 Good morning. Good afternoon depending on where you're at welcome to this very special film premiere and conversation with the filmmakers of current revolution nation in transition. This special premier is presented by Arizona State University and the American resilience project and we will be beginning that just shortly allowing some time for more participants to join us. Please note that the q amp a functionality is on and so if you have questions that come up either through the duration of the film or afterwards doing our q amp a please submit those there. We will also have a quick poll at the close of the film screening so please look for that. Thank you and we'll begin shortly. Please welcome our filmmakers to do the introduction Roger Sorkin and Paul hurt. Hello everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Roger Sorkin I'm the director of the American resilience project which is a mission driven film production nonprofit. This film nation in transition is the second in our current revolution energy transition film series. And the series is designed as a set of convening and educational tools for helping us navigate the complexity of these transitions. And because energy is embedded in just about every aspect of our human existence, our solution set has to go way beyond just the technological. And personally we're doing pretty well on the technology front, but we need to understand how changing our energy system really affects every other aspect of our lives. And so the foundation for this process should begin and yes I am biased as a filmmaker, but I think it's true with stories that connect with us emotionally stories that everyone can relate to, in other words a strategic narrative. And so my hope after you watch this film is that you'll have a clear understanding, not only the urgency around accelerating our energy transition, but that it will also increase your confidence that we can actually get our arms around this that we all have a role to play. And that this film and the subsequent films in the series will help accelerate these transitions and help us navigate them. So I'd like to extend a quick thank you to our executive producers john Martinson and grace taswell, the Arizona Community Foundation, the many faculty staff and departments at Arizona State University who helped make this film possible. And of course last and certainly not least, the people and government of the Navajo Nation, including the Navajo Nation TV and film office, which helped us complete the filming when coven prevented our returns the Navajo Nation for the final film shoot. And with that, I'd like to introduce ASU professor emeritus Paul hurt, who played a critical role in the creation of this film as co writer and co producer Paul. Thank you Roger and thanks everybody for joining us today. We've got well over 300 people already online and more coming every second so that's amazing it's amazing to be at this point. After two years of working on this film to see it ready for public reveal is just very exciting. Roger mentioned, I'm a well former professor at ASU I recently retired this year, and I consider this work on films for public engagement to be something that I'm doing my sort of meaningful work in retirement and it's been a real pleasure. A lot of people helped Roger and I get to this point. Too many to actually name here. So I encourage everybody to watch the credits that roll at the end of the film to see the names of everybody who contributed to this project, and getting us to this point. I especially however want to thank my colleagues at ASU especially colleagues and staff in the school of historical philosophical and religious studies. That was the academic unit that I taught in for the last 16 years before I retired. They provided a tremendous amount of logistical as well as moral support and the public history endowment in that school, provided financial support for this project. And financial support also came from the narrative storytelling initiative run by Stephen Beschloss in the Julianne Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU so I want to thank them in particular for their financial support as well as strategic and moral support. While while I'm doing thanks I want to thank Roger Roger Sorkin for actually inviting me along on this adventure. I first met Roger when he was working on the previous film the first episode in this series called Current Revolution. And I ended up being interviewed and became a talking head in that film and afterwards Roger and I began working together I joined his steering committee and help to sort of suggest the outlines of this project that you'll be watching today so it's been a great learning experience Roger and I really honor the opportunity to be able to work with you. After the film is over we're going to have a question and answer session, and we'll be joined Roger and I will be joined on a panel by Edward D who is the executive director of the Office of not a whole government development, which is part of the Commission Council. He appears in the film you'll see him several times in the film he's joining us on the panel afterwards, and that panel is going to be posted and moderated by one of my favorite people at ASU Chris Mays professor in sustainability and she was also a law professor and she was also the chairwoman of the Arizona Corporation Commission that regulates electric utilities in the state of Arizona one of the nation's leading experts on electricity regulation and renewable energy and she's going to be leading the Q&A. So when we come back from the film, she'll be jumping in and taking over during the question and answer session. I think that's it did I miss anything Jason or Roger. Alright, I think we're ready for the film then we now have 360 people on board so let it roll Jason. It takes a lot of water to produce our energy. It takes a lot of energy to move our water. There's a total lift of about 2000 feet with a dozen or so separate pumping plants to do that lift. The canal is 300 some miles long as it comes into Phoenix and then head south to Tucson. And it is the largest user of electricity in the state of Arizona. We need to pump water 24 hours a day, whether the sun is shining or not. And coal provided that reliability. For half a century coal has been one of the cheapest forms of electricity available. It's no longer so cheap. The shift to clean energy in electric vehicles is already happening and is happening faster than anyone expected. Now our task is to manage that transition to ensure that it is both just and sustainable. There's a lot of economic prosperity that's going to come along with this transformation. But there are going to be costs. Some whole categories of jobs are just going to disappear. Take a new job far from home or face unemployment. That's the decision facing hundreds of employees of the Navajo Generating Station. Last year officials from the Navajo Nation and Salt River Project decided to shut down the plant. It is emotional. A lot of people when they lose their livelihood it's like losing the loved one. That meal is not there no more. The payment for the mortgage or the payment for the vehicle, those are all gone. Our daily routines and habits, all the way up to the way we organize geopolitics, the way we distribute wealth and power. In the world are wrapped up in this thing that we call the energy system. So when we change it we're going to get changes in everything else at the same time. We need to start learning now and we need to learn at a pace and a scale that we've never learned before. Like 19-4 there's only 400,000 people population in the state of Arizona. Now we've got 7 million people. For 50 years now we gave low cost energy and power for the state of Arizona so they can have what they have now. We didn't profit from it. For decades a large portion of Navajo Nation's income has derived from coal royalties. Coal that was mined here and used to produce energy for Phoenix, Vegas and California didn't yield a quality of life that the people in Phoenix, Vegas and California enjoy. The raw resources, Navajo resources were purchased at low prices, rock bottom prices. Navajo water from Upper Basin Colorado River was used to help with the operation of the Navajo generating station. We waived our rights to claim any of that water for the duration of the power plant and we never got any payment for it. You should be a lot