Julian Dorey Podcast - #225 - Why Bill Gates is Building Nuclear Power Plants | Benji Backer

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Benji Backer is a conservative climate activist (yes, you read that right). Benji is the president and founder of the American Conservation Coalition, a bi-partisan environmental policy lobbying organization. BUY BENJI’S NEW BOOK:  https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Environmentalist-Common-Solutions-Sustainable-ebook/dp/B0CJ24CZW8  EPISODE LINKS - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey   - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952   BENJI LINKS - INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/benjibacker/?hl=en  - WEBSITE: https://acc.eco/  LEAP BRANDS LINKS - WEBSITE: https://leapbrands.io/  - INSTAGRAM: ​​https://www.instagram.com/leapbrands/  FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/   INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/  X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips   - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily   - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP   Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Benji working w/ Jared Kushner on Climate; Benji’s very confused childhood 6:24 - Benji gets into Republican politics as a kid & then gets into climate somehow 10:19 - Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”; Apocalyptic Cults; Celebrity hypocrisy & Virtue signalling 18:39 - Greta & AOC; Benji’s organization & how it started 22:19 - Science of Climate Change; Wisconsin Winter Disasters 27:47 - The biggest Climate Change Threat Nobody talks about 31:37 - Climate Scientists, Politics, & The Industrial Revolution History; Fossil Fuels right now 38:06 - What does Carbon Footprint “mean?”; What’s really happening w/ Glaciers & water levels 50:43 - NYC, Boston, & Miami Underwater?; How to RAISE Cities off water 1:00:53 - “Clean Coal” (lmao); Trump & Socioeconomic impact on coal miners; Nuclear Energy 1:06:56 - Bill Gates new Nuclear Project; Why Nuclear Energy is Climate Friendly 1:18:12 - Govs vs Corps; Blackrock 1:26:37 - Political pendulum extremism 1:28:41 - Greta Thunberg; Climate Distractions for Gov Actions 1:38:29 - Coastal vs. Rural Political Divide; Hating on farmers who feed us 1:43:39 - Julian’s NYC Businesswoman Story; 1 Party System 1:49:59 - Politics’ greatest crime; Phones & the divide; Technology evolving faster than humans 2:00:02 - Rural Americans’ interaction w/ nature 2:03:13 - China, India & Russia don’t care 2:08:58 - Regulations vs Free Market w/ Climate 2:15:15 - Benji’s Jared Kushner Meeting 2:20:12 - Overpopulation vs Underpopulation 2:25:25 - AOC’s Extinction Lady Prank Funny... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I was just in Wyoming two weeks ago, and Bill Gates, who I don't like on a variety of things, he just unveiled the first next-gen nuclear project. Like, the first nuclear plant that's not the old traditional reactor. Wait, Bill Gates did this? Yes. He's put in billions of dollars. Pull that up. Bill Gates nuclear plant? Yeah. So I was at this event. Basically, five miles from that is a coal plant that's closing in 2028. The town was about to go bankrupt because the town was completely reliant on this coal plant that's closing in 2028 the town was about to go bankrupt because the town was completely reliant on this coal plant and bill said this town is where we want to build the nuclear power plant you got bill gates right building nukes right two years ago this would

have been like taboo oh my god well and he's been working on this for a while but it was so taboo that even like his own side wasn't gonna even give him the credit or talk about it because he was kind of doing it on his own island and now everyone's like oh actually he was which which island uh the nuclear island okay just making sure yeah you got to be careful around him yeah islands yeah we're off yeah what were you you were meeting with jared Jared Kushner a half hour ago? What's going on there? What's he up to? We're just trying to figure out how to get the right active on climate, you know. Jared Kushner's caring about the climate now.

Everyone realizes that there's some energy and national security implications of being bad on the environment. And China, India, Russia, they're all moving a certain way. This issue is so much bigger than just the environment and climate. And I think people are starting to realize that there are other benefits to protecting the environment, protecting climate, moving forward and sensible energy. More people than I ever would have thought. Yeah. And you are such an interesting guy in the middle of this because as I have- I don't know about that. You definitely are. As I have on my mug here, right-wing climate guy. That is exactly

what you are, which sounds like this- Super weird. This paradox, but you have lived this in your life and we're going to talk about it today. You have a book that you just wrote as well called the conservative environmentalist and what and we'll have the link to that in the description below so people can check that out but what really drew me to this is you know the climate's something that i care about a lot i'm a very moderate guy so i don't subscribe to either of the parties at this point in my life however naturally like when i'm talking to people about the climate, it tends

to be you're talking with someone who's very, very liberal. Very liberal. And then sometimes it can get to the point where it's just a talking point in the middle of a whole litany of things that, you know, other types of completely different legislation. Somehow racism is part of it. What exactly? Like stuff like that. And that kind of gets tiring to me because, you know, I got to live in this world. I'm planning on living a long life. I'm planning on having kids. I want them to have a great world too. And I see some things that aren't necessarily like happening tomorrow that are bad patterns that we're forming.

And what seems to happen is that some of the people who will commandeer this stuff are like, we're all going to die. It's all ending right now. And I just want to have a little bit of nuance in this discussion to figure out some good god forbid some good ways to look at it and so it's fascinating to see a guy who is politically conservative care a lot about this who i mean you've spent your whole adult life now yeah like fighting for this so in the first place like what what's your background like what what got you interested in the climate itself first before even like your politics yeah i mean i i grew up in a family that just spent all of our free time in nature like that was like everything we did and

and everyone at school thought i was super granola kind of hippie patagonia where i grew up in wisconsin patagonia is not like a big brand there. It's all hunting, fishing. If you're going to do something outside, we were hiking, we were skiing. And that was before it was cool. That was before it was Instagrammable, right? Oh, really? Yeah. That was, people were like, why the heck would you go on a walk in trees? Right? Like that, that is the most weird thing I've ever heard. Now that's like the cool hip thing to do. But, you know, that was that was how I grew up. And I never thought of the issue of climate or the environment

politically. Like I just, it was important to me, just because of the way I grew up. And I remember even in like, first, second grade, every, you know, you have to like, do these stupid, like one page essays or whatever. In second grade, I would always write it about climate and the environment. Like all the projects that I did were about the environment. And it was as specific as like specific birds that I liked or like, you know, national parks, or I just loved researching and doing work around the environment because it made me like feel like I was at least somewhat connected to the places that I spent time in when I wasn't at school, or when I wasn't having to work on something. So that was why I got so active in it.

And I grew up in a really strange family. First of all, we're about as close-knit as any family I've ever seen in a really, really positive way, a really healthy way. Between client meetings, managing your business, and everyday tasks, who has time to worry about website hosting? With Kinsta's managed WordPress hosting, you don't have to. They handle the technical stuff, delivering lightning-fast load times, enterprise-grade security, and 24-7, 365 human-only support. Simply switching to Kinsta can make your site up to 200% faster. Kinsta's custom dashboard makes managing sites easy with powerful features designed to save you time and effort. Plus, their free expert-led migrations ensure a smooth transition. Ready to see why Kinsta is trusted by thousands of

businesses? Get your first month free at kinsta.com. That's K-I-N-S-T-A dot com. Kinsta. Simply better hosting. We also, you know, we were very granola. My parents are vegan and vegetarian. My sisters are vegan and vegetarian. No shit. And my parents are conservative. No. So.

This is, you are a walking contradiction, my friend. I'm a very weird, yeah, very much a walking contradiction. They're like, you get rid of my my meat but you give me my fucking guns. No they're like you get rid of my meat but don't get rid of everyone else's. People should have that choice. That's what my parents would say. They my mom would make my mom is an amazing cook and she would always make me a separate meat based meal for dinner every night because she wanted to feed her meat-loving son. But I just saw that life wasn't so black and white growing up, right? Like my granola vegan parents being conservative in the state of Wisconsin, right? Being vegan in Wisconsin is basically illegal. We wear cheese on our heads at football games. Like, oh, that's right. You can't even have like cheese and shit. Right. I mean, I can. I'm not even right. I'm saying I'm saying if they were right. Exactly. So and they, you know, it just showed me that like

the environment didn't need to be political because my parents were literally a perfect example of that. My grandparents, super conservative, always were focusing on their love of nature. And so that's really where it came from for me. Wow. So at what point did you decide to like, become an activist, like, like get involved with it? How old were you? I was 10. 10? 10.

Damn. But I was, I wanted, before my climate environmental activism, I was wanting to get active in conservative politics. I was sitting watching John McCain and Barack Obama debate in our living room. My parents I think were actually undecided at the time of who they were going to vote for. So they had it on and John McCain reminded me of my grandpa honestly. My grandpa is a Marine and John McCain was obviously very my grandpa, honestly. My grandpa's a Marine and, uh, John McCain was obviously very involved in the military. And, uh, honestly, they look kind of similar. Uh, but there was, there was this kind of like, I love John McCain. I want to go volunteer for him.

My parents, not political at all. We're kind of like, uh, okay. God, why is our kid so weird? Yeah. Go watch a, go watch a packers game oh i was doing that too don't worry don't worry i was uh i was doing that as well but my parents brought me down to this thing called the victory center where i like helped make phone calls and do door knocking when i was 10 years old you're making phone calls at 10 hi my name is pendy i would like to vote for john oh my god yeah exactly oh my god and i loved it i loved the process i started getting active in local campaigns too and i literally helped dictate the outcome of multiple local races because when you're active at that level i was volunteering

like 50 hours a week wow so 50 hours a week at age 10 11 and my shit everyone's like your parents mostly pushing i'm like no my parents honestly would probably prefer that I don't do this. They're like, my parents were entrepreneurs, and they were like, between trying to build a business and run a really tight-knit family, they had to drive me 20 minutes to a victory center back and forth. That's the last thing they wanted to do. And I was forcing them to put signs in our yard and bumper stickers on their cars and they were like they literally have neighbors be like wow you're kind of like suddenly all political it's like no this is our 12 year old son 10 year old son like pretty weird but that's when i started being active in conservative politics and my love of the environment was incredibly separate from that like oh so you weren't so at the time you weren't paying

attention to for example maybe how some conservative not at all politicians would have been like oh yeah no that's that's al gore's bullshit man i kind of ignored it you did yeah you know cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance yeah which uh you know i i'm guilty of unfortunately as well yeah it definitely was like a uh you know i I'm guilty of unfortunately as well. Yeah, it definitely was like a, you know, I kind of separated my love for both. But then I like, as my brain grew up a little bit in high school, as it hopefully does for all people, I realized like, okay, there's actually a really big disconnect here, like between my love of the environment, and all the things I knew about it, because I was researching it as much as possible, all the classes I was taking and my politics.

And people started asking me, like, how can you be conservative if you care so much about the environment? And I, you know, would always defend it like, oh, it's, you know, I'm conservative on other issues. Like, that's why. And then I started realizing, like, well, why don't I try to change this disconnect? Because the environment's my most important thing in my life. Hey, guys, if you're listening on Spotify right now and you're not following me, please take a second and hit that follow button and also leave a five star review.

Both things really help my show and I appreciate all both links are in the description to this episode thank you so i'm trying to i'm trying to think of the timeline here too because you said you're watching the obama mccain debate in i guess fall 2008 that's what gets you involved h10 there the year before that is when an inconvenient truth came out which was a documentary by al gore which it was it was alarmist right like he said new york was going to be under manhattan was going to be underwater in 2012 which it actually was for three days with hurricane sandy but then that went away so but he was saying it was going to be he should have done like a stump speech during those three days and been like, see? Yeah. Remember, it's here.

But, you know, nonetheless, that's what kind of ignited this thing. So did you – when you started to kind of come to and realize, okay, there's a disconnect here maybe at this point, 14, 15, something like that? Yeah, 15 probably. Did you go back and watch some of the original stuff like An Inconvenient Truth, which may have been from left-wing voices, and try to rectify that with how you can bridge the gap there? Yeah, I started to listen to Al Gore and I started to listen to John Kerry and some of the big voices at the time because AOC and Greta and such, they didn't exist. Well, they did exist, but they weren't. I think AOC might have been bartending at the time, and Greta was probably in second, maybe in first grade. AOC probably was a great bartender, honestly. But yeah, I thought this doesn't really speak to me either.

I was watching Al Gore, and I'm like, I don't like fear-mongering. I've always hated extremism like just for the sake of extremism like i to me like i see right through it to me it's like it's obvious that al gore is just trying to get attention and get money and become like the face of the issue he's actually not trying to solve it it'd be very easy for you or I to go and be a total extremist loser and basically be a coward just so we can raise our voices. Like I could do that in my sleep. I could have a million followers. I actually, I actually like, and it's not just the unique to me. Anyone really could. That's right. It's very easy. And so I can see right through it. And to me, those people are very shameless. Like Al Gore knows better, right? Like he's smart. He's a smart guy, but he, he, he is doing this. And then these people justify it

to themselves and they say, well, I'm doing it because, you know, it is a problem and I'm getting more attention for it. And even though I'm blowing out a proportion, people are paying attention and therefore it's worth it. And so they have this like very, they justify it to themselves, just like somebody who does a crime justifies the crime a lot of the time. I can't remember the psychological term, but there's a term for that. And that really turned me off too. And so I didn't really know where to turn. Like what, what, what organization do I join? Like what, there's no conservative environmental organization. There's no rational liberal organization. I just don't know what to do. and that's really when – that was about senior year of high school that I really became frustrated from a – like at a tipping point perspective. Yeah, I don't know if we can Google this, Butch, but let's check out – I think Al Gore used the most electricity in the state of Tennessee at one point shortly after this documentary came out.

Like Google Al Gore electricity usage. Big on private jets. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I want to point this out. Huge shout out to my brother Chaz Servino over at Leap Brands. Filling in this week, sending in some of the interns. That's a New York class name. That's a New York class name.

Oh, Servino? Yeah. There's a lot of vowel-enders around here. But filling in, we got Butch today. We're going to have Murph on Wednesday. And then we have Pepe coming in, third one? Yeah. That's right.

Yeah. So we got the fill-ins while Alessi is out of town. But, all right, did we find anything? Butch? Looks like we did. Look at that. First one. One for one.

Al Gore's electric bills get criticism oh it was it was before the sequel of an inconvenient truth so could we scroll down butch just so i can read this article 21 times more energy than the average american all right good uh al gore's environmental documentary an inconvenient sequel opens up friday so conservative think tanks figured it was a perfect time to accuse the former vp of hypocrisy using gore's electric bills from his nash Nashville home to claim he uses at least 21 times more energy than the average American. The group says at least 21 times because they only looked at the energy consumption at Gore's Nashville home, not his other two houses. How do they – how do you even get that?

Like do they like steal his electric bill out of the trash or something? I have no idea. That's a little creepy. I hope no one's tracking mine. Although I have an app that shows how much energy I'm using. I don't think it's 21 times. That's actually crazy that they could get that information. I mean, that might be blown out of proportion.

I don't know. But what I do know is that these people are massive hypocrites. And here's the difference. Like I flew here, right? I fly a lot. I probably – Commercial. Yeah, one of the worst polluters at my age possible.

I'm not shy about that because that's how I get around to do the work that I do. And that's the mode of transportation that I can use. Like that's the only option. But I'm not telling people that they can't use fossil fuels or that we're banning fossil fuels. That's the difference. So these people, even if Al Gore flew commercial all the time, which he flies private, but like, even if he flew commercial, it still would be incredibly hypocritical because he's telling people how to live their lives and then not doing it himself. And it does, like, I don't fault

Leonardo DiCaprio or Al Gore or John Kerry for flying private or flying on planes. I actually don't because that's how they need to get around. What their problem is, is that they're telling people that they can't do that or that they can't drive the truck that they have, which emits, like, if you fly one flight private overseas, you're emitting more than that truck will ever do in its lifetime. So you're telling somebody that they can't use that truck, and then people are like, well, I'm not going to take you seriously because you are the biggest hypocrite ever, and you're trying to mandate that I need to buy an electric vehicle while you're spewing more air pollution than I ever will. And that's why people like Al Gore fall on deaf ears for the majority of the population and and also fell on deaf ears for me big man wins little man loses 100 and i think that's you know we're living in this world where some instagram model drinks out of a fucking hydra flask to save the turtles and thinks she's saving the world and meanwhile you know she's driving

around a hummer with her boyfriend sucking his dick while he's driving for an hour not going anywhere and that's the that's the performative part of it it's got a really weird visual it's not yeah it's interesting i don't know where that came from but sometimes it just anyway i haven't seen a hummer in a while that's actually a good thing uh there's hummer evs now oh shit which is actually horrible for the environment we'll go we'll get into that later talk about that i i feel like hummer just can't win with the environment but anyway you get you get the point. Like it's more about this performative nature such that now I got to go to Dunkin' Donuts and drink out of some fucking flimsy paper straw. Right. When in reality, yeah, plastic being put back in the environment, not great.

