Numbers are mixed. I would like to see green Energy Economies that drive Innovation Forward and doesnt rely on government subsidies. What is it comparable to in terms of numbers of workers or jobs related . Its difficult to say based on the numbers you use. Compared to other industries, they are certainly growing and thats great. Markets, people are demanding Renewable Power and is this is are demanding to use 100 renewables and the demand is driving production and thats ultimately what we want to see, Competition Among the Energy Sources when they are being subsidized through targeted tax credits. Thats just allocation with subsidization taking resources away from other sectors in the economy. Thats not actually creating growth, it is shifting it to politically preferred sectors of the economy that doesnt really do us any good, it only helps the people lobbying to get the handouts. Host in this election cycle several Democratic Candidates are calling for moving towards a net zero emission in the economy. Greench more with the economy have to achieve . Guest 80 of our energy needs are met through conventional oil and natural gas and if you have 80 of our needs in the world bus needs coming from these, you the tax andlicies regulate these out of existence. Even if renewable costs are coming down and becoming more cost competitive with conventional sources of energy. It is still going to take a lot to shift to a net zero economy. Host is anyone tried to estimate what the cost would be . Is it less than the cost of Climate Change . Estimate i every have seen from peerreviewed literature from m. I. T. , things that we have produced at the Heritage Action for him, the cost of the Green New Deal, it seems that the cost of these policies are going to outweigh both the benefits in terms of climate reduction, but also any type of cost from Climate Change itself. You are talking about multiple trillions of dollars across the economy. Energy is such a critical component of everything that we make and do that when you force Higher Energy prices on American Consumers and businesses, you are not just paying more for your electricity or at the pump, you are paying more for food, health care, and education. It has huge ripple effects throughout the economy. Host we are talking about the economics of environmental and Energy Policy. Republicans, 202 7488001, democrats, 202 7488000, independents, 202 7488002. Deal,ning the green New Alexandria a cause you cortez announced the Green New Deal. [video clip] its a big day for us of that forgation, a movement, frontline communities all over the country. Today is a big day for people who have been left behind. Today is a big day for workers and appalachia. A big day for children who have been dirt breathing dirty air in the south. Today is a really good day for families who have been enduring the injustices of thinking dirty or have seen their living rooms flooded with the waves of the rising sea level. Today is a think a really big day for our economy, the labor movement, the social justice movement, Indigenous Peoples and people all over the United States of america. Today is the day that we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social, and racial justice. Climate change and environmental challenges are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life. Not just as a nation, but as a world. Threat, we must be as ambitious and innovative in our innovation as possible. What have you done to talk about the Economic Cost of the Green New Deal. Guest part of the problem is the plan is a nebulous lee there are not good policy descriptions in the model and we attempted to use the federal governments own Energy Administration model to model what the cost would be to achieve. Theye timeframe that wanted to achieve, the model essentially broke. It couldnt handle such a rampup of reducing conventional fuel. Up the carbon tax and impose regulation on the conventional industry and we found millions of jobs lost per year. These are significant costs for negligible climate benefit. Down, we areg talking about mitigation of a few tenths of a degree celsius with a few centimeters on the Sea Level Rise within the same timeframe. Policies really have been all costs with no benefit. Done these have all been at heritage. Org . Guest thats right. Host joseph, democratic line, go ahead. Caller good morning. If you could allow me to make a quick personal testimony regarding the issues, last year i bought a plugin vehicle that has given me 50 miles of electric energy each day and turns out it gives about 120 miles per gallon, combining electric and gas. , put solar panels on my roof 47 of them. I follow a plan based diet. Im not bragging about anything, but its not really costing the anything but it has given me better health. Its kind of a nobrainer. I would kind of like to ask a question here teargas regarding the recent United Nations study that came out of a month ago, this is not the first one the u. N. Has done regarding the environment, but i would like to bring out bring up what i would refer to as a very Inconvenient Truth that came out in that report. Specifically talking about the cattle industry. Much it contributes damage to the environment, you know . Serious issue and people make fun of it, kind of, saying