You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

[00:00] You know I'm really puzzled by something.

[00:02] It's 2026, believe it or not,

[00:05] and even though we live in this modern digital world

[00:08] where we can ask our smart assistants to close the blinds for us,

[00:12] we're still excited about finding oil.

[00:16] That feels weird to me.

[00:18] Petroleum is a 19th century technology, and here in the 21st century,

[00:23] very few of the things we use are powered by petroleum products.

[00:27] So why are we still so obsessed with finding more oil?

[00:32] Well, there's a very simple reason.

[00:34] It just has to do with how oil as a technology works.

[00:39] Once we find new crude oil deposits and take some out of the ground,

[00:43] we then refine that oil into many useful products and things.

[00:47] However, by far the greatest portion of it is used to produce gasoline and diesel fuel,

[00:52] which power some of the machines we rely on.

[00:55] Now, those machines are great and have unlocked plenty of wonderful new possibilities for us,

[01:00] even whole new kinds of economies.

[01:03] While they've also come with some downsides that concern me

[01:10] you're not going to hear me tell you to stop using your machines.

[01:13] That is not at all what this video is about.

[01:16] But petroleum has an unavoidable issue, which is easy to ignore

[01:20] but I don't think you should.

[01:23] It's disposable energy.

[01:26] In order for our machines to do things for us

[01:31] they burn the fuels which power them.

[01:34] That makes those fuels single use:

[01:37] one and done.

[01:39] So to keep using those machines, which most of us would like to do,

[01:43] we have no choice but to keep finding more oil to make more fuel.

[01:49] Many of us have come to the conclusion that this is a serious problem for a long list of reasons.

[01:55] For one thing, it makes our standard of living dependent

[02:02] since what that process yields will be burned

[02:06] appears to have no end in sight.

[02:09] Additionally, because oil deposits inevitably run dry,

[02:13] we often rely on extraction efforts happening in other countries,

[02:16] which may or may not be friendly.

[02:19] And while oil is relatively easy to store,

[02:22] meaning we can build reserves of oil,

[02:24] we use it a lot faster than you may realize.

[02:27] Our 714 million barrel strategic oil reserve sounds huge,

[02:32] but it only holds enough to sustain slightly more than a month of our current use.

[02:38] That's not a very long time.

[02:40] And even when we know we have a healthy and secure supply of oil,

[02:45] that oil costs a lot of money to find, extract and refine into the fuels we buy to power our machines.

[02:52] That results in those fuels being fairly expensive to purchase as a consumer,

[02:57] And that results in a high and ongoing operating cost for any machines which use them.

[03:02] And that cost can change quite dramatically based on supply and demand.

[03:07] What's worse, since nearly every step in our economy

[03:10] currently involves something going on a truck which burns diesel fuel,

[03:14] spikes in oil prices make their way into virtually everything we buy.

[03:20] For those struggling to make ends meet,

[03:22] that can be the difference between well-fed and not, even if they don't drive a car.

[03:27] I truly believe that an honest assessment of the

[03:34] suggests that our situation is actually quite precarious.

[03:39] And if nothing else, it can really hurt the wallet sometimes.

[03:42] But on that note, there's good news.

[03:45] We've developed an enormous variety of electric machines which don't use fuels to function at all.

[03:52] For instance, the screen you're looking at right now,

[03:58] While today we still burn fuels to generate electricity,

[04:02] the even better news is that we don't have to do that anymore.

[04:06] We know how to build devices which generate electricity from nothing but sunlight,

[04:11] and though it has escaped the notice of many politicians,

[04:15] we also know how to build cost effective, rechargeable,

[04:22] to store that energy for use whenever you'd like.

[04:26] Even at night when the sun isn't shining.

[04:29] The bad news?

[04:31] There are a whole lot of people spending money and time trying to confuse everyone

[04:36] and convince us that everything I just said is a pie in the sky idea, which can never, ever work.

[04:42] But I have never believed those people.

[04:45] Why?

[04:46] Simple.

[04:47] I'm a midwesterner.

[04:49] Most of us that were born and raised here

[04:52] grew up learning the virtue of long term thinking -

[04:55] something that seems to be less and less popular these days.

[04:59] My upbringing taught me to value things like durability and resilience,

[05:03] and to consider those factors when making important life decisions.

[05:07] Midwesterners are also big believers in getting the

[05:14] And we have learned that in many cases,

[05:16] the best value comes from spending more money

[05:24] That old fashioned Midwestern wisdom of frugality

[05:27] is what makes me so confident that we should be installing much more renewable energy capacity and quickly.

[05:34] I didn't need scientific studies or lectures on climate change to form that opinion:

[05:39] I just know a good deal when I see one!

[05:42] The energy we capture from renewable sources

[05:48] And while the batteries we will use to support those sources are expensive to purchase,

[05:54] batteries can be used many, many more times than a gallon of gasoline can.

[05:59] Today's battery chemistries are pushing

[06:05] meaning they'll last well over a decade before they need to be recycled.

[06:09] And the future of batteries looks even brighter than that,

[06:12] with different chemistries extending lifespans, lowering costs,

[06:19] in the construction of battery cells.

[06:22] These factors combined tell a clear story to me

[06:25] which says renewable energy paired with long lasting

[06:32] and we'd be foolish to pass it up!

[06:35] I would even go so far as to say that at this point,

[06:38] anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you to protect their own interests,

[06:44] or simply hasn't been paying attention to what things look like today.

[06:48] In 2026, the levelized cost of solar and storage,

[06:57] is now lower than any other kind of energy production we know of.

[07:02] That seemed like the inevitable outcome to me for years because the sun is free.

[07:07] But for a long time, solar panels were very expensive.

[07:11] Today, solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough to make that outcome real.

[07:16] Now!

[07:17] And solar power is just one source of renewable energy.

[07:21] I believe that a renewable energy future should excite you

[07:24] because it allows us to harvest energy, not extract it.

[07:29] And once you really interrogate that difference,

[07:35] Before I really get started —

[07:37] and yes, this video was quite long, isn't it?

[07:39] — I have to make a few things clear.

[07:41] First, this video has two very distinct audiences in mind,

[07:45] and which one of those two I'm speaking to may not be entirely clear at any given moment.

[07:50] I'm telling you this because if you think you know

[07:57] For example, this video is not trying to sell you

[08:04] Whenever I'm talking about renewable energy, people seem to think that's where I'm leading.

[08:09] But as a matter of fact, I do not have solar panels on my roof.

[08:13] And for various reasons, I personally don't even want to add them.

[08:18] I don't think any of us should have to put more thought into how we use electricity than we do right now.

[08:23] But I do think we should be moving as much of our energy demand to the electric grid as we can,

[08:29] and we should be doing that more and faster.

[08:32] I hope by the end you'll understand why I feel that way.

[08:35] And again, it might not be what you think.

[08:38] Second, there are going to be lots of comments down below

[08:41] which say things like “but what about the batteries?”

[08:44] and a lot of them will be coming from a place of good faith.

[08:48] But lots of people ask that question in bad faith.

[08:52] And I would like you to know that anyone leaving those sorts of comments here

[08:56] probably didn't watch this video.

[08:59] “What about the batteries?” is one of the central questions I intend to address.

[09:03] There's a lot of people being told to worry about things, which I, for one,

[09:08] don't think you should be worrying much about,

[09:10] and I promise that I'll explain why I feel that way when we get there.

[09:14] And thirdly, I'm going to be talking a lot about cars

[09:18] since many people have a deep connection to them and they are the biggest reason we use so much oil.

[09:23] And well, since electric cars now exist in large numbers,

[09:28] we can easily compare what a battery powered world

[09:35] Cars are just kind of the perfect tool to understand this at this moment, at least in my view.

[09:42] But the logic of this video can,

[09:44] and I think should be applied to literally anything which burns any kind of fossil fuel.

[09:50] For instance, I still heat my home with natural gas,

[09:53] and natural gas has the exact same problems as oil.

[09:57] Since my furnace sets it on fire,

[09:59] It's a disposable, costly single use fuel we have to keep

[10:07] It just happens to be delivered to my home through a metered pipe

[10:10] rather than sold at fueling stations in a pay-as-you go scheme.

[10:14] But with those things out of the way, let's get back to oil.

[10:18] We use crude oil for lots of things,

[10:20] but the most significant thing we use it for in the US

[10:26] So let's talk about the pinnacle of motor cars,

[10:29] This 2010 Nissan Cube.

[10:32] - Hey isn’t that the car you bought to make videos on engine management technology?

[10:36] - Yes.

[10:38] - When is that happening?

[10:40] We’re getting there.

[10:41] - Oh, carry on then.

[10:45] Now if you were paying close attention to the intro, this section might feel a bit repetitive.

[10:49] And I apologize if it does.

[10:51] But there are two core facts about using this car

[10:58] The first fact is that as this car does its job of providing transportation,

[11:03] it burns the gasoline that's inside its fuel tank.

[11:06] This means you constantly have to replace that fuel if you want to keep driving the car.

[11:12] That's easy enough to do.

[11:13] But the second core fact about using this car is that it

[11:20] I know you already know both of those facts,

[11:23] but the reason I said I'd like you to confront them

[11:25] is because that's just a normal reality to lots of people.

[11:29] And it's so normal that we do a really bad job

[11:33] keeping those ongoing costs in mind when we make comparisons to new technologies.

[11:38] For example, have you ever thought about

[11:40] just how much gasoline a car like this will burn over its life?

[11:45] This little fella has traveled nearly 188,000 miles since it was built.

[11:49] Nissan Cubes with a manual transmission like this one

[11:52] have an EPA fuel economy rating that comes in at 25 city, 30 highway.

[11:57] And if we assume that all of those miles were highway miles,

[12:01] which I'm sure isn't true, but we'll give this fella all the benefits of doubt we can,

[12:05] then this car burned through a gallon of gas every 30 miles it went down the road.

[12:10] And so, 188,000 miles divided by 30 miles per gallon tells us that so far,

[12:16] this car has burned through about 6,250 gallons of gasoline.

[12:22] Here's a fun fact that's more than half of one of these.

[12:26] Yeah, those big trucks that actually deliver gasoline to fueling stations?

[12:30] The largest ones hold 11,600 gallons.

[12:33] So this one little car, assuming all highway miles, I remind you,

[12:38] has burned through about 54% of what the biggest tanker trucks can hold.

[12:44] And if you're thinking “buying half a tanker truck of gas sounds expensive,” you'd be right.

[12:50] Let's say those 6,250 gallons were burned evenly over the past 15 years spanning 2011 and 2025.

[12:58] Using the average historical monthly prices in the U.S. during that time

[13:02] tells us that it costs something like $19,500

[13:10] That's more than the car cost when it was new!

[13:13] Spending nearly 20 grand on gasoline certainly hurts the wallet,

[13:17] but the reason drivers of this car had to spend that much

[13:25] You can only use a gallon of gasoline once.

[13:30] Every 30 miles you go in this car means you have to buy another gallon of gas,

[13:36] and this will never, ever change.

[13:39] That fact is one of the reasons we started to look into the viability of electric cars.

[13:45] Now, I won't bother you with a history lesson here,

[13:48] so we'll just jump ahead to 2022, which is when I bought this one.

[13:52] This is a Hyundai Ioniq 5,

[13:54] and I've had a... mostly fantastic time with the car.

[13:59] Hyundai still doesn't seem to know what exactly is going on with the whole ICCU failure thing, which is very reassuring.

[14:05] And oh boy, they really need to release a software update

[14:08] which gives us a button to turn on battery preconditioning manually

[14:11] because until they do doing long distance drives in the winter

[14:15] will get increasingly annoying with its terrible navigation system.

[14:19] I'm not salty, it is.

[14:21] But aside from the ICCU and my bugbears,

[14:25] I've had four trouble free years with this car.

[14:28] In the time I've had it, it's gone nearly 50,000 miles

[14:31] and it hasn't burned a single drop of gasoline.

[14:35] It can't - ain’t got an engine.

[14:37] “Ahhaaa!” the comments erupt,

[14:40] “but you had to plug it into the power grid

[14:46] Now, folks, that's what we call a gotcha.

[14:49] People say that in conversation to undermine the point of

[14:55] However, something that's pretty nifty about electric cars

[14:59] is that they can be charged from any source of energy that generates electricity.

[15:04] That could be nuclear power,

[15:05] it could be hydroelectric power,

[15:07] or it could be all that natural gas we have here in the US.

[15:12] Hydraulic fracturing has freed up so much gas that we are now a net exporter.

[15:17] And with abundant cheap gas, some 40% of our

[15:25] This car, since it's electric, can make use of that abundant and cheap resource.

[15:31] If nothing else, it's using fuel we already have and control,

[15:35] which has national security benefits.

[15:37] But what excites me the most is that this car can also be charged with these.

[15:44] This is a photovoltaic solar panel.

[15:46] You simply point it at the sun and then electricity

[15:54] Now many people quite understandably feel as if that's simply too good to be true

[15:59] and there's gotta be a catch.

[16:01] Of course, the biggest catch is that the sun doesn't shine at night.

[16:04] But you know, this electric car has headlights and taillights

[16:08] because, through the power of batteries, you can drive it at night.

[16:12] So I'm reasonably sure that's something we can figure out.

[16:16] But we'll be talking about batteries and the materials they're made from later on in this video.

[16:21] Ah materials.

[16:23] In many ways,

[16:23] that's what this video is really trying to get you to think about.

[16:27] And they're responsible for the second catch of solar energy.

[16:30] But no, not what those materials are.

[16:34] We'll get there.

[16:35] Instead, I mean simply that I can't really say this

[16:42] because the panel itself wasn't free.

[16:44] It's made of raw materials, which cost the manufacturer money to obtain.

[16:48] And of course, the manufacturer wanted to be paid for their work

[16:51] turning those materials into a functional product.

[16:54] And so did everyone else at every step of the

[16:56] “turn raw materials into a product and get it to

[17:01] process.

[17:02] That meant this solar panel cost a whole lot more than a gallon of gas.

[17:07] But unlike a gallon of gas,

[17:09] using this thing doesn't require destroying it.

[17:13] The useful life of gasoline is exactly once,

[17:17] but the useful life of a solar panel is on the order of decades.

[17:21] That is how solar energy became the least expensive form of electricity.

[17:26] Sure, the panels may be expensive to purchase,

[17:29] but we are using materials to build a durable thing.

[17:33] An object with no moving parts,

[17:35] and that which harvests energy from the sun - which is free! -

[17:39] and will do so for decades.

[17:42] When you average the cost of purchasing solar panels

[17:44] over the many thousands of days

[17:49] the apparently high upfront cost becomes pennies a day per panel.

[17:54] Now, as I've already said, I don't have any interest in putting these things on my rooftop.

[18:00] Our electricity here in Illinois is already pretty cheap,

[18:03] and I'm not looking to cut the cost of charging my car.

[18:07] With a bit of optimization,

[18:09] which really means by charging my car exclusively at night when the grid is quiet,

[18:14] today already it only costs about one third as much to drive my car

[18:19] as it does to buy gas for a car like the Cube.

[18:22] But thought experiments are pretty fun.

[18:24] So let's say for the moment, I was interested in installing a photovoltaic array on my roof

[18:29] to make my own energy for my own car.

[18:32] What would those costs look like?

[18:35] Well, in case you haven't noticed,

[18:37] the cost of manufacturing solar panels has been dropping like a rock.

[18:41] How do you think Harbor Freight gets their hands on them?

[18:44] It's pretty wild.

[18:46] Have you ever thought about how weirdly cheap big TVs are these days?

[18:50] A very similar thing has been happening in the land of photovoltaics,

[18:54] and new solar panels are miraculously cheap.

[18:58] Let's say that instead of spending $19,500 on gasoline for this weird little car,

[19:05] I spent that amount of money on solar panels.

[19:08] How many could I buy these days?

[19:10] Well, if I Google “solar panel wholesale”

[19:13] and click on various solar panel wholesaler websites,

[19:17] it's looking like I can buy a few pallets of ‘em!

[19:20] This website sells pallets with 32 of these 500 watt panels for $5,600.

[19:26] That's $175 per panel, and they have a 25 year warranty.

[19:31] That price means the $19,500 in this car's total fuel cost

[19:36] could today buy 111 of those panels:

[19:40] way more than I could possibly fit on my rooftop,

[19:43] and enough to generate a theoretical 55,000W of power.

[19:47] That many solar panels, incidentally, represents about 6 or 7 complete

[19:52] rooftop solar installations for an average single family home.

[19:56] Think about that.

[19:57] The same $19,500 in capital which got spent on gasoline,

[20:02] which this one small car burned through and will never be seen again

[20:06] could today purchase all the solar panels necessary to completely power a half dozen homes for decades.

[20:16] I don't know, the math doesn't seem to be mathing very well for gasoline!

[20:19] But let's compare apples to apples here.

[20:22] How many of those 500 watt panels would someone like me, who lives in Chicagoland

[20:26] and drives about 13,000 miles each year, need on their rooftop (in Chicagoland)

[20:31] to charge a Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the middle of December?

[20:36] Twelve.

[20:38] I'll need 12 of those panels.

[20:41] Which means if I spend some $2,100 on solar panels today,

[20:45] then I will have completely taken care of my car's lifetime energy costs!

[20:50] That right there, folks, is why I'm so confident renewable energy is the future.

[20:57] If I were to spend just a little bit more than I did on my last TV upgrade,

[21:02] I will have pre-purchased all of the fuel this car will ever need.

[21:08] Yes, of course, I'm skipping a whole bunch of details,

[21:11] like the labor to install those panels

[21:13] and the racking and the wires and stuff, but I'm also skipping

[21:17] the fact that once we're out of the winter months,

[21:20] those 12 panels will produce way more electricity than my car

[21:23] needs, and in fact, could power my entire home on most days.

[21:28] The essential and core fact to confront here,

[21:31] and this is a fact that often gets overlooked in debates,

[21:34] is that renewable energy capacity is not disposable!

[21:39] It is, in fact durable.

[21:41] And that makes it functionally a one time investment.

[21:45] You only have to buy and install these things once,

[21:48] and then they simply sit there generating free electricity for years to come.

[21:52] All they might need after installation is a bit of cleaning every once in a while.

[21:58] That stands in stark contrast to fossil fuels, which you have to keep buying forever.

[22:04] So going back to the example of the Cube and my Hyundai,

[22:08] the choice becomes do you spend $1,300 on fuel every single year,

[22:13] or do you spend an extra 800 bucks this year

[22:21] Choice seems pretty clear to me!

[22:23] So now you might be wondering why I said I don't want solar panels on my own personal roof.

[22:29] Well, the quickest way to answer that is to go on a field trip.

[22:33] Behind me is a 27 megawatt solar farm

[22:36] that was built here in the town of DePue, Illinois.

[22:40] Now, there's a couple notable things about that.

[22:42] First, Illinois is not exactly the solar power capital of the country.

[22:47] It's cloudy as I'm filming this, and we're kind of high up in the latitudes.

[22:51] And yet...

[22:53] there's a 27 megawatt solar farm that got built in DePue, Illinois!

[22:58] Why did that happen?

[23:00] Well, because people who like to make money

[23:03] understand the difference between CapEx and OpEx.

[23:07] And so do you, even if you don't know what those terms mean.

[23:10] I'll explain them shortly.

[23:11] But first, do you know anyone with a backup generator?

[23:16] That question might sound out of left field,

[23:18] but I promise you it's a perfect way to understand this.

[23:21] Some people live where the electricity grid

[23:23] isn't as reliable as they'd like it to be.

[23:26] Everyone hates power outages because electricity is extremely important to our lives at this point.

[23:31] And if grid reliability is poor enough where someone lives,

[23:35] they might elect to install a large backup generator powered by natural gas,

[23:40] which will automatically kick on and generate electricity during a power outage.

[23:45] When someone decides to spend their money that way,

[23:47] that's CapEx or capital expenditure.

[23:51] They are using their capital to buy a durable thing which will last them many years,

[23:56] and it becomes an investment in the future.

[23:59] Some folks install generators which are large enough to power their entire home,

[24:03] meaning power outages are nothing but an inconvenient blip.

[24:08] And that leads to what I think is an interesting and revealing question to ponder.

[24:14] If those people own a machine which can power everything in their home by itself,

[24:20] why don't they get their money's worth out of it and just use that machine all the time?

[24:24] Why stay connected to the power grid at all?

[24:27] Well, that's because that machine needs fuel to generate electricity.

[24:32] And that fuel costs money, which makes it part of OpEx,

[24:36] which is short for operating expenditure.

