Environmental issues related to fracking which involves injecting water because with chemicals in particular its like sand very High Pressure deep into hard rock formations youre basically putting a jet engine on the drill and using water at High Pressure instead of the drilling operation so theres tons of Environmental Issues water issues but theres also Climate Change the more oil and natural gas produce we produce the more Greenhouse Gas emissions we emit into the atmosphere and so i think what young people are responding to is we have to respond to the Climate Crisis and the only way to effectively respond to the Climate Crisis is to limit our fossil fuel production to limit our fossil fuel consumption and so we cant just talk about banning fracking without talking about specifics on alternatives to liquid transportation. In fuels and alternatives to natural gas in the power sector obama did call it a bridge fuel in terms of getting us off coal but it seems to be much more of a geo political issue we see with the fracking and the doubling of production its really hailed across bipartisan issues as like where the Number One Oil producer in the world so once. It becomes way more difficult to get off it what do you think about this the Obama Administration could take this is a win i think weve seen the world flip flop from 2008 to today weve basically seen the us go from importing 50000000. 00 barrels a day of oil to down to less than 2000000. 00 barrels a day at the same time china is now importing almost 10000000000. 00 barrels a day so now china has become what we were in the seventys and we had the oil crisis i mean the next problem with oil come out of the middle east our strategic rival china is going to a big problem and over here were going to be pretty much selfsufficient so i think in terms of domestic resources it was a win in terms of Climate Change it was a win the u. S. Is the only region in the world that has actually reduced its emissions since 2005 so reduced about 7 percent and thats because were replacing the dirtiest fuel coal with natural gas so this idea of banning fracking is a big gain of pollutants absolute you would watch it you would see number one our Living Standards are completely dependent on our electricity production so to just oh no trying to ban Something Like that weve built the entire Energy Infrastructure around the last 10 years would be totally ridiculous so you know its like a different president comes in every 4 years and changes a Space Program you can not just change or an energy grid that quickly need to look at from a Climate Change perspective i was a renewables is a great thing that need to keep being developed but as as you mentioned that bridge is the natural gas and thats the only reason why the u. S. Has reduced emissions while everybody else continues to increase if we banned fracking. Many of the millennial generation z. Do want millennial as are the largest voting bloc now we would have to import more oil what would that do to our trade deficit which is who are still bad i dont know how bad it would be today if we were importing another 12000000. 00 Barrels Per Day but on top of that you would have to replace that energy with Something Else so it would actually get worse 10 to 15 years ago there was a lot of people talking about peak oil and talking about Peak Oil Supply and obviously unconventional production has sort of put those rumors to rest but the consensus is that we are reaching Peak Oil Consumption and thats because of a number of factors but when you look at an auto company like tesla right that produces a fraction of the vehicles compared to General Motors or ford but yet last year you know the market value i was having greater market capitalization than their much larger rivals thats because everyone understands that the future of the transportation sector is electrification while its true that natural gas from fracking in the United States has has absolutely replaced coal in power sector emissions whats happened now is the largest Single Source of Greenhouse Gas emissions in the u. S. Economy is now from the transportation sector so i think in order for us to address Climate Change yes addressing oil and Gas Production has to be part of it we can call it ban fracking or whatever you want to call it but we cant ban fracking without a corresponding clear agenda to move our transportation sector on to a more sustainable path which i think is the electrification of it and for that youre going to need government assistance in the form of Infrastructure Investment and right now with out like a National Carbon tax to help finance that Infrastructure Investment i dont see it happen i completely agree with the electric electrification of vehicles. You know my 1st job was with General Motors as an automotive engineer and i can tell you the you look at the Combustion Engine take a big step back and look at it its all technologies from last century mechanical gears pulleys rubber transmission belts hydraulic fluids these things are all last centuries technologies when you tear down a vehicle which we used to do you see a look at every component when you turn on a Combustion Engine vehicle they have 5 times as many parts as an electric vehicle so eventually electric vehicles are going to continue to slide down the cost scale when you add in autonomous driving youre looking at the cost of mobility and us is going to collapse its going to go down to a 5th the what it costs today you know one of the most underutilized assets in our economy our cars they sit there most of the time so fast for within 10 years from what i know of people in industry were going to be at level 5 autonomy you wont need a drivers license cars were just continually rotate around cities picking people up theyll be electric will be autonomous and theyll be internet connected so thats the good news i think on the front of consumption. Pushed this 10 years faster than probably where where it was going to come out and you have now not only the benefits of Climate Change but now tesla is the only car company that scares the german Car Companies theyre scared to death for General Motors they dont even care about it but theyre literally worried about going out of business its a level 5 autonomy how do we get to a level 5. At the scale so today were at level 2 or level 3 where it can take over on highways it can break it it can break for you it can park assist for you level 5 if you get in the car and theres nobody driving it theres a situation right because not the interest with the charging stations had to be built in order for this to work it has to get 250 miles on a charge me and so thats a government obviously a government project i think they would do charging stations proprietary to tesla right so theres no interoperability among these various cars so ban fracking. Cry b. Lets build the the infrastructure i think from a political standpoint youre right. Its a lot easier for some of the climate activists to just talk about the whole movement is called keep it in the ground because theyre saying the fossil fuels need to stay unburnt deep in the ground in order for us to avoid a complete climate catastrophe its a little more difficult to talk about the solutions because theyre youve got costs youve got the logistics of how its going to be done but we have to talk about the solutions we cant just rely on an Energy Policy that says we cant frack anymore we have to talk about how are we going to help working people get access to Sustainable Transportation alternatives and it cant just be individual automobiles i definitely share your enthusiasm about the promise of Autonomous Vehicles but we have to we have to remember that the most effective Sustainable Transportation system is mass transit and then bear the United States is always lagging behind our mass transit systems are woefully and chronically underfunded so weve got to have a big public commitment to invest in mass transit and weve got to have a big public commitment on charging stations we have ignored these critical Infrastructure Investments i completely agree and i lived in china 20 years and its not just me many my friends we have come back United States we feel like were going back in time and over there were on high speed train between 300 kilometers an hour brand new airports every roads built you come over here the infrastructure is a shambles i mean the bridges the trains the i mean the subways you feel like youre in the 1950 s. Or sixtys i mean its yeah i mean one area we have got to get ahold of is the infrastructure because its key to the economy whether or not taxpayers will ever want to pay for that here is another thing but 1. 