November 2, 2017

Rick Perry Has a Genius Solution to Preventing Sexual Assault: Fossil Fuels

“When you have the light that shines, the righteousness…”

Bill Clark/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday offered a new, off-kilter rationale for supporting the expansion of fossil fuels in Africa: the prevention of sexual assault. His line of thinking appeared to center on the power of fossil fuels to generate light—presumably with lightbulbs?—and the false notion that sexual assault only takes place in the dark.

“When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts,” Perry said, referring to incidents of sexual assault. “So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that.” 

“I happen to think it’s going to play a positive role,” he continued.

Lightbulbs, of course, can be powered by all sorts of electricity sources. In fact, there’s a race on right now to power the vast number of off-the-grid communities across the African continent using inexpensive solar panels that don’t require the massive infrastructure build-out of a traditional grid.

Perry’s bizarre claim came during an Axios/NBC panel focusing on the Trump administration’s energy policies. During the same discussion, the former Texas governor also asserted that the “science is out on” on man-made climate change. 

We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

payment methods

We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate