Today, we cover some real issues around the EU, and UK energy policies. We even cover some personal issues.
Thank you Irina for your world leadership in the energy market. – Stu
Highlights of the Podcast
02:08 – Stuart Turley mentions Irina’s Substack article titled “The Carbon Massacre”
02:22 – Irina explains her frustration behind writing “The Carbon Massacre” article
03:22 – Discussion on the deindustrialization of the UK, Germany, and the EU due to bad economic decisions and energy policies
04:06 – Irina elaborates on the relationship between lower emissions and higher GDP
05:34 – Discussion shifts to Vladimir Putin and his perspective on sanctions
06:39 – Stuart Turley compares Putin’s attitude towards sanctions to a movie reference
07:07 – Conversation on how sanctions impact consumers more than intended targets
07:55 – Discussion on political situation in Bulgaria
09:17 – Irina describes the puppet government and political situation in Bulgaria
09:42 – Discussion on politicians and frustration with the political system
11:40 – Conversation on unions, politicians, and their impact on jobs
13:38 – Discussion on the Jones Act and its impact on US shipping
14:51 – Brief conversation on unions in Bulgaria
15:31 – Irina expresses her frustration with the education system and universities
16:56 – Stuart Turley shares his thoughts on impacting more people through podcasting than being a college professor
19:20 – Discussion on Irina’s upcoming articles and plans for future topics
22:53 – Conclusion and appreciation for the conversation
Check out the full podcast and transcript Here:
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We disavow any mistakes in the transcript unless they make us funnier or smarter:
Stuart Turley [00:00:08] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat podcast. My name’s Stu Turley, president CEO of the sandstone Group. Today is a van tastic day. It is early owner 30 here in the US, and it is at 3:00 in the afternoon in Bulgaria. And I got Irene Aslam stopping by the podcast today. Welcome, Irina.
Irina Slav [00:00:28] Thank you for having me yet again, Stu. Oh, I haven’t got tired of me yet.
Stuart Turley [00:00:34] Oh, I’ll tell you. I get my arena fixed today. And in, right before the podcast, you showed me your cat, and then you were telling me your cat. Story of the cat does it chases mice, but it doesn’t catch him in the house.
Irina Slav [00:00:49] But still. Yeah, it’s very, very useful this way.
Stuart Turley [00:00:53] So you and your husband were chasing a mouse, and the cat sat in the corner and watched? Or did he know.
Irina Slav [00:01:00] He was chased as well? All three of us chased the mouse. But only one of us could actually, you know, catch it with their teeth. But he didn’t because it was too big.
Stuart Turley [00:01:12] I thought you said you caught it with your teeth there for a second I was like. Okay, cool. Oh, Irene. Oh my goodness. That. Where’s a camera? When you knew that would have gone viral.
Irina Slav [00:01:23] I know right? Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:01:25] Now. So if I can picture you and your husband in the cat chasing the mouse, you catch it. That’s almost like the, world leaders trying to catch dollars to pay for their, their energy transition. And since the wind farms, in the end, the money is running out for wind farms. I’m seeing such a huge push for the carbon taxes, the carbon, everything else in on your Substack, your Substack is Iryna slav.substack.com. You had one go out and it was called The Carbon Massacre. What a cool idea it.
Irina Slav [00:02:09] Should have been. Thank you. But it should have been carbon. Carnage.
Stuart Turley [00:02:14] Oh. It was great. What were you thinking when you wrote this?
Irina Slav [00:02:22] I was thinking how mad I am with people who appear to be incapable of planning in advance. You know, if I want to do something. I will plan for it in a way that will ensure that I get to this something. Taking into account all the factors, or at least all the factors I can think of that could affect it one way or another. I would probably come up with an example, but not right now because my brain is slow. Maybe it’s made a point, but the thing is, will be taking a lot of things into account, both favorable and unfavorable. What I will not be doing would not be doing is making assumptions that only, feeds into my favorable scenario. You know, this is going to happen because I want it to happen, which is exactly what our brave leaders have been doing.
Stuart Turley [00:03:22] Well, you know, you also, point out a great point in here, and that is, the deindustrialization of the UK, in Germany, in the EU is because of bad economic decisions and bad energy policies in that. Oh. Emissions are going down by 19% GDP, which is because you guys are bad managers. And putting in bed policies has nothing to do with your goodness of increasing right, the GDP increasing the output. It’s like a second order of magnitude of like stupid.
