REPLAY: Russell Gold - Energy, Infrastructure, Fracking and the Future of Journalism

Russell Gold (@russellgold) is an author and award-winning investigative journalist and energy reporter at The Wall Street Journal best known for covering the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. They were awarded the Gerald Loeb Award for best business story of the year and were finalists for the Pulitzer.

He's the author of The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World and his new book, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform Energy tells the story of Michael Skelly, who helped created the wind energy industry in the US in a push for sustainability.

In today's episode we discuss:
- How to speed the transition to renewable energy
- The pros and cons of fracking and why it has a bad rap
- Why the energy industry is so fragmented in the US
- What we need MOST to see renewables replace the grid
- How batteries are holding back cleantech
- The pros and cons of monopolies in public infrastructure
- Why Silicon Valley doesn't invest much in energy
- How one innovator can change the course of history and energy consumption
- What we NEED to do to combat climate change
- Why Andy thinks going public is the way to go
- Thoughts on Elon, Tesla and the future of transportation
- What will journalism look like in ten years
- Are billionaire-owned media corporations a net positive

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Fracking could be harnessed in a beneficialway. And it was a hard argument
to be made, and trust me, I'm not sure a lot of people
embraced it. But the argument Iwanted to make and I tried to make
it. Look, if we're notif we're not generating the electricity, the
energy excusing me we use here inthe United States, we're going to be
importing it. We're gonna be importingit from Nigeria, We're gonna be importing
it from Trinidad, other places wherethere will be environmental benefits. We just

(00:23):
won't pay attention to it. Ifwe're producing the energy we need here in
the United States, we're going tofocus more on it. We're going to
figure out the mistakes. We're goingto figure out how to build the wells
so that we don't have leakage,so that we're not losing underground water resources,
so that methane's not leaking. Thatwas the argument I made. I
would say I was seventy five percentright when the book came out five years

(00:44):
ago. The two things I didn'taccount for were one, methane leakage,
nobody's really addressed it, not inan effective way, and that's still a
big problem. Today's episode has broughtto you Guys by five or Business,
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(02:13):
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Disruptors dot Fm. We were talkingabout all getting all sweaty and dirty and
the terribleness of heat, and Ithink it's an interesting, interesting intersection into

(02:35):
you and your work. Why whyenergy reporting? Why did you get involved
with the environment? What's the deal? Well, you know, I always
say it was sort of a lovestory. I moved down to Texas in
the mid nineties without, you know, a job in a local paper.
I've met someone, fell in lovewith them, and decided to stick around
Texas. And if you're going tobe a reporter in Texas, you look
around and sort of say, what'san interesting beat? And energy was the

(02:57):
beat. I mean that that wasthe most interesting business stories around Texas.
So I stuck with them. Yeah, it's that of the Cowboys and things.
Things have changed a ton since then. Well, actually, no,
it wasn't that of the Cowboys.It was that or Walmart. The other
option that the Wall Street Journal coveredout of Texas was Walmart, and that
just retail didn't hold an interest forme. Now, if you've gone Amazon,
though, you might have had someinteresting stock options there or something.

(03:22):
So energy. You are an author, you're a reporter. What is your
take on where we're at today beforewe start to get into it? Sure,
just on energy itself. I mean, there are lots of ways we
can go go at that. Imean the big picture to me, the
big trends that are going on therereally two. One is that we are
still in the early innings of fracking. There's this new technology. It's twenty

(03:46):
years old right now, but wehave more natural gas than we know what
to do with, and that ishaving a big long term impact. The
other major story is that renewable energyhas gotten really, really inexpensive and it's
becoming Those are the two big disruptiveforces right now in the energy world.
Cheap natural gas and cheap renewables.I don't know anything else they can compete

(04:09):
with it. Long term. Youknow, oil is still sticking around because
it's good to make plastics with.And frankly, we have what seven to
eight decades worth of infrastructure built upto move cars around on oil. But
you know, if you're thinking longterm, bet if you're thinking the next
ten or twenty years, gas andrenewables are are really going to continue to

(04:30):
disrupt the entire energy world. Let'sdouble click fracking first. We haven't talked
that as much. Let's hear them. Pros of racking are pretty easy.
Enormous amounts of energy are available inthe United States and elsewhere, relatively easy
to get at lots of natural gas. The cons we haven't figured out how

(04:51):
to get at all this natural gaswithout it leaking everywhere. And this is
the methane leakage story we've heard about. We kind of know how to do
it, we just are not verygood at doing it, and so we're
squandering a lot of the climate benefitof gas. When gas comes on ten
years ago, we start having tonsof cheap gas. Coal just gets knocked

(05:11):
completely off off the pedestal. Andif you look at the percentage of electricity
in the United States and coal it'sjust gone down and down. Same story
in the United Kingdom and the samestory, believe it or not, looks
like it's starting to possibly happen evenin India as well. So, you
know, natural gas huge climate benefitsthere, but could be better and and
you know, if we could justfigure out, well, if we could

(05:33):
figure out how to build a containedsystem so the natural gas doesn't leak,
will be in much better shape.Yeah, So methane is a big problem
with animal agriculture, something like twentypercent of emissions. Methane is a big
part of that. The cows liketo fart. And now we're we're pulling
more methane out of the earth.What does that look like on a scale

(05:53):
basis in terms of the scale ofnatural gas and the scale of the glow
production of natural gas? Is thatwhat you want to know? And how
much methane are we getting from fracking? What type of actual impact? Well,
methane is natural gas. I meanwe sort of have these different words
for it, but methane is naturalgas. Gus oh leak, it's percentage,