that they will take away our cows or whatever, but i would like to make reference to a documentary on netflix, anyone piece,ted in this lobbyists the cattle industry have. The documentary is entitled cowspiracy. Guest more props to you for having an electric vehicle and installing solar panels. Im all for those choices. My concern is when other people are paying for them. If you look at the tax credits for electric vehicles with federal and state subsidies they can be over 10,000 per vehicle oft largely accrue to some the wealthiest americans. You have Middle America paying for subsidized choices of rich folks. Not what we want to see out of competition and choice, those policies subsidizing the choices of the wealthy and resulting a lot of corporate welfare. Commentards to the beef , its certainly true that with methane emissions, the cattle industry is contributing to Climate Change and you see industries innovating with plant waste innovations, with lab grown meat. Things are happening at the market level. People are making choices. The market is driving decisions at the production and consumption level and that is ultimately policy. Confident the market will drive innovations fast enough to avert the cost of Climate Change in the future . Guest putting it in perspective is important. I am less worried about catastrophic costs as was mentioned the previous panel. We need to look at the international community. The future of Greenhouse Gas emissions will overwhelmingly come from th what we need is more innovation to allow people to both adapt to Climate Change in the near term by building more resilient and durable infrastructure no matter what the trend on extreme weather events is, as well as looking at longterm solutions to make sure everybody has the energy needs they demand because we still have nearly one billion people without access to reliable electricity. But also meeting those environmental targets. From georgia, republican. Good morning. Caller hi. Ahead, judy this country is like a snowball headed to hell. They want to control our lives. Going toez we are not kill our cows and milk is not racist. Host this is brenda. Good morning. I do not believe what she just said. I cannot believe anybody would say that and i do not believe what he said about the poor people and average people saying it is a burden for the cost of this. In the first place. When is it we were ever not the toden on us Little People make innovations and changes . Bigcannot depend on these corporations. And about subsidies, he talked about we do not want to subsidize like the person that got a 10,000 credit. How many billions of dollars have we given tax cuts to these corporations who dont who do not pay anything . It they care less about how we breathe. They can buy an island somewhere. Host hold on, brenda. Lets let nicholas weigh in on that. Mr. Loris that is a great point. that is a great point. We should also get rid of subsidies for gas and nuclear. This is a 1 trillion market. These guys do not need help from the federal taxpayer to meet these energy demands. It is either subsidizing economic losers, or it is providing a lot of money and corporate welfare to Big Companies that do not need help from the taxpayer. I agree with you. We should be eliminating the federal government picking winners and losers, not continuing down the path of government intervention. Host which Energy Sectors get the most when it comes to subsidies . Mr. Loris it depends on how you measure it and what you consider a subsidy. Likeu look at things immediate expensing, i do not consider that a subsidy which stands to benefit these conventional sources, though tax cut still apply to everything. That is not really a subsidy. On a per megawatt hour basis, the Renewable Power that generates the biggest benefits from the subsidies, for they or they stand to benefit the most. At the same time youve had a lot of historical treatment for the oil and gas and coal sector. For the expiration and mining of these activities. In that regard, lets wipe the slate clean and get rid of them all, rather than continuing down this path. Host if we got rid of them, how much would that save the government on the annual basis . Mr. Loris you are potentially talking about 10 billion a year, if not more, depending on what you consider a subsidy. Not to mention the ethanol mandate which was once posed as good economic and environmental idea. Now you have most environmentalists opposing the ethanol mandate because of the environmental destruction it has caused. There are so many ways the government intervenes in the energy market. You are talking about allowing for more innovation. It will be the good ideas that move forward, not the ones with that have the most support from lobbyists and politicians. Host enterprise, alabama. Jim, a republican. Good morning. Caller good morning and thank you for taking my call. Back in the 1950s when i was a teenager, there was a lot of talk about an ice age coming. New york was going to be buried in 100 feet of ice. What happened to this ice age . Is it the same thing about Global Warming . Mr. Loris yeah, i think that is one of the reasons a lot of people have skepticism about Climate Science and climate policy. A lot of predictions about imminent climate catastrophe, whether it is Global Warming or Global Cooling have not come true and there have not been political repercussions for these predictions coming true or not. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attributes half the warming since to 1950 manmade activity, but i dont think we are heading towards catastrophic warming. The real dire scenarios where you see several meters of Sea Level Rise and super extreme heat just are not born in reality. They make assumptions that dont seem to be coming true based on both climate projections but also the use of Energy Resources around the world. In that regard i think we need to certainly not call it a hoax call Global Warming a hoax, but we need to not fear monger about the future of catastrophic Climate Change. Host pat, a democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. I just wanted to mention subsidies. Coal power plants get megawatt hour subsidies. What about the coal trains and the mines. What does it cost to build a new power plant today . You are talking about at least half 1 billion. Thank you, goodbye. Mr. Loris i agree we should get rid of those subsidies. There was a reason the percentage of coal providing our Energy Generation has dropped about 25 over the past decade. It cannot compete with cheap natural gas. You are seeing far fewer new coal power plants being built in the u. S. , although that is not the trend around the world. You are seeing more coal mines or exports for consumption in places like china and india who were building coalfired power plants at a rapid clip. Host milton, florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thanks for taking my call. A question for you here. Its funny we are talking about Climate Change. I just got a book from amazon yesterday called the mythology of Global Warming. It is by bruce bunker. Im only on page eight or something, but the caller talked about being a teenager in the 1950s. It talked about that. I am just trying to find the facts now. It says in the 1970s environmentalists and the media proclaiming the Oil Countries were destroying our planet due to Global Cooling. If we dont do something, the earth could drop 20 degrees. Is it just that the climate normally changes up and down throughout the years . And we call it Global Cooling or warming depending what we want to call it, or is there really Science Behind it . It talks about 30,000 scientists that disagree with Climate Change phenomena. Host down in milton, florida, are you seeing the impacts of Climate Change were you live . Caller it is hot and its cold. When i was a kid, it was hot down here and then it got cold again and hot again. It is hot definitely. But is it hotter than normal . No. I was in alaska in the early 1990s. I remember i worked in a hotel. It was the hottest on record in alaska during the summertime, 91 degrees or Something Like that in fairbanks. But then it was the coldest on record that year at 68. To me the climate goes up and down all the time. Sometimes it is hot, sometimes it is cold. Host that is ron in florida. Mr. Loris the Climate Changes all the time due to human activity and natural variation. It can be anything from the different trends in ocean oscillation. It could be volcanic eruptions. There are a number of factors that change the climate. From my standpoint it does not , matter what is driving Climate Change. It is whether it poses a risk to certain communities, certain areas in the United States and around the world, and do the costs of the Climate Policies outweigh the benefits . What i see from a lot of the Energy Policies proposed by the left with the Green New Deal is that the costs significantly outweigh the climate benefits and would not do anything to really protect against the changing climate, no matter what the cause. Host can you explain how a carbon tax works . Mr. Loris it depends who you are talking to, but essentially their carbon tax would impose a fee on each time of Carbon Dioxide emitted, primarily targeting the Energy Industry as well as the agriculture industry if you account for methane emissions and the emissions coming from the Natural Gas Industry as well. Essentially the goal of a carbon tax is to price that allegedly alleged externality of co2 and internalize those emissions. The problem with taxing co2 is that you are not internalizing a pollutant like you would smog or pollutants that have known risks to human health and the environment. You are trying to mitigate warming. A carbon tax would really result in a huge tax on the Energy Industry, a huge tax on American Consumers and businesses, but it would not actually internalize any warming. Host what other countries have imposed a carbon tax . How has it worked out . Mr. Loris canada has tried and it has floundered a bit mostly because they have been a number of giveaways to actually not change very much behavior. Australia has tinkered with it a little bit. Time they have gone back from implementing a carbon tax because it was unpopular and they did not see much environmental benefit from the carbon tax. If you look at a number of places in europe that have either proposed a trade system or carbon fees, those policies have been wildly unpopular as well because they are not deriving the climate benefits they were promised. You saw the yellow vest