Irina Slav [00:04:06] Yes. And it’s what the smart ones, the actually intelligence analysts and commentators have been saying already for years. You cannot have lower emissions and higher GDP. Not at this point in human civilization. Right. Because as you reduce emissions, you reduce them thanks to things like wind and solar and lower energy consumption, but lower energy consumption. Right means lower productivity, right? Lower economic growth. I mean, it’s really not that hard to grasp. I’ve only studied economics for about a semester, and I know this because it’s really too simple and obvious to not be able to grasp an excuse to understand that.
Stuart Turley [00:05:00] You are so logical and have a actual brain. Having brain matters. You know, I think some of our leaders in the world have the brain power of a potato, but, I don’t think they know. Anyway, so when you sit back and we take a look at, the CO2 emissions, I mean, we take a look at Putin and we take a look. And, you and I have teased over the years that I have a lousy Putin imitation.
Irina Slav [00:05:35] Yeah. Because you never, you know, you’ve never heard him speak.
Stuart Turley [00:05:39] I listened to him on Tucker Carlson. Right.
Irina Slav [00:05:42] You see how soft spoken how.
Stuart Turley [00:05:45] I was I was so wrong. And.
Irina Slav [00:05:52] Now you can work on your Putin imitation.
Stuart Turley [00:05:54] Now I can work on it. But I’ll tell you what. He he in, you know, the old. There’s an old saying in some of from in the US from some of the movies. I don’t need those thinking badges is a joke out of a movie. Hey, I don’t need those Lincoln badges. Like badges, ID badges or sheriff badges. Putin. He can sit back. And you’ve always had this wonderful saying it’s, sanctions don’t work as intended. I could almost make a t shirt. I don’t need no stinkin sanctions. Or something like, you know, from Putin saying sanctions don’t hurt, or they, you know. He’s doing great. So I don’t know.
Irina Slav [00:06:41] I mean, it’s probably no laughing matter to the ones enforcing the sanctions, but it’s true. I mean, the International Monetary Fund is saying the world Bank is saying and they’re hardly Putin puppets or whatever. But yes, what Reuters called a long running Russian narrative about sanctions hurting Europe more than Russia is not a Russian narrative. It’s a fact.
Stuart Turley [00:07:07] It is the consumers. There was also another movie, years ago, Joe Pesci, was in this thing, and he always says, you always get screwed in the drive through. So, you know, I always say, you know, people, consumers get. Yeah, yeah, the consumers get it always.
Irina Slav [00:07:29] Get the brunt of the stupid decisions that politicians make. And yeah, it’s been like that since, you know, since there was a society in.
Stuart Turley [00:07:41] Where do you see, Bulgaria ending up in all of this because it seems like, is Bulgaria going to be, how are the politics there going on right now?
Irina Slav [00:07:55] Horrible. We have a puppet government. We have a sense of yes man doing whatever the European Union and the US wants them to do. Even at the expense of their own citizens. Though we have massive inflation, and they’re fighting it by raising the minimum wage. But raising the minimum wage means that Social Security and health security also rises. So people working for minimum wage don’t really feel any difference because they’re paying more. And all of us are paying more in Social Security and health security. They’re just trying to, you know, to curry favor with voters. But it’s impossible because they’re a minority government.
Stuart Turley [00:08:44] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:08:45] It’s the, you know, the most, disgusting sort of coalition between two parties who campaigned against each other.
Stuart Turley [00:08:55] And they’re now working together.
Irina Slav [00:08:56] And they ended up working together because they get to share the power.
Stuart Turley [00:09:03] Sounds like to us.
Irina Slav [00:09:06] Yeah, probably in in a certain way. Yeah. They were prepared to go to any lengths just to be in power and get some, you know, European funds.
Stuart Turley [00:09:17] You know, I’m not a, political fan of politicians from either side. I would, I would vote.
Irina Slav [00:09:26] My politicians are crap. Most of them.
Stuart Turley [00:09:29] Thank you. I knew I liked you.
Irina Slav [00:09:31] Yeah, I know those with friction.
Stuart Turley [00:09:34] I would vote to remove every politician and throw them all out. Just get rid of everybody.
Irina Slav [00:09:42] And, you know, this reminds me of, a Terry Pratchett book. It’s a he wrote fantasy novels, satirical fantasy novels, and there’s, there’s a fantastical place called the forex, a continent which is loosely based on Australia. Yeah. But, the the main character was visiting there, and, there was some conversation involving prison and politicians and the local, the local tour guide or whatever. Said, well, we throw all our politicians in jail the moment they’re elected, don’t you?
Stuart Turley [00:10:23] Well.