(06:14):
it's relatively small, it's single digits, But methane is a very potent
greenhouse gas. It's it's unlike carbondioxide, which stays in the atmosphere.
The H four methane natural gas,it doesn't last that long, but in
terms of its ability to reflect sunlight, to capture the sunlight to heat up

(06:35):
the earth, it's very potent.So even small amounts have an outsized impact.
So I was listening to one ofyour videos a while back. I
think a hundred new fracking fracking developmentsa day. Yeah, yeah, fracking
wells a day. It's pretty stunningwhat's happened. We're just every pretty much
every well onshore in the United Statesor onshore almost anywhere in the world is

(06:58):
going to use some version of itis a big industrialized process and lots of
water usage, chemicals. I mean, a lot of what you've heard about
fracking is true, some of it'snot. You know, the Josh Fox
Everyone's faucet's gonna light on fire wasfairly overplayed. I would say there have
been certainly some situations some environmental concernson the localized basis, But you know,

(07:24):
the sort of the story that youknow, everyone's fascess will be on
fire has not played out. Butthere's a serious environmental impact on fracking.
I mean, I tried to makethe argument in The Boom, in my
first book, that fracking could beharnessed in a beneficial way, and it
was a hard argument to be made, and trust me, I'm not sure
a lot of people embraced it.But the argument I wanted to make,

(07:46):
and I tried to make it.Look, if we're not if we're not
generating the electricity, the energy excusingme we use here in the United States,
we're gonna be importing it. We'regonna be importing it from Nigeria,
We're gonna be importing it from Trinidad, other places where there will be environmental
benefits. We just won't pay attentionto it. If we're producing the energy
we need here in the United States, we're going to focus more on it.
We're going to figure out the mistakes. We're going to figure out how

(08:07):
to build the wells so that wedon't have leakage, so that we're not
losing underground water resources, so thatmethane's not leaking. That was the argument
I made. I would say Iwas seventy five percent right when the book
came out five years ago. Thetwo things I didn't account for were one
methane leakage. Nobody's really addressed it, not in an effective way, and

(08:28):
that's still a big problem. Theother thing I got wrong, frankly,
or I didn't see the importance ofwas that when franking first came about,
it was all about natural gas.Then they know, the industry took franking.
They went to the Permium basin andthey started getting tons of oil,
barrels of oil, millions and millionsof barrels of oil. I did not

(08:48):
see that, nobody really saw it. It was it was a real kind
of step change. So Franking's turnedout to be just as important in the
oil world as it was in thenatural gas world. I hear it's much
dirtier in the oil world, though, Is that where and get such a
bad reputation from? No, Franking'sreputation really started with natural gas. I
mean, you know, by thetime twenty ten, twenty twelve rolled around,

(09:09):
Franking's reputation was pretty solid and itreally hadn't taken off in the oil
world yet. So you know,here's it's been about a year since I
drove through the Permian Basin. Butif you drive through this incredible, incredible
oil development. It is dirty.There's a lot of air emissions. There
are trucks everywhere, the roads arecompletely torn up. You know, it's

(09:30):
out in West Texas. It's ina part of the country which is used
to energy development, but it isit's a dirty, nasty business. Speaking
of going flipside, we talked renewables, solars coming way down, wind is
coming way down. They offset eachother a bit. What are the what
are your thoughts in terms of howyou see the energy futures going right now?
Renewables coming down so much? Whencan we replace more and more of

(09:52):
this? Well? Where we arethe percentage of electricity that's being generated by
wind and solar has been deadily marchingupwards. What's going to happen though?
We're plucking a lot of this lowhanging fruit, a lot of the easier
places to build solar and to buildwind. What we need to do if
we want to have a conversation rightnow about what is it? We're at

(10:13):
about ten to twelve percent wind andsolar on the electricity grid, huge step
change from ten years ago. Tenyears ago is like two percent, so
we're way up. But if wewant to get up to twenty thirty fifty
percent. What we need to dois talk about transmission. We need to
figure out ways to build these bigwires. And the reason to do that
it's a networking issue. You know, the more you can network. Networking

(10:35):
works for Google, it works forFacebook if you if you have a bigger
network to move electricity around, thenyou can generate wind and solar where it's
good to do it where there's goodwind, where there's good solar and low
population density, and then move itto where the people are. And if
we do that, I mean allof the models have shown us that we
can drive down costs, drive downgreenhouse gases, and get up north of

(10:58):
fifty renewable electricity. Now there arepeople out there talking about one hundred percent,
and I'm not against that. I'mnot saying we need to stop.
I'm just saying first step is let'sget to fifty percent, and then we
can talk about where to go fromthere, because once you get past about
seventy eighty percent, it starts toget really expensive. And I think what
we can do is we can getto that seventy or eighty percent without increasing
costs, which is important, andthen we can figure out where we want

(11:20):
to go from there. Now,I will say this is sort of an
interesting new development, something I've onlykind of become aware of in the last
few days. But there are twoor three major federally funded studies that looked
at this issue. They came outof the National Renewable Energy Lab, out
of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration,which looked at how do we build transmission

(11:41):
to get renewables up as a percentage? And those studies have disappeared. One
of the studies was removed from theinternet from the Noah website. Another study
apparently has gone into a deep hiatusbefore it gets published. So there's been
a definite pushback from the Department ofEnergy on these studies, and I certainly
feel very strongly that they need tobe out there to have people debate them,

