick will be sitting down with Senator Dan Sullivan and Congressman Don Young, taping a series of four segments with each gentleman.  These will play in segments three and four the rest of September (8^th, 15^th, 22^nd and 29^th). Following that, we’ll be back in October to visit with political leaders, industry executives and senior-level government officials, as well as experts on Alaska’s resource economy and our budget. You can click here for this week’s show, as well as nearly every media appearance by our team, hosted on PTF’s SoundCloud page.

Feel free to reach out to Rick Whitbeck at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com if you have ideas for future shows!