Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening Hunt podcast, You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor
Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. Gab to Gott to
Speaker 1: bring people up to speed on what we were just
Speaker 1: talking about. Before Phil hit the power button. What what
Speaker 1: don't you hit over there, Phil, Well, there are several
Speaker 1: I do have to hit power first, that's the first
Speaker 1: step step one, Um, and then I armed the board
Speaker 1: for recording, turns on a red light, and then I
Speaker 1: hit a play button that actually starts the recording. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before you did all that, Spencer pointed out the Phil
Speaker 1: means like the name Phil, so all the Phils in
Speaker 1: the world, Philip means horse lover. Yeah, well, like you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Phil and I were having a deep conversation about Phil
Speaker 1: the name over here because my my brother Um was
Speaker 1: the fifth Phill in our family. My dad was the fourth.
Speaker 1: My nephew is a sixth pill. So I was asking,
Speaker 1: didn't name you Phil because my older brother's eight years
Speaker 1: came eight years he got the name, He got the name.
Speaker 1: That's right, he's Philip the he'd be the fifth. I
Speaker 1: believe my nephew is the sixth. So I was asking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, so that brother had a kid. Correct,
Speaker 1: my nephew was good. Confused. Our film was asking if
Speaker 1: he's a one L or two L Phil, what what
Speaker 1: does he feel like to you? One L or two ell? Or?
Speaker 1: I got it wrong? Cow Let me think where were
Speaker 1: you born? Vancouver, Washington? Two els? Yeah, Phil felt like
Speaker 1: a two L to me. I thought he was a
Speaker 1: two L guy. What I'm okay, Phil, but I'd be
Speaker 1: f I L L just as people. Yeah, what two ls? Why?
Speaker 1: Because because one which one sounds more like Philippe. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a two pe situation. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is strictly coming from my personal experience with phills.
Speaker 1: And you're different than those pills, which is like your
Speaker 1: name has to be spelled different. But the horse, the
Speaker 1: horse lover thing um is derived from the Greek word Philippo's,
Speaker 1: which means horse loving or fond of horses, fondling horses,
Speaker 1: fond of horses. I'm with you. I got my on you,
Speaker 1: Phil Well, I gotta say I don't. I don't live
Speaker 1: up to the name. My parents really messed out because
Speaker 1: I have horses. I hates a strong word. I have
Speaker 1: no I have no like attractions. Okay, I'm gonna stop talking.
Speaker 1: I'm not drawn to horses. I don't have an attachment
Speaker 1: to horses. I didn't grow up with like a farm,
Speaker 1: animals or anything like that. And I got a lot
Speaker 1: of admiration for people that. Um. I know a lot
Speaker 1: about horses because it's one of those things where my
Speaker 1: sister in law they have a immense herd of horses
Speaker 1: where she lives, and when she looks at a like
Speaker 1: I look at a horse, I just see I don't
Speaker 1: know horse. She looks at a horse, she sees like
Speaker 1: not only the history of that animal, but like the
Speaker 1: history of its mother. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like all of it's like neu ro season, past injuries
Speaker 1: and what has been eating. It's just like it's amazing.
Speaker 1: You could never learn at all like you have. I
Speaker 1: think it's one of those you have to be brought
Speaker 1: up around. I sat next to a girl in middle
Speaker 1: school who wore nothing but like horse just sweaters and
Speaker 1: was just spent with Spenter days drawing horses all day long.
Speaker 1: I never understood it, like there's a thing with horses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet you. I bet you. She had long hair
Speaker 1: in a ponytail. Yeah. I find it's a weird thing
Speaker 1: that happens. My sister in law doesn't do this, but
Speaker 1: I find a lot of women who are very interested
Speaker 1: in horses wind up having very long hair and a ponytail,
Speaker 1: as though they were trying to replicate the horse's tail.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're even realize this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. If i'd like to start asking people if
Speaker 1: they realize this. Joined today by Nell's Johnson, We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking to a bunch later on. He's the North
Speaker 1: American Energy Program director at the Nature Conservancy. So, hello Nels,
Speaker 1: Hello Steve. So we we've found you because you rode
Speaker 1: into us offering some clarifications and corrections. Someone who knows him,
Speaker 1: someone who knows you suggest oh I thought you rolled in.
Speaker 1: I'm fretting about is not a self promoter. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: hold it against you. So, so who who are? It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter? But but how did we how did we
Speaker 1: track down? Because because we've been talking a little bit
Speaker 1: about wind farms and how I don't like them. There's, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess a listener out there in our community who
Speaker 1: has been you know, who's heard us touch on this conversation,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, you ought to talk to
Speaker 1: exactly and he's right there. So and then we reached
Speaker 1: out you and you said, yes, well, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a little arm twisting involved, but yeah, happy to do it.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna answer all of our questions about whether
Speaker 1: or not the planet will soon be covered in windmills,
Speaker 1: wind turbans. Uh. Well, yeah, that and a few other things.
Speaker 1: And all the birds will be dead. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: the squirrels will be doing great though, because I can't
Speaker 1: climb up those slick turbine shafts. We'll get to all
Speaker 1: that in a minute. That's gonna be interesting, because I got,
Speaker 1: I got. I've been doing a lot of handwringing and
Speaker 1: a lot of fretting. You know, it's interesting. Uh, I'll
Speaker 1: point this out, but we don't even to discuss it yet.
Speaker 1: There's a feller that's been making some waves. Um ah,
Speaker 1: he's a congressman. Ken's anger, Kenzinger, Ken's anger. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just signed up for his email newsletter. So he's been
Speaker 1: making a lot of waves by being um, not really
Speaker 1: like in the direction of the Republican Party. Um. And
Speaker 1: I've been kind of interested in what he's got to say.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at his Twitter feed and he
Speaker 1: was saying, Ah, let's make sure to keep nuclear in
Speaker 1: the mix. So we'll talk about that. We will. That's
Speaker 1: my thing, man, I want to end it on this,
Speaker 1: that's my thing. It's good. Yeah. I hope you can
Speaker 1: talk me out of it, but I don't think you can.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you're interested in talking me
Speaker 1: out of it. Okay, UM, all right, but but be
Speaker 1: realistic about when and how that happens, right, So that's yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get mired nose, kind of make
Speaker 1: sure they're doing it and doing it now. You're either
Speaker 1: pro energy or your anti nature like, which is um. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a handful of Hank tight nels. Feel free
Speaker 1: to if something strikes your fancy, feel free to speak up. Absolutely. Thanks. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: we have to be sitting in Montana right now, and
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some bills that are up,
Speaker 1: some rule changes that are up, and I wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: about it if I didn't think that they uh weren't
Speaker 1: kind of like more broadly applicable, Like it brings up
Speaker 1: interesting subjects that I think that anyone who's interested in
Speaker 1: UH hunting and fishing rules and whatnot legislation, right, they
Speaker 1: don't need to be here to appreciate the complexity and
Speaker 1: relevance of these questions. Do you feel like I'm selling us, well,
Speaker 1: col yeah, absolutely. One one thing that's up right now,
Speaker 1: s B one one one. It's good they went with
Speaker 1: s B and that BS one, but I think BS
Speaker 1: one one one would have been better. I'll be curious
Speaker 1: to hear Spencer's take on this. They want to legalize
Speaker 1: crossbow hunting. They want to legalize, not that it's illegal,
Speaker 1: they want to make it so you can hunt with
Speaker 1: a crossbow during archery season right now, specifically for UH
Speaker 1: impaired hunters, handicapped hunters. That's it. That's it. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought. But then someone told me it was more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. Well, I think someone gave me the
Speaker 1: old slippery slope argument. That is, that's that's our that's
Speaker 1: our argument that we always stand on, right. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm a slippery slope guy, I think that there
Speaker 1: is in fact a slippery slope in the world and
Speaker 1: people fall down the slippery Like I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in slippery slopes. So s B one one one is
Speaker 1: is just that. So it would uh make crossbows legal
Speaker 1: for those who apply for a handicapped validation to hunt
Speaker 1: during the season and they can hunt with that crossbow
Speaker 1: during the archery season. Right now, crossbows are legal to
Speaker 1: hunt with in the state of Montana as long as
Speaker 1: you use them during the firearms season. Mm hmm hmm.
Speaker 1: How are they? I didn't know that, Like I I
Speaker 1: know this from various text messages and stuff that I
Speaker 1: got that didn't get into any level of detail. Is
Speaker 1: just expressing horror text messages expressing like what are the
Speaker 1: what will happen next? Yes, so where is the world headed?
Speaker 1: So so explain the what what is caught as the handicapped,
Speaker 1: like to what degree? So what this says is that
Speaker 1: it's a discriminatory right. So right now that you use
Speaker 1: a device that holds a traditional bow, which you know
Speaker 1: traditional I'm encompassing really compound bows, or if you could
Speaker 1: figure a device out for a recurve or long bow
Speaker 1: that would hold that bow back at full draw with
Speaker 1: an arrow in it, and that would be legal for
Speaker 1: UH handicap hunters to use right now, which you can't
Speaker 1: turn it sideways, but you can't turn it horizontal. Um hm.
Speaker 1: And so this basically, if folks can't figure out how
Speaker 1: to use that, then they can't hunt during ourchery season. However,
Speaker 1: they can use a crossbow if that is uh, you
Speaker 1: know something that they can can work, you know, something
Speaker 1: that they can use effectively. They can use that during
Speaker 1: rightful season, not our tree season. UM. What like Montana
Speaker 1: traditional bow hunters are and is this is how crossbow
Speaker 1: bow has become legal during our tree season. And the
Speaker 1: issue there is we're gonna see much higher success rates,
Speaker 1: which in turn is gonna shorten our archery season altogether
Speaker 1: because our tree is gonna be way too effective. Um.
Speaker 1: And then again there's the discrimination side of this too.
Speaker 1: It's like, if this is keeping handicapped hunters out of
Speaker 1: our tree season, then we need to address that and
Speaker 1: make sure that handicap hunters are included in our tree
Speaker 1: season if they are capable. The state code basically says that, UM,
Speaker 1: as long like we can adapt anything to be as
Speaker 1: inclusive as possible. As as as long as it doesn't change
Speaker 1: the essence of what that thing is. Um. The inter
Speaker 1: susting parts here are like I have been around, I've
Speaker 1: I've guided some crossbow hunts for folks who were able
Speaker 1: to use them under this same pretense. UM in what state? Colorado?
Speaker 1: And it was for me, being somebody who's not familiar
Speaker 1: with the crossbow, it was almost a two person job
Speaker 1: to load the crossbow. UM. And that handicapped hunter was
Speaker 1: not capable of loading that thing on their own. They
Speaker 1: were very effective with it, uh to shoot, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a one person job to load the thing. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot of different crossbows out there,
Speaker 1: but UM, this kind of seems like, oh, if we
Speaker 1: just add crossbows, then everybody's gonna be happy. But it's like,
Speaker 1: if you can't use the thing that holds your bow
Speaker 1: back at full draw, I don't think there's anything that
Speaker 1: necessarily says crossbows are going to fix that. And then
Speaker 1: there's probably people that would still be incapable of shooting
Speaker 1: a cross bow, yeah, absolutely, but could shoot a firearm,
Speaker 1: yes for sure. Uh. A very near and dear person
Speaker 1: to me was sharing with me that they really hope
Speaker 1: this does not pass. They don't want to see crossbows.
Speaker 1: Their argument was that this is like the playbook from
Speaker 1: the crossbow industry, is that it always starts with this
Speaker 1: and then pretty soon it's everybody. But he said that
Speaker 1: if they do make cross bowls legal, he will start
Speaker 1: to hunt with one because it's the arms race. Oh,
Speaker 1: very interesting. I sure like I can't. I don't have
Speaker 1: the level expertise about this to really have an opinion
Speaker 1: about it. But if it was just generally to make
Speaker 1: it that you could during archery season with crossbows, I
Speaker 1: would point out there's all kinds of times with crossbows
Speaker 1: with the crossbow during rifles season. And and that was
Speaker 1: a great point, Like it's not like you can't use it.
Speaker 1: You can use it for six damn weeks. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a point made uh during the hearing for this that, uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to take advantage of shoulder season hunts,
Speaker 1: uh bird hunting opportunities, there's I'm gonna have to dig
Speaker 1: in dead. You can use it for spring bear three
Speaker 1: hundred days of crossbow hunting of crossbow hunting currently available.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: one Uh, here's another bill that's up and this is
Speaker 1: an interesting one. So it's hard as hell, hard as
Speaker 1: hell to draw. It doesn't matter where you are in
Speaker 1: the West. It's hard to draw a moose, sheep or
Speaker 1: goat tag in the West. I'll say, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: out of Alaska, right, so you can apply your whole
Speaker 1: life and never get one. I've been I just drew
Speaker 1: a mountain goat for instance, I just drew a mountain
Speaker 1: goat tag. After twenty six years of applying. I drew
Speaker 1: a mountain goat tag in the state of Montana. Took
Speaker 1: me twenty six years. I don't know how many They
Speaker 1: started the bonus point system somewhere in the middle of
Speaker 1: my application period. Your bonus points are squared. So when
Speaker 1: I learned multiplication as a youngster, we only got up
Speaker 1: to twelve times twelve, and then we quit for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. We never got into what happens
Speaker 1: when you times thirteen by something, so I still don't know.
