The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 261: There's No Free Lunch with Renewable Energy

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Nels Johnson, Ryan Callaghan, Spencer Neuharth, Corinne Schneider, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: How the name Phil means lover of horses; the crossbow arms race and slippery slopes; a war against lucky people and children; The MeatEater Podcast saves yet another life; outing your grandpa for unsportsman-like conduct; when bad people mess with good beaver trappers; a solar and wind footprint the size of Texas; acid rain of days past; what does "clean coal" actually mean?; the problem of runaway climate change; mining the sun and siting the wind; the sad irony of having a dozen stainless steel thermoses in your cupboard; Cal as uniquely conscientious about waste and reuse; how much land The Nature Conservancy has transferred that you've probably hunted and fished on; car companies pledging to go all electric and the trade in value of Cal's Tundra by the time they do; one farmer's marginal is another farmer's best place; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with Onyx. Okay, I've got to bring people up to speed on what we were just talking about before Phil hit the power button. What button do you hit over there, Phil? Well, there are several. I do have to hit power first. That's the first step. Step one. And then I arm the board for recording.

Turns on a red light and then I hit a play button that actually starts the recording. Hmm. Yeah. Before you did all that, Spencer pointed out that Phil means like the name Phil. So all the Phil's in the world. Philip. Means horse lover?

Yeah. Well, Phil and I. Like platonically or like, uh, you know. Equus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Phil and I were having a deep conversation about Phil, the name over here. Because my brother was the fifth Phil in our family.

My dad was the fourth. My nephew is the sixth Phil. So I was asking Phil. So they didn't name you Phil? No. Why not? Because my older brother is eight years, came eight years before me. Oh, he got the name.

He got the name. That's right. He's Philip the? He'd be the fifth, I believe. My nephew is the sixth. So I was asking. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. So that brother had a kid.

Correct. I'm with you now. My nephew. Yeah, I was getting confused. Our Phil. I was asking if he's a 1L or a 2L Phil. What does he feel like to you, a 1L or a 2L Phil. What does he feel like to you? 1L or 2L?

I got it wrong. God, let me think. Where were you born? Vancouver, Washington. 2Ls. 1L. 1L. Phil felt like a 2L to me.

I thought he was a 2L guy. What? Okay. If I was a a kid I'd name him Phil But I'd be F-I-L-L Just to mess with people 2Ls? Why? Because Philippe Which one sounds more like Philippe?

Well that's a 2PE situation Oh that's right This is strictly coming from my personal experience with phil's and you're different than those phil's gotcha it's like your name has to be spelled different okay it tracks but the horse the horse lover thing um is derived from the greek word philipos which means horse loving or fond of horses fondling horses no no no fond of horses i'm with you. I got my eye on you, Phil.

Well, I got to say, I don't live up to the name. My parents really messed up because I have no... You hate horses. I hate's a strong word. I have no attractions. Okay, I'm going to stop talking. You're not drawn to horses. I'm not drawn to horses. I don't have an attachment to horses.

I didn't grow up with farm animals or anything like that. I got a lot of admiration for people that know a lot about horses because it's one of those things where, like my sister-in-law, they have an immense herd of horses where she lives. And when she looks at a horse, like I look at a horse, I just see, I don't know, a horse. She looks at a horse, she sees see, I don't know, a horse. She looks at a horse, she sees, like, not only the history of that animal, but, like, the history of its mother.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, all of its, like, neuroses and past injuries and what it's been eating. It's just, like, it's amazing. You could never learn it all. Like, I think it's one of those things you have to be brought up around. Mm-hmm. I sat next to a girl in middle school who wore nothing but horse sweaters

and would spend her days drawing horses all day long. I never understood it. There's a thing with horses. Yeah, I bet you she had long hair and a ponytail. Yeah. I find it's a weird thing that happens. My sister-in-law doesn't do this, but I find a lot of women who are very interested in horses wind up having very long hair and a ponytail as though they were trying to replicate the horse's tail. I don't know if they're even realize this.

Ponytail. Yeah. I don't know if I'd like to start asking people if they realize this. Joined today by Nels Johnson. We're going to be talking to a bunch later on. He's the North American Energy Program Director at the Nature Conservancy. So, hello, Nels. Hello, Steve.

So, we found you because you wrote into us offering some clarifications and corrections. No, someone who knows him. Someone who knows you suggested. Offer him, yep. Oh, I thought you wrote in being like, stop fretting about. No, no. He is not a self-promoter. Oh, I wouldn't hold it against you.

So who, it doesn't matter, but how did we track down? Because we've been talking a little bit about wind farms and how I don't like them. There's, I guess, a listener out there in our community who has been, you know, who's heard us touch on this conversation. And they say, I know who you ought to talk to. Exactly. And he's right there. And then we reached out to you and you said yes? Well, yeah, there was a little arm twisting involved, but yeah. No, I'm happy to do it.

So you're going to answer all of our questions about whether or not the planet will soon be covered in windmills, wind turbines. Well, yeah, that and a few other things. And all the birds will be dead. Yeah, and the squirrels will be doing great though. Because they can't climb up those slick turbine shafts. We'll get to all that in a minute. That's going to be interesting because I've been doing a lot of hand wringing and a lot of fretting. You know what's interesting?

I'll point this out, but we don't even need to discuss it yet. There's a feller that's been making some waves. He's a congressman. Kensinger? Kensinger? Kensinger? Kensinger, yeah. I just signed up for his email newsletter.

So he's been making a lot of waves by being not really liking the direction of the Republican Party. And I've been kind of interested in what he's got to say. And I was looking at his Twitter feed, and he was saying, let's make sure to keep nuclear in the mix. So we'll talk about that. We will. That's my thing, man. I want to end on this. That's my thing.

It's good. I hope you can talk me out of it, but I don't think you can. I don't even know if you're interested in talking me out of it. No. Okay. But we've got to be realistic about when and how that happens, right?

So that's what the conversation is. Yeah, I don't want to get mired in those kind of – It's pretty simple. I just want to make sure they're doing it and doing it now. You're either pro-energy or you're anti-nature. Like, which is it? Okay, we've got a handful of things. Hang tight, Nels.

Feel free to, if something strikes your fancy, feel free to speak up. Absolutely, thanks. Now, we happen to be sitting in Montana right now, and I want to talk about some bills that are up, some rule changes that are up. And I wouldn't talk about them if I didn't think that they weren't kind

of like more broadly applicable like it brings up interesting subjects that i think that anyone who's interested in uh hunting and fishing rules and whatnot legislation right they don't need to be here to appreciate the complexity and relevance of these questions. Do you feel like I'm selling as well, Cal? Yeah, absolutely. One, one thing that's up right now, SB111. It's good they went with SB and not BS111, but I think BS111 would have been better.

I'll be curious to hear Spencer's take on this. They want to legalize crossbow hunting. They want to legalize, not that it's illegal. They want to make it so you can hunt with a crossbow during archery season. Right now, specifically for impaired hunters, handicapped hunters. That's it. That's it. That's what I thought, but then someone told me it was more complicated than that.

Well. I think someone gave me the old slippery slope argument. That is, that's, that's our, that's our argument that we always stand on, right? It's like.

Yeah, but I'm a slippery slope guy. I think that there is in fact. Yes. A slippery slope in the world and people fall down the slippery, like I'm a big believer in slippery slopes. So SB111 is, is just that. So it would, uh, make crossbows legal for those who apply for a handicapped validation

to hunt during the, the season. And they can hunt with that crossbow during the archery season. Right now, crossbows are legal to hunt with in the state of Montana, as long as you use them during the firearm season.

Hmm. Hmm. How are they, uh, I didn't know, like I, I know this from various text messages and stuff that i got that didn't get into any level of detail is just expressing horror text messages expressing like

what are the what will happen next yes so where is the world headed so so explain the the what what is caught as the handic, like to what degree? So what this says is that it's discriminatory, right? So right now that you can use a device that holds a traditional bow, which, you know, traditional, I'm encompassing really compound bows, or if you could figure a device out for a recurve or a longbow that would hold that bow back at full draw with an arrow in it. And that would be legal for handicap hunters to use.

Right now it is. Right now. But you can't turn it sideways. But you can't turn it horizontal. Hmm. horizontal um and so this basically if folks can't figure out how to use that then they they can't hunt during archery season however they can use a crossbow if that is uh you know something that they can can work you know something that they can use effectively. They can use that during rifle season, not archery season. What like Montana traditional bow hunters are saying is this is how crossbow bows become legal during archery season. And the issue there is we're going to see a much higher success rates,

which in turn is going to shorten our archery season altogether because archery is going to be way too effective. Um, and then again, there's the discrimination side of this too. It's like, if this is keeping handicapped hunters out of archery season, then we need to address that and make sure that handicapped hunters are included in archery season if they are capable.

The state code basically says that as long, like we can adapt anything to be as inclusive as possible as long as it doesn't change the essence of what that thing is. Yeah. The interesting parts here are like, I have been around, I've guided some crossbow hunts for folks who were able to use them under this same pretense um in what state colorado okay and it was for me being somebody who's not familiar with a crossbow it was almost a two-person job to load the crossbow, and that handicapped hunter was not capable of loading that thing on

their own. They were very effective with it, uh, to shoot, but it wasn't a one person job to load the thing. Um, I'm sure there's a lot of different crossbows out there, but, um, this kind of seems like a, Oh, if we just add crossbows, then everybody's going to be happy. Uh, but it's like, if you can't use the thing that, uh, holds your bow back at full draw, I don't think there's anything that necessarily says crossbows are going to fix that. Yeah. And then there's probably people that would still be incapable of shooting a crossbow. Yeah, absolutely. a firearm yes for sure uh a very near and dear uh person to me was sharing with me that they really hope this does not pass they don't want to see crossbows

their argument was that this is like the playbook from the crossbow industry. Is that it always starts with this. And then pretty soon it's everybody. But he said that if they do make crossbows legal, he will start to hunt with one because it'll, it's the arms race. Oh, very interesting.

