September 8, 2025 • 41 mins
Ryan Girdusky and Daniel Turner dive into the explosive growth of data centers and the massive strain they place on America’s energy grid. They unpack how corporate influence and flawed green energy policies are driving up costs for citizens while failing to deliver reliable solutions. The conversation tackles the urgent need for sustainable energy strategies and exposes how corporate interests shape the future of energy production and consumption. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gerdusky. Thank
you all for being here again. Happy Monday, and it
is a happy Monday because we have new polling. I
will admit it's just internet polls, so that they're not
the greatest in terms of accuracy, but I have a
lot of issues with them, and I will be able
to show you how the cake is baked and give
(00:24):
you the kernels of truth to learn from so you
could see because they made a lot of news and
there are things to figure out from them, but it
will but they're not the greatest polster. So the first
poll that came out was a Surveying Monkey poll. It
was released by NBC News. There is a lot of
things in this pole, like are red flags. It is
(00:47):
like a date with a woman who doesn't blink and
already knows your mother's maiden name. It is definitely a
problematic poll, so first issue with it. The poll was
conducted from August thirteenth to September. First, remember poles are
snapshots in time. They are not predictors of the future.
So you want a limited time period for a poll
(01:09):
to be conducted. Write a poll should be done over
the course of a few days to at most a week,
not over several weeks, because you're not getting an accurate
opinion of things. Secondly, it was done by survey Monkey,
which is an internet pollster. They don't have a great
reputation in the business. What they can do successfully is
very large surveys. Right, so people think, oh, you get
(01:30):
such a big bang for your buck ause you're serving
thirty forty fifty thousand people. That's not the case. Survey
Monkey in twenty twenty four hit is seven point error
almost of their polls. They're a C. They have a
C grade as far as polsters go, which remember back
in high school sees you know they're not You can
graduate with them, but you can't actually make get anywhere
(01:51):
decent for college. So before I go any further with
the I want to go through the results. I want
before I sit there and mock the poll a little
bit more, but I want to go through the results.
The poll found President Trump has an approval rating of
forty three percent a disapproval rating of fifty seven percent.
Among the issues that Americans care about the most, the
economy came in first with twenty five percent, threats to
(02:11):
democracy with twenty four percent, and healthcare with seventeen percent.
President Trump's weakest issue, the poll found was inflation, with
only thirty nine percent of Americans approving of the job
he's doing on inflation. Sixty one percent disapprove. Okay, here's
how you know. The poll also has a problem with
sample size. When asked how they felt with the current administration,
(02:34):
seventy three percent of Republicans said that they had a
positive word like they were thrilled or they were excited.
Seventeen percent had a neutral word. That doesn't seem like
much of a reflec to me. But among independents only
eight percent had a positive word, which is way too
low to be an accurate poll, and thirty four percent
had that they were neutral on the administration, which is
(02:55):
way too high. Like that means you're either a over
sampling Democrats among the independents or B, which is the
case for this poll, you have too many people who
do not vote and don't pay attention to the news
being sampled. Forty one percent of people who responded this
pole so that they did not vote in twenty twenty four,
and over twenty percent were not registered to vote. So
(03:19):
poll is way too overrepresentative. People who don't vote, never
will vote, don't really follow the news, and kind of
go on vibes where they've heard in the media. It's
not accurate to the electorate or how people will be
changing their opinion over time. My guess is survey Monkey
did it and did not charge NBC for it, which
(03:40):
is why NBC released it. That's my own personal guest.
The other poll that came out this last weekend was
a you gov poll released by CBS. You gov is
another Internet poster, which a whole host of problems because
they only do Internet things. But the big takeaway from
this poll was that Trump's approting has gone up from
forty two percent in July to four twenty four percent augivets.
(04:01):
Support for tariffs, however, have slipped to a low of
thirty eight percent once again. Trump's weakest issue was on inflation,
and sixty percent of Americans that the economy was in
bad shape. When I asked how people are judging the
success or failure of the Trump administration, forty four percent
of Republicans, the largest Republicans, said they were judging based
(04:23):
on how he kept his promises around immigration. Twenty six
percent of independence tied between immigration and the economy slash
inflation in this sense, because Republicans are more focused on immigration,
they're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to
Trump on other issues because he's kept a lot of
his immigration promises. But fifty percent of Americans say they
(04:45):
are financially worse off, including fifty five percent of Independence,
especially on the issue of food prices. Now, once again,
these poles are Internet polls. They're not high quality polls.
You shouldn't take them as gospels, but there are kernels
of true there. Namely, fears over the economy, especially over inflation,
are real. They are really hurting this president's approval process.
(05:11):
And while the media tries to tie Trump down in
controversies that nobody cares about that, they love to obsess
over everything from what Elon's doing, to National Guards troops
to whatever the flavor of the moment to draw a
click clicks are for you know, Rachel Mattow viewers. That
is not what's driving negative approval of President Trump. It
(05:32):
is the cost of living and the cost of food.
And this is what Republicans need to address. A big
part of that that they are not addressing. That they
are not even talking about yet. Is that the is
that the Trump administration is going all in on AI
and tech companies. They think that this is the way
(05:52):
to solve a myriad of our national problems, especially growth,
especially job creation. Completely invested in this sector of the economy.
I personally believe and I have seen pulling on it,
that they are the Trump administration is very out of
step with the fears and the beliefs of the general public.
(06:15):
There's a general worry from Americans. Not the sky is
not falling, but they are concerned when it comes to
AI and technology. Everything from tech in the classrooms to
automation of jobs, to data collections of our health records.
There's just cause to be concerned. So recent polls like
Pew Research found that fifty one percent of Americans were
(06:37):
concerned about AI and seventy five percent, according to Gallup,
so that AI was going to reduce jobs, and Reuters
found that sixty one percent of Americans think that AI
could threaten humanity. These aren't great numbers when it comes
to an entire sector that members of the Trump administration
are saying, let's go pedal to the metal, let's completely
(06:57):
gamble on with no or limited regular And the problem
as of right now because they're betting that these medical
breakthroughs and all this other stuff, which there might be,
but the problem right now is energy costs that are
trickling into people's bills on their day to day life.
(07:18):
There could be a great future that comes from AI,
but look at what's happening right now in the New
Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. Right look at what the
main issue both Republicans and Democrats running for office are
talking about. Right when I had on, I had on.
Ryan Fazio was running for governor of Connecticut last week
(07:40):
on the show, What was the number one thing? He
was talking about? Electricity costs. Electricity prices have risen past
the rate of inflation for three consecutive years. Since twenty twenty,
electricity prices are up over thirty percent. Now, part of
that is because of overspending, because of COVID, there's too
(08:01):
much money in the system. We're seeing general inflation and
in some parts of our country it's because Green New
Deal policies didn't work to produce the level of energy
that they promised throughout the last twenty some odd years,
and they have made energy more expensive. That is all
part of it. But the bigger part that is recently
happening is the creation and the explosion of these AI
(08:23):
data centers, or just data centers on AI, but data centers.
According to the New York Times, data centers consumed four
percent of all electricity created in the United States in
twenty twenty three. That will jump to twelve percent of
all electricity created the United States by twenty twenty eight.
This isn't far off in the future. This is insane growth,
(08:48):
crazy growth, and that doesn't say anything about the water
being used to cool these data centers. A major data
center consumes up to five million gallons of water per day.
That's as much water as needed for a town of
fifty thousand people. Now, when you consider that these data
centers are propped up in states that are increasingly being
(09:09):
populated in areas that have large levels of droughts in
the South and in the Southwest, it makes this situation
even more problematic as those data centers continue to grow.
A June analysis from the Carnegie Mellon University and North
Carolina State University found that electricity bills are on track
(09:29):
to rise an average up eight percent nationwide by twenty
thirty and as much by twenty five percent in states
with large amounts of data centers like Virginia. Look, I'm
not a genius. I don't have many talents in this life.
