Latest / Follow the Leighder / Alaska Native Energy, AI, and National Security | Dr. Len Necefer

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Alaska Native Energy, AI, and National Security | Dr. Len Necefer · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson. joining me today, this is a good one, folks, ⁓ is Len Necefer Welcome to the studio. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, thanks Leigh I really excited to see the invite. So, we're here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ man. Well, it was an honor to get the yes, the agree, because folks, listen to this person's background. So Dr. Len Necefer sits at the intersection of indigenous people, natural resources, and environmental policy. He received his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon and his undergrad in mechanical engineering at University of Kansas. He's done policy work across the country with clients, both from the private sector and the public sector. maybe protect our winter sounds familiar to some of y'all in the winter skiing space. He is a member of the Navajo, of the Ticini people, of the Tobacco Clan, and has Mexican lineage, Scottish-Romanian lineage, and what I appreciated on your website, that Detroit labor blood. Absolutely incredible. I'm so thankful that you are, you're focusing on the American West and on the Arctic. Absolutely incredible ⁓ pieces, ⁓ regional geographies that if you haven't been folks, I highly encourage you to do so. Can you talk about how ⁓ your journey either with your Navajo or with mechanical engineering or even some of your family's background? How did that lead you into this line of work? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: You know, it really started in a few... ⁓ really started in a few directions. think one, I grew up in Kansas for a big part of my life. And, you know, as any Midwestern kid knows, you know, it's kind of the part of the country, sort of right in the middle, going from north to south, that you're the furthest from a national park and furthest from public lands. But, you know, my sort of interactions with my first public lands were actually County lands. was Clinton Lake State Park, or sorry, state lands. And, you know, it was one of those moments where I began to sort of with my father and my mother just getting into like appreciate these parts of ⁓ you know, the little bits of nature that remained and ⁓ And as I got older I got to spend more time with my mom's side of family in Arizona, northern Arizona sort of in the Four Corners region and that's really where I started seeing big landscapes and ⁓ larger tracts of public lands and and I think that always was had been a draw and ⁓ The other sort of entry point was like, of course, ⁓ my family's background ⁓ in on the Navajo Nation. My grandfather was a uranium miner during the Cold War. ⁓ Became incredibly sick from that. And then I moved back. I moved to Arizona when I was a teenager and went to high school there. But one of the things that that exposed me to is was at the time it was like the fourth and fifth largest coal power plants were operating right in my backyard. And I could see them, you know, burning coal and, you know, filling the area around the four corners in Farmington, New Mexico with air pollution. And it made me sick. my grandfather's sick and I started learning more about the like really challenging history about how uranium mining was done, why my grandfather had lost his lung when he was 40 in his early 40s to silicosis and then also connecting that to you know the air pollution in the air was making us both sick and that's what eventually took his life was just you know bronchitis and eventually pneumonia and ⁓ I remember coming to this point where I was like pretty angry at the world, I would say, and just like what had happened and the environmental injustices, but I realized that continuing to be in that state of anger and frustration was not gonna do much for the situation. ⁓ And so I started thinking about the ways that I could potentially change that. And so that led me on a track of, know, basically pursuing what was available, which was, you know, the educational pathways that... ⁓ were there and I looked at sort of who was involved and I didn't want to become a lawyer. It was very technically inclined. I love working on cars. I love doing that sort of thing. And so I said, well, probably engineering is the best fit. And so I went into that. ⁓ got my undergrad degree, of dabbled in aerospace stuff and automotive engineering and like those are really fun and like, you know, still things that I'm deeply interested in today, but it was one that I, you know, kind of was reminded like, you know, why did I originally go on this path? And so that led me into ⁓ applying for to go to graduate school. I was basically came out of college sort of on the a couple years after the great recession and the job market was really bad. And so my options were basically not have a job, work in a, in a train depot in West Texas, like third shift, which, ⁓ you know, for many reasons was not going to be good for my health. And the way the third was to. Can you continue to get more school? And, ⁓ you know, I didn't really see myself ever getting a PhD, but it just sort of lined up with, you know, funding that I got and other things that I. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: ended up at Carnegie Mellon and the department that I was there, it was called the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. it's sort of a notable and very interesting university department because it was one of the first university programs or university, yeah, university programs and that focused on environmental and energy policy very in the very early days in the 70s and Pittsburgh is an interesting place, having family from Detroit and the Rust Belt. These are places that I've gone through massive economic change, but also pretty incredible environmental changes as well, both positive and negative. ⁓ What drew me to the school was ⁓ the work that they were doing on understanding the social impacts of pollution. ⁓ so if you've ever heard of the social cost of carbon, like, you know, it's a hundred dollars per ton of carbon released on the impacts on the environment or whatever that is. Like that idea came out of that school. And I remember just thinking like, this is the, probably the place that I want to be. ⁓ but yeah, it was like a moment where I felt like that the sort of original intent, like that led me to go and pursue education was being fulfilled. ⁓ I worked my research there was looking at how to basically develop technical energy economic planning tools and just like tools that would be used to sort of look into the future and understand what the impacts of policies would be and the sort of tie in back to The Navajo Nation is that I was looking at how these tools could be adapted to different cultural contexts. One of the things like having grown up between these wide and varied cultural backgrounds, linguistic backgrounds, ⁓ is that in some ways it kind of ⁓ primed me to understand and see culture and see how it plays out in the decisions that we make, the assumptions that we make about the world and how different those can be. And so a lot of that work was focusing on like, can we adapt these economic tools that have their own set of assumptions and values and things that are embedded in them that may be unquestioned. How can we approach it in a way that maybe is a better fit for the community that I come from, right? Where there's a higher priority on various sorts of things. so that's, you know, sort of the education piece. And that led me into working in the federal government for a few years on Arctic energy policy and tribal energy policy. then ⁓ working and then ⁓ the first Trump election happened and I was looking for the door. And so I started my company Natives Outdoors and we Leigh/@followtheleighder: No. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: have changed a lot from the original iteration, but the real goal there I really saw was empowering Native folks to tell their own stories, whether that's through art, design, or now film, ⁓ and sort of looking at that intersection of this is right in the time during Bears Ears. So this is 2017 when sort of that was ramping up and the protections for that and the fight to protect that place was really. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: I basically, I sort of was looking at the cards that were available and I said, hey, here's an opportunity to apply some of the things that I learned in grad school of understanding. We relate to the environment, depending on the cultures that we come from to various degrees and like there's a lot of really interesting intersections that are happening between native communities, the outdoor industry, public lands advocates. Like how do we build on that and sort of build a common language? And so that's where natives outdoors came from. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: starting in a company is really hard. So I ended up becoming a professor for three years to pay bills and figure it out. And then 21, I made the jump and have been ⁓ sort of following that thread as long as there's thread to pull on. So that's what's brought me here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, thank you for that incredible summary and I do apologize for your family. I it is so hard to watch people die from their labor. I'm sure that plays, ⁓ that definitely touched me. Thank you for sharing that. When you studied, excuse me, when you began. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: working, particularly with the American West, you talked about, ⁓ you mentioned tribal sovereignty and working across different lines, ⁓ energy. Where did you focus on the American West? I know it's a large region, but maybe a little bit all over, but where was your primary focus? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: So when I first started, it was on the Navajo Nation. ⁓ So a lot of my research was field work and doing that sort of thing. And slowly it just started, you when you talk about my entry point was in energy and renewable energy and like that angle, the discussion about energy in the West is always tied to this discussion about water. ⁓ There's an old concept called the energy water nexus. Basically you need water to generate electricity or to do things to various degrees or. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: you know, and energies needed to move water and to sort of move that across this arid region. And so a lot of that early work took me to ⁓ when I was working ⁓ with the Department of Energy was taking me to a lot of native communities in very rural parts of the Western United States. These are some communities that don't have running water or electricity. These are also some communities that are very wealthy. from ⁓ casino operations or those sort of things. And so we had to sort of approach these contexts very differently. And you would be in places like rural Arizona where no running water to go to Southern California where San Diego County has the most amount of tribes of any county in the United States, right? There's something like 60. Yeah. And so that sort of really began visiting these communities, working with them on Basically helping them realize their own energy futures and whether that was having some level of of renewables on their grid or you know in their in on the reservation or this was even stuff like just fixing utility billing right and that sort of Began, you know, I started going to more and more of these places and I was like, man, these are beautiful parts of the world and In 2016, I really I began spending more time in Alaska and specifically in communities off the road system, because in Alaska, you know, the two main road communities are Fairbanks and Anchorage. Everything else is effectively operates like an island. You know, they have to fly things in, bring things by barge or et cetera. But we got to go out into some of these communities often in the middle of winter, because that's when people were there and they weren't hunting and fishing. ⁓ And I think one of the things that was really neat about that those sort of early experiences was it really got my sort of appetite for adventure and going to see some of these remote parts of the world and remote parts of the West. And I think what I came away with was just the human element and the human stories that were coming out of that. And I think that sort of began percolating of, you all of these issues of energy, water, public lands, tribal sovereignty and like And yeah, I mean, I really credit it to those early trips. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Well, you just to touch on it real quick, you talked about San Diego having the most amount of tribes in an urban setting. You said 60. Is that because is that from the termination act or where? Why does San Diego have 60 to that? That's a lot of people. just just how does that happen? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Why am saying? San Diego County is a pretty big chunk of land in Southern California. These are very small tribes. These are often like the same cultural or linguistic groups of the same lineage, but there's the history of California Rancherias and the displacement that happened. ⁓ and a lot of these tribes, yeah, I think to your point, we're terminated at one point. And so, ⁓ and, know, some of the communities that we worked with, I remember there was one tribe, very remote sort of section between like Palm Springs and San Diego and the mountains. And I think they only, their reservation was like 40 acres. and they were trying to figure out how to turn that into something positive. And that was, and their idea was an eco tourism. ⁓ you know, sort of off-grid yurt system and so we were working with them on doing that and so it was really cool just to see like, you know, small tribe like that, maybe like 12 members to, you know, working on Navajo Nation where Shum from is the largest on-reservation population in the U.S. Leigh/@followtheleighder: So what is it like to work along different tribes? Because like you said, sovereignty, they all have their own ways of doing things. What does it look like to navigate the differences in those nations as well as US law, particularly when there's corporate interests and counties? I mean, you've got a lot of people that are in the room. What is that like for someone like you to navigate that? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, it's, ⁓ I mean, this is gonna, there's gonna be two answers, one's for Alaska and one's for the lower 48. But in the lower 48, know, reservations are kind of what people are most familiar with. they are, you know, fall into this weird category called domestic dependent nations. They have some level of sovereignty, but it's like, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Sure. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: basically is below that of the United States. So Congress still has plenary power over tribes. ⁓ But you one of the things that I always try to approach when I was working in those communities is that each one of these communities has their own story. They have their own sort of context of what's going on. And there is definitely similarities for sure. And there's a lot of like common experiences that sort of cut across reservations. But one of the things I quickly learned early on is like, I have to like basically go into it with an open mind and realize that like, the history and stories and like the reason why this community is there and the things that are happening ⁓ need to be approached with a fresh set of eyes. And I think that's in many ways, I think was like in very helpful for the storytelling work that I do now ⁓ is that, yes, we're native. Yes, we have a lot of lived experience, but even myself as a native person, have to check myself and just say, okay, what are the assumptions I'm making here ⁓ and do they apply? ⁓ I think the one thing that was really ⁓ cool about that experience was just seeing, you know, I was working ⁓ on behalf of the Department of Energy and, the government has in some communities has a lot of baggage, you know, and ⁓ sometimes we got that, but I was really, I think in some ways like me also coming from a lived experience similar to the tribal leaders who were working alongside. opened up lot of doors and allowed us to have much more candid conversations and to move work forward in a way that ⁓ hadn't in the past. ⁓ And so, you know, in federal, you know, just in the details of what that would look like, you know, it's like working with natural resource directors and different folks that are doing things on reservations. And one of the things that I just really admire it is just like, despite all of these like, amazingly immense challenges that some of these tribes face that are you know far out exceed other some other context like they are still working for the betterment of their community and And they could still see a bright future that was often the case and I think that was really inspiring and in in Alaska ⁓ It's a whole