But like the people who are doing this are drinking out of their fucking Macallan 112s or whatever the shit rich people drink is. You know what I mean? I don't even know what that is. I don't know what it is i don't know what it is person but allen 112 but it's like i probably got that wrong it's some some type of scotch but you get the point like like they're they're basically the it's it's rules for thee not for me and that is that is the worst part of this particular debate right here that is the worst part. Right, because we all, and this is going to sound super kumbaya, gross, cliche, but we all share this issue. And it should be important to all of us to protect the environment and to lower air pollution, to decrease carbon emissions. The fact that these sorts of people have figured out a way to put people against the environment is actually kind of impressive.

Like, good job, Al Gore, you really did it. You found a way to polarize probably the most likely issue that we shouldn't be polarized on. And they did it in a way that, like, is so visceral that I've spent the last eight years trying to undo this toxic nature of this problem. I do blame Al. People are like, oh, you know, you're just giving cover for fossil fuel companies who suppress the science and all this stuff. I'm like, Al Gore literally did so much more damage to the environment than he would ever have hoped to do to help. And AOC, Bernie Sanders, Greta, they're all doing damage to the environment. I don't think all of them are doing it intentionally, necessarily.

But when you turn over half the country, half the world against environmentalism, and make it like this partisan topic, then you're actually doing more harm than good. I 100% agree. That's why it's refreshing to hear someone who's at least politically like on the other side so that we can get voices to balance this out. Because what I really liked is that your organization, ACC, which stands for American Conservation Coalition. Everyone thinks it says conservative because, you know, we're conservative. It's conservation right i want to make sure i had the right so you guys started initially as

you're like well shit every organization i try to join is like really really left wing and they have a whole bunch of other issues that i don't care about so let me start my own and at the beginning it was a lot of other conservative minded people like you who joined. But eventually you got to the point where I believe it's now 40% of your organization is people who are not conservative or even liberal, which shows that you have, you have found a way to keep it to one issue that we can all get behind and bipartisan work with that. That's very, very cool that you've accomplished that. Well, thank you. I mean when we started, it was a frustration of like I don't like any of the organizations on campus that I could join.

Like they were just like Green New Deal type organizations. We'll talk about that. Yeah. But I also was – my freshman year of college is when I started this organization. And my freshman year was when donald trump and hillary were facing off what a great year for all of us that's that was that was when everything started to turn to shit yeah um donald trump was saying climate change isn't real and hillary clinton was saying that it was like the worst thing yeah exactly by the Chinese, just like everything is somehow created by the Chinese, which there's some truth to. But 2016, Clinton also had a very like alarmist message about climate. So like I didn't subscribe to either one. And so I couldn't find anything on campus to join. I couldn't find anything nationally to join. And I couldn't feel like my views are represented at the national level by

either presidential candidate. So I started ACC to get conservatives active because I am a conservative. I can only do so much, right? Like I can't try to get the left to be more sensible and the right to be more sensible all at the same time. And we do have 45,000 activists across the country now, seven years later. And like I said, like you said, 40% of them are either in the middle or left of center. And what that shows is that there is an appetite for like, this issue being nonpartisan. And, and in this toxic political world, like that doesn't seem very appealing, because everyone's kind of like – is really strongly tied to their partisan nature. No pun intended.

But that's – that can be gone on this issue. We can remove the partisanship on this issue because that's the only way that we'll get longevity for the solutions. Right now we're in this battle of like Trump undoes the regulation. Biden redoes it. Trump's going to undo it. Biden's going to redo it. And it's just like this political football. And businesses don't know what to do.

They don't know what to invest in. People don't know what technologies are going to work because it's like, are my EV subsidies going to be pulled? Are they going to be oversubsidized? Like everyone's just so confused. And there's an appetite for this to be nonpartisan. Our organization proves that. Well, I think another part of it is like you actually like to discuss the science in the middle of this stuff. And sadly, that is, that's a bit of a departure from what we're seeing, because as you pointed out a couple minutes ago with an example the minute you

say the words like climate change or global warming someone's either gonna go yeah we're all gonna die yeah we gotta figure this out or someone's gonna go shit's a hoax yep right so you don't even get to the well have we looked at have we looked at data what can we compare that to what things aren't anomalies across the history of the earth? What things are anomalies? And when you open up your book, you talk about these things. So if we can start at the beginning there just for people out there so that we can actually get back to the science of some of these things and challenge that. But what are the problems specifically that we're seeing right now that you are concerned about for

100 years from now? Yeah, I think I love that you brought that up in the way that you did, because when we hear about like, let's take web like weather itself is not climate change, right? Like one weather event is not climate change. I want to make that clear. So if there's a snowstorm, that's not climate change. If it's a hurricane, it's not climate change. When a hurricane happens that's really bad, one side says all the hurricanes that are getting worse, it's normal. It's a normal cycle.

This is just normal. And then you have one side that's saying this hurricane itself is to believe when it's like every weather event is caused by climate change or there is no climate change and every weather event is just part of the natural cycle and God's controlling it or whatever. Neither one are right. And what is right is that – let's take hurricanes again for example. The trend of hurricanes is getting more severe and more damaging. The trend of hurricanes is getting more severe and more damaging. The trend of hurricanes is there are actually less hurricanes every single year than there have been overall. But when there are hurricanes, they are way worse. And that trend is a climate change trend.

The trend of temperature going up over the last 30 years is climate change. The random hot day in August is. The random hot day in August is just a random hot day in August. It would have been a random hot day in August either way. And it might have been slightly less hot, like a degree or two, but it's not like it's 10 degrees, 20 degrees hotter, like people want you to believe. It's not like you're sweltering in the heat because of climate change. It's the trend of temperature over time going up. Before we started recording, we were talking about snowstorms in Wisconsin. Like I grew up in northern Wisconsin.

Yeah, this blew my mind. Yeah, every single winter, every single Christmas, because of course if you're a skier or you like snow, you know that by Christmas like the snow is not that great. But in Wisconsin, you could go sledding and cross country skiing every single Christmas day. That's what we did as a family was to go sledding or cross country skiing. I have spent every Christmas in that town that I grew up in since I was born. I do not know the last time there was a white Christmas, like maybe 12 years ago.

But you were saying it's like in the forties in the winter now there too. Yeah. This is, I mean, can we pull up a map of wisconsin this place is north as shit this is like in the middle this is by the great lakes and stuff like if you look up minocqua wisconsin that's where we have a family cabin how do you spell that we gotta help m-i-n-o-c-q-a uh-oh why the milo scene period oh they're trying big farm is trying to get you O-C-Q-A Uh oh The Mylosian period Oh Big Pharma's trying to get you M-I-N-O-C-U-K Minocqua Wisconsin

Go to maps And then let's zoom out on this bad boy Let's see Let's see what we got Lots of lakes Yeah alright How north is this? Let's compare it to here Let's see what we got. Lots of lakes. Yeah. All right. How north is this?

Let's compare it to here. Let's zoom way up. Yeah, you guys are like, look at us down here. You're all the way up there. You're telling me it's 40s in the west. See, that is where when somebody. It was 55 on Christmas last year. Oh, my God.

And it was so, like, the lake lake wasn't frozen which it's usually frozen by like november and look if that was one winter that's that's you know just a warm winter it happens you know when it's 12 years in a row that northern wisconsin doesn't have snow that is a problem and it has bigger impacts than just like oh i want I want to go sledding and, you know, cross-country skiing. Farmers rely on that weather for their crops. And if their crops can't grow because they're growing too early or they're growing, you know, they have like they plant them and the soil isn't right. You know, like those are real problems for all of us because we are relying on those crops to survive. And Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, these farm centric states that we rely on for a lot of our food, they are, all these farmers don't

know what to do because the weather is so much different than what they're used to. Those trends over time are what climate change is. And there will be like, there will be an extreme cold event still, you know, there still will be cold events. There will still be years where there's lots of snow. It's just the overall trend over time, and that's what's scary. So I would say the biggest problem with climate change, and I've talked to a lot of climate scientists about this, it's not sea level rise. And it's not like worsening hurricanes, even though I've mentioned that that is a problem. It's migration.

Migration. Because those two to three to four to five degree temperature changes over the course of time force people on the margins to want to move. If you're living in a place where you don't have air conditioning or you're struggling to survive, make ends meet, those couple of degrees can make a huge difference. And you're going to see a lot of people, it's already happening, move from the equator north. And it's happening in Europe. It's happening in North America.

It will continue to happen because people want to live where it's habitable. And it's not the only reason that the Mexican border thing is a problem. But like conservatives don't want to hear this, but it is one of the reasons. It is so freaking hot in Mexico all the time, which of course is normal. Mexico is close to the equator. It was always warm. It's always hot. It's getting warmer.

It's becoming more uncomfortable. People don't want to be a part of that. I live in Arizona, so I'm very privy to warm weather, but we have air conditioning. We're in a very like first world, like in third world countries where people are living on the margins, they are not going to want to live in a place that is getting warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer. And that's, I think, the biggest risk that we have. Okay. There's a lot there. That. That's going to come up again. And we actually just did a podcast with this kid, Nick Shirley, who is a Mormon-turned-border YouTuber.

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It's almost as weird as a vegan Wisconsinite. We're having some interesting people in here. I can't say we're not. But he'll cover the stuff right down there on the border, and then he'll come up to New York City and cover where the migrants end up and things like that and really get hard-hitting ground content but you know the number of situations that's what i'll call them that occur in the millions down there is insane but to see that this could tie into it again like it's already tying conservatives may not want to hear that but it's on an issue that conservatives may care about a lot which which is the border so you have people who are literally coming north to flee temperatures where just like

it's like the it's like the the the boiling frog yeah yeah experiment a little bit the frog just doesn't ever jump out of the water but in this case the humans they start to feel a little bit they jump i mean think about like little differences in temperature make a huge difference in the way we live our lives like think about the difference when you're setting your thermostat at 69 versus 75. That's right. My girlfriend wants it at 75 and I'm miserable. Yeah. She, she, well, she's crazy, but she's not crazy compared to most women who I've been with. Uh, so you're living with the thermostat. Yeah. I'm living with the 75 degrees of thermostat, but she's pretty great otherwise. Yeah, I'm living with a 75-degree thermostat, which is pretty great otherwise. Okay. But that six-degree difference makes or breaks how happy I am, right?

And I'm very unhappy at 75, but I'm very happy at 69. If you're living in Egypt – I'm sorry, Elsa. Couldn't help it. If you're living in Egypt and it's 95 every day and you're somehow able to tolerate that, but now it's 100 and the water is drying up faster and they have less resources and they can grow less crops. And it's basically just a less livable – every degree warmer or colder than what you're used to is less livable. And you're going to see – it's already happening especially in Europe because of Africa. These people moving north because they can't stand the differences in weather, and one or two, three, four, or five degrees does make a difference. So where does this begin when you look at it, and obviously you're talking to a lot of climate scientists as well, which by the way, real quick, how many of them are political at all? So that's the fallacies that most of them are not political at all.

That's interesting. I thought that they were because of what I had heard from conservative outlets. And I've spent time, including with our friend Zagnuk, with climate scientists. Shout out, Zag. Yeah, he's got to be brought up at some point. He and I have seen this too because we interviewed a bunch of climate scientists for this documentary we worked on together. And they don't even want to talk about politics because they think it's going to ruin – Love that. They're going to – it's going to ruin – like they – of course, they're human beings.

They have political views on something, right? But they're science first. Right. I actually think that there are a decent amount of them that would lean right that some of the ones that we interviewed lean right, but they don't talk about that because that doesn't that's not part of their research. Right. And they are really frustrated. These climate scientists are really frustrated that they've been thrown into this political world. They don't care what politics they're they're nerdy researchers like they're not they're not Trump supporters or Biden politics. They're nerdy researchers. They're not Trump

supporters or Biden supporters. They're not trying to push some agenda. There's not some conspiracy. Now, there could be examples of that. There could be examples of scientists who are using a political agenda. And I think that there probably are examples, but I do not think that's the norm at all. That's good to hear because we see some of these numbers where it's like 98 percent of scientists all agree this is the thing and we're all going to die and it's cited by you know someone who's political 90 percent of scientists agree that climate is changing and we're contributing to it that's what that's what the science that it's not night yeah they blow climate is changing and we are contributing to it that's what that's what 90

percent of scientists believe 90% of scientists believe. 90% of scientists do not believe that it's going to kill us all tomorrow, that we need socialist policies. That is not true. Okay. But the wording of that, they believe the climate is changing and humans are – what was it? Contributing. Humans are contributing to it. The connotation is that that climate changing with that contribution, if it continues in that way for 100 years or 200 years, then we could have real problems.

Right, exactly. But that the climate is going to change. It always has and it always will. It will continue to change when we're all dead and gone. And their point is that we are messing with the natural cycles. We are making it worse. And if there is a cooling period, we're averting the cooling periods cooling periods if it's a heating period we're making that heating period worse that's what we're doing but like the world is going to be here whether we're here or not

hopefully to most yeah hopefully but do most of these guys subscribe to the idea that this really began with the industrial revolution absolutely and and they also aren't vilifying those industries. Like, we did what we did to get here. We did what we did to get in this room. That's right. They're not like, oh, it's horrible. Like, if we should do it over, we wouldn't do the Industrial Revolution. They're like, no, we just learned like a century later about a negative externality.

That happens. Yeah, that will always happen. And I'm sure everything we think is perfect right now, like they thought the Industrial Revolution was perfect, we're going to find out that we're doing something wrong too. And then you adapt to improve the things that you've done wrong unintentionally. The Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels have a negative consequence. They also had a lot of positive benefits to society that should not be taken away. Scientists understand that, and they don't blame the Industrial Revolution. They just think it started then, and that our job is to alleviate

some of those negative externalities. And that doesn't mean shutting down society to the world where it was pre-Industrial Revolution. They are not saying that. Yeah, and I think that's important to note because like part of what's great about being human is that we, we make progress. We figure out new things. We innovate. And one of the things you talk about in your book is the ability to innovate out of this. It's interesting that at the very beginning of the funnel, it's the problem, so to speak, unknowingly at the time happened with innovation. Yeah. After after that period though and for people with history of the industrial revolution we're roughly talking about it's 19th century stuff

going into the very beginning of the 20th century so after that throughout the 20th century you know what what patterns formed and if you don't mind like can you walk through some of the numerical science behind it that happened as a result that we need to figure out a way to curb or control? Yeah, I mean we are emitting – humans are emitting more fossil fuels into the atmosphere every single day – carbon emissions from fossil fuels every single day. Like our energy demand is exponentially higher than it was last year, and it will continue to exponentially go up. Every fossil fuel that we burn puts carbon emissions into the atmosphere. So if an energy demand is going up, and carbon emissions then are going up, and that's what we need to figure out how to mitigate. Now, we can do that without

shutting down fossil fuels. We can do that without telling people that they can't use energy. We have a growing population in this world, and we have a growing demand for energy. Those two things equal more pollutants in the there are carbon emissions from fossil fuels. I mean it's very clear that that's the case. You can stick your mouth on a tailpipe of a car and you can – I don't recommend that. Don't go do that. But I don't recommend that for a reason, right? It's not healthy. And we're doing more of that every single day to our atmosphere to a level that we have never seen with humanity on this planet even close. I mean it's like – I don't even want to say the number because it's always changing, but it's thousands of times more, millions of times more than it was 200 years ago in terms of carbon emissions in the atmosphere because we weren't using energy like we are today.

Even just powering this room right now, powering Bitcoin mining, powering data centers, I mean, it is remarkable how much energy we're using. That has a negative consequence. And that does not mean that we should be telling people that they can't use energy, that we shouldn't be sitting in this room. So I want to break this down to some of the bare bones because we hear all these buzzwords all the time now. And this is what makes people sometimes roll their eyes and not listen anymore, and I understand that where it's like your carbon footprint is really affecting everything we do. We need to make sure that we monitor that a carbon footprint, what does that mean with respect to our atmosphere? And what does it do specifically? Like if I were a third grader and you're like, here's what's happening, what would you say? Carbon emissions, if you put them in a box, it will heat up the box.

If you put it in a closed box, carbon warms whatever it is. Like carbon – and that's's like basic science 101. Carbon emissions, carbon in general, warms up whatever it's, you know, if it's in a box or it's in our atmosphere. That warmth, the temperature of our atmosphere dictates our weather. And when you have more, when you have higher carbon emissions and it's hotter, right? Like if you're, if it's, if it's five degrees hotter in New Jersey because of carbon emissions, more water is going to basically evaporate because it's hotter, right? Like if you put in Arizona, if I spill some water on the ground, it immediately evaporates in the summer because it's so hot that it heats up and goes into the air.

When you have more water evaporating because it's hotter, you have more clouds. And when you have more clouds, it's actually hotter again because if you think about it, clouds keep in heat. If it's a clear night, it's way colder than on a night where it's cloudy. And if it's a cloudy day, it's way warmer than if it was clear. Wait, really? That's the part that I'm confused on. It's warmer than if it's clear? Yeah, so clouds keep in heat.