of water around here. We didn't have to travel just to get water. So I would say that we spent more money for our water than people that have running water. Because we had to buy gas, we had weather and tear on our vehicle to get water from the chapter house and haul them back for our drinking water or for our livestock. I'm glad that they're shutting it down. But we would like to see them to fix it the way it was before. And they just can't leave, you know, leave it like that and leave. I'm 50 years old and these guys are just now leaving. And I've spent the prime of my life battling the pollution here and not being able to herd sheep on my family ancestral land and not being able to farm here. And so I never got a chance to use any of this land. The plant was built when I was in high school. My dad was hired by SRP to work at the plant. So it was important to our family that he was employed there and it was a good thing for us. I started at SRP in 1979 as an operator trainee. Once the plant was built and people were employed there, I think we thought it was just going to be there forever. There was no thought that it was ever going to close down. People had raised their families there. It just seemed like part of the community. So the news of shutting it down really was a shock, I think, to everyone. It was just unexpected. I had always thought I was going to retire there. But word came down that we weren't going to be economically viable anymore. As much as the Navajo Nation has depended on the coal and this operation, it has never really brought prosperity to the nation and it has never really taken the nation out of the high unemployment rate that persists even today. I'm a union iron worker for local iron workers, 433 in LA. So there's ways from here to find work, but that's the only place I can find work. Nothing around here for us. You've got the mine and the plant. There's only 600 workers, but there's 300,000 of us. And then where do they find work? There's no work at home. So you've got mom and dads having to travel that far away to find work and you've got your kids at home with grandma, grandpa. And having the whole nation 50% unemployed. And then you've got 60% of people in poverty. What we're confronted with now is declining government resources and a larger population to sustain. The great opportunity here is to invest in solar or wind for communities that have bore the brunt and the adverse impacts of extraction but never received the appropriate compensation for giving up land, water, cultural or religious resources that may be contaminated forever. It's critical that we chart a new path defined by our traditional values, being able to have a family, your animals and multi generations living in the community you've always lived in. And at the same time participate in the modern world and in the community of nations. I think we have a design challenge. The way that we design the ownership of that energy, the geography of that energy. The way that we design the markets, it is the opportunity of a century to build a low-carbon future that does more for us than just replace the energy system that we have with a new one. And that's one of the things we can start learning with what's happening here in Arizona around the Navajo Nation because we've never tried to do anything like this. On this scale, this complexity, this deeply integrated into our human systems. We have a long and not so great relationship with the federal government not to mention all the other entities that have come on and off the Navajo Nation. We're still a sovereign nation. And when we say sovereign, that means we can determine our own destiny. It's not only a trust issue between the Navajo people and outside entities. It's a trust issue between we as well as the Navajo government and our Navajo communities. We're a big government, we have about 300,000 members and that means we have to build consensus among our own Navajo people and our own communities. If you don't have a total buy-in of the whole community, the discontent with one stakeholder who's not happy with the process, their discontent kind of grows and it starts reaching into other parts of the community and pretty soon you don't have that buy-in. There's no trust of the process anymore and people feel left out. We collectively need to win. I don't give a damn which party wins. I want answers. When a conflict arises, that ability to pick up the phone and call the city manager and say, this is what my attorneys are telling me and that we need to go to court with you. What are your attorneys telling you and can we kick the attorneys out of the room and solve this problem? That's essential. Arizona Public Service Company has been the largest provider of electricity in the state of Arizona for more than 100 years. We operate two coal-fired power plants, one in Northeastern Arizona and that's the Choya power plant. And that plant is slated to close in 2025 and we announced that closure in 2015. It is really important to start planning before there are plans to formally close the plant and start talking about what will happen when the plant closes. It is never too early to begin these conversations. So you would have regulators and legislators at the table, you would have your public utility commission representatives at the table, environmental groups, faith groups, labor organizations, and then obviously the electric utility. And a lot of these folks bring different perspectives and that's one of the challenges in this space is figuring out how to reconcile those perspectives. You can't overcommunicate. We're beginning to think about other power plants that we have. What's the transition that we want to help those communities with now, even if they may not close for another seven, eight years. Begin those discussions because these transitions take a long time. We made a commitment to the Navajo Nation overall to make this transition work. And so I think there's opportunities to do it no matter if you're an investor-owned utility, public power utility, or a co-op utility. In the case of SRP, they provided information to the community about timelines. They announced that they were going to actually offer jobs to all of the employees. And that was a huge thing. I can't even believe they did that. If I were not offered another job within SRP, I don't know what I would have done. Providing this level of support, providing these resources will help to contribute to a vibrant economy here in Arizona. And that is so important for our business success. And so we've got every confidence that this will be beneficial not just for our customers and our employees, but also for our shareholders. We have reclaimed mine areas. You've got Navajo Mine and McKinley Mine near Gallup. Then you've got Kenyatta and Black Mesa Mine. Three areas that we can build off to build solar fields. And then we've got power lines coming through our homelands. We can light up the city of Phoenix, Tucson. The negotiations between the utilities and the Navajo Nation has left the Navajo Nation with a certain amount of assets from the Navajo Generating Station. The Navajo Nation was able to get the water pumps at the generating station. The Navajo Nation was able to get 500 megawatts of transmission lines, committed to them from the Bureau of Recommissions. So those are really significant. The biggest question was if we have transmission lines and power generating facilities on the Navajo Nation, why are there still Navajo people out there without electricity? A lot of the times people already live where they live. They live in their ancestral areas. They've grown up there for generations and that's where they want to be. Every community has a group of people who don't have electricity. They don't have water. It's really expensive to run power lines and so renewable energy really offers those local solutions. NTUA made a decision a number of years ago to start to develop renewable energy within the reservation, recognizing the abundance of renewable energy available here. We hired approximately 250 local Navajo and trained them. Many of them have gone on to work at other plants and continue to build. Now that they're built, they're providing energy for the local area, reasonably priced and reliable. In addition to that, we sell renewable energy credits to others outside of the Navajo Nation and the revenue from that goes directly back to construct