WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.102
You know I'm really puzzled by something.

00:00:02.802 --> 00:00:05.005
It's 2026, believe it or not,

00:00:05.372 --> 00:00:08.375
and even though we live in this modern digital world

00:00:08.375 --> 00:00:12.112
where we can ask our smart assistants to close the blinds for us,

00:00:12.479 --> 00:00:15.148
we're still excited about finding oil.

00:00:16.683 --> 00:00:17.917
That feels weird to me.

00:00:18.385 --> 00:00:23.189
Petroleum is a 19th century technology, and here in the 21st century,

00:00:23.423 --> 00:00:26.860
very few of the things we use are powered by petroleum products.

00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:31.297
So why are we still so obsessed with finding more oil?

00:00:32.332 --> 00:00:34.200
Well, there's a very simple reason.

00:00:34.701 --> 00:00:38.271
It just has to do with how oil as a technology works.

00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:42.942
Once we find new crude oil deposits and take some out of the ground,

00:00:43.109 --> 00:00:46.913
we then refine that oil into many useful products and things.

00:00:47.514 --> 00:00:52.452
However, by far the greatest portion of it is used to produce gasoline and diesel fuel,

00:00:52.452 --> 00:00:55.021
which power some of the machines we rely on.

00:00:55.688 --> 00:01:00.593
Now, those machines are great and have unlocked plenty of wonderful new possibilities for us,

00:01:00.593 --> 00:01:02.595
even whole new kinds of economies.

00:01:03.430 --> 00:01:10.070
While they've also come with some downsides that concern me
and I think deserve more weight in our public conversations,

00:01:10.370 --> 00:01:13.139
you're not going to hear me tell you to stop using your machines.

00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:15.775
That is not at all what this video is about.

00:01:16.676 --> 00:01:20.914
But petroleum has an unavoidable issue, which is easy to ignore

00:01:20.914 --> 00:01:22.415
but I don't think you should.

00:01:23.283 --> 00:01:25.518
It's disposable energy.

00:01:26.419 --> 00:01:31.057
In order for our machines to do things for us
like take us to work or get the kids to school,

00:01:31.624 --> 00:01:34.027
they burn the fuels which power them.

00:01:34.894 --> 00:01:37.464
That makes those fuels single use:

00:01:37.464 --> 00:01:38.865
one and done.

00:01:39.532 --> 00:01:43.036
So to keep using those machines, which most of us would like to do,

00:01:43.369 --> 00:01:48.741
we have no choice but to keep finding more oil to make more fuel.

00:01:49.476 --> 00:01:54.814
Many of us have come to the conclusion that this is a serious problem for a long list of reasons.

00:01:55.281 --> 00:02:02.322
For one thing, it makes our standard of living dependent 
on an extremely intensive resource extraction process which,

00:02:02.555 --> 00:02:06.426
since what that process yields will be burned
shortly after it's created,

00:02:06.793 --> 00:02:08.728
appears to have no end in sight.

00:02:09.562 --> 00:02:13.032
Additionally, because oil deposits inevitably run dry,

00:02:13.299 --> 00:02:16.936
we often rely on extraction efforts happening in other countries,

00:02:16.936 --> 00:02:18.605
which may or may not be friendly.

00:02:19.472 --> 00:02:22.008
And while oil is relatively easy to store,

00:02:22.275 --> 00:02:24.077
meaning we can build reserves of oil,

00:02:24.544 --> 00:02:26.980
we use it a lot faster than you may realize.

00:02:27.580 --> 00:02:32.318
Our 714 million barrel strategic oil reserve sounds huge,

00:02:32.752 --> 00:02:37.423
but it only holds enough to sustain slightly more than a month of our current use.

00:02:38.324 --> 00:02:39.726
That's not a very long time.

00:02:40.527 --> 00:02:45.098
And even when we know we have a healthy and secure supply of oil,

00:02:45.565 --> 00:02:52.038
that oil costs a lot of money to find, extract and refine into the fuels we buy to power our machines.

00:02:52.739 --> 00:02:57.243
That results in those fuels being fairly expensive to purchase as a consumer,

00:02:57.243 --> 00:03:02.615
And that results in a high and ongoing operating cost for any machines which use them.

00:03:02.882 --> 00:03:06.586
And that cost can change quite dramatically based on supply and demand.

00:03:07.453 --> 00:03:10.790
What's worse, since nearly every step in our economy

00:03:10.790 --> 00:03:14.827
currently involves something going on a truck which burns diesel fuel,

00:03:14.827 --> 00:03:19.332
spikes in oil prices make their way into virtually everything we buy.

00:03:20.166 --> 00:03:21.968
For those struggling to make ends meet,

00:03:22.302 --> 00:03:26.973
that can be the difference between well-fed and not, even if they don't drive a car.

00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:34.614
I truly believe that an honest assessment of the 
basic realities of using petroleum as a source of energy

00:03:34.948 --> 00:03:38.585
suggests that our situation is actually quite precarious.

00:03:39.018 --> 00:03:42.055
And if nothing else, it can really hurt the wallet sometimes.

00:03:42.889 --> 00:03:45.558
But on that note, there's good news.

00:03:45.992 --> 00:03:52.398
We've developed an enormous variety of electric machines which don't use fuels to function at all.

00:03:52.799 --> 00:03:57.837
For instance, the screen you're looking at right now, 
and in fact nearly everything in your home.

00:03:58.871 --> 00:04:02.008
While today we still burn fuels to generate electricity,

00:04:02.175 --> 00:04:06.079
the even better news is that we don't have to do that anymore.

00:04:06.813 --> 00:04:11.751
We know how to build devices which generate electricity from nothing but sunlight,

00:04:11.784 --> 00:04:15.288
and though it has escaped the notice of many politicians,

00:04:15.421 --> 00:04:22.428
we also know how to build cost effective, rechargeable, 
and recyclable batteries which can be charged from the sun

00:04:22.595 --> 00:04:25.531
to store that energy for use whenever you'd like.

00:04:26.065 --> 00:04:28.334
Even at night when the sun isn't shining.

00:04:29.469 --> 00:04:30.670
The bad news?

00:04:31.204 --> 00:04:36.376
There are a whole lot of people spending money and time trying to confuse everyone

00:04:36.609 --> 00:04:41.914
and convince us that everything I just said is a pie in the sky idea, which can never, ever work.

00:04:42.715 --> 00:04:45.118
But I have never believed those people.

00:04:45.485 --> 00:04:46.352
Why?

00:04:46.886 --> 00:04:47.854
Simple.

00:04:47.854 --> 00:04:49.055
I'm a midwesterner.

00:04:49.722 --> 00:04:51.958
Most of us that were born and raised here

00:04:52.191 --> 00:04:55.495
grew up learning the virtue of long term thinking -

00:04:55.862 --> 00:04:58.698
something that seems to be less and less popular these days.

00:04:59.499 --> 00:05:03.503
My upbringing taught me to value things like durability and resilience,

00:05:03.736 --> 00:05:07.173
and to consider those factors when making important life decisions.

00:05:07.974 --> 00:05:13.946
Midwesterners are also big believers in getting the 
most value out of what we spend our money and time on.

00:05:14.380 --> 00:05:16.482
And we have learned that in many cases,

00:05:16.716 --> 00:05:23.256
the best value comes from spending more money 
upfront on things which let you spend less money later.

00:05:24.057 --> 00:05:27.493
That old fashioned Midwestern wisdom of frugality

00:05:27.727 --> 00:05:33.933
is what makes me so confident that we should be installing much more renewable energy capacity and quickly.

00:05:34.901 --> 00:05:39.138
I didn't need scientific studies or lectures on climate change to form that opinion:

00:05:39.739 --> 00:05:41.808
I just know a good deal when I see one!

00:05:42.408 --> 00:05:48.348
The energy we capture from renewable sources 
like solar and wind power doesn't cost anything.

00:05:48.981 --> 00:05:53.519
And while the batteries we will use to support those sources are expensive to purchase,

00:05:54.020 --> 00:05:59.258
batteries can be used many, many more times than a gallon of gasoline can.

00:05:59.959 --> 00:06:04.664
Today's battery chemistries are pushing 
5,000 charge cycles before they wear out,

00:06:05.098 --> 00:06:08.835
meaning they'll last well over a decade before they need to be recycled.

00:06:09.369 --> 00:06:12.004
And the future of batteries looks even brighter than that,

00:06:12.171 --> 00:06:19.612
with different chemistries extending lifespans, lowering costs,
and reducing the use of harmful or hard to find materials

00:06:19.612 --> 00:06:21.581
in the construction of battery cells.

00:06:22.281 --> 00:06:25.385
These factors combined tell a clear story to me

00:06:25.385 --> 00:06:32.792
which says renewable energy paired with long lasting 
and reusable energy storage is the best deal out there,

00:06:32.959 --> 00:06:34.894
and we'd be foolish to pass it up!

00:06:35.695 --> 00:06:38.498
I would even go so far as to say that at this point,

00:06:38.865 --> 00:06:43.503
anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you to protect their own interests,

00:06:44.003 --> 00:06:47.740
or simply hasn't been paying attention to what things look like today.

00:06:48.674 --> 00:06:56.582
In 2026, the levelized cost of solar and storage, 
which includes the costs of purchasing both the panels and the batteries,

00:06:57.049 --> 00:07:01.421
is now lower than any other kind of energy production we know of.

00:07:02.488 --> 00:07:07.193
That seemed like the inevitable outcome to me for years because the sun is free.

00:07:07.527 --> 00:07:10.530
But for a long time, solar panels were very expensive.

00:07:11.197 --> 00:07:16.135
Today, solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough to make that outcome real.

00:07:16.135 --> 00:07:17.003
Now!

00:07:17.336 --> 00:07:20.339
And solar power is just one source of renewable energy.

00:07:21.073 --> 00:07:24.010
I believe that a renewable energy future should excite you

00:07:24.277 --> 00:07:28.548
because it allows us to harvest energy, not extract it.

00:07:29.315 --> 00:07:34.987
And once you really interrogate that difference, 
the noise goes away and the puzzle solves itself.

00:07:35.788 --> 00:07:37.089
Before I really get started —

00:07:37.089 --> 00:07:38.958
and yes, this video was quite long, isn't it?

00:07:39.358 --> 00:07:41.027
— I have to make a few things clear.

00:07:41.627 --> 00:07:45.298
First, this video has two very distinct audiences in mind,

00:07:45.298 --> 00:07:50.503
and which one of those two I'm speaking to may not be entirely clear at any given moment.

00:07:50.937 --> 00:07:56.576
I'm telling you this because if you think you know 
where I'm going with something, you might be surprised.

00:07:57.076 --> 00:08:04.250
For example, this video is not trying to sell you 
anything like solar panels or home energy storage.

00:08:04.884 --> 00:08:09.489
Whenever I'm talking about renewable energy, people seem to think that's where I'm leading.

00:08:09.489 --> 00:08:13.459
But as a matter of fact, I do not have solar panels on my roof.

00:08:13.860 --> 00:08:17.330
And for various reasons, I personally don't even want to add them.

00:08:18.030 --> 00:08:23.202
I don't think any of us should have to put more thought into how we use electricity than we do right now.

00:08:23.569 --> 00:08:28.875
But I do think we should be moving as much of our energy demand to the electric grid as we can,

00:08:29.208 --> 00:08:31.644
and we should be doing that more and faster.

00:08:32.445 --> 00:08:35.147
I hope by the end you'll understand why I feel that way.

00:08:35.147 --> 00:08:37.350
And again, it might not be what you think.

00:08:38.117 --> 00:08:41.687
Second, there are going to be lots of comments down below

00:08:41.687 --> 00:08:44.490
which say things like “but what about the batteries?”

00:08:44.657 --> 00:08:47.293
and a lot of them will be coming from a place of good faith.

00:08:48.027 --> 00:08:52.198
But lots of people ask that question in bad faith.

00:08:52.532 --> 00:08:56.068
And I would like you to know that anyone leaving those sorts of comments here

00:08:56.569 --> 00:08:58.604
probably didn't watch this video.

00:08:59.071 --> 00:09:03.175
“What about the batteries?”  is one of the central questions I intend to address.

00:09:03.709 --> 00:09:07.980
There's a lot of people being told to worry about things, which I, for one,

00:09:08.314 --> 00:09:10.583
don't think you should be worrying much about,

00:09:10.583 --> 00:09:13.653
and I promise that I'll explain why I feel that way when we get there.

00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:18.024
And thirdly, I'm going to be talking a lot about cars

00:09:18.024 --> 00:09:22.962
since many people have a deep connection to them and they are the biggest reason we use so much oil.

00:09:23.663 --> 00:09:28.200
And well, since electric cars now exist in large numbers,

00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:35.274
we can easily compare what a battery powered world 
looks like to a petroleum powered one, both in functionality and cost.

00:09:35.975 --> 00:09:41.113
Cars are just kind of the perfect tool to understand this at this moment, at least in my view.

00:09:42.148 --> 00:09:44.250
But the logic of this video can,

00:09:44.250 --> 00:09:49.855
and I think should be applied to literally anything which burns any kind of fossil fuel.

00:09:50.590 --> 00:09:53.559
For instance, I still heat my home with natural gas,

00:09:53.793 --> 00:09:56.662
and natural gas has the exact same problems as oil.

00:09:57.229 --> 00:09:59.465
Since my furnace sets it on fire,

00:09:59.732 --> 00:10:06.639
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.

00:10:07.406 --> 00:10:10.543
It just happens to be delivered to my home through a metered pipe

00:10:10.543 --> 00:10:13.746
rather than sold at fueling stations in a pay-as-you go scheme.

00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:17.516
But with those things out of the way, let's get back to oil.

00:10:18.150 --> 00:10:20.453
We use crude oil for lots of things,

00:10:20.453 --> 00:10:26.492
but the most significant thing we use it for in the US 
is for producing refined gasoline for motor cars.

00:10:26.892 --> 00:10:29.862
So let's talk about the pinnacle of motor cars,

00:10:29.996 --> 00:10:32.264
This 2010 Nissan Cube. 

00:10:32.264 --> 00:10:36.936
- Hey isn’t that the car you bought to make videos on engine management technology?

00:10:36.936 --> 00:10:38.004
- Yes. 

00:10:38.437 --> 00:10:40.473
- When is that happening? 

00:10:40.473 --> 00:10:41.941
We’re getting there.

00:10:41.941 --> 00:10:44.210
- Oh, carry on then.

00:10:45.277 --> 00:10:49.749
Now if you were paying close attention to the intro, this section might feel a bit repetitive.

00:10:49.749 --> 00:10:51.050
And I apologize if it does.

00:10:51.517 --> 00:10:58.124
But there are two core facts about using this car
which I'd really like you to think deeply about and confront.

00:10:58.958 --> 00:11:02.862
The first fact is that as this car does its job of providing transportation,

00:11:03.229 --> 00:11:06.098
it burns the gasoline that's inside its fuel tank.

00:11:06.832 --> 00:11:11.137
This means you constantly have to replace that fuel if you want to keep driving the car.

00:11:12.104 --> 00:11:13.339
That's easy enough to do.

00:11:13.806 --> 00:11:19.745
But the second core fact about using this car is that it 
costs you money every time you replace that fuel.