[24:39] The gas company will charge you for the gas that generator uses.

[24:42] And those fuel costs mean that using a backup generator

[24:46] is much more expensive than pulling energy directly from the power grid.

[24:51] Everyone with a backup generator knows this,

[24:54] and that's why it's a backup

[24:58] It is simply too expensive to use that machine all the time.

[25:03] The great big machines on the power grid,

[25:06] even when they're burning the same natural gas as a backup generator,

[25:10] can capture much more of the energy contained in the fuel they burn and turn it into electricity

[25:16] than the small engine inside a Generac can.

[25:20] That efficiency of scale is what makes generating electricity cheaper for grid scale power stations.

[25:26] And the fact that the wires which connect your house to the grid

[25:34] explains why distributing that energy through the power grid is very efficient,

[25:39] both economically and from an energy perspective.

[25:42] And what's really important to remember is that grid power is cheaper

[25:47] despite the fact that the people who operate natural gas plants are making a healthy profit.

[25:53] They're not just running a power plant for the fun of it,

[25:55] they're in business!

[25:57] But the smarter business critters out there know that even with the benefits of scale,

[26:02] a natural gas plant still has a very high OpEx.

[26:07] Each unit of electricity a gas plant generates

[26:15] So for those who have an eye on making money,

[26:18] when solar farms pop up and demonstrate that

[26:26] well, gas doesn't look so great anymore.

[26:29] See, all a solar farm operator needs to do is sell their electricity for slightly less

[26:37] And that's what they'll do.

[26:40] That's good for consumers because that makes electricity cheaper to use.

[26:43] But because the solar farm has next to zero OpEx,

[26:48] it still generates a healthy profit, even though it's cheaper.

[26:52] And savvy business people who think long term will use those profits to build more solar farms.

[26:59] The basic realities of economics mean that

[27:07] The sun doesn't cost any money to use, which means

[27:14] And that means whatever price you can sell that energy for on the power grid energy market

[27:19] is almost purely profit once the panels have been paid off.

[27:23] Best of all, grid scale energy storage in the form of

[27:29] that it is now possible — today — to build a solar farm

[27:36] and all the while doing that for a lower cost than any other source of electricity.

[27:41] And since both photovoltaic panels and batteries are manufactured in factories

[27:46] which can leverage economies of scale,

[27:52] The economics are already in favor of solar and storage,

[27:56] but they're going to keep looking better and better every year.

[28:00] Solar energy has put us on the cusp of a positive feedback loop,

[28:04] yet relatively few people seem to have realized this.

[28:07] And that's despite the fact that -

[28:09] there's another one not even five miles up the road here in Spring Valley, Illinois.

[28:15] Solar farms are starting to pop up everywhere, even in states like Illinois,

[28:19] because the business case simply makes so much sense.

[28:23] It's farming a crop, just like we do with land today.

[28:26] But that crop gets harvested every single day rather than once a year,

[28:31] and virtually no work is involved in harvesting that crop.

[28:35] Plus, the crop doesn't need inputs in the form of water or fertilizer or pesticide or seed.

[28:41] You just plop some panels on some land,

[28:44] angle them to get the most energy out of the sun as you can,

[28:46] and let the money roll in.

[28:49] This is a capitalist’s wet dream!

[28:52] People are always talking about passive income, as if that's a panacea.

[28:56] Well, there it is!

[28:57] You can become a farmer, and all you'll have to do

[29:00] is mow the grass between the panels a few times a year.

[29:03] The fact that there's this amazing business opportunity out there is why solar farms are happening in the first place.

[29:10] And they're leveraging the power grid we already have

[29:17] And that's why I'm not that interested in putting panels on my roof.

[29:21] Yes, there are good arguments for distributing energy resources,

[29:25] and we have a real problem right now with getting new transmission lines permitted.

[29:30] There are a ton of solar power projects which are already funded,

[29:35] but aren't happening because FERC can't get their act together

[29:38] and they're stuck in permitting hell.

[29:41] NIMBYs aren't helping either.

[29:43] Pushing individuals to install solar on their rooftop is one way to bypass some of these issues,

[29:49] and it does have some advantages,

[29:51] but many people don't have the agency to install solar on their roof,

[29:56] even if they wanted to and could afford it.

[29:58] Renters can't do that even if they're renting a house.

[30:02] And what's worse, apartment buildings don't have enough roof space to be self-sufficient.

[30:07] Cities will always be relying on solar farms.

[30:11] There are many more reasons I'm not a big fan of pushing people

[30:15] which I'll spare you for time.

[30:17] Bottom line, I will gladly pay these small businesses

[30:24] and think that's a far more efficient use of my money.

[30:27] But speaking of efficient uses of things,

[30:29] let's address some of the concerns I know many of you out there have about solar energy.

[30:34] Like land use.

[30:36] Solar farms do indeed require a lot of space.

[30:40] That 27 megawatt solar farm in DePue is on something like a 120 acre site.

[30:47] I used an online tool and drew a circle around the access road to come up with that figure,

[30:51] so I can't guarantee it's accurate,

[30:56] Now, 27 MW is a tremendous amount of power,

[31:00] but in the context of the power grid, it's pretty piddly.

[31:04] This is the three phase line that connects the solar farm to the substation in DePue,

[31:09] And it's, uh...

[31:11] well it ain't exactly a big transmission line now, is it?

[31:14] So, yeah, solar energy will use lots of land.

[31:18] However, since I'm from Illinois, I think I'm qualified to explain why

[31:23] you probably don't need to worry too much about land use.

[31:27] That is a corn field.

[31:30] It doesn't look like much right now because it's the middle of January.

[31:33] But corn used to be growing there and it was harvested in the fall.

[31:37] Now there's three very notable things about this reality:

[31:41] First of all, this land should not look like this.

[31:44] This is Illinois, where the Prairie State,

[31:46] the natural environment, is prairie.

[31:48] And now there's virtually none of that left because it has all been turned into farms.

[31:54] Secondly, we only get one harvest per year out of this land.

[31:59] We spend all the summer growing the corn.

[32:02] And then in the fall, it's harvested just once.

[32:05] If this was a solar farm, it could have a harvest every single day.

[32:09] And third, if you're thinking, “well, what if we stop growing corn there?

[32:13] We can't eat anymore!’

[32:15] Well, this corn is not the corn that you eat.

[32:18] Some of it does end up in lots of different food products,

[32:21] but a large portion of this corn gets used...

[32:24] for that.

[32:26] Yeah, those messages on gas pumps which say, may contain up to 10% ethanol?

[32:31] That came from corn.

[32:33] We have been using an astonishing amount of our rich agricultural land

[32:38] to grow corn to feed to cars.

[32:41] Maybe you remember the days of FlexFuel vehicles and E85 being relevant.

[32:46] Well, back in 2005, President George W Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005,

[32:52] and in 2007, he signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

[32:58] Those acts mandated a specific amount of ethanol in gallons

[33:02] which needs to be produced so it can be mixed with gasoline.

[33:06] The idea, as you might have gleaned from the independence and security part,

[33:10] was to start making our own energy for cars

[33:13] so that we'd be less dependent on foreign oil,

[33:16] a policy I wholeheartedly support!

[33:20] The only trouble is that doing it with corn ethanol is tremendously stupid.

[33:25] First of all, it's important to acknowledge that we only get one corn harvest per year.

[33:30] Now, an acre of corn field might be able to produce

[33:37] I'd like to note that it takes an awful lot of chemistry and energy to turn corn into ethanol,

[33:43] but we'll just ignore that and pretend it's easy and free.

[33:46] So let's go back to that solar farm.

[33:49] If this were a 120 acre corn field,

[33:52] then at the end of the year we can get maybe 66,000 gallons of ethanol out of it.

[33:58] That's about five tanker trucks worth.

[34:01] Now, if you didn't already know, this ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline.

[34:05] So E85 vehicles which run on E85 have a really poor fuel economy

[34:15] But I'll be generous.

[34:16] Let's say those 66,000 gallons of corn ethanol all make it into cars

[34:21] that can go 30 miles on a gallon of E85.

[34:24] How far can they drive?

[34:26] Well, 66,000 gallons times 30

[34:29] tells us that they can go just shy of 2 million miles.

[34:33] That might seem like a lot,

[34:35] but now let's consider how many miles electric cars

[34:38] that are being charged from the 27MW of solar panels

[34:45] The operator of that solar farm's website claims it generates

[34:53] Well, the website says “in year one,” so it's possible

[34:56] it wasn't yet complete when they came to that figure.

[34:58] But I'm just going to roll with it.

[35:01] Electric cars generally get something like 3 or 4 miles per kilowatt hour.

[35:06] But let's go ahead and make the picture worse for them and say they can only manage two,

[35:11] which is what my car can get down to in extreme cold.

[35:14] Well, 37,000 megawatt hours is 37,000,000 kilowatt hours.

[35:20] So every year these panels can push electric cars at least 74 million miles.

[35:28] That's 2 million miles of driving each year from corn,

[35:38] So do you really think we should still be growing corn to feed to cars?

[35:44] Here's the best part, though.

[35:46] Let's say you decided the answer is no

[35:48] and we stopped growing corn to feed to cars.

[35:52] How many acres of cornfields would that free up?

[35:55] Well, this website I found says we've got 96 million acres of land growing corn in this country.

[36:02] And depending on how you count, between 25 and 40% of all that acreage is devoted to ethanol.

[36:11] So let's just say we took a slightly fudged quarter of that land, 25 million acres,

[36:17] and covered it all in solar panels.

[36:19] How much energy would that harvest?

[36:22] Well, that's going to depend on where the panels are.

[36:25] And since we're going to do a thought experiment here where we put the panels in the corn belt,

[36:29] let's just keep using the numbers from the solar farm in DePue.

[36:33] Up here in Illinois, we can get 37,000 megawatt hours per year out of 120 acres.

[36:40] So let's see 25 million divided by 120 and then multiply by 37,000....

[36:47] That is 7,708,333,000 megawatt hours of energy.

[36:55] And why is that the best part?

[36:58] Because that's more energy than the entire U.S. electricity grid produces right now.

[37:03] And by a lot.

[37:05] In 2023, it all added up to 4.178 billion megawatt hours.

[37:11] So if all we did was decide to stop growing corn to turn into ethanol,

[37:17] and we used only that land for generating only solar power,

[37:21] we'd be able to generate 84% more electricity on an annual basis

[37:26] than we do today from all of our energy sources.

