The FBI is responding to Mark Zuckerberg's claims that he didn t know about the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the Fed is now saying it cannot ask or direct companies to take action. Meantime, we re learning new details about another FBI operation, and that is the raid on Mar-A-Lago.
00:00:00.360Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.600Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
00:00:16.640The FBI today is responding to Mark Zuckerberg's claims that Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story after the agency warned about Russian propaganda.
00:00:28.180The Fed's now saying it cannot ask or direct companies to take action.
00:00:32.460But here's the bizarre thing. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have put out a statement saying he said all of the same stuff he said to Joe Rogan, which made such headlines over the weekend, to Senator Ron Johnson in public testimony in October of 2020.
00:00:47.220And we went back to fact check that fact checked it and we'll bring it to you.
00:00:51.800We'll tell you whether Zuckerberg is correct. This has been out there for two years or hasn't it?
00:00:56.120Meantime, we're learning new details about another FBI operation, and that is the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
00:01:01.760We're going to dig deeper into why they did it and what they found as we learned new details over the weekend.
00:01:07.680Once the supporting affidavit that was issued in support of the warrant was partially revealed.
00:01:13.920But we begin today with the left swerving further to the left.
00:01:19.140California now pledging to ban new gas car sales.
00:01:23.680They're going to have to get rid of their cars that run on gas while the Biden administration declares war on efficient and relatively clean burning natural gas.
00:01:35.760What about natural gas? What's so wrong with natural gas?
00:01:38.640They'd rather people starve, apparently, because that's what's about to happen.
00:01:42.100It's a decision my next guest argues will not only undermine Western civilization, but it will, in fact, kill people.
00:01:49.080It has been killing people across the globe.
00:01:52.480Joining me now, one of my favorite guests, Michael Schellenberger, bestselling author, journalist, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress.
00:02:55.960Hundreds of millions of people are going to die of hunger this year because of expensive natural gas, because of the war on natural gas, the war on oil and gas, both by President Biden, but also, you see, in Canada, in Europe.
00:03:08.160So we're in a very serious crisis right now.
00:03:11.020There is reason to think that one day we will move to hydrogen fuel cell cars.
00:03:16.260It's unlikely to be a transition to electric cars, in my view, because they're basically powered with lithium, which relies on rare earths.
00:03:24.560That entire industry is based in China, and it's insane from a national security perspective to become more dependent on China at this moment in our history.
00:03:35.200These are also very expensive, very heavy vehicles.
00:03:40.020Most experts that look at this think that if we're going to move away from gasoline, it's going to be the hydrogen fuel cells.
00:03:47.660So the idea that you're going to just ban internal combustion engines and move to a kind of vehicle that would increase our dependency on China at a moment like this is just bonkers.
00:04:01.540They're going to have to reverse course.
00:04:02.800But I think it's it epitomizes the, you know, the danger, the real danger that we're in with this war on energy and in particular the war on oil and gas.
00:04:12.900So it's not going to be just California either, because at least Virginia has an automatic trigger in its law saying we're going to do whatever California does when it comes to climate change regulations.
00:04:23.720And they say something like 12 to 16 other states are likely to follow suit.
00:04:27.540So if you're in a blue, blue state, expect the same in your state.
00:04:30.900If California goes through with this, which they're saying they're going to, you're saying it's not going to happen because it's impractical, I assume.
00:04:37.320But they're you know, they've resolved to do it.
00:04:40.140The vote happened on Thursday by the California air regulators.
00:04:44.520They say that this will be the one of the first such bans worldwide, just so the audience knows what we're talking about.
00:04:51.060They set interim quotas for zero emission vehicles.
00:04:56.180So starting with the 2026 model cars, 35 percent of all new cars, SUVs and small pickups sold in California must have zero must be zero emission vehicles.
00:05:16.120And then by 2030, it's supposed to be 68 percent of all cars have to be zero emission by 2035, 100 percent.
