Brent Bennett – TPPF Joins Houstons Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Five fifty two here in Houston's boring news. That's zero.
You're it all the time. We wish wall, we want
to achieve net zero. Vice President Kamba Harra supports a
net zero energy policy. What does that mean other than
a war and gas and oil? Bren Bennett joins us
at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. What the world does
net zero really mean when you get right down to.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It, Brent, Hi, jam, We good to join you this morning. Now,
net zero is you know, net zero carbon emissions, and
typically it's by some date, you know, whether it's twenty forty,
twenty fifty, whatever. The Greenier Deal was net zero by
twenty thirty, which they've kind of given up on now
because we're too close to twenty thirty. But the real
origin of the idea was the Paris Climate Accords in

(00:38):
twenty fifteen, where they needed some kind of goal. You know,
it's not a scientific goal, it was a political goal.
They needed something to shoot for us. They said, well,
let's shoot for you know, zero carbon emissions by twenty fifty,
which would get us to only two degrees of warming,
you know, and there's nothing magic about two degrees. Two
point one degrees is not the world, like the world's
going to end?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Can kind of do that? Can it? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Exactly, I mean it's it's so there's there's no like,
there's no real like science behind it. And it was
a political goal that was created to give you know,
the people crafting the Paris of Climate A Cords something
ain't at right, something to talk about. So that's that's
kind of now it's morphed into this whole movement of sorts,
uh to you know, bring us down to that zero

(01:25):
when there's no cost benefit to that, right, There's there's nothing,
there's nothing, there's no you know again, there's no like
it's absolute all or nothing, right, So you don't get
to that zero in the world ends.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
So the end result of this is, i mean the
Paris Accords, China famously would not sign it. You've got China, India,
you've got bricks countries, everybody except the Western world going
ahead and doing whatever carbon emissions they want to do,
whether it's coal, which is you know, dirty desk, but

(01:58):
natural gas whatever. It's only the Western world And what
does that mean to us?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, And a lot of it is designed around, first
of all, controlling our energy system, right, that's a lot
of the politics is aimed towards and the policy goals
are aimed towards. You know, you can't you know, you
can't drive gas vehicles, you can't do this, you can't
do that. And it's also around wealth redistribution.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
The big part of the Paris Climate Courts was was creating
a fund which has not really been done a little
bit yet but everyone's kind of balking it paying into it.
It's creating a fund to basically transfer money to developing
nations to help, you know, supposedly improve their climate resilience.
So that's you know, those are really the two kind
of the politics behind is really aiming towards that. There's

(02:45):
not it's not about carbon missions really, when you get
down to.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
No, it's about control. You're absolutely rights about control. The
question I would have is, and I think this is
further proof of it. If it was really about saving
the planet, then we would have spent the billion of
dollars necessary to put charging stations all around the country
before trying to get people to buy evs. But we
clearly didn't do that, So it's set up for failure

(03:08):
right from the beginning, right.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
And and we would have we would have been building
nuclear a long time ago, because that's the most effective
way to decarbonize the grid. But instead we're throwing you know,
the Inflation Reduction Act, those billions, hundreds of billions of
dollars at you know, a bunch of technologies that we
know aren't going to completely eliminate.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
This Really, is this really about redistribution of wealth when
we go right down to it.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yes, yeah, h it's about you know, distributing wealth from
you know, favored unfavored parties to favored parties, right, and
and and through that gaining political power. Right. That's that's
kind of what you know, money is power, right, So
there's when you're giving away money, you're you're creating power
bases for you know, more votes for X.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Y Z. Right.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
So that's that's really that's really what it's about when
you get on to it.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well, hope our kids figure that out someday they've been
brainwe Yeah they have. Brent, Thank you, whus always appreciated.
Brent Bennett from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It's five
fifty six