Shaun Newman Podcast - #375 - Brian Gitt 2.0

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Energy entrepreneur, investor & writer he's spent 25+ years working in the energy industry.  Sylvan Lake February 4th Tickets/More info here: https://intentionallivingwithmeg.com/sovereignty Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

I'm Rupa Supermonea. This is Tom Korsky. This is Ken Drysdale. This is Dr. Eric Payne. This is Dr. William Mackis. Hi, this is Shadow Davis from the Shadow at Night Live stream, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday.

It is truly Monday. I'm sitting in the studio with Vance Crow and Toos. They have no mics, so they can't really interject on me much. Either way, we got through the SMP Presents, the rural urban divide. It was live on, it was live on. Twitter and Rumble, Facebook. So if you want, you can go check it out there. Otherwise, it will be live on the podcast here later this week.

Either way, we had a full house at the Gold Horse Casino, and it was a truly incredible night. It was a lot of fun having the boys come together like that and get to discuss some different ideas and everything else. So certainly hope you get the chance to listen that. Either way, if you don't check it out on social media, It will be on the podcast here. I believe Thursday.

I believe Thursday is when it's going to air. Either way, look out for that and just know that if you're in the audience, appreciate you making the trek on a Sunday night when the rain was falling and a January night. What a strange sentence to say aloud. Either way, thanks for making the trip. With that being said, we got a great one on tap for you today. Canadians for Truth.

Well, before we get there, Canadians for Truth. their nonprofit organization consisting of Canadians and believe in honesty, integrity, and principal leadership in government, as well as the Canadian Bill of Rights, charter rights, freedoms, and the rule of just laws. They got Chris Barber coming to Lloyd Minster. It's funny, I bring up Chris Barber.

He is the reason I am no longer on YouTube. So he is in Lloyd Minster, February 9th, the Vic Juba Theater. I think that's one you're going to want to check out, and he tells me he's coming to the studio before that. So it's not like I can get double removed from YouTube or anything, but think awfully highly of Chris Barber and where he stands on a lot of different things.

He's an interesting man, a gentle giant, you might say. When you finally shake that guy's head, he is a man amongst, a man amongst boys. Hmm, can't spit that out tonight. Man amongst men? Man amongst men. I got twos and fans. I was saying to him, you know, I...

So to the audience, I don't do the stop and re-record. Now I'm talking to these two in here. I don't do the stop and re-record anymore because it's way more fun if I just fuck up. So now I'm sitting here and I'm like, normally I'd do this by myself and I wouldn't have anyone to kind of visually respond. But they're both nodding my heads. Anyways, Chris Barber, February 9th, 2 is fuck off. Honestly, folks. Prophet River, they are the, oh man, I'm.

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of firearms, optics, and accessories serving all of Canada. Tyson and Tracy Mitchell over at Michko Environmental. They're a family-owned business that has been providing professional vegetation management services for both Alberta and Saskatchewan and the oil field and industrial sector since 1998. I keep telling this story, hoping it lands with somebody who's probably sitting in university right now or college. But either way, your semester is going to come, you know, not to an end immediately, but soon enough. And there's going to be somebody out there looking for some summer work where they can go make some serious dollars. And working for Tyson and Tracy was something I did, and certainly did not regret doing that one iota. And they put you to work,

You work your butt off. You come out of the summer with a ton of money in your pocket. And if that's something that resonates with you, give them a call, 780214,0004. Carly Clause and the team over at Windsor Plywood Builders of the podcast. Studio table. Hey, fellas, what do you think of the table? Vance, first thoughts. Oh, beautiful.

About this table many a time. And I, it's, every time I see it, it's like boobs. Every time you see them, they're perfect. And you want to touch them. Yeah. And they're just, they're smooth yet firm. You know, it's funny. I don't know how well you can hear these two,

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for more information, visit than a mhankock petroleum.ca. He's an energy entrepreneur, investor and writer. I'm talking about Brian Gitt. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Brian Gitt, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I'm joined by Brian Gitt.

Thank you, sir, for answering the call and coming back. on. Yeah, thanks for having me back. I'm excited to chat more. Well, it's funny. At the end of 2022, it might be the first time in podcast history. I kind of went, you know, maybe I should look back. I mean, I lightly do it, but I never post it, I guess, is what I'm getting across. And you were one of the top 25 episodes. And I was like, you know, I should probably just invite all 25 back on because, I mean, obviously, I enjoyed the conversation and obviously the listener enjoyed the conversation too. And so it's exciting to have you back on.

I think it's honestly, it's kind of timely because a lot is coming out here in Alberta about just transition, which is the federal government's idea of essentially transitioning oil and gas, energy workers over to the green economy and, you know, trying to put across that it's going to be, you know, don't worry. It's going to be the same thing. There's going to be no issues. And I laugh. I'm like, well, we all know that isn't true.

and I say it that way. I'm sure Brian has a different way of putting it. And I don't know. I guess to me it seems like perfect timing, if you will. Yeah, I think there's oftentimes when we're trying to create a jobs program to support an energy system, it's never usually a good idea. I mean, jobs are a natural outgrowth of the energy sector, but usually you put things in reverse if you're going in reordering things, if you're trying to lead with the jobs program. So happy to dig in and chat about some of those topics. Well, your background is super interesting, right?

Like we hashed it out and the first time you came on the podcast. And, you know, it's funny. I should have, I listened to the entire thing today, Brian, and then I didn't pull up here. I'll pull it up real quick for the listener so they know. It was episode 315. So for people wanting to hear more about Brian and his background, go back to episode 315.

there's a solid, solid hour-long conversation where we really dig into some of your history. And I guess to me, I'm just, I don't know, I look at your expertise and I go, me, as a layman, I go, gee, this doesn't sound or feel good. You being in the industry of green technologies and transitioning over to, you know, being a person pro-nuclear, that type of thing.

When you hear a government talking about, oh, don't worry about a thing, you know, we got this all figured out. I feel like that's not quite the case. Yeah, I get a little concerned. I mean, I spent most of my career working in government and on government programs. Not that I worked for the government, but I ran a consulting firm where we consulted with government agencies to both design and implement various types of energy-related programs.

