Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion 20240703

[applause] well, thank you and welcome everyone to a very exciting day for the inaugural launch of our project called chinese handcuffs. In case you didnt pick one up on your way and we had these for everybody on the way out, which has become the emblem of this project. The socalled childs game in which you voluntarily immobilize yourself. This is one product that actually was made in china but i look for one that was made in china. Because i think it is critical for us to start to recognize what we are doing to ourselves, visavis u. S. Energy security and advocating our Energy Security voluntarily to china in the name of climate. They are doing this and highly predatory deliberate campaign to overtake us in energy and make us dependent on them. The good news is that we can write the ship and reverse this if we take it seriously. So today the first panel which discusses the Chinese Campaign we are very pleased to publish their guard many, many people at heritage i would like to thank, starting with our patient study center and davis, and harding and erin walsh who took lead on this project and brought it to fruition in a very timely timely manner. We of course very grateful for our friends in the climate and energy group led by diana ross, and that is one of our great strengths, heritage gives us the ability to work across this lens and bring folks together to collaborate on a project such as this. So without further ado i i wod like to introduce our panelists who will be discussing this project here. We will then have time for q a here in the room and then also for our friends joining us online. So if you would like to join me. Erin walsh is a Senior Research fellow in International Affairs at the Asia Study Center at the Heritage Foundation. Xi has had an extensive career in the private and public sectors, has worked for thwart republican administrations including president trumps when xi was both at the department of commerce and a fellow colleagues of the National Security council staff. And critically for our project today, erin also spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs in Services Going particularly xi served in china. So xi knows what xi speaks. A senior director and morningstar chair for global Energy Security at the Atlantic Council Global Energy center. And landon was also a colleague of mine both on the nsc and at the department of energy where he has worked for several decades on energy issues. And then finally last but sorting not least jack spencer is a Senior Research fellow for energy in a mental policy here at heritage in the center for Energy Climate and the environment. And he previously was our Vice President of the institute of Economic Freedom and opportunity, which is again a very important perspective that jack brings to our project here. He will also be deeply involved in pillar four in his other area of expertise which is Civil Nuclear energy. So please do join me in welcg them to the stage. [applause] in the honored tradition of ladies first, erin, i would just like you, i would like to start with you with a total softball, which is weve had the publication of how china exports americas climate region today. Congratulations on that. What are your Key Takeaways from the recent on the paper . Thanks so much, victoria, and you and your party who cowrote the paper with me. The Key Takeaways are really as you mentioned that we right now are in the handcuffs the china. This is been a decade agenda that led one of the same time our own liberal left agenda has brought us to this point. So thats quite disconcerting. The other issue is the United States is the number three Energy Producer in the world, and china is the Number One Energy importer in the world. What theyre trying to do is to reverse this trend so that they become dominant in distant energy and renewable sector, and we become dependent on them. So that is an extraordinary place the United States to be right now and hopefully we will be able to get ourselves out of it. Thank you. Jack, i can actually remember moments when this project sort of cropped up in my mind. It was actually very early february of 2020, and as i was transitioning on the nsc to the department of energy i read a report on this which i found shocking in the degree to which china is doing this deliberately to create this shift in energy balance. And in your decades of absorbing Energy Policy, whats the trajectory you have seen for china . As erin says the most needy, consuming nation. But have they sort of changed their role on the stage of Global Energy policy . First, thank you, victoria, for inviting here today to participate in this important event and with the whole project. Its interesting what china has done. For all intents and purposes the United States should be dominating the world in energy both on Hydrocarbons Technology across the board because we have it all. We have lots of we not only have now to resources but we have in addition, we have the technology to dominate the world. But that wasnt good enough. The left has decided that what is lifted literally billions of people out of poverty over the last couple hundred years, which is introduction of hydrocarbons combined with free markets wasnt quite enough. That they wanted, they thought that they could manage this better and did use Global Warming as the vehicle to do exactly that. Why