Speaker 1: Welcome back to joining us now is Todd Myers. We've
Speaker 1: talked to Todd before. He's with a think tank policy
Speaker 1: institute in Washington State. He's vice president for research at
Speaker 1: the Washington Policy Center, and this is in Washington State.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, sir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always nice to show with you.
Speaker 1: Great to have you on. I saw your press release
Speaker 1: about what is happening in Washington State with CO two emissions.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about what is happening there
Speaker 1: in terms of their emissions actually going up. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that everything is melting there in Washington yet,
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: Probably I'm stilling outside my window right now.
Speaker 1: So even though even though the CO two emissions went up,
Speaker 1: so tell us what's happening in Washington with Washington State
Speaker 1: with their measuring emissions, they've gone up over a ten
Speaker 1: year period, I guess nine year period twenty twelve to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: So for those not in Washington State are probably wondering,
Speaker 2: why do I care about Washington State CO two emissions?
Speaker 2: And the answer is is that Washington in the West
Speaker 2: Coast has seen itself as a leader on climate change.
Speaker 2: You know, say, oh, here are the policies that we
Speaker 2: need to implement to reduce the risk from CO two
Speaker 2: emissions and climate change. Our governor, Governor Insley, actually ran
Speaker 2: for president, albeit briefly, in twenty nineteen, on the platform
Speaker 2: of addressing climate change. And his whole argument was that
Speaker 2: he was going to bring the policies that we've had
Speaker 2: in Washington State to the federal level to fight climate change.
Speaker 3: And we constantly call ourselves a leader so.
Speaker 2: Across the country, these are the kinds of policies that
Speaker 2: are in Washington State that you know, many particularly on
Speaker 2: the left, want to implement, and what is notable is
Speaker 2: is that they simply have failed to achieve their goal.
Speaker 2: A lot of focuses on, you know, the cost of
Speaker 2: the CO two policies and climate change and things like that,
Speaker 2: but the simple fact is they don't work. And so
Speaker 2: Washington State this week released CO two data through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. And so when you look at twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: which was just before Governor Ansley took office, through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, the ninth year of his administration, CO two
Speaker 2: emissions actually increased five percent over that period of time,
Speaker 2: and that's after COVID, So you know, considering that even
Speaker 2: COVID couldn't cause the emissions to go down. It's pretty remarkable, wow, Durre.
Speaker 2: At that same time, the United States CO two emissions
Speaker 2: went down. And so the message for people who aren't
Speaker 2: in Washington State is these policies simply don't work. And
Speaker 2: if you care about CO two emissions, if you care
Speaker 2: about the risk from climate change, don't do what Washington
Speaker 2: State has done. Look for more innovative ways that put people,
Speaker 2: not politicians in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we look at all this stuff in
Speaker 1: terms of CO two, we got the Paris Climate Accord,
Speaker 1: which is hanging over everybody's head. China is putting in
Speaker 1: two power plants coal power plants a week, and supposedly
Speaker 1: it's not a problem the stuff comes from China, But
Speaker 1: the same as CO two if it's emitted in the
Speaker 1: United States or in Europe or other places like that,
Speaker 1: or it's going to kill us all that to me,
Speaker 1: that is the key thing about this. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting that even in some of the places where
Speaker 1: they have scrupulously tried to reduce, CO two has actually
Speaker 1: gone up and it hasn't been a catastrophe either, as
Speaker 1: it Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I think that The challenge is is that the exaggeration
Speaker 2: and sort of dishonesty has made it so that people
Speaker 2: simply write off climate change as an issue. You know,
Speaker 2: there have been so much exaggeration about the impact, about the.
Speaker 3: Harm and that sort of thing that people get very
Speaker 3: tired of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do know that CO two does track heat
Speaker 2: to some extent and there is some risk. But the
Speaker 2: problem is these adjuration makes people to sort of roll
Speaker 2: their eyes. And then when you see the policies that
Speaker 2: cost a lot, raise energy prices, make things more expensive
Speaker 2: and then don't work, the natural reaction of people is
Speaker 2: to say, this whole thing is a farce. This whole
Speaker 2: thing is about ideology, And you know, it's hard to
Speaker 2: disagree in a lot of cases because you know, even
Speaker 2: Al Gore, when he won the Nobel Prize for his
Speaker 2: work on climate change, said that climate change is an
Speaker 2: excuse to do things we should.
