 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Cold Green, Think Tech Hawaii, have we got an unusual show for you today? It's jokingly titled, can libertarianism save the world or at least achieve 100% clean energy for Hawaii? And that's kind of a lead on type of title because my guest, David Jung, is not a pure libertarian. We'll get into what sort of libertarian he might be, but he's got very, very, very innovative ideas about our path to clean energy. So, hardy, hardy, hardy, welcome, David. And he's much great. Well, actually, I walk here simply because my office is nearby, but David actually kind of ironically, here you are a cab driver and you bicycle all the way here. So welcome, David. And let's launch right in to clean energy for transportation. Normally, I have a real techy type energy efficiency in building things. So this is different. So you and I were discussing the fact that is it, no, Uber has acquired Lyme. That's correct. And yeah, why don't you tell us that story and the last mile implications for this? Well, I was explaining to you or my thought that we live in interesting times, that we have so many opportunities. And just today, Uber acquired Lyme electric scooter, you know, which was recently banned from Honolulu. Because they came in without a license and they were on the sidewalks of Waikiki. That's correct. And well, Uber did too, but they're still here. But I think it's interesting that a company like Uber, which is worth billions of dollars, is willing to back a relatively small operation or a company. They invested $350 million. They along with Google. And I think that represents the future, you know, that they recognize how important e-scooters can be to being part of our multi-modality to help us achieve that sustainability goals that we have as a community. Yeah, well, one thing that immediately I think of is that the millennials, people born what after 1995 or whatever, are not attracted to cars. The car ownership among that generation is going down, down, down. So they are looking for alternate means of transportation. So this is a maybe a very interesting segue here. Yeah. My daughter is a millennial. And so I'm acutely aware of the good things and the bad things of millennials, at least from a baby boomer generation's perspective. And you're absolutely right. The one thing that I really admire about them is and this kind of segues into the libertarianism part of the show. And that is they're incredibly practical. They're not pigeon held to a certain way of thinking. You know, when I graduated, it was very important what job you get, what car you drove, what neighborhood you lived in. All those things were very important to the millennials that seems irrelevant. Their main thing is what's practical. I don't mind living with my mom and dad because they feed me and I can tolerate them. I've tolerated them for 18 years before I went off to college. And they somehow tolerate me. Yeah. And so what's the big deal? I save so much money. So whereas in my generation, no, no, no, it's just a principle of the thing. You don't go back home. You're a real man. Exactly. And so they don't subscribe to those things. So even car ownership is the same thing, right? Why would I spend hundreds of dollars a month on maintaining a car and then paying for parking and so on when I can... Insurance. And insurance. I mean, the upkeep of a car, I don't own a personal car. But I have most of my life. And the amount of money that I'm saving is shocking. Of course, before I became wiser, my last car was a Range Rover. So that sucked up a lot of gas and takes up a lot of parking space. Insurance is higher because it's a larger vehicle. And this is Honolulu. We are just a little bit undercrowded inside. Right, right, right. But it was more of the status thing, right? You know, a Range Rover or Porsche or whatever the case may be. My daughter doesn't think that way. She drives a Mini Cooper. And that's at the encouragement of her mom, because if my daughter had it her way, she'd just have some beater that she'd be driving around. But my mom, you know, her mom is a little bit more, okay, we've got an image to maintain or something like that. But so that's a wonderful thing. And that's another opportunity, along with the advancement of technology, is the evolving attitude. And, you know, it's sad to say, but it's a younger generation, I think that is showing a greater attitude towards the future and how we can achieve sustainability. And they've been raised from a very early age, probably, with their parents encouragement to be very, very environmentally conscious. Yeah. And again, that goes sort of to my side. You know, I told you one time that I'm a libertarian conservationist. And that for the millennials, conservation seems so important. And there is a distinction between environmentalists and conservationists. And again, my daughter, she's not into, oh, I want to be a vegan for a certain reason or whatever. It is just