Uh, I sure, like I can't, I don't have the level of expertise about this to really have an opinion about it. But if it was just generally to make it that you could hunt during archery season with crossbows, I would point out there's all kinds of times to hunt with crossbows. Hunt with a crossbow during rifle season. And that was a great point. It's not like you can't use it.

You can use it for six damn weeks um there was a point made uh during the hearing for this that uh if you want to take advantage of shoulder season hunts uh bird hunting opportunities there's i'm gonna have to dig in dead you can use it for spring bear 300 days. Of crossbow hunting? Of crossbow hunting currently available. That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good.

Okay, here's one. Here's another bill that's up. And this is an interesting one. So it's hard as hell, hard as hell to draw. It doesn't matter where you are in the West. It's hard to draw a moose, sheep, or goat tag in the West outside of Alaska. So you can apply your whole life and never get one. I just drew a mountain goat, for instance. I just drew a mountain goat tag after 26 years of applying. I drew a mountain goat tag in the state of Montana. It took me 26 years of applying.

I drew a mountain goat tag in the state of Montana. It took me 26 years. I don't know how many. They started the bonus point system somewhere in the middle of my application period. Your bonus points are squared. So when I learned multiplication as a youngster, we only got up to 12 times 12, and then we quit for some reason. I don't know why.

We never got into what happens when you times 13 by something. So I still don't know. But if you had 12 bonus points, your name's in the hat 144 times. And I finally drew a mountain goat tag. Now I have to take off. Well, you got to lay low for five years or seven years? Seven years, I think. Before you can apply again.

Before you can even apply. Yeah. But I have friends who- Because you were successful, that would be an important part of this. I had friends who drew a mountain goat, like applied, drew a mountain goat tag, laid low for all the years, started applying again, drew a second one, right?

Which I feel is like a great feat. It's a great triumph. There's a bill that would make it that when you draw, and some states have this already, that once you draw a moose, sheep, or goat tag, I think it's if you're successful. If you're successful on the hunt, so successful drawing and then successful slapping that tag on a harvested animal.

You are done for life. You can never get back in the mix. Is it individually per animal? Yeah. Or is it within that group? No, you're not done with everything. You're done with that one. Okay.

What states have this? Idaho. Yeah, Idaho has once in a lifetime stuff there's a bunch of handfuls like uh new mexico has some once in a lifetime and it's important to note too like if you're you can apply for a cow moose and you know immediately you can yeah or you know so there's there's you got two shots at hunting each animal. Just one's going to be the animal with the more impressive headgear. Now this rule I was sharing, Cal and I were talking about this on the phone. This rule is one of those rules where everybody's opinion,

right down to whoever wrote this thing up. Everybody's, I guarantee whoever wrote this up, hasn't drawn moose, sheep, or goat tag. Guaranteed. And they're pissed. Because their cousin, he's drawn two. I've never drawn one. Yep.

This is not fair. Like, I guarantee. You should look into that, Corinne. Oh, if you. It's the person that drew this up pissed. There's no way they're sitting on on there's no way they drew all these and they're trying to draw them again no way well i wonder how many uh how many folks who have applied what percentage of the total i don't know per year over the past, I don't know, five years, 10 years, if we figure out some kind of percentage of those who have drawn, who have drawn twice and been successful.

Yeah, like what would it really do to this person? If they were out of the mix, what would it really do to the guy that drew this up, this bill? Right. What would it really do for his odds? I mean, are we talking about three people out of thousands or what? That is the point and the the pro-con argument in the debate for house bill 202 is it will increase people's odds who have not drawn yet and the con or the the yeah the con why this bill shouldn't exist is this will not increase people's art.

I don't like it for this reason, because did I ever tell you about my civics teacher in ninth grade, Al DeYoung? Al DeYoung, he would do parody, but none of us were old enough or smart enough to know he was doing parody. Al DeYoung taught government through the land. role played we now know he role played as a guy who would say and remember i'm concerned only with what affects and you point to himself ld young and he would be like there was he was supposed to

take everyone down to register him to vote he's like there's no way i would take you people down to register to vote why would i dilute my vote i don't want you idiots voting you know i love it that was a shit um but it stuck with me and like a rule like this i don't like it because what if they made it retroactive and I'm out of the run on a mountain goat or I'm not I'm old but I'm not totally old I could draw a sheep tag next year I would hate to learn that I couldn't get back in the running in five years why not because your br's got two, right? Listen, that dude. I don't even want to talk about it. Is it because Steve and his brother are competing? No. I just, like, I don't like it, and I don't like it only for what it would mean for me.

Or is it the slippery slope problem? You know, then it's going to be white-tailed deer, and then it's going to be squirrels. And, you know, you get one squirrel, and it's done. Then you're done. That is interesting, honestly. I haven't thought about it that way. But speaking from the Idaho standpoint, right, it kind of could be a BS bill because already there is a governor's tag, which if you love hunting sheep so much why don't you just buy

the governor's tag for i think it went for 440 yeah last year that's not 440 kids right uh state idaho is that once in a lifetime once in a lifetime tag unless you want to get in the governor's auction and buy the tag every year. So you can hunt sheep in perpetuity. It's kind of a bunch of crap. Isn't this a question of statistics? Yeah, I think it's symbolic. I think it's symbolic. Isn't it just like flat statistics?

So let's say, you know, after you're what, waiting seven years, you apply again. Isn't it if 1,000 people apply one year and 2,000 people apply the next, whether Steve is in the running during that 1,000 people or not, isn't it just based on the total number of people who have applied that year? That's what you base on? This is meant to be vindictive. Even when that dude sits out seven years, he's coming in with zero points.

He's got to rebuild his whole collection of points. He's like inconsequential. It's a way to punish the lucky people. It's not one-to-one. It's like they're against lucky people. And so is the winning argument... It's a war on lucky people.

If it doesn't matter, then why not get rid of them? Or is the winning argument is every little bit counts. You know, so like when you look, especially as a non-resident, if you look at your draw odds of getting like a premier sheep tag, it can be like 0.015% some places, 0.05%. And it's like, so if that 0.05% is back in the pool, does it really affect your odds of drawing? Oh, yeah, because when you get to looking at the odds on draw tags, you know, you can see a draw tag is 0.5% chance of drawing, or it's another tag is 1% chance of drawing. There's something that happens in your head.

Like, you don't view it being twice as likely to draw the one. You just view it all as being shitty. Yes. You just view it like, dah shitty yes you just feel like that ain't never gonna happen so this goes directly into the next bill uh which is our bonus points bill which is another great topic and will you read the number on that now this one HB 120. This one strikes to my core. This one, I would go so far to say that I would storm the state capitol building while they were tallying the votes. I wouldn't go that far.

He's a passionate man, Grant. I'm not saying I would take it that far. But I've already bought my kids a bunch of bonus points. You've invested in their future. Listen, I've invested in my future. Dividends. No, I've invested in my future because I think it's fun to go hunt moose, sheep, and goat. So my kids, my four-year-old, when he, no, how old is he now?

He's six. He's already sitting on three bonus points. When he turns 12, he'll be going into the draw with nine points. And now they're trying to rob this from me. Do you at all feel partially responsible for inspiring

this bill? No, because you've talked about this so many times. Yeah, listen, you gotta hate the game, not the player, bro. So I'll tell you right now. I'm dead set against this thing. These are folks coming in against the, you know, as the bill is written, this is not the way the game is supposed to be played so the kids who have not invested in hunting in the state of montana are coming in as if they have invested for what eight nine ten years right but they're they're paying they're

paying money to the state agency and drawing nothing in return. It's a money... Listen, let's be frank. Hold on. Have we said what this bill is yet? Have we talked about it? Okay. Hear me out.

Hear me out. I'll try to explain it real quick. HB 120. Okay, you going to do it? Please. Please? But I think you got to talk about. A bill for an act entitled an act allowing only persons eligible to hunt to apply for bonus points, which would be an amendment of Montana code annotated section 87 dash 2 dash 117. dash one one seven okay so in this state a kid can start legally hunting at 10 with a mentor um and they can only hunt on over-the-counter tags they can a kid a 10 year old cannot try to

draw a limited draw permit you have to be 12 to try to draw a limited draw permit it would stand to reason it would make most sense that you at point, you can start applying and accruing bonus points. But through some weird thing that I don't even think is that rational, but I exploit it. All of a sudden, they made it that your kids could start, a dad or mom, whatever the hell, could start stocking up bonus points for their kids. By just going down and buying them over the counter. So I was like, that's really kind of strange and almost like, you know, I almost don't even like it. But again, hate the game, not the player.

I went down and got my kids little ALS numbers that they don't even need and started buying them points. How much is a point? I don't even need and started buying them points how much is a point i don't know but when it's all said and done i can't remember on each but when it's all said and done i walk out of there dinged by a few hundred bucks because i buy them points for everything all of them okay so all three of them get all available points right and they don't even know this well no i kind of explained it the deal being i told him if you don't bring me if you draw one of these things and don't bring me with you i want all

this money back i've told him that kind of like investing yeah i'm like dude this is like me going on the hunt if you decide to go like with your buddies at school or something you're gonna be getting an invoice for all my point money back. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So the bonus point system, in theory, is set up as a, here is a way to reward people who are invested in the system and giving them a, a conceivably very large leg up, depending on, you know, changes in the, in the state, um, it violates the intention of the bill. The original bill, um, would be my perspective. Now I will also let you in on a little more perspective of mine own.

I have a niece and a nephew at this point, right? You buying them points? I don't buy them anything. Is it because you're a tight ass or because you don't agree with this? What I do is I opened up a life insurance policy for each of them based on my own life and they will get cash but also have to deal with my death that is going to be like their only gift from old uncle cal like they're gonna have to bury your carcass yeah why did you bring my kids that um when you have your own nephews and stuff was it just expediency why you brought my kids? No, they're getting a bunch of stuff too, yeah. And I think this is the way to go, right?

Because you and I have a long-lasting friendship. They should screw me over. You. Rob points from the mouth of my babies. This is like Karen slipping vicariously through their children. I've turned into a pretty decent human being. And one of those things that has made you a pretty

decent human being is like, paying your way through school. Right? Like, oh, God, let me tell you this sob story about going to state school, trapping my way through until I could get into the University of Montana, becoming a big swinging dick writer.