00:11:20.613 --> 00:11:22.715
I know you already know both of those facts,

00:11:23.115 --> 00:11:25.484
but the reason I said I'd like you to confront them

00:11:25.818 --> 00:11:29.321
is because that's just a normal reality to lots of people.

00:11:29.755 --> 00:11:33.025
And it's so normal that we do a really bad job

00:11:33.025 --> 00:11:38.264
keeping those ongoing costs in mind when we make comparisons to new technologies.

00:11:38.798 --> 00:11:40.833
For example, have you ever thought about

00:11:40.833 --> 00:11:44.403
just how much gasoline a car like this will burn over its life?

00:11:45.204 --> 00:11:49.308
This little fella has traveled nearly 188,000 miles since it was built.

00:11:49.975 --> 00:11:52.678
Nissan Cubes with a manual transmission like this one

00:11:52.845 --> 00:11:57.550
have an EPA fuel economy rating that comes in at 25 city, 30 highway.

00:11:57.950 --> 00:12:01.253
And if we assume that all of those miles were highway miles,

00:12:01.253 --> 00:12:04.924
which I'm sure isn't true, but we'll give this fella all the benefits of doubt we can,

00:12:05.491 --> 00:12:09.995
then this car burned through a gallon of gas every 30 miles it went down the road.

00:12:10.262 --> 00:12:16.535
And so, 188,000 miles divided by 30 miles per gallon tells us that so far,

00:12:16.535 --> 00:12:21.140
this car has burned through about 6,250 gallons of gasoline.

00:12:22.041 --> 00:12:25.478
Here's a fun fact that's more than half of one of these.

00:12:26.679 --> 00:12:30.049
Yeah, those big trucks that actually deliver gasoline to fueling stations?

00:12:30.349 --> 00:12:33.586
The largest ones hold 11,600 gallons.

00:12:33.886 --> 00:12:38.557
So this one little car, assuming all highway miles, I remind you, 

00:12:38.557 --> 00:12:44.029
has burned through about 54% of what the biggest tanker trucks can hold.

00:12:44.563 --> 00:12:49.935
And if you're thinking “buying half a tanker truck of gas sounds expensive,” you'd be right.

00:12:50.669 --> 00:12:57.877
Let's say those 6,250 gallons were burned evenly over the past 15 years spanning 2011 and 2025.

00:12:58.477 --> 00:13:02.481
Using the average historical monthly prices in the U.S. during that time

00:13:02.481 --> 00:13:08.921
tells us that it costs something like $19,500 
to purchase all the gasoline this car has used.

00:13:10.156 --> 00:13:13.359
That's more than the car cost when it was new!

00:13:13.859 --> 00:13:17.229
Spending nearly 20 grand on gasoline certainly hurts the wallet,

00:13:17.663 --> 00:13:24.804
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:

00:13:25.871 --> 00:13:30.376
You can only use a gallon of gasoline once.

00:13:30.376 --> 00:13:36.248
Every 30 miles you go in this car means you have to buy another gallon of gas,

00:13:36.515 --> 00:13:38.951
and this will never, ever change.

00:13:39.752 --> 00:13:44.824
That fact is one of the reasons we started to look into the viability of electric cars.

00:13:45.858 --> 00:13:48.194
Now, I won't bother you with a history lesson here,

00:13:48.194 --> 00:13:51.931
so we'll just jump ahead to 2022, which is when I bought this one.

00:13:52.565 --> 00:13:54.400
This is a Hyundai Ioniq 5,

00:13:54.667 --> 00:13:58.270
and I've had a... mostly fantastic time with the car.

00:13:59.138 --> 00:14:05.010
Hyundai still doesn't seem to know what exactly is going on with the whole ICCU failure thing, which is very reassuring.

00:14:05.010 --> 00:14:08.314
And oh boy, they really need to release a software update

00:14:08.314 --> 00:14:11.884
which gives us a button to turn on battery preconditioning manually

00:14:11.884 --> 00:14:15.588
because until they do doing long distance drives in the winter

00:14:15.588 --> 00:14:18.858
will get increasingly annoying with its terrible navigation system.

00:14:19.825 --> 00:14:21.393
I'm not salty, it is.

00:14:21.861 --> 00:14:25.531
But aside from the ICCU and my bugbears,

00:14:25.531 --> 00:14:28.234
I've had four trouble free years with this car.

00:14:28.767 --> 00:14:31.637
In the time I've had it, it's gone nearly 50,000 miles

00:14:31.871 --> 00:14:34.473
and it hasn't burned a single drop of gasoline.

00:14:35.274 --> 00:14:37.376
It can't - ain’t got an engine.

00:14:37.977 --> 00:14:39.945
“Ahhaaa!” the comments erupt,

00:14:40.212 --> 00:14:45.584
“but you had to plug it into the power grid 
to charge it, and the power grid still burns stuff.”

00:14:46.185 --> 00:14:49.188
Now, folks, that's what we call a gotcha.

00:14:49.655 --> 00:14:55.494
People say that in conversation to undermine the point of 
electric cars and make their buyers feel foolish.

00:14:55.728 --> 00:14:58.931
However, something that's pretty nifty about electric cars

00:14:59.231 --> 00:15:03.402
is that they can be charged from any source of energy that generates electricity.

00:15:04.136 --> 00:15:05.671
That could be nuclear power,

00:15:05.738 --> 00:15:07.273
it could be hydroelectric power,

00:15:07.473 --> 00:15:11.911
or it could be all that natural gas we have here in the US.

00:15:12.444 --> 00:15:16.982
Hydraulic fracturing has freed up so much gas that we are now a net exporter.

00:15:17.383 --> 00:15:24.356
And with abundant cheap gas, some 40% of our 
electricity generation these days comes from gas fired power plants.

00:15:25.124 --> 00:15:30.462
This car, since it's electric, can make use of that abundant and cheap resource.

00:15:31.063 --> 00:15:34.767
If nothing else, it's using fuel we already have and control,

00:15:35.100 --> 00:15:37.036
which has national security benefits.

00:15:37.870 --> 00:15:43.542
But what excites me the most is that this car can also be charged with these.

00:15:44.176 --> 00:15:46.412
This is a photovoltaic solar panel.

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.

00:15:54.687 --> 00:15:59.258
Now many people quite understandably feel as if that's simply too good to be true

00:15:59.258 --> 00:16:00.559
and there's gotta be a catch.

00:16:01.126 --> 00:16:04.129
Of course, the biggest catch is that the sun doesn't shine at night.

00:16:04.630 --> 00:16:08.901
But you know, this electric car has headlights and taillights

00:16:08.901 --> 00:16:12.771
because, through the power of batteries, you can drive it at night.

00:16:12.771 --> 00:16:15.607
So I'm reasonably sure that's something we can figure out.

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.

00:16:21.146 --> 00:16:22.781
Ah, materials.

00:16:23.148 --> 00:16:23.949
In many ways,

00:16:23.949 --> 00:16:26.885
that's what this video is really trying to get you to think about.

00:16:27.252 --> 00:16:30.356
And they're responsible for the second catch of solar energy.

00:16:30.856 --> 00:16:33.993
But no, not what those materials are.

00:16:34.159 --> 00:16:35.694
We'll get there.

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

00:16:42.634 --> 00:16:44.303
because the panel itself wasn't free.

00:16:44.937 --> 00:16:48.574
It's made of raw materials, which cost the manufacturer money to obtain.

00:16:48.907 --> 00:16:51.710
And of course, the manufacturer wanted to be paid for their work

00:16:51.710 --> 00:16:54.146
turning those materials into a functional product.

00:16:54.446 --> 00:16:56.749
And so did everyone else at every step of the

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”

00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:02.321
process.

00:17:02.855 --> 00:17:06.825
That meant this solar panel cost a whole lot more than a gallon of gas.

00:17:07.526 --> 00:17:09.228
But unlike a gallon of gas,

00:17:09.495 --> 00:17:12.731
using this thing doesn't require destroying it.

00:17:13.565 --> 00:17:16.835
The useful life of gasoline is exactly once,

00:17:17.236 --> 00:17:20.939
but the useful life of a solar panel is on the order of decades.

00:17:21.673 --> 00:17:25.577
That is how solar energy became the least expensive form of electricity.

00:17:26.278 --> 00:17:29.081
Sure, the panels may be expensive to purchase,

00:17:29.415 --> 00:17:33.052
but we are using materials to build a durable thing.

00:17:33.719 --> 00:17:35.687
An object with no moving parts,

00:17:35.821 --> 00:17:39.324
and that which harvests energy from the sun - which is free! -

00:17:39.792 --> 00:17:41.427
and will do so for decades.

00:17:42.094 --> 00:17:44.797
When you average the cost of purchasing solar panels

00:17:44.797 --> 00:17:48.767
over the many thousands of days
they will produce a free energy harvest,

00:17:49.301 --> 00:17:53.572
the apparently high upfront cost becomes pennies a day per panel.

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.

00:18:00.245 --> 00:18:03.549
Our electricity here in Illinois is already pretty cheap,

00:18:03.849 --> 00:18:06.952
and I'm not looking to cut the cost of charging my car.

00:18:07.686 --> 00:18:09.188
With a bit of optimization,

00:18:09.188 --> 00:18:14.093
which really means by charging my car exclusively at night when the grid is quiet,

00:18:14.093 --> 00:18:18.764
today already it only costs about one third as much to drive my car

00:18:19.131 --> 00:18:21.633
as it does to buy gas for a car like the Cube.

00:18:22.568 --> 00:18:24.536
But thought experiments are pretty fun.

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

00:18:29.341 --> 00:18:31.743
to make my own energy for my own car.

00:18:32.744 --> 00:18:34.146
What would those costs look like?

00:18:35.180 --> 00:18:36.782
Well, in case you haven't noticed,

00:18:37.149 --> 00:18:41.186
the cost of manufacturing solar panels has been dropping like a rock.

00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:44.089
How do you think Harbor Freight gets their hands on them?

00:18:44.990 --> 00:18:46.024
It's pretty wild.

00:18:46.024 --> 00:18:50.028
Have you ever thought about how weirdly cheap big TVs are these days?

00:18:50.629 --> 00:18:54.466
A very similar thing has been happening in the land of photovoltaics,

00:18:54.466 --> 00:18:57.369
and new solar panels are miraculously cheap.

00:18:58.137 --> 00:19:04.877
Let's say that instead of spending $19,500 on gasoline for this weird little car,

00:19:05.310 --> 00:19:08.080
I spent that amount of money on solar panels.

00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:10.182
How many could I buy these days?

00:19:10.983 --> 00:19:13.652
Well, if I Google “solar panel wholesale”

00:19:13.652 --> 00:19:16.355
and click on various solar panel wholesaler websites,

00:19:17.089 --> 00:19:19.658
it's looking like I can buy a few pallets of ‘em!

00:19:20.392 --> 00:19:26.165
This website sells pallets with 32 of these 500 watt panels for $5,600.

00:19:26.665 --> 00:19:30.969
That's $175 per panel, and they have a 25 year warranty.

00:19:31.970 --> 00:19:36.742
That price means the $19,500 in this car's total fuel cost

00:19:36.742 --> 00:19:40.179
could today buy 111 of those panels:

00:19:40.412 --> 00:19:43.215
way more than I could possibly fit on my rooftop,

00:19:43.415 --> 00:19:47.052
and enough to generate a theoretical 55,000W of power.

00:19:47.886 --> 00:19:52.391
That many solar panels, incidentally, represents about 6 or 7 complete

00:19:52.391 --> 00:19:55.827
rooftop solar installations for an average single family home.

00:19:56.728 --> 00:19:57.930
Think about that.

00:19:57.996 --> 00:20:02.834
The same $19,500 in capital which got spent on gasoline,

00:20:02.834 --> 00:20:06.572
which this one small car burned through and will never be seen again

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.

00:20:16.281 --> 00:20:19.351
I don't know, the math doesn't seem to be mathing very well for gasoline!

00:20:19.351 --> 00:20:21.553
But let's compare apples to apples here.

00:20:22.154 --> 00:20:26.325
How many of those 500 watt panels would someone like me, who lives in Chicagoland

00:20:26.592 --> 00:20:31.663
and drives about 13,000 miles each year, need on their rooftop (in Chicagoland)

00:20:31.863 --> 00:20:34.833
to charge a Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the middle of December?

00:20:36.568 --> 00:20:38.370
Twelve.

00:20:38.370 --> 00:20:40.539
I'll need 12 of those panels.

00:20:41.006 --> 00:20:45.043
Which means if I spend some $2,100 on solar panels today,

00:20:45.911 --> 00:20:50.415
then I will have completely taken care of my car's lifetime energy costs!

00:20:50.949 --> 00:20:56.121
That right there, folks, is why I'm so confident renewable energy is the future.

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,

00:21:02.194 --> 00:21:07.866
I will have pre-purchased all of the fuel this car will ever need.

00:21:08.734 --> 00:21:11.703
Yes, of course, I'm skipping a whole bunch of details,

00:21:11.703 --> 00:21:13.305
like the labor to install those panels

00:21:13.305 --> 00:21:17.342
and the racking and the wires and stuff, but I'm also skipping

00:21:17.342 --> 00:21:19.678
the fact that once we're out of the winter months,

00:21:20.078 --> 00:21:23.749
those 12 panels will produce way more electricity than my car

00:21:23.749 --> 00:21:27.619
needs, and in fact, could power my entire home on most days.

00:21:28.553 --> 00:21:31.490
The essential and core fact to confront here,

00:21:31.757 --> 00:21:34.359
and this is a fact that often gets overlooked in debates,

00:21:34.693 --> 00:21:38.764
is that renewable energy capacity is not disposable!

00:21:39.464 --> 00:21:41.233
It is, in fact durable.

00:21:41.533 --> 00:21:44.503
And that makes it functionally a one time investment.

00:21:45.370 --> 00:21:48.073
You only have to buy and install these things once,

00:21:48.373 --> 00:21:52.044
and then they simply sit there generating free electricity for years to come.

00:21:52.644 --> 00:21:57.649
All they might need after installation is a bit of cleaning every once in a while.

00:21:58.450 --> 00:22:03.989
That stands in stark contrast to fossil fuels, which you have to keep buying forever.

00:22:04.723 --> 00:22:08.126
So going back to the example of the Cube and my Hyundai,

00:22:08.527 --> 00:22:13.065
the choice becomes do you spend $1,300 on fuel every single year,

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?

00:22:21.340 --> 00:22:23.041
Choice seems pretty clear to me!

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.

00:22:29.781 --> 00:22:32.884
Well, the quickest way to answer that is to go on a field trip.

00:22:33.285 --> 00:22:36.655
Behind me is a 27 megawatt solar farm

00:22:36.655 --> 00:22:39.424
that was built here in the town of DePue, Illinois.

00:22:40.258 --> 00:22:42.127
Now, there's a couple notable things about that.

00:22:42.594 --> 00:22:46.732
First, Illinois is not exactly the solar power capital of the country.

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.

00:22:51.336 --> 00:22:52.537
And yet...

00:22:53.739 --> 00:22:57.943
there's a 27 megawatt solar farm that got built in DePue, Illinois!

00:22:58.610 --> 00:22:59.811
Why did that happen?

