 Hey, everyone. The critic here. Still working out all the kinks of this. It is so cool. Super excited to be here tonight with my guest, Ben Motolo from, am I saying it right, Ben Motolo? Ben Motolo, yep. Okay. Chittenden. Chittenden 3, Jericho. Chittenden 3, Jericho and Underhill. So he's running for house rep. So he's running for house rep. I don't know if you've ever met at his, a meet and greet of yours. Yeah. A couple of weeks ago. Last weekend. Last weekend. I was just super excited to meet Ben. I tell people all the time that when I go to. Oh, Oh, hello Catherine. Hi, hi. event or conservative event. I'm normally the youngest person by 20 years and so now there's someone who's 20 years my junior so I'm not the youngest person anymore. Ben, you are 20? I'm 20, yep. You're 20. Hello Alice and you are a college student. I am. I'm a junior in college and I go to a school called SUNY ESF which stands for environmental science and forestry and it's an upstate New York in Syracuse. Oh interesting so would you normally be at school right now? Well I'm actually I'm at campus right now but I'm distance learning while on campus for some of my classes so it's just an odd sort of motley crew of COVID policies coming at me right now. Got it okay that's interesting I have so many questions okay so you said it's SUNY ESF yep environmental studies and forestry yep and so what are you studying there? I'm an undergraduate in policy and law so environmental policy and law. Environmental policy and law okay and what do you want to be when you grow up? Well in the near future I hope to be my district's house representative. I'll scrap okay that was the obvious answer okay I should I totally should have gotten that one. But in the future I'd really love to be an environmental attorney working to protect our shared spaces from those who want to do the modern classic lore acts kind of character is what I'm going for. I love it I think that is so cool is there anything in particular that you have an interest in or what what sort of sparked your interest to study that anything in particular? Well probably growing up in the most beautiful state in the lower 48 you know I spent my entire life in under hill grew up hunting fishing camping skiing I was an eagle scout in high school and so my entire life basically took place outside and so you know I've got a very strong connection with the with our with our shared planet and so you know it was just just sort of a natural gravitation toward you know studying environmental policy. I love that hi Karen thank you for joining us. I have found it very interesting recently do you know very much about Teddy Roosevelt? Yep he was a great republican president he started the national park system. So this I didn't really know a lot about Teddy Roosevelt until recently and I yeah he started the park system and didn't he set aside some huge amount of many multiple huge swads of land and stuff like that? Yep many multiple huge swads of land and he started the U.S. Forest Service as well so he was like a pioneer in conservation because at that time America was so focused on tearing down every tree in sight I mean look at pictures of Vermont from turn of the century. The industrial revolution. So yeah he basically started or was you know set the precedent for American conservation in the point. That is so fascinating so then oh okay so I'm just I'm my my brain is going a million miles a minute with this because I think it's really interesting particularly because you mentioned that he it was a republican president yeah and one of the things that you know the the whole point of this conversation today is debunking the myth that conservatives don't care about the environment right and you know this idea that somehow we don't also want to make sure you're preserving our green spaces and how like how beautiful Vermont is. Do you you don't I know this is probably a crazy question you don't have any pictures of Vermont from the turn of the century like handy do you? I do not I'm sorry oh I want to google it now because I had heard at one point that and I don't know if any of this is true basically I heard that they cut down all the trees in Vermont to make telephone poles for New York City. Yeah and basically shot every single game species to feed New York City as well. This state was devoid of game species for a very long time because of over hunting and commercial hunting and fishing and only through like really concerted restoration efforts in the past 75 years have we been able to reconstitute the state's population of game species. That is so interesting now I remember we didn't have moose when I was growing up as an again so I'm 42. I remember when they started having moose sightings again in Vermont and it was a really big deal and I've heard rumors that there have been mountain lion catamount sightings. Do you know if that's true or not? I cannot confirm but I hope with my entire heart that that is true you know you can think about the environment as like a system designed by an engineer right it's like a car engine it needs all its components to function properly and so if you're missing a head gasket your engine's not going to work and if you're missing an apex predator your ecosystem is going to function properly either and so the return of these meta mammals these giant predators mean big things for Vermont I'm very excited about I'm very excited about it yeah that is really interesting Karen said there was a moose in Montpelier when I lived there a few years ago like right in town right into town I'm curious now it's interesting when you talk about when you say apex predator because that means if we don't have those predators then the you know like deer population becomes overrun or other animal species and that to me is one of the roles of hunting and fishing and sportsmen's clubs and things like that is how do we manage and be good stewards of the wildlife that we have here? Well that's so a couple interesting points in there um so one if we did get rid of what's this happened out west um as people were moving west when you know as we were talking about Teddy Roosevelt with setting aside huge swaths of land out west a gentleman named Aldo Leopold who grew up to be you know one of the icons of forest management say the least um was managing a piece of property out west in Montana and he thought that if he eradicated the gray wolf population the deer population would explode and he would create a hunter's paradise but what ended up happening was you know people were moving out west and shooting all these wolves by the hundreds the deer and elk population exploded they devoured all the vegetation on all those mountain sides that had sustained them until there was nothing left and then the deer and elk population collapsed and so that was flaw logic he didn't see the effectiveness of the system um and so just as people might think that you know if I get rid of hunting and fishing opportunities wouldn't that preserve the wildlife actually it wouldn't because the reason that these wildlife populations have been