Ep. 261: There's No Free Lunch with Renewable Energy

talking about. Before Phil hit the power button. What what don't you hit over there, Phil, Well, there are several I do have to hit power first, that's the first step step one, Um, and then I armed the board for recording, turns on a red light, and then I hit a play button that actually starts the recording. Yeah, before you did all that, Spencer pointed out the Phil means like the name Phil, so all the Phils in

the world, Philip means horse lover. Yeah, well, like you know, Yeah, Phil and I were having a deep conversation about Phil the name over here because my my brother Um was the fifth Phill in our family. My dad was the fourth. My nephew is a sixth pill. So I was asking, didn't name you Phil because my older brother's eight years came eight years he got the name, He got the name. That's right, he's Philip the he'd be the fifth. I believe my nephew is the sixth. So I was asking, oh, yeah,

that makes sense, so that brother had a kid. Correct, my nephew was good. Confused. Our film was asking if he's a one L or two L Phil, what what does he feel like to you? One L or two ell? Or? I got it wrong? Cow Let me think where were you born? Vancouver, Washington? Two els? Yeah, Phil felt like a two L to me. I thought he was a two L guy. What I'm okay, Phil, but I'd be f I L L just as people. Yeah, what two ls? Why? Because because one which one sounds more like Philippe. Well

that's that's that's a two pe situation. Oh that's right. Yeah. This is strictly coming from my personal experience with phills. And you're different than those pills, which is like your name has to be spelled different. But the horse, the horse lover thing um is derived from the Greek word Philippo's, which means horse loving or fond of horses, fondling horses, fond of horses. I'm with you. I got my on you, Phil Well, I gotta say I don't. I don't live

up to the name. My parents really messed out because I have horses. I hates a strong word. I have no I have no like attractions. Okay, I'm gonna stop talking. I'm not drawn to horses. I don't have an attachment to horses. I didn't grow up with like a farm, animals or anything like that. And I got a lot

of admiration for people that. Um. I know a lot about horses because it's one of those things where my sister in law they have a immense herd of horses where she lives, and when she looks at a like I look at a horse, I just see I don't know horse. She looks at a horse, she sees like not only the history of that animal, but like the history of its mother. Do you know what I mean? Like all of it's like neu ro season, past injuries and what has been eating. It's just like it's amazing.

You could never learn at all like you have. I think it's one of those you have to be brought up around. I sat next to a girl in middle school who wore nothing but like horse just sweaters and was just spent with Spenter days drawing horses all day long. I never understood it, like there's a thing with horses. Yeah, I bet you. I bet you. She had long hair in a ponytail. Yeah. I find it's a weird thing

that happens. My sister in law doesn't do this, but I find a lot of women who are very interested in horses wind up having very long hair and a ponytail, as though they were trying to replicate the horse's tail. I don't know if they're even realize this. Yeah, I don't know. If i'd like to start asking people if they realize this. Joined today by Nell's Johnson, We're gonna be talking to a bunch later on. He's the North American Energy Program director at the Nature Conservancy. So, hello Nels,

Hello Steve. So we we've found you because you rode into us offering some clarifications and corrections. Someone who knows him, someone who knows you suggest oh I thought you rolled in. I'm fretting about is not a self promoter. I wouldn't hold it against you. So, so who who are? It doesn't matter? But but how did we how did we track down? Because because we've been talking a little bit

about wind farms and how I don't like them. There's, uh, I guess a listener out there in our community who has been you know, who's heard us touch on this conversation, and they said, you know, you ought to talk to exactly and he's right there. So and then we reached out you and you said, yes, well, yeah, there was a little arm twisting involved, but yeah, happy to do it. So you're gonna answer all of our questions about whether or not the planet will soon be covered in windmills,

wind turbans. Uh. Well, yeah, that and a few other things. And all the birds will be dead. Yeah, and uh, the squirrels will be doing great though, because I can't climb up those slick turbine shafts. We'll get to all that in a minute. That's gonna be interesting, because I got, I got. I've been doing a lot of handwringing and a lot of fretting. You know, it's interesting. Uh, I'll point this out, but we don't even to discuss it yet. There's a feller that's been making some waves. Um ah,

he's a congressman. Ken's anger, Kenzinger, Ken's anger. Yeah, I just signed up for his email newsletter. So he's been making a lot of waves by being um, not really like in the direction of the Republican Party. Um. And I've been kind of interested in what he's got to say. And I was looking at his Twitter feed and he was saying, Ah, let's make sure to keep nuclear in the mix. So we'll talk about that. We will. That's my thing, man, I want to end it on this,

that's my thing. It's good. Yeah. I hope you can talk me out of it, but I don't think you can. I don't even know if you're interested in talking me out of it. Okay, UM, all right, but but be realistic about when and how that happens, right, So that's yeah, I don't want to get mired nose, kind of make sure they're doing it and doing it now. You're either pro energy or your anti nature like, which is um. Okay, we've got a handful of Hank tight nels. Feel free

to if something strikes your fancy, feel free to speak up. Absolutely. Thanks. Uh. Now, we have to be sitting in Montana right now, and I want to talk about some bills that are up, some rule changes that are up, and I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't think that they uh weren't kind of like more broadly applicable, Like it brings up interesting subjects that I think that anyone who's interested in UH hunting and fishing rules and whatnot legislation, right, they

don't need to be here to appreciate the complexity and relevance of these questions. Do you feel like I'm selling us, well, col yeah, absolutely. One one thing that's up right now, s B one one one. It's good they went with s B and that BS one, but I think BS one one one would have been better. I'll be curious to hear Spencer's take on this. They want to legalize

crossbow hunting. They want to legalize, not that it's illegal, they want to make it so you can hunt with a crossbow during archery season right now, specifically for UH impaired hunters, handicapped hunters. That's it. That's it. That's what I thought. But then someone told me it was more complicated than that. Well, I think someone gave me the old slippery slope argument. That is, that's that's our that's

our argument that we always stand on, right. It's like, yeah, but I'm a slippery slope guy, I think that there is in fact a slippery slope in the world and people fall down the slippery Like I'm a big believer in slippery slopes. So s B one one one is is just that. So it would uh make crossbows legal for those who apply for a handicapped validation to hunt during the season and they can hunt with that crossbow

during the archery season. Right now, crossbows are legal to hunt with in the state of Montana as long as you use them during the firearms season. Mm hmm hmm. How are they? I didn't know that, Like I I know this from various text messages and stuff that I got that didn't get into any level of detail. Is just expressing horror text messages expressing like what are the what will happen next? Yes, so where is the world headed? So so explain the what what is caught as the handicapped,

like to what degree? So what this says is that it's a discriminatory right. So right now that you use a device that holds a traditional bow, which you know traditional I'm encompassing really compound bows, or if you could figure a device out for a recurve or long bow that would hold that bow back at full draw with an arrow in it, and that would be legal for UH handicap hunters to use right now, which you can't turn it sideways, but you can't turn it horizontal. Um hm.

And so this basically, if folks can't figure out how to use that, then they can't hunt during ourchery season. However, they can use a crossbow if that is uh, you know something that they can can work, you know, something that they can use effectively. They can use that during rightful season, not our tree season. UM. What like Montana traditional bow hunters are and is this is how crossbow

bow has become legal during our tree season. And the issue there is we're gonna see much higher success rates, which in turn is gonna shorten our archery season altogether because our tree is gonna be way too effective. Um. And then again there's the discrimination side of this too. It's like, if this is keeping handicapped hunters out of our tree season, then we need to address that and make sure that handicap hunters are included in our tree

season if they are capable. The state code basically says that, UM, as long like we can adapt anything to be as inclusive as possible. As as as long as it doesn't change the essence of what that thing is. Um. The inter susting parts here are like I have been around, I've I've guided some crossbow hunts for folks who were able to use them under this same pretense. UM in what state? Colorado? And it was for me, being somebody who's not familiar with the crossbow, it was almost a two person job

to load the crossbow. UM. And that handicapped hunter was not capable of loading that thing on their own. They were very effective with it, uh to shoot, but it wasn't a one person job to load the thing. UM. I'm sure there's a lot of different crossbows out there, but UM, this kind of seems like, oh, if we just add crossbows, then everybody's gonna be happy. But it's like, if you can't use the thing that holds your bow back at full draw, I don't think there's anything that

necessarily says crossbows are going to fix that. And then there's probably people that would still be incapable of shooting a cross bow, yeah, absolutely, but could shoot a firearm, yes for sure. Uh. A very near and dear person to me was sharing with me that they really hope this does not pass. They don't want to see crossbows. Their argument was that this is like the playbook from the crossbow industry, is that it always starts with this

and then pretty soon it's everybody. But he said that if they do make cross bowls legal, he will start to hunt with one because it's the arms race. Oh, very interesting. I sure like I can't. I don't have the level expertise about this to really have an opinion about it. But if it was just generally to make it that you could during archery season with crossbows, I would point out there's all kinds of times with crossbows

with the crossbow during rifles season. And and that was a great point, Like it's not like you can't use it. You can use it for six damn weeks. Um. There was a point made uh during the hearing for this that, uh, if you want to take advantage of shoulder season hunts, uh bird hunting opportunities, there's I'm gonna have to dig in dead. You can use it for spring bear three hundred days of crossbow hunting of crossbow hunting currently available.

That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good. Okay, here's one Uh, here's another bill that's up and this is an interesting one. So it's hard as hell, hard as hell to draw. It doesn't matter where you are in the West. It's hard to draw a moose, sheep or goat tag in the West. I'll say, you know, I'll out of Alaska, right, so you can apply your whole life and never get one. I've been I just drew a mountain goat for instance, I just drew a mountain

goat tag. After twenty six years of applying. I drew a mountain goat tag in the state of Montana. Took me twenty six years. I don't know how many They started the bonus point system somewhere in the middle of my application period. Your bonus points are squared. So when I learned multiplication as a youngster, we only got up to twelve times twelve, and then we quit for some reason. I don't know why. We never got into what happens when you times thirteen by something, so I still don't know.

