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215: From AI Stunts to EV Smarts: What Actually Matters for the Climate
Guest(s): Bill Kessler

In this week’s episode we welcome comedian and writer Bill Kessler for a spirited, no-filter take on the intersection of climate politics, policy, and everyday life. Blending wit with insight, they dissect the week’s environmental headlines, from viral AI spectacles to the deeper economic and moral choices shaping our planet’s future.

Matt and Bill unpack the $700 million clean energy project cancellations, exploring what that means for America’s battery manufacturing, job creation, and energy independence. They examine the lawsuits around Cancer Alley, where weakened EPA air pollution standards are hitting vulnerable communities hardest, and talk about the human cost behind those policy shifts.

From public transport funding shortfalls to the environmental price of ultra-processed foods, the conversation connects personal choices with systemic change and lands on practical optimism. Bill’s closing thought? Go buy a two-year-old electric vehicle; it’s smart economics and smart for the planet. It’s a grounded, funny, and thought-provoking exchange that reminds us that humor and hope still belong in the climate conversation.

Want to boast to your friends about trees named after you? Help us plant 30k trees? Only a few trees left! Visit aclimatechange.com/trees to learn more.

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215: From AI Stunts to EV Smarts: What Actually Matters for the Climate
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You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Mattern, your host, and got a great episode coming up. We got Bill Kessler on the show. And, Bill, uh, we had a lot of fun the last time you were here. We’re kind of riffing on Trump’s UN speech, and so now we’re gonna go over some news items, a little current events, keep making sure that you’re staying up to speed with, uh, your reading here, and, uh, get your hot take on some of the important environmental news.

Oh, there’s nothing more that I love than hot takes. Count me in, Matt.

Okay. Well, here, you’re in the right place. Hot takes is what we do. So you’re gonna get a chance to use your comedy skills to turn some of, uh, Trump’s actions into comedy gold. Not a hard job to do, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Uh, stuff writes itself.

Yeah. He does. I mean, he really gives us all the material that any comic could ever ask for every single day. Is it kind of like drinking from a fire hose when you’re looking at this from a comedic, uh, perspective?

Yeah. And that it’s not fun at all.

Well, it’s horrifying. It’s tragicomedy. So you see, hey, our country being hurt, but yet at the same time, he’s doing it in such an idiotic fashion. It’s hard not to kind of laugh at the stupidity.

Laugh or sit on the end of your bed and put your hands over your head and weep for the sheer vulgarity of what this nation has become. Either one is a it’s up to you. Sort of a glass half full.

It happens kinda naturally. So, yeah, I’m kind of not in the, you know, leaning on my bed and crying type, but I’m more like get angry and.

And get to do something.

Right. Just kind of like I’m furious, and then I’ll click on another article and see

What I like about you is that you are furious, and this is what fury looks like. And that is something I can respect because if I was furious, everyone in this room would be uncomfortable.

I’m a zen fury. Uh, you know, I’m trying to.

Try to stay cool. Riding the river.

Yeah. Well, you can’t let, you know, all of your energy dissipate by kind of an anger that is yelling and shouting, and then you’re gonna you’re gonna burn out. I could you can burn out really quickly. So it’s it’s much better to kind of feel it and let it pass through.

Yeah. What is a feeling? Try to identify it.

Uh, right now, I’m not feeling the anger because I’m here with you, and you’re calming me. It’s a very calming effect. Are you feeling the bon ami? Exactly. So, you know, when that’s happening, um, Trump is dropping in the order of importance.

Yeah. There are things in life you can control, and those are the things you should focus on.

I think that’s why a lot of people are just tuning out from all of this. It’s probably most Americans just kind of tune out. Like, I’ve seen enough. I don’t wanna see anymore. This is crazy. And just trying to do watch your TV shows and go to work and hang out with their family and friends and just disassociate, essentially, from politics.

Alright. Let’s get on with the show.

Let’s get on with the show. Let the games begin. One of the current events we’re gonna talk about is the Trump shit dump. And Trump made a dump all over the cities of America, which I guess he considers to be shithole cities. And kind of like to get your take on that. Why do you think the president of The United States would find it necessary?

Well, just to I think people might although I think all of America saw this. I think people might need some clarification on what you’re talking about. I enjoy your use of the term shit dump. It seems it doesn’t seem like it needs both words.

But, you know, I think, uh, unless or if there was some lack of clarity, I wanna just, you know Well, there was a lot of

clarity in that portion of the description, but we’re talking about the the AI video that he posted on his socials, which showed realistic footage, although this didn’t actually happen.

