Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs to job the podcast and in a first. I'm taking a virginity. Is this true? Is this true? It is, it is true. My guest is Kelly Mitchell Kelly. Your

0:35 first podcast? My first podcast. Oh my gosh. Be nice. Be gentle.

0:41 Yes ma'am, of course. No, so you're really cool to come on and I'm going to preface this by saying I absolutely adore you. I think you're one of the coolest people in the world. We've chatted on

0:53 the phone multiple times. Sweet text. This is our first time ever meeting in person. Do you want to tell the story of how we met or do you want me to? Yeah, I mean, maybe I can try and see if

1:04 your version's the same, but I think it was after maybe your podcast with Ashley Watt or with Sarah talking about the issues that were going on in Argentina and I was like, hey, this is the oil and

1:16 gas guy, but he seems pretty honest about some of the issues with the industry. I saw you were getting a lot of flack on Twitter at the time. So I reached out in the DM and I was basically like,

1:28 look, I am a left wing climate activism gay. I was like, just checking all the boxes for the last people to be a digital healthcare understands, but I want to talk and you responded, which was

1:41 very nice. And yeah, we've been hanging out on the phone since - Yeah, it was funny because I think when you sent that DM, I was driving to tell your aunt the next day - Yeah, yeah - And you're

1:52 like, hey, can we talk on the phone sometime? And I'm like, yeah, I have 18 hours of the car - Yup, let's do it, yeah - Feel free to call whatever. So we did it. And so tell me background -

1:57 Yeah - What have you done in your career? Because you were telling me a little bit earlier and it was cool - Yeah, yeah. So I started working on climate stuff when I graduated from college around

1:57 2006.

2:17 So I worked for you - Where'd you get a college - I went to UPenn and all my friends - College Station - No, no, in Philly - Oh - The University of Pennsylvania - Gotcha, gotcha - And yeah, all my

2:29 friends were going to - Did I just accuse you of going to Penn State - Yeah, and I live in Ann Arbor right now too - Oh my gosh - So I got big 10 rivals - Anyway, sorry about that - No, yeah,

2:38 friends are going into investment banking, into consulting, into all the things you go to a ridiculously overpriced private university to do And I took like a 30, 000 job, working for Greenpeace

2:51 at a college. So I worked there for about 11 or 12 years, all on climate issues. I did the whole - Did you like scale, you know, ships and bridges and hanks up really - Yeah, I scaled a

3:05 smokestack in Chicago. So one of the oldest qualified power plants in the country was like right in downtown Chicago. So along with a group of seven other people, we occupied the coal plant. We

3:17 scaled the Smoke Sack. We stayed up there a couple of days. They did close the facility pretty soon after. So hopefully we played some small role in that. But yeah, no, I've done the active

3:27 stuff. I've been arrested - Oh, that's awesome - I've been to jail. I've been to Cook County jail - Hard time. You've done hard time - No, I've not done hard time. I've done easy, easy. I mean,

3:36 look, I've done easy time. People like me don't do hard time in this country. But yeah, no, I was full on in the activism space for a good, long stretch.

3:48 And then in recent years, I kind of switched gears a little bit. So now I work for an organization that's much, much closer to investigative journalism. So a little more kind of neutral, a little

3:57 more about the facts, but we're out there doing original investigations into basically misdeeds in the oil and gas industry, political influence by corporations. Yeah, that's my little spiel So

4:10 tell me something that I would be surprised to hear about. Greenpeace activist hmm if that's a fair question. Yeah It's a good question. I think

4:26 We Hopefully are like a lot more like down to earth and then maybe people would would expect I think there's there's somewhat of a sense that like We're all kind of wrapped up into this like climate

4:40 change religion that we practice With quite a lot of intensity and I think you'll find you know within the Greenpeace activism community There are a lot of people who are wrestling with really

4:52 Difficult questions who understand like the scale of the problem we're facing the under skit stand the significance of oil and gas into our current way of life But are still nonetheless kind of

5:04 looking for solutions and looking for solutions that kind of ease the burden of the transition on on the greatest number of people so Yeah, a lot more. I don't know. Hopefully a lot more sort of

5:15 humor. and levity then maybe you may find among

5:21 the people that you see online. I would hope so at least. No, I like that. Because I would not have thought barrel of laughs when I thought that I green piece. But no, that's cool. So the thing

5:34 I always like is whenever we talk, I'm always like, hey, what are your people saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are your people saying? Yeah

5:44 Do you think, do you think, because my issue is, and I've said it on the podcast, is we ignore global warming at our own peril. Yeah. Right. I mean, and I believe that's true. And I've always

5:58 been a data guy, you know, so kind of look at data type stuff. I believe we ignore that kind of at our own peril. The thing I've always struggled with, and you and I've talked a little bit about

6:11 this offline, is you always hear the science says this right. And I've always thought that the observation of the event or the data, anybody ought to be able to see. Now we need Newton to explain

6:26 the theory of gravity, but we can all see the apple fall off the tree. I'll give you another example. You're sick, you go to the doctor, okay, you need the doctor to tell you you have an

6:35 infection of your spleen or whatever the test may be, but you can still feel it. And so one of the things I had asked you about was, shouldn't we be able to end the data just see global warming?

6:49 And so I printed these out - Yeah - Give me two. 'Cause I printed out double copies - Oh great - So if this is okay, we'll get it - This is really good audio content, explaining charts for your

7:02 event - We get cameras now - No, I'm just kidding - Yeah, but yeah, no, so actually that's a good point. But basically what chart number one is, and I'll go to this red line here, and uh. whoa

7:14 we'll cut these into the YouTube - Yeah, yeah - But when you look at this red line over here - Yeah, which one - This top one, okay, yep - This top one. 'Cause these are the two charts that I've

7:24 always seen when it's the last 10, 000 years worth of temperature. And I've always thought like, supposedly the ice science on this was pretty well accepted by everybody, you go do an ice core and

7:36 it gives you the temperatures and the like. What I've always seen about these charts is number one, like 91 of the time it's been warmer over the last 10, 000 years than it has been now. I called

7:49 you and you actually said, yeah, that may be true, but it's the slope. It's the increase that we've seen kind of since, call it 1850 or whatever. That's the problem. But then I kind of look at

8:00 that line and I go, well, there have been slopes that steep over the last 10, 000 years and the other chart below the simple pop up to basically the same kind of thing - Same stuff What am I

8:10 missing on these charts?