00:23:00.379 --> 00:23:03.181
Well, because people who like to make money

00:23:03.181 --> 00:23:06.518
understand the difference between CapEx and OpEx.

00:23:07.085 --> 00:23:09.788
And so do you, even if you don't know what those terms mean.

00:23:10.655 --> 00:23:11.823
I'll explain them shortly.

00:23:11.823 --> 00:23:15.060
But first, do you know anyone with a backup generator?

00:23:16.595 --> 00:23:18.630
That question might sound out of left field,

00:23:18.630 --> 00:23:21.233
but I promise you it's a perfect way to understand this.

00:23:21.967 --> 00:23:23.935
Some people live where the electricity grid

00:23:23.935 --> 00:23:25.837
isn't as reliable as they'd like it to be.

00:23:26.471 --> 00:23:31.510
Everyone hates power outages because electricity is extremely important to our lives at this point.

00:23:31.943 --> 00:23:35.080
And if grid reliability is poor enough where someone lives,

00:23:35.380 --> 00:23:40.051
they might elect to install a large backup generator powered by natural gas,

00:23:40.285 --> 00:23:44.556
which will automatically kick on and generate electricity during a power outage.

00:23:45.157 --> 00:23:47.559
When someone decides to spend their money that way,

00:23:47.626 --> 00:23:50.362
that's CapEx or capital expenditure.

00:23:51.096 --> 00:23:55.867
They are using their capital to buy a durable thing which will last them many years,

00:23:56.101 --> 00:23:58.270
and it becomes an investment in the future.

00:23:59.171 --> 00:24:03.141
Some folks install generators which are large enough to power their entire home,

00:24:03.442 --> 00:24:06.711
meaning power outages are nothing but an inconvenient blip.

00:24:08.413 --> 00:24:13.518
And that leads to what I think is an interesting and revealing question to ponder.

00:24:14.753 --> 00:24:19.357
If those people own a machine which can power everything in their home by itself,

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?

00:24:24.763 --> 00:24:27.032
Why stay connected to the power grid at all?

00:24:27.699 --> 00:24:32.003
Well, that's because that machine needs fuel to generate electricity.

00:24:32.537 --> 00:24:36.074
And that fuel costs money, which makes it part of OpEx,

00:24:36.074 --> 00:24:38.109
which is short for operating expenditure.

00:24:39.044 --> 00:24:42.214
The gas company will charge you for the gas that generator uses.

00:24:42.514 --> 00:24:46.184
And those fuel costs mean that using a backup generator

00:24:46.184 --> 00:24:50.522
is much more expensive than pulling energy directly from the power grid.

00:24:51.289 --> 00:24:53.725
Everyone with a backup generator knows this,

00:24:54.125 --> 00:24:58.163
and that's why it's a backup
and not their primary source of electricity.

00:24:58.897 --> 00:25:02.467
It is simply too expensive to use that machine all the time.

00:25:03.368 --> 00:25:05.871
The great big machines on the power grid,

00:25:06.037 --> 00:25:10.141
even when they're burning the same natural gas as a backup generator,

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

00:25:16.548 --> 00:25:19.017
than the small engine inside a Generac can.

00:25:20.051 --> 00:25:26.057
That efficiency of scale is what makes generating electricity cheaper for grid scale power stations.

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

00:25:34.332 --> 00:25:39.237
explains why distributing that energy through the power grid is very efficient,

00:25:39.237 --> 00:25:41.907
both economically and from an energy perspective.

00:25:42.674 --> 00:25:47.012
And what's really important to remember is that grid power is cheaper

00:25:47.012 --> 00:25:52.584
despite the fact that the people who operate natural gas plants are making a healthy profit.

00:25:53.351 --> 00:25:55.487
They're not just running a power plant for the fun of it,

00:25:55.654 --> 00:25:56.888
they're in business!

00:25:57.622 --> 00:26:02.460
But the smarter business critters out there know that even with the benefits of scale,

00:26:02.794 --> 00:26:06.698
a natural gas plant still has a very high OpEx.

00:26:07.465 --> 00:26:14.306
Each unit of electricity a gas plant generates 
requires burning expensive fuel, which eats into profits.

00:26:15.307 --> 00:26:18.076
So for those who have an eye on making money,

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,

00:26:26.217 --> 00:26:28.353
well, gas doesn't look so great anymore.

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.

00:26:37.996 --> 00:26:39.230
And that's what they'll do.

00:26:40.065 --> 00:26:43.535
That's good for consumers because that makes electricity cheaper to use.

00:26:43.802 --> 00:26:47.839
But because the solar farm has next to zero OpEx,

00:26:48.239 --> 00:26:51.543
it still generates a healthy profit, even though it's cheaper.

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.

00:26:59.651 --> 00:27:06.324
The basic realities of economics mean that 
photovoltaics are, at this point, frankly, unstoppable.

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.

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

00:27:19.337 --> 00:27:22.674
is almost purely profit once the panels have been paid off.

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

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,

00:27:36.655 --> 00:27:41.026
and all the while doing that for a lower cost than any other source of electricity.

00:27:41.493 --> 00:27:46.898
And since both photovoltaic panels and batteries are manufactured in factories

00:27:46.898 --> 00:27:51.936
which can leverage economies of scale, 
they're just going to keep getting cheaper to manufacture.

00:27:52.837 --> 00:27:56.307
The economics are already in favor of solar and storage,

00:27:56.441 --> 00:27:59.177
but they're going to keep looking better and better every year.

00:28:00.111 --> 00:28:03.782
Solar energy has put us on the cusp of a positive feedback loop,

00:28:04.215 --> 00:28:06.885
yet relatively few people seem to have realized this.

00:28:07.485 --> 00:28:09.254
And that's despite the fact that -

00:28:09.254 --> 00:28:14.659
there's another one not even five miles up the road here in Spring Valley, Illinois.

00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:19.664
Solar farms are starting to pop up everywhere, even in states like Illinois,

00:28:19.964 --> 00:28:23.168
because the business case simply makes so much sense.

00:28:23.835 --> 00:28:26.705
It's farming a crop, just like we do with land today.

00:28:26.971 --> 00:28:31.476
But that crop gets harvested every single day rather than once a year,

00:28:31.843 --> 00:28:35.146
and virtually no work is involved in harvesting that crop.

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.

00:28:41.920 --> 00:28:43.888
You just plop some panels on some land,

00:28:44.155 --> 00:28:46.624
angle them to get the most energy out of the sun as you can,

00:28:46.958 --> 00:28:48.626
and let the money roll in.

00:28:49.527 --> 00:28:51.629
This is a capitalist’s wet dream!

00:28:52.097 --> 00:28:55.467
People are always talking about passive income, as if that's a panacea.

00:28:56.134 --> 00:28:57.335
Well, there it is!

00:28:57.802 --> 00:29:00.138
You can become a farmer, and all you'll have to do

00:29:00.138 --> 00:29:03.041
is mow the grass between the panels a few times a year.

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.

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.

00:29:17.555 --> 00:29:21.392
And that's why I'm not that interested in putting panels on my roof.

00:29:21.926 --> 00:29:25.296
Yes, there are good arguments for distributing energy resources,

00:29:25.730 --> 00:29:30.034
and we have a real problem right now with getting new transmission lines permitted.

00:29:30.769 --> 00:29:34.439
There are a ton of solar power projects which are already funded,

00:29:35.340 --> 00:29:38.710
but aren't happening because FERC can't get their act together

00:29:38.710 --> 00:29:40.378
and they're stuck in permitting hell.

00:29:41.112 --> 00:29:42.614
NIMBYs aren't helping either.

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,

00:29:49.721 --> 00:29:51.322
and it does have some advantages,

00:29:51.956 --> 00:29:56.027
but many people don't have the agency to install solar on their roof,

00:29:56.027 --> 00:29:58.096
even if they wanted to and could afford it.

00:29:58.930 --> 00:30:01.766
Renters can't do that even if they're renting a house.

00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:07.138
And what's worse, apartment buildings don't have enough roof space to be self-sufficient.

00:30:07.372 --> 00:30:10.275
Cities will always be relying on solar farms.

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

00:30:15.647 --> 00:30:16.981
which I'll spare you for time.

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,

00:30:24.489 --> 00:30:26.925
and think that's a far more efficient use of my money.

00:30:27.592 --> 00:30:29.694
But speaking of efficient uses of things,

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.

00:30:34.833 --> 00:30:36.201
Like land use.

00:30:36.935 --> 00:30:40.338
Solar farms do indeed require a lot of space.

00:30:40.939 --> 00:30:46.477
That 27 megawatt solar farm in DePue is on something like a 120 acre site.

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,

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.

00:30:56.221 --> 00:30:59.858
Now, 27 MW is a tremendous amount of power,

00:31:00.592 --> 00:31:04.128
but in the context of the power grid, it's pretty piddly.

00:31:04.629 --> 00:31:08.700
This is the three phase line that connects the solar farm to the substation in DePue,

00:31:09.033 --> 00:31:11.102
And it's, uh... 

00:31:11.102 --> 00:31:13.438
well it ain't exactly a big transmission line now, is it?

00:31:14.239 --> 00:31:17.742
So, yeah, solar energy will use lots of land.

00:31:18.710 --> 00:31:23.615
However, since I'm from Illinois, I think I'm qualified to explain why

00:31:23.615 --> 00:31:27.318
you probably don't need to worry too much about land use.

00:31:27.952 --> 00:31:29.888
That is a corn field.

00:31:30.688 --> 00:31:33.258
It doesn't look like much right now because it's the middle of January.

00:31:33.258 --> 00:31:36.427
But corn used to be growing there and it was harvested in the fall.

00:31:37.295 --> 00:31:40.465
Now there's three very notable things about this reality:

00:31:41.032 --> 00:31:44.202
First of all, this land should not look like this.

00:31:44.736 --> 00:31:46.771
This is Illinois, where the Prairie State,

00:31:46.771 --> 00:31:48.773
the natural environment, is prairie.

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.

00:31:54.245 --> 00:31:58.917
Secondly, we only get one harvest per year out of this land.

00:31:59.417 --> 00:32:01.853
We spend all the summer growing the corn.

00:32:02.053 --> 00:32:04.522
And then in the fall, it's harvested just once.

00:32:05.023 --> 00:32:08.526
If this was a solar farm, it could have a harvest every single day.

00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:13.097
And third, if you're thinking, “well, what if we stop growing corn there?

00:32:13.131 --> 00:32:14.332
We can't eat anymore!’

00:32:15.033 --> 00:32:18.136
Well, this corn is not the corn that you eat.

00:32:18.569 --> 00:32:21.239
Some of it does end up in lots of different food products,

00:32:21.239 --> 00:32:24.742
but a large portion of this corn gets used...

00:32:24.742 --> 00:32:26.210
for that.

00:32:26.377 --> 00:32:30.982
Yeah, those messages on gas pumps which say, may contain up to 10% ethanol?

00:32:31.883 --> 00:32:33.084
That came from corn.

00:32:33.785 --> 00:32:37.889
We have been using an astonishing amount of our rich agricultural land

00:32:38.156 --> 00:32:40.892
to grow corn to feed to cars.

00:32:41.693 --> 00:32:45.997
Maybe you remember the days of FlexFuel vehicles and E85 being relevant.

00:32:46.597 --> 00:32:52.270
Well, back in 2005, President George W Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005,

00:32:52.570 --> 00:32:57.608
and in 2007, he signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

00:32:58.476 --> 00:33:02.480
Those acts mandated a specific amount of ethanol in gallons

00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:05.883
which needs to be produced so it can be mixed with gasoline.

00:33:06.851 --> 00:33:10.655
The idea, as you might have gleaned from the independence and security part,

00:33:10.922 --> 00:33:13.424
was to start making our own energy for cars

00:33:13.624 --> 00:33:16.661
so that we'd be less dependent on foreign oil,

00:33:16.661 --> 00:33:18.730
a policy I wholeheartedly support!

00:33:20.398 --> 00:33:24.435
The only trouble is that doing it with corn ethanol is tremendously stupid.

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.

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.

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,

00:33:43.888 --> 00:33:46.391
but we'll just ignore that and pretend it's easy and free.

00:33:46.991 --> 00:33:49.093
So let's go back to that solar farm.

00:33:49.761 --> 00:33:52.530
If this were a 120 acre corn field,

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.

00:33:58.102 --> 00:33:59.837
That's about five tanker trucks worth.

00:34:01.039 --> 00:34:05.676
Now, if you didn't already know, this ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline.

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.

00:34:15.520 --> 00:34:16.654
But I'll be generous.

00:34:16.654 --> 00:34:21.325
Let's say those 66,000 gallons of corn ethanol all make it into cars

00:34:21.325 --> 00:34:24.195
that can go 30 miles on a gallon of E85.

00:34:24.862 --> 00:34:26.064
How far can they drive?

00:34:26.964 --> 00:34:29.600
Well, 66,000 gallons times 30

00:34:29.934 --> 00:34:33.004
tells us that they can go just shy of 2 million miles.

00:34:33.704 --> 00:34:35.339
That might seem like a lot,

00:34:35.339 --> 00:34:38.776
but now let's consider how many miles electric cars

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.

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.

00:34:53.558 --> 00:34:56.627
Well, the website says “in year one,” so it's possible

00:34:56.627 --> 00:34:58.696
it wasn't yet complete when they came to that figure.

00:34:58.696 --> 00:35:00.031
But I'm just going to roll with it.

00:35:01.132 --> 00:35:06.003
Electric cars generally get something like 3 or 4 miles per kilowatt hour.

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,

00:35:11.142 --> 00:35:14.045
which is what my car can get down to in extreme cold.

00:35:14.912 --> 00:35:19.951
Well, 37,000 megawatt hours is 37,000,000 kilowatt hours.

00:35:20.418 --> 00:35:26.891
So every year these panels can push electric cars at least 74 million miles.

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.

00:35:38.035 --> 00:35:43.407
So do you really think we should still be growing corn to feed to cars?

00:35:44.375 --> 00:35:45.576
Here's the best part, though.

00:35:46.043 --> 00:35:48.579
Let's say you decided the answer is no

00:35:48.579 --> 00:35:51.516
and we stopped growing corn to feed to cars.

00:35:52.183 --> 00:35:54.652
How many acres of cornfields would that free up?

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.

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.

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,

00:36:17.308 --> 00:36:19.177
and covered it all in solar panels.

00:36:19.810 --> 00:36:21.379
How much energy would that harvest?

00:36:22.613 --> 00:36:25.082
Well, that's going to depend on where the panels are.

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,

00:36:29.921 --> 00:36:32.823
let's just keep using the numbers from the solar farm in DePue.

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.

00:36:40.498 --> 00:36:46.971
So let's see 25 million divided by 120 and then multiply by 37,000....

00:36:47.805 --> 00:36:54.545
That is 7,708,333,000 megawatt hours of energy.

00:36:55.346 --> 00:36:57.081
And why is that the best part?

00:36:58.082 --> 00:37:03.354
Because that's more energy than the entire U.S. electricity grid produces right now.

00:37:03.654 --> 00:37:05.790
And by a lot.

00:37:05.790 --> 00:37:10.728
In 2023, it all added up to 4.178 billion megawatt hours.

