In the Conversation in Energy with Stuart Turley interviews Ronald Stein, co-author of “Clean Energy Exploitations,” to discuss the critical and often overlooked role of crude oil in modern society. They explore the challenges and ethical issues surrounding the transition to renewable energy, the limitations of wind and solar power, and the practical concerns associated with electric vehicles (EVs). Stein highlights the environmental and economic implications of current energy policies, advocating for a more balanced and realistic approach to achieving sustainable energy solutions.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my podcasts with Ron; he is a true resource for the energy community. Please buy his books and check out his other articles.
Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/3RMpOfK
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:02 – The Role of Crude Oil
02:52 – Products from Oil
03:50 – Energy Sources and Limitations
05:23 – Electric Vehicles (EVs) Concerns
07:07 – California’s Dependency on Foreign Oil
09:52 – Renewable Fuel and Refineries
10:47 – Economic and Environmental Impact of Policies
12:11 – The Green Movement and Its Challenges
15:57 – Global Elites and Climate Change
18:23 – Ethical Concerns with Green Energy
20:11 – Challenges with EV Infrastructure
24:28 – China’s Role in EV Market
26:18 – Personal Experiences and Opinions on EVs
29;15 – Insurance and Safety Concerns with EVs
21:19 – Technology and Energy Transition
35:25 – Hybrid Vehicles as a Solution
37:30 – Practical Issues with EVs in Cold Climates
38:23 – Maintenance of EV Charging Stations
45:20 – Conclusion
Stuart Turley [00:00:08] Hello, everybody. You know, this is an absolutely crazy time that we’re living in. Well, we don’t have is intelligent conversations, from all sides of the aisle. The politicians are not listening. The folks in the cities are not listening. And it’s all around energy. And I’ve got a special guest today. I’ve got Ronald Stein, who wrote a book with Todd Royale, Clean Energy Exploitations, helping citizens understand the environmental and humanity abuses that support clean energy. I’ll tell you what. This is another, one of the several interviews that I’ve had with, Ronald and I absolutely enjoy every conversation. Sit back and enjoy some of his newest material. And welcome, Ronald, for stopping by.
Ronald Stein [00:01:02] Stu. Glad to be aboard.
Stuart Turley [00:01:04] I’ll tell you what. I thoroughly enjoy our conversations, and I even love it when I’m sitting back in the stands heckling you, on live podcast with, like, Armando or those. And you’re speaking with Armando, again soon, aren’t you?
Ronald Stein [00:01:21] Thursday. Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:01:22] He’s a cool guy out of Brazil. I absolutely love him. And, one of the things that caught my eye this week was, your article, global elites have no master plan to replace crude oil other than lining their wallets. Boy, you’re bringing up a big one with that headline.
Ronald Stein [00:01:42] Reality is hitting the fan. Oh.
Stuart Turley [00:01:45] You bet. What were you thinking on this?
Ronald Stein [00:01:47] Well, it’s it’s amazing that they give all these incentives to to do something that they might be invested in, but they’re not solving the problem that they want to solve. They’re still the elephant in the room is no one wants to discuss the fact that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society. Right. You know, the world populated from 1.8 billion people in 200 years. Not because of oil. Right. Because oil by itself is useless. It’s black tar. Unless you can refine it, you know, beat it and heat it and crack it and all the good stuff. And through human ingenuity, we’ve been able to get a lot of oil derivatives out of the black, cruddy stuff and make 6000 products in our daily lives that didn’t exist 200 years ago. So it’s not the world populated from 1 to 8 billion because of oil. It’s because of the products. We’re a product driven society. You know, wind and solar only generate electricity.
Stuart Turley [00:02:52] You’ve made those comments in on, on LinkedIn or Substack and things. And I absolutely love the way that you’re actually going.
Ronald Stein [00:03:01] Hey.
Stuart Turley [00:03:02] You can’t make an iPhone out of a windmill. It doesn’t work that way. And so I always enjoy you bring that and say, hey, look, you gotta have a will in order to make plastics. You gotta have it. And, at this point, Mr. Producer, if you’d make a note, we want to put in a bring in a slide of life without oil. Not as simple as you may think. So with that, it it is that great chart, Ronald. I know you’ve probably seen it. You’ve got 46% of all oil goes to making gasoline. But what makes up the other 54%? We’ve got medicine, cosmetics, plastic, synthetic rubber, cleaning products, asphalt and then a whole list of a bazillion other things.