[37:30] I hope that helps you understand why I'm not that worried

[37:37] We've got a whole lot of it,

[37:39] and we're not exactly using it responsibly at the moment, anyway.

[37:43] And by the way, I used real world numbers

[37:45] from a real world solar installation to perform this thought experiment

[37:49] in the hopes that that would be more convincing.

[37:51] But just in case you doubt my numbers, which I understand

[37:54] because I used the numbers from the company's website,

[37:57] there have been plenty of studies which demonstrate this,

[38:00] and I'll link them below.

[38:02] What's most notable is that up here in the Corn Belt,

[38:05] we actually have a pretty bad capacity factor.

[38:09] Solar panels would be much more productive

[38:11] if they were somewhere farther south and sunnier.

[38:14] But even with our mediocre latitude and weather patterns,

[38:18] all the land we need to generate electricity

[38:21] with solar power alone can be freed up

[38:24] if we just stop growing corn to feed to cars.

[38:29] So far in this video I've been talking a lot about solar energy.

[38:32] But you know I also like those things.

[38:35] Yeah.

[38:38] Something interesting you can do with these is put them in fields alongside crops

[38:42] and farm the wind and some corn at the same time.

[38:46] You can actually also do that with solar panels,

[38:48] it's called agrivoltaics and it's a really exciting area of research.

[38:53] But we'll set that aside.

[38:54] This video is already quite long.

[38:56] Now some people look at a wind turbine

[38:59] and see a pointless boondoggle which clutters the landscape.

[39:02] But I, on the other hand, see a magnificent machine

[39:05] which turns wind into gasoline.

[39:09] Here's a fun thought experiment:

[39:10] Each one of these wind turbines can generate two megawatts of power.

[39:15] And on a windy day, like today,

[39:19] If this car could actually handle that much power,

[39:22] how long do you think it would take one of those wind turbines —

[39:25] just one! — to charge this car's battery?

[39:28] The answer is two and a half minutes.

[39:31] Seriously, not even 2.5 minutes.

[39:33] And if we consider that this car has a driving range of about 240 miles,

[39:38] and then equate that to a gasoline powered car that gets 40 miles per gallon,

[39:42] then you can very much imagine these machines as wind powered oil derricks

[39:47] that generate about three gallons of refined gasoline every single minute.

[39:53] If you're having a hard time imagining what that looks like,

[39:56] most showerheads run at something like two gallons per minute.

[40:00] So imagine you had a shower running all the time

[40:07] And that's what just one of those wind turbines does.

[40:11] And how much does the wind cost?

[40:14] Slightly more than the sun.

[40:15] But it's still free.

[40:17] Wind power is obviously quite useful.

[40:20] For one thing, these work

[40:25] But these are gigantic machines with moving parts

[40:32] In fact, while I was out at this wind farm,

[40:35] this one in the background was stopped because there was a crew performing maintenance.

[40:39] That's OpEx.

[40:41] So while a wind farm still has a very, very low OpEx

[40:48] wind turbines are not quite as cost competitive as solar panels.

[40:52] Photovoltaics are very much a kind of solid state energy generation.

[40:57] And a big machine like that is very much not.

[41:01] But let's pretend wind power doesn't exist.

[41:04] This is a silly thing to pretend because it does.

[41:07] But I want us to return to the purely solar powered thought experiment.

[41:11] Because in the room where that thought experiment takes place,

[41:15] there is an elephant.

[41:17] Covering 25 million acres in solar panels is going to require building many millions of solar panels.

[41:25] Billions, in fact.

[41:27] And that's going to require a whole heckuvalot of raw materials.

[41:31] Now, I do think it's worth pointing out that the fruit

[41:39] We use an even heckier heckuvalot of raw materials right now when we extract and refine oil

[41:45] and all the fruits of that process function exactly once.

[41:50] You don't notice all the mass you're burning through right now,

[41:52] because it mostly exists in your mind as nothing but numbers on a gas pump.

[41:57] Unless you're filling a jerry can, you don't even see it.

[42:00] But there's a reason those tanker trucks are constantly showing up and delivering more fuel to each and every gas station.

[42:07] Cars burn that fuel and it's constantly disappearing.

[42:12] I, for one, think we should spend our efforts extracting resources

[42:15] which will hang around for a while.

[42:18] Just seems a little wiser.

[42:20] Regardless, solar panels are large, fairly heavy things

[42:26] So it's worth talking about what the raw materials inside these things actually are.

[42:33] And that's why I bought this one.

[42:36] And that one.

[42:37] But we'll get back to that.

[42:39] So these slender black things with all the lines on them

[42:43] are the actual solar cells.

[42:45] These are what convert the photons from the sun that land on them into electrons

[42:50] which can be sent down a wire and harnessed as energy.

[42:53] Those cells are extremely thin.

[42:56] We're talking about as thin as a human hair.

[42:59] And that means the vast, vast majority of this panel's mass is simply...

[43:06] panel!

[43:07] Almost all of what makes up this thing is either aluminum, glass, or adhesives.

[43:13] 72 silicon cells were arranged and wired together and then glued to this sheet of glass.

[43:19] Once that was done, the backside of the glass gets coated in some kind of thermoplastic

[43:24] to seal it all up and make it watertight.

[43:27] A hole in that coating was left for lead wires

[43:29] to connect the solar cells to this junction box,

[43:32] and then the box was attached to the backside of the glass with sealant.

[43:36] Oh, and if you're wondering what's inside that junction box,

[43:39] sometimes it's a circuit board with a micro inverter to allow the panel

[43:46] But in this case, this is a DC solar panel,

[43:49] so all that's in there are a couple of beefy diodes.

[43:52] And well, the last major thing in here is aluminum.

[43:56] The aluminum frame gives some structure to the glass and provides an easy way to mount it.

[44:01] But that's really all it's there for.

[44:03] I'm not that well versed on all the ways these things are constructed,

[44:07] so I don't want to falsely assert that most of them are made like this one is.

[44:11] And a lot of panels now have solar cells on both sides:

[44:14] those are known as bifacial panels. But no matter how they're made,

[44:19] it's mostly just glass and aluminum.

[44:23] I think that's notable because those are both

[44:30] for food containers.

[44:34] And it's also notable because these food containers,

[44:37] mainly glass bottles and jars and aluminum cans,

[44:40] are something we already actively recycle.

[44:43] It would be better if we reused glass containers

[44:46] rather than ground them up and melted them,

[44:48] but that's an issue for another time.

[44:50] The important thing is we already know how to do that,

[44:53] and we already have industrial processes

[44:56] which turn used ground up glass into new glass,

[44:59] and which melt scrap aluminum into new aluminum.

[45:04] So at the end of this panel's useful life,

[45:07] which won't be for 25 years!

[45:10] ...almost all of its raw material mass can easily be recovered

[45:14] and turned into another panel, which is important.

[45:18] When it comes to the actual silicon cells,

[45:21] Well, you've probably heard (or heard someone say) that these things are full of toxic materials.

[45:28] That's misinformation.

[45:30] And let me explain why.

[45:32] There are some kinds of solar cell

[45:34] that we've been experimenting with, like thin film solar cells or perovskite cells,

[45:39] which require some less than great elements in their construction.

[45:42] But those represent only about 5% of panels made today.

[45:47] The vast majority are using monocrystalline silicon at this point,

[45:51] which is a material we derive from quartz.

[45:54] You know, rocks.

[45:57] There are some trace elements of phosphorous, boron and silver in here.

[46:02] But based on what I've researched,

[46:06] people might worry about in this is lead in the solder which makes electrical connections.

[46:13] You can see some of it right here.

[46:15] But I'm not actually sure that lead is even in this panel!

[46:19] We've had lead free solder for quite some time, though...

[46:22] as any electronics enthusiast will tell you,

[46:24] it can be annoying to work with because it

[46:29] I say that because it's possible

[46:34] to get a good bond with the silicon cells.

[46:37] But even if that's true,

[46:40] we know how to deal with lead.

[46:42] Did you know that new lead acid batteries are almost entirely made from old lead acid batteries?

[46:49] Every time you buy a car battery from a store,

[46:52] you're going to have to pay what's called a core charge,

[46:55] which you don't get refunded until you bring your old battery back to the store.

[46:59] And that's to encourage recycling.

[47:02] This system works so well that we capture about 99% of the material in dead car batteries.

[47:08] We have a nearly closed loop recycling stream already established for them.

[47:13] That's some foreshadowing for the “what about the batteries?” section,

[47:17] but I'm really saying it here to let you know we can

[47:24] We just have to want to.

[47:26] And speaking of recycling, there's absolutely no reason

[47:33] The worn out solar cells could be melted down and purified into new silicon

[47:37] to make new wafers, to make new cells at the end of a panels life.

[47:41] But even if for some reason we never figure that out or it's never economically viable,

[47:47] you have to remember two things:

[47:49] First, each panel will last a quarter of a century or longer!

[47:55] And second, those cells are extremely thin,

[47:58] usually less than 200 micrometers,

[48:01] and thus have almost no material in them at all.

[48:04] I wanted to remove the cells from this panel

[48:07] so I could actually weigh them and tell you just how much

[48:12] but they're so thin and fragile that I could not peel away the coating

[48:16] which seals them to the glass without destroying them.

[48:19] I tried several different solvents, hoping to dissolve

[48:25] The magic of buying two of them has unfortunately failed us.

[48:29] However, I has internet!

[48:32] Assuming a thickness of 200 micrometers,

[48:34] which appears to be on the thicker side these days,

[48:37] then if we stacked up all 72 of these cells, they'd make a stack which is just 1.4cm tall.

[48:44] The total volume would thus be about 94.5cm³,

[48:49] and the density of silicon is about 2.3g/cm³,

[48:53] meaning this solar panel has maybe 215g of silicon in it.

[48:59] That's about 3% of its total mass.

[49:03] Now, this is only a 100 watt panel, and most panels sold today are larger with more cells.

[49:09] But that still means we're looking at about a kilogram of silicon per 500 watt solar panel on the high end.

[49:17] Now, that's not a lot for an individual panel,

[49:19] but if we followed through with the Corn Belt thought experiment, we'd need about 10 billion panels.

[49:24] So, well, those panels are going to need something like 5 or 10 million metric tons of silicon.

