A footnote to “The Narrative Controller”

There’s a short Facebook exchange between Nick Mercer and Delia Warren that sums up the whole onshore hydrogen story better than any glossy report.

In the comments, Delia praises his “excellent assessment,” then says the quiet part this way: if the price tag is too high, the projects don’t get built. She adds that she believes costs will come down over time as electrolysis scales up, because we’ve supposedly seen that pattern in other clean technologies. She finishes by cheering on his work on “stakeholder and rightsholder engagement” and suggesting coffee in St. John’s.

Nick replies that he’s looking forward to that coffee and adds one more key line: the “administrative swings in the U.S.” and the backtracking of incentives under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act have really limited any chance at economies of scale. That’s a polite way of saying the quiet thing experts know but rarely headline: these projects don’t stand on their own. They stand on policy.

In one small comment thread, the whole onshore hydrogen dream is finally described as what it is: a subsidy-dependent gamble that only works if the taps in Washington stay open forever.¹⁻³⁵⁻⁷

And that is exactly what no one was allowed to say out loud on the Port au Port and Burin Peninsula pages.

The rule: Don’t mention Trump

This is a Burin Peninsula Paul Pike favorite! From the beginning of the wind fight, there was an unwritten rule in the local groups:

You could talk about turbines, birds, whales, tourism, noise, health, fisheries, even UNDRIP and Indigenous rights. You could yell about Muskrat Falls, about corporate greed, about Ottawa, about “the government” in the most general sense.

But the moment you mentioned Trump in any serious way — not in praise, not as a campaign slogan, just as a factor — you were marked.

If you pointed out that Trump’s term interrupted the global climate-finance consensus, you were suddenly a suspect.⁹¹² If you suggested that the oil and gas lobby had learned how quickly a climate policy can be reversed, you were accused of importing U.S. politics or being a secret right-winger. If you noted that the green-hydrogen business model depended on subsidies that might disappear after the next election, you were treated as if you had endorsed every awful thing Trump ever said or did.⁵⁻⁷⁹⁻¹²

People were costed for even raising the question. Posts vanished. Commenters were frozen out. The message was clear: Trump is off-limits. The wind fight must stay inside a narrow frame of “good green jobs versus bad local NIMBYs,” and anything that complicates that story is a problem.

The leaders of Port au Port and Burin leaned into that dynamic. Faced with uncomfortable information, they reached for character assassination, censorship, rumour, and gossip. It was easier to question motives than to engage with the structure. They preferred to have someone else handle the narrative — consultants, filmmakers, outside experts — and then defend that imported story as if it were their own. In doing so, they helped feed the very system they claimed to be fighting.

From day one, I tried to do the opposite.

I tried to explain how the 2030 agenda and the global wind-hydrogen push were tied to Trump’s term — not because I wanted him, but because his disruption exposed how fragile the subsidy machine really was.⁹¹⁰¹² When I brought the Local Paradox document forward and tried to use the Freedom Convoy as an example of rising unrest inside Canada’s own “just transition,” I wasn’t applauded for connecting dots.

I was walked off the floor.

That reaction wasn’t accidental. It was a warning: there are parts of this story you are not allowed to name.

The irony is that the people enforcing this taboo were often the same ones quoting onshore policy wonks and U.S. climate experts who knew perfectly well how much Trump had shaken investor confidence in long-term subsidies.⁹⁻¹²

They knew. They just weren’t going to let you say it.

What Nick will say in a comment, but not in the record

And this is where that Facebook exchange matters.

Mercer doesn’t deny the Trump factor. He doesn’t pretend the economics of hydrogen are magically independent of U.S. politics. He does exactly what any honest analyst would do: he points to “administrative swings in the U.S.” and the watering-down of incentives and says that’s what has limited “any possible economies of scale.”

That sentence is doing a lot of quiet work.

Translated, it means:

• The industry expected a stable, long-term subsidy regime.⁹¹²
• Trump proved subsidies could be ripped up or weakened in one election cycle.⁹¹⁰¹²
• Investors noticed.
• Now, even with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the political risk is priced in and hydrogen developers are pulling back from some of the most ambitious plans.⁵⁻⁷¹¹

That’s not a fringe theory. It’s basic risk calculation.

But notice where this admission appears: in a casual comment thread, between a compliment about stakeholder engagement and a joke about grabbing coffee in St. John’s.

It does not appear:

• in the glossy reports that sell hydrogen as inevitable;
• in the slide decks that tell rural communities the “opportunity” will vanish if they don’t get on board;
• in the public consultations where locals are invited to “have their say” after the decisions are already framed.

The Trump factor is acknowledged just enough to stay credible with insiders, but never loudly enough to give ordinary residents permission to question the business case.

The result is two parallel stories:

1. The public script

• Hydrogen is the future.
• Costs will fall as we scale up.³⁴⁸
• Newfoundland has a once-in-a-generation opportunity, if only we can “move fast.”

1. The private aside

• The economics only work if a foreign government keeps paying and doesn’t change course.⁵⁻⁷⁹⁻¹²
• One four-year presidency already proved that’s not guaranteed.⁹¹⁰¹²
• Investors are wary, and “economies of scale” may never materialize.⁵⁻⁷¹¹

You are expected to live with the first story. Policymakers and consultants quietly operate according to the second.

