Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your way ahead of me, Your way way ahead of me.
The title of one of Roger Pilke's latest posts on
his substack, called The Honest Broker. The title of it
is Frisbees and Flatulence, And therefore Dragon decided to play
that smell by skinnerd right, Skinner correct. So I don't
know if I would have gotten that on the first
(00:20):
Can you hit me with the first note real quick
and we'll see if Roger says he would have gotten
it on the first note. Nah, I wouldn't have. I
would definitely have needed more than that. That's pretty hard,
keep going right about somewhere around there. Yeah, definitely not
on the first note.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So that's a ridiculous way to introduce Roger Pilka. Roger
is now Professor emeritus, although that makes him sound old
and he's really not at University of Colorado at Boulder,
where he taught basically the intersection of science and technology
and public policy, and now he's doing that same kind
(00:54):
of stuff as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
which is a fantastic stick organization AEI dot org. And
he has a must read and must subscribe substack that
I mentioned already called The Honest Broker, and you can
just look up the Honest Broker substack and you will
find it.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I urge you to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I saw a story this is probably a week or
so ago at the Washington Post, but lots of places
had it epa drafts rule to strike down landmark climate finding,
and I thought about talking about it on the show
on that day or the next day after I saw
the story, and then I decided I would be dumb
(01:37):
to talk about this topic without having Roger here with me,
because Roger will have forgotten more about this than I
will ever know, and I truly don't know anybody who
would understand this issue better. It doesn't mean we will
agree on everything, but that's one of the great things
with Roger is you don't have.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
To worry about that.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So Roger Pilk, welcome back to KOA.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's good to see you you too. Ros's great to
be here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So why don't we start with a definitional thing? What
is and or perhaps the in this case, endangerment finding?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So it goes back a long ways.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So you go back to nineteen seventy and at Democratic
Congress and a Republican President and acted the Clean Air Act.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
This is when we had.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Pretty dirty air in the United States because a lot
of manufacturing and so on. And under that Act, the
EPA Environmental Protection Agency administrator can identify issues for which
the government might want to have regulations, and so.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
It's a very low threshold.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So if the EPA administrator finds that some pollution that
is being emitted poses risks, they can issue what's called
an endangerment finding, saying this substance poses risks and we
might want to do something about it. It's basically that simple.
It's not a regulation itself. It opens the door to regulation.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So the in dangerment finding that we're talking about in
this case, is it very specifically carbon dioxide or is
it more than that?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
It's a basket of six greenhouse gases.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Carbon dioxide is the most important and a lot of
the controversy over this stems from the fact that when
the Clean Air Act was enacted in nineteen seventy, no
one really foresaw.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That we'd be regulating greenhouse gas is water.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Vapor is a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and so
one of the big questions that had to be resolved
almost two decades ago, was our greenhouse gases actually pollution?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And that's something we should probably discuss over bourbon because
it's almost a philosophical conversation as much as a scientific one.
But if you want to give a very short version
of your opinion on that question, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And actually we don't need to have opinions on that
because the Clean Air Act is very explicit and this
gets to the frisbees and the flats.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So in a two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Eight a Supreme Court decision Massachusetts versus EPA, the Supreme
Court ruled, and it was a narrow five to four vote,
that greenhouse gases are pollution simply because the Clean Air
Act is so broadly written that pretty much any substance
in the atmosphere can be identified as pollution. So Judge
(04:23):
Anthony Scalia and his descent had a funny quit.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said, well, you know, based on the Clean.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Air Act, frisbees and flatulence could also be considered air pollution.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And he was right.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So air pollution is just any substance in the atmosphere
that the EPA administrator determines poses risks.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Right, So let's just move away from the law for
a second, just for fun. Yeah, and so if I
were to just ask Roger, not as a matter of law,
but as a matter of what most people would think
the word pollution means, would you put carbon dioxide into
that category?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Most people would not put that in that category. I
don't I think I would either. That said, and this
is you know, my view very much as carbon dioxide
is it's perfectly reasonable to be the subject of regulation.
