The Opportunity Cost of Bill Gates Climate Crisis
In a shocking flip, Bill Gates announced that Climate Change, while a real issue, is not an “existential threat” to humanity. Wow, how much has his Climate leadership impacted global markets and society and how has it harmed kids’ mental health? You have to ask, how much has the global market of carbon credits and Net Zero been influenced by Bill Gates’ money and involvement? And how do we move forward without being censored?
In this episode of the Energy Realities Podcast, David Blackmon, Tammy Nemeth, Irina Slav, and Stu Turley dive into Gates’ sudden change in tone and what it reveals about the broader climate agenda. From the fading dominance of the Green movement to the growing backlash against global sustainability mandates, the hosts unpack how billionaire-driven policies, corporate influence, and political narratives have shaped public perception and distorted energy markets. They also explore the real “opportunity cost” of these policies how resources poured into questionable green ventures have stifled innovation, strained economies, and undermined energy security worldwide. Tune in for sharp insights and real talk you won’t hear in the mainstream.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Opening and Introductions
01:41 – Bill Gates’ Shift on Climate Change
05:11 – Gates’ Motives and Investments
06:45 – Gates’ Profit Motives & Backlash
10:28 – Media Clip: “Opportunity Cost”
15:14 – Exxon’s Pushback and Policy Overreach
21:14 – The Battle over Corporate Climate Mandates
28:15 – EU’s Overconfidence and Federalization Push
34:01 – EU’s Political Shakeups and Doubling Down
39:42 – Climate activists lose human rights case over Norway oil and gas drilling
42:36 – Tests find that Chinese manufacturer can manipulate electric busses in Norway
46:46 – Chris Wright talks China Deal, Alaska, Bill Gates and More
47:44 – Bill Gates Lurch into Energy and Climate Reality
48:33 – Save the animals. But only the ones we say
54:50 – ExxonMobil Sues California Over Climate Reporting Laws
55:23 – Surge in Rooftop Blazes Sparks Concern Over Miliband’s Solar Panel Boom
57:46 – Global Climate Governance
01:01:46 – Closing Remarks
The Opportunity Cost of Bill Gates Climate Crisis
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Irina Slav [00:00:12] Hello and welcome to the Energy Realities Podcast with Tammy Nemeth. How are you today, Tammy?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:20] I’m doing well today. It’s a windy, gusty autumn day in England.
Irina Slav [00:00:25] Are there clouds or is it sunny?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:28] No, it’s cloudy. We had a bit of rain this morning, but yeah, windy, cloudy, great
Irina Slav [00:00:32] What a piece of solar energy in the UK today. We have David Blackmon in Texas, what’s the weather like in Texas?
David Blackmon [00:00:44] It’s beautiful, it’s sunny, it cold, it is autumn finally and it’s one of my favorite three weeks of the year, our autumn season here in Texas. That’s about how long it generally lasts.
Irina Slav [00:01:03] And we have Stu Turley in his bunker where…
Stuart Turley [00:01:08] In Oklahoma, I’m leaving for Abilene here pretty quick, so it’s going to be a great day.
Irina Slav [00:01:14] Have you been working with your back whole recently?
Stuart Turley [00:01:17] Um, yeah, I’ve been fixing out, uh, figuring out a way to lob boulders at my neighbor, so you cannot beat this kind of entertainment. Uh, I have physics. I’ve thrown it all out. I’ve, I figured out how Tesla solve the world’s energy problems. I’m working on solving the geometry problems of lobbing boulder. So
Irina Slav [00:01:41] Good luck with that. In the meantime, we are taking on one of the loudest voices for the energy transition, Mr. Bill Gates, who recently made a splash in the media by saying that climate change was not the biggest threat to humanity. And we had more immediate problems to solve before climate change if you can believe that. Now I personally think that one big reason for this change of opinion is that there is obviously a growing backlash against climate change driven policies across the world really. But what other reasons may there be for this? Tammy?
Tammy Nemeth [00:02:34] Well, it’s interesting because I would almost put the Trump effect in the title because once again, this is an effect, I think a secondary impact of what Trump has been doing. And I think primarily this is related not just to the new sort of trajectory of the Republican administration. But also the cutting of the USAID funds because one of the first things Bill Gates talks about in his notes is that there’s been a 25% reduction in money going in to help his Gavi vaccine fund and so because there’s now all this new competition for funding since USAID cut off so much going around the world. That they need to prioritize, re-prioritize where the money goes and I would almost say that this is not a pivot by Gates, this is more of a refinement of what he’s been talking about for a long time, so in his previous TED Talks and his book and all this kind of thing, he still talked about innovation, he’s still talked about needing to make investments in technology and so on and so forth and how. How human health is really important and his whole vaccine thing. But he also focused back then, a few years ago, on mitigation. And now he’s kind of put mitigation aside and says, well, we need to invest in adaptation. So if you read through his actually kind of boring writing
David Blackmon [00:04:21] It really was hard to plow through that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:04:22] It was hard to plow through, and it’s just like, good to read before bed, I suppose, help you go to sleep. But in any event, what he’s really pushing is that he wants, he still supports Net Zero, but he wants more money invested in the different tech innovations. And you talked about fusion and needing this reliable energy for for AI, but then doubling down also that wind and solar are cheaper than ever and cheaper than fossil fuels and blah blah blah. So he doesn’t reject what he’s said in the past, he’s just kind of reprioritized and put adaptation first and put mitigation sort of farther down the totem.
Irina Slav [00:05:11] But that’s funny, why would Bill Gates need federal funding from USAID and whatever? I thought he was doing it with his own money, he has so much and he’s putting it to good use out of the goodness of his heart to save the planet, I’m confused.