00:37:11.195 --> 00:37:17.068
So if all we did was decide to stop growing corn to turn into ethanol, 

00:37:17.068 --> 00:37:21.005
and we used only that land for generating only solar power,

00:37:21.405 --> 00:37:26.010
we'd be able to generate 84% more electricity on an annual basis

00:37:26.244 --> 00:37:29.580
than we do today from all of our energy sources.

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.

00:37:37.455 --> 00:37:39.123
We've got a whole lot of it,

00:37:39.457 --> 00:37:43.628
and we're not exactly using it responsibly at the moment, anyway.

00:37:43.794 --> 00:37:45.896
And by the way, I used real world numbers

00:37:45.896 --> 00:37:49.300
from a real world solar installation to perform this thought experiment

00:37:49.300 --> 00:37:51.435
 in the hopes that that would be more convincing.

00:37:51.936 --> 00:37:54.705
But just in case you doubt my numbers, which I understand

00:37:54.705 --> 00:37:56.874
because I used the numbers from the company's website,

00:37:57.341 --> 00:38:00.144
there have been plenty of studies which demonstrate this,

00:38:00.144 --> 00:38:01.379
and I'll link them below.

00:38:02.380 --> 00:38:05.449
What's most notable is that up here in the Corn Belt,

00:38:05.783 --> 00:38:08.886
we actually have a pretty bad capacity factor.

00:38:09.453 --> 00:38:11.622
Solar panels would be much more productive

00:38:11.622 --> 00:38:13.958
if they were somewhere farther south and sunnier.

00:38:14.659 --> 00:38:18.129
But even with our mediocre latitude and weather patterns,

00:38:18.596 --> 00:38:21.332
all the land we need to generate electricity

00:38:21.332 --> 00:38:24.268
with solar power alone can be freed up

00:38:24.535 --> 00:38:28.572
if we just stop growing corn to feed to cars.

00:38:29.407 --> 00:38:32.443
So far in this video I've been talking a lot about solar energy.

00:38:32.443 --> 00:38:34.445
But you know I also like those things.

00:38:35.046 --> 00:38:37.515
Yeah.
Let's talk about wind turbines for a second.

00:38:38.082 --> 00:38:42.653
Something interesting you can do with these is put them in fields alongside crops

00:38:42.653 --> 00:38:45.489
and farm the wind and some corn at the same time.

00:38:46.624 --> 00:38:48.859
You can actually also do that with solar panels,

00:38:48.859 --> 00:38:52.763
it's called agrivoltaics and it's a really exciting area of research.

00:38:53.030 --> 00:38:54.065
But we'll set that aside.

00:38:54.065 --> 00:38:55.599
This video is already quite long.

00:38:56.767 --> 00:38:59.136
Now some people look at a wind turbine

00:38:59.136 --> 00:39:02.139
and see a pointless boondoggle which clutters the landscape.

00:39:02.139 --> 00:39:05.843
But I, on the other hand, see a magnificent machine

00:39:05.843 --> 00:39:08.179
which turns wind into gasoline.

00:39:09.013 --> 00:39:10.381
Here's a fun thought experiment:

00:39:10.681 --> 00:39:15.052
Each one of these wind turbines can generate two megawatts of power.

00:39:15.319 --> 00:39:18.322
And on a windy day, like today,
that's probably what they're putting out.

00:39:19.056 --> 00:39:22.026
If this car could actually handle that much power,

00:39:22.326 --> 00:39:25.162
how long do you think it would take one of those wind turbines —

00:39:25.196 --> 00:39:27.765
just one! — to charge this car's battery?

00:39:28.532 --> 00:39:30.901
The answer is two and a half minutes.

00:39:31.335 --> 00:39:33.604
Seriously, not even 2.5 minutes.

00:39:33.771 --> 00:39:37.942
And if we consider that this car has a driving range of about 240 miles,

00:39:38.142 --> 00:39:42.380
and then equate that to a gasoline powered car that gets 40 miles per gallon,

00:39:42.380 --> 00:39:47.151
 then you can very much imagine these machines as wind powered oil derricks

00:39:47.151 --> 00:39:52.289
that generate about three gallons of refined gasoline every single minute.

00:39:53.157 --> 00:39:55.826
If you're having a hard time imagining what that looks like,

00:39:56.127 --> 00:39:59.663
most showerheads run at something like two gallons per minute.

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.

00:40:07.138 --> 00:40:10.875
And that's what just one of those wind turbines does.

00:40:11.575 --> 00:40:13.310
And how much does the wind cost?

00:40:14.378 --> 00:40:15.813
Slightly more than the sun.

00:40:15.813 --> 00:40:17.014
But it's still free.

00:40:17.782 --> 00:40:19.950
Wind power is obviously quite useful.

00:40:20.317 --> 00:40:24.388
For one thing, these work
just fine on cloudy days and even work at night.

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.

00:40:32.696 --> 00:40:34.932
In fact, while I was out at this wind farm,

00:40:35.199 --> 00:40:39.036
this one in the background was stopped because there was a crew performing maintenance.

00:40:39.804 --> 00:40:41.005
That's OpEx.

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,

00:40:48.179 --> 00:40:52.149
wind turbines are not quite as cost competitive as solar panels.

00:40:52.650 --> 00:40:57.254
Photovoltaics are very much a kind of solid state energy generation.

00:40:57.655 --> 00:41:00.825
And a big machine like that is very much not.

00:41:01.792 --> 00:41:04.061
But let's pretend wind power doesn't exist.

00:41:04.862 --> 00:41:07.097
This is a silly thing to pretend because it does.

00:41:07.331 --> 00:41:11.235
But I want us to return to the purely solar powered thought experiment.

00:41:11.769 --> 00:41:15.005
Because in the room where that thought experiment takes place,

00:41:15.739 --> 00:41:16.941
there is an elephant.

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.

00:41:25.082 --> 00:41:26.517
Billions, in fact.

00:41:27.184 --> 00:41:30.955
And that's going to require a whole heckuvalot of raw materials.

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.

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

00:41:45.336 --> 00:41:49.306
and all the fruits of that process function exactly once.

00:41:50.107 --> 00:41:52.910
You don't notice all the mass you're burning through right now,

00:41:52.910 --> 00:41:56.747
because it mostly exists in your mind as nothing but numbers on a gas pump.

00:41:57.248 --> 00:42:00.050
Unless you're filling a jerry can, you don't even see it.

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.

00:42:07.291 --> 00:42:11.028
Cars burn that fuel and it's constantly disappearing.

00:42:12.162 --> 00:42:15.533
I, for one, think we should spend our efforts extracting resources

00:42:15.533 --> 00:42:17.301
which will hang around for a while.

00:42:18.135 --> 00:42:19.336
Just seems a little wiser.

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.

00:42:26.644 --> 00:42:33.250
So it's worth talking about what the raw materials inside these things actually are.

00:42:33.751 --> 00:42:35.886
And that's why I bought this one.

00:42:36.654 --> 00:42:37.488
And that one.

00:42:37.488 --> 00:42:38.689
But we'll get back to that.

00:42:39.123 --> 00:42:42.793
So these slender black things with all the lines on them

00:42:43.093 --> 00:42:44.895
are the actual solar cells.

00:42:45.262 --> 00:42:50.100
These are what convert the photons from the sun that land on them into electrons

00:42:50.100 --> 00:42:52.736
which can be sent down a wire and harnessed as energy.

00:42:53.804 --> 00:42:56.206
Those cells are extremely thin.

00:42:56.473 --> 00:42:59.209
We're talking about as thin as a human hair.

00:42:59.977 --> 00:43:05.015
And that means the vast, vast majority of this panel's mass is simply...

00:43:06.283 --> 00:43:07.484
panel!

00:43:07.651 --> 00:43:13.090
Almost all of what makes up this thing is either aluminum, glass, or adhesives.

00:43:13.757 --> 00:43:19.196
72 silicon cells were arranged and wired together and then glued to this sheet of glass.

00:43:19.797 --> 00:43:24.435
Once that was done, the backside of the glass gets coated in some kind of thermoplastic

00:43:24.435 --> 00:43:26.537
to seal it all up and make it watertight.

00:43:27.271 --> 00:43:29.873
A hole in that coating was left for lead wires

00:43:29.873 --> 00:43:32.176
to connect the solar cells to this junction box,

00:43:32.509 --> 00:43:35.913
and then the box was attached to the backside of the glass with sealant.

00:43:36.780 --> 00:43:39.249
Oh, and if you're wondering what's inside that junction box,

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.

00:43:46.790 --> 00:43:49.159
But in this case, this is a DC solar panel,

00:43:49.226 --> 00:43:51.695
so all that's in there are a couple of beefy diodes.

00:43:52.463 --> 00:43:56.033
And well, the last major thing in here is aluminum.

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.

00:44:01.438 --> 00:44:02.840
But that's really all it's there for.

00:44:03.807 --> 00:44:07.277
I'm not that well versed on all the ways these things are constructed,

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.

00:44:11.181 --> 00:44:14.685
And a lot of panels now have solar cells on both sides:

00:44:14.685 --> 00:44:19.223
those are known as bifacial panels. But no matter how they're made,

00:44:19.790 --> 00:44:22.826
it's mostly just glass and aluminum.

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...

00:44:30.100 --> 00:44:31.435
for food containers.

00:44:34.071 --> 00:44:37.107
And it's also notable because these food containers,

00:44:37.141 --> 00:44:40.044
mainly glass bottles and jars and aluminum cans,

00:44:40.444 --> 00:44:42.913
are something we already actively recycle.

00:44:43.881 --> 00:44:46.617
It would be better if we reused glass containers

00:44:46.617 --> 00:44:48.318
rather than ground them up and melted them,

00:44:48.352 --> 00:44:49.853
but that's an issue for another time.

00:44:50.320 --> 00:44:53.657
The important thing is we already know how to do that,

00:44:53.824 --> 00:44:56.326
and we already have industrial processes

00:44:56.326 --> 00:44:59.730
which turn used ground up glass into new glass,

00:44:59.963 --> 00:45:03.534
and which melt scrap aluminum into new aluminum.

00:45:04.168 --> 00:45:07.204
So at the end of this panel's useful life,

00:45:07.705 --> 00:45:10.374
which won't be for 25 years!

00:45:10.874 --> 00:45:14.244
...almost all of its raw material mass can easily be recovered

00:45:14.244 --> 00:45:17.748
and turned into another panel, which is important.

00:45:18.482 --> 00:45:20.684
When it comes to the actual silicon cells,

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.

00:45:28.692 --> 00:45:30.094
That's misinformation.

00:45:30.494 --> 00:45:31.662
And let me explain why.

00:45:32.396 --> 00:45:34.932
There are some kinds of solar cell

00:45:34.932 --> 00:45:39.036
that we've been experimenting with, like thin film solar cells or perovskite cells,

00:45:39.203 --> 00:45:42.372
which require some less than great elements in their construction.

00:45:42.906 --> 00:45:46.944
But those represent only about 5% of panels made today.

00:45:47.745 --> 00:45:51.482
The vast majority are using monocrystalline silicon at this point,

00:45:51.648 --> 00:45:53.984
which is a material we derive from quartz.

00:45:54.818 --> 00:45:56.286
You know, rocks.

00:45:57.187 --> 00:46:01.592
There are some trace elements of phosphorous, boron and silver in here.

00:46:02.092 --> 00:46:06.497
But based on what I've researched,
the only potentially harmful substance

00:46:06.497 --> 00:46:12.536
people might worry about in this is lead in the solder which makes electrical connections.

00:46:13.070 --> 00:46:14.605
You can see some of it right here.

00:46:15.506 --> 00:46:18.709
But I'm not actually sure that lead is even in this panel!

00:46:19.276 --> 00:46:22.446
We've had lead free solder for quite some time, though...

00:46:22.446 --> 00:46:24.715
as any electronics enthusiast will tell you,

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.

00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:34.291
I say that because it's possible
these will always have to use lead solder

00:46:34.291 --> 00:46:36.593
to get a good bond with the silicon cells.

00:46:37.161 --> 00:46:39.363
But even if that's true,

00:46:40.164 --> 00:46:42.032
we know how to deal with lead.

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?

00:46:49.740 --> 00:46:52.342
Every time you buy a car battery from a store,

00:46:52.543 --> 00:46:55.179
you're going to have to pay what's called a core charge,

00:46:55.245 --> 00:46:59.416
which you don't get refunded until you bring your old battery back to the store.

00:46:59.616 --> 00:47:01.251
And that's to encourage recycling.

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.

00:47:08.992 --> 00:47:13.230
We have a nearly closed loop recycling stream already established for them.

00:47:13.931 --> 00:47:16.900
That's some foreshadowing for the “what about the batteries?” section,

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.

00:47:24.374 --> 00:47:25.742
We just have to want to.

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.

00:47:33.050 --> 00:47:37.354
The worn out solar cells could be melted down and purified into new silicon

00:47:37.354 --> 00:47:40.824
to make new wafers, to make new cells at the end of a panels life.

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,

00:47:47.731 --> 00:47:49.433
you have to remember two things:

00:47:49.933 --> 00:47:54.471
First, each panel will last a quarter of a century or longer!

00:47:55.005 --> 00:47:58.275
And second, those cells are extremely thin,

00:47:58.275 --> 00:48:00.744
usually less than 200 micrometers,

00:48:01.011 --> 00:48:03.313
and thus have almost no material in them at all.

00:48:04.481 --> 00:48:07.050
I wanted to remove the cells from this panel

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,

00:48:12.623 --> 00:48:16.326
but they're so thin and fragile that I could not peel away the coating

00:48:16.326 --> 00:48:18.528
which seals them to the glass without destroying them.

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.

00:48:25.502 --> 00:48:28.839
The magic of buying two of them has unfortunately failed us.

00:48:29.640 --> 00:48:31.608
However, I has internet!

00:48:32.209 --> 00:48:34.544
Assuming a thickness of 200 micrometers,

00:48:34.745 --> 00:48:36.880
which appears to be on the thicker side these days,

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.

00:48:44.955 --> 00:48:49.393
The total volume would thus be about 94.5cm³,

00:48:49.693 --> 00:48:53.964
and the density of silicon is about 2.3g/cm³,

00:48:53.997 --> 00:48:58.902
meaning this solar panel has maybe 215g of silicon in it.

00:48:59.970 --> 00:49:02.606
That's about 3% of its total mass.

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.

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.

00:49:17.254 --> 00:49:19.423
Now, that's not a lot for an individual panel,

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.

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.

00:49:31.902 --> 00:49:33.637
And that is certainly a lot.

00:49:34.438 --> 00:49:36.540
But it's probably not as much as you might think.

00:49:37.140 --> 00:49:39.643
For one thing, right now in the US,

00:49:39.643 --> 00:49:45.449
we put some 265 million metric tons of stuff in landfills every year.

00:49:46.249 --> 00:49:50.721
So if we simply landfilled all that silicon, which I will remind you

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,

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.

00:50:03.867 --> 00:50:06.903
And we'd only need to do that every quarter of a century.

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?

00:50:14.444 --> 00:50:16.446
That's what's really important to remember.

00:50:16.880 --> 00:50:18.815
The amount of silicon, or in fact,

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.