00:05:28.260So not to be too dense, but when they say you have to have a zero emission vehicle that more than half of all new car sales in 2028, six years from now, have to be zero emission.
00:05:39.300Does that mean they have to be totally electric?
00:05:57.160It becomes better and cheaper than the incumbent technology.
00:06:00.360And we move to it through market forces.
00:06:03.280Governments can help with R&D, but this thing of kind of bans on on technologies that are at this moment in time superior to the technologies that they want.
00:06:15.420I mean, I think we're at a moment of peak climate hysteria, peak climate nihilism, where basically the concerns around climate change, some of which I hold, by the way, I think climate change is real and we should do something about.
00:06:28.900But it's just created a kind of derangement syndrome among many people on the left, where they think that somehow you just get technologies by banning this or that technology and wishing a new technology to exist in its place.
00:06:45.540These are, you know, we have technologies that are based on decades of development.
00:06:51.480Electric cars, they're a long ways off still.
00:06:54.740There's a lot of problems with them, as I mentioned, particularly the heavy reliance on rare earths, the heavy reliance on Chinese materials.
00:07:02.960There's a lot of talk about returning those industries to the United States.
00:07:07.660And it's unlikely to happen within the next decade, if ever, for some of the reasons I mentioned.
00:07:14.200There are good reasons, I think, that we'll move to hydrogen over time.
00:07:17.420But we're talking about a decades long process.
00:07:20.160Energy transitions, like the transition from coal to oil and gas, or the transition from wood to coal before that, and the transition from what I think will eventually occur from natural gas to nuclear.
00:07:31.760These things take decades and centuries.
00:07:34.560You can't just go and make them happen in a few years.
00:07:38.360It's just politicians gone wild in California.
00:07:41.820And it's really the case all around the world.
00:07:43.560It's a kind of mania that we're experiencing right now.
00:07:46.740I think we're about to have a really abrupt wake-up call this winter when we see just how deadly many of these policies have become.
00:07:54.280I want to get to that, but table it for right now, because I want to stay on batteries for a second.
00:07:59.260So there's at least a couple of problems.
00:08:03.600According to my stats, current electric vehicles depend on lithium for their batteries, which store and use energy produced elsewhere.
00:08:12.100Most lithium is produced overseas, chiefly in Australia, Chile, and China.
00:08:17.440Batteries primarily manufactured in China.
00:08:20.600The U.S. has one lithium processing facility, and it's not even among the world's top 10 lithium-producing nations.
00:08:29.120So we're not going to be making these batteries.
00:08:31.700We've got to get them from places like China.
00:08:33.420So we've got a problem in terms of greater dependence on China for the batteries of these cars.
00:08:38.540And we've got a problem of, you've mentioned this on the show before, the charging stations.
00:08:43.800Does anybody who's got an iPhone knows if you have something that's, you know, electronic, you've got to charge it at one point or another.
00:08:50.940And the same is true for the batteries inside of these cars.
00:08:53.480And does California have the infrastructure to charge, I don't know how many people are in the state of California, to charge all of their electric vehicles by, you know, 10 years from now?
00:09:13.700We know that the mining of these rare earths is incredibly destructive.
00:09:17.180The Associated Press just came out with a major report about how devastating rare earth mining, these are these very, they're actually common minerals, but they're at low levels in the earth.
00:09:28.580And so you have to dig up a lot of earth to get a small amount of these pure elements.
00:09:34.040But devastating impact on the rainforests of Burma, of Myanmar.
00:09:38.820We also know that they're all processed in China in the refining process itself is incredibly energy intensive, incredibly dirty.
00:09:45.880It's very unlikely to see these industries coming back to the United States, given our very high environmental standards.
00:09:51.760So there's just a huge minerals component of this that is being underestimated.
00:09:56.300Yes, the charging stations is, of course, a huge obstacle.
00:09:59.400There's no universal agreement on what the kind of charging system should be.
00:10:04.920There's been some conflicts between the electric automakers around what that standard should be.
