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Wind and solar power cannot, and should not, replace Persian Gulf oil · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:07
  Mainstream media has betrayed our trust.
• 0:10
  Rather than tell us the whole story about the important issues of the day, they tell us only what they want us to hear.
• 0:16
  Your hosts, Tom Harris and Todd Royal will bring you the other side of the story.
• 0:27
  U.S.
• 0:28
  average retail gasoline prices have risen about 60 cents a gallon since the war in Iran began and stood at $3.58 a gallon on Wednesday just passed.
• 0:39
  This is largely because Iran has closed the Strait of Hormose, which supplies about 20% of the world's crude oil and natural gas.
• 0:48
  There have also been Iranian missile attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in countries that host U.S.
• 0:54
  military bases such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE.
• 0:58
  Never once to let a crisis go to waste.
• 1:01
  Environmental activists have been using this as evidence that we should move away from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power.
• 1:10
  This is ridiculous.
• 1:12
  Nevertheless, activists want us to believe that our reliance on oil is making us vulnerable.
• 1:18
  For example, I'll just read a couple of quotes from some of these activists that are writing this.
• 1:23
  For example, energy commentator Peter McKillop, the founder of climate and capital media said that, quote, fossil fuels aren't a shield against chaos.
• 1:32
  They're a conduit for it, unquote.
• 1:35
  He concluded that, quote, no one goes to war over a solar panel, unquote.
• 1:40
  The climate news site, heat map news, this is what they wrote.
• 1:44
  This moment of energy scarcity could provide yet another reason to turn towards renewable and electrification using solar panels and batteries, unquote.
• 1:54
  Since wind and solar are not transported, they can't be disrupted by political conflicts, they say.
• 2:01
  Well, we'll dismantle that, that's for sure.
• 2:03
  ZME science claims that the supposed lack of a single choke point that is present with gas in the Strait of Hormoes makes wind and solar power better alternatives.
• 2:15
  Well, we're going to take all that apart.
• 2:17
  My energy expert co-host Todd Royal, and I will be dismantling these nonsensical claims.
• 2:24
  So Todd, the United States doesn't rely to a great extent on oil from the Persian Gulf anymore.
• 2:30
  So why would the closing of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran, the UAE, and Oman, why would that result in gas prices suddenly spiking 20% in just a week?
• 2:43
  Wow, what a good question.
• 2:45
  You know, Tom, is let's just say upwards of over 20% of all the world's oil and natural gas goes through the Strait of Hormose, which you know is really ridiculously stupid that that's taken place.
• 3:01
  When you have, I mean, you think about this.
• 3:03
  Let's let's give some context to people because people our listeners could go, wait a minute, it's only 20%.
• 3:09
  What why is that such a big deal on global markets?
• 3:14
  Well, that's a good that's a really good, that'd be a good um question.
• 3:18
  Except for whatever reason, the way that oil and gas markets work, that just a small amount of supply, whether negative or positive, if you remember back during the American elections under the Biden administration during the midterms of 2022, released upwards of about a million barrels a day from the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices and somewhat control inflation.
• 3:44
  It made things look better.
• 3:46
  So you have upwards of about a hundred million barrels a day of oil is consumed at any time, 25 to you know, at any time you have that amount of of supply moving around the world as well.
• 4:03
  So if we if we're going through 100 million barrels of oil and you're going through billions of cubic feet of natural gas per day, and if one percent uh can affect prices, meaning the the former uh presidential administration released a million barrels from the United States strategic petroleum reserve.
• 4:25
  Well, when I take 20% of the supply off the market, you should almost ask yourself, how are prices not higher?
• 4:32
  Yeah.
• 4:33
  I'm surprised they've only gone up 20%.
• 4:35
  I am too.
• 4:37
  Um the one of the the leading people in Iran just said, you know, we're happy to bring oil up to 200 per barrel.
• 4:45
  You know, one of the uh the leading, you know, in the Iranian revolutionary guard corps had just said that, like one of the commanders has said it in the last 24 hours.
• 4:54
  Um, so when you take 20% of all supply is off.
• 4:59
  Now remember, that doesn't mean it's not there.
• 5:02
  That means that insurance companies will not insure those vessels, and that means the owners of those vessels uh really have two things they have to worry about.
• 5:11
  Not only the cargo, you know, whether it's oil or natural gas in the the vessels, but they have to worry about the actual vessels themselves, which are worth significant amounts of money, and then they have to worry about their employees.
• 5:24
  Oh, right.
• 5:26
  If I'm going to uh shoot at blow up or mine uh the Strait of Hormuz, then prices are going to go up.
• 5:35
  The question to really throw back to you though, Tom, is why do you think we have not done alternate routes?
• 5:44
  Meaning, why do you think there aren't because we we can bring up a map and go, you could build pipelines.
• 5:52
  Yeah, there are some pipelines.
• 5:53
  There's a pipeline across Saudi Arabia, for example.
• 5:56
  I you know, it's interesting.
• 5:57
  In my discussion with Copilot last night, I had a long discussion with it about this.
• 6:01
  Okay, the the bottom line is people have just chosen the cheapest way to do things.
• 6:06
  They haven't chosen the most secure, secure way to do things.
• 6:10
  And you know, it's all seems to be driven largely by cost.
• 6:13
  And you know, one of the things that strikes me as strange, Todd, you have a situation where the United States actually exports more than it imports of oil.
• 6:22
  So I mean, the United States are not, when it comes to supply, they're not affected by the Strait of Hormose situation.
• 6:29
  So you sort of say, well, then why do they tie themselves to a global market where other people like Japan, for example, gets 90% of their oil from area, you know, from through the Strait of Hormose.
• 6:42
  Uh, I mean, why would we tie ourselves to that?
• 6:44
  Like, why don't we just say, okay, uh, you know, the rest of the world, you you look after your own oil supply, we've got plenty.
• 6:51
  So we're not going to tie into a global market.
• 6:53
  So I don't actually understand the benefit for the United States of being in a situation where the global situation determines domestic domestic prices.
