Hudson Institute: Brigham McCown EV Policies Are Hurting America

Episode Transcript

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Five KRS the talk station seven ohsix. Here attty five KRC detalk station.

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I'm very happy Tuesday to you.Inside scoop is Bright Barton News eight
oh five talk about the debate,preview with Emma Joe Morris, political letter
in the meantime. I am pleasewelcome back to the fifty five KRS Morning
Show. Brigha McGowan, Senior Fellowand Director of Initiative on American Energy Security
at the Hudson and See, whichyou can find online at Hudson dot org.
Brigha McGowan, always a pleasure tohave you on the fifty five KRSS

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Morning Show. Hey Brian, goodmorning. It's great to be here with
you. Brother. Now you arean owner of an electric vehicle, and
we'll talk about that a little bit. I saw your op ed piece reckless
electric vehicle policies pose a threat tonational security. I have long time.
I am out loud said it.I may be a heretic. I am

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not a believer in the religion.I don't believe that we are exhaling ourselves
into devastation. I just don't believethat. I think this is a made
up reality for control and manipulation.Of the populations for nefarious reasons that are
unsaid. But since volcanoes and wildfiresput more carbon into the world than any
effort to negate carbon production that weimpose upon ourselves, it seems like a

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zero sum gain if anything. Inoted that the fossil fuel and CO two
emissions hit a record high in twentytwenty three in spite of the green efforts
engaged in by let's cut our throatWestern countries. Because of course, fossil
fuel consumption in China and India keepsincreasing, negating any efforts that we make

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to reduce it. And as youpoint out in your reckless electric vehicle policy
post threats to national security, thiseffort to put us all in electric vehicles
makes China more powerful every single day, since they control we're all the vast
majority of all things that go intoelectric vehicles. What's the point of all
of this? Bringham A Cowan,Yes, Brian, you're spot on as

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always. I mean and and thisis it if you think about it.
The talking points might resonate with moststubs. Hey, we want to clean
up our our environment, okay,cool? We want better air, Yeah,
I'm for that. We'd like betterwater. Okay, I'm for that
too, right, It's been along time since the Cuyahoga has been on

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fire though, no offense to ourfriends at the weather end of the state.
And we have the cleanest air.We now have the cleanest air in
the cleanest water on record since theEPA was born. I guess if you
will, created in the Nixon administration, and you know, the real issue

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is this. People want to liftthemselves out of poverty. They want to
use energy, and we are usingmore energy, not less energy. I
argue, we're in the midst ofan energy expansion, not necessarily an energy
transition. And to the extent that, yeah, our fuel mix is going
to change over time as we figureout reliable and affordable ways to use other

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things. But it's not overnight.And government policy makers where this administration can't
write a policy that wills it intoexistence because physics and science, you know,
they eat policy for lunch every dayof the week. And to your
point, we just got out ofthe Arab boil embargo, made ourselves self

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sufficient, got off of all ofthese dependencies, and now this administration wants
us to turn to China to produceeverything. It's it's even a worse dependency.
Didn't we learn something from COVID nineteenthat everything that we rely on to
live, thrive, and survive apparentlyis manufactured in China, most notably the

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vast majority of our pharmaceuticals, whichour military also relies on to keep them
healthy. I just don't understand this. Well. You know, we came
into the relationship with China by allowingthem Most Favored Nation trading status, getting
them into the World Trade Organization.We thought that by connecting our economies,

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we could change the communist philosophy andwe could bring them into our way of
doing business. But here's the thing. They don't have the same values that
we do. They don't believe inthe same You can't even own property or
land, the very basic candata theWestern legal system in China. Hence they

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don't respect intellectual property. We've beennaive at best to think that we can
somehow convert all of these people intowhat they call the colonial world order.
They're not on board with us,So will we stop treating them like,
oh, they have the same valuesas we do. This is not going
to work. Well, doesn't anybodyremember Teneman Square. I mean in my