Speaker 1: But if you had twelve bonus points, your names in
Speaker 1: the hat a hundred and forty four times, and I
Speaker 1: finally drew a mount and go take now I have
Speaker 1: to take off what you gotta quit yell a low
Speaker 1: for five years or seven years, seven years, I think
Speaker 1: before you can apply again, before you can eat an
Speaker 1: amply know. But I have friends who because you were successful,
Speaker 1: that would be an important part of this. I had
Speaker 1: friends who drew mount and like applied drew mount and
Speaker 1: goat tag, laid low for all the years, started applying again,
Speaker 1: drew a second one, right, which I feel is like
Speaker 1: a great feat it's a great triumph. There's a bill
Speaker 1: that would make it that when you draw in some
Speaker 1: states have this already that once you draw a moose, sheep,
Speaker 1: or goat tag. I think it's if you're successful, if
Speaker 1: you're successful on the hunt, so successful drawing and then
Speaker 1: successful slapping that tag on a harvested animal, you are
Speaker 1: done for life. You can never get back in the mix.
Speaker 1: Is it individually per animal? You're not done with everything,
Speaker 1: You're done with that one. What states have this? Idaho? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Idaho has once in a lifetime stuff. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of a handfuls like New Mexico has some once in
Speaker 1: a lifetime And it's important to note too, if you're
Speaker 1: you can apply for a cow, moose you know immediately
Speaker 1: yeah or you know so there's there's you got two
Speaker 1: shots at hunting each animal, just one is gonna be
Speaker 1: the animal with the more impressive headgear. Now, this rule
Speaker 1: I was sharing that Cal and I were talking about
Speaker 1: this on the phone. This rule is one of those
Speaker 1: rules where everybody's opinion right down to whoever wrote this
Speaker 1: thing up. Everybody's I guarantee whoever wrote this up hasn't
Speaker 1: drawn moose, sheep or goat. Take garen ted, and they're
Speaker 1: pissed because their cousin he's drawn too. I've never drawn one. Yep,
Speaker 1: this is not fair, Like I guaren t. You should
Speaker 1: look into that cran if he's the person that drew
Speaker 1: this up piste, there's no way they're sitting on There's
Speaker 1: no way they drew all these and they're trying to
Speaker 1: draw him again. No way. Well, I wonder how many uh,
Speaker 1: how many folks who have applied what percentage of the
Speaker 1: total I don't know, per year over the past I
Speaker 1: don't know, five years, ten years. If we figure out
Speaker 1: some kind of percentage of those who have drawn, who
Speaker 1: have drawn twice and been successful, like what would if
Speaker 1: they were out of the mix, What would it really
Speaker 1: do to the guy that drew this up, this bill,
Speaker 1: what would it really do for his oddes? I mean,
Speaker 1: are we talking about three people out of that is?
Speaker 1: That is the point and the pro con argument in
Speaker 1: the debate for House Bill Too oh two is it
Speaker 1: will increase people's odds who have not drawn yet. And
Speaker 1: the con or the yeah, the con why this bill
Speaker 1: shouldn't exist. This will not increase people. I don't like
Speaker 1: it for this reason because did I ever tell you
Speaker 1: about my Civics teacher in ninth grade? Al de Young?
Speaker 1: Al de Young? Uh? He was. He was. He would
Speaker 1: do parody, but none of us were old enough or
Speaker 1: smart enough to know he was doing parody. Ald Young
Speaker 1: taught government through the letter he role played. We now
Speaker 1: know he role played as a guy who would say
Speaker 1: and remember, I am concerned only with what effects? And
Speaker 1: you point himself Al de Young, and he would be like,
Speaker 1: there was he was supposed to take everyone down to
Speaker 1: register him to vote. He's like, there's no way I
Speaker 1: would take you people down to register to vote. Why
Speaker 1: would I dilute my vote? I don't want you idiots voting.
Speaker 1: That was a ship um, but it's stuck with me.
Speaker 1: And like a rule like this, I don't like it,
Speaker 1: because what if they made it retroactive and I'm out
Speaker 1: of the run on a mountain goat or I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm old, I'm not totally old. I could draw a
Speaker 1: sheep tag next year. I would hate to learn that
Speaker 1: I couldn't get back in the running in five years.
Speaker 1: Why not because your bro's got to rights that, dude,
Speaker 1: It because Steve and his brother are competing. No, I
Speaker 1: just like, I don't like it, and I don't like only.
Speaker 1: I don't like only for what it would mean for me,
Speaker 1: or is it the slippery slope problem? You know then
Speaker 1: it's gonna be white tailed deer and that it's gonna
Speaker 1: be squirrels and you know you're done. That is interesting, Honestly,
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it that way. But one good
Speaker 1: you know, speaking from the Idaho standpoint, right, it's kind
Speaker 1: of could be a b S bill because already, uh,
Speaker 1: there is a governor's tag, which if you love hunting
Speaker 1: sheep so much, why don't you just buy the governor's tag.
Speaker 1: I think it went for four or four yeah last year,
Speaker 1: four kids? Right? Uh? State Idaho? Is that once a lift,
Speaker 1: once in lifetime tag unless you wanna get in the
Speaker 1: Governor's auction and buy the tag every year so you
Speaker 1: can hunt. You can hunt cheap in perpetuity. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a bunch of crap. Here's there's a question of statistics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's symbolic. I think it's symbolic flat statistics.
Speaker 1: So uh, let's say you know, after you'r what waiting
Speaker 1: seven years, you apply again. Isn't it if a thousand
Speaker 1: people apply one year and two thousand people apply the next,
Speaker 1: whether Steve is in the running during that a thousand
Speaker 1: people or not, isn't it just based on the total
Speaker 1: number of people who have applied that year, That's what
Speaker 1: you based on. This is meant to be vindictive because
Speaker 1: even one that dude sits, even when that dude sits
Speaker 1: out seven years, okay, he's coming in with zero points,
Speaker 1: He's got to rebuild his whole collection of points. He's
Speaker 1: like inconsequential, it's it's a way to punish the lucky people, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. It's not one to one. There's people, and
Speaker 1: so is the winning argument. It's the war unlucky people.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't matter, then why not get rid of them?
Speaker 1: Or is the winning argument? Is every little bit counts.
Speaker 1: You know, so like when you look, especially as a nonresident,
Speaker 1: if you look at your draw odds of getting like
Speaker 1: a premier sheep tag, it can be like point oh
Speaker 1: one five percent some places point oh five percent. And
Speaker 1: it's like, so if that point oh five percent is
Speaker 1: back in the pool, does does it really affect your
Speaker 1: odds of drawing? Oh? Yeah, because when you when you
Speaker 1: get to looking at the odds on draw tags, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see a draw tag is point five percent
Speaker 1: chance of drawing, or it's uh, another tag is one
Speaker 1: percent chance of drawing. There's something that happens in your head,
Speaker 1: like you don't view it being twice as likely to
Speaker 1: draw the one. You just view it all as being shitty. Yes,
Speaker 1: you just view like dah ain't never gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: this goes to directly into the next bill, uh, which
Speaker 1: is our bonus points bill, which is another great topic.
Speaker 1: And when you read the number on that, this one, okay,
Speaker 1: HB one, this one strikes to my core. This one.
Speaker 1: I would go so far. I wouldn't go so far
Speaker 1: as to say that I would storm the state Capitol
Speaker 1: building while they were telling the votes. I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: that far. I don't know about it. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I would take it that far. But I've already bought
Speaker 1: my kids a bunch of bonus points. You've invested in
Speaker 1: their future, Listen, I've invested in my future. No, I've
Speaker 1: invested in my future because I think it's fun to
Speaker 1: go hunt moves, sheep and go. So my kids, my
Speaker 1: four year old, when he knows how old is he know,
Speaker 1: he's six, he's already sitting on three bonus points. When
Speaker 1: he turns twelve, he'll be going into the draw with
Speaker 1: nine points. Do you have another trying to rob this
Speaker 1: from me? Do you at all feel partially responsible for
Speaker 1: inspiring this bill? No, because you've talked about this so
Speaker 1: many Yeah, listen, you gotta hate the hate the game,
Speaker 1: not the player, bro. So I'll tell you what said
Speaker 1: against this thing. Um. These Yeah, these are folks coming
Speaker 1: in against the the You know, as the bill has written,
Speaker 1: this is not the way the game is supposed to
Speaker 1: be played. So the kids who have not invested in
Speaker 1: hunting in the state of Montana are coming in as
Speaker 1: if they have invested for well eight, nine, ten years, right,
Speaker 1: But they're they're paying, They're paying money to the state
Speaker 1: agency and drawing nothing in return. It's a money. Let's
Speaker 1: let's be frank. Okay, Okay, let's hear me out. I'll
Speaker 1: try explain it. Okay, HB one, please please, But I
Speaker 1: think you got to talk about a bill for an
Speaker 1: act entitled an Act allowing only persons eligible to hunt
Speaker 1: to apply for bonus points, which would be an amendment
Speaker 1: of Montana Code's annotated section eight seven dash to dash
Speaker 1: one seven. Okay, So in this state, a kid can
Speaker 1: start legally hunting at ten with a mentor um and
Speaker 1: they can only hunt over the counter tags. They can
Speaker 1: a ten year old cannot try to draw a limited
Speaker 1: draw permit. You have to be twelve to try to
Speaker 1: draw a limited draw permit. It would stand to reason
Speaker 1: it would make most sense that you can at that
Speaker 1: point you can start applying in accruing bonus points. But
Speaker 1: through some weird like the thing that I don't even
Speaker 1: think is that rational, but I exploit it. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they made it that your kids can start
Speaker 1: A dad could her mom whatever the hell, could start
Speaker 1: stocking up bonus points for their kids by just going
Speaker 1: down and buying them over the counter. So I was like,
Speaker 1: that's really kind of strange and a little almost like,
Speaker 1: you know, I almost don't even like it, but again,
Speaker 1: hate the game, not the player. I went down and
Speaker 1: got my kids little A L. S numbers that they
Speaker 1: don't even need, and started buying them points. How much
Speaker 1: is a point, I don't know. But when it's all
Speaker 1: said and done, I can't remember on each But when
Speaker 1: it's all said and done, I walk out of their
Speaker 1: danged buy a few hundred bucks because I buy the
Speaker 1: points for everything, all of them, So all three of
Speaker 1: them get all available points. And they don't even know this.
Speaker 1: Well no, I kind of explained it the deal being.
Speaker 1: I told him, if you don't bring me, if you
Speaker 1: draw one of these things and don't bring me with you,
Speaker 1: I want all this money back that investing. Yeah, I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: this is going on the hunt. If you decide to
Speaker 1: go like with your bodies at school or something, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be getting an invoice for all my point money back.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Yeah. So the bonus
Speaker 1: points system in theory is set up as a here
Speaker 1: is a way to reward people who are invested in
Speaker 1: the system right by extending it to people who are
Speaker 1: not invested in the system and giving them a conceivably
Speaker 1: very large leg up depending on you know, changes in
Speaker 1: in the state. Um, it violates the intention of the bill,
Speaker 1: the original bill, um, would be my perspective. Now, I
Speaker 1: will also let you in on a little more perspective
Speaker 1: of mine own. I have niece and a nephew at
Speaker 1: this point, right, I don't buy them anything. Is because
Speaker 1: you're a tight ass, because you don't agree with this.
Speaker 1: What I do is I opened up a life insurance policy,
Speaker 1: uh for each of them on based on my own life,
Speaker 1: and they will get cash. But I also have to
Speaker 1: deal with my death. That is going to be like
Speaker 1: their only gift from all uncle cal Like they're gonna
Speaker 1: have to bury your carcass. Why did you bring my
Speaker 1: kids that, um, when you have your own nephews and stuff?
Speaker 1: Was it just expedient? See why you brought my kids?
Speaker 1: The No, they're getting a bunch of stuff too. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: the and the I think this is the way to go,
Speaker 1: right because like you and I have a screw me over.
Speaker 1: You robbed points from the mouth of my baby. Have
Speaker 1: turned into a pretty decent human being and one of
Speaker 1: those things that has made you a pretty decent human
Speaker 1: being is like paying your way through school, right, Like,
Speaker 1: oh god, let me tell you this sob story about
Speaker 1: going to state school, trapping my way through until I
Speaker 1: could get into the University Montana, and being becoming a
Speaker 1: big swinging dick writer. Right. Uh, that's character, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're robbing your children of knowing the pain of yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and therefore you're you're putting their uh their their lives
Speaker 1: at risk of becoming decent humans. You know, these bills. Oh,
Speaker 1: I want to move on here, but these bills are
Speaker 1: a real one to punch to my children because imagine that, uh,
Speaker 1: I do well, like I do all this, and then
Speaker 1: one of them draws a tag and they're not even
Speaker 1: They're like twelve years old, right, and they don't you
Speaker 1: know what the hell is going on. They don't even
Speaker 1: know how cool it is. And then they can't ever
Speaker 1: draw another one when they're growing up and would appreciate
Speaker 1: it exactly. It's it's a war on children. I'm hung
Speaker 1: up on this life and shirt. So do your nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews know this? Like, do you think they root
Speaker 1: for your death? A little bit? A little thin? By
Speaker 1: that point, I've got shirts older than my niece I got,
Speaker 1: I got shirts older than my nephew gets a little
Speaker 1: thin down by the nice level. They might be kind
Speaker 1: of being like, He's like, so you're telling me if
Speaker 1: Calle dies exactly, And they're like, and I'm currently not
Speaker 1: getting any birthday or Christmas presents. But they know about this.
