How do you research a topic? YouTube videos? What friends tell you? Social media posts?

That’s not it.

Take the topic of oil subsidies. Do you know much about it?

Here’s what a google search brought up –

A scan of this article reveals the US gives about 20 billion to oil corporations directly and through tax benefits each year. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs

This article talks about subsidies to oil as it relates to global warming. You can have it read aloud or read it yourself. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion

This talks about the effect of gas prices if we remove subsidies. This group claims there wouldn’t be a price change. https://usa.oceana.org/oil-gas-subsidies-myth-vs-fact/

For all of these articles it would be wise to look at the About page to see who they are and what their bias might be.

But ultimately, it doesn’t take long to do some research of reliable sites and gain some valuable information. And it makes our conversations so much more effective if we know what we are talking about. When having a political conversation you can google together, maybe split up the reading, and come back together with what you have learned.

This way everyone is the wiser.