Children and Youth Committee - Senate

OK, thank you, members. Uh, we're gonna call this meeting to order. I know that, uh, discussion on windmills and aging and children committee is something, uh, people's asked me about, and I have to tell them that, uh, this windmill issue started up in Carroll County in my district over a year and a half ago and so I tried to get the Energy Committee and some other people to, uh, look at it and, uh, they didn't, so I said, well, we'll just go ahead and bring it up in this committee, and, uh, so anyway, and through my, uh, my brother's on the court and so it's been very controversial issue, at least in Carroll County, uh, with the possibility of about 40, 50 windmills coming into, uh, Carroll County. And so through that discussion and, and looking at it, I've come into contact with people from other states and, and so as people know down here, I let, uh fairly let people present both sides. So last time we had, uh, the Windmill Association and some of the other companies, uh, present their side and, uh, through this, I've gotten contact with, uh, I'll say one of our colleagues from Washington State and, Uh, Representative Di and had some really good conversations, especially with her because she is in farming and agriculture just like I have. So when we've got on the phone, we've got off on many other issues besides, uh, windmills and I have thoroughly enjoyed that and so anyway, uh, so members, I want to introduce you to Representative Dye, and I'll let you, uh, introduce the other person. Miss Nelson, and she's a staffer with and she's with uh Representative Dy as far as the staff. So Representative I, you don't care. Just tell a little bit about yourself and your area you represent, and then you can go into your presentation and if you, uh, uh, take some questions afterwards, that would be great. And then I know you've got to be gone in an hour and Blake here, the staff person knows that I don't like to go over an hour, so that's not gonna be a problem with me. So anyway, but if I'll turn it over to you and if you want to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about yourself and go into your presentation, we'd love to hear from you. Thank you, Senator King, and it's such an honor because I know this committee time was. really scarce, but you're right, it is appropriate to have this hearing in your committee because this is about our children and our grandchildren and what we leave for them, and as a farmer myself, you know, we'd always try to leave the land better than what we. And um, How do you, uh, Balance That with the opportunity to bring in additional income on that property with an understanding, and I think that the producers as they start to realize who they are dealing with and what they're dealing with. It, it goes back to understanding what it really means to a larger part of the economy of the state. And how it plays in what I'm Considering The, um, I would say it's more like their the these companies are taking the wealth producing capacity of the lands. In our state And transferring that wealth to producing capacity to countries, not ours. Not just other states in the United States, but it's the flow of money that goes into countries like Canada or China or Europe or wherever the the countries are located. And so that that's my bigger concern. So how did we get there in Washington state very quickly. We passed a series of laws. It was initiated by Clean and prosperous Washington, a think tank that was funded initially originally from um Starbucks, the founder of Starbucks and the founder of Sonicare. It has pretty much anything in our bus a large business community has, um, and tribes and, and unions have funded that operation. It has uh multiple layers. It has um a Washington Business Alliance, and then it also has um uh Oh goodness, I just stumbled on that, but it has planwashington.org and so you have those um that infrastructure that then created these bills. The first one was clean energy transformation Act passed in 2019, and that set up the goals, the climate goals, and they were very aggressive. We amended them to be more aggressive, so you know we always talk about the hockey stick. Well, the hockey stick goes straight down on uh mandates for climate emissions by 2030. And so the, the, it's a reduction radical reduction of CO2 emissions for our um our, our, we have um We have uh refineries in Wokham County that are very productive. They provide all of the aviation fuel for CA and in the west coast, um, then, you know, we have all of the utilities that are subject to that, and any of the energy intensive trade exposed industries will be subject to the climate goals that are set, and they have to buy what I call indulgences. They call them allowances to continue to um to operate in the state of Washington until the trans information is complete. And then um we pass follow on the Climate commitment Act, so I look at CETA as the um engine climate commitment Act is the key that turns the engine on and what it does is it um puts those prices on those allowances. Through a trading market, we linked to the California and Quebec market, and that linkage then creates a large market of allowances across those three jurisdictions. It's managed by a contractor in in uh uh Canada. And it has brought in tremendous amount of revenue above projected on our fiscal notes. So the above projected has in the first year brought 1 point or $1.146 billion of revenue. That revenue was collected at the gas pump and at the utility bill for every constituent in Washington state. So basically it spread the cost of climate, um, onto, you know, everybody gets to pay their fair share for their contribution to climate change. That's how that policy functionally works. But we also layer on a couple of other things that I think that are interesting for you, um, the layer on the Clean Buildings Act, anything 20,000 square feet up to 200,000 or more square feet. Most of those large buildings are a lot of them are state buildings, one of the things that's interesting