Speaker 1: The sister knows about this. So where is this cal
Speaker 1: guy live? Yeah? So I also want to get to
Speaker 1: this next one, which is super interesting. Is just going
Speaker 1: to be a quick beat, which is what's the next
Speaker 1: one on the list with the It eliminates the fishing
Speaker 1: game's ability to have special draw tags in units that
Speaker 1: are over objective. Yeah, but you're skipping one that I
Speaker 1: want to understand a little better real quick. We gotta
Speaker 1: hustle though. Yeah. Six, Okay, they I think we're going
Speaker 1: to going back in time. So there's another thing. Nonresident
Speaker 1: licenses Okay, nonresid license state sp They want to make
Speaker 1: it the outfitters are guaranteed a significant percentage. That would
Speaker 1: mean that people that would normally, like a nonresident hunter
Speaker 1: that would normally come to a state to just do
Speaker 1: a d I Y hunt, um, that they funnel more
Speaker 1: of that business to outfitters and make it be that
Speaker 1: that they have these outfitter specific permits. Yes, so it
Speaker 1: would favor individuals who are going to hire an outfitter
Speaker 1: over individuals are going to freelance it. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: it does. The truest part of that is this will
Speaker 1: favor those going with who have made the choice to
Speaker 1: go with an outfitter. And you have to make the
Speaker 1: choice earlier in the season than the general draw, the
Speaker 1: general nonresident draw. So UM. Basically, it's kind of poised
Speaker 1: as a if you're willing to commit early and at
Speaker 1: this this point, the revised version of spe UM of
Speaker 1: those non residents who are willing to commit to hunting
Speaker 1: with an outfitter for the two combination tags that are
Speaker 1: available in state Montana for nonresidents, and willing to spend
Speaker 1: an additional three dollars on the application process per application,
Speaker 1: they will be guaranteed a tag up until that threshold
Speaker 1: of of the nonresident tags is met. UH. An interesting
Speaker 1: part of this so I had a great conversation with
Speaker 1: the head of Montana Outfits, Outfitters and Guides Association, Moga
Speaker 1: mcmanard uh super nice guy and UH. The stated intention
Speaker 1: of SPEE is to take care of the current customer
Speaker 1: base for outfitters and guides in the state of Montana.
Speaker 1: And they're saying that right now, it's about of non
Speaker 1: residents already choose to hunt with an outfitter and guide. UM. However,
Speaker 1: the amended version here has UH ten swing, so it
Speaker 1: could go up to fift and that's based on the
Speaker 1: number of applications that don't come in under the outfitters
Speaker 1: bill UM from the previous season. So if choose to
Speaker 1: apply only guaranteed tags, well next year, that can be
Speaker 1: increased to up to UM. It sounds a little complicated
Speaker 1: the way I'm saying it, but it's it's pretty darn
Speaker 1: simple UM. And you know, the cleanest opposition to this
Speaker 1: bill is why the hell should folks who are willing
Speaker 1: to pay more be guaranteed A sounds like it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, privilege UM. And the counter argument to that,
Speaker 1: which is an economic one. So the University Montana has
Speaker 1: an ongo ng survey, and through this ongoing survey, it's
Speaker 1: a recreation based survey, they've determined that out of the
Speaker 1: three point three billion dollars that recreation brings into the
Speaker 1: state of Montana, outfitted recreation, which is a much larger
Speaker 1: umbrella than than hunting, which is what we're thinking of
Speaker 1: right now. So be hunting fishing, it would more than
Speaker 1: likely be your sister in law's outfit as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, guided horseback rides, there's guiding, there's rafting, there's
Speaker 1: sled dog runs, all sorts of things. UM. I even
Speaker 1: have a buddy who takes people on nature walks. UM.
Speaker 1: All of that recreation amounced about ten percent, so bitty,
Speaker 1: you know, big big chunk change for the state of Montana.
Speaker 1: And they found that folks willing to go with an
Speaker 1: outfitter outspend uh non outfitted recreators in the state of
Speaker 1: Montana by five to one. UM, keep them like this
Speaker 1: is one study. Everybody I've talked to you on this
Speaker 1: is like, how the heck does that make sense? But
Speaker 1: I think when you start thinking about the gamut of
Speaker 1: outfitted experiences in the in the state, UM, there's definitely
Speaker 1: some folks spending a lot of money compared to folks
Speaker 1: who are, you know, throwing the kids in the old
Speaker 1: family truckster and coming out to the state of Montana.
Speaker 1: So there's a theme developing here the haves versus the
Speaker 1: have nots, which is like the greatest argument of all time. Right, yeah, Hey,
Speaker 1: we got a note from a guy. You remember how
Speaker 1: we had a guy right in that uh he was hunting.
Speaker 1: He listened to our podcast with Adam Lazzara, who uh
Speaker 1: helped advise and work on our medical section and the
Speaker 1: Mediator Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, which is available
Speaker 1: now on Amazon New York Times bestseller. Um, that guy
Speaker 1: talked all about tourniquets, and a guy wrote in that
Speaker 1: he his dad got shot in the arm hunting and
Speaker 1: used the tourniquet to save him. Another guy wrote in says,
Speaker 1: I would have never thought about tourniquet applying. Driving with
Speaker 1: his kids, comes across car cash oh biker bikers in
Speaker 1: the middle of the road, compound fracture, lower left leg
Speaker 1: bleeding profusely. The guy says he was not wearing a belt,
Speaker 1: but thought about the episode we had and got a
Speaker 1: belt off a bystander and through a tourniquet on the
Speaker 1: guy stop the bleeding. Took ten minutes for the ambulance
Speaker 1: to get there, saved his life. That is episode Bleeding
Speaker 1: out in case here that was named the episode bleeding
Speaker 1: out right. The proper thing to do when you go
Speaker 1: to administer care right is to establish who you are.
Speaker 1: So I'd be like Stephen hey, or you know, sir,
Speaker 1: ma'am you, I would be like, I'm here on behalf
Speaker 1: of Dr Adam Lazara, right, And so I'm just dying
Speaker 1: to know, like what the bedside manner was? Now, sir,
Speaker 1: I see your legs bleeding out. I have a belt here,
Speaker 1: And I've listened to a podcast listening to this year
Speaker 1: podcast stand stand Back called meat Everybody stand Back. I
Speaker 1: heard the podcast No Need to Call for Help. Spencer
Speaker 1: Guy wrote in about the Real Foot Lake deal Um,
Speaker 1: which recovered extensively, but he talked about his grandpa. He
Speaker 1: had a grandpa named Papa Duck, and Papa Duck was
Speaker 1: a guide on a duck club in Utah, and the
Speaker 1: Duck Club had these blinds out in a management unit
Speaker 1: and they would bring in clients by airboat and drop
Speaker 1: them off hunt these blinds. But apparently the like the
Speaker 1: blinds were there, but the Duck Club couldn't actually prohibit
Speaker 1: dudes from using the blinds. So like they built the blinds,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't do away with the public as aspect.
Speaker 1: And he says one day, Gramps rolls in. There's a
Speaker 1: guy in a blind. They're getting a fight, and he
Speaker 1: ties a rope off to the blind and gets so mad.
Speaker 1: He ties a rope to the blind and ties it
Speaker 1: off to his airboat and tries to pull the blind over,
Speaker 1: getting a big fight. The blind tips over. Actually, the
Speaker 1: hunter tries to shoot the rope. Okay, tries to shoot
Speaker 1: the rope clean, gets injured. The Sheriff's called, and Papa
Speaker 1: Duck that Papa Duck thinking that the guy will get
Speaker 1: I don't know how he thinks that the guy will
Speaker 1: get in trouble. The sheriff comes and gives a citation
Speaker 1: to Papa Duck for harassment. Then he ends the note
Speaker 1: by saying, my grandpa was later kicked out of the
Speaker 1: Duck Club for reasons I'm not sure about. I was
Speaker 1: really impressed with this guys honesty. Oh yeah, like typically
Speaker 1: he's turning his own grandpa And yeah, typically grandparents have
Speaker 1: like some level of divinity that grandchildren hold them to classhole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was great, my grandpa. Before we get into our
Speaker 1: renewable energy here, speaking of talking about hunter harassment, now,
Speaker 1: it's a many I don't know how many states. I
Speaker 1: wish I knew this off top of my head. A
Speaker 1: lot of states, most states, I think, have hunter harassment laws.
Speaker 1: You know, Jeremiah Johnson when bear claw Chris clap, is
Speaker 1: it clap? That's an std isn't it? Clap? Clack clap
Speaker 1: lap bear claw Chris clap played by the dude who
Speaker 1: used to play uh the Judge and Hardcastle McCormick. Remember
Speaker 1: that it was a guy on like anyhow, sorry, st
Speaker 1: Uh can you look that up? Spencer? Is it lap
Speaker 1: or clap anyhow? And Jeremiah Johnson l app okay? And
Speaker 1: Jeremiah Johnson he's out fiddling around the mountains trying to
Speaker 1: make it as a mountain man and eventually gets a
Speaker 1: good hollering at from old seasoned, grizzled mountain man who
Speaker 1: accuses him of of molesting his hunt. You've been molesting
Speaker 1: my hunt, and it's illegal to molest someone's hunt. And
Speaker 1: virtually all states like if someone's doing like a lawful activity,
Speaker 1: like they're lawfully hunting, lawfully trapping, lawfully fishing, and someone
Speaker 1: comes out to screw with them, it's against the law.
Speaker 1: But we got an interesting note from a guy who
Speaker 1: is in a dispute with some people over his beaver
Speaker 1: trapping activities, and it's gotten heated and right now joining
Speaker 1: us remotely from Michigan, my home state, the beaver trapping
Speaker 1: country of Michigan is Josh Hagen. I want to ask
Speaker 1: him some questions about his, uh, his experience here with
Speaker 1: within this case beaver trapper intimidation, trapping intimidation. Now, John,
Speaker 1: in the interest of time, Josh, I want to run
Speaker 1: through kind of the high level particulars and then you
Speaker 1: correct me, uh if I screw some part up. Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds good. So you are, your buddy owns property on
Speaker 1: some lake. Your buddy owns property on lake in Michigan.
Speaker 1: There's a big beaver colony on the lake with a
Speaker 1: beaver lodge. Yeah, you guys go out and string a
Speaker 1: little steel and start catching some beavers. Yep. And then
Speaker 1: people start doing what to you or like, they start
Speaker 1: doing the like people around the lake respond to this
Speaker 1: by how by basically messing with our traps, breaking our
Speaker 1: sticks that our traps are set in. They wrote us
Speaker 1: a little note one of the times kind of told
Speaker 1: us broke broke the sticks and pulled basically the trap
Speaker 1: out of the water. Wrote us a little notes and
Speaker 1: no more in the snow right next to the to
Speaker 1: the trap. And then the fourth and final time through
Speaker 1: maybe a ten fifteen pound rock a little smaller than
Speaker 1: a volleyball, threw it in the hole, set the trap off,
Speaker 1: and actually the rock got jammed and stuck in the trap.
Speaker 1: And you put out some trail cams in yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: So after after the rock incident, we put some trail
Speaker 1: cams out to try and catch them because we had
Speaker 1: no idea who was doing it. We had a little
Speaker 1: bit of an idea maybe who, but no hard evidence.
Speaker 1: So we threw some trail cameras out and within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours probably got three guys walking out to our
Speaker 1: traps kind of looking at them, but they didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't mess with the traps. They just kind of hung
Speaker 1: out there and looked at the traps for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. And do you feel that they knew you
Speaker 1: had the trailer camp set up? Yeah? Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the pictures he actually pointed at my trail camera. So
Speaker 1: we set up too. We set up a Sellero trail
Speaker 1: camera kind of off hidden a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: we put a dummy camera right over the whole Our
Speaker 1: thought was maybe keep their attention on the dummy camera
Speaker 1: and then we'll we'll maybe get who's doing this on
Speaker 1: the other camera. Yea, And what's there? What's your best
Speaker 1: understanding of what their gripe is That they like watching
Speaker 1: that they enjoy watching the beavers in the lake, and
Speaker 1: they feel that these beavers should be off off limits.
Speaker 1: They feel that no one should be able to mess
Speaker 1: with these beavers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we believe.
Speaker 1: They're grape as we are. In October, we kind of
Speaker 1: ran out there to do some recon of the beaver
Speaker 1: beaver den and um ran into a few of the
Speaker 1: neighbors who clearly didn't want us messing the beaver then.
