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You know I'm really puzzled by something.

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It's 2026, believe it or not,

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and even though we live in this modern digital world

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where we can ask our smart assistants to close the blinds for us,

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we're still excited about finding oil.

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That feels weird to me.

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Petroleum is a 19th century technology, and here in the 21st century,

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very few of the things we use are powered by petroleum products.

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So why are we still so obsessed with finding more oil?

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Well, there's a very simple reason.

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It just has to do with how oil as a technology works.

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Once we find new crude oil deposits and take some out of the ground,

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we then refine that oil into many useful products and things.

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However, by far the greatest portion of it is used to produce gasoline and diesel fuel,

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which power some of the machines we rely on.

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Now, those machines are great and have unlocked plenty of wonderful new possibilities for us,

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even whole new kinds of economies.

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While they've also come with some downsides that concern me
and I think deserve more weight in our public conversations,

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you're not going to hear me tell you to stop using your machines.

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That is not at all what this video is about.

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But petroleum has an unavoidable issue, which is easy to ignore

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but I don't think you should.

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It's disposable energy.

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In order for our machines to do things for us
like take us to work or get the kids to school,

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they burn the fuels which power them.

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That makes those fuels single use:

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one and done.

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So to keep using those machines, which most of us would like to do,

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we have no choice but to keep finding more oil to make more fuel.

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Many of us have come to the conclusion that this is a serious problem for a long list of reasons.

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For one thing, it makes our standard of living dependent 
on an extremely intensive resource extraction process which,

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since what that process yields will be burned
shortly after it's created,

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appears to have no end in sight.

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Additionally, because oil deposits inevitably run dry,

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we often rely on extraction efforts happening in other countries,

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which may or may not be friendly.

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And while oil is relatively easy to store,

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meaning we can build reserves of oil,

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we use it a lot faster than you may realize.

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Our 714 million barrel strategic oil reserve sounds huge,

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but it only holds enough to sustain slightly more than a month of our current use.

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That's not a very long time.

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And even when we know we have a healthy and secure supply of oil,

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that oil costs a lot of money to find, extract and refine into the fuels we buy to power our machines.

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That results in those fuels being fairly expensive to purchase as a consumer,

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And that results in a high and ongoing operating cost for any machines which use them.

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And that cost can change quite dramatically based on supply and demand.

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What's worse, since nearly every step in our economy

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currently involves something going on a truck which burns diesel fuel,

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spikes in oil prices make their way into virtually everything we buy.

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For those struggling to make ends meet,

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that can be the difference between well-fed and not, even if they don't drive a car.

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I truly believe that an honest assessment of the 
basic realities of using petroleum as a source of energy

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suggests that our situation is actually quite precarious.

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And if nothing else, it can really hurt the wallet sometimes.

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But on that note, there's good news.

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We've developed an enormous variety of electric machines which don't use fuels to function at all.

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For instance, the screen you're looking at right now, 
and in fact nearly everything in your home.

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While today we still burn fuels to generate electricity,

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the even better news is that we don't have to do that anymore.

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We know how to build devices which generate electricity from nothing but sunlight,

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and though it has escaped the notice of many politicians,

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we also know how to build cost effective, rechargeable, 
and recyclable batteries which can be charged from the sun

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to store that energy for use whenever you'd like.

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Even at night when the sun isn't shining.

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The bad news?

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There are a whole lot of people spending money and time trying to confuse everyone

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and convince us that everything I just said is a pie in the sky idea, which can never, ever work.

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But I have never believed those people.

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Why?

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Simple.

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I'm a midwesterner.

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Most of us that were born and raised here

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grew up learning the virtue of long term thinking -

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something that seems to be less and less popular these days.

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My upbringing taught me to value things like durability and resilience,

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and to consider those factors when making important life decisions.

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Midwesterners are also big believers in getting the 
most value out of what we spend our money and time on.

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And we have learned that in many cases,

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the best value comes from spending more money 
upfront on things which let you spend less money later.

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That old fashioned Midwestern wisdom of frugality

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is what makes me so confident that we should be installing much more renewable energy capacity and quickly.

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I didn't need scientific studies or lectures on climate change to form that opinion:

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I just know a good deal when I see one!

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The energy we capture from renewable sources 
like solar and wind power doesn't cost anything.

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And while the batteries we will use to support those sources are expensive to purchase,

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batteries can be used many, many more times than a gallon of gasoline can.

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Today's battery chemistries are pushing 
5,000 charge cycles before they wear out,

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meaning they'll last well over a decade before they need to be recycled.

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And the future of batteries looks even brighter than that,

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with different chemistries extending lifespans, lowering costs,
and reducing the use of harmful or hard to find materials

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in the construction of battery cells.

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These factors combined tell a clear story to me

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which says renewable energy paired with long lasting 
and reusable energy storage is the best deal out there,

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and we'd be foolish to pass it up!

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I would even go so far as to say that at this point,

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anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you to protect their own interests,

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or simply hasn't been paying attention to what things look like today.

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In 2026, the levelized cost of solar and storage, 
which includes the costs of purchasing both the panels and the batteries,

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is now lower than any other kind of energy production we know of.

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That seemed like the inevitable outcome to me for years because the sun is free.

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But for a long time, solar panels were very expensive.

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Today, solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough to make that outcome real.

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Now!

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And solar power is just one source of renewable energy.

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I believe that a renewable energy future should excite you

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because it allows us to harvest energy, not extract it.

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And once you really interrogate that difference, 
the noise goes away and the puzzle solves itself.

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Before I really get started —

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and yes, this video was quite long, isn't it?

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— I have to make a few things clear.

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First, this video has two very distinct audiences in mind,

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and which one of those two I'm speaking to may not be entirely clear at any given moment.

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I'm telling you this because if you think you know 
where I'm going with something, you might be surprised.

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For example, this video is not trying to sell you 
anything like solar panels or home energy storage.

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Whenever I'm talking about renewable energy, people seem to think that's where I'm leading.

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But as a matter of fact, I do not have solar panels on my roof.

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And for various reasons, I personally don't even want to add them.

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I don't think any of us should have to put more thought into how we use electricity than we do right now.

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But I do think we should be moving as much of our energy demand to the electric grid as we can,

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and we should be doing that more and faster.

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I hope by the end you'll understand why I feel that way.

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And again, it might not be what you think.

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Second, there are going to be lots of comments down below

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which say things like “but what about the batteries?”

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and a lot of them will be coming from a place of good faith.

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But lots of people ask that question in bad faith.

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And I would like you to know that anyone leaving those sorts of comments here

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probably didn't watch this video.

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“What about the batteries?”  is one of the central questions I intend to address.

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There's a lot of people being told to worry about things, which I, for one,

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don't think you should be worrying much about,

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and I promise that I'll explain why I feel that way when we get there.

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And thirdly, I'm going to be talking a lot about cars

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since many people have a deep connection to them and they are the biggest reason we use so much oil.

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And well, since electric cars now exist in large numbers,

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we can easily compare what a battery powered world 
looks like to a petroleum powered one, both in functionality and cost.

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Cars are just kind of the perfect tool to understand this at this moment, at least in my view.

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But the logic of this video can,

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and I think should be applied to literally anything which burns any kind of fossil fuel.

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For instance, I still heat my home with natural gas,

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and natural gas has the exact same problems as oil.

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Since my furnace sets it on fire,

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It's a disposable, costly single use fuel we have to keep 
digging out of the ground if I want to keep using the furnace.

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It just happens to be delivered to my home through a metered pipe

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rather than sold at fueling stations in a pay-as-you go scheme.

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But with those things out of the way, let's get back to oil.

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We use crude oil for lots of things,

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but the most significant thing we use it for in the US 
is for producing refined gasoline for motor cars.

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So let's talk about the pinnacle of motor cars,

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This 2010 Nissan Cube.

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- Hey isn’t that the car you bought to make videos on engine management technology?

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- Yes.

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- When is that happening?

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We’re getting there.

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- Oh, carry on then.

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Now if you were paying close attention to the intro, this section might feel a bit repetitive.

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And I apologize if it does.

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But there are two core facts about using this car
which I'd really like you to think deeply about and confront.

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The first fact is that as this car does its job of providing transportation,

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it burns the gasoline that's inside its fuel tank.

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This means you constantly have to replace that fuel if you want to keep driving the car.

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That's easy enough to do.

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But the second core fact about using this car is that it 
costs you money every time you replace that fuel.

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I know you already know both of those facts,

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but the reason I said I'd like you to confront them

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is because that's just a normal reality to lots of people.

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And it's so normal that we do a really bad job

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keeping those ongoing costs in mind when we make comparisons to new technologies.

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For example, have you ever thought about

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just how much gasoline a car like this will burn over its life?

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This little fella has traveled nearly 188,000 miles since it was built.

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Nissan Cubes with a manual transmission like this one

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have an EPA fuel economy rating that comes in at 25 city, 30 highway.

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And if we assume that all of those miles were highway miles,

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which I'm sure isn't true, but we'll give this fella all the benefits of doubt we can,

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then this car burned through a gallon of gas every 30 miles it went down the road.

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And so, 188,000 miles divided by 30 miles per gallon tells us that so far,

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this car has burned through about 6,250 gallons of gasoline.

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Here's a fun fact that's more than half of one of these.

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Yeah, those big trucks that actually deliver gasoline to fueling stations?

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The largest ones hold 11,600 gallons.

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So this one little car, assuming all highway miles, I remind you,

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has burned through about 54% of what the biggest tanker trucks can hold.

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And if you're thinking “buying half a tanker truck of gas sounds expensive,” you'd be right.

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Let's say those 6,250 gallons were burned evenly over the past 15 years spanning 2011 and 2025.

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Using the average historical monthly prices in the U.S. during that time

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tells us that it costs something like $19,500 
to purchase all the gasoline this car has used.

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That's more than the car cost when it was new!

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Spending nearly 20 grand on gasoline certainly hurts the wallet,

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but the reason drivers of this car had to spend that much 
comes back to one of those really core facts I've been asking you to confront:

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You can only use a gallon of gasoline once.

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Every 30 miles you go in this car means you have to buy another gallon of gas,

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and this will never, ever change.

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That fact is one of the reasons we started to look into the viability of electric cars.

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Now, I won't bother you with a history lesson here,

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so we'll just jump ahead to 2022, which is when I bought this one.

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This is a Hyundai Ioniq 5,

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and I've had a... mostly fantastic time with the car.

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Hyundai still doesn't seem to know what exactly is going on with the whole ICCU failure thing, which is very reassuring.

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And oh boy, they really need to release a software update

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which gives us a button to turn on battery preconditioning manually

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because until they do doing long distance drives in the winter

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will get increasingly annoying with its terrible navigation system.

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I'm not salty, it is.

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But aside from the ICCU and my bugbears,

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I've had four trouble free years with this car.

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In the time I've had it, it's gone nearly 50,000 miles

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and it hasn't burned a single drop of gasoline.

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It can't - ain’t got an engine.

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“Ahhaaa!” the comments erupt,

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“but you had to plug it into the power grid 
to charge it, and the power grid still burns stuff.”

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Now, folks, that's what we call a gotcha.

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People say that in conversation to undermine the point of 
electric cars and make their buyers feel foolish.

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However, something that's pretty nifty about electric cars

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is that they can be charged from any source of energy that generates electricity.

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That could be nuclear power,

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it could be hydroelectric power,

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or it could be all that natural gas we have here in the US.

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Hydraulic fracturing has freed up so much gas that we are now a net exporter.

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And with abundant cheap gas, some 40% of our 
electricity generation these days comes from gas fired power plants.

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This car, since it's electric, can make use of that abundant and cheap resource.

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If nothing else, it's using fuel we already have and control,

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which has national security benefits.

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But what excites me the most is that this car can also be charged with these.

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This is a photovoltaic solar panel.

227
00:15:46,512 --> 00:15:53,118
You simply point it at the sun and then electricity 
comes out of these two wires for the low, low cost of free.

228
00:15:54,687 --> 00:15:59,258
Now many people quite understandably feel as if that's simply too good to be true

229
00:15:59,258 --> 00:16:00,559
and there's gotta be a catch.

230
00:16:01,126 --> 00:16:04,129
Of course, the biggest catch is that the sun doesn't shine at night.

231
00:16:04,630 --> 00:16:08,901
But you know, this electric car has headlights and taillights

232
00:16:08,901 --> 00:16:12,771
because, through the power of batteries, you can drive it at night.

233
00:16:12,771 --> 00:16:15,607
So I'm reasonably sure that's something we can figure out.

234
00:16:16,241 --> 00:16:20,479
But we'll be talking about batteries and the materials they're made from later on in this video.

235
00:16:21,146 --> 00:16:22,781
Ah, materials.

236
00:16:23,148 --> 00:16:23,949
In many ways,

237
00:16:23,949 --> 00:16:26,885
that's what this video is really trying to get you to think about.

238
00:16:27,252 --> 00:16:30,356
And they're responsible for the second catch of solar energy.

239
00:16:30,856 --> 00:16:33,993
But no, not what those materials are.

240
00:16:34,159 --> 00:16:35,694
We'll get there.

241
00:16:35,694 --> 00:16:42,301
Instead, I mean simply that I can't really say this 
panel generates electricity for the low, low price of free

242
00:16:42,634 --> 00:16:44,303
because the panel itself wasn't free.

243
00:16:44,937 --> 00:16:48,574
It's made of raw materials, which cost the manufacturer money to obtain.

244
00:16:48,907 --> 00:16:51,710
And of course, the manufacturer wanted to be paid for their work

245
00:16:51,710 --> 00:16:54,146
turning those materials into a functional product.

246
00:16:54,446 --> 00:16:56,749
And so did everyone else at every step of the

247
00:16:56,749 --> 00:17:01,120
“turn raw materials into a product and get it to 
Harbor Freight so some weird YouTuber guy can buy it”

248
00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:02,321
process.

249
00:17:02,855 --> 00:17:06,825
That meant this solar panel cost a whole lot more than a gallon of gas.

250
00:17:07,526 --> 00:17:09,228
But unlike a gallon of gas,

251
00:17:09,495 --> 00:17:12,731
using this thing doesn't require destroying it.

252
00:17:13,565 --> 00:17:16,835
The useful life of gasoline is exactly once,

253
00:17:17,236 --> 00:17:20,939
but the useful life of a solar panel is on the order of decades.

254
00:17:21,673 --> 00:17:25,577
That is how solar energy became the least expensive form of electricity.

255
00:17:26,278 --> 00:17:29,081
Sure, the panels may be expensive to purchase,

256
00:17:29,415 --> 00:17:33,052
but we are using materials to build a durable thing.

257
00:17:33,719 --> 00:17:35,687
An object with no moving parts,

258
00:17:35,821 --> 00:17:39,324
and that which harvests energy from the sun - which is free! -

259
00:17:39,792 --> 00:17:41,427
and will do so for decades.

260
00:17:42,094 --> 00:17:44,797
When you average the cost of purchasing solar panels

261
00:17:44,797 --> 00:17:48,767
over the many thousands of days
they will produce a free energy harvest,

262
00:17:49,301 --> 00:17:53,572
the apparently high upfront cost becomes pennies a day per panel.

263
00:17:54,440 --> 00:17:59,478
Now, as I've already said, I don't have any interest in putting these things on my rooftop.

264
00:18:00,245 --> 00:18:03,549
Our electricity here in Illinois is already pretty cheap,

265
00:18:03,849 --> 00:18:06,952
and I'm not looking to cut the cost of charging my car.

266
00:18:07,686 --> 00:18:09,188
With a bit of optimization,

267
00:18:09,188 --> 00:18:14,093
which really means by charging my car exclusively at night when the grid is quiet,

268
00:18:14,093 --> 00:18:18,764
today already it only costs about one third as much to drive my car

269
00:18:19,131 --> 00:18:21,633
as it does to buy gas for a car like the Cube.

270
00:18:22,568 --> 00:18:24,536
But thought experiments are pretty fun.

271
00:18:24,536 --> 00:18:29,341
So let's say for the moment, I was interested in installing a photovoltaic array on my roof

272
00:18:29,341 --> 00:18:31,743
to make my own energy for my own car.

273
00:18:32,744 --> 00:18:34,146
What would those costs look like?

274
00:18:35,180 --> 00:18:36,782
Well, in case you haven't noticed,

275
00:18:37,149 --> 00:18:41,186
the cost of manufacturing solar panels has been dropping like a rock.

276
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:44,089
How do you think Harbor Freight gets their hands on them?

277
00:18:44,990 --> 00:18:46,024
It's pretty wild.