about that is that you have um Like all of the universities and they are required to do an energy audit, and then um transform their energy systems, or HVAC systems to um a heat pump. And so in the initial phase, if they don't do the audit, then they have to pay a penalty. So I sit on appropriations and in the fiscal note, we ended up um appropriating for the penalty. And then now we're appropriating for the audit, and then finally, um, as, as we've moved through this uh policy, we've got, we have received the first estimates on what the transformation will um cost from going from like a steam plant that's natural gas to uh HVAC system, and the, the university in my district, Washington State University, estimated $1 billion to trans. They had recently converted their steamla from coal to natural gas, so we've already have that, that sunk cost, it's brand new. It would last for a long time. And now we're being asked to um change that over to heat pumps and they have to completely change all of the ducts, everything we can't have district energy anymore on that campus. And I asked myself, what would WSU be like if you had a billion dollars to invest in education. It would be substantively different. And so that to me is some of the, the, the um The conflicts and and then the just to finish out some of the other policies, we passed a bill, House Bill 1589, which Um, was a bill that culminated from a previous bill that allowed the state's largest utility peaches, sound energy to go from a regular rate, um, Great adjudication to our uh utilities and transportation commission to a multi-year rate plan, a 4-year rate plan, and within that there was a lot of um they recognized that it would increase the utility costs or the power bill to their customers. They have 1.1 million customers, and it would increase the, their um their power bills substantively, and so it allows this metric, so it reaches higher up into the middle class and So 60, it has a metric, it triggers the metric for more people. So right now, under that plan, um, 60% of residential customers receive energy assistance, and that is cost shifted onto commercial and industrial ratepayers. Then they followed on with um House Bill 589, which is a natural gas uh process to do a natural gas band for their entire utility. They are a natural gas generating. utility, that's their primary. They um also use a lot of the energy for the from the four lower Snake River dams to power their um They're, uh, utility and um so that bill is the one that gives them the opportunity to rapid depreciate all of their natural gas assets, both the natural gas delivery to homes and industries, and, and then, um, Uh, also construct significant amounts of wind and solar in eastern Washington. The reason why I went through all of these laws very carefully with you, is so that you can understand that there's this platform of mandates. And Those mandates have been laid on large industry. And the cost that they incur go to every individual citizen in Washington state, so there's this huge cost shift. The downfall of that is what happened this summer when I received a phone call from one of the wonderful companies in my district, Lam Weston. They're one of the French fries producers, and they have a facility in Othello. Excuse me, in Cornell and Cornell, um, Has a long time workforce there, generational workforce. They're one company town, and their kids largely are Spanish speaking when they enter the school system by the time they graduate, they exceed all of the state standards on testing. They are like one of the top schools in the state and all of those kids come out, um, completely fluent bilingual. They're those families um are amazing group of folks and um the uh Lam Weston announced that they were going to have to close the plant, and I looked at the announcement in biz news, and There are several reasons that I picked out one, their energy costs. Um, had gone up by over 1/3. For the natural gas cause it takes a lot of natural gas to boil water for processing potatoes, and then um we passed some um Some very highest minimum wage laws and that also fell on the agricultural community and so if you were bringing new people into the plant, you become very, very expensive workforce, which is fine. Um, the long term people there are paid well, and they stay there and it's a good job, but um and then the buildings law, big, big manufacturing facility that's been there a long time, and to comply with the buildings law would have been a huge investment, I estimate about a billion dollars, and they were underwater with um the changes that have been made since COVD, foot traffic in restaurants, 90% of potatoes are consumed in restaurants, but traffic in restaurants have declined significantly since COVID. Um, of course, there's, you know, so anyway, bottom line, they needed to regroup and in the bottom of that article, it stated that they moved them that they will increase their production in their plants in Argentina and China. So meaning that we lose 3037 families that depended on a wonderful job career in that industry, and that town being a one company town now has to figure out how to regroup. And so that's how these laws play out in the agricultural economy. And so, you know, I have the question, you know, what is the why? And so we He's the why, because according to Governor Inslee in his most recent speech at COP 29, he stated that, you know, climate change is an existential threat, we must move rapidly to address the issue, and we have to do something and all of you lawmakers there in Arkansas know that the word something is a pretty broadly defined word and what is the something and why do we have to do it? And what is the social cost? So, you know, when you go through all of the things that are happening to our um local farm communities. I just wanna just finalize finally cover three of the things that I think I'm seeing so that you can kind of evaluate the economics of the industry is, is really chilling. If you look at 100 megawatt wind farm. Uh, it takes about 150 