that, daddy, why do I want to waste? Yeah. Right? It's just conservation. Back to the practical. Yeah, back to the practical. And so for that reason, I just love talking to millennials. They are very refreshing from the, I want to say that baby end of the baby boomer generation, even within the baby boomer generation, it's different, right? I mean, we've got the last, I mean, I was born in 62. So I'm at the last end of that. And we're heavily influenced by Reagan, which was during my formative years, if you will, politically formative, political formative years, had the biggest influence on our generation. And along with that came materialism, right? In the 1980s and 1990s, all about what you wore, what you. And I think that may be that the reason baby boomer generation is that is that every generation repels from its previous generation. And my generation showed so much of that materialism that the need to have. And so my daughter's generation is, I think, rebelling against that is that, no, I don't want to be like that, which is great, which is great. So back to the Uber acquiring Lyme, you talked a bit about the last mile. What's your ecological futurism for, well, we have the rail coming, but just for Lyme alone. And Lyme are these little electric powered scooter things. Right. So as you know, I own two cap companies, and we're at a major battle with Uber and Lyft. But without getting too political, Uber and Lyft basically says that they are the answer to that last mile. But unfortunately, Uber and Lyft, including taxis, we still burn combustible engines mostly. We still have a lot of dead heading. Right. So if I pick someone up, I drop someone off, I got to come back to pick another person up. And that's called dead heading when you're operating empty. And doing that whole. An example here in Honolulu would be somebody's in Waikiki. They want to be taken to the suburbs. No, that driver has to go all the way. He's not going to get any rides out in the suburbs. Right. He has to go all the way back to Waikiki again. So one of the things is, and taxis never claim to be, you know, environmentally friendly or that we're part of that sustainability. We never claim that because it's essentially a lie, right? Because whether it's Uber or taxis, we add to congestion. And I will tell you that if you get in your personal car and you go from point A to point B, right, and then you come back from point B to point A, you will burn a heck of a lot less fuel and produce a lot less carbon than if you were to have ridden an Uber or a taxi. Because that vehicle has to come back to pick up other people and so on. Unless they get super lucky and find another ride close to where they dropped you off. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, doesn't happen all the time. It happens rarely, actually. Because most studies will show you that whether it's Uber or taxis, 50% of our vehicle miles traveled or the miles traveled is empty. Yeah. I have personal experience with that because I visit Queens, New York very often. And I'm at the airport and the taxi driver says, where? And I say so-and-so Queens and you can just see him slump because what he wants is a ride me to go to Manhattan and all he has to do is drop me off and look for somebody waving and boom, there's his next ride. Right. Yeah. So for any, you know, whether it's Uber or whether it's taxis for them to, for us to say that we are part of the solution, it's just simply not true. We are a reality that is necessary, but we are an evil necessary service. But a line and electric scooters in general and electric bikes, those are real solutions. And so that's why I'm excited about it. And quite frankly, I'm happy that Uber is investing in that type of technology and helping it to grow. 350 million will really jump start line. Another venture capital group invested another 300 million into electric scooter called Bird. Just a couple of weeks ago. So all this same principle is lime. Same principle. Yeah. Same principle. In fact, I think they even use the same scooter made in China, right? I mean, but yeah, so it's really exciting. The changes that are happening and, you know, I commute on bikes everywhere. I mean, I commute every day and I do about 14, 15 miles a day, six days a week. I do it for multitude of reasons, but I don't see the last mile being an important thing. But I mean, I know that I'm in an exception that most people don't want to and some people actually cannot, you know, commute on bikes every day. I use my parents as a prime example. You know, they're in their 80s, they cannot, but they love riding the bus. But it is sometimes challenging because that proverbial last mile, which is not necessarily last mile, but even if it's a couple hundred yards, whereas my dad is a cyclist, too, he could get on a electric bike and go to the last 400 yards or 200 yards or whatever that may be. So yeah, we live in interesting times. So in this case, well, what about just for Lyme, your