8:14 Yeah, so they're sort of looking at two sets of charts here, which hopefully we can have up. So the charts here that you're talking about, these are charts that are pretty widely circulated. And

8:26 maybe I'll just start by saying like, I'm not a climate scientist. So I'll do my best to kind of represent my understanding of your stuff. I'll represent my

8:37 people But the sort of problem with these two sets of charts is they don't actually represent the sort of abundance of data and climate science that are taking place. These charts are basically from

8:51 a single set of ice core samples in Northern Greenland. So they show a lot more kind of fluctuation highs and lows than we actually saw when we're looking at sort of a global scale because it's a

9:04 really narrow sample. So I think these charts are sort of cherry picked at times to make the point that maybe the warming that we're seeing right now is not. as dramatic or as scary as it should.

9:18 Or driven by human activity or whatever you wanna call it. There's another set of charts. I think I sent you these as well. Okay, now we're gonna have - The blue charts. The fuzzy blue charts.

9:29 The fuzzy blue charts. Now these represent science, some of it coming out of university of Arizona, but they represent, I think, the much broader view of sampling, so ice cores from multiple

9:44 locations, modeling from multiple locations. And here, the impact of humans on global temperature rise suddenly becomes a lot more severe, where you see that over the past 10, 000 years, we've

9:57 been in a period of extreme kind of climate stability, actually, as a species. So one of the reasons that we've been able to thrive and pass prosper and have predictable agriculture and all the

10:07 things that we've needed to get to where we are as a species.

10:13 all the way to the far end of these charts to see just a huge, a huge spike in temperature change that, you know, if we were to overlay a chart of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, you would

10:30 see the impact of human activity much more aggressively. Yeah. Gotcha.

10:39 So how, so the two sides, do they fight about this and we don't really have a common set of data is, is, you know, kind of the one side sitting there saying, well, this is all based on modeling

10:52 and modeling's never right. And we don't even have enough computing power to be able to predict these models, etc. Is that kind of the fight or do you know? Yeah. I mean, my sense is that within

11:04 the scientific community, there's not much of a fight So I'll never say, you know, I think the triggering word for a lot of people is like. science is settled. I'm not going to say that no

11:15 science is ever settled. But within the climate community, within the science community as a whole, you have the vast, vast majority, 90 plus percent of scientists who are looking at the fuzzy

11:27 blue chart model and saying climate change is happening. And we know that the largest driver at the moment is human activity. So now the question is, what do we do about it? And then you have a

11:38 smaller subset of scientists who are looking at this data and maybe cherry picking examples here, like the red and blue chart we're looking at, or looking for other places where there's some, you

11:50 know, slices of uncertainty here

11:54 and slices of uncertainty there to say, okay, maybe we can pump the brakes on actually doing anything about this problem. So I think, you know, to the, to whatever extent there is that debate,

12:02 it's very weighted towards one side of the equation. Okay, because that's one of the things I've told myself I would want to actually go deep dive. Yeah, it just actually figure out. how good is

12:13 our data, you know? Because it's wild. I mean, you can literally have two people tweet out, you know, the ice and the Arctic is shrinking. And then somebody else is like, no, it's bigger.

12:28 And they bet the pictures in me, like, going, this shouldn't be in debate, you know what I mean - Well, let me tell you a story about the debate. So this might be a long day I tried But so I was

12:39 born in 1984. Now, by that time, Exxon had already been publishing internal papers for years saying climate change is happening and it could have, in their words, catastrophic impacts. A few

12:56 years after I was born, Shell was publishing studies internally, not just whether or not climate change was happening, but actually trying to calculate, like, to the percentage point, what

13:06 percentage of quil warming is Shell responsible for? That's what they're doing in 1988, right?

13:13 It's 2023. I am here. Got two kids. I've got some gray hairs. I'm talking to an internet friend. And we're still having this discussion about, is the science real? And the only thing that's

13:28 changed in that 40-ish year period is that the science has become more robust. It's become more precise. And it's become clearer that humans are responsible And so it's a weird journey that we can

13:43 have, this 40-year-long period where everyone from engineers at Exxon to the best scientists in the world are saying, man, we've got to do something about it. But then the dialogue is still - yeah,

13:56 like you said, it's this back and forth equally-related Twitter exchange of people sharing pictures of an Arctic ice sheet and trying to figure out what's going on. So I don't know how to -

14:08 especially with what your side of the aisle had a bridge that - like how do we get to the place where we can all say like, yeah, this is happening. And so the question is what role is the oil and

14:19 gas industry is going to play in it? What role are NGOs going to play with it? What role is government going to pay, you know, versus considering, you know, considering to be like, well, is

14:28 this even a thing we need to, you know, be concerned about? Yeah. There's my soapbox. No, I like the soapbox. I'm glad to hear that. As my friend David Ramsen Woods says, man, if we could

14:39 only raise the temperature five degrees on this planet, Canada would be bare.

14:45 Yeah. Now, so it's interesting you bring that up because I think, I mean, like I said, you ignore this at your own peril. And I really am going to go deep dive the science because I do want to

14:58 figure out, you know, is this actually happening? To what degree is it happening? And I think what the answer is going to be, and I hate to pre-dispose this, is it's going be well it's fuzzy.