million between federal and state subsidies, the developers, which are the ones that come in that interface with the producers and and And offer them the shiny object of additional revenue, but they come in for 3 years. That first year of $150 million build, they can potentially be getting 53 million of that. In um subsidies and supports from the federal and state government in our state. And so that's, that's just cream cause you get $150 million asset for 70. You know, uh, for 100, and then they get a 3 a 3 year production contract before they um move it to its final destination, the ownership of the facility, and so in that 3 years, they could potentially be getting up to 25 million in revenue. So then that makes it so that half the cost of that bill is is subsidized, it's the cream and a new plant, there's not much repairs or Anything because it's brand new, so it's like buying a new combine and then you trade it 2 years later and you have everything on warranty, and you never have to pay anything for the repairs, so that's kind of the Delio. And then, um, so I look at that and I think, wow, you know, you get $150 million asset for 50% off. They sell it then to a global equity instrument so that that That That um project is, it's um combined with other projects in a bucket, and then that bucket goes to the um As a line item in a portfolio, and those portfolios like Cordelia, they are the largest retirement fund for Canadians. OK. You look at what that the these funds own and what they do, and they're putting A A renewable energy plant that may or may not be there long term because the subsidies if they dry out, what if Too much wind and solar destabilized the grid and we can't handle it, which we're experiencing. There's so many other elements. Once the big government push goes away. Does the business case go away, and so you're putting retired people in a portfolio at risk and what happens there, so it's kind of like the dot-com bus and the the real estate bust in '08, you're kind of setting up a bubble on this thing, and I'm worried about that. The environmental thing is, you know, nobody talks about the real environmental consequences in our state, we um, we do the uh the SEPA, the state environmental impact statement on a on a site by site basis. But according to Discovery Institute, if we are to comply with CETA for both Oregon and Washington have passed similar legislation. If we were to comply with that, it will be 25,000 square miles of the two states on their wild lands and open spaces, so the entire view shed is taken up by wind and solar, and, and, um, and so the total amount of acre of square miles is 100,000, so it's 25% of The total land mass of eastern Oregon and eastern Washington. So that's consequential. And so I asked our state to look at and the consequences of that. What is that really gonna look like, you know, how much of an impact is that going to be on our raptor populations, which can't avoid the blades. How is that gonna affect? Because you know in Apple industry you put windmills to bring warm air down to protect during a frost night. Well, these do the the same thing and I've seen data where it heats the land surface 0.5 degree. 48 degrees, and we're trying to save ourselves from 1.5 degrees uh in, you know, 2100, and yet we're building these things that actually Change and alter the weather patterns. What's the rain shadow in a rain fed industry like mine, what's the rain shadow effect? How is it gonna affect, you know, like the, the stir of the air if you fly, you know, that dirty air is, you know, how that can affect firefighting and the ability to go out and, and, um, protect your lands from catastrophic welfare. There's so many environmental things that we refuse to look like and look at. And we haven't quantified and given us a cost benefit on that. And then the, the biggest question is the social cost to our communities. When these companies come in, a lot of our landowners are, um, their sharecroppers. I'll, I'll admit I'm a sharecropper. We, we rent most of our land and um, so the money goes to my landlords who live in, in, uh, you know, Portland and, and uh uh Colorado Springs, and you know, they uh Harvard, they live all over the place and um And so that's the flow of money out of a rural community that's already been deprived of economic growth. Our largest export out of farming country is our kids. They don't come back. And we don't have an economy or an economic base to support that. And so the social cost also is that you create haves and have-nots. The houses and have nots are the um, the guys that get the contract, the guys that don't, the the community, the, the small town that has to live with the implications and the trade-offs that other economic interests may not come because there's large amounts of land that are um are uh under an industrial wind facility. So we're talking amid about industrializing the entire agricultural base. For renewable energy, and it's weather dependent, it creates instability in the grid. It costs a tremendous amount of money, and it has a social cost. And so I, the cost of the um construction for Oregon and Washington is estimated to be 550 billion by 2050. So wrap your head around. Washington has 7.1 million people, wrap your head around that, that cost, and the social cost is similar to what I explained to you in Connell, and there's more to come, and that's my concern about it. Um, I, the governor signed his last capstone bills this May, and in this speech, he mentioned the revolution. He used the word revolution 5 times, and to me that's what it is. It's a fundamental transfer of wealth away from the uh from the wealth producing lands that sustain our families and our communities and stabilize our nation and create peace. That, that wealth generating capacity is handed over to other nations and other entities that are not um Loyal to the communities that we serve, and that's my My, uh, story, and I'm more than happy to answer lots of questions. OK, thank you, representative. Now, and I know you, you're talking from a perspective from your state where the state has been pushing it, and like I said, it's been an issue that we've had to deal with in Carroll County for a long time, or for, for a year. And like I said, my brother's on the corn court, so whenever they first started coming in, if you had to look at it, It, it, you know, what you know now, and I mean, how many years have they been in your area now, uh, 58 years, 6 years, 4 years. 