lines to those folks that currently don't have electric power within the nation. The COVID-19 death toll continues to rise in the US. Fear is mounting the spread of the virus could devastate tribal communities. I think one of the reasons why we were so impacted on the Navajo Nation with COVID is the fact that you have a lot of people not having access to things as simple as information. A lot of the information was spread through the internet and when you don't have electricity, you don't have computers, you don't have TV, you don't have satellite. Now you're kind of limited to if you get radio signal, if you get cell service. It also limits the storage of their food. This requires them if they don't have electricity to go and get ice. If their stores were closed, they were going further out and further out and so they would have to go to the border towns when our stores weren't open. A lot of our relatives have respiratory issues and they have challenges with the air quality. That being compounded by a virus that attacks that exact thing really affected people that were already in a disadvantaged position. And so owning that process going forward in energy development for us is what we feel is needed in order for us to make sure we don't go down those same paths again. Out of college, I returned back home and I really was looking to create jobs and solve issues for my people. We looked at how we could form a company that would develop projects that we feel are in tune with the cultural and the local values. And we feel like we brought some of those values from Silicon Valley with fundraising and capital investment and markets into the nation so that we can utilize those resources and those allies to be able to develop our projects. So reverse your polarity on your leads there and then re-measure. And guess what's going to happen to my charge controller? You see that negative on this? We're here in Hard Rock, Arizona doing our very first solar training and it's a six to eight week program. We have about ten native students who are participating. And this is really a huge effort for us to invest in the native community and be able to employ our own people to provide off-grid power for families that need it. One of the goals of the workforce training program that we have here is to prepare and empower local native people to go into the solar workforce that doesn't necessarily have to be here on the reservation and they don't necessarily have to be installers. We do want to give them the tools to succeed out in the renewable energy world. A lot of the applicants will know or have relatives and family that don't have electricity so they want to be able to install their own system and know how to maintain it. This is an immense opportunity for us to think about what traditional indigenous governance works and it should be established between Indian tribes and not dependent on the federal government. Then we will be able to demonstrate to tribes across the country how they can work collectively to achieve our goals as people who are indigenous to the United States but not dependent on it to prosper. There's no model or template for how to do this. We are making this up as we go but we do believe that it is our social responsibility to ensure that we help these legacy coal communities whose contributions were critical to the success that we experienced today and really for the economy that our nation is built on. This is because of people who have done hard work in coal mines and coal plants and we owe them a debt of gratitude. Ensuring that we don't leave them behind as we make this transition that we have to make we cannot leave them behind. Historically energy has been one of the unfortunate drivers of inequality. Energy is deeply wrapped up in how we distribute wealth in the world. It takes money from all of us to pay for our fuels and our electricity and it sends it off into the hands of a much smaller array of people and institutions and organizations. We could do a better job of designing that so that the energy system actually works the other way. It becomes a generator of economic security that helps alleviate poverty. It becomes a generator of income. If we get this transition in Northern Arizona right we can take all the lessons from that and apply them to many other transitions that we'll be facing in the years to come. Like the electric vehicle transformation we're going to need a transition plan and transition assistance for that to take care of the jobs and the communities that are dependent on the old internal combustion engine that is going to be going away shortly. And the transition that coal communities are facing today are going to be faced by natural gas communities. We're going to start seeing communities suffering from the loss of natural gas fracking, natural gas processing activities and the power plants that are run on natural gas. The biggest question is do we have the political will to come together and govern ourselves? That is where we have our biggest problem. If we fail to do so I think we as a country certainly won't be a global leader anymore. And globally if we as a species fail to face these things I think we do face some dire consequences. What that means for us long term it's hard to say but you know the world will go on. It existed before we were here as a species and it will exist regardless of where we go. We may leave it damaged behind us but it will survive us. How do we ensure that these things exist for our kids into the future? To me it's that simple. I want to make sure that I have said what I need to say and have done what I needed to do. And that way at least the future generations will never say to me why didn't you speak up for me? And you know I'll never be to blame. There's nothing that beats a clean conscience I don't think. What a fantastic remarkable film and you know so completely moving. Everyone thank you again for being on with us I'm Chris May as you see a poll here on your screen please go ahead and take that poll while it's up and then we will provide the results once you have done that and get started with our panel discussion. So while we are waiting for that to appear I think it's going to appear in a few seconds here. I want to just start with our panelists and just launch in and before I do that let me also say please go ahead and put any questions that you have for our panelists based on this film in the chat in the Q&A and I will do my best to get to as many of your questions as I possibly can because I think that should be our focus. You know Paul let me let me start with you. You know you have had many experiences in your life and now you've had the opportunity to help make this this remarkable movie about this energy transition that is occurring on the Navajo Nation. But you also served on the board of directors of the Salt River project which is one of the utilities that operated or did operate the Navajo generating station. You know one of the things that we saw in this film was the growing recognition by utilities that they do have an obligation to help the Navajo Nation and other coal impacted communities make this transition. What do you think that obligation is on the part of utilities. That's a good question. And it could lead to a lot of detailed specific policy proposals which I think I won't get into the weeds on but sort of keep the perspective large. I think the most important thing that utilities need to do is to recognize as this film highlights in the case of SRP and APS. Utilities need to recognize that they have an obligation to the workers in the communities who have been supported by the legacy fossil fuel energy infrastructure and that they can't just sort of close up shop and walk away. Our sort of default position in a kind of a you know unregulated capitalist economy the default position is if a business isn't making money anymore or a product isn't making a profit you stop making the product and move on. We need to do a certain amount of that but in you know a system that is as central to our lives to our health to our economy to the functioning of our entire modern society the energy system is absolutely central and crucial. And for 100 years we have been designing and fine tuning that system it's not just, you know, a product that can sink and rise or sink in a free market. It is an essential technological system that's completely embedded in our society. And it didn't just sort of evolve organically. It was designed it was built intentionally and rebuilt constantly over time to meet social goals. The three main social goals that our energy system has always met our affordability access and reliability, but we can ask our energy system to serve many more functions than that we haven't adequately asked our energy system to be clean and healthy. We haven't adequately asked our energy system to provide benefits to a broader sweep of the public to stop concentrating wealth and start distributing wealth to make sure you know that more and more people can as this film show there are so many people who have fallen through the cracks who are outside the system. 