Now, you might not feel that way because the sun's not shining on you yeah but a 65 degree day with clouds and a 65 degree day with sun uh those days like the sun will feel warmer right because you have the sun yes but clouds will make like if if it's a cloudy day in new york check your check your weather app i can guarantee you you're low at night it's gonna be a lot higher than you're low on a clear night so not maybe this is the way i'm thinking about it wrong it's not how it feels right right it's how it actually mathematically is which is all the environment cares about right and so if you have more clouds you are going to have more warmth in that moment.

And throughout the world, we're having higher temperatures, not only because carbon emissions create warmth, but also because it's evaporating more water, more water is going into the atmosphere. And when it is like, think about humidity, right? I think that's actually a way better example than what I just said. 85 and humid is way hotter than 85 and dry. 100%. Okay. So there we go.

That's a much better example. Yeah. So that's proof. When you have water around, when you have clouds, like an 85 cloudy, humid day is sticky and gross and horrible. 85 in Arizona where I'm at, where it doesn't rain more than a couple days a year, it is pretty nice out. You can go outside. You're not going to sweat. It's not a problem at all.

The added heat and humidity of carbon emissions is what's controlling this. And those trends over time are getting worse and worse and worse. Because it's getting hotter, more water gets evaporated because when it's hotter more water gets evaporated which means it's going to rain more it's going to snow more if it's cold enough it's going to do like all precipitation events are actually expected to increase around the world because the heat is basically evaporating all the water on the earth's surface and it's eventually going to come back down so hypothetically in wisconsin right now where on the Earth's surface, and it's eventually going to come back down. So hypothetically in Wisconsin right now where you're having these weird winters.

It's just going to rain. So it does rain in the winters. It's going to rain more. And it's raining more in the winters there now. That's interesting. Now where does the science tie in with some of the original visuals they put on this, which is like, oh, the polar bells are melting because the the the glaciers are melting how does can we tie that back to what you just said as well similar to what

you know we were talking about earlier there's a middle ground here that unfortunately people don't want to pay attention to which is that glaciers are not melting at the levels that we've been told like they're not going away so quickly that like go see a glacier right now because they're going to be gone in five years. That was a fear-mongering thing. But they are going away. And I think the easiest way to think about this from a mathematical perspective is if you are a glacier – pretend you're a glacier, Julian. Okay. Are you a glacier yet?

Are you cold? I'm very cold. Okay. Are you a glacier yet? Are you cold? I'm very cold. Okay. I'm frigid. It's because it's sunny. It's clear at night. It's 32 degrees. You're chilling.

You're good. You're good. 32 degrees freezing point. Now, because of climate change, you have more 33, 34, 35 degree days. You're starting to melt a little bit. You're starting to sweat. You're not chill anymore. You're a little bit warm. You're not going to go away by the next winter when it starts to get a little bit colder again, but you're going to melt more than you probably want to. Those small differences in temperature do hurt glaciers. I think it's one of the best examples of climate change.

And I was in – so that's a very small – Quick question on that. I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off. I'm just thinking about the science here. How do they reform too? Like if I'm a glacier and I lose some on those 35-degree days. It takes a long time.

Okay. So it takes way longer for them to add to their ice pack rather than take away those those ice those ice packs uh are millions of years old sometimes i mean they they are they've been there for a long time and the top of it is the newest because that's like where the snow most recently was. And then eventually that turns into ice. That part is like melting off, you know, on warm years and stuff. The bottom of the glacier has been there for like ever. Wow.

I mean, and I've been to plenty of glaciers in my life where it's like, it is so deep and it's like its own mountain. Like the glacier is like its own mountain uh mount rainier in washington where i used to live is like if you took away the glacier the mountain would look completely different we don't even know what it looks like because it's so covered in glacier that it basically creates its own mountain these things are really old and when they melt, they can melt very quickly, but they really are difficult to recreate. And if you look at like the Arctic or Canada or places that it's traditionally very cold, they are melting at pretty astronomical rates, again, as a trend. Like if you do it year by year

and you're like, well, in 2018, it was a cold winter and they actually weren't melting at all. Like, of course, you can find those anomalies. And you can also find the anomaly where it's like, well, in 2016, it was so hot they melted faster than ever. It's like, no, let's look at the trend. Over the course of the last 20, 30 years, glaciers have been melting at a pretty quick rate. And I was in Norway two summers ago. It was 95 degrees in the Arctic Circle. 95 degrees in the Arctic Circle.

In Norway. In Norway. They had never seen temperatures like that. Now, my initial reaction was like, oh, this is climate change. And the reality was it was already going to be a really hot day either way, climate change or not. We just made it a couple degrees worse. But those couple degrees, especially at that temperature, makes a huge difference. And so there was flooding all over the Arctic Circle because – and there's towns up there.

I mean there are people living up there. And that's the sort of thing where we don't think that a small temperature matters, but it is for glaciers. Yeah, how does a glacier – I'm just thinking about that, like in the summer, 95 degrees, how does it not just like melt down to a crisp? Like that's so high. They're sturdy creatures. I told you that you had to envision yourself as a glacier.

I was trying. You're not embodying it. I'm picturing glaciers that are too small, I guess. I don't know. These are huge things, and it takes a lot for them to melt, like the whole thing. Like to melt the whole glacier would take a lot, but it's impressive in a sad way how much our temperature increases are making these glaciers smaller. And I would urge people, if they're interested in it, to not go too much more into glaciers. But like if you look at the size

difference on a google image like and maybe we should look this up too but like the glaciers are it's actually remarkable some pictures of like what they used to be versus what they are now maybe like do night yeah then and now yeah good call that at first one yep all right so we got 1890 and 2005 let's hit that camera five you're already on it good stuff butch all right so look at that these before and afters show how glaciers in the u.s are melting can you zoom in on that butch i think it's like control plus yeah command plus there we go perfect so so that that picture on the left is way even more substantial than you'd think. I mean, that's probably a couple hundred feet deep of just ice. Like, it's not just like a snow-covered.

This isn't snow. This is an ice sheet that's hundreds of feet high. Like, look at how small that guy is. Yeah. That's all just ice. Now, on the right, it just looks like a little snowpack, which that is what that is. That actually looks like just snow.

I can't guarantee that because I haven't dug into that little snowpack right there. But that looks like just snow. On the left, that's ice. And that's really hard to melt. I mean, that takes a lot of warm days. And people also talk about, though, I mean, I mean you mentioned there was like massive flooding in Norway. But when we talk about these glaciers melting and the ones that sit in the ocean up in the Arctic and stuff like that, people then relate that to the water levels.

That's wrong. That's wrong. Now, why is that wrong? What I just said is going to make conservatives feel really uncomfortable because it sounds like I'm fear-mongering about glaciers. People are just so – like people just choose whatever they want to fit their narrative. And the whole glaciers melting in the ocean or the icebergs melting like off of the Arctic Circle is another example of it on the flip side, which is that if I have ice in this cup right here, the water level is not going to change when the ice melts. But what about the fact that many of them – this is why I always just assume some of this was right. And I thought it was fear-mongering because I thought, oh, all of them are going to have to fucking do it to really make a difference.

But like there's a lot that exists above the sea level so now if it didn't would that affect so mathematically yes so yes so that's the complicated part of this if there's an iceberg and it's in the water and it melts that will have zero impact on sea level rise and this glacier melting does have an impact on sea level rise because eventually that melt from that glacier is going somewhere it's going into a river that river is going to funnel into an ocean eventually and so you're putting more water into the system yeah than you originally had so if you have ice sheets falling off of land, or you have rivers that are more flooded because of melting ice, water levels are going to rise. Now, I, you know,

from what I know, sea level rise is going to be a problem for cities on the margins like Miami. Yeah, I was you're taking words out of my mouth here i would say here too well we built cities and places that like were kind of below sea level to begin with like boston literally was created from like where boston sits was below sea level before they built it they basically built boston on this island that they created and really? Yeah. And New York's actually fairly similar to that. Well, New York was built by the Dutch, whereas Boston was built by the English. So they were doing the same thing? They were doing very similar things.

They're basically like, we want to have this port. This is kind of a marshy wetland, you know, kind of quasi shoreline. We're going to build it up a little bit. We're going to put a bunch of sediment and we're going to basically build a little island. Now, that basically just like, even if climate change wasn't real, there are going to be problems with that, right? Like there's going to be weather events that, you know, fluctuate the water levels. There's going to be hurricanes. There's going to be those different things. And basically that, for cities like New York, Boston, Miami, a small change in sea level rise could be a pretty big difference maker. But it's not going to provide these doomsday scenarios of water flooding the streets and people dying.

There might be an extreme weather event that harms these cities, but sea level rise isn't expected to dramatically raise the water levels to the point where like right here we'd be underwater. And what is so what is that sea level rise primarily supposedly going to be caused by and how much is a is enough to put us over the top in, say, New York? Is it like six inches or six feet? I honestly think we could prevent the worst damages from sea level rise just through upgrading our infrastructure. Like, we're pretty good at controlling water. Like, you think about all the dams we have and all the sea walls that are being put up in Miami. You gotta spend some time in Hoboken, man. We're not too good at it here. Well, they gotta figure that out. I think, like, I'm trying to think of, like, if climate change is going to get worse, what are the things that we can prevent the worst impacts from? I think sea level rise is probably pretty easy because you can build sea walls.

You can kind of prevent. You can raise places up. You can build homes like they do in Florida. How would you raise New York? I don't know. That's above my pay grade. But they did it before. I know that it's harder

now because there's some buildings on it fucking huge skyscraper i don't know i i don't think you can raise new york you can raise miami though and but miami's so developed now too it is but there's parts of a lot of you know it's it's a little bit less of a uh a sprawl from a skyscraper perspective new york has like the unique we have new york has the biggest skyline in america so you you have a lot harder of uh yeah look at that look at the wallpaper like if we can cut if we can cut to camera four there butch like imagine just like being like oh yeah let's put a little sheetrock below this like yeah no you can't you can't you can't build this up but but you can control you can control water pretty easily through sea walls and through um basically natural protective mechanisms you can plant more

like water plants like wetlands and grasslands and stuff like that that basically suck up a lot of the water they prevent it from getting to the shores. What my point is, is that I don't think the sea level rise in a place like New York is going to be so bad that New York is like ruined. I do not see that ever being a scenario. What I see as being like the the unpreventable things are like the migration, the energy loss from how much we have to use if it's hotter and hotter and hotter. We have to use more and more energy. The farming. There are certain parts of the climate stuff where it's like it's a little harder to adapt.

And you can adapt to rising sea levels a little bit easier than some of these other things is what I'm saying. Yeah, can we Google this, Butch? How to raise the ground level of a city or ways to raise the ground level of a city. Let's start with how. Let me go there. All right. There's AI. No.

No, that's not going to give us what we want. Go down a little bit. Best way to increase ground level. No. Do ways to raise city... Is it to get above sea level? Should we say that? Yeah, let me look up ways to raise a city to get above sea level.

Yeah, let's try that. See what we got. All right, reclaim low-lying land in the city. This uses a technique known as cut-and-fill to move soil or right reclaim low-lying land in the city this uses a technique known as cut and fill to move soil or rock to low-lying areas raising the ground for development here we go i got it i got it okay so this is from the city of new york uh there's three options build flood walls which is what i was saying there's like basically these you know walls you can build can we google flood walls just so we can see what that looks like you can restore shoreline habitats because that also helps a lot what does that mean in english uh basically the natural ecosystems that are

yep there it is there's yeah okay but basically barriers it it's like building the wall on the southern border but for the you know you're telling the ocean you can't come into the city we're gonna build a wall it's gonna be great no water no water uh that's what you should have told jared be like listen we're gonna build a great wall around new york he'd be fucking on the trail that we just met with someone great this morning mar-a-lago he wants to build a wall around mar-a-lago i said yes we're gonna build yeah i think that's actually a very important wall they should build down there but um you want the second one so restore shoreline habitats so like we basically destroyed a bunch of shoreline habitats through the development of these cities and ports and everything there used to be grasslands and wetlands and all these kind of natural ecosystems

those prevent sea level rise substantially because it's basically a natural seawall. And it prevents sea level rise from kind of getting – with like an extreme storm, it's an extra barrier of entry for that storm. So like down the shore, which is a phrase we have here in New Jersey. I don't know if you know that one. But like the whole Jersey shoreline is – Is there an accent with that statement? Down the shore? It depends where you are in the state. But yes, there is.

So you could be up in the northern Jersey shore by like Long Branch, Nazbury Park, or you could be down to southern Jersey shore, like Ocean City, Seattle, Avalon, down to Cape May. It's all the same idea. They're right along the line. You have Long Beach Island in there as well, which is even worse because it's literally like an island. But like they have very big beaches at a lot of these places, not all of them, where the beaches are long, meaning like the houses are way back off the beach.

But what they do, like in Ocean City, it's like this. They build giant dunes right there. And that was always explained to me as a kid is like, oh, that helps prevent against the storm, but that could also be helping prevent against sea level. That's exactly right. It's exactly that sort of thing. And well, the storms are where the sea level rise is actually going to become a problem. Like it's not going to be a day by day problem. It's going to be if the water levels are six inches higher than they should be. And then an extreme storm comes in that just makes the storms impact six

inches greater. Like basically, basically like if the sea level rise is minimal, but then an extreme storm comes in, then that minimal increase in sea level rise actually ends up making a difference because the extreme storm basically made it, made it worse. So,

so that, so restoring shorelines, building floodwalls, and then the last one is design infrastructure with materials that absorb water, such as permeable pavement. So what they've done in a lot of cities is basically create infrastructure to filter the water out,

like better drainage, better pavement that soaks up water. These are technological improvements that can happen in cities. I guess my main point is I don't know a lot about building sustainable cities to sea level rise. All I know is that scientists are not as worried about sea level rise as they are about the other impacts of climate change. And what's their reasoning for that? It's easier to adapt to. Like you can build flood walls.

You can build infrastructure. Telling a farmer that they have to move north every year because the weather is getting a little bit warmer is like not easy. Got it. So they're more concerned with how to control what the actual environment feels like every day rather than some of the effects maybe we see physically. Right, and if you can also move, in the worst case scenario, Miami is uninhabitable for some reason. I don't think it gets to that point, but let's just say it is. People can move.

It's harder with the food that we rely on to keep telling people to move north, north, north, north, north. If people don't want to live near a place where there's sea level rise, you could relocate to like, I don't know, Wisconsin. And that wouldn't be ideal because it's expensive and you're telling people they can't live where they live. But like as a societal problem, that's a lot less severe than where are we getting our food from? Or why are there so many people coming into our country that we can't account for, that we don't have enough resources for? Or how do we maintain a grid, electrical grid to power our homes that now we're using one and a half times as much energy for because of an, you know,

increased temperatures. Those are, those things are harder to adapt to than something on the coast, even though it may seem like it's hard to adapt to. It's, it's not compared to those things. Hey guys, just a quick note on this episode. We filmed this shortly before Donald Trump's assassination attempt. So it was supposed to come out a couple of days after the assassination attempt, and it didn't make sense to post it that week. So I held on to it. And that said, there's a few points in here where we talk about like Trump, Biden. And obviously that's because this was right before Kamala Harris joined the race. So just ignore that and the rest of it should be good to go. Thank you. And what are some ways that when you speak with some of these scientists, what are some reasonable ways where it's not like the – not for me but for thee, whatever. Some solutions. Massive inconveniences for people that we can look to on a community-wide basis around America and we'll get to the problem with the fact that the rest of the world is to follow this stuff, which is a huge issue.

But like just focus in here for a minute. What are some of the things scientists say we can do that are simple that would help curb some of these issues? Well, first of all, I think one of the issues that we're seeing right now in this conversation is that it gets very complicated very quickly. And like even with the glaciers or the cities, like people kind of lose their attention span to how in-depth this can get. And scientists are frustrated with that, but they're also frustrated with the solutions because the solutions are not that simple either. We've been told like ban fossil fuels, solar and wind only, get electric vehicles. That's like the – it's very simple messaging, but that's not how it's going to work. The reality is a lot more complex than that, but one of the good examples of basically an easy shift would be a shift from coal to natural gas has about 40 to 60 percent less emissions depending on uh depending on where the

natural gas is produced and how it's produced and what technology they're using but if you replaced all the coal around the world you'd be able to with natural gas you would reduce emissions from coal by between 40 and 60 but you're you're forgetting the third part of the holy triumvirate here oh you only said two. What about clean coal? Clean coal. I've been hearing about clean coal forever, bro. We're going to do clean coal.

We're going to do clean coal. It's going to look great. There's no clean coal. I'm sorry. There's coal that is marginally cleaner than other coal, but no. They just wash it a little bit. Right. I don't think anyone who has ever been to a coal facility, which I have, would tell you that there is a clean coal.