But one talent I do is I can see political
movements starting from a mile away. Energy cost is the
(09:52):
populace uprising that no politician is yet jumping on. But
they will, They all will. This is going to be
the conversation for the twenty twenty six governor's races. For
the twenty twenty eight presidential election, someone will be talking
about this because these tech companies that make these data centers,
(10:14):
they're increasingly asking for tax cuts. They create virtually no
jobs outside of temporary construction jobs. And this increased costs
of these centers that produce virtually no jobs are being
consumed by taxpayers. And those just aren't just electricity costs.
Think of how this ripples through your average costs or
(10:36):
your daily life. What is the main driver of costs
when it comes to food. It's not labor, it's energy.
So while oil is fairly cheap to transport right now,
it's not as high as it was at other points
in our recent history. Electricity, which you need to keep
products and produce fresh, is more et more expensive, and
(10:56):
in fact, the rate of growth is increasing faster for
real than it is for your home. So where are
these costs going to be felt by consumers, by restaurants,
by all of these people in the food business. You know,
for as much as Presidents Trump's Trump's tariffs are being
blamed for rising costs, we grow most of our food
(11:19):
in America. They're not subject to tariffs, where the bread
basket of the world. So why are we seeing these
costs explode? Partially is the hangup of too much money
in the system and COVID and all the rest of
that stuff. I said, But the Walmart supercentre or the
costco or the publics that you're buying your groceries from,
they are spending more to refrigerate them, and they are
(11:41):
moving those prices onto you because we're all in the
same power grid. Everyone's using the site the same power grid,
and there's no sign that this is going to end.
My adoptive state of Louisiana is currently building one of
the largest data centers on the planet, enough to build
one hundred and seventy three souper domes empower two million homes.
(12:03):
And this is a META data center and Meta is
only required to share in the cost for fifteen years.
After that, most of the costs will be spread to
Louisiana taxpayers. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't have any
data centers. We obviously need them. But these are the
wealthiest companies on Earth. Some of these are the wealthies
(12:23):
companies that ever existed on Earth.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Why are they.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Receiving tax cuts to build these things? Why are we
as taxpayers being forced to subsidize things that are on
our grid. This is corporatism. This is corporate welfare at
its finest. And if you think that the Bernie Sanders
movement was big in twenty sixteen, wait until an elderly
person or working class people have to choose between heating
(12:46):
their homes this winter and paying their regular bills. As
data centers get up more and more of our energy.
This is the next populous fight that will happen by
the time twenty twenty eight comes around, if not sooner.
I do believe this will happen in most twenty twenty
six elections. We will be talking about electricity ANDAI data
(13:07):
centers are data centers, period, and this will be the
thing that people will jump on and blame the administration on.
And if we cannot reduce the costs of living in
this country, it will be very painful for a lot
of people, but especially for the Republican Party who is
in charge right now. My guest this week is an
(13:28):
expert on energy. He's coming on next to discuss what's
going with data centers and how it's going to be
affecting you and your pocketbook. That's coming up next with
me today to discuss this topic is Daniel Turner. He
is the founder and executive director of Power the Future
and his uncle is my old boss, Congressman Bob Turner,
(13:50):
a campaign I was very proud to work on back
like a decade ago. So Daniel, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Oh Ryan, it's great to be with you. And yeah,
longtime friends. So this is like a reconnection. I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Well anyone from Queen who grew up here as a
special person. So well. Your organization wrote a fascinating research
piece about the growth of data centers, specifically mentioning one
of the references they mentioned in the piece was about
the state of Virginia. You wrote that in data centers
could take a forty six percent of all electricity made
in the state by twenty thirty. What does that average
(14:25):
that kind of growth average out to the cost per citizen.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Our utility bills in Virginia are up thirty five to
forty percent, depending upon the part of the state. And yeah,
there's lots of reasons, and bad energy policy at the
national level can have some impact, but the main driver
is that we have roughly a third of the nation's
data centers are between my farm in Shenandoah and Washington,
(14:50):
d C. Every time I drive to DC for whatever reason,
I pass all these data centers, and the average data
center is the equivalent energy consumer of one hundred thousand homes.
And so when you look at our governor, who I
like very much, Glenn Younkin, but he's talked about how
(15:10):
we've built two hundred and something data centers while he's
been governor. And yes, there's tax revenue and job creation
and all that, but what he doesn't say is we've
basically added twenty three million Virginians in terms of energy
consumption and we haven't increased our energy production. So the
natural result when you have same supply and increased demand
(15:32):
is prices go up. And this is a crisis that's
going to hit nationwide. As we're building these data centers
left and right, we're not producing the energy to sustain
it well.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And it doesn't seem like these data centers make that
many jobs. There's only construction jobs, but long term jobs,
there's not a lot of jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
No, you're absolutely right. There are construction jobs, which are great,
you know if you're in that industry, and of course
there are suppliers and cement and steel and all that.
But then yeah, on the long term there's very few. Actually,
if anyone watched that great show Silicon Valley, there was
always that weird, creepy guy who worked at the data
center and in these huge cavernous halls and just one
(16:10):
strange guy, and that's kind of what it is. There's
four or five people who work there because that's what
they like about AI is that they don't require human
human labor. So yeah, there isn't long term job creation.
It's another reason why municipalities love them so much, because
they say, hey, look we're going to get this tax revenue,
but we don't have It's not like an Amazon fulfillment
(16:33):
center where you've got traffic now of nine hundred one
thousand additional cars. So you don't notice it on the roads,
but you notice it on electricity. Water also that's another podcast,
but both of them are now scarce because of these
data centers.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, okay, I have an opinion that part of the
reason that food costs have increased is because corporation like
to you know, Costco, Walmart, wherever you get your food publics,
you're in there in competition with these data centers for
electricity as well, and that's what you need to keep
produce fresh. Is that is are we seeing this filter
(17:13):
out by than just straight electric costs. Is the cost
of everything in our normal consumption lives also going up
because electricity and energy costs are going And this is a.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Huge vulnerability for President Trump because he ran on this
and he is not to blame. We put out another
study about called America's Coming Energy Crisis, and we made
it clear President Trump, this is not his fault, but
it is going to come to a head and his administration,
and he is going to get the blame if things
don't work out. So something like shutting down the border
(17:48):
happened pretty quickly, right within the first couple of days
it stopped. But reversing four years of bad energy policy
is not going to happen on a dime. It's going
to happen very very slowly. And when you make energy expensive,
you make life expensive. Because everything around us this podcast,
everything requires energy. Anything grown, manufactured, transported, refrigerated, all of
(18:11):
that requires energy. So from the very first kernel of
corn that that is planted and irrigated and harvested, your
diesel prices were through the roof for four years under Biden,
and that takes a while to trickle down. Right, we're
eating last year's food because we're harvesting this year is now,
so last year's we eat last year's corn that was
(18:31):
planted under really high energy prices, and the farmers are
going to pass on those costs. So it's going to
take a while to lower energy costs, and then it's
going to take even longer for those costs to get
felt by the American people.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
How much can our grid hold? Because that's we constantly
hear the grid is under so much stress. The grid
is under some much stress. I don't really know what
that means, and is there a limit to how many
more how much more energy the grade can sustain that
we're that it's going assuming yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
You know, again, this is just like any other unfixed
commodity that at a certain point, if the demand is
too high, collapses is absolutely imminent. And what happened in
the past. A lot of people comparing the AI data
revolution to the birth of the Internet in the late eighties,
(19:22):
early nineties, et cetera. And it's a little bit true,
but there's there's a magnitude of a scale of magnitude
when it comes to energy consumption. You also have to
remember when when the Internet was coming on board in
the nineties, that's when we decided to outsource all of
our jobs to China. So we were shutting down factories
in Toledo and Akron and sending our furniture makers from
(19:45):
North Carolina off to China when when the Internet was
coming on board, so it kind of averaged out. Now
we're bringing these jobs back. The President's trying to bring
manufacturing back, and we're building these data centers. And yeah,
the grid is a very very fixed amount, and the
electric grid isn't like your water supply. It's it's it's
(20:06):
kind of that. There's really almost no other analogous situation
of a pressurized system that when it collapses, it doesn't
just turn back on, right. You don't start a fire
and boil water and get the turbine spinning and you
have electricity. So when collapse happens, it is absolutely catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
How much does it's going to cost to keep up
the growth of electricity, especially from data centers, and how
much is that going to cast? The greatest is owned
by the government, so how much is that going to
cause tax payers to keep this growth that is required.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, well, we're, like I said, at thirty percent nationally,
thirty forty percent higher utility prices than we have been historically,
and I don't see them sadly dropping anytime soon because
we're not producing more immediately. We will over time. But
to build a coal plant, to build a natural gas
plant a nuclear plant takes a little while. So we're
(21:02):
not producing more in the immediate, but we are adding
an awful lot more in the immediate. So the equivalent,
for example, is the nuclear power plant that Governor Cuomo
shut down. Perfect example. We've called many times for Governor HOKEL.