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,

00:50:35.165 --> 00:50:38.935
then the amount of material used per day is irrelevant.

00:50:39.603 --> 00:50:44.041
Anyone trying to get you to focus on that is fear mongering and deflecting your attention

00:50:44.041 --> 00:50:49.679
away from the fact that currently we burn through millions of barrels of oil every day.

00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:51.982
And now here we are.

00:50:52.482 --> 00:50:54.151
What about the batteries?

00:50:54.885 --> 00:50:59.056
If we actually live in this imagined future of nothing but solar energy

00:50:59.523 --> 00:51:01.825
which in case it's not clear, I don't think we will

00:51:01.858 --> 00:51:05.062
because we have many different sources of energy
available to us as well.

00:51:05.495 --> 00:51:07.864
But if we actually live in this future,

00:51:08.165 --> 00:51:10.634
we have to deal with when the sun's not shining

00:51:11.134 --> 00:51:13.470
and we do that with batteries.

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

00:51:20.143 --> 00:51:24.815
and the excess we're not using will charge enormous banks of batteries

00:51:24.815 --> 00:51:28.452
so that when the sun sets and the panels stop producing any output,

00:51:28.885 --> 00:51:31.688
we have stored energy to get us through to sunrise.

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.

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.

00:51:44.668 --> 00:51:47.604
There's a huge variety of ways we could solve this issue,

00:51:47.971 --> 00:51:50.273
and that's one of the cool things about electricity.

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.

00:51:55.579 --> 00:52:00.083
And those suckers absolutely do have some nasty chemicals in there.

00:52:00.317 --> 00:52:02.686
And we're going to need to extract a whole lot of raw

00:52:02.686 --> 00:52:05.388
material from mines and whatnot to get them.

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.

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:

00:52:20.470 --> 00:52:23.473
The first fact is that they last many years now.

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.

00:52:32.349 --> 00:52:36.386
That's 15 years of daily use of the same battery pack

00:52:36.520 --> 00:52:41.424
as opposed to fossil fuels which can all be used, I remind you, once.

00:52:42.425 --> 00:52:43.927
And the second core fact

00:52:43.927 --> 00:52:46.096
is that when those batteries have degraded,

00:52:46.796 --> 00:52:48.265
they're still there!

00:52:49.065 --> 00:52:54.237
When battery cells degrade, it's not as if the material inside of them is disappearing.

00:52:54.905 --> 00:53:00.043
What's actually happening is that the physical arrangements of those materials is slowly changing.

00:53:00.710 --> 00:53:06.449
As the reversible chemical reaction which we call charging and discharging the battery occurs inside,

00:53:06.850 --> 00:53:09.986
little bits of material in the anodes and cathodes can start

00:53:09.986 --> 00:53:13.757
breaking off and moving around, creating structures inside

00:53:13.757 --> 00:53:17.227
that eventually start to block the chemical reaction from happening

00:53:17.460 --> 00:53:19.863
and reduce the battery cell’s ability to function.

00:53:21.031 --> 00:53:26.503
But that does not mean any of the materials have transformed into something else.

00:53:27.170 --> 00:53:31.141
You can't take a lithium atom for example, and turn it into iron.

00:53:31.675 --> 00:53:36.546
All the lithium that was in there when the battery was made is still there.

00:53:37.113 --> 00:53:39.182
So when the battery wears out,

00:53:39.516 --> 00:53:42.152
all of the lithium inside can be recovered.

00:53:42.953 --> 00:53:44.854
Let's talk about mining for a second.

00:53:45.455 --> 00:53:48.992
When we find new deposits of some substance we're looking for,

00:53:49.426 --> 00:53:51.561
it's not as if someone just happens

00:53:51.561 --> 00:53:55.532
upon a giant lump of pure cobalt, and we start cutting chunks out of it.

00:53:56.099 --> 00:54:00.103
No, we find a deposit of ore which is rich in that material.

00:54:00.837 --> 00:54:04.241
Then we'll dig up that ore and do lots of fancy processing

00:54:04.274 --> 00:54:07.978
to extract the cobalt or whatever from the rest of the rocks and purify it.

00:54:09.179 --> 00:54:10.380
Why am I telling you this?

00:54:11.281 --> 00:54:16.052
Because the richest ore for whatever material you need to build a battery...

00:54:16.052 --> 00:54:17.587
is used batteries!

00:54:18.154 --> 00:54:20.223
We are already starting up processes

00:54:20.357 --> 00:54:23.159
where we grind up used lithium ion batteries

00:54:23.293 --> 00:54:25.762
and turn them into a mineral rich paste,

00:54:25.762 --> 00:54:28.398
which, just like the raw ore we get out of the ground,

00:54:28.665 --> 00:54:33.436
can be processed into the raw material inputs that built that battery in the first place.

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.

00:54:40.877 --> 00:54:45.448
Unlike fossil fuels where we toil away
extracting and purifying resources

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...

00:54:52.155 --> 00:54:53.723
we are *building* something!

00:54:54.457 --> 00:54:58.461
We're extracting and purifying resources to make a durable good,

00:54:58.461 --> 00:55:00.730
which will last many, many years.

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,

00:55:07.470 --> 00:55:10.407
everything inside that durable good can be recovered.

00:55:11.074 --> 00:55:14.344
That's kind of the whole point of renewable energy.

00:55:14.678 --> 00:55:17.614
It's called renewable because it's not disposable.

00:55:17.814 --> 00:55:20.817
It's a resource we can use again and again and again

00:55:20.817 --> 00:55:22.886
without worrying about running out.

00:55:23.820 --> 00:55:25.789
Now, a lot of people like to point out

00:55:25.789 --> 00:55:29.959
that we don't have a huge industry recycling lithium ion batteries yet,

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.

00:55:37.033 --> 00:55:41.104
The biggest supply comes from electric cars with worn out battery packs.

00:55:41.104 --> 00:55:47.577
But again, modern battery chemistries in thermally controlled battery packs last decades.

00:55:47.911 --> 00:55:50.447
So aside from first gen Nissan Leafs,

00:55:50.447 --> 00:55:53.450
which had a uniquely terrible battery pack design,

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.

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.

00:56:05.929 --> 00:56:08.565
That happens way more often than a battery pack failure.

00:56:09.499 --> 00:56:13.103
So it's not like a recycling industry isn't going to happen,

00:56:13.503 --> 00:56:15.004
in fact, it's already happening!

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

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,

00:56:29.719 --> 00:56:31.254
meaning they are still in use.

00:56:31.254 --> 00:56:32.455
They're just not in a car.

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.

00:56:40.330 --> 00:56:41.164
That reason?

00:56:42.098 --> 00:56:43.800
We’re still learning.

00:56:44.667 --> 00:56:48.271
We are constantly learning how to build better batteries.

00:56:48.438 --> 00:56:51.508
Name any material of concern inside a battery pack,

00:56:51.508 --> 00:56:55.779
and I can guarantee you there are engineers out there trying to eliminate it.

00:56:56.579 --> 00:56:59.149
Lithium iron phosphate cells, for example,

00:56:59.249 --> 00:57:01.985
don't contain nickel, manganese, or cobalt.

00:57:02.552 --> 00:57:05.422
And in addition to eliminating the need for conflict minerals,

00:57:05.822 --> 00:57:08.658
LFP battery chemistry is also much more stable,

00:57:08.825 --> 00:57:12.729
meaning the risks of battery fires have been reduced dramatically.

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.

00:57:19.169 --> 00:57:20.370
They use sodium.

00:57:20.537 --> 00:57:22.172
You know the stuff in ramen noodles?

00:57:22.539 --> 00:57:23.740
Table salt.

00:57:23.840 --> 00:57:27.610
The stuff we can get simply by filling a pot with seawater and waiting a while.

00:57:28.711 --> 00:57:31.614
Sodium ion batteries are not as energy dense,

00:57:31.614 --> 00:57:34.517
so they'll probably not be a great fit for electric cars,

00:57:34.851 --> 00:57:40.256
but they'll be a fantastic fit for the large grid scale energy storage facilities

00:57:40.256 --> 00:57:42.559
which are already being built all the time.

00:57:43.326 --> 00:57:46.162
And if you've read about battery fires at those facilities,

00:57:46.329 --> 00:57:49.165
that's a huge reason we're looking into sodium ion.

00:57:49.632 --> 00:57:51.768
That chemistry is far more stable

00:57:51.768 --> 00:57:55.805
and seems nearly immune from thermal runaway risks from what I understand.

00:57:56.539 --> 00:58:00.677
We are constantly learning new things as we try to crack this nut.

00:58:01.778 --> 00:58:02.612
I remind you,

00:58:02.612 --> 00:58:05.882
the energy we get from solar panels is free,

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.

00:58:11.855 --> 00:58:18.761
We are and have always been working on building better, cheaper, longer lasting, less dangerous batteries

00:58:18.928 --> 00:58:21.664
which use materials we can find in our own backyard.

00:58:22.198 --> 00:58:25.268
So whatever you've heard that might make you concerned

00:58:25.535 --> 00:58:29.973
is not guaranteed to be relevant in the next few years or even tomorrow.

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),

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.

00:58:45.822 --> 00:58:47.290
That's the end game.

00:58:47.891 --> 00:58:49.792
I've seen a lot of people say things like,

00:58:49.792 --> 00:58:51.928
“well, lithium is just going to become the new oil!”

00:58:51.928 --> 00:58:55.331
but that completely misunderstands the realities here.

00:58:55.965 --> 00:59:01.237
We cannot stop extracting oil because we burn it as we use it.

00:59:01.938 --> 00:59:06.309
Yes, renewable energy technology will require lots of extraction to build,

00:59:06.843 --> 00:59:09.879
but we don't destroy what we extracted.

00:59:10.680 --> 00:59:12.649
That is what we do with fossil fuels.

00:59:12.682 --> 00:59:14.751
We burn them as we use them.

00:59:14.751 --> 00:59:15.952
And that's the problem.

00:59:16.486 --> 00:59:20.456
There's scarcity built into fossil fuels because it disappears.

00:59:20.623 --> 00:59:23.693
Each and every gallon of gasoline you've ever purchased,

00:59:23.693 --> 00:59:27.297
except for what's sitting in your gas tank right this moment, is gone.

00:59:28.131 --> 00:59:32.602
But the battery pack I purchased alongside my car is still with us.

00:59:33.236 --> 00:59:34.437
It's right there.

00:59:34.804 --> 00:59:38.141
All of the raw materials it's made from are still inside of it,

00:59:38.141 --> 00:59:39.876
and we are able to get to them.

00:59:40.376 --> 00:59:42.312
And so when it's no longer doing its job

00:59:42.312 --> 00:59:44.981
as I need it to, it will live another life.

00:59:45.515 --> 00:59:48.484
Just as the steel which makes up the rest of the car will be crushed

00:59:48.484 --> 00:59:49.786
and turned into new cars,

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.

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,

01:00:04.834 --> 01:00:08.404
eventually we'll have built enough of them to do everything we need to do.

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.

01:00:14.777 --> 01:00:18.214
And once we've built enough batteries for grid scale energy storage,

01:00:18.615 --> 01:00:20.917
well, we'll have built enough batteries.

01:00:21.217 --> 01:00:24.087
There does come a day when we have built enough,

01:00:24.087 --> 01:00:27.323
because we only use energy when we choose to do things

01:00:27.323 --> 01:00:29.525
like cook food or drive a car.

01:00:29.859 --> 01:00:32.595
And there's only so many humans on this planet choosing to do stuff.

01:00:33.363 --> 01:00:34.964
And when they start wearing out then, yeah,

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.

01:00:41.938 --> 01:00:44.040
We'll have to find some new lithium to make up

01:00:44.040 --> 01:00:46.309
for whatever is lost in the recovery process.

01:00:46.643 --> 01:00:50.046
But if we can follow the example of lead acid battery recycling

01:00:50.246 --> 01:00:52.215
and all but completely closed the loop,

01:00:52.582 --> 01:00:55.652
then in a theoretical 50 years down the road scenario,

01:00:55.652 --> 01:00:59.322
perhaps 1 in 100 lithium mines will remain operational.

01:00:59.922 --> 01:01:01.624
The rest of them will have closed down

01:01:01.624 --> 01:01:06.929
because when we need to build new batteries, we'll get lithium from old batteries.

01:01:07.797 --> 01:01:11.134
But the best part is something I mentioned way back at the start.

01:01:12.035 --> 01:01:13.703
We're already here.

01:01:14.570 --> 01:01:20.743
Solar and storage is now the cheapest form of electricity generation we know of.

01:01:20.743 --> 01:01:25.481
For years, the barrier to making solar energy happen at scale was simply cost.

01:01:25.882 --> 01:01:28.418
We had functional solar panels decades ago,

01:01:28.718 --> 01:01:31.220
but they were ludicrously expensive to manufacture.

01:01:31.387 --> 01:01:34.290
And that's why the only places you tended to find them were on,

01:01:34.724 --> 01:01:37.493
like the International Space Station and satellites and junk.

01:01:38.394 --> 01:01:41.664
But now we are way under $1 per watt.

01:01:41.998 --> 01:01:45.068
Random websites will sell me, a random schmuck,

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.

01:01:51.407 --> 01:01:54.610
They already are when you have a contract for 27 MW worth.

01:01:55.445 --> 01:01:58.648
Of course, I care deeply about the materials angle

01:01:58.881 --> 01:02:02.118
and appreciate the fact that unlike all fossil fuels,

01:02:02.385 --> 01:02:04.954
nearly everything we extract out of the ground

01:02:04.954 --> 01:02:09.859
to build solar panels and batteries can be recaptured at the end of their life

01:02:09.859 --> 01:02:11.994
to make new solar panels and batteries.

01:02:12.395 --> 01:02:13.830
I like that a lot.

01:02:14.664 --> 01:02:17.033
But even if you don't care about that,

01:02:17.300 --> 01:02:19.502
the sun is free!

01:02:19.802 --> 01:02:23.172
And both solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough

01:02:23.172 --> 01:02:26.309
to make practical use of that free source of energy.

01:02:27.276 --> 01:02:28.745
We are here.

01:02:29.245 --> 01:02:33.382
We made it and the future looks quite bright.

01:02:34.317 --> 01:02:36.753
♫ anomalously smooth jazz ♫

01:02:40.256 --> 01:02:41.190
Oh, sorry.

01:02:41.190 --> 01:02:42.692
Yeah, this isn't the actual end.

01:02:43.326 --> 01:02:47.563
If you watch until the actual end,
I promise I'll explain why I did that.

01:02:47.563 --> 01:02:48.765
But for now,

01:02:49.732 --> 01:02:50.967
I want to ask you something.

01:02:51.934 --> 01:02:54.504
Did this video make sense to you?

01:02:55.204 --> 01:02:57.907
A while ago, I put a quick talking to camera thing

01:02:57.940 --> 01:03:00.409
together on my second channel, where I basically just

01:03:01.144 --> 01:03:03.513
explained the whole situation here and asked,

01:03:03.513 --> 01:03:07.717
why does the logic of pay more upfront to save more later

01:03:08.317 --> 01:03:11.287
break down whenever we're talking about renewable energy?

01:03:12.155 --> 01:03:15.625
It was a pretty snarky video and very off the cuff.