But if you had twelve bonus points, your names in the hat a hundred and forty four times, and I finally drew a mount and go take now I have to take off what you gotta quit yell a low for five years or seven years, seven years, I think before you can apply again, before you can eat an amply know. But I have friends who because you were successful,

that would be an important part of this. I had friends who drew mount and like applied drew mount and goat tag, laid low for all the years, started applying again, drew a second one, right, which I feel is like a great feat it's a great triumph. There's a bill that would make it that when you draw in some states have this already that once you draw a moose, sheep,

or goat tag. I think it's if you're successful, if you're successful on the hunt, so successful drawing and then successful slapping that tag on a harvested animal, you are done for life. You can never get back in the mix. Is it individually per animal? You're not done with everything, You're done with that one. What states have this? Idaho? Yeah,

Idaho has once in a lifetime stuff. There's a bunch of a handfuls like New Mexico has some once in a lifetime And it's important to note too, if you're you can apply for a cow, moose you know immediately yeah or you know so there's there's you got two shots at hunting each animal, just one is gonna be the animal with the more impressive headgear. Now, this rule I was sharing that Cal and I were talking about

this on the phone. This rule is one of those rules where everybody's opinion right down to whoever wrote this thing up. Everybody's I guarantee whoever wrote this up hasn't drawn moose, sheep or goat. Take garen ted, and they're pissed because their cousin he's drawn too. I've never drawn one. Yep, this is not fair, Like I guaren t. You should look into that cran if he's the person that drew this up piste, there's no way they're sitting on There's no way they drew all these and they're trying to

draw him again. No way. Well, I wonder how many uh, how many folks who have applied what percentage of the total I don't know, per year over the past I don't know, five years, ten years. If we figure out some kind of percentage of those who have drawn, who have drawn twice and been successful, like what would if they were out of the mix, What would it really do to the guy that drew this up, this bill,

what would it really do for his oddes? I mean, are we talking about three people out of that is? That is the point and the pro con argument in the debate for House Bill Too oh two is it will increase people's odds who have not drawn yet. And the con or the yeah, the con why this bill shouldn't exist. This will not increase people. I don't like it for this reason because did I ever tell you about my Civics teacher in ninth grade? Al de Young?

Al de Young? Uh? He was. He was. He would do parody, but none of us were old enough or smart enough to know he was doing parody. Ald Young taught government through the letter he role played. We now know he role played as a guy who would say and remember, I am concerned only with what effects? And you point himself Al de Young, and he would be like, there was he was supposed to take everyone down to register him to vote. He's like, there's no way I

would take you people down to register to vote. Why would I dilute my vote? I don't want you idiots voting. That was a ship um, but it's stuck with me. And like a rule like this, I don't like it, because what if they made it retroactive and I'm out of the run on a mountain goat or I'm not I'm old, I'm not totally old. I could draw a sheep tag next year. I would hate to learn that I couldn't get back in the running in five years. Why not because your bro's got to rights that, dude,

It because Steve and his brother are competing. No, I just like, I don't like it, and I don't like only. I don't like only for what it would mean for me, or is it the slippery slope problem? You know then it's gonna be white tailed deer and that it's gonna be squirrels and you know you're done. That is interesting, Honestly,

I haven't thought about it that way. But one good you know, speaking from the Idaho standpoint, right, it's kind of could be a b S bill because already, uh, there is a governor's tag, which if you love hunting sheep so much, why don't you just buy the governor's tag. I think it went for four or four yeah last year, four kids? Right? Uh? State Idaho? Is that once a lift, once in lifetime tag unless you wanna get in the Governor's auction and buy the tag every year so you

can hunt. You can hunt cheap in perpetuity. It's kind of a bunch of crap. Here's there's a question of statistics. Yeah, I think it's symbolic. I think it's symbolic flat statistics. So uh, let's say you know, after you'r what waiting

seven years, you apply again. Isn't it if a thousand people apply one year and two thousand people apply the next, whether Steve is in the running during that a thousand people or not, isn't it just based on the total number of people who have applied that year, That's what you based on. This is meant to be vindictive because even one that dude sits, even when that dude sits out seven years, okay, he's coming in with zero points,

He's got to rebuild his whole collection of points. He's like inconsequential, it's it's a way to punish the lucky people, right, that's right. It's not one to one. There's people, and so is the winning argument. It's the war unlucky people. If it doesn't matter, then why not get rid of them? Or is the winning argument? Is every little bit counts.

You know, so like when you look, especially as a nonresident, if you look at your draw odds of getting like a premier sheep tag, it can be like point oh one five percent some places point oh five percent. And it's like, so if that point oh five percent is back in the pool, does does it really affect your

odds of drawing? Oh? Yeah, because when you when you get to looking at the odds on draw tags, you know, you can see a draw tag is point five percent chance of drawing, or it's uh, another tag is one percent chance of drawing. There's something that happens in your head, like you don't view it being twice as likely to draw the one. You just view it all as being shitty. Yes,

you just view like dah ain't never gonna happen. So this goes to directly into the next bill, uh, which is our bonus points bill, which is another great topic. And when you read the number on that, this one, okay, HB one, this one strikes to my core. This one. I would go so far. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I would storm the state Capitol building while they were telling the votes. I wouldn't go that far. I don't know about it. I'm not saying

I would take it that far. But I've already bought my kids a bunch of bonus points. You've invested in their future, Listen, I've invested in my future. No, I've invested in my future because I think it's fun to go hunt moves, sheep and go. So my kids, my four year old, when he knows how old is he know, he's six, he's already sitting on three bonus points. When he turns twelve, he'll be going into the draw with nine points. Do you have another trying to rob this

from me? Do you at all feel partially responsible for inspiring this bill? No, because you've talked about this so many Yeah, listen, you gotta hate the hate the game, not the player, bro. So I'll tell you what said against this thing. Um. These Yeah, these are folks coming in against the the You know, as the bill has written, this is not the way the game is supposed to

be played. So the kids who have not invested in hunting in the state of Montana are coming in as if they have invested for well eight, nine, ten years, right, But they're they're paying, They're paying money to the state agency and drawing nothing in return. It's a money. Let's let's be frank. Okay, Okay, let's hear me out. I'll

try explain it. Okay, HB one, please please, But I think you got to talk about a bill for an act entitled an Act allowing only persons eligible to hunt to apply for bonus points, which would be an amendment of Montana Code's annotated section eight seven dash to dash one seven. Okay, So in this state, a kid can start legally hunting at ten with a mentor um and they can only hunt over the counter tags. They can a ten year old cannot try to draw a limited

draw permit. You have to be twelve to try to draw a limited draw permit. It would stand to reason it would make most sense that you can at that point you can start applying in accruing bonus points. But through some weird like the thing that I don't even think is that rational, but I exploit it. All of a sudden, they made it that your kids can start A dad could her mom whatever the hell, could start stocking up bonus points for their kids by just going

down and buying them over the counter. So I was like, that's really kind of strange and a little almost like, you know, I almost don't even like it, but again, hate the game, not the player. I went down and got my kids little A L. S numbers that they don't even need, and started buying them points. How much

is a point, I don't know. But when it's all said and done, I can't remember on each But when it's all said and done, I walk out of their danged buy a few hundred bucks because I buy the points for everything, all of them, So all three of them get all available points. And they don't even know this. Well no, I kind of explained it the deal being. I told him, if you don't bring me, if you draw one of these things and don't bring me with you,

I want all this money back that investing. Yeah, I'm like, dude, this is going on the hunt. If you decide to go like with your bodies at school or something, you're gonna be getting an invoice for all my point money back.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. So the bonus points system in theory is set up as a here is a way to reward people who are invested in the system right by extending it to people who are not invested in the system and giving them a conceivably very large leg up depending on you know, changes in in the state. Um, it violates the intention of the bill, the original bill, um, would be my perspective. Now, I will also let you in on a little more perspective of mine own. I have niece and a nephew at

this point, right, I don't buy them anything. Is because you're a tight ass, because you don't agree with this. What I do is I opened up a life insurance policy, uh for each of them on based on my own life, and they will get cash. But I also have to deal with my death. That is going to be like their only gift from all uncle cal Like they're gonna have to bury your carcass. Why did you bring my kids that, um, when you have your own nephews and stuff?

Was it just expedient? See why you brought my kids? The No, they're getting a bunch of stuff too. Yeah, um, the and the I think this is the way to go, right because like you and I have a screw me over.