00:10:12.020Another issue is that fast charging has been promoted as a way to really quickly refuel the electric cars with electricity.
00:10:20.220But that itself actually puts a heavy toll on their batteries.
00:10:24.020It makes the batteries run out much faster than in a normal refueling.
00:10:28.700So, you know, those are some of the problems.
00:10:30.680Another problem, of course, is that you're going from, you're having multiple energy conversions.
00:10:35.180Just to get a little wonky here, what you want is every time you convert energy, either from chemicals into electricity or from a fuel like coal or natural gas into heat and then into electricity, you're paying a penalty that has an economic cost.
00:10:51.120And so you want to reduce the number of energy conversions.
00:10:54.700With a hydrogen fuel cell, you only have one conversion, which is from natural gas to hydrogen.
00:11:00.120Eventually, in the future, it would be from water to hydrogen.
00:11:04.300But with the electric vehicles, you're having multiple, you're having at least one or two more energy conversions, which makes the cost of it that much higher.
00:11:12.460So, yeah, I guess the bottom line, because there's a lot of complexity here, but the bottom line is that these are technologies that are simply not ready.
00:11:20.680They require an increased dependence on China at a time where we really don't want to become more dependent on China.
00:11:26.280Well, you mentioned the environment, and this is something we've talked about in your first episode on the show, how you sort of came from a place of loving the earth, being a nature lover, an outdoorsman, to working for Greenpeace, volunteering for Greenpeace, and then working with the Obama administration on Solyndra, on these solar panels.
00:11:45.780And your evolution into somebody who was skeptical of these things was very natural because you were a flag bearer.
00:11:54.480I mean, you were one of the biggest proponents of all that stuff.
00:11:56.860But your love of the earth, your love of environmentalism, it clashed in a way with this climate change extremism.
00:12:07.160They're so focused on temperatures, they've totally forgotten about the earth and protection of the earth with things like these massive wind farms and solar farms.
00:12:17.060And as you point out, that's why I think it's interesting to hear you go back to mining.
00:12:21.440And I actually haven't given a lot of thought to what, you know, like when you were talking, why is it bad to be digging up the earth, like you point out, to get what's necessary for these batteries?
00:12:35.600So, I mean, what you want from an environmental point of view is you want to use the least amount of natural resource.
00:12:44.020Now, what environmentalists in the 60s, the pro-scarcity environmentalists believed is that that meant that we should reduce how much energy we use.
00:12:51.780But it turns out the relationship is exactly the opposite.
00:12:54.840You can reduce how much natural resource you use if you are using more energy.
00:13:00.300So energy becomes a replacement of natural resource.
00:13:04.300So if you're using, for example, natural gas and eventually moving to hydrogen, you don't have to use you don't have to mine as much.
00:13:14.080You don't have to use as much land for energy production.
00:13:16.640The one statistic that I think everybody should know is that it takes about 300 times more land to generate the same amount of electricity from solar farms or wind farms as it does from a natural gas or nuclear plant.
00:13:38.080So anybody that loves the natural world, that loves forests and deserts and grasslands where there's birds and endangered tortoises, we now know that the expansion of wind threatens the extinction of golden eagles.
00:13:52.560So, I mean, this is not a minor event.
00:13:55.960These are this is I mean, really, the expansion of renewables is the greatest threat to endangered bird and bat and other species around the world.
00:14:06.500So the but if you're using if you're getting energy, if you're just pulling more gas out of shales, which is this underground rock formation that we have in the United States and around the world, abundant amounts of it.
00:14:17.500You can use that gas to power the civilization and you don't have to do what the proponents of renewables and electric cars want to do, which is to massively expand mining and minerals.
00:14:29.760I mean, you're looking at something like a five to seven fold increase of mining in order to power electric vehicles, mining environmentalists have traditionally opposed this.
00:14:40.720You're talking about not just, you know, ripping up forests in places like Southeast Asia or around the world.