Tammy Nemeth [00:05:26] Yeah, you know, that’s a really good question. I think he puts a whole lot of his own money in, but a 25% cut in your operating budget, you know that’s, that a big chunk of cash. And so, you now he puts his, it’s one of these public private partnerships, right? Where you, the foundations put their money in and then the government puts a share in and so on. But I think these, he’s got all of these other investments. And what I think is most concerning is that this what he stated in his notes to try and mobilize this conversation is almost a pitch for the different companies that he has investments in where maybe before the the inflation reduction act where it was helping you know some of these grants and subsidies I’m not sure but in any event but now they need more investors so he lists a bunch of tech things. That he’s been promoting and, you know, oh, we need more investment in this and we need investment in that. It’s like pitching for other people to buy into companies that will benefit from whatever this adaptation sort of push is going to accomplish.
Irina Slav [00:06:45] David, based on what Tammy just said, do you feel like Bill Gates may be starting to feel the real cost of the energy transition?
David Blackmon [00:06:57] Yeah, you know, I, first I want to just say I’m shocked, shocked to learn that Bill Gates might have a profit motive for making this transition in narrative. Right. I mean, come on everything the man does, everything he’s advocated in this space for 30 years has involved him building some kind of business to make profits from whatever it was he was advocating, even stopping cow farts. You know, he had a. He had a business to take advantage and develop technologies to stop cows from farting, uh, which by the way, in Denmark, there are decimating their cattle population now by forcing farmers to feed the cattle. Boverd is a, is that what it’s called this feed that the cows don’t like and it’s causing them to rapidly decline and they’re dying and nobody, nobody in the climate movement gives a damn about those poor cattle, which is Anyway, back to Bill Gates. Um, yes, I mean, I think this is all a reaction is Tammy said to what’s happening in the United States, uh, with USAID and the rescission of $22 billion in, in grants to a bunch of NGOs that most likely Gates was involved in in one way or another in some of them, and, uh just the general reduction in spending by the U S government. In subsidizing all of this nonsense. And you know, for Bill Gates, it’s important, I think just in the overall debate to have someone as prominent as he is making this shift. And I think he should be actually to some extent congratulated or wanting to divert more funding to what humanity actually does well. It throughout history, which is adapting to a changing climate and mitigating for the impacts of a changing climat, because the climate is always changing, and sometimes it changes fairly radically over a short period of time, and so we’ve seen throughout history mankind being able to smartly adapt to these changing conditions, and that’s what we have to now. You know, I have no use for Bill Gates. I think he’s been an incredibly destructive force in this area for a long, long time. Uh, and I had my first real disagreement with secretary Wright last week when he congratulated Gates for doing so much good work on vaccines and other medical issues in the third world, when actually he’s being incredibly destructive and caused an awful lot of death and destruction in the Third World. Over the last 20 years with his harebrained schemes. He’s one of the most pernicious negative forces on the planet and has been for a long time. And I’m gonna be really interested to see how he’s greeted by the Al Gore’s and John Carey’s of the world and Larry Fink’s of the word at the COP 30 conference at the end of this month and at the WEF annual meeting in January. I think there’s going to be some very interesting. Debates and conversations on what he’s rolled out.
Irina Slav [00:10:28] Thank you, Stu. I know, we all know you’re a huge fan of Bill Gates. Oh, you bet.
Stuart Turley [00:10:37] He has a wimpy, he has a really wimppy handshake. The only time I’ve ever met him. I gave him a very firm handshake, looked him in the eye and said, Bill, would you like to see how an operating system is supposed to work? And he did not like my comment, but let’s start. Let’s take a look at what I found very interesting. When you take a look at gut filled, let me set this up a little bit. Uh, I love, um, the whole, uh, Tyrus and, um Tyrus even follows me on my X account. That’s kind of cool. He’s never looked at my account, but I appreciate him following me. But Charles Payne was on Gutfeld and I found this one minute segment, very, very telling, and I wrote an article to follow up on that. So let me play this one.
VIdeo Speaker (FOX NEWS Host) [00:11:24] Do you think the opportunity costs for all of this, like the last 30 to 40 years, I don’t think you can tabulate the opportunity cost, trillions of dollars that could have, you probably could have solved poverty in every third world country.
Video Speaker (Charles Payne) [00:11:40] Yeah, and think about even right now, this AI race, the data center race. In New Jersey, they’re talking about electricity costs. Well, the Democrat comes in and shuts down five plants right away, including a nuclear power plant. You go to war with fossil fuels. What the hell? How do you get to work? It just, none of it ever made any sense, and I’m just, my theory is that at one point he was the richest person in the world, and he was bored. He was like, how can I just pick a seed up? He had nothing to do, but he left the carnage that’s out there. Think about all the pressure. I will say Cows, you know, they wanted to stop cows from farming.
VIdeo Speaker (FOX NEWS Host) [00:12:12] Yes.
Video Speaker (Charles Payne) [00:12:13] Right now, there’s some cows out there like, oh, it’s been since 2019, you know? Don’t walk past the pasture any time in the next week. Give them a little bit more right now. Give them some cows over there for us for, what’s that, since 2019. I really feel bad though for Greta. Yes. Greta, he’s a billionaire. She’s broke. She’s like, you now, activist for hire, give me a cause, Gaza’s gone now. Climate’s gone, what is Greta gonna be upset about?