Speaker 3: Be doing anyway.
Speaker 2: Right, So he said, you know, it's a good way
Speaker 2: to implement our ideology, and that's what you see in
Speaker 2: Washington State. But I think that for those on the
Speaker 2: center right, like myself, we do need to recognize that
Speaker 2: there are things that we're doing to impact ecosystems to
Speaker 2: wildlife and things like that. And if you look, and
Speaker 2: what I always point out to people is look at
Speaker 2: a map, look at where nature is, and look at
Speaker 2: where conservative voters are. They are overlapped. Conservatives live surrounded
Speaker 2: by the environment because they love it and they want
Speaker 2: to be good stewards. But what the failure of Washington
Speaker 2: State shows is that top down political policies fail, and
Speaker 2: bottom up efforts to save energy, to save money too,
Speaker 2: are much better way to be good stewards of the planet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. I talked to this week about you know,
Speaker 1: the classic case at the turn of the century, we're
Speaker 1: in big cities like in New York or Seattle or London.
Speaker 1: They had so much horse manure and horse urine that
Speaker 1: were accumulating in the streets, and it's like, and what
Speaker 1: saved that? Was it a government designed program that dictated
Speaker 1: solutions to people or was it a free market where
Speaker 1: people got to try things? And of course you're talking
Speaker 1: about this from the standpoint of Washington State, and you said,
Speaker 1: how does this affect everybody else? You know, it's the
Speaker 1: federalism that we have, the fact that different states can
Speaker 1: try different things. And the beauty of that is that
Speaker 1: we can see what works. But the beauty of it
Speaker 1: is we can see what also see what does not work,
Speaker 1: and I guess the state has fallen into the latter category.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about some of these regulations.
Speaker 1: What have they done in Washington State, that is in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, forcing people to do this or
Speaker 1: that that hasn't really even accomplished their metric by their
Speaker 1: own paradigm. What kind of regulations have you been seeing
Speaker 1: there in Washington State over this ten year period.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a few things, and I'll give you two examples. One,
Speaker 2: we have lots of building regulations that force buildings to
Speaker 2: be what are called green buildings. And in fact, years
Speaker 2: ago we put it, we implemented a law that required
Speaker 2: all school buildings to meet what are called green building standards.
Speaker 2: And so I started looking at these green buildings and
Speaker 2: these green schools to see if they were in fact
Speaker 2: saving money. And what I found was is that green
Speaker 2: schools that meet these standards actually used more energy per
Speaker 2: square foot than the non green schools in those same
Speaker 2: school districts for a variety of reasons. And you see
Speaker 2: this with buildings. There has been research that in Seattle,
Speaker 2: green buildings actually do worse than almost anywhere else. So
Speaker 2: one of the things was is that these very restrictive
Speaker 2: building standards about what you had to build Seattle. In
Speaker 2: King County, where Seattle is is one of the most
Speaker 2: expensive places to live in the United States, we have
Speaker 2: a housing shortage. We have very high prices, and it's
Speaker 2: because we've added a lot of these regulations, so called
Speaker 2: green regulations, that have ended up failing. Let me give
Speaker 2: you one more example. The number one source of CO
Speaker 2: two emissions in Washington State is transportation. So the governor
Speaker 2: and others have said, oh, well, what we need to
Speaker 2: do is to build a lot of electric vehicle charging stations.
Speaker 2: But many of those charging stations sit unused because where
Speaker 2: people tend to charge up is at home, and if
Speaker 2: they are out and they see a charging station, they
Speaker 2: will plug in, but they're not very useful in terms
Speaker 2: of actually keeping your vehicle charged. And you know, if
Speaker 2: you're in the store, you don't get much of a
Speaker 2: charge while you're there.
Speaker 3: So it doesn't help.
Speaker 2: It doesn't do much to actually help reduce CO two
Speaker 2: emissions or help you know, people who have electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: And the result is we spend millions, tens of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars on you know, electric vehicle charging stations that
Speaker 2: sit there and do nothing. That's just the waste of money.
Speaker 2: And so people, you know, focus on that as a
Speaker 2: waste of tax payer dollars, which it certainly is, but
Speaker 2: it's also a waste of opportunity to do good things
Speaker 2: for the planet. There are lots of projects that we
Speaker 2: actually could do to you know, make it energy more efficient.