278
00:18:46,024 --> 00:18:50,028
Have you ever thought about how weirdly cheap big TVs are these days?

279
00:18:50,629 --> 00:18:54,466
A very similar thing has been happening in the land of photovoltaics,

280
00:18:54,466 --> 00:18:57,369
and new solar panels are miraculously cheap.

281
00:18:58,137 --> 00:19:04,877
Let's say that instead of spending $19,500 on gasoline for this weird little car,

282
00:19:05,310 --> 00:19:08,080
I spent that amount of money on solar panels.

283
00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:10,182
How many could I buy these days?

284
00:19:10,983 --> 00:19:13,652
Well, if I Google “solar panel wholesale”

285
00:19:13,652 --> 00:19:16,355
and click on various solar panel wholesaler websites,

286
00:19:17,089 --> 00:19:19,658
it's looking like I can buy a few pallets of ‘em!

287
00:19:20,392 --> 00:19:26,165
This website sells pallets with 32 of these 500 watt panels for $5,600.

288
00:19:26,665 --> 00:19:30,969
That's $175 per panel, and they have a 25 year warranty.

289
00:19:31,970 --> 00:19:36,742
That price means the $19,500 in this car's total fuel cost

290
00:19:36,742 --> 00:19:40,179
could today buy 111 of those panels:

291
00:19:40,412 --> 00:19:43,215
way more than I could possibly fit on my rooftop,

292
00:19:43,415 --> 00:19:47,052
and enough to generate a theoretical 55,000W of power.

293
00:19:47,886 --> 00:19:52,391
That many solar panels, incidentally, represents about 6 or 7 complete

294
00:19:52,391 --> 00:19:55,827
rooftop solar installations for an average single family home.

295
00:19:56,728 --> 00:19:57,930
Think about that.

296
00:19:57,996 --> 00:20:02,834
The same $19,500 in capital which got spent on gasoline,

297
00:20:02,834 --> 00:20:06,572
which this one small car burned through and will never be seen again

298
00:20:06,905 --> 00:20:14,580
could today purchase all the solar panels necessary to completely power a half dozen homes for decades.

299
00:20:16,281 --> 00:20:19,351
I don't know, the math doesn't seem to be mathing very well for gasoline!

300
00:20:19,351 --> 00:20:21,553
But let's compare apples to apples here.

301
00:20:22,154 --> 00:20:26,325
How many of those 500 watt panels would someone like me, who lives in Chicagoland

302
00:20:26,592 --> 00:20:31,663
and drives about 13,000 miles each year, need on their rooftop (in Chicagoland)

303
00:20:31,863 --> 00:20:34,833
to charge a Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the middle of December?

304
00:20:36,568 --> 00:20:38,370
Twelve.

305
00:20:38,370 --> 00:20:40,539
I'll need 12 of those panels.

306
00:20:41,006 --> 00:20:45,043
Which means if I spend some $2,100 on solar panels today,

307
00:20:45,911 --> 00:20:50,415
then I will have completely taken care of my car's lifetime energy costs!

308
00:20:50,949 --> 00:20:56,121
That right there, folks, is why I'm so confident renewable energy is the future.

309
00:20:57,055 --> 00:21:01,827
If I were to spend just a little bit more than I did on my last TV upgrade,

310
00:21:02,194 --> 00:21:07,866
I will have pre-purchased all of the fuel this car will ever need.

311
00:21:08,734 --> 00:21:11,703
Yes, of course, I'm skipping a whole bunch of details,

312
00:21:11,703 --> 00:21:13,305
like the labor to install those panels

313
00:21:13,305 --> 00:21:17,342
and the racking and the wires and stuff, but I'm also skipping

314
00:21:17,342 --> 00:21:19,678
the fact that once we're out of the winter months,

315
00:21:20,078 --> 00:21:23,749
those 12 panels will produce way more electricity than my car

316
00:21:23,749 --> 00:21:27,619
needs, and in fact, could power my entire home on most days.

317
00:21:28,553 --> 00:21:31,490
The essential and core fact to confront here,

318
00:21:31,757 --> 00:21:34,359
and this is a fact that often gets overlooked in debates,

319
00:21:34,693 --> 00:21:38,764
is that renewable energy capacity is not disposable!

320
00:21:39,464 --> 00:21:41,233
It is, in fact durable.

321
00:21:41,533 --> 00:21:44,503
And that makes it functionally a one time investment.

322
00:21:45,370 --> 00:21:48,073
You only have to buy and install these things once,

323
00:21:48,373 --> 00:21:52,044
and then they simply sit there generating free electricity for years to come.

324
00:21:52,644 --> 00:21:57,649
All they might need after installation is a bit of cleaning every once in a while.

325
00:21:58,450 --> 00:22:03,989
That stands in stark contrast to fossil fuels, which you have to keep buying forever.

326
00:22:04,723 --> 00:22:08,126
So going back to the example of the Cube and my Hyundai,

327
00:22:08,527 --> 00:22:13,065
the choice becomes do you spend $1,300 on fuel every single year,

328
00:22:13,465 --> 00:22:20,305
or do you spend an extra 800 bucks this year 
to eliminate your fuel costs for a quarter of a century?

329
00:22:21,340 --> 00:22:23,041
Choice seems pretty clear to me!

330
00:22:23,709 --> 00:22:28,847
So now you might be wondering why I said I don't want solar panels on my own personal roof.

331
00:22:29,781 --> 00:22:32,884
Well, the quickest way to answer that is to go on a field trip.

332
00:22:33,285 --> 00:22:36,655
Behind me is a 27 megawatt solar farm

333
00:22:36,655 --> 00:22:39,424
that was built here in the town of DePue, Illinois.

334
00:22:40,258 --> 00:22:42,127
Now, there's a couple notable things about that.

335
00:22:42,594 --> 00:22:46,732
First, Illinois is not exactly the solar power capital of the country.

336
00:22:47,099 --> 00:22:50,869
It's cloudy as I'm filming this, and we're kind of high up in the latitudes.

337
00:22:51,336 --> 00:22:52,537
And yet...

338
00:22:53,739 --> 00:22:57,943
there's a 27 megawatt solar farm that got built in DePue, Illinois!

339
00:22:58,610 --> 00:22:59,811
Why did that happen?

340
00:23:00,379 --> 00:23:03,181
Well, because people who like to make money

341
00:23:03,181 --> 00:23:06,518
understand the difference between CapEx and OpEx.

342
00:23:07,085 --> 00:23:09,788
And so do you, even if you don't know what those terms mean.

343
00:23:10,655 --> 00:23:11,823
I'll explain them shortly.

344
00:23:11,823 --> 00:23:15,060
But first, do you know anyone with a backup generator?

345
00:23:16,595 --> 00:23:18,630
That question might sound out of left field,

346
00:23:18,630 --> 00:23:21,233
but I promise you it's a perfect way to understand this.

347
00:23:21,967 --> 00:23:23,935
Some people live where the electricity grid

348
00:23:23,935 --> 00:23:25,837
isn't as reliable as they'd like it to be.

349
00:23:26,471 --> 00:23:31,510
Everyone hates power outages because electricity is extremely important to our lives at this point.

350
00:23:31,943 --> 00:23:35,080
And if grid reliability is poor enough where someone lives,

351
00:23:35,380 --> 00:23:40,051
they might elect to install a large backup generator powered by natural gas,

352
00:23:40,285 --> 00:23:44,556
which will automatically kick on and generate electricity during a power outage.

353
00:23:45,157 --> 00:23:47,559
When someone decides to spend their money that way,

354
00:23:47,626 --> 00:23:50,362
that's CapEx or capital expenditure.

355
00:23:51,096 --> 00:23:55,867
They are using their capital to buy a durable thing which will last them many years,

356
00:23:56,101 --> 00:23:58,270
and it becomes an investment in the future.

357
00:23:59,171 --> 00:24:03,141
Some folks install generators which are large enough to power their entire home,

358
00:24:03,442 --> 00:24:06,711
meaning power outages are nothing but an inconvenient blip.

359
00:24:08,413 --> 00:24:13,518
And that leads to what I think is an interesting and revealing question to ponder.

360
00:24:14,753 --> 00:24:19,357
If those people own a machine which can power everything in their home by itself,

361
00:24:20,258 --> 00:24:24,362
why don't they get their money's worth out of it and just use that machine all the time?

362
00:24:24,763 --> 00:24:27,032
Why stay connected to the power grid at all?

363
00:24:27,699 --> 00:24:32,003
Well, that's because that machine needs fuel to generate electricity.

364
00:24:32,537 --> 00:24:36,074
And that fuel costs money, which makes it part of OpEx,

365
00:24:36,074 --> 00:24:38,109
which is short for operating expenditure.

366
00:24:39,044 --> 00:24:42,214
The gas company will charge you for the gas that generator uses.

367
00:24:42,514 --> 00:24:46,184
And those fuel costs mean that using a backup generator

368
00:24:46,184 --> 00:24:50,522
is much more expensive than pulling energy directly from the power grid.

369
00:24:51,289 --> 00:24:53,725
Everyone with a backup generator knows this,

370
00:24:54,125 --> 00:24:58,163
and that's why it's a backup
and not their primary source of electricity.

371
00:24:58,897 --> 00:25:02,467
It is simply too expensive to use that machine all the time.

372
00:25:03,368 --> 00:25:05,871
The great big machines on the power grid,

373
00:25:06,037 --> 00:25:10,141
even when they're burning the same natural gas as a backup generator,

374
00:25:10,509 --> 00:25:16,081
can capture much more of the energy contained in the fuel they burn and turn it into electricity

375
00:25:16,548 --> 00:25:19,017
than the small engine inside a Generac can.

376
00:25:20,051 --> 00:25:26,057
That efficiency of scale is what makes generating electricity cheaper for grid scale power stations.

377
00:25:26,491 --> 00:25:33,965
And the fact that the wires which connect your house to the grid 
are already there and were paid for perhaps decades ago

378
00:25:34,332 --> 00:25:39,237
explains why distributing that energy through the power grid is very efficient,

379
00:25:39,237 --> 00:25:41,907
both economically and from an energy perspective.

380
00:25:42,674 --> 00:25:47,012
And what's really important to remember is that grid power is cheaper

381
00:25:47,012 --> 00:25:52,584
despite the fact that the people who operate natural gas plants are making a healthy profit.

382
00:25:53,351 --> 00:25:55,487
They're not just running a power plant for the fun of it,

383
00:25:55,654 --> 00:25:56,888
they're in business!

384
00:25:57,622 --> 00:26:02,460
But the smarter business critters out there know that even with the benefits of scale,

385
00:26:02,794 --> 00:26:06,698
a natural gas plant still has a very high OpEx.

386
00:26:07,465 --> 00:26:14,306
Each unit of electricity a gas plant generates 
requires burning expensive fuel, which eats into profits.

387
00:26:15,307 --> 00:26:18,076
So for those who have an eye on making money,

388
00:26:18,476 --> 00:26:25,116
when solar farms pop up and demonstrate that 
we can produce electricity with no input costs at all,

389
00:26:26,217 --> 00:26:28,353
well, gas doesn't look so great anymore.

390
00:26:29,588 --> 00:26:37,829
See, all a solar farm operator needs to do is sell their electricity for slightly less 
than it costs a competing natural gas plant to make it.

391
00:26:37,996 --> 00:26:39,230
And that's what they'll do.

392
00:26:40,065 --> 00:26:43,535
That's good for consumers because that makes electricity cheaper to use.

393
00:26:43,802 --> 00:26:47,839
But because the solar farm has next to zero OpEx,

394
00:26:48,239 --> 00:26:51,543
it still generates a healthy profit, even though it's cheaper.

395
00:26:52,310 --> 00:26:58,850
And savvy business people who think long term will use those profits to build more solar farms.

396
00:26:59,651 --> 00:27:06,324
The basic realities of economics mean that 
photovoltaics are, at this point, frankly, unstoppable.

397
00:27:07,058 --> 00:27:13,765
The sun doesn't cost any money to use, which means 
all of the energy a solar panel produces is free.

398
00:27:14,332 --> 00:27:19,337
And that means whatever price you can sell that energy for on the power grid energy market

399
00:27:19,337 --> 00:27:22,674
is almost purely profit once the panels have been paid off.

400
00:27:23,541 --> 00:27:29,514
Best of all, grid scale energy storage in the form of 
electrochemical batteries has gotten cheap enough

401
00:27:29,514 --> 00:27:36,287
that it is now possible — today — to build a solar farm 
with batteries that can produce energy 24/7,

402
00:27:36,655 --> 00:27:41,026
and all the while doing that for a lower cost than any other source of electricity.

403
00:27:41,493 --> 00:27:46,898
And since both photovoltaic panels and batteries are manufactured in factories

404
00:27:46,898 --> 00:27:51,936
which can leverage economies of scale, 
they're just going to keep getting cheaper to manufacture.

405
00:27:52,837 --> 00:27:56,307
The economics are already in favor of solar and storage,

406
00:27:56,441 --> 00:27:59,177
but they're going to keep looking better and better every year.

407
00:28:00,111 --> 00:28:03,782
Solar energy has put us on the cusp of a positive feedback loop,

408
00:28:04,215 --> 00:28:06,885
yet relatively few people seem to have realized this.

409
00:28:07,485 --> 00:28:09,254
And that's despite the fact that -

410
00:28:09,254 --> 00:28:14,659
there's another one not even five miles up the road here in Spring Valley, Illinois.

411
00:28:15,360 --> 00:28:19,664
Solar farms are starting to pop up everywhere, even in states like Illinois,

412
00:28:19,964 --> 00:28:23,168
because the business case simply makes so much sense.

413
00:28:23,835 --> 00:28:26,705
It's farming a crop, just like we do with land today.

414
00:28:26,971 --> 00:28:31,476
But that crop gets harvested every single day rather than once a year,

415
00:28:31,843 --> 00:28:35,146
and virtually no work is involved in harvesting that crop.

416
00:28:35,814 --> 00:28:41,252
Plus, the crop doesn't need inputs in the form of water or fertilizer or pesticide or seed.

417
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:43,888
You just plop some panels on some land,

418
00:28:44,155 --> 00:28:46,624
angle them to get the most energy out of the sun as you can,

419
00:28:46,958 --> 00:28:48,626
and let the money roll in.

420
00:28:49,527 --> 00:28:51,629
This is a capitalist’s wet dream!

421
00:28:52,097 --> 00:28:55,467
People are always talking about passive income, as if that's a panacea.

422
00:28:56,134 --> 00:28:57,335
Well, there it is!

423
00:28:57,802 --> 00:29:00,138
You can become a farmer, and all you'll have to do

424
00:29:00,138 --> 00:29:03,041
is mow the grass between the panels a few times a year.

425
00:29:03,508 --> 00:29:09,848
The fact that there's this amazing business opportunity out there is why solar farms are happening in the first place.

426
00:29:10,548 --> 00:29:16,621
And they're leveraging the power grid we already have
which can move energy from one place to another.

427
00:29:17,555 --> 00:29:21,392
And that's why I'm not that interested in putting panels on my roof.

428
00:29:21,926 --> 00:29:25,296
Yes, there are good arguments for distributing energy resources,

429
00:29:25,730 --> 00:29:30,034
and we have a real problem right now with getting new transmission lines permitted.

430
00:29:30,769 --> 00:29:34,439
There are a ton of solar power projects which are already funded,

431
00:29:35,340 --> 00:29:38,710
but aren't happening because FERC can't get their act together

432
00:29:38,710 --> 00:29:40,378
and they're stuck in permitting hell.

433
00:29:41,112 --> 00:29:42,614
NIMBYs aren't helping either.

434
00:29:43,948 --> 00:29:49,721
Pushing individuals to install solar on their rooftop is one way to bypass some of these issues,

435
00:29:49,721 --> 00:29:51,322
and it does have some advantages,

436
00:29:51,956 --> 00:29:56,027
but many people don't have the agency to install solar on their roof,

437
00:29:56,027 --> 00:29:58,096
even if they wanted to and could afford it.

438
00:29:58,930 --> 00:30:01,766
Renters can't do that even if they're renting a house.

439
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:07,138
And what's worse, apartment buildings don't have enough roof space to be self-sufficient.

440
00:30:07,372 --> 00:30:10,275
Cities will always be relying on solar farms.

441
00:30:11,309 --> 00:30:15,647
There are many more reasons I'm not a big fan of pushing people 
towards buying their own panels and batteries

442
00:30:15,647 --> 00:30:16,981
which I'll spare you for time.