Right? That's character building. Okay. You are robbing your children of knowing the pain of really having to. Of not having many points. Yes, exactly. And therefore, you're putting their uh their their lives at risk of becoming decent humans you know these bills oh i want to move on here but these

bills are a real one-two punch to my children because imagine that uh i do well like i do all this and then one of them draws a tag and they're not even, they're like 12 years old. Right? And they don't even know what the hell is going on. They don't even know how cool it is. And then they can't ever draw another one when they're a grown up and would appreciate it. Exactly. It's a buyer beware.

It's a war on children. I'm a little hung up on this life insurance. Caveat emptor. So do your nieces and nephews know this? Do you think they root for your death a little bit? Well, the niece is like... The blood's a little thin by that point. I've got shirts older than my niece. I've got shirts older than my nephew.

Blood gets a little thin down by the niece level. They might be kind of being like... He's like, so you tell me if Kel dies. Right. Exactly. And they're like, and I'm currently not getting any birthday or Christmas presents. But they know about this. The sister knows about this.

They're like, so where does this Cal guy live? Yeah. Yeah. So I also want to get to this next one, which is super interesting. It's just going to be a quick beat, which is uh what's the next one on the list with the uh it eliminates the fish and games ability to have special draw tags in units that are over objective yeah but you're skipping one that i want to understand a little better real quick okay we got to hustle though yeah six okay they i think we're going

like going back in time so there's another thing non-resident licenses okay non-resident license state sb 143 they want to make it the outfitters are guaranteed a significant percentage that would mean that people that would normally like a non-resident hunter that would normally come to a state to just do a DIY hunt, um, that they funnel more of that business to outfitters and make it be that, that they have these outfitter specific permits. Yes. So it would favor individuals who are going to hire an outfitter over individuals who are going to freelance it.

Yes. an outfitter over individuals who are going to freelance it. Yes, and it does. The truest part of that is this will favor those going with, who have made the choice to go with an outfitter. And you have to make the choice earlier in the season than the general draw, the general non-resident draw. So basically it's kind of poised as a, if you're willing to commit early and at this, this point, the, uh, revised version of SB 143, um, 40% of those non-residents who are willing to commit to hunting with an outfitter for, uh, the two combination tags that are available in the state of Montana for non-residents and willing to spend an additional $300 on the application process per application, they will be guaranteed a tag up until that threshold of 40% of the non-resident tags is met.

Uh, an interesting part of this. So I had a great conversation with the head of Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, MOGA, uh, Mack Menard. Uh, super nice guy. and the stated intention of SB 143 is to take care of the current customer base for outfitters and guides in the state of Montana. And they're saying that right now it's about 40% of non-residents already choose to hunt with an outfitter and guide. However, the amended version here has a 10% swing, so it could go up to 50%, and that's based on the number of applications that come in under in under the outfitters bill, uh, from the previous season.

So if 45% choose to apply only 40% are guaranteed tags. Well, next year that can be increased to 45% up to 50%. Um, it sounds a little complicated the way I'm saying it, but it's, it's pretty darn simple. Um, and you know, the, It sounds a little complicated the way I'm saying it, but it's pretty darn simple.

And, you know, the cleanest opposition to this bill is why the hell should folks who are willing to pay more be guaranteed a tag? 100%. Sounds like it, you know, privilege. And the counter argument to that would, is an economic one. So the university of Montana has an ongoing survey and through this ongoing survey, it's a recreation based survey. They've determined that out of the $3.3 billion that recreation brings into the state of Montanaana outfitted recreation which is a much larger umbrella than than hunting which is what we're thinking of right now so it'd be hunting fishing it would more than likely be your sister-in-law's outfit as well uh you know

guided horseback rides there's guided there's rafting, there's sled dog runs, all sorts of things. I even have a buddy who takes people on nature walks. All of that recreation amounts to about 10%. So a big chunk of change for the state of Montana. And they found that folks willing to go with an outfitter outspend non-outfitted to recreators in the state of Montana by five to one. Sure. Like this is one study.

Everybody I've talked to on this is like, how the heck does that make sense? But I think when you start thinking about the gamut of outfitted experiences in the state, there's definitely some folks spending a lot of money compared to folks who are, you know, throwing the kids in the in the state um there's definitely some folks spending a lot of money compared to folks who are you know throwing the kids in the old family truckster and coming out to the state of montana so there's a theme developing here the haves versus the have-nots which is like the greatest argument of all time right yeah hey we got a note from a guy you

remember how we had a guy right in that uh listened to our podcast with Adam Lazara, who helped advise and work on our medical section in the Mediator Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, which is available now on Amazon, New York Times bestseller. That guy talked all about tourniquets. Yep. And a guy wrote in that his dad got shot in the arm hunting and used a tourniquet to save him. Another guy wrote in. Says, I would have never thought about tourniquet applying. Driving with his kids, comes across a car crash.

Oh, biker. Biker's in the middle of the road. Compound fracture, lower left leg, bleeding profusely. The guy says he was not wearing a belt, but thought about the episode we had and got a belt off a bystander and threw a tourniquet on the guy. Stop the bleeding.

Took 10 minutes for the ambulance to get there. Saved his life. That is episode 192, Bleeding Out, in case you... Yeah, that was the name of the episode, Bleeding Out. That's right. In this case, he did not bleed out. The proper thing to do when you go to administer care, right, is to establish who you are. So I'd be like, Stephen, hey, or, you know, sir, ma'am, you.

Yep. I would be like, I'm here on behalf of Dr. Adam Lazaro. Right. And so I'm just dying to know, like, what the bedside manner was. Now, sir, I see your legs bleeding out. I have a belt here, and I've listened to a podcast. I've been listening to this here podcast. Stand back. It's called Meat Eater meat anyway everybody stand back i heard the podcast

no need to call for help spencer guy wrote in about the real foot lake deal um which we covered extensively but he talked about his grandpa. He had a grandpa named Papa Duck, and Papa Duck was a guide on a duck club in Utah. And the duck club had these blinds out in a management unit, and they would bring in clients by airboat and drop them off to hunt these blinds. But apparently the blinds were there, but the duck club couldn't actually prohibit dudes from using the blinds were there, but the Duck Club couldn't actually prohibit dudes from using the blinds. So they built the blinds,

but they couldn't do away with the public aspect. And he says one day Gramps rolls in and there's a guy in a blind. They get in a fight and he ties a rope off to the blind and gets so mad he ties a rope to the blind and ties it off to his airboat

and tries to pull the blind over. Getting a big fight. The blind tips over. Actually, the hunter tries to shoot the rope. Okay? Tries to shoot the rope clean. Gets injured. The sheriff's called called and Papa Duck,

Papa Duck thinking that the guy will get, I don't know how he thinks that the guy will get in trouble. The sheriff comes in and gives a citation to Papa Duck for harassment. And he ends the note by saying, my grandpa was later kicked out of the duck club for reasons I'm not sure about. I was real impressed with this guy's honesty.

Oh, yeah. Like, uh, typically... Yeah, he's turning his own grandpa in. Yeah, typically grandparents have, like, some level of divinity that grandchildren hold them to. No, he's like, you want to hear about a real asshole? Yeah, this was great. My grandpa.

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here, speaking of talking about hunter harassment. Now, it's a many, I don't know how many states, I wish I knew this off the top of my head. A lot of states, most states, I think, have hunter harassment laws.

You know when Jeremiah Johnson, when Bearclaw, Chris Clap, is it Clap? That's an STD, isn't it? Or Clap? Clack? Clap? Clap? Bearclaw, Chris Clap,

played by the dude who used to play the judge in Hardcastle, McCormick. Remember that? It was a guy on like, anyhow. Sorry, Steve. Can you look that up, Spencer? Is it Lap or Clap? Anyhow, in Jeremiah Johnson.

L-A-P-P. Okay. In Jeremiah Johnson, he's out fiddling around in the mountains trying to make it as a mountain man and eventually gets a good hollering at from an old seasoned grizzled mountain man who accuses him of molesting his hunt. You've been molesting my hunt. And it's illegal to molest someone's hunt in virtually all states. Like if someone's doing like a lawful activity, like they're lawfully hunting, lawfully trapping, lawfully fishing, and someone comes out to screw with them, it's against the law. But we got an interesting note from a guy who is in a dispute with some people over his beaver trapping activities. And it's gotten heated. And right now, joining us remotely from Michigan, my home state,

the beaver trapping country of Michigan, is Josh Hagen. I want to ask him some questions about his experience here with, in this case, beaver trapper intimidation. Trapping intimidation. Trap and intimidation. Now, in the interest of time, Josh, I want to run through kind of the high-level particulars. And then you correct me if I screw some part up. Okay. Sounds good.

So you or your buddy owns property on some lake in Michigan. My buddy does. Your buddy owns property on a lake in Michigan. There's a big beaver colony on the lake with a beaver lodge. Yeah. You guys go out and string a little steel and start catching some beavers. Yep. And then people start doing what to you?

Or like they start doing like people around the lake respond to this by how? By basically messing with our traps. Breaking our sticks that our traps are set in. They wrote us a little note one of the times, kind of told us, broke the sticks and pulled basically the trap out of the water. Wrote us a little note, said no more in the snow right next to the trap. And then the fourth and final time, threw maybe a 10, 15-pound rock, a little smaller than a volleyball, threw it in the hole, set the trap off, and actually the rock got jammed and stuck in the trap.