Speaker 1: So had a couple of conversations back in October with
Speaker 1: a few of the neighbors back there. How has it
Speaker 1: been like when you called up fishing game to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we got this problem going on. What has been there
Speaker 1: sort of what has been their attitude about it? Like,
Speaker 1: have they suggested that want you just go and kinda
Speaker 1: go somewhere else and try to avoid friction. Actually, we
Speaker 1: actually when we got ahold of them, we had our
Speaker 1: our traps pulled just we we kind of misunderstood one
Speaker 1: of the rules of checking the traps every twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: So she actually told us that we were in our
Speaker 1: right and that that day go put the beaver traps
Speaker 1: back out there. Mhm, like encourage you to keep at it. Yep, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she encouraged. Uh, told us like, have you run into
Speaker 1: any more problems, give me a call and I'll come
Speaker 1: out and we'll come up with the game plan. Huh. Now,
Speaker 1: this is what kind of the main thing I'm curious
Speaker 1: about with this. A lot of like a lot of
Speaker 1: times you go out, people want to go out and
Speaker 1: do stuff outside, like hunting fish or trapp in this case,
Speaker 1: because like, um, some level of quietness, you know, of nature,
Speaker 1: like solitude. You picture this particularly being convers solitary activity
Speaker 1: in some way. But all of a sudden you're like
Speaker 1: mired in this dispute with like a neighborhood h o
Speaker 1: A y Uh. Did you feel compelled to keep at
Speaker 1: it because you were interested in sort of like defending
Speaker 1: your rights or did it still stay fun to do it,
Speaker 1: you know, or did it become like not fun but
Speaker 1: you didn't want to give up the terrorist wind, so
Speaker 1: to speak, say a little bit of both. Are. It
Speaker 1: was still fun, but then the other part was kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, we don't want these these people to,
Speaker 1: you know, to beat us, Like we were fairly confident
Speaker 1: we're doing everything we should. So it took away from
Speaker 1: the on a little bit and kind of more morphed
Speaker 1: into like we're not gonna let these people beat us
Speaker 1: type thing. Yeah, like they're trying to intimidate you, and
Speaker 1: you're in the right not be spooked off. Why do
Speaker 1: you guys set off trapping in the first place. We've
Speaker 1: always been interested in it, so we've always talked about
Speaker 1: doing it. Kind Of where we decided this year to
Speaker 1: do it was they started to destroy damn my Buddy
Speaker 1: Dance property. I think they dropped like four trees in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks back in the fall. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of what let us pushed us into like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's give this a try and see what happens. Um
Speaker 1: did some part of you everthink, man, these people like
Speaker 1: looking at these beavers obviously these beavers alone. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we definitely went down that road of just is
Speaker 1: it worth it, Like we'll let the let them look
Speaker 1: at the beavers and we'll go on some public land
Speaker 1: close by and and try and get into it. Um.
Speaker 1: But once the CEO of the conservation officer called us
Speaker 1: kind of like made us to just keep doing it
Speaker 1: out there more. Um. Once she said that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're good, We're good to be out there. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: in a way, your CEO has to be able to
Speaker 1: enforce the idea that it's stay owned wildlife, and you
Speaker 1: wind up you kind of like inadvertently walked into a
Speaker 1: little bit of a territorial battle where the state claims
Speaker 1: ownership of the resource and sets the guidelines for extracting
Speaker 1: the resource. And then you have kind of like a
Speaker 1: vigilante group saying no, this resources in our custody, will
Speaker 1: set the rules for it, and then they kind of
Speaker 1: have to be like then it almost the beavers don't
Speaker 1: even matter. It almost becomes like this other conversation about
Speaker 1: who owns it and who makes up the rules for it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, I would imagine, like you, you're a little
Speaker 1: bit inadvertently wind up being sort of a pawn in
Speaker 1: this much larger issue going on. I got a friend
Speaker 1: has a ranch and he was explaining to a conservation officer.
Speaker 1: He's talking about his elk. My friend saying, you know,
Speaker 1: the guys you know, doing whatever always spooking my elk,
Speaker 1: And he said the Warden's like, come again, you have
Speaker 1: to wonder too, like if you're conservation officer is also
Speaker 1: like aware of state funded mitigation efforts regarding beavers in
Speaker 1: that area too, just like, well, yeah, i'd be great
Speaker 1: if you guys took a few out because every year
Speaker 1: in the spring we have to go live trap them
Speaker 1: and then move those live traps to another body of
Speaker 1: water where we drowned the beavers, which is not fun
Speaker 1: for anybody. Yeah. Well, Josh, Matt, appreciate you coming on. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was pretty interesting to read it. So, yeah, are
Speaker 1: you guys still plugging away out there? Is it kind
Speaker 1: of like this is the smoke settled now? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: we're out there. I'm not. When I get off here
Speaker 1: with you guys, I'm gonna head out there and and
Speaker 1: check the traps. So they're still out there. Hey, Josh,
Speaker 1: if something else happens and transpires, you know, just let
Speaker 1: me know. Yeah, I will absolutely. Yeah, they hanging on
Speaker 1: the wall behind you. Is that like a it's like
Speaker 1: a like an alcohol drinking Yeah, that's my fiance's it's
Speaker 1: it's her little idea. I guess, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like it. She's making a bold statement about yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, man, thanks a lot, appreciated, Thanks guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had a duck hunting spot in high school and
Speaker 1: in part of college in Missoula, and um, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, like a fanned out section of the Clark Fork,
Speaker 1: the lower Clark Fork, and we'd set up on one
Speaker 1: of these little stems of it, and every once in
Speaker 1: a while we'd get an adjoining landowner that would come
Speaker 1: out and her ask us and us why it was
Speaker 1: illegal to be there, and instead of dealing with it,
Speaker 1: we just pick up, you know, are like six half
Speaker 1: sunken decoys that we had and walk out of there.
Speaker 1: And I called a Missoula conservation officer and let him
Speaker 1: know what was going on. And the officer that I
Speaker 1: talked to was like, yeah, yeah, He's like you're right,
Speaker 1: and he's like, but how good of a spot, isn't
Speaker 1: you know? It's like, you know, that's almost too bad
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I still want to tp that guy's house.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, you still live there, you know who
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? Didn't Huey Lewis getting a big thing
Speaker 1: with spooking off duck hunters and whatnot. Remember this that
Speaker 1: was on Mitchell Sleugh in the Bitter Rout and they
Speaker 1: they fixed that by baiting the slough um. So it
Speaker 1: was illegal to duck hunt there because there was bait
Speaker 1: present the Mitchell Slough Homeowners Association there and then but
Speaker 1: this was on the lower Park Fork um, you know what,
Speaker 1: the and uh Kelly Island down there, which was like
Speaker 1: for high school kids. You know, it's like you're pretty
Speaker 1: limited as far as like you don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff you don't have, you know, it's like none
Speaker 1: of us had chest waiters. It's like knee boots or
Speaker 1: hip hip boots, right, and it's like you're pretty no boats,
Speaker 1: pretty limited, you know, so hip to be they cow
Speaker 1: segue us into our oil and gas deal. Spencer is
Speaker 1: not really bringing it this show. You know what's that like?
Speaker 1: Name me a single thing? Oh no, the stuff about
Speaker 1: Phil's name, Phil's name, Yeah, but he didn't mean to
Speaker 1: do that. Couldn't have been more relevant. He didn't mean
Speaker 1: to do that. I just caught that. Uh, not really
Speaker 1: bringing it, Spencer. If there's one thing somebody's gonna remember
Speaker 1: from this episode it's gonna be Horace Lever over Montana legislation. Fortunately. Yeah, Spencer,
Speaker 1: he's just, I mean, just very recently, I thought he
Speaker 1: was just an astounding personality. That's my fault to have
Speaker 1: on the show. Is happening, Spencer. I'm sorry, nfill rock
Speaker 1: counting stories. He's got time. There's an hour left. St
Speaker 1: co in with something. There's been so much good content,
Speaker 1: I don't need to interrupt it with yeah, with some
Speaker 1: lower level yeah, but yeah, you're sophisticated. Hosting might be
Speaker 1: just your silence, just existing. He's doing a good job
Speaker 1: by not talking. Yeah, it's it's restraint and maybe some
Speaker 1: people in this room could you know, you learn something.
Speaker 1: He's not like look at me, look at me. It's
Speaker 1: not his style. Yeah, I like it. Cal Segue is
Speaker 1: into talking about the whole planet being covered up in
Speaker 1: wind farms and whatnot. Yeah. So you know, recently, real
Speaker 1: interesting or repel looking congressman out of the state Idaho
Speaker 1: put together a package that outlines a kind of grand
Speaker 1: scamand careful with the word slip grand skiing. I gotta
Speaker 1: owe some people apologies on that one. That would remove
Speaker 1: the lower Snake River dams, the four lower Snake River
Speaker 1: dams on behalf largely of of salmon, is the way
Speaker 1: it's pitched. And that is a really interesting topic. As
Speaker 1: we started talking about green energy, and we'll be getting
Speaker 1: into that damn removal. Damn right, Oh, cute quick thing.
Speaker 1: This funny. What's the name of that writer? It is
Speaker 1: Kemmy Larson. Yeah, I got a book for my kids
Speaker 1: called Beavers. What's the book called Beaver's damn Friends. Beaver's
Speaker 1: damn Friends, Beavers. It's about this beavers, real lonely and
Speaker 1: uh Alice says, built a damn make a pond. So
Speaker 1: he makes a pond and all kinds of people start
Speaker 1: showing up, frogs, fish, birds, whatnot. And then he's not
Speaker 1: lonely anymore. And my kids like it because the last
Speaker 1: line of the book is about it says, now Beaver's
Speaker 1: got a lot of damn friends, and there's old dad
Speaker 1: walking in with this trap. This friend Beaver's got a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, Benny, the Beaver's got a lot
Speaker 1: of damn friends gone. So you know, as we you know,
Speaker 1: really begin our path with this new administration, green energy
Speaker 1: is a major topic and we're damns meant to be
Speaker 1: green energy at a time, because we weren't having that
Speaker 1: conversation back then. No, we really weren't. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: very few people were having that conversation. The research that
Speaker 1: I've done, it's kind of shocking how none of these
Speaker 1: conservation ideas are are original now they're just really taking
Speaker 1: hold now. So there's always somebody being like, you know,
Speaker 1: if we put in you know, if we do enough
Speaker 1: blasting with dynamite here than all the previous world wars
Speaker 1: and build a dam that may affect upward travel of
Speaker 1: salmon it and I think it would be bad. And
Speaker 1: they were like, everybody needs jobs right now, and flood
Speaker 1: control is a necessary thing, and agriculture is a necessary thing.
Speaker 1: We'll deal with the fish thing later. So people when
Speaker 1: they're building all these giant dams and and kind of
Speaker 1: like destroying the world's largest like Salmon River in the
Speaker 1: Columbia drainage, um, people had to have been like, but
Speaker 1: what about the fish? Yes, but there's no way, I
Speaker 1: mean obviously not. There's no way there was ever any
Speaker 1: conversation about fossil fuel like climate issues, fossil fuels, certainly
Speaker 1: nothing that's the sinct that I've ever come across. But
Speaker 1: does anybody now are people that have like an ulterior
Speaker 1: motive or that like damns okay, that want that there's
Speaker 1: gonna be like pro damn people out there do the
Speaker 1: are the pro This is as much for Nels as
Speaker 1: this for you are the pro Damn is the pro
Speaker 1: damn lobby, whatever form it's in are They like, I
Speaker 1: got you. It's clean energy, bro, I haven't not burning
Speaker 1: We're not burning oil. From a uh an employee at
Speaker 1: Bonneville Power saying there is nothing more green than hydro
Speaker 1: electric power. M hmm. I like them when people latch
Speaker 1: onto that nothing that. I like them when people when
Speaker 1: it was like an argument sort of presents itself in
Speaker 1: a kind of fortuitous way. We're all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, things aren't looking good for this damn
Speaker 1: this whole salmon thing. Yeah, and they're like ha ha suckers.
Speaker 1: The water moves through and energy, right, that's it hit
Speaker 1: us with that Nels. Alright, well, so there is green energy,
Speaker 1: but you know we need to take a step back.
Speaker 1: Well we should think about clean energy is maybe the
Speaker 1: better term. And then the question is can we make
Speaker 1: clean energy green? And you know where we put energy,
Speaker 1: how we develop energy, even if it's clean, can have
Speaker 1: environmental impacts. So hydro is probably the most clear example
Speaker 1: of what's a clean energy technology that's not exactly always green,
Speaker 1: right because of blocking rivers and and ending uh and
Speaker 1: Drameda's fish runs like the salmon in the in the Columbia.
Speaker 1: So you know, what we're really interested in in the
Speaker 1: Nature Conservancy is how do we develop clean energy? There
Speaker 1: really is green that really ovoids and minimizes impacts the
Speaker 1: environment to habitats, to wildlife too, people. Um, And so
Speaker 1: that's what we're really interested in. So that word, uh,
Speaker 1: the word I never teld this second thought of the
Speaker 1: difference between clean energy and green energy. Did did the
Speaker 1: word green energy come about sort of as a way
Speaker 1: that to to to to cause a kind of reckoning
Speaker 1: between renewable energy resources and its impact on the environment.
Speaker 1: Was like, was that word made up? Was that word coined?
Speaker 1: Because there's this kind of friction. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that friction really existed ten and twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: because we hadn't developed all that much clean or green
Speaker 1: energy that except for hydro, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: goes back to the thirties, right, I mean the reason
Speaker 1: why we didn't care about the fish so much in
Speaker 1: the Columbia during the Great Depression is because people were starving.