443
00:30:17,382 --> 00:30:24,222
Bottom line, I will gladly pay these small businesses 
which are daring to build the future through my power bills,

444
00:30:24,489 --> 00:30:26,925
and think that's a far more efficient use of my money.

445
00:30:27,592 --> 00:30:29,694
But speaking of efficient uses of things,

446
00:30:29,961 --> 00:30:34,332
let's address some of the concerns I know many of you out there have about solar energy.

447
00:30:34,833 --> 00:30:36,201
Like land use.

448
00:30:36,935 --> 00:30:40,338
Solar farms do indeed require a lot of space.

449
00:30:40,939 --> 00:30:46,477
That 27 megawatt solar farm in DePue is on something like a 120 acre site.

450
00:30:47,178 --> 00:30:51,382
I used an online tool and drew a circle around the access road to come up with that figure,

451
00:30:51,382 --> 00:30:55,220
so I can't guarantee it's accurate,
but that's what I'm going to roll with.

452
00:30:56,221 --> 00:30:59,858
Now, 27 MW is a tremendous amount of power,

453
00:31:00,592 --> 00:31:04,128
but in the context of the power grid, it's pretty piddly.

454
00:31:04,629 --> 00:31:08,700
This is the three phase line that connects the solar farm to the substation in DePue,

455
00:31:09,033 --> 00:31:11,102
And it's, uh...

456
00:31:11,102 --> 00:31:13,438
well it ain't exactly a big transmission line now, is it?

457
00:31:14,239 --> 00:31:17,742
So, yeah, solar energy will use lots of land.

458
00:31:18,710 --> 00:31:23,615
However, since I'm from Illinois, I think I'm qualified to explain why

459
00:31:23,615 --> 00:31:27,318
you probably don't need to worry too much about land use.

460
00:31:27,952 --> 00:31:29,888
That is a corn field.

461
00:31:30,688 --> 00:31:33,258
It doesn't look like much right now because it's the middle of January.

462
00:31:33,258 --> 00:31:36,427
But corn used to be growing there and it was harvested in the fall.

463
00:31:37,295 --> 00:31:40,465
Now there's three very notable things about this reality:

464
00:31:41,032 --> 00:31:44,202
First of all, this land should not look like this.

465
00:31:44,736 --> 00:31:46,771
This is Illinois, where the Prairie State,

466
00:31:46,771 --> 00:31:48,773
the natural environment, is prairie.

467
00:31:48,873 --> 00:31:53,611
And now there's virtually none of that left because it has all been turned into farms.

468
00:31:54,245 --> 00:31:58,917
Secondly, we only get one harvest per year out of this land.

469
00:31:59,417 --> 00:32:01,853
We spend all the summer growing the corn.

470
00:32:02,053 --> 00:32:04,522
And then in the fall, it's harvested just once.

471
00:32:05,023 --> 00:32:08,526
If this was a solar farm, it could have a harvest every single day.

472
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:13,097
And third, if you're thinking, “well, what if we stop growing corn there?

473
00:32:13,131 --> 00:32:14,332
We can't eat anymore!’

474
00:32:15,033 --> 00:32:18,136
Well, this corn is not the corn that you eat.

475
00:32:18,569 --> 00:32:21,239
Some of it does end up in lots of different food products,

476
00:32:21,239 --> 00:32:24,742
but a large portion of this corn gets used...

477
00:32:24,742 --> 00:32:26,210
for that.

478
00:32:26,377 --> 00:32:30,982
Yeah, those messages on gas pumps which say, may contain up to 10% ethanol?

479
00:32:31,883 --> 00:32:33,084
That came from corn.

480
00:32:33,785 --> 00:32:37,889
We have been using an astonishing amount of our rich agricultural land

481
00:32:38,156 --> 00:32:40,892
to grow corn to feed to cars.

482
00:32:41,693 --> 00:32:45,997
Maybe you remember the days of FlexFuel vehicles and E85 being relevant.

483
00:32:46,597 --> 00:32:52,270
Well, back in 2005, President George W Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005,

484
00:32:52,570 --> 00:32:57,608
and in 2007, he signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

485
00:32:58,476 --> 00:33:02,480
Those acts mandated a specific amount of ethanol in gallons

486
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,883
which needs to be produced so it can be mixed with gasoline.

487
00:33:06,851 --> 00:33:10,655
The idea, as you might have gleaned from the independence and security part,

488
00:33:10,922 --> 00:33:13,424
was to start making our own energy for cars

489
00:33:13,624 --> 00:33:16,661
so that we'd be less dependent on foreign oil,

490
00:33:16,661 --> 00:33:18,730
a policy I wholeheartedly support!

491
00:33:20,398 --> 00:33:24,435
The only trouble is that doing it with corn ethanol is tremendously stupid.

492
00:33:25,103 --> 00:33:29,974
First of all, it's important to acknowledge that we only get one corn harvest per year.

493
00:33:30,975 --> 00:33:37,949
Now, an acre of corn field might be able to produce 
550 gallons of corn ethanol when all is said and done.

494
00:33:37,949 --> 00:33:43,187
I'd like to note that it takes an awful lot of chemistry and energy to turn corn into ethanol,

495
00:33:43,888 --> 00:33:46,391
but we'll just ignore that and pretend it's easy and free.

496
00:33:46,991 --> 00:33:49,093
So let's go back to that solar farm.

497
00:33:49,761 --> 00:33:52,530
If this were a 120 acre corn field,

498
00:33:52,964 --> 00:33:57,602
then at the end of the year we can get maybe 66,000 gallons of ethanol out of it.

499
00:33:58,102 --> 00:33:59,837
That's about five tanker trucks worth.

500
00:34:01,039 --> 00:34:05,676
Now, if you didn't already know, this ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline.

501
00:34:05,676 --> 00:34:14,752
So E85 vehicles which run on E85 have a really poor fuel economy 
in miles per gallon: it's about a 40% penalty.

502
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:16,654
But I'll be generous.

503
00:34:16,654 --> 00:34:21,325
Let's say those 66,000 gallons of corn ethanol all make it into cars

504
00:34:21,325 --> 00:34:24,195
that can go 30 miles on a gallon of E85.

505
00:34:24,862 --> 00:34:26,064
How far can they drive?

506
00:34:26,964 --> 00:34:29,600
Well, 66,000 gallons times 30

507
00:34:29,934 --> 00:34:33,004
tells us that they can go just shy of 2 million miles.

508
00:34:33,704 --> 00:34:35,339
That might seem like a lot,

509
00:34:35,339 --> 00:34:38,776
but now let's consider how many miles electric cars

510
00:34:38,776 --> 00:34:44,849
that are being charged from the 27MW of solar panels 
on a 120 acre plot of land can drive every year.

511
00:34:45,883 --> 00:34:52,390
The operator of that solar farm's website claims it generates 
about 37,000 megawatt hours of energy every year.

512
00:34:53,558 --> 00:34:56,627
Well, the website says “in year one,” so it's possible

513
00:34:56,627 --> 00:34:58,696
it wasn't yet complete when they came to that figure.

514
00:34:58,696 --> 00:35:00,031
But I'm just going to roll with it.

515
00:35:01,132 --> 00:35:06,003
Electric cars generally get something like 3 or 4 miles per kilowatt hour.

516
00:35:06,671 --> 00:35:10,842
But let's go ahead and make the picture worse for them and say they can only manage two,

517
00:35:11,142 --> 00:35:14,045
which is what my car can get down to in extreme cold.

518
00:35:14,912 --> 00:35:19,951
Well, 37,000 megawatt hours is 37,000,000 kilowatt hours.

519
00:35:20,418 --> 00:35:26,891
So every year these panels can push electric cars at least 74 million miles.

520
00:35:28,159 --> 00:35:36,901
That's 2 million miles of driving each year from corn, 
versus 74 million miles of driving from solar panels.

521
00:35:38,035 --> 00:35:43,407
So do you really think we should still be growing corn to feed to cars?

522
00:35:44,375 --> 00:35:45,576
Here's the best part, though.

523
00:35:46,043 --> 00:35:48,579
Let's say you decided the answer is no

524
00:35:48,579 --> 00:35:51,516
and we stopped growing corn to feed to cars.

525
00:35:52,183 --> 00:35:54,652
How many acres of cornfields would that free up?

526
00:35:55,820 --> 00:36:02,160
Well, this website I found says we've got 96 million acres of land growing corn in this country.

527
00:36:02,793 --> 00:36:10,401
And depending on how you count, between 25 and 40% of all that acreage is devoted to ethanol.

528
00:36:11,202 --> 00:36:17,141
So let's just say we took a slightly fudged quarter of that land, 25 million acres,

529
00:36:17,308 --> 00:36:19,177
and covered it all in solar panels.

530
00:36:19,810 --> 00:36:21,379
How much energy would that harvest?

531
00:36:22,613 --> 00:36:25,082
Well, that's going to depend on where the panels are.

532
00:36:25,416 --> 00:36:29,520
And since we're going to do a thought experiment here where we put the panels in the corn belt,

533
00:36:29,921 --> 00:36:32,823
let's just keep using the numbers from the solar farm in DePue.

534
00:36:33,858 --> 00:36:39,864
Up here in Illinois, we can get 37,000 megawatt hours per year out of 120 acres.

535
00:36:40,498 --> 00:36:46,971
So let's see 25 million divided by 120 and then multiply by 37,000....

536
00:36:47,805 --> 00:36:54,545
That is 7,708,333,000 megawatt hours of energy.

537
00:36:55,346 --> 00:36:57,081
And why is that the best part?

538
00:36:58,082 --> 00:37:03,354
Because that's more energy than the entire U.S. electricity grid produces right now.

539
00:37:03,654 --> 00:37:05,790
And by a lot.

540
00:37:05,790 --> 00:37:10,728
In 2023, it all added up to 4.178 billion megawatt hours.

541
00:37:11,195 --> 00:37:17,068
So if all we did was decide to stop growing corn to turn into ethanol,

542
00:37:17,068 --> 00:37:21,005
and we used only that land for generating only solar power,

543
00:37:21,405 --> 00:37:26,010
we'd be able to generate 84% more electricity on an annual basis

544
00:37:26,244 --> 00:37:29,580
than we do today from all of our energy sources.

545
00:37:30,915 --> 00:37:36,687
I hope that helps you understand why I'm not that worried 
about the land solar panels will take up.

546
00:37:37,455 --> 00:37:39,123
We've got a whole lot of it,

547
00:37:39,457 --> 00:37:43,628
and we're not exactly using it responsibly at the moment, anyway.

548
00:37:43,794 --> 00:37:45,896
And by the way, I used real world numbers

549
00:37:45,896 --> 00:37:49,300
from a real world solar installation to perform this thought experiment

550
00:37:49,300 --> 00:37:51,435
in the hopes that that would be more convincing.

551
00:37:51,936 --> 00:37:54,705
But just in case you doubt my numbers, which I understand

552
00:37:54,705 --> 00:37:56,874
because I used the numbers from the company's website,

553
00:37:57,341 --> 00:38:00,144
there have been plenty of studies which demonstrate this,

554
00:38:00,144 --> 00:38:01,379
and I'll link them below.

555
00:38:02,380 --> 00:38:05,449
What's most notable is that up here in the Corn Belt,

556
00:38:05,783 --> 00:38:08,886
we actually have a pretty bad capacity factor.

557
00:38:09,453 --> 00:38:11,622
Solar panels would be much more productive

558
00:38:11,622 --> 00:38:13,958
if they were somewhere farther south and sunnier.

559
00:38:14,659 --> 00:38:18,129
But even with our mediocre latitude and weather patterns,

560
00:38:18,596 --> 00:38:21,332
all the land we need to generate electricity

561
00:38:21,332 --> 00:38:24,268
with solar power alone can be freed up

562
00:38:24,535 --> 00:38:28,572
if we just stop growing corn to feed to cars.

563
00:38:29,407 --> 00:38:32,443
So far in this video I've been talking a lot about solar energy.

564
00:38:32,443 --> 00:38:34,445
But you know I also like those things.

565
00:38:35,046 --> 00:38:37,515
Yeah.
Let's talk about wind turbines for a second.

566
00:38:38,082 --> 00:38:42,653
Something interesting you can do with these is put them in fields alongside crops

567
00:38:42,653 --> 00:38:45,489
and farm the wind and some corn at the same time.

568
00:38:46,624 --> 00:38:48,859
You can actually also do that with solar panels,

569
00:38:48,859 --> 00:38:52,763
it's called agrivoltaics and it's a really exciting area of research.

570
00:38:53,030 --> 00:38:54,065
But we'll set that aside.

571
00:38:54,065 --> 00:38:55,599
This video is already quite long.

572
00:38:56,767 --> 00:38:59,136
Now some people look at a wind turbine

573
00:38:59,136 --> 00:39:02,139
and see a pointless boondoggle which clutters the landscape.

574
00:39:02,139 --> 00:39:05,843
But I, on the other hand, see a magnificent machine

575
00:39:05,843 --> 00:39:08,179
which turns wind into gasoline.

576
00:39:09,013 --> 00:39:10,381
Here's a fun thought experiment:

577
00:39:10,681 --> 00:39:15,052
Each one of these wind turbines can generate two megawatts of power.

578
00:39:15,319 --> 00:39:18,322
And on a windy day, like today,
that's probably what they're putting out.

579
00:39:19,056 --> 00:39:22,026
If this car could actually handle that much power,

580
00:39:22,326 --> 00:39:25,162
how long do you think it would take one of those wind turbines —

581
00:39:25,196 --> 00:39:27,765
just one! — to charge this car's battery?

582
00:39:28,532 --> 00:39:30,901
The answer is two and a half minutes.

583
00:39:31,335 --> 00:39:33,604
Seriously, not even 2.5 minutes.

584
00:39:33,771 --> 00:39:37,942
And if we consider that this car has a driving range of about 240 miles,

585
00:39:38,142 --> 00:39:42,380
and then equate that to a gasoline powered car that gets 40 miles per gallon,

586
00:39:42,380 --> 00:39:47,151
then you can very much imagine these machines as wind powered oil derricks

587
00:39:47,151 --> 00:39:52,289
that generate about three gallons of refined gasoline every single minute.

588
00:39:53,157 --> 00:39:55,826
If you're having a hard time imagining what that looks like,

589
00:39:56,127 --> 00:39:59,663
most showerheads run at something like two gallons per minute.

590
00:40:00,264 --> 00:40:06,604
So imagine you had a shower running all the time 
that was spitting out gasoline which you could bottle and sell.

591
00:40:07,138 --> 00:40:10,875
And that's what just one of those wind turbines does.

592
00:40:11,575 --> 00:40:13,310
And how much does the wind cost?

593
00:40:14,378 --> 00:40:15,813
Slightly more than the sun.

594
00:40:15,813 --> 00:40:17,014
But it's still free.

595
00:40:17,782 --> 00:40:19,950
Wind power is obviously quite useful.

596
00:40:20,317 --> 00:40:24,388
For one thing, these work
just fine on cloudy days and even work at night.

597
00:40:25,122 --> 00:40:32,062
But these are gigantic machines with moving parts 
which need much more maintenance than a solar panel does.

598
00:40:32,696 --> 00:40:34,932
In fact, while I was out at this wind farm,

599
00:40:35,199 --> 00:40:39,036
this one in the background was stopped because there was a crew performing maintenance.

600
00:40:39,804 --> 00:40:41,005
That's OpEx.

601
00:40:41,172 --> 00:40:47,545
So while a wind farm still has a very, very low OpEx 
compared to a power plant which burns a costly fuel,

602
00:40:48,179 --> 00:40:52,149
wind turbines are not quite as cost competitive as solar panels.

603
00:40:52,650 --> 00:40:57,254
Photovoltaics are very much a kind of solid state energy generation.

604
00:40:57,655 --> 00:41:00,825
And a big machine like that is very much not.

605
00:41:01,792 --> 00:41:04,061
But let's pretend wind power doesn't exist.

606
00:41:04,862 --> 00:41:07,097
This is a silly thing to pretend because it does.

607
00:41:07,331 --> 00:41:11,235
But I want us to return to the purely solar powered thought experiment.

608
00:41:11,769 --> 00:41:15,005
Because in the room where that thought experiment takes place,

609
00:41:15,739 --> 00:41:16,941
there is an elephant.

610
00:41:17,741 --> 00:41:24,748
Covering 25 million acres in solar panels is going to require building many millions of solar panels.

611
00:41:25,082 --> 00:41:26,517
Billions, in fact.

