Latest / Café Berlin / Diane Furchgott-Roth on Educating Leaders for the New Geopolitics of Energy

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Diane Furchgott-Roth on Educating Leaders for the New Geopolitics of Energy · Café Berlin

• speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Hello, good afternoon. Welcome to Cafe Berlin, a podcast brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. I'm Leila Nourakish, I'm a senior fellow for international affairs and academic integrity, and this is my co-host, Ian Oxnevad, who is a senior fellow for international affairs and security studies. Ian, how are you today? speaker-0: I'm doing great, Leela. Happy to be here. We have a great guest today. With us, we have Diana Furchgott Roth. She is the Distinguished Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, where she analyzes domestic and global approaches to keeping energy and transportation affordable and resilient. She is an Oxford educated economist and previously directed the Center for Energy, Climate, and the Environment at the Heritage Foundation. Diana has held senior Economic policy roles across several administrations, including serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the Department of Transportation, Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department, and Chief Economist at the Department of Labor and Chief of Staff at the Council for Economic Advisors. She's the author of multiple books and ⁓ frequently talks about things like transportation, climate change, energy, and regulation. So we're happy to have her with us and ⁓ hope you enjoy the show. speaker-1: Diana, welcome on board. speaker-2: Thank you. I just wish I was in Berlin so we could be having a real cup of coffee in a cafe in Berlin, but we're gonna have to pretend. speaker-0: We don't have to throw anybody over the wall, luckily, ⁓ this time. So so it's a good it's a good place to be. ⁓ so with that, ⁓ we'll ⁓ we'll jump into it. ⁓ so your your background energy is actually pretty fascinating. You've been at really high levels of policy and just kind of kick things off. How has the energy landscape changed in the past few years? It seems to be there's almost an abrupt transition. away from climate alarmism to almost geopolitically driven climate realism or energy realism, both here in the US but also more broadly in the West. Has how has that happened or is is it just our imagination? speaker-2: Well, I think that it has happened. I think you're absolutely right. And one reason it's happened is because of the high cost of these renewables, the high cost of wind and solar. That meant that President Trump was able to run on a platform in the last election against Kamala Harris by pointing out that people should be able to choose the cars they want to drive. They shouldn't be forced into electric vehicles. And that wind and solar were sometimes unattractive and they were certainly more expensive. And he said he was going to bring down the cost of electricity by getting rid of the wind and solar. And he did manage to get rid of the tax credits. Anyway, he got elected on this platform. And when he got elected, he started doing things that no European politician had thought. ⁓ he indeed did what he said, he got rid of the requirements for electric vehicles. He managed to get rid of the tax credits for residential solar. He's phased out the tax credit ⁓ for commercial, for industrial ⁓ wind and solar. That's going to be completely phased out by 2030. And so he's been very successful in this. And I think that that has meant that the United States. Has a comparative advantage because these other countries that are fixed with their legal requirements for wind and solar have higher electricity costs. The ones that are legally required to have electric vehicles, they have higher transportation costs. So it's a question of comparative advantage. So because of what he's done, other countries are following. And it was the same way, if I might add, ⁓ under President Reagan. When President Reagan signed a bill reducing the top tax rate from fifty percent down to twenty-eight percent, and that was back in nineteen eighty-six, you can see that over the next few years other countries followed because they didn't want to be left behind. They didn't want to be in the situation where capital fled to a lower tax area. So it's the same here. ⁓ there are other countries rethinking this because they don't want their manufacturing to go. to a lower electricity cost area. speaker-0: Right. And I we've seen over the past few years this this skyrocketing electricity costs, ⁓ particularly in Europe, in places like Germany and other places where just you see these heat waves that are that it's almost self imposed suffering in the sense of just they can't actually afford or they willingly can't afford ⁓ s something as basic as air conditioning. And you're also seeing it here in in certain states, specifically blue states. But has this energy realism has the language changed or is this actually leading to policy differences in Europe as well as here in the States domestically? speaker-2: Well, I think that we can see that some of the climate targets have been pushed out into the future. And they're talking about pushing more of these targets out into the future, also. So Italian Prime Minister Geor ⁓ Italian President Giorgio Maloney, and she was one of the first people to push some of the targets out. And it's much easier to have waivers or push the targets out into a future year rather than ⁓ completely change the law. And we've also seen this in the United States with something called the Jones Act, which if you like later on we can talk about that. That's a law that's very hard to change, that requires all ships going between ports in the United States to be American made with an American crew. speaker-1: When it comes to electricity prices, I think one ⁓ one ⁓ important question that is always in the media in these days is ⁓ data centers and and AI innovation. And I wonder whether the infrastructural background to build out these data centers and of course not place