The Podcast Hosts for The Energy Realities
Energy Consulting Specialist
Stuart Turley
President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host
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David Blackmon LinkedIn
The Crude Truth with Rey Trevino
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Energy Transition Weekly Conversation
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Irina Slav LinkedIn
Energy Realities – Living Without Plastic
Stuart Turley [00:00:04] Okay. It looks like we’re getting ready to rumble here, and let’s do this. All right. Hey. Welcome, everybody, to the Energy Realities Monday Morning of Life podcast. We have an action packed show today. And I’ll tell you what. It’s kind of wild when you sit back and think that it is actually 8:00 in Texas. Oklahoma. But it is also we’ve got Tammy Nemeth from the UK and or Canada. I’m not sure what part of the world she’s in. Tammi, where are you at today?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:47] I’m in the UK today.
Stuart Turley [00:00:49] Oh, man. What time is it there?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:52] It is 2 p.m..
Stuart Turley [00:00:54] Nice. Then we have also we have the Irina Slav. She is in Bulgaria and weary. What time is it there in Bulgaria?
Irina Slav [00:01:03] It’s 4 p.m..
Stuart Turley [00:01:05] 4 p.m.?
Irina Slav [00:01:06] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:01:07] And I tell you, at least you look great today. You’ve got your garden hat in the back going on and doing any gardening over the weekend.
Irina Slav [00:01:17] Oh, yeah. I did a lot of gardening over the weekend. Yeah. Have quite a bit. Of Things planted and they need taking care of this, their carbon footprint, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:01:28] Oh yes. I need to do everything I can to offset my, horrific problem here. And then we have the David Blackmon. I mean, David Blackmon is a legend in his own mind, and I. David, how are you today? And are you in Texas?
David Blackmon [00:01:44] Yeah, it’s 615 here in, Mansfield. Oh, no, it’s 8:03. Okay. We’re a little late, but what? Yeah. You’re in Mansfield, Texas.
Stuart Turley [00:01:57] It’s 6:15 a.m..
David Blackmon [00:02:00] No, it’s 8:03, according to my computer.
Stuart Turley [00:02:04] Okay, just checking because we are off to a wonderful start today.
David Blackmon [00:02:09] Well, I’ll tell you what.
Stuart Turley [00:02:12] We are going to have some serious fun. And on our show today, I’ll tell you what, we’ve got some crazy things going on around the world. Could we live without plastic? I think that we should do a better job, getting rid of our plastic and having it actually recyclable. But what is life without plastic? Let me show this one video here. This is an oldie but a
Stuart Turley [00:02:53] Yeah. There’s a lot of plastic one. I think all of us would be in trouble. No glasses. I love. I don’t like that. I don’t want to see my neighborhood .
Video Speaker 1 [00:03:32] Have you ever considered how much your world depends on petroleum based products?
Irina Slav [00:03:41] Such oil propaganda. This is outrageous.
David Blackmon [00:03:44] Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:03:45] It. That’s what our discussion is today. And, you know, propaganda is one thing. But when you sit back and take a look, do you always at the store, Tammy in the UK, does somebody come up and say, paper or plastic when you’re shopping? Do they ask, is it a paper bag or is it a plastic bag?
Tammy Nemeth [00:04:06] If you it depends on what store you go to. So, there are some stores where they only offer paper bags. And in Britain, that’s kind of a bad idea because, you know, it’s raining here all the time. We had 1.5in over the weekend. And so you go to the store, they give you a paper bag, and then you need to put an umbrella made of petroleum products over the bag so it doesn’t disintegrate in the rain. And then at the supermarket, they no longer have the little the little bags, the sink, what they call single use. But no one I know ever used them once. It was like they were using it all the time for different things. So now you have to buy the super reinforced plastic ones. And, the grocery stores charge you like 50 £0.50 for every of these reinforced bags. And, so, yeah, I mean, and now they want to get rid of them. So there was a really terrible story in the Daily Mail this morning where it went on and on and on about how grocery stores are making so much money off of these extra strong plastic bags, and people forget them and they have to buy more. And it’s really bad. And they tracked, the one of the major supermarkets. They put a tracker in one of the bags because they say they recycle them, and they actually shipped them over to Poland, where they’re burned in an incinerator to create power for people in Poland. And I’m like, well, why can’t you do that here? They have incinerators in the UK. Why wouldn’t they just send them to the, the, the British incinerators instead of shipping them with all their carbon footprint over to Poland?
Irina Slav [00:05:48] Yeah. Because it it releases emissions and Poland’s lost cause anyway with all their coal, you know, for power generation. So it won’t get so noticed in Poland as well.
Tammy Nemeth [00:06:01] Maybe
Irina Slav [00:06:03] Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:06:06] It’s just it’s madness. It’s absolute madness. You know, the city of Austin, eliminated paper bags from grocery stores and. Fine, whatever they do, fill up landfills. There’s no doubt about that. But, you know, then they found out, there was a study conducted. I don’t remember if it was at the University of Texas or another Texas university. They found that the carbon footprint of the paper bags is actually larger than the carbon footprint of the plastic packs. And so, that leaves you with a conundrum. And then, of course, the next step is to force you to use the permanent bags, right? The the ones you pay, you’re paying £0.50 for. And in England, they cost $2 at Whole Foods. If you want to buy one at Whole Foods, well, they’re made from all products too. They’re made from polyester. Nylon. And and, you know, artificial materials, made from petroleum. So, I mean, what are you really gaining? I don’t think you’re really gaining anything by banning the plastic bags. You know, the only real answer here is, is for people to be responsible, right. And so when I go to the grocery store instead of, you know, you, when you go into the produce part of the store, you have all these roller things with the little very thin, sheer plastic bags. Put your vegetables in. Well, I try not to use those, okay. But that that creates a little bit of a of a pile up at the checkout counter because you’ve got eight onions. You got to pile all those onions up there on the counter. And then it takes the lady all kinds of time to put them on the machine to weigh, and so that creates problems of its own. But, you know, we all should be responsible, I think about, you know, minimizing our plastic use to the extent we can. But the thought that there are alternatives that are in any way cost effective are scalable. In our current society today to replace our plastic use is is ludicrous. You can’t do it. There’s no way we could do that, even with the computers we’re using to record this podcast, right? I mean, what what’s what’s Apple going to do? What are they going to do to build computers without plastics? You can’t do it. There’s no viable alternative to plastics for a million different things we use every day. So, you know.