612
00:41:27,184 --> 00:41:30,955
And that's going to require a whole heckuvalot of raw materials.

613
00:41:31,956 --> 00:41:38,996
Now, I do think it's worth pointing out that the fruit 
of extracting those raw materials will function for decades.

614
00:41:39,763 --> 00:41:45,035
We use an even heckier heckuvalot of raw materials right now when we extract and refine oil

615
00:41:45,336 --> 00:41:49,306
and all the fruits of that process function exactly once.

616
00:41:50,107 --> 00:41:52,910
You don't notice all the mass you're burning through right now,

617
00:41:52,910 --> 00:41:56,747
because it mostly exists in your mind as nothing but numbers on a gas pump.

618
00:41:57,248 --> 00:42:00,050
Unless you're filling a jerry can, you don't even see it.

619
00:42:00,751 --> 00:42:06,824
But there's a reason those tanker trucks are constantly showing up and delivering more fuel to each and every gas station.

620
00:42:07,291 --> 00:42:11,028
Cars burn that fuel and it's constantly disappearing.

621
00:42:12,162 --> 00:42:15,533
I, for one, think we should spend our efforts extracting resources

622
00:42:15,533 --> 00:42:17,301
which will hang around for a while.

623
00:42:18,135 --> 00:42:19,336
Just seems a little wiser.

624
00:42:20,104 --> 00:42:26,343
Regardless, solar panels are large, fairly heavy things
and each one is made from a substantial amount of material.

625
00:42:26,644 --> 00:42:33,250
So it's worth talking about what the raw materials inside these things actually are.

626
00:42:33,751 --> 00:42:35,886
And that's why I bought this one.

627
00:42:36,654 --> 00:42:37,488
And that one.

628
00:42:37,488 --> 00:42:38,689
But we'll get back to that.

629
00:42:39,123 --> 00:42:42,793
So these slender black things with all the lines on them

630
00:42:43,093 --> 00:42:44,895
are the actual solar cells.

631
00:42:45,262 --> 00:42:50,100
These are what convert the photons from the sun that land on them into electrons

632
00:42:50,100 --> 00:42:52,736
which can be sent down a wire and harnessed as energy.

633
00:42:53,804 --> 00:42:56,206
Those cells are extremely thin.

634
00:42:56,473 --> 00:42:59,209
We're talking about as thin as a human hair.

635
00:42:59,977 --> 00:43:05,015
And that means the vast, vast majority of this panel's mass is simply...

636
00:43:06,283 --> 00:43:07,484
panel!

637
00:43:07,651 --> 00:43:13,090
Almost all of what makes up this thing is either aluminum, glass, or adhesives.

638
00:43:13,757 --> 00:43:19,196
72 silicon cells were arranged and wired together and then glued to this sheet of glass.

639
00:43:19,797 --> 00:43:24,435
Once that was done, the backside of the glass gets coated in some kind of thermoplastic

640
00:43:24,435 --> 00:43:26,537
to seal it all up and make it watertight.

641
00:43:27,271 --> 00:43:29,873
A hole in that coating was left for lead wires

642
00:43:29,873 --> 00:43:32,176
to connect the solar cells to this junction box,

643
00:43:32,509 --> 00:43:35,913
and then the box was attached to the backside of the glass with sealant.

644
00:43:36,780 --> 00:43:39,249
Oh, and if you're wondering what's inside that junction box,

645
00:43:39,516 --> 00:43:46,423
sometimes it's a circuit board with a micro inverter to allow the panel 
to spit out the same AC power that the grid runs on.

646
00:43:46,790 --> 00:43:49,159
But in this case, this is a DC solar panel,

647
00:43:49,226 --> 00:43:51,695
so all that's in there are a couple of beefy diodes.

648
00:43:52,463 --> 00:43:56,033
And well, the last major thing in here is aluminum.

649
00:43:56,767 --> 00:44:01,005
The aluminum frame gives some structure to the glass and provides an easy way to mount it.

650
00:44:01,438 --> 00:44:02,840
But that's really all it's there for.

651
00:44:03,807 --> 00:44:07,277
I'm not that well versed on all the ways these things are constructed,

652
00:44:07,277 --> 00:44:10,781
so I don't want to falsely assert that most of them are made like this one is.

653
00:44:11,181 --> 00:44:14,685
And a lot of panels now have solar cells on both sides:

654
00:44:14,685 --> 00:44:19,223
those are known as bifacial panels. But no matter how they're made,

655
00:44:19,790 --> 00:44:22,826
it's mostly just glass and aluminum.

656
00:44:23,293 --> 00:44:29,299
I think that's notable because those are both 
materials which are so cheap and easy to get that we use them...

657
00:44:30,100 --> 00:44:31,435
for food containers.

658
00:44:34,071 --> 00:44:37,107
And it's also notable because these food containers,

659
00:44:37,141 --> 00:44:40,044
mainly glass bottles and jars and aluminum cans,

660
00:44:40,444 --> 00:44:42,913
are something we already actively recycle.

661
00:44:43,881 --> 00:44:46,617
It would be better if we reused glass containers

662
00:44:46,617 --> 00:44:48,318
rather than ground them up and melted them,

663
00:44:48,352 --> 00:44:49,853
but that's an issue for another time.

664
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:53,657
The important thing is we already know how to do that,

665
00:44:53,824 --> 00:44:56,326
and we already have industrial processes

666
00:44:56,326 --> 00:44:59,730
which turn used ground up glass into new glass,

667
00:44:59,963 --> 00:45:03,534
and which melt scrap aluminum into new aluminum.

668
00:45:04,168 --> 00:45:07,204
So at the end of this panel's useful life,

669
00:45:07,705 --> 00:45:10,374
which won't be for 25 years!

670
00:45:10,874 --> 00:45:14,244
...almost all of its raw material mass can easily be recovered

671
00:45:14,244 --> 00:45:17,748
and turned into another panel, which is important.

672
00:45:18,482 --> 00:45:20,684
When it comes to the actual silicon cells,

673
00:45:21,085 --> 00:45:27,658
Well, you've probably heard (or heard someone say) that these things are full of toxic materials.

674
00:45:28,692 --> 00:45:30,094
That's misinformation.

675
00:45:30,494 --> 00:45:31,662
And let me explain why.

676
00:45:32,396 --> 00:45:34,932
There are some kinds of solar cell

677
00:45:34,932 --> 00:45:39,036
that we've been experimenting with, like thin film solar cells or perovskite cells,

678
00:45:39,203 --> 00:45:42,372
which require some less than great elements in their construction.

679
00:45:42,906 --> 00:45:46,944
But those represent only about 5% of panels made today.

680
00:45:47,745 --> 00:45:51,482
The vast majority are using monocrystalline silicon at this point,

681
00:45:51,648 --> 00:45:53,984
which is a material we derive from quartz.

682
00:45:54,818 --> 00:45:56,286
You know, rocks.

683
00:45:57,187 --> 00:46:01,592
There are some trace elements of phosphorous, boron and silver in here.

684
00:46:02,092 --> 00:46:06,497
But based on what I've researched,
the only potentially harmful substance

685
00:46:06,497 --> 00:46:12,536
people might worry about in this is lead in the solder which makes electrical connections.

686
00:46:13,070 --> 00:46:14,605
You can see some of it right here.

687
00:46:15,506 --> 00:46:18,709
But I'm not actually sure that lead is even in this panel!

688
00:46:19,276 --> 00:46:22,446
We've had lead free solder for quite some time, though...

689
00:46:22,446 --> 00:46:24,715
as any electronics enthusiast will tell you,

690
00:46:24,715 --> 00:46:29,253
it can be annoying to work with because it 
doesn't flow as well as when there's a little lead in the mix.

691
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:34,291
I say that because it's possible
these will always have to use lead solder

692
00:46:34,291 --> 00:46:36,593
to get a good bond with the silicon cells.

693
00:46:37,161 --> 00:46:39,363
But even if that's true,

694
00:46:40,164 --> 00:46:42,032
we know how to deal with lead.

695
00:46:42,900 --> 00:46:49,106
Did you know that new lead acid batteries are almost entirely made from old lead acid batteries?

696
00:46:49,740 --> 00:46:52,342
Every time you buy a car battery from a store,

697
00:46:52,543 --> 00:46:55,179
you're going to have to pay what's called a core charge,

698
00:46:55,245 --> 00:46:59,416
which you don't get refunded until you bring your old battery back to the store.

699
00:46:59,616 --> 00:47:01,251
And that's to encourage recycling.

700
00:47:02,052 --> 00:47:08,492
This system works so well that we capture about 99% of the material in dead car batteries.

701
00:47:08,992 --> 00:47:13,230
We have a nearly closed loop recycling stream already established for them.

702
00:47:13,931 --> 00:47:16,900
That's some foreshadowing for the “what about the batteries?” section,

703
00:47:17,167 --> 00:47:23,841
but I'm really saying it here to let you know we can 
absolutely figure out how to capture the lead in these safely and reuse it.

704
00:47:24,374 --> 00:47:25,742
We just have to want to.

705
00:47:26,543 --> 00:47:32,449
And speaking of recycling, there's absolutely no reason 
we couldn't also recycle the silicon inside of these.

706
00:47:33,050 --> 00:47:37,354
The worn out solar cells could be melted down and purified into new silicon

707
00:47:37,354 --> 00:47:40,824
to make new wafers, to make new cells at the end of a panels life.

708
00:47:41,792 --> 00:47:47,130
But even if for some reason we never figure that out or it's never economically viable,

709
00:47:47,731 --> 00:47:49,433
you have to remember two things:

710
00:47:49,933 --> 00:47:54,471
First, each panel will last a quarter of a century or longer!

711
00:47:55,005 --> 00:47:58,275
And second, those cells are extremely thin,

712
00:47:58,275 --> 00:48:00,744
usually less than 200 micrometers,

713
00:48:01,011 --> 00:48:03,313
and thus have almost no material in them at all.

714
00:48:04,481 --> 00:48:07,050
I wanted to remove the cells from this panel

715
00:48:07,050 --> 00:48:12,189
so I could actually weigh them and tell you just how much 
of this panel's mass the silicon cells constitute,

716
00:48:12,623 --> 00:48:16,326
but they're so thin and fragile that I could not peel away the coating

717
00:48:16,326 --> 00:48:18,528
which seals them to the glass without destroying them.

718
00:48:19,162 --> 00:48:24,534
I tried several different solvents, hoping to dissolve 
some of the adhesives in here, but I had no luck at all.

719
00:48:25,502 --> 00:48:28,839
The magic of buying two of them has unfortunately failed us.

720
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:31,608
However, I has internet!

721
00:48:32,209 --> 00:48:34,544
Assuming a thickness of 200 micrometers,

722
00:48:34,745 --> 00:48:36,880
which appears to be on the thicker side these days,

723
00:48:37,314 --> 00:48:44,087
then if we stacked up all 72 of these cells, they'd make a stack which is just 1.4cm tall.

724
00:48:44,955 --> 00:48:49,393
The total volume would thus be about 94.5cm³,

725
00:48:49,693 --> 00:48:53,964
and the density of silicon is about 2.3g/cm³,

726
00:48:53,997 --> 00:48:58,902
meaning this solar panel has maybe 215g of silicon in it.

727
00:48:59,970 --> 00:49:02,606
That's about 3% of its total mass.

728
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:09,112
Now, this is only a 100 watt panel, and most panels sold today are larger with more cells.

729
00:49:09,579 --> 00:49:16,186
But that still means we're looking at about a kilogram of silicon per 500 watt solar panel on the high end.

730
00:49:17,254 --> 00:49:19,423
Now, that's not a lot for an individual panel,

731
00:49:19,690 --> 00:49:24,962
but if we followed through with the Corn Belt thought experiment, we'd need about 10 billion panels.

732
00:49:24,962 --> 00:49:31,335
So, well, those panels are going to need something like 5 or 10 million metric tons of silicon.

733
00:49:31,902 --> 00:49:33,637
And that is certainly a lot.

734
00:49:34,438 --> 00:49:36,540
But it's probably not as much as you might think.

735
00:49:37,140 --> 00:49:39,643
For one thing, right now in the US,

736
00:49:39,643 --> 00:49:45,449
we put some 265 million metric tons of stuff in landfills every year.

737
00:49:46,249 --> 00:49:50,721
So if we simply landfilled all that silicon, which I will remind you

738
00:49:50,721 --> 00:49:58,261
represents the silicon necessary to completely power the entire 
U.S. electricity grid from solar energy and nothing else,

739
00:49:59,196 --> 00:50:03,667
we'd only be taking up less than a 10th of our yearly landfill capacity by mass.

740
00:50:03,867 --> 00:50:06,903
And we'd only need to do that every quarter of a century.

741
00:50:07,871 --> 00:50:13,710
Remember how I said I'd only need 12 of those 
solar panels to provide enough energy to drive my car in the winter?

742
00:50:14,444 --> 00:50:16,446
That's what's really important to remember.

743
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:18,815
The amount of silicon, or in fact,

744
00:50:18,815 --> 00:50:28,191
whatever material in a solar panel might concern you that 
each person in this country will end up utilizing in this imagined future scenario is very small.

745
00:50:28,759 --> 00:50:35,165
And when you remember that each of the solar panels 
is going to last a solid quarter of a human lifetime, if not longer,

746
00:50:35,165 --> 00:50:38,935
then the amount of material used per day is irrelevant.

747
00:50:39,603 --> 00:50:44,041
Anyone trying to get you to focus on that is fear mongering and deflecting your attention

748
00:50:44,041 --> 00:50:49,679
away from the fact that currently we burn through millions of barrels of oil every day.

749
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:51,982
And now here we are.

750
00:50:52,482 --> 00:50:54,151
What about the batteries?

751
00:50:54,885 --> 00:50:59,056
If we actually live in this imagined future of nothing but solar energy

752
00:50:59,523 --> 00:51:01,825
which in case it's not clear, I don't think we will

753
00:51:01,858 --> 00:51:05,062
because we have many different sources of energy
available to us as well.

754
00:51:05,495 --> 00:51:07,864
But if we actually live in this future,

755
00:51:08,165 --> 00:51:10,634
we have to deal with when the sun's not shining

756
00:51:11,134 --> 00:51:13,470
and we do that with batteries.

757
00:51:13,970 --> 00:51:19,743
We would be building much more solar power capacity 
than we can actually use when the sun is shining

758
00:51:20,143 --> 00:51:24,815
and the excess we're not using will charge enormous banks of batteries

759
00:51:24,815 --> 00:51:28,452
so that when the sun sets and the panels stop producing any output,

760
00:51:28,885 --> 00:51:31,688
we have stored energy to get us through to sunrise.

761
00:51:32,355 --> 00:51:36,693
We're also going to have long term storage available to get us through periods of bad weather.

762
00:51:37,327 --> 00:51:44,134
But of course, we can also use this high tech idea 
called wires and move energy from sunny deserts to cloudy places.

763
00:51:44,668 --> 00:51:47,604
There's a huge variety of ways we could solve this issue,

764
00:51:47,971 --> 00:51:50,273
and that's one of the cool things about electricity.

765
00:51:51,074 --> 00:51:55,312
But no matter what, we're going to need to build a whole heckuva lot of batteries.

766
00:51:55,579 --> 00:52:00,083
And those suckers absolutely do have some nasty chemicals in there.

767
00:52:00,317 --> 00:52:02,686
And we're going to need to extract a whole lot of raw

768
00:52:02,686 --> 00:52:05,388
material from mines and whatnot to get them.

769
00:52:06,423 --> 00:52:11,895
However, if you understand the logic of lifespan, you'll know what I'm about to say.

770
00:52:12,929 --> 00:52:19,769
Most people who say “but what about the batteries?” seem 
to always ignore two core facts about batteries:

771
00:52:20,470 --> 00:52:23,473
The first fact is that they last many years now.

772
00:52:23,773 --> 00:52:31,581
In fact, some of the latest batteries with a daily 
charge cycle should get to 15 years old before they start degrading significantly.

773
00:52:32,349 --> 00:52:36,386
That's 15 years of daily use of the same battery pack

774
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:41,424
as opposed to fossil fuels which can all be used, I remind you, once.

775
00:52:42,425 --> 00:52:43,927
And the second core fact

776
00:52:43,927 --> 00:52:46,096
is that when those batteries have degraded,

777
00:52:46,796 --> 00:52:48,265
they're still there!

778
00:52:49,065 --> 00:52:54,237
When battery cells degrade, it's not as if the material inside of them is disappearing.

779
00:52:54,905 --> 00:53:00,043
What's actually happening is that the physical arrangements of those materials is slowly changing.