Not to say that that hasn't been an important industry for a lot of parts of the world. But that – I think coal is really the only energy source that I think we should put in the past right now. Well, let's talk about the socioeconomic impact of these things though because – You have to replace it with something. You have to replace it with something, but you also have to look at the people in it. I went to school in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, and we were close to a lot of coal towns. And you're talking about places. They are not only people's livelihoods.

They are generationally there. Right. That's their family's heritage. That's right. They've been there for five, six, seven generations. This is what they do. This is what they know. And people can complain about Trump as a politician and all that.

But he reached them for a reason. That's right. They left behind. There's plenty to complain about. But what you cannot deny is that even if you don't think it was genuine, he went and he spoke to these people. And he said, we're not going to take you out of the mines because you have been left behind because you had all these coastal elites who were like, oh, yeah, those people. Go learn how to code. Right, right, right.

They literally said that. Exactly. And I think that was like a meme too on Twitter. I put it on my book. Both Kerry and Biden said basically coal miners you should go learn how to code and it's like well no wonder you're losing uh the blue collar americans joe no wonder uh ohio democrats who voted for obama are now voting for trump it's because they don't that's like the worst thing they could have heard. It's basically saying fuck you, figure it out.

And it's like when these people see politicians holding the hands of other groups around the country for certain things, which maybe they're right to do. Right. And then they realize their own hand isn't getting held. Of course they're going to be upset about that. So I fully understand that, and I get why Trump went in there and said we're going to put you back down there in the mines from a from a socioeconomic perspective it made all the sense in the world it doesn't change the fact that like okay oh we're human beings and we have needs and that's right and so not everything is a number on a spreadsheet we're not numbers on a spreadsheet humanity is not numbers on a spreadsheet we are people who are

trying to do the right things for our families in our own ways. And for you, it's starting a podcast because that's what you want to do. For me, it's launching a nonprofit because that's what I want to do. For people in West Virginia, it's being a coal miner because that's what their family's done for seven generations. How do we fix that? That's going to be my question. How do we tell people like that, like, hey, we're going to help you out. We're not going to make you go code. Right. But we're going to figure out ways that if, let's say, we change this industry to natural gas or something like that.

Is there a way you can be a cog on the wheel there to make more money than you do now? Totally. So that's the real opportunity that the left has missed is that all these communities have infrastructure for energy production. And yes, like coal isn't the same as solar or natural gas, like they they're not exactly the same. But there there are similar processes of trying to get electricity from a plant to the grid and, and, you know, having workers who are, you know, kind of boots on the ground, you know, these are very similar jobs and let's replace a closing coal plant with a different energy source that these people can use and usually

the ones that they don't have to like learn how to code or learn something outside of their you know education is nuclear or natural gas uh and geothermal too those three energy sources have very similar processes to coal in many ways. And they're very like kind of – like if you think about like a manufacturing hub or a steel mill or whatever, all these people can work pretty like interdisciplinary. Like the mining is similar. The production is similar. There's turbines that are similar for every energy source uh to power uh the grid like they they have very similar backgrounds in i was so i was just in

wyoming uh two weeks ago and bill gates who i don't like on a variety of things but he just unveiled the first next gen nuclear project it's's basically like the first nuclear plant that's not the old traditional reactor. Wait, Bill Gates did this? He's put in billions of dollars. Pull that up. Bill Gates nuclear plant? Yeah. Those in Wisconsin?

It's called TerraPower. No, Wyoming. Wyoming. The other W state that's in the middle of now. Yeah, they're all flyovers to me. Not to me. Not to me. Honestly, though, I say that because until three weeks ago, I had never been west of Pennsylvania.

What? Yeah, it's crazy. You've missed the best part of the country. So that's what I'm saying. When I was quite literally flying over those states, I didn't know what states they were, but it was a clear day, and we were 35,000 feet up. I was just looking out the window. I had the window seat, and it was so beautiful everywhere I went. And I'm like, damn, it all looks like – in a weird way, you run into some mountains.

You run into some valleys and shit like that. But it looks like it's all part of the same environment and it's in the same country I'm in. It's crazy. I think the Midwest and the West are the most beautiful parts of this country. It's pretty amazing. So I was at this event that – the picture is on the screen below. Actually, there's a – yeah. So Bill Gates is in the middle there.

Basically, so that's in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming. Five miles from that is a coal plant that's closing in 2028. The town was about to go bankrupt because the town was completely like reliant on this coal plant billy build them some nukes and bill said this town is where we want to build the nuclear power plant how about that and so all these people can go work at this nuclear power plant now it's not the exact same process as a coal power plant but it has very similar processes they're not people don't have to dramatically change their lives to understand how to work on it. And it basically revived the town. And the people who work at these plants, you know, make well over six figures. Wow. Yeah. Now this is cool. Very cool. For a litany of reasons, because you also

introduced something that was going to be another question I'm sure was going to come up at some point with the nuclear, because we saw that, you had chernobyl you had what was the one in three mile three mile island right that was pennsylvania yes right so that was here chernobyl was over there and we had this huge attitude form around the world even in before like climate change was a real focus to be like oh we gotta get away from nuclear yep and now that you know we've moved to all these sometimes like over the top you know trying to legislate to protect the climate ideas we we're starting to move away from fossil fuels and doing that and people are like yo we can do climate friendly things with nuclear and for a long time politicians around the world have been like, fuck that.

Nuclear is bad for the environment. But it's actually fairly good provided you do it safely because it's nuclear. Can you explain this? It's better than any other energy source. It's the cleanest energy source. I will die on that hill. Why is that? So to create the material for nuclear, you just need one thing pretty much.

It's uranium, and uranium gets mined from the ground. You don't need – and there are human beings for the most part that are getting the uranium. You don't need these massive mining facilities. I actually just went down 1,400 feet below ground. It was super fun for me. Glad you had fun. It was pitch dark. There were like 12 miners down there and they were blowing up the underground to get uranium.

And that uranium is what turns into the fuel for our nuclear energy. There is basically no other process but getting the uranium, processing it, and then having it fuel our nuclear facilities. There's zero carbon emitted at all during that process. When you have solar panels, you have to mine for the materials in solar panels. It's a huge, it's a far more intensive mining process. And you have to use coal plants or nuclear, or natural gas or nuclear to power the mining for solar. So you're already using a lot of carbon just to get the solar out of the ground in the first place. And the panels themselves are made using a lot of carbon just to get the solar out of the ground in the first place. And the panels themselves are made from a lot of different fossil fuels.

So overall, it's better in the lifespan of a solar panel. It is still cleaner. But it's actually not 100% clean. Nuclear is the closest thing to 100% clean. It has the lowest carbon impact out of any of the energy sources. And science proves this. It also has the least amount of deaths per kilowatt hour produced out of any energy source. What do you mean by that? So kilowatt hour, just like, just in simple terms, like for how much energy it produces for an hour at someone's home versus a solar at someone's home versus whatever, it has the least

amount of deaths. And deaths are like, you know, you have deaths in mining, you have deaths in, you know, all sorts of different like health issues. It's each energy source has certain deaths associated with it. Like nuclear has the Chernobyl deaths and like all these, you know, people are dying, not at large numbers, but every energy source has some sort of adverse effect. So it's anything. Anything. Nuclear has the lowest number of deaths per hour produced out of any energy source. So it's not only the safest, but it's also – or it's not only the cleanest, but it's also the safest.

And people have completely missed the boat on nuclear. Nuclear is the answer to lowering carbon emissions right now this is so interesting though because it's like we get into these places in society where there's things you can't talk about like oh don't even mention right right right and then suddenly it changes so it's starting to change two years ago it was yo if you talked about china being a problem i was like no no don't do that that's like racist or something and then suddenly like, like, I started to see some of this. Now it's the cool thing to do. Some of the think tanks writing about it.

I was like the meme in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I was like, wait a minute. DiCaprio. And I called up my boy Danny Jones. I'm like, yo, this is about to change. And now it's like, yo. Daniel Jones, the New York Giants quarterback? No, different Danny Jones.

He's the guy down in Tampa. The more important Danny Jones. Yeah, I mean, the one, the Giants quarterback? No, different Danny Jones. He's the guy down in Tampa. The more important Danny Jones. Yeah, the one – the Giants quarterback kind of sucks. Yeah, he does suck. This is an Eagles household, so, you know. Good. You like that. You like that.

Yeah, we're making friends there. But anyway, so I called him up, and I'm like, dude, this is about to change. And now you see it. Everyone talks about it. They talk about it on mainstream media, which makes me think sometimes. I'm like, wait a minute. Are we taking this a little too seriously but now it seems like you got fucking bill gates building nukes right two years ago this would have been like you know taboo oh my god well

and he's been working on this for a while but it was so taboo that even like his own side you know because he's somewhat left of center like wasn't gonna even give him the credit or talk about it because he was kind of doing it on his own island and now everyone's like oh actually he was which which island uh the nuclear island okay just making sure yeah you gotta be careful around him yeah islands yeah we're yeah we're talking about islands a lot new york's an island we're talking about Bill Gates' island. But in that picture, the guy in the cowboy hat is the Republican governor, super Trumpy guy. Next to Billy. Yeah. So you have like a Trumpy Republican governor partnering with Bill Gates,

and he worked with the Republicans and the Democrats in the state legislature to get this approved. Good. It's a perfect example of the power nuclear has. And like I said, it's going to replace these jobs that are being lost. So you could do that, to get back to your question. You could put natural gas plants in places, like at least the processing or some part of the natural gas process. Can you do that in the same places as where coal is? Does it matter where they are actually situated some places you can't do it there's most of the time you can do it wherever the coal plant is interesting and especially with nuclear um you can do that there any like mineral processing for solar and wind

you could do in a coal facility coal plant i mean you have to retrofit it you have to update and upgrade the infrastructure to that specific energy source, you'd have to retrofit it. You'd have to update and upgrade the infrastructure to that specific energy source. But you already have the land. You already have a lot of the infrastructure. They have a lot of the same, they use a lot of the same machines and technology. Like it's actually, energy is energy.

And a lot of it is pretty complimentary across the different sectors. So coal communities don't have to die or move somewhere else to have success. And I think this plant in Wyoming is a perfect example. Yeah, that's – I didn't know about this. That's really, really cool. It's just interesting to see the narrative on that change.

450,000 homes can be powered by this one nuclear plant that's coming online. How big is this roughly? It's smaller than the traditional nuclear plant just by a little bit so if you think about that smokestack picture you think of uh with or it's not a smokestack but it looks like a smokestack of a nuclear power plant it'll be about that size but a little bit smaller oh bravo so it's really small like one traditional nuclear plant you have to replace with over three million solar panels that's the equivalent of power like if you wanted to power the same amount of homes with solar as you do nuclear it'd be three million solar panels for one nuclear plant that is a lot of space and a lot of resources and a lot

of fossil fuels and a lot of fossil fuels this plant this plant that's coming online powers even more homes than that so it's it's it's a remarkable kind of success story of republicans democrats fossil fuel people clean energy people climate people all working together all right now outside of the potential for like a nuclear reactor problem or something like that what are the potential drawbacks it's this so that's a problem the the expense comes from two things one our regulatory structure in the united states makes it almost impossible to build a nuclear plant other countries are building them very quickly and much more cheaply but we have way more regulations and all these things called permitting processes that are actually very

fairly arbitrary and even the most ardent climate person would say that we need to loosen those restrictions. Like they are really unnecessary. But the other thing is it's just a huge upfront cost. So it's more expensive upfront, but over the lifespan, it's cheaper. But it's like, that's like telling somebody, I mean, because energy is energy, like you can drive a Tesla, which is going to be $20,000 more expensive than the gas-powered car. But you're going to save on gas, and over the course of the lifespan of the Tesla, you're actually going to end up saving money compared. People are going to be like, I can't afford the extra $20,000 now. I don't care about what's happening in 10 years.

That's the same thing with nuclear. It's more expensive now, less expensive in the long run, and getting people to approve higher tax, whatever the way that they're going to pay for it is, they're using mostly private dollars for this one, is really difficult because people don't want to pay that money now. Okay. But you mentioned one of the things there is all the regulatory hurdles that then so you could decrease it significantly yeah right so this goes to a a classic battle that is a theme that's come up throughout the life of this podcast that i've done in different episodes for different reasons but has to do with where the buck stops yeah yeah so i think governments are largely inefficient yes i think we've proven that they're they get big they're bureaucratic you know go to a dmv

and you'll kind of get a feel for some of the people exactly that you know sometimes just clock in at the government and then that's why things move slow there's no incentive there's no incentive for them to get better that's right and so that's an issue but there's really as best as i can tell in a in an advanced first world society at the very least there's really only two places the buck can stop it can stop with the government or it can stop with corporations and my issue is that there are enormous drawbacks to both. If corporations are completely allowed to run free… Well, then they become kind of governments themselves. They absolutely.

Look at what we have in Silicon Valley now, for example. And also look at 1929 and look at 2008. You see what happens when there's no governors if you will on the tracks for them and so then people go oh so you want the government coming in and making regulations listen governments never let a balance yes you never let a good crisis go to waste if you're the government so when 2008 happens they fuck every single end of wall street including places that had nothing to do with anything that happened with the crisis. Sure.

Absolutely. There's another great example. And so it's like I constantly have a situation where it's like freedom and everyone gets fucked. Or I have like we're coming in for you and everyone gets fucked. Yeah. So how do we do this in a reasonable way that says government, corporations, shake, shake, shake. We have a good time. We actually innovate. We do things. There's a good relationship with regulation and everything is

hunky dory. I think that that's an incredibly important balance. I actually, so I work, you know, I've talked a lot with like the Black Rocks, JP Morgans, like the companies that are seen as evil, right? No. what's really interesting is basically they say, if you want us to have less control, then we need to have laws to do that. They're doing what they're allowed to do. And to your point, I don't actually blame the companies because their goal is to grow the company

and to make more profit and to help their shareholders and help their customers. But one company's customers isn't the whole world. And so the government has the obligation then to say, okay, here's what you can and can't do. Which is regulation. And a lot of the companies actually kind of want that. It's not like they're trying to ruin these big companies that, like we said, are kind of turning into governments. Like, they're not, they don't want, these aren't, like, some nefarious, like, I know there's conspiracies, but, like, I've talked to a lot of, like, they're not nefarious. They're not trying to ruin the

world. They're just trying to, like, they're in their silo. I agree. And so, there needs to be this balance. And I think, like, the BlackRock, JP Morgans are a perfect example of where that's failed. And on the environment, it's very true too. Like the government should say that we should protect against nuclear waste disasters. The government should make sure that we're not destroying an ecosystem to put up an offshore wind turbine, right? Like, we shouldn't be mining all the American West and the beautiful national parks for solar panels in the name of saving the environment, right? Like, we shouldn't be harming these places that we all need to survive. But we also shouldn't be like, requiring that a company takes 10 years to approve this permit for a nuclear plant that has no impact on the environment whatsoever. And there's this like kind of overreach that's been happening on the environment where every single energy source basically has to wait somewhere between 7 and 12 years to get an approved permit from the federal government.

And it's not because – 7 to 12 years. Yeah. It's not because they have some massive amount of research or something that they need to figure out to see if it's a good project for that area or not. It's literally just because the government sucks at doing its job. And you could streamline a lot of those without removing the important restrictions, right? Like if you're going to contaminate the water supply, probably should follow that restriction. Like if you're going to mine in a rural community and you're going to put everyone's life at risk, like probably shouldn't – you probably shouldn't remove that restriction. But if it's just because you have a lot of the breakdown of

these restrictions that are super unnecessary, it comes from the fact that there's so much bureaucracy because there are so many different departments of the federal government, and they all have to approve the same thing. So you have the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the USDA. You have to pass all these approvals it's like why can't we just go through one right like why can't we just that would be too easy that would be you'd have people out of jobs yeah that's exactly right and you're you say something in there that is an unpopular opinion that i share with you a hundred percent which people don't like to hear conspiracy minded people don't like to hear but like-minded people don't like to hear. But like these companies aren't necessarily evil.

Are there a few evil guys out there who happen to be CEOs or CFOs? Absolutely. But like by and large, like everyone loves this whole BlackRock conspiracy or whatever. BlackRock is a public company. Right. Every three months, they have to report their nut right to the public yep for their fucking stock price and so when they do this if they don't do a good enough job quarter to quarter you are out of a fucking job right especially once you get up to those high

end ladders where the people make decisions because guess what there's nowhere else to go except get fired you can't go up and if they fail it's bad for a lot of regular human beings too because there's a lot of people who do their pension funds and and retirement funds all tied it's all tied together yeah there's not something to fit like blackrock is like just trying to do what's best for the company and if you don't want them to invest in china then make sure that like to set up laws where they can't invest so much money in china which is which and this gets to our point, which is regulation. But those guys can sit on those conference calls once a quarter and say, yeah, we couldn't take that opportunity because the government said we couldn't. Our hands are tied, and they don't get punished for it because that's where it's an even playing field for everyone else.