protests in paris for a reason. People are upset with paying more and more for energy and more and more for goods and services that they pay for and not seeing any change in the climate. That is why these policies in the United States and around the world are very unpopular. People care about Climate Change and are increasingly caring about Climate Change, but on the list of policy priorities it falls near the bottom and it has for decades. Energyhe economics of and environmental policy is our topic with Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation taking your phone calls. Phone lines as usual republicans, democrats, independents. Bob is a republican out of victoria, texas. Good morning. Caller good morning, gentlemen. I would like to say Climate Change is the weather. One day it is hot, one day it is cold, one day it rains, the next day you have a drought. The professor that was on there talked about how wonderful california is. The reason they have wildfires is because they do not keep their forests intact. When a tree dies, it stays there until it falls down. When it falls down, any little spark and catch it on fire and burn it up. Also, los angeles is ridden with feces and every thing else. Disease is what i am worried about. You take northern mexico host we will stay on environmental policy. Bob brings up california. What specifically have you studied when it comes to the economics of environment of policy when it comes to california . Mr. Loris a lot of subsidies and mandates that have driven families to pay higher costs and driven businesses out of california to states where the economic climate is much more enticing than california despite the great weather california has. He brings up a good point about forest management. That has been a systemic problem in a lot of our western states. It has become a culture of not properly maintaining the forests and resulting in essentially kindle to allow these forest fires to burn without proper management. You will just exacerbate the risks and exacerbate the costs. Host vanessa here in washington, d. C. A democrat. Good morning. Caller i wanted to make a comment. I find it interesting the Heritage Foundation, the republican party, those are the only ones who dont seem to know there is Global Warming going on. I find it interesting a lot of these fossil fuel corporations and organizations are paying them a lot of money for their campaigns, et cetera. I find it interesting it is not ok to subsidize for the Green New Deal, but im supposed to subsidize farmers because of tariffs. Its good for the goose but not for the gander, and that is my issue. Mr. Loris yes, i largely agree with you. I dont think we should be subsidizing farmers because of bad trade policies because this is essentially a tax on consumers. This is problematic not just for Energy Policy, the tariffs on solar panels, potential natural gas and exports, these are raising costs on consumers. I completely agree with you. I agree with you there is Global Warming and we have been in a warming period for a while, ever since we came out of the little ice age. I would disagree with some of the left of how much warming we are expected to see from increased Greenhouse Gas emissions and i think sometimes the media portrays each wildfire event or each hurricane as attributed to human activity when even the United NationsFramework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel say that is not the case. Neither does the United States natural climate assessment. I like to look at what these reports actually say with regard to trends in extreme weather events and natural disasters. They show even with increased Greenhouse Gas emissions you are not seeing more frequent and intense natural disasters. Host in terms of historically when it comes to subsidies, what Energy Sector has received the most . What is your thought on helping new technologies get off the ground and the role the government can play and should play . Mr. Loris historically it has largely been oil and gas and coal because they dominated the Energy Sector for such a long time. On a per megawatt hour basis more recently it is wind and solar and renewable sources of energy. What i envision for successful innovation coming out of the United States is utilizing the. Ited states is utilizing the what i envision for successful innovation coming out of the United States is utilizing the department of energys natural labs. They are tremendous resources we have that lead to a whole bunch of innovations and new technologies coming to the marketplace, or research we have seen at the department of defense. Look at the internet and gps. These came from dod Research Endeavors and then entrepreneurs took the ideas and made them commercial Success Stories that we have today. We could do that more by opening up access to the natural lab, dachshund national lab national lab, look at what theyre doing, push technologies to the marketplace and have a terminus about of success with innovation stemming from government research. Host i want to dive back into the cspan archives. 