And with all the best intentions, you know, all the people I worked with, I can't think of one. that really had bad intentions or wanted a bad outcome. Unfortunately, though, a lot of the programs just didn't deliver on the promises of what they were trying to do with respect to jobs, with respect to energy savings. And I think a lot of this comes back, if we think about this from first principles, if you're really trying to transform a market to adopt these best practices of upgrading various homes and transitioning to renewable energy, you have to really start. from first principles. You can't just centralize the decision making and cram it down on the market

and hope that it's going to work. That just generally doesn't work to try to do this top-down approach. You really got to understand, well, what problems are you solving in the marketplace and what do consumers want to pay for? And then if there's ways that you can help boost incentives and support some of the local businesses than great, but unfortunately, more often than not, what the government tries to do is kind of impose these more rigid standards and rules and regulations or are programs that just aren't based in kind of the market realities. And so they never are able to scale and get widespread adoption. So that's a big part of the challenge. So you think it's just, you know, when I, when I sit and think about our world leaders, you know, they're focused, they're hyper-focused on

saving the planet. We need to save the planet. We need to get to net zero. We got these goals. We got to hit these goals. We got to push as hard as we can. In their like lust to get there. They're just neglecting facts everywhere. Because you know when I go back and listen to our first conversation when I follow you on Twitter, when I listen to a bunch of different people and you see like overwhelming numbers and statistics that just show like this isn't a good plan. Like this is going to cause more harm than good. When you look at it, world leaders pushing full steam ahead, you know, what goes through your brain? We need to zoom out and really assess what is the goal? What are we trying to achieve? And I think

so often we get just sucked into following these various narratives or focus on a particular metric, like you mentioned net zero energy or net zero carbon by 2050 or whatever the specific metric is. And you're kind of missing the bigger picture. Like what are we trying to actually achieve here? the goal. And I would propose, there's really two main goals that we're trying to accomplish. First, is we're trying to protect and improve the quality of human lives, right? I mean, everyone wants that. If you're going to intervene in a market or you're going to create a new rule or new regulation or new incentive, ultimately, I would hope that part of the purpose of that rule or that incentive is to protect and improve human lives. The second goal, I think, is to protect and improve the

quality of our environment, right? I mean, no one wants to breathe bad air or drink polluted water. We all want a clean environment. And we also want it for our leisure activities and for animals and for wildlife habitat, et cetera. So those are the two main goals, I think, that are fundamental. However, oftentimes we start looking past those and just get sucked into these metrics that kind of lead us of course. So the goal is not necessarily to have net zero carbon. The goal is to improve human flourishing and protect our environment. So what are the most effective ways to achieve those goals? And if we would step back and start really evaluating things through that lens, then I think we wouldn't make as many mistakes. I think too often when we're having these conversations,

they're very one-sided and we ignore all of the benefits. For example, with fossil fuel You'll see this all the time. People just constantly are vilifying fossil fuels and basically just saying how horrible they are and all these greedy companies that are polluting the air and in our water systems, et cetera, and destroying these environments when obviously this is not the case and they're ignoring all of the multiple benefits that all of our lives rely upon. I mean, every single one of us is listening to this podcast right now couldn't go an hour without relying on fossil fuels for all of the essential aspects of our lives from our health care system.

Every time we go to the doctor and any type of equipment in a hospital or a doctor's office is made with fossil fuels. The power and the energy in our house and our businesses is provided by fossil fuels. I mean, the microphone I'm talking into now in the computer I'm using was made from fossil fuels. So to ignore all of the benefits of these critical and essential resources is not helpful, right? If we want to do an honest assessment and weigh cost and benefits, all energy sources have trade-offs for sure. But we have to weigh those trade-offs and be thoughtful about both sides of the scale. We can't just ignore all the benefits and just vilify a particular energy source and focus on those side effects.

You know, the last time you're on, you talked about storytelling and how the oil and gas sector really needs to find a way to tell its story, right? Because it's kind of one-sided right now. You know, it's also one-sided in the sense, and we talked a little bit about this last time, you know, that the green energy is just completely green, and there's no, like, nothing bad about it and whatever else. And then, you know, it was just, I forget how many episodes ago on Joe Rogan that Sidharth, Kara came on talking about cobalt mines, right? and seeing in that, and I've heard you talk, actually I think it was on the last one too, about the slave labor in China, right, when it comes to different things there.

And yet that kind of gets swept under the rug. They kind of portray it as we're one with nature and we don't do anything bad, except for when you pull back the curtain and start to see some of the things that have to be done to kind of give the green agenda, the green thought process, it's like kind of comfortability, like we're doing the right thing.

They have to sweep a lot of things away that not only telling the story of oil and gas and different things like that to help people embrace and understand why they're so beneficial, but on the flip side, when you talk about the way scale, it's like, and it doesn't hurt to talk about like, but all these things have to happen in order for you to get the, you know, the turbine or what be, you know, that green energy, so to speak. Yeah, oftentimes all of these negative externalities or impacts are just swept under the rug and completely forgotten. You know, you bring up mining as a great example. I mean, to achieve the various goals that have been laid out, the various climate action goals or sustainability goals, the amount of increase in mining is just incredible.

First of all, we don't have both the existing or planned mines right now to come anywhere close to achieving these goals. So we're going to have to build hundreds of new mines across the world. I think some of the numbers I've seen range about 180 to 200 new mines. These are nickel, nickel, lithium, coal, all of these critical minerals have to come from somewhere. They're not just going to drop out of the sky and all form into your wind turbine or your solar panel. They've got to be dug up out of the ground. And unfortunately, as you mentioned, 70% of the coal bolt in the world, comes from the Congo where we know there's just atrocities and terrible conditions happening there.