Irina Slav [00:10:26] You know, that’s pretty small. That’s the trouble to wait for them to mess everything up and then not go to prison. So, as soon as they win an election, they go to prison so you can avoid the mess up there, and they can rule from the prison cell.
Stuart Turley [00:10:44] I think that would be fantastic. You know, Tom cruise had a movie years ago called the Minority Report where they were starting to predict who was going to do a murder and things. And so you went and arrested them before they did the murder. So, since most U.S. politicians go in and their average yearly salary is $170,000, but like we have one with AOC, whatever the number is, she’s worth $20 million.
Irina Slav [00:11:15] Now what?
Stuart Turley [00:11:16] How dang. You know, and then you take a look at the other politicians that, are multi, multi, multi millionaires in their investments. Kind of cool side with legislation that has been going on so little insiders. Me I’m shocked.
Irina Slav [00:11:40] You know, one of the things that, I find is how to forgive America. The United States is turning what is essentially, a scam. Not not a scam, but it should be a criminal law based, isn’t it? It’s it’s not right. Because legislators vote on issues based on lobbies and.
Stuart Turley [00:12:06] Not the.
Irina Slav [00:12:06] People. It shouldn’t it shouldn’t be legal. It shouldn’t be acceptable. But it is. It’s actually a very lucrative profession, I suppose.
Stuart Turley [00:12:19] You bring up, gigantic problem with the U.S., lobbyists and energy. You just nailed it. We have the. Oh, I forgot the act. The Jones act. The Jones Act prohibits any shipping between ports in the U.S. from all these years ago. And so we’re sitting here, the Jones act. So we have all the LNG in the world. And then let me go through this here for sake. All the LNG in the world we can ever use, but we can’t even ship it from Texas to Boston because we don’t have any LNG tankers, because they’re not flagged by the U.S or owned by the US or owned.
Irina Slav [00:13:06] This is something by an LNG carrier. Just one.
Stuart Turley [00:13:11] Yeah, I hey, what’s what’s a few billion between friends to buy one silly thing.
Irina Slav [00:13:17] One so really stupid piece of legislation.
Stuart Turley [00:13:22] I don’t get this. It’s the lobbyists for I think it’s like 200 union members, on shipbuilders that are holding up the entire U.S shipping model to be independent.
Irina Slav [00:13:38] But how much money do these people make from this act to justify its continued staying in effect?
Stuart Turley [00:13:48] I don’t know what it is, but there’s got to be some graft or something in there.
Irina Slav [00:13:53] Yeah, yeah, somebody must be making money.
Stuart Turley [00:13:55] It does not make sense to me. But the union now, Bulgaria does not have, a car manufacturer. Do you? In, Bulgaria. China. EVs are lining up on the border. You know, they’re going to be dropping them like we talked about on the energy reality.
Irina Slav [00:14:15] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:17] So all these cheap cars are going to be flooding in, but the union in the U.S has killed all these jobs by supporting the Biden administration. You can’t buy this kind of stupid. They’re the union is representing the employees and they have killed the jobs. Why politicians? Now the unions have a place or there are a lot of unions in Bulgaria.
Irina Slav [00:14:45] There are unions. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:48] But do they kill jobs?
Irina Slav [00:14:51] No, they they tried to prevent the killing of Jill and they have also become. I haven’t followed unions lately. They were really loud in the 90s when I started paying attention and, you know, reading, watching news and this whole thing. But essentially they have moved into into work. I expect most unions are in the US or elsewhere, you know, just to basically corporations, they’re doing it for profit, but in, profiting from their actions, they also tend to benefit their members, I expect.
Stuart Turley [00:15:31] I think there’s a huge benefit to to properly run unions is a huge benefit, especially when colleges have gone totally, out to lunch and a college education is worthless in the United States. I would rather be what.
Irina Slav [00:15:47] You have done to your educational system, not you personally. I’m sure you’re not involved, but. And it pains me to say this. It pains me to do it in the, in Britain. But these places, these universities, these world renowned universities. Turning into cesspools of propaganda.
Stuart Turley [00:16:10] You know, Irene, I wanted to retire and be a college professor. That was my goal. I was going to be successful in business. And then I never want to retire. And I wanted to be a college professor. Not now, one day, because I’m a podcast host. I get to talk to people from all around.
Irina Slav [00:16:30] The globe because what these young you can do both. Because these young people need some common sense in their lives.
Stuart Turley [00:16:38] But you, you can’t survive in a, a climate like that because you will be taken down and out. Why do I need that headache? I mean, I can expect.
Irina Slav [00:16:54] To.
Stuart Turley [00:16:55] Do well.
Irina Slav [00:16:56] How is this possible? I’m just being loudly frustrated here.