able to be restored is that every time you buy hunting and fishing gear you pay an invisible tax that goes into a fund that the state has specifically set aside for restoration and conservation efforts and so hunters and fisherfolk are actually responsible for the bulk of conservation in the United States um and also you know not not in least included Vermont um I did not know that yeah and so that's actually a market-based solution to conservation so the command and control solution would be to put a moratorium on hunting certain species you know setting game limits and those are all well and good but to truly preserve a species we need a sustainable fund of money um and that can't just come through burdensome tax like income tax because not everybody hunts and so that doesn't seem fair to make people pay for things that they're not going to use but hunters and fishermen have a vested interest in keeping these sports alive and so that's why every time I go to the Dick's Sporting Goods in Williston to buy new fishing gear it's a little bit extra because I'm paying for trout um habitat restoration I'm paying for deer sampling I'm paying for bear muller restoration I'm paying for all those things that is so fascinating and Ben thank you for really taking the time to point out the difference right so when we say debunking the myth that conservatives don't care about the environment just pointed out a market-based solution that better facilitates the preservation and health of our wildlife here in Vermont yeah um and and I can speak to that point um a little further if I get too geeky just uh just stop me but no I love it every single piece of historic landmark environmental legislation up to this point has been passed under a republican president and a bipartisan congress so the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act in 1970 were passed under Richard Nixon who also started the Environmental Protection Agency he's a republican and along with the Endangered Species Act three pieces of legislation which are still being used today to set precedents for air pollution reductions goals and water pollution reduction republican president um the reason that we still have forests in the northeast is because George Herbert Walker Bush instituted a cap and trade initiative to amend the Clean Air Act in 1990 um which is another market-based solution because all these coal-fired flower plants in the midwest were spewing ash into the sky it would travel east it would rain down onto the Adirondacks and us and that would be slightly acidic and it would destroy our forests yep there was no real way to control interstate pollution um until George Herbert Walker Bush used the power of the presidency to push for a market-based solution to reduce emissions causing acid rain and that same market-based solution cap and trade um which is very complicated systems of issuing polluter permits and essentially monetizing right to save pollution um that same method of emissions reductions was actually being recommended by conservatives as a means to fight climate change at the national level um but without him without George H. W. Bush our northern forest would be destroyed um okay hold on okay oh sorry oh no go ahead well hold on okay hold on hold on to that for one second so let's oh Karen says yes the moose was walking down main street um mo they once said timber wolves we're gonna come back catamats are catamats are around but they don't want anyone hunting them so they're hiding is that what you're saying you're hiding um so when you and I so I am just learning all this everyone this is fascinating and super fun for me because I don't know everything I know I know it seems like I do because I'm so brilliant but I'm off as kind of a genius so what is can you talk at all about the difference between like a when we say cap and trade versus um carbon tax they almost sort of sound the same right like carbon you know are we if we're trying to do something to manage the way we pollute and we're monetizing it right what's the difference uh well so both of them are actually um conservative solutions to emissions um right uh there's actually a bill on the house floor right now called it's HR 763 this is on this is in congress this is in um Vermont local politics um but it's a carbon fee and dividend and essentially what that is is it's carbon price um or carbon tax I instead of saying carbon tax I I like to say carbon price because tax sort of sounds like something that the government is arbitrarily choosing that doesn't want and a price is something that you have to pay for moral it's a moral obligation to pay the price for something and the reason that I like to make that distinction is because we don't just arbitrarily want less carbon in the atmosphere it's a carbon price because somebody is paying for those emissions right now it's us because we will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change and our taxes are going to go up to fuel climate adaptations building seawalls restoring ecosystems things like that when it should be the first reading it should be research development to responsibility to pay for that so they're paying the carbon price um and cap and trade is essentially you're going to issue a bunch of permits to pollute that allow you to pollute and you allow companies to trade them amongst themselves so that the companies with higher marginal costs meaning that companies who would pay more for each for each level of pollution could get away with polluting more while larger companies who could afford to reduce emissions can do so and then you reduce the number of permits issued every single year until emissions have reduced to below acceptable levels things that the natural world can absorb this is so fascinating um but so yeah both of them are market based um in conservative and principal um policies to reduce emissions so what do you think then about the carbon tax that they're doing in vermont where they're going to have an extra tax on like home heating oil you know i i really do want our country to act on climate but we just can't seem to get it together to do it the right way and there's a lot of things with this now i've got some serious criticisms with state level pollution reduction schemes for a multitude of reasons one because carbon emissions are economy wide you can't just single out home and heating or transportation or energy or food production and then arbitrarily make them lower their emissions while the rest of these industries continue to pollute and unfortunately when regulations come down from federal or state agencies they're industry specific so you can't just say i'm going to reduce carbon as you mentioned it's going to be a carbon tax on home and heating or a gas tax and one of the most deceiving parts about that is scale right as i mentioned earlier air pollution knows no boundaries and so if the scale isn't correct our state could see emissions reductions but global emissions would stay the same because businesses are either evacuating vermont or people are making different choices on