the burden on households is happening quick enough to ⁓ to win this tech race with with China and So on. So how how does this come to the whole energy realism politics? speaker-2: Yes, well we are in an AI race with China, and there has been a lot of negative press, unfortunately, about data centers. Some of this is homegrown, some of this is what we call astroturfs, some grassroots, which is homegrown, some astroturf, which is manufactured by foreign influencers. But it's clearly the case, two things. First of all, America has enough energy for data centers. We have so much natural gas. We have 200 years worth of natural gas. It's very easy to put a data center in an area where there's natural gas. Secondly, these electricity prices do not have to rise because data centers are there. Yes, there is communities that are worrying, but it's possible to think of a situation where ⁓ a company that wants to put in a data center ⁓ rebates amounts. to the communities and that actually results in lower electricity bills. So I think that America does have a big advantage in data centers. On the other hand, communities don't like data centers often because of the way they look. And I think that companies are beginning to realise that. They're going to disguise data centers like shopping malls or maybe put a cafe, they could even call it Cafe Berlin, in front of a data center. They're going to make it look more appealing. Because no one wants to go down the road and see this really ugly building. But you could cover it with wood. I mean, just as Core Power, for example, which is a nuclear power company, wants to put nuclear power plants on ships in harbors, and the nuclear power plant would look like a ship. It would be disguised like a ship. It would look all intents and purposes like a ship, piping power to land. ⁓ then when ⁓ the fuel was spent, it would float away, they'd put another one in its place. I think it's also a matter of packaging and marketing. People want the infrastructure in their areas to look good. And I think that these companies that are putting in the data centers are going to manage to achieve that. speaker-1: That's a great point on aesthetics actually. And ⁓ I I recently published two articles on data centers and how China is actually benefiting from this anti-data center sentiment. ⁓ so ⁓ I I really appreciate your thoughts on that. And I think aesthetics is a completely different approach as as we know, American entrepreneurial spirit will invent companies who will provide solutions for the aesthetics question when it comes to data centers. So that's a completely different very But ⁓ yeah, it's a it's a great point. ⁓ I also read articles about placing data centers in the space. speaker-2: I think that some of the opposition to data centers is coming from foreign influencers, potentially from China, who don't want America to get ahead in the AI race. And there was an article in the Washington Examiner saying that opposition to data centers is from the same people who ⁓ did the Free Palestine movement and the Black Lives Matter movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's interesting how these movements come along and then they disappear. We never hear about Occupy Wall Street. Now we rarely hear about Black Lives Matter. But again, these same people are now talking about free Palestine and no data centers. So it's interesting to see what is real and what is caused by foreign influencers. With today's social media, you can't always believe what you see, just as in the past you haven't been able to necessarily believe what you read in the newspapers. You always have to look underneath, underneath and see what's really true. speaker-0: It you you bring up such an interesting point with the the ability of I think the average person, especially in the West, to really just look at the very surface level aspect of anything and run away with it as opposed to analyzing it or let alone debating it. ⁓ I think that's a huge almost cultural problem that we have. And I can't think of anything more sci-fi interestingly enough than having a Greek revival, classical revival data center. stylized that way, ⁓ that actually produces ⁓ revenue in in in such a way is but I have to ask, i the discussion about integrating power generation into these data centers, is that just a talking point or is that like a real feasible thing that could could be done, not just in the sense of putting them with natural gas, but actually if you had a town in the middle of nowhere where there was nothing ⁓ in terms of generating power, is that something that's feasible? Could they actually be power plants? speaker-2: Yes, there's the ratepayer protection pledge that ⁓ many hyperscalers have signed promising ⁓ not to have high rates, ⁓ not to have high rates for communities in terms of electricity. And you can see that economies of scale might result in more electricity, more hookups coming to certain areas, and the local communities would benefit. And in terms of some of these resources, people talk about how data centers use so much water. Well, it's ⁓ almond growers and golf courses use more water than data centers and no one's talking about getting rid of the almond industry or getting rid of golf courses. So it's just very interesting to see what what opponents are bringing up and why don't they bring it up against golf courses, for example, if they're concerned about water. speaker-0: Yeah, we see that in in California where we have we have these water rationing ⁓ periods where ⁓ seventy percent of the you know water goes to non agricultural landscaping basically in the state or it just runs off into the ocean. ⁓ so no that that's something that we that we see up close here, ⁓ not to mention the willful and ability to manufacture electricity. ⁓ turning to Latin America, the arrest of Nicolas Maduro almost seems to to have happened so quickly before the war in Iran that we almost don't talk enough about Venezuela and how that's affected ⁓ energy because I think everyone was taken by surprise where you just had this like arrest slash I don't want to call it a coup