12 or 14 or 15, maybe 15 years. Yeah, so if you 2014, 10 to 15 years because Bickleton got him first. OK. And how tall are they in your district, typically? And the older plants are 54544 ft and they're looking at 600 and, I mean, plus the 690. I mean, they're bigger than the Columbia Tower. They, they, they're way bigger than the Space Needle. I mean, it's like skyscrapers everywhere. Yeah, and that's what they're talking about in Carroll County and I think Eastern Ark they, they said they're going to be 600+ feet tall. So if you had to go back and ask the question, look at it from the We talked about a little bit and I've talked to other states, from the promises they made about the economic impact and what all this is going to do versus then and now, I mean, what would be your opinion or what would you say now that, uh, before these came in. I would say it's a giant sucking sound, um, you know, you just, you have to look at the money. So let's say this is how I looked at that number of um 50 million in subsidies upfront. It's like there's a lot of room for negotiating community. A, a, a program or a way to get that to accrue to a revitalization of the economies of our rural communities, right? And, and instead, the, the lease agreements are a pittance in comparison to that subsidy margin, right? And so a good portion of our um CCA dollars 25% is for social justice and environmental justice of that one. 14 billion, that's now nigh on 3 billion at this point and it raised our gas prices by 50 cents. I'll say that too. So everybody's paying 50 cents more. We've got the 2nd highest gas price in the nation and over $1 of it is tax. And so, um, So I would say that, you know, those are big dampers on the general economy, but what flows back to small town. And it's so little and, and right now they're negotiating. Well, maybe we ought to do community benefit agreements, and I'm like they come in and they go, oh, here, we'll give this to your little foundation $250,000 and I'm thinking. We need a big economy. They, they, they'll tell you, they'll sell you, OK, the count that your county will receive a big bump up in the amount of tax revenue, property tax revenue that you receive from those projects, and that's true for a time, but ours has an incentive for rapid depreciation and so, um, while the stockholders for Puget Sound Energy are making bank on rapid. depreciation uh depreciation. The ratepayers are having to pay for that. And then it shifts the tax burden onto the local community, so there's a massive tax shift onto landowners and um homeowners and any kind of commercial, it, it shifts back to the community within 10 years. And so you, we're just at that point where we're 10 years in on our county and then we're just starting to see that decline. So 50% of Garfield County's income is um from windmills. It's 3 million. at the 6 million line item for their property tax revenues, so we built a $6 million government service sector. That will now transfer over to the farmers. Because the farmers are the tax base. Yeah So it's, it's never really seen more. You have to look up and say what are they doing? I have a bill that produces a royalty on the nameplate capacity of these facilities and then puts it into a fund that's run like our community economic revitalization board, and then that fund will Um, go to offer entrepreneurs and free market thinkers to consider coming back incentivize those folks to come back and build their um their American dream in small town where they can have neighborhoods where the kids can play in tree-lined streets and walk to school and walkable retail and really revi revitalize these depleted farming towns in eastern Washington. Yeah, and that's what some of the things up there, they're saying, well, we're gonna get all this money for local schools and so right now we do not have a tax structure for wind turbines. I need to call it by what it is, a wind turbine, not a windmill. But, uh, So, you know, in, in one area of East Arkansas, they're, they're signing in lieu of taxes. So, you know, I'm trying to find out right now is with our state funding that supplements our local schools to a certain level, uh, you know, if we just generate more local money, does that mean the state contributes less, so that means maybe a net zero. we also talked about the fire danger, you know, in East Arkansas, where it's flat, you know, up there in my area, where you look at the prime wind channel from the last presentation, uh, you know, it's up in the, in our wooded areas and right now we're ending our, our dry season with leaves on the ground, and you talked about, they say it is minimum that these catch a fire, but they do catch a fire. That's correct. They do catch on fire, and not only that, they're in the arid parts of our state and it's pride of their they're fire prone areas. The Scout Clean Energy Project, that, that those courses have hills burned nearly nearly every year, and we put a bill to um cite the, the, the facility so that aviation assets can go in and fight the fire because with the flashy fuels, 5 minutes is too long, so we, we, we can burn tens of thousands of acres in 15 minutes. And so because it's windy and dry, and so, um, they, they, they shot that bill down, but in reality, it's still on the table to discuss because You know, how do you fly aircraft in a uh an industrial wind facility. It's very difficult and they have a 10 acre um storage battery storage, lithium ion battery storage. None of our volunteer firefighters are trained on how would you fight an industrial scale lithium ion battery, and it's just watch it burn is the current standard