00:14:47.540You're then also digging into it and creating the waste byproduct, the tailings.
00:14:52.640So you're trying if you if you really love nature and you want to save the natural environment, you want to use less of it.
00:14:57.480And that actually means using more power, dense, more energy intensive processes rather than more material and land use intensive processes.
00:15:09.640So what I mean, if you were in charge of this problem and you did run for governor of California, so you wanted to be in charge of this problem, at least in that state.
00:15:18.580What would you do when it comes to vehicles and reform?
00:15:21.100Well, I think the first thing is and thanks for asking that question, because I think this is a moment that calls out for a long term vision.
00:15:28.660So I think the first thing is that, you know, recognizes that we're in an energy crisis.
00:15:32.120We need to produce significantly more oil and gas in order to power in order to provide energy to our allies in Europe and Asia.
00:15:39.400They do not have abundant natural gas and oil like we have.
00:15:42.360They're trying to move away from Russian oil and gas correctly.
00:15:46.220In my view, we do not want to return that.
00:15:48.740We do not want our allies to return to any amount of use of Russian oil and gas.
00:15:53.220That means that we have to replace it and we can do it in the United States.
00:17:00.840So you can just split the carbon atom off and then you can also split that hydrogen into hydrogen gas.
00:17:09.220So you can make hydrogen gas out of natural gas.
00:17:13.420And so over time in this, again, we're talking decades and maybe a century or so to make this transition.
00:17:20.780We can reduce carbon emissions in the short term because that's something most people want to do by replacing our coal with natural gas.
00:17:28.980But then to replace oil, it's much trickier.
00:17:31.160It's going to take a longer period of time to move to hydrogen.
00:17:33.960But we do that by starting with with natural gas and reformulating it, as we say, into hydrogen gas.
00:17:41.700And then you've got a move to hydrogen.
00:17:44.460And once your economy is going from natural gas to nuclear for electricity and from oil and natural gas to hydrogen for transportation, you're in a so-called net zero economy.
00:17:58.080But you're getting there through using more natural gas and oil, at least in the short and medium term, not less.
00:18:08.600And so this drastic, radical war on natural gas that President Biden is prosecuting, that the governor of California is prosecuting, that the Europeans have been caught up with, it's now literally causing energy and food shortages so that hundreds of millions of people will die.
00:18:25.200You know, the other thing is that fertilizer, there's three kinds of fertilizer.
00:18:28.920One of the most important is a nitrogen fertilizer, also made from natural gas.
00:18:33.680So you need more natural gas for electricity, for eventually for transportation and also for making food.
00:18:42.120And so we're in an era of abundant natural gas.
00:18:45.620The United States is blessed with these abundant natural gas resources.
00:18:49.540We need to expand their use and have this longer term vision of what you'd call decarbonization, which is to deal with climate change.
00:18:57.440But we have to deal with the emergency at hand.
00:18:59.840And that's going to require significantly expanding natural gas and oil production in the short and medium term.
00:19:06.320Natural gas, those are dirty words in the Biden administration.
00:19:10.620He doesn't seem to make any distinction between natural gas and oil.
00:19:13.480And you mentioned Germany and our European allies.
00:19:17.340Correct me if I'm wrong, but they've been begging.
00:19:19.160They've been begging us for help when it comes to natural gas and oil.
00:20:17.020And so we we first saw this publicly emerge in June at the G7 conference.
00:20:22.460We saw the French president, Emmanuel Macron, tell Biden in a kind of pretend stage whisper in front of a whole like gaggle of journalists.
00:20:34.800He said, you know, I just spoke to the basically the UAE, the United Arab Emirates head of state.
00:20:44.900And he said that the Arab nations are not going to be able to produce as much petroleum as we thought.
00:20:51.100And this is Macron saying this to Biden and there's Biden.
00:20:54.740He's kind of like not totally there as usual.