VIdeo Speaker (FOX NEWS Host) [00:12:41] That is true, like she can’t hate the Jews anymore. She should like blame the Jews for climate change. That and she kills two birds with one stone. You know the funny thing about the cattle thing? Do you know that it got so crazy that they were doing surgeries on cattle and putting their stomachs outside. Watch her, look at her face. So they would barge into giant bags. Did you know this? I didn’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:13:01] So I wrote this story, uh, after the, after watching that, and when you sit back and take a look, Charles Payne is actually bringing you home, but what would Greta do instead of WWJD? What would Jesus do? I added, uh WW, uh www GDN. What would Grete do now? So, I mean, this poor girl is now out of a job being an activist, but when you go through the actual trillions of dollars. Let’s take a look at some of this stuff that he’s done. The European union, which in emphasis on carbon, which Exxon this morning has actually come out and, and, uh, Reuters put out a story on, uh. Uh, Exxson having to think about getting out. That’s a whole nother topic here in just a minute. The UK under its net zero by 2050 has echoed Gates calls for carbon capture storage and renewable subsidies. And it is now appearing that under all of this is that the climate catastrophe is a wealth transfer. The high cost of carbon capture. Let’s take Occidental Petroleum as an example. They’re in a, if a different US government won in a new thing, Warren Buffett would look brilliant. But Occidental has gone through the direct carbon capture and it has actually now set themselves up. Warren Buffett had to buy back in and have a buyout to reduce their debt. And carbon capture does not mean anything without the scheme behind it. So I have all of this in here. Then you have policy overreach and you have Exxon versus California, the EU backlash, I have, all of that. In the article for, uh, the energy newsbeat.substack.com. So it was kind of fun taking a Gutfeld, uh show and then writing a complete article on it.
Tammy Nemeth [00:15:14] That’s awesome.
Irina Slav [00:15:16] He mentioned on that show, New Jersey, I just read the story in the Wall Street Journal that people in New Jersey are struggling, not everyone, but a lot of people are struggling to pay their electricity bills because they’ve gone so high because of all the data centers and the upgrades that are being done to the grid to accommodate this.
Stuart Turley [00:15:40] Let me, uh, let me share this story this morning. Uh, you all shared this at Exxon, uh Warren’s EU lock and force exit from Europe, what’s the impact of the EU and investors I went through and found. The Antwerp, uh he’s they’ve got several different, um, huge investments. They’ve invested a lot. Let me pull up the numbers here and. Here’s the thing, this goes back to my discussion of bifurcation of trading blocks. I think we’ve been going to go through some trading block changes. If you’re in the net zero camp, you’re going to deindustrialize and then keep putting all of your trading and manufacturing with China. If, you are then moving to a new block, which is using oil, gas, nuclear, which is against net zero. You’re going to find ways of making those fossil fuels as clean as you can. You’re gonna be in a whole new block, but I found this very interesting at how impactful Darren woods is.
Irina Slav [00:16:50] Have you noticed? No, go on, Stu.
Stuart Turley [00:16:54] Oh, no, go ahead.
Irina Slav [00:16:56] Have you noticed, or is it just me, that Exxon is becoming really vocal about its criticism of the next Euro affair? I mean, that’s true in California. Darren Wood just said they might just up and leave Europe, which I totally understand. And Exxson also warned that the UK may be left without a single refinery. In the not too distant future, if they keep pushing with the carbon taxes and everything. Do you think that Exxon has had enough?
Stuart Turley [00:17:31] It’s happening in California and.
Irina Slav [00:17:33] It’s all too obvious and the company can’t stay silent in the face of this insanity.
Stuart Turley [00:17:40] If they don’t stand up for themselves, who will?
Irina Slav [00:17:43] Well, they didn’t stand up for themselves for years, Stu
Stuart Turley [00:17:46] Oh, I agree, but now Exxon just filed over the last week, a few days ago, a lawsuit against California on those things. So they’re finally standing up and it’s going to be the fiduciary responsibility of the CEO to stand up for its shareholders and investors. When you look at The oil and gas companies of the United States, Exxon Chevron, the majors. They are doing a better job in not going down 100% of the renewable. You had Oxy go down the carbon capture route because of the subsidies. The subsidies are going to dry up. They’re now going to be holding to their shareholders in a different way. You have total energies, um, which is Oklahoma talk for, you know, trying to speed up the energies. Yeah. Yeah. Total energies. But when you sit back and say, wait a minute, you’ve got BP shell and the European that had flopped over to the renewable side, and then they have failed, they are now coming back in and total energies has bought into United States natural gas assets and they’re now getting rid of theirs. So if the big oil companies don’t defend themselves, they will be forced out of those markets. And we’re seeing We’re seeing California as a national security risk with the 20% of their refining capacity being shut down in the next year, in the next few months, actually, they’re already starting to wind down. And I wouldn’t want to do business in California. Uh, it’s absolutely.
David Blackmon [00:19:23] Not an oil company and Exxon is largely out of California other than a plastics operation and some retail which they would have to find buyers far to get out and that’s the same problem they’re going to have in Europe trying to get outta Europe they gotta find buyers for those assets in an atmosphere you know with that new regulation CS3D regulation in effect but the other side of Exxon of course and I and I’m thrilled with Darren Woods being out there being a lot more vocal is Exxon still fully endorses a carbon tax here in the United States along with Shell and BP and Chevron and all the rest all the other members of API and the US Chamber of Commerce which is a country club Republican organization both of them really and you know to that extent the Exxons is counterproductive all the rest of them, but at least Darren Woods. Uh, is vocally speaking out against that heavy regulation and, uh, and Exxon does take a more sensible direction overall than its competitors do, which is why it’s so much more profitable and successful as a company.
Stuart Turley [00:20:38] The Exxon shares, they were three, uh, let me look at the numbers. 339.2 billion in 2024 across their entire globe. The specific European revenue includes 20.6 billion from, uh and then 13.7 from the UK. So if they take a haircut, they will survive. It will be a significant haircut. But who will be the losers? It’ll be the Europeans that will be the losers.