And then the conservatives may say, well, that's not a free market. Listen, you can't – That's the tough thing it's tough but like the when you have 10 regulations where there should be one right that's where there's an issue right it's not 10 or zero that's right and i think that that's like there we've gotten this headspace where it's like we need a free market or we need to rely on regulation for everything relying on regulation for everything is not a good idea. And letting companies do whatever the hell they want to do is also not a good idea. That was the whole point of America's success is that there was a balance between those two things. Overall, again, as a trend of a country, we've had a pretty good balance

of the government stepping in when it needs to and the private markets being able to do what they need to do and of course there have been examples of that not being true but that's the balance that we need to strike especially when it comes to the environment because it is a it is a public good a common good like we we all rely on the resource the natural resources that we are surrounded by all the time it's's our food, it's our energy, it's all those things. Destroying it has an impact on all of us. A company doing that to just make a profit is not good for the world and it would doom society. But on the flip side, if you stifle all economic growth and innovation because the government's stepping in at every turn, you also screw over society in the same way that you would

if you were allowing people to just do whatever the heck they wanted to. You're basically – both ways you're being inhumane. Both ways hurt humanity. Yes, and this is the problem. It's like how do you find that beautiful middle-ish area there and our society unfortunately works – That's not cool these days. It's not cool and our society unfortunately works that's not cool these days it's not cool and our society works in pendulums our society is constantly like i mean you feel it now so many people were like when you just walk outside go like that and take a temperature of the wind right

in 2020 so many people were like it's time to get trump the fuck out of there right they're more liberal minded now you go out you say outside to do it they're like we gotta get back in there exactly and it's just like I'm I just this is the one place in my life I feel some zen because like I just I've seen this I know how people work with that I'm like oh it all comes back here eventually and it will always go back there too but I wish it would it wouldn't happen right this. And I worry that it's happening more like that than ever before. Oh, yeah. It gets worse and worse. And I think we're at a really scary point in this country where – and this is why – this kind of goes back to the general problem with the environment and climate.

That that – so before the early 2000s and Al Gore and all that stuff, the environment was incredibly bipartisan. Everyone just agreed on the same principles. They wanted clean air, they wanted clean water, they wanted energy that wasn't going to pollute their air, like whatever. And then their politicians worked out the solutions. That's how like our democracy should work. We say, hey, these are the things that are important to us. And you guys figure out the solutions, you find some compromise or whatever. Because compromise means compromise in politics means that you're representing all sides of the country. Like, I don't know how compromise got to be such a dirty word. If you're compromising with the left, which is mostly represented in urban areas,

you're also finding a solution that might help an urban area, and you're also finding a solution that might help a rural area, conservative area, liberal area. Like, you're helping out the entire country when you compromise because you're bringing all voices to the table. That's what compromise was and used to be, the environment becoming partisan and super polarizing like Greta and people sitting in traffic. You don't like Greta? You're not a Greta fan? I've met her a few times. Oh, you have?

Yeah. Oh, let's take that little sideshow. I testified at Congress with her in 2019. Okay. So what's she like? I felt like she was incredibly well-intentioned. But. I would believe that.

Her parents were controlling everything. Ah. And. She's like a YouTube kid. Yeah, exactly. And her parents were backstage at congress we were all in this like waiting room and they had her phone and they were posting for her and they were doing all these things that like you know she obviously was groomed by her parents to do that. That's gross. And I think she unintentionally.

Has done way more harm than good. And has pushed. So many people away. From being part of the solution. I don't know what. Rational person sees Greta. And says. That's what I want.

You've stolen my future. Everything is horrible. The world is the worst it's ever been. All these people are out to get you and everyone's just kind of like, okay, I don't buy into that and I don't want to ban fossil fuels like you're telling me to do. So basically I'm going to turn the other way and not engage at all.

It's also like when she started talking, she was what, like 15 years old or something? And by the way, Butch, can we pull up the picture of Greta? Type in Greta Thunberg, UN, Trump. So she's 15 years old. She doesn't know fuck all about the world. That's not her fault. fault but like you know she's telling people and we're going to get to this that they're going to have it's going to have real effects on people in the world one day yeah who are part of the people who make this thing go that you know she can sit there and say look we won we have no more fossil

fuels and like there's farmers dying and now people aren't eating because those are the people who provide you your food so she's been seen as a like an enemy yeah we have this image up right here i can't believe that they're in the same place that's that's perfect right there let's stick that you got on camera fuck great job i had forgotten that they had been in the same place like this is kind of staged obviously you know with her face looking at Trump or whatever, and I understand. Like you may not be the biggest fan of the guy who says he's a hoax invented by the Chinese. I fully understand that. Right, right, right.

However, to your point, there are so many people in this country. Half the country doesn't fuck with him. Half the country fucks with him. Right, right, right, right. Who will see this picture and will now look at her and say fuck that girl right exactly i'm never dealing with her and now anything she says we do the opposite because that's how people are wired to think and so you will now turn off you can't even have a conversation about what a car what a carbon footprint even is no you can't with somebody because they're like oh that they immediately think of greta. Yes. And it's – they immediately think of AOC, Greta, and Al Gore.

And it's like what worse things could you do? Like when I think about the environment, I think about the environment. That's right. I think about what I'm trying to protect. I think about the picture on my book cover. Like I think about nature. I think about the places that i love like that's what i think about that the political world that we live in today of making everything way over here or way over here is having disastrous

effects on society but it's having a really disastrous effect on this issue because no one thinks about the environment as the environment anymore one side thinks of it as like the social justice like climate science doomsday scenarios that haven't even existed yet and one side sees it as greta and aoc like that is a horrible place to be if you're trying to solve a problem well the other thing is when you and and this this is where it gets a little bit like government power structural conspiratorial, and I think it's a very fair question. When you divide society on things that they're just going to go farther and farther apart on and probably not get any solutions and fight in the streets against each other over it. Oh, they want that. They want that because then they get to do all the things that are a little more complicated that, you know, actually matter that the people aren't paying attention to and they're able

to do that. Right. Right. So they can throw in 75 billion, and I'm not saying they did this exact example, but I'm just throwing one out there. They can throw in $75 billion of funding to fucking, you know, Ukrainian tanks and, and fancy dinners over there into the middle of a bill called Climate Action 2024. Right?

And meanwhile, society and Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, they're just going to fight over like, oh my god, they put in the Green New Deal here. And you're going to have the predictable two people who then the posts that get the most attention are the ones that are the most extreme so that the most people will engage with it and the system goes on and on joe biden did this exact scenario that you're talking about on climate so he passed this thing called the inflation reduction act which was the biggest investment in climate in u.s history literally called the inflation reduction act but it was a climate bill, okay? That in itself should be, like, against the rules. There's a climate, okay? We got it. Why couldn't it just be the Climate Reduction Act?

So he passed that. Not only is that a perfect example because they literally used a different name to try to get it across because they knew that inflation mattered more to people at the time than climate did. And the bill was literally expected to increase inflation. It should have been called the Inflation Act. The Inflation Inflation Act. That doesn't ring as well.

But they also included like – so it wasn't just climate. So that already was like a misleading thing. But it also included healthcare and pharmaceuticals and all this stuff and then i actually liked a lot of the different climate portions of it a lot of them were like these small bipartisan bills that they bunched together but then they threw in all this other stuff and then they wondered why republicans didn't vote for it and it's like well stop trying to like use this as a vehicle for all this other shit it's really annoying but then they get to say oh republicans don't care yeah exactly and that's that's exactly what they wanted it was

a you know electoral play but on the flip side republicans would never consider supporting it because they also don't want to be seen as you know capitulating to the left and it's just like holy crap like we are like it is it feels like i'm in middle school every time that i'm dealing with politicians it's like well i don't want to give the other side a win like that would be really bad for my election and then the other side's like i'm gonna i'm gonna do it all in this one bill so the republicans don't vote for it i'm gonna make them look really bad and you're like but that doesn't get it through but yeah but we care about it right and if they really cared about it they would just forget about the other stuff and just vote for it one virtue signal for you yes one

little token for you and you can keep that for yourself because that's what they do that's what they do and then they don't get anything done, and then they can campaign on that. Because now you have Democrats in swing districts running against Republicans saying, this person doesn't care about the environment. This person doesn't care about the climate. This person hates the environment. They didn't vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. And to the average person, they're like, oh, yeah, that actually does look pretty bad. The biggest climate investment bill ever, you didn't vote for it?

Well, and then people kind of lose interest. It's like, well, there's other parts of it, though. There were parts of it that You didn't vote for it? Well, and then people kind of lose like, you know, interest. It's like, well, there's other parts of it, though. There were, you know, there are parts of that I didn't like. And people aren't going to like care about that nuance. People just want to score political points and they don't care what the ramifications are, whether the bill gets passed or not. This one ended up getting passed. A lot of them don't end up getting passed. The politicians don't care. They just want to divide us and they just want to be part of their own camps so that they can get elected and it kind of goes full circle to what we were talking about earlier. And they know that the truth on this stuff takes time and effort to find and this is where I'll defend the average American. The average American has a couple kids. There's no way they can pay attention like that. They work a hard – exactly. They can't be running through going, all right, let's find out what part of the bill this was.

It doesn't work like that. So all you need is the 30-second ad that plays in the background when someone is just having a beer and chilling on a Monday night football, relaxing after a long day at work that they have to do all over again the next day. And they hear, oh, shit, that guy doesn't care about the climate. They're literally toying with us. And you're right like it doesn't matter how educated quote-unquote you are you can't pay attention to these issues that deeply and like if i didn't have environment and climate as my number one issue and i wasn't working on this every single day i wouldn't even know that that's why the inflation reduction act was so partisan i would have no idea like and i probably would

hate republicans for that like probably, if I was less politically active, but I had the exact same beliefs that I have, which is I'm a conservative leaning person who cares a lot about the environment, but I was like working, you know, at Starbucks or something. I would literally just think, oh, Republicans still hate the environment. I'm not voting for that person, even though I, because I just don't have the time. And I think that's like all of our politicians are misleading us because we don't have the time. They know that. They know that they can oversimplify this and have us believe it. They know that they can use a partisan political point and have it work because we don't have time to do the details. details yeah and one of the things you point out in your book that's really important when you talk

about the political divide is the lack of an understanding of the existence of the other right and this comes down to the coastal crowd versus you know the middle america crowd the rural crowd if you will and i was i was talking to you about flying over those states or whatever and how beautiful it looked but like i feel like a lot of people who maybe live here don't even think that way and by the way and it does work both ways you know because in doing this job i talk with people i get to talk with people all over the world i get to not just in that seat but like i have fans all over the country that are in these places i talk with them about what they see and it's really cool for me because i have a

better understanding for what they deal with on a day-to-day and that's fucking awesome but like right i appreciate that and yet you know very few people get access to that and i'm and i recognize that but it still doesn't stop that the red it doesn't change the fact that the rhetoric's gone crazy especially when we're so we have such an ability to be interconnected these days it pisses me off more disconnected than ever but like i'm standing in i'm standing in uh one of the convenience stores up here this is like two months ago and you know i do get my groceries delivered to my door i hope you don't mind my carbon footprint with that but anyway i'm standing in there like grabbing something that i

forgot and there's a woman i think she was it was she was holding avocados and she was testing out like each avocado perfectly for for their. And I was an only child. I people watch, right? So I'm looking at this. This lady has purple hair. She's wearing a shirt that says like climate action 2019 or something like that. That was my mom's. And I'm watching her grab all these avocados and everything.

And I'm making some judgments in my head because, again, I didn't speak to her. So I can't tell exactly what she thinks or whatever. and everything and i'm making some judgments in my head because again i didn't speak to her so i can't tell exactly what she thinks or whatever but the appearance and the shirt kind of like okay i think dead giveaway i can probably guess what she's going to say about what we need to do with fossil fuels and stuff like that and all i could think about was the fact that that avocado in her hands started with a farmer somewhere maybe even a farmer in new jersey this is the garden state who nonetheless operates a farm waking up at 4 a.m every day and is one of millions around this country who feeds people like me and like her who has to rely on fossil fuels to do this and who you know the legislation happening in washington dc that may prevent that guy from

doing that is going to put him out of business and not take that avocado right the fuck out of her hands. Totally. And not enough people understand this. That is actually, I think, where most of our societal breakdowns come from, is from this, like, total misunderstanding of each other through, like, the geographical divide. If you think about it, like, when was the last time donald trump spent time in like the south side of chicago or like the slums of la like he's not going to go there republicans aren't going to go there in general compared to like aoc she represents a poor district in you know new york city area that's right when's the last time she was in rural iowa like never so these politicians don't represent a big swath of the country they they over they over index on the communities that

they're comfortable in and they forget about the other side which just creates more division and creates more of a like mentality of these people don't care about me like when i'm in i'm going to iowa today when i go to iowa i can guarantee you that when i'm there people will feel very disenfranchised and if i said i was just in new york city they'd be like oh oh the new york city land of Sodom and Gomorrah. I don't think they even know that Iowa exists. And people in Seattle don't know that Iowa exists. I lived there for a while, and when I told people I was from Wisconsin,

they're like, holy crap. Like, where is that? I don't even know where Wisconsin is. But then when I tell like people in in wisconsin that i went to seattle they're like oh my god that must have been horrible there's just like this crazy like misunderstanding of each other and our politicians embody that to the fullest and then like people like tucker carlson and you know morning joe are like literally embodying that like tucker carlson makes it seem like every city is the biggest hellscape on earth. That's right. And the Morning Joes are like, we have the dumbest people in America, and they're all in conservative places.

And they're really fucking dumb. And it's like, oh. It's like by design. Real quick, I just got to go to the bathroom. I think Butch has to go too, but we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So this dichotomy we're talking about though with the coastals and the campaigning for the divide after trump had come into office so totally i'm at lunch in manhattan with my boss and this other woman who is i want to say like it's gonna sound not great but like she's fucking

awesome and really really really successful businesswoman. And so we were talking about all different types of things and obviously all about the markets at the time because I was working on Wall Street. But it came up into some politics as well. She was like a very moderate Republican who then just hated Trump, didn't like Hillary, didn't like Biden, but was just very, very pissed off about him. About Trump, yeah. Yeah. And it got to the point where it came up about the people who are like his base. And she – I'll never forget this in the middle of this really nice Italian restaurant. She goes, and then you got all these fucking people in the middle of America who are crying and saying, you think we're so stupid. You think we're so stupid up there.

And she's like, that's exactly right. I do think you're fucking stupid. I think you're really fucking dumb. And like I saw this and I realized she's just upset about the situation. But these are the attitudes that have formed. And I was like, oh, that shit's real. These are who she can blame. Yes. And that to me is scary.

Because the people in those areas, like I grew up in a pretty rural area. And like that sort of response is exactly the same towards urban folks. Like they're so stupid. They're so out of touch. They're so elitist. They don't care about anyone but themselves. Like all like basically much, like the smarts that rural America has are not the same smarts as people in urban America, but that doesn't mean that it should be diminished. It's like, if you put that business woman on a farm in the place that her food came

from, I don't think she'd know what she was doing like i don't think she'd have any idea so to people like who live in those areas they think she's dumb correct they think like oh you can't you're not self-sufficient you can't you know you're just gonna order off of a menu wow it cuts both it cuts both ways book like they're more like real life smart we're more like book smart in urban areas. And both are important. Like we need to be advancing technology in places like New York City and Seattle and places like that. 100%.

We also need people who are really good with their hands and really good in the land. Like we need that so badly too. It's a different sort of smarts. Yeah. And that's the yin and the yang of this whole thing that's the that's the worst part of it in the sense that it it has become a it's us or them and only one of us can win like i think we'd be fucked as urban people if these stupid rural people weren't helping us yeah and rural america would be fucked if we weren't helping them like it's like we have

a very symbiotic relationship we just don't realize it we've gotten to a point where even if you just divide it back to straight politically you have the bases of each party don't want the other to exist forget that we disagree and we're going to fight it out in politics and may the best man or woman win it's not like that it's like i don't want you to exist and this i can say with 1000 percent certainty there has never been a point in human history where one ideology says the other can't exist and then that happens where that ends well no not once and as much as i get annoyed by the two-party system for things we've already outlined today i will take that all day right No, never. in a really visceral way. But like, we can't we can't have a functioning society without the people in both sides of the aisle. And until we realize that, like, we are going to continue down this path of like what you're saying, like this, like this visual of like, we are way over here,

way over here. And what I found is really interesting. So I grew up in pretty privileged. My parents are entrepreneurs. And, you entrepreneurs and we had a pretty privileged background. But I went to high school across the street from a dairy farm. My high school, there were a lot of people from – we were kind of on the outskirts of an already kind of outskirt town. And I saw kind of their hardships firsthand. Then I went to Seattle and saw the different hardships that are happening there, which are very different than the hardships that I grew up around. But they're very similar in terms of what people want, and that's what people don't understand about each other. It's like the things that somebody in inner city New York is struggling with and somebody in rural Iowa is struggling with are are, sure, they're different situations,

but they're very similar in what they want to change. Like, they want a job that puts more food on their table. They want a safe community. In Iowa, maybe there's more of a, like, opioid addiction, because that happens a lot in rural areas. Maybe in New York, it's like more of the crime. Like, I don't really know, but like everyone wants safer communities,

healthier communities. They have different situations, but they think that the other side's like way against them when actually like they're both feeling very disenfranchised in a similar way. Like, I don't want to like say like, oh, we're all going to come together and realize like kumbaya.