You robbed points from the mouth of my baby. Have turned into a pretty decent human being and one of those things that has made you a pretty decent human being is like paying your way through school, right, Like, oh god, let me tell you this sob story about going to state school, trapping my way through until I could get into the University Montana, and being becoming a

big swinging dick writer. Right. Uh, that's character, right, Okay, you're robbing your children of knowing the pain of yes, exactly, and therefore you're you're putting their uh their their lives

at risk of becoming decent humans. You know, these bills. Oh, I want to move on here, but these bills are a real one to punch to my children because imagine that, uh, I do well, like I do all this, and then one of them draws a tag and they're not even They're like twelve years old, right, and they don't you know what the hell is going on. They don't even know how cool it is. And then they can't ever draw another one when they're growing up and would appreciate

it exactly. It's it's a war on children. I'm hung up on this life and shirt. So do your nieces and nephews know this? Like, do you think they root for your death? A little bit? A little thin? By that point, I've got shirts older than my niece I got, I got shirts older than my nephew gets a little thin down by the nice level. They might be kind of being like, He's like, so you're telling me if Calle dies exactly, And they're like, and I'm currently not

getting any birthday or Christmas presents. But they know about this. The sister knows about this. So where is this cal guy live? Yeah? So I also want to get to this next one, which is super interesting. Is just going to be a quick beat, which is what's the next one on the list with the It eliminates the fishing game's ability to have special draw tags in units that are over objective. Yeah, but you're skipping one that I want to understand a little better real quick. We gotta

hustle though. Yeah. Six, Okay, they I think we're going to going back in time. So there's another thing. Nonresident licenses Okay, nonresid license state sp They want to make it the outfitters are guaranteed a significant percentage. That would mean that people that would normally, like a nonresident hunter that would normally come to a state to just do a d I Y hunt, um, that they funnel more of that business to outfitters and make it be that

that they have these outfitter specific permits. Yes, so it would favor individuals who are going to hire an outfitter over individuals are going to freelance it. Yes, and and it does. The truest part of that is this will favor those going with who have made the choice to go with an outfitter. And you have to make the choice earlier in the season than the general draw, the

general nonresident draw. So UM. Basically, it's kind of poised as a if you're willing to commit early and at this this point, the revised version of spe UM of those non residents who are willing to commit to hunting with an outfitter for the two combination tags that are available in state Montana for nonresidents, and willing to spend an additional three dollars on the application process per application, they will be guaranteed a tag up until that threshold

of of the nonresident tags is met. UH. An interesting part of this so I had a great conversation with the head of Montana Outfits, Outfitters and Guides Association, Moga mcmanard uh super nice guy and UH. The stated intention of SPEE is to take care of the current customer base for outfitters and guides in the state of Montana. And they're saying that right now, it's about of non

residents already choose to hunt with an outfitter and guide. UM. However, the amended version here has UH ten swing, so it could go up to fift and that's based on the number of applications that don't come in under the outfitters bill UM from the previous season. So if choose to apply only guaranteed tags, well next year, that can be increased to up to UM. It sounds a little complicated the way I'm saying it, but it's it's pretty darn

simple UM. And you know, the cleanest opposition to this bill is why the hell should folks who are willing to pay more be guaranteed A sounds like it, uh, you know, privilege UM. And the counter argument to that,

which is an economic one. So the University Montana has an ongo ng survey, and through this ongoing survey, it's a recreation based survey, they've determined that out of the three point three billion dollars that recreation brings into the state of Montana, outfitted recreation, which is a much larger umbrella than than hunting, which is what we're thinking of right now. So be hunting fishing, it would more than

likely be your sister in law's outfit as well. Uh. You know, guided horseback rides, there's guiding, there's rafting, there's sled dog runs, all sorts of things. UM. I even have a buddy who takes people on nature walks. UM. All of that recreation amounced about ten percent, so bitty, you know, big big chunk change for the state of Montana. And they found that folks willing to go with an outfitter outspend uh non outfitted recreators in the state of

Montana by five to one. UM, keep them like this is one study. Everybody I've talked to you on this is like, how the heck does that make sense? But I think when you start thinking about the gamut of outfitted experiences in the in the state, UM, there's definitely some folks spending a lot of money compared to folks who are, you know, throwing the kids in the old family truckster and coming out to the state of Montana. So there's a theme developing here the haves versus the

have nots, which is like the greatest argument of all time. Right, yeah, Hey, we got a note from a guy. You remember how we had a guy right in that uh he was hunting. He listened to our podcast with Adam Lazzara, who uh helped advise and work on our medical section and the Mediator Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, which is available now on Amazon New York Times bestseller. Um, that guy talked all about tourniquets, and a guy wrote in that he his dad got shot in the arm hunting and

used the tourniquet to save him. Another guy wrote in says, I would have never thought about tourniquet applying. Driving with his kids, comes across car cash oh biker bikers in the middle of the road, compound fracture, lower left leg bleeding profusely. The guy says he was not wearing a belt, but thought about the episode we had and got a belt off a bystander and through a tourniquet on the guy stop the bleeding. Took ten minutes for the ambulance

to get there, saved his life. That is episode Bleeding out in case here that was named the episode bleeding out right. The proper thing to do when you go to administer care right is to establish who you are. So I'd be like Stephen hey, or you know, sir, ma'am you, I would be like, I'm here on behalf of Dr Adam Lazara, right, And so I'm just dying to know, like what the bedside manner was? Now, sir,

I see your legs bleeding out. I have a belt here, And I've listened to a podcast listening to this year podcast stand stand Back called meat Everybody stand Back. I heard the podcast No Need to Call for Help. Spencer Guy wrote in about the Real Foot Lake deal Um,

which recovered extensively, but he talked about his grandpa. He had a grandpa named Papa Duck, and Papa Duck was a guide on a duck club in Utah, and the Duck Club had these blinds out in a management unit and they would bring in clients by airboat and drop them off hunt these blinds. But apparently the like the blinds were there, but the Duck Club couldn't actually prohibit dudes from using the blinds. So like they built the blinds, but they couldn't do away with the public as aspect.

And he says one day, Gramps rolls in. There's a guy in a blind. They're getting a fight, and he ties a rope off to the blind and gets so mad. He ties a rope to the blind and ties it off to his airboat and tries to pull the blind over, getting a big fight. The blind tips over. Actually, the hunter tries to shoot the rope. Okay, tries to shoot the rope clean, gets injured. The Sheriff's called, and Papa Duck that Papa Duck thinking that the guy will get I don't know how he thinks that the guy will

get in trouble. The sheriff comes and gives a citation to Papa Duck for harassment. Then he ends the note by saying, my grandpa was later kicked out of the Duck Club for reasons I'm not sure about. I was really impressed with this guys honesty. Oh yeah, like typically he's turning his own grandpa And yeah, typically grandparents have like some level of divinity that grandchildren hold them to classhole. Yeah,

this was great, my grandpa. Before we get into our renewable energy here, speaking of talking about hunter harassment, now, it's a many I don't know how many states. I wish I knew this off top of my head. A lot of states, most states, I think, have hunter harassment laws. You know, Jeremiah Johnson when bear claw Chris clap, is it clap? That's an std isn't it? Clap? Clack clap lap bear claw Chris clap played by the dude who

used to play uh the Judge and Hardcastle McCormick. Remember that it was a guy on like anyhow, sorry, st Uh can you look that up? Spencer? Is it lap or clap anyhow? And Jeremiah Johnson l app okay? And Jeremiah Johnson he's out fiddling around the mountains trying to make it as a mountain man and eventually gets a good hollering at from old seasoned, grizzled mountain man who accuses him of of molesting his hunt. You've been molesting

my hunt, and it's illegal to molest someone's hunt. And virtually all states like if someone's doing like a lawful activity, like they're lawfully hunting, lawfully trapping, lawfully fishing, and someone comes out to screw with them, it's against the law. But we got an interesting note from a guy who is in a dispute with some people over his beaver trapping activities, and it's gotten heated and right now joining us remotely from Michigan, my home state, the beaver trapping

country of Michigan is Josh Hagen. I want to ask him some questions about his, uh, his experience here with within this case beaver trapper intimidation, trapping intimidation. Now, John, in the interest of time, Josh, I want to run through kind of the high level particulars and then you correct me, uh if I screw some part up. Okay, sounds good. So you are, your buddy owns property on some lake. Your buddy owns property on lake in Michigan. There's a big beaver colony on the lake with a

beaver lodge. Yeah, you guys go out and string a little steel and start catching some beavers. Yep. And then people start doing what to you or like, they start doing the like people around the lake respond to this by how by basically messing with our traps, breaking our sticks that our traps are set in. They wrote us a little note one of the times kind of told us broke broke the sticks and pulled basically the trap

out of the water. Wrote us a little notes and no more in the snow right next to the to the trap. And then the fourth and final time through maybe a ten fifteen pound rock a little smaller than a volleyball, threw it in the hole, set the trap off, and actually the rock got jammed and stuck in the trap. And you put out some trail cams in yeah, yep. So after after the rock incident, we put some trail cams out to try and catch them because we had

no idea who was doing it. We had a little bit of an idea maybe who, but no hard evidence. So we threw some trail cameras out and within twenty four hours probably got three guys walking out to our traps kind of looking at them, but they didn't they didn't mess with the traps. They just kind of hung out there and looked at the traps for a couple of minutes. And do you feel that they knew you had the trailer camp set up? Yeah? Yeah. One of the pictures he actually pointed at my trail camera. So

we set up too. We set up a Sellero trail camera kind of off hidden a little bit, and then we put a dummy camera right over the whole Our thought was maybe keep their attention on the dummy camera and then we'll we'll maybe get who's doing this on the other camera. Yea, And what's there? What's your best understanding of what their gripe is That they like watching that they enjoy watching the beavers in the lake, and they feel that these beavers should be off off limits.