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recollection that was it didn't feel likeit was that long ago. We looked
at those folks fighting for freedoms andliberties that we have and that mock up
of the Statue of Liberty, andwe thought, Hm, this may be
the turning point when China does gofull on sort of open market and transforms
itself into something other than a communistdictatorship. And no, we got a
hard crackdown murder of their own civiliansand a well a stronger increase in this

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sort of Marxist Mauise philosophy that they'vebeen operating under. We absolutely have,
and it's gotten so much worse underJijinping, the current ruler. And you
make a very good point. Ineed to separate people from China from the
Chinese conank you absolutely. Oh,you might be labeled a racist or a

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xenophobe or something, Brigham. Imean, that's the point. It's not
the Chinese people we dislike. It'sthe Chinese Communist Party and their oppression.
Yes, and you know, someof your listeners may be surprised to learn
that. You know, when wedo we do business in China, we
use a Chinese company to make whetherit's a Tesla battery or an Apple iPhone.

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Every Chinese company must swear allegiance tothe state, and that includes using
their company to provide information and nationalsecurity back to the state, i e.
They're all spying for the Chinese CommunistParty. It is so ingrained in
their whole society. There is noseparation between government and the private sector.

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It doesn't exist. No, that'sthey own the means of production. This
is what definitionally speaking, what youknow or communism is all about. The
government owns the means of production.You are merely a cog in the government's
wheel. I mean, we're movingthat direction more and more into our socialist
direction in our country, where westill believe we own the means of uction,

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but all the terms and condition ofour lives and how we run our
businesses are dictated by the government,which is fascism. Always cracks me up
breaking when they scream about Donald Trumpbeing a fascist, when this administration is
demonstrably more fascist than I think anyadministration I've ever lived under my life.
Well, I did mention just aguy. I agree with you, and
I mentioned just a couple of weeksago. You know, during the Bush

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administration. The Democrats went bonkers overwhat they perceived was Dick Cheney's view of
something called the unitary executive. Whatthese folks are doing today would make Cheney
look like a boy scout. Imean is it is unbelievable. And that's
where the EV policy comes in,because you're going to tell us all what

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kind of car you have to buythat? And you know, moving back
over to to China, they currentlycontrol the means of production, which is
all of the elements that go intothese batteries, the manufacturing process and all
that. So we're seeing ourselves torely on the Chinese to achieve this nirvana
that they want. But nobody isforcing China to abide by the green rulls

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that are pushing in this insurrection.They continue to consume more oil and more
coal, and build more coal plantsand build all of this technology using carbon
producing energy. It's just it's isthere really any benefit from operating an EV
when it's all built on coal that'sbelching out carbon into the environment. I

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just I don't believe this. No, because obviously the world in the atmosphere
is interconnected, and the China hasincreased carbon produce production pollution more than has
been offset by the West and theUS. We can hold our breads and
do nothing, but China and Indiaare exponentially off the chart and then less

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and until they change their deal,there's not a thing we could do over
here, Brian. But you andI will go to China and we'll just
we'll just talk to them. I'msure we can fill this, oh absolutely,
and there'll be more than please tosit down and have that conversation with
us, you know, Brigham,I I guess the other component of this,
and I don't understand it's the headsof the various unions that run the

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automobile manufacturers that embrace this kind ofcrap in spite of the fact that their
members are the ones that are goingto be out the jobs. You point
out in your article about Ohio beingthe number one in the nation for engine
production and the number two transmission producerin the country, and that we stand
to lose over one hundred thousand dollarsjobs just within the state of Ohio going

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down this road. Yes, andabsolutely, and you know it's something we
all need to be aware of.It's something we probably just don't think about
on a daily basis. And look, brit if any government were serious about
saying, well, okay, here'sour goal. You know, we need
to be a better stewards and theenvironment here, so we do great.
But then you don't say that lastpart and this is how you're going to

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do it. You say, let'sunleash American innovation. You figure out how
to cut emissions by building whatever kindof car you want, fueled by whatever,
and that's how it's done. Youdon't play winners and losers. That
is not what happens in a freemarket economy. But that's exactly what this

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government is doing. Well, perhapsit's because there are people like me and
a lot of us out here thatreject the idea that I should even be
concerned about the carbon production. Treeslive on it. You know, there
have been periods in times geologic historyis demonstrated in core sampling and bore sampling,
and the Arctic has demonstrated there havebeen periods in the globe's history.
We've had far far in access tothe amount of carbon in the environment,

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and apparently hasn't stopped our evolution.I'm thankful that it's warmer now than it
was, say ten thousand years agowhen a glacier covered the entire state of
Ohio. At least we can growcorn now, Brigham. Yes, and
the climate is changing. The climateis always changing. It's been warming since
the last ice Ice Age, whetheror not we contributed to it or can
do anything about it. But toyour point, and what are your listeners?