780
00:53:00,710 --> 00:53:06,449
As the reversible chemical reaction which we call charging and discharging the battery occurs inside,

781
00:53:06,850 --> 00:53:09,986
little bits of material in the anodes and cathodes can start

782
00:53:09,986 --> 00:53:13,757
breaking off and moving around, creating structures inside

783
00:53:13,757 --> 00:53:17,227
that eventually start to block the chemical reaction from happening

784
00:53:17,460 --> 00:53:19,863
and reduce the battery cell’s ability to function.

785
00:53:21,031 --> 00:53:26,503
But that does not mean any of the materials have transformed into something else.

786
00:53:27,170 --> 00:53:31,141
You can't take a lithium atom for example, and turn it into iron.

787
00:53:31,675 --> 00:53:36,546
All the lithium that was in there when the battery was made is still there.

788
00:53:37,113 --> 00:53:39,182
So when the battery wears out,

789
00:53:39,516 --> 00:53:42,152
all of the lithium inside can be recovered.

790
00:53:42,953 --> 00:53:44,854
Let's talk about mining for a second.

791
00:53:45,455 --> 00:53:48,992
When we find new deposits of some substance we're looking for,

792
00:53:49,426 --> 00:53:51,561
it's not as if someone just happens

793
00:53:51,561 --> 00:53:55,532
upon a giant lump of pure cobalt, and we start cutting chunks out of it.

794
00:53:56,099 --> 00:54:00,103
No, we find a deposit of ore which is rich in that material.

795
00:54:00,837 --> 00:54:04,241
Then we'll dig up that ore and do lots of fancy processing

796
00:54:04,274 --> 00:54:07,978
to extract the cobalt or whatever from the rest of the rocks and purify it.

797
00:54:09,179 --> 00:54:10,380
Why am I telling you this?

798
00:54:11,281 --> 00:54:16,052
Because the richest ore for whatever material you need to build a battery...

799
00:54:16,052 --> 00:54:17,587
is used batteries!

800
00:54:18,154 --> 00:54:20,223
We are already starting up processes

801
00:54:20,357 --> 00:54:23,159
where we grind up used lithium ion batteries

802
00:54:23,293 --> 00:54:25,762
and turn them into a mineral rich paste,

803
00:54:25,762 --> 00:54:28,398
which, just like the raw ore we get out of the ground,

804
00:54:28,665 --> 00:54:33,436
can be processed into the raw material inputs that built that battery in the first place.

805
00:54:34,137 --> 00:54:40,410
Jerry Rig Everything has a two year old video about this process, 
and I'll link to it in the description if you'd like to see it.

806
00:54:40,877 --> 00:54:45,448
Unlike fossil fuels where we toil away
extracting and purifying resources

807
00:54:45,682 --> 00:54:51,821
just so that we can sell them, put them in our gas tanks and set them on fire, when we're building a battery...

808
00:54:52,155 --> 00:54:53,723
we are *building* something!

809
00:54:54,457 --> 00:54:58,461
We're extracting and purifying resources to make a durable good,

810
00:54:58,461 --> 00:55:00,730
which will last many, many years.

811
00:55:01,197 --> 00:55:06,770
And because that durable good doesn't disappear once we've used it like fossil fuels do,

812
00:55:07,470 --> 00:55:10,407
everything inside that durable good can be recovered.

813
00:55:11,074 --> 00:55:14,344
That's kind of the whole point of renewable energy.

814
00:55:14,678 --> 00:55:17,614
It's called renewable because it's not disposable.

815
00:55:17,814 --> 00:55:20,817
It's a resource we can use again and again and again

816
00:55:20,817 --> 00:55:22,886
without worrying about running out.

817
00:55:23,820 --> 00:55:25,789
Now, a lot of people like to point out

818
00:55:25,789 --> 00:55:29,959
that we don't have a huge industry recycling lithium ion batteries yet,

819
00:55:30,593 --> 00:55:36,433
but that's mostly because we don't have a huge supply of dead lithium ion batteries yet.

820
00:55:37,033 --> 00:55:41,104
The biggest supply comes from electric cars with worn out battery packs.

821
00:55:41,104 --> 00:55:47,577
But again, modern battery chemistries in thermally controlled battery packs last decades.

822
00:55:47,911 --> 00:55:50,447
So aside from first gen Nissan Leafs,

823
00:55:50,447 --> 00:55:53,450
which had a uniquely terrible battery pack design,

824
00:55:53,817 --> 00:55:59,189
most electric cars that were built in the last 15 years still have their original battery packs.

825
00:55:59,989 --> 00:56:05,295
The biggest reason we end up with used packs is cars getting into collisions and becoming totaled.

826
00:56:05,929 --> 00:56:08,565
That happens way more often than a battery pack failure.

827
00:56:09,499 --> 00:56:13,103
So it's not like a recycling industry isn't going to happen,

828
00:56:13,503 --> 00:56:15,004
in fact, it's already happening!

829
00:56:15,638 --> 00:56:21,277
But it doesn't seem to be at a very large scale yet because most EV batteries are still in service

830
00:56:21,644 --> 00:56:29,586
and a lot of folks are buying used EV battery packs from totaled cars 
and the like to repurpose them for stationary energy storage,

831
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:31,254
meaning they are still in use.

832
00:56:31,254 --> 00:56:32,455
They're just not in a car.

833
00:56:33,156 --> 00:56:39,496
But there's another rather enormous reason I think 
“but what about the batteries” is a misplaced concern.

834
00:56:40,330 --> 00:56:41,164
That reason?

835
00:56:42,098 --> 00:56:43,800
We’re still learning.

836
00:56:44,667 --> 00:56:48,271
We are constantly learning how to build better batteries.

837
00:56:48,438 --> 00:56:51,508
Name any material of concern inside a battery pack,

838
00:56:51,508 --> 00:56:55,779
and I can guarantee you there are engineers out there trying to eliminate it.

839
00:56:56,579 --> 00:56:59,149
Lithium iron phosphate cells, for example,

840
00:56:59,249 --> 00:57:01,985
don't contain nickel, manganese, or cobalt.

841
00:57:02,552 --> 00:57:05,422
And in addition to eliminating the need for conflict minerals,

842
00:57:05,822 --> 00:57:08,658
LFP battery chemistry is also much more stable,

843
00:57:08,825 --> 00:57:12,729
meaning the risks of battery fires have been reduced dramatically.

844
00:57:13,496 --> 00:57:18,635
And we're on the cusp of commercializing sodium ion batteries which don't use lithium at all.

845
00:57:19,169 --> 00:57:20,370
They use sodium.

846
00:57:20,537 --> 00:57:22,172
You know the stuff in ramen noodles?

847
00:57:22,539 --> 00:57:23,740
Table salt.

848
00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:27,610
The stuff we can get simply by filling a pot with seawater and waiting a while.

849
00:57:28,711 --> 00:57:31,614
Sodium ion batteries are not as energy dense,

850
00:57:31,614 --> 00:57:34,517
so they'll probably not be a great fit for electric cars,

851
00:57:34,851 --> 00:57:40,256
but they'll be a fantastic fit for the large grid scale energy storage facilities

852
00:57:40,256 --> 00:57:42,559
which are already being built all the time.

853
00:57:43,326 --> 00:57:46,162
And if you've read about battery fires at those facilities,

854
00:57:46,329 --> 00:57:49,165
that's a huge reason we're looking into sodium ion.

855
00:57:49,632 --> 00:57:51,768
That chemistry is far more stable

856
00:57:51,768 --> 00:57:55,805
and seems nearly immune from thermal runaway risks from what I understand.

857
00:57:56,539 --> 00:58:00,677
We are constantly learning new things as we try to crack this nut.

858
00:58:01,778 --> 00:58:02,612
I remind you,

859
00:58:02,612 --> 00:58:05,882
the energy we get from solar panels is free,

860
00:58:06,249 --> 00:58:11,154
so there is a huge incentive for us to figure out 
how to use this free energy when the sun isn't shining.

861
00:58:11,855 --> 00:58:18,761
We are and have always been working on building better, cheaper, longer lasting, less dangerous batteries

862
00:58:18,928 --> 00:58:21,664
which use materials we can find in our own backyard.

863
00:58:22,198 --> 00:58:25,268
So whatever you've heard that might make you concerned

864
00:58:25,535 --> 00:58:29,973
is not guaranteed to be relevant in the next few years or even tomorrow.

865
00:58:30,740 --> 00:58:36,713
And because every single battery we build will 
still be there when it wears out (barring accidents, of course),

866
00:58:37,146 --> 00:58:44,888
we have the ability to reprocess those batteries 
into fresh new batteries without extracting more virgin materials.

867
00:58:45,822 --> 00:58:47,290
That's the end game.

868
00:58:47,891 --> 00:58:49,792
I've seen a lot of people say things like,

869
00:58:49,792 --> 00:58:51,928
“well, lithium is just going to become the new oil!”

870
00:58:51,928 --> 00:58:55,331
but that completely misunderstands the realities here.

871
00:58:55,965 --> 00:59:01,237
We cannot stop extracting oil because we burn it as we use it.

872
00:59:01,938 --> 00:59:06,309
Yes, renewable energy technology will require lots of extraction to build,

873
00:59:06,843 --> 00:59:09,879
but we don't destroy what we extracted.

874
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:12,649
That is what we do with fossil fuels.

875
00:59:12,682 --> 00:59:14,751
We burn them as we use them.

876
00:59:14,751 --> 00:59:15,952
And that's the problem.

877
00:59:16,486 --> 00:59:20,456
There's scarcity built into fossil fuels because it disappears.

878
00:59:20,623 --> 00:59:23,693
Each and every gallon of gasoline you've ever purchased,

879
00:59:23,693 --> 00:59:27,297
except for what's sitting in your gas tank right this moment, is gone.

880
00:59:28,131 --> 00:59:32,602
But the battery pack I purchased alongside my car is still with us.

881
00:59:33,236 --> 00:59:34,437
It's right there.

882
00:59:34,804 --> 00:59:38,141
All of the raw materials it's made from are still inside of it,

883
00:59:38,141 --> 00:59:39,876
and we are able to get to them.

884
00:59:40,376 --> 00:59:42,312
And so when it's no longer doing its job

885
00:59:42,312 --> 00:59:44,981
as I need it to, it will live another life.

886
00:59:45,515 --> 00:59:48,484
Just as the steel which makes up the rest of the car will be crushed

887
00:59:48,484 --> 00:59:49,786
and turned into new cars,

888
00:59:50,153 --> 00:59:56,492
The minerals inside that battery pack will be 
processed into their pure form and used to build new batteries.

889
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:04,133
And even if we never figure out how to make better batteries and we're stuck 
with lithium ion from now until the end of time for some reason,

890
01:00:04,834 --> 01:00:08,404
eventually we'll have built enough of them to do everything we need to do.

891
01:00:09,305 --> 01:00:14,143
I'm not buying a new battery pack for my car because it's already got one! And it's still working.

892
01:00:14,777 --> 01:00:18,214
And once we've built enough batteries for grid scale energy storage,

893
01:00:18,615 --> 01:00:20,917
well, we'll have built enough batteries.

894
01:00:21,217 --> 01:00:24,087
There does come a day when we have built enough,

895
01:00:24,087 --> 01:00:27,323
because we only use energy when we choose to do things

896
01:00:27,323 --> 01:00:29,525
like cook food or drive a car.

897
01:00:29,859 --> 01:00:32,595
And there's only so many humans on this planet choosing to do stuff.

898
01:00:33,363 --> 01:00:34,964
And when they start wearing out then, yeah,

899
01:00:34,998 --> 01:00:41,137
those batteries will need replacement but that 
doesn't mean we'll have to keep mining for more lithium forever.

900
01:00:41,938 --> 01:00:44,040
We'll have to find some new lithium to make up

901
01:00:44,040 --> 01:00:46,309
for whatever is lost in the recovery process.

902
01:00:46,643 --> 01:00:50,046
But if we can follow the example of lead acid battery recycling

903
01:00:50,246 --> 01:00:52,215
and all but completely closed the loop,

904
01:00:52,582 --> 01:00:55,652
then in a theoretical 50 years down the road scenario,

905
01:00:55,652 --> 01:00:59,322
perhaps 1 in 100 lithium mines will remain operational.

906
01:00:59,922 --> 01:01:01,624
The rest of them will have closed down

907
01:01:01,624 --> 01:01:06,929
because when we need to build new batteries, we'll get lithium from old batteries.

908
01:01:07,797 --> 01:01:11,134
But the best part is something I mentioned way back at the start.

909
01:01:12,035 --> 01:01:13,703
We're already here.

910
01:01:14,570 --> 01:01:20,743
Solar and storage is now the cheapest form of electricity generation we know of.

911
01:01:20,743 --> 01:01:25,481
For years, the barrier to making solar energy happen at scale was simply cost.

912
01:01:25,882 --> 01:01:28,418
We had functional solar panels decades ago,

913
01:01:28,718 --> 01:01:31,220
but they were ludicrously expensive to manufacture.

914
01:01:31,387 --> 01:01:34,290
And that's why the only places you tended to find them were on,

915
01:01:34,724 --> 01:01:37,493
like the International Space Station and satellites and junk.

916
01:01:38,394 --> 01:01:41,664
But now we are way under $1 per watt.

917
01:01:41,998 --> 01:01:45,068
Random websites will sell me, a random schmuck,

918
01:01:45,068 --> 01:01:50,707
solar panels which go for just $0.35 a watt, and they'll certainly get cheaper than that.

919
01:01:51,407 --> 01:01:54,610
They already are when you have a contract for 27 MW worth.

920
01:01:55,445 --> 01:01:58,648
Of course, I care deeply about the materials angle

921
01:01:58,881 --> 01:02:02,118
and appreciate the fact that unlike all fossil fuels,

922
01:02:02,385 --> 01:02:04,954
nearly everything we extract out of the ground

923
01:02:04,954 --> 01:02:09,859
to build solar panels and batteries can be recaptured at the end of their life

924
01:02:09,859 --> 01:02:11,994
to make new solar panels and batteries.

925
01:02:12,395 --> 01:02:13,830
I like that a lot.

926
01:02:14,664 --> 01:02:17,033
But even if you don't care about that,

927
01:02:17,300 --> 01:02:19,502
the sun is free!

928
01:02:19,802 --> 01:02:23,172
And both solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough

929
01:02:23,172 --> 01:02:26,309
to make practical use of that free source of energy.

930
01:02:27,276 --> 01:02:28,745
We are here.

931
01:02:29,245 --> 01:02:33,382
We made it and the future looks quite bright.

932
01:02:34,317 --> 01:02:36,753
♫ anomalously smooth jazz ♫

933
01:02:40,256 --> 01:02:41,190
Oh, sorry.

934
01:02:41,190 --> 01:02:42,692
Yeah, this isn't the actual end.

935
01:02:43,326 --> 01:02:47,563
If you watch until the actual end,
I promise I'll explain why I did that.

936
01:02:47,563 --> 01:02:48,765
But for now,

937
01:02:49,732 --> 01:02:50,967
I want to ask you something.

938
01:02:51,934 --> 01:02:54,504
Did this video make sense to you?

939
01:02:55,204 --> 01:02:57,907
A while ago, I put a quick talking to camera thing

940
01:02:57,940 --> 01:03:00,409
together on my second channel, where I basically just

941
01:03:01,144 --> 01:03:03,513
explained the whole situation here and asked,

942
01:03:03,513 --> 01:03:07,717
why does the logic of pay more upfront to save more later

943
01:03:08,317 --> 01:03:11,287
break down whenever we're talking about renewable energy?

944
01:03:12,155 --> 01:03:15,625
It was a pretty snarky video and very off the cuff.

945
01:03:16,292 --> 01:03:18,628
I don't even remember what prompted me to make it.

946
01:03:19,061 --> 01:03:21,364
But at last year's Open Sauce,

947
01:03:21,364 --> 01:03:23,566
which, by the way, I'll be headed to again this year,

948
01:03:24,233 --> 01:03:27,436
I had a wonderful conversation with someone who told me

949
01:03:27,570 --> 01:03:29,405
that video changed their mind.

950
01:03:30,273 --> 01:03:32,909
I have to apologize because I don't remember your name.

951
01:03:32,909 --> 01:03:35,144
But I very much remember that conversation.

952
01:03:35,144 --> 01:03:37,113
And it's been stuck in my head ever since.

953
01:03:38,314 --> 01:03:41,350
See, the logic of renewable energy

954
01:03:41,551 --> 01:03:43,586
seemed self-evident to me.