40% of Navajo families on on the Navajo nation don't even have access to running water and electricity. How can that be in the 21st century. So we utilities and everybody else need to recognize that our energy system is intentionally produced is designed. And it's going through a major reorganization now the most significant most fundamental restructuring in the 120 years since the invention of electricity. And as Clark Miller said in the film that gives us an enormous opportunity, and we should think carefully. Number one about where we want to go in the future with our energy system and number two, as this film emphasizes, who's losing out in this transition and how do we bring them along how do we not let them fall through the cracks and be left behind. Great, thank you Paul and Eddie let me come to you with this one you know you are you are in the middle of working on this transition you're a member of the Navajo nation you're an official there at the Navajo nation. Talk to us about what some of the near term achievable objectives goals projects are that you think we be working on the nation can be work on utilities can be working on to help the nation right now. This is clear from this film that the Navajo nation and the Hopi nation are experiencing immediate impacts from the closure of NGS the Navajo nation for instance I believe the statistic is, has lost you know $50 million a year and revenue and enormous amount in the Hopi 80% of their revenue so what are some near term attainable projects or goals we could be headed toward. Well, thank you Chris and hello everyone out there. Thank you Roger and Paul for this film, a great film. Although I can't speak for the Hopi tribe of course I can only speak for Navajo to some extent. I think a great place to start is an attitude is a position or or a perspective now I really like what a delegate Carl Slater mentioned in the film that the chart in that path. And so I think that's basically where we need to begin with is to have that mindset to have that understanding to have that principle view and position to say hey, we now realize that the coal power in that field by the minds up on black Mesa has come and gone. So, I remember sitting in the 23rd Navajo Nation Council here about four years ago, three and a half years ago, they're debating on negotiating or at least extending the lease. And I'm sitting there listening to the 23rd Navajo Nation Council, oh my God, what have they gotten themselves into this is non attainable non feasible. And that's then and now some of the immediate thing I think that's relevant here is a legislation that was introduced by delegate Slater here last summer, which is basically pursuing the partnership with the city of Los Angeles Department of Power. I think that's feasible. That's still there. And I think that's where we need to really pick up the pieces. That's one area. And then prior to that legislation was another legislation by a delegate from Western Southwestern part of the Navajo Nation. They introduced legislation 0073, which was really to embrace renewable energy. So we have Navajo leadership who are a part of the what we call the 24th Navajo Nation Council that at least recognize that and then speaker Damian of course has fully embraced the need to transition and not just energy but energy being the focal point but in other areas of sustainability. So there's some positive area to highlight, as well as the committee of the Navajo Nation Council Resource Development Committee has begun talking about putting together an energy summit that will bring experts within the region as well as across the country to bring experts to have this really open in the in, you know, face to face conversation about the need to make this transition. So in my last contact with the speakers staff, they're still pursuing that, of course, co has put a stop on a lot of things. And then lastly is with our office, the Office of Government Development, as well as the Commission on Government Development, you mentioned that of course we were very closely with the delegates. We put together a white paper that just was passed by the Commission here two weeks ago, and the title of the paper is a case for understanding Navajo sustainability. Subtitle COVID-19 pandemic presents unique opportunities. And in that 27 page report, we highlighted what Paul, Dr. Hurches mentioned earlier is the EV transition. And we highlighted that in this piece that we'll get it public here in about a couple of weeks or so. There is a huge need to also address transportation on Navajo, one on the local level, the lifestyle and also transportation, the mobility with respect to Navajo Nation fleet and other governmental fleet. And the fact that there is an MOU out there, every state surrounding Navajo Nation, there are eight Western state that are sticking towards onto this MOU about transitioning into EV Navajo is not there. So these are opportunities I think that are reachable and attainable. Thank you. Thanks Ed. And I would add, you know, we work a lot also with here at ASU we work with President Nez's office and President Nez himself and he has done I think a fantastic job negotiating the package with APS that Ann Becker in this film talked about. And I think it's a groundbreaking nation leading economic path package that was negotiated around four corners closure and Shoria closure. And I believe it's actually worth the north of $200 million and under that package that President Nez negotiated, the Navajo Nation will get 600 megawatts of renewable energy purchases from APS about $100 million in direct cash release. And I think it's worth the Corporation Commission approves it, and $10 million for electrification projects on the Navajo Nation, among other things so there, there are very concrete actions I think that we need to be expecting of our utilities, going forward. Roger, let me move to you. You've done a number of films under your series a current revolution. You've done a number of films around this, these themes of transition and equity in the transition so can you just sort of compare for me what you saw and found in this film. And then a secondary question for you would be, what surprised you about the time that you spent on the Navajo Nation making this movie. Yeah, so you know equity is a major theme I think that runs through this and I think it's probably a unifying theme that, you know when we look at our, our political situation right now. And, you know, trying to, I guess take the temperature down and get everybody to somehow have a seat at the table I think the real unifying factor here is jobs. Everybody wants to create jobs in their district every elected official. That's the way they measure their, their success and it's what they run on or they get attacked for when it comes time to run again for their seat. And so you know I think the that the idea of workers job opportunities is just one of those storylines that I think is unavoidable and any narrative that we put out there with regards to the energy transition that that that doesn't address head on this question of job opportunity is really just going to fall flat. And, you know, one of the things about I just want to pick up on something real quick that Ed mentioned about transportation, the one of the next films that we have in the series is looking specifically about the electric vehicle transformation, but from the perspective of the auto dealership which is not necessarily what most people think about when they think, how are we going to transform our economy to accommodate transition to electric vehicles I think policymakers, they often think about well what about purchasing incentives for those cars or do we have enough charging