(12:05):
learn from them, and to usethem to build out a new energy
future. Do you think the pushbackagainst them has primarily been the new government
administration. I don't know exactly,but I suspect that's probably part of it.
That there was probably some mid levelbureaucrat who looked at this political pointee
and said, you know what,this doesn't fit with the message we're trying

(12:28):
to get out, which is apro nuclear, procal message. And so
why are we promoting this on awebsite. Let's remove it, or you
know, let's go back and studythis more before we print the results.
So it's disappointing. This is theseare this is a federal government. These
are these are federal tax dollars atwork paying for these studies. What the
studies found is fascinating. We canget much higher renewables, we can get

(12:52):
there at a lower cost. Thatseems to me, I mean as a
federal as a taxpayer, I wantthat information out there. Is the coal
push anything other than chronyism. There'sa little little bit that I would say
that there's some truth too, andthat is that there is which is beyond
just chronism. I think if there'sa lot of chronyism in there, let's
just put that out there. Inaddition, I think there is a concern

(13:18):
amongst some people that when you moveaway from what are called baseload assets,
big coal plants, big nuclear plantsthat we've built our entire system off of
that run twenty four hours a day, these workhorse plants, that if we
move beyond that, we're going tolose reliability, that we're going to have
a system that's less reliable, thatdoesn't work. And my response to that
is, and that's a genuine concernsome of the most conservative people I know,

(13:41):
not conservative of a political sense,but a conservative and let's make sure
this works point nine percent of thetime. Or the grid operators, they
have to be conservative when you talkto and I did this interview the grid
operators in places where there's a lotof wind, especially places like the Great
Planes, they will come and say, look, we didn't think. We
thought when we got to ten percent, we got to fifteen percent wind on

(14:03):
the grid, that we'd have majorreliability problems. They have overcome those fears.
They've figured out how to make itwork. And some of the pushback
that we're seeing in places like Ohioin the Northeast are partially grid operators who
are concerned, but mostly it's companiesthat own these giant coal plants and don't
want to see them go away becausethey're essentially printing money out of them right

(14:26):
now, and also frankly politicians thatdon't want to lose the jobs associated with
them. So we just have adepreciation right off for all bullshit energy and
life like companies that have essentially diedand gone past that put them out to
past year. But at least theycan they can reap from that. You
said that a little flippingly, Butthere's a there's a genuine discussion out there
right now, which is that shouldwe just pay some sort of you know,

(14:50):
some sort of bond essentially for thesedepreciated assets that are just sort of
sticking around and so you know,if you to close down your coal plant,
will give you this much money.And there are some people who argue
that that would be a more effectiveuse of federal tax dollars than something like
the tax credits right now that areused for solar and storage and some of
the other assets. That's the bestif you want to talk about the best

(15:11):
use of money. Yeah, givethem, give them money. I mean,
look, when a lot of thesecoal plants were built, they weren't
built. You know, it's notlike someone sat down and said, you
know, rub their hands together andsaid, you know, we're going to
pollute the entire you know, we'regoing to create all these greenhouse gases.
I mean, they were built togenerate electricity so that we all could turn
on our television. They were built, you know, for good reasons,

(15:31):
and then later on, you know, seventies and eighties, nineties, as
the science comes out of the problemswith greenhouse gases, they're stuck with these.
You know, they went into heavydebt for them, and then what
do you do with them? Soif the federal government wants to come out
and say we will pay you toshut these down and pay to retrain the
workers, that would be a potentiallyinteresting use of money, even if it
was just tax cuts on writing itoff in faster depreciation or something. Yeah,

(15:54):
absolutely right. So why haven't weinvested more in building out a more
robust renewable grid. Basically, weneed wires running. You don't think that
small scale will handle it. Wehaven't done that for a couple of reasons.
First of all, we don't havea single electrical grid in the United

(16:14):
States. We kind of have three. We have the Eastern, the Western,
and Texas. But even within that, we really have fifty different small
grids. Each state runs their grid, controls the politics of their grid,
and it is really really hard toget Arkansas to play well with Tennessee,
to get Louisiana to play well withTexas, you know, to get California.

(16:37):
You know, I can go onand on. It's proven to be
incredibly difficult to get these different gridsto work together. And that's sort of
a historical accident. We created theseregional grids to promote their development a hundred
years ago, and they became thesepowerful political institutions, and they don't want
to do these kind of massive interconnectionsthat we need. That's one reason.

(17:00):
Yeah, that's probably I would saythat's that's the biggest reason that I encounter.
They just don't want to play wellwith each other. They don't want
to play with each other. Theydon't play well with each other. How
big is the problem caused or isit caused by the fact that the US
government outsources infrastructure to companies? Youknow, I actually think that if we
outsourced to companies, that would bea benefit. Right there is lots of

(17:25):
money sitting on the sidelines right nowthat wants to invest in green renewable developments
but can't find good projects. Ithink if the federal government would do a
better job of paving the way forthese type of investments, we'd actually move
more quickly along this energy transition howdo we do it without granting monopolies.