different thing because in Alaska there's one reservation ⁓ and they were ⁓ The Land Claim Settlement Act in the 70s, it's ⁓ called ANSCA, the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act, basically came about because of unseeded or unresolved ⁓ land claims that were being brought up during the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. so in the 70s, all of these tribes, know, most, all of the majority of tribes are actually in Alaska, but the funny thing about them is that they are actually incorporated as incorporations. ⁓ And so you can have village corporations, can have regional, there's 13 regional corporations. And then you can also have city governments and then you have the state and then you have the feds. You just have this really complex landscape where, you know, I remember one meeting, we met with the village in the morning, the village leaders and they're like, all right, we're going to meet with the city next, right? Which the village and the city were effectively the same thing. There's reasons why that exists because the state of Alaska didn't recognize villages, but they recognize cities. But the funny thing is, that like 75 % of the people that we met with in the morning were the same people we met with in the afternoon. And it was like, all right, that's a, that was one of those moments where I had to laugh. It was like, this is a crazy complex mess. And, you know, and I think that's kind of one of the moments where just there's some absurd things that happen in native communities because of policies that were imposed upon us. I kind of came to the moment where I was like, I could be angry about it, but I could also just find it like deeply funny. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No. Well, and it's a lot to adapt and adjust to, particularly, like you said, radically different from the American West. ⁓ I want to give each of these regions ⁓ a dedicated place in your culture, in the West, your American West, lower 48. ⁓ I lived out in Colorado for a few years, loved going out to the headwaters of the Colorado River. It's up, you know, near. right outside Rocky Mountain National Park and flows all the way, think, through Vegas or Hoover Dam, not through Vegas, but Hoover Dam, and then lets out ⁓ at the Pacific. I don't know where it lets out, though. But that river is extremely controversial. ⁓ And it is a main life source for that region of the country, It's not the only one, and I we can talk, but can you talk about the different policies, not even different policies, Let's talk all the different interests that people want from that Colorado River. Again, folks, starting in Colorado, wedding out at the Pacific in California. ⁓ What are some of the projects or policies you've worked on that are related to the Colorado River? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, I mean, just ⁓ the last time the Colorado River flowed to the ocean was in 2014. Yeah. ⁓ It's supposed to flow to the ocean. For six million years it has, until the 60s. ⁓ But one of the things about the Colorado River is I think it's this. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Oh, then I was way wrong. It's supposed to flow to the ocean, but 2014. My goodness. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: You know, I think one of the challenges that I kind of face is that, you know, it's going to be a national issue this year. It's going to be an issue that we're going to hear about in the fall, like because of how low the snowpack has been for the last 20 years. We've been, we exist in like a basically a once in 1200 year, once in a thousand year drought. And that's dried out the land, meaning that less water ends up in the river when it melts a snowpack, because this land is sucking it up and then. Warmer temperatures mean that more of the water evaporates when it goes into these large dams like ⁓ Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon and Lake Powell. And so, 10 % of the river is lost to evaporation from that. And one of the things though is that this is a, it is a national and an international issue because a ⁓ majority of the water for... ⁓ Colorado River actually supports a lot of the agriculture ⁓ that feeds us specifically in the winter months. the river ⁓ supports, you know, it basically, you know, directly supports 40 plus million people in the western United States, but the agriculture component is something that actually supports the rest of the country. So from November to March-ish, if you eat a vegetable, of basically any sort, there's a very high like 90 plus cent, you know, chance that it's coming from Colorado River water, both on the US side with the Imperial Valley and Imperial Valley sits right on the border with Mexico and right on the other side of the border is the Mehekali Valley, which is also a big bread, big bread basket for us. And, and a huge component of that is also growing alfalfa and you know, alfalfa is one of the largest uses of water on the river and that feeds cattle. ⁓ We also export it abroad ⁓ and there's complicated reasons for that. For the farmers that the alfalfa, yes it's a very water intensive crop but it is a nitrogen fixer and so the more that they use it the less fertilizer they need to use. ⁓ And it also is a cash crop that they can grow in the hottest months of the year when they normally can't grow vegetables because it's too hot in those parts of the world. so, ⁓ but because of this historic drought over the last 20 years, the growth of cities in the ⁓ Sunbelt to the United States and increasing demands in some of the Northern regions, it means that this water, there is basically more demands of the river than there is water in the river. And so, ⁓ The water is diverted. There's two last diversions that happen. The one that goes to Imperial Valley on the American side and then one that goes to the Mexican side and then the river's dry for about 80, 90 miles. And there's a dry river delta that now exists ⁓ that's massive and used to be giant mangroves and one of the most biologically productive parts of the world. ⁓ So we're in a really consequential year. And so a lot of my work recently has been trying to document some of the things that are happening around this. And ⁓ it's complex, it's wild. And I think always the thing that I come back to is that there's human stories. There's very unique human stories in this. ⁓ And there's people on each side of this equation. And I think often what it gets framed as is as conflict, but you know, ⁓ I kind of come from the belief that everyone wants the best for others. ⁓ And, you know, people know what they know about the context that they live in. A big part of my work is trying to meet them there and understand that better. So I think, yeah, and then terms of where we're at and why this is going to be a really consequential year for the Colorado River is that ⁓ we have seen the lowest recorded snowpack ever in human history this year. ⁓ Very, very scary looking graphs. And that means that less water is ending up in places like ⁓ Lake Powell and Glen Canyon. ⁓ But there's a real possibility this year we're going to hit some critical levels on the dam. They call them power pool, but basically the dam is not going to be able to let out ⁓ nearly as much water as historically has happened. And so what it means is that there's probably going to be lawsuits, there's federal government involved, ⁓ definitely shortages and cutbacks and you know, it's going to be a wild fall. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's already happening, this dryness. mean, we've seen wildfires been going on for years, but there was a wildfire in Oklahoma, because, I mean, just like two months ago, because of how dry it's been, just a dry winter. Even areas that don't get a ton of snow, I know Colorado does get snow, but just this rain, it's a real concern. I'm up here in Montana and ⁓ it's affecting Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: you mom and pop ski resorts. mean, obviously, you know, with the protect our winners, what is there a future of Winter Olympics? I don't know what that looks. That was a deep concern watching it this year with how dry everything was. I don't know if you had that thought too. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, like you're saying, you're seeing more rain than snow. And that's like, you know, that's an effect of rising temperatures. And that is a future that we're gonna, we have entered and we're gonna see more of. ⁓ I've tried to like relate to it more, like it used to give me a lot of anxiety. It still does a little bit, but I think where I've tried to shift it to is like, this is a really interesting time to be able to live through. And Leigh/@followtheleighder: What are we- Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: in the role that I occupy, I have the opportunity to live through it and to share those stories and to, ⁓ you know, tell people in the future to have these things document so future people can understand what was going on. But also right now is like being able to articulate and advocate for that on a bigger scale. it's, you know, there's crazy, there's crazy bad things that are happening with, you know, climate and our public lands and the rivers. But there's also some really interesting and like positive stories. I just got off of a river trip last week and, you know, got to see this 53 mile section of the San Juan River, which feeds into Lake Powell, ⁓ is now out of the reservoir and, or out from under the water of the reservoir and this entire river section that was basically just, basically had a nuclear bomb dropped on it, completely dead, is now returning at a speed. The ecosystem is returning at a speed that even blows my mind, you three to five years you're already seeing this, you know, colonization of native plants and ⁓ the return of this riparian ecosystem. And so in a way it's like keeping my eyes and mind open to that there is a possibility for like really interesting and good things to happen too. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. I loved what you said about that and painting that image. About a month ago, I watched the most recent remakes, I guess, if you will, of Planet of the Apes. that, I don't know if you've seen those movies, but the second movie, all the humans have gone away, enough of them. There's like small colonies of humans, but ⁓ within like a year or two, Earth has almost completely healed and regrown. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: I haven't. Leigh/@followtheleighder: like, and it was like astonished and I didn't even think that Earth would but it just was very quick with no one to mow and no one to get in the way like how nature does what it does and it's really beautiful and inspiring. ⁓ I also appreciated your comment about it's just an interesting time to live through one of the and how that connects to like you said this these low Colorado water levels are going to impact policies this fall, lawsuits and all sorts. ⁓ But years ago, I was in Iceland and they were telling us on a tour about a volcano how a volcanic eruption, the eruption, the cloud suffocated the farm animals and the farming of Europe, which contributed to the French Revolution and how significant and Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: just it showed how everything is so deeply connected. Like over in Iceland a volcano erupted, but down in France they're getting the cloud and ⁓ makes economic conditions which lead to political uprisings. And so these climate change issues are not just, we need, like they're gonna have real, I mean, water wars are a possibility. ⁓ Not. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I don't know this fall, but I mean in the grand scheme of what can happen, ⁓ that these aren't just, ⁓ people are upset. This is survival. And I appreciate you walking in and again humanizing it by getting to know all of these people affected at a human level. I feel like I said a lot. don't know if I am. Okay. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. No, that's great. I totally agree. that's been one of the... I always keep the possibility, like whenever there's big changes, there's incredibly bad things can happen, but also incredibly good things can happen. And I kind of think about, you know, we have with the Colorado River, there's a real possibility that we could basically enter a new regime where the river's managed more according to the science that is before us. And, ⁓ you know, I think that is totally within the realm of possibility. And I think it's like one of those moments where, you know, trying to look for those opportunities amidst these big changes and, you know, changes are scary and it's often really hard ⁓ for societies to adapt. you know, there's incredible places where that has happened. ⁓ You know, I... Sometimes that's been through war and terrible things that have led to that, but there's also been other moments where that hasn't been the case. ⁓ And I think I just have, try to maintain that hope of possibility that things could be better and they could also be worse than I could ever imagine. It's going to be a mix of all of the above. Leigh/@followtheleighder: They really Yes Yeah, it could be better. It could also be a lot worse Can you talk about this? Your point that up in Alaska they govern just slightly differently and it changes the way you you navigate these structures What are some of the pressing issues going on in the Arctic or in Alaska where you were? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, so right now, ⁓ Alaska's, I'll try to like summarize this succinctly, but you know, when we look at the public lands angle, you know, there's incredible threats to some of the ⁓ most intact ecosystems that we have left in the United States. ⁓ So the Alaskan Arctic is a place where there's very few roads. It's very hard, you know, you have to get in there by walking in by you know, airplane or by boat. And ⁓ roads are an incredibly detrimental thing that can occur to an ecosystem. And ⁓ right now Alaska faces a multitude of threats on opening up places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the 1002 area, which is on the coast for oil and gas drilling. There's, ⁓ you know, a large, another large oil and gas development that is ⁓ currently underway in this place called the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, doesn't give away that it's actually a huge track of BLM land and it's like the largest piece of federal land in the United States. You can go there, you don't need a permit, but you're gonna pay a lot to get there. But these are ecosystems where ⁓ hundreds of species of birds from every continent except Antarctica go and... Nests every year, so there's a connection to other ecosystems across the West. There's, ⁓ you know, caribou migrations that still occur. There's, you know, incredible things that are happening there. And ⁓ right now you have threats from things like the Ambler Road, which is to basically support increased mineral development in this part of the world, the oil and gas development. ⁓ And then climate change and warming is a thing that, you know, in Alaska, climate change is not a political issue because people see it right in front of them. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: You know, and that's from things like melting permafrost and some of these, you know, native Alaskan communities and coastal areas whose communities are falling into the ocean to ⁓ frost heaves and Fairbanks basically, you know, screwing up people's foundations. ⁓ It's, in a place that's seeing an incredible amount of change. And what is really cool about the stories and the people that I've met there is just how Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: adaptable they are to that change and they understand that like the things that they understood about the past won't apply to the future but they've lived there for you know 40,000 years plus and they've seen this sort of change before ⁓ the last time during the Pleistocene and there's still people there and I think you know I look at that story as an incredible you know beacon of hope of that you know things will be different ⁓ but you know when we look at the core of what really bonds a lot of these Alaska Native communities and these Native folks that live there and non-Native folks as well is the connection to land, the connection to the wildlife, the connection to the food and subsistence that, you know, that brings. ⁓ And just the communities that, you know, the cohesiveness and the connection of these communities is really at the core, I think, what really keeps these things going. ⁓ So there's a lot of things happening there and I haven't even talked about the geopolitics and the fight of Russia and China trying to fight over the Arctic, but that's gonna be a part of the story too. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: it absolutely will. And I do have a note to talk about war and public lands or war and natural resources that's on here. But one of the things that you talked about was community and how that is going to be what gets us through this. And the other part being you don't have to convince folks who live in these particularly remote or like wilderness or quote unquote extreme environments. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: that climate change is happening. And I saw that in Pakistan this past summer when I was there doing some climate change work as part of the things I did all over there. But we were up in the Himalayas and they were like, yeah, they're melting. Like, I don't know, these glaciers are flooding. They're, it's, mean, and it's not just massive, which it is these massive floods, but those mountains, as I'm sure you know, with permafrost and they're held together with a combination of ice and rock. And so it's just not stable. can't, it's landslides too, even in the dry season. So ⁓ again, you don't have to convince people when they're waking up and living it. And ⁓ like you said, a lot of them are remote or rural. They're not the ones like consuming a ton of resources like a city. And so to see these things happen when... Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: their lifestyles haven't really changed. They're doing a lot of the same methods of farming or living or, you know, society that they've always done, but other places have influenced it. ⁓ When you think about the Arctic, not only like the survival that these people have on the lands up there, but the energy. What are folks looking to? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: mine or harvest from Alaska in general? it? Yeah, I'll just pause there and not guess. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's kind of it's an interesting. ⁓ There's a few different, I'll try to separate these into three angles. The first will be like the governance structure of the Alaska Native corporations. The second will be like the energy resources that are looking to be exploited for a global market. And then the last will be like looking at the villages and how that the energy needs have changed over time. ⁓ So there's the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act was basically an act that was. promulgated by Congress and settled native claims to land in Alaska. Hold on, me, I'm gonna close my window real quick. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah, no problem. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: I live right by an Air Force base. I'm in Tucson. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah, where are you? Okay, yeah, I was on Tucson last October. That's cool. Okay, sorry. Keep going. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah. ⁓ yeah, that's a great place. ⁓ So the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act was promulgated by Congress in the 70s, and it basically ⁓ settled native land claims throughout the state, and it created these 13 regional and a few hundred village corporations. And ⁓ a part of that settlement was a large disbursement of a few billion dollars to say, all right, these lands are no longer yours, but here's a settlement to make peace with that. The other part of that is that these 13 regional corporations, which I'm going to focus on primarily, they were given the opportunity to select lands that they could develop for. economic development and there's some argument that has been made that like this sort of structure was a form of social engineering ⁓ by the federal government because there is a tension in a lot of these communities at the time of well, you can't have sort of regular regular in quotes economic activity like you would have in cities and some of these very rural communities and cash was still needed to operate, ⁓ know, that's buying gasoline and and other food stuff that isn't gathered or hunted. ⁓ And so the idea was is that you would have these regional corporations that would go out, develop natural resources, and then they would pay their shareholders. And so like in Alaska, don't, they're not referred to as tribal members or that sort of thing. They're literally called shareholders. And ⁓ every native person in Alaska that's a part of this has a shareholder card and it's passed down and blah, blah, blah. But in some of these instances, these... tribal members or shareholders will get dividends from the sort of work that, you know, these regional corporations take upon themselves. And one of them, ⁓ Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which is the only Fortune 500 ⁓ company that's based in Alaska is a native corporation. And they've made an incredible amount of money from the oil and gas development that's happened throughout the northern part of the state, Prudhoe Bay and other areas. But they've also expanded into doing, you know, drilling. globally. that's one example. There's other regional corporations that do things like fishing and ⁓ ecotourism. There's a multitude of things that are there. But the idea is that that money and those dividends would go back to the community and they would be used to support these traditional activities. ⁓ And so looking at the sort of larger context of where Alaska sits is that it sits in the Arctic. In the Arctic, as sea ice is disappearing, is becoming basically a geopolitical playground for a lot of countries to start to lay claim on the resources that are there and that are now going to be available. And, you know, the United States, along with, you know, many other countries, 13 other countries, I believe, have a stake in what's happening there. And the United States, you know, we're kind of in this interesting point where there is national security concerns around things like critical minerals. And there's the Department of Energy ⁓ designated these 50 plus minerals that are critical to economic and national security. And currently there's a huge chunk of those, like 90 % of the world's critical mineral supply chain goes through China. so the designation by the federal government as critical minerals basically can expedite the development of these resources. ⁓ sort of in the light of national security. This is not the first time that this has happened historically, know, things like uranium, which affected my community was deemed a critical and you know, a critical resource of sorts and sort of put under the guise of national security and ⁓ but what that means is that there's increasing pressures that are happening there and ⁓ you know, and there's it's a mixed bag, you know, because We haven't seen the other shoe drop of like, okay, what if China fully cuts us off from the critical mineral supply chain? It would cause some serious issues in our country. And it's a scary one, know, like kind of we, there's a lot of things that we just don't understand. know, these supply chains in the minute and the resources that go into them are incredibly complex. They affect so many parts of our lives that we just don't even realize. And like the minute that that gets pulled away, it can be ⁓ not good times. So. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: I think there's part of me where it's like, understand the impacts that are happening by some of these developments. And I also understand the forces that are going in the other direction. And I think that's where policy and policymaking can get really messy because it's like, how do you balance all of these things? And how do you ensure that we don't repeat the past in the same way? And also try to ensure that we can hedge our bets and like make sure that, you know, we don't as a country end up in a situation that's um something beyond our our wildest nightmares and imaginations so that's kind of what's going on up there and that's it's it's a really i find it deeply interesting i you know i think where i i deeply care about public lands and protecting these ecosystems but i understand the forces that are pushing these things as well and i think is there a balance to be struck there maybe i don't know i don't have an answer to that yet but Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: I think just kind of keeping an open mind. the third one is about ⁓ the villages. know, a lot of Alaskan villages, I mean, with what's happening with global oil prices, that's going to be pretty devastating if oil prices, gas prices and diesel prices stay really high because in some communities in Alaska, ⁓ they will only get ⁓ fuel barged in once or twice a year if they're lucky. ⁓ the price that the gasoline and diesel is purchased at is the price that it will be for six or eight months until ice thaws and things that happen. So if you get, know, some communities, I remember, you know, this was in 2017, 2016, it was 10, $12 a gallon for gasoline. And some of these other communities, rely on diesel power generation for electricity. And so if you have Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ my gosh. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: incredibly sky-high diesel prices that won't just affect trucks, that'll affect literally the prices that people will pay for ⁓ their electricity. And so some of these communities I remember working in, their total utility bills during the middle of winter were like three to $4,000 a month. ⁓ And these are not very rich communities. These are places that are ⁓ there. And what we could potentially see is that these high energy prices could actually push people out of villages because it's not Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: feasible to live there. ⁓ So it's, you know, there's going to be some interesting things that happen. And ⁓ I think that's kind of where, you know, I look at that larger picture of Alaska is like, it's a really unique place. And I think to like, I feel like I understand enough of it to navigate it, but I definitely still feel like an outsider in many ways, but I kind of understand. like the, again, an interesting time. And, you know, I hope to be able to Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. Wow. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: spend more time there as some of these things happen. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I did not want to leave my time in Alaska. I just loved it. I did some hiking down at Canine Fords and fjords and camped and then I also did some in the Chugach. Chugach? Chugach? Chugach. Thank you. I mean, trying to describe, I mean, those mountains are black and then the water is like glacial frost, Gatorade blue and the wildflowers are so vivid. was like, it's, Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: ⁓ yeah. You gotch. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's so, there's so much contrast. It is a beautiful, beautiful place. And to your point about the minerals that are available there, the fact that then you said China controls 90 % of minerals globally, critical minerals globally. So, ⁓ cause that is, I've read that argument several times is this need to use our own backyard to compete against China. And I, Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Critical minerals, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I'm thankful to hear from you that it's from a place of real threat. And again, we don't know what the balance looks like to come back. like you said, these mandated ⁓ resource harvesting in the name of national security, I could also see that happening with AI. In the name of national security, military bases, there's one up in Anchorage. I think there's another in Fairbanks. I know there's one here in Montana, certainly all over the place. A lot of them along rivers or near bodies of water. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if they had their own AI data centers or something like it. So can we talk about the military and if it or war, you also mentioned war. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But how does war impact energy and public lands? And what are some of our concerns with now we're looking at AI wars? Like, that's a whole different thing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, we can look at the example of Iran. The United States in the last 20, 30 years ⁓ has become a net energy exporter when it comes to petroleum. historically, the last time that we faced an energy crisis of this level was in the 70s with the oil embargo by OPEC. that disrupted about six to six to 8 % of the world's supply of oil. you know, overnight in the United States in the seventies, not overnight, but in the course of a few weeks, ⁓ gas prices quadrupled, you know, and that was an incredible shock to the system in many ways, where the United States ⁓ at the time and the Carter administration understood that like having foreign imported oil was a security threat and it was a threat to our economy and there was you know a recession happened like in the mid 70s we got into this area of stagflation where inflation and inflation and a recession was occurring and ⁓ energy prices are sort of the lubricant of energy and energy prices are the lubricant of our global economy and high energy prices just have you know a multitude of effects downstream in ways, in effect supply chains in ways that we just don't understand. And we're starting to see that with the blockade that's happening in the Strait of Hormuz because the Strait of Hormuz moves 20 % of the world's oil. we're in a different place in the United States compared to the 70s because most of that oil that moves through that strait services Asia and China. But here in the United States, because of fracking, we actually have quite a bit more oil and gas than we've ever had, which is kind of an interesting, you know, there's an argument to be made that if fracking didn't happen, this war wouldn't have happened. ⁓ you know, there's disruptions to supply chains. The other thing that moves through the Strait of Hormuz is I believe half of the world's fertilizer. So, you know, that's going to have a direct impact on food prices to come. We have not seen that other shoe drop because that, you know, the plant starts still growing. or have not yet grown already. And so that's a high, high input cost as well. so, you know, it's this, I think, ⁓ you know, there's really scary things that are happening. The amount of energy disruption that we're seeing now is unprecedented. We've never seen it to this degree. ⁓ But I think with this second Trump administration and the amount of work that they've done to sort of undermine renewables, undermine... clean energy being put on the grid, this is actually something that I think could be a net positive for renewable energy. Granted, the other complication of that is, know, 80 % of the world's renewable energy tech or like solar panels are manufactured in China. So it becomes this like chicken and the egg of like, what do we, does that make sense? Do you want to have an energy grid tied to, you know, Chinese production? I mean, it opens up a whole can of worms, but I think in terms of like the larger threat is like, climate change is a real and serious threat that's gonna make everything that we try to do in the future much more challenging. And if we can like take steps to, know, solar panels and wind turbines and other sorts of renewable techs out there, those are still very cheap. And even now, like much cheaper and quicker forms of energy to deploy than say building a power plant. And so, you know, we're kind of seeing that mixed bag of... You know supply chains getting screwed up, of course, but then you know could actually move policymakers to say hey we should actually try to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we use because they're so they can be so volatile in times like this, right and I think that's the one of the things that I look about this particular conflict as ⁓ We don't know we don't know what the future holds but there's a few signals that we could get out of that and ⁓ I think to your and so, know, but what it also means is that there's going to be increased pressure to develop domestically. And ⁓ for me, like that's. You know, I have mixed feelings on that, of course, because, you know, I've seen how mining happens in places like Bolivia and South America, and it's not good. Like you, I mean, the protections that they have around the environment, the worker protections, like the sort of intersections with that and like. Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: international crime syndicates. mean, there's just a lot of things that happen there. I'm like, well, you know, what if we did update our mining laws in this country from the outdated ones we have from 1874 and like started looking at examples from like Australia and Canada where there's like much better protections. I wouldn't say they're great. They have their issues too, but there's also better consideration of indigenous rights. ⁓ you know, these things are going to happen. And I think like having, I think we could imagine, you know, future where it could be a little, it could be better. ⁓ But it's a trade-off, know, it's like those minerals are gonna have to come from somewhere. And ⁓ if we keep shunting it off to other countries where people don't have rights and like there's just less protections, like is that a better situation? Maybe for us, like we can outsource some of these things, but not for the people that are living there. So I just... ⁓ I struggle as you can imagine. I'm a great party guest. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, and ⁓ get it. I get it. And that was, again, I think one of the posts that I found you was you were actually advocating for ethical AI use as a public lands advocate. ⁓ And so I went down, I was reading and you are not the first ethical AI creator to come across. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I know that there some folks that have even studied ethical AI. So then they have content that's out there. Can you talk about ⁓ what you mean by ethical AI use and publicly and advocacy? What does that mean? And how does, what does it mean to live like that? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, well my first, you know, it's the graduate school I went to, Carnegie Mellon, is a very interesting place. There's a wonderful movie if you ever want to like see what it's like. It was made by Werner Herzog. It's called Low and Behold and it's about the creation of the internet. So Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and a few other places were the first places that had the internet and like developed this as a technology. ⁓ And when I was there in the early 2010s, I began, you know, robotics and what they called machine learning, is now, you know, so, mean, AI encompasses a lot of different things, but it used to be sort of known better known as machine learning was just starting to take hold. And it was kind of in the understanding of like having robotics for manufacturing or, you know, self-driving cars, like Uber. The like two years before I graduated, basically poached half of the robotics department at CMU to like build their self-driving cars and. You know, there's, having an early sort of view of that technology and just kind of seeing what its potential is, it was always interesting. You know, I think, you know, it's, it's a scary thing and it's become a very, you know, sort of this moral flag that, you know, it's more a playground that we're kind of fighting in now. And, you know, I think one of the things that I remember, I took this technology policy change class and we looked at sort of the history of transformative technologies and, you know, in the way that they impacted society. you know, one of the great examples is electricity. And, you know, we can look at the, there was a lot of opposition in the early days in rural America of incorporating electricity onto farms. you know, ⁓ there was, yeah, an incredible amount of opposition, even went so far as like farmers cutting down transmission towers and that sort of thing. ⁓ you know, we're kind of seeing a similar moment now. And one of the things that, you know, when we look back in the past, these in many ways, like the genie is out of the bottle is like, we're already there. Like it's there. It's not going anywhere. And we have to just imagine a future now that this is going to be a part of our world. And, ⁓ you know, there's been times where it's been disruptive in some really big ways. ⁓ you know, we don't, we, we take electricity for granted these days, you know, but That was not the case over a hundred years ago. ⁓ The other one that I kind of reference a lot was ⁓ flash freezing technology. So if you've ever eaten frozen vegetables or bird's eye foods or that sort of thing, like that was actually a technology that was incredibly disruptive at a way, like sort of at a scale that maybe AI could be, but we don't think about it that way. And so in the twenties, ⁓ this is actually a traditional ecological. TK knowledge from Inuit people in the far north where they basically could freeze foods so quickly that it wouldn't break the cell walls of the foods itself. So you would have food that would still have the texture when you thought it, would still have the texture and flavor and taste of regular food. And prior to the 1920s, ⁓ know, frozen foods were bland, mushy and disgusting. And it also meant that our Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: our food system was designed with a very different preservation technology in some minds, canning, salting. ⁓ We don't have ice harvesters and folks that manage, ⁓ what do you call it? Like that sort of ice cooling chain, because this also coincided with the development of refrigeration. And so in the course of five to eight years, ⁓ something like 15 to 20 % of Americans were displaced from their jobs because of this flash freezing technology, because prior to that moment, something like 80 % of food was lost to waste or spoilage ⁓ because there was an inability to sort of move it, you know, cross market without that sort of loss. And so that meant you had to have an overproduction of food. ⁓ You also had to rely on a few different, you know, preservation technologies that we don't have quite as much of anymore. But once that technology Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: dispersed, know, a lot of people had their jobs shifted. A lot of people moved to cities. mean, there was a lot of disruption that happened. But ⁓ one of the things is that now we have a food system where there's still quite a bit of waste, but it's not 80%. And, and it's also one that we can enjoy vegetables in the winter, like fresh vegetables in the winter that, you know, a hundred years ago was not even a possibility. You would have to get them from a can and Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: You know, so there's a trade-off that happened there and there was a displacement that happened, but we don't think of it as one as particularly ⁓ severe. And I think when I look at AI, you know, this is a unique technology at the speed it's deploying. It's also one of the few technologies that's actually displacing white collar workers more than it is blue collar workers. know, lot of previous technology development of automation has displaced a lot of manual labor. And this is an interesting one because it's like, you know, ⁓ where folks like you and myself are kind of at the front lines of it for the first time. And I look at that and I say, well, there's gonna be incredible change here. But when we look at that throughout history, ⁓ this sort of technology disbursement actually results in, tends to result in more jobs on the other end. They're different. The economy is different. ⁓ The jobs that are done are different. But... ⁓ you know, I, that's kind of what I look at. And so what we're seeing is like, of course the way the speed at which it's deploying is breakneck into a certain degree. The other, the other thing that gets talked about a lot is this is sort of coupled with data centers and data centers are a little bit, you know, they're not fully driven by AI. Like us having this conversation over Riverside is using a data center. And we've seen more and more of these technologies post COVID. We're using a lot more video conferencing and video conferencing, for example, is an incredible amount of data center use. It's like actually a huge chunk, maybe a quarter to a 40 % or, you know, depends on where you're at. And there's a lot of factors that are involved. But we're going to see just, yeah, there's going to be other things on the other side, but the, but back to the data center thing. Let me, let me refocus on that. We have a lot more technology that uses these cloud softwares. videoconferencing, I mean, you name it, there's a lot of sort of like underneath the surface things that we don't see where this technology is being used. And one of the things that we're seeing is quite a massive build out of AI data centers across the United States. You know, the amount of capital expenditures that are happening are substantial. And if you look at it, like on a per dollar basis, it's like larger than the interstate highway system, than the Apollo program, than the railroad expansion. But if you look at it from more of a perspective, okay, percentage of GDP, it's actually very, it's not that different from some of these other things that we've seen. The railroad expansion in the West in the late 1800s was incredibly chaotic. mean, just, I mean, the amount of spending that was going on during that time dwarfs anything that we've seen now. And there was just multiple booms and busts and crisis. And I think we could see that in the near future is like some sort of, ⁓ explosion of that of that capital expenditure build out. ⁓ And, you know, and the other part of it is like, that's been really the only thing booing the United States economy from going into a recession. So it's like, you know, this is a, this is a little messy thing. But one of the things that we do see intersect with that is that ⁓ we see the sort of limitations of our existing laws and like how, you