Speaker 2: We're fighting you know, I used to work with salmon recovery.
Speaker 2: We have very low populations of salmon. There's things we
Speaker 2: can do there. So if you waste money on useless
Speaker 2: ev charging stations rather than doing projects that help salmon,
Speaker 2: you are harming the environment by misallocating resources in addition
Speaker 2: to wasting tax.
Speaker 1: Paranal And of course, what we're seeing with all this
Speaker 1: stuff is that they will kind up with one solution
Speaker 1: like an electric battery car, right, and they will you
Speaker 1: know not, and they will subsidize that heavily. They will
Speaker 1: shut down any other competition. And even if it is
Speaker 1: something like another form of an electric car, let's say,
Speaker 1: a fuel cell car or a hydrogen car, even if
Speaker 1: it's something that is could also be zero mission. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: we've got this one solution and you're going to do that.
Speaker 1: That's something that we see from the government all the time.
Speaker 1: But I want to step back and when we talk
Speaker 1: about the schools and how the ones that were green
Speaker 1: schools and they gave them regulations about how they wanted
Speaker 1: to build them and that type of thing, how what
Speaker 1: was it that caused what types of things were they
Speaker 1: having these schools do that caused them to use more
Speaker 1: energy than other schools that didn't follow this this green
Speaker 1: building regulation scheme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people are always when I mentioned that, they're always
Speaker 2: flabbergasted that you could make a green building and make
Speaker 2: it actually worse than the existing buildings exactly. Several things
Speaker 2: that they did. One is I never understand good this,
Speaker 2: but they repeated it again and again, which is they said, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to have big windows because big windows allow
Speaker 2: in more light, and therefore you have you need fewer lighting.
Speaker 3: Fixtures than that will save electricity.
Speaker 2: Well, led light bulbs are extremely efficient, very low energy,
Speaker 2: put out a lot of light, and so there's just
Speaker 2: not very much energy to be saved by reducing that
Speaker 2: amount of light. However, windows are not very efficient. Right,
Speaker 2: they let a lot of heat in. They allowed a
Speaker 2: lot of you know cold in as well, Right when
Speaker 2: during the summer it's hot or in the winter it's cold,
Speaker 2: and so you have to constantly run the HVAC to
Speaker 2: keep that room the normal temperature. The other thing that
Speaker 2: and that more than offsets any you know, energy savings
Speaker 2: you get from wind. The other thing that they do
Speaker 2: is they say, well, we want clean air, we want
Speaker 2: fresh air. So what they do is they have requirements
Speaker 2: to have to recirculate the air to pull the old
Speaker 2: air out, put a new area. And what you got
Speaker 2: to do, You've got to heat that, You've got to
Speaker 2: cool that, whatever. And so they're constant running the hvacs.
Speaker 2: And so I talked with several facilities directors, not just
Speaker 2: in Washington State but across the country where these were,
Speaker 2: and they just said, in order to build a green school,
Speaker 2: we would actually have to increase the size of the
Speaker 2: HVAC system to meet these new requirements.
Speaker 3: But I want to address your point about the one
Speaker 3: size fits all.
Speaker 2: That's the fundamental problem with government programs.
Speaker 3: Right, should can't say the fundamental a fundamental.
Speaker 2: Problem, which is is that there is one size and
Speaker 2: if it doesn't work, then you've lost time. We need
Speaker 2: a diversity of efforts. So, you know, I would be
Speaker 2: a horrible book author if I didn't mention my book
Speaker 2: Time to Think Small, which focuses on exactly this issue,
Speaker 2: which is lots of small efforts and a diversity of
Speaker 2: efforts are better ways to find not only solutions that work,
Speaker 2: but solutions that fit people's lives. Rather than have government
Speaker 2: impose restrictions on people that make their lives more difficult.
Speaker 2: A diversity of solutions, especially with technology, allows them to
Speaker 2: find ways to save energy, save money, do things that
Speaker 2: fit their lifestyle, make their life better while also making
Speaker 2: a planet better. And so I think that's the real
Speaker 2: key is is that we need a diversity of things.