And you put out some trail cams then? Yeah. Yep. So after the rock incident, we put some trail cams out to try and catch them because we had no idea who was doing it. We had a little bit of an idea, maybe who, but no hard evidence. So we threw some trail cameras out and within 24 hours, probably got three guys walking out to our traps, kind of looking at them,

but they didn't mess with the traps. They just kind of hung out there and looked at the traps for a couple minutes. Do you feel that they knew you had the trail cam set up? Yeah. One of the pictures, he actually pointed at my trail camera. So we set up two. We set up a cellular trail camera, kind of off hidden a little bit. And then we put a dummy camera right over the hole. Our thought was maybe keep their attention on the dummy camera. And then we'll, we'll maybe get who's doing this on the other camera. Yeah. And what's their, what's your best understanding of what their gripe is that they like watching,

they enjoy watching the beavers in the lake and they feel that these beavers should be off limits. They feel that no one should be able to mess with these beavers. Yeah, that's what we believe their gripe is. In October, we kind of ran out there to do some recon of the beaver den and ran into a few of the neighbors who clearly didn't want us messing with the beaver den. So had a couple of conversations back in October with a few of the neighbors who clearly didn't want us messing with the beaver den so had a couple conversations back in october with a few of the neighbors back there how has it been like when you called up fishing game uh to say hey we got this problem going on what has been their sort of what has been their attitude about it like have they suggested that why don't you just go and kind of go somewhere else

and try to avoid friction? Actually, we actually, when we got a hold of them, we had our traps pulled. We kind of misunderstood one of the rules of checking the traps every 24 hours. So she actually told us that we were in our right and that that day go put the beaver traps back out there hmm like encourage you to keep at it yep yeah she encouraged uh told us like have you run into any more problems give me a call and i'll come out and we'll come up with a game plan huh now this is what kind of the main thing i'm curious about with this a lot like a lot of times you go out people want to go out and and do stuff outside like hunt and fish or trap in this

case because like um some level of quietness you know of nature like solitude you picture this particularly being kind of a solitary activity in some way yeah but all of a sudden you're like mired in this dispute with like a neighborhood hoa yes uh did you feel compelled to keep at it because you were interested in sort of like defending your rights or did it still stay fun to do it you know or did it become like not fun but you didn't want to give up the terrorist win so to speak say a little bit of both uh it was still fun but then the other part was kind of like well we don't want these these people to you know to beat us like we we're fairly confident we're doing everything we should so it took away from the fun a little bit and kind of more morphed into like, we're not going to let these people beat us type thing. Yeah. Like they're trying to intimidate you

and you're in the right, not be spooked off. Why'd you guys set off trapping in the first place? We've always been interested in it. So we've always talked about doing it kind of where we decided this year to do it was they started to destroy dan my buddy dan's property i think they dropped like four trees in a couple weeks back in the fall so that's kind of what led us pushed us into like yeah let's give this a try and see what happens um did some part of you ever think man these people like looking at these beavers i'll just leave these beavers alone yeah yeah we we definitely went down that road of just is it worth it like we'll let the let them look at the beavers and we'll go on some public land close by and and try and get into it um but once the the co the conservation officer called us kind of like made us want to just keep

doing it out there more um once she said that you know we're good we're good to be out there yeah because in a way uh your co has to be able to enforce the idea that it's state-owned wildlife yes and you wind up you kind of like inadvertently walked into a little bit of a territorial battle where the state claims ownership of the resource and sets the guidelines for extracting the resource and then you have kind of like a vigilante group saying no this resource is in our custody. We'll set the rules for it. And then they kind of have to be like, then it almost, the beavers don't even matter. It almost becomes like this other conversation about who owns it and who makes up the rules

for it. Yeah, exactly. I would imagine you're a little bit inadvertently wind up being sort of a pawn in this much larger issue going on. I got a friend that has a ranch and he was explaining to a conservation officer. He was talking about his elk. My friend saying, you know, the guys, you know, doing whatever, always spooking my elk. And he said, the warden's like, come again?

Yeah. you have to wonder too like if uh your conservation officer is also like aware of state funded mitigation efforts uh regarding beavers in that area too just like well yeah be great if you guys took a few out because every year in the spring we have to go live trap them and then move those live traps to another body of water where we drown the beavers, which is not fun for anyone. Well, Josh, man, I appreciate you coming on. It was pretty interesting to read it. So are you guys still plugging away out there, or is it kind of like is the smoke settled now?

Oh, no, we're out there. Or dust settled. I'm mixing my metaphors. When I get off here with you guys, I'm going to head out there and check the traps. So they're head out there and check the traps. So they're still out there. Hey, Josh, if something else happens and transpires, just let me know. Yeah, I will. Absolutely.

Hey, hanging on the wall behind you, is that like an alcohol drinking artwork? Yeah, it's my fiance's. It's her little idea, idea i guess i don't know so i like it man she's making this she's making a bold statement about her wine consumption yeah yeah yeah yeah all right man thanks a lot yeah appreciate it thanks guys yeah we had a duck hunting spot in high school and part of college in Missoula. And it was, you know, like a fanned out section of the Clark Fork, the lower Clark Fork. And we'd set up on one of these little stems of it. And every once in a while we'd get an adjoining landowner that would come out and harass us and tell us why it was illegal to be there and instead of dealing with it we'd just pick up you know our like six half sunken decoys that we had and walk out of there and i called a missoula conservation officer and let

him know what was going on and the officer that i talked to was like yeah yeah he's like you're right he's like but how good of a spot is it yeah you know it's like you know that's almost too bad it is yeah still want to tp that guy's house if you're listening you still live there you know who i'm talking about didn't huey lewis getting a big thing with spooking off duck hunters and what not? Remember this? That was on Mitchell Slough in the Bitterroot and they fixed that by baiting the Slough.

So it was illegal to duck hunt there because there was bait present. The Mitchell Slough Homeowners Association there. But this was on the Lower Clark Fork and Kelly Island association there. And then, but this was on the lower Clark Fork, um, you know, at the end of Kelly Island down there, which was like for high school kids, you know, it's like, you're pretty limited as far as

like, you don't have a lot of stuff. Yeah, where you go, yeah. You don't have, you know, it's like none of us had chest waders. It was like knee boots or hip, hip boots. Right. And it's like, you're had chest waders. It was like knee boots or hip boots, right? And it's like, you're pretty, no boats, pretty limited.

Yeah. You know, so. Hip to be square. Hey, Cal, segue us into our oil and gas deal. Spencer's not really bringing it, this show. You notice that? Like, name me a single thing. Oh no, the stuff about Phil's name. Phil's name phil's name yeah that's right horse lover yeah that was good that was good but he didn't mean to do that couldn't have been more

relevant he didn't mean to do that i just caught that uh not really bringing it spencer if there's one thing somebody's gonna remember from this episode episode, it's going to be horse lover over Montana legislation, unfortunately. Yeah, Spencer, he's just, I mean, just very recently, I thought he was just an astounding personality. That's my fault. To have on the show. And now, man. What is happening?

Spencer, I'm sorry. This is unfair. No rock hounding stories. He's got time. There's an hour left in the podcast. Yeah, he can still come in with something. He's got time. There's an hour left. He can still come in with something. There's been so much good content. I don't need to interrupt it with some lower level content.

Yeah, your sophisticated hosting might be just your silence. Just existing. He's doing a good job by not talking. Yeah, it's restraint. And maybe some people in this room could you know you learn something yeah he's not like look at me look at me it's not his style yeah i like it cal segues into talking about um i think the whole planet being covered up in wind farms and whatnot yeah so you know recently uh real interesting republican congressman out of the state of idaho put together a package

that outlines a kind of grand scam grand scheme dude careful with the word choice man slip uh grand scheme i gotta owe some people apologies on that one. Holy cow. That would remove the lower Snake River dams, the four lower Snake River dams, on behalf largely of salmon is the way it's pitched. And that is a really interesting topic as we start talking about green energy. And we'll be getting into that dam removal. Damn right.

Oh, can I tell you a quick thing that's funny what's the name of that writer it is kemmy larson yeah i got a book for my kids called beavers what's the book called beavers damn friends beavers damn friends beavers it's about this beaver who's real lonely and uh owl says build a make a pond. So he makes a pond, and all kinds of people start showing up, frogs, fish, birds, whatnot. And then he's not lonely anymore. And my kids like it because the last line of the book is about, it says, now beavers got a lot of damn friends.

And there's old dad walking in with his traps. To take all their friends away. Who's this friend? Beaver's got a lot of, no, Benny the Beaver's got a lot of damn friends. Go on. So, you know, as we, you know, really begin our path with this new administration, green energy is a major topic. And. Were dams meant to be green energy at a time? No we weren't having that conversation back then no we really weren't well i mean very few people were having that conversation the research that i've done it's kind of shocking how none of

these conservation ideas are original now they're just really taking hold now so there's always somebody being like you know if we put in you know if we do enough blasting with dynamite here then all the previous world wars and build a dam that may affect upward travel of salmon it and i'd think it would be bad and they were like everybody needs jobs right now and flood control is a necessary thing and agriculture is a necessary thing we'll deal with the fish thing later so people when they're building all these giant dams and kind of like destroying the world's largest like salmon river the columbia drainage um people had to have been like but what about the fish yes but there's no way i mean obviously not there's no way there was ever any conversation about fossil fuel like climate issues fossil fuels certainly nothing that's

succinct that i've ever come across. But does anybody now, are people that have an ulterior motive, or that like dams, that want, there's got to be pro-dam people out there. Absolutely. This is as much for Nels as it is for you.

Is the pro-dam lobby, whatever form it's in, are they like, I got you. It's clean energy, bro. I have an email. We're not burning oil. From an employee at Bonneville Power saying there is nothing more green than hydroelectric power. Hmm.

Hmm. power. I like it when people latch on to, not to latch, I like it when people, when there's like an argument sort of presents itself in a kind of fortuitous way. Where all of a sudden you're like, yeah, things aren't looking good for this dam. This whole salmon thing. And then they're like, aha, suckers. The water moves through and gives us energy. Right. That's it.

Hit us with that, Nels. All right. Well, so there is green energy, but, you know, we need to take a step back. That's a more expansive term. Well, we should think about clean energy as maybe the better term. And then the question is, can we make clean energy green? And, you know, where we put energy, how we develop energy, even if it's clean, can have environmental impact.

So hydro is probably the most clear example of what's a clean energy technology that's not exactly always green, right? Because of blocking rivers and ending andromedous fish runs like the salmon in the Columbia. So, you know, what we're really interested in at the Nature Conservancy is how do we develop clean energy that really is green, that really avoids and minimizes impacts to the environment, to habitats, to wildlife, to people. And so that's what we're really interested in.