thats interesting apropos in our conversation today is that it falls right into chinas hands. Because what theyve been able to do because they are Chinese Communists is spend a whole lot of Chinese Communist money to build their manufacturing facilities for things like wind and solar and electric vehicles which are precisely what the environmental left is forcing us to buy. And over time the trajectory has been us becoming more dependent on them. Its literally come here using its hand in glove where were building a policy for no good economic reason that completely opens us up to chinese dependence. After will talk about more why that might be but thats the trajectory, unfortunately, and its completely unnecessary. Well, thank you. Landon, jack raised climate issues which are central in to this discussion and we have seen the Biden Administration said some very interesting longterm climate goals and they have defined climate issues and i commit such as the National Security strategy as an existential threat to the United States. And where the conflict i see there is if you do that, then you have to write china even if you take it seriously as a lesser threat. So im wondering how you assess the goals that the set and also the critical question of can they be achieved without the participation of china . Thank you victoria. Thank you to the Heritage Foundation, erin, andrew, congratulations on a really nice report. I think it reads really well and articulate the conversation. Excessive pricing as jack e china would want to dominance over its deficit of indigenous resources, make it want to gravitate towards a new model. The United States doesnt have a challenge. So thinking through this challenge is from our perspective of how do we maintain our primacy and going forward. The Biden Administration has set out some i think very fairly ambitious climate benchmarks. Right . Talking 80 Renewable Energy generation by 2030, carbon free electricity by 2035, zero emissions in 20 thursday under note exactly 2030 but these are all benchmarks to require us to be engaged or require the world to grapple with how we make new Energy Affordable and the repercussions of what those supply chains i can have on us. To your point about how engaged china is in this value chain is really important point. Looking at their command of Energy Resources, china has effectively 80 of manufacturing newbie just as much as lithium batteries conception of rare earth extraction, 90 of processing. The point is when it comes to these new technologies, china has set up a framework that is could advantageous for them. This is a yes yes or no finr question can we achieve those benchmarks that the buy administration set up without china . Probably not. To do so without them is going to have economic consequence and good run of costs and what is a policy induced Energy Transition. Sticking with you for a moment since you raise this supply chain, one of the things the covid19 experience i think refill to everyone was the fragility of Global Supply chains. Erin is also because she is superwoman working on a bipartisan report on the origins of covid which will be rolling out later on this month so hopefully will be able to welcome you back then. But one of the thinks as i said, covid revealed was these fragile supply chains, particularly the ones that run through china. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how those supply chains can potentially undermine our Energy Security . Well look, convention in a g supply chains we with. Conventional energy supplychains we are familiar with. They are fairly global fungible, that ease. We know how to move them. America does them well. When you start to at the context of Energy Resources it gets a lot more complicated and theres a tremendous additional input we have to break down. The battery itself costs various inputs. When youre creating a lithiumion battery, not just a barrel of crude oil but its a box chain and as we discussed through a series of state led policies, subsidies, investments by the Chinese Communist government, we have seen them surround and as i point out with some of the figures before concentrate their control of those resources. Theres a vibrant conversation going on about how we break up that dominance but they clearly see the value of taking what is a much more complex supplychain and garnering benefits from the extraction standpoint and the manufacturing standpoint to a end user that may or may not be able to be part of that value chain and that is what we are grappling through the policy in washington. Start to go off, can i answer something about the supply chain . What covid taught us is the fragility of supply chains but something more important i think, its the risk that governments impose on supply chains. It wasnt covid that made supply chains breakdown. It was the response of government shutting down the economy that caused supply chains breakdown. We saw that with russias invasion of ukraine and that government shutting down supplies of natural gas to europe. I bring it up because we need to soberly assess the risks that government post these supply chains and when you are talking communist china, when they control completely vertically integrated supplychain, something our government is forcing us to depend on it makes the risks that much more, even more than what we saw under covid. Thats an excellent point. A good segue to my next question