15:11 And so you know. If we could all live with, hey, this is fuzzy, which kind of seems where we are right now, you still need to have the conversation about, okay, one side says we need to stop

15:24 hydrocarbons by this date. And I think the answer back is, okay, how are we gonna get Africa to do that? How are we gonna get China to do that? How are we gonna get India to do that? 'Cause I

15:36 was like to say on the podcast, there's really not a peeing and non-pying part of the pool - Yeah, absolutely, yeah And

15:45 do you have any suggestions from your side how we have that discussion - The global discussion or just the like - Yeah, 'cause I will say what my people will say is, all they wanna do is shut it

16:01 down and all they wanna do is just shut down hydrocarbons, but at the same time, John Kerry's still gonna fire around those jets So it's it's rules for the not for me, which it feels like. And

16:15 at the end of the day, I do think the developing world has a bit of a point of, hey, you guys are driving around in Lambos and you get to go see Post Malone and concert and all of this while I'm

16:28 over here, you know, in

16:32 this tent burning dung for fuel - Sure, yeah. No, I mean, I think it's a good discussion. Like, I think one of the first conversations we had, I was pretty clear, I'm like, I drive a giant

16:44 SUV. Like, you know, I gotta come out here like eight-mile style and like self-docs, right? Like the shirt was like NGL's at some point, you know what I mean? Like, I think

16:55 I am well aware. I think you'll find a lot of people in the climate space are very well aware of like how dependent we are. And I think, you know, one thing our side could do is be able to have

17:06 the honesty to say like, for like billions of people, maybe. on this planet, like fossil fuels have enabled certain lifestyles. Like it has helped to extend life. It's helped to make people more

17:19 comfortable. It's helped to make people safer. Like I don't think we can deny the fact that like fossil fuels have been a great benefit to a lot of people. Now if we don't start grated - Hold on,

17:31 hold on, hold on. I hope your wife doesn't get offended, but my crush on you even grew more right there. Okay, keep going. Sorry. Okay This chuck just brought me here is the Chuck wife needs,

17:42 or Chuck Yates needs a wife podcast ends with me walking down the aisle. But no, I mean, I will say that with sincerity because I think if we just completely throw that by, you know, the wayside

17:55 or deny that, then you know, we're not being honest. And so, you know, we can say that yes, fossil fuels have benefited a lot of people. There's a lot of people, it's also shortened life of,

18:08 You know what I mean? emissions from burning these products have created massive problems with air quality and water quality that we've taken a lot of steps to improve in the US, but still continue

18:20 to persist in a lot of parts of the world. And then obviously if we don't address climate change, there's the big, big catastrophe around the corner. And so I don't think the solution is just to

18:30 say, like, yeah, we're going to get rid of all oil and gas Everything tomorrow, everyone has to live in caves, everyone has to, you know, stop enjoying the things that they enjoy. I think,

18:44 but the reality is, is that because we've debated the science for so long, because the oil and gas industry has until very recently really resisted being part of the solution, you know, we didn't

18:56 get to start making that transition in,

18:60 let's say the 80s and the 90s when the science was becoming abundantly clear I'm making the transition now, and so that is gonna just have to force a lot. you know, steeper cuts in emissions, it's

19:10 gonna force us to take oil and gas out of the system a lot faster than I think we otherwise would have had to - So what I would think, 'cause we talk around here that

19:24 you can say, oh, big bad governments imposing stuff on it, this is actually being consumer-led. I mean, my kids, they would vote tomorrow to get rid of oil and gas. Always don't, just stop

19:36 using it and it would go away, but they don't seem to like that answer But how much oil and gas are your kids using - As much as any other American kid, you know? Daddy, drive me here. Daddy,

19:47 I'm going to the car, you know? But anyway, I think the, so this is being driven by consumers, customers, companies, et cetera. And I think the path forward actually needs to be, instead of

20:05 absolutes, it needs to be relatives So, you know, look. I get it, Greenpeace does not want a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania or Ohio or West Virginia, anywhere in the Appalachian basin to

20:24 go to Massachusetts. So they're not gonna let you go across New York, they're not gonna do it. We had a day in the winter where half of the heating in Massachusetts was fuel oil. And we can all

20:36 agree, fuel oil is nasty I mean, even pro oil guys, like I don't want to burn fuel oil in my backyard. And it just, it seems like unfortunately, both sides fight on the absolutes. Okay, no,

20:50 we're not gonna do that. And this side fights over here where it would be nice if we could just make relative trade-offs that got it somewhat better. 'Cause I mean, we have, we've done whatever

21:03 we've done to the population in the United States, but we have reduced emissions. natural gas kicking coal off the system - Yeah, well, a couple things. Yeah, I mean, on the Northeast stuff,

21:14 yeah, it's interesting. I think the question for us is like, what choices are we locking in now for the next 10, 20, 30 years? So building that pipeline in Massachusetts is gonna lock in a ton

21:28 of new natural gas into that system. Everyone who was involved in building that pipeline and supplying the gas has a huge incentive to make sure that there are never any new policies in Massachusetts

21:39 that incentivize renewable energy or heat pumps or anything that's gonna get people off natural gas. Whereas like, if we took that moment, which yeah, totally agreed, no one needs to be burning

21:49 fuel oil in the United States in 2023. But if that in turn ended up being a big change in heat pump technology or other solutions that you could have, which then lock us into a very different path

22:03 for the next 10, 20, 30 years Like I think that's where those changes start to be. really significant - I don't know that I ever actually appreciated that point, you know, 'cause in my mind,

22:16 it's so obvious that we're gonna sit there and we're gonna burn every hydrocarbon on the planet before it's over with somebody - Yeah, yeah - Somebody is, right? I mean, just 'cause at the end of

22:28 the day, it really is the cheaper fuel source - For now - Yeah - And in some places, yeah, that's changing, but yeah So I don't know that I'd actually appreciated that point. So that's kind of

22:41 good to hear, but yeah, now it's just ridiculous that we're importing LNG into Massachusetts from Trinidad. First off, we could have sent that to Europe and helped deal with Putin to the diesel we

22:56 burn in the ships to get it there - To get it there - Not good either - Yeah - 'Cause it kills the whales. I've told you my whales story haven't I? story. I know I want to hear your world. Okay.