01:03:16.292 --> 01:03:18.628
I don't even remember what prompted me to make it.

01:03:19.061 --> 01:03:21.364
But at last year's Open Sauce,

01:03:21.364 --> 01:03:23.566
which, by the way, I'll be headed to again this year,

01:03:24.233 --> 01:03:27.436
I had a wonderful conversation with someone who told me

01:03:27.570 --> 01:03:29.405
that video changed their mind.

01:03:30.273 --> 01:03:32.909
I have to apologize because I don't remember your name.

01:03:32.909 --> 01:03:35.144
But I very much remember that conversation.

01:03:35.144 --> 01:03:37.113
And it's been stuck in my head ever since.

01:03:38.314 --> 01:03:41.350
See, the logic of renewable energy

01:03:41.551 --> 01:03:43.586
seemed self-evident to me.

01:03:43.753 --> 01:03:47.523
And that's why the video was as snarky as it was.

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,

01:03:51.527 --> 01:03:54.730
but it probably comes across that way, so I apologize in advance.

01:03:54.730 --> 01:03:59.468
But as soon as I was old enough to understand what photovoltaics did

01:03:59.969 --> 01:04:03.573
and that like almost every technology we've ever dealt with,

01:04:03.573 --> 01:04:06.642
eventually we'd figure out how to make solar panels cheaply.

01:04:07.343 --> 01:04:10.313
I immediately thought, oh, cool.

01:04:10.313 --> 01:04:12.715
So eventually we'll be able to stop burning

01:04:12.715 --> 01:04:14.851
expensive stuff to generate electricity.

01:04:15.685 --> 01:04:19.021
And that mental reality has been in my head

01:04:19.021 --> 01:04:22.158
so long that I never thought to explain it.

01:04:22.758 --> 01:04:26.462
I kind of assumed everyone already knew what we were trying to do

01:04:26.629 --> 01:04:29.432
by commercializing solar and storage technologies.

01:04:30.333 --> 01:04:32.301
So when I discovered it's

01:04:32.301 --> 01:04:35.504
not as self-evident to everyone as it was to me,

01:04:36.606 --> 01:04:39.175
well, that's when I started thinking about making this video.

01:04:39.942 --> 01:04:42.011
And in the process of making this one,

01:04:42.278 --> 01:04:44.914
I've been reflecting on some of the other videos I've made.

01:04:45.448 --> 01:04:49.886
For instance, the videos I've done on heat pumps and electrification, etc.

01:04:50.953 --> 01:04:53.756
I made those videos assuming that everyone who watched

01:04:53.756 --> 01:04:55.591
them was on the same page as me,

01:04:56.058 --> 01:04:58.361
and that comments which were perplexed by my desire

01:04:58.361 --> 01:05:00.863
to stop paying for things we set on fire,

01:05:01.197 --> 01:05:03.466
were coming from a place of malice.

01:05:04.367 --> 01:05:05.935
I'm sure some were.

01:05:06.402 --> 01:05:10.506
But I also know that not everyone is really thinking about resilience

01:05:10.506 --> 01:05:14.310
and the value of permanent infrastructure in the way that I am.

01:05:15.244 --> 01:05:17.613
Lots of those comments were probably honest,

01:05:17.847 --> 01:05:21.684
especially when I made arguments couched in my own internalized reality

01:05:21.884 --> 01:05:25.254
which understands that natural gas is very cheap today,

01:05:25.588 --> 01:05:28.624
but it is likely to become more expensive in the future.

01:05:28.824 --> 01:05:32.695
While electricity is almost certainly going to get cheaper.

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.

01:05:42.939 --> 01:05:44.140
But I digress.

01:05:44.407 --> 01:05:49.178
I am always thinking both through lens of history and opportunity.

01:05:49.912 --> 01:05:52.214
And that's why when I look at an electrical panel,

01:05:52.448 --> 01:05:55.785
I don't see a boring piece of infrastructure
everyone has in their house.

01:05:56.352 --> 01:05:59.789
I see an endless variety of new opportunities.

01:06:00.456 --> 01:06:02.224
If you've got a natural gas connection,

01:06:02.391 --> 01:06:06.429
then you probably have at most four appliances
which actually utilize it.

01:06:06.929 --> 01:06:11.968
Meanwhile, literally everything else you own is powered by the wires that are in your house.

01:06:12.768 --> 01:06:14.470
Everything we've invented in the last

01:06:14.870 --> 01:06:17.239
what, century? Is electric.

01:06:17.673 --> 01:06:21.711
All the innovation we've been doing to make our lives better relies on electricity.

01:06:22.311 --> 01:06:25.314
And all the innovation which happens in the realm of fossil fuels

01:06:25.715 --> 01:06:28.084
is how to use them slightly more efficiently.

01:06:29.218 --> 01:06:29.885
That's it.

01:06:29.885 --> 01:06:33.522
And we're already damn near perfectly optimized in a lot of cases.

01:06:33.723 --> 01:06:35.825
There's very little room left to innovate,

01:06:36.692 --> 01:06:40.529
But we are always innovating with electric technologies.

01:06:40.763 --> 01:06:43.299
And since your house already has wires in it,

01:06:43.699 --> 01:06:46.402
you can add new things and new technologies

01:06:46.402 --> 01:06:48.504
to your home with very little effort.

01:06:49.171 --> 01:06:50.906
When the personal computer hit the scene,

01:06:51.207 --> 01:06:53.376
nobody needed to do an engineering study

01:06:53.376 --> 01:06:56.712
or get permits to get one because you just plug it in.

01:06:57.546 --> 01:07:00.449
Some things, like installing an electric car charger,

01:07:00.750 --> 01:07:04.420
are a little more difficult, but they still utilize the feed wires

01:07:04.420 --> 01:07:07.957
you already have and the power grid which already exists.

01:07:08.824 --> 01:07:12.328
Electrification seems like the most rational thing we should be doing.

01:07:12.595 --> 01:07:14.363
We can leverage infrastructure

01:07:14.397 --> 01:07:17.199
which is already in place to distribute

01:07:17.199 --> 01:07:21.270
and utilize the free energy we can harvest from the sun, the wind,

01:07:21.270 --> 01:07:23.906
or maybe even the hot rocks beneath our feet.

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,

01:07:30.479 --> 01:07:34.050
in many cases, simply by replacing wires and transformers.

01:07:34.717 --> 01:07:38.421
That's how the grid went from not existing, to

01:07:38.421 --> 01:07:42.558
existing basically just for electric lights, to everyone has air conditioning now.

01:07:43.459 --> 01:07:44.794
And that's a perfect segway...

01:07:45.127 --> 01:07:46.362
Oh, those were also electric.

01:07:47.329 --> 01:07:52.768
Anyway, that's the perfect segue to addressing the “misled” in the video title.

01:07:53.736 --> 01:07:55.104
And well,

01:07:56.338 --> 01:07:58.374
now the snark levels are going to go up a bit.

01:07:59.208 --> 01:08:01.277
Let's just, uhhh, roll some clips.

01:08:01.911 --> 01:08:05.681
You know, I also just want to point out I drove my electric car out here.

01:08:05.781 --> 01:08:11.954
I'm 134 miles from Millennium Park in downtown Chicago which is a pretty rural area.

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.

01:08:15.991 --> 01:08:17.193
I don't know what that's about.

01:08:17.393 --> 01:08:19.028
Something else I should point out.

01:08:19.328 --> 01:08:21.430
I didn't spend any time charging the car

01:08:21.430 --> 01:08:24.066
because I spent the night at a friend's house and her house,

01:08:24.066 --> 01:08:25.968
believe it or not, has electricity.

01:08:26.268 --> 01:08:29.171
So I just plugged the car into her house, and then it charged overnight.

01:08:29.438 --> 01:08:30.139
It's wild.

01:08:30.139 --> 01:08:31.674
Did you know homes have electricity?

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

01:08:36.145 --> 01:08:39.915
because I wanted to find out if they really make that RRRER RRRER RRRER

01:08:39.915 --> 01:08:41.550
noise that some people say they make.

01:08:41.951 --> 01:08:45.354
And, you know, I can hear some whooshing from the blades every time it goes past,

01:08:45.354 --> 01:08:47.056
but it's not that loud.

01:08:47.790 --> 01:08:49.191
Standing right beneath it,

01:08:49.592 --> 01:08:53.262
and I can hear the blade whooshing by, but, I don't know.

01:08:53.295 --> 01:08:54.597
Just take a listen for yourself.

01:08:55.631 --> 01:08:59.068
[faint repeating whoosh sounds with an even fainter 60 Hz hum from the transformer]

01:08:59.869 --> 01:09:01.504
Are these are these really that loud?

01:09:01.537 --> 01:09:03.405
Let me just let me just walk around this way.

01:09:03.606 --> 01:09:05.641
By the way, I'm also taking a look on the ground

01:09:05.641 --> 01:09:08.110
to see if there's a bunch of dead birds around here.

01:09:08.978 --> 01:09:12.047
I hear that these things are just murder factories for birds.

01:09:12.047 --> 01:09:13.015
But I don't know. I'm not.

01:09:13.015 --> 01:09:14.216
I'm not seeing any.

01:09:16.285 --> 01:09:17.720
It's a really windy day out.

01:09:17.753 --> 01:09:21.323
Honestly, just the wind is kind of louder than the whooshing of the blades.

01:09:22.458 --> 01:09:25.628
Yeah, if it's not clear yet, I'm going there.

01:09:26.262 --> 01:09:29.398
But before I do, it's important to me that you understand

01:09:29.398 --> 01:09:35.070
and grasp the difference between small p politics and capital P Partisanship.

01:09:36.138 --> 01:09:39.308
A lot of people in the United States right now confuse those two,

01:09:39.575 --> 01:09:42.111
and think any discussion of a political issue

01:09:42.411 --> 01:09:45.247
must have been bought and paid for by the other team.

01:09:46.415 --> 01:09:48.651
That's just not how any of this works.

01:09:49.451 --> 01:09:52.221
If you've been watching my channel for any length of time,

01:09:52.221 --> 01:09:55.224
then you should already have a pretty clear understanding

01:09:55.224 --> 01:09:57.326
of what my personal politics are.

01:09:58.227 --> 01:10:01.197
If you've been under the impression that I've not been political,

01:10:01.630 --> 01:10:04.633
you simply don't understand what politics means.

01:10:05.334 --> 01:10:09.271
I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics,

01:10:09.572 --> 01:10:13.676
but I've been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time,

01:10:14.076 --> 01:10:15.578
and they've not been that subtle.

01:10:16.478 --> 01:10:18.981
Remember that thing I said about getting the most value

01:10:18.981 --> 01:10:20.950
out of how we spend our money and time?

01:10:21.850 --> 01:10:23.385
The money part is obvious,

01:10:23.385 --> 01:10:25.387
but the time part might be less so.

01:10:26.589 --> 01:10:28.591
I have a tremendous respect

01:10:28.591 --> 01:10:30.759
for the working people of this country.

01:10:31.360 --> 01:10:33.562
I certainly have a cushy job these days,

01:10:33.829 --> 01:10:35.864
but I used to work in the hotel industry,

01:10:36.432 --> 01:10:38.467
and I have not forgotten what it's like

01:10:38.467 --> 01:10:41.103
to make ends meet on $14 an hour.

01:10:41.370 --> 01:10:45.641
Nor have I forgotten the amazing
and underappreciated housekeeping staff,

01:10:45.774 --> 01:10:48.644
who were the only reason we could even be in business.

01:10:49.778 --> 01:10:52.548
My connection to those women and their families

01:10:53.048 --> 01:10:56.151
is absolutely part of my personal politics.

01:10:56.518 --> 01:10:59.989
And if the foreshadowing of that isn't clear enough, my God,

01:11:00.022 --> 01:11:01.657
have you not been paying attention.

01:11:02.524 --> 01:11:04.460
I believe in the value of labor,

01:11:04.460 --> 01:11:07.029
and I also respect the purpose of labor.

01:11:07.963 --> 01:11:09.898
Our housekeeping staff was there to do

01:11:09.898 --> 01:11:12.501
the grunt work of cleaning rooms and doing laundry,

01:11:12.835 --> 01:11:16.138
a sort of domestic labor we have never truly valued.

01:11:17.139 --> 01:11:19.508
Front desk me was there to help people

01:11:19.508 --> 01:11:21.410
with whatever problems they might be having.

01:11:22.278 --> 01:11:25.648
Did you know businesses used to put their real phone numbers

01:11:25.648 --> 01:11:28.617
on their websites? When you called my hotel,

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.

01:11:35.124 --> 01:11:37.926
It was old fashioned, but it worked and way

01:11:37.926 --> 01:11:40.929
better than every single customer service chat bot

01:11:40.929 --> 01:11:43.265
I have been forced to interact with lately.

01:11:44.066 --> 01:11:47.770
When I think about the laborers who work on, say, oil rigs,

01:11:47.936 --> 01:11:50.339
I respect what they're doing immensely.

01:11:51.040 --> 01:11:53.275
Those people toil day in and day out

01:11:53.275 --> 01:11:56.211
to make our lives possible, which is noble work.

01:11:57.279 --> 01:11:58.480
But I also think there's a

01:11:58.480 --> 01:12:02.251
crassness to that work, because if we must toil,

01:12:02.551 --> 01:12:05.654
why should we toil as Sisyphus on drilling platforms,

01:12:05.654 --> 01:12:08.324
doing work that brings us fuel to spin our wheels,

01:12:08.324 --> 01:12:09.925
but which moves us nowhere?

01:12:11.126 --> 01:12:13.896
We should build with what we extract.

01:12:13.929 --> 01:12:16.365
We should not just set it on fire.

01:12:17.199 --> 01:12:20.436
And when we build things which make our lives easier,

01:12:20.502 --> 01:12:22.538
we improve the human condition.

01:12:23.405 --> 01:12:28.077
Basically, I just want us to learn stuff and grow our bag of tricks.

01:12:28.344 --> 01:12:31.814
And that's what I've been preaching from this channel the whole time.

01:12:32.548 --> 01:12:37.853
Sometimes that's through looking at interesting pieces 
of old technology and making connections between them.

01:12:38.620 --> 01:12:42.057
There are a lot of lessons we've already learned as a species,

01:12:42.358 --> 01:12:46.395
but which can easily be forgotten if folks aren't sharing those stories.

01:12:47.696 --> 01:12:48.697
Other times,

01:12:48.697 --> 01:12:49.865
that's through teaching things

01:12:49.865 --> 01:12:51.767
like the difference between power and energy.

01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:55.671
Basic facts of our world that if you can learn to intuit,

01:12:55.871 --> 01:12:59.875
are very helpful for understanding your energy bills or indeed

01:13:00.075 --> 01:13:02.878
just how much opportunity solar panels unlock.

01:13:03.946 --> 01:13:07.249
Everything I do here is rooted in my belief

01:13:07.383 --> 01:13:10.753
that all of us should have some basic understanding

01:13:10.919 --> 01:13:13.188
of how the stuff we use in our lives works,

01:13:13.455 --> 01:13:17.025
and what the impact of using that stuff is both on ourselves

01:13:17.259 --> 01:13:19.461
and our fellow humans.