for aaron. Which is that to my knowledge the history of what china has done in terms of deliberately dominating supplychain sin this space, this hasnt been written before and to my mind this is very analogous to the 5g labels that you are going to move into a space, exploit various weaknesses to dominate it and as jack says, flooded with a lot of communist chinese money and subsidies and whatnot that allow them to manipulate the market. Take us through the campaign a little bit and what your research uncovered. The whole energy space is extremely complicated in many ways and one of the things we wanted to look at is it depends on where we are today and that is the history. Without starting after the 50s when the Global Warming science started in the 1950s in the United States. Al gore who many of you are familiar with was a student at harvard and he latched onto a professor who was very interested in this and decided this was going to be a critical thing for the United States and so he moved ahead and when he got to congress he started building up an entire group of fellow members that would support this agenda and they moved quickly to start the first advocacy and activist movement on Global Warming and green energy and with that, when he became a senator, he led the first senate delegation, the first rio summits, that we had this year and he came back to the United States as Vice President , drove a lot of the negotiations for this, and then when he left he started a movie and made a movie and got an Academy Award from that and from that he got a surprise. It was to his benefit to keep driving this agenda. At the same time in china in the 1960s, the cultural revolution, looking at where china wasnt aware al gore was, the godfather of the Climate Movement and now, after the cultural revolution 16 years later china became involved in this agenda in terms of creating their own agenda for the most part. The president at the time who really saw the impact of what was happening in china in terms of their industrialization that had taken place since the opening up of china with ping and Richard Nixon so what weve seen is really a about of water pollution, air pollution, really creating a lot of Health Concerns with china and that was going to create a lot of discomfort and social unease among the population and that became an impetus. When hu jintao got involved, he decided to push this agenda and create chinas agenda for green energy and when xi xinping came in and 2,012 he accelerated their move in terms of new energy and renewables understanding china does not have the energy they need and have to import so much oil. For one. 4 billion people, theyve got a lot to be dealing with so therefore they knew they didnt have the Oil Resources the United States does or natural gas, what they wanted to do was create renewables, us has solar and they decided to take that, they have the new Energy Vehicles and batteries. You can talk a little more about that but it is important to understand the history of where we are because john kerry involved in all of this negotiating for Paris Agreement, obama and now biden brought us to where we are today. Along those lines, a double question for you next, to bring this to a second, talk a little bit about we were at dubai together this december and i started watching them, 21. 26. The evolution of the cop, what it does, is that conversation shifting noticeably, did it shift in dubai . What do you anticipate coming next year . Great question. The cops have been the platform for global defense. This has been a government process around how we address global emissions. What does cop standpoint . Conference of party but there are many cops. There are many cops for tobacco, cops for climate, we are talking about the climate bill. The most famous of the climate cops today is the Paris Agreement and i want to say 2015, i could be wrong but that is one of john kerrys going back to the point, signature achievement, his legacy on these issues. It has been a government process and what was different about paris at that moment in time was governments around the world creating their own framework for benchmarking get their commitment to reducing emissions based on 2,005 benchmarks. What has shifted, to your question, you can only diplomatically talk about change so long. You can set benchmarks, you can have nationally determined contributions to the process but eventually the private sector has to get involved. What we see is this conversation about change and one thing aaron pointed out is not every government is taking this just by markets alone, we are getting very involved and seeing industrial policies so everyone is grappling with at this point what the Energy Transition means in the context of these cops and the conversation is galvanizing at the end of the day at each of these events annual. I wouldnt say each cop has its own magnitude of impact. The next cop will be focused principally on finance. So right now theres a Global Benchmark around 100 billion a year to the developing world to help address climate. That is is a pledge that principally the developed world made and they are looking to see that even bigger. Admittedly that has been challenging to begin with. I dont know that utility is moving that benchmark further, you cant consistently achieve what you do already but that is how this is going to happen. From the atlanta counsel standpoint, less time