To just put it back online. We've asked the White
House to use executive authority. And not that I love
(21:24):
the federal government sticking in its nose in states rights,
but this is an emergency. Right. That's a two thousand
megawatt facility that was just taken offline by Andrew Cuomo
for purely stupid reasons. He replaced it with nothing. He
promised wind, he promised solar, but nothing was replaced. So
(21:45):
what's the delta prices go up? Kathy Hochl has said
we're going to build more nuclear plants. Lovely, Why don't
we turn on the ones that have already been turned off?
Just put them back online?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Are we building more nuclear plants across the country?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Because I think there's permitting in place. But again, these
are five six year programs. And that's also the problem
of Joe Biden's four years of hiatus. Right. It's like
if you stop working out on or running on the treadmill. Right,
Like when you come back after four years ago into
the gym.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Something I'm very familiar about.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
All you don't pick right up where you left off, right, right,
You're back to zero. And when it comes to electricity
or energy written large this administration, if they can dig
us out of the whole Biden put us in, I
would give that an a where you haven't even made progress.
Just I think we are so far in this hole
(22:42):
that if Trump can get us to hear that's that's
a win in my book.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Is the is the whole partially responsible because during especially
during the Obama administration, but to continue to under Biden,
the America was hung up on this idea that green
energy would produce this men amount of a huge windfall.
And I'm not an expert on this field whatsoever, but
I do know a lot of corporations got a lot
(23:07):
of taxpayer dollars and didn't produce nearly anything that they promised.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
They you're spot on, right. We incentivized in the Obama
administration corporations to go green. We gave them enormous tax credits,
the whole ESG right, which was another one of those
acronyms like DEI just communism under a new brand, the
whole ESG Energy, Environment, Social Governance, et cetera. Right. We
(23:34):
told companies, hey, if you invest in a wind farm,
we will you know, tax credits, tax benefits, et cetera.
So yeah, corporations were incentivized to invest in a wind farm,
and then the politician got this talking point, look at
this wind farm that we've built, and isn't this great.
The problem is that the ratepayers are the ones who
got screwed. Right, the corporation's got the tax break, you
(23:56):
got your reliable coal plant shut down, and now you
have this crowd wind farm which is incredibly expensive to maintain,
only works fifteen percent of the time, and your rates
go through the roof. When it comes to the green
and this is this is an hour's long show I'd
love to do. But when it comes to going green,
I always say, find me any place in the world
(24:16):
that's worked, right, just show me. Look at Europe, look
at California, look at any place that says we are
the greenest. Does it work if work means less affordable
or more affordable, less expensive for the rate payers at
a more reliable grid. And there isn't a place in
the world that the more green you have, the more
(24:37):
it has worked. So they have to define work as investments. Right,
We've invested in remember the debate last year, Kamala Harris said,
we've invested a trillion dollars in the green economy, as
if that's like a win, like pissing away a trillion
dollars is somehow something that she applauds. I mean, I
could say I invested a trillion dollars in green hats
(24:58):
and now look everyone's got a green had. What the
hell did we accomplish? Nothing? And so the green movement
has no winds under its belt except for these fake metrics,
of which every communist movement has these same fake metrics.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Well, it seems like when I looked at a map
of energy price increases, blue states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York,
California have the high Hawaii especially have the highest rate
of cost increases. And I'm guessing this is just a guess,
but I'm guessing that is a lot to do with
their green new policies basically already increase the cause electricity
(25:36):
and now the AI data centers are just turbocharging it.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
It's a huge part of it. And to show you
that it's true bipartisan stupidity, Texas has higher than it
should electricity rates because Texas has hundreds of millions of
acres in West Texas that are not really productive land. Right,
you can't really raise a lot of cattle. You can't
really raise a lot of crops, but you can lobby
(26:00):
the governor to lease the land for wind farms, and
then you write a big check to the governor's re
election campaign, and the governor gets to say we are
the leading nation energy rich Texas, which has had grid
collapses in the past, the big one in twenty twenty
two when seven hundred and something people froze to death
in their house. No one famous, right, it wasn't wasn't
(26:21):
the governor's son who died. It was poor, a stless, nameless,
probably black and brown, you know, or illegal immigrants. No
one built them a damn statue. No one protested. But
Texas Republicans get to say, we are leading the world
in wind turbine but your average Texan pays thirty percent
more than they should for electricity, and the governor of
(26:43):
Texas not this year because they've had a mild summer, right,
so congrats on luck. But the governor in the past
has sent tweets like, hey Texans, the grids at a
strained level. We ask you to not use your washing machine.
We have what the hell world? This is Texas oil,
energy rich Texas is a leading example of green stupidity.
(27:06):
But they get the talking points, their buddies get the
tax benefits. So what do we care if the average
Texan gets screwed? And that's kind of how your government
looks at you in a general rule Republican or Democrat
has said, As much as I hate to admit it,
it is true bipartisan stupidity when it comes to green.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, and you mentioned water before. These data centers take
up an enormous level of water. As Americans have migrated
to the south, especially the Southwest, states like Texas that
don't have a ton of water to begin with that
are constantly in the national droughts. This can't make that
process any easier.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
No, And this is a huge concern I have, especially
as as a farmer where water is essential, and we
have all seen our creeks lower, our ponds lower. Why
because I said, we added the equivalent of twenty three
million people when it comes to energy and water consumption
in our state. And so yeah, this is a huge product,
(28:04):
a problem on the horizon. But again, these are the
things that aren't sexy to run on, right, run on.
We're going to bring in data centers and we're gonna
transgender sports and we're gonna and those are all important issues.
I'm not knocking them. The boring things that you ask
your government to do, which is grid and roads and infrastructure.
(28:26):
No one runs on those issues. We have a Google
and toroial race here in Virginia, and the trans movement
hopefully will get Abigail Spanberger kicked out because she's a
monster when it comes to mutilating children and boys and girls' sports,
et cetera. But a real concern for Virginia should be
these data centers, and no one's talking about it because it's.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
She's actually the first state wide Canada to even mention
data centers at all. I mean she's not talking about
a tom, but she actually referenced it. Because in New
Jersey they haven't brought up when some sears hasn't brought
it up, it is shocking that no one is talking
about and I think, you know, I mean it's not inconceivable,
but the next winter there will be elderly people on
(29:09):
fixed incomes have to choose how to heat their homes
if they can't afford the price of heat. And during
the Obama administration, when they're having all these green new deals.
We talked about corporatism, right, the fact that the corporations
have privatized privatize profits, but socialized losses. These AI centers,
(29:29):
to me look like corporatism in that sense, in the
sense that the taxpayers are footing the bill of the
wealthiest corporations that have ever existed, who should be building
their own grids of some sort to subsidize this immense
amount of cost and are reaping immense amounts of money
from it. I just think that it's I don't know.
(29:50):
To me, it's a very obvious populist wave that will
be a messaging thing come twenty twenty six, if not
soon a time this year.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
And the best example of that is what Microsoft announced
that they were opening Reactor TO at the famous Three
Mile Island Nuclear plant, and Microsoft is building an enormous
data center nearby. Governor Shapiro and Pennsylvania gave them all
the green lights, and everyone said, yeah, this is wonderful,
But well, why don't the Pennsylvanians deserve reliable, affordable nuclear Right,
(30:21):
No one opened up Reactor to for the good of
the people of Pennsylvania. They opened it because Microsoft asked
for it. To open. And you're right, this is a
huge risk that of corporations get to come into the
area and say we want a data center and we
want to build a coal plant. We're like, awesome. And
don't get me wrong, I love coal. But why doesn't
the government say we need a coal plant just because
(30:41):
we need to lower prices for our constituents.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And will the same will that energy sector they just
build in Pennsylvana. Will that equal one data center or
will they'll still be at a run at a loss.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I probably will be good for one data center and
then some because nuclear plants and reactor to will probably
put out six hundred megawatts, which is a lot of electricity.