Speaker 1: I mean no, people had no money. Uh, people had
Speaker 1: no electricity in rural areas, and so the dams that
Speaker 1: were built um in the Columbia weren't partly you know,
Speaker 1: a job's creation program an economic improvement program, and people
Speaker 1: thought that tradeoff was worth making back then. And now
Speaker 1: we have a different view of that tradeoff and we
Speaker 1: have a greater appreciation how profound that tradeoff is. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, salmon species that have evolved that have you know,
Speaker 1: migrated up the Columbia and the snake rivers to you
Speaker 1: know spawn way up into the rockies in Idaho are
Speaker 1: winking out. I mean they're just they're on the verge
Speaker 1: being extirpated. They've been there for hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: years and now sudden they're about to be gone. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to think about the concert. There's
Speaker 1: no free lunch when it comes to energy. Regardless of
Speaker 1: the energy type, clean energy included. Uh, every form of
Speaker 1: energy with a possible exception of efficiency is going to
Speaker 1: have some sort of impact, and we need to Hey,
Speaker 1: what those impacts are so that we make trade offs
Speaker 1: that we think are acceptable. Are you familiar with the
Speaker 1: intellectual exercise of saying, um, we would never have won
Speaker 1: World War Two if it wasn't for the beaute copper mine. Right,
Speaker 1: There's one that goes, um, we won World War two
Speaker 1: because we were able to smell aluminum better than Germany,
Speaker 1: because we had all those big ass damns that it
Speaker 1: was like, there's like an electricity bottleneck, and we were
Speaker 1: able to outproduce aircraft. I don't know if I'm doing
Speaker 1: this right, but I've heard this. Yeah, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: that one, but you know, I can imagine that being
Speaker 1: a legitimate argument. That's interesting. How far those uh you know,
Speaker 1: how how far can it damn fall? Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: and it's sort of public perception. But one interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the whole damn thing is, you know, it used
Speaker 1: to be the cheapest form of electricity out there anywhere
Speaker 1: in the planet. Pretty much. Hydro was the cheapest thing.
Speaker 1: It's not anymore. The cheapest thing in the world today
Speaker 1: is solar and wind. Really yeah, so, uh, most of
Speaker 1: the United States right now, solar and wind go for
Speaker 1: three to six cents per kilowatt hour natural gas and
Speaker 1: coal or between five and seventeen cents per kilowatt hour
Speaker 1: hydro is somewhere in between. UM, So it's still pretty cheap.
Speaker 1: And hit me with hit me with that again. I
Speaker 1: understand like you're saying, that's what it costs to produce,
Speaker 1: to produce a kilowatt hour of But isn't it more
Speaker 1: isn't haven't we made it that it's more valuable to
Speaker 1: the producer depending on how the producer is making it. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like they sell it, they get it, they get a
Speaker 1: related rate to encourage renewables. Now, I mean, most energy
Speaker 1: markets in the the United States are extremely competitive today. So
Speaker 1: you know that, you know, utilities put out a call
Speaker 1: for proposals to build the next generation of energy producing sources.
Speaker 1: And you know, the best packages coming into a lot
Speaker 1: of utilities these days are wind and solar or a
Speaker 1: combination of the two, usually paired with storage some storage
Speaker 1: of some type. UM And that's you know, you know,
Speaker 1: Xcel Energy. Uh in Colorado. They also have another major
Speaker 1: territory in the Midwest. Most of what they've you know,
Speaker 1: put out there has come back as wind and solar.
Speaker 1: That's been the most competitive and so of all new
Speaker 1: additions to the electric generating fleet last year where either
Speaker 1: wind or solar kind of split almost in half, solar
Speaker 1: actually outpacing wind for the first time. UM, you know,
Speaker 1: and just again, why is this happening? Well, part of it,
Speaker 1: of course is we are concerned about climate change, but
Speaker 1: economics is really a huge driver of this. Solar costs
Speaker 1: have gone down in a decade. So that's because of
Speaker 1: technological improvements, getting more and more experience with deploying UH
Speaker 1: and setting up systems UH. You know, if you build
Speaker 1: a coal plant, it will take years to get the
Speaker 1: coal plant online. If you develop a wind project or
Speaker 1: a solar project, you can get that thing online after
Speaker 1: it's permitted in six months or at most a year,
Speaker 1: So it comes online much faster than than the forms
Speaker 1: of energy that it's replaces. So that that's one way
Speaker 1: where the UH start up costs start to even out right,
Speaker 1: Because one argument that that I see over and over again,
Speaker 1: right is like the cost of the shafts, the blades
Speaker 1: of those wind turbines, UM, the you know, the the
Speaker 1: cost of the solar farms in UM, you know, materials
Speaker 1: that are mined out of the earth UH and then
Speaker 1: compared to what we have in in the superstructure that
Speaker 1: we have currently, right, and like dams, think about like
Speaker 1: a modern damn, what a modern dam would cost to
Speaker 1: build currently versus you know, I believe the upgrading um
Speaker 1: the hydroelectric capabilities of some of these damns is also
Speaker 1: in the tune of billions of dollars to modernize them
Speaker 1: and get them where they need to be. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a thing right here. UM solar and wind power
Speaker 1: need forty to fifty times more surface space than coal
Speaker 1: and gas. So solar and wind power needs around forty
Speaker 1: times more space than coal and nine times more space
Speaker 1: than gas. Is that is that? That's that's roughly right.
Speaker 1: So to power our whole country and UM solar would
Speaker 1: mean that we have eight million acres of solar farms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's yeah, that's consistent with our That does that
Speaker 1: intimidate you? Well, you know how many millions of acres
Speaker 1: are there in the United States? Just even you know,
Speaker 1: so I don't know that number is offhand, but just
Speaker 1: but just take the Bureau of Land Management, the largest
Speaker 1: landowning public agency in the United States. You know, they
Speaker 1: have about two hundred and fifty million acres, so it's
Speaker 1: a small fraction of that. The question, Steve, really is
Speaker 1: where does it go? You know, if we put not
Speaker 1: in my backyard. Argument, well, there's not in my backyard.
Speaker 1: But you know, we'd like to encourage up upfront planning
Speaker 1: at a landscape scale before we decide where to put
Speaker 1: this stuff. So some of the first big, really big
Speaker 1: solar projects Ivan Paw for example, right on the Nevada
Speaker 1: California line. I don't know if you've ever proven I
Speaker 1: fifty north of l A on the way to Las Vegas. Right,
Speaker 1: you see these towers that are several hundred feet in
Speaker 1: the air with thousands of you know, solar mirrors all
Speaker 1: pointing at the top of those towers beating you know,
Speaker 1: this sunlight, so it can hit a temperature several thousand
Speaker 1: degrees the time. I mean, it's like a sun at
Speaker 1: the top of this tower. I mean, pilots have to
Speaker 1: fly around these things because they're so bright because of
Speaker 1: these thousands of solar rays um and uh and in fact,
Speaker 1: if birds fly through those, those rays of sunlight that
Speaker 1: are concentrated going up to the tower just basically vaporized.
Speaker 1: But the problem with that project is where it went,
Speaker 1: it went into an area that was really important for
Speaker 1: desert tortoise, which is an endangered species, and it also
Speaker 1: uh is in an area that is important for desert
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep. So you know, we didn't have the information
Speaker 1: we should have used at that point to figure out
Speaker 1: where that project goes. I think the point is is
Speaker 1: that we have more than enough room across the United
Speaker 1: States of what we would call low impact places that
Speaker 1: will have minimal conflicts with habitats, wildlife, and people that
Speaker 1: we could put this stuff. But we've got to think
Speaker 1: about it up front. And so that's what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is help figure out where are the best
Speaker 1: places for this energy to go. So one project we
Speaker 1: have is called Mining the Sun. Right, so there are
Speaker 1: forty three million acres of mine lands and brown fields
Speaker 1: across the United States. E p A has a program
Speaker 1: called the Repowering Program, which is inventory these sites. And
Speaker 1: so what we're doing is trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: do we unlock these places and get renewable energy to
Speaker 1: go on those acres instead of out in what we
Speaker 1: call a green field situation, right, a natural environment in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Maave Desert. Interesting like doing like
Speaker 1: super fun sites and quarries and stuff. Yeah, or minds.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, for example, we're work in Nevada. Actually
Speaker 1: with the Nevada Mining Association. We've gotten some regulations changed
Speaker 1: to encourage renewable development to go online sites in Nevada.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the biggest hold uranium minds, well, copper
Speaker 1: minds still her minds, you know, they're Nevada is the
Speaker 1: biggest hard rock mining state in the country. Montana's up there,
Speaker 1: it's third or fourth maybe after Arizona. Uh. Then we're
Speaker 1: also working in West Virginia, and there we're looking at
Speaker 1: coal fields. Um. You know, there's you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of acres of former uh coal fields in West
Speaker 1: Virginia that used to be mountains that were blasted off
Speaker 1: and leveled and and now there's no economic activity going
Speaker 1: on there. There's no jobs anymore there. What about putting
Speaker 1: renewable energy there? You know. The great thing about focusing,
Speaker 1: we've got to have either a shipload of wind or
Speaker 1: a shipload of sun, right, And what happens when there's
Speaker 1: no sun and no wind? Well true, and that's why
Speaker 1: we need to look at the whole country in terms
Speaker 1: of where we put this stuff. I mean, the bigger
Speaker 1: the field of view we have, the more complementary we
Speaker 1: can have wind and so because it's cloudy here one day,
Speaker 1: but it's sunny, you know, hundred miles away where it's
Speaker 1: windy uh in this place now, but it's calm over there.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if we have a big enough
Speaker 1: field of view, we can integrate a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And then we need other things. We need storage, we
Speaker 1: need some other energy technologies that can do some baseload.
Speaker 1: That's why keeping, for example, existing nuclear online is important.
Speaker 1: You know, about twenty of our energy today is nuclear?
Speaker 1: Is it real? Well, it's maybe about eighteen now because
Speaker 1: a couple of plants of clothes in the last few years,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's still a big chunk of our
Speaker 1: electricity generating capacity and it's essentially carbon free. The problem
Speaker 1: with any you're probably gonna get there. But I mean,
Speaker 1: are we doing is anybody eyeballling um adding nuclear facilities
Speaker 1: online or is it all that they're just all destined
Speaker 1: to phase out? We also uh N nine three my
Speaker 1: all island happened in the forty years since then, there's
Speaker 1: been one facility added that's it Watts Bar in Tennessee
Speaker 1: in and that's the only new nuclear facility built in
Speaker 1: the United States since Three Mile Island. And there's another
Speaker 1: one that's being built in Georgia right now that's supposed
Speaker 1: to come online later this year. And those those plants
Speaker 1: are essentially the same technology we've had for the last
Speaker 1: sixty years. Uh. There are lots of enhancements, of course,
Speaker 1: because of of concerns we've had because of Three Mile Island,
Speaker 1: Fukushiv and other things, but essentially it's the same technology
Speaker 1: and UM and we have about how I don't know
Speaker 1: what the exact number is, somewhere around sixty existing nuclear
Speaker 1: plants across the country. Most of those were built in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, so they're kind of approaching the end
Speaker 1: of their original planned lives. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: there are ways to keep them going longer, and I
Speaker 1: think utilities are doing that where they can. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of the if you will,
Speaker 1: the building blocks of our clean energy future needs to
Speaker 1: be keeping existing nuclear in the fleet as long as
Speaker 1: it's safe, uh and as long as it's at least
Speaker 1: reasonably economic to do so. UM. That is going to
Speaker 1: be one of many solutions that we need. There's no
Speaker 1: silver bullet. There is no one technology that's going to
Speaker 1: save us. We need to combine a lot of technologies,
Speaker 1: some of which have been around for a long time
Speaker 1: and some of what you're totally new. Were you, Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask let me ask you different thing first,
Speaker 1: just to t up. I was gonna ask you about
Speaker 1: whether you were surprised when GM made their announcement about
Speaker 1: all electric No, not really, Okay, we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Uh So the Biden administration, like, what's there?
Speaker 1: They have a more They put in a moratorium on
Speaker 1: new oil and gas leases on public land. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: That's correct? And that's what it is, like a moratory
Speaker 1: about issuing new ones its federal lands. And yeah, my
Speaker 1: understanding is it's leases. It's not permits that have already
Speaker 1: been issued, right, so it would be new leases. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: do you imagine a future I'm not so much asking
Speaker 1: if you like would like to see it, but do
Speaker 1: you imagine a future where we have a lot of um, federal,
Speaker 1: federally managed public lands that are given over to renewable energies, Like,
Speaker 1: is that part of the mix. Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: part of the mix. Yes. Um, Again, we have to
Speaker 1: look at what the value of those lands are. They're
Speaker 1: not all the same. I mean, Bureau of Land Management,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, has extensive areas that have been
Speaker 1: to graded through different processes. Mining of courses is one
Speaker 1: of those. And we think those places may be good candidates.
Speaker 1: In fact, we worked with the BLM five and six
Speaker 1: and seven years ago to create what was called the
Speaker 1: Southwest Solar Plan, where we looked across you know, six
Speaker 1: southwestern states. We looked across BLM lands and where are
Speaker 1: the places that development of solar or wind or geothermal
Speaker 1: for that matter would have relatively low impact. And and
Speaker 1: the BLM designated what we're called solar energy zones, and
Speaker 1: they've also been called development focus areas, but they're kind
Speaker 1: of zones where there would be relatively little impact to
Speaker 1: the habitat or to wildlife and that we would facilitate
Speaker 1: development there. And Congress passed something called the Omnibus, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the funding bill to keep government going
Speaker 1: back in I guess it was December, and part of
Speaker 1: that bill includes an editor g subtitle, and within that
Speaker 1: there's a a goal now for the federal government to
Speaker 1: develop twenty five gigawatts of renewable energy on essentially BLM Lands.