Tammy Nemeth [00:21:14] I would add in there that maybe Exxon and Darren Woods have been emboldened by what was uncovered during the House Judiciary Committee meetings last year about these different proxy voting groups that managed to install three activist type people onto the Exxons board. Engine number one. Engine number in those guys. And just how the collusion was going forward. I think Exxon didn’t understand the extent of it. And also, once all that was revealed, and then you have Trump being elected, I think Exxon’s attitude may have been different had the Kamala and the Democratic machine got in. So if it was reversed and the Republicans hadn’t been in power, I don’t think Exon would have been speaking out quite the way as strongly as it is. But I do think that that House Judiciary Committee revelations. Just the extent of it. I mean, it is, I hope they pursue it further because it hasn’t stopped. You know, they kind of have slowed down a little bit, been not quite so vocal and public about what they’re doing.
David Blackmon [00:22:23] And had a lot of their money taken away, yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:22:25] They had a lot of their money taken away, but they’re still doing it. They’re still putting forward these shareholder positions and, and, which is why the sec is trying to change. That’s the securities exchange commission is trying to change how votes happen. Exxon has been behind that, um, where they want retail investors to be able to vote for themselves and not have some proxy voter out there voting on their behalf or, you know, the institutional investors and so on. I’m sorry, I mean So I’m glad Exxon is finally stepping up. Maybe they didn’t understand the extent of the attacks against them. But yeah, it’s good that they’re speaking out because once you start down what the European Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is, it is the transition plans. And even though they said, well, you have to have a transition plan, but you don’t have to say precisely how you’re going to go about achieving it, it allows, which is what he said in this interview, it’s so open. It’s so vague. That litigators will have a field day. Suddenly it’s like, well, why didn’t you have this plan? Why didn’t have more detailed explanations of what you’re doing? How are you gonna do this? And they’ll look to the courts to do the salami tactics to drag it out through the courts and suck revenue out of the company. So yeah, I agree. It’s the changes they made were insignificant and just made it worse.
Stuart Turley [00:24:01] You bet, Irina, this quote from the Reuters article that David put out in his substack, what’s astounding to me is the overreach not only requires us to do that for businesses that we’re doing in Europe, but it will require me to do that for all my business around the world, irrespective of whether it touches Europe or not. Go back to the numbers that I just gave you on $330 billion worth of revenues versus $20 billion worth revenue. Where are you going to be as a CEO? I’m going to protect the fiduciary responsibilities of my company to my shareholders and stockholders, and finally really muscle up and stand up. I got real concerns and I, this is the underlying cause of bifurcation of the markets. You’re going to see it go this way. It’s we’re talking about a $330 billion company, huge company. But it’s actually a bigger topic than that. Yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:25:04] But the interesting thing about the European law is that if they find that you’re not in compliance, that you haven’t gone through with a fine-tooth comb throughout your entire supply chain, their fines are up to 5% of global revenue. So originally, it was minimum 5%. Bam. Oh, but they changed it and said it’ll be up to five percent. So even if it’s one or two percent, that’s a significant amount. So it’s not like this is just chump change. If you if it turns out that you didn’t comply properly and which is open to interpretation of what’s compliant.
David Blackmon [00:25:43] And people need to realize that we’ve complained here for a month now about China’s really aggressive move on rare earth minerals to try to prevent exports of rare earth, minerals, not just from their own country, but globally trying to lock down the entire global market by expanding their authority to, to impact exports by Bolivia for crying out loud or any other country on earth. This EU regulation is that on a different topic, but worse. Even more overreaching, and more onerous, and more authoritarian in nature. And companies like ExxonMobil, and it’s not just them, it’s a lot of other companies, simply are not going to be able to invest the resources in complying with it, and will sue the EU to death to avoid paying those fines. I mean, it’s gonna be, it’s going to generate the most massive array of litigation. From both sides in world history if they go forward with that regulation.
Tammy Nemeth [00:26:47] Yeah. And what’s interesting is that originally, the plan is to phase it in over a period of years. And so the original threshold for who would have to comply was actually kind of low. And then they’re like, oh, well, you know, this will hit medium-sized companies. So we’ll just make it the really big corporations will have to do it. But when you have these really long and integrated supply that ends up including a lot of medium. Size companies, small companies that will still have to provide all that information to the larger company. So yeah, I mean, it would just the ramifications are quite significant. And it’s unfortunate that these, you know, it takes so long to get a reaction. But again, it’s the Trump effect. Because if if Kamala had won, there wouldn’t have been any pushback at all. Would have embraced this and brought it to America.
Irina Slav [00:27:49] Exxon wouldn’t have embraced it. I mean, you can’t force a company to stay in a place where the government policy is hurting its business.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:01] Yeah, but I would argue that if the Democrats had been elected, they would have implemented something similar in the United States. Yes, and so therefore Exxon would have been compelled to do it because they’re everywhere.
Irina Slav [00:28:15] That’s amazing. Even more amazing is the assumption in Brussels that they’re going to comply because the EU market is so huge and so invaluable. Well, it’s not. It’s the Asian market, the growth market. It is not you. You’re impoverishing your people, making that miserable for everyone. It´s true.
David Blackmon [00:28:38] It is true.
Irina Slav [00:28:39] So, of course, companies are going to live, countries are going to live as Qatar and the US said, we’re just not going to export LNG to you. Now, who needs who more? Does Europe need the US and Qatar more than the US and Qatar need the EU? I think it’s a very obvious answer to this question and it’s not good for the EU. And we’re off topic again.
David Blackmon [00:29:03] No, no, no but this is all.
Tammy Nemeth [00:29:06] Together.
Stuart Turley [00:29:08] It’s all related Irina.