• 7:04
  Well, number one, there's different grades of oil.
• 7:06
  There's heavy oil, there's uh light crude, sweet crude, and they're used for different measurements.
• 7:13
  Um typically U.S.
• 7:14
  refineries need heavy crude.
• 7:16
  So a barrel of oil is not just a barrel of oil.
• 7:20
  Um, the other thing is it's it's a great, it's a great question.
• 7:25
  And the way that I would answer this is we are living in a post-World War II order.
• 7:31
  And what do I mean by that?
• 7:33
  Well, if you go back to World War II, that was a global war.
• 7:36
  It fighting actually took place on all seven continents.
• 7:39
  And what we said after that, meaning the allies, particularly the United States.
• 7:44
  We never want to have another global world war.
• 7:47
  So how what what do we have to do for this?
• 7:49
  How do we get this to stop?
• 7:51
  Well, the best way to do it is somebody's money.
• 7:54
  And so we said we're not going to be isolationists.
• 7:58
  You know, now that kind of goes against the MAGA movement, the America First movement.
• 8:03
  It what it says is we are going to be tied into one another around the world.
• 8:09
  So while there may be trade disputes and maybe Mark Carney and Donald Trump are fighting with each other, or you know, whatever political theater they're they are doing, there is significant amounts of trade between the United States and Canada now.
• 8:26
  Oh, that's for sure.
• 8:28
  Take place with with oil and natural gas.
• 8:31
  Okay.
• 8:42
  So we now live in this post-World War II order where we are interconnected with one another.
• 8:49
  We say, hey, and if you think about this, Tom, why don't the United States and China go to war?
• 8:56
  They are we're we're their customers.
• 8:59
  There you go.
• 9:00
  There you go.
• 9:01
  Well, and also there's an interconnection.
• 9:04
  You sell us your goods, and we give you factories, we give you technology.
• 9:11
  In other words, whether you think that's right or not, whether you think, hey, uh, China has stolen from the West and taken technologies, all true.
• 9:22
  They're trying to hurt us.
• 9:23
  They they are killing 100,000 people a year via fentanyl.
• 9:27
  All true.
• 9:28
  Canada, you're not doing enough to close your border to all that.
• 9:32
  All true.
• 9:33
  Those are all true statements, except you do not have a global war wherever 100 to 150 million people died and the entire world change.
• 9:43
  In other words, as horrible as it is to say 100,000 Americans are dying a year, and it is horrible.
• 9:52
  We do not have a global world war.
• 9:54
  And I would make the argument based upon the Bretton Woods Agreement that set up
• 10:00
  Global markets, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations that says, okay, what is a way to keep China from attacking Japan?
• 10:10
  Japan attacking China, United States and China, Germany trying to retake over Europe again, the Russians, whatever, whoever it may be, Tom, we are now connected globally with one another through uh the SWIFT trading system, which is how most uh transactions are settled, uh, usually in dollar denominations, we are connected financially, whether it's Dubai, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, um, New York, et cetera, Mexico City, et cetera, et cetera.
• 10:45
  So what that does is it interconnects all this.
• 10:48
  Now, if I take the item that that every single one of us interact with every single day, probably more than we even do with our wives, husbands, partners, lovers, friends, etc.
• 11:02
  Fossil fuels, well, when I close down 20% of how those fossil fuels reach the market, which to me, that should be the real issue.
• 11:12
  Why in the world did this global order allow 20% in one of the more volatile parts of the world?
• 11:21
  Yeah, good.
• 11:21
  That's to me, if you go, what's the real issue here?
• 11:25
  If it were me, I would be talking about why in the world have we allowed 20% of the most valuable resource in the world to go through one of the most volatile regions in the world, why aren't there hundreds of pipelines to mitigate against this very issue?
• 11:42
  Or at the very least, Tom, why aren't there thousands of fleets of tanker trucks or rail lines that could take these to safer ports, be it whether it's Turkey, whether it's Egypt, wherever it may be that can get this product.
• 11:59
  If you look at the Strait of Hormuz, it it's like a it's like a bad B movie of a bad actor looking at each other.
• 12:07
  So that's a that's a long way of saying we live in a post-World War II order where the world is interconnected.
• 12:16
  Why in the world have hasn't this been mitigated with pipelines, railways, and tanker trucks?
• 12:22
  Yeah, and um the price, the price will likely continue to go higher uh longer this uh conflict goes on.
• 12:31
  Yeah, that's crazy.
• 12:32
  It is uh, you know, so I guess they must have decided years ago that even though you could have part of the world like North America, which could be self-sufficient in oil because we have so much of it, and not have to be tied to a world price, that the world price was a political tool to maintain peace.
• 12:50
  And you know, it's interesting, Todd.
• 12:52
  It's not just in uh oil, it's also in fertilizers.
• 12:55
  A lot of fertilizer, up to 40% of the world's fertilizer, because of course they use natural gas to make it, actually flows through the Strait of Hormones.
• 13:04
  I want to come back to that issue, but before we go on, there's one interesting fact, and that is that the oil companies in North America who have a great deal of supply, they have no damage to their facilities.
• 13:17
  They are making an absolute fortune because of the increase in costs of oil.
• 13:22
  So I mean it's sort of weird.
• 13:23
  The increase is being driven by things that are happening on the other side of the earth that don't affect our our oil companies, but they're allowed to charge a lot.
• 13:31
  In fact, they have to charge a lot more for their product.
• 13:34
  So they're making an absolute killing.
• 13:36
  Well, let me let's just let's play a little bit here.
• 13:39
  Let's do a little game theory mixed with a little conspiracy theory.
• 13:44
  Yeah.
• 13:45
  We know that most of the American oil majors were upset with the policies of Donald Trump, who said, I want oil to be at $50 a barrel.
• 13:58
  We know that uh said oil executives were brought to the White House after uh Venezuelan, the capture of Madura.
• 14:06
  And so now there's about to be even more oil coming on the market.