typical tourist just wants to tutel around, maybe go from Waikiki to Diamond Head and back again. I don't know what the range of a Lyme is. Oh, the range of Lyme, from what I understand is, well, I don't know the exact range, but it's, it can run all day, do 10 rides, and I think they average about a mile a day. So I'm sure it's like 15, 20 miles. Really? So I'm just thinking of our proverbial tourist in Waikiki could easily go, say, to go around Diamond Head, through Kahala, to Kahala Shopping Mall, and then come back again, or maybe tour Kameki. Absolutely. Come back again. No, I mean, I would think that, again, it's about trying to make it as convenient to everyone as possible. And so when we talk about multimodal transportation, I think e-scooters are different from e-bikes. So if I were to give a suggestion, you know, to a tourist and they said, I'm going to do that route that you just suggested, I would say, get on an electric bike because it's much more comfortable and you can carry stuff and so on. Yeah, you have your little basket. And on that cheery note, we need to take a break, Code Green Howard Wigg, back with David Jung in a minute. Good noon again. Welcome back, Howard Wigg, Code Green with David Jung, Libertarian, or some offshoot of libertarianism, extraordinaire. We've talked a lot about the transportation sector and electric bikes and the lime type of scooters as an alternate means of getting around when, again, I turned to tourists, but certainly it could apply to, say, university students, high school students, whatever. But you have some more thoughts on me getting my job done, and my job is to do everything I can to promote 100% clean energy, first electrical energy, and then we look at transportation energy by 2045. What are your thoughts on that? So, you know, I think when we spoke first time, and I told you that I'm a libertarian and a conservationist at the same time, you saw that as sort of maybe not difficult, maybe not so compatible. And I wanted to sort of discuss that with you and present my side as to why it is compatible and consistent. You know, being a libertarian just merely means that I'm for limited government and, you know, a limited set of rules and regulations to guide our community. But I'm not an anarchist. I mean, I do believe in rules and laws, and most libertarians do. And I also believe, as most libertarians believe, that whatever rules and laws that we have must be strictly followed. That's just an ethical, moral issue, right? And we also recognize that we live in a society, and there are things that in which I cannot freely do what I want to do, if on a social contract basis I've agreed that I will agree to whatever laws we all pass, even though I may not agree with it. And so as it relates to the environment, because I do, for example, I am a conservationist. I drive a car, you ride a bike, my goodness. Right. And that's my choice. And, you know, that's part of my ability to express my freedom, if you will, as a civil libertarian. But the one thing that I wanted to sort of clarify is that I truly do believe that when it comes to rules and regulations, that it is meant to help and protect those who can't protect themselves. I mean, that's one of the biggest values of agreeing as a society to live by rules and rule of law, right? Absolutely, yeah. So, and I put the environment as one, as the environment can't protect itself, but it's so essential to all of us. And so we need to have strict laws to essentially force us, right, to protect the environment. Now, where I differ a little bit with the environmentalists, you know, who are basically saying, well, you know, I want to protect the environment for the sake of the environment. I generally say, well, what's in it for us as human beings? How does it benefit us? Now, environment, the protection of environment has clearly been established, right? I mean, you may differ on the degree of climate change, but there's no escaping that human activity impacts on climate change. So from a libertarian standpoint, how do you get from here to there, you know, protecting the environment with the least amount of regulation? And for me, it is basically, and this is part of it is personality. You just lay the law down. I'll give you an example. Plastic bags. You can sit there and try to incentivize people not to use plastic bags. You can use all kinds of, you know, subliminal messaging and, you know, as many experts think that they can manipulate people into thinking in a certain way. No, the environment, plastic is not good for the environment. So from this point on, or, you know, you can set a set date and say, no more selling of plastic bags, and everybody complies. Now, where I have a problem is if they start taxing things, because then that makes the government, goes into the government call for, and then you never see that money, and, you know, it gets spent in mysterious ways. But if legislation which basically tells you what you have