Irina Slav [00:29:09] I actually think it’s linked. I have been thinking about it for a while, have been arguing for it that there’s a wind of change. It is getting really strong, especially after Trump came into office. So now big oil is involved to speak up. And Bill Gates is feeling this pressure, he’s seeing a reaction against what he’s doing in addition to the, you know, the vanishing funds he needs. So it’s not working out quite as they expected and they’re starting to react to this both big oil and, you Bill Gates in this case, the EU would be the last. Even though they’re saying they will make certain concessions.
David Blackmon [00:30:08] Just one other point on all this. With the EU is, you know, last week, Donald Trump went all over the Pacific rim and executed trade agreements with some of the most rapidly rising, growing economies in that part of the world, powerful economies, Malaysia, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan. And we all said, well, that’s a clear signal to China that they need to back off on rare earths and do a trade deal with the United States. I think it’s equally a clear signal to the EU that the leaders in the EU need to take a step back and really understand the implications of Trump administration executing these comprehensive trade, at least frameworks for comprehensive trade deals with these rapidly growing economies while the EU’s regulations are causing all the economies of Europe and have been for two decades now to stagnate and diminish. This is, you know, America’s gonna do business where the business is, not just based on long-standing relationships and alliances that we would all like to see continue. The reality is that in the global marketplace, money talks, economic growth matters, and the United States investments are gonna go where the business is. And the same is true of the corporations like ExxonMobil. And so, you know, I would hope that some cooler heads at the EU would take a step back, look at what’s happening and behave a little more sensibly than they’ve been doing.
Tammy Nemeth [00:31:54] Well, let me throw something out. And this is a bit of a diversion from the conversation, but kind of related.
David Blackmon [00:32:00] All right, we’ve diverted seven times
Tammy Nemeth [00:32:03] Well, the EU’s wake-up call should be that Franz Timmermann’s party received the lowest votes I think they’ve ever had in the recent Dutch election and he’s resigned and I think they got 3% of the vote. It was really, really small in any event.
David Blackmon [00:32:22] And he was a powerhouse five years ago.
Tammy Nemeth [00:32:24] And he was a powerhouse. He was the Green Deal czar. He was the one going around pushing it to everybody. And so the fact that that party got pretty much obliterated in this election should be a wake up call to Ursula von der Leyen and the other leadership people at the European Union. But I don’t know because you know, they like to double down on these things. The Like the story today that Germany after having blown up its last nuclear power plant is going to invest two billion into fusion. So fusion isn’t good enough. And it’s just the research. They’re just going to double down. They’re going to doubled down. And if I hear one more time about how much cheaper wind and solar is, I’m just
David Blackmon [00:33:19] Oh my god.
Tammy Nemeth [00:33:20] I don’t know.
David Blackmon [00:33:21] It’s the lamest talking point in the world.
Irina Slav [00:33:24] But there’s also, in addition to doubling down on the insanity, they’ve started going on about federalizing the European Union. Yes. More frequently. They’re really losing control of the reins over the European Union, so they’re going all in, let’s federalize. Pull all the resources and everyone from Brussels because these people worked on that, it’s amazing.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:01] That’s what ties into that whole defense thing, right? And the critical minerals, because it’s like we said last week, if all the individual countries have their own little stockpiles, who’s responsible for the sharing? So Germany needs some, but France is holding it. And so their solution then is to federalize. If you federalize, then the supra-state will be the ones that will decide who gets what when, and at what price or whatever. And so it’s like if they want to increase the defense spending, if they wanna have all these critical minerals, if they’re gonna have this AI in the different countries, then they all need to share the burden. And the easier way to share the burden is if you’re a federal state, whether that’s a sort of federal republic like the United States or a federation like Canada. That’s what they are, they’re trial ballooning. You know, they throw these ideas out there to see what’s the public reaction. So what didn’t they like?
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:02] Yeah, great.
Irina Slav [00:35:03] From Ne- negative. Amazingly.
Stuart Turley [00:35:07] I think security starts at home and a European Union is not the answer.
Irina Slav [00:35:15] Of course, it cannot be a federation. Federations don’t just happen because somebody says they should happen. They evolve. Nobody studies history in Brussels. Nobody. It’s really tragic. They have no notion of historical processes that inform future events and developments.
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:42] I don’t know. I think they have a very select, they have a select historical view. I think they like that idea of the old Holy Roman Empire. And that’s what they would prefer. Honestly, if you look at what they’re doing, I know it’s crazy, but look how they’re acting.
David Blackmon [00:36:01] Do they, do they have any memory of how that whole, uh, Roman Empire ended up? You know, at the end of the day.
Irina Slav [00:36:10] No, I’m not fond of history as a discipline because I find it really hard to memorize dates and years and events but it’s a very interesting subject and you know there’s a saying, you should know history to avoid repeating the mistakes. Yeah. Nobody cares. This time it will work.
David Blackmon [00:36:31] This time, it’ll work. We’ll do it better.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:34] Well, I mean, I look at the evolution of what’s happening in finance, what’s happening in banking, what is happening in the economy, and the politics, and the unrest and everything, and it’s just a rewind of the 1970s. And if you look at when the first Russian invasion of Ukraine happened, it was exactly like the 1970s, the same kind of responses. And then if you looked now that there’s potentially stagflation or whatever, and then you have the unrest amongst these so-called activist groups and whatever that are funded by probably entities that don’t like the United States. It’s just like the 1970s with the bombings and protests and all that kind of stuff So yeah, it’s we’re repeating history and they’re they’re making the same mistakes in how to deal with these different things
Irina Slav [00:37:32] Oh, so that’s why it’s so farcical because, you know, first time it’s tragedy. The repeat is a farce. . Ok, shall we go to the stories?