Speaker 2: What I'm hoping is is that, you know, during the
Speaker 2: upcoming Trump administration, rather than just simply saying all of
Speaker 2: these environmental you know, this focus is ridiculous to say
Speaker 2: we need a new approach, We need to diversified approach, federalism,
Speaker 2: local power rather than top down government power. To show
Speaker 2: that this way works better than the one size fits
Speaker 2: all government approach.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. When we're talking about federalism and the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, we can see what works and
Speaker 1: what doesn't work based on different states and everything. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that is taken hold in America across
Speaker 1: a political spectrum. It doesn't seem to me the matter
Speaker 1: whether people on the left or the right, Republican Democrat,
Speaker 1: everybody thinks that a solution needs to come from Washington.
Speaker 1: And one of the results of that is that we
Speaker 1: get this one size fits all. We're going to have
Speaker 1: a dictated solution and that's the way this is going
Speaker 1: to work. And we need to be able to experiment
Speaker 1: to find out what works and what doesn't work. That's
Speaker 1: a key thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting, and you address this in your
Speaker 1: press release. The fact that the most recent data that
Speaker 1: they just released is twenty twenty one. Why is that
Speaker 1: If this is something such a high priority for them,
Speaker 1: why aren't they Maybe it's because it's not working, they
Speaker 1: don't want people looking at it. Why are they three
Speaker 1: years behind and all this stuff?
Speaker 2: So another problem with I mean more evidence this is
Speaker 2: I think more evidence that simply bureaucracy is not up
Speaker 2: to the task, certainly of addressing environmental issues as well
Speaker 2: as other issues. And the fact that here we are
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five, and the most recent data we
Speaker 2: have for Washington state two missions is twenty twenty one. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: that is actually in violation of state law. State law
Speaker 2: says that by the end of even numbered years, like
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, they are to release emissions data for
Speaker 2: the preceding two years, which would have been twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two in twenty twenty three. So I pointed this out
Speaker 2: and said that the state is actually in violation of
Speaker 2: its own law and being two years behind. And the
Speaker 2: problem with that is that twenty twenty one data is
Speaker 2: useless if you are a policy maker and trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what works and what doesn't, because you can say, oh,
Speaker 2: and what they do say is, oh, yes, we didn't
Speaker 2: meet those targets, but the policies we adopted after that
Speaker 2: are working. Well. It's like, well, how do you know
Speaker 2: you don't have any data, You're just making it up.
Speaker 2: And so when I pointed this out that they were
Speaker 2: in violation of their law of bit, the governor's press
Speaker 2: secretary sent out a snarky email saying, you know what
Speaker 2: Todd doesn't understand is how difficult it is to gather
Speaker 2: this information. Well, exactly, the government doesn't have the capacity
Speaker 2: to get the information and to do the job in
Speaker 2: a way that will work. That's what they are admitting
Speaker 2: is it's like, look, we can't do this. The other
Speaker 2: irony is is that we actually have very ownerous restrictions
Speaker 2: in Washington State about electric vehicles. You can't basically sell
Speaker 2: a recreational vehicle or a semi in Washington State because
Speaker 2: there aren't enough electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: To sell because you have to sell a certain percentage
Speaker 3: of that. So we stopped. So the argument has been
Speaker 3: to the same agency who put these numbers out, look,
Speaker 3: we would like to comply.
Speaker 2: We can't. It's physically not possible to comply. And the
Speaker 2: response to the agency is sorry, that's the law. So
Speaker 2: you know, when it's other people, it's the law that
Speaker 2: you have to follow. When it's them, they whine about
Speaker 2: the fact that it's not possible for.
Speaker 3: Them to actually comply with the law.
Speaker 2: And I think that just shows you that, you know,
Speaker 2: how incapable bureaucracy is of addressing these serious challenges, but
Speaker 2: also how an image, their own image is more important
Speaker 2: than actually reducing CO two emissions. As much as they
Speaker 2: talk about it's an existential crisis. When the choice is
Speaker 2: between admitting failure and saying yes, we need to do
Speaker 2: better or making excuses. They make excuses to say their own.
Speaker 1: And that's something that we see all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I talk about the fact that you know, when you
Speaker 1: look at let's say a command control economies socialism, you know,
Speaker 1: look at East Germany versus West Germany, or North Korea
Speaker 1: versus South Korea. Why is it that they don't have
Speaker 1: any goods in the story? So well, they don't really
Speaker 1: because they don't have a market system. Even if you
Speaker 1: had the smartest people in control, and we know that's
Speaker 1: not what happens, even if you had the smartest people
Speaker 1: in control, they don't have sufficient information to be able
Speaker 1: to make decisions about what is going to work the best.
