Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the WallBuilder Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. You can learn about us at our website, wallbuilders.com. Wallbuilders.com, of course, right out of Nehemiah. Arise and Rebuild the Walls that we may no longer be able to approach. Check out the website today, wallbuilders.com.

Make a one-time or monthly contribution there and get you some good materials, your information diet. Make sure that you're getting some good stuff about history, about the Constitution, about the Bible, and make sure you're saturating yourself in God's Word and then, using that wisdom in the culture, make sure you're being salt and light. David and Tim, we talk about rebuilding the walls. We talk about rebuilding the foundations, making sure that we're a nation where our principles reflect a biblical perspective and free enterprise is one of those things we don't talk a whole lot about but certainly a biblical perspective and being good stewards of what God's given us. And some people think that means you don't use any of the natural resources, when in fact God put them here for us to use. So today we're going to talk about those natural resources, specifically fossil fuels, with a guy named Jeff Ventura and we're going to talk about what these policies that politicians have the difference in whether or not you get to use those resources and the impact that it ends up having on the economy as well.

Tim Barton

Yeah, and let me start off with a preface. I think there's a lot of irony when you see people that are living in cities, living in concrete jungles, that are trying to give guidelines for how ranchers and farmers live out in the country, when they're trying to control right, you have too many cows and there's methane or whatever it is. And for those of us that live in the country, that live on farms or ranches, that have acres, we drive in the city and we see the trash and the filth and everything and we drive out in the country and we're like man, this is the way it should be. So there's levels of irony when there are people who are going to tell you how to live your life, when they are often living the opposite of what they are promoting and they're projecting on you things that are very intellectually dishonest and intellectually inconsistent with their position. Now, I say all that because this is one of the things we see a lot with the environmental movement not the least of which with the environmental movement, not the least of which, when you see the big push that we're going to go green and we're going to, you know, in California, where we're not going to have any more gas powered, diesel powered vehicles. It's going to be only electric vehicles.

And then, within I don't remember you guys might know a matter of days, a week, hours. I don't remember what it was when they said make this announcement. And then they come out and say oh yeah, by the way, we're going to have to ask you to not run your AC units, don't use as much electricity, because our grid is being overwhelmed right now. Well, how do you power those electric vehicles using a grid? And what kind of power are we using right now for electricity? We're using primarily coal-powered, gas-powered things to power these electric vehicles.

Again, the intellectual inconsistency, the intellectual dishonesty that you're going to say these things are evil, even though right now there is evidence showing that these quote-unquote green electric vehicles are far more damaging to the environment than a normal gasoline vehicle. But because it doesn't fit the modern narrative, because in this case they're trying to kind of flex their social justice muscles and they want a virtue signal about how great they are, then they don't want to be bothered by facts. But this is one of the battles we are dealing with this inconsistency, the intellectual dishonesty, and this is shaping a lot of our politics and our policies. Unfortunately, and because we don't often teach people in the public education system how to think, instead we teach them what to think that a lot of them don't recognize they're buying into stuff that's such nonsense.

David Barton

And with that whole concept of buying into nonsense, there's a passage in 2 Thessalonians that talks about if you don't accept the truth, then you'll believe a lie and be led into delusion. And what happens? I think a lot of our environmental policy is that way. We've just determined that everything is scarce, that there's not an abundance of anything. We have to reserve everything. Man can't use it because we would use it up. And the belief is that there's a scarcity because there's a limited supply. Well, we have a God who by his nature is unlimited. He's able to supply every need, et cetera. So the concept of a God that's limited by scarcity and producing things that way is not necessarily consistent.