You have kids, you have tens of thousands of kids that are mining in these operations. They don't have all of the various controls and labor standards that we do here in the United States, obviously. And they're not being paid anywhere near a fair wage for that work. And so we have to really look at the full impact of the supply chain when we're considering where these various minerals are coming from. What I think is ironic where in Canada, in the U.S., where we have some of the strictest environmental regulations and labor requirements in the world, we don't want to mine here. We want to push it out to kind of developing countries where they have weak environmentalations and weak labor standards, which makes no sense. Again, back to the goal. What is the goal that we're trying to achieve with these various technologies?

We're trying to improve human lives. Well, you're not going to be doing that if you're relying on importing cobalt in the Congo from having, you know, 10-year-old kids mine that stuff in just atrocious conditions and dirty conditions with no environmental regulations. So we really got to be thoughtful about what's required to deliver on these promises. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. it because like if the goal was the I don't know ending human suffering having a cobalt mine over in the Congo where they are exposed to just about everything

well that's going the opposite direction there's certainly different things happening in Europe and and everywhere else where you know the goal was to be completely net zero to completely just whatever but it's selling this fancable idea over here everybody can see that and in the background you're doing a whole bunch of things that almost surely negate the one plus you may be created you've created this illusion of uh uh of something grandos of like we're doing great by the environment meanwhile not acknowledging the trail of debris you're leaving in your wake And you just sit there and I mean, more and more people are waking up to the fact.

You know, I said this last time. Like, I probably wasn't really paying attention to it. And the more people I listen to and start having these conversations, I'm like, oh, my goodness. And I just come back. So what is the goal? You're a guy that's been in the industry for a long time. What is the goal? Because, you know, when you watch the politicians, I'm not sure of sir, they know anymore

other than they're following the climate accord and we're going to get to here. and they're pushing as hard. But like even their goals, you know, don't even look like they're even remotely attainable. You know, here in Canada, we're trying to like phase out gas powered vehicles and a whole bunch of different things. And you're like, is that even reasonable in that amount of time? Probably not. You always have to drill into the incentives of the various parties that are involving

these decisions because oftentimes politicians, their incentive is to get reelected, or their incentive is to be popular or people to like them. And in general, those aren't always the long-term interests for the community or for the people that they're in charge of governing. So you've got to really evaluate those because a lot of times there's no accountability. They'll put in place, like you brought up some of these mandates, for example, mandating that California has this and other countries are starting to adopt this too. In California, they're saying no sales of any kind of internal combustion engine vehicles past 2035. And actually it starts phasing in. That's the same here in Alberta.

Okay. By mandatory target for 100% of new light duty cars and passenger truck sales are zero emission by 2035. And these are even phasing in well before that. It's getting to basically 100% by 2035. but we in California here were starting in 2026 where we're having a certain percentage of those new sales need to be zero emission vehicles. And so this is a great example where where's the accountability in 2035, that's over a decade from now. The people that are the politicians that are in office today are not going to be held accountable to that goal. And if that just gets kicked down the road and extended later on, well, where's the repercussions for that?

who's taking ownership and responsibility for that. And so there's not really, what is the negative impact to the politician for making these promises? They get all the benefits up front. It's like using a credit card. You get all your goodies up front. You charge your card now, but you don't have to pay until later. And if they're not even around to pay the bill, then, you know, there's no accountability there. So that's part of the challenge is aligning the incentives of some of this decision making.

So how do you, how do we change this then? How do, because otherwise what happens, I assume, is in a decade's time, things are just crumbling around us and now it's the next politician to be like, well, that didn't work and we're gonna clean this up and you're gonna have this huge mess on your hands. Is there anything in the interim that a population can do? I mean, obviously educating,

we talked about changing the narrative, telling us story, different things like that. If there's anything I've seen up here, you know, it's crazy. Politicians really function off of what the public opinion is, right? So if the public opinion is, you know, steadfast, oil and gas, I don't think they're moving away from it. But if it starts to sway, then you see what they do and they move with it, which isn't exactly it shouldn't make sense other than they're in the business and getting reelected.

So I guess it does make sense. I draw it back. Brian, you're one of the guys that's come on here and laid it down almost like black and white where I'm like, okay, that actually, like I get that. Where you sit, do you just go, it just takes time and inevitably we're going to hit a cliff and they're going to come running for, and I know you're positive on nuclear power. Sorry, I was looking for a word there and I can spit it out. Do you just see it as like, eventually they're going to hit this cliff?

and they're going to come to us? Or is there things that can happen before that so that we don't have to fall off the cliff, so to speak? Well, two things. First of all, I think there are inevitable... We're on this path of increasing our power density or energy. We're basically climbing up the ladder of energy density over the last several centuries.

And I don't think anything is going to stop that. So, you know, we started with wood, and then we moved to coal, and then up to oil, natural gas, and then eventually nuclear. And I don't see any reversal of that, maybe in the short term, maybe from some bad decisions to go back to renewables, et cetera. But I think inevitably we're going to continue that march up the ladder of energy density to using higher quality energy dense fuels. Because our modern civilization is going to demand it. I mean, we're going to use a lot more energy in the future than we're using now. I mean, just think about all of the new technologies that are in development from artificial intelligence and robots.

Right now, you look around, I don't see a lot of robots. In the next 10 to 20 years, I think there's going to be tons of robots everywhere in all these factories and various applications. And so all of that's going to take a huge amount of energy, a lot of power. Not to even mention the developing world, which we already know just on if they're going to fall in our footsteps, the world's going to use 50% more energy by 2050 than it's using now. now. So I think our destiny is to use a lot more energy and we're going to continue to kind of advance. However, it's not a straight line and there's certainly setbacks along the way. I think there's two things that are really going to galvanize all this. One is physics and the other is economics.