stations. One of the ideas that one of our advisors Bill Stetson American resilience project and I are working on now. Actually, and the executive producer for for nation and transition john Martinson and I are putting our heads together on this of what is going to happen to auto dealerships. And when you look at the fact that the dealerships make more money on service than they do on sales. Electric vehicles have less service requirement than internal combustion engine. Add on top of that that our training platforms for auto mechanics are vocational schools the military and prisons. And we have a high level of former prison inmates working as auto mechanics. So there really begs a lot of questions there around equity. What happens to the social fabric the, you know, the workers at these dealerships what's going to happen if we just suddenly impose all of these policies that say, you know you can't sell internal combustion engine vehicles anymore so I think the technological questions are the easy ones. Those are the social questions that are the thornier ones for us to get our minds around so. And then you know quickly with regards to the surprises. I don't know that I was surprised other than the fact that I mean coven threw us a curveball in the middle of this production so we started filming before coven came along. We expected to go back in April of 2020, but we couldn't. I think if you had mentioned it to me that there is a public health connection with regards to energy access. I would have thought okay well of course that makes sense. But what I really was a stark for me and it still is whenever I hear the statistic about so many homes in the novel nation lacking access to electricity and water. And that became crystal clear for me that that coven was worse. The fact that electricity is less accessible. And I think that we really need to factor in the public health component to the energy transition no matter where we're taking it on. Could not agree more absolutely. On that point, Jason can we post the results from the poll real quickly. And 37% of our viewers are very motivated to advocate for policies that would support a just transition away from coal somewhat motivated 13% and very very few not motivated at all. So that's good to see. Great, I'm glad. So let's use that as a springboard. Let me go to the questions from from our audience. One audience member asked what are the major obstacles against the transition from coal and gas to clean energy is it technological political or social and cultural. Paul do you want to take that first and anyone else. Paul you're on mute. Yeah, the answer to the questions actually embedded in the question itself it's a little bit of all of them it's some technological some economic some political and social. I think you can maybe summarize it as inertia, and that's not inertia from not caring, it's inertia from the infrastructure that we have already built and invested in and design the system around. You know, a lot of that still has to be paid off. There's an awful lot of jobs and buildings and power lines and everything else around it. We just can't abandon one of the largest infrastructure systems in the world. If we come up with a new way of designing a better energy infrastructure, it has to roll out incrementally, and we have to think carefully about what are we replacing and what are we going to do with all of that legacy infrastructure like the power plants have to come down. It's required by law to be decommissioned, and there's money set up ahead of time in a escrow kind of fund for paying the costs of dismantling and removing, you know, big old power plants and recovering the land to a usable condition we didn't used to do that we didn't even start thinking about these kinds of obligations to do cleanup and reclamation until the 1970s. And so it's just been a couple of generations that we've even paid any attention at all to what do we do with stuff that's worn out. I think that that's kind of probably the main obstacle technology is already there. I mean clean energy is already more efficient and cheaper than the legacy energy systems and and the transformations being driven by that fact market factors are driving coal out of the market, not tree huggers, not policies, not climate, you know, concern, it's, it's the market. If you can generate the same number of kilowatt hours for 15 or 20% less with solar and wind, why wouldn't you do that. Well the only reason we can't move faster is that we have to restructure and redesign the whole energy system to take this new kind of power which goes back to a question somebody else asked, you know what are those limitations to how much renewable energy, we can, we can adopt and some of that limitation is storage that problem is being solved technologically but we still have, you know there's a lot of cultural resistance. The Navajo Nation resisted the closure of that coal plant for like two years after it was announced that the plant was closing. Instead of, you know embracing change and trying to figure out how to move forward. They had so much invested in that plan and so many families were dependent on it, that there was a whole lot of time and effort expended trying to keep the plant from closing down that's going to happen all over North America. But the plant closings are inevitable and they're coming rapidly and I think it would be much smarter for us to figure out how to move forward together and bring everybody along and design a new and better system. Well, and to that point I mean in this maybe for Paul and Ed, but I totally agree with you Paul and one of my great frustrations in watching that what's occurred on the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Nation. With these closures is that they really have not been given enough time to plan the utilities I mean in the case of NGS. The utilities basically gave the Navajo Nation four months. That's ridiculous. And, and yet, you know, for, I think an analogy would be the for this situation in, in American history is the military base closure process right the brach process. Well, in that case we gave communities lots of time to plan there was lots of process, lots of community stakeholder efforts so you know, I guess that one of our audience members asked what are the legislative. Are there any legislative actions or commission actions going on on this issue, but let me start with both of you, or all of you. Why haven't we done a better job of planning for this and what are the current legislative or corporation commission efforts around just transitions and I can help with the second part of that question if you guys would like. So, Ed, what do you think, let me go ahead and start. Hey, I want to kind of tell off what Paul just said with respect to some of the challenges being political cultural governance. I, so there's about 300 of us that are tuned into this film. And so you kind of have to step back at least I do step back there is a number of us who subscribed to sustainability environmental science sensitivity. So, obviously we're here, and then also the Navajo nation has its own NGOs out there that really advanced this conversation, but the lay person out there your regular every day, Navajo. I think one of the biggest piece is education, you can do all the political might and presentation that you may have but it's the. Your lack of education your lack of connection to the lay Navajo person. I think that's where some of the disconnect has been in terms of why have what why why would you have these challenges out there. So having said that to you to the next question is, I think one of the things that need that needs to happen that which we all are part responsible is really embracing the need for this just transition. I have my responsibilities working with the Navajo nation government and I do what I can, but there's only so much that you can do within one's title or one office or one's channel of communications. I think combining everyone's effort in a team format, making a unified front. I think that would be really helpful now that's basically what I might take away from this piece is the nation and transition is to capture, and to present this presentation. Much too much larger audience in time and I think that's where we will get that unified front and to really push forth and you know presenting a just transition for the Navajo people Navajo leadership Navajo