know, how do we incorporate the views of local communities in this sort of build out and, you know, even the behind the meter power generation. So one of the things that some of these data centers are doing is that they're putting natural gas power plants, many power plants behind the meter because the grid can't be built out quickly enough. And there's policy reasons that have stymied and slowed. ⁓ our grid and electrical build out and a lot of our grid has been under invested in for decades. ⁓ And the bill is coming due right at the time when we're building these data centers. And so, you know, people talk about power center or power rate increases. Some of that is actually, mean, majority of that from some of the studies that I've been looking at is actually being driven by ⁓ the increasing costs of the transmission equipment, right? So the critical minerals, tariffs, increased costs of labor post-COVID, those are actually the boring things to blame when it comes to rising utility bills. And it just happens to coincide with this build out of AI centers. But when we look at these behind the meter power plant generation, behind the meter natural gas generators, that has air emission impacts. And it's basically exploiting a loophole of one. We haven't invested in the grid in a meaningful way, meaning that utilities and other groups can't put a power online as quickly as they need to. have like a seven year backlog on putting on ⁓ renewable energy onto high transmission lines. So you see this convergence of energy policy, local siting decisions about this sort of thing. And then this like AI data center build out and it's You know, one of the things that I always remember is like, I think it's really important that communities be consulted with this. And then I think on the other side of this is like this conversation would be a moot one. I think at least on the energy side, if this was coming from renewable energy and that's like the energy policy side, because you know, the, when we look at AI data center build outs, it's gone from 2 % to 4 % of electric electrical consumption in the United States, but we don't think about. the massive industrial processes or the mines, for example, in Arizona that use an incredible amount of electricity. There's a lot of other things that I'm more worried about on the electrical side. ⁓ And I think the broader conversation I try to zoom out on is like, we need cleaner energy on the grid. And ⁓ poor policies and lack of coordination has led us to this point where we're having real conversations about. What are we using electricity for and how is it used? And we should have been investing in the grid decades ago because then we wouldn't have to be dealing with these high energy prices that are, the bills that are coming due. ⁓ But yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. So do you, do you, I don't, I wanna wrap up soon, so I don't wanna launch you into another question. In fact, but I do, do you think that nuclear energy is on the horizon? Is that what's coming down the pipeline for us anytime soon, or is that still a ways away? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Hahaha You know, one of the things that I always look at is ⁓ the cheapest, most reliable source of energy that we can put on the grid or the quickest ⁓ is solar and wind. you know, Texas is not a place that we think of as a renewable energy Mecca, but there's been many parts of the summer in the last few years where they've been getting a crazy amount, like 80 % or a hundred percent, whatever, like getting close to a hundred percent of their summer demand from renewable energy. And It's a cost thing. In 2021, we crossed the threshold where renewables are much cheaper than fossil fuel generation across the board. Granted, that raises a whole lot of questions about where are you going to put all those solar panels and are you going to sacrifice parts of the country to cover in solar panels? big policy question we have to answer. I think on the nuclear side, maybe. It's incredibly costly. technology has gotten better ⁓ and there's a good reason to, we have experiences that make people scared about it. I think for me, having grown up with a uranium mine grandfather and seeing the impacts of that, granted, most of those went to nuclear weapons, but ⁓ it becomes this question where I used to be pretty anti-nuclear and now I'm like, well, it needs to be on the table. Like, I don't think we need to, like, I'm not gonna. advocate for it, but I think it's something that we have to seriously consider and understand that every other technology has its trade-offs too. ⁓ that's always the moment where it's like it might make sense in some contexts, it might not make sense in others. And I think, you know, we're at this moment in this inflection point where, especially what we're seeing with the disruption of oil and gas from the Middle East and what's doing to global energy prices, it's ⁓ You know, I think it would be foolish not to at least have some consideration of it as an option, but people get mad at me for saying that. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, it's, well, it's just, like you said, we have a very intense energy demand. We have a new technology, AI. ⁓ Could that mean a shakeup? Could that mean things that, you know, but like you said, there's a lot of danger in nuclear energy and solar and wind. I live in Montana. It's so windy, so windy. And I would be interested, you know, Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: When I was in Pakistan, I saw how many people had solar panels ⁓ either on their roofs, they made, just like had them with like, they walked around with battery packs that were solar powered for their phones or whatever. And it was just such a natural, it was just a built-in part of their society that's not in the United States. And I wish it was, I wish it was just more accessible for citizens and businesses to lean in and. ⁓ I don't know, see it as doing all of our part. But that kind of society can't happen unless we keep talking about it and talking about the benefits, which is why we have you. And this was an amazing hour. ⁓ Dr. Professor, where can folks learn more about you? How can they follow you? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: So you can follow me on my socials. It's kind of a, I don't take social media very seriously. ⁓ It's a place to, think of it as the attention casino. but yeah, social media, Len Nesiver, natives outdoors. And then ⁓ where I do most of my thought work is actually on Substack. I have a Substack called All At Once. ⁓ And I write a lot about. lot of different issues, explorations, expeditions, energy issues, water issues, yeah, just kind of a place where I can play with ideas and thoughts and hopefully bring people along and how complex and messed up our world can be. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, absolutely. And ⁓ you're a great writer, very well spoken. I have so appreciated. I've just sat back here like learning. I'm so glad that I'm recording this so I could enjoy it and not have to write and just be like, wow, really. So I mean, thank you. Please come back so we can do a deeper dive on any number of these topics, whether it's the Arctic, Colorado River, AI, or public lands. It's... Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Ha ha. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You're just a wealth of experience and information that I think a lot of people should know about. think so I'm really thankful that you gave me your time this afternoon and please come back. Are there any other parting words before we wrap up? Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Thank you. Yeah, definitely. ⁓ Just, you know, get off the internet sometimes and go touch grass. That's my best advice. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Amen. Amen. I actually that was the motivation behind my children's book series where my dog narrates adventures in national parks. I was like, get off your phone and go get your dog and go camping. Go outside. Read them. Yes. Well, thank you much. Again, folks, that is Dr. Len Nesifer. ⁓ Again, working at the intersection of Indigenous people, natural resources and environmental policy. Dr. Len Necefer, Enviro Policy: Yeah, and read books, read books. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you for your time and thank you listeners for tuning in. Let me know what you thought down in the comments. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. This has been another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and until next time, see ya.