Ronald Stein [00:03:50] Exactly. Yeah. Because, you know, today we have, you know, transportation infrastructure. We got airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, telecommunication. This didn’t exist 200 years ago, and wind and solar can’t make anything. And still, the interesting thing about wind and solar is let’s go back to the light bulb. The light bulb was made with oil, right. And we have a lot of ways of generating electricity. We got wind and solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro. All six of those generating systems cannot exist without oil because all the parts and the computers and insulation, all the components to make the system work. Is made from oil. So without oil, you eliminate electricity. Electricity came after oil in it. Take a look at the other side of it to everything that needs electricity. Everything needs electricity. Your iPhone, your television, a defibrillator, the x ray machine. Everything needs electricity. Is made with those oil derivatives. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, the confusing thing. The frustrating thing is our leaders talk about wind and solar energy is gonna replace oil. Well, it can’t happen because they do different things. We literally only generates electricity. Can’t make any tires. Can’t make any insulation.
Stuart Turley [00:05:23] And Ronald, I this this whole EV thing is just going hilarious. The weight of the EV causes more, tire pollution and microplastic micro, pollution because the tires weigh, wear out at 75% less, the your tires wear out that much more on EVs because all the extra battery EVs are polluting more than Ice cars. And people are not putting the second order of magnitude in here.
Ronald Stein [00:05:59] And here’s another another facet of EVs you have to get to.
Stuart Turley [00:06:04] Oh, cool. But you’re not. You’re burning through more tires, which is owned oil and everything else.
Ronald Stein [00:06:10] And tearing up the roads. You know, I’m here in California. We’re a big state. We got 400,000 miles roadway right in with all the fuel taxes up and down the state. It raised like $8.8 billion to maintain 400,000 miles of roads. And now the governor wants everybody to drive in EV. Well, EVs are heavier, right? They tear up the roads quicker, and EVs are paying nothing to maintain the roads. And the $8.8 billion in tax revenue we get out of the fuels, that’s going to decrease as people are driving less and less Ice cars and more EV cars. And so, you know, the argument amongst the fund, the road repairs is going down. Where are the need to. Thunder rolls is going to be increasing in its.
Stuart Turley [00:07:04] This is not even being talked about. I mean.
Ronald Stein [00:07:07] This is.
Stuart Turley [00:07:08] This is like so how many billions is California over budget or. They are they’re in a budget crisis right now.
Ronald Stein [00:07:19] They’re always on a budget crisis. They keep laying on more regulations and more cost, and it’s, it’s crazy.
Stuart Turley [00:07:28] And, what I’m looking for is I think there’s some deals that we’ll probably see between China and, California. On importing more refined products since the refined products from California, the refineries are being shut down.
Ronald Stein [00:07:45] So. Exactly. Because, Asia is planning on building, I believe, 88 new refineries. Yeah. This will be state of the art. And, you know, the interesting thing, when you talk about them building more refineries and also importing more, it brings back memories. Remember the oil embargo, you all know.
Stuart Turley [00:08:06] Yeah, I do remember.
Ronald Stein [00:08:08] In 73 the oil embargo hit the United States. You know, we’re pretty reliant on OPEC for oil. And OPEC decided to shut the valve and it was devastating. We were lined up to get gas and immediately pretty much shut down the country in 73. The Department of Energy was for their main goal. Don’t let this happen again. 50 years have gone by. Well, if you take a look back in 73. California was pretty much independent for oil with a lot of production in the state. There’s a lot of production in Alaska between Alaska and California production. We provided 95% of the state of California’s needs. And we relied on foreign oil for 5%. Well, 50, 50 years gone by. We’re the fourth largest economy in the world, and the 5% dependent state of.
Stuart Turley [00:08:59] California is the fourth largest.
Ronald Stein [00:09:03] Economy in the world. Wow. So we have basically gone from 5% dependency in 73 to more than 60% dependency on foreign oil. And it’s interesting because the Department of Energy, as 14,000 employees, has an annual budget of $48 billion, and they’ve allowed California, the fourth largest economy in the world, to increase our dependency on foreign oil. Stu, California’s a big state. We got nine international airports in the state, right? We got 41 military airports in the state, right through three largest shipping ports in the world, all being run by foreign oil. Wow.
Stuart Turley [00:09:52] No, I did see a refinery that was getting additional money, and I have to I have to go remember what I was seeing. But it was for a renew. It was an upgraded refinery for renewable. Either, airplane fuel. And I believe you’ve been singing about the airport fuel issue for a long time. I’m not sure that I want to be on a plane with renewable, fuel that is not tested. I’m sorry, I you know, I kind of, like, tested methods when I’m in the air, right?
Ronald Stein [00:10:28] No, it’s it’s it’s bizarre that no one’s, you know, talking about this. It’s it’s crazy. I I’m just amazed that the world is buying into all this green movement, and it’s. It’s pathetic what’s happening around the world.