Speaker 1: That's what a marketplace does. And so as you point out,
Speaker 1: they're making this confession that yeah, it's not possible for
Speaker 1: us to get all this information together. It's not possible
Speaker 1: for them to get enough information together to make an
Speaker 1: intelligent decision. That's that's what the whole free market is about, everybody,
Speaker 1: And that's what your book is about as well, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking getting small and pulling back instead of having central
Speaker 1: planning and dictates and mandates and bans that are being
Speaker 1: put on all kinds of things. And I imagine you
Speaker 1: probably have that as well. I mean we're looking at
Speaker 1: Biden going out the door banning hot water heaters and
Speaker 1: other things like that. I'm sure you guys are way
Speaker 1: ahead of that right at state level.
Speaker 2: Yes. In fact, we just in Washington State, the state
Speaker 2: tried to ban natural gas hookups, not just the heaters,
Speaker 2: not just the stoves or anything like that, but actually
Speaker 2: running natural gas to new homes. They tried to ban it.
Speaker 2: The voters overturned that in this lend this last election
Speaker 2: because they recognized that it was so excuse me, extreme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're seeing that in the UK as well.
Speaker 1: You know, they've done the same thing there. They want
Speaker 1: to ban natural gas and stuff. And you know, heat
Speaker 1: pump in a really cold climate like you've got in
Speaker 1: Washington State, only they've got in the UK heat pumps
Speaker 1: just don't make it handle it very well during the winter,
Speaker 1: and so but they don't care, and they want to
Speaker 1: in the UK, they even want to remove the exist
Speaker 1: thing infrastructure. I mean, they want to rewild is one
Speaker 1: of the terms that they've used. They want to rewild
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that's been built. In other words, you know,
Speaker 1: just just take everything back down to nothing, that's what
Speaker 1: you're saying everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, in fact, you mentioned heat pumps. So I
Speaker 2: live in the mountains and we have a heat pump.
Speaker 2: Well last January it was negative ten where I was. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: I have a propane backup, and so I have a
Speaker 2: propane tank that when it gets that low, that we
Speaker 2: can heat our house. Because the heat pump, when it
Speaker 2: gets you know, in the teens and certainly negative temperatures,
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. I also have a smart thermostatum. My
Speaker 2: smart thermostat would come up and say, we think that
Speaker 2: your heat pump is broken because it's just turning and
Speaker 2: not generating the heats, and I was like that, yes,
Speaker 2: because it's negative ten. And so that I think is
Speaker 2: the challenge of these one size fits all approaches. But
Speaker 2: you made a really good point about local control, and
Speaker 2: I think there's two things. One is that you need
Speaker 2: to have the information, and bureaucrats simply don't have the
Speaker 2: information necessary to make those good decisions because it's not
Speaker 2: in front of them, and everybody's circumstances are a little
Speaker 2: bit different. The second thing is is that you need
Speaker 2: accountability so that when something goes wrong or when it
Speaker 2: goes right, you get that feedback. When you fail, you say, okay,
Speaker 2: we got to change bueroquests don't have that feedback, they
Speaker 2: don't have that accountability. There's a fantastic example here at
Speaker 2: Washington State.
Speaker 3: So the Quinault tribe, which is out on the coast, had.
Speaker 2: Been as these beautiful forests, but the Bureau of Indian
Speaker 2: Affairs had been doing all of the timber harvesting on
Speaker 2: the land on behalf of the tribe. And what did
Speaker 2: they do. They cut clear cut massive areas and then
Speaker 2: left slash on the ground. They said, don't worry, it
Speaker 2: will decompose and trees will regrow between them. But what
Speaker 2: they didn't realize was that cedar has a chemical in
Speaker 2: it that slows decomposition. So what was left was these
Speaker 2: massive areas where there was just all of this timber
Speaker 2: slash and no regrowth at all for decades, literally for decades.
Speaker 3: So the tribe said, look, why.
Speaker 2: Don't we take over the forest tree on our own land,
Speaker 2: because they were the ones who are paying the price.
Speaker 2: They lived there, not the BIA, right the BIA was
Speaker 2: making decisions from Washington, d C. So they took it over.