But the Clean Air Act ought to be expanded, And
don't try to put it in with frisbees, flatulence and
you know, smog and things like that. Create your own
section of the law to focus on greenhouse gases and
(05:20):
their unique.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Properties, right, and on a on a pound for pound basis,
or however you would want to measure it. It's not
so much the flatulence, but the cow burps are much
more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is right. And
I'm not trying to make a policy point there, just
sort of a science point.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So, okay, so what does the Trump administration want?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Okay, no, let me back up.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
What does the endangerment finding then allow government to do so?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
After the two thousand and eight Supreme Court ruling, after
President Obama came in, they issued the Endangement Finding, So
it was a two hundred and thirty page document that
said greenhouse asses pose significant risks in the future, and
we therefore might want to regulate them. And that set
the stage for putting regulations on automobiles, on trucks, eventually
(06:10):
power plants to limit how much carbon dioxide methane could
be emitted. And regulations are expensive, and so that's where
this issue becomes very political.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So what does the Trump administration propose to do?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So it's we don't know all of the details, but
what has been released is they want to get rid
of that endangerment finding, so they want to get rid
of the basis for even having regulations, and so the
reports are in the Washington Post in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
They're not going to argue about science. Everyone wants to
argue about science.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
But they're going to argue about issues like standing and
does EBA have the authority under the Clean Air Act
to actually regulate greenhouse gases? So the details are to
be determined, but it's going to get very technical and
very legal very quickly, right, And.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
It's probably a little bit beyond the scope of it's
more than a little bit beyond my mental capabilities and
maybe slightly beyond yours to give really strong legal opinions
about how this would play out in court. You know,
I mean you might have an opinion, and I think
you actually do have an opinion, even though you're not
(07:23):
a lawyer. But it seems like you think the Trump
administration is more likely than not to lose.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think that if it were to go before the
current Supreme Court, and you know, it's unlikely during the
Trump's term that it would get there, I would think,
but three of the justices are still there that dissented,
so it's very plausible that they could.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Win a case based on the legal arguments.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
That said, if they challenge the idea that carbon dioxide
is a pollutant and so on. Going back to the
text of the Clean Air Act, it's a very difficult
case to actually make because it is so clear, because
it's so broad.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So one of the things that.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Strikes me as having been very noticeable by its absence
is the lack of conversation about cost benefit of analysis
with some of this stuff, which I know, even though
you and I have some modest disagreements about the importance
of the underlying problem. I think you and I both
think cost benefit analysis is a pretty reasonable thing, So
(08:24):
why does it seem like we haven't seen much of that.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So under the Obama and then the Biden administration, they
invented a concept, or employed a concept that was invented
in academia called the social cost of carbon. And the
idea was to come up with how much it costs
society for every ton of carbon that's emitted into the atmosphere.
And it turns out it's a very plastic number. You
(08:48):
can come up with any number you want, so I
don't remember what it was exactly, like one hundred and
eighty dollars per ton under the Obama administration and the
Trump administration came in and they reduced it to seven
dollars a ton, and they're both equally plausible, and so
they employed cost benefit in kind of a you know,
a fake sort of way to get the answer that
(09:09):
they want it. And so there is cost benefit analysis,
but the problem is it doesn't really touch the ground.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So, just moving away now from sort of government and
the intricacies of politics and so on, for just ordinary people,
why is this conversation important? How Can this conversation result
in something that impacts your daily life?
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, So everybody gets a power built.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
We get Excel bills here in Colorado, and if there
are regulations put onto power plants that burn natural gas or.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Coal, you're going to see your electricity bill go up,
and people don't like that.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
If you drive a car that's powered on gasoline or diesel,
like most people are these days, you're going to see
the price of the pump go up. And the idea
is that with these regulations you can create a more
favorable environment for cleaner burning fuels. And so there's a
tension there between higher prices to motivate people and the
fact that people don't like higher prices. And it's a
(10:10):
political loser in pretty much under any administration.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And I think you and I would probably agree that
under the last two Democratic administrations they placed more emphasis
and more of their own goals on reducing greenhouse gases,
and Trump is placing more emphasis on cost of living.
Just to put it in the plainest term, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Mean, I think that's perfectly fair, And I mean the
reality is regulation is important. Anyone who is alive in
the sixties and seventies knows that you know, there's dirty water,
dirty air, and we've all benefited from those improvements, but
it does have to be balanced with cost of living issues.