I mean, we can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, we're going to hit the hard wall of physics and economics on these things. And you can push it until something breaks and then there's going to be unfortunately unnecessary suffering and hardship. So we're seeing this already in states like California where I'm sitting now where they've been pushing a certain agenda for the last 20 years or so, you know, pushing to get to these very aspirational goals of 100% renewable energy, getting rid of all internal combustion vehicles, restricting all oil and gas production and the state and they've been just hammering on this for years and years and just ratcheting up the requirements in squeezing the industry out and now we're starting to see the cracks we're starting

to see the system start to buckle and break and we're not even anywhere close to 100% renewable you know we still get um you know 40 or 50% of the power and is coming from natural gas still so we're already starting to see power blackouts being a common occurrence now. It used to be very rare that you would have a power blockout. Now, it seems like every year we're having power blockouts. The governor, just this last summer, was telling people not to charge their electric vehicles. But at the same time, he's putting forth a mandate to get rid of... To make everybody have an electric vehicle. Exactly. And now he's basically because of the state of the power grid. the lack of reliability that we're experiencing having these ruling blackouts, they're telling people not to charge them.

And we're not anywhere close to hitting the aspirational goals that they've set. So you could already see the crack starting to show. And at the end of the day, I think most people want the same thing. You know, they want a comfortable house. They want air conditioning in the summer. They want heat in the winter. They want their kids to be comfortable. They don't want their parents to be freezing.

I mean, so I think we're going to hit a wall. And unfortunately, some of these things are going to break in states like California, in New York, and some of these areas where they're really pushing the boundaries and ignoring the physics and economics of these technologies and decisions. We are going to have some pain. But unfortunately, more pain is required. We haven't hit that threshold yet. Isn't that a wild statement to make? More pain is required.

You know, I'm curious, you know, because I sit here and I go like, I live in a place where for, I'm going to do six months of the year, it pretty much wants to kill you, you know? Like it's minus, it's cold. It snows a lot, et cetera. You know, it's just the option of having blackouts isn't exactly, I mean, sure, can we go back and live in a time where we didn't have consistent power and you had wood fire or coal, you know, like the old. timers to tell you all these different stories. But in today's world, you have blackouts, rolling blackouts in Alberta, specifically, Canada in general. That's not good. Like, we don't live in a place where, and I just assume in California, like, and maybe this is my, my ignorance, is like, I assume a rolling blackout in California isn't as bad as some other parts because of

your climate. But maybe I'm wrong on that, Brian. Well, blackouts kill people. I mean, let's be, let's be frank i mean anywhere obviously the more hostile the the weather and the environment the greater the risk but you know when the texas blackouts hit hundreds of people died in that right you you have people that are relying upon for for medical equipment and all different types of scenarios for their for their survival or you have people that you know are just their health isn't they're not going to be able to deal with living in a house where it's you know a hundred degrees outside and there's no air conditioning. You have elderly people that are sensitive to this. So blackouts are incredibly dangerous and totally irresponsible way to manage our grid. And that is

becoming the sad state of affairs where you're hearing even from the regulators and thought, well, if we have to have, you know, a blackout, a rolling blackout, it's becoming almost this common language used as an acceptable way to manage the grid, which to me is totally. They've somehow managed to make blackout not seem as bad at it. Because when you just say, well, people die in it. It's like, gee, that's something you never, it's not that I don't equate it with that. It's that they do a good job of making sure that doesn't equate. And to me, you know, you go back to storytelling and trying to inform people and everything else, what the heck to other people in California think? Like, I just, how isn't there just angry mobs everywhere? Maybe there is

angry mobs everywhere. But when it comes to this, I'm like, I mean, I feel like the power goes out once all across Alberta for an extended period of time, especially in the winter, like I mean politicians better be fearful because I mean like we don't have the luxury of, of it for you know, like I say, six to eight months of the year where it's like you don't freeze every pipe in your bloody house and everything else, right? Like it's, you know, when you do the risk analysis of like what's some of the biggest risk I face as a homeowner? It's like, better find a way to heat it in case the power goes out because of course the power goes out you have bad storms you have different things you have natural disasters things happen but when you're

talking about you know ineptitude on a on a giant level of like this is this is like we're literally doing this to ourselves that's a scary thing but anyways I come back to it what is going on in California you know you say more pains needed I'm like oh man how much more pain is needed for California to figure it out Well, more is required, unfortunately. I mean, this idea of electrifying everything, the attempt to electrify everything, really increases the risk substantially because, for example, the electric grid was not designed to shoulder the load of heating, right?

So as we're trying, a lot of these proponents of these policies are saying, well, we should move to electric heat pumps, and we're going to move to electric vehicles. we're going to electrify your home. We're going to electrify everything. And the challenge of that is that the grid wasn't designed to handle that load. And so that's going to be on top of the existing risk that we already have. I mean, as we were just talking about, we already are having problems. We're already having rolling blackouts.

Well, what's going to happen when you try to electrify all of these other things? It's going to be catastrophic, I think. And I think people will wake up. Once they realize that they don't have access to reliable electricity 24-7, they can't even charge their car, this brings up another point about electric vehicles. You know, in California, like you said, the weather is more mild. We're not going to have extreme, you're not going to be stuck out unless you're, let's see, in Lake Tahoe or something. But for most of coastal California, if your car runs out of charge, you're probably not going to die in your car, right? But the reality is if you live in a really cold climate and its single digit temperatures outside,

first of all, electric vehicles, their range can decrease up to 50%, depending on the temperature and how extreme the temperature is, obviously, but 40 to 50% of the range can be reduced in extreme cold, single digit weather, right? And it can take three times as long to charge the vehicle in those conditions. And so this is a significant risk if you live in a climate like yours, where I'm assuming you guys hit single digit temperatures all the time in the winter. Well, I mean, right now it ain't so bad. And I'm by not so bad I go. It's about minus 9 to minus 12 Celsius.