(17:45):
Well, monopolies, I think iswhat got us in this problem the first
place. You know, we wecreated these regional monopolies. We told Southern
Company that they basically ran not justthe grid but all the power generation in
the Southeast, and then you know, we let them go for sixty years,
and by the time we looked atit again, they were these incredibly
powerful political institutions that were really,really hard to dislodge. So I think

(18:08):
monopolies are part of the problem.I would love to see more competition,
I agree, but I would saynot creating monopolies is the problem, but
granting them. So like if youlook at if you look at van,
I mean, if you look atthe cell intelcom industry, it's basically,
you guys can own this spectrum andthat's all there is. Sorry, deal
with it, right, I don'tthink you need to create monopolies. So

(18:30):
in my recent book Superpower, Iwrote about an entrepreneur and energy developer who
wanted to build basically a large extensioncourt right from Oklahoma into Tennessee. It
wasn't monopoly. I mean, anyonewho wanted to use that and was ready
to pay the money to use thecapacity on it could use it. I

(18:51):
mean it was a business opportunity nowwhere it started. It appealed to wind
developers, and there were lots ofwind developers who were chomping at the bit
to get in there. But itwasn't a monopoly. And then on the
other end, he didn't want tosell to one company, wanted to sell
like five or six companies. Soit was, you know, it was
a building a new road basically,you know, and you know when you

(19:11):
build a road, uh, youknow, Amazon is going to use it
to deliver packages, and Walmart's goingto use it to stock up their superstores,
and you know I'm going to useit to take a vacation. So
it's a basic piece of infrastructure.I gave you a magic wand what would
you do? What would you changeabout energy? And how would you enjoy
that? A magic wand I wouldmake batteries much more efficient and much better.

(19:33):
If you want to change one thingabout energy right now, that would
have massive ripple effects and be anenormous disruption. It's a better battery.
So that's the biggest thing holding usback right now. Storage it's a big
it's a big issue. You know, a combination of storage and transmission could
really help us get to a very, very low carbon future. But man,

(19:57):
storage would be such a big differ. Can you imagine if you know,
let's see, I drive a HondaCRV right now, and if I
put twelve gallons into it, ifI'm lucky, I get twenty five miles
a gallon. I hate to say, what is that three hundred? My
range is three hundred miles versus aTesla. You know I'm going to get

(20:17):
pretty close to that, probably abouttwo fifty. What if there was a
better battery? What if I gota thousand miles on my Tesla? What
if? I mean, we knowelectric cars are better in a lot of
ways, right, They don't breakdown as much, the fewer parts,
don't have thinking to the mechanic,they don't have take them for oil changes.
What if? My god, they'refun to drive because they're acceleration is
phenomenal. But what have an additionto that? You know, I could

(20:40):
get a thousand miles on a charge, you know, go much further than
I could in my car. Thatwould be a battery. What if from
my roof I could store up enough, you know, solar power, so
that if there was a week's worthof disruption, I could run my entire
house on it. There are allthese different things that could happen if we
have a better, cheaper battery.I'm not sure we're going to get there.

(21:02):
There's a lot of chemistry, andI'm not a chemist. There's a
lot of materials science. So there'sa question as to whether we can get
there. But if but you gaveme the wand and that's how I'm going
to use it. As long aswe get there without it being explosive.
When there's so much energy and sucha small thing could have some interesting consequences.
Oh no, no question. Imean, you know, think about
I mean, look, lithium ionbatteries, right, that's the chemistry the

(21:25):
battery construct that's won so far asthe lithium ion that was what was responsible
for the exploding laptops a few yearsago, and one of the earliest large
electricity storage projects outside of Phoenix,Arizona had a massive fire and sent something
like twenty firefighters to the hospital acouple months ago. So, look,

(21:47):
no source of energy is perfect.If we build up a system with lots
of transmission, lots of win,lots of solar and lots of batteries.
We're still going to have problems withit. So you know, my magic
wand only goes so far as Yeah, energy is inherently powerful. Today's episode
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more details. What do you thinkabout Tesla and Elon and what they're doing?

(23:18):
You know, I am he hascreated something. He's created an incredible
brand, you know, and Igive him all the respect in the world
for that. Tesla even if tomorrowhe said, you know what, I
can't make any more cars financially doesn'tmake sense. The Tesla brand itself,
and that is a brand which hasyou know, talks about changing the world

(23:41):
lower energy consumption, you know,cleaner energy. That's an incredibly powerful project.
It has captured a lot of people'simagination. So he has, you
know, huge respect on that.You know, what he did in solar,
what he did with a powerwall justdidn't quite work. And you know,
Tesla's are one wonderful cars. Butyou know, every time I take

(24:02):
a look at the Tesla's financials,I scratch my head and wonder how it
is he's still in business. Yeah, I know what, they're doing some
really good stuff with the battery technology. Where do you see Yeah, where
do you see the most interesting stuffhappening? So I have heard of some
interesting stuff going on with the Teslabatteries. There's a lot of fundamental research

(24:22):
that's still going on in universities.Most of the corporate focus right now is
just on driving down cost. Youknow, let's see how how low we
can produce lithium I on sales forSo I would say I would kind of
keep my eyes on universities and maybea couple of startups that breakthrough ventures is
funding and Tesla. I mean,anyone who's working on batteries has the capacity

(24:45):
to make a really interesting fundamental breakthrough. But I would caution your listeners that
I get about ten emails a monthclaiming that they've invented this new breakthrough battery,
and none of them ever seemed toamount to a hill of being.
And China's basically buying all the minesin Congo. What do you think about
the production and the overall dynamics inthe world for that. Yeah, well

(25:07):
that's a really that that's well.Unfortunately, cobalt mining involves a lot of
potential for abuse, for environmental abuse, for human rights abuse. We have
seen that. It's not a prettypicture. And uh, we certainly don't
want a situation in which our entireeconomy is based on lithium ion cells and

(25:29):
we can't build them because we don'tcontrol the cobalt. So it is something
that is worrisome. But as longas China remains a good trading partner,
shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully not. Yeah, usually you don't like to
punch your punch your partners and thenose. That's a that's a whole other
can of worms. I don't thinkwe need to get into it. An
optimist, our pessimist yourself. I'mcompletely an optimist. I'm completely an optimist.