And so I would say, you know, neither the Democrats
nor the Republicans have really engaged in smart regulation. It's
(10:58):
more political posturing as regulation. So we've had this climate
ping pong back and forth between the administrations for at
least twenty years.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
We're talking with Roger Pilke, Senior Fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute AEI dot org, and he has a fantastic
must subscribe substack called the Honest Broker. You can just
go look up the Honest Broker substack and you'll find it.
Make sure you find Rogers, because there might be more
than one with a similar name, But make sure you
find Rogers. If you forget any of that, you can
find it on my website today as well. So, Roger,
(11:30):
let's say I made you an advisor to the president.
Or let's say our mutual friend Chris Wright resigned for
a day, and you were Secretary of Energy for a day,
and you were given the task to give the president
a few bullet points of the most important things that
(11:52):
should and shouldn't be in regulation of carbon dioxide in particular.
Forget the other greenhouse gases for now, what would be
your bullet points what must be in there and what
must not be in there to give us the most
sane policy.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, so the Cleaning Act for other types of pollution
already has some language.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
It's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It talks about the importance of deploying the best available technologies.
And so the best available technologies are those that are
the cleanest, operate the lowest costs, and are proven. So,
for example, coal energy, it's not very popular, it's been
declining for economic reasons for a long time. Natural gas
is plentiful. The US is the world's leading producer. It's
(12:36):
a powerhouse. We should be moving.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Off of coal onto natural gas.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Nuclear power is absolutely a wonderful technology and it's advancing
very quickly. One great proposal that came out of the
Department of Energy is to cite new nuclear power plants
where coal plants have been shuttered or will be shuttered.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
They're already connected to the grid.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So in this era of AI and data center and
this recognition, we're going to need a lot more electricity
in this country.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We ought to be doing everything we.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Can to deploy the best available technologies everywhere we can.
On the other side, on the technologies that we use,
I tell people I'm old enough. Remember the great light
bulb Wars of twenty eleven when people thought about light bulb.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Now you go to home depot.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And there's a whole wall of LEDs that last for
fifteen or twenty years. Great lights, great technology, and they're inexpensive.
So a lot of the battles over energy I think
can be diffused by advancing technology such that the choices
become obvious.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
All right, let me just.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Refocus on one part of my question that I don't
think you got to, and that is what is something
that is currently in regulation about carbon dioxide that you
think is counterproductive?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So the Biden administration put forward rules that the Trump
administration is unwinding, said that that fossil fuel power plants,
natural gas, and cole had to have carbon capture technology,
and carbon capture doesn't.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Exist at scale.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
So I would take out of regulation the dependence upon
expected future technologies that don't exist today and have the
requirement that, yes, you have to use the best technologies
that are available, but but you know, for those issues.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I'm a Missourian. I mean, show me if they work,
then let's deploy them.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Regulation can help expand the deployment of the best technologies.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
All right, last thing for you and and to me,
I'll stick with the Missouri thing for a minute. We've
been told for many years that solar and wind are
cheaper than fossil fuels, and I've never believed that when
you take out the subsidies. But I'm not looking to
debate that. So to debate that with you, how do
you think that in the absence of large government subsidies
(14:58):
that there either will be or should be a significant
place for more wind and solar in our energy mix.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, so the first thing I would say is we
got to stop lumping those together, wind and solar the
term renewables. Yeah, solar has a fantastic future, and I
mean you can just see that by the rate of
deployment all over the world in places.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Where there are subsidies.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Where there aren't subsidies, wind technology is much more challenging
both technologically. It requires a lot of land, a lot
of space, and so I do think that without subsidies,
wind has a limited future. There are some places West Texas,
for example, or Wyoming eastern Colorado where it might make sense,
but Solar I am very.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Bullish on Roger Pilka Junior is a Senior Fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute a EI dot org. Subscribe to
his substack, Roger Pilka Junior. That's Jr. For the junior
part dot substack dot com. It's called The Honest Brokers.
You can just look that up and find it. It's
all linked on my blog today at Rosskominsky dot com,
(16:04):
including the article we were talking about frisbees and flatulence.
Thanks so much for your time as always, Roger. By
the way, great article title.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Thank you Ross. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
All right, we'll talk again soon
Your way ahead of me, Your way way ahead of me.