[49:31] And that is certainly a lot.

[49:34] But it's probably not as much as you might think.

[49:37] For one thing, right now in the US,

[49:39] we put some 265 million metric tons of stuff in landfills every year.

[49:46] So if we simply landfilled all that silicon, which I will remind you

[49:50] represents the silicon necessary to completely power the entire

[49:59] we'd only be taking up less than a 10th of our yearly landfill capacity by mass.

[50:03] And we'd only need to do that every quarter of a century.

[50:07] Remember how I said I'd only need 12 of those

[50:14] That's what's really important to remember.

[50:16] The amount of silicon, or in fact,

[50:18] whatever material in a solar panel might concern you that

[50:28] And when you remember that each of the solar panels

[50:35] then the amount of material used per day is irrelevant.

[50:39] Anyone trying to get you to focus on that is fear mongering and deflecting your attention

[50:44] away from the fact that currently we burn through millions of barrels of oil every day.

[50:50] And now here we are.

[50:52] What about the batteries?

[50:54] If we actually live in this imagined future of nothing but solar energy

[50:59] which in case it's not clear, I don't think we will

[51:01] because we have many different sources of energy

[51:05] But if we actually live in this future,

[51:08] we have to deal with when the sun's not shining

[51:11] and we do that with batteries.

[51:13] We would be building much more solar power capacity

[51:20] and the excess we're not using will charge enormous banks of batteries

[51:24] so that when the sun sets and the panels stop producing any output,

[51:28] we have stored energy to get us through to sunrise.

[51:32] We're also going to have long term storage available to get us through periods of bad weather.

[51:37] But of course, we can also use this high tech idea

[51:44] There's a huge variety of ways we could solve this issue,

[51:47] and that's one of the cool things about electricity.

[51:51] But no matter what, we're going to need to build a whole heckuva lot of batteries.

[51:55] And those suckers absolutely do have some nasty chemicals in there.

[52:00] And we're going to need to extract a whole lot of raw

[52:02] material from mines and whatnot to get them.

[52:06] However, if you understand the logic of lifespan, you'll know what I'm about to say.

[52:12] Most people who say “but what about the batteries?” seem

[52:20] The first fact is that they last many years now.

[52:23] In fact, some of the latest batteries with a daily

[52:32] That's 15 years of daily use of the same battery pack

[52:36] as opposed to fossil fuels which can all be used, I remind you, once.

[52:42] And the second core fact

[52:43] is that when those batteries have degraded,

[52:46] they're still there!

[52:49] When battery cells degrade, it's not as if the material inside of them is disappearing.

[52:54] What's actually happening is that the physical arrangements of those materials is slowly changing.

[53:00] As the reversible chemical reaction which we call charging and discharging the battery occurs inside,

[53:06] little bits of material in the anodes and cathodes can start

[53:09] breaking off and moving around, creating structures inside

[53:13] that eventually start to block the chemical reaction from happening

[53:17] and reduce the battery cell’s ability to function.

[53:21] But that does not mean any of the materials have transformed into something else.

[53:27] You can't take a lithium atom for example, and turn it into iron.

[53:31] All the lithium that was in there when the battery was made is still there.

[53:37] So when the battery wears out,

[53:39] all of the lithium inside can be recovered.

[53:42] Let's talk about mining for a second.

[53:45] When we find new deposits of some substance we're looking for,

[53:49] it's not as if someone just happens

[53:51] upon a giant lump of pure cobalt, and we start cutting chunks out of it.

[53:56] No, we find a deposit of ore which is rich in that material.

[54:00] Then we'll dig up that ore and do lots of fancy processing

[54:04] to extract the cobalt or whatever from the rest of the rocks and purify it.

[54:09] Why am I telling you this?

[54:11] Because the richest ore for whatever material you need to build a battery...

[54:16] is used batteries!

[54:18] We are already starting up processes

[54:20] where we grind up used lithium ion batteries

[54:23] and turn them into a mineral rich paste,

[54:25] which, just like the raw ore we get out of the ground,

[54:28] can be processed into the raw material inputs that built that battery in the first place.

[54:34] Jerry Rig Everything has a two year old video about this process,

[54:40] Unlike fossil fuels where we toil away

[54:45] just so that we can sell them, put them in our gas tanks and set them on fire, when we're building a battery...

[54:52] we are *building* something!

[54:54] We're extracting and purifying resources to make a durable good,

[54:58] which will last many, many years.

[55:01] And because that durable good doesn't disappear once we've used it like fossil fuels do,

[55:07] everything inside that durable good can be recovered.

[55:11] That's kind of the whole point of renewable energy.

[55:14] It's called renewable because it's not disposable.

[55:17] It's a resource we can use again and again and again

[55:20] without worrying about running out.

[55:23] Now, a lot of people like to point out

[55:25] that we don't have a huge industry recycling lithium ion batteries yet,

[55:30] but that's mostly because we don't have a huge supply of dead lithium ion batteries yet.

[55:37] The biggest supply comes from electric cars with worn out battery packs.

[55:41] But again, modern battery chemistries in thermally controlled battery packs last decades.

[55:47] So aside from first gen Nissan Leafs,

[55:50] which had a uniquely terrible battery pack design,

[55:53] most electric cars that were built in the last 15 years still have their original battery packs.

[55:59] The biggest reason we end up with used packs is cars getting into collisions and becoming totaled.

[56:05] That happens way more often than a battery pack failure.

[56:09] So it's not like a recycling industry isn't going to happen,

[56:13] in fact, it's already happening!

[56:15] But it doesn't seem to be at a very large scale yet because most EV batteries are still in service

[56:21] and a lot of folks are buying used EV battery packs from totaled cars

[56:29] meaning they are still in use.

[56:31] They're just not in a car.

[56:33] But there's another rather enormous reason I think

[56:40] That reason?

[56:42] We’re still learning.

[56:44] We are constantly learning how to build better batteries.

[56:48] Name any material of concern inside a battery pack,

[56:51] and I can guarantee you there are engineers out there trying to eliminate it.

[56:56] Lithium iron phosphate cells, for example,

[56:59] don't contain nickel, manganese, or cobalt.

[57:02] And in addition to eliminating the need for conflict minerals,

[57:05] LFP battery chemistry is also much more stable,

[57:08] meaning the risks of battery fires have been reduced dramatically.

[57:13] And we're on the cusp of commercializing sodium ion batteries which don't use lithium at all.

[57:19] They use sodium.

[57:20] You know the stuff in ramen noodles?

[57:22] Table salt.

[57:23] The stuff we can get simply by filling a pot with seawater and waiting a while.

[57:28] Sodium ion batteries are not as energy dense,

[57:31] so they'll probably not be a great fit for electric cars,

[57:34] but they'll be a fantastic fit for the large grid scale energy storage facilities

[57:40] which are already being built all the time.

[57:43] And if you've read about battery fires at those facilities,

[57:46] that's a huge reason we're looking into sodium ion.

[57:49] That chemistry is far more stable

[57:51] and seems nearly immune from thermal runaway risks from what I understand.

[57:56] We are constantly learning new things as we try to crack this nut.

[58:01] I remind you,

[58:02] the energy we get from solar panels is free,

[58:06] so there is a huge incentive for us to figure out

[58:11] We are and have always been working on building better, cheaper, longer lasting, less dangerous batteries

[58:18] which use materials we can find in our own backyard.

[58:22] So whatever you've heard that might make you concerned

[58:25] is not guaranteed to be relevant in the next few years or even tomorrow.

[58:30] And because every single battery we build will

[58:37] we have the ability to reprocess those batteries

[58:45] That's the end game.

[58:47] I've seen a lot of people say things like,

[58:49] “well, lithium is just going to become the new oil!”

[58:51] but that completely misunderstands the realities here.

[58:55] We cannot stop extracting oil because we burn it as we use it.

[59:01] Yes, renewable energy technology will require lots of extraction to build,

[59:06] but we don't destroy what we extracted.

[59:10] That is what we do with fossil fuels.

[59:12] We burn them as we use them.

[59:14] And that's the problem.

[59:16] There's scarcity built into fossil fuels because it disappears.

[59:20] Each and every gallon of gasoline you've ever purchased,

[59:23] except for what's sitting in your gas tank right this moment, is gone.

[59:28] But the battery pack I purchased alongside my car is still with us.

[59:33] It's right there.

[59:34] All of the raw materials it's made from are still inside of it,

[59:38] and we are able to get to them.

[59:40] And so when it's no longer doing its job

[59:42] as I need it to, it will live another life.

[59:45] Just as the steel which makes up the rest of the car will be crushed

[59:48] and turned into new cars,

[59:50] The minerals inside that battery pack will be

[59:57] And even if we never figure out how to make better batteries and we're stuck

[1:00:04] eventually we'll have built enough of them to do everything we need to do.

[1:00:09] I'm not buying a new battery pack for my car because it's already got one! And it's still working.

[1:00:14] And once we've built enough batteries for grid scale energy storage,

[1:00:18] well, we'll have built enough batteries.

[1:00:21] There does come a day when we have built enough,

[1:00:24] because we only use energy when we choose to do things

[1:00:27] like cook food or drive a car.

[1:00:29] And there's only so many humans on this planet choosing to do stuff.

[1:00:33] And when they start wearing out then, yeah,

[1:00:34] those batteries will need replacement but that

[1:00:41] We'll have to find some new lithium to make up

[1:00:44] for whatever is lost in the recovery process.

[1:00:46] But if we can follow the example of lead acid battery recycling

[1:00:50] and all but completely closed the loop,

[1:00:52] then in a theoretical 50 years down the road scenario,

[1:00:55] perhaps 1 in 100 lithium mines will remain operational.

[1:00:59] The rest of them will have closed down

[1:01:01] because when we need to build new batteries, we'll get lithium from old batteries.

[1:01:07] But the best part is something I mentioned way back at the start.

[1:01:12] We're already here.

[1:01:14] Solar and storage is now the cheapest form of electricity generation we know of.

[1:01:20] For years, the barrier to making solar energy happen at scale was simply cost.

[1:01:25] We had functional solar panels decades ago,

[1:01:28] but they were ludicrously expensive to manufacture.

[1:01:31] And that's why the only places you tended to find them were on,

[1:01:34] like the International Space Station and satellites and junk.

[1:01:38] But now we are way under $1 per watt.