(25:55):
Let me take you back to frackingfor a second. So twenty years
ago, twenty one years ago,now, there was this guy in North
Texas who was trying to figure outa new way to build a well into
a super dense rock and he cameupon this idea of doing a massive water
flood and trying something no one elsedid, and he invented modern fracking twenty
one years later, it's completely changedthe world. So my question is who

(26:18):
out there is going to figure outthe new way to make a solar cell,
the new way to make win,the new way to do this,
or to do that that's going tohave a comparable impact. I mean,
so far, what's happened over thelast ten years to push renewable energy from
a really a niche product to somethingthat's much more mainstream has been a global
supply chain. Hasn't been a hugetechnological change. We haven't had some breakthrough

(26:42):
like we did with fracking. Wedeveloped a global supply chain which drove down
prices. So somebody out there istrying to invent the next mouse, a
better mousetrap, and when they do, it's going to be massively successful.
And you know, the capitalist systemhas many flaws, but one thing it
does right is that if you canbuild a better mousetrap, it will find

(27:03):
the money to develop that system andspread it. And so you know,
we're waiting for you know, somebody'sgoing to come up with something brilliant and
it's going to change the world.That's my feeling, and I'm an optimist
because of it. I would agree, But I think with a better mousetrap
example, at least as an entrepreneurand someone who's done a bit of investing,
the yeah, you've got to befive to ten x better, not

(27:23):
five to ten percent better. Otherwisethe mousetrap doesn't really have the extra umphant
needs to get the adoption and change. People don't like change, well,
that's for sure, that's definitely forsure, but I'd still feel like they're
there. There's look, I spentseveral years watching when Silicon Valley tried to
get involved in clean tech and madeall these investments buy and large. They

(27:44):
weren't successful, and then Silicon Valleysort of backed away and sort of said,
now we're happy, we'll keep doingour software investments. So we men.
I've watched some of the this investmentplay out, but I'm still I'm
still an optimist. I'm still there'sa lot of fundamental research going on and
somebody's going to figure something out thatwill deliver those five to ten x returns

(28:07):
or five to ten x better thanthe status quo. But I do agree
with you, the power of theincumbent energy technology is incredible and very difficult
to dislodge and that was one ofthe stories I covered in Superpower. You
know, you had these incumbent utilitiesthat they did not want something that was
better because it was disruptive to theirbusiness. I would agree. I think

(28:29):
the problem with the Silicon Valley cleantech thing was the timeline they have,
the ten year fund cycles. Ifyou can't think longer than that, you
can't really change the world and themeaningful ways that at least large infrastructure projects
need. But that's a problem.I mean, it's a problem. Is
we got to fix the incentives tofix the problem then yeah, yeah,
I mean, you know, look, we were talking about big transmission lines

(28:52):
before and the entrepreneurs clean Line thatI wrote about Michael Skelly and clean Line,
they took years just to get ayea or nay vote or whether they
could build their infrastructure. We needto do a better job with big energy
infrastructure to say here, you know, here's your timeline. Maybe it's four
years, maybe it's three years,but something there needs to be a reasonable

(29:15):
timeframe in which you can get ayes or no vote. Something that takes
seven to ten years just to getthe environmental impact statement, just to be
told whether you can do something,it's not going to work. Investors or
not? Are just going to shyaway from it? Yeah, it's it's
a major problem. How do youthink about climate change today? I remain
an optimist, you know, Ithink we think about climate change in the

(29:37):
wrong way. We sort of thinkabout, you know, are we going
to meet Paris or not? Arewe going to stop before we get through
the two degrees of celsius increase ornot? Climate change is not a yes
or a no. It's not abinary type of situation. If we have
one degree of temperature rise, that'sgoing to be disrupted, but a hell
of a lot better than two degrees, which is a hell a lot better

(29:59):
than three or four. Climate changeis a matter of degrees. You know,
no pun intended, and we needto do everything we can to prevent
the worst and most catastrophic changes.You know, you gave me a wand
before and I said I would Iwould wave it on batteries. But here's
here's something else. Maybe if Icould take that back, I would love
to see somebody come up with asystem that can take in massive amounts of

(30:25):
air and strip the carbon out.And you know, and then you just
stripping carbon out of the air,sort of carbon mining from the air.
Come up with a technology along thoselines, and we'll go a long distance
towards solving climate change. If youever get a genie in the future,
your first wish should be for unlimitedwishes. Just FYI, Well no,
I don't genies give you three wishes. So I've used two of mine so

(30:45):
far. Oh yeah, right,batteries. Yeah, I'm not as effective
of a genie. So well,we're trying to change change the world.
We're trying to change people's perspective.I think having a cutoff in a lot
of sense is more helpful though.So for instance, if you're overweight,
it's much easier to not have junkfood in the house. If you're alcoholic,