But when you take it to the oil area, if you go back, even to World War II, now there's a notion that there's a limited amount of fossil fuels. And, by the way, it's called fossil fuels because they say well, back at the time of the dinosaurs you had ferns and you had plants and all these things. And now what's happened is, with all the changes in the earth and all the different layers and strata, all those ferns and all those animals have been pressed together and they're decaying, and that's what creates the fossil fuels. That's what creates the natural gas and the oil and the other things, and there's only a thin layer of that there. Well, it's interesting that in World War II, Russian scientists said, hey, everything we find from drilling with oil, we keep finding new materials down there, the materials that aren't fully decayed, that there's new vegetation, et cetera, and it looks to us like the oil fields are regenerating. It doesn't look like there's a limit on what there is with the oil fields. It looks like they're regenerating. And so that was a book called Black Gold that they saw oil as black gold, and it's not a scarce commodity, there's a lot of it. And so, if you take that, I was talking to one of our legislators here in Texas who's over energy committee here, and Texas, of course, one of the top oil producers, I think, are we the third largest oil producer in the world?

There's two nations that maybe are larger than Texas and the United States is way up there, but nonetheless, Texas, I think, was either the third or sixth oil producing nation, and he was pointing out that, when it comes to natural gas, when you look at natural gases being used to fuel power plants and other things, there's a lot of uses in natural gas home eating, et cetera At the current usage of natural gas in the nation. Texas has enough natural gas that we know of right now that we've discovered to last for 2,500 years at the current usage. So that's just the current usage. What's the scarcity thing that we keep hearing about 2,500 years at the current usage? And then when you look at oil, there is at the current usage of oil and that's for gasoline and all the fuels for vehicles et cetera. We have 100 years of supply at the current usage, so it's not like we're going to run out soon.

And back in the 70s there were books that came out that said we would be out of natural gas and fuel by the 1980s. We're going to have to go to electric cars and they keep this thing about you've got to go to something else because they're scary and that's just not accurate. And so one of the friends we have is recently retired from Range Resources and they're the ones that found the oil field up in Pennsylvania. That is the largest natural gas field in the world and that's a recent discovery in recent years. And so he's pioneered all that and helped the company get through it.

He's led the company through it, and he is so well informed on what's going on with energy. And this has now become part of the campaign. You know, kamala Harris has got her positions on energy, trump's got his positions, and a lot of times they're not necessarily grounded in truth, they're grounded in fiction, particularly on the Democrat side, with the belief in the scarcity of resources. And so we thought we'd ask Jeff Ventura, who just retired and he's been doing this for years and years and years and he is probably more informed in the industry than any political official is what his perspective was and how to look at this issue, because we're hearing a lot of it now from both sides, both campaigns.

Rick Green

Jeff Ventura, our special guest, stay with us. We'll be right back on the WallBuilders Show.

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Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. Thanks for staying with us, jeff Ventura, with us. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on today.

Jeff Ventura

Well, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rick Green

Well, man, you've got so much experience in the energy world and it's something that usually it's just sound bites in a campaign, right? Somebody's either claiming to save the planet or they're going to improve the economy, and people have a hard time cutting through all of that. I'm just a free market guy, so I'm like let the market decide and, unfortunately, government's very involved in this area of the market. So David said man, jeff can cut through all of that and help us look at the two different parties, the two different candidates and what the world might look like post January 2025, depending on who gets elected. So thanks for coming on and helping us make some sense of this.

Jeff Ventura

Okay, well, again, thanks for having me, and if it works for you, maybe I'll start with Biden-Harris and what they've done and what that might mean for the Harris campaign and then contrast that with what I think Trump will do. You bet Sounds good, okay, great. She doesn't have an official policy, but I think Trump will do. You bet Sounds good, okay, great. You know she doesn't have an official policy, but I think it's pretty easy to look back at the last three and a half years and what they've done and other things that she said when she was running for president in 2020. But so the last three and a half years, you know they've stopped the Keystone pipeline, they've delayed or stopped federal leasing, they've stopped development in ANWR and delayed or stopped some pipelines, and they passed the Inflation Reduction Act I think she was a deciding vote on that and Harris has embraced the Green New Deal and the net zero policy.

So what does all that mean? I think that basically, they've said they want to phase out US oil and natural gas and shift towards wind, solar and electric cars, and I think there's kind of five consequences that you get with that One, when you shift to wind, solar and electric cars. One you're increasing the cost of electricity. When you put in intermittent power, you have to back it up with 100%. Back it up with natural gas or some fast start electricity. So you're building double the capacity for what you need. So you're still paying.