Speaker 1: And you know, just a little definition here. Gigawatt is
Speaker 1: a thousand megawatts, So a thousand megawatts or one gigawat,
Speaker 1: you know, used to be kind of a typical size
Speaker 1: of a power plant, a coal power plant or nuclear
Speaker 1: power plant. Not so much anymore because those economies of
Speaker 1: scale are less important for natural gas, solar way and
Speaker 1: other energy technologies. But that's roughly the way you can
Speaker 1: think of it. So twenty five large power plants. Uh.
Speaker 1: The goal is over the next four years on on
Speaker 1: BLM lands again, you know, that would be you know,
Speaker 1: a few hundred thousand acres out of you know again,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty million. We're pretty confident we can
Speaker 1: find low impact areas that could accommodate that twenty five gigawatts. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, we need to be thoughtful, We need
Speaker 1: to be careful about when we quit news. Can we
Speaker 1: just go back for a sect to what you said, Steve,
Speaker 1: with the amount of surface area of the country or
Speaker 1: you know, eventually the planet to be covered. So when
Speaker 1: I spoke to you before, um, you said we are
Speaker 1: between now and probably we're about into our build out
Speaker 1: of of space and that we would you can pick
Speaker 1: up you said, a footprint from the size of Maine
Speaker 1: to potentially Texas. Yeah, so just that's that's essentially right, Karen. Um.
Speaker 1: We're roughly ten I mean maybe into where we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with the build out, which is it's inevitably going
Speaker 1: to come. You know, the question is how fast does
Speaker 1: it happen and how careful are we about? But you
Speaker 1: don't think that the technology might act that in half?
Speaker 1: It could, Yeah, I mean it's possible. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we can. We have to deal with the data and
Speaker 1: information we have and make our best guesses. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we give a range in terms of
Speaker 1: what the spatial impact could be main being at the
Speaker 1: small end. Actually Arizona's right, we think is the high end.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's because of different assumptions about what
Speaker 1: technologies are being deployed. So for example, if we have
Speaker 1: a lot more rooftop solar and a lot more battery storage,
Speaker 1: that's less acres than if we have uh more of
Speaker 1: a reliance on just utility scale with less storage, then
Speaker 1: we have to build more older plants, we have to
Speaker 1: build more wind plants, so that is kind of the
Speaker 1: more upper area. UM. And then actually Princeton released a
Speaker 1: study just a couple of months ago, uh that suggested
Speaker 1: the footprint could be as big as the size of Texas.
Speaker 1: And I think that's because they're looking at transmission. We didn't,
Speaker 1: we didn't have good enough to always felt comfortable about
Speaker 1: projecting the transmission footprint. But it's it's you know, that
Speaker 1: would be significant, and that that might you know, and
Speaker 1: just well, you know, but but I think it's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out that, Um, if you look at the footprint
Speaker 1: of hydro and you count the reservoirs, So if you
Speaker 1: look at the footprint of hydro gas coal, that's not insignificant, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like there's zero energy footprint
Speaker 1: now and we're growing it to the size of Arizona.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell it is. Presumi is
Speaker 1: not Arizona, but it's not nothing. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a Rhode Island. It's it's still been large, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at Mountaintop removable mining in West Virginia,
Speaker 1: or the mining and the Powder River basin just a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles from here. I mean there are
Speaker 1: extensive areas the West Virginia, Kentucky examples always strike me,
Speaker 1: right because it's like anytime we bring up mining. Anytime
Speaker 1: I bring up mining, uh, I will have emails that
Speaker 1: come in. Let's say, and all those mines have elk
Speaker 1: on them, now, so how could they be a bad thing?
Speaker 1: You know, hey man, we're just hunting in Pennsylvania. We
Speaker 1: were just flint locked deer hunting on top of some
Speaker 1: old mine, on top of hills that are mysteriously flat
Speaker 1: on top. Yeah, it's like what happened? It's kind of
Speaker 1: going up and then allously just flat. Yeah. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: infrastructure too, Like I always think of Cold Strip, Montana. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like how much do you count? There's an entire
Speaker 1: railroad that goes us through Colster at Montana, Right, But
Speaker 1: that has a lot of other services involved with it too.
Speaker 1: But the reason that it's there is for that cold
Speaker 1: which is like how many yards wide? But then real
Speaker 1: damn long. Yeah, and you take oil and gas infrastructure.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever been in the Jonah Basin
Speaker 1: in southwestern Wyoming, you can kind of appreciate this. You know,
Speaker 1: there there are these oil and gas pads, you know,
Speaker 1: sprinkling the landscape over hundreds of thousands of acres with
Speaker 1: roads and and you know, pump stations and pipeline corridors,
Speaker 1: and you know it's a it's a spider web of impact,
Speaker 1: right that makes that area a lot less uh, appreciated
Speaker 1: by mule deer and pronghorn. And so for example, the
Speaker 1: Wyoming Department of Fish and Game, I think it's tracked
Speaker 1: about decline now and in the mule deer herd that
Speaker 1: you know would normally winner in that area because they
Speaker 1: just don't like human activity. You know, in concentrated forms
Speaker 1: like that, things are more spread out. You know, they
Speaker 1: can live with it, but when you have a lot
Speaker 1: of it in one place, uh, it really starts to
Speaker 1: impact the way animals think about the habitat that's there,
Speaker 1: and just to look at the footprint, you know, so
Speaker 1: it gets you know, it's always like peeling an onion.
Speaker 1: You know, we say these numbers like it's the size
Speaker 1: of Arizona, but not all of that impact is exactly
Speaker 1: the same. So the numbers we use for solar are
Speaker 1: about you know, eight acres are needed for every megawatt
Speaker 1: of solar. We need about sixty or eighty acres for
Speaker 1: every wind turbine that goes up, which might be three
Speaker 1: or four megawatts nameplate capacity. But there's a difference in
Speaker 1: that impact. I mean that solar is totally covering the
Speaker 1: ground and is totally changing habitat is something that's totally
Speaker 1: not what it was. On the other hand, a wind turban,
Speaker 1: you know, the footprint of the turban itself isn't very biggest.
Speaker 1: So when we use that six eight, we're using the
Speaker 1: spacing that's required between the turbans because it can't be
Speaker 1: too close to each other. They essentially have to be
Speaker 1: about a thousand feet apart. So it's the project area
Speaker 1: we're using for wind. So for some species, the fact
Speaker 1: that there's a turban there and there's a sprinkling of
Speaker 1: turbans across the landscape not a big deal. But if
Speaker 1: you're a bird or a bat, it could be a
Speaker 1: big deal. Um. And so you know their differential impacts
Speaker 1: to uh, these these technologies. So that's that's another thing
Speaker 1: we have to think about an account for. Remember when
Speaker 1: everybody's kind of realizing the damage that cigarettes cost, and
Speaker 1: then you had tobacco companies that would really want to
Speaker 1: like obfuse skate right what exactly was going on with
Speaker 1: tobacco to the point where it became a joke. And
Speaker 1: then you've had historically, we've had oil companies that wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of obfuskate some of the realities around oil.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that the renewable industry is is maybe
Speaker 1: hoodwinking people a little bit, like maybe obfu skating a
Speaker 1: little bit of what they're talking about, or do you
Speaker 1: feel that they're trying to deal in a way that
Speaker 1: they're like, this is what it will require, this is
Speaker 1: what it will look like, or are they a little
Speaker 1: bit of shape, Like are you a little bit like
Speaker 1: are you embarrassed about the numbers at all? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: I mean the numbers are what the numbers are in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, our companies obfu skating the reality
Speaker 1: of what's going to happen. Uh. You know, I can't
Speaker 1: speak to the motivations of all companies. Companies have different motivations.
Speaker 1: I think some of them truly are focused on the
Speaker 1: social and environmental benefits. Yeah, but let's face it, I mean,
Speaker 1: companies have to make money. They have to make a profit.
Speaker 1: In order to be in that business. And an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about renewables is where is the money coming from
Speaker 1: that's driving all this investment. Ten trillion dollars going to
Speaker 1: go into renewable energy over the next several decades. A
Speaker 1: big chunk of that money is coming from oil and
Speaker 1: gas companies because they know what's coming. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a different world they're gonna have to operate in, and
Speaker 1: so they're hatching their bets and they're investing substantially and
Speaker 1: in renewable energy, along with lots of other folks, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, including myself. Um so, uh it's hard to
Speaker 1: you know, lump everybody together and say they're they're all
Speaker 1: in cahoots trying to hug with us. No, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, uh they are. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the history of energy now, we've progressively gotten better,
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean, we we went from wood, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we cleared New England. There wasn't a tree
Speaker 1: growing in New England by about eighteen thirty because we
Speaker 1: had chopped everything down to burn it for charcoal or
Speaker 1: of course clear it for farming. And and yeah it's
Speaker 1: our whale I got. I mean, so yeah, wood wasn't
Speaker 1: a very sustainable thing. We had to come up with
Speaker 1: something else and we did, right, and that was coal.
Speaker 1: So coal was the next thing we did, and so
Speaker 1: um so we did that for a century. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, we started to like, well, you know, there
Speaker 1: are some real problems with coal. I mean, there's arsenic
Speaker 1: there's there's you know, sulfur dioxide. Remember the remember the
Speaker 1: acid rain thing back in the ages. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard about acid rain recently? Why? Why don't? When I
Speaker 1: was in grad school, that was like a huge topic.
Speaker 1: That's what you know, drove a lot of the ecological
Speaker 1: research community. By the way, I'm a forest ecologist by training,
Speaker 1: I'm not an energy guy, so you know, but real quick, Uh,
Speaker 1: what happened to acid rain again? Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: stopped burning coal. I mean it's a big part of
Speaker 1: We use sulfur's dioxide, you know, scrubbers to keep nitrous
Speaker 1: uh oxide and sulfur dioxide out of the air. But
Speaker 1: a big part of it is is because of the
Speaker 1: burning of coal, is has been reduced over the last
Speaker 1: several decades. It seemed like during the last presidency you
Speaker 1: heard a lot about clean coal. Can you explain, like
Speaker 1: what that is what someone means when they're referring to
Speaker 1: clean coal and the reality of it. Spencer trying to
Speaker 1: get in there, see that totally. How you know? So,
Speaker 1: Um again, I'm a forest ecologist, I've gotten I've been
Speaker 1: immersed and energy development for a couple of decads. I
Speaker 1: can get to that in just a moment. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, there are ways to reduce the the various
Speaker 1: side effects of burning coal, right, I mean things like
Speaker 1: scrubbing the air to get uh, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides,
Speaker 1: arsenic mercury. But the more you do that, the more
Speaker 1: expensive it becomes. And one of the reasons why coal
Speaker 1: has become less and less competitive economically is the cost
Speaker 1: of dealing with those things that are in coal that
Speaker 1: are harmful to both human health and the environment. So
Speaker 1: that's where they point out, that's where they point out
Speaker 1: that regulations are killing the coal industry. Yeah, well, because
Speaker 1: if it was just unfettered coal burning, it would be
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper than when you make certain stipulations about
Speaker 1: what you can and can't do. Correct. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be cheaper, it's still be arguably it'd still be expensive
Speaker 1: for a whole bunch of reasons. But yeah, there's no question,
Speaker 1: you know, society has made the judgment the right one.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, we can't tolerate having unfettered
Speaker 1: burning of fossil fuels with no attempt to curb you know,
Speaker 1: they're really damaging side effects of burning fossil fuels. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no question that burning fossil stuff creates
Speaker 1: you know, a slew of of toxics that go into
Speaker 1: the air and go into the water, and and are
Speaker 1: you a real threat to human and environmental health? But
Speaker 1: aren't we looking at um? God? I feel like there's
Speaker 1: so many misnomers with green and clean and just Noman's
Speaker 1: really telling the we're the truth that, as you said,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a free lunch. You know,
Speaker 1: who's looking into what do you do with solar panels
Speaker 1: after they've run their life cycle? Or battery powered cars?
Speaker 1: Maybe we're not burning you know, fossil fuels, but what's
Speaker 1: you know, when are where are those Where are we
Speaker 1: going to bring those things? Where are we gonna where
Speaker 1: are they going to break down? What kind of environmental
Speaker 1: impact will they have later on? Like we won't maybe
Speaker 1: have them in our backyard country is will we be
Speaker 1: disposing of them in That's that's the thing I've been
Speaker 1: trying to introduce. A conversation we're trying to introduce in
Speaker 1: my family is, um, everything your kids go to now,
Speaker 1: anything they go to they come home with a stainless
Speaker 1: steel water bottle. As But it's like we have this
Speaker 1: idea that like the salvation of the world is from
Speaker 1: like the whole point that whole thing is that you
Speaker 1: get one and you hang on to it. But they've
Speaker 1: become almost like disposable, and I think that like people
Speaker 1: feel better about themselves doing that. But that ship comes
Speaker 1: out of the ground. Man, But it's all nonsense, Like
Speaker 1: I missed the milkman. Like everyone's talking about recycling. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy space, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of processing and processes to also recycle. Oh god, I'm
Speaker 1: just you. It makes you. That's kind of what I
Speaker 1: meant about the stainless steel bottle thing, is like it's
Speaker 1: like it's hard to it's you want to make it
Speaker 1: all super simplified, like plastic bottles, you know, are bad. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of reasons, like with with plastic
Speaker 1: and the oceans, right, there's all kinds of reasons to
Speaker 1: be down on plastic bottles, But I don't know that
Speaker 1: the answer is that every family has sixty merch you know,
Speaker 1: stainless steel bottles in there the cupboards, which is which
Speaker 1: is where my family went. Hey, Steve, you know I'm
Speaker 1: I'm drinking out of the same coffee thing that my
Speaker 1: brother gave me ten or twenty years ago. Now, by
Speaker 1: the way, it's good. Congratulates got a Yellowstone cutthroat. They're
Speaker 1: just congratulated. I try, I try to. I have this
Speaker 1: trusty cup. You'll see that I try to use. But
Speaker 1: I do see that people are like, it's you can
Speaker 1: fall into this thing where like, oh no, I'm rehabilitated.
