I’ll be honest, I wasn’t going to write the usual “celebrate America” newsletter this week. Instead, I wanted to show you something I find genuinely fascinating: how America has powered itself for the last 250 years.
Take a look at this chart.
It’s one of my favorite visuals, because it tells America’s whole story without a single word. For our first hundred years, we ran on wood. Then coal took over, powering the railroads and factories that turned us into an industrial giant. Oil and gas followed, electricity became a necessity instead of a luxury, and nuclear power squeezed more energy out of less material than anyone thought possible. Today, the mix is more diverse than ever, with gas, coal, renewables, and nuclear all sharing the load.
Here’s what strikes me most: not one of these sources stayed dominant forever. Wood didn’t. Coal didn’t. Nothing has. The system just keeps adapting, new tools, new efficiencies, same underlying need for power that’s stable and reliable.
Markets work the same way. The tools change and the strategies evolve, but the goal never does, reliable output you can count on, decade after decade. It’s a good reminder that staying power rarely comes from betting everything on one source. It comes from the ability to adjust as conditions change, without losing sight of what actually matters over the long run.
That’s the twist on my 4th of July message this year. America’s real superpower isn’t any one resource, it’s the ability to keep adapting without missing a beat.
Have a great 4th of July weekend!