01:13:20.496 --> 01:13:22.531
It is very empowering and protects

01:13:22.531 --> 01:13:25.167
you from people who would otherwise leverage your ignorance

01:13:25.367 --> 01:13:28.537
and scam you into things you don't actually need.

01:13:29.505 --> 01:13:32.174
And another core piece of my personal politics

01:13:32.341 --> 01:13:34.977
comes from something we know deep in our hearts,

01:13:35.344 --> 01:13:37.646
even if we sometimes like to pretend it isn't true.

01:13:38.647 --> 01:13:42.217
We accomplish more when we work together and collaborate.

01:13:42.785 --> 01:13:45.888
The power grid is the ultimate example of that.

01:13:46.455 --> 01:13:49.425
I believe the power grid is the most miraculous machine

01:13:49.425 --> 01:13:51.026
our species has ever created.

01:13:51.760 --> 01:13:54.730
Once we figured out how useful this whole electricity business was,

01:13:54.863 --> 01:13:57.666
we took great efforts to run wires

01:13:57.666 --> 01:13:59.768
to almost every structure in this country.

01:14:00.002 --> 01:14:03.705
Even remote farmhouses, which a traditional view of capital would tell

01:14:03.705 --> 01:14:06.241
you could never recoup that infrastructure investment.

01:14:07.509 --> 01:14:11.180
If you've never spent time amongst the cornfields,
you might not have seen

01:14:11.180 --> 01:14:16.518
the poles and wires that run for miles, sometimes to serve just a single house.

01:14:17.619 --> 01:14:22.090
We decided it was so important that everyone have access to electricity,

01:14:22.191 --> 01:14:24.393
that our government made that happen.

01:14:24.626 --> 01:14:26.728
When the private sector certainly would not.

01:14:27.663 --> 01:14:31.099
But somewhere along the line, we lost the will to do that.

01:14:31.934 --> 01:14:34.136
If you don't know anyone who lives in a rural area,

01:14:34.236 --> 01:14:36.371
you might not know how horrible it can be

01:14:36.371 --> 01:14:38.474
to get reliable internet access out there.

01:14:39.107 --> 01:14:44.379
Even though it's totally possible to get networking anywhere with wireless technologies,

01:14:44.813 --> 01:14:47.316
internet service providers are doing the math and realizing,

01:14:47.316 --> 01:14:49.284
oh, they're just not going to make very much money

01:14:49.284 --> 01:14:50.986
getting broadband out to the boonies.

01:14:51.520 --> 01:14:52.721
So they didn't.

01:14:53.088 --> 01:14:55.691
And somehow the most rational response to this reality

01:14:57.259 --> 01:15:00.195
is a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit?

01:15:01.797 --> 01:15:03.999
As impressive as that is technologically,

01:15:04.466 --> 01:15:08.237
it's kind of crazy making that we're fawning over that solution

01:15:08.237 --> 01:15:10.706
rather than just like blanketing

01:15:10.706 --> 01:15:13.742
the country in 4G a little bit better.

01:15:14.476 --> 01:15:17.679
We've got countless point to point networking options,

01:15:17.880 --> 01:15:20.549
which don't involve launching rockets into space,

01:15:20.716 --> 01:15:23.118
but we dragged our feet so long

01:15:23.285 --> 01:15:26.555
that satellite constellations somehow seem rational.

01:15:27.523 --> 01:15:28.624
Don't get me wrong.

01:15:28.624 --> 01:15:30.492
I used to rely on Starlink,

01:15:30.626 --> 01:15:34.630
and as someone dealing with either a six megabit DSL line
with a whole one

01:15:34.630 --> 01:15:37.332
megabit upload speed, great for a YouTuber,

01:15:37.699 --> 01:15:39.935
or a flaky 4G connection

01:15:39.935 --> 01:15:42.371
that would get overwhelmed to the point of becoming useless

01:15:42.371 --> 01:15:44.773
if too many people were in the area at the same time.

01:15:45.240 --> 01:15:46.942
Starlink was a miracle.

01:15:47.776 --> 01:15:51.547
but if AT&T could just get a better trunk line to that tower

01:15:51.680 --> 01:15:54.249
and maybe put some extra radio equipment there if needed,

01:15:55.117 --> 01:15:57.019
well, then I would never have needed Starlink.

01:15:57.753 --> 01:15:59.621
And what really makes me pull my hair out

01:15:59.721 --> 01:16:03.825
is that AT&T absolutely knows that tower is getting overwhelmed.

01:16:04.393 --> 01:16:06.495
Or at least they should if they're running analytics.

01:16:06.895 --> 01:16:09.398
But they just don't care.

01:16:10.299 --> 01:16:11.833
It's not a big enough problem for them.

01:16:12.801 --> 01:16:15.437
Launching satellites into space to make rural broadband

01:16:15.437 --> 01:16:18.874
happen is an admission of laziness and defeat

01:16:19.007 --> 01:16:21.677
from both Big Telecom and the government.

01:16:22.511 --> 01:16:25.981
It's a solution a billionaire could provide and happily monetize.

01:16:26.582 --> 01:16:29.217
But it's not necessarily the best solution now is it?

01:16:30.419 --> 01:16:33.288
That's called
looking at something with an eye for nuance and complexity.

01:16:33.522 --> 01:16:35.223
Not everything is black and white.

01:16:35.991 --> 01:16:38.093
But the truth is.

01:16:39.161 --> 01:16:41.897
And here are some true facts I'd like you to know.

01:16:42.197 --> 01:16:44.866
And now we are getting into partisan politics.

01:16:45.434 --> 01:16:47.536
Go ahead and click away if you don't want to hear any of this.

01:16:48.270 --> 01:16:50.272
But did you know that President Jimmy Carter

01:16:50.272 --> 01:16:51.974
put solar panels on the White House?

01:16:52.708 --> 01:16:56.712
No, they were not photovoltaic panels, though those did exist at the time.

01:16:57.145 --> 01:16:59.414
They were instead solar water heating panels.

01:16:59.715 --> 01:17:01.817
Those are still common today in sunny climates.

01:17:01.817 --> 01:17:04.620
They're effectively just boxes with black pipes

01:17:04.620 --> 01:17:07.456
zigging and zagging back and forth and solar radiation

01:17:07.456 --> 01:17:09.758
heats the water inside the pipes for free

01:17:10.158 --> 01:17:12.194
and without using any electricity or fuel.

01:17:12.961 --> 01:17:14.696
Carter did this to promote

01:17:14.696 --> 01:17:16.832
the idea of alternative sources of energy,

01:17:17.165 --> 01:17:19.134
something that was very much on our mind

01:17:19.134 --> 01:17:21.336
during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

01:17:22.104 --> 01:17:24.172
And then in 1986,

01:17:24.172 --> 01:17:27.075
President Ronald Reagan took them down.

01:17:28.744 --> 01:17:31.413
Supposedly, the white House was getting its roof resurfaced,

01:17:31.413 --> 01:17:33.749
so they were taken off, which is understandable.

01:17:34.182 --> 01:17:38.020
But what's less understandable
is that he never bothered to put them back.

01:17:39.121 --> 01:17:41.523
Now, President Carter was a Democrat

01:17:41.690 --> 01:17:43.625
and President Reagan was a Republican.

01:17:44.393 --> 01:17:47.896
And in the years since, there has been a repeating pattern

01:17:48.130 --> 01:17:50.732
where Democratic administrations attempt to usher

01:17:50.732 --> 01:17:54.236
in new energy technologies to free us from endless extraction.

01:17:55.270 --> 01:17:58.306
And then Republican administrations swiftly undo that.

01:17:59.007 --> 01:18:01.209
We just went through this when President Biden

01:18:01.209 --> 01:18:02.811
signed the Inflation Reduction Act,

01:18:03.111 --> 01:18:04.913
a weirdly named piece of legislation

01:18:04.913 --> 01:18:07.315
which included a lot of spending for renewable

01:18:07.315 --> 01:18:09.985
energy and electrification investment in this country

01:18:09.985 --> 01:18:12.020
to make panels and batteries here,

01:18:13.388 --> 01:18:14.923
investments that I hope by now,

01:18:14.923 --> 01:18:17.726
you understand, were to lower our costs in the future,

01:18:17.726 --> 01:18:20.729
improve our national security and make our lives better.

01:18:21.630 --> 01:18:23.498
But then President Trump got into power

01:18:23.498 --> 01:18:26.368
and told his Republican Congress critters to repeal

01:18:26.368 --> 01:18:28.003
that law almost immediately.

01:18:28.870 --> 01:18:31.339
Except, no, that's not actually what happened.

01:18:31.573 --> 01:18:33.775
President Trump signed some executive orders

01:18:33.775 --> 01:18:35.243
which froze much of the funding,

01:18:35.343 --> 01:18:38.447
bypassing the very structure of our Constitution,

01:18:38.613 --> 01:18:42.317
which explicitly gives Congress the power of the purse.

01:18:42.617 --> 01:18:45.587
We actually have a whole law, the Congressional Budget

01:18:45.587 --> 01:18:48.023
and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,

01:18:48.156 --> 01:18:50.625
which explicitly makes what Trump did illegal.

01:18:51.460 --> 01:18:53.361
But Republicans currently control

01:18:53.361 --> 01:18:56.298
both houses of Congress, and they've made it very clear

01:18:56.298 --> 01:18:57.766
they do not care to provide

01:18:57.766 --> 01:19:00.969
the checks and balances they're constitutionally obligated to do.

01:19:02.070 --> 01:19:04.272
They are desecrating our Constitution

01:19:04.272 --> 01:19:06.241
because they happen to be on the same team

01:19:06.241 --> 01:19:07.476
as the guy in the white House.

01:19:07.743 --> 01:19:10.078
And as we all know, the primary objective

01:19:10.078 --> 01:19:12.380
of this administration is to own the libs.

01:19:13.148 --> 01:19:14.983
Or is it kidnaping brown people?

01:19:15.751 --> 01:19:17.419
It's getting kind of hard to tell.

01:19:18.120 --> 01:19:20.722
I didn't think masked cowards with guns going around

01:19:20.722 --> 01:19:23.492
demanding papers, please was on the bingo card of my 30s,

01:19:23.658 --> 01:19:24.926
but apparently it was.

01:19:25.193 --> 01:19:27.295
And having looked at that card a little more closely,

01:19:28.063 --> 01:19:31.099
I mean, I've almost got a bingo without even using a free space.

01:19:31.533 --> 01:19:32.534
I've already crossed off,

01:19:32.534 --> 01:19:35.137
threatened to invade Greenland and destroy NATO, threaten

01:19:35.137 --> 01:19:37.639
to annex Canada and papers, please.

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.

01:19:43.879 --> 01:19:45.080
What's that?

01:19:45.413 --> 01:19:46.615
Cross that off too?

01:19:47.082 --> 01:19:49.184
Well, surely I'm not going to be able

01:19:49.184 --> 01:19:52.854
to cross off “government officials telling us our eyes didn't see what we saw.”

01:19:55.023 --> 01:19:55.724
Oh.

01:19:57.959 --> 01:19:59.227
Bingo.

01:19:59.461 --> 01:20:02.731
Folks, you need to wake up and smell the fascism.

01:20:03.598 --> 01:20:05.233
I don't know what imaginary lines

01:20:05.233 --> 01:20:07.235
you might have drawn which could be crossed,

01:20:07.836 --> 01:20:10.639
but if you can't agree we've crossed a very bad one

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.

01:20:17.279 --> 01:20:21.116
Or, I'm so sad to say, CBS news.

01:20:22.250 --> 01:20:23.451
It's bad.

01:20:24.019 --> 01:20:25.787
We are clearly living under leaders

01:20:25.787 --> 01:20:26.988
who have a completely different

01:20:26.988 --> 01:20:29.157
understanding of reality than the rest of us do,

01:20:29.491 --> 01:20:32.027
and they are so high on their own supply

01:20:32.227 --> 01:20:35.297
that their followers will believe abject lies.

01:20:36.698 --> 01:20:38.099
Renewable energy is only

01:20:38.099 --> 01:20:40.635
controversial because they made it so.

01:20:41.203 --> 01:20:43.438
And they don't want you thinking through the reality

01:20:43.438 --> 01:20:47.843
which is free energy from reusable materials, as I've just explained.

01:20:48.176 --> 01:20:52.047
They have donors who still make money selling you fossil fuels,

01:20:52.214 --> 01:20:55.817
and so they do not want you thinking about how much you're spending

01:20:55.817 --> 01:20:58.186
and how we have the opportunity to stop.

01:20:59.654 --> 01:21:00.856
Even worse,

01:21:01.122 --> 01:21:04.259
they'll artificially lower the cost of fossil fuels through subsidies,

01:21:04.593 --> 01:21:07.863
even though they're supposedly the party against that sort of thing.

01:21:08.763 --> 01:21:10.599
I am very scared of what

01:21:10.599 --> 01:21:12.267
the future of this country looks like.

01:21:13.001 --> 01:21:15.303
The Bill of Rights looks to be effectively dead.

01:21:15.837 --> 01:21:16.872
Our First Amendment right

01:21:16.872 --> 01:21:19.174
to protest is being challenged through intimidation,

01:21:19.608 --> 01:21:21.509
and the press that dares to tell the truth

01:21:21.743 --> 01:21:23.511
is being declared an enemy of the people.

01:21:24.379 --> 01:21:26.581
Our Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable

01:21:26.581 --> 01:21:27.782
searches and seizures

01:21:27.782 --> 01:21:31.286
is being gleefully violated, and nobody seems to care.

01:21:32.487 --> 01:21:35.690
Even the Second Amendment might as well be lost.

01:21:35.991 --> 01:21:38.660
Our government used the fact that Alex Pretti,

01:21:38.693 --> 01:21:41.830
a legal firearm holder with a concealed carry permit,

01:21:41.997 --> 01:21:44.900
had a gun on him to justify his murder.

01:21:46.534 --> 01:21:48.970
So do we have a right to bear arms or not?

01:21:49.971 --> 01:21:51.473
Sure doesn't seem like it!

01:21:52.340 --> 01:21:54.876
If you're upset that a tech creator like myself

01:21:54.910 --> 01:21:57.178
is suddenly being explicit about politics,

01:21:57.812 --> 01:22:01.316
then you're not paying enough attention and are part of the problem.

01:22:02.384 --> 01:22:03.885
I should not have to do this.

01:22:04.052 --> 01:22:06.922
I never thought I'd be making a video where I said,

01:22:07.022 --> 01:22:10.558
hey guys, remember that whole Constitution thing?

01:22:11.893 --> 01:22:15.630
I figured our leaders would always uphold it, but they're clearly not.

01:22:16.064 --> 01:22:20.201
The document does not enforce itself, and so it is up to us.

01:22:21.369 --> 01:22:22.704
We had a revolution in

01:22:22.704 --> 01:22:25.540
1776 to escape the tyranny of British rule.

01:22:26.041 --> 01:22:28.109
And the Declaration of Independence describes

01:22:28.109 --> 01:22:31.146
what's going on right now with distressing clarity.

01:22:32.147 --> 01:22:33.348
Let me quote it for you.