who to patronize based on carbon tax and well and that's one of the things that i've one of the things i've been so confused about is how there's this huge push for solar huge push for solar here in vermont and on the surface it sounds like a good idea so right when you talk about we're offsetting pollution or whatever yeah seeing the price for pollution or firms are paying price for pollution right and if we as an example and what what who pays on that carbon tax right so if we're to say we're going to tax to the level that carbon is used in the production of something yeah so then solar panels would have a huge carbon tax because they take more fossil fuels to create and then ship here overseas assemble and all that stuff then they save plus you have the slave labor in africa the toxic pollution of the batteries so that's a cost so that's what i get so confused sometimes i go okay solar panels sound good but there's this huge cost to them it doesn't really sound like a better option and so if all you're going to do is tax things that look like fossil fuels on the surface but not fossil fuels used to create something then what is it actually helping in a state that's winter nine months out of the year yeah and that i mean the answer to that is it's not um the state can't possibly plan our energy mix effectively and the other thing about that the carbon tax it's such a it's a really interesting policy and it's one that i love to geek out about because it's really elegant at reducing emissions if designed correctly so the way that our state has designed it it's actually incredibly regressive a conservative from a conservative standpoint if a firm chooses to build you can't throw your garbage into my backyard for free and not pay for it right if more garbage in my backyard you should have to pay the price you can't throw carbon up into our shared atmosphere without paying for it so firms should pay the carbon tax but what's happening what would happen if vermont instituted a statewide carbon tax is we'd be paying for it because companies would immediately pass down those costs onto the consumer and we would lose out this is exactly what happened in france when emmanuel macron tried to pass a gas tax people rallied against it that's what those yellow jacket protests were immediately got passed on to the protesters who were already heavily taxed that france is one of the most aggressive tax schemes in all of europe and so besides so yeah sorry so hold on no we're just we're getting some questions so karen first she said she's oh what you explained something better than her land use law professor did that's what she said it was a little while ago right um thank you very much and then when karen when you say don't they get subsidies what do you mean by that exactly and and actually i have a major problem with the subsidies yeah personally because to me if the only people that i'm aware of that can afford the install and maintenance of solar panels are people of a higher income bracket and so the state of vermont is taxing lower and middle class people in a wealth transfer to rich people yep a lot of a lot of remanters don't know that social security is taxed so if you're a retired person and you're earning social security it's taxed like it's income so your grandma is getting her social security taxed so that we can install solar panels on a rich person's house it's it's really silly one of the one of the real benefits of having a carbon price is it lets the market market is a fancy term for people we let we can can we all agree that we can choose the best energy mix for our state we can't just step in and say it's all going to be wind and solar that's ridiculous there's a podger of green energy sources that we can use and to just have the government step in and say we're going to subsidize green energy or we're going to push wind and solar it's it's ridiculous because as you said before i mean there's the amount of fossil fuels it takes to generate a solar cell is ridiculous and you know i don't want to with all due respect to house democrats is in congress one of my biggest criticisms about the green new deal among many because i i don't really believe that it's an effective means by any stretch of the imagination that's finding climate change is it doesn't include nuclear and that's why i truly believe that it's really just about pushing wind and solar across the nation no matter the cost or no matter how incongruous or inconvenient it might just be it like if we just put enough money no we don't we don't know we okay i'm gonna know we okay i'm gonna argue with you on this one and i'm gonna let you try to convince me are you ready i'm on it okay i've heard so many conservatives say that a similar talking point to that that if you're not about nuclear then you're not really about whatever and i go no nuclear is toxic poisonous waste that we have we have decades of nuclear waste that we still don't have a place so that can't be an answer well it's not the answer the uh it would be just as wrong to say we're going to subsidize solar to the nth degree and have that spread across the country but well i agree it'd be just as wrong sorry if excuse me it'd be just as wrong say we're going to subsidize nuclear and push that across and those are valid concerns about the waste but that's from um fission right there's another way of deriving energy from atoms and it's called fusion and that technology is still on the horizon but what it does is it generates a fraction of the waste and it allows the atoms to perform at a higher level of energy output um so we could actually get more bang for our buck without generating the same amount of waste and that yeah that technology is still on the horizon but because they can't compete on a level playing field with um natural gas putting all our money into solar panels and wind turbines they can't it's not a level playing field and so we'll never really know what the possibilities with fusion nuclear are because nobody is being incentivized to innovate and so that's one of the that's one of the things there's a lot of really cool answers to these questions about our energy mix that could be found if the energy market was a level playing field yeah if oh see market market solutions competition choice yep so what uh what's that sorry i said the solution works because entrepreneurs will compete to find the most efficient ways because they want to make money yeah i i have a friend okay and i can't ray i i see your question i'm gonna ask i have a friend who's like a rocket scientist or whatever and he invented some device that you install on a natural gas burning power plant and it basic and i'm gonna i'm totally getting it wrong and i've tried to talk about it i need to ask him to refresh me it basically like captures the um the waste or the whatever emissions and uses it to like keep the plant running and it all it cuts the pollution down to almost nothing and natural gas is cheap yep it's so cheap and we don't have to depend on other places but we can't even have that conversation we would rather