Did that word – did the word – I never until this second thought of reckoning between renewable energy resources and its impact on the environment? Was that word made up? Or was that word coined because there's this kind of friction? Well, I don't know that that friction really existed 10 and 20 years ago because we hadn't developed all that much clean or green energy then except for hydro. And a lot of that goes back to the 30s, right? I mean the reason why we didn't care about the fish so much in the Columbia during the Great Depression is because people were starving. I mean people had no money. People had no electricity in rural areas.

And so the dams that were built in the Columbia were partly, you know, a jobs creation program, an economic improvement program, and people thought that tradeoff was worth making back then. And now we have a different view of that tradeoff. And we have a greater appreciation how profound that trade-off is, right? I mean, salmon species that have evolved, that have, you know, migrated up the Columbia and the Snake Rivers to, you know, spawn way up into the Rockies in Idaho are winking out. I mean, they're just, they're on the verge of being extirpated. They've been there for hundreds

of thousands of years and now all of a sudden they're about to be gone. So, you know, we need to think about the consequence. There's no free lunch when it comes to energy, regardless of the energy type, clean energy included. Every form of energy, with the possible exception of efficiency, is going to have some sort of impact. And we need to weigh what those impacts are so that we make trade-offs that we think are acceptable. Are you familiar with the intellectual exercise of saying, we would never have won World War II if it wasn't for the Butte copper mine, right? There's one that goes.

We won World War II because we were able to smelt aluminum better than Germany because we had all those big ass dams. There's like an electricity bottleneck and we were able to outproduce aircraft. I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I've heard this. I, yeah, I haven't heard that one, but you know, I could imagine that being a legitimate argument.

That's interesting. Yeah. How far those, you know, how far can a dam fall? Yeah. And it's sort of public perception. But one interesting thing about the whole dam thing is, you know, it used to be the cheapest form of electricity out there. Anywhere in the planet, pretty much hydro was the cheapest thing. It's not anymore. The cheapest thing in the world today is solar and wind. Really?

Yeah. So most of the United States right now, solar and wind go for three to six cents per kilowatt hour. Natural gas and coal are between five and 17 cents per kilowatt hour. Hydro is somewhere in between. So it's still pretty cheap. Hold on. Hit me with that again. I don't understand. Like you're saying that's what it costs to produce it.

To produce a kilowatt hour of energy. But isn't it more, haven't we made it that it's more valuable to the producer depending on how the producer is making it? Like they sell it, they get an inflated rate to encourage renewables. No, I mean most energy markets in the United States are extremely competitive today. So, you know, utilities put out a call for proposals to build the next generation of energy-producing sources. And, you know, the best packages coming in to a lot of utilities these days are wind and solar or a combination of the two, usually paired with storage, some storage of some type.

And that's, you know, Xcel Energy in Colorado. They also have another major territory in the Midwest. Most of what they've put out there has come back as wind and solar. That's been the most competitive. And so 80% of all new additions to the electric generating fleet last year were either wind or solar, kind of split almost in half. Solar actually outpacing wind for the first time. And just, again, why is this happening? Well, part of it, of course, is we are concerned about climate change, but economics is really a huge driver of this. Solar costs have gone down 90% in a decade. 90%.

Thanks to what? Because of technological improvements, getting more and more experience with deploying and setting up systems. You know, if you build a coal plant, it'll take years to get the coal plant online. If you develop a wind project or a coal plant, it'll take years to get the coal plant online. If you develop a wind project or a solar project, you can get that thing online after it's permitted in six months or at

most a year. So it comes online much faster than, than the forms of energy that it's replacing. So that's one way where the, the startup costs start to even out, right? Cause one argument that, that I see over and over again, right, is like the cost of the shafts, the blades, uh, of those wind turbines, um, the, you know, the, the cost of the solar farms in, um, you know, materials that are mined out of the earth, uh, and then compared to what we have in, in the superstructure

that we have currently. Right. And like dams think about like a modern dam, what a modern dam would cost to build currently versus, you know, I believe the upgrading the hydroelectric capabilities of some of these dams is also in the tune of billions of dollars to modernize them and get them where they need to be. I'm looking at a thing right here. Solar and wind power need 40 to 50 times more surface space than coal and gas. So solar and wind power needs around 40 to 50 times more space than coal and 90 to 100 times more space than gas. Is that? That's roughly right.

Yes. So to power our whole country in solar would mean that we have 8 million acres of solar farms. Yeah, that's consistent with our estimates. Does that intimidate you? Well, you know, how many millions of acres are there in the United States? Just even, you know, so I don't know what that number is offhand. That's a good question. are there in the United States, just even, you know, so I don't know what that number is offhand, but just take the Bureau of Land Management, the largest landowning public agency in the United States. They have about 250 million acres. So it's a small fraction of that. The question,

Steve, really is where does it go? You know, if we put- Oh, the not in my backyard argument, right? Yeah, well, there's the not in my backyard, but, you know, we'd like to encourage upfront planning at a landscape scale before we decide where to put this stuff. So some of the first big, really big solar projects, Ivanpah, for example, right on the Nevada-California line. I don't know if you've ever driven I-15 north of LA on the way to Las Vegas, right? You see these towers that are several hundred feet in the air with thousands of, you know, solar mirrors all pointing at the top of those towers, beaming, you know, the sunlight so it can hit a temperature of several thousand degrees. I mean, it's like a sun at the top of this tower. I mean, pilots have to fly around

these things because they're so bright because of these thousands of solar rays. And in fact, if birds fly through those rays of sunlight that are concentrated going up to the tower, they're just basically vaporized. Really? But the problem with that project is where it went. It went into an area that was really important for desert tortoise, which is an endangered species, and it also is in an area that is important for desert bighorn sheep.

So, you know, we didn't have the information we should have used at that point to figure out where that project goes. I think the point is, is that we have more than enough room across the United States of what we would call low impact places that will have minimal conflicts with habitats, wildlife, and people that we could put this stuff. But we've got to think about it up front. And so that's what we're trying to do is help figure out where are the best places for this energy to go. So one project we have is called Mining the Sun, right? So there are 43 million acres of minelands and brownfields across

the United States. EPA has a program called the Repowering Program, which has inventoried these sites. And so what we're doing is trying to figure out how do we unlock these places and get renewable energy to go on those acres instead of out in what we call a greenfield situation, right? A natural environment in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Yeah, that's interesting, man. Like doing like super fun sites and quarries and stuff. Yeah, or mines. I mean, so for example, we're working in Nevada, actually with the Nevada Mining Association. We've gotten some regulations changed to encourage renewable development to go on mine sites in Nevada.

Like old uranium mines would come to mind. Well, copper mines, silver mines. You know, Nevada is the biggest hard rock mining state in the country. Montana is up there. It's third or fourth maybe after Arizona. Then we're also working in West Virginia, and there we're looking at coal fields. You know, there's hundreds of thousands of acres of former coal fields in West Virginia that used to be mountains that were blasted off and leveled. And now there's no economic activity going on there.

There are no jobs anymore there. What about putting renewable energy there? You know, the great thing about focusing- Well, you got to have either a shitload of wind or a shitload of sun, right? And what happens when there's no sun and no wind? Well, true. And that's why we need to look at the whole country in terms of where we put this stuff. I mean, the bigger the field of view we have, the more complimentary we can have wind. Because it's cloudy here one day, but it's sunny, you know, 100 miles away. Or it's windy in this place

now, but it's calm over there. And so, you know, if we have a big enough field of view, we can integrate a lot of this stuff. And then we need other things. We need storage. We need some other energy technologies that can do some baseload. That's why keeping, for example, existing nuclear online is important. About 20% of our energy today is nuclear. Is it really 20%? Well, it's maybe about 18 now because a couple of plants have closed in the last few years, but it's still a big chunk of our electricity generating capacity and it's essentially carbon free. The problem with nuclear- Are we doing any- Oh, go ahead. You're probably going to get there.

But I mean, are we doing- Is anybody eyeballing adding nuclear facilities online? Or is it all that they're just all destined to phase out? Well, so 1979, Three Mile Island happened. In the 40 years since then, there's been one facility added. That's at Watts Bar in Tennessee in 2016. That's the only new nuclear facility built in the United States since Three Mile Island. And there's another one that's being built in Georgia right now that's supposed to come online later this year. And those plants are essentially the same technology

we've had for the last 60 years. There are lots of enhancements, of course, because of concerns we've had because of Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and other things. But essentially, it's the same technology. And we have about, I don't know what the exact number is, somewhere around 60 existing nuclear plants across the country. Most of those were built in the 1970s. So they're kind of approaching the end of their original planned lives. But, you know, I think

there are ways to keep them going longer. And I think utilities are doing that where they can. So I think, you know, one of the, if you will, the building blocks of our clean energy future needs to be keeping existing nuclear in the fleet as long as it's safe and as long as it's at least reasonably economic to do so, that is going to be one of many solutions that we need. There is no silver bullet. There is no one technology that's going to save us. We need to combine a lot of technology, some of which have been around for a long time and some of which are totally new. Were you – well, I was going to ask, let me ask you a different thing first. Just to tee you up, I was going to ask you about whether you were surprised when GM made their announcement about all electric.

No, not really. Okay, we'll get to that in a minute. So the Biden administration, like what's their, they have a more, they put in a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public land. Is that correct? That's correct. And that's what it is? Like a moratorium on issuing new ones?

It's leases. On federal lands. Yeah. My understanding is it's leases. It's not permits that have already been issued, right? So it would be new leases. Yeah. Do you imagine a future i'm not so much asking if you like would like to see it

but do you imagine a future where we have a lot of um federal federally managed public lands lands that are given over to renewable energies? Like, is that part of the mix? Yeah, it could be part of the mix. Yes. Again, we have to look at what the value of those lands are. They're not all the same. I mean, the Bureau of Land Management, for example, you know, has extensive areas that have been degraded through different processes.

Mining, of course, is one of those. And we think those places may be good candidates. In fact, we worked with the BLM five and six and seven years ago to create what was called the Southwest Solar Plan, where we looked across six southwestern states. We looked across BLM lands, and where are the places that development of solar or wind, or geothermal for been called development focus areas. But they're kind of zones where there would be relatively little impact to the habitat or to wildlife, and that we would facilitate development there. And Congress passed something called the Omnibus, which is kind of the funding bill to keep government going back in, I guess it was December.