They feel that no one should be able to mess with these beavers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we believe. They're grape as we are. In October, we kind of ran out there to do some recon of the beaver beaver den and um ran into a few of the neighbors who clearly didn't want us messing the beaver then. So had a couple of conversations back in October with a few of the neighbors back there. How has it been like when you called up fishing game to say, hey,

we got this problem going on. What has been there sort of what has been their attitude about it? Like, have they suggested that want you just go and kinda go somewhere else and try to avoid friction. Actually, we actually when we got ahold of them, we had our our traps pulled just we we kind of misunderstood one of the rules of checking the traps every twenty four hours. So she actually told us that we were in our right and that that day go put the beaver traps

back out there. Mhm, like encourage you to keep at it. Yep, Yeah, she encouraged. Uh, told us like, have you run into any more problems, give me a call and I'll come out and we'll come up with the game plan. Huh. Now, this is what kind of the main thing I'm curious about with this. A lot of like a lot of times you go out, people want to go out and do stuff outside, like hunting fish or trapp in this case, because like, um, some level of quietness, you know, of nature,

like solitude. You picture this particularly being convers solitary activity in some way. But all of a sudden you're like mired in this dispute with like a neighborhood h o A y Uh. Did you feel compelled to keep at it because you were interested in sort of like defending your rights or did it still stay fun to do it, you know, or did it become like not fun but you didn't want to give up the terrorist wind, so

to speak, say a little bit of both. Are. It was still fun, but then the other part was kind of like, well, we don't want these these people to, you know, to beat us, Like we were fairly confident we're doing everything we should. So it took away from the on a little bit and kind of more morphed into like we're not gonna let these people beat us type thing. Yeah, like they're trying to intimidate you, and you're in the right not be spooked off. Why do

you guys set off trapping in the first place. We've always been interested in it, so we've always talked about doing it. Kind Of where we decided this year to do it was they started to destroy damn my Buddy Dance property. I think they dropped like four trees in a couple of weeks back in the fall. So that's kind of what let us pushed us into like, yeah, let's give this a try and see what happens. Um did some part of you everthink, man, these people like

looking at these beavers obviously these beavers alone. Yeah, Yeah, we we definitely went down that road of just is it worth it, Like we'll let the let them look at the beavers and we'll go on some public land close by and and try and get into it. Um. But once the CEO of the conservation officer called us kind of like made us to just keep doing it out there more. Um. Once she said that, you know,

we're good, We're good to be out there. Yeah, because in a way, your CEO has to be able to enforce the idea that it's stay owned wildlife, and you wind up you kind of like inadvertently walked into a little bit of a territorial battle where the state claims ownership of the resource and sets the guidelines for extracting

the resource. And then you have kind of like a vigilante group saying no, this resources in our custody, will set the rules for it, and then they kind of have to be like then it almost the beavers don't even matter. It almost becomes like this other conversation about who owns it and who makes up the rules for it. Yeah, exactly. You know, I would imagine, like you, you're a little bit inadvertently wind up being sort of a pawn in

this much larger issue going on. I got a friend has a ranch and he was explaining to a conservation officer.

He's talking about his elk. My friend saying, you know, the guys you know, doing whatever always spooking my elk, And he said the Warden's like, come again, you have to wonder too, like if you're conservation officer is also like aware of state funded mitigation efforts regarding beavers in that area too, just like, well, yeah, i'd be great if you guys took a few out because every year in the spring we have to go live trap them and then move those live traps to another body of

water where we drowned the beavers, which is not fun for anybody. Yeah. Well, Josh, Matt, appreciate you coming on. Uh, it was pretty interesting to read it. So, yeah, are you guys still plugging away out there? Is it kind of like this is the smoke settled now? Oh? No, we're out there. I'm not. When I get off here with you guys, I'm gonna head out there and and check the traps. So they're still out there. Hey, Josh, if something else happens and transpires, you know, just let

me know. Yeah, I will absolutely. Yeah, they hanging on the wall behind you. Is that like a it's like a like an alcohol drinking Yeah, that's my fiance's it's it's her little idea. I guess, I don't know. I like it. She's making a bold statement about yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, man, thanks a lot, appreciated, Thanks guys. Yeah.

We had a duck hunting spot in high school and in part of college in Missoula, and um, it was, you know, like a fanned out section of the Clark Fork, the lower Clark Fork, and we'd set up on one of these little stems of it, and every once in a while we'd get an adjoining landowner that would come out and her ask us and us why it was illegal to be there, and instead of dealing with it, we just pick up, you know, are like six half sunken decoys that we had and walk out of there.

And I called a Missoula conservation officer and let him know what was going on. And the officer that I talked to was like, yeah, yeah, He's like you're right, and he's like, but how good of a spot, isn't you know? It's like, you know, that's almost too bad it is. Yeah, I still want to tp that guy's house. If you're listening, you still live there, you know who I'm talking about? Didn't Huey Lewis getting a big thing

with spooking off duck hunters and whatnot. Remember this that was on Mitchell Sleugh in the Bitter Rout and they they fixed that by baiting the slough um. So it was illegal to duck hunt there because there was bait present the Mitchell Slough Homeowners Association there and then but this was on the lower Park Fork um, you know what, the and uh Kelly Island down there, which was like

for high school kids. You know, it's like you're pretty limited as far as like you don't have a lot of stuff you don't have, you know, it's like none of us had chest waiters. It's like knee boots or hip hip boots, right, and it's like you're pretty no boats, pretty limited, you know, so hip to be they cow segue us into our oil and gas deal. Spencer is not really bringing it this show. You know what's that like?

Name me a single thing? Oh no, the stuff about Phil's name, Phil's name, Yeah, but he didn't mean to do that. Couldn't have been more relevant. He didn't mean to do that. I just caught that. Uh, not really bringing it, Spencer. If there's one thing somebody's gonna remember from this episode it's gonna be Horace Lever over Montana legislation. Fortunately. Yeah, Spencer, he's just, I mean, just very recently, I thought he was just an astounding personality. That's my fault to have

on the show. Is happening, Spencer. I'm sorry, nfill rock counting stories. He's got time. There's an hour left. St co in with something. There's been so much good content, I don't need to interrupt it with yeah, with some lower level yeah, but yeah, you're sophisticated. Hosting might be just your silence, just existing. He's doing a good job by not talking. Yeah, it's it's restraint and maybe some people in this room could you know, you learn something.

He's not like look at me, look at me. It's not his style. Yeah, I like it. Cal Segue is into talking about the whole planet being covered up in wind farms and whatnot. Yeah. So you know, recently, real interesting or repel looking congressman out of the state Idaho put together a package that outlines a kind of grand scamand careful with the word slip grand skiing. I gotta

owe some people apologies on that one. That would remove the lower Snake River dams, the four lower Snake River dams on behalf largely of of salmon, is the way it's pitched. And that is a really interesting topic. As we started talking about green energy, and we'll be getting into that damn removal. Damn right, Oh, cute quick thing. This funny. What's the name of that writer? It is Kemmy Larson. Yeah, I got a book for my kids called Beavers. What's the book called Beaver's damn Friends. Beaver's

damn Friends, Beavers. It's about this beavers, real lonely and uh Alice says, built a damn make a pond. So he makes a pond and all kinds of people start showing up, frogs, fish, birds, whatnot. And then he's not lonely anymore. And my kids like it because the last line of the book is about it says, now Beaver's got a lot of damn friends, and there's old dad walking in with this trap. This friend Beaver's got a lot of you know, Benny, the Beaver's got a lot

of damn friends gone. So you know, as we you know, really begin our path with this new administration, green energy is a major topic and we're damns meant to be green energy at a time, because we weren't having that conversation back then. No, we really weren't. Well, I mean, very few people were having that conversation. The research that I've done, it's kind of shocking how none of these conservation ideas are are original now they're just really taking

hold now. So there's always somebody being like, you know, if we put in you know, if we do enough blasting with dynamite here than all the previous world wars and build a dam that may affect upward travel of salmon it and I think it would be bad. And they were like, everybody needs jobs right now, and flood control is a necessary thing, and agriculture is a necessary thing.

We'll deal with the fish thing later. So people when they're building all these giant dams and and kind of like destroying the world's largest like Salmon River in the Columbia drainage, um, people had to have been like, but what about the fish? Yes, but there's no way, I mean obviously not. There's no way there was ever any conversation about fossil fuel like climate issues, fossil fuels, certainly

nothing that's the sinct that I've ever come across. But does anybody now are people that have like an ulterior motive or that like damns okay, that want that there's gonna be like pro damn people out there do the are the pro This is as much for Nels as this for you are the pro Damn is the pro damn lobby, whatever form it's in are They like, I got you. It's clean energy, bro, I haven't not burning

We're not burning oil. From a uh an employee at Bonneville Power saying there is nothing more green than hydro electric power. M hmm. I like them when people latch onto that nothing that. I like them when people when it was like an argument sort of presents itself in a kind of fortuitous way. We're all of a sudden you're like, yeah, things aren't looking good for this damn this whole salmon thing. Yeah, and they're like ha ha suckers. The water moves through and energy, right, that's it hit

us with that Nels. Alright, well, so there is green energy, but you know we need to take a step back. Well we should think about clean energy is maybe the better term. And then the question is can we make clean energy green? And you know where we put energy, how we develop energy, even if it's clean, can have

environmental impacts. So hydro is probably the most clear example of what's a clean energy technology that's not exactly always green, right because of blocking rivers and and ending uh and Drameda's fish runs like the salmon in the in the Columbia. So you know, what we're really interested in in the Nature Conservancy is how do we develop clean energy? There really is green that really ovoids and minimizes impacts the environment to habitats, to wildlife too, people. Um, And so

that's what we're really interested in. So that word, uh, the word I never teld this second thought of the difference between clean energy and green energy. Did did the word green energy come about sort of as a way that to to to to cause a kind of reckoning between renewable energy resources and its impact on the environment. Was like, was that word made up? Was that word coined?

Because there's this kind of friction. Well, I don't know that that friction really existed ten and twenty years ago, because we hadn't developed all that much clean or green energy that except for hydro, and a lot of that goes back to the thirties, right, I mean the reason why we didn't care about the fish so much in the Columbia during the Great Depression is because people were starving.

I mean no, people had no money. Uh, people had no electricity in rural areas, and so the dams that were built um in the Columbia weren't partly you know, a job's creation program an economic improvement program, and people thought that tradeoff was worth making back then. And now we have a different view of that tradeoff and we have a greater appreciation how profound that tradeoff is. Right.

