WEBVTT - The "Carbon Dominance" Strategy Driving Trump's Anti-Renewables Spree 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:08.800 Hello, and welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westerveld are 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:12.319 slapped and Carbon Bros. Seasons have wrapped and we'll be 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.680 bringing you a new season later this month. In the meantime, 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:17.639 we have a whole bunch of interviews to bring you, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.320 starting with this great conversation our Australia reporter Royce Kermilov's 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.319 had last month with Brown University professor Mark Blythe and 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:30.280 what he calls the strategy of carbon dominance and how 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.360 we're seeing that strategy play out in an all out 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.760 attack on renewable energy in the US and beyond. 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:39.400 Hope enjoy it. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:56.240 Thank you so much for being here to talk to 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.040 you about this. I've been very much looking forward to 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.760 this conversation for some time after what your talk at 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:03.520 the run Square of Economics about carbon dominance, where you 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.440 describe the politics of climate change and you put it 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.880 through the lens of both carbon and power. Would you 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.480 mind walking as sorry, what is the strategy of carbon dominance? 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:17.800 So no, essentially, carbon dominance is what I would call 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:19.960 what's going on in the United States just now, and 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.920 that requires a little bit of unparking so you can 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:27.680 focus on the politics and obviously it's Trump. Obviously, it's Maga, Obviously, 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.080 it's bright wing populism, et cetera, et cetera. But there's 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.280 also something weird going on in all this. You probably knows, 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.480 like yesterday when the EU basically said yes, please to 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.319 a fifteen percent tax on everything they do. He then 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.920 went on this really weird brant about and the one 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.039 thing that I'll do, my Trump and the one thing 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.080 we'll never do is is build up windmill. The EU 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:51.600 will have no windmills in America. And he starts going 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:53.840 this whole thing about windmills, and it's just, you know, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.560 you think it's bizarre, you've got a hatred against windmills, 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:00.200 but it's actually far deeper than that. And the sort 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.000 of the short version of the story goes like this, 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.280 where does populism and Trump and all this stuff come from. 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.000 Why they have an anti carbon twinge? So two things. 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.320 One is basically what you might call the strategic power 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:12.320 side of this. We'll park that for a minute, bullet's 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:14.600 come back to it. What's the domestic politics of this? 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.800 Go back to nineteen seventy five, and the three biggest 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.560 employers in the United States were, if I remember correctly, 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:25.240 General Moores, the company that became x on It, and 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.880 another big manufacturer I can't remember who the hell it was. 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:30.519 Now you go to today and what do you get you? 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.520 Basically your top three are Walmart, the Home Deco, and 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.680 Amazing Logistic. So they've gone from a business model for 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.400 a country that makes lots of things to ones that 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.160 sells lots of things, watch of which has made in 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.280 other places. And this is the whole the industrialization thing, 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.200 and China Shop and so on and so forth. Right, 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.600 and I go back to about nineteen seventy one, just 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:53.880 before that period, and what have you got. You've got 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.280 kind of an encompassing political coalition whereby one in five 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.320 jobs is in the auro sector and one and three 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:03.360 are unbelated sectors that feed into this. So what does 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.120 politics look like in this period? It looks like Tweedle, 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:08.799 dumb and tweedl day, every political scientus in the world 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:10.519 will be writing about how there's no difference between the 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.800 Republicans and the Democrats. They agree on everything, So what 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:16.959 are they doing. They're basically arguing over the distributions within 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:19.640 what we would call a stable growth model. And what 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:22.480 was that growth model? It was a carbon based growth model. 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.040 What powered American growth for the nineteenth century, for the 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:29.240 twentieth century, particularly postwar, is the East Texas basin. It's 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:33.440 cheap shield. It's basically having cheap fuel which powered chief electricity. 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.600 You can produce its scale manufacturing, so on and so forth. 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.560 So you have this very sort of encompassing coalition. Everybody's 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:43.960 basically part of the same growth model. Thirty percent of 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:48.000 people are working in unions. Is industrial economy. Move forwards 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.520 through the eighties, the nineties into the China Shop the 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:52.880 two thousands, and what have you got. You've got a 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.320 Republican coalition that looks like this. Start in Alaska. We've 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:01.040 got a north to Kora, South Dakora, Oklahoma, Kansas, East Texas, 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.680 through Texas, through the Panhandle, Mississippi, Alabama, come up to 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:06.600 West Virginia. What have you got? You've got the core 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.440 of the Republican states, the reddest states. What did they 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.200 all do? They're the residual from the old growth model. 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:21.400 They're the carbon coaliction. What they do is food, farms, fuel, fertilizer, feedstock, plastics, petrochemicals, manufacturing. 