Irina Slav [00:08:37] Maybe they’ll try to recycleIt when. That’s possible.
David Blackmon [00:08:40] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:08:42] Well, let’s do, when President Xi takes, China. What are we going to do? How are we going to build computers without chips? I don’t think.
David Blackmon [00:08:55] That’s a good point.
Irina Slav [00:08:55] Then the internet will die, and we’ll see how life is without the internet. Which is, I think, a safer option than life without plastics.
Stuart Turley [00:09:05] Life without plastics. Nice. Yeah. Well,
Irina Slav [00:09:10] The internet will be healthier.
Stuart Turley [00:09:17] Here’s a comment from Joe.
Irina Slav [00:09:21] Hello, Joanna.
Stuart Turley [00:09:24] We love Joanna.
David Blackmon [00:09:24] Oh, gosh.
Irina Slav [00:09:25] Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
David Blackmon [00:09:27] they do that off and on.
Irina Slav [00:09:29] And, and toilet paper is sold in plastic packaging, right. So nearly everything in supermarkets.
David Blackmon [00:09:39] My favorite was when the rock singer or the pop singer, was it Alanis Morissette 10 or 12 years ago? Because this goes in cycles. They talk about toilet paper periodically. And, I think it was Alanis Morissette said that, you know, you should only use one square of toilet paper whenever you need to use toilet paper. One square.
Irina Slav [00:10:01] To like please.
David Blackmon [00:10:03] Yeah. To to cut your your paper use. Right. Well and then do that.
Irina Slav [00:10:08] It’s it’s all.
David Blackmon [00:10:09] That’s I mean yeah. They’re not living in my reality. That’s all I can say.
Irina Slav [00:10:14] Well well yeah I am I guess we can use anything, you know, except food. And like a lot of people, I have a full, you know, I have a stack of, plastic bags that I reuse because we, we somehow accumulate them, even though we do use durable cane for, weekly shopping and shop and.
David Blackmon [00:10:42] Sure.
Irina Slav [00:10:44] And that’s great. I like multiple use things, but we have this drawer, the plastic bag drawer. I think a lot of families in Europe have them. It’s a draw that especially dedicated to plastic bags because they always come in handy for some purpose or another, even if it’s the kitty litter. And now I’m thinking that cats are bad because you need to clean that kitty litter. Okay, my my cat is mostly outdoors, but he does have days in the house for when it’s raining and I cannot collect its contents in my hands. You know, I have to use a plastic bag and these go straight to the landfill. And now I feel extremely guilty about having a cat. Not to mention that his food pouches are also made of plastic.
David Blackmon [00:11:37] So what I’m hearing there, here is the solution. Right now our solution is cat owners is to what? Kill the cats, right? But then they got to go.
Irina Slav [00:11:48] To avoid waste.
David Blackmon [00:11:50] Right? To avoid plastic waste. Yes.
Irina Slav [00:11:52] Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:11:53] And this conversation is lurching off into really dark territory. No, no, it’s my fault.
Tammy Nemeth [00:12:01] But okay, so this comes back to.
Stuart Turley [00:12:03] Let’s go to the.
Tammy Nemeth [00:12:04] The issue of trade offs. Because in all too often transition conversations, they don’t want to talk about trade offs. And everything we do is a trade off. So it’s like okay yes I might have to put that that cat poo in a little plastic bag or, or something. Maybe it should get incinerated. Maybe there’s, there should be options for that or whatever. But the alternative is that it helps with your mental health and your quality of life to have a pet and to then deprive people of that, especially older people. It’s, yeah, I, I there’s a comment here from a user. Potty train
David Blackmon [00:12:45] To potty train my cat. Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:12:47] I mean.
Stuart Turley [00:12:50] My wife’s tried to potty train me for years. But I tell you what. As a husband, I put the c lid down. Okay, so, you know, I put the toilet seat down. I’m. I’m trained.
David Blackmon [00:13:05] How many years. Did it take you to get to that point, though?
Stuart Turley [00:13:09] Many.
Tammy Nemeth [00:13:10] Can I add to Joanna’s Joanna’s point here, which was, I wonder when they’re going to hit the toilet paper in its footprint. And I know you guys were just talking about that, but it’s interesting that before the pandemic, there was a move by NRDC and some of the other really big environmental groups to try and get toilet paper banned, or at least you have to use recycled wood or something like this. And they were making a case that the boreal forest in Canada was being cut down for toilet paper. Then the pandemic hit and everybody, the first thing they did was stock up on toilet. And then it was the environmental groups realized, oh, wait a second, people have quite an attachment to toilet paper. Maybe we should back off on this. So although they’ve updated the Nddc, has updated its banning toilet paper report or whatever their report card on it. It’s really low down on the totem pole of priorities for the environmental groups at this time. But, you know, if they keep bringing in rules and regulations against paper companies and forestry companies and the toilet paper may end up just kind of remove it being removed from the economy because the forestry companies aren’t allowed to cut down the trees in order to make the toilet paper.
David Blackmon [00:14:32] Right.