23:06 So here's the deal. You know, we've all figured out there's, there's an amazing technology God gave us to get rid of CO2 in there. It's called the tree, right? Almost equally as good as the

23:18 whale because the whale actually winds up sequestering 30, 35 tons of carbon. And when it dies, it just goes to the bottom of the ocean. Right? Yeah. The other thing is they're figuring out that

23:31 about 40 of photosynthesis on

23:34 the planet is done by plankton Yep. Yep. You know what the greatest environment for plankton is? Whale shit. I mean, it really does. Yeah. And I would actually say that potentially, you know,

23:47 CO2 levels going up and, you know, temperature following, it also inversely correlates to us having about five to six million whales on the planet down to we got a million, million two whales on

24:01 the planet now too And unfortunately, all these ships running around kill baby whales because they find ships very fascinating. And they go over and they talk to the ship and they usually lose them.

24:14 Boom, before they can, so making whales have sex is kind of my niche - That's your big, that's your big job to hear - Chuck AIDS 2024, whales - What -

24:27 No, I mean, the ocean stuff is interesting. And again, this is where I start to get maybe out of my depth on some of the craft size stuff - I was totally out of my depth on the whale thing, but I

24:35 used to hold it - You're not an actual whale scientist - You're not an actual whale scientist -

24:39 Yeah, but - I read an article - You know, that's sort of the other side of all this is like one of the biggest sequestering bodies in addition to trees of carbon is ocean. The ocean's sucking up

24:48 massive amounts of carbon. Absent the ocean, we'd have CO2 levels that were way higher than we're experiencing now. The problem is that when the ocean sequesters that carbon, it's sort of like,

24:60 you know, this energy drink. It makes it incredibly acidic. And so one of the problems we're seeing right now, which you don't even need. fancy climate models to detect, you can go and just take

25:10 measurements. Is that ocean acidity is kind of going through the roof as it were, as the ocean's absorbing more and more carbon. That's leading to problems like coral reefs dying off. I think I

25:21 told you environmental is really like fun. And now I'm telling you all the terrible things about, you know, coral reefs are dying off. And that starts to impact when you really get down to a

25:31 little little level, less the sort of plankton, but those super tiny, you know, animal, I don't know, micro, you know, but some of them have kind of like a harder sort of shell. And the, the

25:44 acidity of the, of the oceans is breaking that down, you know, so it's really cutting out the very bottom of the food chain for a lot of the oceans as a result of ocean acidification, which is

25:55 going to hurt your beautiful oils. They're not going to want to have sex if they're hungry So, you know, fair enough. Yeah, no,

26:05 it's it's it's interesting how. you know, this is all tied together. And, you know, one of the biggest things we could actually do is dam up nine rivers in China, because in that where 80 of the

26:16 ocean's pollution comes from, they just throw their trash in the river and it just floats out to the ocean. So, yeah, now that's interesting. So, you're now this investigative journalist. And

26:29 don't give away any deep dark secrets. So my audience will go prepared to hide from you and all that But what are some stories you've written and what are some stories you're seeing - Yeah, so one

26:43 of the big things I've kind of looked at in various levels over the last couple of years is just actually stuff you've covered really beautifully on the podcast is just the entire issue of like

26:54 orphanage abandoned wells, decommissioning liabilities, onshore and offshore for the oil industry. And, you know, I think especially looking for interesting case studies of where, you know, oil

27:06 companies have abandoned. properties to kind of help people kind of understand how, because I think it's such a big problem. Like there's so many millions of wells out there that it can become sort

27:16 of a data story, a statistic story. So just trying to find kind of cool or interesting examples of how individual people might end up bearing the cost of the industry's work and well problem. So,

27:28 and I think we talked, I think we talked about this, but I will get on my soapbox. Yeah And just a little bit, by the way, of educating, you know, at the end of the day, really the abandoned

27:42 well issue isn't really an abandoned well issue and how well you plugged it. It's pressure, right? Of forcing something up. And the Permian Basin, which is the biggest producing basin, God

27:55 didn't put any pressure there. I mean, you're sucking like a fat kid on a water burger milkshake to get oil and gas out of the ground in the Permian Basin. And so, you know, that's why you have

28:06 the pump. and all that sort of stuff. That's also why you do water floods. You're injecting water, increasing the pressure, pushing it out. You do CO2 floods, same sort of thing to push it out.

28:17 So I think the biggest, the big, the nuance I would be looking for, poorly abandoned wells in areas where they're pressure. And I think that's really what Ashley is fighting against on Antina

28:32 Ranch is not that these were bad cement jobs They probably were, who knows? I'm not an engineer, I can't tell. It's more just that her reservoir underneath her ranch got way over injected. I mean,

28:45 she's actually found the data. She's really smart and she's got money and she went to the microfish literally back from the 80s and just found all of the injection going on there. So they just have

28:58 too much pressure there. I mean, the solution to that, which it may be too late for is they should have been, should have drilled a couple of wells. produced off as much water as I could and

29:09 truck the water someplace else. Yeah. And so it's really kind of too, if you don't have pressure, nothing's going to come up. So you still want a good cement job and put it all close. But I

29:21 think that's the nuance you need to be looking for. No, I actually think that's really a good point. And that's probably not something I've gone as deep into is like from basin to basin, you know,

29:32 level where the actual like long term risks of this leading to contamination or methane and all the things that people are worrying about. I think we're more interested on just the corporate level

29:43 about how like, you know, there's a little bit of like a moral hazard problem kind of being created now where states and now the federal government are basically saying like, look, at the end of

29:52 the day, if you go belly up, if you decide to just not deal with your long term liabilities, like we're going to have cash available to plug that well And, you know, I, I'm. A lot of that has

30:05 happened with much smaller operators. So folks that went bankrupt in the last shale, boom and bust. I don't know what Exxon and Chevron and Occidental are going to do in the long term, but you do

30:18 see small examples of them challenging decommissioning orders off the California coast, off the Gulf Coast. And you start to just get a sense that 20, 30, 40 years from now are these companies

30:30 really going to put their money where their mouth is and take care of these properties. And if so, what does that look like? And if not, is that me and you then putting that bill in the long term?