Oh my god. It didn’t happen?

Flew an American fighter jet over a city and then opened up, like, the pod bay doors or the where the bombs are or this I don’t know what you call that. And then it it just he put diarrhea all over the protesters.

Uh, so that’s, you know, that’s what you get if you’re a protester. That’s what you deserve, I guess, in the Trump world.

Here’s my question. Remember the movie Back to the Future?

I do.

Michael J. Fox, he goes back in time, and he’s talking to Doc Brown. He’s trying to convince him that he’s actually from the future, and Doc Brown doesn’t believe him. He goes, okay. Yeah. If you’re from the future, who was president of The United States in 1985? And he goes, Ronald Reagan. And he goes, yeah. The actor?

Can you imagine going back thirty years now? And you go to someone, okay. You’re from the future. Who’s president? You go, Donald Trump. And you meet the dude with a comb over from People magazine who’s known for, like, cheating on his wife. That’s come on. And you go, like, uh, like, tell me something that happened in the future. Right. Right. Go, okay. We have these computers that can aggregate all of human recorded information and media, and then you can just type stuff into them, and then they will generate for you in seconds a visual of whatever it is you type in. This is an existing technology, and they go, wow.

Like, so what do people use that for? Like, they make new Van Gogh’s or something? Well, the president of The United States, he made footage of himself in a fighter jet full of diarrhea and then dumped it on the populace. They were, oh, yeah. You are from the future. That makes perfect sense now that you explain it.

Wow. We’re really going in a good direction. Things are things are going well. I’m looking forward to the future.

Does it actually feel like this is reality? That such a thing is happening.

It kinda defies reality, but that’s just one point among many. And the Department of Energy canceled $700,000,000 in battery and clean air manufacturing projects. So what’s your take on that, Bill?

Well, I guess I would ask you a question. I mean, this is that story seems to me like from a Republican fiscally conservative perspective. Yeah. There’s the whole part where he’s canceling money that was that congress already approved, so that wouldn’t happen with another president. But in terms of the idea of the philosophy of a conservative where you wouldn’t be giving money to companies to help prop them up, it kinda makes philosophical sense. Right?

I I guess if they weren’t giving money to oil companies to prop them up and give them all. Now you’re asking for them not to be hypocrites and for them to be right.

Right. I guess I…consistency.

So let that let that notion.

I guess I’ll let’s throw that out the window and just talk about.

Like, well your your own personal fiscal beliefs.

My…

What would you think?

I would say that it’s a good investment because the Chinese government is putting tons of money into their battery manufacturers, and we will lose the technology wars if we don’t create our own battery manufacturers. And look at what happened with the rare earth thing. So if they say, hey. We’re not giving you any more batteries anymore, and we don’t have the technology. We’re kind of up a Trump Creek without a paddle.

But isn’t capitalism supposed to work with the invisible hand, and then the motivation would just be these companies would do this on their own? The government picking favorites would be against.

I guess that would work if the Chinese government was not.

So you’re saying the Chinese?

You know, it tilts the playing field. So Adam Smith’s field is no longer a fair playing field when somebody else comes in with a $100,000,000,000 and says, I’m gonna give it to my battery manufacturers, and they’re gonna have a head start, which it’s I mean, we’ve done that with many industries. We’ve done that with all of our defense industries. We’ve given them tons of money to develop fighter planes and jets and all kinds of advanced technology that wasn’t market based.

It was we need to be able to kill everybody else in the world based? Like, we need to be.

Right. Yeah. It’s power based. So, like, yeah, you if from a pure power play standpoint, it makes sense from that standpoint. Even if you’re not an environmentalist, it makes sense because we would have renewable power, which is a good source in the future. It’s cheaper.

I wonder if the weakness of capitalism would be that what they’re trying to help incentivize is innovation, and capitalism in some of a space like that would be very fear based. Why would from a purely capitalist perspective, would you wanna replace oil and fossil fuels? Right? It’s wildly profitable. So they’re they’re gonna go, yeah, we could do this thing which could then eclipse all this other thing, or we could just do keep doing what we’re doing, and it’s a known commodity. So they’re they are putting their thumb on the scale.