Stuart Turley [00:14:35] This brings up two very important videos that we have teed up for today. And, actually this one, this first one is David as he’s getting ready for the. I got a video of him yesterday preparing for today’s show. So, let’s go ahead and bring David Blackmon up here.
David Blackmon [00:14:54] Look at the really fine form. OH, wait.
Stuart Turley [00:14:59] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
David Blackmon [00:15:01] Oh, yeah thats good form
Stuart Turley [00:15:06] Yeah. I want to give David Blackmon your shout out for really getting after it there. But communication is critical and this video is pretty funny.
Irina Slav [00:15:37] Well, that’s certainly alternative to. You know. The plastic sticks.
David Blackmon [00:15:43] Yeah, exactly. You didn’t use a plastic
Irina Slav [00:15:48] sustainable. Unless, of.
Stuart Turley [00:15:50] you didn’t use. No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to substitute, you know, toilet paper for my hand. But let’s go to the next video. This one’s about a minute long. How many of you, really use, Starbucks? Have you thought about the microplastics that are in coffee cups? Because if you have a cup of coffee and it’s paper, why does it not bleed through? I found this just, head splitter. And I’m going to add this one here. It’s about one minute. So bear with us as we go through this.
Video Speaker 2 [00:16:33] Let’s talk about those.
Video Speaker 3 [00:16:34] A paper cup by nature should absorb water. If it’s not absorbing water, then that means there must be a barrier in between the paper and the liquid. And that barrier is polyethylene plastic. A study found that in 15 minutes of contact with hot liquids, these 25,000 microplastic particles into your cup. But no one’s questioning this. No one’s really thinking about it because it’s just part of our daily lives.
Video Speaker 2 [00:16:57] Are we very good at metabolizing plastics?
Video Speaker 3 [00:16:59] No. Plastic is a foreign body. It’s a foreign particle. In fact, it’ll break down into nano plastics. And nanoparticles in general have the issue of being able to penetrate cell membranes so it can penetrate very deeply into the cell. It can cause inflammation. Your body doesn’t know how to deal with it. It’s a foreign object. So you’ll get the inflammatory response when you encounter these. Or to make things worse, the monkey. But they also release plasticizer chemicals when they’re in contact with your body. And they can also carry toxic chemicals into your body.
Video Speaker 2 [00:17:34] The fact that they can basically invade and integrate into our cells and you are what you eat. Are we turning into real life Barbie candles?
Video Speaker 3 [00:17:41] We could be, because there’s actually microplastics that have been detected in human lung, blood and placenta. And who knows how much of this is getting into babies? Are babies being born with plastic in their body? Is, I would guesstimate. Yes.
Irina Slav [00:17:57] Good theory. But there’s very good point about paper cups. How papery are they? All holding liquids.
David Blackmon [00:18:07] Well, I, you know, again, there’s an easy solution to that too. Just don’t go to Starbucks.
Irina Slav [00:18:13] That’s the best solution. But it’s not just Starbucks, is it? Right? Yeah. I mean, paper cups are being represented as an alternative to plastic cups, a better alternative and more sustainable. And well, they’re not.
David Blackmon [00:18:32] Yeah. My claim there can’t be good for you, right? I mean, nobody I don’t think anybody is advocating consuming microplastics. Disclosure would be nice. You know, I mean, at least a company like you go to Sonic Drive-In here in the United States, and, they just bring their drinks in styrofoam cups. They don’t, you know, they’re not pretending to have paper cups, and they have plastic straws, you know, what do you think? The same thing is true of the straws that the California rolled out when they banned plastic straws. Those paper straws are made out of the exact same materials that Starbucks paper cup is made out of. Right? Because otherwise they wouldn’t work if they were pure paper. You could drink a liquid through a pure paper straw. And, even with the microplastics added to them, you you still end up with a soggy straw after about 20 minutes. So you have to drink your drink pretty quick.
Stuart Turley [00:19:33] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:19:34] System. You said there’s always a trade off, and we we need to decide what we’re willing to give up to gain something else. I don’t think we’re ready to give up plastics, because ultimately, life without plastic certainly is possible. People used to live without plastic for thousands and thousands of years. But what about quality of life? What about cost of living?
Tammy Nemeth [00:20:00] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:20:01] Because plastics make everything a lot more, a lot cheaper. I’m thinking food. I’m thinking consumer electronics. Everything that’s got plastics in it is cheaper than an equivalent without plastic, I think. And it’s really important, I think in, in food, I don’t care about soft drinks. This could be banned straight away. Why don’t they ban soft drinks? They’re disgusting. They’re bad for your health. They really. They are a major contributor to plastic waste. Yeah, if you think about it. But, you have fresh fruit and vegetables, which the EU voted us tummy told us on a few days ago. The EU just voted to to ban single use packaging for fresh fruit and vegetables. That’s the genius idea. Okay, we don’t have to eat out of season vegetables, but we like to eat them because in the middle of December, there’s nothing but, apples.
David Blackmon [00:21:03] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:21:04] For example. And it’s good to have some variety occasionally. And plastic packaging makes this affordable, relatively affordable to a lot of people. Remove the plastic packaging waste increases. As you pointed out in that conversation at the time, Tami, and everything will go up in price to make up for this increased waste, not to mention how much food will be thrown away. This makes me really angry.