30:42 You know who I honestly think ought to pay a lot of it is Amazon. I mean, we had - no, in all seriousness. Listen, hear me out on this. OK, no, I'm - hear me out on this. So we had the shale

30:52 revolution. We doubled oil production in America after 30-some-odd years of decline. We had cheap oil I got fired shortly after. minus thirty seven dollars. That's right. Which you caused I think.

31:05 That's what I heard. Yes. It was all me just in case. Or letting you go because of performance. Minus thirty seven. What? Anyway,

31:16 no need to go there. Well, yeah. But anyway, so they had, I mean, all those vans are running around because they had cheap energy. And Amazon made a lot of money during that period. And so at

31:29 least part of the benefactor of cheap oil was Amazon. So, you know, I've always kind of said, yes, the oil and gas company needs to do it. But they also had record losses there for 10 years.

31:42 Shouldn't the consumers pitch in on it? Yeah. Well, they're going to, right? Like it's going to be Amazon consumers via their role as a US taxpayer who do end up putting that bill. Like, you

31:53 know, so your dream may comes true except it's not going to hurt John Bezos. The liver, it's going to hurt me. Yeah, the liver I'm tearing in me, it's just like, oh gosh. But no, that's fair.

32:03 So what else are you seeing out there - Other big thing we're tracking right now is just this whole ESG boogie man. I don't know how much you guys have followed it or talked about it at all, but

32:13 just right now there's like 30-something states that are pursuing legislation that would punish Black Rock and State Street for considering ESG that would ban pension funds from having any

32:27 environmental criteria in their fund selection So we've done a lot of work on that issue in particular, especially just trying to go one or two layers back of like who are the groups that have kind

32:37 of put this idea into the zeitgeist who's funding them? What are they, how are they actually wielding influence within states and within the federal government as these proposals are being

32:48 considered? So it's been a big, big reporting project, like tens of thousands of government documents, but it's been a fun one So, so.

32:60 So fan of Biden vetoing the legislation on the assuming - Yeah, I think I'm a fan of it. OK, I was just checking. I didn't want to be presumptuous. I mean, at the end of the day, ESG is two

33:11 things, right? It's both a thing that is very much, I think, wanted by consumers. I think, especially younger generation folks, they want to know what the risks are of their company's

33:25 investments They want to know that their company isn't using child slave labor, that they have the independent board of directors, that they're not burning trash outside their headquarters for fun.

33:35 And it's also completely meaningless right now. There's no legal standard for ESG. So we could say this is an ESG podcast because you printed this on recycled paper. I mean, you could not even use

33:49 real recycled paper because no one would care, no one would check. So the whole thing's just very funny to me that there's been such a political like, crack us about ESG when it's. at the end of

33:58 the day, at least as the rules are considered right now, it's either going to be positive because it's going to give investors and consumers better information, or it's going to be kind of a

34:09 nothing burger because there's not any existing standards to dictate what ESG means. It kind of feels like the whole organic debate.

34:19 I guess now we've at least got some sort of definition around what organic products actually are In the days, it was just you slapped it on the product. You could say you did it. Oil companies love

34:33 ESG. I'm at this conference right now, but you read their best report. You go look at their proxies that are coming out this year, and the whole thing is a love note to ESG. They're all, Oh, we

34:43 now tie 25 of our managers' compensation to ESG metrics, and we're doing this net zero thing. They talk about how in a lot of cases it's actually enabled them to get more money on better terms.

34:57 when they have a plan in place to reduce methane emissions. So it's actually, I think, overall, probably been quite good for the oil and gas sector to be able to have this ESG branding. And yet

35:09 you go into the States and they're, these state legislators who are creating these bills are talking about how the existence of an ESG label is the only reason the oil industry didn't perform

35:22 throughout the 2020s - And we fucked it up - Yeah, no, that was all your fault. You drilled too much oil - We were too good. I mean, that actually was the problem - Right, but we were too good -

35:36 Yeah, so - Yeah, so this is interesting 'cause when the SEC is gonna make us disclose all our emissions and all, I mean, oil and gas people just cringed at that. Oh my gosh, I actually think

35:49 that's gonna be really good for us 'cause we actually don't, in the production of oil and gas, And we don't in the way of emissions. that much. It's the use of the product. So I think we're going

36:01 to wind up looking good. Amazon and all the vans and United Airlines flying the planes around, it's going to shine a spotlight on. It actually is consuming. That's the issue. It's not us. I mean,

36:13 we in the grand scheme of things have done a really nice job

36:19 of, there are exceptions, but you've done a nice job of kind of cleaning up. Yeah. I think the SEC role will be very good. I mean, we'll see what they end up including in that. I think similar

36:28 to ESG, it kind of gets hyped up as this thing that's going to destroy America if companies have to report on their emissions. Well, anything the government does destroys America coming from the

36:38 libertarian. Exactly. They keep going unless it's paying billions of dollars to clean up the industry's wells, in which case.

36:46 No, but I think it would be a very good thing for the industry. It actually like, you know, it'll allow some differentiation between like operators, I think. The EU is going to be way ahead of

36:57 the US anyway on these kinds of reporting standards. So like really, like US companies should just be like completely on board to get this SEC rule in place and to get their data systems in place to

37:09 be able to do it because they're going to have to do way more stringent reporting in the EU whether they like it or not. But no, I think it'll be a good tool for everybody involved. So I totally

37:23 agree with you Well, and I don't know that it'll be a good tool. It's being forced upon us. There's nothing we can do about it. That being said, I would get out in front of it. You know, if I

37:32 was an energy company, I'd get my systems in place because one of the things and I don't want to speak ill of my former investors, I love all my former LPs, but you asked them, okay, what does

37:44 ESG mean? And kind of get these blank stares on And I always use the joke.