exactly, but this thing that basically just changed the the regime f almost without changing it seemingly overnight. But it seemed to have signaled like a new era of American foreign policy. ⁓ specifically related to energy as it relates to regime change. Could you talk about that? speaker-2: Yes, well President Trump knew all along that he wanted to take on Iran. And when he takes on Iran, of course, oil prices go up. So he wanted to provide a buffer. And that's why he went into Venezuela first. He wanted to open Venezuelan oil, or at least send the expectation that there would be oil coming from Venezuela before he went into Iran. And that is one reason why. ⁓ oil prices did not go up more after he invaded Iran. ⁓ they w the the peak was $120 a barrel. ⁓ when I speak today ⁓ in ⁓ on on September ⁓ tenth then we can see that oil prices are ⁓ approaching or over a hundred dollars a barrel but a lot of people thought that they would be much higher than than that. And ⁓ he let out stocks from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Venezuelan oil was part of it because prices are set on the basis not just of oil that's available now, but on the basis of expectations of future production. So what he wanted to do was increase expectations of future production. And that's why he went into Venezuela before Iran. speaker-0: Right, no, I mean that makes perfect sense. ⁓ and as Venezuela's done this, how how much what what role does refinery capacity play in all this? Because Venezuela's obviously right there. ⁓ I don't know if they had refineries ⁓ before you know Hugo Chavez took over, but is our refinery capacity part of this whole equation? speaker-2: We have the big advantage that we have this massive refining industry. Here in the United States, we produce light crude. We need sour crude from places like Venezuela and Canada and Mexico in order to be able to make the products, the ore products that we can then export elsewhere, ⁓ different kinds of fuel, different kinds of heating oil, and they take light crude and sour crude, and this is mixed in our refineries. So we do have the capacity. And we need to be ⁓ again focusing on refinery capacity and seeing if perhaps we can reopen the refinery in California that was closed down when I believe Chevron left. speaker-0: Yeah, no, California's the ⁓ willful willfully off the board ⁓ in this. I mean California could be a and should be an energy producing state. ⁓ as Latin America as a whole seems to be shifting rightward, what's driving this? ⁓ is this part of a hemispheric shift or is the US driving this? Or is this just part of almost the same movement that we seem to be happening s seems to see happening across the West, like with the victory of the AFD and in Germany recently, ⁓ and and other sort of populist right word parties. Is Latin America just part of this broader trend or is this a product of a specific foreign policy push? speaker-2: I think that as people live with socialism for several years, they find that it doesn't work. As Margaret Thatcher said, you soon find that you're running out of other people's money and that that's the problem with socialism. So Chile. Chile had a socialist government for a little while, and then people decided that life was better under a more free market regime. ⁓ the same with Argentina. And Argentina and Chile are now very ⁓ successful, more successful economically than they were before. And other countries are taking note. People want the freedom to set up their own businesses. They want lower taxes. They want less regulations. And then if the free market oriented party doesn't mess up, then they get re-elected. But you know what it's like in politics, you know, you move on and on and you make some mistakes and then voters think that things can be better off otherwise. So we're we're seeing that so voters who did vote socialist in Latin America are now thinking that they could do better under a different form of government, and that's what's happening. We saw the same in Germany ⁓ with the victory of ⁓ the AFD. And I think part of it, at least in Europe, is driven by the green policies that are causing immense economic damage, raising levels of unemployment, slowing growth, and people are quite naturally tired of it. speaker-1: Yes, and when it comes to socialist countries, probably the lack of foreign direct investment is also an incentive behind the regime change as who wants to invest in a socialist country where their private property might be just taken away overnight. So that can be an incentive too. speaker-2: Yes, and also ⁓ who wants to invest in a country with very high electricity costs? If you look at the UK and Germany, they have some of the highest electricity costs in the Western world, with rates approaching ⁓ forty cents per kilowatt hour for residential electricity. ⁓ these high costs make it difficult to locate substantive manufacturing in these countries. They become more tourist havens and that's fewer jobs. And people who want employment, high paying employment, emigrate to try and find it elsewhere. speaker-0: Right. Right. No, I mean I think we see that ⁓ even in places that you wouldn't expect like southern Europe where you would think that renewables would be completely abundant with the you know, greater amounts of sunshine, etcetera, but you still see these catastrophic like blackouts in places like Spain, ⁓ not long ago and ⁓ and other places. ⁓ speaker-2: Just a matter of it's not just a matter of sun, by the way. The problem with these renewables is that solar energy, the sun might shine for free, the wind might blow for free, ⁓ but it doesn't blow all the time. It's as though I said, Ian, I'm gonna give you a beautiful car, but you can only drive it during the day. I'm gonna give you a Mercedes Benz, but you can only drive it during the day. And you might say, Well, Diana, but I need to drive at night too. I say, Too bad you need another car for night. And you might say, well, two cars, that's two sets of oil changes, two sets of gas fill-ups, two sets of maintenance, two sets of insurance policies. I say too bad that's the way