1985. Carl sagan testifying before the Senate Committee about the impacts of the greenhouse effect, but alternative sources of power and their development in the decades to come. This is what he had to say. [video clip] the best estimates are that at the present rate of burning of fossil fuels, the present rate of increasing minor infrared absorbing gases in the atmosphere, there will be a several centigrade degree temperature increase on the earth global average by the middle to the end of the next century. That has a variety of consequences including redistribution of local climates and the melting of glaciers and an increase in sea level. There is concern on a somewhat longer timescale about the collapse of the west Antarctic Ice sheet and a general rise of many meters in sea level. So, we have a kind of handwriting on the wall. Certainly there is more research to be done but there was a consensus. What can be done about it . The idea that we should immediately stop burning fossil fuel has such severe economic consequences that no one will take it seriously. There are many other things that can be done. One has to do with subsidies for fossil fuels. More efficient use could be encouraged by fewer government subsidies. Secondly there are alternative Energy Sources, some of which are useful at least locally. Solar power is certainly one that might be a more general use. Safe fission power plants, which are in principle possible. On a longer timescale, the prospect of fusion power. Fission and fusion power plants in principle vent no infrared active gases and therefore whatever other problems that may provide, they do not provide a greenhouse problem. [end video clip] host Nicolas Loris, carl sagan back in 1985, talking about the issues we are talking about this morning. Mr. Loris you just put a different timestamp on that 2019 and its what a lot of people are saying today. We have heard fusion is around the corner for a long time, or renewables being cost competitive. We have heard that for decades yet they only supply a small percentage of our electricity generation. The costs are coming down. That is what we want to see. If we eliminate this preferential treatment and allow Energy Policy to be consumercentric, that is when we derive the most innovation. Some of the dire predictions have not come true. Yes, the arctic is warming and we have seen melting. The antarctic has been growing in most seasons. Some climate predictions come true, some dont. You are not seeing the huge multiple meters of Sea Level Rise projected that some climatologists have made back in the 1970s and 1980s. You are seeing a steady rise instead. Some of these things we can adapt to overtime. We should have sensible policies to allow people to adapt to Climate Change over time rather then creating more Energy Poverty in the u. S. And around the world. Host lets chat with callers. Gilmer, texas. Republican. Go ahead. Caller good morning, cspan. I hear talk about the environment all the time and the gases and getting rid of fossil fuels. Let me touch on a couple of things. I have not heard anybody talk about this how many people across the United States own a boat . They get on the water and have recreation with their families. How many people are going to get into an electric boat . How are we going to ship things across the ocean with an electric ship . As far as the methane gas, if you help the people get out of the streets of california, from san diego up to seattle, washington, a lot of methane right there would probably be erased from the atmosphere. Mr. Loris i think there is a reason that oil has been overwhelming supplier of our transportation sector for a long time. It is affordable and reliable. Even in places like europe where they jacked up the taxes to the point where the price of petrol is eight dollars to nine dollars equivalent, they are largely using cars that run on gasoline and diesel. There has not been a massive switch over to electric vehicles or biofuel powered vehicles. That is not to say biofuels or electric vehicles cannot be a bigger part of our energy and transportation future. The market is going to drive that demand. It has a big obstacle to overcome because we have so much oil. It has been a huge Success Story in the u. S. We are the Worlds Largest producer of oil and we have been the largest producer of natural gas for a decade now, which has yielded tremendous economic and geopolitical benefit by sharing this energy and trading it with our allies. Host revere, massachusetts, diane, independent. Good morning. Caller thanks for taking my call. I have listened to these environmental shows and i have never once heard anyone talk about technology with the cell phones, the computers. There are billions of cell phones being held in the hands of people that never shut off. Dont tell me it is not leading leaving a carbon footprint. I only use my cell phone for emergencies. I cant stay on it longer than five minutes. It gets so hot. Nobody ever they would rather go after cow gas and light bulbs and everything else, but nobody ever talks about the cell phones. Host have you looked into the Environmental Impact of powering cell phones . Mr. Loris i have not, but the caller raises a good point. There are environmental tradeoffs for everything we make and do. If you look at the batteries for electric vehicles, there was a campaign now worried about the child slave labor that goes into mining material for lithiumion batteries for electric vehicles. No matter