Tammy Nemeth [00:21:36] Well, there’s that’s part of the contradiction in the EU, right? Because there they have this program where they want to reduce food waste. So then they bring in this thing where it says, okay, you can’t use packaging that will extend the life of your food, which will then create more food waste. I mean, what can you do when, when you have these, these contradictions that, that just destabilize it all and make it as absurd as, as everything that David always talks about on his energy, absurdities, articles every day. So, yeah, I know it’s it’s crazy. And then I think of meat. Are they going to go back to having wax paper or something to wrap your meat in, which then leaks all over your fridge and doesn’t last very long, versus having hamburger meat or whatever in a nice vacuum sealed, plastic, container. I mean, when we go and buy bulk meat or something, we portion it up and use a vacuum sealer to to preserve it longer in the freezer or whatever. So what about frozen vegetables? Are they going to say you can’t have packaging for frozen vegetables? Maybe we shouldn’t freeze vegetables anymore. So I am very concerned about where this all leads because first like for example, they’re doing this UN meeting in in or I guess it was last week in Canada to try to agree to this treaty on plastic pollution. And they always treat it all like it’s pollution. And we we care about the oceans and everything else, but it’s that thin end of the wedge or a slippery slope however you wish to describe it. Where they start with this, oh, we’re just want to stop pollution. And I agree, we shouldn’t have things tossed about. And there’s other ways to dispose of items, but it always ends up as something else, which is to ban the use eventually. Right? That’s probably the end goal. And if you look at, for example, Mike Bloomberg’s Beyond Petrochemical campaign, where he’s put something like, $85 million into this campaign to stop the use of petrochemicals, or he’s saying just to stop the expansion of the petrochemical industry. But you know, where that end is. The end is to not have it at all.
David Blackmon [00:23:59] Yeah. Yeah. And we we what gets lost a lot in these discussions about, you know, the things that are made from plastics that we use every day is, power transmission lines are filled with plastic materials.
Tammy Nemeth [00:24:13] Oh, Good point.
David Blackmon [00:24:15] You can’t you. Can’t deliver electricity without plastics. Now, it’s not possible anywhere in the world. You know, you can’t drive a car. You couldn’t have transportation. So all this talk about food would be, irrelevant, because you wouldn’t be able to transport the food to the supermarkets, and you wouldn’t be able to refrigerate the food in the supermarkets because, you know, the refrigerant, you know, in, in freezers and refrigerators are, you know, contained within, lines that are made largely with plastic and other materials. Yeah. So until you have viable solutions that are scalable and instantly available to replace all that, we’re stuck with plastics and we need to figure out the the question is not to to try to ban plastics, but try to more responsibly handle it and deal with it. On the ocean pollution question, we know that 90% of that comes from five different rivers in China and India that flow into the ocean, and that’s where the plastic waste comes from. We know that.
Irina Slav [00:25:19] Yeah. You was exporting that plastic waste to India, to China.
David Blackmon [00:25:23] So that’s right
Irina Slav [00:25:25] in time. So it’s not their own.
David Blackmon [00:25:28] No, I know. I know, but I’m just saying we know where the problem is. Right. And so, you know.
Irina Slav [00:25:34] As I say, we we should just be more responsible. It’s very difficult whoever you. We haven’t even we as a species, we haven’t even learned yet to dispose of the garbage in the appropriate receptacle. Maybe people keep throwing the the trash on the street still. I’d just like to address one comment, which is very interesting. So to me, as always though, there was paraffin wax to cool the insides of paper cups with like. Yeah, I’m sure there are alternatives. I’m sure not everyone is like. What was the name of that coffee chain?
Tammy Nemeth [00:26:16] Starbucks.
Irina Slav [00:26:18] No, not subway. Subway sandwiches. What you are talking about in a video clip.
Tammy Nemeth [00:26:24] Starbucks?
Irina Slav [00:26:25] Starbucks? Yes. Sorry. So I forget donuts anyway, but I don’t drink anything from Starbucks. So, yeah, I’m sure there are alternatives, but I’m willing to bet that it is cheaper to call it with polyethylene because plastic products are so much cheaper. It doesn’t mean that everybody is doing it, but many are. So yeah, thousands.
David Blackmon [00:26:51] And what is wax? Paraffin. It’s a petroleum product.
Stuart Turley [00:26:57] Unless you get it from.
David Blackmon [00:26:57] Yeah. I mean it’s.
Stuart Turley [00:27:03] earwax is not healthy.
David Blackmon [00:27:05] No earwax is not a petroleum. As far as I know.
Irina Slav [00:27:09] Beeswax? Probably, but that would make it more expensive.
David Blackmon [00:27:12] Yeah, yeah. The the missing molecule turned plastics into mar.
Stuart Turley [00:27:19] Patrick.
Irina Slav [00:27:22] Was plastic.
David Blackmon [00:27:24] I think that’s why I have four stents in my heart.
Tammy Nemeth [00:27:29] But again, it comes to trade offs, right? So if we’ve got I think one of the interesting things with the whole plastic recycling issue and the West sending developed countries, sending their plastics to these other jurisdictions, those other jurisdictions were promising to recycle them. And so. They didn’t. They they found out they couldn’t didn’t, didn’t want to, didn’t invest in whatever. And but then again, it comes down to this whole idea of, incineration. So if there are certain plastics that can’t be recycled, then why not incinerate them? But there’s this complete hate on for incineration. And yet I know that there there’s power generating stations in Germany that are from incineration. And my understanding is that the Netherlands started incinerating their garbage and we’re importing it from other places. So there’s a solution. It just depends. Do we want to do it? And it sounds like, no, the environmental groups don’t want incineration. They just don’t want us to use it.
Irina Slav [00:28:39] Of course they wouldn’t want incineration. Think about all those emissions, all that smoke.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:44] But the scrubber.
Irina Slav [00:28:46] It’s always better to just keep them in a landfill, you know? Yeah, because recycling is not always profitable. This is what we learned the hard way. That’s why I’m very well, relatively small percentage of plastics are being recycled because it stops being profitable at certain point, which is what recyclers in Europe discovered. Recyclers in the US discovered and probably recycles in in China and India.
Tammy Nemeth [00:29:18] Well then. Plus, when you recycle it, there’s no guarantee that when you reconstitute it into something else, it will be as durable or equal.