nation. Great. Paul you want to add to that. I'm, I was just thinking I was putting on my SRP board of directors hat for a minute I served for four years on the board of directors of SRP ran in 2016 to try to help advance solar because SRP had adopted a bunch of policies that made it very very difficult for people to put rooftop solar on their and gain from that benefit so it was a kind of a short term thing that I did but was one of the most interesting and educational experiences I had. That's, you know, good advice for everybody. If you want to see change. Don't just wait for somebody else to bring it. It's just, you know, all the people who make these decisions they're just regular people. You can make a difference yourself, but thinking about your question Chris from the point of view of SRP. And I hope this is changing, but a lot of utility companies are afraid to announce that their legacy fossil fuel fired power plants are out of the money. They keep it close to their chest for a very long time. APS claimed that they let one community know they were shutting a coal plant down 10 years early. I can tell you that is not just highly unusual but unprecedented. And there's a lot of coal fired power plants out there that the owners know are shutting down. But they're afraid to tell the local community because they know it's going to be a bombshell. It's really devastating. So a lot of them will wait till the last minute. And as you pointed out Chris then there's not enough time for that community to really organize and prepare for the transition. In some cases they'll say oh we're going to close this plant down in 2032 like they're doing for a couple other coal plants in Northwestern New Mexico also on the border of the Navajo Nation. And one of those plants is supposed to close down in 2032. I bet, you know, a month's salary that it's going to close down five years before that if not even sooner. We need clear and open and honest communication about this, if we're going to be able to design a just transition. And so that's one responsibility of utilities. Indeed Paul President Nez often says in publicly and in conversations I've had with them. Look, I don't want any Arizona or New Mexico community to ever experience what the Navajo Nation had to experience with the closure of NGS. And he talks about Springerville because obviously Springerville is now slated for closure and that community in Arizona is going to go through the same thing the Navajo Nation has had to go through and he is very passionate about wanting to make sure that these communities have time to plan. And for him that meant five years at least not four months. Let me ask another question to the to the panel from an audience member, which was, you know, how do we make sure that this trend that the Navajo Nation is not doesn't experience the same thing it experienced with the closure of coal plants. When we get into the renewable energy transition energy projects, ie, how do we make sure that the benefits of renewable energy projects go to the Navajo Nation. You know one of the themes of the film was, we had all this massive infrastructure I think Nicole horse herder and delegate Slater talked about this from the movie. We had all this massive infrastructure on the Navajo Nation. You know, we, you know, we use their water, their air shed their labor, and yet they didn't really reap the benefits so how do we not repeat that mistake going forward. I'll throw that to anyone who wants to answer it. Go ahead and then I'll follow you up. Okay, thank you Chris. Thank you Paul. So what comes to mind is human capital investment. This concept of natural capital investment or reinvestment. The idea that you train your Navajo people, your Navajo worker force. You train them to where they maintain the skills and the skills then are advanced to the next generations. And part of that is of course a massive investment, not only in education but in infrastructure and maintaining those education within this case to to an institution on that foundation. So Navajo Navajo Technical University make that as a hub to begin your investments so you have a workforce for generations to come. That's one in terms of renewable energy. The second thing is also understanding, again the NGOs have really done a great job and some of these areas, but really understanding what I think a delegate Slater talked about in the movie which is look, the cultural religious investment, some of it has have been waived, if you will, by not understanding and not appreciating not embracing these principles. I think that's got to be part of the stewardship of taking care of Mother Earth that has to be part of this investment. And so you got to start local and start using the institution on the nation as a vehicle to advance this investment long term. That's a very short answer here. Paul. Yeah, I'm at your first answer about native renewables. That's why we made sure that we went and interviewed Suzanne singer and they're at their training session is because of the critical importance in a just transition of workforce retraining. There's funding available for workforce retraining in both the New Mexico and the Colorado just transition acts that were passed in 2019 to facilitate this transition. They included economic, local economic development and workforce retraining because that's so crucial. Slater also mentioned that this is an enormous opportunity and that really gets to the heart of the question. Why would it be different in a renewable energy regime than it was in the old fossil fuel regime and here's the best way to explain that. That coal fired power plant novel generating station that shut down. It generated 2.2 gigawatts of energy it was a gigantic centralized generating station that sent electricity throughout the Southwest all the way to Los Angeles LA Los Angeles and a lot of water and power was one of the co owners of that plant taking electricity all the way from the Navajo nation. That kind of super large centralized energy generation system requires a lot of capital, a lot of time to build takes about 10 years to build a coal fired power plant just to pay the damn thing off before you start earning you know a free and clear profit. It has a lot of maintenance costs and and it's got to have enormous amounts of coal sent to it for fuel. The investment to create one of those things required outside capital international, you know, monetary instruments as stock markets and giant corporations. It's not something that can be home grown. Now compare that to a one megawatt solar array, which should be enough to, you know, provide power for say 1000 homes or more. You can't put solar anywhere, and you can scale it so you can build, you know, 30 panels one year and then 60 more the next year and then 100 more the next year as you need that power. And as you have that capital so renewable energy development particularly solar can be coded or locally developed and locally owned in a way that the old legacy system never could. To hold to develop on the Navajo nation, it had to be outside companies coming in with outside capital and outside expertise and of course, in a capitalist system those companies are going to take most of the benefits away with them. But the Navajo nation is in a position now where it can develop its own resources, solar resources renewable energy resources with much of their own capital, generating local income training local jobs and making sure that the benefits. As many as possible of those benefits stay locally that's an opportunity we have with the renewable energy system that we did not with the previous system. I want to jump back thank you Paul, I want to jump back to the policy question what's going on from a policy standpoint because we also have a question from the audience on what the Biden administration can do. And I did notice with with great interest that President Biden in his first slew of executive orders did mention the need to help coal impacted communities through this transition which I thought was great and I think he has assigned that to his White House climate as our Gina McCarthy, but let me let me just lay out a couple things that I know are going on at the Corporation Commission that are in the right direction. The Commission is addressing this in the APS and TEP rate cases the Navajo nation led the charge on intervening in that case and has proposed a number of things including