[1:01:41] Random websites will sell me, a random schmuck,

[1:01:45] solar panels which go for just $0.35 a watt, and they'll certainly get cheaper than that.

[1:01:51] They already are when you have a contract for 27 MW worth.

[1:01:55] Of course, I care deeply about the materials angle

[1:01:58] and appreciate the fact that unlike all fossil fuels,

[1:02:02] nearly everything we extract out of the ground

[1:02:04] to build solar panels and batteries can be recaptured at the end of their life

[1:02:09] to make new solar panels and batteries.

[1:02:12] I like that a lot.

[1:02:14] But even if you don't care about that,

[1:02:17] the sun is free!

[1:02:19] And both solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough

[1:02:23] to make practical use of that free source of energy.

[1:02:27] We are here.

[1:02:29] We made it and the future looks quite bright.

[1:02:34] ♫ anomalously smooth jazz ♫

[1:02:40] Oh sorry.

[1:02:41] Yeah, this isn't the actual end.

[1:02:43] If you watch until the actual end,

[1:02:47] But for now,

[1:02:49] I want to ask you something.

[1:02:51] Did this video make sense to you?

[1:02:55] A while ago, I put a quick talking to camera thing

[1:02:57] together on my second channel, where I basically just

[1:03:01] explained the whole situation here and asked,

[1:03:03] why does the logic of pay more upfront to save more later

[1:03:08] break down whenever we're talking about renewable energy?

[1:03:12] It was a pretty snarky video and very off the cuff.

[1:03:16] I don't even remember what prompted me to make it.

[1:03:19] But at last year's Open Sauce,

[1:03:21] which, by the way, I'll be headed to again this year,

[1:03:24] I had a wonderful conversation with someone who told me

[1:03:27] that video changed their mind.

[1:03:30] I have to apologize because I don't remember your name.

[1:03:32] But I very much remember that conversation.

[1:03:35] And it's been stuck in my head ever since.

[1:03:38] See, the logic of renewable energy

[1:03:41] seemed self-evident to me.

[1:03:43] And that's why the video was as snarky as it was.

[1:03:47] Frankly, and I don't want this to sound like I think I'm full of myself,

[1:03:51] but it probably comes across that way, so I apologize in advance.

[1:03:54] But as soon as I was old enough to understand what photovoltaics did

[1:03:59] and that like almost every technology we've ever dealt with,

[1:04:03] eventually we'd figure out how to make solar panels cheaply.

[1:04:07] I immediately thought, oh, cool.

[1:04:10] So eventually we'll be able to stop burning

[1:04:12] expensive stuff to generate electricity.

[1:04:15] And that mental reality has been in my head

[1:04:19] so long that I never thought to explain it.

[1:04:22] I kind of assumed everyone already knew what we were trying to do

[1:04:26] by commercializing solar and storage technologies.

[1:04:30] So when I discovered it's

[1:04:32] not as self-evident to everyone as it was to me,

[1:04:36] well, that's when I started thinking about making this video.

[1:04:39] And in the process of making this one,

[1:04:42] I've been reflecting on some of the other videos I've made.

[1:04:45] For instance, the videos I've done on heat pumps and electrification, etc.

[1:04:50] I made those videos assuming that everyone who watched

[1:04:53] them was on the same page as me,

[1:04:56] and that comments which were perplexed by my desire

[1:04:58] to stop paying for things we set on fire,

[1:05:01] were coming from a place of malice.

[1:05:04] I'm sure some were.

[1:05:06] But I also know that not everyone is really thinking about resilience

[1:05:10] and the value of permanent infrastructure in the way that I am.

[1:05:15] Lots of those comments were probably honest,

[1:05:17] especially when I made arguments couched in my own internalized reality

[1:05:21] which understands that natural gas is very cheap today,

[1:05:25] but it is likely to become more expensive in the future.

[1:05:28] While electricity is almost certainly going to get cheaper.

[1:05:34] That is, of course, once we decide to cut it out with this weird aberration

[1:05:42] But I digress.

[1:05:44] I am always thinking both through lens of history and opportunity.

[1:05:49] And that's why when I look at an electrical panel,

[1:05:52] I don't see a boring piece of infrastructure

[1:05:56] I see an endless variety of new opportunities.

[1:06:00] If you've got a natural gas connection,

[1:06:02] then you probably have at most four appliances

[1:06:06] Meanwhile, literally everything else you own is powered by the wires that are in your house.

[1:06:12] Everything we've invented in the last

[1:06:14] what, century? Is electric.

[1:06:17] All the innovation we've been doing to make our lives better relies on electricity.

[1:06:22] And all the innovation which happens in the realm of fossil fuels

[1:06:25] is how to use them slightly more efficiently.

[1:06:29] That's it.

[1:06:29] And we're already damn near perfectly optimized in a lot of cases.

[1:06:33] There's very little room left to innovate,

[1:06:36] But we are always innovating with electric technologies.

[1:06:40] And since your house already has wires in it,

[1:06:43] you can add new things and new technologies

[1:06:46] to your home with very little effort.

[1:06:49] When the personal computer hit the scene,

[1:06:51] nobody needed to do an engineering study

[1:06:53] or get permits to get one because you just plug it in.

[1:06:57] Some things, like installing an electric car charger,

[1:07:00] are a little more difficult, but they still utilize the feed wires

[1:07:04] you already have and the power grid which already exists.

[1:07:08] Electrification seems like the most rational thing we should be doing.

[1:07:12] We can leverage infrastructure

[1:07:14] which is already in place to distribute

[1:07:17] and utilize the free energy we can harvest from the sun, the wind,

[1:07:21] or maybe even the hot rocks beneath our feet.

[1:07:24] And we can bulk up that infrastructure if and when we need to support new demand down the road,

[1:07:30] in many cases, simply by replacing wires and transformers.

[1:07:34] That's how the grid went from not existing, to

[1:07:38] existing basically just for electric lights, to everyone has air conditioning now.

[1:07:43] And that's a perfect segway...

[1:07:45] Oh, those were also electric.

[1:07:47] Anyway, that's the perfect segue to addressing the “misled” in the video title.

[1:07:53] And well,

[1:07:56] now the snark levels are going to go up a bit.

[1:07:59] Let's just, uhhh, roll some clips.

[1:08:01] You know, I also just want to point out I drove my electric car out here.

[1:08:05] I'm 134 miles from Millennium Park in downtown Chicago which is a pretty rural area.

[1:08:12] And yet there's a lot of people who think you can't drive electric cars out in the country.

[1:08:15] I don't know what that's about.

[1:08:17] Something else I should point out.

[1:08:19] I didn't spend any time charging the car

[1:08:21] because I spent the night at a friend's house and her house,

[1:08:24] believe it or not, has electricity.

[1:08:26] So I just plugged the car into her house, and then it charged overnight.

[1:08:29] It's wild.

[1:08:30] Did you know homes have electricity?

[1:08:32] You know, I should also point out that I parked my car right next to one of these

[1:08:36] because I wanted to find out if they really make that RRRER RRRER RRRER

[1:08:39] noise that some people say they make.

[1:08:41] And, you know, I can hear some whooshing from the blades every time it goes past,

[1:08:45] but it's not that loud.

[1:08:47] Standing right beneath it,

[1:08:49] and I can hear the blade whooshing by, but, I don't know.

[1:08:53] Just take a listen for yourself.

[1:08:55] [faint repeating whoosh sounds with an even fainter 60 Hz hum from the transformer]

[1:08:59] Are these are these really that loud?

[1:09:01] Let me just let me just walk around this way.

[1:09:03] By the way, I'm also taking a look on the ground

[1:09:05] to see if there's a bunch of dead birds around here.

[1:09:08] I hear that these things are just murder factories for birds.

[1:09:12] But I don't know. I'm not.

[1:09:13] I'm not seeing any.

[1:09:16] It's a really windy day out.

[1:09:17] Honestly, just the wind is kind of louder than the whooshing of the blades.

[1:09:22] Yeah, if it's not clear yet, I'm going there.

[1:09:26] But before I do, it's important to me that you understand

[1:09:29] and grasp the difference between small p politics and capital P Partisanship.

[1:09:36] A lot of people in the United States right now confuse those two,

[1:09:39] and think any discussion of a political issue

[1:09:42] must have been bought and paid for by the other team.

[1:09:46] That's just not how any of this works.

[1:09:49] If you've been watching my channel for any length of time,

[1:09:52] then you should already have a pretty clear understanding

[1:09:55] of what my personal politics are.

[1:09:58] If you've been under the impression that I've not been political,

[1:10:01] you simply don't understand what politics means.

[1:10:05] I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics,

[1:10:09] but I've been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time,

[1:10:14] and they've not been that subtle.

[1:10:16] Remember that thing I said about getting the most value

[1:10:18] out of how we spend our money and time?

[1:10:21] The money part is obvious,

[1:10:23] but the time part might be less so.

[1:10:26] I have a tremendous respect

[1:10:28] for the working people of this country.

[1:10:31] I certainly have a cushy job these days,

[1:10:33] but I used to work in the hotel industry,

[1:10:36] and I have not forgotten what it's like

[1:10:38] to make ends meet on $14 an hour.

[1:10:41] Nor have I forgotten the amazing

[1:10:45] who were the only reason we could even be in business.

[1:10:49] My connection to those women and their families

[1:10:53] is absolutely part of my personal politics.

[1:10:56] And if the foreshadowing of that isn't clear enough, my God,

[1:11:00] have you not been paying attention.

[1:11:02] I believe in the value of labor,

[1:11:04] and I also respect the purpose of labor.

[1:11:07] Our housekeeping staff was there to do

[1:11:09] the grunt work of cleaning rooms and doing laundry,

[1:11:12] a sort of domestic labor we have never truly valued.

[1:11:17] Front desk me was there to help people

[1:11:19] with whatever problems they might be having.

[1:11:22] Did you know businesses used to put their real phone numbers

[1:11:25] on their websites? When you called my hotel,

[1:11:28] the front desk phone rang and it was my job to say hello and ask what you needed.

[1:11:35] It was old fashioned, but it worked and way

[1:11:37] better than every single customer service chat bot

[1:11:40] I have been forced to interact with lately.

[1:11:44] When I think about the laborers who work on, say, oil rigs,

[1:11:47] I respect what they're doing immensely.

[1:11:51] Those people toil day in and day out

[1:11:53] to make our lives possible, which is noble work.

