Happy to be here, Steve, thanks for having me on. Well, it was an incredible moment to hear from him directly, and particularly at the end when he spoke to us in English and, and ask us to give him the help that they need in terms of the armament to defend themselves against this Russian aggression, or really more accurately Putin's aggression. And it reminded me of a speech that wants to Churchill gave on February 9 1941, to Parliament, was broadcast on the BBC. And Churchill knew that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be listening and attended. And Churchill had been pleading with Roosevelt, to provide Britain with the tools the means that they needed to defend themselves against Germany, and Hitler's Third Reich. And at the end of that speech, he said something that, that I thought about yesterday listening to him, at the end of that speech, Churchill said, Put your confidence in us. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. And, and I really wanted to say that to my fellow members, that were gathered there to give them the tools. They performed beyond any expectation that anyone had in the highest circles of military expertise. And they've demonstrated not only their courage, but their expertise in carrying out operations that have that have really stymied the Russian military. And I think it's time for us to give them what they they need, what they've asked for. And see, my big issue is going back to the Afghanistan withdrawal, is that you need to listen to your military commanders, to the people on the frontline, the people who are the boots on the ground, and it shouldn't be people in suits, sitting behind desks, 1000s of miles away making those decisions. And that's what I would say, to the Biden administration, what I'll say to my congressional colleagues, at some point, is listen to the people who are face to face with the enemy. They know what they need, they're not going to tell us in a zoom call, how they'll use certain systems, particularly the MiG 29. They know what they need, and they know how to use it. So give them the tools, I think they'll do the job.
Well, it will, because energy is the most ubiquitous part of the entire economy, there's an energy cost in everything. In the water you use this morning, to shower, the food you ate the car or whatever vehicle whatever means of transportation, if you Hawk even your she is they all have an energy cost. And and it gets compounded along the way along the process. So if you can reduce energy cost, your manufacturing costs come down your production costs comes down your wholesale and your warehousing and your transportation. So that you don't have a situation where not only are you paying $2 A gallon more for gas, and you were in December of 2020. You're now in some cases paying seven or $8 for a box of cereal, which I saw in my local grocery store just a few days ago. And people can't afford that. It creates a displacement in the economy where people are having to make decisions on how much food they can buy, versus what they can, what they have to spend on putting gas in their vehicles to go to work, or their medicine or their children's clothes or educational needs versus paying their household utility bills. If we open up our energy resources, you will see prices come down. We've seen it already. Natural gas in 2003 was around $15 per million vgtu by 2019. I think it was below $3. And it has an enormous impact natural gas for instance is the price has gone up on it. It's going to impact your food cost because fertilizer which is heavily dependent on fossil fuel, particularly natural gas is I'm going to cause farmers about three times what it cost them this time last year, and it's all going to get passed on to the consumer.
Well, the Democrat policies of printing more money is another reason why we have rampant inflation. And you combine that with with the increase in energy costs, it's gonna make it worse, not better. We could see ourselves at some point, if they don't get their head straight on this headed toward hyperinflation, increasing the money supply, which is what this does doesn't help. And it makes things worse, it. I think the Democrats are focused all on climate change. They're totally out of touch with American people. And I understand we've got an issue with climate change with co2 emissions, we can deal with that. We're importing Russian natural gas that has 40 over 40% more emissions than us gas, that we refuse to buy natural gas that's produced right here in the United States, because we're trying to eliminate that industry. That makes no sense. So this idea that, well, we'll just send checks, everybody does not make things better, the right, the right policies are to restart construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. So that we don't have to depend on on Russian oil anymore. We can get oil from Canada, open up our resources, we've got one formation out Westie that has 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. That's three times what the entire world sees in the last 100 years, that would definitely have an impact on on the world market price for oil. And I tell people this we've got inexhaustible natural gas and oil resources. And they're inexhaustible, because eventually the technology is going to move us into vehicles that don't rely so heavily on fossil fuels. But we've got to we've got to let the technology get us to that point before we shut everything else down. Well, I'll support renewable energy, but it will not supply the nation's needs and not in the timeframe that the Democrats are pushing. I worked for two international engineering companies before starting a think tank which I ran for 20 something years before I came to Congress, and I can tell you, from an engineering perspective, what they're advocating for is not possible. Our power grid, for instance, is a patchwork grid. It wasn't built all at one time. Electricity didn't get to the whole country at the same time. But each part of that requires a consistent baseload, which you do not get with solar or turbans. Natural gas, on the other hand, is the cleanest fossil fuel that we have. You build one of those facilities, and it will generate power for 65 years, a solar facility maybe 25 to 30 years and you can't recycle the solar panels. A turbine, wind turbine generation facility may be 25 to 30 years. But after 10 years, the generating capacity declines precipitously, and you can't recycle the blades. So there's so much that the American public has been misled about over promised on that. It. It defies description at times, we can't abandon totally abandoned fossil fuels, and think that we can power the entire economy, all of our vehicles and everything else. With renewables. It's the technology won't support it. We don't have the battery storage capacity to do it. So we need a mix. And I really think the future in terms of eliminating emissions is next generation nuclear. And particularly now that we have the technology to recycle spent fuel rods would still retain about 90% of their energy capacity. That's the direction we ought to be going. Thanks for having me on today.