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Pointed this out to me that throughouttime humans have been here just for
a small blip, and the carbonfootprint of the Earth has been substantially higher
on average than it is today.And you know, if you own a
greenhouse, you know that you actuallypump CO two into the greenhouse because it
makes the plants grow more quill.You know, plants love it and in

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return they give us oxygen. It'samazing dynamic how God created the earth.
Brigham. Let's pause, we'll bringit back and we'll talk about longer commutes
and can you actually use an evwhen your commute is more than seventy fun
the Hudson Institute. Also a teacherat Miami University, Briga might just got
to point out, I'm old enoughto remember at least you know, when

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I was a child, the concernsyou peak oil had already been reached that
we were going to deplete the oil. We were running out and there wasn't
any more around, and we wereall going to have to move away from
it because simply it wouldn't be thereanymore as a commodity, global population and
an enthusian doctrine, we were allgoing to, you know, populate the
globe into mass starvation. That apparentlydidn't happen either. And then the other

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pesky elephant in the room for meon this energy is how come the environmentalists
who are so concerned about carbon don'tembrace nuclear power? Which modern nuclear pants
are small, easy to build,modular, so they work pretty much anywhere.
It's now one size can fit all. Nuclear waste is easily manageable under
modern with modern nuclear plants. Andyou know, it's an abundance of power.

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Isn't that what they don't want usto have? An abundance of power
because an abundance of power equals prosperity. You make a very good point,
and I'm not I can't tell youwhy. I understand some folks political philosophy,
but there is this notion and you'veseen it, frankly since the Obama

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years or what was called the Americanapology world tour, where we have to
be ashamed of ourselves for what wehave, for our progress, for American
exceptionalism. And you may remember whenadministration officials went around the world saying,
we're so sorry that we've been successful. Yeah, and it's this guilt of

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oh, we need to give away, we need to wealth transfer our money
to these third world nations because wehave to help them get better, instead
of leading from the front and sayingfrom an exceptional standpoint, from an innovation
standpoint, we can help you all. But we're not going to just give
money away. We're going to teachyou how to fish so you can fish
for yourself. That's really the differencein philosophy that we're talking about. And

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this administration is full of a lotof those Obama people and they think the
same way, and it's terrible,quite frankly, and I'd like to see
a change well that ultimately just createsa bunch of dependent class third world countries,
does it not? If they're notsharing in the technology, learning and

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growing on their own, they're merelystanding there with their handout waiting for the
next check or shipment of food.As the case may be. Yes,
And you know, those that believethat government is the answer, they want
that dependency on government right, theywant And frankly will even see this and
to some of my friends that arepopulous out there, you've got to be

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careful because bigger government is not theanswer. And I've been a little surprised
to how people on both sides theisle are embracing this notion of bigger government.
And I'm sure you've talked about we'vegot nearly a two trillion dollar deficit
this year. YEA for crying outloud one year alone. And this is
something that I cast blame on bothsides of the political ledger. Not one

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single administration I think in my lifetimehas done anything about reducing the national debt.
I mean not one Donald Trump A. It ran up what five trillion
under the Trump administration, and Biden'sgoing to blow that out of the water
with his four years and hopefully hedoesn't get four more. I mean,
I mean, if there is anexistential threat in global warming, it is
our overspending in government. It reallyis. And if you look at the

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polls, the number one threat thatAmerican voters agree on is securing our border,
immigration and illegal drugs flowing into thecountry. Climate change ranks down there
around eighth or ninth. Threats fromRussia and China rank much higher. A
lot of domestic policy agendas ranked muchhigher. But this is sort of some