Yeah. I I think that well, the point is that the renewables are cheaper, but they need some help regarding batteries because batteries do help the renewables kind of work through the night when the sun isn’t shining. Sometimes the wind’s not blowing. You need to have some battery backup to allow for that that transition. I think it makes some sense. The the other thing is it there’s a lot of jobs at stake. This this affects more red state job or jobs in red states than it does in in blue state. So it’s kind of destructive to the communities that supported him in the twenty twenty four election. So which doesn’t seem to bother his constituents a whole lot. I haven’t heard of a whole lot of squawking about this.

If you look at the Chinese companies in terms of what they have been able to accomplish, I just saw a thing where the president of Ford, who is Chris Farley’s cousin. I don’t know. It’s it’s something Farley.

Kevin, that’s that’s fine.

His brother, but he looks like Chris Farley. He’s not as, uh, rotunded ample a gentleman, but he has a certain Chris Farley aspect to him. But that guy, he wanted to see what they were like, so he got a Chinese electric car just to compete. And he’s saying in the press, oh my god. The thing is great. I gave it back. I miss it desperately. Now I have to drive a Ford. No. You didn’t put it that way, but, like, there’s no motivation for him to say that beyond it must be

Well, he can say that because we have such high tariffs that no Chinese car can enter the market. So Yeah. None of us can actually drive a Chinese car unless you’re Chris Farley.

But you can imagine a case where, yeah, the rest of the world is gonna be driving Chinese cars.

Oh, that’s that is happening.
[
Yeah. My girlfriend was just in Italy, and there was someone driving a Chinese electric car, and she and they were like, I don’t know why this even came up. I think these people are just so excited and in love with their cars that this person was telling you, like, oh my god. This thing is the best. It reads your mind. It gives you a back massage. It tells you to call your mother. I don’t know what it does. Like, but it’s just like an amazing vehicle. Like, they are better. Right.

And that’s even with pretty high tariffs going into Europe. Their tariffs aren’t quite as high as ours, but they’re they’re pretty substantial.

You can get a Chinese electric car in Italy.
[
Wow. Another reason to move to Italy.

Yeah. And, again, they are sort of comparing them to Fiats. So in that sense, it’s not it might not be entirely accurate, but nonetheless, the guy loved his car.

I enjoyed the Fiat with that I rented in Europe a few years back. It was fun. It was a fun little car. It’s it’s not a Ferrari, though.

Yeah. I mean, I’m aging myself, but back in when the Fiats were first in America.

And I don’t and I never drove a Ferrari, so I don’t I really I just wanna put that out on the record that I don’t have any experience.

You didn’t need it, man. Man. You do fine without something like that. You don’t need any help.

You know, I actually don’t have a car at all right now. I am carless for the last going on two months. No car.

No car. No car. How do you, uh, get around? Are you are you on Uber and What about a bicycle? And so aerobic benefit.

I bought a bicycle, but it’s not come in yet. It’s on order, so it should be here within Rick Shaw? Uh, no. Not no.

The bike is on order.
[
The bike is on order.

Is it an electric bike?

It is. I am it’s slightly embarrassing when I have to say that because I feel like that’s kinda cheating, but I I promise that I’m gonna use the pedals as much as I can.

Well, just call it a motorcycle.

It is kind of it’s not that bad. There are a lot of these bikes that now go, like, 55, 60 miles an hour that they call bicycles, but they’re they’re really not anymore. They’re really motorcycles with pedals.

Yeah. I mean, and you’re comparing it to having had a car. You’re literally getting a bike to replace a car. That had zero option to pedal it. It wasn’t a Flintstone car. So at this point, you’re if any you know, you’ve got so many talking points.
[
I’m way ahead of the game. Yeah. Though I’ve got I’ve got, like, whatever, forty years of car ownership behind me that I’ve got, uh, for? To make up the difference for.

But Just the sheer joy. That’s one of the great pleasures in life is riding a bicycle. You if you haven’t been on one in a while, but then it’s the novelty is anew every time you get on it, the wind in your face, you just end up singing a tuneless song to yourself. It just and the trees and the wind, it’s exhilarating.

I’m looking forward to it.

Experience.

Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. You know? And, uh, course.

Are you gonna get a little bell?

I haven’t thought of that.

When’s your when’s your birthday?
[
It’s coming up February 10. 02/10. 02/10. Buy a bell format. Okay. Fantastic. That I I hope I get it.

Heard that? Oh, damn it. I gotta surprise you.

I I hope I get it before, you know, before I get into any accidents. You know? You gotta get it to me pretty quickly. Maybe Christmas. Who knows? You know? Spectacular. The safer I am, the better. So, uh, kind of moving right along in the news.