But still no one thinks about doing these things for
the good of the people, right, No one thinks about
it widening the road for the You do it after
(31:14):
enough people bitch and complain about it, But no one
proactively says, let's make the let's make the Verrizonto free. Right.
No one ever does that because it's good for the people.
They only do it if if if you know, they're
they're pushed by corporations, or they just ignore it the
wills of the people. It's the same thing as like
we're going to make it a sanctuary city, and then
suddenly your kid is in class with forty kids that
(31:36):
don't speak English. No one cares about the school kids.
No one cares about you, the parent, Right, we care
about the talking point. We brought in a data center,
We became a sanctuary city, and the people suffer the consequences,
these secondary and tertiary consequences of bad policy.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Right, Well, Daniel, where can people go to see read
more of your your organization's work and read more of
your stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Or you know, if you have a question, Daniel at
Powerthfuture dot com shoot me an email. I'd love to
help you out.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
All right, thank you so much for coming this podcast, Daniel,
Great time.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Ryan, Thanks, good to see you.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky.
We'll be right back after this message. Now it's time
for Asking Me Anything segment. If you want to be
part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me Ryan
at Numbers Game Podcast dot com. That's ryanat Numbers Game
Podcast dot com. I love getting your emails. This email
comes from Connor from Western New York, New York. I
(32:32):
don't know why I just said New York like that
from Western New York. There's a few questions, so I'm
going to answer them. One, Western new York is largely
forgotten about in the context of national politics, especially because
it's a Ross Belt area of the Ross Belt.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Do you have any insights into future trends or political
history of this area. It's forgotten about when we talk
about the Ross Belt because it's in New York, which
is not a swing state. That's really the truth of
the matter. If it were if upstate New York or
its own state, it would definitely be talked about and
campaigned on more. But because New York State's population is
(33:06):
so concentrated in New York City, and the surrounding suburbs
of Long Island, Rockland and Westchester and Upstate has just
hollowed out. It just doesn't get the love and attention
it deserves. And Governor Kathy Hochle doesn't even give it
that much attention, and she's from there. So if New
York ever became a swing state, we would see efforts
(33:26):
to bring it in the fold and have that conversation.
But I think that because it's such a heavily unionized
state and it's an area where the governor's always resisting
any Republican efforts to do stuff on trade, especially President Trump.
It's just been kind of forgotten about. Unfortunately. That's just
I mean, but we'll seeing. I mean, New York did
move eleven points in the last election, so if it
(33:47):
moves seven more, it's swing state territory, and I promise
you Western Europe will be visited and talked about. Then
is there a question two? Is there any data on
how people vote that moved a different states, Like examples,
what are political characters of California or New York's moving
to Tennessee or Georgia. That's a great question. So this
(34:08):
thing that has talked about quite a bit by a
lot of people, there's a lot of like, especially as
Californian's move, there's a lot of like, don't California my
Arizona or my Texas. There has never been really strong
recent especially in the twenty twenty four election data to
look at how transplants changed elections. There was a little
(34:28):
bit in twenty twenty two. Because COVID was so feared
and fear bongered by the media, a lot of Democrats
didn't move to states like Florida because that a fear
for COVID and Republicans did from like the Northeast. When
it comes to interstate migration, there's actually a lot more
(34:50):
clear data, and this you can see in the twenty
twenty two New York State governor's election. During COVID, a
lot of people in Manhattan moved to the Hudson Valley
because they wanted like they wanted blue state laws around COVID,
but they didn't want to live in Manhattan, so they
moved to the Hudson Valley. And you can see in
the election results of the twenty twenty two governors race
(35:10):
the only part of New York State that got bluer
from the previous election was the Hudson Valley. Most people
keep their politics depending on regardless of what state they
moved to. They don't change state lines. And all of
a sudden, say, you know what that Barry Guldwater had
a point anyway, Okay, last question, he asked, I know
(35:31):
you've mentioned you are Catholic. Do you have a difficult
time watching the Republican Party so slowly dripped left on
social issues? Is there any data indicates some Republicans will
eventually sit things out of the party goes too far left,
so do I Okay, So first, is there any data? Yeah,
but there's no alternative right. So if there was an
(35:52):
actual third party that was very right wing on social issues,
that had a viable chance. But most people have a
football mentality when it comes to politics. It's my team
versus your team, and their team is far worse. And
I think because Democrats have moved so far left on
social issues to the point of like insanity, that even
with the Republicans no longer being the party of like
(36:14):
evangelicals of the two thousands, it's still the welcome party
me myself. Do I have a problem with it? No,
because I believe I'm a political animal and winning is
everything when it comes to politics. But you do want
people who reflect your beliefs, and I think that being
a pluralistic society that is less religious than it was,
(36:39):
I don't expect people to live under my many, many,
many wild beliefs. I have some beliefs that are definitely
out there for the average person. I'm not going to
expand on that because it's not worth it, because I'm
not here to try to convert everyone to the Church
of Brian Gerdosky. I think that I think that the
(37:02):
best thing that you could do as a religious person
is one the Republican Party should be tolerant and try
to leave people alone. Right. The fact that those nuns
are still being sued over not giving out contraception is ridiculous. Right,
you don't want that. You want a Republican party that
(37:23):
will defend the beliefs of religious people to practice and
worship and live as they as they as they want.
Because ultimately, the most oppressed person is the individual. Right,
that's the If you have an individual belief on anything,
you're more likely to be oppressed. But I think that
(37:44):
that is that's the most oppressed minority anyways, the individual.
I think that that is the I think that's the
most that they could hope for in a pluralistic society
that is less religious. And if we can protect the
rights of communities to have self determined nation that they
want to live in a certain way, they want to
have certain customs, then they should be allowed to. Right.
(38:08):
If a community in Kentucky wants a Christmas tree in
their public school, honestly, it should not be the government's
responsibility to knock down doors and drag and people out
and find people. You have to accept though, if that's
going to be your standard, that you have to be
okay when Muslims in large communities want to do the
(38:31):
same thing. Right, we don't live in a Christian nationalist nation,
despite the wishes of some people. We live in a
pluralistic society. So we want to respect individuals' rights to
believe and pray and everything, then we have to accept
them for all people. And I think that as an individual,
the most that I can do, and the most that
(38:55):
any of us can do, is to make sure the
institution that mattered to us are visited in our practice.
It's very sad when we see, like in western New
York there was a big cathedral, big Catholic cathedral that's
being torn down, partially because all the practicing Catholics left
the area and no one goes to the church anymore.
And but we see that throughout the entire world, where
(39:17):
people don't go to churches of all faiths, not just
Catholic faiths. The church is closed and they're demolished, and
something depressing is built there or more depressing. So the
littlest things that I can do that I think about
as a person of faith is go to my church,
put money in the thing every Sunday and participate. And
(39:38):
the most we can hope from I think the government
is to be left alone, but that involved alves also
winning elections, and you cannot run as a theocrat in
twenty twenty five America and hope to win. And the
alternative is Democrats, which do have a state religion that
they will push on you. So I know there's a
long winded answer, but that's what I think. I didn't
(39:59):
write an answer thoroughly out, but that's my opinion about it.
I'm not depressed. It is what it is, and I
just hope that individual communities can live as autonomally as
possible and we respect self determination. So all right, thank
you for listening to this episode. I hope you like it.
Please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
wherever gets your podcast. This Thursday episode is a special
(40:22):
tribute to nine to eleven. I'm having my mom on
who worked at the World Trade Center on the ninety
seventh floor of Tower one, So we're going to have
a conversation on the podcast. We very rarely I've ever
had in real life, and it will be good. I
think it'd be really important, esecially people who were too
young to remember it, to remember that day. And I'll
(40:44):
tell you about my experience being a teenager in New
York City and having parents who worked as cops and
in the World Trade Center, and my mom will come
on and talk about her experience working there, and yeah,
it'll be great episode. I hope you guys all listen.