Rick Green

You're just paying maybe on a different part of the ledger and people don't see it. They don't realize it. Yeah.

Jeff Ventura

Those costs are there. You got to count all of the costs, so you're increasing the cost too. You're decreasing the reliability because they're taking out 24-7 power generation like coal, or shutting down gas with time and putting in intermittent power, so that you're increasing the cost of decreasing the reliability of the grid. Thirdly, and I think importantly, you're making us more dependent on China and other countries because the rare earth elements and minerals needed to build solar panels, batteries and windmills China controls a lot of that globally and we can get into that and all the implications for that. So making us more dependent on other countries with higher costs, less reliability.

You're hurting our economy because electricity and the feedstock for all that hurts. And I think the fifth thing, you're really not having an effect on the atmosphere at all. Even if the US and Canada and Europe embraces those net zero policies, that's about 22% of the world's emissions. The rest of the world China, India, southeast Asia, south America, Africa are focused on lifting their people out of poverty. They're going to continue to use a lot of coal generation, so you're hurting our country with no impact on the atmosphere. We have one atmosphere or atmosphere.

Rick Green

Right, right, and it sounds like I mean you get this tremendous cost to implement these policies with very, very little upside. And even the upside, according to their numbers, is minuscule. It's such a small impact on even what they define as the problem. I totally disagree with them on what the actual problem is or what's causing it in its totality. But even if I bought all of their what I think is junk science, even if I bought all of that, what they're saying the payoff is for this tremendous cost to our economy. That's just a really lousy cost-benefit analysis. I mean, even if they succeeded at everything they're wanting to do, it's like that trade-off is just not worth it from a logical perspective in terms of the, what it costs.

And and you know just a small example and I didn't mean to derail us from where you were going but the, the, the, even, the, even, the, the, the wind, uh, you know the, the turbines and all of that stuff. I was watching the RFK interview with uh, with, with um, uh, tucker Carlson, and he was talking about, you know, the tremendous cost to the environment of this supposed help to the environment and how little you know benefit on the other end. And that's just rarely discussed. It's usually just platitudes about we're going to save the planet and nobody gets into the details. So I think your five items that you just listed should be enough for us to realize this is a costly choice with very little upside on the other side.

Jeff Ventura

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. And if you look at that, people will think simplistically the sun is clean and the wind is clean, but the key is the process to convert them to electricity, aren't? It requires a lot of mining, a lot of manufacturing. A lot of that's done in China with coal-fired power. They put the solar panels or windmills or batteries on boats, ship them here, and then the solar panel typically has a life of 20 to 25 years and after year 10, it's at about 50% efficiency, same with windmills.

So then you got to repeat that cycle again. So when you consider mining and the manufacturing it, I agree with you it's a lot of cost for not a lot of benefit. One last example is and this kind of surprises a lot of people to make a 1,000-pound battery you have to mine 500,000 pounds of earth, and most people wouldn't consider that green. So and then you think of the batteries, and the battery might last yeah, I don't know seven, eight, nine years, but batteries don't last forever. And then you're starting that again. But let's move to Trump.

Rick Green

And Jeff, just to real quick drill down on that, I mean, and I think a lot of Americans don't acknowledge that cost because it's being done in other countries and so they don't see it in their backyard and see that level of, you know, disturbing the earth and all of the things that happen there. And again, before you go to the Trump thing, I mean, you know, you've been around this for decades. I don't understand how we ended up demonizing what is a blessing in the ground. I mean, god's given us this wonderful resource and somehow we're not supposed to use it. It's like they accomplished a really amazing marketing, you know, branding negative branding of fossil fuels that are in fact a blessing to us, and yet they act like that's tearing up the earth, when what they're doing with these other supposed solutions tears up the earth way way worse. Does that make sense? Absolutely?