it is. And that's the way it is with these renewables. The wind is free, the sun is free, but you need a backup. That backup is usually natural gas pica plants or else batteries. And it's less expensive to have these natural gas pica plants run or a a natural gas plant, not a pika plant, a real plant. Run continuously than to have this smaller natural gas plant go on and off when the wind blows and the wind stops blowing. So that's the fundamental problem. And we're so fortunate here in the United States, we have 50 states. We have 50 forms of electricity regulation. And we can look at those states that have more renewables and we can see their electricity prices are higher. Of the top 10 states in pricing, in terms of electricity prices, nine out of the top ten require. are renewables. If you look at the bottom ten in terms of electricity prices, nine out of the bottom ten do not require renewables. The bottom is Utah with around and Louisiana with around 11 cents per kilowatt hour. The top is California with around 35 cents per kilowatt hour. So it's about three to one. So we do have data on this. And the background for the data, the background of the data is that these renewable systems require backups and it's more difficult to integrate them in the grid. So if you have something called 24 hour dispatchable power, that's kind of power that just keeps going without anybody stopping it, like hydroelectric power, nuclear power, a coal-fired power plant, a natural gas-fired power plant. It's not difficult to produce electricity with that form of energy. But once you start saying, well, I'm going to have wind kick in here and then solar kick in there, then it becomes a lot more complicated. So it's not just the amount of sun you have. It's the renewables themselves are more expensive to incorporate into the electricity grid. And that's why the electricity grid in Spain went down ⁓ about a year ago, a year ago, May, ⁓ because there wasn't sufficient backup. speaker-0: Right. And you bring up such an interesting point that, you know, nature supposedly provides this stuff for free and then government tries to mandate it and it's less affordable than what was there before. ⁓ speaker-2: Yeah, we have these ⁓ we have you know, there are producers who say on the one hand they say their product is cheaper, they say wind and the sun are free and then they say but we need subsidies, so it doesn't really fit. And the world has spent about eight or nine trillion on subsidies over the past twenty years throughout the world. And still wind and solar say they cannot stand on their own. They need subsidies and mandates. So it doesn't make any sense at all. And it's not like it makes that much difference to the climate. If the United States stopped using all fossil fuels today, it would make a difference of two or three tenths of one percent of one two ⁓ two or three ⁓ tenths of one degree centigrade in the year twenty one hundred. It would make hardly any difference at all to global temperature. speaker-0: Right. No, that's ⁓ a thing that they never point out in the data when they try to push the these policies. Right. ⁓ turning to Iran, the conflict with Iran has sort of combined standing back, it's one of the weirder wars that I can think of in certainly recent times, because you see this intermittent strikes with diplomacy ⁓ making it kind of unusual compared to what we've seen over the past ⁓ really the past century, certainly the the post war era. ⁓ how is How has the Strait of Hormuz crisis affected energy policy ⁓ here in the US, but also in places like Europe and and elsewhere? Because you see I and the reason I bring this up is because I see like the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, there's a lot of underreported ⁓ sort of collaboration that seems to be taking place with natural gas, places like Cyprus, Israel and Egypt and Greece, places that you would never think were actually working on things. ⁓ together. And I'm just wondering how this has affected like kinda like Venezuela, how has that affected energy policies not just in the US but regionally and in the broader West? speaker-2: People are looking for workarounds. So there's an east-west pipeline going through Saudi Arabia, for example. People are talking about ways around the Strait of Hormuz. This problem is going to be with us probably permanently. I don't know when the Strait of Hormuz is going to be completely clear again. The risk has certainly gone up. And people are looking for ways around it. Either by ⁓ producing more oil themselves, ⁓ shipping it in other ways, ⁓ importing or exporting it from other places. But during the first phase of the conflict, there were stores in strategic petroleum reserves all over the world that were let go. And we don't have such stores anymore. There was also more oil floating around tankers, what we call basically Dirk ships, that we were able to access. And again, some of those have been drawn down. So as the conflict continues, I think there's going to be more pressure on oil prices. But Iran had to be dealt with. We do not want a nuclear powered Iran, and its neighbors can see this right now. It's a cancer in the Middle East. Someone had to deal with it. Different presidents in the United States have been promising to deal with it through different deals, giving money. I mean, if you think about the pallets of cash under Obama, the deals under President Biden. And President Trump has basically taken the bull by the horns and has said he's going to deal with it. He should be congratulated for doing this. And he is right now placing a stranglehold under the Iranian economy. So we can see that ⁓ prices are higher there. They're in great economic distress. And the question is, will the Iranian Republican Guard buckle and give in? At some point, the political pressure is going to be such that probably ⁓ the regime is going to be severely weakened if not fall. speaker-1: When we are talking about ⁓ energy security, ⁓ oftentimes we we just mentioned the oil and gas and ⁓ the prices and the you know war in Iran. But ⁓ there's also significant ⁓ issues