 Today, I have the pleasure on Critical Materials Corner. Speaking with Jack Lipton and Byron W. King, how are you both today? Well, thank you. Good, thank you. Today's conversation is gonna be around a column you just recently wrote Byron titled Energy Rundown 2022, A New Year of Living Dangerously. Now, I just asked you a second ago before we started this interview, I'm gonna ask it again, which is you have so many interesting comments in this particular column. What would you prioritize this morning as the most critical? Because there were numerous variables in here. I think everybody should read this, by the way. The center of gravity here, I mean, the kernel, the takeaway point is that we collectively, society, and truly the whole world, we are on the edge of a cliff staring into the abyss of an energy disaster. It is, all the hallmarks are there. And the question is, will enough policy makers, will enough industrial side be able to come up with something that will literally, truly keep the lights on for the Western world? And for much else of the world, not just the West, but I mean, we speak to a Western sort of audience and investment glory on our audience, but I mean, if you haven't figured out that we're in an energy crisis, I'm telling you we are, and we can talk about it for the next 20 minutes. And of course, I received a number of emails between the two of you after you published this column and Jack, you had numerous insightful things to say. Would you like to comment on what this cliff that we're staring at right now that Byron is referencing? Yes, I think this cliff is self-made. And I think it represents a outstanding lack of understanding by the political leaders of the Western world in how to even address this issue. They don't understand resource economics, they don't understand mineral economics, and they certainly don't understand energy and economics, yet these people were entrusting to make these decisions about our future energy supplies. And I think the one thing that stands out to me is their total disregard for Africa, South America, India. These are places where cheap energy could bring about the revolution in lifestyle and standard of living that we in the West enjoy. If we continue on this path to so-called green energy, we destroy the chances of those places to develop. And I don't think they're gonna go willingly. Let me just add to that, Jack, perfect point, absolutely. Just the term green energy is a lie. I mean, there's nothing green about green energy. The idea, oh, I'm gonna collect the sun, I'm gonna collect the wind. The things that you need to collect the sun and collect the wind are made with energy, the mining, the processing, the transport, the building, the construction, et cetera. The concrete base, I mean, concrete is nothing but energy. I mean, it is limestone burnt down to lime mixed with gravel and water, et cetera. I mean, concrete is a highly energy-intensive material, and that's your foundation. Then you throw in the steel, which is a high-heat substance. You cannot make basic steel out of basic iron or economically, electrically. I mean, pretty much all the basic steel in the world is made with carbon inputs. You can remelt it as scrap with carbon arc furnaces, but the basic stuff you need carbon for. So the whole green thing is a lie. It's a branding mechanism. And that's before we get to the raerers that go into the magnets and the other exotic metals, the silver. This is all a product of essentially carbon-based energy that goes into mining it. And frankly, if we just measured up all the metals and materials in the world that we think we're going to need to build out this green world by 2030, 2035, give me a number, pick it up. There's just not enough. And even if there is enough, you're talking about mining everything that's mineable on the face of the earth basically to make it happen. So in a sense, the energy future of the world is a fantasy and it is a lie. Although since this is investor intel, it's highly investable. And so, I mean, we can always make some money off of other people's delusions. So let me just jump in here. Of course, investor intel with both of you, of course, are providing excellent data on where we really are because you have to have the data before you can move forward. But let's talk about solutions with our, with this energy scarcity. And I'm gonna throw it back at you, Byron, to lead. And then, Jack, obviously we want your feedback. How are we going to deal with this? And how can we help the greenies sleep at night? Some people are gonna have to back away from, from the paradigms that they're living with. I mean, there's nothing green about green. There's nothing renewable about renewable. I mean, let's shift the argument a little bit. Renewable could be rebuildable. It could be recyclable. You can maybe approach it that way. But the idea that we have to just turn the valves and shut it all off at the carbon level. No more natural gas, no more oil, no more coal or whatever. You're really setting yourself up for failure. I know that some people out there absolutely don't wanna hear this. But I mean, unless you can really come up with a whole new concept of thermodynamics and unless you can just sort of uninvent the last 200 years of the Industrial Revolution, you're setting yourself up to fail and you're setting yourself up to literally wreck the economy, wreck the society that we live in. And I don't just mean the US society. I mean, US Canada. I mean, US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and China too. And it's all, it's all in play. Bad energy decisions are in play across the world. And where we go from here, realistically, I mean, you can just say, okay, well, we are going to have to mine the copper and mine the nickel and mine the rare earth. We're gonna have to build a rare earth industry in the United States or in the US, Canada, US, Canada, Europe, what have you? Because we're not gonna get what we need out of China. China has plenty of uses for everything they can produce on their own. I suppose if you wanna look at it as a win-lose sort of thing, the bad news for China is that it's an energy poor country. I mean, they have not that much oil, not that much natural gas. They mine a lot of coal, but that's not enough. Stupidly, they shut off their Australian coal imports over some sort of perceived insult that the Australians asked about where did this Chinese, where did this virus come from thing had to do with Wuhan? They, oh, we're not gonna import your coal anymore, great. So now Indonesia has shut off coal exports because their power plants were running low, so I mean, China is an energy poor country right now. And that's a problem for China, but it's also a problem for the rest of the world because China is the world's workshop. But getting back to how do we, what can we do going forward? We can be very positive about the Western ability to rebuild the mines and the mineral industry and the materials industry that it's going to need to do energy moving forward. At the same time, you are gonna have to also accept the idea that we still have to, we still have produced natural gas and oil and certainly there's a lot of coal left to be mined and composted. Do it much more do it do it better, do it whatever, you know, okay, yeah, we'll do better, but 70 years ago, but yeah, sure. I think what you're saying, and this is my view that we're actually at war with the earth. What we're doing, you know, you're speaking of, how are we gonna produce all of the materials necessary