So what is that in Fahrenheit? I don't know. Is it 5, 8 somewhere in there, I'm assuming? Maybe it's a little bit warmer than that in the Fahrenheit side of the world. but I mean like January or January December we had a stretch right over Christmas where it was like minus 30 and the wind chill was minus 40 and it was just it was bloody cold even for a Canadian you're like this sucks this is cold and I'm chuckling on this side because I'm sitting at I was telling you before we started I'm on the road today I'm sitting in emminton and uh Phoenix energy services

were kind enough to throw me a spot in their in their offices and one of the guys buddies drives a Tesla. And he was supposed to be, long story short, they had this little confusion in the morning. Anyway, he's driving the Tesla out. Oh, I got to turn around and come back, gets back, and now he doesn't have charged to make it back to where he was heading to. So he's sitting at his home charging his Tesla. And I just laugh. I'm like, that's funny, right? Like, I mean, that should be proof in the pudding enough of where I live. I mean, I'm sure there's Tesla owners out there that live in this area and have no issues and whatever else. It's just, you know, it's pretty self-evident to me at this point. I mean, you tack on everything else that you got to do.

do battery storage, everything you're talking about with the grid and everything else. I chuckle because it's like I see it playing out firsthand. Yeah, I think that oftentimes these things are taken into account in a lot of the storytelling around electric vehicles is a perfect example. Like, I'm not anti-electric vehicles. I'm pro any technology that's going to make our lives better and more convenient. And I think electric vehicles will play a role in the future. but the power density of the batteries is really not there yet to be better.

I think we generally adopt new technology when it's better, when it makes our lives easier, when it makes our lives everything more convenient. When you don't have to force it on a population because they just see the usefulness of it. Exactly. That's when technology gets embraced and you see its scale. Right now what we're seeing with electric vehicles, it is trying to be crammed down. I mean, there's massive government incentives that are fueling a lot of, of in terms of tax credits and in various rebates, as well as these mandates and requirements signaling

to industry. And all of this is trying to push something prematurely. That's why I don't have a problem with the technology itself, and I think it will play a role, but I think they're prematurely trying to scale it. And it's not there yet. I mean, when you think about it, just think about practically. The range, the charging time. What about if you don't have a garage, to charge your vehicle in. I mean, all of these things are not convenient. And the cost, the average electric vehicle in the United States cost $66,000. That's double the cost of a typical sedan or internal combustion engine.

These are luxury vehicles, basically. This is not for kind of your average person. This is not for your podcaster, Sean Newman, who cannot afford that, you know? How close do you think we get to this? It's a little bit of a hypothetical. I'm going to use their numbers. I'm going to read this. This is, they want 100%.

We were talking about this earlier. They want mandatory target 100% of new light duty cars and passenger trucks sales are zero omission by 2035. How close do you think we get to that date where they realize, this isn't going to happen and they push that. Or do you think, do you, or do you think what's going to happen is we're going to hit 2035. They're going to say, nope, we don't only have zero emission vehicles

and the market is going to go like this. And people are just going to wait it out until they bring back something that makes reasonable sense. Or what are your thoughts? It's a complete hypothetical. But I mean, we are, that's where we're heading. Yeah, I mean, it's dangerous to ever predict the future because obviously, no one has a crystal ball. My hunch is that a couple things will happen. One is that these things will get pushed out in terms of hitting that absolute maximum. Or there's going to be all these

kinds of watered down workarounds that, you know, kind of allow things to happen. Or people are just going to start going around it. Like, for example, instead of buying a car in California, they'll they'll buy their car in Nevada or Arizona or they'll find ways around that rule one way or another. I mean, I'm not an expert in that law to understand what all the loopholes are, but I guarantee you every law and every rule has a loophole if you want to search for it hard enough. And I think people will just start exposing those. And we see that all types of examples all over the place with any time you try to cram down a rule that's so tight and so strict that people just find ways around it.

It'll be interesting because, I mean, money dictates so much, right? Like, I mean, you talk about incentives. Well, the biggest incentive for a lot of people is money. And so for business owners, for industry in general, if there's no, you know, like right now, Tesla and different things like that are relatively popular. I might even say extremely popular. And certainly there is some truth to that, but eventually you're gonna hit this point

where there's no other option. And I just, I just see money drying up. Maybe I'm wrong on that. I'm certainly no industry insider. I'm just like, at some point people are just gonna be like, I can't afford that, I'm gonna stick with my 2016, whatever, and we'll just ride it out. And no different than having a savings account

and just kinda, well, I'm just gonna leave it there, I'm not gonna go spend money because I can't. And industry's gonna have have to adjust. I just assume that. When you talk about workarounds, I wonder how a country like Canada finds a workaround when the federal government is trying to impose it on everyone, you know? Like I just, but maybe there's, you probably know different ideas or somehow companies got around workarounds or countries got around workarounds when it comes to, you know, whether it's country saying we're not going to buy something X from you because of maybe some

labor issues and stuff like that. I don't know. I'm spitballing here a little bit, but I'm sure there are some creative ways. My brain just, I guess, has never had to deal with that before. Well, it's either the workaround or the political backlash is so strong that the politicians have to cave or adjust, right? I mean, it's usually one of those two outcomes. And there's a lot of counterproductive impacts of a lot of these rules. You know, for example, when they've studied electric vehicle use and sales, what they find is, well, first of all, most people that are buying electric vehicles today make six figures or more. So these are relatively well-off people for the most part. Second is that it's usually a second vehicle. They also already have a conventional

vehicle as well. They're not necessarily getting rid of their existing car. And so when you actually look at, again, getting back to what was the goal of even doing this? The goal that was driving this was to reduce carbon emissions in most cases. That was kind of the impetus or the push for this. Well, if we know, and if you go to any of the report, you go to Tesla's sustainability report, they fully admit that there's more embodied energy and embodied carbon emissions when a Tesla rolls out the factory and that you need to drive it for whatever it is, 60,000 miles or, you know, there's a debate on exactly how many miles you have to do.

drive and it depends on the source of energy that you're getting in terms of electricity to power it. So there's variables there. But basically, you have to drive it for a number of years and a certain number of miles to actually pay back that carbon debt, depending on where you are in the type of vehicle you have. So we know that. Well, if people are buying, if they're keeping their internal combustion car and they're buying their electric car as kind of their additional car and they're not driving it, is much, or in certain situations, when they're going on long road trips or when they're,

you know, maybe they're only using their electric car for shorter commutes, you have to really think about the whole calculus of what are we achieving because you now have a new electric vehicle that has more embodied carbon emissions to just create it, but you're also still keeping that internal combustion car. And now you're driving both, right? So you're not necessarily having a net reduction in emissions, depending on, obviously, the driving behavior and longevity of the car, and how long is that car going to stay on the road? Will they have to replace the battery? Because if they have to replace the battery, which depend, you know, a lot of the electric vehicle manufacturers are warranting these batteries for eight years or so. Now, some of them

should last hundreds of thousands of miles and it should be okay. But if you have to replace it, you've basically just killed all the potential carbon reduction because replacing the battery, which is where all that embedded energy is involved. Do you think then, you know, like the conversation right now is so focused on reducing emissions, reducing emissions, we need to reduce emissions. You think that needs to be shifted from emissions to, I don't know, even just waste, right? Like, you know, everything's so focused on what it's doing pollution-wise to the planet, you know, in the air, emissions, that type of thing. CO2.