Jeff Ventura

well, let's move to trump, then that's a good segue into the trump or trump Vance. So yeah, I think I'll start simplistically and it's what it's what you're saying exactly. You know, I think trump recognizes the US is the largest oil producer in the world and we're by far and away the largest natural gas producer in the world. And, importantly, we're not only the largest producer. We have tremendous resource. You know, probably, you know well over 100 years. So we can, you know for a long, long time. We have, you know, a lot of oil and natural gas.

What Trump will do is the exact opposite. Trump said he'd shut down the net zero policy and focus on domestic energy or oil and gas, versus focusing on wind, solar and electric cars. So what that'll do is that'll lower electric prices versus the wind and solar, plus building more 24-7 electric generation will improve grid stability. So you have lower energy prices, more resource, more feedstock. That helps bring manufacturing back to the country, helps with job creation and the US I don't know if a lot of people know this, but the US oil and natural gas industry creates and supports millions of jobs and the reason is other than the direct jobs. Natural gas is key for power generation generates more than I think it's like 40, 45% of the nation's electricity. It's vital for home heating, industrial heating to make steel and cement, and it's a key component to manufacturing fertilizer.

Oil and natural gas has ethane. You can convert ethane into ethylene, into polyethylene, to make plastics. Same with oil, you can create plastics. They're in everything from iPhones to car parts, to the glasses, to clothing and everything else. It's in hundreds of products. And, of course, oil you need for gasoline, for transportation, aviation fuel and marine fuel, so it's in everything. And then you get the other benefits of being energy independent, critical for national security. And we have so much resource the US and so much natural gas. The US now is the largest natural gas producer. We're the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. So you're helping our allies globally. You're helping with the trade balance and this is a key part.

Back to the environment. It's not an either or. So the US has led the world in emissions reductions for the last couple of decades, despite not being part of the Kyoto Protocol and, under Trump, despite not being part of the Paris Climate Accord. And the reason is simple. It's just free market substitution of natural gas for coal. It's cheaper and it's significantly cleaner. It has half the CO2, none of the sulfur dioxide, none of the nitrous oxide, no mercury, no ash. So the US has led the world in emissions reductions by utilizing the resource we have, you know, domestically, with natural gas displacing coal, and not at a cost to our you know citizens. It's a cost savings. You know, natural gas in the US is about 80% less, cost, less than a thousand euro per China. So, rather than these European protocols which you know, Germany has double the price of electricity than most countries in the world we have cheaper electricity and cheaper but also cleaner air as a result of utilizing it. So it's, you know, it's a win-win.

Rick Green

Yeah, it's literally using the assets that that we have and the infrastructure that that's in place. You know, david Barton would say you know, your problem, jeff, is you're using common sense. This actually makes sense that that doesn't work with these people. It's like logic. And you know, do you remember I don't know if you remember this or not when I, when I was, when I was kind of just figuring out what I really believed, back in the 90s, newt Gingrich had a book and he talked about I'm an environmentalist, but I'm an economically rational, scientifically based environmentalist. And everything you just described is the way I think about that Economically rational, scientifically based environmentalism and which, to David's joke, I mean it's just common sense. What are the assets we have? How do we best use them and be good stewards of what we've got? And it's just rational. And it sounds like the Trump campaign or administration in this field has the right people on the team to implement that kind of policy.

Jeff Ventura

Yeah, absolutely kind of policy. Yeah, absolutely. In the US, you know, has by far and away, you know again, largest natural gas and, you know, oil producer in the world. The country has the technology and the people and the resource, and so we have what we need. It's in place. The key then would be growing in and expanding it, allowing pipelines like the Keystone Pipeline to go forward, building more infrastructure to move natural gas to where you need it domestically, or to help our allies. And you know and we can get into the that as well you know the timing of that and how long it takes, and things that need to change in order to enhance what we have.

Rick Green

And just I mean on that subject of the timeline having a good administration come in in January sets in motion things that we may, that will take time to see. The benefit of Having a bad administration just kicks that further down the road. Kicks that can further down the road makes it harder for us to get that infrastructure in place when they're blocking pipelines and preventing this kind of stuff from happening. So it's not even just what's the price of things going to be in January. This will affect things for decades to come.