37:55 I know it when I see it. You kind of got that of, well, I'll know it when I see it. And so there was not a lot of direction in terms of what that actually means. And everybody in the energy

38:09 business was like, oh, that's horrible. All this. I was like, that's the greatest thing on the planet, because you get to define it. Go in and say, well, it's obvious that it means X, Y,

38:18 and Z, and just treat it as a fact. And I thought we should have been way more proactive about it because it was going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, yeah, it's coming. I mean, I think a lot

38:28 of operators, a lot of the majors have tried to do that and embrace it and say, you know, it's net zero. So that means it's carbon capture. It means it's direct air capture. It means it's

38:39 reducing scope on and scope to emissions. I think other operators have fought it. So I think it'll be interesting to see, like, as we actually get some legal definitions around ESG, once we get

38:50 actually some reporting guidelines and from SEC like how that. sort of changes the whole landscape. But I'll just say again, I think you see in the filings, there's so much resistance from the oil

39:02 and gas industry on the data side where they're saying, look, there's no way we could possibly calculate, maybe we can calculate scope one and scope two, there's no way we can calculate scope

39:12 three emissions. And yet, going back to my other point, Shell was doing that in 1988, they were calculating their scope three emissions So

39:22 it's not an impossible task for industry, there just needs to be the commitment to do it - Well, I think here's kind of the issue from my people is, okay, yes, we can go do it, it's gonna raise

39:35 our costs, it's gonna put our companies in jeopardy. And oh, by the way, John Kerry's still gonna get gasoline from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela and these people not doing it And we're gonna be out

39:49 of business. That I think is a fair argument back of. Hey, because we are doing it cleaner than the rest of the world. You know, I mean, us and Canada did do it really well in terms of being

40:01 clean. And if the flip side was so long as we're going to use this stuff, we might as well make it happen here and let's go put Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the other folks out of business. I think

40:14 you would have more buy-in, but unfortunately it's, hey, we're going to get rid of y'all, but we're just going to, we're going to use the same barrel in their dirtier and other places of the

40:23 world I think the thing for me on like the whole, is it supplies, it demands question, is that like it assumes the US oil and gas industry is just an economic actor and they've never just been an

40:35 economic actor, like, especially when you're talking about the super majors, you know, they're not just doing a business, right? They have some, or I've had at least some of the most

40:45 sophisticated, you know, lobbying, advertisement, front group, political machines. any industry has ever had in American history. And so they're not just producing oil and producing oil cleaner

41:01 or dirtier for customers who want it or don't. They've also worked to set the political stage so that as a country, like we've moved much more slowly than we otherwise would have towards electric

41:15 vehicles and renewables and things that would actually like reduce demand. So I think when the oil industry says, Oh, it's just the consumer, like we are just supplying a demand, there's a way in

41:26 which they've also created the demand by suppressing alternatives over the last 10, 20, 30 years. And so, you know, I'm not saying that means, you know, we need to get rid of Exxon tomorrow,

41:37 but I think it does mean that we have to realize like, they're not just operating as a business in this country either - Okay, can I put my tin foil hat on about electric vehicles - Put it on, do

41:48 it Okay, so we know the carbon footprint of an internal combustion engine, right? We've been building those things for 125 years. We can measure it to the nth degree exactly what they, I don't

41:59 think anybody disputes those numbers. Everybody agrees on what that is. Do we truly know the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle? And I think the answer to that is not really, but Volvo

42:13 actually did a deep dive on it. And they put it on their website. You can go Volvo dot com, pull it up. And the punchline into their report, and I tried to read it one night, and I used it to

42:23 fall asleep for about a month. I never really got through it. But the punchline is dependent on how you're generating the electricity, the fuel source. It's anywhere from like 70, 000 miles to 90,

42:38 000 miles. I think 90, 000 miles is, you know, worldwide average of electrical generation and maybe 70, 000 miles as Europe, because Europe generally has more renewables than than we do, right?

42:50 Is that sort of before it? has a better emissions profile than an internal combustion. Is that the - Well, it's the break over point - The break, okay, yeah - And I think they've been all

43:01 encompassing and they've gone, all right, you need these special metals, so you're burning diesel 'cause unfortunately in the middle of the Congo, you can't plug into an electric socket. You burn

43:10 diesel to mine. And I think that as best I can tell and from people I respect, they say, they've done a pretty good job. So 70, 000 to

43:18 90, 000 miles,

43:22 most cars run more than that. So it is better. So electric, is it worth trillions and trillions of dollars for that increment better? 'Cause what we did in the IRA is historically the US

43:36 government with its big bully club would say, we want this, but it would let the market go figure things out. The IRA actually came in and said, no, we want electric vehicles, period. We're

43:47 gonna and it for credits give all this. Didn't say, hey, if you can make gasoline, out of natural gas and the emissions are less, we'll give you the same credits. They went, no, it's electric

43:58 vehicles. Here's why I think they did it. This is the 10-4 - Yeah, yeah, I wanna hear it - So here's why they've done it. If you switch from internal combustion engines, how do we pay taxes

44:09 right now? We pay taxes since per gallon when we buy our gasoline, right - Yep - I think a fill up state does it, the federal government does it, that's their money They don't know where we drive.