(31:06):
you don't want to touch alcohol becauseevery time you have to make that
decision. How do we get peoplein society on board to make these difficult
changes when it is a collective benefitsproblem that doesn't affect us all that much
until we're all scared. That's agreat question and one that I've struggled with.
So, first of all, youneed some sort of social movement.
There needs to be a social sensethat we're all in this together, and

(31:30):
then everyone has a role to play. Social pressure, social cohesion. It
is important. But even just asimportant as that is, there need to
be alternatives. Look, I livein Texas. Mostly what I need to
do I have to drive. Butif you build roads with good bike lanes,

(31:51):
if you build better public transportation,I will begin using that. So
it's not just about personal choices weneed to have. We need to have
social choices out there as well.You can't expect people to choose to make
the sacrifices that might be necessary ifwe don't give them good options. Even
even so, if you need toget to Texas from one side to the

(32:14):
other, a bike lane is notgoing to get you all that far.
It's part of it, just thephysical issues behind it. So it's a
lot easier for Europe to implement stufflike this because Europe is designed as a
small city. Yea, yeah,closer together, a lot easier to build,
to build rail, to build otherother technologies. Sure, but look,

(32:34):
I'm not big on flight shaming.That's the new phrase. Look,
if people need to take flights,go for it. At the end of
the day, climate change is notgoing I'm not going to solve climate change
by turning my air conditioner and living, you know, at seventy eight instead
of seventy four, because that's notgoing to address the fact that you have

(32:54):
millions and millions of people in placeslike Indonesia, India, Bangladesh that are
living in increasingly sweltering climates and wantair conditioning and want more air conditioning.
What's going to solve air conditioning iscan we come up with a better air
conditioning. Can we come up witha more energy efficient way to cool the
air. Can we come up withsomething that just, you know, a

(33:17):
new way to design cities, anew way to design houses that encourages more
cooling and more cross ventilation. It'sin some ways climate change is a very
much a design and then technology question, not a personal, you know,
some sort of personal choices question.So how do we avoid the innovation race?

(33:37):
Though? So this reminds me ofsomething Ben Thompson once said about Snapchat's
business model, and it was there. It was He's the gingerbread man,
Evan Spiegel. He runs, heruns just as fast as he can,
and he hopes that facebooks doesn't catchup in time. And that's what it
feels like with climate change, dowe have to invent a new solution continuously
to fix it or are there incentivesnot to fix it but to slow it
to improve it, or their incentivesthat we can also shifts to be able

(34:00):
to make this easier than having tofind the wild card which saves everything because
we found the way to scrub themethane or the way to clean the blowers
or etc. Right. Look,I think we're a lot closer than we
think, and because it's a marketissue ten years ago. So I'm going
to tell you something that ten yearsago would have been preposterous, would have

(34:22):
gotten me locked up and fired frommy job at the Wall Street Journal,
and that is that in most placesin the world, the cheapest way to
generate electricity is wind or solar,hands down. That's the truth now.
And that technology keeps getting better,so kids getting cheaper. So we now
have a way to generate lots ofelectricity. It's not exactly where it needs

(34:44):
to be. It's maybe not exactlywhere the people live. We don't have
the infrastructure. We've got too manyincumbents standing in the way. But what
we need to do is create amarket structure to allow us to generate as
much of that electricity as possible andto move some of the more polluting forms
of electricity off the system. Weneed to let the market dictate, so
you know, whether that means somesort of carbon tax or some sort of

(35:06):
price on the more polluting carbons thatbring in the externalities. You know,
if we can find the right structure, I think the market will move us
much closer to slowing down the amountof greenhouse gases that we're releasing. And
you know, and the other thingis we need to continue to be innovative
and we need to continue to havea healthy, robust economy. That's what's

(35:29):
going to get us there. Yousaid, if we can figure out the
way to do it, what isthe way to do it? In terms
of yeah, okay, so firstof all, this is really important.
We have the technology. It wouldbe great to have some technological improvements,
you know, methane capture, strippingcarbon dioxide out of the air, better
batteries, that would be wonderful,But we have a lot of the basic

(35:49):
building block technologies that we need.What I'm talking about is some sort of
market structure which says we want thatwe're going to give an advantage. We're
going to have an incentive toward anenergy that doesn't create carbon, that doesn't
create greenhouse gases. We're going tocreate a new market structure that incentivizes that

(36:12):
and then let let the investors takeover to build that out. We don't
really have that right now. Okay, So for you, there's a lot
of ways we can do it.We just need to have the will to
do it. I think there's alot of political will involve, and I
think we need to find ways tospeed up the infrastructure that's required, like
transmission lines to you know, wecan't We've got people want to build wind

(36:37):
farms, but if we can't movethose electrons to where the people are,
if we don't have that basic infrastructure, it's not going to do us any
good. And then what we needto do is have a market structure which
says you, which provides the incentives. Say, you know, a kilowatt
hour is a kilowatt hour, butwe're going to pay more for a kilowatt
hour that doesn't also generate greenhouse gases. I like it. We tech the

(37:00):
cigarettes. They're terrible for you.So you're a journalist, what's the state
of the media industry today, regionalnewspapers are in big trouble. When I
was coming up, you know,there were many, many great regional newspapers
Dallas Morning News, Seattle Times,San Francisco Chronicle, Charlotte Observer, Miami

(37:21):
Harold. A lot of those newspapersare in big financial trouble right now.
The national newspapers are still strong,and we're seeing a great proliferation of online
resources, online news channels. Butbut we are we're inventing the future in
some ways faster. Well, no, excuse me, let me flip that