that $100 million fund for transition for the Navajo nation. The Navajo nation did as I said negotiate the 600 megawatts of renewable energy projects for the nation from APS. And, and the Hopi nation has also intervened in in before the Arizona Corporation Commission. The, and so there's and then finally there's a movement of foot to try to encourage the utility to utilize something called securitization of these coal plant assets that would then throw off funding for these communities whether it's the Navajo nation or eventually the Navajo nation or the Navajo nation or the Navajo nation. Paul, do you want to add to that or, or, or add and maybe even speak to the Biden administration or what the Biden administration can do. Well, I'm not sure I have a good answer for that but I would like to note that the other co founder of native renewables. And singer is a woman named Wahela Johns, who was just appointed head of the office of Indian energy in the US Department of Energy by the Biden administration so there is a Navajo clean energy activist, who is now running the office of Indian energy and will be in a position to be able to help advance the development of clean energy on tribal lands throughout the United States. Good news. Also, the Secretary of Interior, Deb Holland is a Pueblo of Zuni member from New Mexico who is very familiar with all of the challenges of coal mining and coal fired power plants in northwest New Mexico, and very familiar with the concept of a just transition for affected communities as we ship from coal to renewables and so we're going to have two key indigenous leaders from the Southwest in the Biden administration, pushing forward the policies that we need. We, we had a question also in the chat from someone wanting to know what they what they can do to get involved in this especially as a grad student but let me throw it to Roger. I also had a question on what is the plan for the distribution of this film, what's next steps for you Roger. It seems to me this film is so incredibly important because it's our opportunity to really get get this message out to the general population that this is happening. I just, I just believe in my heart that, and in my gut that most Arizonans don't know this is happening and if they did, they would care deeply about this, and they would agree with delegates later that and frankly, the representative from APS which I thought was a great statement by that that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Navajo nation so Roger. Thank you Chris. You know, one thing I often think about is this concept of a strategic narrative. And it's a term that I picked up from some military strategist that I came across years ago when I was doing another film on the military's transition to renewables. And really it's a simple term I mean for me it just simply means that it's a story that everyone can relate to in their daily lives. And, you know, it's hard to come up with a story that everyone can relate to in their daily lives but energy certainly is one. And when we put this in terms of basic human need. Then we can see how the narrative really just cuts across every, not even just sector of our country but every culture around the world. And I think it's a it's a human story. And one thing I'm really trying to do, you know, I'm not an energy policy expert I'm so glad that Paul and Ed and you Chris are here to help answer the more technical and policy related questions. But what I'm really trying to do is democratize this experience for people and I, I borrow that term from an advisor of mine and Eric Martin wrote a great book called democratizing leadership. And it's it's something I think a lot about it's, it's not I'm not trying to make people into filmmakers. I'm trying to give people the tools to tell their own stories and communicate more effectively. And I think, you know, in our culture nowadays people avoid difficult conversations. You know the classic example is you know you don't talk politics at Thanksgiving. And I'm trying to turn that on its head so that we can find a way to talk politics at Thanksgiving but to do it the right way. And that means showing up with an understanding of what is it this other person cares about. I might disagree with this person, I might. I think some of their choices in life might repel me, but I know that there's some commonality that we share and if you're committed to, to discovering what that is. And then honing the communication skills to to make a bridge to that person. I'm trying not to be naive here but I really think that there's, there's a tool here that this film is a tool for you to go out there and have this conversation with people I mean it really this concept of democratizing leadership is finding the difficult conversation and having the difficult conversation. It takes work it takes courage, but it's definitely not rocket science and it's definitely not even energy policy as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, that's what I hope people will do is, you know, pick up on the themes in this film, and then look for opportunities wherever they might be and maybe it's the water cooler, the virtual water cooler at your office. And just, you know, try to talk to people about the things they care about in terms that will will really unite us around this common purpose. So I would add to that, Roger, we have a link to the American resilience project in the chat. That's at www.amrezproject.org and will also be linking to the movie from our new just energy center website which is global futures.esu.edu forward slash just energy so you can get the movie in a couple different places for those who didn't see it beforehand. Let's get this movie widely viewed. Yeah, if I could just jump in with a, you know shameless plug that needs to be made which is that we have a number of these other films that are in the pipeline, and we are non profits so we are seeking donations and grants so you can donate to us through the www.amrezproject.org website. Yes, please everyone do that if you can these movies. If you haven't seen Roger's other films they are fantastic. And he's going to continue making them if we if we can help them do that Paul did you want to say something. Yeah, I can reemphasize Roger's company is a not for profit company not a you know commercial for profit company and so that's important for two ways one, we need to raise money from supporters and philanthropists who like to see this educational work being done but number two. Roger doesn't charge that much, sometimes nothing at all for you to be able to show this film we want this film to be widely shared and if any of you on the call are involved with any organization that you think would like to host a we will make it available to you without charge and we will also provide you some tools for discussions afterwards for additional resources to learn more and for ways to get engaged. This is just energy transition center and Rogers American resilience project will have links to educational resources we're creating was called a public we're calling a public engagement tool kit that will have resources available for people who are you citizens trying to make a difference policymakers municipal leaders business leaders educators, anybody we're going to try to create tools that will allow you to take this film and take it to the next level of engagement with your own communities and your own organizations and there's not going to be any barriers to doing that so please take advantage of this. I want to, we still have a few minutes left in in the hour so if I could end with a couple of additional substantive questions that came into the chat that I think are really important. A person asked a question about the renewable energy, developing renewable energy projects on a sovereign nation, and you know how, how, you know, can you speak to the issue of sovereign immunity, or sovereignty in building renewables on tribal land. Do you have any insights on on on that because that is an interesting question. A little bit different than when you're dealing when you're developing renewables on on privately owned land. Okay Chris thanks for the question. Hey so in the filming, I had a chance to have a conversation a brief conversation with delegates later. I presume he's on online listening. So one of the things that he mentioned was a framework, the nation, whether you're talking from the