Speaker 2: And what was the first thing they did. They forested,
Speaker 2: They removed the slash, and they started a harvest rotations
Speaker 2: that were sustainable that would bring back those forests. Now, critically,
Speaker 2: they harvested for revenue. They want that money because they
Speaker 2: recognized that it's a valuable resource, and they use it
Speaker 2: to fund part of the tribe's budget. So they didn't
Speaker 2: just leave the trees, but they were better stewards because
Speaker 2: they had the information about how cedar worked as opposed
Speaker 2: to other trees.
Speaker 3: And then they also had the accountability.
Speaker 2: And my favorite part of the story was is that
Speaker 2: when the tribe took over forests in the early two
Speaker 2: thousands completely from the BIA, the BIA said the BIA
Speaker 2: had been harvesting without any environmental assessments at all.
Speaker 3: They said, well, we have a general plan, go harvest.
Speaker 3: The tribe took.
Speaker 2: Over, the BIA said you have to do environmental assessments.
Speaker 2: You could imagine the tribe's reaction when they said, you
Speaker 2: haven't been doing it, but we have to, And the
Speaker 2: BIA said yes. I think that's the arrogance sometimes of
Speaker 2: government overseeing and in this case, I mean, really treating
Speaker 2: the tribe badly who had been doing a better job
Speaker 2: than the BIA.
Speaker 3: Accountability is just so much better for the environment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess my question is do they have
Speaker 1: some special status that we don't have that they could
Speaker 1: take back control from this bureaucracy, Because that's the biggest problem.
Speaker 1: We can't get control back from these bureaucracies that are
Speaker 1: doing a bad job. How did they get it back?
Speaker 1: Was it because of their status as Indians there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was because they have sovereignty. Now that's what
Speaker 2: sovereignty means on on tribal lands. Is sort of interesting
Speaker 2: because the BIA is supposed to hold the land and
Speaker 2: trust and manage it for the benefit of the tribes.
Speaker 2: It's an incredibly paternalistic system, I think. But as the
Speaker 2: point that you make is is that in the tribes
Speaker 2: they have the opportunity to do that. They can at
Speaker 2: least make an argument that they are sovereign and can
Speaker 2: do that. You and I we can't say, hey, we
Speaker 2: would rather have control. Let us figure a way to
Speaker 2: be better stewards. The federal and state agencies don't do
Speaker 2: that for us. So I think it's funny. It's because
Speaker 2: I've started studying tribal stewardship of natural resources for this
Speaker 2: very reason, which is that they have more control. And
Speaker 2: I think that in many ways they provide a really
Speaker 2: good model for how we should care for natural resources
Speaker 2: because they have that local control, local knowledge, and the accountability,
Speaker 2: and when it comes from forests, fisheries, wildlife habitat, wildlife management,
Speaker 2: they do a better job. May be one more fun example,
Speaker 2: which is in Washington State, the wolf is considered a
Speaker 2: threatened species, but on the Callville Reservation, which is right
Speaker 2: in the area where the wolves are, they consider the
Speaker 2: wolf recovered because the populations are very high and they
Speaker 2: actually hand out hunting permits. That's the tribe. So when
Speaker 2: they have authority and when it affects them, they can say, look,
Speaker 2: we're using the information we have, we have the accountability,
Speaker 2: we have the control to do a better job than
Speaker 2: the sort of bureaucratic systems from the government.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting, you know, and but you know, part
Speaker 1: of it is and again it is the status of
Speaker 1: the Indians. But regular Americans have sovereignty that they're not
Speaker 1: using as well. And I think that they need to
Speaker 1: start using the Tenth Amendment and some of these other things,
Speaker 1: because federal policy, especially when you talk about forests, and
Speaker 1: we were talking about that earlier in the program, with
Speaker 1: the fires that are happening in La seen it over
Speaker 1: and over again, poor forestry management because they're not doing
Speaker 1: stewardship anymore. They're doing environmentalism, and it's kind of just,
Speaker 1: you know, don't touch anything type of thing rather than
Speaker 1: actually doing stewardship. And it has been disastrous for the
Speaker 1: last fifty years, and it's getting worse all the time.
Speaker 1: And so I think everybody needs to start getting together
Speaker 1: and seeing how we're going to increase our sovereignty so
Speaker 1: that we can start addressing some of these problems ourselves.