Stuart Turley [00:37:46] Sure. Oh, heck yeah. Um, when we, before we do that, one last little clip, this is about a six seconds, uh, 15, 22nd clip of secretary Chris Wright, because the Biden administration and the Obama administration really set the green policies to affect. And I quite honestly wasn’t aware of this rule.
Video Speaker (FOX NEWS Host 2) [00:38:10] Building data centers everywhere, but that requires a lot more energy than we have right now in the grids It seems like you’re getting kind of stressed. When will we have enough energy to be an AI powerhouse?
Video Speaker (Chris Wright) [00:38:24] It’s gonna go, it will go in parallel. We are bringing energy on the grid today. Some of it is new power plant construction. That takes time. So those will come on. But there’s a lot of just bad policies from the Biden administration that said, yes, you have that power plant there and it can produce power, but you’re only permitted to run it 40 days a year because of our climate rules. So last summer, I was able to waive some of those regulations to prevent blackouts. We would have far more blackouts and even higher power prices if we had continued the trajectory of the Obama and Biden presidencies. They really were digging us into a hole. If you go to Germany, go to United Kingdom and see 40 cent a kilowatt power, that’s the trajectory we were on. And of course you can’t win the AI race with that.
Stuart Turley [00:39:11] I thought that was very, very telling and very interesting on that. Everything he says is interesting.
Tammy Nemeth [00:39:21] Well, those rules were brought in through the, well, I think partially through the DOE and partially through the EPA. And I think they were the result of litigation again. Okay, so I’m going to go with the, these are my stories. I’m gonna go with a second one first. And so this was a story and the title is Climate Activists Lose Human Rights Case Over Norway Oil and Gas Drilling. So a bunch of, a group of youths, and I put that in scare quotes, was led by Greenpeace and a bunch of other environmental groups, challenging Norway’s approval of various offshore new developments of oil and gas fields offshore in the North Sea and they lost in every Norwegian court. So after losing, I don’t know, three or four times, they took it to the European Court of Human Rights saying that the future of these children is being jeopardized by Norway’s continued exploitation of oil& gas and so therefore they have to shut it all down. So the European Court of Human Rights said, actually, Norway hasn’t violated the constitutional rights of children and the citizens. However, it’s a bit of a pirate victory, because the court then said that Equinor needs to take into account scope three emissions, including the burning of oil and gas and the emissions from it. Before any new oil projects and gas projects are approved. So in the environmental review process, the European court is mandating the Norwegian government to mandate Scope 3 emissions accounting for any future developments. So basically that means If they’re going to develop the oil and gas fields, they have to say what the emissions will be if people actually use their product. Which is like extraordinary amount and you’d never get approval. So yay, on the one hand, oh, you’re not violating constitutional rights, but then the court goes and mandates scope three emissions accounting. So once again, overstepping its authority. And I guess it’ll be up to the Norwegian government of whether or not they’re going to accept this ruling. But given that the labor government got voted in again, I don’t know, and they’re sharing power with the greens. We want to stop all oil and gas development, so who knows. That’s why I say everyone’s like, yay, the Norway one. These activists lost the case, but not really. Because they got what they wanted, which was to get a court to mandate Scope 3 emissions accounting, which is what they’re trying to do at Canada, by the way. And then the second story is one that came through just the other day. I think it was yesterday. And tests find that Chinese manufacturer can manipulate electric busses in Norway. Well, there’s a big surprise. So a lot of these electric busses, electric vehicles, they have a lot of software, obviously, and it can be remotely accessed. And I would say it’s not just the Chinese manufacturers. All EVs can be accessed remotely, whether it’s a Tesla or Volkswagen, whatever, because they get the software updates all the time, all of these different things. You’ve got Uconnect. You’ve Got OnStar in the United States. They can turn your car off and on. So what happens when it has all this other software in it for self-driving and whatever. So, I think there needs to be some care because what if there’s a cyber attack and then suddenly the whole network is compromised?
Stuart Turley [00:43:38] Ford has a patent on the return to dealer if you miss a payment.
Tammy Nemeth [00:43:48] So it’s not just China. I don’t know, I think there needs to be some assessment of what this means and the implications and then the public needs to maybe put some pressure on to say, what are we doing here?
Stuart Turley [00:44:03] Toyota put out one with the EVs, uh, where you, if you want the, to connect your phone to the radio, I believe it was Toyota that, that put that out there. One of the car manufacturers just had that out. I need to see which one, but they just bought a brand new car and they had to sign up for 20, uh $8 a month to connect your phone so you could play your phone, to the Bluetooth. And then if you wanted extra, you want to use the map feature, it was $20 a month. So it’s kind of like a, a horrible thing going, Whoa, I bought a car. I want to the car. I don’t want to pay a monthly fee.
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:43] Well, they’re all doing that, like this whole subscription based service. I hate that I can’t download Word software and just have it on my computer. Because the minute I stop paying that subscription, I lose access to my files. You can maybe read them, but you can’t change anything. Really? Yeah, really. So then unless you have a really old version that you have on your computer that allows you to actually read and change your files. Once your subscription’s done, it’s read-only, no changes. And the way that they save the documents, it’s not backwards compatible. So yeah, it is an issue. And Don Deere does it with their tractors. So now if you want to use your PTO on a tractor, or you want the air conditioning, or the heat, or some of these other things, you pay a subscription for every bit of it. And the tractor can be accessed remotely but from John Deere headquarters. So it’s not just, you know, automobiles. It’s throughout the entire what we’re doing with tech right now. And it’s like gaming. You can’t buy a game, a physical game. You have to go on to these stupid streaming things. Subscriptions only. Anyway, that’s my, those are my stories. Thank you.