Please like and subscribe, and I will see you on Thursday.
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gerdusky. Thank
you all for being here again. Happy Monday, and it
is a happy Monday because we have new polling. I
will admit it's just internet polls, so that they're not
the greatest in terms of accuracy, but I have a
lot of issues with them, and I will be able
to show you how the cake is baked and give
(00:24):
you the kernels of truth to learn from so you
could see because they made a lot of news and
there are things to figure out from them, but it
will but they're not the greatest polster. So the first
poll that came out was a Surveying Monkey poll. It
was released by NBC News. There is a lot of
things in this pole, like are red flags. It is
(00:47):
like a date with a woman who doesn't blink and
already knows your mother's maiden name. It is definitely a
problematic poll, so first issue with it. The poll was
conducted from August thirteenth to September. First, remember poles are
snapshots in time. They are not predictors of the future.
So you want a limited time period for a poll
(01:09):
to be conducted. Write a poll should be done over
the course of a few days to at most a week,
not over several weeks, because you're not getting an accurate
opinion of things. Secondly, it was done by survey Monkey,
which is an internet pollster. They don't have a great
reputation in the business. What they can do successfully is
very large surveys. Right, so people think, oh, you get
(01:30):
such a big bang for your buck ause you're serving
thirty forty fifty thousand people. That's not the case. Survey
Monkey in twenty twenty four hit is seven point error
almost of their polls. They're a C. They have a
C grade as far as polsters go, which remember back
in high school sees you know they're not You can
graduate with them, but you can't actually make get anywhere
(01:51):
decent for college. So before I go any further with
the I want to go through the results. I want
before I sit there and mock the poll a little
bit more, but I want to go through the results.
The poll found President Trump has an approval rating of
forty three percent a disapproval rating of fifty seven percent.
Among the issues that Americans care about the most, the
economy came in first with twenty five percent, threats to
(02:11):
democracy with twenty four percent, and healthcare with seventeen percent.
President Trump's weakest issue, the poll found was inflation, with
only thirty nine percent of Americans approving of the job
he's doing on inflation. Sixty one percent disapprove. Okay, here's
how you know. The poll also has a problem with
sample size. When asked how they felt with the current administration,
(02:34):
seventy three percent of Republicans said that they had a
positive word like they were thrilled or they were excited.
Seventeen percent had a neutral word. That doesn't seem like
much of a reflec to me. But among independents only
eight percent had a positive word, which is way too
low to be an accurate poll, and thirty four percent
had that they were neutral on the administration, which is
(02:55):
way too high. Like that means you're either a over
sampling Democrats among the independents or B, which is the
case for this poll, you have too many people who
do not vote and don't pay attention to the news
being sampled. Forty one percent of people who responded this
pole so that they did not vote in twenty twenty four,
and over twenty percent were not registered to vote. So
(03:19):
poll is way too overrepresentative. People who don't vote, never
will vote, don't really follow the news, and kind of
go on vibes where they've heard in the media. It's
not accurate to the electorate or how people will be
changing their opinion over time. My guess is survey Monkey
did it and did not charge NBC for it, which
(03:40):
is why NBC released it. That's my own personal guest.
The other poll that came out this last weekend was
a you gov poll released by CBS. You gov is
another Internet poster, which a whole host of problems because
they only do Internet things. But the big takeaway from
this poll was that Trump's approting has gone up from
forty two percent in July to four twenty four percent augivets.
(04:01):
Support for tariffs, however, have slipped to a low of
thirty eight percent once again. Trump's weakest issue was on inflation,
and sixty percent of Americans that the economy was in
bad shape. When I asked how people are judging the
success or failure of the Trump administration, forty four percent
of Republicans, the largest Republicans, said they were judging based
(04:23):
on how he kept his promises around immigration. Twenty six
percent of independence tied between immigration and the economy slash
inflation in this sense, because Republicans are more focused on immigration,
they're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to
Trump on other issues because he's kept a lot of
his immigration promises. But fifty percent of Americans say they
(04:45):
are financially worse off, including fifty five percent of Independence,
especially on the issue of food prices. Now, once again,
these poles are Internet polls. They're not high quality polls.
You shouldn't take them as gospels, but there are kernels
of true there. Namely, fears over the economy, especially over inflation,
are real. They are really hurting this president's approval process.
(05:11):
And while the media tries to tie Trump down in
controversies that nobody cares about that, they love to obsess
over everything from what Elon's doing, to National Guards troops
to whatever the flavor of the moment to draw a
click clicks are for you know, Rachel Mattow viewers. That
is not what's driving negative approval of President Trump. It
(05:32):
is the cost of living and the cost of food.
And this is what Republicans need to address. A big
part of that that they are not addressing. That they
are not even talking about yet. Is that the is
that the Trump administration is going all in on AI
and tech companies. They think that this is the way
(05:52):
to solve a myriad of our national problems, especially growth,
especially job creation. Completely invested in this sector of the economy.
I personally believe and I have seen pulling on it,
that they are the Trump administration is very out of
step with the fears and the beliefs of the general public.
(06:15):
There's a general worry from Americans. Not the sky is
not falling, but they are concerned when it comes to
AI and technology. Everything from tech in the classrooms to
automation of jobs, to data collections of our health records.
There's just cause to be concerned. So recent polls like
Pew Research found that fifty one percent of Americans were
(06:37):
concerned about AI and seventy five percent, according to Gallup,
so that AI was going to reduce jobs, and Reuters
found that sixty one percent of Americans think that AI
could threaten humanity. These aren't great numbers when it comes
to an entire sector that members of the Trump administration
are saying, let's go pedal to the metal, let's completely
(06:57):
gamble on with no or limited regular And the problem
as of right now because they're betting that these medical
breakthroughs and all this other stuff, which there might be,
but the problem right now is energy costs that are
trickling into people's bills on their day to day life.
(07:18):
There could be a great future that comes from AI,
but look at what's happening right now in the New
Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. Right look at what the
main issue both Republicans and Democrats running for office are
talking about. Right when I had on, I had on.
Ryan Fazio was running for governor of Connecticut last week
(07:40):
on the show, What was the number one thing? He
was talking about? Electricity costs. Electricity prices have risen past
the rate of inflation for three consecutive years. Since twenty twenty,
electricity prices are up over thirty percent. Now, part of
that is because of overspending, because of COVID, there's too
(08:01):
much money in the system. We're seeing general inflation and
in some parts of our country it's because Green New
Deal policies didn't work to produce the level of energy
that they promised throughout the last twenty some odd years,
and they have made energy more expensive. That is all
part of it. But the bigger part that is recently
happening is the creation and the explosion of these AI
(08:23):
data centers, or just data centers on AI, but data centers.
According to the New York Times, data centers consumed four
percent of all electricity created in the United States in
twenty twenty three. That will jump to twelve percent of
all electricity created the United States by twenty twenty eight.
This isn't far off in the future. This is insane growth,
(08:48):
crazy growth, and that doesn't say anything about the water
being used to cool these data centers. A major data
center consumes up to five million gallons of water per day.
That's as much water as needed for a town of
fifty thousand people. Now, when you consider that these data
centers are propped up in states that are increasingly being
(09:09):
populated in areas that have large levels of droughts in
the South and in the Southwest, it makes this situation
even more problematic as those data centers continue to grow.
A June analysis from the Carnegie Mellon University and North
Carolina State University found that electricity bills are on track
(09:29):
to rise an average up eight percent nationwide by twenty
thirty and as much by twenty five percent in states
with large amounts of data centers like Virginia. Look, I'm
not a genius. I don't have many talents in this life.
But one talent I do is I can see political
movements starting from a mile away. Energy cost is the
(09:52):
populace uprising that no politician is yet jumping on. But
they will, They all will. This is going to be
the conversation for the twenty twenty six governor's races. For
the twenty twenty eight presidential election, someone will be talking
about this because these tech companies that make these data centers,
(10:14):
they're increasingly asking for tax cuts. They create virtually no
jobs outside of temporary construction jobs. And this increased costs
of these centers that produce virtually no jobs are being
consumed by taxpayers. And those just aren't just electricity costs.