freaking burn wood chips in the McNeil power plant and not actually be able to make enough power we don't actually need to be zero emissions we need to be net zero emissions um nature the car there's a carbon cycle on earth right it cycles um plants take it up during photosynthesis that's how they make their food we breathe it out as we breathe because we breathe in the oxygen that plants produce and then the cycle continues nature has ways of sinking or sequestering co2 back into the ground that's why our forests are so important because they take co2 literally from the air and so this idea that we can't emit any carbon at any time it's it's just not true we need to be net zero so we can't be overloading the system right you can select like we were back in the day when we were just blasting coal power plants and leveling all all the trees yeah okay okay so ray asked why doesn't the state promote geothermal i don't actually know what that is so geothermal uh if i'm not mistaken is tapping into the heat deep beneath the earth's crust to warm up to basically generate steam to create energy and iceland does this quite a bit because iceland is a it's a volcanic island and so the um level to which you have to drill to access the levels of heat which are viable for energy production are relatively close to the surface so it's pretty cheap um i'm not really too familiar with um how that would play out in vermont how far down we have to drill but again if essentially the reason that we're not seeing more creative mixes of energy is because oil companies are allowed to pollute for free if they weren't allowed to pollute for free the playing field would be more level and and we'd have different energy mixes because people could now compete you know so i mean that we might never know what geothermal might mean for vermont um if we don't allow for innovation to take place in the energy sector uh my husband just told me to stop making weird faces so i just texted my sister about the geothermal thing because i have this vague memory that she told me like uh fine and i feel like she said something about a volcano i could just be totally making that up does anybody know what i'm talking about can anybody correct me do we know in terms of energy production or carbon output uh the geo is released a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide wait hold on so wait i said to my sister could we do geothermal here and she said yes being done in the island i've heard mixed results which like grand isle yeah she looked at grand isle so were they were they volcanoes i'm phoning a friend all right let's see do we have any questions right karen said they tax unemployment too so we pay tax we pay a tax called unemployment tax and then they tax the tax that we pay yeah i guess it's called unemployment insurance technically but whatever that is super funny um okay so so there's this new kind of nuclear okay you talked about not all energy companies get a level playing field to compete yeah right and some of that is because of what like um subsidies breaks special carve outs in the law stuff so the conservative argument to this would be because global warming the climate changing is going to cost us money to adapt and so allowing companies to pollute for free it's as if we're giving them a subsidy we're subsidizing their ability to pollute by making it free this gives them tremendous amounts of savings and distorts the market because everybody's saying well climate action is impossible because the market has determined that fossil fuels are the cheapest and most efficient source of energy when this just isn't true because we aren't taking into account the externalized costs the externality that is pollution if companies were forced to pay for their pollution the playing field would be more level because um you know um oh my goodness gracious nuclear and solar and wind and hydro who don't have that carbon footprint in their energy output could then compete because now everybody is paying for their externalized costs um no costs are being left out and so that level playing field would send a price signal to the economy saying hey pollution is no longer a way to justify dear shareholders that i'm saving this company money by stoking the atmosphere full of co2 and it would actually incentivize investors to pour their money into green energy sources which is why we could answer some of these questions right what would fusion look like for the united states what would geothermal look like for vermont it would encourage investment in green sources of energy which would provide answers to these questions that we don't yet have and so so hold on yeah fossil fuels are pretty cheap is all i'm trying to say well and so this is my question and this is and so this is where this is where we got to dance a little bit and figure out what this means right so when i hear you say that conservative right because i'm a conservative right you say that and i think level playing field you know isn't the government going to be required to create some kind of a mechanism that enforces or it has some kind of a my concern is does that shrink the government or does that make it bigger it actually shrinks the government thanks my my concern yeah it actually is the government so this is federal policy um so carbon dividends is essentially a carbon fee right we generate revenue from the carbon fee and as conservative i'm concerned about where this money is going because if it's going to fuel the federal bureaucracy i'm not about it but it's going to be in the energy innovation and carbon dividend act hr 763 should look it up all that money is going to be recycled right back into the economy and given to taxpayers through the form of a quarterly dividend to help us transition into a renewables based economy so this prevents two things it prevents it going from the to the federal bureaucracy and it also prevents the carbon price from becoming regressive because companies can't pass those costs onto us so then how okay well then how then do you make sure that that money is going towards realistic thoughtful projects and research and development because we heard about what was it when that you hear it's the scandal that they bring up all the time for the obama administration about some solar company that under or something like all these companies got a whole bunch of federal money and then this immediately went bankrupt well it wouldn't so no companies are going to get any federal money this would so this would shrink the government because under carbon under the energy innovation and carbon dividend act all subsidies for all fuels would be null and void everything goes away any yep and any epa regulation like the clean power plan under the obama administration that tries to reduce emissions would also be null and void so we could price emissions and reduce we could price emissions and reduce pollution while also shrinking the government because now all these epa stipulations about greenhouse gases would be null and void and any energy subsidies would also be null and void okay wait