Stuart Turley [00:17:01] It is horrible. I can impact with great leaders like you, David and Tammy. More people than I could in a classroom. Those. Those classrooms are so indoctrinated. So I’m working on a homeschooling project with all of our content to try to help get homeschooling material. Because homeschooling has become is going to become such a big thing in the United States.
Irina Slav [00:17:30] We here by necessity.
Stuart Turley [00:17:32] By necessity.
Irina Slav [00:17:34] So, yes, you know, if I can help in any way, because this is an excellent idea.
Stuart Turley [00:17:39] Well, Irina, it’s funny you should say that. I am trying to work out enough money to get programmers to take things like the energy reality that you and I are on, and then we can pay for that content to pay to have it go to, homeschooling and have the testing and the curriculum and everything done so that energy leaders like yourself and David and Tammy can only do creation, content creation, but yet have it paid for to go to the, schools and have it organized. So I’m trying to get good, energy policies in the hands of parents, in physics, fiscal responsibility. I see, I think I can have more of an impact doing that. Being a podcast host, the CEO of my own company, and and having fun with you and Tammy and David and letting you guys put up with my stupid jokes. Every Monday morning.
Irina Slav [00:18:46] All you enjoy to have on the top. Guests come.
Stuart Turley [00:18:49] I’ll pay you later. But I think the the key thing is the. I love your sense of humor in trying to talk about really serious problems. And for our listeners again, it is I arena slav.substack.com. And I love your, listen button on your you read these things and it is.
Irina Slav [00:19:20] I do and sometimes it takes as many as four takes to do it properly.
Stuart Turley [00:19:26] I’m sorry.
Irina Slav [00:19:27] I know how actors feel. You know, it is not fun.
Stuart Turley [00:19:31] I love it. And I want to just give you this because I’ve been sitting here working, and I’ll have my wife walk by and she’s like, It’s Iryna. No, no, I’m listening to her. So I get my Iryna fix by listening in the sense of humor comes through even more with the way you read. So, this is a big advertisement for your Substack.
Irina Slav [00:19:57] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:19:59] I I’m sorry, I, I still owe you.
Irina Slav [00:20:02] An agent’s fee or something.
Stuart Turley [00:20:05] Anyway, well, I read on what’s coming around the corner for you in the next few weeks.
Irina Slav [00:20:11] Well, I’m thinking about something about carbon price. Okay, I’ve not tracked carbon prices. I’m sorry. Carbon taxes. But, it’s a work in progress. I haven’t planned publications yet, but, would like next week. I’m thinking of doing a story on the cocoa crisis. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. Bloomberg wrote about it a very, very good Substack and looked into it in detail. And I’m seeing certain parallels between the cocoa situation and the oil situation in terms of supply. So I’m going to write something about this in the meantime by cocoa and by chocolate, because prices are going to go through the roof.
Stuart Turley [00:20:52] Why is that?
Irina Slav [00:20:55] Because, the short of it, we’re having a blast from Bloomberg. Who?
Stuart Turley [00:20:59] Yeah, I like how.
Irina Slav [00:21:00] He tells me. Yeah, yeah, it’s very good. Well, basically, most of the cocoa in the world is produced by small and very poor farmers. The big money goes to the processors, middlemen and the chocolate manufacturers. So these poor farmers, people who actually grow the cocoa trees, do not get enough money to invest in renewing their cocoa forests, plantations. So trees are getting older, and as they get older, they get more vulnerable to disease. There was bad weather. There was a lot of rain last year. So there’s. Looming right now, and it cannot be solved very quickly because these are trees. Trees take time before between planting and beginning to produce. And nobody thought about this? No, but they plan for it because cocoa so cheap that the whole world, but especially Europe and North America, started consuming more and more of the broccoli. Right? Yeah, it was cheap and foldable and nobody thought about securing long term supply. Again, no long term planning whatsoever. You know, these people should go take a course on long term planning in China.
Stuart Turley [00:22:21] China thinks a little differently. I don’t agree with their humanitarian policies, but they got China first. And they think in, decades upon decades, right. They think of 100.
Irina Slav [00:22:35] Very important skill.
Stuart Turley [00:22:38] The U.S., thinks in terms of the next election, and they don’t even think that far yet. Most, so, you know, well, I read it. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your time so much.
Irina Slav [00:22:53] Yeah. Me too. I love spending some time with you.
Stuart Turley [00:22:56] Hey, I’ll see you Monday when you know what time this comes out. We would have talked to Robert Bryce. That’ll be a lot of fun. All right.