Irina Slav [00:29:27] They always mix it with new plastic when they make the new packaging. Yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:29:33] Yeah, it’s the same thing with fabrics or. Yeah. Or, any materials. So. Do what we can. But then once you can’t do that.
Stuart Turley [00:29:45] The one thing that I have seen.
David Blackmon [00:29:48] Go ahead, Stu. We seem to have a time difference in the according.
Stuart Turley [00:29:52] For the entire recycling. Yeah. I’m not sure what’s going on. I think it’s me. But when you sit back and look. There is a recycling problem with with windmills, with solar panels and plastics. And we. Major issue. I think it’s me.
David Blackmon [00:30:21] I think it is.
Stuart Turley [00:30:21] Yeah. Anyway. So anyway, we do have some major issues with recycling and recycling and land reclamation is critical. Call on this. Let me go ahead and throw up the the screen here. And since I’m having some screen issues, let’s go here. This is.
Irina Slav [00:30:48] These are mine.
Stuart Turley [00:30:51] Irina’s.
Irina Slav [00:30:52] Yeah. Yeah, these are mine. So. Oh, no. Oh. On our topic about plastics and plastic bans. I thought it was interesting. Nestlé is suffering, declining sales of its frozen pizza and other frozen products. That got me thinking. These must be some of the more affordable products of the company. Yeah, and if people can’t afford them, what happens when single use plastic packaging for foods is banned? I think this will serve a much more significant decline in sales and profits as a result of this.
David Blackmon [00:31:35] Yeah. Any food company?
Irina Slav [00:31:37] Any food company would. Yeah. But especially the big ones because they basically control the market just but it’s a handful of companies. That the other, the other headline has nothing to do with plastics. Basically, it’s just funny. I like all headlines about artificial intelligence and electricity use, and there have been so many of them recently. So air conditioning, air conditioning and, demanding more of the world’s power. Renewables can’t keep up.
David Blackmon [00:32:08] Who could have. Picked at that?
Tammy Nemeth [00:32:09] Who could have guessed that.
David Blackmon [00:32:10] Nobody could have seen that
Irina Slav [00:32:12] Shocking revelation, right?
David Blackmon [00:32:13] My God.
Irina Slav [00:32:13] Nobody could have predicted, even if we didn’t have all these big tech companies working on AI. Oh my God. Yeah. That’s all it was humorous. That’s why.
David Blackmon [00:32:26] It’s hilarious. And, you know, on the topic of air conditioning and cooling food and freezing, in Europe, you know, they’re they’re looking to replace the current, what is it? Whoops. Man, we’d lost everybody all of a sudden. Here we are now we’re back. So what is the current coolant? Is it our 25, 40 something like that, that we’re using and air conditioners and, and, industrial, coolers and freezers, in, in Europe, and and in the United States as well. One of the, alternatives for coolant that’s, being explored as a viable substitute is. Guess what? Carbon dioxide.
Irina Slav [00:33:09] Oh, yeah.
David Blackmon [00:33:10] Yeah, yeah. Which loses its effectiveness at temperatures above 80 degrees. Right. It loses its effectiveness as a coolant. So, in summertime, you’re going to have to find something else to work with the air conditioner in your freezer. But anyway, that just is an aside.
Tammy Nemeth [00:33:28] But the AI issue is very fascinating because I suppose to be monitoring everything our energy use and make sure that the grid is stable and all this kind of thing. So how much.
Irina Slav [00:33:39] You and I’m living in.
Tammy Nemeth [00:33:41] Right, right. So it’s going to consume all this energy to make sure that we are using as much energy.
David Blackmon [00:33:47] Yeah. You just can’t learn any stuff. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. You can’t buy entertainment like this, can you?
Irina Slav [00:33:58] No, no.
David Blackmon [00:34:01] Stu your back. Are we on the same timeline this time?
Stuart Turley [00:34:04] I think we I think we are.
David Blackmon [00:34:06] Okay, good, good.
Stuart Turley [00:34:07] Yeah. I got my hair parted, so I think that was part of the problem. Are we.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:14] Throwing off the signal?
Stuart Turley [00:34:16] Yeah, it was all the, static electricity when I was rubbing my flesh there. Are we. Do we get both of these now? I’m sorry.
David Blackmon [00:34:25] Yes.
Irina Slav [00:34:25] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:34:27] Okay. Let’s go to the next slide here if I can. Outfits. There we go. There you go. Yeah, these are mine. I just want to give a shout out to Ocean Integrity with Captain Kieran Kelly. He is one cool cat. He has a bazillion followers, but yet he has done over, 3 billion pounds of waste and plastic being removed from the ocean. Through jobs. He helps create jobs. And he was on my podcast. And I just really, really want to give him a shout out for not only just taking plastic as a problem, but creating jobs, that we can then recycle these plastics and pulling them out of the ocean and then, making things out of those again. So go follow Captain Kieran Kelly, on LinkedIn. And he is just one cool cat. And. The. The, he, on my podcast. He was also, really cool on it. This article, the, global study just revealed, the biggest polluters, clogging the streams. David, what cities did you say it was at?
David Blackmon [00:36:05] There’s five. Rivers in in China and India where most of the ocean plastics, come out of those river basins.
Stuart Turley [00:36:12] The biggest contributor to plastic was Coca Cola, which accounted for 11% of the branded plastic pollution worldwide. Holy smokes, Batman, I, I don’t like Coca-Cola anyway. I have anybody seen a hazmat suit? Yeah, right. Those are not good. Guess what they wear when they go put the aspartame and everything else into the chemicals. Here is a that of Coca Cola. And then here’s Coca Cola either zero or sugar free. They shovel all these, poisons into the sugar free. No executive at Coca Cola will drink. And. Sugar free Coca Cola because they know what’s in it. So I found that this was very, very, very, filling in that or telling in this Nestlé was, trying to also reduce its plastic by one third in recycling. I think the key for us as a society around the world is to think about how to. Recycle these things and really do it. Another article that came out was also saying, even though it’s recyclable. They all end up in the same place, that, Irina, a landfill. I mean, they’re not being recycled.