Stuart Turley [00:10:47] Well, it’s about delivering the lowest kilowatt per hour to everyone on the planet with the least amount of impact on the environment. If we did that, we’d all be running down the road happy. But you got to use nuclear. You got as natural gas. You got to use oil. Hey, wind and solar have their place. I’m all in. Let’s use them. But let’s use them fiscally responsible.
Ronald Stein [00:11:15] I also have to. You have to take a look at the quality of the electricity. Because the currently the four systems we have primarily it coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, they provide continuous, uninterrupted electricity.
Stuart Turley [00:11:31] Exactly.
Ronald Stein [00:11:32] Where wind and solar provides occasional electricity depending on the weather. If you’re on the operating room, you don’t want the lights to go out. You know. And you know, we we got dams. You got computers, you got airports, the military. They need continuous electricity, not intermittent electricity. And it’s interesting that most of the states are buying into we’re going to close the natural gas power plants. We’re going to close the coal power plants. We’re close nuclear power plants, all with continuous electricity. And we’re going to replace it with wind and solar.
Stuart Turley [00:12:09] New York is just absolutely, unbelievably weird. I vote right now. Let’s take a poll after this and go. All those in favor of letting New York be our test pilot? Ban all diesel, all gasoline, anything delivered with gasoline or diesel. Shut down all oil out of New York. All those in favor? Let’s let it be a good test run.
Ronald Stein [00:12:38] The stock market with, well, stock market wouldn’t be affected because no one would be able to get to the stock market.
Stuart Turley [00:12:44] It most of that’s automated now anyway in Texas. Ronald, last month or month before got more financial, jobs than did, New York. So the, the most number of the Wall Street guys are now in Texas. So, anyway, that’s a whole nother story, but wouldn’t you have fun? What was that movie with Kurt Russell all those years ago? Escape from New York? He would never do that. Was, it was a really, like a barbaric movie in when people are trying to get out. Snake Plissken was, his character, and he was trying to save the president out of New York, so. And that would pretty be pretty weird.
Ronald Stein [00:13:34] So it was really like the global elites to do is participate in conversations because, you know, we.
Stuart Turley [00:13:41] Do that run on one side, doesn’t want to talk.
Ronald Stein [00:13:44] Well, they got to stop using the word energy because they misuse it. You’re either talking to electricity. Were you talking products? Because wind and solar can generate electricity, right? Can’t generate. Can generate products. Oil can basically generate the products but can’t make electricity. So you can’t you can’t. You can’t mix them. And they do different things. You know, when the solar only generates electricity, it can make nothing for society. Whereas, you know, the oil makes no electricity but makes all the products. And, you know, I was interviewed in New York a couple weeks ago. And the first question to me, what’s wrong? We understand your pro oil as raw. I’m not pro oil. I’m pro the products we get from them. But not for a while. We’ve had 200 years to replace oil and have been unable to do it. And you can’t replace that with wind and solar because they don’t do what you’re getting out of oil. Yeah. And so, you know, it’s a materialistic society. You know, I’m all for improving efficiencies in conservation because do you know what we have on this earth? Yeah, there’s a lot of oil. Pretty much every country has oil. Very few countries have the exotic minerals and metals that are going green, like lithium and cobalt. That’s much more limited in availability. And so yeah, the you know, when the Earth was 4 billion years ago, there’s, you know, there’s coal and oil. You know, lithium, cobalt, you know, is going to be around 100 years from now. Yes. Thousand years from now, probably. Yes. 10,000. You know, I I’m not sure. You know, because what we have on this earth, we want to conserve it. We got a great life. And of the 8 billion people on this planet, it’s devastating that more than 80%. And that’s more than 6 billion people living on less than $10 a day. Right. They haven’t joined the Industrial Revolution. We have a great life and we can afford to do all these crazy things.
Stuart Turley [00:15:57] Did you?
Ronald Stein [00:15:58] Whereas most.
Stuart Turley [00:15:59] Did you see the interview with the president of Guyana when he was being attacked by the BBC reporter just recently? That was a hoot. He defend. He goes, we’ve got more, forests and we export in the guise. The reporter says, well, you’re responsible for all these exports of oil. And he says, you can’t blame that on us. We export the oil, but we have so much in forests that we absorb 18 times what is exported out. That’s your fault. I thought it was a great argument. Let’s let Africa use their own resources and not say that they only can use wind and solar. Anyway, sorry. I thought it was great.
Ronald Stein [00:16:47] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:16:49] You need to defend themselves.
Ronald Stein [00:16:51] Yeah, I’ve got an article coming out, I think next week that, biscuits humanity’s demands for the products.