The politics you’re not allowed to notice

This is where the narrative management in the Port au Port groups becomes more than just petty social policing.

If locals are forbidden to mention Trump as a structural factor, you can never fully connect the dots:

• that the entire hydrogen push is built on international subsidy flows;³⁻⁵⁷
• that those flows depend on volatile national politics far outside Newfoundland;⁹⁻¹²
• and that one major disruption has already happened, with visible scars in investor behaviour in both climate finance and the hydrogen project pipeline.⁵⁶⁷⁹⁻¹²

Erase that from the conversation and what remains? The illusion that local resistance is the main risk.

If projects stall, it must be because of “NIMBYs,” or “misinformation,” or “people who don’t understand opportunity.” It can never be because the global financial and political scaffolding is wobbling.

So when I or others tried to say, “Look, whether you loathe Trump or not, his term changed the risk math for exactly the kinds of projects they want to build here,” we weren’t just being disagreed with. We were treated as a threat to the story itself.⁹⁻¹²

Meanwhile, the professionals who wrote that story were quietly updating their spreadsheets to reflect the very same risk.⁵⁻⁷¹¹

That’s the part that still sticks.

Belief, costs, and who is allowed to doubt

Delia’s comment adds one more layer.

She writes that costs will come down over time as electrolysis becomes mainstream, because we’ve “seen this in other clean technologies,” and — her words — because she needs to believe there will be solutions for hard-to-decarbonize industry.³⁴⁸

In reality, low-emissions hydrogen is still less than one percent of global supply, and most production is still firmly fossil-fuel based.¹² The cost-reduction pathways she’s leaning on are real on paper, but they depend on massive scaling and stable policy support that simply aren’t there yet.³⁴⁸

That’s not economic forecasting. That’s faith.

And again, notice the asymmetry:

• Experts are allowed to say “I need to believe” in falling costs and be treated as serious.³⁴⁸
• Locals who say, “I need to see proof those costs will fall without permanent subsidies” are treated as backward, reactionary, or manipulated.⁵⁻⁷

Your belief is a problem.

Their belief is a plan.

The Trump interruption sharpens that contradiction. It exposed how dependent the “costs will come down” story is on continuous political support.³⁻⁵⁷⁹⁻¹² Rather than admitting that openly and letting communities debate whether they want to hang their future on such a fragile lifeline, the narrative managers keep it in the margins.

Nick will nod to it in a thread. He will not build a presentation around it.

Why this small comment matters

Does one Facebook reply change anything on the ground? Of course not.

But it does something important for the record: it shows that they knew.

They knew that subsidy risk is central.³⁻⁷

They knew Trump’s term and the wobbly follow-through on U.S. climate policy are part of why their big hydrogen story isn’t playing out on schedule.⁵⁻⁷⁹⁻¹²

They knew the economics were a lot more conditional than the glossy decks ever admitted.³⁻⁷

And they knew that if locals started talking openly about that, the whole “once-in-a-generation opportunity” sales pitch would be harder to sell.

So the truth is allowed to exist, but only in safe places:

• in private emails,
• in policy circles,
• and in friendly comment threads between people who will never be accused of being “Trump supporters” for saying it.

Out in Port au Port, the Trump-shaped hole in the story stays mostly off-limits — even though it may be one of the few reasons the peninsula isn’t already covered in concrete and blades.⁵⁻⁷⁹⁻¹²

If you read The Narrative Controller, you saw how the same people who stage the public conversation often write the script for both sides of the fight. This little exchange is just one more example: the real constraints are known, but they’re not allowed to reorganize the story ordinary people are told.

And let’s be clear — Protect NL didn’t discover any of this. They heard it from me. I gave them the Local Paradox document. I showed them the Asset Chart — with Nick Mercer placed right where he belonged. I explained how Trump’s term exposed the cracks in global climate funding, and how the hydrogen push here relied on shaky foreign subsidies that were never guaranteed. They avoided addressing it publicly while agreeing with me privately.

But I stuck to my story.

And now, in the case of Nick Mercer, they’re repeating the same points — like they just figured it out. I still hope to receive an apology from Ms. Brenda Kitchen, and that we can move forward as allies on this issue.

And the cruel twist is, even if no one in Port au Port had said a word — even if the peninsula had stayed perfectly quiet — these projects still would have stalled. The outcome was already baked in by global subsidy shifts and political instability far beyond our control. (Sorry, Sylvia Benoit and Paul Pike — that’s the reality of it, and it’s been that way for more than three years.)

Maybe the deeper problem is this:

Newfoundland still struggles to give credit where credit is due.

See also

• The Narrative Controller: How Nick Mercer Ended Up Writing the Story He Helped Stage
• The Invisible Playbook: How Bureaucrats and NGOs Script Both Sides of the Fight
• Silence by Design: How Geopolitics Got Censored in Newfoundland’s Wind Debate
• Behind the Green Curtain: How Global Contracts and Climate Branding Drove the Wind and Hydrogen Push in Newfoundland
• From Hype to Harm: WEGH2 and the Reckoning Newfoundland Needs
• The Grey Zone Mandate: How Newfoundland Became a Test Bed for the Great Reset

References