to do, and it's not to fill the government call for, I don't have a problem. You know, seatbelt, I mean, but that's not an environmental issue. But there are plenty of instances and examples in which, you know, the government basically, we as a community have decided that the way to do it is just really establish the laws to help. In the plastic bag, or I would add to that, paper bags, because paper bags involve chopping down trees, 15 cents. If you want a bag, you say, sure. And it goes into the supermarket or the market's coffers. Right. And incidentally, all I've queried, the checkout people at markets say, do you have an option? Yes. They can buy right there that reusable bag for 99 cents. Yeah. Boom. There it is. And then, you know, you get used to, I mean, I haven't used a bag in a long time. I mean, I shopped for myself. I don't shop for a family. So it's a little easier for me. But when I go to 7-Eleven, buy a bunch of drinks or whatever, I stuff it in my pocket and everything else. But I don't ask for a bag. Yeah. I have infinite numbers of bags in the office, in the car, in the house. Yeah. So I'm always with a bag somewhere. So from a libertarian standpoint, again, I may be a libertarian from the standpoint of, I want less regulations, rules and regulations. But I'm not, I don't object to or oppose well thought out rules and regulations that are intended to force us to do certain things like helping the environment. What about carbon tax that would, to reduce fossil fuel use, that would be the easiest of everything, just tax carbon, figure out your formulas. So carbon tax is really complicated to me. I don't fully understand it. And whenever you say tax, and then it's somehow monetized, and it goes into the government's coffer somehow, that automatically puts a big yellow flag for me. I think a simpler approach would be just to say, from this point on, you cannot have, to Ford, GM and everyone else, you must have hybrids or electric vehicles or whatever. Your vehicles, average vehicles, average miles per gallon must be this. Just set it, and make them do it. Yeah, which we were doing for quite a while. And even though we have more and more cars on the road, in Hawaii, in America, the gasoline consumption is going down, down, down because your typical vehicle is much more efficient than it used to be. Yeah, yeah. So I don't have a problem of the government just, there's a lot of things that they dictate to, to me on, or not me individually, but to companies, right? Companies are a little different. They have corporate citizenship duties and stuff like that. But for the government to, and that's where I made differ with some of the other libertarians, but for me, the government telling companies that you will achieve these thresholds or these, I don't see a problem with that. I mean, it's to help the environment. It directly impacts on my job. We work with Department of Energy, the federal department, and they set a minimum of efficiency ratios for air conditioners. They'll shout not manufacture anything below this threshold. And incandescent lamps were burned. The manufacture of incandescent lamps was banned some years ago. And as a result, even though we have more and more buildings, more and more homes, the per-building energy use is going down, the per-home energy use is going down. Because of regulations such as you're describing. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that we should be careful of is getting bogged down. There's, in business, you have this term, paralysis by analysis, right? And too often I see that where you could debate things ad nauseam and everything that you do from a legal standpoint, when you pass rules and regulations, could be seen as regressive. Because at the end of the day, it's the poor people that have less options. But unless it's something that's really like carrying a bag, I mean, for a rich person, paying 15 cents is no big deal. For a poor person, paying 15 cents could be a big deal. But if you get bogged down by that alone and not seeing the bigger picture of really the positive impact that that rule can have on the environment, then that's what makes government so slow and inefficient. At some point, you just got to say, you know what, I've heard your arguments. We as a community, we decided we're just going to go. We're going to do it. Yeah. I can give many, many examples of that in my own professional career, where things really, really get bogged down, right? Because I am a conservationist, I attend many of the city and state sponsored programs on transportation. As you know, in our march to sustainability, transportation gets a D minus all the time. We're the worst, right? I mean, everyone else is meeting their goals except for transportation. So I attend these programs and I probably won't be attending too many in the future because I just get frustrated because all they do is talk. And when I, the last program we had, I introduced myself and they asked for my