hold on so i must be missing something but so if we're if we're if we've created if we've said that there's okay i'm missing something if we've said that we're gonna we're gonna say that there's a cost to polluting yep and the companies that pollute are gonna pay it and then we collect that do we collect that money yep and we use existing streams of revenue collection through the irs because it wouldn't be based on the amount it wouldn't be taxed at the gas pump or when you buy something that's not where that it's very far upstream and it's based on the amount of fossil the amount of emissions that would be emitted if you combusted this um fossil fuel so like when a barrel of oil enters the like let's say we have a barrel of oil from montana right yep the first transaction that happens with that barrel of oil that's where the carbon taxes apply well that's where the carbon price is applied it's not applied at the smokestack it's not applied at the oil well or at the gas pump it's applied at the first transaction that uh that that barrel of oil undergoes okay and um i know so but then we're gonna use the money for research and development nope all the money that is generated from the carbon tax is going to be returned to the citizens in the form of a quarterly dividend and so okay i totally missed that's what i missed yep that's why it's called the carbon dividend um hold on a second wait a second okay you just blew my mind yeah this is a real bill that's in in congress right now it's a revenue neutral carbon tax and it's a it basically do you mind if i i don't want to hijack conversation no so there's four pillars to the carbon tax one there's the carbon fee which we discussed all the revenue generated from that carbon fee is returned to the citizens you and i through the form of quarterly dividend right okay the regulatory it's on income nope it's equitable for across the board across the board okay there's a regulatory simplification because all energy subsidies including epa regulations on greenhouse gases would be eliminated unwound okay and there's also a border carbon adjustment so it doesn't matter if the united states does you know the most incredible you know acrobatic emissions reduction scheme of all time if other world polluters namely china and india don't follow and so the border carbon adjustment allows us to collect a carbon tax on imported goods from china and india based on the amount of emissions that took place in their production and rather than let us collect a carbon tax on their imported good they are going to start collecting a carbon tax in their own countries um at which point you will will start pricing carbon for them but through one piece of federal legislate legislation the united states can use its position as world consumers to influence global emissions so it would actually reduce global emissions without the need for bulky or unfair treaties like the paris accords so you can agree with president trump's decision to pull us out of the paris accords but still want alternative means to resist yeah exactly and if you'd like um just for any viewers who might be getting bored um if you'd like more information if you go to the climate leadership council.org clc.org they have a lot of information on the carbon dividend well and that was the main i mean there were a lot of um criticisms of the paris climate accord bird uh a lot of you know i know a lot of people were excited about it but the one thing that i heard that was the most troubling for me was that it gave some kind of regulatory power to people outside of the united states so i was like i'm not i didn't elect those people no i don't know who they are why would i allow them to make laws in my country when they don't you know this that was really weird it's true we make ourselves incredibly vulnerable when we give ourselves up to foreign unelected power which is contrary to the carbon dividend which puts america in the driver's seat because we are dictating to all other world polluters most of whom are foreign policy adversaries that it's time for them to bone up and get a similar carbon price and scheme going um and it puts america in the driver's seat it also protects american industry because if america is the only one pricing carbon it's that issue of scale that we talked about with vermont businesses could flee to other countries where they could pollute for free and emissions would stay the same but the border carbon adjustment prevents that sort of thing from happening and i i say that all the time it's this is another one of the things that i hear conservatives say all the time and so i just want this i'm bringing it up because i think it's funny as a conservative when i hear conservatives give really bad arguments and everybody like oh we reduced all of our emissions so much over this period of time and america's so great and i'm like yeah yeah but some of that is because we've obfuscated our manufacturing to countries where they don't have labor laws where they don't have the epa making rules you know so china can pollute all they want and it doesn't matter it's true we haven't reduced emissions we've offshored them so i know like for sure we've definitely reduced absolutely i don't want to say that we've done nothing here right when you look at what is required as an example like the toxic chemicals and the waste from making cell phones i think if if we made these things here in the united states the people who are concerned about the environment i think would probably have other things they would be focusing on i i hate to be like that about it but like we we have to be responsible not only for the direct pollution that we cause right like if i'm burning trash in my backyard or doing something like that but what is my consumption as well am i reducing the things that i'm using are we looking for alternatives in our manufacturing for making laptops i'm not i'm a hypocrite right i've got a laptop right here i've got a cell phone yeah um so that's that's interesting that there's this possibility that we could could help influence overseas without it being terrible yeah absolutely yeah and i wholeheartedly agree and it doesn't violate any international trade agreements because we aren't singling out china's goods for being chinese we're singling them out for their emissions which would then be and and then that carbon price would be redacted if they showed signs of reducing emissions themselves and so it's not arbitrary why we would price goods from china and india it has everything right emissions and nothing to do with nationality and of course protectionism and it's not a tariff and so it doesn't violate those international trade agreements so then this is so fascinating what is the name of the bill again so it's the energy innovation and carbon dividend act which is hr 763 hr 762 63 if you go on the citizens um or sorry the climate leadership council dot org has a lot of great literature on the subject and it's uh it's actually the policy wasn't developed by politicians it was developed by a policy entrepreneur named ted