Think of how this ripples through your average costs or
(10:36):
your daily life. What is the main driver of costs
when it comes to food. It's not labor, it's energy.
So while oil is fairly cheap to transport right now,
it's not as high as it was at other points
in our recent history. Electricity, which you need to keep
products and produce fresh, is more et more expensive, and
(10:56):
in fact, the rate of growth is increasing faster for
real than it is for your home. So where are
these costs going to be felt by consumers, by restaurants,
by all of these people in the food business. You know,
for as much as Presidents Trump's Trump's tariffs are being
blamed for rising costs, we grow most of our food
(11:19):
in America. They're not subject to tariffs, where the bread
basket of the world. So why are we seeing these
costs explode? Partially is the hangup of too much money
in the system and COVID and all the rest of
that stuff. I said, But the Walmart supercentre or the
costco or the publics that you're buying your groceries from,
they are spending more to refrigerate them, and they are
(11:41):
moving those prices onto you because we're all in the
same power grid. Everyone's using the site the same power grid,
and there's no sign that this is going to end.
My adoptive state of Louisiana is currently building one of
the largest data centers on the planet, enough to build
one hundred and seventy three souper domes empower two million homes.
(12:03):
And this is a META data center and Meta is
only required to share in the cost for fifteen years.
After that, most of the costs will be spread to
Louisiana taxpayers. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't have any
data centers. We obviously need them. But these are the
wealthiest companies on Earth. Some of these are the wealthies
(12:23):
companies that ever existed on Earth.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Why are they.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Receiving tax cuts to build these things? Why are we
as taxpayers being forced to subsidize things that are on
our grid. This is corporatism. This is corporate welfare at
its finest. And if you think that the Bernie Sanders
movement was big in twenty sixteen, wait until an elderly
person or working class people have to choose between heating
(12:46):
their homes this winter and paying their regular bills. As
data centers get up more and more of our energy.
This is the next populous fight that will happen by
the time twenty twenty eight comes around, if not sooner.
I do believe this will happen in most twenty twenty
six elections. We will be talking about electricity ANDAI data
(13:07):
centers are data centers, period, and this will be the
thing that people will jump on and blame the administration on.
And if we cannot reduce the costs of living in
this country, it will be very painful for a lot
of people, but especially for the Republican Party who is
in charge right now. My guest this week is an
(13:28):
expert on energy. He's coming on next to discuss what's
going with data centers and how it's going to be
affecting you and your pocketbook. That's coming up next with
me today to discuss this topic is Daniel Turner. He
is the founder and executive director of Power the Future
and his uncle is my old boss, Congressman Bob Turner,
(13:50):
a campaign I was very proud to work on back
like a decade ago. So Daniel, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Oh Ryan, it's great to be with you. And yeah,
longtime friends. So this is like a reconnection. I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Well anyone from Queen who grew up here as a
special person. So well. Your organization wrote a fascinating research
piece about the growth of data centers, specifically mentioning one
of the references they mentioned in the piece was about
the state of Virginia. You wrote that in data centers
could take a forty six percent of all electricity made
in the state by twenty thirty. What does that average
(14:25):
that kind of growth average out to the cost per citizen.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Our utility bills in Virginia are up thirty five to
forty percent, depending upon the part of the state. And yeah,
there's lots of reasons, and bad energy policy at the
national level can have some impact, but the main driver
is that we have roughly a third of the nation's
data centers are between my farm in Shenandoah and Washington,
(14:50):
d C. Every time I drive to DC for whatever reason,
I pass all these data centers, and the average data
center is the equivalent energy consumer of one hundred thousand homes.
And so when you look at our governor, who I
like very much, Glenn Younkin, but he's talked about how
(15:10):
we've built two hundred and something data centers while he's
been governor. And yes, there's tax revenue and job creation
and all that, but what he doesn't say is we've
basically added twenty three million Virginians in terms of energy
consumption and we haven't increased our energy production. So the
natural result when you have same supply and increased demand
(15:32):
is prices go up. And this is a crisis that's
going to hit nationwide. As we're building these data centers
left and right, we're not producing the energy to sustain
it well.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And it doesn't seem like these data centers make that
many jobs. There's only construction jobs, but long term jobs,
there's not a lot of jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
No, you're absolutely right. There are construction jobs, which are great,
you know if you're in that industry, and of course
there are suppliers and cement and steel and all that.
But then yeah, on the long term there's very few. Actually,
if anyone watched that great show Silicon Valley, there was
always that weird, creepy guy who worked at the data
center and in these huge cavernous halls and just one
(16:10):
strange guy, and that's kind of what it is. There's
four or five people who work there because that's what
they like about AI is that they don't require human
human labor. So yeah, there isn't long term job creation.
It's another reason why municipalities love them so much, because
they say, hey, look we're going to get this tax revenue,
but we don't have It's not like an Amazon fulfillment
(16:33):
center where you've got traffic now of nine hundred one
thousand additional cars. So you don't notice it on the roads,
but you notice it on electricity. Water also that's another podcast,
but both of them are now scarce because of these
data centers.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, okay, I have an opinion that part of the
reason that food costs have increased is because corporation like
to you know, Costco, Walmart, wherever you get your food publics,
you're in there in competition with these data centers for
electricity as well, and that's what you need to keep
produce fresh. Is that is are we seeing this filter
(17:13):
out by than just straight electric costs. Is the cost
of everything in our normal consumption lives also going up
because electricity and energy costs are going And this is a.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Huge vulnerability for President Trump because he ran on this
and he is not to blame. We put out another
study about called America's Coming Energy Crisis, and we made
it clear President Trump, this is not his fault, but
it is going to come to a head and his administration,
and he is going to get the blame if things
don't work out. So something like shutting down the border
(17:48):
happened pretty quickly, right within the first couple of days
it stopped. But reversing four years of bad energy policy
is not going to happen on a dime. It's going
to happen very very slowly. And when you make energy expensive,
you make life expensive. Because everything around us this podcast,
everything requires energy. Anything grown, manufactured, transported, refrigerated, all of
(18:11):
that requires energy. So from the very first kernel of
corn that that is planted and irrigated and harvested, your
diesel prices were through the roof for four years under Biden,
and that takes a while to trickle down. Right, we're
eating last year's food because we're harvesting this year is now,
so last year's we eat last year's corn that was
(18:31):
planted under really high energy prices, and the farmers are
going to pass on those costs. So it's going to
take a while to lower energy costs, and then it's
going to take even longer for those costs to get
felt by the American people.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
How much can our grid hold? Because that's we constantly
hear the grid is under so much stress. The grid
is under some much stress. I don't really know what
that means, and is there a limit to how many
more how much more energy the grade can sustain that
we're that it's going assuming yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
You know, again, this is just like any other unfixed
commodity that at a certain point, if the demand is
too high, collapses is absolutely imminent. And what happened in
the past. A lot of people comparing the AI data
revolution to the birth of the Internet in the late eighties,
(19:22):
early nineties, et cetera. And it's a little bit true,
but there's there's a magnitude of a scale of magnitude
when it comes to energy consumption. You also have to
remember when when the Internet was coming on board in
the nineties, that's when we decided to outsource all of
our jobs to China. So we were shutting down factories
in Toledo and Akron and sending our furniture makers from
(19:45):
North Carolina off to China when when the Internet was
coming on board, so it kind of averaged out. Now
we're bringing these jobs back. The President's trying to bring
manufacturing back, and we're building these data centers. And yeah,
the grid is a very very fixed amount, and the
electric grid isn't like your water supply. It's it's it's
(20:06):
kind of that. There's really almost no other analogous situation
of a pressurized system that when it collapses, it doesn't
just turn back on, right. You don't start a fire
and boil water and get the turbine spinning and you
have electricity. So when collapse happens, it is absolutely catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
How much does it's going to cost to keep up
the growth of electricity, especially from data centers, and how
much is that going to cast? The greatest is owned
by the government, so how much is that going to
cause tax payers to keep this growth that is required.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, well, we're, like I said, at thirty percent nationally,
thirty forty percent higher utility prices than we have been historically,
and I don't see them sadly dropping anytime soon because
we're not producing more immediately. We will over time. But
to build a coal plant, to build a natural gas
plant a nuclear plant takes a little while. So we're
(21:02):
not producing more in the immediate, but we are adding
an awful lot more in the immediate. So the equivalent,
for example, is the nuclear power plant that Governor Cuomo
shut down. Perfect example. We've called many times for Governor HOKEL.