David Blackmon [00:37:53] Right.
Irina Slav [00:37:54] Yeah. Actually, I now remember some environmentalist. Oh, well, he wasn’t an environmentalist, but just common sense. Got somewhere on social media. He was saying that because, we can’t recycle even even half of the plastic waste we produce. We’d better both put them in a landfill, then incinerate them. Because of all the smoke that comes from incineration. I can’t remember the name. Do you remember it? It made quite a splash when I saw it. But we have to find a way to deal with them. They do degrade. It just takes longer for for plastics to degrade. And there’s this worry that they can leak into underground water and whatever. But this guy was saying that it’s better to put them in landfills instead of incinerating them, because we can’t recycle them. Whatever. We, we, you know, separate when we separate, trash. What we separate as recyclable, and it doesn’t all end up in a recycling plant its ends up in an incinerator.
David Blackmon [00:39:07] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:39:08] So apparently landfill is better than incinerator from his perspective. It’s so complicated, isn’t it?
David Blackmon [00:39:15] It’s very complicated. And, just as an aside, the state of California is about to launch another lawfare effort targeting Exxon and other big oil companies, claiming that they spent 30 years exaggerating the capacity for recycling plastic waste. Okay. Well, I would just ask people to to think back through your lives over the last 30 years at what entity has has spread the most propaganda about recycling in your life? It hasn’t been the oil companies. It’s been your city government and your state government. Okay. They’re the ones who force you to use three different bands to separate your trash and put them out by the curb on the pretense that the one in the green band is going to go to a recycling center. Well. The city of Houston was for several years ago to stop doing that because everyone finally figured out that none of that was going to a recycling center. Okay. The recycling centers are overwhelmed. It hasn’t been the oil companies spreading that propaganda. It’s been your city and state governments. So that’s just my rant for today on this subject.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:33] Can I add to that? So those really big wheelie bins that they, they have at everyone’s house, they’re made of plastic. Are we going to go back to that?
David Blackmon [00:40:43] Yeah, exactly.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:45] We’ll have all these aluminum ones or steel steel bins.
David Blackmon [00:40:51] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:40:51] Well we have one in our yard. It’s very, very old.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:55] Is it all rusted? Galvanized.
Irina Slav [00:40:58] And it’s not in use.
David Blackmon [00:41:01] There’s a stainless steel cabinet. Galvanized steel. Or is it?
Irina Slav [00:41:05] I think so. It’s really heavy, so I don’t think it’s aluminum.
David Blackmon [00:41:10] But it’s not rusting.
Irina Slav [00:41:12] I haven’t checked it recently.
David Blackmon [00:41:15] I mean, not.
Irina Slav [00:41:16] Much, but last time I saw it wasn’t rusting. But it’s like 30 years old.
David Blackmon [00:41:23] Yeah, yeah.
Irina Slav [00:41:24] These are.
David Blackmon [00:41:25] So much part of chemical process that these constitute plastics to be. More recyclable. Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:41:32] You know what I think, guys, when I put this up and we have Patrick Devine’s picture over mine, I suddenly look a lot better. You know, on the screen. You know, I think Patrick looks a lot better than I do. And here’s here’s another one from Patrick.
David Blackmon [00:41:51] Yeah. Coca-Cola originally had cocaine in it. Yes. And a lot of people were pretty angry when they had to take it out.
Tammy Nemeth [00:41:59] Oh, we’ll get this 7up. My son was researching lithium, and it turns out that in the I think it was in the postwar period, 7UP had lithium in it, and it was used as a sirup because lithium is is known to, help bipolar disorder and mood disorders but it was they used to have it in 7Up when it was considered a healthy drink.
David Blackmon [00:42:22] Yeah. Well, you know, it. Was renewable then it could have lithium in it. It was rechargeable.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:28] That’s what I was thinking.
David Blackmon [00:42:30] Yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:33] Rechargeable drinks?
David Blackmon [00:42:35] Yeah. Why not?
Irina Slav [00:42:36] Recharging the lithium. Solution? Less likely a psychiatric treatment of some very serious disorders.
David Blackmon [00:42:43] Yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:43] It did. Yeah, it’s quite remarkable.
David Blackmon [00:42:46] Okay PatricK.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:46] You know,.
David Blackmon [00:42:47] Claiming That’s not his photo, actually. Okay. All right.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:50] I see your photo. I just see a big gray blob.
David Blackmon [00:42:54] You don’t see. Patrick’s picture there?
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:56] No, I don’t see a picture.
Irina Slav [00:42:57] He’s smiling widely.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:59] I don’t know, can. You guys get a picture.
David Blackmon [00:43:02] In a nice jacket? Okay. He looks great. You look great, Patrick. Even if it’s not your picture. Oh, gosh.
Tammy Nemeth [00:43:10] This was a complicated issue. And you know, when they talk about. Too bad someone doesn’t do research. Well, why isn’t there being research done? You know, where’s the real scientists out there who are curious, who are looking for solutions and not just ways to demonize something? Where are they?
David Blackmon [00:43:31] I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to any of that. Oh, those articles or minds, do I guess, I forgot I submitted that California lawsuit article to you to put up there, so I’ve already concluded my rant on that. What was the other one?
David Blackmon [00:43:50] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:43:51] All plans.
David Blackmon [00:43:52] oh. Stu. We’ve lost. Lost two again? Oh, there we go.
David Blackmon [00:43:57] Well. Oh, the power plant.