of practice, and You know, that's significant because that that facility in particular is um That there is 400,000 people that live. Um, downwind from that facility, and so should there be something untoward happen to their storage facility that could cause catastrophic health issues, and we don't want that, and there's a 100,000 people that will be living within 6 miles of a turbine. So it has a significant cost. The other thing that I thought was interesting was the governor when he threw it back to his own um rapid uh or his expedited sighting commission, um, He has, he said, I need it, I need it full size, I need 20 more of this size, which would be 1.45 million acres, and um he says, and I, I, there hasn't been any for goodness talks in the last few years. So I guess if we're gonna hawks are gonna have to go. And I'm like, what happened to the environmentalists in this world that they could say that out loud. It bothered me. Yeah. Let me ask you a question about the wildlife. So right now in, in Arkansas, we have, we're, I mean, every day at our farm, I'm seeing at least 15 to 30 bald eagles. I mean, you know, can you talk about the wildlife aspect of it. I mean, you, I think you mentioned a bird up there that we probably don't have up here earlier, but, uh, so like the wildlife aspect of it, can you discuss that a little bit? Sure. Um, it's so, I understand that there was a point where California started removing some of their turbans because they were just knocking the California condor to the ground, and they will, the company will come and they will say, well, more birds die from hitting glass buildings and in car, you know, hitting cars, but. The last time I checked, I've never hit a California condor, and you know, so, yes, there are a lot of birds or more birds are eaten by cats. I've never seen my cat catch bald eagle. Um, So it's a particular kind of bird, and I think we need to look into that more as to why it is the Raptors that are most vulnerable, but I don't want to build at 25,000 square miles and then find out that, oh golly, we just killed all our golden and bald eagles in the area, you know. I, I, I think that it would be nice if we could be proactive and really clear eyed about the environmental impacts, and I think there are real environmental impacts that are not being assessed at scale. One wind farm with turbines is one thing, but landscapes of it because it's a diffuse energy supply, it takes 40 to 70 acres perturbine, and I actually looked. Arkansas wind map, and y'all don't have hardly Any good quality wind compared to the Midwest, and most of the wind. Windshields that are really viable economically for producing consistent energy have been taken. They're the Nebraska and the Kansas and Oklahoma's, those are the places that if you look at that map, it's and I'll send that to your committee. I think it's a a real telling thing. If you look at the wind map for Washington State. The colors are purple, like a really beautiful color, a dark purple. That's the Midwest. Then there's kind of a peachy color and a little bit of orange. Those are the ones that are being looked at or sought after, so it's kind of 9 to 12, 8 to 7 to 9, and then green is like 234, hardly any, and this is all measured at 80 ft. The speeds, wind speeds it 80 ft. And so that, that to me tells me that there's something else. Driving the mission and the something else is the flow of money, the wealth generating capacity of American sovereign land to Large global corporations that have no loyalty to the benefits of affordable, reliable. Energy that supplies our grid, and the whole idea of putting more and more and more onto the grid, destabilizes. I was sitting next to a lady from Bonneville Power yesterday, and she was saying they have to turn the generators on and off, on and off, on and off in our dams. They have 11 dams on our system, and she said it's just taken the life out of our generators. And so that's, I hope I asked you, but as far as the um birds and stuff. I think that's a big issue, and the ground nesting birds in particular, and, and it's just to me we have um we have burrowing owls, we have, um, you just, we have great horned owls. Those are slow flyers, and they get sucked out of the air. They can't see it. Well, and that's some of the questions, and you know, so the difference in, in probably our state, you have a lot of hydroelectric power with dams and, and things like that. And I'll talk with you and I think another representative about that. So what we're seeing on that, what you'll see from the, uh, the windmill, uh, wind turbine last time was that we're having these coal plants go offline and that we've got a code to this power and even up there, you're seeing some of that debate about like where we're shifting our energy from. hydroelectric power, which you have a lot of up there to, you know, we're going offline. I mean, after you're 12 years into it, do you see where this is really keep it going keep the wind is gonna keep up with our increasing power needs. I mean, You're kind of playing with two very interesting paradigms because you just said it, they, they pulled the coal off of the grid, which created, we were in Washington state, if you looked at the actual generation and demand for Washington residents. We have more than enough, and we do export power to 17 states and Canadian provinces in the Western Inner Thai. So that when we say we're we're building these things for our own little rural community, you know, and they put up 100 megawatt facility that serves 38,000 homes and you only have 1200 people that live there, you know, you have to start thinking, what is it? And, and so, you know, they've already pulled the power that we need, so they destabilize the grid, then they say we have to build renewables and the overbiild to get to where you want to go is. is huge, so, you know, to to get. Enough To match what you had in your coal plant. would be 3 times. As much as the nameplate, so the nameplate capacity is 100 megawatts, you have to build 300 megawatts, and then