Recently-appointed Department of Energy Undersecretary Kyle Haustveit says that when people talk about transitioning on energy sources, they aren't talking about reality.

"We've never transitioned from any fuel source in the world in the history of mankind," he said on this episode of Plain Talk, recording with us from the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck. "We consume more wood and dung or biomass today than we ever have before. Same with coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal."

"The charts are all up and to the right," he added.

Going forward, we need to start by asking what we need from our energy? Is it low prices? Low carbon intensity?

"What do you have available in your region? How do we prioritize responsible development to maintain affordable, reliable, secure energy for the people that need it most?" he said we should be asking.

Also, he says we need to grow to meet new demands for power. "For years, it's been far too easy to stop things and far too hard to start building things," he said, crediting President Donald Trump's administration with changing some of that.

Also on this episode, Supreme Court Justice Jerod Tufte and Cass County State's Attorney Kim Hegvik join to celebrate North Dakota's drug courts or, to use the new terminology, treatment courts. These are specialized proceedings in the criminal justice system that still prioritize accountability for crimes, but also focus on helping people solve problems. They were called drug courts because they started out focusing on addiction, though these days there are lots of different types, including some specializing in the specific issues veterans might face.

"Right now we run most of these at close to capacity, and so we have a pretty good population of people that have shown that they are high-risk, high need," Justice Tufte said. "So these aren't the lowest level, first-time offenders. These are people that by and large would be incarcerated if they weren't in a drug drug court or a treatment court program."

Hegvik and Tufte said the treatment courts save the state money by keeping offenders out of jail, and they also reduce recidivism.

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