(37:43):
we're sort of tearing down the oldstructure, the old way we trained journalists,
the old way we distributed news fasterthan the new forms are coming and
coming down the pike. So Iworry. I worry about, you know,
my children and where they're getting theirnews from, because you know,
for them, there's just this great, big sea out there of news and
there's not as much differentiation as thereused to be. And I think that's

(38:07):
really opened up the door for alot of the fake news we've seen,
and a lot of the manipulation ofsocial media to plant propaganda. Is the
expensive Wall Street journal subscription or payroll, the answer to having the funding needed
to do journalism. You know,I think it's an answer for certain niche
publications. We've managed to do itbecause we've you know, we have a

(38:30):
long track record, and there arelots of people who are willing to pay
for that type of quality. Youknow, the Washington Post has done the
same, and look, quality,people will pay for quality. We found
that. So paywalls help us preservethose bastions of quality, I think.
But that's not the complete answer,because we've got a whole generation of people

(38:51):
coming up who are used to theirnews being free, So how do you
convince them to take out a subscription? You know, etcetera, etcetera.
I'm I'm kind of keeping a closeeye on some of these new these news
aggregator sites, whether it's through Appleor you know, my parent corporation,
the parent corporation I work for,News Corpus starting to put one of those
out where you'll pay some sort ofprice, uh, and they'll aggregate lots

(39:15):
of different news sources for you andpresent it to you. At business,
it's all about bundling and unbundling.It's uh, yeah, Look, the
media business has been uh, it'sbeen tough over the last few years,
and there are days that I feellike I've got Stockholm syndrome, trying to
figure out how it is that overthe last twenty five years I've managed to
survive in this business because I've seenmany, many great reporters not be able

(39:37):
to find jobs and have to godo other things. And it's problematic because
in some ways that could be agood thing if the system was inefficient,
But in other ways, do wewant only the people with the means to
pay to be able to have accessto valuable, credible information? No,
absolutely not. That's that's incompatible democracy. You know, if you if you
mean, how can you if onlypeople who've got the means can get access

(40:00):
to good information, high quality informationnews, you really can't run a democracy
that way. Democracy requires everyone tohave access to some level of news and
discourse. So I mean that's yeah. What do you think about, Mark,
Yeah, what do you think aboutstate stubsidized journalism or potentially some type
of some type of democracy tax sothat we keep our people not stupid.

(40:22):
You know, it worries me wheneveryou talk about the state and news.
That concerns me. However, youknow, the BBC has done very well
for many years, and they therewas a I forget exactly how, but
there was some sort of state tax. If we're going to do that,
if we're going to have some sortof state collected tax or fee to fund

(40:44):
good journalism, there's going to needto be a very strong, very robust
way to keep the state apparatus andthe press apart. So somehow the money's
collected, and it's going to haveto go through some sort of independent group
to make sure that the government andpoliticians don't exert undue influence on the news.

(41:06):
Billionaires buying newspapers. Yeah, well, you know, that's been actually
a very positive trend recently. WashingtonPost is doing great, Wall Street Journal
is doing great. The Atlantic ismuch stronger than it used to be.
There's definitely something to be said forhaving a daddy warbox with deep pockets paying
for the news, unless it becomesMurdoch. So how do we avoid that?

(41:30):
Well, I look, I workfor Hey, I work for Murdoch.
I work you know, Wall StreetJournal has been owned by Murdoch for
goodness what eight ten years now,when they bought it from the Bancroft family,
which, by the way. I'vebeen watching Succession on HBO and just
absolutely love it because it feels likeI lived through part of that. Um,
yes, say what you like.I can tell you with all,
with all sincerity, that I havenever felt the hand of Murdoch trying to

(41:54):
guide my stories toward one political conclusionor another. We have always had a
very you know, he's allowed theWall Street Journal to pursue good, high
quality journalism. You guys don't sellon advertising though, you guys sell on
value and primarily stock trading. Ionly I can only talk about what I
know, Okay, I just Iget a little worried. I feel like

(42:15):
it gets into the same realm ofthe censorship debate with Facebook or Twitter.
Well, yeah, you want Suckerbergto not let this guy talk now,
But what happens when it's not thatguy in charge, but it's someone you
don't trust. And I feel likeyou could have similar problems with the billionaires
owning newspapers, And yet it alsofixes a lot of the economic problems.
How do you put those safety rolesin place? Yeah, it's no question.

(42:37):
I mean, look, it doesn'tmake me nervous to see the Jeff
Bezos of the world own the WashingtonPost. Of course it does hopefully over
the years, the very rich familiesthat have owned the American media, the
Chandlers, the Soulsburgers, the Bancrofts, have seen it as a public trust
and hopefully the next generation will continin you that pattern. If they don't,

(43:01):
then I hope there's enough competition.There are enough other news sources so
that if the Washington Post god forbiddown the road becomes something which is very
clearly steered in one direction, thatpeople have an alternative to go to.
That could be an interesting put pushfor you as a journalist or for someone
to try to get to try toget to try to get the owners to

(43:22):
foundationalize them, so to speak,so to set up trusts to manage the
papers as opposed to managing them themselves. Well so, yeah, that would
be interesting. But then, youknow, I think part of the fun.
One of the reasons that the billionairesbuy these newspapers and buy these media
outlets is because they want to bein the flow. They want to be
they want to be in have asay in how this is all run.