president nez aside, or the right, really for the moment lacks a framework, and what he called a principle framework. And I think that's one of the leading thing that needs to be adopted embedded accepted and put out there so that will then convey the message with respect to sovereignty, political sovereignty as well as cultural sovereignty, sovereignty to these inner renewable energy companies and they're basically standing at the door of Navajo nation knocking on doors whether in natural resources department, the president's office, the speaker's office and any number of delegates even our office and when we put together a sustainability symposium here about a year and a half ago. There's a lot of them were there. And so that question continues to come up is how do we come on to a sovereign nation and put together at least put a bit out there. There, what President nas talks about is there's really no clear in house they talked about adopting an energy house which was part of the 73 legislation I spoke about that legislation fizzled out. So, these delegates are aware as well as President nas that there needs to be a renewed energy policy that speaks uniquely and purposely with targets to renewable energy. And I think that's where we're going in terms of that that's where Navajo nation leadership is going is adopted a framework with principle statements of how to bridge that gap. Thanks. Thanks, Ed. You know, and then the other substantive question I that I thought that that I throw out there and maybe this is to you, Paul. What is the timeline to full question. What is the timeline for a just energy transition whether it's for the Navajo nation or any other coal impacted community like Springerville. How do we judge success, you know, 15 years from now when all of these coal plants are shut down and there will be they will all be shut down essentially within I think 15 years. It's happening at a blinding pace really across the country. How do we judge success for these communities in and all of us in helping these communities make this transition. I think one way of judging success would be to see down the road whether communities have viable economic options and can maintain their tax base and maintain their services maintain their job space. There's going to be a really rocky period at the beginning and a bunch of people are going to lose jobs as new job opportunities come in and it's going to be messy. There's going to be a lot of pain. But if we look back at it two years later three years later we can judge how successful that transition was after you get through the bumpy part by whether the community is doing as well or better than it was before. And I always think back, I spent a lot of time in Southeast Arizona I spent 17 years in Tucson, and I remember back in the 1980s and Tucson. That was a period the 80s was a period in which a whole bunch of gigantic open pit copper mines were shutting down all over the American West, North America all the way up to Canada and all the way down into Latin America, but Arizona had like five gigantic open pit copper with, you know, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of people employed in them, and the price of copper plummeted, and it became more and more difficult to be profitable and one after another these copper mines shut down. There's a really big copper mine in Bisbee in Cochise County, and a giant smelter in Douglas just about 1015 miles away that smelted that copper and there are a lot of those two communities were, they thought entirely dependent on that copper mine and that smelter. And everybody kept saying for 10 years as the economics got worse and worse and worse. Economic analysts and policymakers and local, you know chambers of commerce were saying this is our lifeblood we can't let it go we've got to keep it open, and inevitably it shut down, and the smelter was removed. And there is a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson, who covered that whole period, the controversy over the closure, what happened to the town of Douglas after the smelter shutdown. And it was pretty devastating. One year later, new businesses were moving in at a rapid clip, and Douglas Agua Prieta Mexico Douglas is a border town became one of the new key quarters for trade between the US and Mexico. And three years later the economy was better in Douglas, Arizona, then it was when the smelter was running, and nobody predicted that so we can't know the future. And there are ways of making communities whole and finding new pathways forward. We just have to, you know, focus on it, and do what we can to facilitate that. And so us who are on the outside and have access to policymakers and resources, we need to keep reminding everybody that these communities were important to us. They are important to us today and will be important to us in the future and we need to pay attention to managing the transition and adjust in sustainable way. Yeah, and never ever give up, never let never leave these communities behind. Exactly. Ed, what does a just transition a successful just transition look like for the Navajo Nation in in 2035 in 2035 a just transition. Basically, I really like what Nicole in the piece here said about that towards the end of the field. It's not about us. It's about our children. It's looking into our children's eye and say, look, with a good conscience, have I at least handed you some tools, some education, some principles, some understanding. That's fundamental here in terms of educating the youth to make a just transition so long. So 23rd by that's about, I don't know, 1213 years from now is basically having them the tool set and tool kits and knowledge in their side and say, look, we now can handle this. And we've gotten away from coal or other fossil fuel related energy. So that's basically what a just transition would look like to me. Thank you. Roger as the as the filmmaker and the the artist behind this film. What what do you think and do you have any closing thoughts for us. I mean, for me, I think, you know, a just transition is one in which we're all conversant in what it what it means to us and we should all be able to answer that question and you know I think part of my mission is supplying my skill set as a filmmaker to translating a lot of these very complicated questions into late late person terms. I really do want people to have the tools to have these conversations at family dinner, not just on a zoom call with, you know, experts in the fields with all due respect to the experts we need you. My job is to take what you do and translate. So, and that again I come back to what I said earlier which is that we can all be those translators. And I think that is what film is is really when it's done well I mean any medium, any medium of communication can can do this. But I think film is particularly well suited because it allows us to go into an emotional level that some of the other forms of communication that we utilize these days doesn't really reach. It's hard for a tweet or a Facebook post to to really can have an impact in the moment but it won't necessarily linger. And I think to break through in this media ecosystem. You really need to make that emotional connection and so you can do that with a film, but you can also do it in one on one conversations. And so, you know, I would I would flag the term emotional intelligence for people in addition to democratizing leadership, emotional intelligence those two go go together. We all have the tools and the skills to do that no matter what field we work in no matter what our level of education is. And I'll just add. I think what this film does is it it is going to help us continue this conversation, continue real action on this issue, and it is going to, you know, I think be be the starting point for this statewide that we really need to have for me a just transition for the Navajo Nation would be that not only is the Navajo Nation more prosperous in 2035 than it is today, but that it is also become a leader and a beacon of hope for the rest of the country. And I really think that the nation has that opportunity and that and, you know, God willing, that will happen so thank you, Roger Sorkin, Paul Hurt, Ed D Arizona State University everyone who worked on this movie, I think our time is up. Thank you, especially to everyone who attended this zoom watch to the film, and let's all stay together and work on this issue.