• 14:10
  So in other words, we know that oil companies want the price to be, let's just say around 70 to 78 dollars a barrel.
• 14:19
  We know that they were losing money uh before this massive bombardment and uh the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which is interesting that the first time I ran did not close the Strait of Hormuz, but this time they are closing it.
• 14:36
  Yeah.
• 14:37
  Let me just throw a few things at you.
• 14:39
  Unfortunately, we've seen since COVID and Russian collusion and et cetera, et cetera, that things you think are conspiracy theories are not theories.
• 14:50
  They're not a conspiracy theory, it's the truth.
• 14:52
  Well, right.
• 14:52
  In fact, you know, Russell Brand, the commentator.
• 14:55
  Yeah, he's always exposing these so-called conspiracy theories before they become true.
• 15:00
  And he said, you know, the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth, uh, it's about six months.
• 15:05
  Well, I would say this.
• 15:07
  What if there's actually been coordination between the U.S.
• 15:09
  and Iranian government?
• 15:11
  Huh?
• 15:12
  Do you mean to drive up the price?
• 15:14
  Sure.
• 15:15
  Yeah.
• 15:16
  Because you know, there's been back channel talks, um, and this was on Russia Today.
• 15:21
  I was reading it this morning.
• 15:22
  Uh the well, like one of the deputy, you know, finance ministers that said, we're open to outside investment.
• 15:29
  Okay.
• 15:30
  Well, what if I knew that, okay, I need to get, I need to satisfy the oil and gas companies in the United States.
• 15:39
  So what if I help them make a killing here for the next few months?
• 15:43
  Because the first year of my presidency, they haven't done very well.
• 15:47
  I mean, the saying goes, uh, you make money during Democrats and you work on infrastructure during Republican administrations.
• 15:53
  We know, you know, Democrats believe in green and global warming, and so they're gonna they're they're hostile to fossil fuels.
• 16:00
  Gavin Newsom.
• 16:01
  Or they want more product on the market, and they believe in fossil fuels and nuclear over renewables, batteries, EVs, uh, and global warming.
• 16:12
  Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio.
• 16:15
  So if I do what's going on now, and now I've got gas, I've got a price of a barrel, 100, 120, I can make up a lot of money that I've lost the past uh 14 to 14 to 16 months.
• 16:29
  That's my first one for you.
• 16:31
  And then secondly, so it's so it's obviously to their advantage.
• 16:34
  So you think quite quiet quietly, the oil companies are hoping they would close the Strait of Hormouth.
• 16:40
  Why would why wouldn't you?
• 16:42
  And you have to ask yourself.
• 16:43
  So you're saying there was a 12-day war, you can look this up.
• 16:48
  And and I kept looking at this from an energy perspective and going, why are they not closing the Strait of Hormuz?
• 16:55
  Why have they decided to close the Strait of Hormuz this time, but they didn't close it last summer?
• 17:02
  Oh, good point.
• 17:03
  That when you sit back and kind of laterally think about this, it doesn't make sense.
• 17:09
  Uh unless unless there is a conspiracy.
• 17:14
  Because when you think about when the United States took out Maduro in Venezuela, Venezuela has the largest known recoverable reserves in the world, over 300 billion barrels.
• 17:27
  We know that most of the majors, including the Chinese, are in Guyana, right next door.
• 17:34
  They've already brought millions of barrels on the market in record time.
• 17:38
  They could move right over to Venezuela, start bringing product almost immediately while spending billions to work on the infrastructure to bring that oil back.
• 17:48
  So if I'm a if I'm an oil and gas executive at Exxon Mobil, Todal, any Shell, British Proleum, Conaco Phillips, et cetera, well, I'm looking at sub-40 a barrel oil for as long as I can see the moment that Venezuela and oil hits the market.
• 18:10
  And then what if Mexico oil hits the market when you take out cartels?
• 18:15
  When you begin to put the pieces together, it makes a lot of sense to go to go right now close the Strait of Hormuz versus closing it last summer.
• 18:24
  Wow, that's interesting.
• 18:26
  So Todd, last night I had a good long discussion with Copilot, probably about 50,000 words actually, about this fertilizer issue.
• 18:34
  And apparently something like 40% of the fertilizer that's used throughout the world, happily not North America and the United States, not the United States and Canada, comes through the Strait of Hormos.
• 18:44
  And that's largely because it's very expensive to build these plants to make different products, you know, like nitrogen-based fertilizers, the feedstock is natural gas.
• 18:55
  So they're actually making it right there.
• 18:57
  Now, what it means though is that even though we have plenty of fertilizer, because we make our own, we are affected by the global price of fertilizer.
• 19:07
  And they're saying that when the spring comes, and you know, farmers are starting, you know, will be planting, there'll be a huge change increasing fertilizer costs.
• 19:16
  There'll be a huge change increasing diesel fuel costs.
• 19:19
  And so the outcome of this is that our food costs are going to go up in, you know, in the spring.
• 19:25
  Absolutely because of this restriction.
• 19:27
  And that's again because of the fact that we have essentially a world price for fertilizer.
• 19:32
  Um, so I mean, I guess this is all the price you pay if you want to have peace.
• 19:38
  You integrate the whole system of the world in these different essential commodities, which means we're affected by things that ordinarily wouldn't affect us at all, right?
• 19:48
  Well, yes, and it I will tell you, it's it's the thing that I keep seeing being missed in all commentary.
• 19:57
  You know, whether it's people on the right, you know, famous politicians.
• 20:00
  Podcasters or folks on the left is that nobody realizes two things.
• 20:05
  Number one, you you, meaning you and me, the world, you live in a post World War II order.
• 20:14
  Now, does some African person who's living in abject poverty or still living in the 1800s live under that system?
• 20:23
  Not really.
• 20:24
  But but if you are someone who says, I want I'm living in the West, or I'm living in the ascended areas of China and the Middle East and um India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam.
• 20:39
  I'm striving for what you have, meaning I want electricity, I want to meet Maslov's hierarchy of needs, you know.