And part of that bill includes an energy subtitle. And within that, there's a goal now for the federal government to develop 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on essentially BLM lands. And, you know, just a little definition here, gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. So 1,000 megawatts or one gigawatt, you know, used to be kind of a typical size of a power plant, a coal power plant or a nuclear power plant. Not so much anymore because those economies of scale are less important for natural gas, solar, wind, other energy technologies. But that's roughly the way you can think of it.

So 25 large power plants, the goal is over the next four years on BLM lands. Again, you know, that would be, you know, a few hundred thousand acres out of, you know, again, 250 million. You know, we're pretty confident we can find low impact areas that could accommodate that 25 gigawatts. But, you know, we need to be thoughtful. We need to be careful about where we put it. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Nels, can we just go back for a sec to what you said, Steve, with the amount of surface area of the country or, you know, eventually the the planet to be covered. So when I spoke to you before, you said we are between now and probably 2050, we're about 10% into our build out of space and that we would, you can pick up, you said a footprint from the size of Maine to potentially Texas.

Yeah. So just, that's, that's essentially right, Corinne. We're roughly 10, maybe 15% into where we're going to go with the build out, which is, it's inevitably going to come. You know, the question is how fast does it happen and how careful are we about? But you don't think by 2050 that the technology might ax that in half? It could. Yeah.

I mean, it's possible. I mean, you know, we can, we have to deal with the data and the information we have and make our best guesses. One of the reasons why we give a range in terms of what the spatial impact could be, Maine being at the small end, actually Arizona is what we think is the high end. And that's because of different assumptions about what technologies are being deployed. So, for example, if we have a lot more rooftop solar and a lot more battery storage, that's less acres than if we have more of a reliance on just utility scale with less storage. Then we have to build more solar plants. We have to build more wind plants. So that is kind of the more upper area. And then actually Princeton released a study just a couple of months ago that suggested the footprint could be as big as the size of Texas. And I think that's because they're looking

at transmission. We didn't have good enough data where we felt comfortable about projecting the transmission footprint, but it's, you know, that would be significant and that that might you know and just well you know but but i think it's worth pointing out that um if you look at the footprint of hydro and you count the reservoirs yep so if you look at the footprint of hydro gas coal that's not insignificant right it's not like you're it's not like there's zero energy footprint now. No. And we're growing it to the size of Arizona. I don't know what the hell it is.

Presumably it's not Arizona, but it's not nothing. Yeah. Maybe it's a Rhode Island. It's still been large, right? I mean, if you look at mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia or the mining in the Powder River Basin, just 150 miles from here. I mean, there are extensive areas. The West Virginia, Kentucky examples always strike me, right?

Because it's like, anytime we bring up mining, anytime I bring up mining, I will 100% have emails that come in that say, and all those mines have elk on them now so how could they be a bad thing you know hey man we were just hunting uh in pennsylvania we were just uh flint log deer hunting on top of some old mine on top of hills that are mysteriously flat on top yeah it's like what happened it's kind of going up and then all of a sudden just flat yeah uh well infrastructure to like i always think of coal strip montana right yeah it's like how much do you count there's an entire railroad that goes

through coal strip montana right like but that has a lot of other services involved with it too but the reason that it's there is for that coal, coal power facility. Which is like how many yards wide, but then real damn long. Yeah. And you take oil and gas infrastructure, you know, if you've ever been hundreds of thousands of acres with roads and, you know, pump stations and pipeline corridors. And, you know, it's a spider web of impact, right, that makes that area a lot less appreciated by mule deer and pronghorn. And so, for example, the Wyoming Department of Fish and Game, I think, has tracked about a 40% decline now in the mule deer herd that would normally winter in that area because

they just don't like human, in concentrated forms like that. Things are more spread out, you know, they can live with it. But when you have a lot of it in one place, it really starts to impact the way animals think about the habitat that's there. And just to look at the footprint, you know, so it gets, you know, it's always like peeling an onion. You know, we say these numbers like it's the size of Arizona, but not all of that impact is exactly the same. So the numbers we use for solar are about, you know, eight acres are needed for every megawatt of solar. We need about 60 or 80 acres

for every wind turbine that goes up, which might be three or four megawatts nameplate capacity. But there's a difference in that impact. I mean, that solar is totally covering the ground and is totally changing that habitat to something that's totally not what it was. On the other hand, a wind turbine, you know, the footprint of the turbine itself isn't very big. So when we use that 60-80, we're using the spacing that's required between the turbines because they can't be too close to each other. They essentially have to be about a thousand feet apart.

So it's the project area we're using for wind. So for some species, the fact that there's a turbine there and there's a sprinkling of turbines across the landscape, not a big deal. But if you're a bird or a bat, it could be a big deal. And so, you know, there are differential impacts to these technologies. So that's another thing we have to think about and account for. You remember when everybody was kind of realizing the damage that cigarettes caused? And then you had tobacco

companies that would really want to like obfuscate right what exactly was going on with tobacco okay to the point where it became a joke and then you've had historically we've had oil companies that wanted to sort of obfuscate some of the realities around oil. Do you feel that the renewable industry is maybe hoodwinking people a little bit? Like maybe obfuscating a little bit of what they're talking about? Or do you feel that they're trying to deal in a way that they're like, this is what it will require. This is what it will look like.

Or are they a little bit ashamed? Like, are you a little bit, like, are you embarrassed about the numbers at all? No, I mean, the numbers are what the numbers are. In terms of, you know, are companies obfuscating the reality of what's going to happen? You know, I can't speak to the motivations of all companies. Companies have different motivations. I think some of them truly are focused on the social and environmental benefits. But let's face it. I mean, companies have to make money. They have to make a profit in order to be in that business. interesting thing about renewables is where's the money coming from that's driving all this investment. $10 trillion is going to go into renewable energy over the next several decades. A big chunk of that money is coming from oil and gas companies because they know what's coming.

It's a different world they're going to have to operate in. And so they're hedging their bets and they're investing substantially in renewable energy along with lots of other folks, right? I mean, including myself. So it's hard to, you know, lump everybody together and say they're all in cahoots trying to hug us. No, I mean, I think they are, you know, if you look at the history of energy, you know, we've progressively gotten better, I would say. I mean, we, you know, we went from wood, right? I mean, we cleared New England. There wasn't a tree growing in New England by about 1830 because we had chopped everything down to burn it for charcoal, uh, or of course clear it for farming. And, and, you know.

We saw where whale oil got us. Yeah. We saw where whale oil got us. Yeah, we saw where whale oil got us. I mean, so, yeah, wood wasn't a very sustainable thing. We had to come up with something else, and we did, right? And that was coal. So, yeah, coal was the next thing we did. And so we did that for a century. And then, yeah, we started to like, well, you know,

there are some real problems with coal. I mean, there's arsenic, there's, you know, sulfur dioxide. Remember the acid rain thing back in the 80s? Sure, yeah. Have you ever heard about acid rain recently? No. Why don't we hear about, why don't we hear about, can you explain why we don't? When I was in grad school, that was like a huge topic. It's what, you know, drove a lot of the ecological research community. And by the way, I'm a forest ecologist by training.

I'm not an energy guy. So, you know. But hold on, real quick. What happened to acid rain again? Well, you know, we stopped burning coal. I mean, it's a big part of it. We use sulfur dioxide, you know, scrubbers to keep nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide out of the air. But a big part of it is, is because of the burning of coal is, has been reduced over the last several decades.

It seemed like during the last presidency, you heard a lot about clean coal. Can you explain like what that is, what someone means when they're referring to clean coal and the reality of it? Spencer trying to get in there. See that? Holy cow. You know, so, um, again, I'm a forest

ecologist. I've gotten, I've been immersed in energy development for a couple of decades. I can get to that in just a moment. But, you know, there are ways to reduce the various side effects of burning coal, right? I mean, things like scrubbing the air to get sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, arsenic, mercury. But the more you do that, the more expensive it becomes. And one of the reasons why coal has become less and less competitive economically is the cost of dealing with those things that are in coal that are harmful to both human

health and the environment. So that's where they point out that regulations are killing the coal industry. Yeah, well. Because if it was just unfettered coal burning, it would be a lot cheaper than when you make So that's where they point out that regulations are killing the coal industry. Yeah, well. Because if it was just unfettered coal burning, it would be a lot cheaper than when you make certain stipulations about what you can and can't do, correct? Yeah, it would be cheaper. It'd still be – arguably, it'd still be expensive. Is that right?

For a whole bunch of reasons. But yeah, there's no question. You know, society's made the judgment, the right one, I think, that, into the air and go into the water and are a real threat to human and environmental health. But aren't we looking at, God, I feel like there are so many misnomers with green and clean and just no one's really telling the truth that, as you said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You know, who's looking into what do you do with solar panels after they've run their life cycle or battery powered cars? Maybe we're not burning, you know, fossil fuels, but what's, you know, where are we going to bring those things? Where are they going to break down? What kind of environmental impact will they have later on?

We won't maybe have them in our backyard. What countries will we be disposing of them in? That's the thing I've been trying to introduce, a conversation I've been trying to introduce in my family family is everything your kids go to now, anything they go to, they come home with a stainless steel water bottle. But it's like we have

this idea that the salvation of the world is from the whole point of that whole thing is that you get one and you hang on to it but they've become almost like disposable and i think that like people feel better about themselves doing that but that shit comes out of the ground man but it's all nonsense like i miss the milk man like everyone's talking about recycling it takes a lot of energy space it

takes a lot of processing and processes to also recycle. Oh, God. I'm just depressed. I think this is all a social political issue. That's kind of what I meant about the stainless steel bottle thing. It's like it's hard to – you want to make it all super simplified. Plastic bottles are bad. And there's a lot of reasons like with plastic in the oceans, right?