Uh, Matt wants to move off of the he’s segueing from the hot bike talk.

Hot bike talk, yeah, to, uh, communities sued Trump and the EPA over toxic air pollution exemptions. So we’ve got Trump kind of cutting back on pollution laws so that factories can pollute more.

Read a little read a little further in that story.

Uh, the Inside Climate News reports that community and environmental justice groups are suing the Trump administration and the EPA for exempting 50 chemical plants from key air pollution rules designed to prevent cancer and other serious illnesses.

That’s the part that got me because I’m gonna tell you something. And I don’t you know, I’m gonna take a stand right here, and people can go with me or not. But I am against giving people cancer.

You are way out there on the spectrum. You are such a…

That was your platform as a as a candidate.

That sounds woke to me. That sounds really woke. I don’t know what’s up with you. I when did you turn so woke that you’re against cancer?

Say a guy is running for president, and he gets on the stage, and he says, I as part of my decree to America, I will mandate that every baby is taught to smoke. I would say, hey. You know, I’m not voting for this guy. That seems like a terrible idea.
[0
That does seem like a terrible idea.

I mean, I’m not saying it wouldn’t look hilarious because, like, I mean right? Like, little babies smoking. Remember the, uh, Van Halen album 1984? 1984, I think it is.

I don’t remember that one. I did get the first Van Halen album pretty close after it was published, which would have been…

Oh, so you were too cool for once they went and had, like, uh, electric keyboards on it. Well, the 1984 album has a baby smoking on it. It’s and I’m not saying that isn’t a super cool cover, and I’m all for Eddie Van Halen’s guitar virtuosity and David Lee Roth’s eternal sexual energy.

Forever adolescent ribaldry. But that nonetheless, I’m still against baby smoking.

Okay. Well, it’s kind of akin to smoking when you’re throwing off things from a smoke stack that creates particles.

Precisely the analogy that I was making.

You know, I’m just trying to put the dots together in case anybody missed it.

Big bulletin board with some red yarn.

Yeah. Like, you know, keep everybody in the game. So these these exemptions primarily affect communities in the Gulf South, especially Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, Texas, home to predominantly black and low income neighborhoods, already suffering some of the worst nation’s worst pollution.

Against especially, I’m no. It’s not on a spectrum, but I’m against giving black people cancer, I’d like to say. I’m against giving anybody cancer, and I don’t know that that’s worse, but it feels worse because of the historic racism that this country was built on. It’s not a great platform. This guy this truck guy seems like a It doesn’t. And he seems like a real jerk.

Uh, he told us during the campaign that America would was going to have cleaner air and water. I don’t know how that’s possible when you’re spewing more toxins into the air and putting them into the water. It’s the those two things don’t seem to connect. These aren’t abstract pollutants. These are ethyl oxide and chloroprene cause cancers and miscarriages, and residents in Cancer Alley already face air pollution a thousand times above safe levels.

That seems like a lot.

I’ve driven down those roads in you know, I went to school in New Orleans for five years, so I had a chance to travel a little bit in Louisiana. And there’s just an incredible amount of petrochemical plants in that, you know, 80 mile run from, what is it, Baton Rouge down to, uh, New Orleans.

Did you have the vents open on your car when you went through that?
[
I don’t think I had any kind of sense at the time of how much it was a thousand times.

Right. Right. There weren’t any warning signs on the side of the road saying, hey. You’re going into this area where a lot of toxins are being thrown.

Like an alligator with three eyes or anything?

I didn’t see that alligator. But just to keep everybody on track and so not only shit dumping that, uh, the president has engaged in recently, he’s also blasting narco boats out of the water in The Caribbean. As if we need to start another war, that seems to be kind of on the agenda. The peace president is, uh, rattling the saber and now has sent an aircraft carrier down close to Venezuela. For what purpose? I’m not sure.

Maybe fishing?

Fishing. Could be fishing. Uh, Pete Hegseth, uh, wants to do some muscle, uh, building out on the deck of a carrier in The Caribbean, maybe. Yeah.

That’d be sweet out there.