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of my other friends will say,well, this is the Church of Green.
You know, it's an ideology.And you see this in Germany that
has turned off their nuclear power becauseof the Green Party and they've gone back
to cole to your point, andso, yes, we do need to
be building more nuclear plants. Andthe Congress, strangely and they vary bi

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parties away, just passed a billyto accelerate nuclear power. But you know
they say we need two hundred reactorsby twenty fifty. Frank, We've built
one in the last twenty years.Yeah, and you know they can say
all day long, Brigham, thatthey want to advance nuclear power. And
on the other side there is theEnvironmental Protection Agency and all these regulatory agencies

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which make it, i would argue, almost literally impossible to build one.
Every NIMBI lawsuit, every claim ofenvironmental damage that comes in, you're going
to have ten plus years worth oflitigation and it makes it almost worthless gesture
to even try to build one.It makes it impossible nearly do anything.
And actually it's about one point eightwe've almost built a second one. But

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anything we try to anything, wetry to do, the environmental laws,
the litigious society, we're trying tobuild a new electric transmission line, and
now they just suit over that yesterdaybecause you know, you can't build anything.
And this has got to change,because people are You and I are

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both lawyers, and we know ifyou don't get your way, there's somebody
that will represent you to sue somebody. And it's just yep, it's not
the way we should be doing.And an activist judge that won't chuck the
case out. Let's pause, We'llbring bring them back for one more.
We'll talk about the longer commutnit.So I'm sorry to take you down that
Lebron Thomas with Briga McGaw and,Senior Fellow Director of Initiative on American Energy

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Security at the Hunston Institute, alsoa political science professor at Miami University.
So could have Brigham on the programtalking about electric vehicles, and it was
interesting at moving over to the longercommute kind of throwing a monkey monkey wrench
in the whole idea of Agenda twentyone. COVID nineteen wrecked that concept.
They want to stuff everybody into citiesand the fifteen minute city where we all

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live on top of each other andride our bikes to wherever it is we
need to go. It's going theopposite direction is, as Anne Marie Checker
over It reported, America's commute gettinglonger and longer seventy five miles or longer,
actually increase pretty dramatically. That's along mute. Brigham, Yeah,

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it really is. And what WallStreet Journal report it is in the last
two years, our major metro areas, fifty six of them lost a total
of almost two million people. Yeah, that's after the beginning of COVID,
right, I guess it's during COVID. But people are fleeing the cities because
they don't like it, and they'reseeking better lives and places like Ohio and

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around our area and so, butyou know, there's this dynamic of how
many times you have to go intothe office, and people are willing to
commute longer under the theory they don'thave to go back every day, but
jobs are also leaving these cities justbecause of the tax policy, the security
situation, the legal system, thattax system, it is rebalancing itself.

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That is the exercise of free willright there. You know, It's something
that they left absolutely hates. Ifthey had their way, they would stuff
us all big cities for reasons unknownto me. All in the name of
all I don't know, going backto climate, religion or not. But
people want their freedom, they wanttheir liberty, and thank God for technology,
we now have the freedom and libertyto work elsewhere. My wife used

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to commute forty five minutes each directionto get to her law office. Well,
when COVID came down or came along, they shut down the office and
everybody's been working at home very happilyand successfully since then. She's been home
for like three years now, Brigham. It's worked out wonderfully. We save
money on gas, she doesn't havea laundry bill anymore. She gets to
do a little bit of gardening workon her breaks, and that makes her

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happy. I mean, it's justeverybody has benefited from this, at least
from my perspective. I think sotoo, And I think it's made these
smaller towns more resilient. I feellike a member of your community now because
you don't leave while it's dark andcome back home while it's dark. You
can actually be a member of yourcommunity. And I think for a lot
of cities in Ohio, having theenergy you need and the broadband that you

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need is actually going to do usvery well over the next generation. I
think more and more people are wantingthat quality of life, no doubt about
it. And I don't know ifyou saw it the other day. It
was the op ed piece by alist of Finley in the Journal was talking
about the difference between older voters andyounger voters. But insofar as the electric
vehicle is concerned, there was aMackenziean Company study found that fifty percent of