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.279 That's their core business model. So when Biden comes along 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:29.479 and says we are going to do decarbonization. They regardless 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:32.320 as an existential threat to their growth model because basically 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.880 they're going to shut them down. And you can tell 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:36.640 them all the stories about we're going to help you 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:38.960 transit and all this sort of stuff, but they basically 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:41.039 look at the Midwest and go, now, we don't believe 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.320 you will stick with ours. This is basically an existential struggle. Now, 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:47.680 part that for a second, and then think about how 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.960 we used to think about stranded assets. Stranded assets was 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.599 something that would happen to carbon assets because as the 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:58.240 world got warmer and as governments got serious about climate change, 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.640 they would tighten, if you will, regulations and it become 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.200 too expensive to have these things or produce these things, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.599 and companies would rationally disinvest from them, and investors would 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.719 disinvest from them, and they would become stranded assets, and 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:12.839 therefore they'll be we want to hold them. And that's 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.520 how you basically power a transition towards green ticket cetera, 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:18.840 et cetera. But what have you flipped that on its 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.280 head and you say that there's an existential struggle between 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.680 green and carbon asset, and we now hold the White 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:27.240 House and the Senate and the House. So what are 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.119 we going to do. Well, basically, we're going to protect 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.400 our assets. So how do you do that? You dominate 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.279 the other sectors. Yeah, we're not going to ban it completely. 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:36.160 We're going to get rid of all the subsidies, We're 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.440 going to get rid of any scientific support. We're going 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.359 to lean into all the stuff that doesn't really matter. 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:45.440 For example, last week was the pitch that the American 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.480 government's no longer going to recognized greenhouse gases in any 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.360 way harmful, you know, being lots of other things like this. 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:54.080 But essentially what they're doing is they've got a strategy 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.760 of we're going to allow you to build that windmill 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.919 in Texas because that'll help us keep the air conditioning on, 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.520 But in no way do you replace the carbon that's 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.159 powering the economy and moreover, that's where we get the power. 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:09.080 Go back to the power stuff. With parts of a 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.599 while ago, that has been the sort of the secret 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.159 to American growth. Partly is the dollar, which I'm happy 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:16.560 to talk about, but the dollar very much rises and 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.600 falls historically with the price of oil. Because even though 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.919 Saudi for a while was the biggest producer in America, 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.400 is now the largest net producer. It's American oil companies, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.040 it's American LNG. It's a huge part of what America does, 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.000 and it also gives them a huge advantage in growth. So, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.479 for example, the cost of energy in the United States 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.440 approximately one third the cost of word is in the 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.320 United Kindom. So if you have that as your advantage 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:43.240 and you basically are part of that coalition that sees 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.360 carbon is basically your strategic advantage. When the rest of 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.400 the world is decarbonizing, you have two choices. You can 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.760 either go for splendid hemispheric isolation from Greenland to Argentina 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.920 based on carbon, which might be one option, or you 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.840 can do what they're also doing, which is actively discouraged 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.680 through a coergon and bribery and other methods to do 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.680 with tariffs and others to get others not to make 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.040 a green transition and instead to sign very long contracts 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.760 for American lerg et cetera. C So, carbon dominance is 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:17.240 basically when you turn stranding assets into a political strategy, 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.440 and that is essentially what's going on right now. 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.280 So I think the phrase it's essentially you're trying to 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:26.160 frown the competitive industry that is green tech, that is 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.200 you know, renewable solar wind. You're trying to drown the 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:31.840 baby in the bata before it becomes established, before it 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:32.560 becomes a threat. 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:33.560 Got it. 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:35.840 And So just looking a bit to what you said 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.560 about the tariffs, I mean, the tariffs have been integral 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.240 to Trump's strategy and there's trying to erect that tariff wall. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.440 In their view, it seems to rebuild American industry. How 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:48.800 is that playing into this broader strategy, because, as the 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.280 narrative goes, tariff's a profound act of self harm. 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.000 Well, are they right in the sense that the problem 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.160 with thinking about tariffs is always has this, you know, 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.120 the economous caveat on it, which is cateris part of us. 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.880 All things remain equal, but they're never equal. So if 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:08.360 you think about the fact that corporate profits, particularly American profits, 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:11.280 but everybody's profits have never been higher. If you throw 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.680 up tariffs, do you think those companies can eat that 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.800 a little bit while reducing their margins. Yes. In other words, 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.320 things don't remain equal. So some of it will end 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.320 up on the American consumer, some of it will end 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:24.680 up in producers. You'll be able to effectively tax those 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.640 producers and then redistribute that cash. They've already raised a 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.440 couple of hundred billion with it. It's not exactly chump change. 