thinking about the actual negotiated process and more about how you have industry and others part of the story so that the United States government, us companies are engaged constructively to make sure we have a strong appreciation of where our Energy System is moving and maintaining our primacy in that process. It is a good segue into what i have been cooking up for jack which is when we were preparing, we did prepare for this event, is that we have this conventional wisdom that the United States has to respond to chinas predatory activities with some kind of coherent policy and when you hear about china dumping components for solar panels into vietnam, vietnam assembling them, sending them to the us, the natural response is to say this is terrible and it is against our laws and you have climate envoy john kerry yelling at the us companies that raised this issue because it was going to prevent cheap chinese solar panels from going to the United States and that was his priority in his position but as we have been discussing it both in terms, this is where i want to give you the opportunity to address the second and third question but chinas anticompetitive practices. What are the pitfalls we will fall into if we respond to this through this conventional wisdom approach . I want your views to inform the recommendations we eventually make on this and it is not just precisely what you might think . We should always strive for fair and free trade between likeminded countries. Im not sure where china lies on that but that is not what this issue is about. What the Biden Administration has done is created a catch 22 for every american. They created a situation through their energy mandates that essentially forces the United States to buy from china. People respond to that we shouldnt be buying these things from china so whats the alternative, we kill our far cadres in detroit with subsidized ev manufacturing, replace american coal and natural Gas Producing things with americanmade wind and solar and what happens when those subsidies go away . A complete collapse of an even broader swath of the American Economy because weve used subsidies and government policy to now invest massively for green Energy Things in the United States we are left with a catch 22, either you are dependent on china or you dedicate massive swath of your industrial capacity to this thing which is a political manifestation. Both are really bad outcomes for every american and that is why we need to get off this hamster wheel of the green energy phares. We need i would like to see actual free markets drive Energy Policy. Lets at least get back to where we dont have this completely Artificial Energy economy creating all of, that is creating distorted Investment Decisions and will cause mass disruptions for the American Economy, there is no good outcomes we continue down this road. Recognizing both sides of that is one of the crippled points that this report makes which we will continue to hammer in the next three pillars and how these policies touch every day americans which i cant think of an issue besides energy that touches each of us regardless of our socioeconomic class, regardless of where we live we all need energy to live. On top of that we are looking at, im trained as an art historian, i dont pretend to understand this but the Energy Demand of Artificial Intelligence are going to be dramatic. As much as a quarter of what we are consuming over the next five years alone. The fact of the matter is we cant do that on wind and solar. Can you talk a little bit about the impact on every day american lives that you looked into as you were preparing this report . As we fall in history, this is been created and they are okay in this whole situation, regular americans are not for two reasons, the first is National Security. China controls the rare earth supplychain and rare earths are needed not only through Different Things around the world but more importantly for our defense needs. And so lets say we go to war. By the grace of god we wont be but lets say we do. Rare earths going to everything from drones to radios to f 35 fighters. And so for us not to have access to rare earths and production and Critical Minerals puts us at a real disadvantage ourselves and our allies. The second issue is specifically every day households. Every day americans and that is the cost of energy. Energy creates inflation. The cost of energy creates inflation and every thing that we see and do has an Energy Impact to it whether it is our agriculture, the food the week, the electricity and electrical grid. Every single aspect, the fuels in our car has an Energy Component and the number one issue is inflation and thats going to lead voters to change their mind in november simply because we cannot continue to tolerate this. The American People cannot have this level of cost on them every single day. Landon, one other aspect of this, with your history and perspective, the United States is not alone in this vulnerability we are creating for ourselves visavis china. I wonder if you could talk about particularly europe as we are well on our way through year 3 of the ukraine war europes very real Energy Vulnerability have become starkly clear to the rest of the world yet they continue to take actions that dont seem to recognize that reality continuing to buy russian energy, shuttering Nuclear Power plants, i wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you