holstead who started the climate leadership council um and it was actually this bill or carbon dividends in general was actually designed by james baker and george schultz both of whom were reagan economists who are economic advisors to ronald reagan another republican president yep i think isn't it fascinating that the way we've been talking and all of these initiatives and and things for the forests and all republican presidents yep so why does obama get so much shine for the paris climate accord or whatever when republican presidents in the past have actually done all this amazing stuff you know that's a really interesting question i can tell you one of the things that needs to change real quickly is we're quickly becoming the party of anti and not the party of what are we going to do about it so say we're anti paris accords we're anti government spending we're anti big government we're anti but like okay there's a positive to each one of these anti's that for lack of a better term that we don't do a good job of explaining so for example i personally am against the paris climate accords i think pulling us out was a good decision most republicans are pretty good at expressing that sentiment but they have no yes and like what what are we going to do we've got clearly from the conversation that we've just had um you know the carbon dividend is nothing but like bad rock conservative economics that's been that there's precedent for this is happening like we've used market-based policies to reduce emissions before but yeah you can't seem to explain it or get our message out and so it's so important to have these conversations i um let's see trevor and mic are talking about our gas tax trevor just said as far as i know our gas tax is at least 32 cents a gallon right and so the gas tax see this is the fundamental difference between the carbon dividend policy which we've been chatting about and yeah a gas tax is meant to influence consumer behavior you need to go buy an emissions free automobile an emissions free form of transportation or drive less as if global warming is your fault and personal choice is the only thing causing emissions carbon dividends is meant to influence the habits of producers you need to produce means of electricity that do not emit and so about punishing consumers into making different choices it's about allowing the producers of our society to innovate and okay that was super well articulated sounds it sounds very sexy okay it sounds the economist in me was like wow that was great okay doesn't it my only concern is that it still will end up up on the consumer in the end do you know what i mean because if we if they if they pay a dividend or whatever we get a dividend we get a dividend if they pay to pollute then and if they have to figure out ways to not pollute and whatever isn't that still going to drive up the cost which invariably we will end up paying in the end so that's a great question and before i answer it if anyone wants or if you'd like any concrete answers before i just give my verbal answer James Baker and George Schultz the two Reagan economists who devised this bill yeah as along with um Nobel laureate candidate oh my goodness i can't remember his name but he wrote my economics textbook um modeled what carbon dividends would mean for the US and we could actually exceed our commitments to the Paris Accords in a shorter amount of time while growing our GDP um their models indicate actually a net growth to our GDP um through the expansion of our energy sector which isn't expanding right now because the market's been distorted because it's stuck so our GDP would actually grow and we would exceed our commitments to the Paris Accords without having to commit to this see and it's again market solution creates a better outcome yep and so you can see all that data there for yourself if you don't believe me on clc.org but in answer to your question uh yeah there would be in the first couple months of the carbon tax a transitional period where people would use their dividend to acquire the same fuel that they've always had but what is unavoidable what i mentioned earlier is the price signal that would be sent to investors throughout the country showing that you know the fact that these companies pollute is what will end up sinking them and so it's time to find alternative means and so once those come about once again answers to questions that we don't even understand yet people will make different choices you know rational people as we are we like to save money saving money to reducing emissions then people try to save money they'll choose the option that reduces emissions the most and so whether that's an electric car a hybrid vehicle hydrogen fuel cell which is something that's on the horizon um ford has a deal with uh standard hydrogen which is a company out of ithica um or hydrogen cars um also you should check out some of the corporate sponsors of this bill um it's sponsored by ford shell bp oil is on board with it it's one of the only policies that has attracted major corporations but also the world wildlife foundation and the nature that is wait hold on i'm sorry hold on back you need to say that again did you just say this bill has the approval of a of a forestry service and a oil company yep if you go on um climate leadership council.org you'll see they're sponsored by ford they're sponsored by general electric they're sponsored by shell and british petroleum but also the nature conservancy in the world wildlife federation and the reason for that is companies want price certainty because with regulations epa bureaucrats can change those rather arbitrarily and depending on who the president is there might either be more regulations or none and companies want price certainty they want a schedule of when their prices are going to be and so that's that's what attracts them to this bill and a lot of lefties like to point out it and say that it's because it wouldn't reduce emissions and that's not true look at the numbers wow okay we're talking about in the in the chat they're talking about electric cars being ridiculously expensive a new battery costs six hundred dollars and is hyper hyper toxic well why would you invest in it when everybody is driving gas powered cars it attracts so few dollars for r&d that it's not surprising and the government is trying to pick up some slide with subsidies but that could never compare to the power given by private investment well and not only that it's another a thousand pound battery oh i think i posted that the other day which if it's if it weighs that much how much more energy does it take to push it plus electric cars have to be powered by something what's the electricity made out of it's another wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in my opinion you know it's like the only people who can afford them are rich people or well off and if our unemployment whoops and social security and stuff are being taxed then that's what's paying for it and you know we when we say that we're for the poor and the little people and you know make the rich pay