Speaker 1: I now have eighty stainless steel containers and I lose
Speaker 1: one every but I'm not feeding into the bottlest at
Speaker 1: a time. No child is okay, no school event right
Speaker 1: has somebody distributing the stainless steel bottle, looking each child
Speaker 1: in the eyeballs and going, this is now your drinking about.
Speaker 1: It can hold many things. It is yours. Do not
Speaker 1: lose it. And if you ask the child, do you
Speaker 1: I want you to ask yourself, do you really need
Speaker 1: this stainless steel bottle, to which they will say, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's absolutely true. We live in a throw away society, right.
Speaker 1: But seriously, I think there's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: focus moving forward with these technologies to find ways to
Speaker 1: recycle them. For one thing, you know, you could save
Speaker 1: money just recycling batteries. For example, lithium and other rare
Speaker 1: earth metals that go into batteries that are you is
Speaker 1: now by cars and your cell phone sitting on the
Speaker 1: table are are expensive, really expensive. And so if we
Speaker 1: can find ways to recycle those batteries, if we can
Speaker 1: find cheaper components for those batteries, there's you know that
Speaker 1: the sixty four million, maybe billion dollar question is scalable
Speaker 1: cheap battery storage. And you know there's there's a hot
Speaker 1: technology race on around the world define cheaper, less impact
Speaker 1: ways to develop battery storage. There's some really promising research
Speaker 1: out there that suggests we can get beyond some of
Speaker 1: the rarers, including lithium, but we don't know, we don't
Speaker 1: have enough experience. There's it's too early in the R
Speaker 1: and D phase. But all I can say is there
Speaker 1: is going to be a lot of focus and attention
Speaker 1: on getting cheaper and less impactful ways of developing these
Speaker 1: technologies over time. I think the same as going to
Speaker 1: be true for you know, wind turbine blades. And you
Speaker 1: know one thing that's going on in the wind industry
Speaker 1: now is you know some of these wind turbines have
Speaker 1: been out there for twenty years. You know, they were
Speaker 1: one or one and a half megawatts. Now we're doing four.
Speaker 1: So how do they repurpose those twenty year old turban
Speaker 1: towers and get new blades on those things that are
Speaker 1: more efficient, can generate more energy, so we don't have
Speaker 1: to go out and build another turban and just leave
Speaker 1: that other one there, take it down and try and
Speaker 1: dispose of It's like, how do we reuse recycling cost?
Speaker 1: It's like we want really long lasting batteries. Yeah, we like,
Speaker 1: that's what I want because it's like the cost of recycling,
Speaker 1: like it's, uh, the input can outweigh the output of recycling,
Speaker 1: and then it's like what is the point. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's why recycling everything every place that always makes sense.
Speaker 1: Like right here in Bosen, right you cannot recycle glass.
Speaker 1: Why is that? Because you have to take it to
Speaker 1: Spokane or Denver to get rid of it. I mean
Speaker 1: that means putting it in a truck hauling a long ways.
Speaker 1: It costs a lot of money and it used a
Speaker 1: lot of fuel, So not a good idea. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, loom when i'm cans, yes, I mean let's
Speaker 1: do that. There are places that will recycle that. They
Speaker 1: are much more affordable and don't require the kind of
Speaker 1: energy that's required of glass, for example. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we have to use our our noggins when we
Speaker 1: think about these things. There's not always one solution, you know.
Speaker 1: We have to think about what the right solution is
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time. We'll think
Speaker 1: about what Karen said, right, It's like I think of
Speaker 1: salmon and damns again. Right. I know from doing a
Speaker 1: lot of my own construction that when I tear apart
Speaker 1: of house, all that lumber that's been sitting there forever,
Speaker 1: if I rip all the nails out and put that
Speaker 1: lumber back in a house or in to the new
Speaker 1: addition of the house, or into whatever I'm working on
Speaker 1: in the house, that is way better than me going
Speaker 1: down to the lumberyard and buying a brand new wet
Speaker 1: two by four. Who does that? I do know I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, but I also know that if you want
Speaker 1: to talk about green, clean energy, a protein source that
Speaker 1: can replicate itself, move halfway around the fricking globe, and
Speaker 1: then bring itself all the way back inland, that is renewable,
Speaker 1: that people can eat off of the entire way you
Speaker 1: have done responsibly. Salmon seems pretty damn green and clean.
Speaker 1: Now that's a hell of a pitch for a farmer.
Speaker 1: Be like, I got this idea. But that giant live
Speaker 1: stock right, you don't even touch. Yeah, it goes out
Speaker 1: into the ocean, it comes back all fat and good.
Speaker 1: No one does ship and we eat it, pluck a
Speaker 1: few off as it come by, and leave, leave enough
Speaker 1: so we can keep going up. But then you have
Speaker 1: the superstructure in the middle right that there, My god,
Speaker 1: the initial cost of putting that thing there. Uh, it
Speaker 1: seems that it would also be very beneficial to have
Speaker 1: that thing there in some capacity and renew it in
Speaker 1: a way that offset that mitigates that cost somehow while
Speaker 1: still allowing this miracle of protein to flow past at
Speaker 1: both downward and upward. Right, And then you look at
Speaker 1: brand new clean energy like this. The startup cost is
Speaker 1: is the hard part right, and it's like, just like
Speaker 1: those oil pads and gas pads, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of roads, probably a lot of chain link fencing
Speaker 1: that does not do a lot of good things for
Speaker 1: animals either. And then we talked about the space, right,
Speaker 1: so it's like like, how do we find our cake
Speaker 1: and eat it too? Yeah, and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 1: We need that. Let's take a step back. The reason
Speaker 1: why we think clean energy is so important is because
Speaker 1: climate change really threatens the mission that we have, which
Speaker 1: is sustaining lands and waters that all life needs to exist.
Speaker 1: And the number one threat habitats, wildlife, ultimately uan society
Speaker 1: faces is runaway climate change. The climate is changing at
Speaker 1: between one hundred and a thousand times faster than it
Speaker 1: has in millennia m eons. So we are compressing a
Speaker 1: huge amount of climate change into a very short period
Speaker 1: of time, a period of time that species and habitats
Speaker 1: will not be able to adapt to unless we slow
Speaker 1: it down. Uh. You know, living here in Montana, we
Speaker 1: can see it just in the last few years. You know,
Speaker 1: last year we had a record snow pack in a
Speaker 1: bunch of western Montana by June when the runoff normally peaks, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't go fly fishing in June in Montana.
Speaker 1: That was always you know, as a kid growing up
Speaker 1: in North Dakota, we come out to Montana to go
Speaker 1: fly fishing because it's not very good in North Dakota.
Speaker 1: And and but you know, you wouldn't come in June
Speaker 1: because the water was always too high. You know, when
Speaker 1: the water peak last year, it was like the middle
Speaker 1: of May. And that's tip that's going on across the
Speaker 1: West right now, is that we are seeing the runoffs.
Speaker 1: So we're getting about the same amount of snow at
Speaker 1: least here. I mean further south that's not so true.
Speaker 1: But but here the northern Rockies, you know, we've been
Speaker 1: doing fine on annual snow pack and maybe even a
Speaker 1: slight increase. The problem is it's a running off a
Speaker 1: lot sooner. And so what does that mean hoodol restrictions.
Speaker 1: I'm the kid, you never heard of anything called the
Speaker 1: Hoodalo restriction. For those of the uninitiated, that means you
Speaker 1: can't fish. You can't fly fish for trout, for cold
Speaker 1: water species in the afternoon because they get stressed out
Speaker 1: because the water temperatures get up to the upper sixties
Speaker 1: low seventies, and you know, if you're a trout, you know,
Speaker 1: you depend on cold water because cold water has enough
Speaker 1: oxygen that you're used to, that you've evolved to. If
Speaker 1: the water gets above a threshold. You know, some trout
Speaker 1: like yellowstone cutthroats have a fairly low threshold in the
Speaker 1: upper sixties. You know, brown trout can tolerate into the
Speaker 1: you know, load amid seventies, but at some point you
Speaker 1: reach a temperature where the trout just can't exists. And
Speaker 1: certainly moving around and getting caught for example, um on
Speaker 1: one of those really warm afternoons is really stressful and fish,
Speaker 1: you know, have been shown not to survive that stress
Speaker 1: very well, and they it kills, you know, So they
Speaker 1: might survive that day to live another day, you know,
Speaker 1: if they don't get stressed out because they're being caught
Speaker 1: that afternoon. So those hood our restrictions. I looked online
Speaker 1: just trying to track how many of those have been
Speaker 1: imposed in Montana and whether there's some trend. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find any data on that, but just from my own
Speaker 1: personal experience, that's been going up right, and we have
Speaker 1: more and more days look at fire seasons you know,
Speaker 1: the fire season across the West has now been extended
Speaker 1: by weeks to several months, depending on where you are,
Speaker 1: even here in Montana, you know, I mean last fall
Speaker 1: there were wildfires, not just grass fires, but wildfires in
Speaker 1: four settings in November and December. That's almost unheard of.
Speaker 1: I mean, these changes are happening now. Um. So the
Speaker 1: reason why we're so devated, uh to advocate for clean
Speaker 1: energy is because of that underlying problem. Do you foresee
Speaker 1: that your organization, the Nature Conservancy? Uh? Will you guys
Speaker 1: turn nature conservancy lands over to renewable energy production? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: with possibly some exceptions. We own, for example, agricultural lands
Speaker 1: that are a buffer around to preserve that we might own,
Speaker 1: and you know, it might actually be better to have
Speaker 1: solar panels there then having a farmer dro corn there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean growing corn caused some erosion. You know, they
Speaker 1: might be using pesticides that might be a problem for
Speaker 1: insects or birds or whatever. So maybe solars a better
Speaker 1: use of that, But it would be an extremely limited circumstances.
Speaker 1: And in fact, actually we're looking we own two and
Speaker 1: a half million acres across the United States, so it's
Speaker 1: it's receivable that we would have some places that might
Speaker 1: be what we would call low impact for renoubal energy.
Speaker 1: But your lands are not. Your lands are not the
Speaker 1: kind of compromised landscapes that converting. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of our lands are really the ecological gems that are
Speaker 1: out there, right, I mean we need conservancy. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we have about preserves across the United States. By the way,
Speaker 1: you can hunt fish on over a million acres and
Speaker 1: we have yeah, yeah, I mean here here a couple
Speaker 1: of examples. One is the Big Two Hearted Preserve in Michigan,
Speaker 1: you know where uh the Nick Adams stories by Ernest
Speaker 1: Hemingway or said, you know, we own a preserve there
Speaker 1: and you can go fly fishing right there where you
Speaker 1: know Hemingway at one point slowly fishing. And then we
Speaker 1: have someplace called the Silver Creek Preserve in Idaho, which
Speaker 1: actually was the last place at Hemingway lived and unfortunately
Speaker 1: committed suicide. But you could go fly fishing or duck
Speaker 1: hunting there. And so any way, so we yeah, we
Speaker 1: owned about a million a half acres I mean two
Speaker 1: and a half million acres um. We've acquired another fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen million acres nationwide that we've transferred to state
Speaker 1: and federal agencies of vast majority of that's open to
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing too. So yeah, yeah, So, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of those lands went to state you know,
Speaker 1: wildlife management areas, or they went to the US four
Speaker 1: Service and they went to the Fish and Wildlife Service
Speaker 1: or the Bureau of Land Management. You know, some hard
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I didn't know that you guys did
Speaker 1: land transfers. They put land into public estate. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we we Most of the LANDWA acquire ultimately ends
Speaker 1: up residing with a public agency and open access. Do
Speaker 1: you know that about the nature conservans? To be honest, no,
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I wasn't hip on the on the I
Speaker 1: know of some some cases, but I didn't know that
Speaker 1: that was. Um, I guess a pillar of the you
Speaker 1: hold two and a half million, but you guys have
Speaker 1: transferred somewhere around fifteen million acres. Okay, Yeah, I pres
Speaker 1: spent more time on Nature conservancy land than I thought maybe. Um.
Speaker 1: But by the way, before you go charging into a
Speaker 1: nature conservancy preserve, you contact the program ahead of time
Speaker 1: to make sure it's because some places are really sensitive
Speaker 1: and you know there's species out of that are sensitive that,
Speaker 1: you know, make it hard for us to have public
Speaker 1: access to those places. So they're in Michigan. We found
Speaker 1: We were hiking one time on a nature conservancy property
Speaker 1: and found a bunch of spawn and bluegills on a pond.
Speaker 1: I got a little nervous about it and did some
Speaker 1: checking around. This is not by Traverse City. Did some
Speaker 1: checking around and turned out that we were allowed to
Speaker 1: go fish those bluegills, and we did, but we checked
Speaker 1: with a fly rode within that no cooking worm man, Okay,
Speaker 1: that giling that out there. We were interesting. Here's why.