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American millennial EV owners say they're likelyto switch back to a gasoline car because
they can't charge at home. Mostof them can't afford home, so they
don't have their own home EV chargers, so they got to do it out
on the road or park it outon the street where there's no charger.
Ensuring an EV is a lot morethan ensuring a gas powered car because the
repair costs are so much. Thebatteries take too long to charge. Resale

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of the EV's has tanked. Theresol value has dropped substantially, way more
than the resoll values of gas poweredcars. They fall by thirty to thirty
nine percent. Prices for used evsten times more than gas powered cars.
So across the board, these arebeing rejected as impractical. Well, I

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think people have a lot of concernsand they're founded. You know, an
EV has fear moving parts, butthe parts it has are very expensive,
and repairs can be expensive if itis involved in a significant crash. To
your point, frankly, they're producingtoo many of them. They're sitting on
the lots thirty to forty five daysmore than a traditional car. Hybrids seem

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to be selling pretty well, andToyota may have actually gotten that right,
But look at that. It's noteither or it's kind of you know,
make your choice in between sometimes.But you know, I have one,
as you've mentioned, In fact,I drove it over here Brian this weekend.
I'm in DC today and set ofmy seven and a half hour commute
from Cincinnati to Washington. Because Itry to stay somewhere near the speed limit.

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It took nine and a half hmm. Just because I'm driving an EV
and I think it's great for aroundtown. You want to go fifty seventy
five miles a day, you havea place where you can plug it in.
Fine, but it's not the onlycar in the garage. And that's
what we are seeing is people thatare purchasing evs. It is not a

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primary car. It's a commute car. It's a golf cart. And my
mom and dad had golf My momand dad had one of their condo in
Florida. They take the golf cartover to the grocery store because it was
like, you know, three blocksaway. Fine, what are those circumstances?
That works out? Just dandy.But of course they had the SUV
in the garage. As you pointout, I don't know a single person

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who owns an electric vehicle that doesnot have something like an SUV in their
driveway. Also, well, rangeanxiety is real. And I have a
Tesla and they have a wonderful chargingnetwork. I can't imagine taking a non
Tesla away from Cincinnati and trying tofigure out how to charge it. I

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don't know how. You can't reallydo that, and you have to have
a place to charge it. Andif you don't have, if you're on
street parking, you don't have agarage, or you don't want to pay
a thousand dollars to put two twentyvolts into your garage to rerun the wiring.
It can be a problem, yes, it can. Anyhow, let

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us conclude our discussion today, bringhim down from the Hudson Institute about your
podcast Charged Conversations. Who you goingto be interviewing and who did you recently
interview in your latest Charge Conversation podcast? Brigham? Yeah, so I'd love
everybody to please subscribe to Charge Conversationswherever you find your favorite podcast. What
we've taken a look at this weekis something called bright Gen and Bright Loop

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Hydrogen Technologies. There is a professor, doctor fan Over at the Ohio State
Universities, originally from Taiwan, hasfigured out a way to use a process
called chemical looping, and you canlisten to the episode and it'll explain what
that means to burn whether it's coal, whether it's natural gas or other projects

(24:14):
without any emissions, and he caneven convert it into hydrogen. So an
Ohio company, Babcock and Wilcox Theyare an energy company that they built nuclear
power plants back in the sixties andseventies. They have licensed the technology and
they are moving forward to take histechnology and deploy it at commercial scale.

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It's fascinating. Check it out.Wow. It sounds transformative and allows us
to use the coal that so farwe're just selling to China so they can
burn it. Yes, Yes,indeed, bringa mccun I appreciate you being
on the program. It's always areal enjoyable conversation. Keep up the great
work at the Hudson Institute. I'lllook forward to another conversation with you,

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and I will encourage my listeners toget hooked up with charged conversations where we
get your podcast. Bringham, takecare of yourself, my friend. I'll
look forward to having you on soon. Thank you, Brian, My pleasure
seven forty fifty five KRC, thetalk station