955
01:03:43,753 --> 01:03:47,523
And that's why the video was as snarky as it was.

956
01:03:47,523 --> 01:03:51,527
Frankly, and I don't want this to sound like I think I'm full of myself,

957
01:03:51,527 --> 01:03:54,730
but it probably comes across that way, so I apologize in advance.

958
01:03:54,730 --> 01:03:59,468
But as soon as I was old enough to understand what photovoltaics did

959
01:03:59,969 --> 01:04:03,573
and that like almost every technology we've ever dealt with,

960
01:04:03,573 --> 01:04:06,642
eventually we'd figure out how to make solar panels cheaply.

961
01:04:07,343 --> 01:04:10,313
I immediately thought, oh, cool.

962
01:04:10,313 --> 01:04:12,715
So eventually we'll be able to stop burning

963
01:04:12,715 --> 01:04:14,851
expensive stuff to generate electricity.

964
01:04:15,685 --> 01:04:19,021
And that mental reality has been in my head

965
01:04:19,021 --> 01:04:22,158
so long that I never thought to explain it.

966
01:04:22,758 --> 01:04:26,462
I kind of assumed everyone already knew what we were trying to do

967
01:04:26,629 --> 01:04:29,432
by commercializing solar and storage technologies.

968
01:04:30,333 --> 01:04:32,301
So when I discovered it's

969
01:04:32,301 --> 01:04:35,504
not as self-evident to everyone as it was to me,

970
01:04:36,606 --> 01:04:39,175
well, that's when I started thinking about making this video.

971
01:04:39,942 --> 01:04:42,011
And in the process of making this one,

972
01:04:42,278 --> 01:04:44,914
I've been reflecting on some of the other videos I've made.

973
01:04:45,448 --> 01:04:49,886
For instance, the videos I've done on heat pumps and electrification, etc.

974
01:04:50,953 --> 01:04:53,756
I made those videos assuming that everyone who watched

975
01:04:53,756 --> 01:04:55,591
them was on the same page as me,

976
01:04:56,058 --> 01:04:58,361
and that comments which were perplexed by my desire

977
01:04:58,361 --> 01:05:00,863
to stop paying for things we set on fire,

978
01:05:01,197 --> 01:05:03,466
were coming from a place of malice.

979
01:05:04,367 --> 01:05:05,935
I'm sure some were.

980
01:05:06,402 --> 01:05:10,506
But I also know that not everyone is really thinking about resilience

981
01:05:10,506 --> 01:05:14,310
and the value of permanent infrastructure in the way that I am.

982
01:05:15,244 --> 01:05:17,613
Lots of those comments were probably honest,

983
01:05:17,847 --> 01:05:21,684
especially when I made arguments couched in my own internalized reality

984
01:05:21,884 --> 01:05:25,254
which understands that natural gas is very cheap today,

985
01:05:25,588 --> 01:05:28,624
but it is likely to become more expensive in the future.

986
01:05:28,824 --> 01:05:32,695
While electricity is almost certainly going to get cheaper.

987
01:05:34,363 --> 01:05:42,138
That is, of course, once we decide to cut it out with this weird aberration
we find ourselves in where computing is getting less energy efficient somehow.

988
01:05:42,939 --> 01:05:44,140
But I digress.

989
01:05:44,407 --> 01:05:49,178
I am always thinking both through lens of history and opportunity.

990
01:05:49,912 --> 01:05:52,214
And that's why when I look at an electrical panel,

991
01:05:52,448 --> 01:05:55,785
I don't see a boring piece of infrastructure
everyone has in their house.

992
01:05:56,352 --> 01:05:59,789
I see an endless variety of new opportunities.

993
01:06:00,456 --> 01:06:02,224
If you've got a natural gas connection,

994
01:06:02,391 --> 01:06:06,429
then you probably have at most four appliances
which actually utilize it.

995
01:06:06,929 --> 01:06:11,968
Meanwhile, literally everything else you own is powered by the wires that are in your house.

996
01:06:12,768 --> 01:06:14,470
Everything we've invented in the last

997
01:06:14,870 --> 01:06:17,239
what, century? Is electric.

998
01:06:17,673 --> 01:06:21,711
All the innovation we've been doing to make our lives better relies on electricity.

999
01:06:22,311 --> 01:06:25,314
And all the innovation which happens in the realm of fossil fuels

1000
01:06:25,715 --> 01:06:28,084
is how to use them slightly more efficiently.

1001
01:06:29,218 --> 01:06:29,885
That's it.

1002
01:06:29,885 --> 01:06:33,522
And we're already damn near perfectly optimized in a lot of cases.

1003
01:06:33,723 --> 01:06:35,825
There's very little room left to innovate,

1004
01:06:36,692 --> 01:06:40,529
But we are always innovating with electric technologies.

1005
01:06:40,763 --> 01:06:43,299
And since your house already has wires in it,

1006
01:06:43,699 --> 01:06:46,402
you can add new things and new technologies

1007
01:06:46,402 --> 01:06:48,504
to your home with very little effort.

1008
01:06:49,171 --> 01:06:50,906
When the personal computer hit the scene,

1009
01:06:51,207 --> 01:06:53,376
nobody needed to do an engineering study

1010
01:06:53,376 --> 01:06:56,712
or get permits to get one because you just plug it in.

1011
01:06:57,546 --> 01:07:00,449
Some things, like installing an electric car charger,

1012
01:07:00,750 --> 01:07:04,420
are a little more difficult, but they still utilize the feed wires

1013
01:07:04,420 --> 01:07:07,957
you already have and the power grid which already exists.

1014
01:07:08,824 --> 01:07:12,328
Electrification seems like the most rational thing we should be doing.

1015
01:07:12,595 --> 01:07:14,363
We can leverage infrastructure

1016
01:07:14,397 --> 01:07:17,199
which is already in place to distribute

1017
01:07:17,199 --> 01:07:21,270
and utilize the free energy we can harvest from the sun, the wind,

1018
01:07:21,270 --> 01:07:23,906
or maybe even the hot rocks beneath our feet.

1019
01:07:24,774 --> 01:07:30,246
And we can bulk up that infrastructure if and when we need to support new demand down the road,

1020
01:07:30,479 --> 01:07:34,050
in many cases, simply by replacing wires and transformers.

1021
01:07:34,717 --> 01:07:38,421
That's how the grid went from not existing, to

1022
01:07:38,421 --> 01:07:42,558
existing basically just for electric lights, to everyone has air conditioning now.

1023
01:07:43,459 --> 01:07:44,794
And that's a perfect segway...

1024
01:07:45,127 --> 01:07:46,362
Oh, those were also electric.

1025
01:07:47,329 --> 01:07:52,768
Anyway, that's the perfect segue to addressing the “misled” in the video title.

1026
01:07:53,736 --> 01:07:55,104
And well,

1027
01:07:56,338 --> 01:07:58,374
now the snark levels are going to go up a bit.

1028
01:07:59,208 --> 01:08:01,277
Let's just, uhhh, roll some clips.

1029
01:08:01,911 --> 01:08:05,681
You know, I also just want to point out I drove my electric car out here.

1030
01:08:05,781 --> 01:08:11,954
I'm 134 miles from Millennium Park in downtown Chicago which is a pretty rural area.

1031
01:08:12,054 --> 01:08:15,758
And yet there's a lot of people who think you can't drive electric cars out in the country.

1032
01:08:15,991 --> 01:08:17,193
I don't know what that's about.

1033
01:08:17,393 --> 01:08:19,028
Something else I should point out.

1034
01:08:19,328 --> 01:08:21,430
I didn't spend any time charging the car

1035
01:08:21,430 --> 01:08:24,066
because I spent the night at a friend's house and her house,

1036
01:08:24,066 --> 01:08:25,968
believe it or not, has electricity.

1037
01:08:26,268 --> 01:08:29,171
So I just plugged the car into her house, and then it charged overnight.

1038
01:08:29,438 --> 01:08:30,139
It's wild.

1039
01:08:30,139 --> 01:08:31,674
Did you know homes have electricity?

1040
01:08:32,475 --> 01:08:36,145
You know, I should also point out that I parked my car right next to one of these

1041
01:08:36,145 --> 01:08:39,915
because I wanted to find out if they really make that RRRER RRRER RRRER

1042
01:08:39,915 --> 01:08:41,550
noise that some people say they make.

1043
01:08:41,951 --> 01:08:45,354
And, you know, I can hear some whooshing from the blades every time it goes past,

1044
01:08:45,354 --> 01:08:47,056
but it's not that loud.

1045
01:08:47,790 --> 01:08:49,191
Standing right beneath it,

1046
01:08:49,592 --> 01:08:53,262
and I can hear the blade whooshing by, but, I don't know.

1047
01:08:53,295 --> 01:08:54,597
Just take a listen for yourself.

1048
01:08:55,631 --> 01:08:59,068
[faint repeating whoosh sounds with an even fainter 60 Hz hum from the transformer]

1049
01:08:59,869 --> 01:09:01,504
Are these are these really that loud?

1050
01:09:01,537 --> 01:09:03,405
Let me just let me just walk around this way.

1051
01:09:03,606 --> 01:09:05,641
By the way, I'm also taking a look on the ground

1052
01:09:05,641 --> 01:09:08,110
to see if there's a bunch of dead birds around here.

1053
01:09:08,978 --> 01:09:12,047
I hear that these things are just murder factories for birds.

1054
01:09:12,047 --> 01:09:13,015
But I don't know. I'm not.

1055
01:09:13,015 --> 01:09:14,216
I'm not seeing any.

1056
01:09:16,285 --> 01:09:17,720
It's a really windy day out.

1057
01:09:17,753 --> 01:09:21,323
Honestly, just the wind is kind of louder than the whooshing of the blades.

1058
01:09:22,458 --> 01:09:25,628
Yeah, if it's not clear yet, I'm going there.

1059
01:09:26,262 --> 01:09:29,398
But before I do, it's important to me that you understand

1060
01:09:29,398 --> 01:09:35,070
and grasp the difference between small p politics and capital P Partisanship.

1061
01:09:36,138 --> 01:09:39,308
A lot of people in the United States right now confuse those two,

1062
01:09:39,575 --> 01:09:42,111
and think any discussion of a political issue

1063
01:09:42,411 --> 01:09:45,247
must have been bought and paid for by the other team.

1064
01:09:46,415 --> 01:09:48,651
That's just not how any of this works.

1065
01:09:49,451 --> 01:09:52,221
If you've been watching my channel for any length of time,

1066
01:09:52,221 --> 01:09:55,224
then you should already have a pretty clear understanding

1067
01:09:55,224 --> 01:09:57,326
of what my personal politics are.

1068
01:09:58,227 --> 01:10:01,197
If you've been under the impression that I've not been political,

1069
01:10:01,630 --> 01:10:04,633
you simply don't understand what politics means.

1070
01:10:05,334 --> 01:10:09,271
I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics,

1071
01:10:09,572 --> 01:10:13,676
but I've been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time,

1072
01:10:14,076 --> 01:10:15,578
and they've not been that subtle.

1073
01:10:16,478 --> 01:10:18,981
Remember that thing I said about getting the most value

1074
01:10:18,981 --> 01:10:20,950
out of how we spend our money and time?

1075
01:10:21,850 --> 01:10:23,385
The money part is obvious,

1076
01:10:23,385 --> 01:10:25,387
but the time part might be less so.

1077
01:10:26,589 --> 01:10:28,591
I have a tremendous respect

1078
01:10:28,591 --> 01:10:30,759
for the working people of this country.

1079
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:33,562
I certainly have a cushy job these days,

1080
01:10:33,829 --> 01:10:35,864
but I used to work in the hotel industry,

1081
01:10:36,432 --> 01:10:38,467
and I have not forgotten what it's like

1082
01:10:38,467 --> 01:10:41,103
to make ends meet on $14 an hour.

1083
01:10:41,370 --> 01:10:45,641
Nor have I forgotten the amazing
and underappreciated housekeeping staff,

1084
01:10:45,774 --> 01:10:48,644
who were the only reason we could even be in business.

1085
01:10:49,778 --> 01:10:52,548
My connection to those women and their families

1086
01:10:53,048 --> 01:10:56,151
is absolutely part of my personal politics.

1087
01:10:56,518 --> 01:10:59,989
And if the foreshadowing of that isn't clear enough, my God,

1088
01:11:00,022 --> 01:11:01,657
have you not been paying attention.

1089
01:11:02,524 --> 01:11:04,460
I believe in the value of labor,

1090
01:11:04,460 --> 01:11:07,029
and I also respect the purpose of labor.

1091
01:11:07,963 --> 01:11:09,898
Our housekeeping staff was there to do

1092
01:11:09,898 --> 01:11:12,501
the grunt work of cleaning rooms and doing laundry,

1093
01:11:12,835 --> 01:11:16,138
a sort of domestic labor we have never truly valued.

1094
01:11:17,139 --> 01:11:19,508
Front desk me was there to help people

1095
01:11:19,508 --> 01:11:21,410
with whatever problems they might be having.

1096
01:11:22,278 --> 01:11:25,648
Did you know businesses used to put their real phone numbers

1097
01:11:25,648 --> 01:11:28,617
on their websites? When you called my hotel,

1098
01:11:28,884 --> 01:11:34,123
the front desk phone rang and it was my job to say hello and ask what you needed.

1099
01:11:35,124 --> 01:11:37,926
It was old fashioned, but it worked and way

1100
01:11:37,926 --> 01:11:40,929
better than every single customer service chat bot

1101
01:11:40,929 --> 01:11:43,265
I have been forced to interact with lately.

1102
01:11:44,066 --> 01:11:47,770
When I think about the laborers who work on, say, oil rigs,

1103
01:11:47,936 --> 01:11:50,339
I respect what they're doing immensely.

1104
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:53,275
Those people toil day in and day out

1105
01:11:53,275 --> 01:11:56,211
to make our lives possible, which is noble work.

1106
01:11:57,279 --> 01:11:58,480
But I also think there's a

1107
01:11:58,480 --> 01:12:02,251
crassness to that work, because if we must toil,

1108
01:12:02,551 --> 01:12:05,654
why should we toil as Sisyphus on drilling platforms,

1109
01:12:05,654 --> 01:12:08,324
doing work that brings us fuel to spin our wheels,

1110
01:12:08,324 --> 01:12:09,925
but which moves us nowhere?

1111
01:12:11,126 --> 01:12:13,896
We should build with what we extract.

1112
01:12:13,929 --> 01:12:16,365
We should not just set it on fire.

1113
01:12:17,199 --> 01:12:20,436
And when we build things which make our lives easier,

1114
01:12:20,502 --> 01:12:22,538
we improve the human condition.

1115
01:12:23,405 --> 01:12:28,077
Basically, I just want us to learn stuff and grow our bag of tricks.

1116
01:12:28,344 --> 01:12:31,814
And that's what I've been preaching from this channel the whole time.

1117
01:12:32,548 --> 01:12:37,853
Sometimes that's through looking at interesting pieces 
of old technology and making connections between them.

1118
01:12:38,620 --> 01:12:42,057
There are a lot of lessons we've already learned as a species,

1119
01:12:42,358 --> 01:12:46,395
but which can easily be forgotten if folks aren't sharing those stories.

1120
01:12:47,696 --> 01:12:48,697
Other times,

1121
01:12:48,697 --> 01:12:49,865
that's through teaching things

1122
01:12:49,865 --> 01:12:51,767
like the difference between power and energy.

1123
01:12:52,000 --> 01:12:55,671
Basic facts of our world that if you can learn to intuit,

1124
01:12:55,871 --> 01:12:59,875
are very helpful for understanding your energy bills or indeed

1125
01:13:00,075 --> 01:13:02,878
just how much opportunity solar panels unlock.

1126
01:13:03,946 --> 01:13:07,249
Everything I do here is rooted in my belief

1127
01:13:07,383 --> 01:13:10,753
that all of us should have some basic understanding

1128
01:13:10,919 --> 01:13:13,188
of how the stuff we use in our lives works,

1129
01:13:13,455 --> 01:13:17,025
and what the impact of using that stuff is both on ourselves

1130
01:13:17,259 --> 01:13:19,461
and our fellow humans.

1131
01:13:20,496 --> 01:13:22,531
It is very empowering and protects

1132
01:13:22,531 --> 01:13:25,167
you from people who would otherwise leverage your ignorance

1133
01:13:25,367 --> 01:13:28,537
and scam you into things you don't actually need.