Speaker 1: Here's why we got to think. And you couldn't. We
Speaker 1: thought you couldn't because no one was And be like,
Speaker 1: how could it be the all these blue girls are
Speaker 1: in here, like spawning in plain sight and no one's
Speaker 1: angling form. It must be that you're not allowed to.
Speaker 1: But it's just that everybody else made the same mistake
Speaker 1: we made, assuming that you couldn't. Yeah, well, always check
Speaker 1: with your local nature conservancy, uh program? Yeah we did
Speaker 1: and it was cool. Okay, what else? Give us a
Speaker 1: final give us a final thing, man, like, let's do this. Oh,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this too. The thing I
Speaker 1: mentioned GM. Yeah, when they said, Okay, everybody acted like
Speaker 1: it was all over the news, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: that it felt that ambitious. What was the year twenty fifth, fifty? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's like thirty five or something like that.
Speaker 1: And they're you know, they're not the only car company
Speaker 1: making that commitment. I mean, Evolve, Toyota, I think Forward
Speaker 1: as well. You know, they've all made commitments to essentially
Speaker 1: completely replace internal combustion engines with electric or other non
Speaker 1: fossil fuel based technologies, you know, sometime in the next
Speaker 1: two decades. And the reason it doesn't surprise me is
Speaker 1: twofold one is the the economics of it are getting
Speaker 1: better and better. So, you know, it used to be
Speaker 1: the only electric car you get out There was a
Speaker 1: Tesla that costs you a hundred grand. Uh. Now you
Speaker 1: can get cars that are thirty five grand, thirty grand um.
Speaker 1: And when you know, obviously if you have a federal
Speaker 1: tax credit, that makes it even more attractive. So you're
Speaker 1: getting to the point where those vehicles are starting to
Speaker 1: be competitive. You're also are getting batteries that enable you
Speaker 1: to power more kinds of vehicles. You know, it used
Speaker 1: to be, you know, it would just cars, sedans, um,
Speaker 1: that would be manufactured as electric vehicles. Now we have
Speaker 1: a whole set of you know, pickups and SUVs that
Speaker 1: are going to be coming out that are electric powered.
Speaker 1: And they have and here's the second reason. They have
Speaker 1: some real advantages over our conventional internal combustion engine cars
Speaker 1: in the following sense. They almost require no maintenance, very
Speaker 1: little maintenance in contrast to internal complexity. You don't have
Speaker 1: to change the oil. Um, you may have gear trains
Speaker 1: that are much simpler. You actually have a motor that's
Speaker 1: in each wheel. You don't have, you know, a transmission
Speaker 1: system with linkages and things that actually make the engine
Speaker 1: less efficient in delivering power to the wheels. You actually
Speaker 1: have an electric engine or motor with each wheel. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have that kind of less cost of ownership over time.
Speaker 1: So that makes them more affordable. And I think where
Speaker 1: you're going to see the biggest progress with electric vehicles
Speaker 1: before they become more widespread with the public is with fleets. Right.
Speaker 1: So fleet uh, company companies that have large fleets, let's
Speaker 1: say FedEx or Ups for example. Yeah, they have all
Speaker 1: these trucks and vehicles that are out there making deliveries
Speaker 1: every day. They typically are out there for two d
Speaker 1: miles or something or less every day, and they require
Speaker 1: a lot of maintenance for all those vehicles all the
Speaker 1: time because it's stop and start driving, which is hard
Speaker 1: on internal combustion vehicles, and so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: maintenance required. So the idea of having an electric vehicle
Speaker 1: that you know has dramatically less maintenance means you have
Speaker 1: a much lower cost again of ownership of that fleet,
Speaker 1: and so that could be very attractive to a fleet owner.
Speaker 1: So that's where you're gonna see. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of these technologies really get further refined, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna see it proliferating more and more into the public
Speaker 1: space where people who are motivated by something beyond carbon
Speaker 1: footprint are going electric just because it makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it is today, but increasingly, I i'd predict
Speaker 1: in the next five to ten years, you know, the
Speaker 1: the fact of car people are gonna be buying is
Speaker 1: going to be electric because it's it's the same price
Speaker 1: as an internal combustion and it doesn't have all the
Speaker 1: maintenance problems. And I was I was in a nice
Speaker 1: one recently, and my god, the acceleration, it's awesome through
Speaker 1: the like put your eyeballs in the back of your
Speaker 1: head and made my daughter very nervous. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: these cars typically can go zero to was in a
Speaker 1: like a souped up tesla, but it's like it's unsettling.
Speaker 1: My dollar thought we were doing something wrong. The the
Speaker 1: the rate at which we got to the speed limit
Speaker 1: made her feel that there was like that we were
Speaker 1: going to get a ticket. It was incredible. Anyways, So
Speaker 1: GM will sell only zero emission vehicles by um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess that like that could happen. That's
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out. I was like, are
Speaker 1: they Here's I was trying to figure out and I
Speaker 1: never read enough about it. When GM made that announcement,
Speaker 1: was one day some guys saying, huh, you know, at
Speaker 1: the rate we're going and the way the markets are,
Speaker 1: I bet you by this will be the truth. Or
Speaker 1: did some guys say it like let's push for this
Speaker 1: goal and the engineers are like, can't be done, and
Speaker 1: they're like, my god, we can do it. We put
Speaker 1: a man on the moon. Like I'd love to know
Speaker 1: like how the conversation went. If it was more like
Speaker 1: it's just where everything's headed. There's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: We'd laying there anyway. But let's hey, I wasn't in
Speaker 1: the GM board room and then made that decision, But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure there were conversations about that, and
Speaker 1: I think it was both what's the competitive future, you know,
Speaker 1: who are we competing against, because you know, before GM
Speaker 1: there were other major manufacturings making that commitment. But I
Speaker 1: think it was also just a recognition that the technologies
Speaker 1: are improving. They can start to envision the scalability of it,
Speaker 1: the affordability of it, and it becomes more and more
Speaker 1: clear that, yeah, that is the way to go. What's
Speaker 1: interesting is, you know, during the last administration, administration you know,
Speaker 1: really wanted to try and roll back the clean energy
Speaker 1: standards for cars, for vehicles in California, right the Cafe standards,
Speaker 1: And actually a lot of the vehicle manufacturers said, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't do that. We're actually on track to, you know,
Speaker 1: to meet those standards and exceed them. In fact, we
Speaker 1: think that's a good thing competitively for us to be
Speaker 1: able to do that, because we're gonna be competing with
Speaker 1: cars from Japan and from China and from Europe where
Speaker 1: they are doing that stuff. And if we're not doing
Speaker 1: that stuff, We're gonna be caught uncompetitive at least with
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. So we need to keep
Speaker 1: up with the competition. As we record this, there's blackouts
Speaker 1: happening at across Texas and the Dakotas. How would things
Speaker 1: be better or worse if we relied more on renewable energy.
Speaker 1: I think actually it would be better. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: Um So, first of all, let's recognize what's driving the blackouts. Now.
Speaker 1: It isn't simply that you know, wind turbans are iced
Speaker 1: up and can't move. I mean here in Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: you know we have wind turbans, you know, many many
Speaker 1: thousands of them, no problem in the wintertime, and that's
Speaker 1: because they're winterized and they're you know, they're they're prepared
Speaker 1: to deal with that kind of client tech as they're not.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in Texas, natural gas plants and coal
Speaker 1: plants and nuclear plants aren't either, and those shut down
Speaker 1: way more than winded according to Aircott report I heard yesterday.
Speaker 1: And so you know, natural gas lines are freezing going
Speaker 1: into plants. Coal piles are frozen so hard they can't
Speaker 1: get the coal move to put it on the conveyor
Speaker 1: belt to take it into the plant, and water cooling
Speaker 1: systems at nuclear plants are frozen because again they're not insulated,
Speaker 1: they're not winter rised, they're not used to those kind
Speaker 1: of temperatures. The other reason why Texas is experiencing the
Speaker 1: energy blackouts that it's seeing currently is because they have
Speaker 1: a grid that's unto themselves. It's you know that the
Speaker 1: Energy Reliability uh system AIRCOT, it's called that's a grid
Speaker 1: manager and it's only Texas. It does not connect to
Speaker 1: the rest of the country. If they had a grid
Speaker 1: system that actually we're better interconnected. Uh, there would be
Speaker 1: energy from other parts of the company that come the
Speaker 1: country that could come into Texas. Stuff here man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, there's there's you know, private independence and ownership,
Speaker 1: but ultimately that is gave gave up. But actually we're
Speaker 1: gonna be better off as a country building out renewables
Speaker 1: and increasing grid connectivity so we can move energy around
Speaker 1: more easily around the country so that we can get
Speaker 1: stuff to where it needs to go when it makes sense. Again,
Speaker 1: this goes back to it's cloudy sometimes, it's dark every day, Um,
Speaker 1: so we need to have a mix of energy in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, all interconnected, and they can flow
Speaker 1: around the country to where it's most needed. That's going
Speaker 1: to be part of the renewable energy solution that will
Speaker 1: actually help us. Well. We have things that can drive blackouts,
Speaker 1: like these big energy are these big climate impacts like
Speaker 1: we're seeing in Texas today with the cold weather, or
Speaker 1: like we saw in California last year with all the
Speaker 1: heat and the fires, which by the way, it wasn't
Speaker 1: solar projects that couldn't generate energy. It was forest fires
Speaker 1: burning transmission lines that actually were set by transmission lines
Speaker 1: arcing UM. And a big part of why the California
Speaker 1: system experienced so many problems last year was because of
Speaker 1: transmission lines. You haven't heard that conspiracy that it's um
Speaker 1: Israeli lasers you gotta get you got you hip to
Speaker 1: the news man, Jewish lasers. That's not I mean, let's
Speaker 1: make sure we're accurate, isn't Isn't that though? Mining for
Speaker 1: a lot more copper and digging up a lot more
Speaker 1: ground put all that connectivity in there. Yeah, Like I'm
Speaker 1: just so, there's no there's no I think the moral
Speaker 1: of the story is be more like and be more
Speaker 1: conscientious like Cal and live like Buck Bowden in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, and you'll let your kids when they
Speaker 1: leave their closet light on. What is this gonna do
Speaker 1: to the trade in value of my Toyota tundra? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm about about the time GM is making that switch.
Speaker 1: Is about the time we'll be looking for a new
Speaker 1: rail cal traded in fast. I mean it's still be
Speaker 1: good for a while, all right, Uh Okay, how do
Speaker 1: people go Let's say they wanted to go read up
Speaker 1: on this and you guys have do you have the
Speaker 1: sort of policy stance or like, where do people go?
Speaker 1: They're like, man, I need to find out or I
Speaker 1: need to refute this guy or whatever they want to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll provide Coren some links that you can load up
Speaker 1: so that any reader, any of the listeners out Derek
Speaker 1: and follow up and learn more about some of the
Speaker 1: solutions that we're working on. And um, you know I
Speaker 1: talked about the mining the son. Another one that we're
Speaker 1: working on is is you know what about marginal agricultural lands?
Speaker 1: You know, what role could they play? And one farmer's
Speaker 1: marginal is another farmer's you know, best place, but you know,
Speaker 1: for example, yea, we irgate a lot of land in
Speaker 1: the west for alfalfa, you know, and some of that
Speaker 1: land is really poor productivity, and the water is extremely
Speaker 1: valuable for lots of things besides the low value crop
Speaker 1: like alfalfa. Maybe you know, maybe we should put solar
Speaker 1: there instead of alfalfa and the fish benefit, people benefit, um,
Speaker 1: the rancher gets more money. Money might maybe more money.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, we have a place where we're not
Speaker 1: going to fight over you know, something going on the
Speaker 1: ground there because uh you know. So those are the
Speaker 1: solutions that I like. That kind of thing in there, man,
Speaker 1: like where they do. Like a guy's already doing it.
Speaker 1: He's using water. He walks away. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is true or not. He walks away with more money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, less water gets used. We think that there
Speaker 1: are win win situations out there, and we think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Actually, let's figure out where they
Speaker 1: are and how we unlock those places. Let's do that
Speaker 1: so we can spend less time fighting over it and
Speaker 1: more time hunting and fishing in the places that we
Speaker 1: love to go. This alfalf will deal. You better talk
Speaker 1: to Mark Kenyan because he probably likes those he likes
Speaker 1: those alfalfa fields. Tail. Hey, I'm not saying get rid
Speaker 1: of all of them, right, I mean we still malfalf out.
Speaker 1: There is gonna be an anti renewable crusader once you
Speaker 1: start talking about ruining all of his lfalfa fields. All right, uh,
Speaker 1: Nels Johnson, thank you very much for joining us, the
Speaker 1: North American Energy Program director at the Nature Conservancy. And
Speaker 1: if you, even if you don't realize that you have
Speaker 1: probably been on some of their properties. I know I have.
Speaker 1: I sure have killed an elk on one. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: going well. I'd i'd like to point out to cal
Speaker 1: you gotta seek a deer on one. Oh I did
Speaker 1: get a seekret deer on one. Yes, all right, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, appreciate you coming on. As things shake out,
Speaker 1: we'll hopefully we'll have you back to explain where we're
Speaker 1: at in the future. All right, body else, all right,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Thanks