You get my drift, I hope. And I go, you know, when I, as I talk to you here the second time, I'm like, you know, it just seems like there's so much waste that's going to be coming down the pipeline. Like, there's just going to be so much, like, whether we're talking batteries, whether we're talking solar. panels whether we're talking wind turbines whether we're talking whatever like it just seems like this fixation on this kind of number way over here and I kind of put it out of the screen because it's kind of it's kind of what it is when I listen to you talk about all these different things I'm like man the the amount of waste coming is going to be astronomical I think oh it's huge for example the amount of solar panels

that they're planning to hit the landfills, there's millions and millions and millions of solar panels in California that now they're concerned about what's going to have, because they last 20, 25 years, somewhere in that ballpark. Then on these residential homes, a lot of times it's not like a big utility where they have a huge field of these solar panels. These are just getting oftentimes disposed of in landfills

because there's not the recycling infrastructure for them. So a lot of the local governments fear that you're going to have millions of solar panels, panels hitting the landfills. Now, solar panels are made for all kinds of heavy metals, toxic chemicals, and when they get broken and get then disposed of them in a landfill, there's the potential for that to leach into the groundwater, if it somehow got out of the landfill liner, et cetera. And so it's a huge concern and a big problem looming for states that have high levels of solar panel penetration, especially in residential. So all of these things, it gives back to

What is the evaluation criteria that we're using? You mentioned that we're so fixated just on the CO2 emissions is an example. Now, CO2 emissions is a useful metric, and we should consider it. But there's multiple evaluation criteria we should be using. We should be looking at materials use and intensity, land use. What is the end of life for that? How scalable is the technology? What are the energy security implications?

there's a bunch of evaluation criteria we should be considering, and we need to balance all of these different criteria when we're considering different energy options, not just be myopically focused on one of them, and assuming that that is the one end-all-be-all criteria that should guide everything. Because then we're ignoring all of these other really important factors, and oftentimes having effects that are counterproductive to what we're trying to achieve in the first place. You know, I sit and listen to you and I wonder, like, are you frustrated at all? You know, as a guy who talks daily, openly, extensively about this issue and, you know, the different statistics and everything else, do you see, like, you talk about cracks forming in California and yet more pain is needed, which is sadly funny in a dark wave to me. But I mean certainly that extends itself to different subjects, not just energy.

Are you sitting there and are you seeing glimmers of hope? Are you seeing things change? You know, last time we talked, we talked to, you know, and she's not even the prime minister of the UK anymore. But at the time we were talking about fracking opening up in the UK. And we, you know, you said there's all these little signals starting to form that maybe things are starting to change. It's going to take time, as we, you know, as we talked extensively last time. It's not like you just snap your fingers and you got, you know, whatever you want, mining to drilling and et cetera for all these different minerals and everything else.

Are you continuing to see signals that are promising, that, you know, give you a little bit of hope that, you know, maybe some of the darker days are behind us? Are we walking into, I don't know, more dark days? nuclear power gives me hope and I think we're seeing right now a shift globally with how nuclear power is perceived in the world and this this is happening not just in pockets in one country or two countries we're seeing countries that had basically shut down all of their nuclear power such as Japan right after the Fukushima accident now they're ramping all the they're trying to turn on as many of those nuclear plants as they can to ramp them back up, as well as investing in new technologies such as small modular reactors

and thinking about their plans for the future. Same thing in Korea. Complete reversal. They were going to basically shutting down their nuclear program as official government policy. They were divesting from it, and they've done 180 degree about face, and now they're reinvesting in growing it. You're seeing this across the Middle East. United Arab Emirates is going to have 25% of their power coming from.

from nuclear. We're seeing across different countries in Europe, like Poland and others that are really embracing nuclear as part of energy security and in addition as a way to reduce emissions. We're seeing a shift happen. Now, how widespread that ends up being in what time frame? That's a good question. We'll have to wait and see. I don't want to be presumptive to, you know, not Pollyanna about this, this is all going to happen tomorrow. And, you know, these projects take a long time. There's a lot of challenges ahead. But that does give me hope that we are seeing a shift on the global stage on the acceptance and promotion of nuclear power. And we're starting to see more people understand this on both sides of the political spectrum. This should be something that everyone gets behind. You know,

on the left, there's a lot of concern around climate change and climate risk. Well, nuclear power provides the best solution to that problem. There's nothing that even comes close. Nuclear power has four times less emissions than solar panels, right? And the power density of it is incredible. You have, you know, you sit on a teeny little footprint of land. It uses 75 times less land than a solar farm. The amount of materials is 18 times less. So all the, you avoid all the mining impacts, etc. So when you look at this through an environmental lens or through a climate lens, nuclear power is the answer. Now, if you're looking in the other side of the political spectrum, where energy security is paramount in the top priority, well, it also scores incredibly high there as well.

I mean, that's why France decided to embrace it in the 70s. It wasn't for emissions reduction. They basically built over 54 nuclear reactors in just over 15 years for energy security purposes. That was the driving factor. And now they have about seven. 70% of their power coming from nuclear energy. So I think politically, we're starting to see a shift where both sides of the political spectrum can see a pathway to embracing this technology and to scaling it. Now, it's not going to happen overnight, but I do see that trajectory, and that does give me hope.