• 20:46
  Before I have a relationship, I need to have a home, I need to have food, I need to have clothing, and it all needs to be secured, and then I want to have heating and air conditioning.
• 20:55
  All the things you and I take for granted, billions of people are trying to strive for.
• 20:59
  Well, yeah.
• 21:00
  Yeah.
• 21:01
  How do you make that happen?
• 21:03
  Well, there's two things.
• 21:04
  Number one, there has to be peace.
• 21:06
  And number two, there has to be reliable energy.
• 21:11
  Has to be affordable, has to be scalable, has to be abundant, has to be flexible, has to be resilient.
• 21:17
  But I somehow have to have that energy to market.
• 21:19
  Well, if I take something like fertilizer that needs natural gas and some other processes, well, the only thing I can do to ensure that takes place is making sure I have global peace.
• 21:33
  How do I have how do I have some semblance of global peace?
• 21:38
  Well, I link all of us together.
• 21:42
  I link markets together, I base it on a dollar system.
• 21:46
  I try to make everybody as prosperous as I can.
• 21:48
  I try to make everybody use fossil fuels.
• 21:51
  Because uh I mean, listen, if you were a renewables person, you could have an argument uh saying you guys are against us because of what I'm gonna say, let's say you're right.
• 22:01
  Meaning I have got to have, I've got to have a system in place where people are not gonna blow each other to hell.
• 22:09
  And that had been going on for thousands of years and kind of had its crescendo in World War II.
• 22:15
  So if I take things like oil, natural gas, fertilizer, um, gold, silver, commodities, and I begin to trade it all over the world.
• 22:29
  Well, now what Tom, you know, what Tom Harris does in Canada is going to affect uh somebody in China as well.
• 22:37
  Because we all linked on this global financial system.
• 22:42
  Huh, yeah.
• 22:43
  I hadn't actually thought about it that way, but I guess there is wisdom in the system.
• 22:48
  Oh, sure.
• 22:49
  Um absolutely there is.
• 22:52
  Um is that you say you have to ask people, you have to go.
• 22:56
  There's two reasons why we've not had a global war again.
• 22:58
  Number one, the nuclear deterrence.
• 23:00
  Right.
• 23:01
  Nothing.
• 23:02
  Nothing nothing says peace like mad.
• 23:06
  Meaning, once you have a nuclear weapon, I have to treat you differently.
• 23:09
  Meaning, why hasn't all of Europe invaded Russia?
• 23:13
  They're mad at Russia because they're right there on the doorstep because Russia has a nuclear arsenal.
• 23:18
  That's what that's what's kept that war from expanding.
• 23:21
  Now they're they're blowing the hell out of each other.
• 23:24
  There's over a couple million of them dead, but it's not spread.
• 23:28
  It's not spread because of that deterrent.
• 23:30
  Why else has it not spread?
• 23:32
  Well, the Europeans are still dependent on Russian natural gas and things like pot ash and things like helium and things and oil.
• 23:42
  And so when you think about this system, Tom, that's what people that I don't hear anybody talking about.
• 23:50
  Whether again, famous podcasters on the right, no, it's the Jews' fault, or it's this thing.
• 23:56
  No, no.
• 23:58
  You, my foolish person talking into a mic, you live under a system that is based on two things.
• 24:08
  Fossil fuels and the interconnection of all of us.
• 24:11
  Not in a, hey, my religion is like your religion or non-religion, or I'm a Buddhist or you're a Buddhist.
• 24:18
  Forget all of that.
• 24:19
  What ties us all together is global trade, a global economic system that was put together in 1945 and 46.
• 24:28
  And if you really wanted to solve all this, then go solve the problems that we still have from World War II, and then ask yourself why did the strait get closed right now but didn't get closed previously, and why are there not hundreds of pipelines and railways to mitigate against this very thing?
• 24:50
  I would tell you because eventually all oil and natural gas folks, they need that price to be higher because it has such a massive infrastructure system all around the world that has to support this interconnected global economy that we have.
• 25:05
  Yeah.
• 25:06
  It's interesting.
• 25:07
  One thing I just before we go to break, I just wanted to emphasize one thing.
• 25:11
  I had a neighbor who was a 95-year-old, and he said to me over the fence one day, he said, you know, Tom, nuclear weapons are the greatest invention of mankind.
• 25:20
  And I said, What?
• 25:22
  You know, because of course we have a lot of people saying we should get rid of nuclear weapons because the outcome of a nuclear war, well, they say the next war would be fought with sticks and stones.
• 25:31
  Here was his argument.
• 25:32
  Tell me if you agree with this.
• 25:33
  He said, look, in the 1800s, if a leader in Europe went to war, he'd watch the war, the battles with a telescope from the top of a nearby hill.
• 25:43
  And he was generally speaking, pretty safe.
• 25:46
  Okay, so he was he couldn't be hurt.
• 25:49
  And even when they did lose a war, the worst they would do in most cases was banish the person, take them out of power.
• 25:55
  Whereas now, target number one, if there's a major war between the United States and Russia, for example, would be the White House or the Kremlin.
• 26:03
  You know, that and that's why, of course, they have the plane, the US uh 747, where they want to be in the air with the president if a nuclear war starts.
• 26:12
  So when I see people say, oh, get rid of nuclear weapons, I always ask them, so would you rather live under a nuclear umbrella or fight a conventional war?
• 26:23
  Because what you essentially do is you make the world safe for conventional warfare again if you have no nuclear weapons.
• 26:30
  So I mean, yeah, the outcome of a nuclear war is catastrophic.
• 26:34
  But if we don't have nuclear weapons, will we be going back to World War III and another hundred million people die?
• 26:42
  So, Todd, when we get back after the break, could you answer that question?
• 26:45
  I mean, have nuclear weapons being one of the major guarantors of peace, and is it dependent, the mutually assured destruction uh scenario is it dependent on having rational actors?
• 26:58
  That's important because I don't think the leaders of Iran are particularly irrational.
• 27:02
  They're not very irrational.