There's all kinds of reasons to be down on plastic bottles. But I don't know that the answer is that every family has 60 merch stainless steel bottles in their cupboards is which is where my family went hey steve you know i'm i'm drinking out of the same coffee thing that my brother gave me 10 or 20 years ago now by the way it's got congratulations got a yellowstone cutthroat there just just to impress you congratulations i try i try to i have this trusty cup you'll see that i try to use I have this trusty cup, you'll see, that I try to use. But I do see that people are like, you can fall into this thing where like, oh no, I'm rehabilitated. I now have 80 stainless steel containers and I lose one every week. Yeah, I own a Tesla. But I'm not feeding into the bottle, the plastic.

Saving the world one Tesla at a time. That's the biggest load of BS I've ever heard. is, okay, no school event, right, has somebody distributing the stainless steel bottle, looking each child in the eyeballs and going,

this is now your drinking vessel. For the rest of your life. It can hold many things. It is yours. Do not lose it. No. And if you ask the child,

do you, I want you to ask yourself, do you really need this stainless steel bottle? To which they will say, no, it's absolutely true. We live in a throwaway society, right? But seriously, I think there's going to be a lot of focus moving forward with these technologies to find ways to recycle them. For one thing, you know, you could save money just recycling batteries, for example, lithium

and other rare earth metals that go into, you know, batteries that are used now by cars and your cell phone sitting on the table here are expensive, really expensive. And so if we can find ways to recycle those batteries, if we can find cheaper components for those batteries, there's, you know, the $64 million, maybe billion dollar question is scalable, cheap battery storage. And, you know, there's a hot technology race on around the world to find cheaper, less impact ways to develop battery storage. There's some really promising research out there that suggests we can get beyond some of the rarers, including lithium, but we don't know. We don't have enough experience. It's too

early in the R&D phase. But all I can say is there is going to be a lot of focus and attention on getting cheaper and less impactful ways of developing these technologies over time. I think the same is going to be true for, you know, wind turbine blades. And, you know, one thing that's going on in the wind industry now is, you know, some of these wind turbines have been out there for 20 years. You know, they were one or one and a half megawatts. Now we're doing four. So how do they repurpose those 20-year-old turbine towers and get new blades on those things that are more efficient and generate more energy?

So we don't have to go out and build another turbine and just leave that other one there take it down and try and dispose of it's like how do we reuse yeah the recycling cost right it's like we want really long lasting batteries yeah we like that's what i want because it's like the cost of recycling like it's a the input can outweigh the output of recycling and then it's like what what is the point? Yeah. And that's why recycling everything, every place doesn't always make sense. Like right here in Bozen, right? You cannot recycle glass.

Why is that? Because you have to take it to Spokane or Denver to get rid of it. I mean, that means putting it in a truck, hauling it a long ways. It costs a lot of money and it uses a lot of fuel. So not a good idea. On the other hand, aluminum cans, yes. I mean, let's do that. There are places that will recycle that that are much more affordable and don't require the kind of energy that's required of glass, for example.

So, yeah, I mean, we have to use our no our noggins, uh, when we think about these things, there's not always one solution. You know, we have to think about what the right solution is in the right place at the right time. Well, think about what, uh, Corinne said, right? It's like, I think of salmon and dams again, right? I know from doing a lot of my own construction that when I tear apart a house, all that lumber that's been sitting there forever, if I rip all the nails out and put that lumber back in a house or into the new addition of the house or into whatever I'm working on in the house, that is way better than me going down to the lumber yard and buying a brand new wet two by four.

100%. But who does that? I do. No, I mean, there's you and you are rare. That's, you know,

but I also know that if you want to talk about green, clean energy, a protein source that can replicate itself, move halfway around the fricking globe and then bring itself all the way back inland. That is renewable that people can eat off of the entire way. Talking about salmon.

If done responsibly, salmon seems pretty damn green and clean. Now. That's a hell of a pitch for a farmer. Be like, I got this idea. But that giant superstructure. It's just livestock, right? You don't even touch. Yeah. It goes out into the ocean and comes back all But that giant superstructure This livestock, right?

You don't even touch Yeah It goes out into the ocean It comes back all fat and good No one does shit And then we eat it Pluck a few off as it comes by And leave enough so it can keep going up But then you have the superstructure in the middle, right?

That they're, my God, the initial cost of putting that thing there uh it seems that it would also be very beneficial to have that thing there in some capacity and renew it in a way that offset that mitigates that cost somehow while still allowing this miracle of protein to flow past it both downward and upward right and then you look at brand new clean energy like this the startup cost is what is is the hard part, right? And it's like, just like those oil pads and gas pads, there's going to be a lot of roads, probably a lot of chain link fencing that does not do a lot of good things for animals either.

And then we talk about the space, right? So it's like, how do we find our cake and eat it too? Yeah, and that's what we're all about. Let's take a step back. The reason why we think clean energy is so important is because climate change really threatens the mission that we have, which is sustaining the lands and waters that all life needs to exist. And the number one threat habitats, wildlife, ultimately human society faces,

is runaway climate change. The climate is changing at between 100 and 1,000 times faster than it has in millennia, eons. So we are compressing a huge amount of climate change into a very short period of time, a period of time that species and habitats will not be able to adapt to unless we slow it down. You know, living here in Montana, we can see it just in the last few years. You know, last year we had a record snowpack in a bunch of western Montana. By June, when the runoff normally peaks, right? I mean, you can't go fly fishing in June in Montana. That was always, you know, when I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, we'd come out to Montana to go fly fishing because it's not very good in North Dakota.

And, but, you know, you wouldn't come in June because the water was always too high. You know, when the water peaked last year, it was like the middle of May. And that's going on across the West right now is that we are seeing the runoff. So we're getting about the same amount of snow, at least here. I mean, further south, that's not so true. But here in the northern Rockies, we've been doing fine on annual snowpack and maybe even a slight increase. The problem is it's running off a lot sooner.

And so what does that mean? Hood owl restrictions. When I was a kid, you never heard of anything called a hood owl restriction. And for those of the uninitiated, that means you can't fish, you can't fly fish for trout, for cold water species in the afternoon because they get stressed out because the water temperatures get up to the upper 60s, low 70s. And, you know, if you're a trout, you know, you depend on cold water because cold water has enough oxygen that you're used to, that you've evolved to. If the water gets above a threshold, you know, some trout like Yellowstone cutthroats have a fairly low threshold in the upper 60s. You know, brown trout can tolerate into the, you know, low to mid 70s. But at some point, you reach a temperature where the trout just can't exist.

And certainly moving around and getting caught, for example, on one of those really warm afternoons is really stressful. And fish, you know, have been shown not to survive that stress very well. So they might survive that day to live another day, you know, if they don't get stressed out because they're being caught that afternoon. So those hoot hour restrictions, I looked online just trying to track how many of those have been imposed in Montana and whether there's some trend. I couldn't find any data on that. But just from my own personal experience, that's been going up, right? And we have more and more days. Look at fire seasons.

You know, the fire season across the West has now been extended by weeks to several months, depending on where you are, even here in Montana. You know, I mean, last fall there were wildfires, not just grass fires, but wildfires in forest settings in November and December. That's almost unheard of. I mean, these changes are happening now.

So the reason why we're so motivated to advocate for clean energy is because of that underlying problem. Do you foresee that your organization, the Nature Conservancy, will you guys turn Nature Conservancy lands over to renewable energy production? No. With possibly some exceptions, we own, for example, agricultural lands that are a buffer around a preserve that we might own. And, you know, it might actually be better to have solar panels there than having a farmer grow corn there, right? I mean, growing corn causes some erosion. You know, they might be using pesticides that might be a problem for insects or birds or whatever.

So maybe solar is a better use of that. But it would be in extremely limited circumstances. In fact, actually, we're looking, we own two and a half million acres across the United States. So it's conceivable that we would have some places that might be what we would call low impact for renewable energy. But generally, your lands are not the kind of compromised landscapes that you would look toward converting. A lot of our lands are really the ecological gems that are out there. We need a denatured conservancy.

Yeah, so we have about 1,400 preserves across the United States. By the way, you can hunt fish on over a million acres of those. And we have. Yeah, you probably have. I mean, here are a couple of examples. One is the big two-hearted preserve in Michigan, you know, where the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway are set.

You know, we own a preserve there and you can go fly fishing right there where, you know, Hemingway at one point saw him fishing. And then we have some place called the Silver Creek Preserve in Idaho, which actually was the last place that Hemingway lived one point, fly fishing. And then we have some place called the Silver Creek Preserve in Idaho, which actually was the last place that Hemingway lived and unfortunately committed suicide. But you could go fly fishing or duck hunting there.

And so anyway, so we, yeah, we own about a million and a half acres. I mean, two and a half million acres. We've acquired another 15 or 16 million acres nationwide that we've transferred to state and federal agencies. The vast majority of that's open to hunting and fishing too. Oh, is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, a lot of those lands went to state wildlife management areas or they went to the U.S. Forest Service or they went to the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

Yeah, somehow I didn't know that. I didn't know that you guys did land transfers. They put land into public estate. Yeah. I mean, most of the land we acquire ultimately ends up residing with a public agency. Huh. And managed for open access. Did you know that about the Nature Conservancy, to be honest?

No, I wasn't hip on the, I know of some cases, but I didn't know that that was, I guess, a pillar of the TNC. So you hold two and a half million, but you guys have transferred somewhere around 15 million acres? Yeah. Okay. I probably spent more time on Nature conservancy land than I thought. Maybe. But by the way, before you go charging into a nature conservancy preserve with your

rifle, do contact the program ahead of time to make sure it's, because some places are really sensitive and, you know, there's species there that are sensitive that, you know, make it hard for us to have public access to those places. In Michigan, we found we were hiking one time on a Nature Conservancy property and found a bunch of spawn and bluegills on a pond. Got a little nervous about it and did some checking around.

This is up by Traverse City. Did some checking around and turned out that we were allowed to go fish those bluegills. All right, cool. And we did. But we checked first. With a fly rod? No. With a net?

No. Hook and worm, man. Okay. That would be the Rinella way. Don't stand by. Yeah, we threw a gill net out there. No, we were. One inch match.

Here's why we got to thinking you couldn't. We thought you couldn't because no one was. And be like, how could it be that all these bluegills are in here like spawning in plain sight and no one's angling for them? It must be that you're not allowed to. But it's just that everybody else made the same mistake we made, assuming that you couldn't. Yeah. Well, always check with your local nature conservancy program. Yeah, we did.