Stuart Turley [00:16:58] Right.
Ronald Stein [00:16:59] That’s determining the supply of oil. You know, basically, stop using the product. Stop using fuel. The need for oil goes away.
Stuart Turley [00:17:10] Have you got a title for the article yet?
Ronald Stein [00:17:13] Mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions?
Stuart Turley [00:17:19] I can’t wait to read that one. I can’t.
Ronald Stein [00:17:22] Wait. It’s a fool’s game. The world demand. You know, we basically remember Greta Thunberg when she was chastising the leaders of the world. How dare.
Stuart Turley [00:17:32] You?
Ronald Stein [00:17:33] Oh, yeah, I rephrase that. It’s kind of like, how dare me demand all these products and fuels. And then, you know, so I can improve my life.
Stuart Turley [00:17:45] How dare me so I can demand all of these products. But how dare you to hold those products from me.
Ronald Stein [00:17:53] Right? Basically, we’re demanding these these products and tools, which is increasing the supply. And then we’re claiming that suppliers are causing climate change.
Stuart Turley [00:18:06] Unbelievable. And Greta, she is a pawn. I feel sorry for her in many ways that she is just being used by people as a puppet, as a front person, if you would.
Ronald Stein [00:18:23] Exactly. And like you say, there’s no conversations because, you know, she, you know, when she flies everywhere, you know, she’s flying in these electric planes and, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:18:36] You know, I got really tickled when she was being hauled off to jail, in a photo op. Was it last year? I can’t, Ronald, I can’t remember when it was, but she was being hauled off at a, coal factory that she, coal mine, that she was there to try to help shut down. And then, about four months later, they started tearing down the wind farm so they could reopen that coal, coal, coal mine because Germany is in such trouble. So if you’re going to get hauled off to jail, be careful what you’re standing for. I don’t get it, but.
Ronald Stein [00:19:16] It is crazy. But like I said, you know, we’re we’re firemen, you know, the fossil fuel industry for climate change, but they don’t exist. They they don’t make anything that we need. We need something and we’re forcing them to make.
Stuart Turley [00:19:34] And and BASF has made so much. They’re a big fertilizer. They’ve had to move out of Germany, but they need natural gas, which is a great byproduct of an oil and gas well. Oh, oil and gas. So fertilizer is kind of important for food.
Ronald Stein [00:19:51] You know what exactly you want to get rid of natural gas. Well, you’re going to start getting rid of fertilizer. You’re going to start getting rid of pesticides, which helps the food industry grow a lot of products. So it’s you know, we’re kind of like blindsided that we like our life. But, you know, right.
Stuart Turley [00:20:11] Now, Cole, I’m all in on using better technology and using less coal. But I’ll tell you what. There’s no way we would have a stable grid without coal right now. Oh, yeah.
Ronald Stein [00:20:27] Exactly, exactly.
Stuart Turley [00:20:28] We’ve got to maintain our coal.
Ronald Stein [00:20:31] Well, we have to maintain continuous generate electricity. Right. You right now, there’s only four methods which, you know, coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear. And you know, the fact that they want to get rid of three of them coal, natural gas and nuclear. Right. And replace it with wind and solar.
Stuart Turley [00:20:52] All right. So I am excited about geothermal. And there is a lot of new technology coming around for geothermal. And I think geothermal has the potential. But can it scale quickly? I’m not saying that technology scale, but the oil and gas EMP operators that can migrate overdue a geothermal solution, that the guys are already there. I mean, it’s already the workforce is there. The oilfield service guys can run down the road with it. But just seeing how that all plays, in different areas. Yellowstone, man, you could tap into it.
Ronald Stein [00:21:30] Easy was to your right. There’s no silver bullet answer. And, you know, there’s a place for almost everything in the challenge when you come up with a solution, right. And you can work. Can you commercialize? Because you can run a you can run a car on French fry grease. Yep. But there are not enough people eating that many French fries to generate that much grease. So yeah, commercialized. So it’s there are places because I know like EVs, I live in Southern California and enrolls with a temperate climate. So does Florida. In California has about 40% of all EVs in the entire country, here in California, 40%. Yeah. And most of them are low mileage cars. They you know, they basically sit in the garage and they do the short hauls. But if you want to go somewhere and bring out the workhorse vehicle, you know, let’s take a look at gasoline consumption. Yeah. Gasoline consumption hit a peak in 2019 worldwide. And that was before the pandemic, right. Since 2019 we now have 30 million EVs in the entire world. And we have. Hundreds of millions of people not going to work as often because they’re telecommuting. Right. And so we got hundreds of millions of people not going to work as often, driving as much. Right. And we have 30 million EVs that are not burning, you know, gasoline. And in 2023, the world hit another peak of oil. Because even if.