• 27:04
  And I'll tell you a story about that after the break.
• 27:06
  Stay tuned.
• 27:07
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• 30:52
  So Todd, when we ended the last half of our episode, I ended off with a very controversial point.
• 30:58
  And that is that perhaps nuclear weapons were a great invention for maintaining world peace.
• 31:03
  And I'd like to give you an interesting example of why mad mutually assured destruction works very well if you have rational actors, but not if you have irrational actors with nuclear weapons.
• 31:16
  So I want to take you to, and you've probably been there because you're you live very close, um, to the location where JFK was assassinated.
• 31:24
  A very sad museum, but a very respectful museum is built right where Lee Harvey Oswald apparently fired.
• 31:31
  And I know there's lots of theories as to whether or not that really happened.
• 31:34
  They have it glassed off.
• 31:36
  So nobody's going to do a copycat assassination from the same location.
• 31:40
  But the museum is very tasteful.
• 31:42
  And it's interesting because it has the facts that are exchanged between the Kremlin and the White House and Cuba, Havana, uh, concerning the Cuban Cuban Missile Crisis.
• 31:54
  And at the beginning of the correspondence by facts back and forth between Khrushchev and Kennedy, you can see that initially they're quite belligerent towards each other.
• 32:03
  Khrushchev even said, we will bury you.
• 32:05
  I mean, that kind of statement back and forth.
• 32:08
  But eventually they calmed down and they started to realize that whoa, this would be a catastrophe for both sides.
• 32:15
  And so you can see them actually calming down.
• 32:18
  However, on the side, Castro was still pushing right to the end, destroy the evil Satan, destroy America.
• 32:24
  And of course, the fact is Cuba would have been obliterated if that ever happened.
• 32:29
  But because he was not a rational actor, he was literally prepared to see his whole country destroyed.
• 32:35
  He kept pushing them to have a nuclear war because he hated the United States so much.
• 32:40
  Now, eventually you see in later facts is that Kennedy, who never was that aggressive, but certainly um Khrushchev, they calmed down, and they started to say to each other, well, you know, and you can see the facts going back and forth.
• 32:53
  If we had nuclear war, this would be pretty bad for all of us.
• 32:57
  You know, I mean, this would decimate our farming, our machine, you know, our agriculture totally would be destroyed, and this would lead to massive famine for those who weren't killed.
• 33:06
  So the two rational leaders calmed down, and they both decided to work out an agreement.
• 33:12
  And the agreement, of course, was the U.S.
• 33:14
  would remove its missiles from Turkey, and Cuba would lose the Soviet missiles.
• 33:20
  So there was a deal worked out by rational actors.
• 33:23
  But here's the point I'm making, Todd.
• 33:25
  Right to the very end, Castro was still pushing Khrushchev, launch the missiles, kill the evil Satan.
• 33:31
  So he was not, he was not a rational actor.
• 33:34
  So mutually assured destruction works if you have rational actors who actually care about their own survival and care about their country's survival.
• 33:43
  So that's where the concern about Iran getting nuclear weapons to me is a real serious concern because they're not rational actors.
• 33:53
  Yeah.
• 33:54
  Oh my gosh, now we're getting into international relations, you know, theory and I don't know.
• 34:00
  You know, Tom, I don't know if I agree with you that I think they're not rational actors.
• 34:04
  Um I don't I don't know.
• 34:08
  Uh, because you can see some of the finance people right now saying things like they want investment.
• 34:14
  I I still wonder, could you have could you have gone after you know the can the leadership the way we did without doing what we're doing right now?
• 34:25
  I mean, my i I could make the argument, and many others have made it as well, that what this is actually about is China.
• 34:33
  Because China had gained such a foothold in Iran and was getting millions of barrels of oil a day that you're you're degrading um, you degradated them in Venezuela, and now you're doing the same thing in Iran before Trump visits uh President Z uh in China, I believe it's next month, and they begin to work out uh a larger trade agreement.
• 34:55
  I I don't know if I think they're rational actors or not.
• 34:59
  I I don't.
• 35:01
  Um do I want to do that?
• 35:03
  You don't think they're you don't think they're as bad as Hezbollah or Hamas who that well now you now you're gonna you're about to tear apart my argument so no, I do not think Hezbollah or Hamas are rational actors at all.
• 35:18
  Like neither do I think the Taliban is either, but what tears down my own argument saying they could possibly rational actors is their funding irrational actors.
• 35:29
  So if I'm doing the if I'm doing the funding, then I'm just as guilty.
• 35:35
  And so we know that they've been the largest state sponsor of terrorism.
• 35:41
  We know that they've used these proxies now for decades, where they're the Shia paramilitaries, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, obviously Hezbollah.
• 35:51
  Um, at one point it was thought that Al-Qaeda had come through Iran at some point, though it's it's Sunni and Shias, so people don't they're they're not completely sure about that.
• 36:02
  But you know, Tom, I I honestly I don't I don't know.
• 36:06
  I don't know if you can I don't know if you could say that they are rational actors or not.
• 36:11
  I think I can I can see I guess the question would be would they be like Castro, where they would literally see their country.
• 36:18
  Um you remember in World War II, it was really interesting because after the second bomb dropped, the war council were deciding whether they were going to surrender in Japan.
• 36:29
  And believe it or not, it was 50-50.
• 36:31
  50% of them said that the honor of Japan was at stake, and even if it meant destroying the whole country, they would not surrender.
• 36:40
  So they were not, in my mind, rational actors.
• 36:42
  It was the emperor coming in to the war council for the first time in apparently a thousand years, and he cast the deciding vote that they would surrender.
• 36:52
  So I mean, even among a developed country like Japan, you had a big contingent in the war council who were not rational actors in the way we would consider rational.
• 37:02
  And so the question then becomes would the leaders of you know, these people that are being trained to be terrorists in inside Hamas, many of them will die gladly if it means killing uh Israelis.
• 37:16
  I mean, they literally were, and and so I I would say they are not in our definition rational actors.