Jeff Ventura

Absolutely.

Rick Green

Man. You know, the only other problem I see, jeff, is that you started with your description of the Harris policies by looking back and she's unburdened by what has been right, I mean so it doesn't matter.

I'm kidding man.

Thank you so much. I mean this is so important for people to realize, because I don't even know how to put numbers to it, but we're talking about massive impact on our families, our backyards, our communities. The economic impact of our energy policy in this country is huge and we've been literally chained down for the last three and a half years, preventing the industry from being able to go out there and thrive. I mean we were, is it true? Let me just ask you this before we go, because this may be a platitude, and I've repeated it myself.

I mean we were energy independent. We finally got to the point where we didn't have to depend on other nations because we have the assets here. Under the Trump administration, he unleashed that and now we've gone backwards. I mean, I think they've even implemented things to prevent us from exporting. There's just been so many things to shackle this industry that could benefit our country. Is that a true statement that we have what it takes to be energy independent as a nation and not have to depend on the Middle East or anybody else?

Jeff Ventura

Yeah, no, absolutely. We have the resources to do that, and I think the key is, when you look at oil production today, it's about 13 million barrels per day, and that's about what it was in 2020. In natural gas production today, it's a little over 100 billion cubic feet per day, and that's about what it was. The key, though, is, in order to grow that and build it, you have to build out the infrastructure. You need the additional pipe.

Shutting down all the pipelines or attacking them to where they take twice as long to build and cost twice as much as predicted, slows that future growth or stops the future growth. You know, right now, we have a moratorium I think they started in January on exporting more LNG or liquefied natural gas. It's still there, you know. It's eliminating those policies which hurt the development of the resources we have and which have resulted in, you know, job creation, lower energy costs and a better environment, and it's being stymied, you know, by stopping its future growth. But, yeah, we have plenty of resource, absolutely can do safely, help the environment, yet help job creation, help our country become more independent, versus going the other way and making us more dependent on other countries for everything from electricity to feedstock to supply chain.

Rick Green

Amen. Yeah, I'm a simple guy. It's like good policies, good results. You put good things in, good inputs in. You get good outputs. It has tremendous impact down the road, Jeff, God bless you, man. Thank you so much for helping us with this. Let's get you back again soon. Appreciate you coming on Wall Builders Great. Thank you, Rick. Appreciate it. Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

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Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show, back with David and Tim Barton now. Thanks to Jeff Ventura for joining us, and, guys, this is one of those subjects that I'm telling you. WallBuilders was way ahead on this, David. You were testifying in front of the Senate and other places on a lot of this junk science that's out there, because you had a biblical perspective to look at it through.

And now, boy, you got churches that are actually preaching the dogma of the environmentalist, what Rush Limbaugh used to call the wackos, and Megan Basham exposes a lot of this in her book Shepherds for Sale. But, boy man, they've gotten people to take an anti-biblical perspective, let alone anti-science persepective and boy, you you were saying this 20 years ago. 

David Barton

Yeah. One of the things I learned from Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Because you mentioned I was testified at the US Senate on climate change issues at the time, and one of the things he pointed out he says well, just always remember in Genesis, creation goes in an ascending order. It goes from the least important to the most important and man is the top, and so creation is below man. Everything in creation is below man, and so the way that the secular people do it is man is the least important.

We'll save the planet before we save man. We'll save whales before we save man. We'll save snakes and snails before we save man. And so when you have a viewpoint that says there is scarcity and that man is the problem, that's not a biblical viewpoint. And so science keeps pointing out the biblical viewpoint, and it's just that people have to get that, and a lot of pastors they don't understand that biblical viewpoint. They hear too much news and too much what's going on. They buy too much fear. That's just not the way to do it.

Rick Green

Well, that's why you need a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You get that when you listen to WallBuilders, so check it out at wallbuilder.scom, and then our radio shows are listed at wallbuilders.show. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.