1134
01:13:29,505 --> 01:13:32,174
And another core piece of my personal politics

1135
01:13:32,341 --> 01:13:34,977
comes from something we know deep in our hearts,

1136
01:13:35,344 --> 01:13:37,646
even if we sometimes like to pretend it isn't true.

1137
01:13:38,647 --> 01:13:42,217
We accomplish more when we work together and collaborate.

1138
01:13:42,785 --> 01:13:45,888
The power grid is the ultimate example of that.

1139
01:13:46,455 --> 01:13:49,425
I believe the power grid is the most miraculous machine

1140
01:13:49,425 --> 01:13:51,026
our species has ever created.

1141
01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:54,730
Once we figured out how useful this whole electricity business was,

1142
01:13:54,863 --> 01:13:57,666
we took great efforts to run wires

1143
01:13:57,666 --> 01:13:59,768
to almost every structure in this country.

1144
01:14:00,002 --> 01:14:03,705
Even remote farmhouses, which a traditional view of capital would tell

1145
01:14:03,705 --> 01:14:06,241
you could never recoup that infrastructure investment.

1146
01:14:07,509 --> 01:14:11,180
If you've never spent time amongst the cornfields,
you might not have seen

1147
01:14:11,180 --> 01:14:16,518
the poles and wires that run for miles, sometimes to serve just a single house.

1148
01:14:17,619 --> 01:14:22,090
We decided it was so important that everyone have access to electricity,

1149
01:14:22,191 --> 01:14:24,393
that our government made that happen.

1150
01:14:24,626 --> 01:14:26,728
When the private sector certainly would not.

1151
01:14:27,663 --> 01:14:31,099
But somewhere along the line, we lost the will to do that.

1152
01:14:31,934 --> 01:14:34,136
If you don't know anyone who lives in a rural area,

1153
01:14:34,236 --> 01:14:36,371
you might not know how horrible it can be

1154
01:14:36,371 --> 01:14:38,474
to get reliable internet access out there.

1155
01:14:39,107 --> 01:14:44,379
Even though it's totally possible to get networking anywhere with wireless technologies,

1156
01:14:44,813 --> 01:14:47,316
internet service providers are doing the math and realizing,

1157
01:14:47,316 --> 01:14:49,284
oh, they're just not going to make very much money

1158
01:14:49,284 --> 01:14:50,986
getting broadband out to the boonies.

1159
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:52,721
So they didn't.

1160
01:14:53,088 --> 01:14:55,691
And somehow the most rational response to this reality

1161
01:14:57,259 --> 01:15:00,195
is a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit?

1162
01:15:01,797 --> 01:15:03,999
As impressive as that is technologically,

1163
01:15:04,466 --> 01:15:08,237
it's kind of crazy making that we're fawning over that solution

1164
01:15:08,237 --> 01:15:10,706
rather than just like blanketing

1165
01:15:10,706 --> 01:15:13,742
the country in 4G a little bit better.

1166
01:15:14,476 --> 01:15:17,679
We've got countless point to point networking options,

1167
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,549
which don't involve launching rockets into space,

1168
01:15:20,716 --> 01:15:23,118
but we dragged our feet so long

1169
01:15:23,285 --> 01:15:26,555
that satellite constellations somehow seem rational.

1170
01:15:27,523 --> 01:15:28,624
Don't get me wrong.

1171
01:15:28,624 --> 01:15:30,492
I used to rely on Starlink,

1172
01:15:30,626 --> 01:15:34,630
and as someone dealing with either a six megabit DSL line
with a whole one

1173
01:15:34,630 --> 01:15:37,332
megabit upload speed, great for a YouTuber,

1174
01:15:37,699 --> 01:15:39,935
or a flaky 4G connection

1175
01:15:39,935 --> 01:15:42,371
that would get overwhelmed to the point of becoming useless

1176
01:15:42,371 --> 01:15:44,773
if too many people were in the area at the same time.

1177
01:15:45,240 --> 01:15:46,942
Starlink was a miracle.

1178
01:15:47,776 --> 01:15:51,547
but if AT&T could just get a better trunk line to that tower

1179
01:15:51,680 --> 01:15:54,249
and maybe put some extra radio equipment there if needed,

1180
01:15:55,117 --> 01:15:57,019
well, then I would never have needed Starlink.

1181
01:15:57,753 --> 01:15:59,621
And what really makes me pull my hair out

1182
01:15:59,721 --> 01:16:03,825
is that AT&T absolutely knows that tower is getting overwhelmed.

1183
01:16:04,393 --> 01:16:06,495
Or at least they should if they're running analytics.

1184
01:16:06,895 --> 01:16:09,398
But they just don't care.

1185
01:16:10,299 --> 01:16:11,833
It's not a big enough problem for them.

1186
01:16:12,801 --> 01:16:15,437
Launching satellites into space to make rural broadband

1187
01:16:15,437 --> 01:16:18,874
happen is an admission of laziness and defeat

1188
01:16:19,007 --> 01:16:21,677
from both Big Telecom and the government.

1189
01:16:22,511 --> 01:16:25,981
It's a solution a billionaire could provide and happily monetize.

1190
01:16:26,582 --> 01:16:29,217
But it's not necessarily the best solution now is it?

1191
01:16:30,419 --> 01:16:33,288
That's called
looking at something with an eye for nuance and complexity.

1192
01:16:33,522 --> 01:16:35,223
Not everything is black and white.

1193
01:16:35,991 --> 01:16:38,093
But the truth is.

1194
01:16:39,161 --> 01:16:41,897
And here are some true facts I'd like you to know.

1195
01:16:42,197 --> 01:16:44,866
And now we are getting into partisan politics.

1196
01:16:45,434 --> 01:16:47,536
Go ahead and click away if you don't want to hear any of this.

1197
01:16:48,270 --> 01:16:50,272
But did you know that President Jimmy Carter

1198
01:16:50,272 --> 01:16:51,974
put solar panels on the White House?

1199
01:16:52,708 --> 01:16:56,712
No, they were not photovoltaic panels, though those did exist at the time.

1200
01:16:57,145 --> 01:16:59,414
They were instead solar water heating panels.

1201
01:16:59,715 --> 01:17:01,817
Those are still common today in sunny climates.

1202
01:17:01,817 --> 01:17:04,620
They're effectively just boxes with black pipes

1203
01:17:04,620 --> 01:17:07,456
zigging and zagging back and forth and solar radiation

1204
01:17:07,456 --> 01:17:09,758
heats the water inside the pipes for free

1205
01:17:10,158 --> 01:17:12,194
and without using any electricity or fuel.

1206
01:17:12,961 --> 01:17:14,696
Carter did this to promote

1207
01:17:14,696 --> 01:17:16,832
the idea of alternative sources of energy,

1208
01:17:17,165 --> 01:17:19,134
something that was very much on our mind

1209
01:17:19,134 --> 01:17:21,336
during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

1210
01:17:22,104 --> 01:17:24,172
And then in 1986,

1211
01:17:24,172 --> 01:17:27,075
President Ronald Reagan took them down.

1212
01:17:28,744 --> 01:17:31,413
Supposedly, the white House was getting its roof resurfaced,

1213
01:17:31,413 --> 01:17:33,749
so they were taken off, which is understandable.

1214
01:17:34,182 --> 01:17:38,020
But what's less understandable
is that he never bothered to put them back.

1215
01:17:39,121 --> 01:17:41,523
Now, President Carter was a Democrat

1216
01:17:41,690 --> 01:17:43,625
and President Reagan was a Republican.

1217
01:17:44,393 --> 01:17:47,896
And in the years since, there has been a repeating pattern

1218
01:17:48,130 --> 01:17:50,732
where Democratic administrations attempt to usher

1219
01:17:50,732 --> 01:17:54,236
in new energy technologies to free us from endless extraction.

1220
01:17:55,270 --> 01:17:58,306
And then Republican administrations swiftly undo that.

1221
01:17:59,007 --> 01:18:01,209
We just went through this when President Biden

1222
01:18:01,209 --> 01:18:02,811
signed the Inflation Reduction Act,

1223
01:18:03,111 --> 01:18:04,913
a weirdly named piece of legislation

1224
01:18:04,913 --> 01:18:07,315
which included a lot of spending for renewable

1225
01:18:07,315 --> 01:18:09,985
energy and electrification investment in this country

1226
01:18:09,985 --> 01:18:12,020
to make panels and batteries here,

1227
01:18:13,388 --> 01:18:14,923
investments that I hope by now,

1228
01:18:14,923 --> 01:18:17,726
you understand, were to lower our costs in the future,

1229
01:18:17,726 --> 01:18:20,729
improve our national security and make our lives better.

1230
01:18:21,630 --> 01:18:23,498
But then President Trump got into power

1231
01:18:23,498 --> 01:18:26,368
and told his Republican Congress critters to repeal

1232
01:18:26,368 --> 01:18:28,003
that law almost immediately.

1233
01:18:28,870 --> 01:18:31,339
Except, no, that's not actually what happened.

1234
01:18:31,573 --> 01:18:33,775
President Trump signed some executive orders

1235
01:18:33,775 --> 01:18:35,243
which froze much of the funding,

1236
01:18:35,343 --> 01:18:38,447
bypassing the very structure of our Constitution,

1237
01:18:38,613 --> 01:18:42,317
which explicitly gives Congress the power of the purse.

1238
01:18:42,617 --> 01:18:45,587
We actually have a whole law, the Congressional Budget

1239
01:18:45,587 --> 01:18:48,023
and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,

1240
01:18:48,156 --> 01:18:50,625
which explicitly makes what Trump did illegal.

1241
01:18:51,460 --> 01:18:53,361
But Republicans currently control

1242
01:18:53,361 --> 01:18:56,298
both houses of Congress, and they've made it very clear

1243
01:18:56,298 --> 01:18:57,766
they do not care to provide

1244
01:18:57,766 --> 01:19:00,969
the checks and balances they're constitutionally obligated to do.

1245
01:19:02,070 --> 01:19:04,272
They are desecrating our Constitution

1246
01:19:04,272 --> 01:19:06,241
because they happen to be on the same team

1247
01:19:06,241 --> 01:19:07,476
as the guy in the white House.

1248
01:19:07,743 --> 01:19:10,078
And as we all know, the primary objective

1249
01:19:10,078 --> 01:19:12,380
of this administration is to own the libs.

1250
01:19:13,148 --> 01:19:14,983
Or is it kidnaping brown people?

1251
01:19:15,751 --> 01:19:17,419
It's getting kind of hard to tell.

1252
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:20,722
I didn't think masked cowards with guns going around

1253
01:19:20,722 --> 01:19:23,492
demanding papers, please was on the bingo card of my 30s,

1254
01:19:23,658 --> 01:19:24,926
but apparently it was.

1255
01:19:25,193 --> 01:19:27,295
And having looked at that card a little more closely,

1256
01:19:28,063 --> 01:19:31,099
I mean, I've almost got a bingo without even using a free space.

1257
01:19:31,533 --> 01:19:32,534
I've already crossed off,

1258
01:19:32,534 --> 01:19:35,137
threatened to invade Greenland and destroy NATO, threaten

1259
01:19:35,137 --> 01:19:37,639
to annex Canada and papers, please.

1260
01:19:37,739 --> 01:19:42,744
So all I need now is a few murders of U.S. citizens
which were captured on video from multiple angles.

1261
01:19:43,879 --> 01:19:45,080
What's that?

1262
01:19:45,413 --> 01:19:46,615
Cross that off too?

1263
01:19:47,082 --> 01:19:49,184
Well, surely I'm not going to be able

1264
01:19:49,184 --> 01:19:52,854
to cross off “government officials telling us our eyes didn't see what we saw.”

1265
01:19:55,023 --> 01:19:55,724
Oh.

1266
01:19:57,959 --> 01:19:59,227
Bingo.

1267
01:19:59,461 --> 01:20:02,731
Folks, you need to wake up and smell the fascism.

1268
01:20:03,598 --> 01:20:05,233
I don't know what imaginary lines

1269
01:20:05,233 --> 01:20:07,235
you might have drawn which could be crossed,

1270
01:20:07,836 --> 01:20:10,639
but if you can't agree we've crossed a very bad one

1271
01:20:10,906 --> 01:20:17,279
you need to get off Twitter and stop watching Fox News or 
Newsmax or OAN and or whatever those new ones are.

1272
01:20:17,279 --> 01:20:21,116
Or, I'm so sad to say, CBS news.

1273
01:20:22,250 --> 01:20:23,451
It's bad.

1274
01:20:24,019 --> 01:20:25,787
We are clearly living under leaders

1275
01:20:25,787 --> 01:20:26,988
who have a completely different

1276
01:20:26,988 --> 01:20:29,157
understanding of reality than the rest of us do,

1277
01:20:29,491 --> 01:20:32,027
and they are so high on their own supply

1278
01:20:32,227 --> 01:20:35,297
that their followers will believe abject lies.

1279
01:20:36,698 --> 01:20:38,099
Renewable energy is only

1280
01:20:38,099 --> 01:20:40,635
controversial because they made it so.

1281
01:20:41,203 --> 01:20:43,438
And they don't want you thinking through the reality

1282
01:20:43,438 --> 01:20:47,843
which is free energy from reusable materials, as I've just explained.

1283
01:20:48,176 --> 01:20:52,047
They have donors who still make money selling you fossil fuels,

1284
01:20:52,214 --> 01:20:55,817
and so they do not want you thinking about how much you're spending

1285
01:20:55,817 --> 01:20:58,186
and how we have the opportunity to stop.

1286
01:20:59,654 --> 01:21:00,856
Even worse,

1287
01:21:01,122 --> 01:21:04,259
they'll artificially lower the cost of fossil fuels through subsidies,

1288
01:21:04,593 --> 01:21:07,863
even though they're supposedly the party against that sort of thing.

1289
01:21:08,763 --> 01:21:10,599
I am very scared of what

1290
01:21:10,599 --> 01:21:12,267
the future of this country looks like.

1291
01:21:13,001 --> 01:21:15,303
The Bill of Rights looks to be effectively dead.

1292
01:21:15,837 --> 01:21:16,872
Our First Amendment right

1293
01:21:16,872 --> 01:21:19,174
to protest is being challenged through intimidation,

1294
01:21:19,608 --> 01:21:21,509
and the press that dares to tell the truth

1295
01:21:21,743 --> 01:21:23,511
is being declared an enemy of the people.

1296
01:21:24,379 --> 01:21:26,581
Our Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable

1297
01:21:26,581 --> 01:21:27,782
searches and seizures

1298
01:21:27,782 --> 01:21:31,286
is being gleefully violated, and nobody seems to care.

1299
01:21:32,487 --> 01:21:35,690
Even the Second Amendment might as well be lost.

1300
01:21:35,991 --> 01:21:38,660
Our government used the fact that Alex Pretti,

1301
01:21:38,693 --> 01:21:41,830
a legal firearm holder with a concealed carry permit,

1302
01:21:41,997 --> 01:21:44,900
had a gun on him to justify his murder.

1303
01:21:46,534 --> 01:21:48,970
So do we have a right to bear arms or not?

1304
01:21:49,971 --> 01:21:51,473
Sure doesn't seem like it!

1305
01:21:52,340 --> 01:21:54,876
If you're upset that a tech creator like myself

1306
01:21:54,910 --> 01:21:57,178
is suddenly being explicit about politics,

1307
01:21:57,812 --> 01:22:01,316
then you're not paying enough attention and are part of the problem.

1308
01:22:02,384 --> 01:22:03,885
I should not have to do this.

1309
01:22:04,052 --> 01:22:06,922
I never thought I'd be making a video where I said,

1310
01:22:07,022 --> 01:22:10,558
hey guys, remember that whole Constitution thing?

1311
01:22:11,893 --> 01:22:15,630
I figured our leaders would always uphold it, but they're clearly not.

1312
01:22:16,064 --> 01:22:20,201
The document does not enforce itself, and so it is up to us.

1313
01:22:21,369 --> 01:22:22,704
We had a revolution in

1314
01:22:22,704 --> 01:22:25,540
1776 to escape the tyranny of British rule.

1315
01:22:26,041 --> 01:22:28,109
And the Declaration of Independence describes

1316
01:22:28,109 --> 01:22:31,146
what's going on right now with distressing clarity.

1317
01:22:32,147 --> 01:22:33,348
Let me quote it for you.

1318
01:22:33,715 --> 01:22:36,117
“He has kept among us, in times of peace,

1319
01:22:36,184 --> 01:22:39,187
standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

1320
01:22:39,788 --> 01:22:41,623
He has affected to render the military

1321
01:22:41,623 --> 01:22:44,492
independent of and superior to the civil power.