Stuart Turley [00:23:11] You run a lot of these factors, you did say.
Ronald Stein [00:23:14] We didn’t.
Stuart Turley [00:23:15] Gain, but we did get another big.
Ronald Stein [00:23:18] It was like you say it, people, if people want to go somewhere, they bring out the workhorse vehicle. And it’s it’s amazing that, you know, I preached, I wrote an article, I think, two years ago that the auto industry did mandate it into a death spiral. To make EVs. Because when you take a look at the profile of Evan, a highly educated, high income, multi-car family, low mileage requirements, right? Most of the public is not as highly educated, not as highly compensated, may not be a multi-car family, may not live in a house, may live in an apartment. And, you know, today, you know, most people have a debt of like 60, $200,000 with car loans and credit cards and, you know, mortgages and etcetera, etcetera. And very few people are right. They have financial literacy and they’re living paycheck to paycheck. And so there are kind of like one paycheck away from being homeless. And once you get off the income stream, you’re you’re hurting. And so most people, you know, can’t afford a luxury SUV. And, yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hitting the fan.
Stuart Turley [00:24:38] And so what’s your what’s your thoughts on the China invasion, if you would? The plants that they’re putting in, China is got, you know, pretty far along on a plant in Mexico. They’ve got just tons of Chinese folks not buying EVs, and they’re going to be offloading that inventory to the U.S. and the UK. And do you see those being the infiltrating of our market, the low cost ones?
Ronald Stein [00:25:10] Well, definitely. You know, from the oil embargo we had in 73, you know, we had OPEC. We’re dependent on OPEC for well now our dependance on China and India for low cost products. And these countries have no environmental controls, no labor controls. That’s why I told Roy when I wrote that book, clean Energy exploitations, because all the exotic metals and metals to go green are coming from these developing countries. And, you know, I, I get off asked, do you buy any of the I said, definitely not. And they say why. So for ethical and moral reasons, he said, what the hell do you mean by that? Because I know where the lithium cobalt coming from, and I’m not willing to financially support that. Our government is. However, our government provides incentives to buy EVs, you know, subsidize, you know, building wind turbines, solar panels. They’re basically encouraging China and Africa and parts of Brazil continue exploiting. The people have yellow, brown and black skin. Continue the environment, segregation on your land. We’re going green. And I think it’s critical, but there’s no discussions.
Stuart Turley [00:26:18] You know, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned more about solar power from trying to get my houses set up for, grid failure. And so I have, several propane generators, since I live so far out in the country that don’t have natural gas. And so I’ve got big propane tanks and a backup generators, but you can’t run propane all the time, you know, for unbelievable amounts of time. So I put solar panels. So the house design that I’ve got for each of the four houses is to have batteries that will support lights, TVs and, you know, my office gear and everything else, for the day or, and, or just rely on generators to charge those batteries for four hours a day. So if I can just run a generator for four hours a day, I don’t need much electricity. Now, I tried to supplement that with solar panels and some wind turbines. They stink. Holy smokes Batman, that I’ve been putting these things in and it’s like, okay, somebody was kind of going, now you bought all these solar panels and I’m like, yeah. And I was. And they go, did you buy them from China? And I’m like, no, I hear I am a hypocrite. I, I’m trying to learn how to put in solar.
Ronald Stein [00:27:42] I was kind of like, who else makes them, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:27:44] I don’t know. And I and so now I’m trying to replace a couple of them and all this is so that I can be off the grid if the grid comes down. We’re being warned by. The FBI that, Christopher Wray, when he said this past week the grid is in danger. Chinese could hack in, anybody could hack in. And we’ve got all these renewables, the grid. Here’s the head of the FBI saying this. It’s not even me.
Ronald Stein [00:28:17] That’s right. I think, I’d like to see a cartoon of Stu Turley driving his EV, towing his diesel generator behind.
Stuart Turley [00:28:28] You know what? That ain’t going to happen. I do what I do love you, Musk. And, I love what he’s doing with Twitter. I am buying a, Starlink system. Because I do want to be able to have the backup internet to go to his is internet. If he comes out with a phone, I’m going to get rid of my iPhone. Now, am I going to buy a, carton? No, I’m probably.
Ronald Stein [00:28:53] Not.
Stuart Turley [00:28:54] If I had the money to throw away, I might buy a cyber truck for a video and then take the write off on the taxes and then park it. Or use the Cybertruck to go on meetings for folks because it is bulletproof. And if people see me, you know, I, I just have to make sure I’m in a bulletproof car.