I mean, salmon species that have evolved that have you know, migrated up the Columbia and the snake rivers to you know spawn way up into the rockies in Idaho are winking out. I mean they're just they're on the verge being extirpated. They've been there for hundreds of thousands of years and now sudden they're about to be gone. So, you know, we need to think about the concert. There's no free lunch when it comes to energy. Regardless of

the energy type, clean energy included. Uh, every form of energy with a possible exception of efficiency is going to have some sort of impact, and we need to Hey, what those impacts are so that we make trade offs that we think are acceptable. Are you familiar with the intellectual exercise of saying, um, we would never have won

World War Two if it wasn't for the beaute copper mine. Right, There's one that goes, um, we won World War two because we were able to smell aluminum better than Germany, because we had all those big ass damns that it was like, there's like an electricity bottleneck, and we were able to outproduce aircraft. I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I've heard this. Yeah, I haven't heard that one, but you know, I can imagine that being

a legitimate argument. That's interesting. How far those uh you know, how how far can it damn fall? Yeah, And it's and it's sort of public perception. But one interesting thing about the whole damn thing is, you know, it used to be the cheapest form of electricity out there anywhere in the planet. Pretty much. Hydro was the cheapest thing. It's not anymore. The cheapest thing in the world today

is solar and wind. Really yeah, so, uh, most of the United States right now, solar and wind go for three to six cents per kilowatt hour natural gas and coal or between five and seventeen cents per kilowatt hour hydro is somewhere in between. UM, So it's still pretty cheap. And hit me with hit me with that again. I understand like you're saying, that's what it costs to produce, to produce a kilowatt hour of But isn't it more isn't haven't we made it that it's more valuable to

the producer depending on how the producer is making it. Uh, Like they sell it, they get it, they get a related rate to encourage renewables. Now, I mean, most energy markets in the the United States are extremely competitive today. So you know that, you know, utilities put out a call for proposals to build the next generation of energy producing sources.

And you know, the best packages coming into a lot of utilities these days are wind and solar or a combination of the two, usually paired with storage some storage of some type. UM And that's you know, you know, Xcel Energy. Uh in Colorado. They also have another major territory in the Midwest. Most of what they've you know, put out there has come back as wind and solar.

That's been the most competitive and so of all new additions to the electric generating fleet last year where either wind or solar kind of split almost in half, solar actually outpacing wind for the first time. UM, you know, and just again, why is this happening? Well, part of it, of course is we are concerned about climate change, but economics is really a huge driver of this. Solar costs

have gone down in a decade. So that's because of technological improvements, getting more and more experience with deploying UH and setting up systems UH. You know, if you build a coal plant, it will take years to get the coal plant online. If you develop a wind project or a solar project, you can get that thing online after it's permitted in six months or at most a year, So it comes online much faster than than the forms

of energy that it's replaces. So that that's one way where the UH start up costs start to even out right, Because one argument that that I see over and over again, right is like the cost of the shafts, the blades of those wind turbines, UM, the you know, the the cost of the solar farms in UM, you know, materials that are mined out of the earth UH and then compared to what we have in in the superstructure that we have currently, right, and like dams, think about like

a modern damn, what a modern dam would cost to build currently versus you know, I believe the upgrading um the hydroelectric capabilities of some of these damns is also in the tune of billions of dollars to modernize them and get them where they need to be. I'm looking at a thing right here. UM solar and wind power need forty to fifty times more surface space than coal and gas. So solar and wind power needs around forty times more space than coal and nine times more space

than gas. Is that is that? That's that's roughly right. So to power our whole country and UM solar would mean that we have eight million acres of solar farms. Yeah, that's that's yeah, that's consistent with our That does that intimidate you? Well, you know how many millions of acres are there in the United States? Just even you know, so I don't know that number is offhand, but just but just take the Bureau of Land Management, the largest

landowning public agency in the United States. You know, they have about two hundred and fifty million acres, so it's a small fraction of that. The question, Steve, really is where does it go? You know, if we put not in my backyard. Argument, well, there's not in my backyard. But you know, we'd like to encourage up upfront planning at a landscape scale before we decide where to put this stuff. So some of the first big, really big solar projects Ivan Paw for example, right on the Nevada

California line. I don't know if you've ever proven I fifty north of l A on the way to Las Vegas. Right, you see these towers that are several hundred feet in the air with thousands of you know, solar mirrors all pointing at the top of those towers beating you know, this sunlight, so it can hit a temperature several thousand degrees the time. I mean, it's like a sun at

the top of this tower. I mean, pilots have to fly around these things because they're so bright because of these thousands of solar rays um and uh and in fact, if birds fly through those, those rays of sunlight that are concentrated going up to the tower just basically vaporized. But the problem with that project is where it went, it went into an area that was really important for desert tortoise, which is an endangered species, and it also uh is in an area that is important for desert

bighorn sheep. So you know, we didn't have the information we should have used at that point to figure out where that project goes. I think the point is is that we have more than enough room across the United States of what we would call low impact places that will have minimal conflicts with habitats, wildlife, and people that we could put this stuff. But we've got to think about it up front. And so that's what we're trying to do is help figure out where are the best

places for this energy to go. So one project we have is called Mining the Sun. Right, so there are forty three million acres of mine lands and brown fields across the United States. E p A has a program called the Repowering Program, which is inventory these sites. And so what we're doing is trying to figure out how do we unlock these places and get renewable energy to go on those acres instead of out in what we call a green field situation, right, a natural environment in

the middle of the Maave Desert. Interesting like doing like super fun sites and quarries and stuff. Yeah, or minds. I mean, so, for example, we're work in Nevada. Actually with the Nevada Mining Association. We've gotten some regulations changed to encourage renewable development to go online sites in Nevada. You know, it's the biggest hold uranium minds, well, copper minds still her minds, you know, they're Nevada is the biggest hard rock mining state in the country. Montana's up there,

it's third or fourth maybe after Arizona. Uh. Then we're also working in West Virginia, and there we're looking at coal fields. Um. You know, there's you know, hundreds of thousands of acres of former uh coal fields in West Virginia that used to be mountains that were blasted off and leveled and and now there's no economic activity going on there. There's no jobs anymore there. What about putting

renewable energy there? You know. The great thing about focusing, we've got to have either a shipload of wind or a shipload of sun, right, And what happens when there's no sun and no wind? Well true, and that's why we need to look at the whole country in terms

of where we put this stuff. I mean, the bigger the field of view we have, the more complementary we can have wind and so because it's cloudy here one day, but it's sunny, you know, hundred miles away where it's windy uh in this place now, but it's calm over there. And so you know, if we have a big enough field of view, we can integrate a lot of this stuff. And then we need other things. We need storage, we need some other energy technologies that can do some baseload.

That's why keeping, for example, existing nuclear online is important. You know, about twenty of our energy today is nuclear? Is it real? Well, it's maybe about eighteen now because a couple of plants of clothes in the last few years, but it's but it's still a big chunk of our electricity generating capacity and it's essentially carbon free. The problem

with any you're probably gonna get there. But I mean, are we doing is anybody eyeballling um adding nuclear facilities online or is it all that they're just all destined to phase out? We also uh N nine three my all island happened in the forty years since then, there's been one facility added that's it Watts Bar in Tennessee in and that's the only new nuclear facility built in

the United States since Three Mile Island. And there's another one that's being built in Georgia right now that's supposed to come online later this year. And those those plants are essentially the same technology we've had for the last

sixty years. Uh. There are lots of enhancements, of course, because of of concerns we've had because of Three Mile Island, Fukushiv and other things, but essentially it's the same technology and UM and we have about how I don't know what the exact number is, somewhere around sixty existing nuclear plants across the country. Most of those were built in the nineteen seventies, so they're kind of approaching the end

of their original planned lives. But you know, I think there are ways to keep them going longer, and I think utilities are doing that where they can. So I think, you know, one of one of the if you will, the building blocks of our clean energy future needs to be keeping existing nuclear in the fleet as long as it's safe, uh and as long as it's at least reasonably economic to do so. UM. That is going to be one of many solutions that we need. There's no

silver bullet. There is no one technology that's going to save us. We need to combine a lot of technologies, some of which have been around for a long time and some of what you're totally new. Were you, Well, I was gonna ask let me ask you different thing first, just to t up. I was gonna ask you about whether you were surprised when GM made their announcement about all electric No, not really, Okay, we'll get to that in a minute. Uh So the Biden administration, like, what's there?

They have a more They put in a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public land. Is that correct? That's correct? And that's what it is, like a moratory about issuing new ones its federal lands. And yeah, my understanding is it's leases. It's not permits that have already

been issued, right, so it would be new leases. Yeah. Um, do you imagine a future I'm not so much asking if you like would like to see it, but do you imagine a future where we have a lot of um, federal, federally managed public lands that are given over to renewable energies, Like, is that part of the mix. Yeah, it could be part of the mix. Yes. Um, Again, we have to look at what the value of those lands are. They're

not all the same. I mean, Bureau of Land Management, for example, you know, has extensive areas that have been to graded through different processes. Mining of courses is one of those. And we think those places may be good candidates. In fact, we worked with the BLM five and six and seven years ago to create what was called the Southwest Solar Plan, where we looked across you know, six

southwestern states. We looked across BLM lands and where are the places that development of solar or wind or geothermal for that matter would have relatively low impact. And and the BLM designated what we're called solar energy zones, and they've also been called development focus areas, but they're kind of zones where there would be relatively little impact to the habitat or to wildlife and that we would facilitate

development there. And Congress passed something called the Omnibus, which is kind of the funding bill to keep government going back in I guess it was December, and part of that bill includes an editor g subtitle, and within that there's a a goal now for the federal government to develop twenty five gigawatts of renewable energy on essentially BLM Lands.