To just put it back online. We've asked the White
House to use executive authority. And not that I love
(21:24):
the federal government sticking in its nose in states rights,
but this is an emergency. Right. That's a two thousand
megawatt facility that was just taken offline by Andrew Cuomo
for purely stupid reasons. He replaced it with nothing. He
promised wind, he promised solar, but nothing was replaced. So
(21:45):
what's the delta prices go up? Kathy Hochl has said
we're going to build more nuclear plants. Lovely, Why don't
we turn on the ones that have already been turned off?
Just put them back online?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Are we building more nuclear plants across the country?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Because I think there's permitting in place. But again, these
are five six year programs. And that's also the problem
of Joe Biden's four years of hiatus. Right. It's like
if you stop working out on or running on the treadmill. Right,
Like when you come back after four years ago into
the gym.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Something I'm very familiar about.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
All you don't pick right up where you left off, right, right,
You're back to zero. And when it comes to electricity
or energy written large this administration, if they can dig
us out of the whole Biden put us in, I
would give that an a where you haven't even made progress.
Just I think we are so far in this hole
(22:42):
that if Trump can get us to hear that's that's
a win in my book.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Is the is the whole partially responsible because during especially
during the Obama administration, but to continue to under Biden,
the America was hung up on this idea that green
energy would produce this men amount of a huge windfall.
And I'm not an expert on this field whatsoever, but
I do know a lot of corporations got a lot
(23:07):
of taxpayer dollars and didn't produce nearly anything that they promised.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
They you're spot on, right. We incentivized in the Obama
administration corporations to go green. We gave them enormous tax credits,
the whole ESG right, which was another one of those
acronyms like DEI just communism under a new brand, the
whole ESG Energy, Environment, Social Governance, et cetera. Right. We
(23:34):
told companies, hey, if you invest in a wind farm,
we will you know, tax credits, tax benefits, et cetera.
So yeah, corporations were incentivized to invest in a wind farm,
and then the politician got this talking point, look at
this wind farm that we've built, and isn't this great.
The problem is that the ratepayers are the ones who
got screwed. Right, the corporation's got the tax break, you
(23:56):
got your reliable coal plant shut down, and now you
have this crowd wind farm which is incredibly expensive to maintain,
only works fifteen percent of the time, and your rates
go through the roof. When it comes to the green
and this is this is an hour's long show I'd
love to do. But when it comes to going green,
I always say, find me any place in the world
(24:16):
that's worked, right, just show me. Look at Europe, look
at California, look at any place that says we are
the greenest. Does it work if work means less affordable
or more affordable, less expensive for the rate payers at
a more reliable grid. And there isn't a place in
the world that the more green you have, the more
(24:37):
it has worked. So they have to define work as investments. Right,
We've invested in remember the debate last year, Kamala Harris said,
we've invested a trillion dollars in the green economy, as
if that's like a win, like pissing away a trillion
dollars is somehow something that she applauds. I mean, I
could say I invested a trillion dollars in green hats
(24:58):
and now look everyone's got a green had. What the
hell did we accomplish? Nothing? And so the green movement
has no winds under its belt except for these fake metrics,
of which every communist movement has these same fake metrics.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Well, it seems like when I looked at a map
of energy price increases, blue states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York,
California have the high Hawaii especially have the highest rate
of cost increases. And I'm guessing this is just a guess,
but I'm guessing that is a lot to do with
their green new policies basically already increase the cause electricity
(25:36):
and now the AI data centers are just turbocharging it.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
It's a huge part of it. And to show you
that it's true bipartisan stupidity, Texas has higher than it
should electricity rates because Texas has hundreds of millions of
acres in West Texas that are not really productive land. Right,
you can't really raise a lot of cattle. You can't
really raise a lot of crops, but you can lobby
(26:00):
the governor to lease the land for wind farms, and
then you write a big check to the governor's re
election campaign, and the governor gets to say we are
the leading nation energy rich Texas, which has had grid
collapses in the past, the big one in twenty twenty
two when seven hundred and something people froze to death
in their house. No one famous, right, it wasn't wasn't
(26:21):
the governor's son who died. It was poor, a stless, nameless,
probably black and brown, you know, or illegal immigrants. No
one built them a damn statue. No one protested. But
Texas Republicans get to say, we are leading the world
in wind turbine but your average Texan pays thirty percent
more than they should for electricity, and the governor of
(26:43):
Texas not this year because they've had a mild summer, right,
so congrats on luck. But the governor in the past
has sent tweets like, hey Texans, the grids at a
strained level. We ask you to not use your washing machine.
We have what the hell world? This is Texas oil,
energy rich Texas is a leading example of green stupidity.
(27:06):
But they get the talking points, their buddies get the
tax benefits. So what do we care if the average
Texan gets screwed? And that's kind of how your government
looks at you in a general rule Republican or Democrat
has said, As much as I hate to admit it,
it is true bipartisan stupidity when it comes to green.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, and you mentioned water before. These data centers take
up an enormous level of water. As Americans have migrated
to the south, especially the Southwest, states like Texas that
don't have a ton of water to begin with that
are constantly in the national droughts. This can't make that
process any easier.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
No, And this is a huge concern I have, especially
as as a farmer where water is essential, and we
have all seen our creeks lower, our ponds lower. Why
because I said, we added the equivalent of twenty three
million people when it comes to energy and water consumption
in our state. And so yeah, this is a huge product,
(28:04):
a problem on the horizon. But again, these are the
things that aren't sexy to run on, right, run on.
We're going to bring in data centers and we're gonna
transgender sports and we're gonna and those are all important issues.
I'm not knocking them. The boring things that you ask
your government to do, which is grid and roads and infrastructure.
(28:26):
No one runs on those issues. We have a Google
and toroial race here in Virginia, and the trans movement
hopefully will get Abigail Spanberger kicked out because she's a
monster when it comes to mutilating children and boys and girls' sports,
et cetera. But a real concern for Virginia should be
these data centers, and no one's talking about it because it's.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
She's actually the first state wide Canada to even mention
data centers at all. I mean she's not talking about
a tom, but she actually referenced it. Because in New
Jersey they haven't brought up when some sears hasn't brought
it up, it is shocking that no one is talking
about and I think, you know, I mean it's not inconceivable,
but the next winter there will be elderly people on
(29:09):
fixed incomes have to choose how to heat their homes
if they can't afford the price of heat. And during
the Obama administration, when they're having all these green new deals.
We talked about corporatism, right, the fact that the corporations
have privatized privatize profits, but socialized losses. These AI centers,
(29:29):
to me look like corporatism in that sense, in the
sense that the taxpayers are footing the bill of the
wealthiest corporations that have ever existed, who should be building
their own grids of some sort to subsidize this immense
amount of cost and are reaping immense amounts of money
from it. I just think that it's I don't know.
(29:50):
To me, it's a very obvious populist wave that will
be a messaging thing come twenty twenty six, if not
soon a time this year.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
And the best example of that is what Microsoft announced
that they were opening Reactor TO at the famous Three
Mile Island Nuclear plant, and Microsoft is building an enormous
data center nearby. Governor Shapiro and Pennsylvania gave them all
the green lights, and everyone said, yeah, this is wonderful,
But well, why don't the Pennsylvanians deserve reliable, affordable nuclear Right,
(30:21):
No one opened up Reactor to for the good of
the people of Pennsylvania. They opened it because Microsoft asked
for it. To open. And you're right, this is a
huge risk that of corporations get to come into the
area and say we want a data center and we
want to build a coal plant. We're like, awesome. And
don't get me wrong, I love coal. But why doesn't
the government say we need a coal plant just because
(30:41):
we need to lower prices for our constituents.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And will the same will that energy sector they just
build in Pennsylvana. Will that equal one data center or
will they'll still be at a run at a loss.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I probably will be good for one data center and
then some because nuclear plants and reactor to will probably
put out six hundred megawatts, which is a lot of electricity.