No, but we do have very similar issues. And if you're feeling disenfranchised, the person who's feeling disenfranchised, that's your enemy actually isn't your enemy. It's the greatest crime that the politicians have played upon society, dividing us in two to make us think we're extremely different. When in reality, we just have a few different opinions on how to actually get the end result but people want to put food on their table they want health for their family they want safety in their communities and they want the opportunity to grow and possibly live the american treatments it's no different no for all these people and you know i i hope you know i'm one of these guys i'm very like listen it's not

that serious like i do content right it's fun like we have a good time i don't think like oh we're changing the world here but if there's one thing that could be really cool that would require a lot of people in podcasts and not just talking about like this show or anything like all different shows and stuff one thing that would be really cool is if over time here we can use these platforms talking to cool people from all these different perspectives maybe in like the style i do and a lot of other people do to bridge that gap totally without even you know this is a more of course we have to talk a lot of politics in this conversation right here today because we're talking about a very political issue. But I have most of the people in here where like that's not the main part of the conversation at all. Right.

And there's got to be a way to use that to bridge that divide a little bit to realize like, oh, this person – this person I always experience is a lot different than mine. But their emotions and their feelings on what they want, god damn, that's similar. Like normalize that. We do need to normalize that. And I think that that's like the power that you have and the power that I have too is like showcasing these like quote unquote anomalies and oxymorons that are like not that way. Like I'm a conservative environmentalist. That in itself seems like an oxymoron. But almost every conservative I know is really passionate about loving the environment. My parents are vegan, conservative

Wisconsinites. Like, we got to stop putting each other into these weird boxes and start realizing that we all have these different kind of variables in our lives that actually make us so much more similar. And that's not to say that there aren't going to be disagreements and policies and all that stuff like that. But let that play out. Like right now, we're disregarding half the country on a human level. Like we're basically saying that they are evil. And like when I talk to Trump supporters, it's like the Biden agenda is out to get you. They're part of this deep state network. They're evil. They're stealing your elections. Like they're,

you know, they're, they're evil. And then you talk to the people, it's like these racist, you know, anti health, anti gay,

you know, anti woman, like stupid rednecks are trying to take away our country and bring it back to a place where it's back like we're south park episode bro it is so unnecessary it is actually so unnecessary and i think that that's like people ask me like what's the most hopeful thing that you see and what's the most frustrating thing you see traveling around the country and like it's the same thing the most hopeful thing is that i see that people are dealing with the same struggles that people are kind of sick of this shit. They're, you know, they want to be represented and they want kind of to, to, to be happy and

fulfilled and they don't want to be depressed. And like, I feel like there's a lot of similar priorities, but yet it's really frustrating that there are so many similar priorities, yet we are going further and further away from each other. And I have this really probably bad belief or controversial belief that phones and social media have done so much more harm to the world than they've done good. I don't see this divide happening without the phones. Like I feel like 100% we have really like and now we're just trying to keep technologically innovating in that space. And I'm like, I'm like, stop. Like, we're basically creating more and more incentives to hate each other every single day. Well, that's the problem. Innovation doesn't stop. Yeah. And sometimes innovation is really good. Like we need more innovation and energy. Because that would other every single day well that's the problem innovation doesn't stop yeah and sometimes

innovation is really good like we need more innovation and energy because that would actually make everyone's life better every single person's life better i don't think more innovation on phones is gonna make our lives better like the guy who invented the infinity scroll meaning like when you keep going and like it reloads the next part of the page. For three hours on Twitter as I'm complaining about it. That's right. There you go. I hate it. I can't stop. But that's the thing. We're psychologically wired to do that unless we check ourselves, and most people don't.

But like that guy, remember, I think he was in that Social Dilemma documentary. I want to say that was the one. If I'm wrong about about that maybe someone can point out the right documentary in the comment section but you know he talked about the regret yeah he had like oh my god i'm so sorry i did this like and he wasn't trying to create something that was going to dick people but that's what happened and my reaction to that is i appreciate your regret if you hadn't done, someone else would have done it the next day. And that's the unfortunate thing. If there is an incentive to invent something, which in this country there's always an incentive on innovation. I mean, Christ, even in communist countries, there's an incentive on it.

It's a bigger incentive. Yeah, they won't get shot. And they're not fighting over it. They're just like, yep, we're just doing it. It's going to happen. And you have to deal with the cards that you are going to be dealt and that you're going to have to play. So, yes, I agree with you. The phones are a huge problem.

Right. But what are we going to do about it? And I also wonder, though, this is the positive side of it. Okay. They've made it this bad because now Johnny in fucking Nebraska and Jimmy in California can both put out their opinions at the same time like someone cares and maybe some people will you know like it makes it more easy to access to go right here behind a keyboard and be like fuck you I hate you die right you know so it gets bad and it gets worse but you know what would it have looked like during the Vietnam years if we had phones?

And we didn't have phones then, but look at how bad it got without them. So it's more like social media. The positive side of it is it may be just revealing us for what we already always were, and now we can just see more of it, which sucks. The negative side of it is it's also affecting our behavior patterns and our ability to get brainwashed every day. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We just totally missed that. Forget that for a second.

Forget that for a second. I'm not even there yet. Yeah. Just the algorithms itself. Sometimes I'm talking to someone and I want to say to them, can you just pull up your Twitter feed for me? Can I just see it? I just want to see what it looks like. Right.

Right? them can you just pull up your twitter feed for me can i just see i just want to see what it looks like right right like these things they bait they they re re integrate the whole like fucking echo chamber of whatever it is we want to feel that day creating it and that's it and so you create these bots that's the part i worry about but it's like we've always been that way in a way so can we just find a way to not make it worse? Right. I think that that's a great point. I think that – and like how can we use technology to do that? Like I have a friend who is trying to start a social media company that is trying to like basically put the algorithms for good.

I don't know if that will work, right? Like I don't know if our brains – if our measly brains will actually want that. Probably not. But like can we use technology for good i i feel like yeah i i've been in therapy for the last seven years um and one of the things that i talk about with my therapist is like that we have kind of over like technology is of all faster than we have our brains are still in this flight or fight or flight space where we're actually kind of addicted to fight or flight and we want to see the negative headline we want like even if we don't want to we do want to subconsciously and we're attracted to it we want to check it out because we want to

make sure that it's not going to hurt us but like the cnn headline's not going to hurt you the the tweet is not going to hurt you and like you don't need to tell somebody that you want them to die. They're not going to hurt you. Like, this is not man fighting bear. This isn't Teddy Roosevelt going out in the wilderness and having a grizzly attack his his camp like this is real life. But it's it's it's also kind of fake. And we're not in life or death situations in civilized society very much. And I actually think like a lot of times we're manifesting the uncivilized situations. Like we are creating so much hatred that we're actually creating these uncivilized situations.

Because another thing that I've talked about with the therapist is like, we, we have this weird thing as humans where we are always trying to predict the future. Like we're not focused on like, we're not focused on the present. we're not focused on like we're not focused on the present we're not focused on like who's around us we're like like even sports it's like what do you think lebron james is going to do in six months or you know what do you think

what do you think the election's going to be and then the election happens and it's immediately what do you think is going to happen in six months it's just like it it's a never ending what's going to happen in the future. We're not talking about what's happening right now. And I think if we all just started to become more present with our, with ourselves and the people around us and like talk to people around us and didn't just go in our own echo chambers about some scary predictions for the future, we'd be a lot better off. I'd love that point, man. Cause you're talking about presence, which is the hardest thing with the phones these days to worry about. That's the ultimate symbol because we're not present when we're on a phone. Like imagine, you know, the next time... We're basically dead. Yeah, in a way, like we're these little bots,

you know, like the next time you're in public, imagine someone's there with a camera and you have to watch yourself while other people are going around you. I try to think about that sometimes. And that's why in public now I'm a lot better with like not just living on my phone. When I got to do work, like when I got to respond to an email and stuff, that shit happens. That's fine. But like the doom scrolling, stuff like that, like I've gotten better with that. And I think it would help to

unplug from that like when i when i went to the amazon with paul i was telling you about that in may it was like it you know my phone was off and in my bag for the 11 days why did you come back it was incredible honestly when i landed at jfk and had to turn that motherfucker back on that was a horrible moment because it was so peaceful without it. It was just like – and you're out there in nature, which is – I love both. I love the city. I love nature. I love that balance.

And you're just – you're present at all times. Even when – like I've read books out there, so that's – you're looking at something else that's not there. But like you're present with the environment around you when you're just focused on a book as opposed to the next tweet. Oh, 100 percent. Yeah, you can actually hear things, smell things, see things. Yeah, and I think like that's – it does actually tie back to the environment because it's really easy like to kind of – and this is where I think rural Americans actually are more pro-environment than urban Americans. Rural Americans tend to be more, and that's controversial too, but rural Americans tend to be more disconnected

and a little bit more hands-on with the surroundings. I don't think that's controversial, by the way, but go ahead. They have a deep connection to nature because they literally interact with it every day. The more that I have become technologically advanced, the less I have interacted with nature. Like that's just true. And I wish that that wasn't true, but I think it's easy to kind of – it's not as – it's not that dopamine hit, right? Like it's like you – it's a grounded feeling that we're all kind of trying to avoid a lot of the times.

And these people who live in those areas are surrounded by it all the time. They're so peaceful and so grounded. And I feel – and they don't even really realize it. Like we talk about groundedness and like you can talk about meditation and stuff and they'd be like, oh, that's some hippie bullshit. They're the ones who are doing it actually every day. They just don't realize it. And I feel like we as a society could be way better off. We'd solve a lot more of these problems if we took a look around for a second and like when you go to an airport no one's looking around

no one's talking to each other no one is building community really anymore these days except for online that's not a community that's an echo chamber you're not building a community online no like you're building an echo chamber. And unless I think the only exception is something like this, where like you're actually hearing like diverse viewpoints over a long period of time. It's not just like a headline. But other than that, like we've just forgotten what human to human interaction looks like. And I don't think any political issue matters truly if we can't figure that out. Well, you're talking about solving problems and we're using terms like our society and our communities and, of course, the connotation there is like within this country. And let's even expand that.

Let's say within countries that are allies or similar type idea countries that have similar social viewpoints maybe on climate and the emphasis on that and solving some of these issues, if you will. Yep. The problem is there's a 500-pound elephant in the room here in the existence of countries like China and Russia who, if I could tell you one thing safely, they don't give a flying fuck about any of these things that we're doing to try to solve these problems. So let's even assume – let's hypothetically say for a second Republicans and Democrats were all on the same page. We all start doing the right things in our own ways within our city environments, within our rural environments with reasonable means.

Not just saying like, oh, ban all fossil fuels and shit like that. But I actually did things that were provably making a difference. Yep. And let's say it was happening in all the other type of first world countries that are like our friends. Wouldn't matter. Wouldn't matter because there's 1.5 billion people and God knows how much land in China. And there's 300 million people and the biggest fucking country in the earth in Russia who are out there saying – and I wasn't even going to bring up India, but 100 percent. That's another 2 billion people or whatever it is who don't give a flying fuck about whether or not they pollute the environment. We like this thing that we're regulating over here.

So how do we solve that problem if we have countries – like forget India for a second has like some friendly relationships with the United States, Russia and China don't fuck with us in a lot of ways, unless there's some money going back and forth. We don't really fuck with them. How do we solve that if they're just going to continue to be like, you know, China, for example, oh, let's build a city no one's going to live in today and have a fucking plant there running 24 seven smogging up the air and, you know, not care about it. Like, how do we even fix that? Yeah, I mean, that is a really good question. And it's something I talk about a lot in the book, because China is building more coal plants than you could even believe it. It's like 50 a day or something. I mean, they're doing some crazy

amount of coal plant production when the rest of the world is decommissioning coal plants, right? But they're also building more nuclear, they're building more hydropower. They're building more solar. They're building more wind. They lead the world in production of every single energy source. Every one. Like, they're not picking winners and losers. They're putting all their eggs into every basket. While like Germany has gone fully solar and wind and put all their eggs in that basket didn't work. China is putting all their eggs in every basket because if one doesn't work, it doesn't matter. They're still invested into something else. But their emissions are skyrocketing still.

India basically announced that they're going to stop their climate targets and build more coal plants just like in the last couple of weeks. And that's what I'm saying. That negates any positive they're doing because they're tripling down on the things that are like the most – Exactly. Yeah. So how you avoid that is really simple really in terms of the approach, which is you have to prove it to those countries that being cleaner is better for them.

And the way you do that is with dollars and cents. It's not through feel-good shit. They don't care about the feel-good shit. If solar and wind saved China money, they would do it. If nuclear saved China money, they would do it. If it made people's lives better, if India could evolve faster, if it could grow economically, if people's lives are more efficient and they could live their lives more efficiently, people would want to adopt it, then India would adopt it. And same with China. They just want to have the ability to power, like they have such a segmented world, but they're

still trying to develop too. If they could develop their country with cleaner energy sources, they would. They just know that it's not reliable enough right now, it's not the reliability of renewables and other clean tech solutions will only be solved through more technological improvement. And those countries need to have it proven to them that they too can embrace these things and it won't harm them. And that's like, we're willing to pay more. We're willing to do more. We're willing to kind of have this moral argument. But they're not willing to do that, and they will if it's cheaper. So if I'm understanding correctly though right now, it sounds like these ways to show them that they can save money for these things don't exist right now. We have to innovate those. The ways they are, for example, building coal as opposed to building something else instead, it's because it does cost less and we don't currently have that solution.

And it's also more reliable. Like solar only works when the sun is shining and wind only works when the wind is blowing. And so even if it was way cheaper, it still wouldn't be fully 100 percent renewable in any part of the world, including China, because they don't want to go dark at night, right? Like they don't want to be dark during a cloudy day. They don't want to be dark during a calm day. So they want to have like, there's like this baseload power question of like nuclear, natural gas, or coal. Those are like the three or hydropower if there's enough water. Those are the ones that can go 24 hours a day. Like it doesn't really matter. And right now they're building more of all of that just because they don't know where the market's headed. But they're using the coal because it's the cheapest.

They're using the coal because it's the cheapest. And they're importing tons of natural gas from other countries that have those reserves, really bad countries like Iraq and Iran and countries that don't have environmental standards because it's cheaper. And if you could prove that nuclear was cheaper, if you could prove that geothermal, which is a new technology, is cheaper, China would do it in a heartbeat. Now, how do you just encourage the innovation there though? And here's what i mean by that if you let the free you say okay i want the government office i want the free market to figure out these ways to do it i don't want that either okay you don't okay so what because you talked about earlier you had the problem with there's 10 where there should be one regulation wise so you do want some i still want the one so you do want

the one meaning let me fill that into my example then meaning maybe there are regulations that say, Hey, if you're going to innovate, I'm going to make one up right now. If you're going to innovate in the energy space, it has to be in say the more renewable, newer energy stuff. And by the way, if you do that, you are free to go sell that internationally to anybody. That would be great. But I also just think incentives in general for new technologies coming up in America

are something that the government could really help out on. Like I think regulations stifle progress in general, which sometimes you do need to stifle progress as we talked about earlier. You want to stifle a really horrible environmental disaster or you want to stifle a company doing something immoral. But sometimes stifling progress is a really bad idea, too. And you want to lower the barrier to entry of the technologies that you're hoping to achieve in this country. Now, some of them might not work out. It's like investing in

a business. You talk to any venture capitalist, and they're like, yeah, we expect a certain percentage of our investments to fail. You can look at my stock prices and you'll see even with the market going up, I've been failing a lot in a few different areas. I hate to admit it, but you're expecting to fail, right? But you're also expecting to find some success stories. And that's what the government should be focused on is how do we equip the private market, not the free market, the private market with the tools to succeed in this country? Can we lower the barrier of entry for these new technologies for entrepreneurs? Can we fund some of their projects? The government is actually partially funding Bill Gates's TerraPower project in Wyoming. Even him? Even him. Because it's so expensive

that he, I mean, even someone like him can't afford to do the whole thing by himself, especially the scale that what he's trying to do. Now, it's his company. It's not him. He's not, you know, there are tons of other next gen nuclear companies that are also taking those. But that's, that's what I think the government's role should be is like helping things get off the ground. And if it works out, great. Let it go, and if it doesn't work out, still let it go. Like stop hanging on, and that's better than relying on regulation. When you said earlier – I'm just remembering the number.