related to supply chain security and critical minerals, and those are pretty much exposed to China. And ⁓ a question ⁓ that that ⁓ came up recently in our discussions with Ian is ⁓ where is the most ⁓ you know serious vulnerability for the United States when it comes to these critical minerals and their exposure to to China and how this whole comes together to the ⁓ broader energy security debate? speaker-2: Yeah, that's a very important question. And President Trump is liberalizing permitting, moving forward, permit with ⁓ permitting, ⁓ so that we can get more of these critical minerals out of the United States. We have minerals and rare earths in the lower forty eight, we have others in Alaska, ⁓ we have others offshore. There's plenty of critical minerals and rare earths here in the United States. We just need to be able to have access to them. And the environmentalist movement was very successful in blocking these projects. So in China, when there are rare earths, there's no environmentalist movement that blocks them. ⁓ China's also building two coal-fired power plants a week. And again, there's no environmentalist movement that blocks it. China doesn't have to go through the Environmental Protection Agency, the way our companies here do that. So what we need to do is in a regulatory way. ⁓ make sure that within the safeguards that we have we can access those minerals safely and cleanly here in the United States. And we also need to be making deals with other countries. Many of the countries in Africa have these rare some critical minerals. China has made deals with them, but we need to be making deals with them also. speaker-1: Yes, and ⁓ we also saw that ⁓ the Trump administration's actions resulted in ⁓ re I mean these actions related to domestic ⁓ energy extraction. ⁓ this also resulted in some ⁓ court cases, particularly in states like California. And my question is what's the likely outcome of this kind of policy conflict? and ⁓ you know how how what what do you see? ⁓ unfolding in California and other st and other states. speaker-2: There's a permitting council now as part of the federal government and they work with state and local governments and the federal government to move forward these permits. ⁓ there's a mine in Nebraska that's opening up and has got permits, and there's going to be others in Utah, for example. So we need to be moving forward with these. There are some state and local communities that do want these. And there was an important Supreme Court ⁓ decision, not last year, but the year before, that made it more difficult. to stop these projects using these environmental laws. So that's very positive also. speaker-1: And ⁓ how does this policy ⁓ issue affect the broader nuclear power ⁓ issues? How so what what kind of reforms would be necessary to ⁓ have a real genuine nuclear revival in the United States? speaker-2: That's a great question. It's really a good question because nuclear power right now is more expensive than natural gas power. And that's one reason the demand has been low. So it's more expensive because there are these regulations, because it needs higher insurance, because there's more liability. So we need a certain amount of regulatory reform, and that has been happening. ⁓ there have been four small Modular nuclear reactors that have reached what's called critical stage this summer. That's a big advance. But it's still more expensive. The question is, why do we want nuclear power in the United States right now when it's not commercially viable relative to natural gas power? And perhaps there's a reason to do it, perhaps there isn't. But I think we have to look at the basic economics. We have 200 years of natural gas. It's very inexpensive. It doesn't cost so much to set up a natural gas-fired power plant. I mean, building one of these nuclear power plants costs billions. It takes about 15 years. Look at the one in Georgia, for example. It's still more expensive than natural gas power. So we have to think why do we want more nuclear power? And why do we want to build another nuclear power plant? These are all questions that energy economists need to answer. speaker-0: That raises an interesting point, ⁓ just in terms of how the different states have handled this, but also how, you know, the the different types of power itself all kind of carry with them their own sort of political baggage and regulatory hurdles and things like that. but in sort of bridging between this and the next question, ⁓ you were you spoke at our the launch of our report ⁓ behind the climate curtain, earlier this year, which ⁓ basically showed how the state of California had used ⁓ the University of California system, ⁓ including its own laws, to f basically formalize a policy partnership ⁓ with China. And ⁓ we just found out earlier this ⁓ earlier this month or late last month rather that ⁓ a number of senators and ⁓ members in the House ⁓ basically sent a formal letter requesting a DOJ investigation ⁓ to ⁓ To ⁓ the BOJ on California for constitutional violations. And you know, you brought up the fact that you had these 50 states with 50 different sort of energy ⁓ policy baskets with them. ⁓ how has how has this created almost a constitutional crisis, if at all? Because it seems like it does or it should, especially when you have ⁓ a state with so many ports and so much coastline. It seems consequential, ⁓ not to mention California's own energy capacity, if it really wanted to utilize that, ⁓ that's affecting the rest of the country. ⁓ you know, I don't know, I I don't I don't want to try to touch at the legal aspects of this because we're gonna s wait all wait to see how this plays out. But ⁓ how does that affect energy sovereignty? Because China is like as you mentioned before, China's very adept at using our own policies against us or convincing us to go after bad policies. And it seems like the fifty state system almost allows that, where it's like if one state becomes favorable, then ⁓ you can use that to affect the other forty nine. ⁓ how how does that affect like energy sovereignty and the geopolitics of all of those? speaker-2: Well, as you say, it's a major problem. It was a brilliant report that you published behind the climate behind the climate curtain. It was a really brilliant expose of what was going on. That here there were scientists from Tshua University joining up with scientists at ⁓ the University of California, Berkeley, and other California state institutions. And because it was an academic project. They didn't have to file under the Foreign Registration Act. And here they could be producing laws that were then were they were they were producing suggestions that were required by California law, AB 39, I believe, to be taken up by ⁓ the ⁓ climate board in the state of California. Once they were taken up, then about 17 or 18 states followed. So, for example, Virginia, a neighbor to Washington, DC. ⁓ took up the California regulations, as did Maryland, another neighbor to Washington, DC, and the spread throughout the United States. And by the way, I you didn't mention it in your report, but I did a little bit more digging. And Singhua University is also involved in a coalition in Europe with the London School of Economics, ⁓ with ⁓ universities in Paris, and they are doing the same thing in Europe. They're crafting recommendations. And this is not transparent. It should be at least transparent, announced that a particular policy is crafted by the London School of Economics and Singhua University, by the University of California at Berkeley and Tsinghua University. So everybody can see what it's like. But it was done under the table or as you say, behind the curtain. And that's what's so unfair. People should know if China is helping to craft their environmental policies. Especially when these environmental policies benefit China, because who is making the wind panels seventy percent of the wind ⁓ turbines, seventy percent of the solar panels? It's China. How's it doing it? With coal fired power plants. Trying to get us to stop using fossil fuels, using its products that are made with fossil fuels, and saying this is going to improve the climate. It doesn't make any sense at all. speaker-0: I just I I almost picture ⁓ the the meme sort of makes itself where you picture this, you know, ⁓ coal burning furnace attached to a Tesla, you know, that's plugged in and it's going down the road. that's kind of what China's done with ⁓ multiple economies ⁓ as a whole, which is ⁓ it's ⁓ it's ⁓ it's kinda going to this activism part, but they've managed to able to ⁓ convince people of this. ⁓ speaker-2: First of all, first of all, as you say, electrical vehicles are not emissions free because even ⁓ the batteries are made with coal-fired power ⁓ in China. China makes a substantial share of the batteries, but also draws on the electric grid, which is powered by natural gas. So the natural gas is going into the battery, charges the battery, and then the battery runs your car. ⁓ it's much easier to have the gasoline go straight into the engine. And I understand that Now automakers are talking about adding a gasoline pad engine to an electric vehicle. So that gasoline pad engine is going to charge the battery for the electric vehicle. That's their latest idea. Well, why not just have the gasoline pad engine run the car, or else the electric battery charge by the operations of the vehicle and the braking system the way Toyota does with its hybrids? So the whole thing doesn't seem to make a lot of common sense. It's obviously driven by factors that are not. purely cost. But it's causing far more damage in Europe, where these laws, there, these are laws, not regulations. It's difficult to get these European Union laws changed. The EU is trying to make laws for the whole world. It has something called the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, ⁓ saying that ⁓ companies over a certain size that do business in Europe have to declare their emissions and then under another EU law, They have to orient their operations towards a net zero. ⁓ That companies that emit too much methane have to pay, will have to pay, starting in 2030, 20% of their global revenues. I mean, this discourages energy production. It makes it more expensive. It raises the costs of goods. It raises inflation. It is not helping these voters who elect the politicians. These politicians are working against the interests of the people. Who voted for them rather than in their interests. speaker-0: Well yeah, and it manufactures poverty too. That's what ⁓ I think a lot of people don't understand. ⁓ you know, they they it 'cause and that kind of goes back to that attention span that most voters or citizens have. They don't seem to have v a long enough one to actually look at the economics of it. ⁓ you know, ⁓ very early on ⁓ in political science when you're talking about voting behavior, nobody sits down and actually debates policies and does research at the kitchen table. I don't know anybody that does that, nobody does that. It's just this built in assumption. that ⁓ the people running will actually ⁓ follow through on representing your interests. That's not necessarily the case. ⁓ the climate activism has dominated higher education for sure, almost like a religion. And it's also in the K-12 system. And there doesn't seem to be any real concerted effort. ⁓ Among all of the awful that we see taking place in the West, higher education is basically the epicenter for a lot of it. And it's a slow burning crisis in the sense that year after year after year, ⁓ you're pumping out we are pumping out people that believe these horrible policies. ⁓ and they're it's based on bad data, omissions bias, confirmation bias, ⁓ that has metastasized into entire fields that then people get credentials in and then they go into policy making decisions. And no one seems to really be do anything about it. A lot of people are aware of it. That that education is doing this, but nobody seems to really be doing anything about it. So I wanted to ask, how has this emphasis on climate activism in the classroom, how has this affected energy sovereignty over time? And are we failing to actually train enough energy experts who can actually be climate or