And you're starting to see maybe even a little bit of the narrative change on it, right? Like if you, it's kind of what I'm taking. Whether that's just like hard cold facts or like, oh crap, like this is where we're heading and 180, either whichever way they come to that conclusion, whichever their conclusion is, and I just put that as we can use nuclear again, most likely when that starts happening and a government starts to take that viewpoint, the narrative is going to start to change on it. and they're going to probably try and open up some dialogue and try and show exactly what you're talking about, which, you know, whether that happens tomorrow

or in the next couple years or whatever, if you're starting to see different countries do that, chances are that's some of what's going to happen. I was curious, and maybe you've said this and I just missed it. You know, I was joking with you before we started. Like I listened to our conversation, I wrote down by it. I'm like, how did I not ask this question? You know, and sometimes my ears and my brain go to different places,

and I start jotting down things, and I miss things. Has there been a country that is, and I don't know what percentage you would be like, they were a nuclear power country. Has there been a country in the history of nuclear power that was that, that solely relied on it? And solely I'm using a little bit tongue-in-cheek, because obviously not 100%, but is there a country that has done it successfully?

Well, I would go back to, there's really three countries that have, a considerable amount of nuclear power. You know, France being the permanent example of having the highest level of penetration of their electricity being sourced from nuclear, just 69%, which is considerable. I mean, that's the majority of the grid. However, on an absolute basis, in terms of the total amount of power, the United States actually leads the world and generates the most energy from nuclear. 19% of all of the electricity in the United States is coming from 92 nuclear power plants around the country.

Now, we haven't built new plants in a long time. We're building a couple right now in Georgia. And unfortunately, due to kind of very burdensome regulation, COVID, the contract going through a bankruptcy during the building period. There's a lot of reasons why that project is way over budget, way behind. schedule and unfortunately we haven't that's the only example in the U.S. in the last, you know, a couple decades. However, we did, we know how to do it. We did it once, right? You know, we, we had almost a hundred reactors around the country generating a considerable amount of power. Also, Sweden is another example. 31% of, of their electricity is coming from nuclear in. So you're

There are examples where a considerable portion of the power is coming from this technology. How did they convince, because if memory serves me correct, France, 69% you said? Yes. How did they convince them that that was not good for the environment, that they needed to slow these down, they needed to turn them off, they needed to, you know, a whole bunch of different things? I don't know if you know the answer to that, Brian. I'm just curious because you'd think they'd be able to go like, actually, this is why we do it this way, and this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have this feeling that the French are not just this agreeable sort that went, yeah,

you're right. Do you know how they got to the point where they were slowing or turning reactors? Like, do you know any of that? A little bit. I mean, I think this, unfortunately, this ideology has become, it's like a mind virus as it spreads. Bad ideas can spread just as good ideas can spread. And, you know, it shows that you have to be vigilant to maintain your infrastructure, to maintain your culture, to maintain your civilization. You can't lapse because bad ideas do seep into the culture.

And what we saw in 2015, France passed legislation, the energy transition law that was directing them to divest from nuclear and invest in renewables. Now, this is a country that obviously had a tremendous investment in nuclear power, but if you're going to basically tell all of the operators, hey, we're going to start phasing this down over time and we're going to ramp these renewables up, well, that has big implications. You're going to kick the maintenance down the road and defer maintenance. You're not going to be investing in new plants. Eventually, things are going to start to erode. And that's what we saw in this last year where a bunch of nuclear plants in France were offline for maintenance because they weren't. operating at high capacity because they weren't being maintained in the way that they should be. Because they didn't see it as the future of energy in France.

They saw it as, okay, we did this. This was good for that time, but we're going to now start divesting and we're going to be embracing renewables. So that mine virus spread and affected legislation, which affects investment in maintenance of these assets. And so you have to be, it really does show that you can't rest. back on your laurels, you have to be vigilant at all times. Otherwise, even if you had the most robust infrastructure in the world, it can erode. And entropy is real. And you're not going to be

able to maintain it. Yeah, you, the vigilant thing is going to sit with me for a while because it really shows you, you know, if nuclear is the best option to not only just give the most people the amount of power but land use waste you know I'm probably missing a few different things here and even the country that had adopted it and had 69% of the grid on nuclear can find a way to slowly erode that and and be in a position where they're going what have we done I think that's a pretty good warning sign to anywhere in the world It doesn't matter if we're talking energy or we're talking farming or we're talking anything. If you've got the best practices, and I'm actually speaking a lot about Canada right now,

because Canada has a lot of these strict environmental policies and everything else. We don't have slave labor. We don't have like, you know, and even the best of us can have a mine virus. You know, I feel like you're, it's Dune. Dune is the mine virus. Anyways, a little sci-fi plug in there. I think the vigilance thing is pretty apt because over the course of history, you can see it play out. And I find it really curious with France, because I'm like, you know, like somewhere in the world, there's somebody who knows everything about nuclear.

Not everything, but they've dealt with it for a long time. And they see the benefits and all the different things. And even they have caved. and isn't that an interesting, interesting thing? You know, you said last time that if you don't have energy security, you don't have a country. And, you know, I hate to get too conspiracy theory

on the show today, and I'm sucking Brian into it a little bit here. But, you know, it is the week of Davos going on with the World Economic Forum and all these different things. They've certainly had some mine viruses come out of that facility. when you say the energy security, you don't have a country, I was hoping we could just expand on that.

And I know we got a little bit of a tie and constraint coming up. But could you expand on that a little bit more? And I don't know why I bring up the world economic forum, other than they've had some pretty strong ideas coming out about energy and different things like that over the course of their existence. Well, throughout history, all wars are won or lost by those. countries that can harness and use energy and project energy in the world most effectively. So let's just look at World War II. World War II, Europe would all be speaking German if it

wasn't for the United States oil industry because the United States supplied 90% of the allies in Europe with the energy in the form of oil to actually win that war. Without it, Hitler would have rolled over all of Europe and everyone would be speaking German right now. So, I mean, that's just a fact. I mean, so if you if you don't have access to an energy source for both not only your your country's defense, but also it's the bedrock of your entire economy and how you're going to prosper as a civilization, you don't have a chance, right? And so you see this right today, right? I mean, look at look at what's happening in Europe where Germany who there's no country on earth that has invested more in kind of this renewables fantasy than Germany.