The title of one of Roger Pilke's latest posts on
his substack, called The Honest Broker. The title of it
is Frisbees and Flatulence, And therefore Dragon decided to play
that smell by skinnerd right, Skinner correct. So I don't
know if I would have gotten that on the first
(00:20):
Can you hit me with the first note real quick
and we'll see if Roger says he would have gotten
it on the first note. Nah, I wouldn't have. I
would definitely have needed more than that. That's pretty hard,
keep going right about somewhere around there. Yeah, definitely not
on the first note.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So that's a ridiculous way to introduce Roger Pilka. Roger
is now Professor emeritus, although that makes him sound old
and he's really not at University of Colorado at Boulder,
where he taught basically the intersection of science and technology
and public policy, and now he's doing that same kind
(00:54):
of stuff as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
which is a fantastic stick organization AEI dot org. And
he has a must read and must subscribe substack that
I mentioned already called The Honest Broker, and you can
just look up the Honest Broker substack and you will
find it.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I urge you to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I saw a story this is probably a week or
so ago at the Washington Post, but lots of places
had it epa drafts rule to strike down landmark climate finding,
and I thought about talking about it on the show
on that day or the next day after I saw
the story, and then I decided I would be dumb
(01:37):
to talk about this topic without having Roger here with me,
because Roger will have forgotten more about this than I
will ever know, and I truly don't know anybody who
would understand this issue better. It doesn't mean we will
agree on everything, but that's one of the great things
with Roger is you don't have.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
To worry about that.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
So Roger Pilk, welcome back to KOA.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's good to see you you too. Ros's great to
be here.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
So why don't we start with a definitional thing? What
is and or perhaps the in this case, endangerment finding?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So it goes back a long ways.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So you go back to nineteen seventy and at Democratic
Congress and a Republican President and acted the Clean Air Act.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
This is when we had.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Pretty dirty air in the United States because a lot
of manufacturing and so on. And under that Act, the
EPA Environmental Protection Agency administrator can identify issues for which
the government might want to have regulations, and so.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
It's a very low threshold.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So if the EPA administrator finds that some pollution that
is being emitted poses risks, they can issue what's called
an endangerment finding, saying this substance poses risks and we
might want to do something about it. It's basically that simple.
It's not a regulation itself. It opens the door to regulation.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So the in dangerment finding that we're talking about in
this case, is it very specifically carbon dioxide or is
it more than that?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
It's a basket of six greenhouse gases.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Carbon dioxide is the most important and a lot of
the controversy over this stems from the fact that when
the Clean Air Act was enacted in nineteen seventy, no
one really foresaw.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
That we'd be regulating greenhouse gas is water.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Vapor is a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and so
one of the big questions that had to be resolved
almost two decades ago, was our greenhouse gases actually pollution?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And that's something we should probably discuss over bourbon because
it's almost a philosophical conversation as much as a scientific one.
But if you want to give a very short version
of your opinion on that question, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And actually we don't need to have opinions on that
because the Clean Air Act is very explicit and this
gets to the frisbees and the flats.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
So in a two thousand and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Eight a Supreme Court decision Massachusetts versus EPA, the Supreme
Court ruled, and it was a narrow five to four vote,
that greenhouse gases are pollution simply because the Clean Air
Act is so broadly written that pretty much any substance
in the atmosphere can be identified as pollution. So Judge
(04:23):
Anthony Scalia and his descent had a funny quit.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said, well, you know, based on the Clean.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Air Act, frisbees and flatulence could also be considered air pollution.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And he was right.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So air pollution is just any substance in the atmosphere
that the EPA administrator determines poses risks.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Right, So let's just move away from the law for
a second, just for fun. Yeah, and so if I
were to just ask Roger, not as a matter of law,
but as a matter of what most people would think
the word pollution means, would you put carbon dioxide into
that category?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Most people would not put that in that category. I
don't I think I would either. That said, and this
is you know, my view very much as carbon dioxide
is it's perfectly reasonable to be the subject of regulation.