(43:45):
And you know, they feel theexcitement that is journalism. And if you
create a trust, and you hirea bunch of graybeards who are former editors,
and you know, what's the funof that? So I think it
will be difficult. I think itis. It is incumbent upon us in
the media to not just broadcast tothe public what's important about the news,

(44:07):
but to also broadcast and convince ourowners what's important so that hopefully they make
their right choices. Yeah, Igot to keep the job. How oftome
do people tell you you look justlike Vince Vaughn A couple of times a
month. A couple times a month, Yeah, a couple of times a
month. I bumped into him onceat the Contine Club in Austin, Texas,
and my wife told me I hadto go stand next to him.
He is slightly taller than I am, he said, I noticed when you

(44:29):
started slightly more handsome. Also slightlymore handsome, slightly more rich as well.
But that's okay, we'll fix that. What technology or trend are you
most excited about outside of energy?And why? Outside of energy? What
technology trend the most excited That's areally good question. Um, I came
prepared to talk energy. What amI excited about outside of energy? Um?
I'm drawing a blank. Can Ican I think about this for a

(44:51):
minute or yeah we can, Yeah, we can jump back to it.
Okay. I was prepared to answerthat for energy, but that's a good
question. Let me think about somethingthat's non O. Let's you're ready,
yep, okay, jone, justjump back into it, or how you
want to just jump okay. Iam fascinated and excited about the trend of
that's going on in foods. Youknow, with this whole it's not just

(45:12):
the beyond meat, but trying tobring in protein from insects. It's a
whole new way of thinking about food. Uh, and growing vertical farms in
in warehouses and cities to get productionof food closer to where people are.
I think that that all. Ijust find that all completely fascinating and I'm
totally excited about it. Yeah.If we can start lab growing meat,
then we have way more space forsolar farms as well. Yeah, and

(45:36):
we can actually reforest parts of theworld. It will be a win win
win except for well, yeah,it'll be a win win win. What
should I have asked you about that? I didn't, um, you know,
the one topic that we didn't coverwas community opposition to win into transmission
and whether there's you know, likewhy people are so opposed to it?

(45:58):
Why why should you asked me?Or why are they opposed to it?
No, why are they opposed?I think they're opposed. And one of
the things that I was really surprisedby was that there was and this was
going on. I think we've allseen this more in the last couple of
years, but there was an oppositionto transmission line because the benefits, the

(46:20):
money, the profits were going toflow to the coasts. And there were
people in the middle of the countrysaying, look what we have is land,
and you want to take our landand send profits somewhere else, and
you there was no matter how muchyou talk to them about the social benefit,
about how everyone would benefit from cleanerelectricity, it did not matter.
And I was, you know,just really surprised by just how strong those

(46:43):
sentiments were. Yeah, it's frustrating. We're working together. You get a
ten thousand dollars raise, I geta five thousand dollar raise. I feel
like shit. It's some of thesome of the human dynamics. It's it's
quite frustrating. We've got to dealwith them. But look, here's a
perfect example. For twenty years peopletalked about building offshore wind in the States
and it went nowhere. There werelegal fights, there were regulatory fights,
they're political fights. The Kennedy's foughtit off off the Cape off Nantucket.

(47:07):
And then what happened, and therewas a key change that allowed so much
more offshore wind to be envisioned andto begun to be built. And that
key change was that the developers startedto go to the state capitals in the
Northeast and say, hey, youknow that dilapidated port that you've been trying
to save jobs at, we canyou know, we're ready to invest,

(47:29):
We're willing to bring hundreds of newjobs. So there was a sense they
sort of figured out the special sauceso that the benefits of this energy production
were more widely spread. Well,we haven't quite figured out that special sauce
yet. We haven't certain for onshorewind or for onshore solar, we haven't
certain ways. But there needs tobe more of an effort to figure out

(47:50):
how can we spread the benefits ofthis more broadly so that everyone feels that
everyone were asking to make sacrifices,feels that they're also benefiting. To get
results, you got to tell peoplewhat they want to hear. What would
you recommend to people in terms ofa quote or a call to action before
you tell them where to find youquote or call to action? You know,
I'll go with the epigraph that Iput into my book Superpower. Everyone

(48:15):
always talks about the weather, butno one ever does anything about it when
it comes to climate stop stop complainingabout it, Stop talking about how climate
change is horrible, and start doingsomething. Start figuring out how you can
get involved in some of the technologyand the innovation and the new business models,

(48:36):
the investment. Look, this isexciting. We can either look at
what the next twenty or thirty yearsis going to bring and get overwhelmed and
scared, or we can get beexcited by the opportunities, and I encourage
everyone to be excited start doing somethingabout it. Going gone beyond climate change
and the energy I like it.Where where can people find you learn more
about the books and all the kids? Oh sure? Well, yeah,

(48:58):
thanks very much www dot Russellgold dotnet or on Twitter at Russell Goold,
and of course guys links and everythingin the show Notes Disruptors dot FM check
out the books, check out RossRuss and if you guys enjoyed the episode,
please be sure to share it witha friend. Helps us with growing
our disruptive movement, so to speak, to fight climate change, build a
better world. All the good stuffUntil next time, Cheers, Cheers Russ,

(49:21):
Thanks allot for having me by gasbe the change you want to see
in the world. That's something Istrive towards and fail towards every single day.
If you enjoyed this podcast, ifyou think the world could benefit from
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(49:42):
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(50:05):
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