I think you said you had like 45,000 activists at ACC. Are you – is part of what you guys do you know spread it's pretty much all us right yeah it's all okay so it's been we go to the united nations conferences and stuff like that okay but it's also part of it kind of similar to what i know you're doing yourself which is building relationships with like politicians in dc like across those 45 000 people trying to figure out ways that we can innovate legislation for innovation with this. I mean I'll meet with fucking anyone. Like I will meet with Donald Trump or AOC or whoever and like I'm using my platform mostly behind the scenes honestly.

Like I released this book. As I said, I don't really put much time into social media, which I'm trying to change a little bit. But like where is the overlap that we could have in government or in the private market? Like I actually – it's so fascinating. A couple weeks ago, I toured this uranium mine that I talked about going down 1,400 feet. That company is one of the only American companies that like has uranium mines in the United States. We closed most of them down terrapower this company that bill gates started has to use uranium for the fuel that they're going to burn you know

have for the nuclear they didn't know each other the companies didn't even know each other so i introduced them oh and that's like so fulfilling right like that's because i don't know if that's going to work out you know they got to make a deal if they want to make a deal but like those are the sorts of things where like there's a lot of dots that aren't being connected in this country with companies, politicians. And there's more opportunities for a Trumpy governor and a Bill Gates to stand together than people think. So we're kind of using the 45,000 activists to leverage their voice to say, hey, you know, Trumpy Republican governor, we have all these young conservatives who want you to do this. Hey, billionaire liberal, we have some liberals who also want you to do this and kind of like tie that together to bring progress. I love that. And that's basically what I dedicate my life to is doing that.

It's not like spreading this message. It's actually trying to – like when you invited me out here, I literally just planned meetings around it that would basically do what I'm talking about. Yeah, you met with Jared Kushner 10 minutes before this. Exactly. So – and now some people – That's the funniest person coming to a podcast from a meeting I have heard yet. We've had a lot of people in here, but I haven't had someone walk in and be like, yeah, I was just having a beer with old Jar at the golf course. Well, I wasn't having a beer in the morning. I was trying to get it.

When in Rome. Trying to make it sound a little more important. Normal. Normalize my morning beer drinking. No, I mean I think that that's like – but I will say I do get written off by a lot of people who are in their camps because you can pretty easily look me up and look that I do not fall really squarely well within each side. So Jared Kushner could look me up and say, oh, this guy has been anti-Trump before. And AOC could look me up and say, oh, this guy's been anti-Trump before. And AOC could look me up and say, oh, this guy has, you know, been pretty anti- He's conservative. And he's anti-Green New Deal, right? So they aren't really willing to take the meeting. And I

will always do it with good intent. Have you met with her? I have not. She's refused to. I always do things with good intent. I never, like this meeting with Jared Kushner, like nothing with malintent. Like I actually want to work with him. Just like I would want to work with AC. Without going into things that have to be private from a meeting. First of all, so you reached out to him ahead of coming out here and he accepted the meeting? So I have a friend who's friends with him and he lives in the area too. And he, you know, invited me out told jared that he wanted to have a meet

with me and because i have also had an interest in meeting with him and we met up by the pool of the the trump national golf club and we met with the names on all the doors exactly their houses right there it's beautiful um he totally got it like it was, like, and it was not fake. Like, the guy is a business guy. He's very uninvolved in the campaign, from what I understand. But he was like, it makes sense economically for America to be good on this stuff. We need to be leading the world in this sort of production of energy. Like, otherwise we're going to let china and other

countries take it over what was your main because like you're also representing an organization that is looking at the organization's ability in the future to help move these things in the right directions but like you sit down with them what's what's your pitch like like when when he says go like what what are you really saying to him Are you going more towards those broad things like, hey, here's what we got to do versus like here's what my organization does and by the way, here's how we can help do these things? You establish credibility first. Like what I was focused on is basically like I automatically assume that every conservative has – especially who's over the age of 35 or 40, has this like barrier on these issues. And I automatically talk their wall down, even if they don't have one. Basically, and if they don't have one, then they like what I'm saying. But basically, even if I'll say something exactly like this,

even if you don't believe in climate change, even if you don't believe that the environment is a top priority, we have an obligation to protect America's national interest. And by exporting all of our clean energy technology and all that stuff to China, that's against our national interest. We have an economic obligation. We have a community obligation. All these coal towns are closing. They don't know what to do. They don't know where to go. It is pro-conservative. It is pro-conservative values. It's pro-America to care about this stuff, even if the environment is not your reason. And that gets people to be like, oh yeah, you're right. You're not talking about this from some crazy point of view of like, oh, but if you don't care about this, like morally, you're

just like totally wrong. Like the world's going to end and you're going to be to blame. So that kind of lowers the barrier of entry. And then you can start talking about more nuanced policies. We didn't get to that because he's not really involved in the policy side. But like he understands it because he's an investor. He invests in companies. He sees that sustainability is a focus in a lot of people in our generation's mind as they're looking for businesses to work for, for businesses to support, you know, with their dollar, for businesses to start. And he understands that. It's just a matter of kind of translating that to people who have been so opposed to the greatest of the world for so long, they've convinced themselves that anything environmental is behind this dark

veil of like, you know, I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing and convincing people of that who are so visceral that's the hardest part but jared was totally on board how long did you meet with him probably 20 minutes okay so did he bring up because like he was very involved in the first white house the 45th presidency and he was very involved in a lot of the overseas deals and working with the representatives of a lot of these other countries, including those that might be more hostile towards us. Did he bring up at all the concerns about other countries not doing the things we do i mean we just talked about this a few minutes ago but you know obviously like he's not looking at this every day like you are was was did he have some of those same concerns i raised it was more about actually he he did but it was more about the fact that they're also 80 of our solar materials 80 of our wind materials come from China. And so like, I don't think we are

going to live in an America where we increase coal production. I like it, it actually isn't economical here. And partially it's government restrictions, but it's also just an outdated technology. I do think natural gas increases. But we also need an increase in solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Not just for our grid and for cleaning up emissions, but because other countries, like specifically China, are dominating that market. It is a really bad thing for America to allow that to happen. And he was talking about that more so, like how do we ensure that Americans understand the importance of doing solar, wind, nuclear, etc. in the United States so that we're not exporting it overseas? Okay, well, you actually just made me think of something there that I didn't ask you about. But demographically speaking, this is a conversation that happens all the time now where you'll have people like, oh, is our population too big?

Are we overpopulating the planet? Or is – the other side is, is our population getting too small? Are we not having kids in so many countries around the world, which is a huge problem because it could lead to population collapse? From an environment perspective, where are you on our current 8 billion person global population and do you view a certain amount of growth as a problem or do you think we need to grow exponentially? So this goes back to my like whole thing about how I don't like forecasting because you're just telling people how to live their lives when you're forecasting. And like, I think if you want to have kids, you should have kids and not worry about the fact that we have too many people because we need more good people. We need more good ideas. We need more innovation. Like I

understand that, like that Elon Musk argument. I totally agree with that. Like if you don't have people to innovate, you're not going to, you're not going to innovate. However, I don't think that we should be like, let's just keep populating the earth as much as we can. Like I don't think that that's necessary. People should have kids if they want to have kids and they shouldn't have kids if they don't want to have kids. And it's also bad for the world that people have kids that don't want them or it's like an accident. Like you, you good parents are a good thing for society. Like I grew up with great parents and no parents flawless, but like if my dad wasn't there or my mom was a certain

way, like I would have been a different human being and both of them are present and incredibly supportive and loving. And we need more of that. Like I think more good people who want to be good parents should have kids. Like I, I, I, I do believe that we have have a lot of people in third world parts of this planet that are having a lot of kids because they're not really thinking it through or they don't have the education about it. They don't have the sex ed or they don't have some of the – they don't have condoms. They don't have all this stuff. I think that is somewhat of a problem because you have an overpopulation in areas that they don't have any resources. And I would rather try to help get those communities to a more wealthy place before we just are like telling them that they – our obligation isn't telling them they should have less kids or more kids. It's just like we should help them advance in society so that people can be productive members

of society but i i hate the anti-life part of the climate movement i hate it because our our planet is inherently beautiful and i do believe humans are meant to be on it and who am i to say what the perfect number is like great answer like i'm not god why are you god like we don't we don't know what breaking point the world would be at because technology is always changing we could maybe have 100 billion people on the earth and somehow make it work we don't know i mean it was 45 minutes of a drive outside new york city and it was just completely grass green prairie like forests for miles on end yeah like it's not like our whole earth is like with people. And honestly, consolidating them into one place

is the least harmful thing you can do environmentally because you're not having the sprawl and the development everywhere. I just feel like it's an obligation. I feel an obligation to have kids because I feel like I would be a good dad. And I feel like i would raise productive members of society that make the world a better place my dad and mom made the world a better place

my grandparents made the world a better place i can confidently say that and i can confidently say that i'm trying my best to do that i want my kids to do that too because for every one of me and one of you and one of us there are other people who don't have that mindset and who are trying to tear society apart. And we need more good people, especially to protect the environment that I love so much. That's an awesome answer. And you raised a point in there about, you know, the unfortunate aspect that happens with different movements where then you get those extreme voices where people are like, no, we need to stop having kids and shit which is absolutely insane like that makes no sense it's such a fear meaning of life too yeah it is and like if if we should have less kids then and in our society is

doomed to fail if you've accepted that then there's no going back. Like, you basically have accepted that you want the world to end, right? Like, you're basically, and I'm not saying, like, I also don't subscribe to the fact that, like, oh, we should have 12 billion people. Like, we need way more people. Like, I don't believe that either. Like, let's just let it play out. Let people have kids if they want to, and people don't they don't and then if we Have less people will adapt to that if we have more people will adapt to that. Let's let's Maybe we'll become multi-planetary right more people to which is pretty cool Like I don't I think we'll make it work either way

So let's just do what we want to do yes a hundred percent and like you get that but that's again These are the things that get attention. You know, like – The extinction rebellion is the big one. Who was the one that – I think this one was like fake or something. Like they injected it. But the lady who was going to AOC's town halls like in her constituency like in New York who was like, we have to eat the babies. We have to eat them. Eat them? Yeah. She was like saying – oh, you didn't. We have to eat them. Eat them?

Yeah, she was like saying, oh, you didn't see this? Uh-uh. Oh, can we pull this up on YouTube, Butch? So this was... It's probably a parody, but that's not that far off. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I can't remember. So AOC eat the babies.

I can't remember if it was officially proven that way, so I want to make sure. Yeah, this was it. So I'm going to turn this on. So if you want to turn that mic you have right there, Butch, towards your speaker. Oh, she does look kind of real. Turn my speakers on.

Yeah, just watch your call. Holy crap. She actually looks somewhat normal. It doesn't really look like a plant. Yeah, so turn that speaker on. Good. And then this mic. Oh, sorry.

Oh, because it's on the TV. That's my bad. Hold on. Let me turn this bad boy on. Oh, sorry. Oh, because it's on the TV. That's my bad. Hold on. Let me turn this bad boy on. That's why. All right. Can we put this back at the beginning real fast, Butch? Sorry.

That's perfect. Go back to the beginning. So this is like a meeting that was happening. We only have a few months left. I love that you support the Green Deal, but it's not getting rid of fossil fuel. It's not going to solve the problem fast enough. A Swedish professor saying we can eat dead people, but that's not fast enough.

So I think your next campaign slogan has to be this. We got to start eating babies. We don't have enough time. There's too much CO2 all of you you're you know you're pollutant oh my god we have to start now please you are so great i'm so happy that you're really supporting the great deal but it's not enough you know even if we would bomb russia putin's watching this and laughing. Look at her face. She's shaking her head yes a little bit.

She's like, oh shit, how am I getting out of this one? We need to eat the babies under this bed. They're like, that's enough, ma'am. No, thank you. I like the hair clip. The hair clip's a good touch. Hold on, what did she say? Okay.

No, no, no. Thank you. thank you so i think um yeah she's still going one of the things that's very important i'm gonna look this up is that we need to treat the climate crisis with the urgency oh my god it does present. Luckily, we have more than a few months. We do need to hit net zero in several years. But I think we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions that we have that we can pursue. And that if we act in a positive way,

there is space for hope. We are never beyond hope. Okay? All right, that's good right there. But you get the idea. So she was fake, right? Let's see. Like she was sitting there as like some sort of act.

I feel like she was fake. It was satire, but the fact that she responded as if it could be real, like the fact that that's even the realm of possibility right yeah and the fact that she responded not with like okay that's really annoying the set you know satirist came in like there are you know real people who believe that humans not maybe not to that degree where it's like eat the babies but it's like humanity needs to be wiped from the earth if we're going to save the planet and you first like

you go first like i like i believe that we can coexist and i i believe in that really hippie bumper sticker coexist on the back of the priuses that all the liberals drive like let's coexist with nature we don't need to go away and especially in europe it's really been a big movement it's called extinction rebellion and it's kind of like the people who like are telling you to ban fossil fuels or whatever it's like well then stop using anything with fossil fuels good luck do it first yeah good and they're like well that's the problem there's no replacement it's like come up with it then and then use that like i'm all for it like i i don't need fossil fuels i don't you know but we do need to have like these people not dominate the narrative anymore because they are toxic and there are a lot of them and

there are so many people in my generation and our generation who do not want to have kids because of maybe not that exact person but like you are bad you are the scum of the earth you are a pollutant any kid you have is just going to make it worse turning humanity evil exactly and the world's going to burn by the time they're 50 anyways and it's like i mean look to an extent when it when it comes to what we use and what we do no matter how much we care about something, in some ways, we're always going to be a hypocrite on something. That is just a reality. But it gets real rich when you see the people who might, for example, say, oh, I'm not buying Nike. And they're tweeting this out.

I'm not buying Nike because of their slave labor while they tweet it from a fucking iphone built by slaves it's like the the lack of self-awareness some of us have in these spaces well you can when i feel like you can want things to change without trying to vilify everything about that like i don't think we need to rely on fossil fuels as heavily as we do right now. And I think it would be bad for the planet. But we do right now. So let's acknowledge the current reality. Because I'm not flying home tonight, right? But let's also work towards different solutions.

Like I think it's really cool what they're trying to do with sustainable aviation fuel. And if that's the future. Sustainable aviation fuel? Yeah. They're trying to make like cleaner fuel that emits like 90 percent less carbon how do you do that different plant material that they're using i mean i'm not going to be on the first plane to to test that out oh shoot this burns way faster than we'll try it on spirit we'll see what happens uh yeah that's that's the guinea pig that'd would be something funny that Trump would do.

He'd be like, you know, if it's really going to work, we're going to put it on a Spirit Airlines flight. And we're going to have Biden go on it. That's what he'll say. Have Joe try it. Exactly. But, like, if that's the future, great. But, like, should airplanes be gone in 50 years if we don't figure that out? Probably not.

Like, there's always a way out, right? Like, we could capture carbon. We could create a better fuel we could find some other you know we could start to um randomly i could disappear and suddenly turn up in iowa like you don't know like maybe in 100 years that's possible we don't know but we'll figure it out that's that's the whole thing is it's like we don't know the answers but we're going to figure it out so stop telling people that they suck and that they should all die. Try to figure out a solution to the problem.

How are you helping? You are not. But it also – it leads to the other side too that fights back against it. We've been talking about that today. But you have these kids fucking throwing paint on the Mona Lisa and standing there and gluing themselves to it saying stop fossil fuels. Oh, you were yeah okay but you know they're saying like stop fossil fuels and stuff like that which is pushing people in the other direction and then right that ends up leading to more inaction more inaction but also ideas that might not even be right and and there there's a guy out there

what the fuck is his name? Alex Epstein. Oh, God. Who goes around, and now he's – so you're familiar. I've spent a lot of time with him too. Okay. So I believe, correct me if I'm wrong here, he's going around and saying as a result, like, oh, no, it's not that we're using too many fossil fuels. We just got to use more of them to fossil fuel our way out of this i don't even think he says out of it it's more like he almost is on the train of like fossil fuel emissions are good for the world like type of thing like now what's his logic the warmer the world the less

people die because it's easier to survive warmth than it is cold. And that if Canada got warmer, if all these countries like Russia got warmer, we'd have more land and more space to inhabit. But it's like – but we also lose a lot of the land that we currently inhabit. And you're basically just telling everyone to move all the time. Like that's the dumbest thing you've ever heard. And that's not possible. So people are going to die and that's not going to work. But that's his argument. And he also thinks – he has this really stupid argument. It's like it's like the somebody like defending horse and buggy. It's like, well, it's gotten us here and it's brought so much prosperity and so much progress that that's why we need more of it. And it's like, well, true,

but that doesn't mean there's not something better out there. Like nuclear, in my opinion, is better than fossil fuels. Like I'm sure everyone at the time thought wood burning was the greatest thing on earth. Little did they know they could have a light turn on, like without them having to light a candle, right? Like everyone thinks the current technology is, that mindset is like the best thing ever and that we should just stay there.