[1:11:57] But I also think there's a

[1:11:58] crassness to that work, because if we must toil,

[1:12:02] why should we toil as Sisyphus on drilling platforms,

[1:12:05] doing work that brings us fuel to spin our wheels,

[1:12:08] but which moves us nowhere?

[1:12:11] We should build with what we extract.

[1:12:13] We should not just set it on fire.

[1:12:17] And when we build things which make our lives easier,

[1:12:20] we improve the human condition.

[1:12:23] Basically, I just want us to learn stuff and grow our bag of tricks.

[1:12:28] And that's what I've been preaching from this channel the whole time.

[1:12:32] Sometimes that's through looking at interesting pieces

[1:12:38] There are a lot of lessons we've already learned as a species,

[1:12:42] but which can easily be forgotten if folks aren't sharing those stories.

[1:12:47] Other times,

[1:12:48] that's through teaching things

[1:12:49] like the difference between power and energy.

[1:12:52] Basic facts of our world that if you can learn to intuit,

[1:12:55] are very helpful for understanding your energy bills or indeed

[1:13:00] just how much opportunity solar panels unlock.

[1:13:03] Everything I do here is rooted in my belief

[1:13:07] that all of us should have some basic understanding

[1:13:10] of how the stuff we use in our lives works,

[1:13:13] and what the impact of using that stuff is both on ourselves

[1:13:17] and our fellow humans.

[1:13:20] It is very empowering and protects

[1:13:22] you from people who would otherwise leverage your ignorance

[1:13:25] and scam you into things you don't actually need.

[1:13:29] And another core piece of my personal politics

[1:13:32] comes from something we know deep in our hearts,

[1:13:35] even if we sometimes like to pretend it isn't true.

[1:13:38] We accomplish more when we work together and collaborate.

[1:13:42] The power grid is the ultimate example of that.

[1:13:46] I believe the power grid is the most miraculous machine

[1:13:49] our species has ever created.

[1:13:51] Once we figured out how useful this whole electricity business was,

[1:13:54] we took great efforts to run wires

[1:13:57] to almost every structure in this country.

[1:14:00] Even remote farmhouses, which a traditional view of capital would tell

[1:14:03] you could never recoup that infrastructure investment.

[1:14:07] If you've never spent time amongst the cornfields,

[1:14:11] the poles and wires that run for miles, sometimes to serve just a single house.

[1:14:17] We decided it was so important that everyone have access to electricity,

[1:14:22] that our government made that happen.

[1:14:24] When the private sector certainly would not.

[1:14:27] But somewhere along the line, we lost the will to do that.

[1:14:31] If you don't know anyone who lives in a rural area,

[1:14:34] you might not know how horrible it can be

[1:14:36] to get reliable internet access out there.

[1:14:39] Even though it's totally possible to get networking anywhere with wireless technologies,

[1:14:44] internet service providers are doing the math and realizing,

[1:14:47] oh, they're just not going to make very much money

[1:14:49] getting broadband out to the boonies.

[1:14:51] So they didn't.

[1:14:53] And somehow the most rational response to this reality

[1:14:57] is a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit?

[1:15:01] As impressive as that is technologically,

[1:15:04] it's kind of crazy making that we're fawning over that solution

[1:15:08] rather than just like blanketing

[1:15:10] the country in 4G a little bit better.

[1:15:14] We've got countless point to point networking options,

[1:15:17] which don't involve launching rockets into space,

[1:15:20] but we dragged our feet so long

[1:15:23] that satellite constellations somehow seem rational.

[1:15:27] Don't get me wrong.

[1:15:28] I used to rely on Starlink,

[1:15:30] and as someone dealing with either a six megabit DSL line

[1:15:34] megabit upload speed, great for a YouTuber,

[1:15:37] or a flaky 4G connection

[1:15:39] that would get overwhelmed to the point of becoming useless

[1:15:42] if too many people were in the area at the same time.

[1:15:45] Starlink was a miracle.

[1:15:47] but if AT&T could just get a better trunk line to that tower

[1:15:51] and maybe put some extra radio equipment there if needed,

[1:15:55] well, then I would never have needed Starlink.

[1:15:57] And what really makes me pull my hair out

[1:15:59] is that AT&T absolutely knows that tower is getting overwhelmed.

[1:16:04] Or at least they should if they're running analytics.

[1:16:06] But they just don't care.

[1:16:10] It's not a big enough problem for them.

[1:16:12] Launching satellites into space to make rural broadband

[1:16:15] happen is an admission of laziness and defeat

[1:16:19] from both Big Telecom and the government.

[1:16:22] It's a solution a billionaire could provide and happily monetize.

[1:16:26] But it's not necessarily the best solution now is it?

[1:16:30] That's called

[1:16:33] Not everything is black and white.

[1:16:35] But the truth is.

[1:16:39] And here are some true facts I'd like you to know.

[1:16:42] And now we are getting into partisan politics.

[1:16:45] Go ahead and click away if you don't want to hear any of this.

[1:16:48] But did you know that President Jimmy Carter

[1:16:50] put solar panels on the White House?

[1:16:52] No, they were not photovoltaic panels, though those did exist at the time.

[1:16:57] They were instead solar water heating panels.

[1:16:59] Those are still common today in sunny climates.

[1:17:01] They're effectively just boxes with black pipes

[1:17:04] zigging and zagging back and forth and solar radiation

[1:17:07] heats the water inside the pipes for free

[1:17:10] and without using any electricity or fuel.

[1:17:12] Carter did this to promote

[1:17:14] the idea of alternative sources of energy,

[1:17:17] something that was very much on our mind

[1:17:19] during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

[1:17:22] And then in 1986,

[1:17:24] President Ronald Reagan took them down.

[1:17:28] Supposedly, the white House was getting its roof resurfaced,

[1:17:31] so they were taken off, which is understandable.

[1:17:34] But what's less understandable

[1:17:39] Now, President Carter was a Democrat

[1:17:41] and President Reagan was a Republican.

[1:17:44] And in the years since, there has been a repeating pattern

[1:17:48] where Democratic administrations attempt to usher

[1:17:50] in new energy technologies to free us from endless extraction.

[1:17:55] And then Republican administrations swiftly undo that.

[1:17:59] We just went through this when President Biden

[1:18:01] signed the Inflation Reduction Act,

[1:18:03] a weirdly named piece of legislation

[1:18:04] which included a lot of spending for renewable

[1:18:07] energy and electrification investment in this country

[1:18:09] to make panels and batteries here,

[1:18:13] investments that I hope by now,

[1:18:14] you understand, were to lower our costs in the future,

[1:18:17] improve our national security and make our lives better.

[1:18:21] But then President Trump got into power

[1:18:23] and told his Republican Congress critters to repeal

[1:18:26] that law almost immediately.

[1:18:28] Except, no, that's not actually what happened.

[1:18:31] President Trump signed some executive orders

[1:18:33] which froze much of the funding,

[1:18:35] bypassing the very structure of our Constitution,

[1:18:38] which explicitly gives Congress the power of the purse.

[1:18:42] We actually have a whole law, the Congressional Budget

[1:18:45] and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,

[1:18:48] which explicitly makes what Trump did illegal.

[1:18:51] But Republicans currently control

[1:18:53] both houses of Congress, and they've made it very clear

[1:18:56] they do not care to provide

[1:18:57] the checks and balances they're constitutionally obligated to do.

[1:19:02] They are desecrating our Constitution

[1:19:04] because they happen to be on the same team

[1:19:06] as the guy in the white House.

[1:19:07] And as we all know, the primary objective

[1:19:10] of this administration is to own the libs.

[1:19:13] Or is it kidnaping brown people?

[1:19:15] It's getting kind of hard to tell.

[1:19:18] I didn't think masked cowards with guns going around

[1:19:20] demanding papers, please was on the bingo card of my 30s,

[1:19:23] but apparently it was.

[1:19:25] And having looked at that card a little more closely,

[1:19:28] I mean, I've almost got a bingo without even using a free space.

[1:19:31] I've already crossed off,

[1:19:32] threatened to invade Greenland and destroy NATO, threaten

[1:19:35] to annex Canada and papers, please.

[1:19:37] So all I need now is a few murders of U.S. citizens

[1:19:43] What's that?

[1:19:45] Cross that off too?

[1:19:47] Well, surely I'm not going to be able

[1:19:49] to cross off “government officials telling us our eyes didn't see what we saw.”

[1:19:55] Oh.

[1:19:57] Bingo.

[1:19:59] Folks, you need to wake up and smell the fascism.

[1:20:03] I don't know what imaginary lines

[1:20:05] you might have drawn which could be crossed,

[1:20:07] but if you can't agree we've crossed a very bad one

[1:20:10] you need to get off Twitter and stop watching Fox News or

[1:20:17] Or, I'm so sad to say, CBS news.

[1:20:22] It's bad.

[1:20:24] We are clearly living under leaders

[1:20:25] who have a completely different

[1:20:26] understanding of reality than the rest of us do,

[1:20:29] and they are so high on their own supply

[1:20:32] that their followers will believe abject lies.

[1:20:36] Renewable energy is only

[1:20:38] controversial because they made it so.

[1:20:41] And they don't want you thinking through the reality

[1:20:43] which is free energy from reusable materials, as I've just explained.

[1:20:48] They have donors who still make money selling you fossil fuels,

[1:20:52] and so they do not want you thinking about how much you're spending

[1:20:55] and how we have the opportunity to stop.

[1:20:59] Even worse,

[1:21:01] they'll artificially lower the cost of fossil fuels through subsidies,

[1:21:04] even though they're supposedly the party against that sort of thing.

[1:21:08] I am very scared of what

[1:21:10] the future of this country looks like.

[1:21:13] The Bill of Rights looks to be effectively dead.

[1:21:15] Our First Amendment right

[1:21:16] to protest is being challenged through intimidation,

[1:21:19] and the press that dares to tell the truth

[1:21:21] is being declared an enemy of the people.

[1:21:24] Our Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable

[1:21:26] searches and seizures

[1:21:27] is being gleefully violated, and nobody seems to care.

[1:21:32] Even the Second Amendment might as well be lost.

[1:21:35] Our government used the fact that Alex Pretti,

[1:21:38] a legal firearm holder with a concealed carry permit,

[1:21:41] had a gun on him to justify his murder.

[1:21:46] So do we have a right to bear arms or not?

[1:21:49] Sure doesn't seem like it!