even then you can't fix the duct curve, and for your folks, um, on the committee that aren't energy, there's a duck curve and what it is is the power demand curve during the course of a day, and it, if it's graphed out, it looks like a duck. And so when you get up in the morning, you kick everything on. You, everybody takes a hot. shower and then you leave and go to work and then power demand goes down and then when you get home from work, you start cooking, you do loads of wash, you run the dishwasher, whatever, and the duck curve goes up. Now we have an EV mandate in Washington state, so the duck curve when you plug into your garage is goes way up, right? Because we've taken an energy source that runs our transportation sector, our, our gasoline and diesel, and we converted it all. to electricity because we want to be 100% electric by 2050 and so you created this huge spike in the duck curve, and it's the same thing with um with the uh going to heat pumps and so you've added that to that as well. We don't have the transformers. We don't have the wires to even have a plugin in every garage in every neighborhood, and the transformers are back ordered forever. So to me, I just, it doesn't make sense. Why we would Cripple or grid prematurely without letting Technology and affordability and reliability direct the, the energy resources to our neighborhoods, to our communities, to our states, and to our nation. Why would we do that? What is the primary mission for doing that and when you meet with a group of farmers and they're looking at the leases for the windmills, and it looks kind of nice, but they don't know how to negotiate, and you see like vast diversity in what the deal is going to be, and they just pick off the cheapest deal they can get from these um. these little groups of farmers. But when you ask them specifically, so everybody in this room is doing this because you feel deeply in your heart that you're doing something to save us from catastrophic climate collapse. They'll laugh at you, but the other thing is, is that when you look at the data Discovery Institute has published a study in November, and it shows that if we do everything. We in Washington state could potentially reduce The temperature, global temperature by 11,000. Of a degree And that's less than what you can read on a thermometer, and so there's no way to confirm that. Yeah, we're having 50 billion. Yeah, and we're having that debate. I mean, several years ago, I mean, you and I talked about, I went in several years ago, we had the natural gas boom here in the central part of Arkansas, which are, you know, when the natural gas price was real high, it made it where they could profitably drill here and extract more natural gas when, when the natural gas price tank, I mean that a lot of them have pulled out. So we, we, we still have a lot of natural gas we're trying to develop a lithium down here in, in South Arkansas. But so right now, that's what we're trying to do before our legislative session. It's what's been valuable because like I said, I would, I would sit here right now today and not know how to ask questions other than this issue's been going on for a year in Carroll County, and I've got connected with people around the, the country to try and have a debate because like you said, up here in Carroll County, uh, and East Arkansas, they're coming into these farmers or absentee landowners and saying, hey, you know, do you want to make money out of this? and it's a profitable way and then we all like want to look at that for economic development in any district. So we appreciate you, uh, does any members of the committee have any questions or anything like that. I think, OK. I have time to stay longer, but I know you want to end like on top of the hour anyway, so go ahead. Yeah, uh, Senator Stubblefield, you're, we're trying to get you recognized here. Oh OK, you may need to go help him. We're, uh, we've switched over our things and several of us have tell by looking at us, don't really take to new technology and we have to learn, so we have to have these smart young people go explain us how to do this. Uh, let me Camilla is sitting on this committee meeting. That's, yeah, I'm sitting here talking to Blake. I, I know, uh, Blake will and you could have your staffer could have a lot of discussions about, so they're moving him to another. Another portal here. So while he's doing it, one of the discussions I had, I think Vermont, I found out, put a moratorium on windmills because they didn't, didn't have the capacity to get out the grid. That's probably some of the things we need to look at. We need to really look at our grid system, how are they gonna transport before they come in here and set up and do something, we need to, would you say it's critical for us to have discussions really quick about what is your plan, how you get it on the grids, you know, some type of thing that we know ahead of time, uh, these questions about how to transport on the grid. Use that, is it necessary. The other part is, that's one question. The second question I'd have again is, um, what you were saying about like our wind area down here is nothing like, I mean, I go to Oklahoma or Kansas. Yeah, it's, and so, uh, do you? Why they build them there in a non-efficient area with a very inefficient technology. is that doesn't serve the demand curve very well because it's running when there is no demand and there's no way to store it except through hydropower in our case or batteries, which are toxic and require a lot of mining. Millions of tons of mining. Remember when America was opposed to mining. Anyway, so that that whole thing is, is, um, just follow the money and it's the incentives, that's the renewable energy credits that they get. It's the cap and trade deals that they get. It's the sales to global equity firms and moving the wealth-producing capacity that you would have in your community out to global firms that you have no control. You don't even know who owns all the pieces of their portfolio. Love to know that. I think you. need to really