44:23 When we go to electric vehicles and there's no longer since per gallon of gasoline, they're gonna come out and say, well, we need to tax you. And the most obvious, easiest way to tax you is per

44:33 mile driven. That would make sense. Everybody would kind of go, huh, okay. Oh, by the way, guess what we're gonna need to do? We need to track you so we can follow the miles driven. And I

44:43 know they track us - I was gonna say they already tracked me right now - But at least at this point, they've gotta go get a judge order. before they go where Chuck gets in. And not that our judges

44:53 are robust in the defense of my civil liberties, but a judge has to sign off on it. They are gonna normalize having a tracker in your car so that they can follow wherever we go. And that's why

45:06 they've gone all in. And in the IRA, there's actually a 25 million pilot program for trackers - For trackers - That is why we're doing electric vehicles - You figured it out, man It's not that much

45:18 better for the environment - You know, I have no comment on the tracker thing, but I'm gonna look forward to watching some great YouTube videos about that later tonight. But yeah, I mean, on the

45:31 EV thing, I'll be totally honest. Like, I don't know the math. Some of the studies I have like, we're calling shows. There's some like better gains than that, but I trust that the one you read

45:43 is legit - Well, and it was Volvo and they published it - I don't know if they tried it wrong - Yeah, yeah - And I drove, like, I'm like. pro electric vehicles. I drove a Tesla for six years.

45:52 It was a bad ass car. I mean, my kids are still like, Daddy, I missed the Tesla - Yeah - It was really cool and all, my whole problem is we just haven't had the discussion about it. Is that -

46:02 Yeah - 'Cause I mean, at the end of the day, I think like the issue, and you and I, I've talked about this, the issue I really have is we just can't have a thoughtful discussion about it. 'Cause

46:11 I'm not opposed to electric vehicles. I'm just like, do we go trillions of dollars on that? Or do we give that trillions of dollars to Indians and say, please don't build any more coal plants.

46:22 We'll send you as much natural gas as you want. Here's a trillion dollars to go build your infrastructure. I actually think that might be a better approach - Yeah - It doesn't feel like we can have

46:31 that discussion. Not me and you, but just globally - Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's true to the discussion point. I mean, I think that's true about everything right now. Like there's so

46:40 little space to have a real discussion about any issue. I mean, we could have this podcast about, you know, 12 other issues. probably disagree on and it would get us like both canceled, you know,

46:50 overnight from our respective parties. So, me and the British girlfriend got into it last night about Colin Powell. But anyway, so to your point,

47:01 to your point, to your point, re-celebrating the Iraq war anniversary or? No, we were talking the Iraq war and she kept bashing Bush and I'm like, time out. I agree the war was a bad thing. But

47:15 I will say it was not Bush. It was all of us. I mean, 60 of the Democrats in the US Senate voted for it, 40 of the Democrats in the House voted for it, 72 of the Americans supported it when it

47:30 happened. So it was all of us. We all made a bad decision. It was not just, you know, George Bush making the bad decision I was

47:39 not among that. Actually, when I, when that was going on, this is a random detour,

47:46 Around the time the Iraq war protests were gearing up, I was studying abroad in London and I'd like fallen into a sort of an anarchist commune by accident. So they had like - Oh yeah, the crush is

47:56 even bigger - They had occupied this like building in downtown London and it was kind of being used as a staging ground for a bunch of anti-war protesters. So I was part of the cooking collective,

48:08 which was basically us taking like dumpster diving ingredients and like cooking them into stews - You were bend dipping - Exactly, but yeah, no, I was out there. I remember what year that was like

48:19 2004, maybe for like a huge march where we had like occupied the student union and we all slept there overnight and it was freezing and we had built a tank in a basement of this guy's house in

48:31 Brixton out of an old bed frame and then marched around the street with a very horrible looking tank. Anyway, so it's not me. You could take me out of your equation of everybody Or I mean the, the,

48:45 the. The simple matter of fact is the United States got attacked for the first time and we were scared. And Saddam Hussein was actually pretending that he had nuclear weapons to hold Iran at bay.

48:58 And so the stuff we saw him moving stuff around, all that satellite surveillance that we went to the UN to, I think we actually believed that there was a nuclear bomb in there. Or certain people

49:13 did, or it was, we ignore that at our own peril, holy cow, what if he actually really does have it? I do think it would have been healthier for someone to say, hey, we need more evidence than

49:26 this before we're gonna get to do this. I do have a funny story, not a funny story, but a story about the first Iraq war. So I was in Las Vegas and it was, call it three or four weeks before the

49:40 offensive was launched and me and my ex-wife were sitting at a table. with all these naval fighter pilots. And it was like three in the morning and they were there. And they basically kind of

49:53 fussed up, hey - Like a last hurrah - This is our last hurrah. And then we're being shipped out to Iraq and all this. And I knew Saddam Hussein did not have a shot in the first Gulf War, 'cause

50:04 those guys were like hitting 18 and getting a three. You know, I was like, double down, okay, boom. Yeah, so I had no worries about us winning the first war after hanging out with those guys,

50:15 'cause they were all so badass. But - It's a long, long digression from energy stuff. But yeah, no - So let's do this. Let's close up on this. One thing from you that I have to go back until my

50:31 side and convince that your intentions are honorable and all that. What is that one thing you want me to go back and do - Yeah, I think the big thing would be. I have no beef with oil workers. I

50:44 have no beef with truck Yates. Like I think there are a lot of really great people who work in the industry, industry who are doing very good work at times very physically demanding, thankless work.