1322
01:22:45,360 --> 01:22:47,495
He has combined with others to subject us

1323
01:22:47,495 --> 01:22:49,831
to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution

1324
01:22:49,965 --> 01:22:51,900
and unacknowledged by our laws.

1325
01:22:52,267 --> 01:22:55,737
Giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.

1326
01:22:56,404 --> 01:22:59,274
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

1327
01:22:59,607 --> 01:23:03,812
For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders

1328
01:23:03,812 --> 01:23:06,982
which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

1329
01:23:07,916 --> 01:23:10,719
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

1330
01:23:11,252 --> 01:23:13,822
For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

1331
01:23:14,489 --> 01:23:17,826
For depriving us in many cases of the benefit of trial by jury.

1332
01:23:18,660 --> 01:23:21,196
For transporting us beyond seas

1333
01:23:21,196 --> 01:23:23,698
to be tried for pretended offenses.

1334
01:23:25,066 --> 01:23:27,435
Those words were written about King George,

1335
01:23:27,769 --> 01:23:30,338
but they might as well describe Donald Trump.

1336
01:23:34,476 --> 01:23:38,113
We fought the Revolutionary War to be free of tyrannical kings,

1337
01:23:38,113 --> 01:23:40,215
but it looks like we're under tyranny again,

1338
01:23:40,548 --> 01:23:42,717
inflicted on ourselves.

1339
01:23:43,551 --> 01:23:46,721
You may have been one of those people who likes to stay out of politics,

1340
01:23:46,721 --> 01:23:48,890
but politics eventually comes for everyone.

1341
01:23:49,357 --> 01:23:50,792
Here we are,

1342
01:23:51,926 --> 01:23:53,161
for the love of God.

1343
01:23:53,661 --> 01:23:55,296
Please learn from this

1344
01:23:55,296 --> 01:23:58,500
and remember what happens when you stop paying attention

1345
01:23:58,500 --> 01:24:00,568
and let other people think for you.

1346
01:24:01,269 --> 01:24:02,737
It doesn't end well.

1347
01:24:03,638 --> 01:24:05,306
Now, as scared as I am,

1348
01:24:05,473 --> 01:24:07,942
I am still going to vote in the midterms

1349
01:24:07,942 --> 01:24:10,578
and I will be voting against Republicans.

1350
01:24:11,279 --> 01:24:13,148
I think you should too.

1351
01:24:13,848 --> 01:24:16,051
And yes, because the realities of our terrible

1352
01:24:16,051 --> 01:24:18,453
two party system don't always sink in to everyone.

1353
01:24:19,220 --> 01:24:22,490
I am saying I think you should vote for Democrats in November.

1354
01:24:23,291 --> 01:24:25,093
I am not a huge fan

1355
01:24:25,126 --> 01:24:27,829
of a lot of what the Democratic Party is up to these days.

1356
01:24:28,930 --> 01:24:31,900
They seem, unfortunately, to be far more beholden

1357
01:24:31,900 --> 01:24:33,134
to corporate interests

1358
01:24:33,134 --> 01:24:35,470
than they're concerned with the lives of their constituents.

1359
01:24:35,870 --> 01:24:38,006
Universal health care still hasn't happened.

1360
01:24:38,173 --> 01:24:40,275
And the best reason I can think that's the case

1361
01:24:40,308 --> 01:24:43,678
is that the for profit health care lobby is very influential.

1362
01:24:44,879 --> 01:24:47,282
Meanwhile, constituents such as myself

1363
01:24:47,315 --> 01:24:49,150
haven't even been able to leave a voicemail

1364
01:24:49,150 --> 01:24:50,819
at any of Senator Durbin's offices

1365
01:24:50,819 --> 01:24:53,388
because there all all the inboxes are full.

1366
01:24:54,689 --> 01:24:57,058
They've been very disappointing.

1367
01:24:57,125 --> 01:24:59,994
But right now, we are heading into a primary season,

1368
01:25:00,228 --> 01:25:03,898
and you'll have the opportunity to vote in those primaries very soon

1369
01:25:04,099 --> 01:25:07,669
to tell Democrats how you want them to act.

1370
01:25:09,003 --> 01:25:11,873
Please make sure you are registered to vote in general

1371
01:25:11,873 --> 01:25:15,009
and in the Democratic primary if that's required in your state.

1372
01:25:15,743 --> 01:25:17,712
If you don't know how to do that, call

1373
01:25:17,712 --> 01:25:19,714
or walk into your local library.

1374
01:25:20,248 --> 01:25:22,383
The people there have the same mission I do

1375
01:25:22,484 --> 01:25:26,287
to share knowledge and be helpful, and they'll guide you.

1376
01:25:27,055 --> 01:25:30,058
Be sure you ask them how the primary process works in your state,

1377
01:25:30,058 --> 01:25:32,727
and whether you need to declare a party affiliation to vote in it.

1378
01:25:33,328 --> 01:25:35,797
And by the way, just throwing this out there,

1379
01:25:36,164 --> 01:25:38,333
the process of registering to vote is

1380
01:25:38,333 --> 01:25:40,535
how we verify the citizenship of voters.

1381
01:25:40,869 --> 01:25:44,939
You have to be on the voter rolls before you can cast a vote.

1382
01:25:45,673 --> 01:25:47,442
But it's a lot easier for Republicans

1383
01:25:47,442 --> 01:25:50,745
to ignore that fact and lie by omission to make

1384
01:25:50,745 --> 01:25:54,048
you think massive voter fraud from non-citizens keeps happening.

1385
01:25:54,349 --> 01:25:56,651
They lie all the time,

1386
01:25:56,684 --> 01:25:58,553
and people need to stop listening to them.

1387
01:25:59,287 --> 01:26:01,723
This isn't just normal “politicians always lie” stuff.

1388
01:26:01,890 --> 01:26:04,459
This is active propaganda designed

1389
01:26:04,459 --> 01:26:07,262
to make you distrustful of your fellow human beings.

1390
01:26:07,362 --> 01:26:09,597
It's disgusting and shameful.

1391
01:26:10,532 --> 01:26:13,134
How did we get to a place where the president can say

1392
01:26:13,168 --> 01:26:17,906
other countries pay for tariffs and literally nobody cares that he's lying?

1393
01:26:18,139 --> 01:26:20,575
He's counting on his base not understanding

1394
01:26:20,808 --> 01:26:23,778
that you can't just charge someone extra money

1395
01:26:23,778 --> 01:26:26,581
when you buy something from them, because

1396
01:26:27,815 --> 01:26:29,617
that's just not how trade works.

1397
01:26:30,151 --> 01:26:32,120
Hell, that's not even how commerce works.

1398
01:26:32,620 --> 01:26:34,722
I can't walk into Menards and demand

1399
01:26:34,722 --> 01:26:37,058
they pay me to buy their products,

1400
01:26:37,792 --> 01:26:40,595
but the only people who are willing to say that plainly

1401
01:26:41,129 --> 01:26:44,232
were independent journalists and freaking YouTubers.

1402
01:26:45,133 --> 01:26:46,601
The stalwarts of the press

1403
01:26:46,834 --> 01:26:49,938
just kept writing headlines as if reality was up for debate.

1404
01:26:50,238 --> 01:26:52,207
And they still haven't cut that shit out.

1405
01:26:53,308 --> 01:26:54,576
It is terrifying

1406
01:26:54,609 --> 01:26:57,312
how nobody is interested in holding anyone accountable

1407
01:26:57,312 --> 01:26:58,846
for anything these days.

1408
01:26:59,814 --> 01:27:01,749
But while I am terrified,

1409
01:27:02,016 --> 01:27:03,651
I am also increasingly hopeful.

1410
01:27:04,419 --> 01:27:07,522
The people of Minnesota are demonstrating what we have to do.

1411
01:27:08,156 --> 01:27:10,525
We have to care for each other.

1412
01:27:11,359 --> 01:27:13,494
Don't wait for someone to lend a helping hand.

1413
01:27:13,695 --> 01:27:15,196
Be that helping hand.

1414
01:27:16,030 --> 01:27:18,099
Organizing networks are popping up everywhere

1415
01:27:18,099 --> 01:27:22,103
because those of us who managed to grow up into adults,

1416
01:27:22,637 --> 01:27:24,939
who care about people other than ourselves,

1417
01:27:25,540 --> 01:27:27,075
are not going to stand by

1418
01:27:27,075 --> 01:27:30,178
and let this illegitimate government run by petulant toddlers,

1419
01:27:30,311 --> 01:27:34,849
violate the Constitution
and the very principles that make America great.

1420
01:27:35,984 --> 01:27:39,320
My fellow Midwesterners in Minnesota have made me so proud.

1421
01:27:40,455 --> 01:27:41,656
Stay strong

1422
01:27:42,023 --> 01:27:44,425
and keep teaching us how to be brave and resist

1423
01:27:44,425 --> 01:27:47,929
this horrible chapter of our history with steadfast,

1424
01:27:47,929 --> 01:27:49,764
nonviolent defiance.

1425
01:27:50,665 --> 01:27:54,168
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a lawless group

1426
01:27:54,168 --> 01:27:57,672
of masked thugs terrorizing our cities and neighbors

1427
01:27:57,839 --> 01:28:00,375
for daring to look not quite white.

1428
01:28:01,843 --> 01:28:04,979
Anyone who has any understanding of history

1429
01:28:05,179 --> 01:28:08,049
will know that it is happening here.

1430
01:28:08,249 --> 01:28:10,585
And if you believe that to be true, then

1431
01:28:10,585 --> 01:28:14,188
you should also believe that ICE must be abolished.

1432
01:28:15,390 --> 01:28:17,425
And if that freaks you out, I'm going to guess

1433
01:28:17,425 --> 01:28:20,728
you've been told the people who say that want completely open borders.

1434
01:28:21,296 --> 01:28:24,132
Some people do, but most people simply

1435
01:28:24,132 --> 01:28:27,335
took the poem on the Statue of Liberty as meaningful

1436
01:28:28,002 --> 01:28:30,271
and think this country should open its arms

1437
01:28:30,271 --> 01:28:32,907
wide and provide a legal pathway to immigration.

1438
01:28:32,940 --> 01:28:36,177
Just as our ancestors did on the storied Ellis Island.

1439
01:28:37,245 --> 01:28:38,846
It is our decades long

1440
01:28:38,846 --> 01:28:41,683
inability to have true immigration reform occur

1441
01:28:41,716 --> 01:28:45,286
which put us in this place and what we're doing today to fix

1442
01:28:45,286 --> 01:28:47,588
it is clearly wrong.

1443
01:28:48,389 --> 01:28:51,292
It is a racist ethnic cleansing operation

1444
01:28:51,292 --> 01:28:54,128
happening on the pretext of childcare fraud,

1445
01:28:54,262 --> 01:28:56,597
which was already being investigated and dealt

1446
01:28:56,597 --> 01:29:00,401
with by the state of Minnesota, but which some terminally online weirdos

1447
01:29:00,401 --> 01:29:03,971
somehow got wind of and spun into this madness.

1448
01:29:05,440 --> 01:29:06,641
And that madness

1449
01:29:06,641 --> 01:29:09,477
is being perpetrated by agents of the state

1450
01:29:09,477 --> 01:29:12,046
and endorsed by Republicans.

1451
01:29:12,513 --> 01:29:14,716
Republicans could stop this now,

1452
01:29:15,917 --> 01:29:17,118
but they won't.

1453
01:29:17,518 --> 01:29:20,455
and the reason I know we absolutely can abolish ICE?

1454
01:29:21,322 --> 01:29:23,358
I am older than ICE.

1455
01:29:23,358 --> 01:29:26,761
In fact, I'm older than the entire Department of Homeland Security.

1456
01:29:27,128 --> 01:29:29,263
That agency was created post 9/11.

1457
01:29:29,263 --> 01:29:33,067
And in retrospect, the folks who thought “Homeland” Security

1458
01:29:33,067 --> 01:29:36,003
sounds kind of ominous were apparently correct.

1459
01:29:36,938 --> 01:29:39,340
We need to throw this system out and start over.

1460
01:29:39,340 --> 01:29:42,477
And so, yes, I believe ICE must be abolished.

1461
01:29:42,643 --> 01:29:45,012
There is no reforming that agency of thugs.

1462
01:29:45,046 --> 01:29:46,247
It has to go.

1463
01:29:46,681 --> 01:29:49,050
And the lawless criminals hiding behind

1464
01:29:49,050 --> 01:29:51,619
masks who are violating the Fourth Amendment day

1465
01:29:51,619 --> 01:29:54,455
in and day out, need to be prosecuted

1466
01:29:55,123 --> 01:29:57,625
for each and every one of their crimes.

1467
01:29:59,060 --> 01:30:00,728
I will be voting in the primaries

1468
01:30:00,728 --> 01:30:04,399
and I sure as well hope my representative, Sean Casten, starts

1469
01:30:04,399 --> 01:30:06,601
saying that with clarity and conviction.

1470
01:30:07,435 --> 01:30:09,504
Sean has been one of the people who understand

1471
01:30:09,504 --> 01:30:11,038
the realities of renewable energy,

1472
01:30:11,038 --> 01:30:14,142
and has been a long time advocate of it, so we've been pretty aligned,

1473
01:30:14,342 --> 01:30:15,910
but we're not aligned on everything.

1474
01:30:15,910 --> 01:30:17,812
And my patience is starting to break.

1475
01:30:18,679 --> 01:30:20,481
So if you made it here.

1476
01:30:21,249 --> 01:30:22,450
Thank you for watching.

1477
01:30:23,084 --> 01:30:25,453
I hope we can bring some sanity back to this country

1478
01:30:25,453 --> 01:30:28,456
and that we can start calling lies what they are.

1479
01:30:29,190 --> 01:30:31,259
And you will have to be a part of that.

1480
01:30:31,959 --> 01:30:33,161
Talk to your neighbors.

1481
01:30:33,161 --> 01:30:34,362
Talk to your family.

1482
01:30:34,695 --> 01:30:36,998
And if you don't know where to start the conversation.

1483
01:30:37,832 --> 01:30:39,700
That's why there's that fake ending.

1484
01:30:40,802 --> 01:30:42,937
If you think it might get some gears turning,

1485
01:30:42,937 --> 01:30:45,840
go ahead and watch this video with someone and stop it there.

1486
01:30:46,140 --> 01:30:47,341
See how it goes.

1487
01:30:47,408 --> 01:30:49,510
And if you want to send it to someone with a link,

1488
01:30:49,777 --> 01:30:52,647
there's an unlisted version of this video on my second channel,

1489
01:30:52,647 --> 01:30:54,916
which actually stops at the fake ending.

1490
01:30:56,284 --> 01:30:57,618
The link is in the description

1491
01:30:57,618 --> 01:30:59,454
and a card should be popping up now.

1492
01:31:00,121 --> 01:31:03,791
I would pin a comment too, but I am not interested

1493
01:31:04,025 --> 01:31:06,527
in knowing just what sort of replies that will get.

1494
01:31:07,261 --> 01:31:09,630
I am all but certain it will be depressing.

1495
01:31:10,531 --> 01:31:14,335
The future has always been in our collective hands,

1496
01:31:14,669 --> 01:31:17,038
but we need to stop tolerating lies.

1497
01:31:17,472 --> 01:31:19,440
We need to stop tolerating greed.

1498
01:31:19,841 --> 01:31:22,443
And we need to stop tolerating politicians

1499
01:31:22,610 --> 01:31:25,079
who care more about their corporate donors than

1500
01:31:25,079 --> 01:31:26,814
they do their constituents.

1501
01:31:28,015 --> 01:31:29,250
We need to care about

1502
01:31:29,250 --> 01:31:32,053
our future more than we care about the price of eggs,

1503
01:31:32,053 --> 01:31:33,354
or the price of gas.

1504
01:31:34,388 --> 01:31:35,590
And most importantly,

1505
01:31:36,357 --> 01:31:38,826
we need to care for each other.

1506
01:31:39,961 --> 01:31:43,297
There is a duty of care in everything we do,

1507
01:31:43,764 --> 01:31:46,634
and that's the simplest way to put my personal politics.

1508
01:31:47,201 --> 01:31:50,137
Start acting like you take that duty seriously.

1509
01:31:50,638 --> 01:31:52,507
A free future depends on it.

1510
01:31:53,241 --> 01:31:54,842
A future with liberty

1511
01:31:55,510 --> 01:31:59,814
and justice for all.