I mean Come on. Yeah. Show his big guns. Uh, he’s…

Does that guy got tattoos? That dude’s got

Yeah. He’s got lots of tattoos and some questionable tattoos. Oh, really? Like, what kind of stuff? I I can’t recall exactly, but the You haven’t seen him? It’s been a minute. I think we’re gonna segue to the public transit systems on the edge of a cliff amid funding shortfalls. So imagine waiting an hour for a bus that never comes because it broke down, because your city can’t afford to run it anymore. Uh, the PBS NewsHour, well, PBS is gonna be off the air soon because they’re not getting any more money, reports that public transit systems across The US are facing massive funding shortfalls as pandemic relief dollars dry up and ridership remains below pre COVID levels. So, uh, should the federal government be spending money on public transit? Does that seem like a reasonable It know it it always has.

Right? Isn’t that the way that public transit works? I mean, nobody could own all the land to lay all the track for a subway. Or I guess that’s why it’s called public transit.

Yeah. It’s always been it’s and everywhere around the world is not a private entity. This is these are the things we do collectively together.

I guess he never had to take the bus in New York. You imagine. Probably, you know, he’s always taking limos and helicopters.

Jet planes full of human feces.

Right. That kind of thing. So you really didn’t have to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi in the subway.

Do you think in his entire life that Donald Trump has ever ridden on a bus? I would bet no. We really should celebrate the bus more. I mean, the bus when you think about the the bus in terms of the civil rights movement, I mean, the bus is the fulcrum for the launching of the greatest social change in the history of America. Rosa Parks refused to give over seat on a bus. The movie Speed, it’s like Die Hard, but on a bus, great fucking idea. Don’t go below 50 miles per hour. I mean, these two things, Mondami. That dude’s making buses for free. He’s changing the game there. So, I mean, I’m not ranking these. They’re of different values, but nonetheless.

What do you think about this Mamdami character, uh, and his idea of free grocery store or government grocery stores?

I think it’s cool that he came up with, like, five actionable policies or or he’s certainly gonna try that are all pocketbook based, and then he is ignoring all these kind of, uh, culture war issues and just saying these are these are my things I’m gonna do. Whether or not you personally agree with the idea of some sort of commie grocery store, I do because I’m a dirty communist. You know, I’m one of these left wing lunatics. I said, sure. Why not? Did we need to figure out a way to equal this playing field, put some thumbs on the scale, and I’m a I’m a Bernie guy.

I love this stuff. I’m all for it. Let’s do it. We haven’t tried it. You know? There was the the new deal, and they tried a bunch of cool stuff that we all have to this day and, like, you know, Social Security, maybe you heard of it. You know, Medicare, all this all these great things. And then since then, we’re like, oh, we’ll just rest on our laurels. Nothing will ever get better than that. In fact, it’ll get worse. We’ll just chip away on those until they’re gone. This is not a great system. So this guy’s like, hey. Here’s some other new ideas that we could do to improve people’s lives.

Uh, you know, you make a good pitch on that front. I I’m kind of leaning in that direction too. I didn’t get outraged when I heard it. I felt like one of the big problems we have in health care and we spend tons of money on is the fact that our food supply and the kinds of foods that people who are poor are eating are terrible. And the food companies have injected all this ultra processed garbage.

Yeah. You’re incentivized. The cheapest food is, like, high sugar food. Right. The cheapest way to eat is very unhealthy.

Right. Okay. Just in this, um, plaintiff’s seminar, and they were talking about these ultra food processed cases that are being brought. And they’re being brought against the food companies, and their kind of contention is is kind of like, well, RJR with a tobacco JR. It was Reynolds.

Oh, we’re ack to smoking.

They, uh, were bought by KKR, which was Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, a big hedge fund or whatever, uh, back in the eighties. They bought a bunch of food companies, and the theory is that they kind of created food similar to the way they created tobacco to make it addictive. And these ultra processed foods are addictive. They make you want to eat more than you should, and it’s garbage. So so lose lose scenario, and the rate of diabetes in The US is skyrocketing higher.

So, clearly, their, you know, their premise has worked. They’ve gotten people more addicted to garbage foods. So going back to madam Madami, if if they stocked really wholesome foods and fed people who are lower income good food, I think that’s money better spent than on the health care system because my feeling is if people are getting better foods, they’re gonna get sick less often, and that’s gonna be a net positive.

I mean, it’s a it’s a intractable difficult problem, though, because you can’t the government can’t enforce what kind of food people eat.

Well, you could tax New York like that.

You could tax, uh, say, soft drinks.

Remember they did that in New York of, like, that there wasn’t there, like, a limit on how big a large soft drink was or something like that, and people lost their minds. Like, they’re like, how dare you tell me whether I should be

I you know, you can drink a a six gallon thing of Coke, but we’ll tax it like we tax cigarettes. How about that? Uh, because I’m gonna end up paying for the people who drink large Coca Colas because they’re gonna drive up the cost of health care. They’re gonna have diabetes more. They’re gonna have all kinds of other illnesses because of eating crappy food. So, well, it impacts other things.