think about it in terms of, is this real economic development because that's what I told the government governor, he said he's he's like, well, this is gonna be great for rural communities. No, the money does not land in the rural economy like agricultural production does. The farmers that live there that worship in churches there, those people, they invest in their community. That's what sustains your economic base. Agriculture is a base for economies in, in our states and, and we, we're putting in an opportunity for people to exploit our wind resource and exploit the revenues of our taxpayers and take it out into their own portfolios, and I think that that's the fundamental problem with the industry itself. It's like a great massive shift of power and money to governments and global companies. I, I want to call it an oligarchy that I'm trying to avoid that. I just did, OK, go ahead with the next question. OK. I think Senator Stubblefield is recognized for questioning. All right. OK. There we go. All right, Senator Stubfield's records. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, um. Am I speaking to Mary? You are a senator. It's nice to see you, it was nice to meet you too, uh, you know, someone who served on the Energy council for 14 years. I have sit and listened to groups discuss this particular topic for the last 4 years. Uh, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about putting in windmills in a place like Arkansas because like you said, I've seen the maps and I've seen all the, uh, topographical Arkansas is not meant for wind power. I mean, all, all the states you mentioned like Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas. But even then, we wouldn't be building these things were it not for government subsidies. That is the only reason we're building under this administration. They have set goals aside for us to put windmills all over even in the ocean. They're killing whales. That are doing things that the Sierra Club should be fighting against and killing all these birds that the Sierra Club normally would be in here arguing against. And it reminds me a lot of the uh electrical uh outlets that our government just put in spent $8 billion and put in one. One charging station. That is, that is the kind of waste and abuse that this whole program will bring there's no common sense in any of this, none, and President Biden himself said he would like for us to be totally green. By the year 2050, do you know what the cost of that is? To change our grid to build our. Wasn't it like 88 trillion or something or have they gone up from there 50 trillion now we owe 36 trillion and we're gonna add another 50 trillion, uh, producing vehicles that people do not want. The car dealers are parking them behind their garages because they can't sell them. And, and this whole thing is, is to me is a uh a governmental joke, but it's a, it's the liberal, the liberal agenda. And they want to produce something and tell people what they have to drive instead of letting the American people make the choice of whether they, I don't have anything against electric. If you wanna buy electric, go ahead and buy electric, but don't tell me I have to buy electric. Because you've got countries like Pakistan and India and and China that are building coal-fired plants without scrubbers and filters, uh, one a week. All of that, all of that smoke and soot coming out of those, those huge, huge. They're being caught up in the jet string they're traveling around the globe and they're going to wind up right here and everything we do like this is not gonna change the temperature one iota. I'm a farmer. I've watched this very closely and I've studied it and I've listened to a lot of people talk at the Southern states Energy Board and the, and the Energy council. I've been to those coal fire plants in Wyoming and in South Dakota where you can eat off the floor, the scrubbers and the filters and and the what comes out of those stacks is nothing but steam. But we're allowing China and Pakistan and India. And other countries over there to build these coal fired plants with no protections at all as far as the environment is concerned, so. This is absolutely ludicrous what we're doing and the American people are gonna be stuck with the bill. So I appreciate you coming here today. I appreciate you testifying. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your comment and you bring up a very important point as to the geopolitical why. And, you know, why would we do this, and I think that there's a broader issue. We're looking at building code to council changes that happened in our state, and I bring this forward just for your consideration. So the building codes, we had had a number of natural gas band bills that went through our committee. And thanks to the trade unions, we were able to um keep those from becoming law. And then, um, shortly thereafter, a technical advisory group was formed, and in the building code council, and the language from the technical advisory group was from uh was helped. It was drafted by an organization called Rocky Mountain Institute. It's out of Boulder, Colorado. That, that organization had in the past. About 60 attorneys. And um A small budget. And It has now morphed. From a recent 2020, 2020 report in 2024 report to a 550 attorneys and um $150 million budget. And it is also associated with a couple of other NGOs that do grants to NGOs and community organizations similar to um to Rocky Mountain Institute to do the technical work to implement the the climate policies that are, they are focused on policy, um, and so they bring the policy agenda for China, which was stated in Rocky Mountain Institute's annual. report that China wants to get green energy, yet they're building coal-fired plants every, every month, the new one crops up to manufacture. And mine and process, all of the materials and all of the equipment, a large percentage of the windmills that are being installed in Washington state are Chinese manufactured, certainly all of the bat uh the magnets inside the motors are