[1:21:52] If you're upset that a tech creator like myself

[1:21:54] is suddenly being explicit about politics,

[1:21:57] then you're not paying enough attention and are part of the problem.

[1:22:02] I should not have to do this.

[1:22:04] I never thought I'd be making a video where I said,

[1:22:07] hey guys, remember that whole Constitution thing?

[1:22:11] I figured our leaders would always uphold it, but they're clearly not.

[1:22:16] The document does not enforce itself, and so it is up to us.

[1:22:21] We had a revolution in

[1:22:22] 1776 to escape the tyranny of British rule.

[1:22:26] And the Declaration of Independence describes

[1:22:28] what's going on right now with distressing clarity.

[1:22:32] Let me quote it for you.

[1:22:33] “He has kept among us, in times of peace,

[1:22:36] standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

[1:22:39] He has affected to render the military

[1:22:41] independent of and superior to the civil power.

[1:22:45] He has combined with others to subject us

[1:22:47] to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution

[1:22:49] and unacknowledged by our laws.

[1:22:52] Giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.

[1:22:56] For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

[1:22:59] For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders

[1:23:03] which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

[1:23:07] For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

[1:23:11] For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

[1:23:14] For depriving us in many cases of the benefit of trial by jury.

[1:23:18] For transporting us beyond seas

[1:23:21] to be tried for pretended offenses.

[1:23:25] Those words were written about King George,

[1:23:27] but they might as well describe Donald Trump.

[1:23:34] We fought the Revolutionary War to be free of tyrannical kings,

[1:23:38] but it looks like we're under tyranny again,

[1:23:40] inflicted on ourselves.

[1:23:43] You may have been one of those people who likes to stay out of politics,

[1:23:46] but politics eventually comes for everyone.

[1:23:49] Here we are,

[1:23:51] for the love of God.

[1:23:53] Please learn from this

[1:23:55] and remember what happens when you stop paying attention

[1:23:58] and let other people think for you.

[1:24:01] It doesn't end well.

[1:24:03] Now, as scared as I am,

[1:24:05] I am still going to vote in the midterms

[1:24:07] and I will be voting against Republicans.

[1:24:11] I think you should too.

[1:24:13] And yes, because the realities of our terrible

[1:24:16] two party system don't always sink in to everyone.

[1:24:19] I am saying I think you should vote for Democrats in November.

[1:24:23] I am not a huge fan

[1:24:25] of a lot of what the Democratic Party is up to these days.

[1:24:28] They seem, unfortunately, to be far more beholden

[1:24:31] to corporate interests

[1:24:33] than they're concerned with the lives of their constituents.

[1:24:35] Universal health care still hasn't happened.

[1:24:38] And the best reason I can think that's the case

[1:24:40] is that the for profit health care lobby is very influential.

[1:24:44] Meanwhile, constituents such as myself

[1:24:47] haven't even been able to leave a voicemail

[1:24:49] at any of Senator Durbin's offices

[1:24:50] because there all all the inboxes are full.

[1:24:54] They've been very disappointing.

[1:24:57] But right now, we are heading into a primary season,

[1:25:00] and you'll have the opportunity to vote in those primaries very soon

[1:25:04] to tell Democrats how you want them to act.

[1:25:09] Please make sure you are registered to vote in general

[1:25:11] and in the Democratic primary if that's required in your state.

[1:25:15] If you don't know how to do that, call

[1:25:17] or walk into your local library.

[1:25:20] The people there have the same mission I do

[1:25:22] to share knowledge and be helpful, and they'll guide you.

[1:25:27] Be sure you ask them how the primary process works in your state,

[1:25:30] and whether you need to declare a party affiliation to vote in it.

[1:25:33] And by the way, just throwing this out there,

[1:25:36] the process of registering to vote is

[1:25:38] how we verify the citizenship of voters.

[1:25:40] You have to be on the voter rolls before you can cast a vote.

[1:25:45] But it's a lot easier for Republicans

[1:25:47] to ignore that fact and lie by omission to make

[1:25:50] you think massive voter fraud from non-citizens keeps happening.

[1:25:54] They lie all the time,

[1:25:56] and people need to stop listening to them.

[1:25:59] This isn't just normal “politicians always lie” stuff.

[1:26:01] This is active propaganda designed

[1:26:04] to make you distrustful of your fellow human beings.

[1:26:07] It's disgusting and shameful.

[1:26:10] How did we get to a place where the president can say

[1:26:13] other countries pay for tariffs and literally nobody cares that he's lying?

[1:26:18] He's counting on his base not understanding

[1:26:20] that you can't just charge someone extra money

[1:26:23] when you buy something from them, because

[1:26:27] that's just not how trade works.

[1:26:30] Hell, that's not even how commerce works.

[1:26:32] I can't walk into Menards and demand

[1:26:34] they pay me to buy their products,

[1:26:37] but the only people who are willing to say that plainly

[1:26:41] were independent journalists and freaking YouTubers.

[1:26:45] The stalwarts of the press

[1:26:46] just kept writing headlines as if reality was up for debate.

[1:26:50] And they still haven't cut that shit out.

[1:26:53] It is terrifying

[1:26:54] how nobody is interested in holding anyone accountable

[1:26:57] for anything these days.

[1:26:59] But while I am terrified,

[1:27:02] I am also increasingly hopeful.

[1:27:04] The people of Minnesota are demonstrating what we have to do.

[1:27:08] We have to care for each other.

[1:27:11] Don't wait for someone to lend a helping hand.

[1:27:13] Be that helping hand.

[1:27:16] Organizing networks are popping up everywhere

[1:27:18] because those of us who managed to grow up into adults,

[1:27:22] who care about people other than ourselves,

[1:27:25] are not going to stand by

[1:27:27] and let this illegitimate government run by petulant toddlers,

[1:27:30] violate the Constitution

[1:27:35] My fellow Midwesterners in Minnesota have made me so proud.

[1:27:40] Stay strong

[1:27:42] and keep teaching us how to be brave and resist

[1:27:44] this horrible chapter of our history with steadfast,

[1:27:47] nonviolent defiance.

[1:27:50] Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a lawless group

[1:27:54] of masked thugs terrorizing our cities and neighbors

[1:27:57] for daring to look not quite white.

[1:28:01] Anyone who has any understanding of history

[1:28:05] will know that it is happening here.

[1:28:08] And if you believe that to be true, then

[1:28:10] you should also believe that ICE must be abolished.

[1:28:15] And if that freaks you out, I'm going to guess

[1:28:17] you've been told the people who say that want completely open borders.

[1:28:21] Some people do, but most people simply

[1:28:24] took the poem on the Statue of Liberty as meaningful

[1:28:28] and think this country should open its arms

[1:28:30] wide and provide a legal pathway to immigration.

[1:28:32] Just as our ancestors did on the storied Ellis Island.

[1:28:37] It is our decades long

[1:28:38] inability to have true immigration reform occur

[1:28:41] which put us in this place and what we're doing today to fix

[1:28:45] it is clearly wrong.

[1:28:48] It is a racist ethnic cleansing operation

[1:28:51] happening on the pretext of childcare fraud,

[1:28:54] which was already being investigated and dealt

[1:28:56] with by the state of Minnesota, but which some terminally online weirdos

[1:29:00] somehow got wind of and spun into this madness.

[1:29:05] And that madness

[1:29:06] is being perpetrated by agents of the state

[1:29:09] and endorsed by Republicans.

[1:29:12] Republicans could stop this now,

[1:29:15] but they won't.

[1:29:17] and the reason I know we absolutely can abolish ICE?

[1:29:21] I am older than ICE.

[1:29:23] In fact, I'm older than the entire Department of Homeland Security.

[1:29:27] That agency was created post 9/11.

[1:29:29] And in retrospect, the folks who thought “Homeland” Security

[1:29:33] sounds kind of ominous were apparently correct.

[1:29:36] We need to throw this system out and start over.

[1:29:39] And so, yes, I believe ICE must be abolished.

[1:29:42] There is no reforming that agency of thugs.

[1:29:45] It has to go.

[1:29:46] And the lawless criminals hiding behind

[1:29:49] masks who are violating the Fourth Amendment day

[1:29:51] in and day out, need to be prosecuted

[1:29:55] for each and every one of their crimes.

[1:29:59] I will be voting in the primaries

[1:30:00] and I sure as well hope my representative, Sean Casten, starts

[1:30:04] saying that with clarity and conviction.

[1:30:07] Sean has been one of the people who understand

[1:30:09] the realities of renewable energy,

[1:30:11] and has been a long time advocate of it, so we've been pretty aligned,

[1:30:14] but we're not aligned on everything.

[1:30:15] And my patience is starting to break.

[1:30:18] So if you made it here.

[1:30:21] Thank you for watching.

[1:30:23] I hope we can bring some sanity back to this country

[1:30:25] and that we can start calling lies what they are.

[1:30:29] And you will have to be a part of that.

[1:30:31] Talk to your neighbors.

[1:30:33] Talk to your family.

[1:30:34] And if you don't know where to start the conversation.

[1:30:37] That's why there's that fake ending.

[1:30:40] If you think it might get some gears turning,

[1:30:42] go ahead and watch this video with someone and stop it there.

[1:30:46] See how it goes.

[1:30:47] And if you want to send it to someone with a link,

[1:30:49] there's an unlisted version of this video on my second channel,

[1:30:52] which actually stops at the fake ending.

[1:30:56] The link is in the description

[1:30:57] and a card should be popping up now.

[1:31:00] I would pin a comment too, but I am not interested

[1:31:04] in knowing just what sort of replies that will get.

[1:31:07] I am all but certain it will be depressing.

[1:31:10] The future has always been in our collective hands,

[1:31:14] but we need to stop tolerating lies.

[1:31:17] We need to stop tolerating greed.

[1:31:19] And we need to stop tolerating politicians

[1:31:22] who care more about their corporate donors than

[1:31:25] they do their constituents.

[1:31:28] We need to care about

[1:31:29] our future more than we care about the price of eggs,

[1:31:32] or the price of gas.

[1:31:34] And most importantly,

[1:31:36] we need to care for each other.

[1:31:39] There is a duty of care in everything we do,

[1:31:43] and that's the simplest way to put my personal politics.

[1:31:47] Start acting like you take that duty seriously.

[1:31:50] A free future depends on it.

[1:31:53] A future with liberty

[1:31:55] and justice for all.