their fair share why are we taking from the least less people with less and giving it to people with more excuse me while i go on the other side of my camera and fix my light oh it's no problem and i think that's a really common thing i mean obviously with all due respect to formal democrats and gen and democrats in general i think that there's a disconnect between what voters envision as the result of their proposed policies and the actual result and so this whole conversation has been around the fallacy of state level emissions reductions versus the true benefits of federal level emissions reductions and so i think that there's really just a disconnect between what people envision their legislators are doing and the actual result which is articulate yep and that's what my big thing that i've asked about is why are we going back and checking and making sure that these programs are working yeah you know we sink all this money and we create all this legislation we say we're going to put money here we're going to put money there but we're not measuring it doesn't seem like things are being measured it just seems like they're adding more money on top of an already inefficient system yeah and for a lot of there is no reliable metric to measure success which is why these are so dangerous i mean it's a lot of government programs are kind of like a money pit because you could just pour infinite amount infinite amounts of money into it like like climate initiatives or things along that along the along those lines but um there's just no real reliable metric to measure success and that's one of the biggest problems that is conservative i have with the government being the tool to solve some of these problems right this i'm saying the government is terrible at everything i mean it really is a name a thing that the government has put its grubby little hands in that it made it better yeah and so again yeah as we were just discussing carbon dividends would actually reduce government and lower emissions it's it's absolutely possible let me see okay Colleen says how is an electric car going to run in the northeast kingdom winter with a week of negative 20 the closest charging station to me is 24 miles and so the idea that you know arbitrarily choosing electric cars as the future of transportation will lead to results like that um so it might work in like Texas Virginia or somewhere that has a more temperate climate but here necessarily right and so that's why it's so important to let the market determine our energy mix essentially let us determine what works best for us because as i mentioned earlier there's all sorts of technologies which aren't that well known because of lack of investment like hydrogen fuel cells which are sustainable which function very similar to the cars that we have now except they use hydrogen fuel as the mode of combustion rather than gasoline that would work incredibly well in the northeast kingdom um and we'll have a lot of really interesting answers to these questions if we could just unleash the power of American innovation and ingenuity on on climate change oh my gosh what you mean solve our problems that we always have whenever we've encountered anything that we couldn't figure out or needed to fix um that's what that's one of the things that i found is is funny about the conversation is we've always found a way human beings have always found a way not just the americans right but human beings have gone through you know ice ages and thaws and the everything right we've been through this we used to be on one continent together right so clearly we've been able to adapt and figure it out yeah why don't we think why don't people think we can do that now so the system that is most amenable to that mode of thinking being that there's an answer to every question and that given the right incentives we can figure it out and then we'd be guided by an invisible hand to help others that's the basics of free market economies and as and because in a free market who knows how far it'll go but also in a free market you know there there's the possibility that um you know those who have a hard time contributing society those who don't have a job they struggle and we as a society can can obviously come together to help those people because nobody deserves to live out in the cold but what's so attractive about socialism is that there's a plan for everybody the government has a plan for everybody but in that plan they've limited how far you can go and so the reason that social democracies that being like those of western or eastern europe sorry could never really solve climate change is because the government could never plan far enough into the future to account for the revolutionary solutions that would reduce emissions oh my god the free market allows for all those possibilities to come to fruition and so it's not about savage competition that's you know funnels all the money to the top echelon you know the bourgeoisie and keeps everybody else down it's about allowing a space to create itself for those who wish to create that's i think that moving away from a meritocracy and meritocracy sounds like bad i think a lot of times because not everyone has the same skills not everyone has the same abilities and things like that and and so we want people to be like you like you said a moment ago we want everyone to be taken care of you don't want to get in the way of the people who can really excel you know the benjamin franklin's who invented 40 million things the nicola tesla the um uh alexander grand bell if we stifle if we had been in a place where that kind of innovation where that creativity was being stifled and stuffed where would we be today yeah i mean i there's there's no telling and people focus on the free market again like as if it's this machine that displaces wealth away from people and and this meritocracy is you know sort of fake and look at all these people who are suffering that's that's that's just absolutely not what it's about at all and you hit the nail right on the head um and additionally if i could just speak to that point for for just one second one of the things that bothers me a lot about um a lot of my adenobrack colleagues is this idea that conservatives aren't compassionate because we don't see government as the tool to solve poverty um we the people like we as society will pick up the slack where government leaves off so i may not think that some disinterested bureaucrat is the best tool for alleviating poverty or digging someone out of the situation i would like to pick up the slack with the charity work that you know we could do on the weekend like you know so there's yeah it's about creating a space where you could manifest your best self into the world it's not about you know having a life that's already planned out and an equal outcome for everybody it's not how you bring about prosperity yep i i completely agree it completely uh great okay so it's 759 we're getting close to the end uh ray just said one more thing so i know i said we were gonna end at eight but i want your opinion on this next of