50:55 Like I do expect that every morning when I wake up my lights are gonna work and then I'm gonna be able to get gas for my car. And I know that is because of the work that people in the oil and gas

51:05 industry do. And so that I have no problem with anybody in this industry I think we're all my concern lies where I think the ire of the climate movements lies is with really sort of C-suite

51:21 executives who over the past 40 years have made Americans believe that there's a real debate around climate change who have blocked solutions, municipal, state, federal, international level and

51:31 have made it so much harder to address this problem than it should be so that now we are forced to this need for a rapid, dramatic decarbonization of our entire economy over an incredibly short

51:45 timeline that's going to be really, really hard and Way harder than it ever had to be because of the decisions they were making throughout my lifetime. So You know, hopefully just seeing the

51:56 distinction between between those two levels and recognizing that like, you know Most people in the climate movement are like me. Hopefully they don't take themselves too seriously Hopefully they're

52:06 willing to have conversations if you want to ever talk like I don't want to DM me If I don't want to talk about the stuff and like make fun of my glasses I don't know whatever you want to do just come

52:14 come talk to me because you know I do think there there are a lot of great people in this industry who want to see change and I think it just Sucks that they're being held back by a lot of leadership

52:25 and happen held back by leadership So it's interesting because you and I've kind of had that That discussion before and I think the way I've actually done some preaching on my side is

52:40 You know you get on my side, they're trying to put us out of work, they're trying to do all that. And I go, you know what? They actually feel like they need to fight that hard and what I'm quote,

52:50 fight dirty. And it's not because they really believe that the world's gonna end tomorrow if we don't get a, it's just they don't trust us. And I do think that's kind of on us. I don't think we've

53:02 necessarily been the best actors. And what's really interesting, kind of bring it back to Chuck Hitt's needs of life - Yeah - It's coming. We've shot like six hours of stuff. I've been editing all

53:14 this. It'll come out at some point. But it was really interesting. So me and the girlfriend, the backdrop on that story is, she broke up with me after we've gone out six months. She's like, I

53:25 don't even think you like me. I don't think you care, all this. And so, may or may not have been clinically depressed in 2022. I like to phrase it as, there was no consequence to my inaction,

53:37 right - Yeah - I didn't put out a podcast, nobody really cared. you know, half ass that roast I did, we still raised a million dollars. So that was the first time I kind of had that, uh, a

53:47 consequence. So I went and thought about it. And that's what the serious side of Chuck Yates needs a wife. It's going to be telling that story. But one of the things that's interesting about that

53:56 is you realize that you get into in relationships, you get into these cycles where I'm reacting to you. You're reacting to me And what the psychologist will tell you is the only way to break those

54:10 cycles is one person goes first and changes the environment, uh, such that the negative behavior of this person is no longer present. And then this person doesn't react. What's interesting about

54:28 that dynamic is it can't just happen on one day. Yeah Because this person will go, Oh my gosh, this is so much better behavior, but it's uncertain. and uncertain is just bad. And it generally

54:42 takes three to six months for the person to accept the new behavior of the one trying to break the cycle. And so that's why it's so hard as couples walk in. And if you're just being blunt as a

54:57 couples counselor, it's like, all right, who's gonna go first? And it's gonna suck. I mean, you're gonna stop all your bad behavior and it might even get worse from your spouse or your partner

55:08 and all that And so it's interesting. So me and the girlfriend have kind of gone through that, knock on wood. I think we've broken the cycle. I chose to go first. 'Cause she's really special and

55:19 all that. But it's almost like we need to do that. The oil and gas business and the environmentalists need to do it. And someone almost has to go first so that the other side accepts, okay, there

55:30 is better behavior on that side - Yeah, can you go first again on that? You got more money, I think. You got more power You can go first.

55:40 You've got the narrative, you've got all the people behind you. Sure, we should go first. I mean, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get the people behind us, right? But yeah, I think it'll

55:50 be interesting, right? Because we aren't this place where you do see a lot of oil companies now claim that they're like, we're in it, we're climate partners, right? They're talking the talk.

56:01 And I think the response from us right now is like, we'll see Like we've seen you talk that talk before, but like, you know, and I think that's why having some firm language on ESG matters,

56:13 having these SEC disclosures matters is because like, we need to see beyond the pledges, beyond the headlines, beyond

56:23 the flashy slides at the conferences, like what is the level of commitment from this industry to actually make a change? Because if you're really dug into it, like you're talking about managed

56:32 decline, right? And I don't know what industry voluntarily enters into managed decline in human history. Certainly not the climate movement. No, did I say that? Oh, I'm sorry. I have like

56:45 three viewers left watching the podcast at this point, so that was for you guys - So we can wrap up - That was for you guys - No, yeah, I'm just saying. I think, yeah, my big takeaway is

56:55 hopefully like seeing me here, I'm not, definitely not scary. I'm definitely not, you know, too pretentious about anything. So it's like, yeah, if people want to reach out and like talk

57:04 climate stuff, talk energy stuff, talk solutions, like, you know, leak a story to me Like, great, like, I am always willing to really talk to anybody because like, I have massive amounts of

57:17 learn from the oil industry to be able to do my job well and hopefully vice versa. So - You know what I'd love to do? And maybe we could actually do this and we could do podcasts about it as, let's

57:28 go find one example of something that's bad. And I don't know what that bad is bad. But something small enough where

57:38 you could go research it, I could go research it, and we come up with a joint solution, you go sell your side, I'll go seal on my side, and let's see if we could fix. Is that a river or whatever,

57:49 just something - Yeah - I'll do that - Yeah, get start with cleaning up your beard a little bit - Long way to

57:58 go on that - No, that would be great, I'd love to do that - It's so funny, so I go get coffee every morning in the small town I live in, Joseph's coffee shop, and the old guys sit over at the

58:09 table, and I walk in, and one of them's always like, You know, we could start a go fund me and get you a razor.

58:17 You really got holes in your pants - And I always joke, I go, You know, someone tweeted out the other day, Yates spends a lot to look this crap - Right - He really does - That's a, that's a Dolly

58:28 Parton in the catalog. It takes a lot of money to look this trashy, so - You look this trashy, yeah. Somebody else tweeted out, You don't dress for the job.

58:35 you have, you dress for the job you want. Yates took that shit to heart. So I wanted to be a 90s angsty teen. That's just got on my jam. Kelly, you were cool to come on - Yeah, no - And it's

58:46 nice to meet you in person - It's good to meet you too. Don't, you know, maybe EFT won't be too mean to me on the back end of this, but remains too seep - Good luck with that. I'll be right there

58:57 with you - Yeah - They can be a little sick also - Yeah, but no, this is super cool. Thanks for having me on.