Speaker 1: And of course that's what your book is focused, not
Speaker 1: not the political aspect of it, but the beauty of
Speaker 1: having smaller local decisions. Tell us little bit about your
Speaker 1: book again, I know we talked about last time you
Speaker 1: were on and the title of it.
Speaker 2: Is Time to Think Small, How nimble environmental How nimble
Speaker 2: environmental technology.
Speaker 3: Can solve the plant's biggest problems.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of folks on the center
Speaker 2: right who care about the environment, but very skeptical about
Speaker 2: environmental issues because they feel that it's a trojan horse
Speaker 2: for policies that they don't like, and in many cases,
Speaker 2: as we discussed, it is but they want to find
Speaker 2: an alternative that they can support to be, you know,
Speaker 2: to protect the natural resources. Like I said, conservative live
Speaker 2: around that. The other sources that I've had a lot
Speaker 2: of people say, is my college age son or daughter
Speaker 2: comes back, it lectures me about.
Speaker 3: The environment and why don't we care about the environment.
Speaker 2: And so I said, we'll give them my book.
Speaker 3: It'll explain a better way to help the environment.
Speaker 2: But what it shows is is that in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies when we created the EPA, you didn't have the technology,
Speaker 2: you didn't have the control for individuals to make a
Speaker 2: big difference in environmental stewardship. That's just simply not true anymore.
Speaker 2: We now have the technology. We now have the ability
Speaker 2: to do really remarkable things, to be good stewards of
Speaker 2: the environment in ways that bureaucracies fail. And so what
Speaker 2: we recognize, what we need to recognize, is that we
Speaker 2: need to change the way that we do environmental stewardship.
Speaker 2: Put the power in the hands of individuals, people's innovative companies,
Speaker 2: and less in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats who
Speaker 2: tend to focus on their own interests rather than the
Speaker 2: interests of the planet. In Washington State's failure on reducing
Speaker 2: CO two emissions that we saw this week is really
Speaker 2: just the perfect example of where an issue that the
Speaker 2: politicians say is critical and existential crisis, and yet even
Speaker 2: they fail and then make excuses for that fail rather
Speaker 2: than saying we need to find a better way for them,
Speaker 2: it's about political image. It should be about for the planet.
Speaker 2: For conservatives and those in the center right who live
Speaker 2: near nature every day, that's what thinking small, That's what
Speaker 2: these new technologies, That's what my book is about. It's
Speaker 2: about ways to do that actually lived, that help us
Speaker 2: live the lives of the way we want while being
Speaker 2: good stewards of the planet.
Speaker 1: That's really well said. And again the book is Time
Speaker 1: to Think Small by Todd Myers. And I guess I
Speaker 1: can find that Amazon and where books are sold right, Yep, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's great. Yeah, I've seen that same type of thing.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I worked with a guy
Speaker 1: at a think tank who had been with the EPA
Speaker 1: at the time he had just retired. He was with
Speaker 1: him for about thirty years. Right after their creation and
Speaker 1: to see that it had kind of changed his whole
Speaker 1: mission statement, you know, and the EPA has not really
Speaker 1: been about pollution anymore. It's all about the environmentalism. And
Speaker 1: so that's what we see with the bureaucracies. And it's
Speaker 1: really by design because it allows these people who have
Speaker 1: to stand for election to not have any accountability either,
Speaker 1: because they can always push it on to the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Todd Myers. And
Speaker 1: again the book is Think Time to Think Small by
Speaker 1: Todd Myers, and he works there at the Washington Policy Center.
Speaker 1: Thank you all of you, and thank you Sandy Hayes.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Thank you for the tip. Have a
Speaker 1: good day. The common man, they created common Core, dumbed
Speaker 1: down our children. They created common Past to track and
Speaker 1: control us, their Commons project to make sure the commoners
Speaker 1: own nothing and the communist future. They see the common
Speaker 1: man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But each of us has
Speaker 1: worth and dignity created in the image of God. That
Speaker 1: is what we have in common. That is what they
Speaker 1: want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation.
Speaker 1: They desire to know everything about us, While they hide
Speaker 1: everything from us, it's time to turn that around and
Speaker 1: expose what they want to hide. Please share the information
Speaker 1: and links you'll find at the Davidknightshow dot com. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Thank you for sharing. If you can't
Speaker 1: support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. Ddavidnightshow
Speaker 1: dot com