• 37:22
  So the last thing you want is for them to have nuclear weapons because they would be very pleased to have their country destroyed if it meant destroying Israel.
• 37:30
  So you think I uh yeah, I get the impression you're right that Iran are not as irrational actors as those groups.
• 37:38
  Oh, God, and then I know people could could argue with me all day long about it.
• 37:43
  I I think the thing you always have to keep coming back to is saying, okay, what is gonna be your plan to mitigate 20% of the oil and natural gas?
• 37:54
  Um, what are you gonna do?
• 37:56
  What are you gonna do to mitigate 40% of the world's fertilizers?
• 38:00
  In other words, in today's interconnected world, you're not just allowed to do a major, or you can do it, but there's always going to be ripple effects, whereas there were not ripple effects 80 years ago, except the problem with that argument, you know, the the the and that problem began when you allowed the Nazis to go crazy, when you allowed the Germans to go crazy, and someone could go, okay.
• 38:28
  We know that the French and we know the Allies had larger uh standing armies and more armaments and population than the Germans, yet you allowed them to continue their march towards um towards you know dominating Europe, eventually wanted to dominate Russia, wanted to eventually dominate the UK, and here's to say they would have not come over to North America at some point.
• 38:52
  Well, I guess from that point of, I guess from that point of view, Hitler was not a rational actor either.
• 38:57
  Oh, heavens no.
• 38:58
  And and Churchill said he was he he said as much.
• 39:01
  It's why Churchill said I could essentially do business with Stalin, though he was a mass murdering uh maniac and he was a lying duplicitous, horrible human being, but you could deal with him.
• 39:16
  Yeah, I don't you know, Tom, it's a great question.
• 39:21
  I I honestly, Tom, I I I I don't I don't know.
• 39:25
  I don't know if I would have launched this big of attack, but also what are you supposed to do when somebody like the Iranians are saying, oh, we have enough enriched uranium to do this.
• 39:38
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 39:40
  Yeah.
• 39:40
  What do you what do you think?
• 39:42
  I think it's dependent on who the leaders are because the system there, you know, theocratic system, where they're you know, extremists in their religion could very well end up with somebody like a Hitler in charge because you know, Hitler was not prepared to surrender, even if it ruined all.
• 40:00
  Of Germany.
• 40:01
  Okay.
• 40:01
  And that kind of irrational actor as the head of government could happen in the Iran in Iran.
• 40:06
  Whether they're actually at that point now is is an interesting question.
• 40:10
  And I suppose we'll see over the next couple of weeks if the bombardment continues, are they prepared to take the country down, you know, to sticks and stones rather than surrender.
• 40:21
  I mean, we'll find out, I suppose.
• 40:23
  I I would certainly say that yes, they are, they're willing to do that.
• 40:27
  Absolutely.
• 40:29
  Yeah.
• 40:29
  So that to me would mean they're not, in our definition, rational actors, in which case giving them nuclear weapons or allowing them to develop nuclear weapons.
• 40:38
  Uh whoa, that mad scenario is not going to work anymore.
• 40:42
  I don't know.
• 40:43
  Well, I'll give you a different scenario for why I also think, you know, and I know I get it, we're going, you know, you and I are getting into war theories and game theories and international relations.
• 40:54
  Uh, and we've kind of gone, you know, we've we've gone past kind of the energy question.
• 40:59
  Going back to World War II.
• 41:01
  So I always have a thesis, and it was brought to my attention during graduate school that you know, all of the world's problems can still be traced back to World War II.
• 41:10
  Well, I've got a Jewish state or an Israeli state.
• 41:15
  And what does it have?
• 41:16
  Like 6 million, 11 million people in there.
• 41:18
  I can't.
• 41:19
  Okay.
• 41:20
  A lot of a lot of Arabs, by the way.
• 41:22
  You know, people don't realize that, but unlike the Arab countries who essentially got rid of all the Jews in Israel, there's a high fraction of Arabs.
• 41:30
  Even in their even in their IDF.
• 41:32
  Yep.
• 41:33
  Well, think about this one, Tom.
• 41:36
  So we know that there's a phrase that can't that the Israeli state lives by, and that's called never again.
• 41:42
  And that means we will never allow ourselves to be annihilated the way we were uh during the Holocaust.
• 41:50
  So you have to ask yourself, and again, I don't hear any media people or any famous podcasters talking about this.
• 41:58
  You know, why are we helping the Jews?
• 42:00
  And oh, we're allowing Israel to be the foreign policy lobby and establishment of the United States.
• 42:06
  My counter to that would be number one, you don't know what you're talking about.
• 42:10
  Number two, you're naive.
• 42:11
  And number three, you don't understand the history of World War II, which is that six million of them were slaughtered.
• 42:19
  We then saw uh a reenactment of it uh on October 7th, three years ago, when the mosque came across and you know, literally cooked babies alive and raped women to death.
• 42:32
  The most the most brutal atrocities going back to the Nazi years.
• 42:37
  So, in my opinion, and I would say sure, they have every right to go flat in Gaza and kill every single one of them.
• 42:42
  Look what they did.
• 42:43
  They're they're they're brutes.
• 42:45
  But more importantly, what if Iran got a bomb and let's say Iran shot a bomb off?
• 42:52
  My guess would be it would take about two to three minutes to hit Israel, a nuclear bomb in Israel, you know, one of the world's worst kept secrets is they have between 80 to 200 nuclear bombs.
• 43:05
  My guess is the moment they saw a bomb coming, they would release all 80 to 200 nuclear bombs and lay waste not only to Iran, but the entire Middle East, which means the nuclear fallout would go to God knows where, whether it's China, Pakistan, Turkey, etc.
• 43:26
  And now an entire region that supplies 40% of the world's, let's just say goods, commodities to make the world run, is now a nuclear wasteland for the next six, six thousand to ten thousand years.
• 43:41
  And if somebody doesn't think that Israel wouldn't do it, they're insane.
• 43:45
  Yeah, yeah.