are seeing in europe and what if any hope we have for them to change course. We are the path of elections in europe and i was in brussels in february and in 2019, given the global dynamics, these issues around Energy Transition, that weighed on the populace then. They elected a green wave in the commission and youve seen policies that invigorate that as a baseline. It shouldnt be surprising. Like china, europe is resource poor. They dont have the Energy Resources we have. Some countries like norway are the exception but ultimately the United States is pretty song Resource Base and play to hold that a huge role in dropping off after russias invasion of ukraine. That said, i think they are weighing equally in this is a moment of affection so it is important as jack says that we do think about this and debate how we address policy next steps. Before you can do that you have to have appreciation of how we got here and it is important to reflect on the fact that we talk about the overwhelming control and dominance china has created around some of these Rare Earth Minerals, critical inputs for the clean Energy Economy but it started before that. Moving to the 1950s and 60s, in the 70s china impose regulations on joint ventures, the auto manufacturers had to build partnerships. Those partnerships forced ip sharing and if they are not taking ip indirectly, they have forced companies to transition, you couple that with a domestic market of one. 4 billion building markets of scale through policies that keep competition down. Even when you lift, talking in this context about the electric vehicle market. Even when you lift the requirements of joint ventures in 2,022. If you have a command and you own 70 of your domestic market you are now able to project that outward. There is no catching up. Its very difficult for International Competitors in europe or america and europe has seen that impact their domestic market. If youre going through the imports of evs they are doubling year on year to hundreds of thousands of vehicles coming into the European Market and the expense and challenge here is european automakers invested heavily in the chinese market. So you get this catch22 and these policies, this manipulation of a market process has real outcomes and that is what we are deliberating over right now. Landon mentioned the capacity of the United States to search natural gas into europe in a way that the ukraine war, which perhaps i am biased because i worked in the Trump Administration that to my understanding that was largely because of the more streamlined permitting process allowed those additional facilities to be constructed that came online almost miraculously in 2022 to get the product across the atlantic. At the Heritage Foundation we are deeply committed to deregulation, to allow for the exercise of free markets and capitalism. Can you talk about what that Program Might Look Like if we had a change between administrations and a more conservative approach . Year. The thing about Energy Markets, we are extraordinarily resilient, whether it is if they are allowed to operate, whether its conflict in the middle east, europe, or wherever, our hydrocarbon markets, gas, oil and coal are very resilient and that is because weve had decades of investment in those industries because that is what people want and use. What weve seen more recently is greater restrictions on those markets to the point where President Biden in the Campaign City was going to shut them all down. And the result of that is a loss of that resiliency. An inability to as effectively respond to challenges over time. I think what we will see under a conservative administration is a reversion back to allowing Energy Market store because they should. It doesnt mean we will produce more or less energy, we will produce the amount of energy we need to feed the economy. If it is more we will be able to export more, to produce more, to get those molecules where they need to go. Weve seen things like the Biden Administration with their decision to put a pause on additional natural gas exports, these are all things that chill investment. Weve seen this, it costs billions of dollars to build new factories and things and they cant do it when the administration is saying we are going to shut you down and we will see a reverse of that. Theres got to be reform on some of the Environmental Policies like the National Environmental policy act which everyone acknowledges has become onerous. A big thing will be opening up development on federal lands, weve seen this administration take massive swaths of federal land out of commission for development and for no good reason. They will portray it as a good release and, we are protecting this thing or that thing but the fact of the matter is none of this development that comes to mind, a bunch of things around the grand canyon they took off line for Uranium Development and to read their press conferences you would think people would be mining in the grand canyon, no one is mining in the grand canyon. It would be far away from the grand canyon but it is part of that federalist state and across the board, opening up federal lands for energy development, allowing, giving the private sector the confidence that it can make these investments without the government trying to shut you down will be Game Changing going forward. Thank you. I think we can move on now to our audience questions and