00:20:58.980But what Macron was doing was he was telling the world that the United States needs to produce more oil because we can't rely on Arab nations.
00:21:08.480Well, Biden obviously didn't get the hint.
00:21:10.200So he went to Saudi Arabia, begging them a little fist bump to the the Saudi royal prince, begging them for more oil.
00:21:20.000They just announced that they're really not going to produce more oil because they like these high oil prices.
00:21:25.940You know, so we saw the Biden administration going to Venezuela to beg for oil.
00:21:29.600Meanwhile, Biden has not had the big oil companies to the White House yet to talk about how to expand production.
00:22:44.100This is the industrial heartland of Europe.
00:22:46.460And they depend directly on gas for producing those those items and those those commodities.
00:22:53.180So, yeah, it's I kind of am still shocked by it because I thought that the crisis would have woken the Biden administration up at this point.
00:23:00.160But it apparently hasn't in Germany's in such trouble because it's not getting its gas now from Russia where it needed to get its gas from Russia.
00:23:08.080And it's being in an effort to penalize Russia and then Russia striking back.
00:23:12.660So they're involved in this whole Ukrainian conflict.
00:23:15.560My team pointed out to me something very interesting.
00:23:18.420Trump was at the U.N. in 2018 and looked at the Germans with a warning about Russia.
00:23:26.260What's interesting in this clip for the listening audience who is now taking in the visual is at the end of it, the German delegation appears to laugh at Trump.
00:24:31.940It might have been Trump's finest hour.
00:24:34.400And you have to remember, Megan, he's warning against Germany.
00:24:39.080He's saying that Europe is becoming dangerously dependent on Putin at a time that the entire Democratic Party and basically all of the mainstream news media was accusing Trump of being a Biden puppet.
00:24:53.720You know, so this company at a moment where where Trump is accused of being a traitor and he's the one that's actually warning them against Putin, you know, and I'll tell you something else.
00:25:05.060I just I went and looked at the media reaction to that speech back in 2018.
00:25:10.740And the news media, not only were they dismissive of Trump, they fact checked him, claiming that he was wrong.
00:25:19.740They were they said Trump was wrong in saying that Europe had become dependent on Russia.
00:25:24.680I mean, I was like, you couldn't make it up.
00:25:26.580You know, and I'm talking like this was New York Times, CNN, Washington Post.
00:25:30.400They all said that Trump was wrong to to point out how dependent Europe had become.
00:25:37.080I'll say if anything, if Trump was wrong about anything, he understated how dependent Europe was.
00:25:42.580He was actually warning against Europe opening up a second natural gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2.
00:25:50.640They didn't even need that second pipeline for Europe to have become totally dependent on on Russia.
00:25:56.580And that that's because and this is a lesson in economics for all of us, is that you can exert extraordinary control over the global energy economy.
00:26:07.080With by only controlling a minority of its energy and because in economics, we call this marginal pricing that the price of energy and electricity is determined by natural gas because it's such a heavy influence, even though it's not the majority of where the electricity in Europe comes from.
00:26:25.140It is. It is. It does determine the price because it's so embedded in so many different industries, not just electricity, but also making glass and steel, as I mentioned.
00:26:36.780So, yeah, I think that I think that everybody did a disservice to President Trump.
00:26:43.580And I say this as somebody that was not a fan and but he was absolutely spot on.
00:26:49.640And I think that they look very good now in historical retrospect.
00:26:53.800Meanwhile, we're still I mean, as Michael points out in the grips of this, you know, crazed commitment to renewables and renewables only and Europe, too.
00:27:04.440And Europe is now facing some serious food shortage issues.
00:27:09.020And what's going to happen to the United States where huge percentages of the American people now cannot pay their electric bills?
00:27:15.640So, Michael, before we get to the United States and other parts of the world, spend one more minute in Europe and what's happening there, because I know you you you told me something in your sub stack that I did not know.
00:27:33.180And I felt like I should have known it answering the question.