And you know, just a little definition here. Gigawatt is a thousand megawatts, So a thousand megawatts or one gigawat, you know, used to be kind of a typical size of a power plant, a coal power plant or nuclear power plant. Not so much anymore because those economies of scale are less important for natural gas, solar way and other energy technologies. But that's roughly the way you can

think of it. So twenty five large power plants. Uh. The goal is over the next four years on on BLM lands again, you know, that would be you know, a few hundred thousand acres out of you know again, two hundred and fifty million. We're pretty confident we can find low impact areas that could accommodate that twenty five gigawatts. Um, but you know, we need to be thoughtful, We need

to be careful about when we quit news. Can we just go back for a sect to what you said, Steve, with the amount of surface area of the country or you know, eventually the planet to be covered. So when I spoke to you before, um, you said we are between now and probably we're about into our build out of of space and that we would you can pick up you said, a footprint from the size of Maine

to potentially Texas. Yeah, so just that's that's essentially right, Karen. Um. We're roughly ten I mean maybe into where we're gonna go with the build out, which is it's inevitably going to come. You know, the question is how fast does it happen and how careful are we about? But you don't think that the technology might act that in half? It could, Yeah, I mean it's possible. I mean, you know, we can. We have to deal with the data and

information we have and make our best guesses. One of the reasons why we give a range in terms of what the spatial impact could be main being at the small end. Actually Arizona's right, we think is the high end. And that's that's that's because of different assumptions about what

technologies are being deployed. So for example, if we have a lot more rooftop solar and a lot more battery storage, that's less acres than if we have uh more of a reliance on just utility scale with less storage, then we have to build more older plants, we have to build more wind plants, so that is kind of the more upper area. UM. And then actually Princeton released a study just a couple of months ago, uh that suggested the footprint could be as big as the size of Texas.

And I think that's because they're looking at transmission. We didn't, we didn't have good enough to always felt comfortable about

projecting the transmission footprint. But it's it's you know, that would be significant, and that that might you know, and just well, you know, but but I think it's worth pointing out that, Um, if you look at the footprint of hydro and you count the reservoirs, So if you look at the footprint of hydro gas coal, that's not insignificant, right, It's not like it's not like there's zero energy footprint now and we're growing it to the size of Arizona. I don't know what the hell it is. Presumi is

not Arizona, but it's not nothing. Yeah, I mean, it's a Rhode Island. It's it's still been large, right. I mean, if you look at Mountaintop removable mining in West Virginia, or the mining and the Powder River basin just a hundred and fifty miles from here. I mean there are extensive areas the West Virginia, Kentucky examples always strike me, right because it's like anytime we bring up mining. Anytime I bring up mining, uh, I will have emails that

come in. Let's say, and all those mines have elk on them, now, so how could they be a bad thing? You know, hey man, we're just hunting in Pennsylvania. We were just flint locked deer hunting on top of some old mine, on top of hills that are mysteriously flat on top. Yeah, it's like what happened? It's kind of going up and then allously just flat. Yeah. Uh. Well, infrastructure too, Like I always think of Cold Strip, Montana. Right,

It's like how much do you count? There's an entire railroad that goes us through Colster at Montana, Right, But that has a lot of other services involved with it too. But the reason that it's there is for that cold which is like how many yards wide? But then real damn long. Yeah, and you take oil and gas infrastructure. You know, if you've ever been in the Jonah Basin

in southwestern Wyoming, you can kind of appreciate this. You know, there there are these oil and gas pads, you know, sprinkling the landscape over hundreds of thousands of acres with roads and and you know, pump stations and pipeline corridors, and you know it's a it's a spider web of impact, right that makes that area a lot less uh, appreciated

by mule deer and pronghorn. And so for example, the Wyoming Department of Fish and Game, I think it's tracked about decline now and in the mule deer herd that you know would normally winner in that area because they just don't like human activity. You know, in concentrated forms

like that, things are more spread out. You know, they can live with it, but when you have a lot of it in one place, uh, it really starts to impact the way animals think about the habitat that's there, and just to look at the footprint, you know, so it gets you know, it's always like peeling an onion. You know, we say these numbers like it's the size of Arizona, but not all of that impact is exactly

the same. So the numbers we use for solar are about you know, eight acres are needed for every megawatt of solar. We need about sixty or eighty acres for every wind turbine that goes up, which might be three or four megawatts nameplate capacity. But there's a difference in that impact. I mean that solar is totally covering the ground and is totally changing habitat is something that's totally

not what it was. On the other hand, a wind turban, you know, the footprint of the turban itself isn't very biggest. So when we use that six eight, we're using the spacing that's required between the turbans because it can't be too close to each other. They essentially have to be about a thousand feet apart. So it's the project area we're using for wind. So for some species, the fact that there's a turban there and there's a sprinkling of

turbans across the landscape not a big deal. But if you're a bird or a bat, it could be a big deal. Um. And so you know their differential impacts to uh, these these technologies. So that's that's another thing we have to think about an account for. Remember when everybody's kind of realizing the damage that cigarettes cost, and then you had tobacco companies that would really want to like obfuse skate right what exactly was going on with

tobacco to the point where it became a joke. And then you've had historically, we've had oil companies that wanted to sort of obfuskate some of the realities around oil.

Do you feel that the renewable industry is is maybe hoodwinking people a little bit, like maybe obfu skating a little bit of what they're talking about, or do you feel that they're trying to deal in a way that they're like, this is what it will require, this is what it will look like, or are they a little bit of shape, Like are you a little bit like

are you embarrassed about the numbers at all? Uh? No, I mean the numbers are what the numbers are in terms of, you know, our companies obfu skating the reality of what's going to happen. Uh. You know, I can't speak to the motivations of all companies. Companies have different motivations. I think some of them truly are focused on the social and environmental benefits. Yeah, but let's face it, I mean, companies have to make money. They have to make a profit.

In order to be in that business. And an interesting thing about renewables is where is the money coming from that's driving all this investment. Ten trillion dollars going to go into renewable energy over the next several decades. A big chunk of that money is coming from oil and

gas companies because they know what's coming. You know, it's a different world they're gonna have to operate in, and so they're hatching their bets and they're investing substantially and in renewable energy, along with lots of other folks, right, I mean, including myself. Um so, uh it's hard to you know, lump everybody together and say they're they're all in cahoots trying to hug with us. No, I mean

I think, uh they are. You know, if you look at the history of energy now, we've progressively gotten better, I would say, I mean, we we went from wood, right, I mean, we cleared New England. There wasn't a tree growing in New England by about eighteen thirty because we had chopped everything down to burn it for charcoal or of course clear it for farming. And and yeah it's our whale I got. I mean, so yeah, wood wasn't

a very sustainable thing. We had to come up with something else and we did, right, and that was coal. So coal was the next thing we did, and so um so we did that for a century. Uh, and then yeah, we started to like, well, you know, there are some real problems with coal. I mean, there's arsenic there's there's you know, sulfur dioxide. Remember the remember the acid rain thing back in the ages. Have you ever

heard about acid rain recently? Why? Why don't? When I was in grad school, that was like a huge topic. That's what you know, drove a lot of the ecological research community. By the way, I'm a forest ecologist by training, I'm not an energy guy, so you know, but real quick, Uh, what happened to acid rain again? Well, you know, we stopped burning coal. I mean it's a big part of We use sulfur's dioxide, you know, scrubbers to keep nitrous

uh oxide and sulfur dioxide out of the air. But a big part of it is is because of the burning of coal, is has been reduced over the last several decades. It seemed like during the last presidency you heard a lot about clean coal. Can you explain, like what that is what someone means when they're referring to clean coal and the reality of it. Spencer trying to get in there, see that totally. How you know? So, Um again, I'm a forest ecologist, I've gotten I've been

immersed and energy development for a couple of decads. I can get to that in just a moment. But um, you know, there are ways to reduce the the various side effects of burning coal, right, I mean things like scrubbing the air to get uh, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, arsenic mercury. But the more you do that, the more expensive it becomes. And one of the reasons why coal has become less and less competitive economically is the cost of dealing with those things that are in coal that

are harmful to both human health and the environment. So that's where they point out, that's where they point out that regulations are killing the coal industry. Yeah, well, because if it was just unfettered coal burning, it would be a lot cheaper than when you make certain stipulations about what you can and can't do. Correct. Yeah, it would be cheaper, it's still be arguably it'd still be expensive

for a whole bunch of reasons. But yeah, there's no question, you know, society has made the judgment the right one. I think that you know, we can't tolerate having unfettered burning of fossil fuels with no attempt to curb you know, they're really damaging side effects of burning fossil fuels. I mean, there's no there's no question that burning fossil stuff creates you know, a slew of of toxics that go into the air and go into the water, and and are

you a real threat to human and environmental health? But aren't we looking at um? God? I feel like there's so many misnomers with green and clean and just Noman's really telling the we're the truth that, as you said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You know, who's looking into what do you do with solar panels after they've run their life cycle? Or battery powered cars? Maybe we're not burning you know, fossil fuels, but what's you know, when are where are those Where are we

going to bring those things? Where are we gonna where are they going to break down? What kind of environmental impact will they have later on? Like we won't maybe have them in our backyard country is will we be disposing of them in That's that's the thing I've been trying to introduce. A conversation we're trying to introduce in my family is, um, everything your kids go to now, anything they go to they come home with a stainless

steel water bottle. As But it's like we have this idea that like the salvation of the world is from like the whole point that whole thing is that you get one and you hang on to it. But they've become almost like disposable, and I think that like people feel better about themselves doing that. But that ship comes out of the ground. Man, But it's all nonsense, Like I missed the milkman. Like everyone's talking about recycling. It takes a lot of energy space, it takes a lot

of processing and processes to also recycle. Oh god, I'm just you. It makes you. That's kind of what I meant about the stainless steel bottle thing, is like it's like it's hard to it's you want to make it

all super simplified, like plastic bottles, you know, are bad. Um. And there's a lot of reasons, like with with plastic and the oceans, right, there's all kinds of reasons to be down on plastic bottles, But I don't know that the answer is that every family has sixty merch you know, stainless steel bottles in there the cupboards, which is which is where my family went. Hey, Steve, you know I'm I'm drinking out of the same coffee thing that my brother gave me ten or twenty years ago. Now, by

the way, it's good. Congratulates got a Yellowstone cutthroat. They're just congratulated. I try, I try to. I have this trusty cup. You'll see that I try to use. But I do see that people are like, it's you can fall into this thing where like, oh no, I'm rehabilitated. I now have eighty stainless steel containers and I lose one every but I'm not feeding into the bottlest at

a time. No child is okay, no school event right has somebody distributing the stainless steel bottle, looking each child in the eyeballs and going, this is now your drinking about. It can hold many things. It is yours. Do not lose it. And if you ask the child, do you I want you to ask yourself, do you really need this stainless steel bottle, to which they will say, yeah, no, it's it's absolutely true. We live in a throw away society, right.