to do this transformation? That would be by high grading and low grading, everything, in other words, draining the earth of its mineral resources for this momentary fantasy will actually destroy our future. I think that's what people need to understand. Could we produce this all this material necessary for this transformation? No, but in trying to do it, we destroy our own future because in that future and we're bringing the more we produce today, the closer the disaster is coming and that disaster will be extremely expensive resources which will limit their use dramatically. And I think that the only solution is to be rational. Let's find an equilibrium point, base load energy, coal oil, gas, nuclear and altered energy where it's most efficient and useful. Places where it's too expensive to hardwire that as the Chinese are doing in their Gobi Desert region with wind turbines. But the idea of simply transforming an energy industry that's been developed and growing for nearly two centuries, suddenly in a few, and by high grading out the resources of Mother Earth is nuts. We're gonna kill Mother Earth and in the process destroy our future. So we've got to slow down and maximize efficiency here. We have to take a look at our natural resources and say, how much of these can we mine sustainably? I love that term. In other words, can we continue to mine at a level that allows us to maintain our society and add others in the world to it? That's the problem. And is it investable? Absolutely, because we have to find more sources of lithium, cobalt, rare earths and we have to find ways to develop them without destroying our own future. That's my opinion. One absolute factor in all of this has to be the price signals. Last year in 2021, the highest gaining commodity on the whole list of anything was lithium, for example. That was up something over 400%, but that depends on if you were the one who paid 800% versus 300%. I mean, lithium was up remarkably last year. Right now, as we speak, as 2022 commences, another metal that's up significantly is nickel, for example. Nickel prices are as high as they've been in a long time. It's funny because I look at the price of gold every day and it's sort of been trading in that range and that zone. Well, you don't build electric cars out of gold, I guess, but you do need nickel batteries, lithium batteries. Those things are going out of sight. The price of rare earths are also moving up into record territory. Jack, you've been talking about this for decades. You and I have been talking about this for many years, Tracy, as well. And China has completely restructured its own internal rare earth industry to build a stronger business case for what they have. And so you can see prices going up there. With rising prices, people are gonna have to make their own decisions, but rising prices also face the Federal Reserve and this European bank that's just willing to just throw these invented dollars into the furnace as well. And so it's so distorted by easy money. You don't allow zero interest rates, things like that. So gentlemen, I'm jumping in. We got time for one last little debate here. Let's talk about China. Okay, both of you, I have the advantage of hearing some of your commentary behind the scenes. Talk, share with our audience what you have been debating about whether or not we can actually compete with China. I can summarize it. China has been on a war footing in the energy space for the last 25 years and guess what? They're winning and we are not the enemy. The enemy is the world economy. They want to participate and they want to be as rich as they can and they're doing an excellent job. They have addressed this issue for 25 years and what we have to understand in America is that wars end and they end with the winner being the one who's still got resources. The United States didn't win World War II because it was better politically, let's say than the Germans. I'm gonna get a lot of crap on this, but we won because we outclassed them in resources. They were bankrupt at the end. The British Empire was bankrupt. The United States was not. Where China is making sure in the next bankruptcy of the world, they are not a victim. That's what's going on here. We have to wake up, stop the war. Yeah, I mean, I know what you mean, Jack. I think what you really meant to say was politically we were better than Germany. Absolutely. And industrially too. We outproduced the hell out of them. In particular industrially. Because I don't want to get off on that tangent, but I mean, I think for yourself. I have to make one comment. I believe, as Victor Davis Hansen does, that in 1939 Germany was bankrupt. The war was over before it started. We don't want to be in that position. Well, I mean, that is a deep argument that we can talk about that. But let's get back to rare earth right now. I mean, for all of the discussion, for all of the wall streeting that goes on of rare earth in the US and in Canada, we have some really great ideas. We have some great ore deposits, you know them. I mean, I'll mention names, Apia minerals and you know, defense metals and vital metals and you know, some really great ideas out there. And we have some people who are really smart about, you know, we can take the, take the ore and we can make this and do that and downstream. But we really don't, we don't have a system that's up and running yet. There are some, you know, bench scale, prototype scale things out there. We don't have nearly the ability to turn the rocks in the ground. I mean, here's a piece of ore from British Columbia that's beautiful monazite ore from Wichita, British Columbia. I have to keep it on my desk. But we don't have, we don't have the ability to turn this into, you know, the magnet that you need for your car. When I say we, I'm talking the US, Canada for them. You know, I mean, there's little experimental bits here and there and there, but it's not there. So in that sense, China is not just years ahead. It is a generation and maybe more ahead in terms of, of its ability to process these materials. So it gets back to what we talked about at the beginning, Tracy and Jack. If we're going to have this energy revolution, we're going to need some tools with which to revolutionize. And we simply do not have, we, US, Canada, Western Europe, do not have the tools that are necessary to fight this war. We don't have the weapons we need to wage this war for industrial parity, let alone industrial, you know, victory. And you do not think that the World War II model applies that we're going to form some big wagon train and, you know, move across the prairies and, you know, win the war. You know, we're not even building the wagons. We don't even have the horses to pull the wagons that we need. So this is a downbeat discussion in a sense the flip side of it is that, you know, we're trying to get the word out to viewers, listeners, audiences out there so that you understand that this isn't a game, this isn't just the investment game. You know, we're not some other video game to play or something like that. I mean, if you, the car in your driveway, the car is driving down the street, the car you're going to buy, it's not going to be there when you need it. If we don't get the basic materials that these companies need to do what they want to do, what they say they want to do. So I'd like to thank you both. This is a recap on the Byron King column this week titled Energy Rundown 2022, A New Year of Living Dangerously. Thank you both for joining us on Critical Materials Corner. Okay, thank you.