sort of input on what the solution is. And I said, regulate. Just tell us what we have to do. Tell us at some point, no more diesel. Tell us at some point, no more combustible engine. And then we'll have to comply. Now, if you make that into where Roberts doesn't have a benefit over TPT or in other words, people in the same industry, where neither they all have to comply, there's no advantage, right? If you start giving advantages, that's a different issue. You know, that's what government sometimes does. But if it's across the board, sort of bright line of this is by this time, we're not going to have any more diesel gas. Well, then Roberts and everyone else will have to start getting ready for it. It's a level playing field. It's a level playing field. And again, fuel efficiency standards, great example. And you can talk about, oh, well, then I'm going to have to raise prices and blah, blah, okay, whatever. Except what they don't factor in is the laws of mass production. If a hybrid costs this much now, if suddenly you double and triple and quadruple the number of hybrids being manufactured, your per unit cost goes down, down, down. And that would be a benefit but that really doesn't matter. I mean, even if you don't achieve that benefit, you're still going to do it. That's where I think one of the things that I guess Trump, if you will, is gaining some positive response from certain people is, he's kind of like that, right? I mean, he's kind of a bully. He just kind of sets down the rules and he says, just do it. And I think part of that is his business background. Because that's what CEOs generally do, right? Business owners generally do. I get my managers together. Tell me what you think, blah, blah, but at the end of the day, I got to make the decision. And I'm just going to, boom, make the decision. And if you're a good CEO, the company will benefit. If not, then the company will go bankrupt. But there is this attitude of, okay, I'm just going to decide. But that's one of the problems of government and even some nonprofits, right? They want to do good, but they can never pull the trigger. It's like they spend so much time talking to each other talking about things rather than just doing it. Well, we got maybe a minute left. I'll throw air transportation out to you. That's the hardest one. The UAE, United Arab Emirates, they have come out with a new breed of plane, which has zero windows. They have false windows and a camera pointed outside and you get an image of what's out there. And the benefit is that you reduce your fuselage weight by something like 40% and your fuel efficiency goes way, way, way, way up. Yeah, unfortunately for that, international travel means that you go out of the boundaries of the United States. So it may be a little bit more difficult because the US-based airlines will be at a competitive disadvantage if they have to use that plane as opposed to UAE or someone else or Singapore Air, right? But maybe that is where international organizations come in, right? And you do it and say internationally, everyone has to do it. If there's anything that's internationalized, it's the airline industry. They have to be. Yeah. So they do that with tort law, for example, if you have airplane accidents, you have a uniform international court. They could do that with the environment too and sustainability and efficiency and all that. We've still got a minute. Here's a controversial one, maybe Jones Act, your take on the Jones Act. Yeah, I think Jones Act is another one of those things that you could debate all day long, but at the end of the day, common sense should prevail. The fact of the matter is that if it costs you twice, three times as much to go from California to Hawaii, then it does to go from California to China, there's something wrong. And who gets the blunt of that? Who pays for that? Us. And unlike the 48 other states, and even Alaska, they have options. They can truck it, they can railroad it. We don't have that option. So I'm, you know, along with the fact that I am a libertarian and I believe this gigantic Jones Act is very objectionable just by it's what it's trying to accomplish. I think the real cost to Hawaii is something that we should really not only study. I mean, like I said, I don't like studying it. Just do it. Get rid of it, repeal it, or get us exempted. And it's sad that the four congressional delegations to Hawaii are probably the most strongest advocates. Yeah, yeah. You're getting a little pressure from me. There's a litmus test for me as a voter. That's my litmus test. That's how strongly I feel about the Jones Act. If you're going to sell us the community down the road for your benefit, so that you can get more money from the unions and so on, you know what? You shouldn't be in there. Well, on that very cheery note, we need to bid fund due to David June, libertarian extraordinaire, been a great, great, great conversation, David. This is Howard Wiig, Code Green. See you next time.