Ronald Stein [00:29:16] My. My neighbor just bought an EV truck. You know.
Stuart Turley [00:29:19] Did he really? What?
Ronald Stein [00:29:20] He was here. Tesla.
Stuart Turley [00:29:23] Tesla.
Ronald Stein [00:29:23] Oh, yeah. And, I he was in the driveway, so he walked over and he showed me the truck, and he was pretty proud of it. And still I thought it was ugly. Oh. Hey.
Stuart Turley [00:29:37] Ronald, have you seen, the videos on YouTube? It’s a carrot and a cucumber test on the Cybertruck. People go back in, and then they shut the hatch in the back, and they put the carrot and or the cucumber in there, and it cuts and cuts them in half. And then they go to another SUV, and they put it down, and you put a cucumber, a, carrot in there and the gate will come back up. So the moral of the story is, Cybertruck maybe taking your finger off.
Ronald Stein [00:30:07] I’m like, oh.
Stuart Turley [00:30:09] That’s good, that’s good. Now, here’s what’s his real world. Has he had it long enough to be able to say it’s actually been working?
Ronald Stein [00:30:19] He has limited range. Basically, like everybody else has an EV, they know how far they can go and then come back and then charge it overnight, because waiting for the charging station, that’s hours wasted. So most people really don’t like to charge at a charging station. Conveniently, you come home, plug it in, and you know, next morning you’re ready to go. But it’s yeah, he has a range that fits his needs. And wow, he’s a he’s a Tesla lover as a Tesla. So they don’t go to the shop. The Tesla truck.
Stuart Turley [00:30:55] I well I more power to them. And I think that’s one of the reasons Tesla will survive. I believe in Elon and other people believe in Elon as well. Now whether or not I want to buy it, I don’t want that. Have the those children digging all that cobalt, you know on my hands is I’m a hypocrite buying giant, you know, solar panels from China. And I’m just like no.
Ronald Stein [00:31:23] But, you know, just like the oil embargo we had, you know, with OPEC and it’s an OPEC, we are growing our dependency on China and India, and primarily because they’re more cost effective, because, you know, I’m here in California, regulations here are crazy. And Newsom, you know, we’re the most regulated location in the world. If you want to manufacture anything you want to do it in California to have the minimum amount of emissions. But I’m I’m convinced that Newsom doesn’t breathe there outside California borders. He wants to clean California up, which is fine, but is leaking. I use term leaking, leaking responsibility for manufacturing somewhere else that doesn’t have environmental controls because he doesn’t breathe air emissions, he only brings emissions within the state of California. And so yeah, he’s basically increasing emissions. But because it’s so cost effective to do it there, that’s where we can get affordable products in the California, make them and try and make them in India, you know, exploit their people. You know, it’s their land.
Stuart Turley [00:32:33] You know, India is going through a huge, growth period right now because the people are afraid of China in, in many ways in, in there. So the low cost manufacturing is moving to China. I mean, moving to, India. And, it’s just unbelievable what’s going on with all that.
Ronald Stein [00:32:55] Yeah. You know, when you think about it, you know, more than 6 billion people making less than $10 a day. That’s that’s atrocious. In fact, the the cover of the book of clean energy Exploitations. Yep. You know, we we debated before we chose it, but that’s a photograph from Africa with a military guy with an Uzi overlooking the family, mining the stuff by hand. So we can go green.
Stuart Turley [00:33:24] That’s pretty frightening.
Ronald Stein [00:33:26] Yeah. And that’s that’s the exploitations. And like I say, I don’t want to encourage that. And I think people should be aware of it. Right. And if you’re happy with that, you know fine. You know, people say I’m a hypocrite because I got an iPhone because it’s got a lithium battery, right? But the lithium battery in there, I can probably make a million iPhones.
Stuart Turley [00:33:47] Exactly.
Ronald Stein [00:33:48] Yes. One battery.
Stuart Turley [00:33:51] But, you know, even if we went to, Ronald, hybrids, I’m a big hybrid fan. And I think Toyota has done a phenomenal job. Not going in all in on the EVs and the hybrid. Makes sense to me to really get you further down the road, get 50, 60 miles per gallon. And go with the hybrid. I I’m all in on that, but can it tow my boat? No. Can I pull my trailer for working on my land? No.
Ronald Stein [00:34:26] Well, still, I’m an engineer in it, right? I thought the hybrid was the most fantastic thing. Because you double your gas mileage. Yep. And you’re by hundreds of years to develop battery technology. Exactly. And. But the auto industry has been mandated to get their emissions down so low for their entire fleet. That the only way to get down that low. They had to eliminate the gasoline engine in the hybrid. So most automobile manufacturers are 100% into EVs. Well, you’re going to see a couple hybrids. But for them to meet the regulations. Right. Emissions of their, you know, average out among their entire fleet. They had to eliminate the gasoline engine and the hybrid. Hybrid. I think I think you’re mandating 100% hybrids. That’d be great. Yeah. Like I said, you know, you’re doubling your gas mileage and you buy a hundred years to develop the battery technology.