And they are sacrificing not only their energy security, just from a political standpoint, they became incredibly reliant on Russia for natural gas, which was a terrible decision. That kind of compromised them, both politically. Then they made these decisions to shut down their nuclear plants, go all in on renewables. They wanted to ban fracking in other kind of oil and gas development. And you can see how that weakened their political position because their whole industrial sector. Germany is the beating heart of industry in Europe. They have more kind of all of your big kind of metals and ceramic and glass factories and aluminum smelters and all this stuff is all clustered and centered in Germany.

Well, they've lost a huge amount of that industry already and it's eroding more and more because of these terrible energy policies. I think they've lost something like 15% of their industrial sector. And these big companies like BASF and others that are headquartered there even are not going to be building new factories there. They're looking to China and they're looking to other countries to build their factories. And in existing factories are not able to actually exist or function. So you can see if you start eroding through bad policy, your ability to harness and project energy. not only are you weakening your country from a defense perspective, but you're weakening the heart of your economy and the robustness of your whole culture and society.

So it is, to me, the most important metric of energy, first and foremost, is energy security. Because if you don't have energy security, you don't have a country. That should be the number one priority. And then, of course, it's not the only priority. You have to consider these other attributes of emissions, land use, materials use, pollution, all of these things. But to me, that's the paramount, number one priority. You know, when you put it that way, I just think, you know, when I sit in our country, it's like we could be an absolute energy powerhouse for the amount of people we have

compared like the amount of resources we have sitting in this country. We could be an absolute if we just get out of our way, you know? And I assume sitting down in the United States, you probably look at it the same way, I have to assume. Canada and the United States are blessed almost more than anywhere else on Earth with just tremendous natural resources, both from minerals, oil, and gas. It seems incredible, right? And we really are our own worst enemy sometimes. There's no excuse for this.

You know, the last barrel of oil that is ever sucked out of the ground or the last bit of natural gas should be in Canada or the United States because that is, number one, the cleanest barrel from an emissions profile standpoint, as well as when you factor in all these labor and social impact of importing it. You know, it's so ironic. You know, you're sitting there in Canada. I'm sitting here in California. California imports 70% of its oil, even though it's sitting on 1.5 billion barrel sitting right here in the state in the middle of the desert. I was down there at an oil site. There's not even a tree in sight. It's just barren desert, right? And they don't want to drill there, even though they're sitting on all this oil. They'd rather import it. So we import it. The three

countries that California imports most of their oil from is Ecuador, in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, right? Those countries don't have near the environmental protections. if any in some cases, much less the social protections of the workers and everything else. So why are we in California importing oil from a rock? Then all that oil, not only is it the way it's basically pulled out of the ground and the workers' treatment, but then they put it on big tankers that are burning fuel oil, emitting all of this pollution to ship it all the way across the ocean to get there. Is it just out of sight out of mind?

It makes people feel good when they don't. have it coming out of California because you know that that's what they're pushing for not in our land even though the ramifications of what they're trying to do which in their mind I assume is save the planet they're actually creating just this big a problem probably larger of a problem on such a giant scale it's it's not acknowledging the second and third order of these policies and decisions and if again back to the goal like if your goal is to reduce emissions and protect workers and minimize pollution, you would actually say California should be the last place on earth

that we produce oil, right? Because it has the strictest requirements of anywhere. They don't flare. You know, they have all, I mean, when I went down and visited the site, they were, there was a guy and a team of people doing an inventory looking for endangered lizards on the site, putting flags in earth to basically cord off those areas so they don't disturb the lizard in the middle of the desert. So you think they're doing that in the Amazon? No. They're slashing and burning. Up here we're doing frog studies. I know all about these studies. So it's just, it's very counterproductive, unfortunately, and it's a lack of second and third order thinking in terms of what's going to happen because of these policies. With time running out

on us, Brian, I appreciate you giving me time again today. And I certainly enjoy our chats. I think the audience will as well. It seems like a whole lot of common sense mixed with knowledge and background in an industry which I think needs more conversation around you know to get the some of the message and and some of the thoughts out about before I let you out of here let's do the the crude master final question and actually you know I've done it with you once before and I'm curious since you've started being active you know talking on not only this show but other shows being active on Twitter what's one of the staggering stats that you've come across, that you're just like, you can't refute this.

I think the thing that always just boggles my mind when I think about this topic of energy is just how many people in the world still live in energy poverty? 40% of the 8 billion people on Earth still live on energy poverty. What that means is that about 800 million of them don't even have access to electricity, and they cook with wood and dung. And there's about 2.5 billion people that are cooking with wood and dung for their heating and cooking source using that fuel.

It's just the amount of people that just don't have access to energy just is such a, the statistic is just so massive in terms of, because we just take it for granted. Like I'm sure you and I, you know, we're sitting there talking through a video call, right now and this amazing technology and computers and living in a very air conditioner heated home. And it's just that stat to me is just so staggering that 40% of the people on the planet just

don't have access to this. So to me, the number one priority is getting those people access to clean, reliable, affordable energy because that's really where we're going to do the most good. Right. And we know as countries get wealthier, they take better care of their environment. So it's a solution to both the social issues as well as the environmental issues. So I mean, there's tons of stats out there that are shocking. But to me, that stat is just incredible. Well, Brian, I appreciate you coming on and giving me some of your time yet again. I hope it's not the last time. I hope somewhere down the road, you know, you get to come back on and share more with us. Either way, thanks for giving me. me some time today. All the best and look forward to our next chat. Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity and if people are interested in wanting to learn more about this, they can follow me on Twitter at Brian Git. I also have a personal website I write at BrianGit.com. So feel free

to give me a follow and hopefully we can stay in touch. Sounds good, Brian. Appreciate it once again.