course because i've heard of this and i don't know how feasible it actually is uh ray said another idea would be burning our waste to generate energy i've heard that's a thing that there's like something that burns it and then recycles and doesn't do you know anything about that yeah i've heard i've heard of that i mean all organic the reason that combusting fossil fuels produces energy is because between all the bonds between carbon and carbon there's energy in those bonds and so all organic matter possesses some kind of energy in the bonds between itself and so i mean our waste is organic energy and so i would have to imagine that there'd be some energy in that waste i would ask the question what kinds of things are emitted from um using that waste as fuel um but i mean who knows i'm i'm not super familiar with that but that's a really interesting thing that is so and we're getting a science lesson here today ladies and gentlemen too from republicans yes oh wait republicans believe in science yeah who knew what i can't believe it karen said they burn trash in europe sure that's they do something like that in europe i know they do that in singapore too because they have a finite space um finite political boundary and they can't offshore their trash um and i've heard that that becomes energy as well i don't know a ton about that process but again like look at look at solutions yes what you know consider anything yeah a diverse energy portfolio is bad for no one it thank you uh trevor said they tried that in ticonderoga with the tire plant vermont shot it down even with about 60% of vermont as the contributing factor vermont does not like big business that is true yeah that's absolute that's why forms ranked us 45th out of 50 states for business family practice i mean 49th out of 50ness 50 for business unfriendliness that is like if people don't know why we don't have good jobs here if people don't understand why we can't pay for stuff because the taxes and regulations are so i i we're talking about the environment but i was talking to an economist while ago and he said it's like it's something like 100 000 in fees before you for a for a five unit apartment building right 100 000 in fees and environmental studies and stuff before you've even drawn a picture or put a shovel in the ground right yeah i mean that's what our land use laws have done um and so that's that's the other thing actually yeah let's wrap i let's wrap up with this let's take a couple minutes and just talk just say a little bit about the act 250 land use laws in vermont i think people i think that they had a point at one time i think they have done some good it's kept vermont beautiful right you talked about earlier in the century how all our trees were cut down and we and a wildlife and all that stuff right we've got to restore those things what now though when the cost is so great to keep them in place yeah um so you know as an environmental policy guy i'm all i'm very concerned about sustainability and sustainability goes both ways you know if something is environmentally unsustainable is dangerous and something is economically unsustainable it's also dangerous and so if land use laws are preventing all development all the time and making it incredibly expensive to even break ground to the point where it just doesn't make sense for a business which is not you know a philanthropy organization um to go somewhere else we we just have to find a way to preserve vermont and vermonters because as i said before um you know if everybody flees right we're one of the states with the declining population there's not going to be any money for any of these environmental protection regulations to be enforced there's not going to be any revenue generated from the tax on hunting and fishing goods to conserve these animal species and so nobody wants you know urban sprawl to overtake the entire state but we have to find a way to keep businesses coming to vermont but also you know and i think that vermont's really an interesting spot because one of our most lucrative sectors of business is ecotourism and so in order to have a thriving ecotourism industry we need the eco but we also need the tourism i know that's very cool but there's gotta be a way to allow these ecotourism businesses to flourish because they depend on people to you know work the concession stands to work the ski lifts um you know to be ski instructors but there also has to be the mountain to ski on and so it's a it's a it's a double-edged sword you really need them both and i think that you know i don't have all the answers obviously but you know if elected i would obviously pursue solutions that preserve vermont and vermont yes yes okay so tell everybody that was a perfect place to stop awesome i love it so tell everybody where to go um oh and okay hold on so everybody there's a meet and greet at buckys in heinsberg this weekend i was told not to forget to tell everybody so from three to five at buckys in heinsberg this weekend we're doing an in-person meet and greet it's outside socially distanced come and visit us um ben tell everyone where they can find you on social media your website and all that stuff yeah um so i've got a mutolo is a m-u-t-o-l-o i've got mutolo for statehouse.com um i've got instagram website it's all mutolo for statehouse uh and if you live in jarrett going under hell i i hope i could get your vote for november third i hope that you win because you are exactly the kind of person that i want to see in my legislature um i'm sure that if we talked long enough we would find some things that we disagree on sure you would find some uh maybe different values but i love how you it's it's it's clear that you've thought very deeply about these topics it's very clear that you care and are passionate about it and that's the kind of people that we need you know they don't have to be people that have all the answers but they have to be people who are willing to find them absolutely i love that thank you yeah thank you so much for having me um you know i really had a ball chatting with you and good best of luck in your election as well i'm moving forward yeah thank you thank you yeah thanks and uh everybody you can find me at ericoretic.com uh on here facebook same on instagram it's generally irritable and you can donate you have a donation link on your website everybody the maximum donation is fifteen hundred and sixty dollars so you know holler at your people um but really any amount is great any amount is helpful it is hard to run a campaign in vermont as a conservative so we i know for for me a lot of the money that i'm receiving is going towards advertisements uh to make sure that we get the word out so anything that you can do is super helpful ben thank you again so much for coming everyone thank you for visiting and for your questions love it uh throw us throw some suggestions in the comment section about what you'd like to hear people talk about next week and uh we'll get something on the schedule we'll be back next week at seven o'clock live again all right thanks so much bye then bye