But seriously, I think there's gonna be a lot of focus moving forward with these technologies to find ways to recycle them. For one thing, you know, you could save money just recycling batteries. For example, lithium and other rare earth metals that go into batteries that are you is now by cars and your cell phone sitting on the

table are are expensive, really expensive. And so if we can find ways to recycle those batteries, if we can find cheaper components for those batteries, there's you know that the sixty four million, maybe billion dollar question is scalable cheap battery storage. And you know there's there's a hot technology race on around the world define cheaper, less impact

ways to develop battery storage. There's some really promising research out there that suggests we can get beyond some of the rarers, including lithium, but we don't know, we don't have enough experience. There's it's too early in the R and D phase. But all I can say is there is going to be a lot of focus and attention on getting cheaper and less impactful ways of developing these technologies over time. I think the same as going to

be true for you know, wind turbine blades. And you know one thing that's going on in the wind industry now is you know some of these wind turbines have been out there for twenty years. You know, they were one or one and a half megawatts. Now we're doing four.

So how do they repurpose those twenty year old turban towers and get new blades on those things that are more efficient, can generate more energy, so we don't have to go out and build another turban and just leave that other one there, take it down and try and dispose of It's like, how do we reuse recycling cost?

It's like we want really long lasting batteries. Yeah, we like, that's what I want because it's like the cost of recycling, like it's, uh, the input can outweigh the output of recycling, and then it's like what is the point. Yeah, And that's why recycling everything every place that always makes sense. Like right here in Bosen, right you cannot recycle glass. Why is that? Because you have to take it to

Spokane or Denver to get rid of it. I mean that means putting it in a truck hauling a long ways. It costs a lot of money and it used a lot of fuel, So not a good idea. On the other hand, loom when i'm cans, yes, I mean let's do that. There are places that will recycle that. They are much more affordable and don't require the kind of energy that's required of glass, for example. So yeah, I mean we have to use our our noggins when we

think about these things. There's not always one solution, you know. We have to think about what the right solution is in the right place at the right time. We'll think about what Karen said, right, It's like I think of

salmon and damns again. Right. I know from doing a lot of my own construction that when I tear apart of house, all that lumber that's been sitting there forever, if I rip all the nails out and put that lumber back in a house or in to the new addition of the house, or into whatever I'm working on in the house, that is way better than me going down to the lumberyard and buying a brand new wet

two by four. Who does that? I do know I mean, you know, but I also know that if you want to talk about green, clean energy, a protein source that can replicate itself, move halfway around the fricking globe, and then bring itself all the way back inland, that is renewable, that people can eat off of the entire way you have done responsibly. Salmon seems pretty damn green and clean. Now that's a hell of a pitch for a farmer. Be like, I got this idea. But that giant live

stock right, you don't even touch. Yeah, it goes out into the ocean, it comes back all fat and good. No one does ship and we eat it, pluck a few off as it come by, and leave, leave enough so we can keep going up. But then you have the superstructure in the middle right that there, My god,

the initial cost of putting that thing there. Uh, it seems that it would also be very beneficial to have that thing there in some capacity and renew it in a way that offset that mitigates that cost somehow while still allowing this miracle of protein to flow past at both downward and upward. Right, And then you look at

brand new clean energy like this. The startup cost is is the hard part right, and it's like, just like those oil pads and gas pads, there's gonna be a lot of roads, probably a lot of chain link fencing that does not do a lot of good things for animals either. And then we talked about the space, right, so it's like like, how do we find our cake and eat it too? Yeah, and that's what we're all about.

We need that. Let's take a step back. The reason why we think clean energy is so important is because climate change really threatens the mission that we have, which is sustaining lands and waters that all life needs to exist. And the number one threat habitats, wildlife, ultimately uan society faces is runaway climate change. The climate is changing at between one hundred and a thousand times faster than it

has in millennia m eons. So we are compressing a huge amount of climate change into a very short period of time, a period of time that species and habitats will not be able to adapt to unless we slow it down. Uh. You know, living here in Montana, we can see it just in the last few years. You know, last year we had a record snow pack in a bunch of western Montana by June when the runoff normally peaks, right, I mean, you can't go fly fishing in June in Montana.

That was always you know, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, we come out to Montana to go fly fishing because it's not very good in North Dakota. And and but you know, you wouldn't come in June because the water was always too high. You know, when the water peak last year, it was like the middle of May. And that's tip that's going on across the West right now, is that we are seeing the runoffs. So we're getting about the same amount of snow at

least here. I mean further south that's not so true. But but here the northern Rockies, you know, we've been doing fine on annual snow pack and maybe even a slight increase. The problem is it's a running off a lot sooner. And so what does that mean hoodol restrictions. I'm the kid, you never heard of anything called the Hoodalo restriction. For those of the uninitiated, that means you

can't fish. You can't fly fish for trout, for cold water species in the afternoon because they get stressed out because the water temperatures get up to the upper sixties low seventies, and you know, if you're a trout, you know, you depend on cold water because cold water has enough oxygen that you're used to, that you've evolved to. If the water gets above a threshold. You know, some trout like yellowstone cutthroats have a fairly low threshold in the

upper sixties. You know, brown trout can tolerate into the you know, load amid seventies, but at some point you

reach a temperature where the trout just can't exists. And certainly moving around and getting caught for example, um on one of those really warm afternoons is really stressful and fish, you know, have been shown not to survive that stress very well, and they it kills, you know, So they might survive that day to live another day, you know, if they don't get stressed out because they're being caught

that afternoon. So those hood our restrictions. I looked online just trying to track how many of those have been

imposed in Montana and whether there's some trend. I couldn't find any data on that, but just from my own personal experience, that's been going up right, and we have more and more days look at fire seasons you know, the fire season across the West has now been extended by weeks to several months, depending on where you are, even here in Montana, you know, I mean last fall there were wildfires, not just grass fires, but wildfires in

four settings in November and December. That's almost unheard of. I mean, these changes are happening now. Um. So the reason why we're so devated, uh to advocate for clean energy is because of that underlying problem. Do you foresee that your organization, the Nature Conservancy? Uh? Will you guys turn nature conservancy lands over to renewable energy production? Uh? No,

with possibly some exceptions. We own, for example, agricultural lands that are a buffer around to preserve that we might own, and you know, it might actually be better to have solar panels there then having a farmer dro corn there, right, I mean growing corn caused some erosion. You know, they might be using pesticides that might be a problem for insects or birds or whatever. So maybe solars a better use of that, But it would be an extremely limited circumstances.

And in fact, actually we're looking we own two and a half million acres across the United States, so it's it's receivable that we would have some places that might be what we would call low impact for renoubal energy. But your lands are not. Your lands are not the kind of compromised landscapes that converting. You know a lot of our lands are really the ecological gems that are out there, right, I mean we need conservancy. Yeah, So

we have about preserves across the United States. By the way, you can hunt fish on over a million acres and we have yeah, yeah, I mean here here a couple of examples. One is the Big Two Hearted Preserve in Michigan, you know where uh the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway or said, you know, we own a preserve there and you can go fly fishing right there where you

know Hemingway at one point slowly fishing. And then we have someplace called the Silver Creek Preserve in Idaho, which actually was the last place at Hemingway lived and unfortunately committed suicide. But you could go fly fishing or duck hunting there. And so any way, so we yeah, we owned about a million a half acres I mean two

and a half million acres um. We've acquired another fifteen or sixteen million acres nationwide that we've transferred to state and federal agencies of vast majority of that's open to hunting and fishing too. So yeah, yeah, So, I mean a lot of those lands went to state you know, wildlife management areas, or they went to the US four Service and they went to the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Bureau of Land Management. You know, some hard didn't know that. I didn't know that you guys did

land transfers. They put land into public estate. Yeah, I mean we we Most of the LANDWA acquire ultimately ends up residing with a public agency and open access. Do you know that about the nature conservans? To be honest, no, I wasn't. I wasn't hip on the on the I know of some some cases, but I didn't know that that was. Um, I guess a pillar of the you hold two and a half million, but you guys have transferred somewhere around fifteen million acres. Okay, Yeah, I pres

spent more time on Nature conservancy land than I thought maybe. Um. But by the way, before you go charging into a nature conservancy preserve, you contact the program ahead of time to make sure it's because some places are really sensitive and you know there's species out of that are sensitive that, you know, make it hard for us to have public

access to those places. So they're in Michigan. We found We were hiking one time on a nature conservancy property and found a bunch of spawn and bluegills on a pond. I got a little nervous about it and did some checking around. This is not by Traverse City. Did some checking around and turned out that we were allowed to go fish those bluegills, and we did, but we checked with a fly rode within that no cooking worm man, Okay, that giling that out there. We were interesting. Here's why.