But the Clean Air Act ought to be expanded, And
don't try to put it in with frisbees, flatulence and
you know, smog and things like that. Create your own
section of the law to focus on greenhouse gases and
(05:20):
their unique.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Properties, right, and on a on a pound for pound basis,
or however you would want to measure it. It's not
so much the flatulence, but the cow burps are much
more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is right. And
I'm not trying to make a policy point there, just
sort of a science point.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So, okay, so what does the Trump administration want?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Okay, no, let me back up.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
What does the endangerment finding then allow government to do so?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
After the two thousand and eight Supreme Court ruling, after
President Obama came in, they issued the Endangement Finding, So
it was a two hundred and thirty page document that
said greenhouse asses pose significant risks in the future, and
we therefore might want to regulate them. And that set
the stage for putting regulations on automobiles, on trucks, eventually
(06:10):
power plants to limit how much carbon dioxide methane could
be emitted. And regulations are expensive, and so that's where
this issue becomes very political.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So what does the Trump administration propose to do?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So it's we don't know all of the details, but
what has been released is they want to get rid
of that endangerment finding, so they want to get rid
of the basis for even having regulations, and so the
reports are in the Washington Post in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
They're not going to argue about science. Everyone wants to
argue about science.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
But they're going to argue about issues like standing and
does EBA have the authority under the Clean Air Act
to actually regulate greenhouse gases? So the details are to
be determined, but it's going to get very technical and
very legal very quickly, right, And.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
It's probably a little bit beyond the scope of it's
more than a little bit beyond my mental capabilities and
maybe slightly beyond yours to give really strong legal opinions
about how this would play out in court. You know,
I mean you might have an opinion, and I think
you actually do have an opinion, even though you're not
(07:23):
a lawyer. But it seems like you think the Trump
administration is more likely than not to lose.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think that if it were to go before the
current Supreme Court, and you know, it's unlikely during the
Trump's term that it would get there, I would think,
but three of the justices are still there that dissented,
so it's very plausible that they could.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Win a case based on the legal arguments.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
That said, if they challenge the idea that carbon dioxide
is a pollutant and so on. Going back to the
text of the Clean Air Act, it's a very difficult
case to actually make because it is so clear, because
it's so broad.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So one of the things that.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Strikes me as having been very noticeable by its absence
is the lack of conversation about cost benefit of analysis
with some of this stuff, which I know, even though
you and I have some modest disagreements about the importance
of the underlying problem. I think you and I both
think cost benefit analysis is a pretty reasonable thing, So
(08:24):
why does it seem like we haven't seen much of that.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So under the Obama and then the Biden administration, they
invented a concept, or employed a concept that was invented
in academia called the social cost of carbon. And the
idea was to come up with how much it costs
society for every ton of carbon that's emitted into the atmosphere.
And it turns out it's a very plastic number. You
(08:48):
can come up with any number you want, so I
don't remember what it was exactly, like one hundred and
eighty dollars per ton under the Obama administration and the
Trump administration came in and they reduced it to seven
dollars a ton, and they're both equally plausible, and so
they employed cost benefit in kind of a you know,
a fake sort of way to get the answer that
(09:09):
they want it. And so there is cost benefit analysis,
but the problem is it doesn't really touch the ground.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
So, just moving away now from sort of government and
the intricacies of politics and so on, for just ordinary people,
why is this conversation important? How Can this conversation result
in something that impacts your daily life?
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, So everybody gets a power built.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
We get Excel bills here in Colorado, and if there
are regulations put onto power plants that burn natural gas or.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Coal, you're going to see your electricity bill go up,
and people don't like that.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
If you drive a car that's powered on gasoline or diesel,
like most people are these days, you're going to see
the price of the pump go up. And the idea
is that with these regulations you can create a more
favorable environment for cleaner burning fuels. And so there's a
tension there between higher prices to motivate people and the
fact that people don't like higher prices. And it's a
(10:10):
political loser in pretty much under any administration.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And I think you and I would probably agree that
under the last two Democratic administrations they placed more emphasis
and more of their own goals on reducing greenhouse gases,
and Trump is placing more emphasis on cost of living.
Just to put it in the plainest term, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Mean, I think that's perfectly fair, And I mean the
reality is regulation is important. Anyone who is alive in
the sixties and seventies knows that you know, there's dirty water,
dirty air, and we've all benefited from those improvements, but
it does have to be balanced with cost of living issues.