01:22:33.715 --> 01:22:36.117
“He has kept among us, in times of peace,

01:22:36.184 --> 01:22:39.187
standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

01:22:39.788 --> 01:22:41.623
He has affected to render the military

01:22:41.623 --> 01:22:44.492
independent of and superior to the civil power.

01:22:45.360 --> 01:22:47.495
He has combined with others to subject us

01:22:47.495 --> 01:22:49.831
to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution

01:22:49.965 --> 01:22:51.900
and unacknowledged by our laws.

01:22:52.267 --> 01:22:55.737
Giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.

01:22:56.404 --> 01:22:59.274
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

01:22:59.607 --> 01:23:03.812
For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders

01:23:03.812 --> 01:23:06.982
which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

01:23:07.916 --> 01:23:10.719
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

01:23:11.252 --> 01:23:13.822
For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

01:23:14.489 --> 01:23:17.826
For depriving us in many cases of the benefit of trial by jury.

01:23:18.660 --> 01:23:21.196
For transporting us beyond seas

01:23:21.196 --> 01:23:23.698
to be tried for pretended offenses.

01:23:25.066 --> 01:23:27.435
Those words were written about King George,

01:23:27.769 --> 01:23:30.338
but they might as well describe Donald Trump.

01:23:34.476 --> 01:23:38.113
We fought the Revolutionary War to be free of tyrannical kings,

01:23:38.113 --> 01:23:40.215
but it looks like we're under tyranny again,

01:23:40.548 --> 01:23:42.717
inflicted on ourselves.

01:23:43.551 --> 01:23:46.721
You may have been one of those people who likes to stay out of politics,

01:23:46.721 --> 01:23:48.890
but politics eventually comes for everyone.

01:23:49.357 --> 01:23:50.792
Here we are,

01:23:51.926 --> 01:23:53.161
for the love of God.

01:23:53.661 --> 01:23:55.296
Please learn from this

01:23:55.296 --> 01:23:58.500
and remember what happens when you stop paying attention

01:23:58.500 --> 01:24:00.568
and let other people think for you.

01:24:01.269 --> 01:24:02.737
It doesn't end well.

01:24:03.638 --> 01:24:05.306
Now, as scared as I am,

01:24:05.473 --> 01:24:07.942
I am still going to vote in the midterms

01:24:07.942 --> 01:24:10.578
and I will be voting against Republicans.

01:24:11.279 --> 01:24:13.148
I think you should too.

01:24:13.848 --> 01:24:16.051
And yes, because the realities of our terrible

01:24:16.051 --> 01:24:18.453
two party system don't always sink in to everyone.

01:24:19.220 --> 01:24:22.490
I am saying I think you should vote for Democrats in November.

01:24:23.291 --> 01:24:25.093
I am not a huge fan

01:24:25.126 --> 01:24:27.829
of a lot of what the Democratic Party is up to these days.

01:24:28.930 --> 01:24:31.900
They seem, unfortunately, to be far more beholden

01:24:31.900 --> 01:24:33.134
to corporate interests

01:24:33.134 --> 01:24:35.470
than they're concerned with the lives of their constituents.

01:24:35.870 --> 01:24:38.006
Universal health care still hasn't happened.

01:24:38.173 --> 01:24:40.275
And the best reason I can think that's the case

01:24:40.308 --> 01:24:43.678
is that the for profit health care lobby is very influential.

01:24:44.879 --> 01:24:47.282
Meanwhile, constituents such as myself

01:24:47.315 --> 01:24:49.150
haven't even been able to leave a voicemail

01:24:49.150 --> 01:24:50.819
at any of Senator Durbin's offices

01:24:50.819 --> 01:24:53.388
because there all all the inboxes are full.

01:24:54.689 --> 01:24:57.058
They've been very disappointing.

01:24:57.125 --> 01:24:59.994
But right now, we are heading into a primary season,

01:25:00.228 --> 01:25:03.898
and you'll have the opportunity to vote in those primaries very soon

01:25:04.099 --> 01:25:07.669
to tell Democrats how you want them to act.

01:25:09.003 --> 01:25:11.873
Please make sure you are registered to vote in general

01:25:11.873 --> 01:25:15.009
and in the Democratic primary if that's required in your state.

01:25:15.743 --> 01:25:17.712
If you don't know how to do that, call

01:25:17.712 --> 01:25:19.714
or walk into your local library.

01:25:20.248 --> 01:25:22.383
The people there have the same mission I do

01:25:22.484 --> 01:25:26.287
to share knowledge and be helpful, and they'll guide you.

01:25:27.055 --> 01:25:30.058
Be sure you ask them how the primary process works in your state,

01:25:30.058 --> 01:25:32.727
and whether you need to declare a party affiliation to vote in it.

01:25:33.328 --> 01:25:35.797
And by the way, just throwing this out there,

01:25:36.164 --> 01:25:38.333
the process of registering to vote is

01:25:38.333 --> 01:25:40.535
how we verify the citizenship of voters.

01:25:40.869 --> 01:25:44.939
You have to be on the voter rolls before you can cast a vote.

01:25:45.673 --> 01:25:47.442
But it's a lot easier for Republicans

01:25:47.442 --> 01:25:50.745
to ignore that fact and lie by omission to make

01:25:50.745 --> 01:25:54.048
you think massive voter fraud from non-citizens keeps happening.

01:25:54.349 --> 01:25:56.651
They lie all the time,

01:25:56.684 --> 01:25:58.553
and people need to stop listening to them.

01:25:59.287 --> 01:26:01.723
This isn't just normal “politicians always lie” stuff.

01:26:01.890 --> 01:26:04.459
This is active propaganda designed

01:26:04.459 --> 01:26:07.262
to make you distrustful of your fellow human beings.

01:26:07.362 --> 01:26:09.597
It's disgusting and shameful.

01:26:10.532 --> 01:26:13.134
How did we get to a place where the president can say

01:26:13.168 --> 01:26:17.906
other countries pay for tariffs and literally nobody cares that he's lying?

01:26:18.139 --> 01:26:20.575
He's counting on his base not understanding

01:26:20.808 --> 01:26:23.778
that you can't just charge someone extra money

01:26:23.778 --> 01:26:26.581
when you buy something from them, because

01:26:27.815 --> 01:26:29.617
that's just not how trade works.

01:26:30.151 --> 01:26:32.120
Hell, that's not even how commerce works.

01:26:32.620 --> 01:26:34.722
I can't walk into Menards and demand

01:26:34.722 --> 01:26:37.058
they pay me to buy their products,

01:26:37.792 --> 01:26:40.595
but the only people who are willing to say that plainly

01:26:41.129 --> 01:26:44.232
were independent journalists and freaking YouTubers.

01:26:45.133 --> 01:26:46.601
The stalwarts of the press

01:26:46.834 --> 01:26:49.938
just kept writing headlines as if reality was up for debate.

01:26:50.238 --> 01:26:52.207
And they still haven't cut that shit out.

01:26:53.308 --> 01:26:54.576
It is terrifying

01:26:54.609 --> 01:26:57.312
how nobody is interested in holding anyone accountable

01:26:57.312 --> 01:26:58.846
for anything these days.

01:26:59.814 --> 01:27:01.749
But while I am terrified,

01:27:02.016 --> 01:27:03.651
I am also increasingly hopeful.

01:27:04.419 --> 01:27:07.522
The people of Minnesota are demonstrating what we have to do.

01:27:08.156 --> 01:27:10.525
We have to care for each other.

01:27:11.359 --> 01:27:13.494
Don't wait for someone to lend a helping hand.

01:27:13.695 --> 01:27:15.196
Be that helping hand.

01:27:16.030 --> 01:27:18.099
Organizing networks are popping up everywhere

01:27:18.099 --> 01:27:22.103
because those of us who managed to grow up into adults,

01:27:22.637 --> 01:27:24.939
who care about people other than ourselves,

01:27:25.540 --> 01:27:27.075
are not going to stand by

01:27:27.075 --> 01:27:30.178
and let this illegitimate government run by petulant toddlers,

01:27:30.311 --> 01:27:34.849
violate the Constitution
and the very principles that make America great.

01:27:35.984 --> 01:27:39.320
My fellow Midwesterners in Minnesota have made me so proud.

01:27:40.455 --> 01:27:41.656
Stay strong

01:27:42.023 --> 01:27:44.425
and keep teaching us how to be brave and resist

01:27:44.425 --> 01:27:47.929
this horrible chapter of our history with steadfast,

01:27:47.929 --> 01:27:49.764
nonviolent defiance.

01:27:50.665 --> 01:27:54.168
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a lawless group

01:27:54.168 --> 01:27:57.672
of masked thugs terrorizing our cities and neighbors

01:27:57.839 --> 01:28:00.375
for daring to look not quite white.

01:28:01.843 --> 01:28:04.979
Anyone who has any understanding of history

01:28:05.179 --> 01:28:08.049
will know that it is happening here.

01:28:08.249 --> 01:28:10.585
And if you believe that to be true, then

01:28:10.585 --> 01:28:14.188
you should also believe that ICE must be abolished.

01:28:15.390 --> 01:28:17.425
And if that freaks you out, I'm going to guess

01:28:17.425 --> 01:28:20.728
you've been told the people who say that want completely open borders.

01:28:21.296 --> 01:28:24.132
Some people do, but most people simply

01:28:24.132 --> 01:28:27.335
took the poem on the Statue of Liberty as meaningful

01:28:28.002 --> 01:28:30.271
and think this country should open its arms

01:28:30.271 --> 01:28:32.907
wide and provide a legal pathway to immigration.

01:28:32.940 --> 01:28:36.177
Just as our ancestors did on the storied Ellis Island.

01:28:37.245 --> 01:28:38.846
It is our decades long

01:28:38.846 --> 01:28:41.683
inability to have true immigration reform occur

01:28:41.716 --> 01:28:45.286
which put us in this place and what we're doing today to fix

01:28:45.286 --> 01:28:47.588
it is clearly wrong.

01:28:48.389 --> 01:28:51.292
It is a racist ethnic cleansing operation

01:28:51.292 --> 01:28:54.128
happening on the pretext of childcare fraud,

01:28:54.262 --> 01:28:56.597
which was already being investigated and dealt

01:28:56.597 --> 01:29:00.401
with by the state of Minnesota, but which some terminally online weirdos

01:29:00.401 --> 01:29:03.971
somehow got wind of and spun into this madness.

01:29:05.440 --> 01:29:06.641
And that madness

01:29:06.641 --> 01:29:09.477
is being perpetrated by agents of the state

01:29:09.477 --> 01:29:12.046
and endorsed by Republicans.

01:29:12.513 --> 01:29:14.716
Republicans could stop this now,

01:29:15.917 --> 01:29:17.118
but they won't.

01:29:17.518 --> 01:29:20.455
and the reason I know we absolutely can abolish ICE?

01:29:21.322 --> 01:29:23.358
I am older than ICE.

01:29:23.358 --> 01:29:26.761
In fact, I'm older than the entire Department of Homeland Security.

01:29:27.128 --> 01:29:29.263
That agency was created post 9/11.

01:29:29.263 --> 01:29:33.067
And in retrospect, the folks who thought “Homeland” Security

01:29:33.067 --> 01:29:36.003
sounds kind of ominous were apparently correct.

01:29:36.938 --> 01:29:39.340
We need to throw this system out and start over.

01:29:39.340 --> 01:29:42.477
And so, yes, I believe ICE must be abolished.

01:29:42.643 --> 01:29:45.012
There is no reforming that agency of thugs.

01:29:45.046 --> 01:29:46.247
It has to go.

01:29:46.681 --> 01:29:49.050
And the lawless criminals hiding behind

01:29:49.050 --> 01:29:51.619
masks who are violating the Fourth Amendment day

01:29:51.619 --> 01:29:54.455
in and day out, need to be prosecuted

01:29:55.123 --> 01:29:57.625
for each and every one of their crimes.

01:29:59.060 --> 01:30:00.728
I will be voting in the primaries

01:30:00.728 --> 01:30:04.399
and I sure as well hope my representative, Sean Casten, starts

01:30:04.399 --> 01:30:06.601
saying that with clarity and conviction.

01:30:07.435 --> 01:30:09.504
Sean has been one of the people who understand

01:30:09.504 --> 01:30:11.038
the realities of renewable energy,

01:30:11.038 --> 01:30:14.142
and has been a long time advocate of it, so we've been pretty aligned,

01:30:14.342 --> 01:30:15.910
but we're not aligned on everything.

01:30:15.910 --> 01:30:17.812
And my patience is starting to break.

01:30:18.679 --> 01:30:20.481
So if you made it here.

01:30:21.249 --> 01:30:22.450
Thank you for watching.

01:30:23.084 --> 01:30:25.453
I hope we can bring some sanity back to this country

01:30:25.453 --> 01:30:28.456
and that we can start calling lies what they are.

01:30:29.190 --> 01:30:31.259
And you will have to be a part of that.

01:30:31.959 --> 01:30:33.161
Talk to your neighbors.

01:30:33.161 --> 01:30:34.362
Talk to your family.

01:30:34.695 --> 01:30:36.998
And if you don't know where to start the conversation.

01:30:37.832 --> 01:30:39.700
That's why there's that fake ending.

01:30:40.802 --> 01:30:42.937
If you think it might get some gears turning,

01:30:42.937 --> 01:30:45.840
go ahead and watch this video with someone and stop it there.

01:30:46.140 --> 01:30:47.341
See how it goes.

01:30:47.408 --> 01:30:49.510
And if you want to send it to someone with a link,

01:30:49.777 --> 01:30:52.647
there's an unlisted version of this video on my second channel,

01:30:52.647 --> 01:30:54.916
which actually stops at the fake ending.

01:30:56.284 --> 01:30:57.618
The link is in the description

01:30:57.618 --> 01:30:59.454
and a card should be popping up now.

01:31:00.121 --> 01:31:03.791
I would pin a comment too, but I am not interested

01:31:04.025 --> 01:31:06.527
in knowing just what sort of replies that will get.

01:31:07.261 --> 01:31:09.630
I am all but certain it will be depressing.

01:31:10.531 --> 01:31:14.335
The future has always been in our collective hands,

01:31:14.669 --> 01:31:17.038
but we need to stop tolerating lies.

01:31:17.472 --> 01:31:19.440
We need to stop tolerating greed.

01:31:19.841 --> 01:31:22.443
And we need to stop tolerating politicians

01:31:22.610 --> 01:31:25.079
who care more about their corporate donors than

01:31:25.079 --> 01:31:26.814
they do their constituents.

01:31:28.015 --> 01:31:29.250
We need to care about

01:31:29.250 --> 01:31:32.053
our future more than we care about the price of eggs,

01:31:32.053 --> 01:31:33.354
or the price of gas.

01:31:34.388 --> 01:31:35.590
And most importantly,

01:31:36.357 --> 01:31:38.826
we need to care for each other.

01:31:39.961 --> 01:31:43.297
There is a duty of care in everything we do,

01:31:43.764 --> 01:31:46.634
and that's the simplest way to put my personal politics.

01:31:47.201 --> 01:31:50.137
Start acting like you take that duty seriously.

01:31:50.638 --> 01:31:52.507
A free future depends on it.

01:31:53.241 --> 01:31:54.842
A future with liberty

01:31:55.510 --> 01:31:59.814
and justice for all.