But still no one thinks about doing these things for
the good of the people, right, No one thinks about
it widening the road for the You do it after
(31:14):
enough people bitch and complain about it, But no one
proactively says, let's make the let's make the Verrizonto free. Right.
No one ever does that because it's good for the people.
They only do it if if if you know, they're
they're pushed by corporations, or they just ignore it the
wills of the people. It's the same thing as like
we're going to make it a sanctuary city, and then
suddenly your kid is in class with forty kids that
(31:36):
don't speak English. No one cares about the school kids.
No one cares about you, the parent, Right, we care
about the talking point. We brought in a data center,
We became a sanctuary city, and the people suffer the consequences,
these secondary and tertiary consequences of bad policy.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Right, Well, Daniel, where can people go to see read
more of your your organization's work and read more of
your stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Or you know, if you have a question, Daniel at
Powerthfuture dot com shoot me an email. I'd love to
help you out.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
All right, thank you so much for coming this podcast, Daniel,
Great time.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Ryan, Thanks, good to see you.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky.
We'll be right back after this message. Now it's time
for Asking Me Anything segment. If you want to be
part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me Ryan
at Numbers Game Podcast dot com. That's ryanat Numbers Game
Podcast dot com. I love getting your emails. This email
comes from Connor from Western New York, New York. I
(32:32):
don't know why I just said New York like that
from Western New York. There's a few questions, so I'm
going to answer them. One, Western new York is largely
forgotten about in the context of national politics, especially because
it's a Ross Belt area of the Ross Belt.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Do you have any insights into future trends or political
history of this area. It's forgotten about when we talk
about the Ross Belt because it's in New York, which
is not a swing state. That's really the truth of
the matter. If it were if upstate New York or
its own state, it would definitely be talked about and
campaigned on more. But because New York State's population is
(33:06):
so concentrated in New York City, and the surrounding suburbs
of Long Island, Rockland and Westchester and Upstate has just
hollowed out. It just doesn't get the love and attention
it deserves. And Governor Kathy Hochle doesn't even give it
that much attention, and she's from there. So if New
York ever became a swing state, we would see efforts
(33:26):
to bring it in the fold and have that conversation.
But I think that because it's such a heavily unionized
state and it's an area where the governor's always resisting
any Republican efforts to do stuff on trade, especially President Trump.
It's just been kind of forgotten about. Unfortunately. That's just
I mean, but we'll seeing. I mean, New York did
move eleven points in the last election, so if it
(33:47):
moves seven more, it's swing state territory, and I promise
you Western Europe will be visited and talked about. Then
is there a question two? Is there any data on
how people vote that moved a different states, Like examples,
what are political characters of California or New York's moving
to Tennessee or Georgia. That's a great question. So this
(34:08):
thing that has talked about quite a bit by a
lot of people, there's a lot of like, especially as
Californian's move, there's a lot of like, don't California my
Arizona or my Texas. There has never been really strong
recent especially in the twenty twenty four election data to
look at how transplants changed elections. There was a little
(34:28):
bit in twenty twenty two. Because COVID was so feared
and fear bongered by the media, a lot of Democrats
didn't move to states like Florida because that a fear
for COVID and Republicans did from like the Northeast. When
it comes to interstate migration, there's actually a lot more
(34:50):
clear data, and this you can see in the twenty
twenty two New York State governor's election. During COVID, a
lot of people in Manhattan moved to the Hudson Valley
because they wanted like they wanted blue state laws around COVID,
but they didn't want to live in Manhattan, so they
moved to the Hudson Valley. And you can see in
the election results of the twenty twenty two governors race
(35:10):
the only part of New York State that got bluer
from the previous election was the Hudson Valley. Most people
keep their politics depending on regardless of what state they
moved to. They don't change state lines. And all of
a sudden, say, you know what that Barry Guldwater had
a point anyway, Okay, last question, he asked, I know
(35:31):
you've mentioned you are Catholic. Do you have a difficult
time watching the Republican Party so slowly dripped left on
social issues? Is there any data indicates some Republicans will
eventually sit things out of the party goes too far left,
so do I Okay, So first, is there any data? Yeah,
but there's no alternative right. So if there was an
(35:52):
actual third party that was very right wing on social issues,
that had a viable chance. But most people have a
football mentality when it comes to politics. It's my team
versus your team, and their team is far worse. And
I think because Democrats have moved so far left on
social issues to the point of like insanity, that even
with the Republicans no longer being the party of like
(36:14):
evangelicals of the two thousands, it's still the welcome party
me myself. Do I have a problem with it? No,
because I believe I'm a political animal and winning is
everything when it comes to politics. But you do want
people who reflect your beliefs, and I think that being
a pluralistic society that is less religious than it was,
(36:39):
I don't expect people to live under my many, many,
many wild beliefs. I have some beliefs that are definitely
out there for the average person. I'm not going to
expand on that because it's not worth it, because I'm
not here to try to convert everyone to the Church
of Brian Gerdosky. I think that I think that the
(37:02):
best thing that you could do as a religious person
is one the Republican Party should be tolerant and try
to leave people alone. Right. The fact that those nuns
are still being sued over not giving out contraception is ridiculous. Right,
you don't want that. You want a Republican party that
(37:23):
will defend the beliefs of religious people to practice and
worship and live as they as they as they want.
Because ultimately, the most oppressed person is the individual. Right,
that's the If you have an individual belief on anything,
you're more likely to be oppressed. But I think that
(37:44):
that is that's the most oppressed minority anyways, the individual.
I think that that is the I think that's the
most that they could hope for in a pluralistic society
that is less religious. And if we can protect the
rights of communities to have self determined nation that they
want to live in a certain way, they want to
have certain customs, then they should be allowed to. Right.
(38:08):
If a community in Kentucky wants a Christmas tree in
their public school, honestly, it should not be the government's
responsibility to knock down doors and drag and people out
and find people. You have to accept though, if that's
going to be your standard, that you have to be
okay when Muslims in large communities want to do the
(38:31):
same thing. Right, we don't live in a Christian nationalist nation,
despite the wishes of some people. We live in a
pluralistic society. So we want to respect individuals' rights to
believe and pray and everything, then we have to accept
them for all people. And I think that as an individual,
the most that I can do, and the most that
(38:55):
any of us can do, is to make sure the
institution that mattered to us are visited in our practice.
It's very sad when we see, like in western New
York there was a big cathedral, big Catholic cathedral that's
being torn down, partially because all the practicing Catholics left
the area and no one goes to the church anymore.
And but we see that throughout the entire world, where
(39:17):
people don't go to churches of all faiths, not just
Catholic faiths. The church is closed and they're demolished, and
something depressing is built there or more depressing. So the
littlest things that I can do that I think about
as a person of faith is go to my church,
put money in the thing every Sunday and participate. And
(39:38):
the most we can hope from I think the government
is to be left alone, but that involved alves also
winning elections, and you cannot run as a theocrat in
twenty twenty five America and hope to win. And the
alternative is Democrats, which do have a state religion that
they will push on you. So I know there's a
long winded answer, but that's what I think. I didn't
(39:59):
write an answer thoroughly out, but that's my opinion about it.
I'm not depressed. It is what it is, and I
just hope that individual communities can live as autonomally as
possible and we respect self determination. So all right, thank
you for listening to this episode. I hope you like it.
Please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
wherever gets your podcast. This Thursday episode is a special
(40:22):
tribute to nine to eleven. I'm having my mom on
who worked at the World Trade Center on the ninety
seventh floor of Tower one, So we're going to have
a conversation on the podcast. We very rarely I've ever
had in real life, and it will be good. I
think it'd be really important, esecially people who were too
young to remember it, to remember that day. And I'll
(40:44):
tell you about my experience being a teenager in New
York City and having parents who worked as cops and
in the World Trade Center, and my mom will come
on and talk about her experience working there, and yeah,
it'll be great episode. I hope you guys all listen.
Please like and subscribe, and I will see you on Thursday.
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