And so I would say, you know, neither the Democrats
nor the Republicans have really engaged in smart regulation. It's
(10:58):
more political posturing as regulation. So we've had this climate
ping pong back and forth between the administrations for at
least twenty years.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
We're talking with Roger Pilke, Senior Fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute AEI dot org, and he has a fantastic
must subscribe substack called the Honest Broker. You can just
go look up the Honest Broker substack and you'll find it.
Make sure you find Rogers, because there might be more
than one with a similar name, But make sure you
find Rogers. If you forget any of that, you can
find it on my website today as well. So, Roger,
(11:30):
let's say I made you an advisor to the president.
Or let's say our mutual friend Chris Wright resigned for
a day, and you were Secretary of Energy for a day,
and you were given the task to give the president
a few bullet points of the most important things that
(11:52):
should and shouldn't be in regulation of carbon dioxide in particular.
Forget the other greenhouse gases for now, what would be
your bullet points what must be in there and what
must not be in there to give us the most
sane policy.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, so the Cleaning Act for other types of pollution
already has some language.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
It's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It talks about the importance of deploying the best available technologies.
And so the best available technologies are those that are
the cleanest, operate the lowest costs, and are proven. So,
for example, coal energy, it's not very popular, it's been
declining for economic reasons for a long time. Natural gas
is plentiful. The US is the world's leading producer. It's
(12:36):
a powerhouse. We should be moving.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Off of coal onto natural gas.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Nuclear power is absolutely a wonderful technology and it's advancing
very quickly. One great proposal that came out of the
Department of Energy is to cite new nuclear power plants
where coal plants have been shuttered or will be shuttered.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
They're already connected to the grid.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So in this era of AI and data center and
this recognition, we're going to need a lot more electricity
in this country.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
We ought to be doing everything we.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Can to deploy the best available technologies everywhere we can.
On the other side, on the technologies that we use,
I tell people I'm old enough. Remember the great light
bulb Wars of twenty eleven when people thought about light bulb.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Now you go to home depot.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And there's a whole wall of LEDs that last for
fifteen or twenty years. Great lights, great technology, and they're inexpensive.
So a lot of the battles over energy I think
can be diffused by advancing technology such that the choices
become obvious.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
All right, let me just.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Refocus on one part of my question that I don't
think you got to, and that is what is something
that is currently in regulation about carbon dioxide that you
think is counterproductive?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So the Biden administration put forward rules that the Trump
administration is unwinding, said that that fossil fuel power plants,
natural gas, and cole had to have carbon capture technology,
and carbon capture doesn't.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Exist at scale.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
So I would take out of regulation the dependence upon
expected future technologies that don't exist today and have the
requirement that, yes, you have to use the best technologies
that are available, but but you know, for those issues.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I'm a Missourian. I mean, show me if they work,
then let's deploy them.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Regulation can help expand the deployment of the best technologies.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
All right, last thing for you and and to me,
I'll stick with the Missouri thing for a minute. We've
been told for many years that solar and wind are
cheaper than fossil fuels, and I've never believed that when
you take out the subsidies. But I'm not looking to
debate that. So to debate that with you, how do
you think that in the absence of large government subsidies
(14:58):
that there either will be or should be a significant
place for more wind and solar in our energy mix.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, so the first thing I would say is we
got to stop lumping those together, wind and solar the
term renewables. Yeah, solar has a fantastic future, and I
mean you can just see that by the rate of
deployment all over the world in places.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Where there are subsidies.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Where there aren't subsidies, wind technology is much more challenging
both technologically. It requires a lot of land, a lot
of space, and so I do think that without subsidies,
wind has a limited future. There are some places West Texas,
for example, or Wyoming eastern Colorado where it might make sense,
but Solar I am very.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Bullish on Roger Pilka Junior is a Senior Fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute a EI dot org. Subscribe to
his substack, Roger Pilka Junior. That's Jr. For the junior
part dot substack dot com. It's called The Honest Brokers.
You can just look that up and find it. It's
all linked on my blog today at Rosskominsky dot com,
(16:04):
including the article we were talking about frisbees and flatulence.
Thanks so much for your time as always, Roger. By
the way, great article title.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Thank you Ross. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
All right, we'll talk again soon
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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