Stuart Turley [00:43:59] Yeah, this was the power plant. Am I having issues.
David Blackmon [00:44:08] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:44:09] Yeah, yeah. This was a yeah. This wasn’t an issue that just came around on the whole thing. David, I loved your Substack. By the way, please follow, David Blackmon on his Substack and Irina Slav on her Substack. Irina Slav at Substack dot Com and David blackmon.substack.com. And Tammy is her podcast is the Nemeth Report. So, anyway,.
David Blackmon [00:44:35] And what’s your Stu?
Stuart Turley [00:44:37] the energy news beat substack.com. So. Okay. David, what were your thoughts on this one?
David Blackmon [00:44:48] Oh, well, the power plant thing. Yeah. It’s not really related to plastics, but, the Biden, Biden, EPA issued, another what they call the, quote, Clean Power plan replay of the Obama administration’s Clean Power plan, only more ridiculous. And, it’s under the Clean Air Act. And the point I made in the story is, is that, under the Clean Air Act, you have to when you when you regulate something like this at the EPA, they have to, suggest the best available tech proven technology to capture the emissions they’re trying to capture. And this is a crackdown on, on, coal and natural and natural gas fired power plants, not just coal. And so what they suggest is what they’re going to mandate is if you want to keep your coal plant and your natural gas plant running, if they meet, exceed certain thresholds of emissions, you’re going to have to, build a carbon capture and storage project to capture the emissions to bring them below that threshold. Well, there isn’t a single example. In the United States or anywhere, apparently. Of course, being used in conjunction with a natural gas power plant. Okay. Anywhere on Earth. So that that’s not a proven technology. First of all, on coal plants, it’s been tried five different coal plants in the United States and been a miserable failure. Okay, so that’s the new EPA regulation on emissions from coal and natural gas plants. And it’s going to be sued. It’s going to be massive lawsuits. Probably 25 attorney generals around the country are going to sue EPA in addition to all the people in the industries. And, and it’s going to get overturned, just like Obama’s Clean Power plan got overturned by the federal courts. And it’s just it’s this massive waste of time and energy and, and millions and millions of dollars over the next 3 or 4 years are going to be consumed. It’s going to be a great cottage industry for for the legal profession. And, at the end of the day, it’s going to get overturned, just like Obama’s plan did. And the next EPA and the next Democratic administration will try again. And that’s that’s my rant on that one. You put me in a bad, mad mood, Stu.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:17] You chose the stories.
David Blackmon [00:47:19] I know, I know. This is a carbon capture. Waste of our tax dollars.
Stuart Turley [00:47:27] We love Joanna. Let’s go to the next one here. Now, I think that this really does play into this because recycling and waste to energy is critical. Just we have waste for government. I believe these are Tammy’s. Is that right?
Irina Slav [00:47:45] Oh, this is a horror story of first headline.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:49] Yeah. So, Canada, our liberal NDP coalition in Canada, has established a plastics registry. And so companies that produce any kind of plastics. And the list is as long as your arm have to account for where they’re selling it. What those sellers are doing with it and what the plan is for disposal. And I really don’t know how they expect companies to track the disposal. So let’s say you you have plastic wrap that goes like you sell, you know, the plastic racket wrap in the tube that you roll out, you use it for your own foods or whatever. So how is a company supposed to know what you’ve done with that? No. And what if it’s. It could be recycled, but you don’t know whether or not someone has actually recycled it, like the disposable or the little plastic parts of yogurt. So how how is that manufacturer supposed to know how much of it has actually been recycled? And then apparently they also want the municipalities and like the towns and cities or whatever to keep track of how much plastic is actually being collected, how much has been sold in their jurisdiction. I mean, it’s just it’s insane. And they have this.
Irina Slav [00:49:10] Place that can totally. Sorry for interrupting you. Just quickly. They can put little trackers in every single plastic bag. Single plastic.
David Blackmon [00:49:20] Like those. Luggage tag things, right?
Irina Slav [00:49:22] Yeah. It’s just, you know.
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:25] So. But.
Irina Slav [00:49:25] Well. But then they looked at all.
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:27] right. It was so let’s say they do that without any RF. For outfit tags on everything. So what’s the material cost of that? Who’s keeping track of that information. What’s the energy requirement to track that information. And what are you going to do with it. Right. So apparently the whole point of the registry is so they know where how much plastics are being used in Canadian society and what happens to it afterwards. I mean, it’s ludicrous. So they did a consultation period. The manufacturer said, this is crazy. How are we supposed to do this? Municipalities said the same thing and they went forward anyway because they had all the environmental groups are on their side, produce reports and whatever, saying this is absolutely necessary for the transition. So. That’s Canada. And then in the UK, you know, the, the Labor Party, which is the government in waiting apparently. I have a whole list of things they want to nationalize. And the most recent is the rail industry. So back I don’t know, 30
David Blackmon [00:50:40] Worked So well in the United States. So yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:50:42] Right. I mean 40 years ago they national are they they privatized they privatized it. It’s a mess apparently. And whatever. So now they’re going to renationalize it. They want to create a new energy company called GB Great Britain Energy that’s going to nationalize all the renewables, all the transmission. Right. And and then there’s maybe they, they, they would nationalize the oil and gas that, that that’s in the North Sea to shut it down because apparently by 2030 they’re saying, there’s going to be no oil and gas used in the UK. That’s the that’s the labor now. So if you read their platform, holy crap, what are they doing is amazing.
David Blackmon [00:51:32] So so the UK is basically going to return to the era of Queen Victoria. I mean, that’s.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:38] Not even that’s going to be. No, because Queen Victoria there was actually.