what we are producing, whether it is the Rare Earth Materials necessary for cell phones or defense technologies or for solar panels, all these activities have environmental costs. That is part of the problem with some of the grand environmental policies. If you are reducing the ability for the United States to harness our resources, you are only going to ship activities to other countries where they are less safe and certainly not done in an environmentally friendly manner. You are not improving the environment. You are taking Economic Opportunities away from americans and making the environment worse off. Host aubrey on twitter wants to talk about the Heritage Foundations model when it comes to the Green New Deal. Do you consider factors such as cost due to damaged infrastructure, the military, naval forces, environmental refugees, gdp . Mr. Loris we run the Energy Information administrations energy model. That is solely an energy model. We dont factor in those costs. There are some of those costs. I would like to see the military and civilian infrastructure be better prepared for extreme weather events, no matter the cause. It has been clearly documented that our dod infrastructure is susceptible to flooding in certain areas. To Sea Level Rise in certain areas. They have a hard time actually building the necessary infrastructure to protect against those extreme weather events. An air force base in nebraska is a good example. It just succumbed to flooding this last spring. 10 years ago, the same thing almost happened. They recognized it was a threat and a problem, but the permitting timeframe to build the Flood Control technologies was still in limbo when this last flooding happened. This has been a systemic problem that we have these regulatory paralysis when it comes to building new infrastructure to help us adapt to Climate Change. Yet the Environmental Review and the legal processes result in these projects being held up for years and sometimes decades. Host philip in michigan, democrat. Caller this is the fastest ive got through and the longest ive been waiting to speak. Can you please change your topic to human effect on Climate Change . We dont really want to stop Climate Change. The earth tilts on its axis and gives us the seasons. If you stop Climate Change look at the weather for phoenix. It says 110, high, 90 something for a low. Have we studied the side effects to determine are we ever going to have another mild ice age . Thanks a bunch, cspan. Host philip in michigan. I will give you the final minute and a half or that topic or other topics we have covered today. Mr. Loris if you look at the human effects, it is clear humans are having an impact on Climate Change. I do think there is disagreement as to how much of an impact that is and what the future of warming looks like when you double Greenhouse Gas concentrations in the atmosphere. One thing we have not talked about Nuclear Power as an option as well. Here is an industry that shows a lot of promise. There are a lot of Small Modular Reactor designs that are innovative completely safe. , we have a regulatory process that does not allow them to get to the marketplace. I think people wrote off the Nuclear Renaissance when we had all the cheap natural gas that it could not compete. They are confident it can. It could be built in remote areas, used for dod infrastructure, used in the developing world where they do not have access to affordable reliable electricity. There was a lot of potential for Energy Innovation across the board, not just with conventional resources and coal and natural gas, and not just with wind and solar and battery storage. Also with nuclear. We should be considering all of these and allowing markets to drive Innovation Forward. That is what will best meet consumer needs. Host heritage. Org is the website where you can see his work. He is the executive director of economic policy. But todayas changed, that big idea is more relevant than ever. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Thursday, we will look at how health care is playing out in the 2020 campaign with mark houston and the American Enterprise in her student American Enterprise and a two American Enterprise institute in going to discussion institute. Shootingswake of the in dayton, ohio, the house will return to markup gun violence prevention bills which includes banning highcapacity magazines, restricting firearms from those deemed to be a risk. Live coverage begins wednesday cubs wednesday, september or go,and if you are on the listen to live coverage using the free cspan radio app. Late 1850s, americans generally trusted their congressman, but did not trust congress as an institution, nor did they trust each other. Were armed in the 1800s for fear that their opponent might try to kill them. Ms. Freemans latest book is the field of blood. Her other titles include the essential hamilton and affairs of honor. Conversation. Then at 9 00 p. M. Eastern, and his latest book, ben how examines whether evangelicals are choosing political power over christian values. I think the argument is tempting, but dangerous. Thateps a system in place takes accountability and i think it also is an easy way to bring in something and then use that as a way to get votes which seems about the worst possible way