The Chaser Report - Texas Coal'dem

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

This episode would be banned in Florida. Yeehawwwww. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello. I am Charles. I'm Dom. Welcome to the show. Isn't this a nice sort of episode?

So far, no. It's got zero content in it. I want to talk about Texas today. Oh, yeah. Because there's a lot going on in Texas when it comes to renewable energy. Well, Texas is now, of course, the home of Tesla. Yes. He's abandoned California with all of its leftist woke ways and moved to good old Texas.

Yes. So you might know of Texas as sort of the center of oil production. Like it's, you know, Exxon and whatever, shell and beat, like they all operate. It's where you go to become an oil millionaire, i.e. George W. Bush. But Texas has recently in the US become the leading producer of wind and solar energy How do they do that? That seems accidental.

Well, everything's big in Texas. Oh, so if you do a windmill. Yeah, you do a fucking big one. Massive windmill. And also, because it's the home of the energy industry, there's all these energy entrepreneurs who've gone, well, I know how to spin a book. I see what they've done, yeah.

See, what they've done is all these massive companies for marketing reasons, you know, BP doesn't stand for British petroleum down. Oh, yes. Beyond petroleum. Yes. They've had, what they've had to do is do these tiny greenwashing projects.

Yes. Just so they can tell shareholders, look, we're going to stick around in the future and so that everyone can feel better about buying shares in a polluting industry. And because renewable energy works really well, they've actually succeeded despite themselves.

They've accidentally started all this renewable energy. It's worked. Yes. Even though they didn't want it to necessarily. That is just doing it for the marketing brochure. It's got out of control. Like wind power alone now accounts for, more than a quarter of Texas's electricity generation.

That seems like a terrible oversight. And it is the second largest source of power after natural gas in the state. Anyway, what they have decided to do, the Congress in Texas, the state Congress, is they're going to crack down on it. Oh, right, they're going to stop it. Yes, they've decided, so they're Republicans, obviously. This is sounding more like the Texas that I know. Yeah, and they're going to impose a whole raft of new fees and regulations on renewable energy companies,

making it harder for them to compete with traditional power sources. Well, that's not what we want. We want to protect fossil fuel companies and stifle innovation. This is how they managed to defeat the electric car. You remember that movie that they did years ago about who killed the electric car? Yes. If any competition comes up, you relentlessly destroy it. So that fossil fuels, which as we know will last forever, are protected.

We can't afford to gamble with getting rid of fossil fuels. So remember, this is a bill by the report. Republicans in Texas, right? Yes. And what do you think when you think of Republicans in Texas? I think giant hat? No. No, you think freedom.

Oh, of course. And you think free market. Don't tread on me, that kind of stuff. Yeah, don't tread on me. Like, oh, the land of the freedom. The spirit of the Alamo continues. Yes, exactly. We'll get defeated, but we'll do it with our freedom.

Well, yes, Charles, except that as we've seen, for instance, in Tennessee in the past week or so, that goes out the window freedom and liberty if someone opposes something you don't like so if you for instance in Tennessee as three Democrats did if you are part of a protest against shooting such as one that just happened

recently in Tennessee if you're part of a protest the Republicans will just expel you from the state house they'll just sack you if you're black if the white woman was allowed to stay but the two black men had to leave Congress immediately they were actually expelled they got stripped of their vote in Congress so even though they had been elected

they were unelected by their political opponents. Wow. Because they believed in freedom. They were setting them free. Not in not getting shot. They believe in the Second Amendment more than anything else. But the point is these principles of freedom and do whatever you want don't apply to, for instance, going into a protest.

But in this case, yes. Well, this makes more sense now because... My point is they're not consistent. They don't... Yeah, they don't have to be. Freedom means the freedom to be hypocritical, child. The freedom to completely contradict your own position of freedom and liberty. Yes.

As soon as someone does something you don't like, you clamp down on them. Okay. So that, mate, because the whole... So let me just tell you what the problems that the state legislature are saying. Sure. Which is the first one is... So Texas is big, as we said, right? And so they have been setting up these very large wind farms and solar farms, right?

And so they're now saying, well, hang on, isn't that bad for the environment? Oh, of course. They have a pristine environment, and then suddenly it's full of windmills. Yes, yes. And so they're trying to pass legislation that protects the native wilderness against renewable projects while at the same time not protecting against fracking or natural gas extraction or oil extraction. You're putting an oil rig.

I mean, that's important for the economy, Charles. Windmills are unsightly. Have you seen the majesty of an oil derrick working in the desert? That's poetry in motion. You can't regulate against that. Right, okay. So, because then the other problem is that because they're so large and they cost nothing to run, they keep undercutting the price of coal.