Stuart Turley [00:46:08] Um, you also had these, I’m not sure if that was meant to be in there.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:14] No, that way I think those were from last week.
Stuart Turley [00:46:17] OK.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:21] Oh, this is my Substack, TheNemethReport.Substack.com. I put my podcasts up there and articles and whatnot. Please check it out when you have some. Subscribe. That’d be great.
David Blackmon [00:46:38] Well, uh, so I forgot to send my links into this week, so he picked them for me. I appreciate that. Stu, um, Chris Wright talks, China deal, Alaska, Bill Gates, and more. This is what I published this, a transcript from an interview secretary Wright did it’s about an eight minute interview segment on Fox news or no with Bloomberg and, um it’s really good. He addresses a number of different topics. This was the interview I was referencing earlier when he said something I actually for the first time disagree with him on. And that was the, although great benefits Bill Gates has produced in the past related to vaccines and other efforts in developing countries. I think he’s been entirely destructive in those things. And, but, you know, I understand why the secretary would feel the need to say that. Then of course, I did write a few.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:34] I said, just ask India about the vaccine.
David Blackmon [00:47:36] Yeah, just ask India. Exactly. And then the other one, I wrote a piece at the Daily Caller was published Saturday summarizing Gates’s lurch into energy and climate reality. I got a nice little plug in for our podcast with that headline, and I appreciate that from the Daily Caller. And, you know, we’re always in favor of energy reality here at the Energy Realities podcast And, and that’s it, you know, I mean, there’s really nothing new. We’ve talked about it all. Uh, my, my uh, my sub stack is David Blackman’s energy additions, because that’s what we’re in the midst of is an energy addition and not a transition. And, uh, uh would love to see y’all there. The address is Blackmon.substack.com very easy.
Stuart Turley [00:48:28] And I love Irina’s Substack.
Irina Slav [00:48:30] Thank you. I’m not going to talk about the animals because I’ll get angry again. It’s really a touch subject to me. But I’m going to talks about other animals, cows in Denmark. David, you mentioned bovver. And I’ve been seeing in the past couple of days on X people reporting that their cows are getting sick. After they started giving them this additive, and I just googled it. Of course, there’s nothing in mainstream media, but there’s a project by Aarhus University in Denmark, which started this year after they mandated Bover. I mean, farmers apparently have a choice between additional fat and Bover, And now they’re starting a study to see whether Bovaire has an impact on the welfare of the cows. Just how animal friendly are we with this transition? So far they’ve only researched whether Bovair is doing its job in reducing methane emissions. Who cares about how the cows feel? Now they’ve started, you know, researching. Why does that sound familiar? I don’t know, but it sounds weirdly familiar. Releasing something on the market without testing it sufficiently and only then collecting data to see whether it’s actually safe. And the other thing that, the other story that drew my attention earlier today was a story in Le Monde. Of all places, about a coming LNG glut. It’s not the first story. I think legacy media is starting to hype up, in addition to the oil glut, they’re starting to hyper up an LNG glut, which depends on every single LNG facility that is currently being planned getting actually built, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. But they’re Starting early. Basically saying there will be too much supply in just a few short years. Well, don’t worry about it. It means it will get cheaper. That’s that’s good news, isn’t it? But I think that trying to tell us that there will not be enough demand because everyone will be so happy with wind and solar, and I seriously doubt that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:01] Well, so with the LNG glut, is this because Qatar and Exxon are saying we’re going to cut off supply? And so now they’re trying to convince the people, well, there’s too much anyway. It’s not a problem.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:13] Okay.
Irina Slav [00:51:14] That’s the funny thing, there will be too much. There isn’t too much as of yet, but there will be too many plans on the Gulf Coast get built and there’s two in Mozambique that are very, very far from completion due to Islamist terrorist activity in the area. But yeah, I just go through what’s planned for construction, I imagine. I said, no, there’s going to be too much LNG on the global market. That’s good news, people. But if the suggestion is there won’t be enough demand, well, we’ll see about that.
David Blackmon [00:52:00] Yeah, without doubt, maybe half of those will get built.
Irina Slav [00:52:05] Exactly. You can’t assume that everything will get built.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:10] I was going to say with Bove, they haven’t been studying if there’s a change to the milk and what the impacts on people are who consume it.
Irina Slav [00:52:19] Well, of course they haven’t, it’s
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:21] It’s what you get to say, it’s what I get to choose, it is what I choose. Wait for people to get sick, I guess, I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:52:28] I love Patrick Devine. He says it’s supposed to help the cows stop burping. Well, it’s going to help them when they’re dead because they’re, you know, they’re not going to burp when they are dead. This is actually not a good thing. And I love Brian, messing with the food supplies.
Irina Slav [00:52:42] That is absolutely right.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:45] Well, you know, we’re messing around with evolution because nature has created the best grass converter ever in the history of the world. And that is a cow’s four stomachs that processes it all and makes this amazing milk. And why are we messing with that? You know, they talk about how we shouldn’t be intervening with nature and all this other kinds of stuff, and yet the environmentalists are okay with intervening it with nature this way.
Irina Slav [00:53:19] When they do it’s all right when somebody else wants to do it not in the same way they they do it i mean look at this owl story it’s fine if we shoot almost half a million birds to save another bird really
David Blackmon [00:53:36] Insane, yeah.
Irina Slav [00:53:37] It’s worked so well in the past, every single time, no problem at all. Okay, I’m done.
David Blackmon [00:53:43] This is about the fifth time the United States has gone insane over the damn spotted owl, by the way, since the seventies. I mean, it’s just like every 10 years, we have a mass massacre of some other species to save this, this owl that’s apparently incompetent in saving itself. Why are we doing this? Stop the madness.