Stuart Turley [00:35:25] But you see in in we nailed it in the, the poorer families, if they made the hybrids affordable for the poorer families or the, ones that a hybrid will get you there. The poor folks in in Chicago this past winter, I saw a snowstorm, and there were lines and lines of people waiting in snow to charge their cars, and then they wouldn’t start when they would get there to even get them charged. Nobody could go to work in a snowstorm. It was.
Ronald Stein [00:35:57] Well, you know, the tough thing about EVs is if you live in cold climate, you want your heater to work. Well, still, the heater works off the battery. Very low doesn’t, and it’s 120 degrees. You want your air conditioning running well. Still, the AC runs off the battery.
Stuart Turley [00:36:15] Yeah. Right. Right.
Ronald Stein [00:36:17] So that’s why the temperate climates of California and Florida have most of the EVs in the entire country. We don’t have the extreme cold, we don’t have the extreme heat. And it’s like I say, the rest of the country doesn’t really care about, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:36:33] In fact, this is just a personal note from my father in law. My father in law was on a, a trip to Midland. Odessa in in Midwest in mid and west Texas. And, he got there late and he found a hotel room, and they did not have a charger anywhere nearby, so he had to go drive to a different place, leave his car overnight, charge it, walk a mile and a half or two miles back to his hotel room, and he’s 85. And then he had to walk back a mile a half, two miles back to his car in the morning. And guys don’t really need to be doing that at that age. At dark in the middle. Now it is Midland Odessa. So it is a not a bad place because there’s good people out there. But you know what? I’m sorry.
Ronald Stein [00:37:30] The question I have for him. Would you buy another RV? No.
Stuart Turley [00:37:37] He. Now, I will say this as a Tesla. He loves his Tesla. Absolutely. It’s a way cool car. I’m all in. I’m happy. And in 99% of the time, he just happened to take the this trip to West Texas. He won’t be taking it on the road again.
Ronald Stein [00:37:59] So, you.
Stuart Turley [00:37:59] Know, it’s it’s a little different when I would I would not want to have to get in the car and go save my grandma and my father in law, but I would do that in RV. But, you know, this is like, what happens if he had gotten hurt because he had to go to a battery charge?
Ronald Stein [00:38:16] Exactly.
Stuart Turley [00:38:17] Yes. It’s just battery charges are not out there unless you’re in a big city.
Ronald Stein [00:38:23] Well, the other thing is that they provide the incentives to build battery chargers, but there’s no incentives to maintain them. And so a lot of the battery charges, once they’re built and they become inoperative. Yep. Sometimes I read a chapter for a long time.
Stuart Turley [00:38:42] BP just announced. I believe it was yesterday, the day before that. They are getting rid of their, excuse me, their charging station division group, and they’re laying everybody off because they were expecting to be building fleet places for charging stations rather than onesie twosies. And, if BP is you have total energies or total energies, however you want to phrase it is now going, all in on buying all the natural gas plants in Texas. You have shell, who’s now thinking about getting out of the UK and coming to the US. I mean, they there’s that rumor going on because they don’t like the regulatory issues going on in the UK, and they’re doing more development and more expansion. I think that we’re going to see some more headway. Trouble for the EVs because of insurance companies. I think insurance is the hidden like nugget in there that people can’t afford the two and three times the insurance rates that are coming.
Ronald Stein [00:39:54] Well, let’s talk about insurance on EVs because the EV battery wants you. It’s easy to start on fire. And once it starts on fire, it’s a chemical fire. And you can put it up with water or, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:40:08] They’re horrible.
Ronald Stein [00:40:09] In fact, I think in Germany there’s that are some of the cities in Germany have banned parking EVs and underground structures.
Stuart Turley [00:40:17] Right.
Ronald Stein [00:40:18] Because if it starts on fire, they can’t get to it. It could burn down the whole building.
Stuart Turley [00:40:23] And we’ve seen those those, videos of the, transport carriers, and the big offshore carriers just burned into the ground.
Ronald Stein [00:40:33] Yeah, there was one that went down, had 4000 cars, had inexpensive cars and Maseratis, Bentleys, you know, and to the bottom of the ocean. Now, consider yourself Lloyd’s of London. You’re not going to be too excited about ensuring the next transporting ship. Yep. Because it has the potential of, you know, starting fire that starts far in the middle of the ocean. And, you know, you can’t put up with water. No. And it can just burn down the whole ship. You know, and.