Windmills. Yes. So basically power from windmills is, like, vastly cheaper than coal power. Yes, of course, because you build it and just leave it. But that's until you start subsidising Charles, the coal. Yes. And then suddenly coal is much cheaper. Well, what they're saying is that the state's resource.

resources in wind and solid. This is what the legislators are saying is they are too abundant and therefore it creates unhealthy competition. Of course. With coal, which is, of course, the scarce resource. You can't compete against Mother Nature. Is that not fair? You've got to hobble Mother Nature to make it fairer.

And so therefore, no, therefore it makes sense to put fees on these abundant resources of the sun and the wind so that it evens things up with the stuff in the ground. As long as you don't put the same fees on. other natural resources such as coal because then that would be an even playing field and that's not fair. No, no, no, but the whole point is that coal is not abundant. It's scarce.

Absolutely. Like it could you know, you could dig all of it up. You've got to look after it. Yes, exactly. You've got to treasure it. Yes. Yeah. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. So, um, I don't know really where I was going with that, yeah.

But, but the whole point is, isn't it good that Texas What is the point? I don't know I'm impressed to see Charles that someone has stood up and said renewables are too efficient we have to make them more expensive

than it because that's, it's meant to be fair. I feel like Dutton is going to announce this as a policy. They're so efficient. And this is the thing, I mean, Al Gore a few years ago said, you know what, it's actually basically over.

Solar is now so cheap. But it just, you don't need. He said that back in 1999. I mean, remember he said, Look, I've tried for years to convince everyone that there's a moral argument that we have to do this. Now I don't need to make the moral argument anymore. The price is obviously cheaper.

So it's very innovative of Texas to find a way of just disturbing that logic and making a cheaper thing more expensive. Yes. I mean, it's sort of... They're going to preserve old growth fossil fuel jobs. They're going to protect the precious, endangered species of miners. Of miners and lobbyists. No, well, that's good.

That's good. I don't know whether you've been following the situation over in Florida, but it's not unlike what Ron DeSantis, the governor's been doing there. See, the thing about Florida, and this is very similar to Texas, Florida is the place where wokeism goes to die. You can't be woke in Florida.

Oh, right. And what that means is he is so committed, Ron DeSantis, to liberty, to freedom, to everyone getting to do whatever they want. I mean, there's no rules in Florida. Oh, yeah. Except for the rule that says you can't preach leftist ideals. In particular, you're not allowed to say

that there's any such thing as racism or sexism, or any... Or gay, you're not allowed to say gay. Yes, you can't say the word. Don't say gay. You certainly can't say that the world is in any way unfair to people who aren't white. No. That's not allowed. So you're completely free in Florida.

Yes. Unless you want to say something that Ronda Sanders disagrees with it, in which case, turns out you have almost no freedom at all. So, but as far as an electoral strategy goes, that combined with, if a black person does get elected, you then just removing their vote. Expell them from that. It does seem to me like that's a fairly coherent political ideology. I mean, the GOP has a really rough time retaining power.

They've had to do it by gerrymandering, by stacking the Supreme Court. I mean, they haven't won the popular vote in years in a national election. Yes. So these are the kind of brilliant strategies that they're going to use. Yes. If it's simply illegal to advocate the democratic position in an election, they're not going to win. The Republicans will keep winning. And that's why you end up having one-party state, which is much more free.

So how does this relate to Australia? This just doesn't relate to Australia. Well, it doesn't yet. Do you think maybe... Maybe that's the way forward for the Liberal Party. To just start legislating the fact that anything that you say that Dutton doesn't agree with, you can't say. Well, Queensland has a long history, of course, under Sir Joe, of basically changing electoral law so that it was impossible for Labor to win. Yes.

So that's the kind of free thinking and out-of-the-box creativity that we need. here. But I mean, in Australia, Charles, you've got to remember we're just coming out of a period where the coalition dominated everything for a very, very long period of time. And even in the Rudd-Gillard government, arguably, many of the coalition's best ideas were still very popular. This is just a brief period where Labor temporarily have control. Yes. Before the pendulum swings back. Yes. And this time. And also, they're being so disappointing that the pendulum won't even swing very far anyway. Labor has three years until the next set of elections. And it's gone. Maybe two. Yes. And I mean, Labor has a change.

chance now to permanently put the coalition out of business by doing such a good job that it will become the natural party government. The one thing we know about Labor is that they will fail to do that. They will squander that opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. It's fine. We will be in Florida in no time. I wouldn't worry about it. And even if Australia's politics are different, and even if climate action is popular in Australia, we are so small compared to the US that it's not going to matter. We're going to all be doomed anyway. Okay. That's why Texas matters. Because where Texas goes, so goes the rest of us. It's very big. Our gear is from Road.

We are part of the Iconiclass Network. We'll have a more optimistic episode tomorrow. Well, we have to because we can't be woke. We can't have... We're not allowed to be woke anymore. Oh, this is the podcast where woke goes to die. Would the podcast, would this podcast be banned in Florida? I would hope so.

Certainly in universities. We're wide.