00:27:36.680What happens if Russia decides to completely cut off gas supplies to Europe before winter?
00:27:42.840Now, the Russian situation in Ukraine is one of those very hard to understand situations because there are sort of the, you know, NatCon folks who report on it.
00:27:53.420And they're very pro, you know, slamming Putin and slamming Russia and putting an end at Putin's aggression.
00:28:00.000And they report that Ukraine's winning and they're winning and winning and Putin's being devastated.
00:28:05.840And then there are the folks who are against this war who say, no, Russia's already won.
00:28:08.980It's just a matter of time before Ukraine surrender.
00:28:10.560I mean, this is how the news reporting goes.
00:28:12.660It's one of my frustrations, but in caught up in that is how Putin's doing in the wake of our sanctions and the European sanctions, which were meant to devastate him to the point where he could not pursue this war anymore.
00:28:25.560Remember, Biden just wait a couple of months and get back to me.
00:28:29.220Well, you did wait and you actually kept the tally of how he's doing.
00:28:33.040And my jaw dropped when I read the stats on how he's actually doing when it comes to his oil and gas exports and the money he's taking in from them.
00:28:46.040So because he's been cut off, he's been cut off by Europe, by us to a large extent.
00:28:51.460So tell us tell us how bad, quote, air quote, it's gotten for him.
00:28:56.980Yeah. I mean, and by the way, in terms of the debate, you know, whatever the debate is around who's going to win, Ukraine or Russia.
00:29:04.820I think that really what matters here is that we can't you can't rely on Russia for your energy.
00:29:10.000I mean, that I think everybody agrees on, even if you are sympathetic to Putin.
00:29:15.360And I don't think many people are at this point anymore.
00:29:18.620He's not a trustworthy business partner because he's been cutting off oil and gas in retaliation for Europe's support for Ukraine.
00:29:26.080So, look, there's no question in my mind that the West needs to move away from any dependence on Russia or China, for that matter, for their energy, particularly and possibly for other and for sure on other strategic products.
00:29:44.280I mentioned rare earths earlier, but we do not want to become dependent on totalitarian regimes, which, you know, strengthens them around the world.
00:29:54.740We want to this is a moment to lean into the West.
00:29:57.540This is a moment to realize how special our system of liberal democracy and liberal capitalist democracy is.
00:30:05.260There's a reason everybody wants to live in the United States.
00:30:07.940There's a reason that we have a border crisis.
00:30:09.740People want to come here because it's the greatest system that exists, that has existed.
00:30:15.280So for the over the long term, we need to move away from Russia and China, or I should say in the short and medium term, rather, we need to move away from Russia and China.
00:30:23.240Russia has exploited the crisis very well.
00:30:25.760I mean, you know, Putin understood something that people in the West had forgotten.
00:30:45.160We took away all these purchasers of his product, but we didn't stop to think about what that was going to do to price.
00:30:50.860And I mean, according to the International Energy Agency, since its invasion in Ukraine, the amount of revenue Russia has collected from exporting oil and gas to Europe has doubled.
00:31:02.400They say, to put it another way, the increase in Russia's oil and gas export revenues in just the last five months is almost three times what Russia typically makes from exporting gas to Europe over an entire winter.
00:31:15.000Here, one other thing, per the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, soaring prices have more than compensated Russia for the loss in sales volume due to sanctions.
00:32:28.380We're we're actually a very interesting moment historically and globally where, you know, these guys, you know, the Biden administration in Europe, they really think that the world is like it was after World War Two, where the United States really controlled much of the world.
00:32:46.380You know, China and India and Russia have their own relationships and Russia is using its its abundant oil and gas to basically bribe other countries by selling it to them at significant discounts, bribe other countries to be allied with it and not to stand up to it as the bully that it is.
00:33:06.520So, you know, Putin understood something that the West didn't, which is that energy is not the same as other commodities.
00:33:11.980I think there's still a lot of people in the West that think they go, oh, well, there's copper and lithium and nickel and wheat and corn and natural gas and oil.