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.280 In terms of the broader strategy. You know, will have 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:37.960 fifteen percent tariffs lead to American reindustrillization. No, WITHUD have 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:40.719 fifty percent tariff, Well, yeah, because you'd stop trading and 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.360 therefore you would literally have to make this stuff yourself. 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.040 So on its own as a reindustrialization vehicle, absence any 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.120 sense of investment policy or industrial policy, which you had 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:56.959 with Biden, then it's probably not going to work. But nonetheless, 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.200 does it sort of like work in terms of a 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.199 political stratage. Yes, If you think about the nineteenth century, 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.959 what would the Republican policy towards the working class to 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.320 protect them the tariff, keep out foreign competition, have ruthless 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.000 domestic competition, keep your markets really flexible, keep your energy 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.439 costs really really low. In fact, use carbon to make 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:18.599 them the lowest in the world. Never mind all this 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.960 stuff about the level ased cost of electricity being cheaper 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.720 with green stuff. If we really pumping off carbon, we 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.040 can be competitive, and we can do that in such 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.680 a way that we can ignore and basically obviate this 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:29.480 green transition. 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:32.800 Why I'm with NATA kind of the picture be on 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.960 the u US for a moment. But there was something 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.360 you mentioned in your talk to Ansul of Economics which 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:39.920 was a lot of this stuff that works around the 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.079 idea of I think you used the praise minimum viable coalitions. 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:45.439 Yeah, minimal winning coalitions. 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.240 Yeah, yes, So what is that? Just to be clear 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:49.960 about what that is. 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.440 So the basic if you think about politics under that 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.800 old Regima talked about when Democrats are tuedo dominic, Republicans 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.960 of tweedle d how did you win elections? That's when 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.080 political sciences in love with the thing called median voter theorem. 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.920 So that's some dude who's in the middle, and they 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:09.760 really have middle preferences, And because votes are very large 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:12.080 number of things, ultimately you have a kind of quasi 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.880 normal distribution of preferences, which is to say, there are 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:17.520 very few communists and very few fascists, and most people 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.240 are just uncle nice in the middle. So you need 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.120 to move your polity free towards captain as many Uncle 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.640 nice as possible, and the Republicans will by saying, hey, 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.200 taxis are good for Uncle Nice. And then the Democrats 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.079 will say, no, actually, redistribution is really good for Uncle Nice, 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.240 and that's what we should do. But essentially Tweedle Dumb 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.640 and Twio default over this median voter. The median voter 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:43.040 has largely disappeared. What you've basically got are the action 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.600 is no longer in a sort of normal distribution. What 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.760 you've got are very hetrogeneous preferences. And what you try 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.560 and do is build a minimum winning coalition rather than 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.920 an encompassing coalition. You basically go to your base and 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:57.040 work out from the tale to as far into the 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.719 middle as you need to go, basically working with your activists, 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.960 working with gerrymandering districts, working with keeping them agitated and 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.720 angry all the time. And in that way, the Republicans 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.360 have been much more successful than the Democrats. And it's 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.520 that ability to build up minimum winning coalition and keep 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.360 that going means that you don't have to compromise anything 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:17.160 with the other side. 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.800 So taking those ideas, something I was picking up on 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.839 my reporting in isolation was that there have been attempts 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.640 elsewhere to replicate this strategy. I mean, we see this 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:30.080 kind of in New Zealand, where the government's coupled together. 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:32.880 We see this in Australia with different Australian states that 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:35.840 Queensland now is currently doing something similar and also it 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.040 looks like the UK might be going down that path. Yeah, 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.240 and so my question is how does it say, how 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.960 do we see this kind of bawling out from the 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:45.720 US to other places right now? 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.679 Well, there's a way in which it doesn't work, which is, 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.720 if you really want to destroy a right wing political movement, 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.520 just get endorsed by Trump. So you know, that's what 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.480 Albanize showed us, That's what Canada showed us, right, I 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:01.800 mean that was basically like you cut, Trump comes out 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:03.280 for the other guy and it's a kiss of death. 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.640 On the other hand, there are deep, sort of endogenous 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.280 reasons for these countries to embrace this type of politics. 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:12.200 So what is this type of politics? The type of 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.640 politics basically says three things. There's a self serving elite 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:17.719 called the top ten to twenty percent. They've run off 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.480 with all the cash. We've got nothing and screw them. 