• 43:47
  It really says we should have stopped.
• 43:48
  The United Nations should have stopped Iran a long time ago.
• 43:52
  I mean, to let it go this far that they were bristling with weapons and on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.
• 43:59
  It was a huge mistake to let it get this far.
• 44:02
  I what is your opinion on why the Strait of Hormuz has not been mitigated?
• 44:10
  Well, that's it.
• 44:11
  I think it just boils down to cost.
• 44:12
  It's the cheapest way to do it, and there's a short-sided approach to their planning.
• 44:17
  And you know, that was the common theme I saw throughout all of my discussions with Copilot.
• 44:22
  They kept coming back.
• 44:23
  Well, it's the cheapest way to do it.
• 44:24
  So they just simply take the short-term approach.
• 44:27
  I think it's a huge mistake.
• 44:28
  I mean, hey, Todd, we got 11 minutes left.
• 44:31
  I just wanted to get onto one topic, and that is the idea that if we switch away from oil, gas, and coal to wind and solar electricity, well, then we would have no worries about supply.
• 44:43
  And that's the argument, believe it or not, that many environmentalists are making now is that yeah, if you if you go to wind and solar, we're not dependent on dictatorships.
• 44:53
  We have free wind and solar right here.
• 44:55
  What's the flaw in that argument?
• 44:57
  Well, okay, let's just you and I take take that and say, okay, let's say it is it can work as well as a nuclear power plant.
• 45:06
  But remember, it only supplies electricity.
• 45:09
  And again, this argument, and I've seen people on the right make this argument now too, which is that it only when we look at electricity, okay.
• 45:19
  Electricity use is climbing.
• 45:22
  We see electricity being put more in you know, places like China.
• 45:26
  Uh, we see more electrification, we see heat pumps, electric vehicles, but typically electricity only makes up about 20 to 25% of total energy consumption.
• 45:39
  Remember, we're not talking about transportation.
• 45:43
  We're not we're not talking about um process heat, steam, or let's just call it manufacturing.
• 45:49
  We're not talking about that.
• 45:50
  You if you're plastics, plastics, which have to be, you know, which which come from a barrel of oil.
• 45:56
  So, in other words, the flaw in the argument, okay.
• 45:59
  You know what?
• 45:59
  If you want to say that you believe that they can work all the time, if you're Bill McKibben and you write your you write a book that you think solar can work, and frankly, Elon Musk says the same thing now.
• 46:11
  Um, and if you guys want to believe that, knock yourself out.
• 46:15
  The problem is it's only electricity.
• 46:19
  So what do I do?
• 46:21
  What do I do with the rest of the world that has to have uh that all of those processes are run on electricity, pardon me, or run on fossil fuels?
• 46:31
  What do I need to do?
• 46:33
  Um, we'll we'll segue into this, as we've talked about before.
• 46:39
  90% of the world's rare earth metals and minerals, the things that make electric vehicles, iPhones, semiconductors, advanced weaponry, solar panels, wind turbines, uh batteries, whether for grids or batteries that are going to go in your remote control for your television.
• 46:59
  The 90% of all of those come from China.
• 47:02
  And what I mean by that, you have to mine the rare earth, you have to uh convert it and fabricate it, but I have to get it ready to go.
• 47:10
  That could be conversion, could be fabrication.
• 47:12
  90% at the at the conservative end is 70%.
• 47:17
  Let's just let's use conservative numbers.
• 47:20
  70% of everything that can be used to make that rare earth metal or mineral works comes from China.
• 47:28
  Right.
• 47:28
  So you're really just exchanging dependence on one fossil fuel in this case, which comes from areas that are dictatorships to another dictatorship.
• 47:38
  I mean, it's not it's not a very good trade, is it?
• 47:40
  Well, it's also such a horrible argument because these people don't understand total energy consumption.
• 47:47
  Meaning, we if you break it, if you just broke it down in a chart, you're going to see, because they're looking at electricity.
• 47:54
  Hey, we could have electricity from the wind and the sun.
• 47:58
  Now, yeah, we would you always have to remember that what they're looking at is the marginal cost, meaning the cost of putting that through the solar panel or the turbine, you're right, does not come from a murderous theocratic uh dictatorial Islamic thugs, or it doesn't come from the Chinese communist party.
• 48:19
  It's coming from uh nature or the climate or the machines somehow.
• 48:26
  Bingo, bingo, and then and you and you wrote a book specifically about this whole topic is the idea that if we become a reliant on wind and solar power, we're supporting a ruthless communist regime who has no respect for the environment or for human rights.
• 48:43
  So I mean, tell us about your book because that's something I really want people to look at because it's just ignored by the environmentalists.
• 48:51
  What is the real environmental and human rights cost of wind and solar power?
• 48:56
  Well, remember that all those wind and solar panel uh panels.
• 49:00
  Uh let's start with a solar panel.
• 49:02
  Okay.
• 49:03
  You've got to, you've got to break down silicone, which is a rare, and that is one of the most energy intensive processes that you have to do in the world.
• 49:11
  It is an arduous, long, needs lots of heat, needs tons of power to break it down to be able to make a PV solar cell or what's called photovolactic panel, the famous panels you see.
• 49:26
  Yeah.
• 49:26
  That is mainly done in China, and that is mainly done by coal-fired power plants.
• 49:31
  And the dirtiest form of plants.
• 49:33
  So if you tried to break that down with the wind or the sun, it doesn't happen.
• 49:39
  It's not economically viable, and no one will ever do it.
• 49:43
  So you can't use, sorry, you can't use wind and solar to make wind and solar.
• 49:48
  Exactly.
• 49:49
  Then when you go into a um a wind turbine, they have these specialized magnets.
• 49:53
  It's like called like an ND magnet.
• 49:56
  Uh Robert Bryce has done great work on this.
• 49:58
  I highly recommend reading.
• 50:00
  His work on this.
• 50:01
  Well, those magnets are predominantly made again with rare earth metals and minerals.
• 50:07
  Typically, anywhere, depending on what you want to consider is like 23 to like 33 of them.