And it was cool. Okay, what else? Give us a final thing, man. Like, let's do this. Oh, I wanted to ask you this too. The thing I mentioned. GM? Yeah, oh yeah, cars.

When they said, okay, everybody acted like it was all over the news, but I didn't think that it felt that ambitious. What was the year? 25, 35, 50? Yeah, I think it't think that it felt that ambitious. What was the year? 20, 35, 50? Yeah, I think it's like 35 or something like that. And they're, you know, they're not the only car company making that commitment. I mean, Volvo, Toyota, I think Ford as well, you know, they've all made commitments to essentially completely replace internal combustion engines with electric or other non-fossil fuel-based technologies sometime in the next two decades.

And the reason it doesn't surprise me is twofold. One is the economics of it are getting better and better. So it used to be the only electric car you get out there was a Tesla that cost you $100,000. Now you can get cars that are $35,000, $30,000. Obviously, if you have a federal tax credit, that makes it even more attractive. So you're getting to the point where those vehicles are starting to be competitive. You also are getting batteries that enable you to power most kinds of vehicles. You know, it used to be, you know, just cars, sedans that would be manufactured as electric vehicles.

Now we have a whole set of, you know, pickups and SUVs that are going to be coming out that are electric powered. And they have, and here's the second reason, they have some real advantages over our conventional internal combustion engine cars in the following sense. They almost require no maintenance, very little maintenance in

contrast to internal combustion. You don't have to change the oil. You may have gear trains that are much simpler. You actually have a motor that's in each wheel. You don't have a transmission system with linkages and things that actually make the engine less efficient in delivering power to the wheels. You actually have an electric engine or motor with each wheel. You have that kind of less cost of ownership over time. So that makes them more affordable. And I think where you're going to see the biggest progress with electric vehicles before they become more widespread with the public is with fleets, right? So fleet companies that have large fleets, let's say FedEx or UPS, for example. Yeah, they have all these trucks and vehicles that are out there making deliveries every day. They typically are out there for 200 miles or something or less

every day. And they require a lot of maintenance for all those vehicles all the time because it's stop and start driving, which is hard on internal combustion vehicles. And so there's a lot of maintenance required. So the idea of having an electric vehicle that, you know, has dramatically less maintenance means you have a much lower cost, again, of ownership of that fleet. And so that could be very attractive to a fleet owner. So that's where you're going to see, I think, a lot of these technologies really get further refined. And then we're going to see it proliferating more and more into the public space. Where people who are motivated by something beyond carbon footprint are going electric just because it makes sense.

Yeah, that's what it is today. But increasingly, I'd predict in the next five to 10 years, the de facto car people are going to be buying is going to be electric because it's, it's the same price as an internal combustion and it doesn't have all the maintenance problems. And I was, uh, I was in a nice one recently and my God, the acceleration. It's awesome. Through the, like put your eyeballs in the back of your head.

What were you doing? It made my daughter very nervous. Yeah. I mean, these cars typically can go zero to... I was in like a souped up Tesla. And it's like, it's unsettling. My daughter thought we were doing something wrong. The rate at which we got to the speed limit made her feel that there was like, that we were going to get a ticket.

It was incredible oh anyways 2035 so gm will sell only zero emission vehicles by 2035 um yeah i i mean i i guess i don't know man is that like that could happen that's what i was trying to figure out i was like are they here's what i was trying to figure out and i haven't read enough about it. When GM made that announcement, was one day some guy saying, huh, you know, at the rate we're going, and the way the markets are, I bet you by

2035, this will be the truth. Or did some guy say it like, let's push for this goal and the engineers are like, can't be done. And they're like, by God, we can do it. We put a man on the moon. Like, I'd love to know like how the conversation went.

If it was more like, it's just where everything's headed. It's not a big deal. We'd land there anyway, but let's make a press release. Hey, I wasn't in the GM boardroom when they made that decision. But, you know, I'm sure there were conversations about that. And I think it was both, what's the competitive future? You know, who are we competing against?

Because, you know, before GM, there were other major manufactories making that commitment. But I think it was also just a recognition that the technologies are improving. They can start to envision the scalability of it, the affordability of it.

And it becomes more and more clear that, yeah, that is the way to go. What's interesting is, you know, during the last administration, the administration, you know, really wanted to try and roll back the clean energy standards for cars, for vehicles in California, right? The CAFE standards. And actually, a lot of the vehicle manufacturers said, no, no, don't do that. We're actually on track to meet those standards and exceed them. In fact, we think that's a good thing competitively for us to be able to do that because we're going to be competing with cars from Japan and from China and from Europe where they are doing that stuff. And if we're not doing that stuff, we're going to be caught uncompetitive, at least with

the rest of the world. So we need to keep up with the competition. As we record this, there's blackouts happening across Texas and the Dakotas. How would things be better or worse if we relied more on renewable energy? I think actually it would be better. And I'll tell you why. So first of all, let's recognize what's driving the blackouts now. It isn't simply that, you know, wind turbines are iced up and can't move.

I mean, here in Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota, you know, we have wind turbines, you know, many, many thousands of them, no problem in the wintertime. And that's because they're winterized and they're, you know, they're prepared to deal with that kind of climate. In Texas, they're not. And in fact, in Texas, natural gas plants and coal plants and nuclear plants aren't either. And those shut down way more than wind did, according to ERCOT, the report I heard yesterday. And so, you know, natural gas lines are freezing going into plants. Coal piles are frozen so hard they can't get the coal moved to put it on the conveyor belt to take it into the plant.

And water cooling systems at nuclear plants are frozen because, again, they're not insulated. They're not winterized. They're not used to those kind of temperatures. The other reason why Texas is experiencing the energy blackouts that it's seeing currently is because they have a grid that's unto themselves. It's the energy reliability system, ERCOT it's called, that's a grid manager, and it's only Texas. It does not connect to the rest of the country. If they had a grid system that actually were better interconnected, there would be energy from other parts of the country that could come into Texas. You're getting into some Alamo stuff here, man.

Yeah, yeah. I know that. I know. There's pride of independence and ownership. But ultimately, I know that. I know there's, you know, pride of independence and ownership, but ultimately that is going to- You're like, Davy Crockett gave up. But actually-

He surrendered. We're going to be better off as a country building out renewables and increasing grid connectivity so we can move energy around more easily around the country so that we can get stuff to where it needs to go when it makes sense. Again, this goes back to it's cloudy sometimes.

It's dark every day. So we need to have a mix of energy in a lot of places, all interconnected, and they can flow around the country to where it's most needed. That's going to be part of the renewable energy solution. That will actually help us when we have things that can drive blackouts like these big energy or these big climate impacts like we're seeing in Texas today with the cold weather or like we saw in California last year with all the heat and the fires, which, by the way, wasn't solar projects that couldn't generate energy.

It was forest fires burning transmission lines that actually were set by transmission lines arcing. And a big part of why the California system experienced so many problems last year was because of transmission lines. You haven't heard that conspiracy that it's Israeli lasers? You gotta get hip to the news, man. Jewish lasers.

It's Israeli lasers. That's not. I mean, let's make sure we're accurate. L'chaim! Isn't that, though, mining for a lot more copper and digging up a lot more ground, put all that connectivity in there? Yeah, like I said. Straight off, Corinne.

I'm just so depressed. No, no, no, but. There's no easy way out of this, man. No free lunch, Corinne. There's no palatable way out of this. I think the moral of the story is be more conscientious like Cal and live like Buck Bowden in the middle of nowhere.

Yell at your kids when they leave their closet light on. What is this going to do to the trade-in value of my Toyota Tundra? I mean, about the time GM's making that switch is about the time we'll be looking for a new rig. You'll have it paid off. Cal, trade it in fast. No, I mean the time we'll be looking for a new rig. You'll have it paid off. Cal, trade it in fast. No, I mean, it'd still be good for a while.

All right. Okay, how do people go, let's say they wanted to go read up on this. Do you guys have, do you have the sort of policy stance, or like, where do people go? They're like, man, I need to find out,

or I need to refute this guy or whatever they want to do. Yeah. I'll provide Corinne some links that you can load up so that any reader, any of the listeners out there can follow up and learn more about some of the solutions that we're working on. And, you know, I talked about the mining of the sun. Another one that we're working on is, you know, what about marginal agricultural lands? You know, what role could they play? And one farmer's marginal is another farmer's, you know, best place. But, you know, for example, you know, we irrigate a lot of land in the west for alfalfa, you know, and some of that land is really poor productivity and the water is extremely valuable for lots of things besides a low value crop like alfalfa.

Maybe, you know, maybe we should put solar there instead of alfalfa and the fish benefit, people benefit, um, the rancher gets more money. The landowner might make more money. They might make more money. Uh, you know, we have a place where we're not going to fight over, you know, something going on the ground there because, you know. That's, I see now.

So those are the solutions that we want. I like that kind of thinking there, man. Like where the dude, like a guy's already doing it. He's using water. He walks away. I don't know if this is true or not. He walks away with more money.

Yeah. I mean. know if this is true or not. He walks away with more money. Yeah. I mean, you know, less water gets used. We think that there are win-win situations out there and we think there's a lot of them actually. Let's figure out where they are and how we unlock those places. Let's do that. So we can spend less time fighting over it and more time hunting and fishing in the places that we love to go. This alfalfa deal, you better talk to Mark Kenyon because he probably likes those alfalfa fields. Hey, I'm not saying get rid of all of them, right? I mean, we still need alfalfa out there. Mark Kenyon is going to be an anti-renewable crusader once you start talking about ruining all of his alfalfa fields.

All right. Nels Johnson, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Steve. The North American Energy Program Director at the Nature Conservancy. And even if you don't realize it, you have probably been on some of their properties. I know I have.

I sure have. Killed an elk on one. Oh. Yeah, Oregon. Well, I'd like to point out too Cal that you got a Sika deer on one oh I did get a Sika deer on one yes alright thank you very much appreciate you coming on as things shake out hopefully we'll have you back to explain where we're at in the future

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