00 thing we are paying for here is. These new elland terminals and that suggests that banning fracking is not anywhere on the horizon how much are we spending on terminals how big are these terminals and what does that suggest for our you know the next 510 years from now l. And g. Or liquefied natural gas thats the way that you transport natural gas across oceans because usually youre moving natural gas to a pipeline where it can remain in its cash form in order to make it more dense you basically freeze it turned into a liquid each of these liquefied natural gas export terminals cost billions and billions of dollars and we have to remember that this is the number one priority of the u. S. Oil and gas industry right americas now the Largest Crude Oil producer the largest natural gas producer that is a lot of money that is a lot of Campaign Contributions that this industry gives and their priority is not Energy Independence for americans their priority is selling their frack to natural gas and frack crude oil for the highest possible price globally so that their focus is on Building Infrastructure for export out of the United States so thats where the liquefied natural gas terminals come in and its basically been the status quo from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration no real difference between democrats and republicans on their promotion of of l. N. G. And it was obama in 2015 that struck the deal to lift the 40 year old ban on crude oil exports are i really take a break when we come back dive deeply into the Lithium Market believe it or not dont go away stay right there on front running 2020. So what weve got to do is identify the threats that we have its crazy. Let it be an arms race. Spearing Dramatic Development only mostly im going to resist i dont see how that strategy will be successful very. Time to sit down and talk. Just enough to you know the moon through lump in your circles mostly. Due to the much for clues of little interest in the military when theyre. Not. Quite in good sort of produce. In the eastern seaboard never known what it seems to trace. Cities. That. I cant show you my face but im going to teach you must store in 9093 this man was sentenced to death. They could charged with capital murder even though he didnt have the gun didnt pull the trigger didnt intend to kill anybody imagine living in your bathroom for that week with just under 23. 00. But. Confined within 4 gray walls. Using. Them to leave this room. Welcome back to front running 2020 with max kaiser and Stacy Herbert as we look at the policies and issues heading into oh yeah the election coming up very soon were talking about Energy Policy stacy and before we get into our scintillating discussion about lithium i want to ask the panel quickly were you aware that the world is facing a severe shortage of helium down did not know that i wrote about this right because the balloon companies werent able to waiting is that the kids are wasting the helium and its just her teaching element is used in aerospace and many applications and were just printing away all of our helium for the children terrible ok enough but helium in fact youre helium story does play into this because if were going to get to mars are off planets and exit this planet as apparently many billionaires plan on doing and escaping the Climate Change or whatever disaster is on the rise and they will need that but in terms of lithium of course its a crucial ingredient to this future that many of the money ells and everybody and at mckinsey and all these think tanks well think that we have a future with smart cities smart grid electric vehicles so bolivia has Something Like 50 percent a little bit over that of the lithium supply at the moment china and germany had just recently in the past year done huge deals with bolivia for those resources could we see this become the new oil in terms of the geo political Unrest Associated with anywhere with oil absolutely i mean Energy Storage has been the holy grail for the Energy Industry because if you can officially at least store it you can go borrow the transportation sector and the electric power sector Energy Storage with batteries can balance off the intermittency of renewables like wind and solar but the achilles heel of Energy Storage of batteries is that they are. Comprised of things like lithium and other things that are limited and finite in supply and require mining usually in global south countries and that it is usually done in not a Sustainable Way and so while i do think that a Movement Towards electric vehicles and Energy Storage on balance is better for the planet there are big red flags and concerns about the ability of us to scale up current Mining Operations for the elements that make up batteries to fit the demand that were expecting and to do it in Sustainable Ways and so these are all things that need to be part of a comprehensive energy and Climate Strategy to make sure that we have plans in place to try and do this is sustainable is possible in terms of Smart Grid Technology 1st im going to ask you what is a smart grid because were supposed to bring this to cities around the world and in fact in 2009 obama did in the american recovery and reinvestment act allocate 4500000000 towards developing the smart grids one thing of course for a smart grid for a city is you need this Battery Storage you need to be able to store electricity china is indeed developing all these substations they already have thousands of them do we have even one in america do you see any sense that we are actually developing any technologies towards smart grid absolutely theres a bunch of smaller scale demonstration projects and a lot of investment going into this so to me smart grid means 2 main things one is having communication that is 2 way between producer and consumer so that you have accurate flows of information about where supplies are where demand is and how to more smartly match them the 2nd thing that a smart grid is supposed to do is to better match up distributed Energy Resources which are small. Scale renewables matched with batteries which is different from the conventional way of making electricity beginning with Thomas Edison in the pool street station in manhattan which was a blart centralized power plant that sold power to millions of homes now the future is likely going to be smaller scale distributed Renewable Resources and that entails a different type of smarter grid how practical is it for users to sell energy back so in other words in germany they have solar panels etc peoples homes they are generating more energy than they need they sell it back to the grid and theres are universal basic income right there everyone becomes a Cottage Industry of producing solar energy how practical is that why dont we pursuing that isnt that a great way to add home income into further cost of homes were we on this youre absolutely right so in the u. S. Its usually a state based policy and its known as net metering and what net metering implies