Here's why we got to think. And you couldn't. We thought you couldn't because no one was And be like, how could it be the all these blue girls are in here, like spawning in plain sight and no one's angling form. It must be that you're not allowed to. But it's just that everybody else made the same mistake we made, assuming that you couldn't. Yeah, well, always check with your local nature conservancy, uh program? Yeah we did and it was cool. Okay, what else? Give us a

final give us a final thing, man, like, let's do this. Oh, I want to ask you this too. The thing I mentioned GM. Yeah, when they said, Okay, everybody acted like it was all over the news, but I didn't think that it felt that ambitious. What was the year twenty fifth, fifty? Yeah, I think it's like thirty five or something like that. And they're you know, they're not the only car company making that commitment. I mean, Evolve, Toyota, I think Forward

as well. You know, they've all made commitments to essentially completely replace internal combustion engines with electric or other non fossil fuel based technologies, you know, sometime in the next two decades. And the reason it doesn't surprise me is twofold one is the the economics of it are getting better and better. So, you know, it used to be the only electric car you get out There was a

Tesla that costs you a hundred grand. Uh. Now you can get cars that are thirty five grand, thirty grand um. And when you know, obviously if you have a federal tax credit, that makes it even more attractive. So you're getting to the point where those vehicles are starting to be competitive. You're also are getting batteries that enable you to power more kinds of vehicles. You know, it used to be, you know, it would just cars, sedans, um,

that would be manufactured as electric vehicles. Now we have a whole set of you know, pickups and SUVs that are going to be coming out that are electric powered. And they have and here's the second reason. They have some real advantages over our conventional internal combustion engine cars in the following sense. They almost require no maintenance, very little maintenance in contrast to internal complexity. You don't have to change the oil. Um, you may have gear trains

that are much simpler. You actually have a motor that's in each wheel. You don't have, you know, a transmission system with linkages and things that actually make the engine less efficient in delivering power to the wheels. You actually have an electric engine or motor with each wheel. Uh. You have that kind of less cost of ownership over time. So that makes them more affordable. And I think where you're going to see the biggest progress with electric vehicles

before they become more widespread with the public is with fleets. Right. So fleet uh, company companies that have large fleets, let's say FedEx or Ups for example. Yeah, they have all these trucks and vehicles that are out there making deliveries

every day. They typically are out there for two d miles or something or less every day, and they require a lot of maintenance for all those vehicles all the time because it's stop and start driving, which is hard on internal combustion vehicles, and so there's a lot of

maintenance required. So the idea of having an electric vehicle that you know has dramatically less maintenance means you have a much lower cost again of ownership of that fleet, and so that could be very attractive to a fleet owner. So that's where you're gonna see. I think a lot of these technologies really get further refined, and then we're gonna see it proliferating more and more into the public space where people who are motivated by something beyond carbon

footprint are going electric just because it makes sense. Yeah, that's what it is today, but increasingly, I i'd predict in the next five to ten years, you know, the the fact of car people are gonna be buying is going to be electric because it's it's the same price as an internal combustion and it doesn't have all the maintenance problems. And I was I was in a nice one recently, and my god, the acceleration, it's awesome through the like put your eyeballs in the back of your

head and made my daughter very nervous. Yeah, I mean these cars typically can go zero to was in a like a souped up tesla, but it's like it's unsettling. My dollar thought we were doing something wrong. The the the rate at which we got to the speed limit made her feel that there was like that we were going to get a ticket. It was incredible. Anyways, So GM will sell only zero emission vehicles by um, yeah, I mean I guess that like that could happen. That's

I was trying to figure out. I was like, are they Here's I was trying to figure out and I never read enough about it. When GM made that announcement, was one day some guys saying, huh, you know, at the rate we're going and the way the markets are, I bet you by this will be the truth. Or did some guys say it like let's push for this goal and the engineers are like, can't be done, and they're like, my god, we can do it. We put a man on the moon. Like I'd love to know

like how the conversation went. If it was more like it's just where everything's headed. There's not a big deal. We'd laying there anyway. But let's hey, I wasn't in the GM board room and then made that decision, But you know, I'm sure there were conversations about that, and I think it was both what's the competitive future, you know, who are we competing against, because you know, before GM

there were other major manufacturings making that commitment. But I think it was also just a recognition that the technologies are improving. They can start to envision the scalability of it, the affordability of it, and it becomes more and more

clear that, yeah, that is the way to go. What's interesting is, you know, during the last administration, administration you know, really wanted to try and roll back the clean energy standards for cars, for vehicles in California, right the Cafe standards, And actually a lot of the vehicle manufacturers said, no, no, don't do that. We're actually on track to, you know,

to meet those standards and exceed them. In fact, we think that's a good thing competitively for us to be able to do that, because we're gonna be competing with cars from Japan and from China and from Europe where they are doing that stuff. And if we're not doing that stuff, We're gonna be caught uncompetitive at least with the rest of the world. So we need to keep up with the competition. As we record this, there's blackouts

happening at across Texas and the Dakotas. How would things be better or worse if we relied more on renewable energy. I think actually it would be better. I'll tell you why. Um So, first of all, let's recognize what's driving the blackouts. Now. It isn't simply that you know, wind turbans are iced

up and can't move. I mean here in Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota, you know we have wind turbans, you know, many many thousands of them, no problem in the wintertime, and that's because they're winterized and they're you know, they're they're prepared to deal with that kind of client tech as they're not. And in fact, in Texas, natural gas plants and coal plants and nuclear plants aren't either, and those shut down way more than winded according to Aircott report I heard yesterday.

And so you know, natural gas lines are freezing going into plants. Coal piles are frozen so hard they can't get the coal move to put it on the conveyor belt to take it into the plant, and water cooling systems at nuclear plants are frozen because again they're not insulated, they're not winter rised, they're not used to those kind of temperatures. The other reason why Texas is experiencing the energy blackouts that it's seeing currently is because they have

a grid that's unto themselves. It's you know that the Energy Reliability uh system AIRCOT, it's called that's a grid manager and it's only Texas. It does not connect to the rest of the country. If they had a grid system that actually we're better interconnected. Uh, there would be energy from other parts of the company that come the country that could come into Texas. Stuff here man, Yeah, I know, there's there's you know, private independence and ownership,

but ultimately that is gave gave up. But actually we're gonna be better off as a country building out renewables and increasing grid connectivity so we can move energy around more easily around the country so that we can get stuff to where it needs to go when it makes sense. Again, this goes back to it's cloudy sometimes, it's dark every day, Um, so we need to have a mix of energy in a lot of places, all interconnected, and they can flow

around the country to where it's most needed. That's going to be part of the renewable energy solution that will actually help us. Well. We have things that can drive blackouts, like these big energy are these big climate impacts like we're seeing in Texas today with the cold weather, or like we saw in California last year with all the heat and the fires, which by the way, it wasn't

solar projects that couldn't generate energy. It was forest fires burning transmission lines that actually were set by transmission lines arcing UM. And a big part of why the California system experienced so many problems last year was because of transmission lines. You haven't heard that conspiracy that it's um Israeli lasers you gotta get you got you hip to the news man, Jewish lasers. That's not I mean, let's

make sure we're accurate, isn't Isn't that though? Mining for a lot more copper and digging up a lot more ground put all that connectivity in there. Yeah, Like I'm just so, there's no there's no I think the moral of the story is be more like and be more conscientious like Cal and live like Buck Bowden in the middle of nowhere, and you'll let your kids when they leave their closet light on. What is this gonna do

to the trade in value of my Toyota tundra? I mean, I'm about about the time GM is making that switch. Is about the time we'll be looking for a new rail cal traded in fast. I mean it's still be good for a while, all right, Uh Okay, how do people go Let's say they wanted to go read up on this and you guys have do you have the sort of policy stance or like, where do people go? They're like, man, I need to find out or I

need to refute this guy or whatever they want to do. Yeah, I'll provide Coren some links that you can load up so that any reader, any of the listeners out Derek and follow up and learn more about some of the solutions that we're working on. And um, you know I talked about the mining the son. Another one that we're working on is is you know what about marginal agricultural lands?

You know, what role could they play? And one farmer's marginal is another farmer's you know, best place, but you know, for example, yea, we irgate a lot of land in the west for alfalfa, you know, and some of that land is really poor productivity, and the water is extremely valuable for lots of things besides the low value crop like alfalfa. Maybe you know, maybe we should put solar there instead of alfalfa and the fish benefit, people benefit, um,

the rancher gets more money. Money might maybe more money. Uh you know, we have a place where we're not going to fight over you know, something going on the ground there because uh you know. So those are the solutions that I like. That kind of thing in there, man, like where they do. Like a guy's already doing it. He's using water. He walks away. I don't know if this is true or not. He walks away with more money. Yeah,

I mean, less water gets used. We think that there are win win situations out there, and we think there's a lot of them. Actually, let's figure out where they are and how we unlock those places. Let's do that so we can spend less time fighting over it and more time hunting and fishing in the places that we love to go. This alfalf will deal. You better talk to Mark Kenyan because he probably likes those he likes

those alfalfa fields. Tail. Hey, I'm not saying get rid of all of them, right, I mean we still malfalf out. There is gonna be an anti renewable crusader once you start talking about ruining all of his lfalfa fields. All right, uh, Nels Johnson, thank you very much for joining us, the North American Energy Program director at the Nature Conservancy. And if you, even if you don't realize that you have probably been on some of their properties. I know I have.

I sure have killed an elk on one. Yeah, we're going well. I'd i'd like to point out to cal you gotta seek a deer on one. Oh I did get a seekret deer on one. Yes, all right, Thank you very much, appreciate you coming on. As things shake out, we'll hopefully we'll have you back to explain where we're at in the future. All right, body else, all right, thank you very much. Thanks