that only place on earth that they can source the materials for that magnet is China. All of the cobalt for this, the solar panels is being sourced from a mine that's Chinese owned. With the nation to nation agreement with the Congo to build road infrastructure and infrastructure, water infrastructure for the Congo, which they're failing on that promise, but they're mining with children, children that when they enter the mind, their life expectancy in the mind is about 2 years, and those children are dragging cobalt out with their bare hands into wicker baskets. The mind that I have video of has 50,000 children in their mining the materials for the green transformation or revolution that we're experiencing here, so I think that the key thing is the note to yourself that this is being driven by a foreign adversary, the idea of it is being driven by a foreign adversary for a to weaken our energy sector nationally to get us to go to a fossil-free future. Do you know how much diesel it takes to run a navy and also to cripple us financially. We will all under our own weight with these policies, that is a big issue with me, um, don't know how to bring it up, but you, you, I just, I just want you to know that we, if you track Where the money from the climate commitment Act when 25% of it was allowed to go to community organizations and NGOs working on social justice and environmental justice. It empowers these organizations. They're actually writing policy, so that tag committee created a natural gas ban which we passed, we passed that natural gas ban through administrative council. It's not a legislative body and it has no authority. Now. That's how we end up with those huge bogies on our, our buildings on our universities. That's how we get to that billion dollar bogey on our university. And so you look at how this plays out into our society, and now you look at how they're imposing themselves and really exploiting the vulnerabilities of our farming communities to take our land and our wealth generating capacity. That's the big story here. It's a bigger picture than what we're willing to accept. The the growers, I don't begrudge them because we've been, you know, beans and rice for a long time and trying to, you know, stay economically viable for a long time, but the fact is, is that this is something that's fundamental to the sovereignty of our United States of America. This, you know, when we talk about, oh, the Chinese are buying farmland. No, no, but they're doing public policy that will fundamentally transform our economy into a much weaker. Much more dependent economy and our environmental community. Should be fortified, that we're mining. In Chile, their national park that we're putting the Uighurs at work. To build solar panels that were allowing children to be killed in mines in the Congo. That's the thing. Meanwhile, it will not build our world economies. We will continue to depopulate Bickleton is a good, a good example of that. The, the, the company built a school for the 15 children, so they didn't have to commute 100 miles a day, and then they turned around and now 15 years later, that that was there it's just a few children, but they did that for that that community as a community benefit for harvest, uh, exploiting their wind resource. It turns around now. There is only 6 children that enrolled this year. Why? Because all the families left. That's why. And those are the pictures that I sent to you, Senator, of the windmill that was burning and also the solar farm that was burning. Well, I've, I've read a great deal about the children and how they're treated in China, uh, slave labor, uh. And it just It breaks my heart. Because this is such a sinister plan, uh, against the United States of America because China is not our friend. I don't know how long it's going to take us to realize that they're not our friend. In the carbon content in our atmosphere today is 004. 30 years ago it was 0.04. We can't drop below down to 2 because we no longer have plant life, so we haven't really not moved the scale, barely at all. And in those many years and yet why all of a sudden, have we had everything shifted to a green energy, and I think it's, I think it's a liberal policy, and I'm, I'm not sure they just, it's uh. A plane to destroy this country and take over our country and I'm hoping that this new administration, and I think they will put a stop to some of this insanity. Uh, over this green energy, so thank you again. I appreciate you coming and testify. Thank you for giving me the time. I appreciate you. Thank you, uh, Senator Stofield, and since we are a little bit over our hour, we're going to let go and then Blake, you know, I always tell Blake to try and remind me about hours about all I go. So Camille, we want to thank you for being on there. I certainly know somebody's, I think next year I'll have been around here 20 years. And so I know the staffers, I used to think when I first come in, they worked for. now I consider him my big brothers and sisters, so they, uh, uh, but, so we thank you. So we thank you, Representative Do, for coming in, and I certainly look forward to more visits, and I will apologize ahead of time if I ever mess up because I know you're 2 hours behind us, and as a farmer, I get up early. So if I ever it takes you at 6 o'clock in the morning here, it's 4 o'clock in the morning there. It's just because I'm going to forget about the time zone. So, uh, but I do want to thank you guys for participating in this. We're beginning a discussion on this and we're going in our session. So I just wanted. To present both sides, and I think you've done that very well and, uh, we appreciate that. And so hopefully sometime at a conference or maybe sometime we can talk to our energy committee and come up there and visit Washington State. We'd love to do that. So we want to thank you for, uh, participating today, so. Thank you so much, and I'll send you some data. Thank you again. OK, thank you very much. All right. If there's no, there's no other questions, we'll call this meeting adjourned.