answers which i will give you an opportunity to make any points that i missed, but we have mikes here in the room if you could stand up, state your name and affiliation and to whom youre addressing your question or you can just say for the whole panel. My name is kevin. I work at the daily signal at the Heritage Foundation but i will ask in a cheeky way, is there anything biden and his minions are doing that an invasion of china would do different the . If the answer is no should the president register as a Foreign Agent . Do you want to you are exactly right. Exactly what china would be doing right now and we are seeing it. Should he, thats not my call. Maybe you can pass the mic back and forth. My name is eric with meltzer and associates. The question i have is what are your thoughts on your lawn musts visit to china last week . Seems to be a paradox that musk is advocating freedom of speech but does a lot of business with the ccp and how much could his business dealings with tesla in china benefit the ccp and harm us interests, talking about batteries . When you think about elon musks Business Model and tesla, and chinas dominance over the battery value chain and growth of competitors, they have 2. I dont know a situation in which exactly where the conversation starts today, china has incubated up policy process that makes people have to gravitate to them as opposed to how weve done business successfully for the past century and we have to grapple with not surly elon musk but how the United Statess partners and allies respond to that effectively because a situation where theres a century of chinese control i dont think is anything that a policymaker in washington, certainly i would not be an advocate for. I totally agree with that. I would say i am not going to comment on the players but i will comment on the game. This is the game this administration has created, a series, and ecosystem it is created that makes it such that you lawn musk or whoever has much to benefit by going and engaging with these guys. One can criticize a long, thats not where i am. Im more concerned about Public Policies that create the system that make it advantageous for him and others to do that. I work with the Department Homeland security. I got my big question would be, to what extent can america grapple with this challenge alone and to what extent do we need to have european allies or other allies and parties on board. Just because when i think of so many of these issues, the rest of the worlds going toward clean energy anyway. China will be enhancing its own position, you look at them, the European Union putting a carbon tax on imports and so much of the exploration of energy would target the United States so i am asking to what extent can america do this alone and what can be done to bring allies who might be more invested in the climate agenda aboard. The United States should show real climate leadership by rejecting the whole idea from a policy standpoint. There are lots of countries who would love for the United States to stand up and not reject Climate Science but reject the way Climate Science has been portrayed as there being a consensus around the thing, we need to look more at this, the actual state of Climate Science is not such that we should reorient the entire economy around that and while we continue to look into that we will continue to move forward with what has lifted millions of people out of poverty over the last 200 years which is allowing markets to drive Energy Policy forward for the most part and i think we would have lots of countries come in behind us and one further thing, this notion that because the rest of the world is doing something therefore the United States should do it, if the thing they are doing is corrupt and immoral we shouldnt do it. If its based on bad economics we shouldnt do it because it will collapse. It will collapse. We can take advantage if people want to keep doing that, knock yourself out, we need to show real climate leadership which is doing Something Different than everyone else seems to be doing right now. Jack and i have had impassioned conversations around this issue. The point of this report is to identify is there a successful pass forward with that kind of policy. What you are portraying in this question is where i see the general conversation, whether we agree on the timeline of the trajectory, whether and how politics play how we get there, there seems to be a sense of inevitability in the air, this report is chair and lunging whether that can change. In the interim its important to think about what we are prioritizing too. Is this about climate . Is this about emissions . Is it about the economy . This is about security in the future of the free world and democracy and the fact that we have allowed the ccp to gain this level of control over an Energy System is a concern and we should be concerned and i would tell you i think i would find if i was to travel internationally within the g7 much more continuity in that position then some may think. I dont know that we have the solutions but we are exercising that effort right now and i applaud the Heritage Foundation for pushing the envelope because we have to have this debate. We will see in time like we did with the 5g, we will see the europeans, they are starting to get upset about their own electric vehicles have their own markets and we will see more and more. Of the United States leads, we