00:33:23.140But the last two are unlike the others.
00:33:27.380The whole economy depends on natural gas and oil.
00:33:30.720You can go without you can have some temporary shortages of those other products without causing economy wide inflation.
00:33:38.020You know, Megan, one of the things I think we people don't really appreciate is the extent to which the inflation we've experienced is entirely driven by high energy prices.
00:33:47.580Now, the flip side of that is that if you can if you create abundant oil and gas by expanding production of oil and gas in the United States and Canada, if they want to help, then you can reduce inflation without having to so-called destroy demand.
00:34:01.940So there I mean, it's it's kind of amazing when you think about it, because energy is the master resource.
00:34:08.580It's unlike all other commodities in that it determines the price of so many other commodities.
00:34:14.580We can produce more oil and gas and we can make significant headway in reducing inflation without having to go into recession.
00:34:22.920We just refuse to do it because he's so in the pocket of these renewable companies and the elites within his party who are effectively, as you point out, wage waging war really on the poor, on the working class who don't have the microphones to stand up for themselves and the cheap energy they need.
00:34:40.720And it looks like natural gas, according to my stats, meets more than one third of the United States energy needs.
00:34:47.980And and at the same time I read that, I read you tweeting out that 20 million U.S.
00:34:52.320homes are right now behind in their gas and electricity bills.
00:34:56.260Twenty million people cannot pay their electric bills at this time.
00:35:01.040And Joe Biden has the power to make this cheaper for those folks, but he won't.
00:35:06.660His energy secretary was asked on Fox News about, hey, you know, people can't pay their electric bills.
00:35:42.380Well, we know that actually Obama did this as part of his stimulus, is that we invested a bunch of money into home weatherization.
00:35:49.200And we found out that it was not cost effective, that it actually wasted money because you did not save as much money in terms of energy as it costs.
00:35:59.000Now, that might be slightly different with higher with much higher energy prices, but you have other problems.
00:36:04.480Like, are we really going to be able to weatherize millions of homes over the next two months?
00:36:10.180You know, you still have to use energy in order to heat your home.
00:36:13.900And I think people need to realize far more people die of cold than heat.
00:36:18.720But this is something that people that really my former colleagues that raised the alarm about climate change, they don't like to talk about.
00:36:26.440But with, you know, with both warmer temperatures, you know, and with cold, they're both solved with energy.
00:36:34.820You know, nobody needs to die because you because of high because of heat or of cold.
00:36:41.060We have solutions called air conditioning and indoor heating, but they depend on having cheap energy.
00:36:47.480So, yeah, you mentioned the 20 million homes right now that are behind.
00:36:50.760That number is going to double very quickly as energy prices rise.
00:37:37.740And so if you can make energy expensive, then that's a quick way to making a lot of people miserable, very, you know, making a lot of people miserable around the world.
00:38:20.520But my point is, what's happening with the farmers there actually is relevant to what we're dealing with when it comes to our government policy.
00:38:28.500Before I play your soundbite, because you interviewed a Dutch farmer, it was really good.
00:38:32.380Can you just explain to the audience why?
00:38:34.300Why should they care about what's happening with Dutch farmers, you know, over here?
00:38:48.500They have the they they are the second largest agricultural exporter by value, by economics, not by weight, but by the amount of money they make.
00:39:01.100So it's been a huge part of their economy.
00:39:02.660And we're talking flowers and seeds and meat that they export around the world, including, you know, much of Europe.
00:39:09.400And so the government has, you know, the farmers, what I point out, in which the New York Times did not decide to mention in its own story that came after mine, but the farmers had been reducing the amount of nitrogen pollution that comes from the farms.
00:39:27.040They had been successful in doing that through technological innovation.
00:39:30.280We're really talking about manure management here, Megan, by the way.
00:39:33.640This is just about managing the manure that comes from the livestock so that it doesn't create a lot of nitrogen pollution,
00:39:40.240which can hurt some of the nature conservation areas.