energy realists? because that seems to be something that's also missing. Like, are we actually producing the people who can do the job? speaker-2: I think we're certainly producing people who can do the job. ⁓ the question is, are they going to be hired into positions where they're going to be allowed to do the job? And are they going to be allowed to speak and make recommendations? Are their recommendations going to be taken seriously? The problem with elementary and secondary school education is that they're brainwashing all these kids to say that they You know, they love the environment, and of course they love the environment, but it shouldn't mean that you don't use natural gas. And you can see it also in zoos. You can look at the little labels ⁓ that describe the different animals and ⁓ talking about how the environment is negatively affecting ⁓ these animals in zoos. It's also in museums. So it's throughout the culture, President Trump is trying to make a change in this culture. by having different curators for the different museums, but in terms of the education, the teachers are all ⁓ they're they're from the Democrat Democratic Party. I mean 99%, if not a hundred percent, are registered Democrats. And it's very difficult to know what to do to change the curriculum. It can be done, but it's an uphill battle community by community, county by county. speaker-0: Well, and it it seems to also go deeper than just energy policy because I mean you've seen it get to the point of ridiculousness and just existential crisis of things like antinatalism, where people are advocating not to have kids, not to have children, not to have families, because they think it's bad for the climate. I mean that's that's ridiculous. That's I I mean from from every sort of natural law, human standpoint, it seems it seems absurd to the even you have to debate it, but yet This is actually ⁓ causing people to take actions on these ideas. speaker-2: Yeah, and you have people who say that they don't want to have children because it'll hurt the environment and that's very sad also. ⁓ because the economic growth, it's good to have children. And if you want children, there's many reasons not to have children. I mean they're expensive, they're noisy, they make you get up early on the weekends, but ⁓ you shouldn't ⁓ I the climate is not a reason, not a reason not to have children. And I should say I have six of them myself, so I know all about ⁓ how noisy and expensive they can be. But the climate is not a reason not to have. speaker-1: One question is how could we change this culture? How could we bring back some common sense in the public discourse when it comes to just for example analyzing this data? Right? ⁓ for example, you mentioned the great example about water usage of data centers and ⁓ that they are not ⁓ using more water than goal of courts, for example. how could we put things in perspective for You know, just average citizens to understand it who might not be experts of these issues. speaker-0: Just to let me add to that too, because there's another dimension to this, because for for years people, especially on the left, have talked about facilitating cultural change. And that's not something that I would say ordinary people really think about, but yet these policies have gotten to such a detrimental point, not just with energy, but everything related to it, that it almost begs the question of how do we facilitate cultural change? Because we since this is something we ignored for so many years. speaker-2: Yeah, number one. speaker-0: And yet it's having real like real life and death implications now where we have to change culture. speaker-2: I would say that the primary way to have cultural change is to have more school choice. And you can see this is happening in California, where people can take their tax dollars and send their children to the school of their choice because a lot of these private schools don't have the ⁓ same kind of environmental brainwashing, primarily because they focus more on academics. And it's really interesting that the government provides all kinds of benefits. provides food stamps, provides medical care, provides housing vouchers. And in all these, ⁓ you can go to any grocery store if you have food stamps. If you're on Medicaid, ⁓ you can see any doctor that accepts Medicaid patients. Same with Medicare. Housing vouchers, you can take your housing voucher and you can go to any area that accepts that housing voucher. It's only education where they say you're in the zip code, you have to go to the school. Now if they say you're in the zip code, you have to go to this grocery store, there'd be a revolution. They might say, why should I go to that grocery store? I want to go to that one over there. It has better fresh vegetables. Or it has ⁓ you know, better pastries. ⁓ but for some reason, people accept that with education you have to take the one that you're given. And I think this really needs to be changed because you can see all kinds of parents, ⁓ lower income parents, upper income parents, middle income parents, where there's any kind of housing vouchers, they want choice for their children. And you can see that these ⁓ ⁓ housing ⁓ vo ⁓ these these school education vouchers are vastly oversubscribed. They're vastly oversubscribed and everybody wants them. People really care about their children's education and if they were able to have more school choice, I think that would enable the culture to be changed. And as far as adults go, I think we need to have reasoned programs, reasoned arguments, we need to have more debates. People do not like high electricity bills. You see them moving from high electricity states to low electricity price states. So you already see them moving with their feet to where prices are lower. Look at people leaving New York, leaving California, going to Texas and Florida. It's not just for the taxes, it's also ⁓ for the low electricity prices and lower prices that these states have. That's why the Southeast is attracting more people than the Northeast right now. speaker-1: Yeah, it's a great point. And ⁓ I I think