need allies, we need allies and what you were at, they said the first time we are going to start really unraveling fossil fuels, theyve got years and years of fossil fuel capability left. I dont think they are going to give that up. I do think we will have our allies. Thats the point of this report. One of our Biggest Challenges in the Trump Administration was the realization of what was happening with 5g, our lack of tools to combat it and having to have a knockdown drag out brawl with the United Kingdom over 5g which is painful when you have an ally that close, economic security, pretty much every englishspeaking, any sector you care to mention, that was that close, this can be a huge problem for us. We talked a lot about the problem here and i was hoping we could drill down more on the potential solution. Jack doesnt think it is subsidizing the industry domestically and i appreciate desire to change the conversation around climate short of getting local and state governments and corporations in the us to buy into that too. I wonder if theres a role for more tariffs, more protectionism particularly to counter market manipulation we are seeing, the Solar Industry is pursuing that today. I wouldnt be a huge fan of more tariffs or as i call them taxes on the American People. If we are concerned about china we should do that, but not to protect some other domestic industry thats dependent on politics. Even more against, we havent done vermilion things we need to do to be able to compete. Why dont we loosen up the environmental regulations that have been on an upward trajectory for years . Why dont we treat capital more sanely so that american businesses can be more competitive . Why dont we not, President Biden wants america to lead the world and business practices. Thats not the way to rebuild an industry. There are a million things we can do to make america more competitive. Lets do those things and if we still cant compete then maybe talk about tariffs, maybe they will work this time, i dont know. I think theres a consistent pace in which adjustment mechanisms and other tools are becoming the way of addressing Climate Policy so if we cant articulate another path forward it probably needs to be legislated not just through executive orders that waffle backandforth between administrations. Youre you are going to see a fairly persistent case of climate and emissions entering into the trade conversation which is a tariff conversation. Given the scale of complexity in the supply chains it doesnt mean it cant be changed, doesnt mean the Trump Administration wouldnt change that policy but that seems to be the trajectory we are headed on. Depends where we are with National Security and the energy situation. If we have a conservative president come in its highly likely there would be tariffs put on, that highly likely. In my opinion it is necessary because with evs flooding in over the border and the way they are putting up the ability in mexico and pushing over, going to crush our own industries and they are going to continue to tie our hands so the fastest way to go up against our number one adversary in the world is to put tariffs on what they want to export. I hope before we use tariffs to subsidize american ev manufacturing we work to get rid of the ev mandate so that the demand we are trying to protect is an organic and sustainable demand and not one that is dependent on policy because my fear is if youre protecting an industry that is itself a function of bad policy through tariffs you will end up with a very difficult economic ladder to deal with at some future point. I think we can all agree the ev mandate is a policy we can get behind. I have heard mining for these Rare Earth Minerals you need for ev batteries is causing severe environmental damage in places like china. Is that true . And if so why arent we hearing more about that . Environmental standards that china has are very different from ours. Almost anything they do regarding development that has an Environmental Impact will probably be greater for and what happens in the United States or western countries. To me, however, that is a china problem. The us problem, i should also say that china mines and engages in other Economic Activities that impact the environment in a negative way is a comment on china, not on the activity. It is sometimes framed this way but sometimes framed that it is the mining for Critical Minerals that is the problem. It is not. Is the china that is the problem. China is the problem. Instead as i mentioned before, we can do mining in the United States in an environmentally friendly way thats not heavily regulated. That is what we should be doing, not because china is deciding to pollute itself, if that is what it wants to do there are grown people there, they can do what they want but we shouldnt be hamstringing ourselves not being able to mind at all because of a fear of environmental degradation. We can do it. One point to add, china is not only doing it in their own country, what theyre doing it in the developing world, most important in africa, tearing them to shreds, taking it out of those peoples hands and using child labor and their standards are diabolical. And so it is a climate narrative. For a lot of us who use technology, we talk about it, the grandest sort of way. Do we have any online questions . We have time for one more and closing remarks. One online question, we talked about the