Stuart Turley [00:41:02] And I think, Ronald, the discussion we would be having right now is we’re not against EVs. We’re not against an energy transition. The technology’s not here now. And so how do we get to that technology and everything else is have discussions, right.
Ronald Stein [00:41:20] Exactly. And, you know, battery technology. Well, you take a look at the, you know, the the handheld phone. You know, the first phone way to pound, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:41:29] Yeah I had one. Yeah.
Ronald Stein [00:41:31] Yeah. But you know, the battery technology, the batteries got less and less. The challenge with commercializing it into a vehicle. Now you got thousands of pounds to move. You know, it’s easy. Easy to charge a little phone, but now you want, you know, in technology and there’s a lot of battery technology. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:41:51] All this one, this one. Just chat me up, Ronald. Okay. I am in, Dallas, Texas. Okay. I’m. I’m in, Dallas last, last week. And I look over at my phone and it’s late at night, and I plugged in my phone and it says, your phone is on green energy charging and won’t be ready until 7 a.m. the next morning. And I’m like, all right, I’m not buying this. So I go over and I look at Ercot, what is going on on the grid, and there’s no battery coming in from wind or solar. It was night. It. And so why is my iPhone telling me that it’s not charging because there’s no green energy. I’m like So I tested it I plugged it into my solar here at the house and it said yeah we’re going to wait until 2 or 3:00 tomorrow in order to charge because it’s you know, we’re waiting for green energy. You’re on a solar panel. What kind of marketing Buki is this, man? This is like, I know I’m on a solar panel because I’m sitting here looking at that solar panel, and I’m off the grid.
Ronald Stein [00:43:11] Well, you know, we’ve learned very little. You know, Germany was the first country to go green.
Stuart Turley [00:43:15] And today California is a whole different country to it.
Ronald Stein [00:43:20] And that’s that’s a different subject. But Germany has got the most expensive electricity in the world. And California is right behind them.
Stuart Turley [00:43:31] And so as New York and Connecticut, I think in some or three top, top ones.
Ronald Stein [00:43:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re, we’re we’re comical, occasionally. And.
Stuart Turley [00:43:42] Have you seen that message, though, on your phone in California that it’s not charging? Because of the renewables?
Ronald Stein [00:43:50] We don’t have that many renewables in the grid yet. It’s interesting with California because, okay, we’re the fourth largest country in the world. And shutting down our power supplies, we shut down the center for, nuclear power plant, and we’re shutting down gas and natural, you know, coal and California imports more electricity than any other state in the country.
Stuart Turley [00:44:19] Wow.
Ronald Stein [00:44:19] From our adjoining neighbors right now, hopefully they have extra electricity. Give us because we have the demand. They have the supply. Right. And if they need it, we ain’t going to get it. Know.
Stuart Turley [00:44:35] Wow. That’s funny. I if there’s any of our podcast listeners, if anybody else has had that same thing happen, I’d sure love to know, because that really drives me nuts when I know that I am on a solar panel and it is green energy, and my phone still pops up and says, we’re not going to charge because you’re not on green energy. And I’m like, that’s a marketing scam is what that is.
Ronald Stein [00:45:02] If you didn’t you didn’t register your solar panels. Oh yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:45:08] Or they reckon, well, yeah, there you go. They didn’t I didn’t register my solar panels. So not only are we going to have to register to even get. Never mind. Okay.
Ronald Stein [00:45:19] That’s all good. Sorry.
Stuart Turley [00:45:20] But, Ronald, how can people find you? Right. We’re going to have your book, in the show notes. But how do people, find all your articles and everything else?
Ronald Stein [00:45:31] You know, the best thing is just Ronald Stine. Google me. All over the internet. Like I say, I’m on America outline news. I’m a basically, contributor weekly. And work was to go out there on American Outlaw News. Just say Ronald Stein. Okay, pick a location you can pick, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, any of the articles you have. But, you know, you see my articles pop up and, so, yeah. So it’s kind of hard for me to hide from anybody.
Stuart Turley [00:46:02] Yeah. And that’s why I need a, a Tesla, Cybertruck. Because it’s.
Ronald Stein [00:46:07] Oh, that’s right.
Stuart Turley [00:46:08] So you and I go to lunch sometime, I’m going to have to, you know, show up in the Cybertruck so people don’t be protected. Well, thank you for stopping by the bodyguards around.
Ronald Stein [00:46:19] And I still have a great day.
Stuart Turley [00:46:21] Hey Talk to you soon.
Energy News Beat