Cola’s right as a company to poison the country.

I think it’s a limited right.

It is a limited right. But where do you draw that line? Because it isn’t it is a spectrum. Coca Cola is not cigarettes.

Right. I don’t think we start off with a tax that nobody could buy it, but, you know, it starts off at a nickel, a drink, or something like that, a manageable amount, and it goes up to a dime in a few years, and then it maybe goes up to a quarter after, you know, 5 years or something. So people have a, you know, a runway to get off of the, uh,

Matt, did you not run for president as a Republican?

I did, but a lot of people said I sounded like, uh, the Republican Mary Ann Williamson. You know?

Well, hopefully not that.

Yeah. I know you’re not a fan, but, uh, you know, she had some good ideas.

What was her good idea? What was her good idea?

How about a peace department? You know, now we’ve got a war department. How about a department based upon peace and negotiations? Yeah. Like, in the law, we have a lot of mediation going on. So we mediated an idea she had? That was an idea she had.

Yeah. So I thought So branding. She was about branding.

No. I think that it’s a focus. So, hey, we have a focus on war. And I’m not saying we drop our Department of Defense. I’m just saying that we should have a department dedicated to finding peaceful resolution to conflict and that we could be a force for peace around the world. Now everybody’s gotta go out there or you don’t gotta go out there. We’re gonna invite you to go out and do something environmentally.

Oh, okay.

Positive. And what do you got? What do we got? Well, we could have voting. We’ve got voting coming up here in California.

Yeah. You’re yes on this prop 50, the gerrymandering thing.

What are you feeling on? On gerrymandering. Yeah.

Let’s gerrymander because they gerrymander.

Yeah. It’s only fair.

The only hope is that everybody gerrymanders so much that it makes everything irrelevant, and then they make it illegal. So we gotta just keep Yeah. I I I have I have no idea the end game on this.

Supreme Court seems to be allowing almost unlimited gerrymandering.

Right.

Which is unfortunate because it seem you know, in the past, there was kind of some judge sitting there saying, hey. You’ve gone too far. This is insane. Whereas now, it seems to be no holds bar, complete gerrymandering.

Shapes with, like, peninsulas that are one block wide and 1,500 miles long.

Why not why even connect the two?

K. So vote prop 50, and in a way, that’s not that would help with the environment.

Yeah. Because well, if there was a democratically or a Democrats in running the congress, then it’d be less likely that some of the environmental nonsense would be passed into law going forward, which would be a net positive. So that’s probably the biggest thing on the agenda for California, uh, in the next go round. But there are other places that are listening to this show outside of California. So what do you say to them, Bill?

Move to California. Quickly become a citizen, and vote yes on Prop 50. Is that illegal? I don’t know.

No. I think that’s legal.

I think that thinking about doing that, like creating a movie.

I think there’s a day by which you can’t register. I think I think we might have passed it. We’re if we’re not, we’re pretty close to it.

Okay. Well, that’s all I had. I don’t know how to save the world, Matt. I just crack wise and hope for the best.

Well, you’ve gotta do better than that, Bill. We we’re counting on you. We’re counting on your vote, and we’re counting on your equipping in a way that enlightens America to go out there and act and to do something environmental.

Here’s my environmental pro tip that I recommend to people. Electric cars depreciate massively, like, more than any other car for reasons that are economic that I don’t understand. But they’re in terms of them their mechanics wearing out, it’s slower than other cars. But go out and people go, oh, they don’t make them under $40,000.

Go buy a two year old $40,000 car for $20,000. It’ll be exactly like the new car. The only things that wear out are there’s, like, shocks and tires, but there’s not moving parts in the engine. The battery will eventually go. But you basically have yourself a brand new car for what’s or what seems like a brand new car for $20.

That is a brilliant idea.

Or ride a bicycle. Right. But, you know, it’s a little bit of a struggle on the freeways as you’ve found.

I have not gone on the freeway yet with my bicycle, but I might. Til then. Til then.

Man, it’s been a joy. Thank you, Matt, for having me here on your festival of of serious talk and nonsense.

Tune in. Come back next week, and god knows what you’re gonna hear. To learn more about our work at A Climate Change and how you can help us reach our goal planting 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year, visit aclimatechange.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. See you next time.

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