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.240 They hate us, and that's up. Basically, there's one is 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.240 basically that. Then there's a sort of nationalist ethno nationalist 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:30.520 version of that. That's the anti immigration thing is basically 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.000 all these foreigners coming in and living off welfare, and 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.280 when the one paying taxes, so on and so forth. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:37.920 And then there's the anti green one. Right, it's all 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:40.199 a hoax and we don't need to do this. And 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:45.240 those different factions coalesce because all of those are basically 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:47.880 whether the legitimate gradiances are not a leave up to 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.760 whoever's listening to this, but they work together as a set, 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:53.720 and they're all real things in each of these countries. 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.720 Is it the case that basically, in the eyes of many, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.440 a self serving political coal that cares more about decarbonization 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.520 than the fact of your kid's schools falling down? Yes, 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.400 what about wage stagnation, Well, it hasn't hammed for the 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.480 top twenty percent, it's hard for everyone else. They don't 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.520 seem to give a damn about us. Yes, right, So 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.320 those conditions are there, and what Trump has done is 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:19.000 to provide a model of how to do this, of 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:21.800 what this is and what these agents should be thinking about, 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.959 et cetera. And they'll have different national cadences and different 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:28.559 national flavors, but the formula is essentially the same. So 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:33.080 we have this world in which those grievances have real valance, 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.000 if you will, for people. They mobilize around them to 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.400 a certain extent. The United States provides a ten plate 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:40.959 for it, but you have to then dial it back 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:43.959 in terms of particularities of your local economy, et cetera. 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.439 They can't just take these ideas off the shelf and 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:48.520 dump them down and do the playbook. They have to 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:50.760 be played with in certain ways. And then does the 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:54.040 figure of Trump himself, who is immensely unpopular side of 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.920 the United States and actually inside the United States. So 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.360 that kind of cuts the other way. But you know, 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:01.760 that's sort of the broadway in which I think about it. 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.040 So when we think about this as kind of international conservatives, 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.360 we might find parallels between places like Hungary, the US, 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.840 and other places around, but ultimately these are American ideas 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.040 and they don't necessarily transplant as easily to other countries. 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.080 Other communities are the places. 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:20.520 Yeah, I mean, if you think about Hungary, right, I 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:22.800 mean Orban's big thing, along with a lot of the 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.320 sort of nationalists right in Eastern Europe. It began with 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.600 central banks. It began basically a central banks as agents 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.920 of the money lenders and all of the antisemitic tropes 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.280 that went with that. They're sort of the anti Surus thing, 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:36.840 et cetera. Then it became sort of, you know, along 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.120 with putting the much more nationalist version of this. Hungary 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.920 then became very critical of the EU and then the 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.240 ethno nationalism et cetera, et cetera. So there's a playbook 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:49.760 which has developed very much uniquely in those places and 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.240 it predates Trump. But what Trump did was basically take 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:59.040 this kind of latent call it of basically angry working 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.400 class people and low and middle class people who had 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:06.160 been hit by a combination of financial crisis, austerity, wage stagnation, 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.680 and a seeming favoritism towards foreigners rather than the domestic population. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.160 And he was able to weaponize that. And that's been 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.080 layered on top of those politics and other places. So 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.720 again to think of, you know, the La Pen, La 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.240 Pen's very different, The National Front's very different to this. 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.640 They've talked very much towards the center to be left 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.960 economically but right on immigration, et cetera. It's quite different 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.600 from the Maga approach box in Spain, very much more 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.800 like the Maga approach reform. It's really kind of a 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:38.640 vehicle for forage rather than anything else. So there's a 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.400 trumpy aspect of this, but the politics aren't particularly maga 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.760 in that respect. So again it's a very mixed bag. 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.400 What's interesting is at this moment you see this everywhere 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.120 in different versions, and it behooves us to go world. Why. 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.440 One of the questions I had was, I mean, so 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.680 we have this kind of international conservatives and building, we 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.240 have this template being set up by Trump and his friends. 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.880 We also have this strategy of carbon dominance that we've outlined. 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:08.840 But opposed to that, we have the example apparently being 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.640 said by China, where China is moving very fast to 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.120 mean I think in May, and the sort of Sweden's 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.240 worth of solo it's the people is expected in China 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.440 by twenty twenty seven. I could have that wrong, but 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.240 and yeah, and we're starting to see you know, kind 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.680 of incredible statistics coming out about you know, the right 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:26.240 baby production battle. 