He is the opposite of innovation. He's the opposite of progress. He just wants society to stay as it is right now. I think that we could have a brighter future where we don't have to worry about pollution in our atmosphere and pollution in our air. Like, I mean, I live in Arizona where there's like mountains on all, and there's this massive cloud

of smoke, haze, that's there all the time on hot days because of cars and pollution. I don't want that, right? I believe that there could be a better future than that. He believes that that's what we should do because somehow this city that we've built is better than it was 100 years ago, which is true, but that doesn't mean that improvements can't be made. He's very- You've spent time with him too. A lot of, yeah, but he's bought out by the oil and gas companies.

Oh, he is. Yeah. The thing- How so? I mean, they're the only ones who fund him. They pay for everything. He presents for $25,000, $30,000 a pop. Oh my God. At all these oil and gas things. I mean, he's a very wealthy guy. Oh my God. Add all these oil and gas things. I mean, he's a very wealthy guy. Oh, there you go.

They paid for his books. The thing about- Who pays for you? Everyone. See, oil and gas, solar, wind, nuclear. We have donors who are liberal, conservative. We have some of the most hated conservatives and some of the most hated liberals,

and I'm proud of it. Are you public with some of the people who- I can't't like i could name a few but before i do that like why i think that that's important is because you want to have like if you're all bought out by solar and wind you are going to default to be only solar and wind if you're all bought out by oil and gas you're going to be bought out by oil and gas i think a lot of people who are bought out don't even know they're bought out. Like they're, they, they are like, well, I know I'm actually independent thing. I just only take money from solar and wind because I think it's because I think that they're the best ones. But there's no incentive to change their thinking, right? There's actually a disincentive to change your

thinking when you're bought out. And so you're never, you're going to become more and more blind of the realities that, that, that challenge your thinking if you're bought out by a certain industry or a certain party too, right? Like you look at like how Kyrsten Sinema has been treated in Arizona. She turned independent and she lost all of her donors on the left. There's a disincentive to be a free thinker. So that's why I talk to everyone and that's why I get funded everyone. Because if I lose one, I don't care. Right? Like, do you think that's going to be limiting, though, for you in the system we have? I don't think so. Because I have found that most reasonable people in those different industries on both sides of the aisle

can understand the nuance, right? Like, we work a lot with Duke and Southern Company. These are big utilities, and they have an incentive not to allow consumer choice on energy. We also get support from some of the tech companies that are literally at war with these utilities, trying to basically provide power so that you can buy power from amazon or buy power from microsoft but they understand that we're taking a nuanced approach and that we're going to be on our own path and like if they need to stop supporting us because they like they know that we don't care like and i think that that's really unique about us because we don't have to straddle we're not trying to straddle everyone.

It's just more like we're trying to work with everyone and make the right decisions and look at it from a holistic approach. And now the world is starting to realize that we do need more nuclear, solar, wind, natural. We need all of it. And we're like, yeah, we've been here this whole time realizing that because we have been open-minded to everything. And I would literally sit down with George Soros as much as I would sit down with any of the farthest right donors because there are – there's a need to have a holistic view. And if you're only represented by a certain faction of society, you are definitely not making the right decisions. And I piss off my donors all the time. That's great because you should. And when I lose one, I'm like, okay, we'll see in a couple of years when you need, you know, when, when we're aligned again, right? Like, because I hope that's the case too. It is,

but people are always shocked. Like we have a organization that's, you know, multi-million dollars. We don't have any donor that like bankrolls it. They're all very like small in the nonprofit world. So if we lose one, it's not like we're – I think that's the other problem is it's like if Alex Epstein calls out fossil fuels, he loses all of his support. Yeah. Right? It's a financial incentive. Right.

And even if he thinks something is wrong, he can't stand against it because he's going to lose all – if I lose a donor, I'm like, okay, I don't care. Don't care. That's great. I mean – and I think that's not even just to pick on Alex himself. Unfortunately, when you look across all these issues, you're going to find patterns like that where people have an economic incentive. Just like politicians have an incentive to you know do the shit they do so they get elected right right like these guys that you start and and like they mean a lot of these people like a guy like alex might not even realize i don't

think he realizes because you're like he probably thinks that he's above it he's probably like yeah i know i'm only sponsored by i'm good but i don't this is what i actually believe and you start like self-censoring things and not realizing it and it's such a you know that's the beauty of like independent media where like i started this in my parents house and i get to just talk with who i want to talk to and do what i want to do that to me is such a fucking luxury right because so many people have to even if you're a really high-level person, incredible expert or something, you still need your people. And there's still, you know, it's just follow the money. Where is it coming from?

You may not even see where it's coming from. It's from way the fuck up there. But then it works its way down to you and you need to move into this direction right here. And if you don't, no more money for you. Right. And I think that it's like not even, it's not even nefarious either. It's like people are just out for their own self-interest. And so it's like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to call out this story. I'm only going to highlight this one because

I don't want to piss off my donors. And like, it's not like they disagree that maybe that story is important, but they're never going to promote it. Like, let's just say it's a story about oil and gas companies hiding oil spills or something you think alex epstein's gonna tweet that out probably not no if he did they'd tell him to delete it right away just like if just like if greta tweeted out solar and wind are actually not as reliable as we want them to be and their handlers yeah so that's the problem is like, I have no problem sharing anything about anything. I'm super transparent. Because I'm always just trying to find the best solution. And I know, and this is the thing that people don't realize. I know that yes, it's a little bit riskier. But when you pursue the right thing for the right reasons, the support will come. Like it will come. It might not come right away. You might lose something. You might lose friends. You might lose supporters. But every time that I've had to make those tough decisions to say something that I thought was

really difficult or to do something that was really difficult, I've lost people, but I've gained more. And that's also, I think the, like the American dream in politics is kind of like making yourself a free thinker and building a support system around you that is okay with free thinking. And I can tell you that if someone doesn't want me to be a free thinker, I don't want to work with them. I love that. Yeah. And there's a – I was just trying to pull it up while you're talking. There's some Churchill quote where – I'm going to paraphrase it because I couldn't. Yeah. And, and there's a, I was just trying to pull it up while you're talking. There's some Churchill quote where I'm going to paraphrase it because I couldn't find it, but it's like, he says, if you, if you haven't pissed anyone off, then you've never led, right? It's just a part of what it is. You're going to piss people off and where you can do that and, and swallow the financial disincentive to do so you know that's that's amazing and and like you mentioned in there about how people are doing things that i'm paraphrasing

what you said but they're doing things that are basically performative right that totally that don't actually solve a problem but that pretend we're going to stamp something on there and maybe force people to get to where you think the problem is going to be solved which usually isn't what happens and there's no bigger example of this it seems like than something we've mentioned throughout the day today but haven't gotten to in in the green new deal yes now what what were the three main tenets of the green new deal that they wanted to do by 2030 when they passed this in what year was it? When they were looking at the legislation? Well, they never passed it.

They never passed it, but what was the legislation? In fact, it never really got any votes. It was 2017, 2018 when it got first proposed. Right. And then it got put up for a vote 2018, 2019. So call it an 11, 12-year timeline, timeline meaning by 2030 what were the three things they wanted to do 100 clean energy 100 evs and 100 getting rid of fossil fuels is there any planet on which that was even remotely possible at 50 and i don't know how dumb AOC was when she wrote it, but someone who was helpful in writing it knew that that was impossible, and they didn't care because it was a marketing strategy.

It was not a policy strategy. And I will give credit to AOC because I think every day someone has a chance to start over. No, seriously. I'm not going to write her off completely. She's toured some nuclear plants. She's kind of backed off some of the language. So I don't know where that's coming from. Good for her.

Could be well-intended. Could be not. But she's backed off some of it. And I think what people need to realize is that most of these things that are super sizzly like the Green New Deal or like Build Back Better or whatever, like if you can explain it in three words, it's probably a bad idea. Interesting. So the simpler you can explain, it's a bad idea. Yeah, because nothing is that simple. Nothing is that simple.

Like I can't tell you that my girlfriend is a hundred percent perfect because it's not true. I'm not careful. She's listening. She knows that I'm not a hundred percent perfect either. I'm just trying not to get you in the doghouse, you know, but you're a hundred percent perfect.

I'm not, but I'm, that's not my girlfriend. Exactly. I'm not your girlfriend. Not yet. It's 2024. You know, you could be on your way but there's there's it's never black

and white right like no energy source 100 bad no energy source 100 good like we we live in a world there's always trade-offs like when you're looking for a romantic partner when you're looking at having kids when you're looking at getting a, like there is never a perfect solution to anything, like literally anything. And so when you try to narrow it down to be perfect in three words, and it's like, you're not, you're, you're, it's like a TV commercial. It's the fakest thing ever. It's you're, you're watching something that's not policy.

It's entertainment. It's marketing. And I'm a marketing major. I can tell you that the Green New Deal was one of the best marketing strategies I've ever seen in politics in my lifetime, I mean. Great name. Great name. Very simple. 100% banned fossil fuels, 100% clean energy, social justice transition, helping out poor communities.

But behind that, there was nothing. But to our point earlier, no one's looking behind that because they don't have the time. And what was the cost going to be? $93 trillion. Yeah. And what did that – you lay this out in your book. It was like $14,000 or $15,000 per something. So it was actually going to – yeah, it was $14,000 or 14 or 15 000 per ton of carbon removed and like

forest management like just clearing out some of the dead brush in our forest costs like 80 per ton for example so 80 so 80 versus 15 000 okay um that's some dc math right there baby yeah i mean but you can get away with it when people aren't paying that close of attention. $93 trillion, and if it was 100% effective, we did the math, 4% of emissions would be reduced. So you'd spend $93 trillion. For 4%. And that's if it worked. That's like if all the solar, wind, all that stuff worked completely. 4% of emissions for $93 trillion, which is like the size of the global GDP.

I'm not taking that deal. No. Deal or no deal. That's the global GDP. I'm not taking that deal. No. Deal or no deal. That's the no deal. I don't like that deal. I played deal or no deal at some arcades as a kid, and that's a deal that I would not have taken. Yeah.

And to the credit, actually, of the left, there were a lot of people on the left who were very critical of this. I think Pelosi was like, this is just not realistic. Yes. Pelosi, and she sounds like like, this is just not realistic. Yes. Pelosi, Pelosi, and she sounds like that, which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that is, that is 100% right. And you had a lot of, like, really high up officials

in the Obama administration who, like, oversaw the Department of Energy and stuff like that, call it out too, which was really big. Yeah. Basically made it, but the fact that Energy and stuff like that, call it out too, which was really big. Yeah. Basically made it. But the fact that she could even propose that, and we did a poll of young Americans, and like over 70% of them thought it was an effective climate strategy.

Oh, boy. Including over half of young Republicans, because that's the only thing they'd ever heard of. What age is? Which is what their goal was. What age is? 18 to 30. Okay. Yeah, they're not really looking at it, obviously. the only thing they'd ever heard of what age which is what their goal was what age 18 to 30 okay

yeah they're not really looking at it but if you have obamacare right great name most people have no idea what that even means and it's still hitting them like if you ask them like what obamacare does to their lives like i uh i think kids can stay in their parents plans till they're 25. And I'm not a health care guy. I don't truly know either. Yeah, health care is so complicated. But yet it was so like I'm pro or anti it, just like the Green New Deal.

I'm pro or anti it, but no one actually knows what it stands for. But I see your point when you say if something is that simple, like we're going to do these three things, it's probably bullshit. But you've got to be careful with that too because the alternative is more common and way worse which is you make things complicated yes right like steve jobs who invented the iphone sitting in front of us his whole life was about simplicity yeah he always hated every microwave he had because he said a microwave needs one button add 30 seconds and you're good and i agree with him i think he's right about that i use microwave every day i do struggle with that on this issue i i think that's true and that's i mean maybe you can help me with this i i really struggle to boil down the right approach on this into that simplicity like i can't do it but i i see your point though when you want to take monumental issues and be like poof exactly

i understand i i think like i don't want to be risking going down the slippery slope to complication but i think they're unfortunately sometimes things do have layers and another one you had mentioned this earlier but you know we we see that that bill wanted all electric vehicles by 2030 but even fast forward to today with things that are actually getting passed totally what it was california's they want it all by 2035 or something like that like how even realistic is that in one state it's not realistic i mean they have two percent of their cars registered cars are electric vehicles two percent such so you're telling me that they can make up that ground in

in 10 years and the thing is is that we don't have enough inventory and mining and capacity to even have that many electric vehicles. The California grid couldn't support that many electric vehicles. And it couldn't in 10 years either, especially with the way they're headed in terms of just embracing only solar and wind, which like we talked about earlier, just they're not working 100% of the day day i have a hybrid uh electric it has 28 miles electric and then it turns to gas that's the sort of thing that americans could like with the grid with our infrastructure could embrace but if you're telling all of california that if they don't have an electric vehicle they're gonna have to move out of the state, which is basically what they're saying, or you have to buy it in other states,

which of course, Nevada and other states are like, sounds good to us. Like, we're gonna have all these Californians coming over to buy cars. What people don't realize about that too, is that the people it hurts the most when you mandate things like that are the poor people who can't afford the more expensive solution, who can't afford to install a charger in their garage or whatever it is. When you're telling people they have to change, poor people are hurt the worst. And yet, Gavin Newsom is so focused on helping low-income people in his state, but he is doing everything he can to make their lives harder. He's raising energy prices. He's raising the cost of cars and some of the most expensive things that people have to deal with in their day-to-day

lives. They're getting even more expensive because of him. These policies backfire because we can't capacity-wise take it, but we can't economically take it. And I hope that they revoke that because we're not going to come even close to the 2035 target. Well, also, you go, and that's one state but like extrapolate this go back to the green new deal they want all electric vehicles by 2030 the forget the costs we just went through forget the lack of reality that lives in and the ability to even do it assume for a second you could do it right you will you could crash the entire supply chain totally of people's sustenance in doing that because farmers won't – they'll be getting evicted from their farms because half the shit they do. Yeah.

I'm using one example, but you know what I mean. Oh, yeah, totally. Like we don't think about the cascading effects of this stuff because we want to make something make something sound like oh we're doing something good and there's a reality and of the people you can't see who affect your life directly every single day right and that's and that's kind of goes back to the people like the gavin gavin newsom's the aocs etc they don't think about those people when they're making these decisions just like when republican governors are like banning more solar and wind investment in their state, they're also not thinking about the people who would benefit from that. Like they're not, no one's thinking about the people that they don't understand. And totally I'm like

the EV thing, like Gavin, Gavin, Governor Gavin Newsom, their governor is literally so out of touch with low income people and rural people in his own state, and they're all fleeing for a reason. They're all going somewhere else for a reason, and it's because of his policies, and he thinks that he's somehow qualified to be president. So I think we have a real disconnect between the political elites on both sides and the rest of American society, and they're making decisions that don't do good, but they just sound good. Like in theory, a hundred percent EVs by 2035, if you didn't know how much mining it took,

if you didn't know how bad it was on the physical environment, if you didn't realize how much energy it took, if you didn't realize how expensive it was and how subsidized it is, like might sound okay. Like that might sound like a decent thing. It's far enough away, you know, whatever. But then you start looking at the details and it's like, wow, this is going to actually be incredibly harmful.

But similar to the Green New Deal, he doesn't think that through. He wants a marketing material, too. He wants to be able to go on the campaign trail and say, I mandated electric vehicles by 2035 and we'll be the first state to do it and everyone's like woo and then that's why i did it and he'll be on his next step when that doesn't exactly he does not need to fulfill that doesn't care someone someone else is going to undo that and they're going to look bad but it's him that did it he gets to do a little virtue signal exactly gotta love it well benji it, it's pretty cool stuff you're doing.

Thank you. It's nice to hear a different voice on a big issue like this. You know, I'm a part of the younger generation. You're a part of the younger generation. We care about our future and stuff like that. Sometimes it feels like the older generations don't understand that. But, you know, there's got to be a good diplomatic way to go about it. I appreciate that.

And, I mean, you are doing a lot of good with this i feel like just opening up people's minds to different approaches is literally the best thing we can do in society these days because fuck yeah man whatever doesn't fit within the norm is probably the best way forward that's why we talk to people across the spectrum here but thanks for having the book of course brother the the book is the conservative environmentalist thank you to sag nick for hooking this up by the way shout out to our boy right there the link for this is going to be down in the description i have started to read it it's really good so far love what you're doing and people can get you on social at instagram and twitter right yep so at benji backer at acc

underscore national for the organization got it okay so we'll put those links down in the description as well. And I'd love to know how this is going in a year or two. Yeah, let's revisit this when you're number one. All right, well, we're working on it, brother. A couple years. Give me a few. Benji, great meeting you, brother. Thanks, man.

Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. It's a huge help. And also if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally,

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