values of hydrocarbons and that Energy Trajectory through a conservative perspective. Theres a question of how can we recapture and reshape the environment agenda to a more realitybased agenda in the context of energy, does it play a role, how do markets incorporate that . From a conservative angle, how can renewables be a factor . You want to take the first bite . In the back again. How can we recapture and reshape the environmental agenda to a more reality based agenda . It starts where our baseline is. Its very easy to backtrack climate standard and take a point of emissions the Climate Movement wants to be, the complexity of getting to that benchmark isnt linear. This is why we are having conversations on the security aspect of china. Technology, a lot of this technology is pioneered in america whether it is through the Us Government or private industry and it has been refined so i dont have an issue with the technology. What we have an issue with and the challenge is through unfair business practices, cheap labor, and dirtier energy, 60 of china is on call, capitalizing, monopolizing this segment of the market of which theres a push to make that the primary side of the Energy Sector of the future. For me, the technology is not the challenge. It is china problem here that is weighing on how we think about energy. We can be advocates for clean energy and should be to the degree that it allows the United States to excel as well. I agree with that. People present it as theres a balance we have to strike between energy and the environment. Thats not true. The more developed society becomes, the more energy they use, the cleaner the environment becomes. Weve seen it time and again, country after country, actual pollutants, particulate matter that the epa regulates have gone down dramatically over the last couple decades. This idea that we cant have Economic Growth and protect the environment just isnt true. Look at the poorest countries around the world, not like they are in an environmental paradise. They are in degraded from a conservative standpoint what we should be seeking is Economic Development and understanding the role energy plays in that, hydrocarbons have been the key over the last couple hundred years. The question is moving forward. If one cares about renewables are one moves away from hydrocarbons it shouldnt be driven by government, that will virtually, when the government picks, will exist in mediocrity, to drive Technology Forward like call took the place of whale oil, its a multitrillion dollar industry, the market is the best way to do that. That is how you overcome hydrocarbons if that is what you want to do. The government should set a predictable Regulatory Environment thats not too heavy and allow people and businesses to do that thing. Cspan is taping so we have to conclude sharply, you have 35 seconds to make any point you missed. I dont think we missed any. I want to say china is not a partner of ours. In the whole environment issue and energy environment. They will continue to do what they want for as long as they want. Starting up two call burning plants, dirty call, per week, and have an amazing trajectory across the provinces and they are still developing and as long as they are still developing and becoming more and growing more they will do what they want to do. We need to be realistic as the questioner asked about what we are facing in terms of National Security. Recognizing we are playing into their hands, we need to be more concerned with what we are doing. We are making policy decisions, making it easier to stay on this trajectory, we will be in a difficult place to be economically from a National Security standpoint. Something we need to talk about, security is where this conversation is going to drive from here. Theres a reason beijing is prioritizing National Security, think about the Communication Systems of the future, the digitalization of clean Energy Resources and you are getting Realtime Data including the layout of this. To hone in on the security component. Its important that we do. Including conversations around supercomputing and other topics. We can end right on time. If you can keep your eyes open for the announcement of its arrival in the next 6 to 8 weeks, we focus on the military dimension of this problem and the ramifications of that. Thank you for hosting this event, thank you for attending, and those who joined us online. Have a wonderful rest of the day . [inaudible conversations] today on cspan e use is back at 10 a. M. Eastern for general speeches followed by legislative business at noon, legislation to repeal the securities and Exchange Commission rule that reir companies to include crypto currency assets onhe balance sheet. At 10 00 a. M. 00 am on cspan2, the senate turns to continue work on a 5year reauthoriti bill for federal aviation adminisatn programs with current faa authority se to expire fda at midnight. So at 10 00 on cspan 3 defense secretary oyaustin and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, general Charles Brown junioteify on the conflict between israel and hamas, the war in ukrai a the president s 2025 budget request for the pentag. Washington dcmar and police chief testify on the citys respoe recent protests over the israel hamas war at George Washington university and the surrounding area. That is live before the House Oversight and accountable to mmittee at one p. M. At one pm eastern. You can