Irina Slav [00:51:43] You had the.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:43] Victorian builders who built stuff. This will be, I think, back to the Middle Ages where there’s they they can’t build anything. They was there was a recent story about the smokers. They had the they announced there was going to be this competition for smokers in 2015. It was about eight months ago that they actually put together a panel that would review the different things. And Rolls-Royces said, well, it’s taking too long. We were going to build these two manufacturing facilities in the UK, but now we’re just going to buy stuff off the shelf from somewhere else, and now we’re only going to have this other, this other unit because we don’t know what’s happening. We don’t know if we have approvals to go forward. So no, not Victorian because Victorians actually got stuff done. They still built this structure. They can’t do that anymore.
David Blackmon [00:52:38] My goodness.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:39] So that’s my rant.
David Blackmon [00:52:43] It’s just all so depressing. Just really.
Irina Slav [00:52:48] Really hates any of.
David Blackmon [00:52:49] You are crazy. Infuriating.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:50] Infuriating.
David Blackmon [00:52:51] yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:52] You’re absolutely right, Irina. Because we have this amazing standard of living. And like we talked about last week, we’ve never had it better and everything else and and it’s like we’re just throwing it away.
David Blackmon [00:53:03] Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:53:05] Yeah. And people like this Guilbault guy are treated as serious people. The guy’s a circus clown. Okay? He’s an idiot.
Irina Slav [00:53:14] How his name.
David Blackmon [00:53:15] Even know this? Is it. Guilbault? Djibo.
Tammy Nemeth [00:53:19] Guilbault.
Stuart Turley [00:53:20] Guilbault.
Irina Slav [00:53:22] And that’s an insult to the species?
David Blackmon [00:53:25] Yeah. It’s just. Anyway.
Tammy Nemeth [00:53:29] Well, you know, that’s what happens when an activist gets power.
David Blackmon [00:53:32] Yep.
Irina Slav [00:53:33] Yeah. Apparently. Should be a cautionary tale for future generations.
David Blackmon [00:53:37] This. Yeah. You. Yeah. Okay. We better start before I. Yeah, sure. Get a headache.
Tammy Nemeth [00:53:50] So conclusions Stu.
Stuart Turley [00:53:52] Well. Conclusion is, Tammy. And thanks for bringing that up. I’ll tell you, this was a lot of fun. And I think that this scratches the surface of the biggest problem. The biggest problem is communication. Who’s in power? And I think that. Do. What?
Irina Slav [00:54:13] Why do these people hate us so much? I mean, with a.
Stuart Turley [00:54:20] And and it’s we. You know what? Show me a good oil man or a good oil woman. And I guarantee you they’re a ecologist. I mean, it’s like a hunter. Everybody says hunters in the US. Hunters in the U.S for the most ecologically, friendly people on the planet, they take care of the environment. You have to, harvest the deer herd and do it properly. I am a ecological kind of guy, and it drives me nuts when I see all these people on college campuses, putting all their trash in their tents everywhere, you know, and saying, oh, in the name of, something stupid. So buckle up.
David Blackmon [00:55:13] Travis Lynn hits the nail on the head with this comment. This is the key to everything. Was classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This is the the gas that is the foundation of all life on planet Earth. And we gave the EPA the power to regulate it as a pollutant. And that will be the downfall of our society unless we, clean it up somehow.
Tammy Nemeth [00:55:44] And and it also lists it as a pollutant unto the toxic substances.
David Blackmon [00:55:49] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:55:49] Well, the Carbon Coalition is absolutely. Who? And Gregory. Right. Stone over there. I’ve interviewed him 2 or 3 times, and, over at the, I’ll get him on the podcast as well as Fritz Dunning. He has now found, this, is that the climate activists have gotten in and figured out a way to say that we are now in a hotter summer because they are modifying the sensors that are, in the Antarctic.
Irina Slav [00:56:28] Oh, yeah. The breaking data.
Stuart Turley [00:56:30] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:56:31] The data making up numbers.
David Blackmon [00:56:34] Although we’ve been doing that at Nova here in the United States for 15 years. So, yeah, Obama took office.
Stuart Turley [00:56:42] So, we do have some, great things coming around the corner here. And for the last word for today, Irina, let’s go around the horn. What are your thoughts for closing us out?
Irina Slav [00:56:52] I think Johnsons will win because these miserable bastards will just fail spectacularly, because they are rushing everything and they are being way too vocal about it. They’re not hiding anything anymore. They’re bound to fail.
David Blackmon [00:57:10] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:57:11] So I’m an optimist.
Stuart Turley [00:57:12] I knew I love.
Irina Slav [00:57:14] An optimist.
Stuart Turley [00:57:16] David. You’re. I mean, David, you are hit it out of the park again. And I love everything that you’ve got writing. What are your last thoughts here?
David Blackmon [00:57:27] I’m a long term optimist. In the short to mid-term, we’re going to have a massive energy crisis because of all of this. And probably a lot of people are going to lose their lives as a result of it. And, you know, when the fingers start pointing, we can all point them at ourselves for electing these idiots to office.
Stuart Turley [00:57:47] Well, your well said Tammy about you.
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:51] I agree with Irina. I think at some point, the rubber hits the road and unfortunately, I’m an optimist that things will work out in the end, but I think there’s going to be pain on the way to that end.
Irina Slav [00:58:03] You know.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:04] And I, I wish there wasn’t going to be but I that’s the trajectory we’re on.
Stuart Turley [00:58:09] I what a great day. Thank you all so much. Thank you to all of Laurie and Peter Lafountaine. They’re going to use AI to replace our current leadership.
David Blackmon [00:58:20] It came in just in time.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:21] That would be a bad idea. Bad idea? Who’s, Bye
Stuart Turley [00:58:30] Yeah. See you guys.
David Blackmon [00:58:32] Everybody have a good week
Irina Slav [00:58:34] Have a great week.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:34] Bye
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