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:28.320 Of like eleven fifteen sectors all the rest. 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:30.680 But absolutely, and then we had the US Secretary of 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:32.320 General just the other day of at least that report 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.640 basically saying, hey, solar is still the cheapest thing ever 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.480 and batteries are coming down and everything's changing now. So 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:41.120 when we view what's going on in the US in 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:42.880 opposition to China, what are we looking at? 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:46.200 So this is where you move out to the other 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.520 side of Trump's circle, away from the national conservatives, the 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:51.960 ban and wing, the marginally tailors, and you move away 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:56.320 from the finance people who are interested in stable coins 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:58.760 and sort of reworking the role of the dollar, and 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.800 you get back to those folks used to be mainstream Republicans, 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.760 the ones that are like Marco Rubio. And you said, well, 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.119 what are they worry about? What they worry about is China, 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.399 And they worry about China in the following sense they 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.320 are if you will. And my friend and colleague Dan 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.120 Brisco must get a shout out for this because he's 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:17.959 writing an offhead on this and I just read it, 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.200 so it's in my head. But essentially I think Dan's 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:22.959 right on this, that that group of people are what 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.280 you might call really hardcore form policy of realists, and 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.240 they're a very materialistic bunch of realists in the sense 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.080 that they've got no time for America. Is the shining 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:34.000 light on the hill or any of that sort of stuff. 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.240 This is naked self interest and what is naked self 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.960 interest dictate The history is written by the people who 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.080 control the source of energy. The nineteenth century, it was 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:46.960 coal that was the United Kingdom with a technological lead. 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:49.280 Once it moved to oil and gas, it became the 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:52.800 United States. Russia was able to maintain itself in large 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:54.800 part of the coal war because it was completely self 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:58.119 sufficient and oil and gas. And if you control that stuff, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.879 then then you know you control the future. But if 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:03.520 you've got a world in which greenhouse gases and other 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:08.680 warming agents are seriously threatening everything from biowebs to human survival, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.159 then you have to be carbonized. Now, whoever gets there first, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.000 whoever locks that in, whoever creates the tech, they're the 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:17.479 ones that are going to be the next hedge and one. 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:19.159 They're the ones that are going to be selling the 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.800 stuff you need to survive to everybody else. And Biden's 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.840 crew recognized this and wanted had they won the election, 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.639 their idea would have been IRA two, IRA three, build 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.320 on this, build more and more, actually get ahead of 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.560 the technological curve, try and sort of anticipate before China 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:36.760 gets their way to go. And instead what we did 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.720 was we voted in Trump and we basically said to 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.159 the tech lords, why don't you just do ai instead, 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.159 because I'm sure it'll end up being something someday. So 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.880 that's kind of where it's ended up. And we've seeded 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.719 that to China. Now have you seed that to China? 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.800 And you're a foreign policy realist, what do you do? 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.760 You have to stop them. This is why they're serious 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.200 about Taiwan, is why they're not spoiling for a fight, 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.200 quite willing to have one. Now, the interesting thing about 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.960 the Crump coalition is these people are quite vocal and 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.960 quite a large prominent part of it, but so far 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.840 they seem to be completely sidelined because neither the tech 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:16.040 laws nor the National Conservatives really want to get to 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.359 a shooting More of the China they're quite fine to 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.159 have the Communist Party is the ideological enemy and so 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.840 on and so forth, and they're pushing green tech around 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.119 the world, and it's all just bullshitting. We shouldn't be 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:28.359 doing it. Why don't you love our coal industry? Et cetera, 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:30.520 et cetera. But they don't really want to get into 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.000 a shooting match that could be the final shooting match. 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:37.119 So there's real tensions in this coalition. But the basic 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.040 idea is whoever controls the energy infrastructure in the twenty 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.840 first century runs the world. And the Americans are very 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:44.600 scared it's not going to be oil and gas, and 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.479 they're doing everything they can to make sure that it 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:47.720 is well. 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.399 On that in terms of material reality that this is 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.280 describing here, I mean, one of the things that is 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:55.680 very interesting to me is you have China. I think 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:57.960 there was a report out yesterday the day before that 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.159 China is now basically planning to a limit it's oil imports. 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.840 At the same time, you have Japan basically buying more 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.159 gas than what it needs and now that it's Nucleus 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.120 timing back on and reselling Australian gas wiolets on the water. 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.240