00:39:44.640But then the government has now come along and is proposing really drastic measures that would basically reduce the amount of livestock by somewhere between one third and a half.
00:41:29.320This is what, this is her dream of getting rid of all nitrogen, all farming.
00:41:35.340Farmers in the Netherlands, this is from your substack, reduced nitrogen pollution, so our audience knows, by nearly 70%.
00:41:41.160The government said that's not good enough.
00:41:43.420They're demanding they cut pollution by another 50%, another 50% by 2030.
00:41:49.240By the Dutch government's own estimates, that means 11,200 farms out of the roughly 35,000 that are dedicated to dairy and livestock would have to close.
00:42:00.16017,600 farmers would have to reduce livestock.
00:42:04.300And total livestock would need to be reduced by one half to one third.
00:42:09.120The Dutch government has demanded that animal farming stop entirely in many places.
00:42:15.080This is what has led to the fierce backlash among the Dutch farmers, some of whom spoke with Michael.
00:42:22.120I know the families of my cows better than I do with my own family.
00:42:27.300You know, when we talk about that cow, I can tell you about his mother, his grandmother, his great-grandmother, and I can picture them in my head.
00:43:08.400It's not appreciated anymore because modern people, especially in the city, you know, the only thing they care about is five o'clock in the afternoon, go to the supermarket and they grab their food for their day.
00:43:38.720So it makes the, it makes the climate activists feel good for a moment, but people will starve as a result of these policies.
00:43:46.120I mean, it's, I still find myself very moved when I, when I see that, I mean, I mean, you're talking about what's going on here in the name of climate change is a war on the productive sectors of our economy.
00:44:00.860I mean, these are the people that produce our food.
00:44:03.720These are the people that produce our electricity.
00:44:05.960These are the people that produce the natural gas that we heat and cook with.
00:44:11.820I mean, it's like, if you were just to arrive on the scene from another planet, you'd be like, why are you trying to destroy the livelihoods of the people who make your lives possible?
00:44:39.660I mean, I think people are looking at Greta Thunberg in a new light.
00:44:43.240They're looking at Al Gore and John Kerry in a new light.
00:44:47.200I mean, what are we, these are the, some of the most privileged, wealthiest people in the world and, or AOC you mentioned, and here they are, you know, these are people that have never, you know, produced food.
00:44:59.380These are people that have never produced energy, electricity, and here they are attempting to really put down and, you know, tax and regulate out of existence these people that, that they depend on.
00:45:16.360I think it's a kind of collective madness.
00:45:17.880I don't know any other way to describe it.
00:45:19.360I think about Prince Harry, who was lecturing us all about climate change at the UN and elsewhere, as he, of course, flies around on his private jets and the news broke late last week.
00:45:30.540He, he made his private jet sit and just idle waiting for him because for 20 minutes to get his polo gear boarded, he had forgotten it onto the plate.
00:45:41.120I mean, like that's who's lecturing us about climate change while this guy's farm is getting shut down as he's trying to put food on our table.
00:45:49.820You know, Prince Harry is never going to have to worry about eating well at his mansion in Montecito, but that guy actually has to put food, not just on his own table, but on yours and mine and the citizens of the Netherlands and elsewhere.
00:46:03.920I mock because I truly don't understand the situation there, but it's alarming and it's spreading, right?
00:46:21.720And I think the only thing I can say to silver lining here is that I think we're up for a period of significant change.
00:46:28.100I think that this is the energy and food crises are a wake up call.
00:46:31.080Um, we're going to have a lot of pain and suffering over the next several weeks and months, but I do think it's a chance for us to reorient ourselves and start to appreciate this remarkable civilization we've created for ourselves.
00:46:55.100Nuclear power is the safest way to make electricity.
00:46:58.980We know that about 200 people have died directly or over time from Chernobyl that contrasted the 6 million deaths from air pollution every year.