Irina Slav [00:54:06] Well, it’s still trudging along, it is not even in danger, so…
David Blackmon [00:54:10] Yeah, it’s just, there’s a lot of money in that.
Stuart Turley [00:54:15] But where’s the environmentalist outrage over wind turbines killing billions of vets and billions of birds that have an even a greater reach. But that’s just me being stupid.
Irina Slav [00:54:30] Well, maybe somebody should tell them that TurbineSkill spotted ours. Oh, there you go. There you go! And Lizard. That’d be amazing as an activist.
Stuart Turley [00:54:45] Um, yeah, we already talked about this one. This story was out of zero edge. ExxonMobil has sued California to stop the enforcement of two climate, uh, reporting laws. This just, we’ve already hashed this one, uh until it’s a dead spotted owl. Um, Yahoo and Bloomberg writes the first law requires accompanies of more than 1 billion in annual revenue, calculate and disclose. This goes back to the same thing. It’s an overreach out of California’s law impacting the entire. Uh, market, uh, reach that ExxonMobil has. Yeah. And then, uh let’s go back to the other story there. The Surge in rooftop blazes sparks concern. Tammy, you sent this out over, uh uh, uh Mel, yeah, yeah. It was a great article and I took it one step further. There is a insurance thing going on across the U S and they don’t report it. But in, in everybody says that, Oh, by the way, the quiet litmus test in the room for policies is insurance rates. They don’t publish a lot of it and I’m having to dig into it. So I’m going into that story there. But on your bus story that you did, it was an outstanding one. I took that as a headline. And then I went and looked at other stories that I’d already written over the past several years. And there is a real problem with anybody that is buying Chinese electronics. A benefit or a feature. I haven’t figured this out is remote control or billing able to shut down. And The Chinese can remotely shut down phone systems and major grid components across all things they manufacture. So if you buy Chinese equipment, it is a feature.
Tammy Nemeth [00:56:46] Not a bug.
Stuart Turley [00:56:47] Yeah, there you go. Uh, also had, uh, Illinois’s governor. Uh, I love this dem, this war that was going on between the Democrats and the Republicans. And the war is basically saying governor, uh Pritchard, uh is not going on a diet. That’s not the story. The story is that he’s actually out there saying that this, this Storage bill is going to save consumers money and it does not make any sense. It’s not going to say any money. In fact, it’s going to increase your bill, but they’re advertising it. This is another, instead of the inflation reduction act by Nancy Pelosi, which turned out to be the biggest porculous bill on the planet. This is the same thing. So you can find me on theenergynewsbeat.substack.com or you can me on energynewsbeat.co or energynewsbeat.com.
Irina Slav [00:57:46] Great talk today. Thanks for all the comments. Anyone want to sum up what conclusions we came to today?
David Blackmon [00:57:55] I like this one. This is a public-private partnership.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:03] They’ve improved on it because now it’s a PPP, philanthropy public-private partnership. That was the thing that came out of WEP a couple of years ago, where philanthropy money should also partner with corporations and partner with governments in order to accelerate the climate transition.
Stuart Turley [00:58:27] I want to throw this out to the panel real quick. As we get into comp, is it 30? Uh, comp 30, baby. And if you sit back and think about the lack of the U S participation in comp 30. I would like to vote for the UN to be thrown out of the United States and the United States pull out of UN, but that’s just me. I think the UN’s overreach with the EU’s overreach is again, a gigantic problem. And I, what is your all’s opinion about cop with so many people not attending.
Irina Slav [00:59:04] You’ll be fun.
David Blackmon [00:59:06] Well, it’ll be the same old, same old. I, you know, it won’t have a delegation there. Although there are members of Congress, 30, I think rhinos and Democrats that are forming their own delegation. So, you, there’s grift to be had and they’ve got to go get in on it. Right. And it’s a free trip to Bellum, the, you want taxpayers expense and then get to have their thousand dollar dinners with $2,000 bottles of wine. And everybody will be fat and happy. But otherwise, you know, it’s just another cop conference. They’ll finish it with some information and uh,
Tammy Nemeth [00:59:45] I think they’re going to try and bring a global carbon trading, carbon emissions trading thing.
David Blackmon [00:59:56] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:59:57] Yeah because last year it went so well with all those pledges of however many billions of rich countries helping to pay for poor countries. That went well.
David Blackmon [01:00:07] Yeah, but apparently they’ve, they’ve improved. So that’s, that’s the goal along with governing missing climate misinformation. That’s the other one. Here’s a great example from last year’s day. They all got together and they signed this, you know, this multinational pledge to never build any more non-abated coal fire power plants anywhere on earth and China has opened about two of them every week since. Right. So, I mean, how effective was that? Oh, but they’re abated! They’re abaded because they built all that wind and solar! Yeah, exactly. Hey next week we have Brian, Brian Zinchuk is going to be our special guest
Stuart Turley [01:00:51] That’ll be looking forward to it. Brian, uh, the amount of new coal plants, I just did the global energy search thing. I did an article on it and the number of new cold plants in India under, under construction and implementing in India. You look at that. We actually had a new one open up in the United States and new coal, uh plant. And we had a new coal mine, uh, start rolling. So the energy secretary in the United States is now the United States has got one to the hundreds of being built around the world. Um, it’s pretty impressive to see that you’re going to either go down solid energy, fiscal responsibility, or you’re gonna fail.
Irina Slav [01:01:40] Great last words.
Stuart Turley [01:01:41] With that we’re gonna have a great next week with Brian.
Irina Slav [01:01:46] Have a lovely week!
David Blackmon [01:01:48] Thanks, everybody.
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