• 50:13
  Well, those magnets are, I think 90% of all of those come from China.
• 50:18
  Yeah.
• 50:19
  And remember, when you're making these things, Tom, these are heavy manufacturing processes.
• 50:25
  This requires enormous amounts of energy in large factories.
• 50:29
  It's extremely dirty.
• 50:31
  All the mining takes place with diesel um diesel machinery.
• 50:38
  Typically strip away the earth to find it.
• 50:40
  I would tell anyone go look at a leachy mine for lithium.
• 50:43
  Um, it is an absolute, it literally will make a coal-fired or coal ash site look better in comparison than a lychee mine site.
• 50:54
  Go look at photos.
• 50:55
  I think we have some in our book.
• 50:57
  Um what's the title again?
• 50:59
  Clean energy exploitations.
• 51:01
  Go look at go look at and go research uh the lithium, the lithium triangle in South America.
• 51:09
  These are places you will never ever, never ever want to live around, be near.
• 51:14
  Um you've destroyed those environments for many years.
• 51:18
  If you want to go look at how the Chinese do their own mining for this, how they convert all of this, they fabricate this.
• 51:25
  Most, and this is this is not coming from folks like you and me that people could say you guys are more right wing.
• 51:31
  The New York Times has written about this, even wrote about it recently, talked about the human rights abuses.
• 51:37
  I'll get to that in a minute.
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  These processes to make these things are done by coal because coal can heat up and give enough sustained heat and power to make these magnets, to make the silicone, to make the silicae, um, to put into a solar panel.
• 51:55
  There's nothing environmentally friendly about this.
• 51:58
  And if you really did the value chain, you really did the environmental cycle, you will see that nothing about a solar panel wind turbine is actually helping pollution, the air, water.
• 52:12
  Oh, and when you mine for these, you are destroying large parts of where you mine.
• 52:20
  This is not this is not the kind of mining or the kind of extraction you'll see when a fracking site takes place or for uh oil or natural gas, where these are heavily regulated industries.
• 52:32
  There is protections for labor.
• 52:35
  None of that takes place.
• 52:37
  Uh, we we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, the UN has chronicled this.
• 52:41
  Um, Amnesty International's chronicled this, the New York Times has that Uyghur Muslims, over two million of them are used as slave labor to make these solar panels to help make these magnets.
• 52:55
  We know that people, there's no good that's going to people locally off this strip mining or these heavy manufacturing processes.
• 53:04
  And I would tell anyone go when you look at the way China does things, zero environmental controls.
• 53:11
  Um, most of their environmental controls from factories are pipes that go into rivers, and they just they just sludge things out.
• 53:19
  So anyway, just I got to interrupt because please the the picture on the front of your book brings up a totally other problem, too.
• 53:29
  And you know, it's interesting because one of the activists here in Ottawa went to the microphone and said, I don't want the city of Ottawa to electrify on the backs of African children working in mines breathing radioactive dust.
• 53:42
  So could you say a bit about that?
• 53:44
  It's too human rights abuse galore when it comes to wind wind and solar.
• 53:49
  That's for cobalt.
• 53:50
  And let's let's be fair.
• 53:51
  I want to be is that that cobalt is also probably used in your iPhone or your Android.
• 53:56
  Oh, yeah.
• 53:56
  Uh, but but particularly, you cannot run a solar panel or a wind turbine without cobalt.
• 54:02
  Uh 60% of it comes from Congo.
• 54:05
  We also know uh again, Amnesty International, New York Times.
• 54:10
  I I can't say enough good things.
• 54:11
  The Amnesty International particular has done fantastic work on this.
• 54:15
  We know that this is slave labor.
• 54:18
  We know that these are literally where people will mine this and they're getting buried alive.
• 54:23
  Like they're literally holding up the earth with sticks and and bamboo, um, and and people will be buried alive.
• 54:32
  We know that uh this funds warlords that that rape, maim, kill people.
• 54:38
  Um, I mean, we we know that this is the worst way to do this.
• 54:42
  We know uh until there can be better governmental structures, better policing, labor, environmental laws and regulations that you are signing people's slave labor death warrants to go do.
• 54:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 54:57
  So this is this is this is not my opinion.
• 55:00
  This is all been chronicled.
• 55:02
  Yeah, for sure.
• 55:02
  And I'll include links to the Amnesty International reports under this podcast.
• 55:07
  So we have to wrap up, Todd.
• 55:09
  So what it boils down to is you couldn't transition from uh fossil fuels to wind and solar because of the obvious inherent problems with intermittency.
• 55:20
  You wouldn't want to because of the fact that you'd be destroying the environment and making ourselves dependent on China, massive human rights abuses.
• 55:29
  So their whole argument is ridiculous.
• 55:31
  It's not possible, and it's not even desirable.
• 55:34
  And they don't even realize too that we're essentially fighting this war in Iran, that they're being backed, uh they've they're they're backed by China.
• 55:43
  The the former Ayatollah signed a 25 year strategic agreement with China.
• 55:48
  So you're literally funding the two entities that want to create chaos, death, destruction, and slavery while killing their environments all over the earth.
• 55:59
  Yeah, so the the two when those people say that, they have no idea about the historical geopolitical, international relations, environmental and economic ramifications of of those kind of statements.
• 56:13
  You're linking two of the worst abusers on the earth to the very things that you say you're against.
• 56:19
  Yeah, yeah.
• 56:20
  Well, it's much, much more complicated than when people, you know, give these simplistic arguments.
• 56:25
  Wind and sun is free.
• 56:26
  Yeah, sure.
• 56:27
  But so what?
• 56:28
  You're not gonna make the products with wind and solar, and you got to make the machines somehow.
• 56:33
  So, anyways, you know, a wonderful discussion, Todd.
• 56:36
  And uh, we'll have to look into this more.
• 56:38
  So this is Tom, yeah.
• 56:39
  This is Tom Harrison, my co-host Todd Royal signing out from the other side of the story.