it's just very hard to argue with emotions and many times these climate campaigns are targeting emotions, you know, let's save the world, ⁓ let's save the environment. ⁓ so ⁓ it's just extremely hard to put common sense there when someone has emotional considerations. Why, for example, why not to have children, right? We just want to save the planet. We we shouldn't have more children. There's no reason behind it, and it's really hard to argue when there's no reason. speaker-2: That's true. But if you look at polls and you ask what people are interested in, climate is fairly low on the list. Even if you look at the UN goals, ⁓ alleviating poverty is number one. Climate is somewhere ⁓ in the middle or the bottom. So people ⁓ people don't really care about the climate. But if you if you ask them, do you care about the climate? Of course they're gonna say yes. But if you look at in practice what they want and when they rank these things, they want lower prices. And of course, energy security is food security. If you have these crazy environmental regulations, it raises the price of food also. People want low prices, they want choice, they want low taxes. ⁓ And ⁓ it's what Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform used to call the Leave Us Alone Coalition. They want to be left alone to do whatever they want. They want their money, they don't want people to take their money, they don't want people to interfere with how they educate their children. Some people care about guns, they don't want people to stop them. ⁓ you know, take away their guns and stop them hunting or defending themselves. So it's very clear that climate is really on the low list of priorities. speaker-0: Yeah, people want to control their own lives. speaker-2: Yeah. Exactly. And if you look at these heat waves in Europe, people want air conditioning. They know that it's not going to make a big difference, maybe one tenth of one degree centigrade in the year twenty one hundred, ⁓ to have these climate provisions and they're being inconvenienced by not being allowed to have air conditioning and they don't like that right now. speaker-1: That's true. Plus if they get a stroke they you know speaker-2: Well look at the AFB look at the AFD win in Germany. And the AFD was running against these net zero requirements. These parties in Europe that run against net zero requirements are doing very well. speaker-0: There was footage of literally a fight breaking out in some store. I don't know what country it was in in Europe, but it was over air conditioning. People were grabbing the air conditioning. And it's it it was very surreal. ⁓ I wanna say it was the UK. It was earlier, ⁓ you know, during the World Cup whenever when all these people were coming to the US and they were fascinated how air conditioning's everywhere. ⁓ Americans almost take it for granted that there's an air conditioning nearby. That's not the case overseas. If you're American listening to this, That's not the case overseas. There's not a a ready air conditioning ⁓ nearby within arm's reach. ⁓ and that's something that you would think Europe would have ⁓ 'cause they could afford it, but they but conspicuously do not at the same scale. speaker-2: Right, exactly. And even more surreal was images of people from the county councils in London, Camden County Council, for example, ⁓ taking out air conditioners that were installed in people's homes, saying they didn't have a right to have that air conditioner because they could be opening their windows and having a throughput of breeze. So they shouldn't have an air conditioner. So taking it away from them. That was crazy too. Uninstalling the air conditioners that were there. speaker-0: It's a great argument. It's a great argument for the Second Amendment to protect the air conditioning. speaker-2: Right. speaker-1: So Diana, we have a tradition at Cafe Berlin that we ask a question from every speaker ⁓ to ⁓ ask it from the next ⁓ guest. And your question is from Daniel Di Martino. ⁓ I'm sure you know him. He's from Venezuela. And ⁓ he's he we were talking about ⁓ communism and what kind of damages it can do, and ⁓ he was talking about Venezuela, of course, as a kind of case study. And his question to you is how w so what do you think about the global energy markets and ⁓ the oil prices and ⁓ would it change Venezuela ⁓ when it if if Venezuela was to become a free country and oil production boon like ⁓ in the neighbouring Guyana? speaker-2: Well, I think it's very important to be able to change Venezuela and one thing that needs to be done is to allow ⁓ Karina Machado to come back and take over and have free elections in Venezuela ⁓ and free ⁓ s those political prisoners that are still imprisoned. And that in combination with the energy and property rights could make Venezuela into the powerhouse that it used to be. speaker-1: ⁓ and what would be your question to our ⁓ next ⁓ speaker? speaker-2: Who is your next speaker? speaker-1: ⁓ is this Juliana Pillon yeah, Juliana Pillon. Doctor Juliana Pillon. speaker-2: Yeah, so my question is, why is it that anti Semitism has just come up over the past couple of years? Is it something that is homegrown or is it something that's funded by foreign influence? Is it that people have just changed to anti Semites overnight? Or is there a campaign like Occupy Wall Street, like Black Lives Matter, ⁓ like No Kings? And what can we do about it? speaker-1: Great question. Thank you so much. speaker-2: Literally. speaker-0: Thank you, Diana. speaker-2: Thank you. speaker-0: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Cafe Berlin, the podcast where high politics meets higher education. This has been brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. NAS is a membership organization. So if you like what you see, you'd like to get involved, ⁓ please do become a member today or at least consider it. ⁓ if you think education, both higher and lower, K through twelve, have kind of gone off the rails and you're looking for the good guys, that's us. So please do consider becoming a member. 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