How America Can Achieve Environmental Goals Without Sacrificing Independence | CLIP | Facts Matter

[Music] all right Carla thank you so much for joining us it's my pleasure Roman so let's start with um I think a topic that comes up over and over again in the American political context which is this false binary between the environment and American Energy conventional energy outside of let's say the green energy sources yeah seems to be this um this uh oppositional character to it you're either pro- environment or you're pro-american energy and it seems like at least in the in the you know public Arena there's no Common Ground there can you square that Circle yes and we need to be able to tell that story to people so that they understand that American energy is clean and it's abundant we're never going to run out of American Energy we have under our feet in the ground more energy than Saudi Arabia and Russia so we have enough to power our country country for hundreds of years and to power our friends like the Europeans that were just recently buying a lot of Russian energy how can we do it we do because we're highly regulated we we Harvest cleanly we move the energy cleanly and we know that the hydrocarbons or some people call them fossil fuels have been the industrial engine that give us this incredible life where we can turn a switch flip a switch and turn on the light have air conditioning in the hot months and heat in the cold months our industrialized lives the luxuries that we enjoy that were unknown 150 years ago are because of the benefits of hydrocarbons so we need to harvest them they're the reason our air is cleaner now than when I was a kid because of American natural gas well let me let me ask you this there seems to be um like a push towards Ned zero it's you know the Net Zero agenda 100% but when you look look at some of the policies that are being pushed in that direction the net that kind of falls under the umbrella of net zero right if you calculate it at a local level like sure maybe it's Net Zero in terms of emissions but then if you brought in your scope as an example if you stop producing energy here and we have to import it from Venezuela as just one example that's a it's a good example actually because that recently happened it's like okay you're you're adding the cost of shipping you're adding the fact that venezuel has laxer environmental regulations than the US so the processing there is worse for the environment in a seven times dirtier and and so I guess the question is like why is that conversation not being had why is it that it's like oh we need to push green policies Net Zero but then you zoom out and it's like wait a minute if you care about the planet as a whole you probably want more production in America why is that not being talked about it's not well I think it's a perverse anti-human agenda they don't if if the green people that want Net Zero and love this climate agenda people like John KY or Al Gore if they were sincere they would say let's go nuclear because that's sustainable green clean and um they're not and they would say let's go with a lot of hydr power but they're not they're actually taking out dams in California so what we want to do is have all kinds of energy but we don't want the government picking winners and losers we don't want the go we don't want our tax dollars to pay for energy that's not efficient that's not going to power Our Lives that's not reliable and things like uh windmills things like solar panels while it's nice to have those they're very very dirty it takes tons of mining of critical minerals to make the windmills and they use a lot of hydrocarbons fossil fuels and the the solar panels are often made in China sometimes by slave labor Congo children slaves are mining cobal in for instance in the Congo all of these things um aren't very human friendly or green do we really want to seed our energy sector to the Chinese Communist Party who the Chinese Communist Party who wishes to dominate the whole world and has an actual plan to do so or do we want to use our own domestic energy that's clean it's from a friendly source and then we can also share sell some to our allies you saw just recently this Administration um said we're going to stop um growing our exports of natural gas we're going to ban that the future and projects come to a halt but our our friends need our energy other countries are relying on us that was going to lead into my next question which is how much impact does a change in administration actually have because I can imagine if you're running a project you know if you get like a a a license you need to go survey the land find you know find whether there's any let's say gas or oil or or minerals on there then you start production I mean I can imagine it's like a multi-year pro process when you count in the surveys so with a change in administration like is is the change in saneus like like when when it's shifted from Biden to Trump was was there really a change or was it a perception thing so there's a couple of things that happened what the Trump policies did is they set in in motion really good energy policy for the first time in 50 years we became energy independent again and we were on our way to being energy dominant we became a net exporter of energy um so those policies many of them are still in place but what Biden did on day one is he signed executive orders things like he killed the Keystone XL pipeline and like you just said it took years of planning hundreds of millions of dollars of investors hard-earned money that they invested in that project and then the promise of about 11,000 good paying jobs to move that energy and it was energy from Canada going down to Texas to the Panhandle to be refined so with a stroke of a pen he killed all of that the investment the you know the the hopes and dreams of those working people the the reliable energy processing so now instead of the cleanest way to move energy is through a pipeline it's green it's clean instead now it's on a real car or in a truck so presidents have great power but president Trump's policies many of them are why we still have the energy growth although it's slower because the Biden Administration came in and undid a lot it's still growing but slower so just if I I'm correct what you're saying is that with a change of administration they can do two things by by signing certain orders and certain directives for instance with the Keystone Pipeline or with the sale of natural gas outside of the country they they sort of stop that industry as it's currently is or they stop that project as a currently is but then I can imagine also any future Investments are halted right because future Investments are halted so the sunk costs gone in other but in other project other projects for instance those terminals that were being built to ship our natural gas to Europe uh to our friends those are killed and so those investors whatever cost they they have spent uh they've lost that investment now it's it's too unreliable for energy companies and investors to think that in four years somebody's going to come in and kill my deal so we need to give investors certainty that like John krey is saying you know we can have fossil fuels hydrocarbon 78 10 years Max don't be thinking 30 40 years well 30 40 years is what it takes to recoup the investment for say a big terminal there it's going to work for 30 40 years and that's that's they need that certainty to build that project so what we need to do as a country is come together I think in a bipartisan way and make that hundred-year energy plan knowing it's going to change we're going to invent things we're so inventive and Innovative in the United States but we need to have a plan so that we can power our country and be able to grow so that we can do Manufacturing in the United States we have to make things here um so it's very very I think it would be beneficial to the American people to make a a good energy plan so investors can invest their money soank aren't allowed to debank energy companies which has been happening under this Administration