Green Tech Empowers China - SM by John A. Shanahan

How the Green Tech Industry Is Empowering Communist China

Steve Milloy

April 30, 2024

“The greener we get, the more dependent we are on China, and they’re taking advantage of it. That is part, I think, of their 100-Year Plan. They don’t want to go to war with anyone, they’re just going to own our economy.”

What has been the result of the West’s current energy and climate policies? Has our planet become cleaner? Or greener? Or have our economies weakened, and our products cheapened?

“China is burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow. And the Biden administration is doing everything it can to reduce fossil fuel use in the United States,” says Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute. “You have this European climate movement, which has been funded by Putin to block Europe from producing its own energy. The other side knows what the West’s weaknesses are, and they fund them—and much to our detriment.”

He argues that the Biden administration is putting independent oil companies out of business, and that contrary to reducing carbon emissions, the West has merely exported them to hostile actors.

“Exxon Mobil and Chevron ... last year they announced $110-billion worth of purchases of smaller companies who have been weakened by Biden policies,” says Mr. Milloy.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek: Steve Milloy, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Steve Milloy: Jan, thanks for having me back.

Mr. Jekielek: The U.S. is having record energy production of oil and gas right now. What is your reaction to that?

Mr. Milloy: I think it’s great. We should be producing all the oil and gas we can. But under these circumstances, it’s a bit ominous. Since Joe Biden became president, he has done everything in his power to sabotage oil and gas development in the U.S. You can’t do much about oil and gas production because the permits and the leases have already been given out.

But what is scary is that Joe Biden has already drained the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve of oil. Now he is forcing U.S. oil companies to drain their own domestic reserves, which they are willing to do because oil prices are very favorable right now. But he’s not allowing them to develop new reserves in the United States.

After having developed the public reserves, now he’s allowing U.S. domestic oil companies to drain their domestic reserves. One day we will just run out and have no reserves left, and then we'll have to do something about it. We will be even more dependent on OPEC [International Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries] for oil.

Mr. Jekielek: Most people are imagining we are getting back to some kind of energy independence. When they hear about record energy production they think, “This is a positive thing for America. It’s stronger.” But you’re actually telling me the opposite is happening. Is this what you’re saying?

Mr. Milloy: Yes. This is just Joe Biden letting U.S. oil companies exhaust themselves without allowing them to replenish their food. It’s like letting someone run a race, but not allowing him to nourish himself after running a marathon. You’re just expending energy and there’s no replacement. Eventually, the whole system is just going to collapse.

We have big oil companies which have reserves all over the world, and they can weather this stuff very well. But the key to having the United States control oil prices has been the smaller independent oil companies operating

in the United States. They’re the ones that brought down the price of oil. They’re the ones that made the U.S. energy dominant.

They’re the ones that brought down the price of oil under President Trump. They’re the ones that crushed the ability of OPEC to control prices. Now, they’re also the ones that don’t have the reserves of the big oil companies, and they’re not allowed to develop new reserves. These guys are going to go out of business or be purchased by big oil.

Mr. Jekielek: Once you have a lease, there’s an estimate of how much oil or gas there is in that reservoir, how much you can produce, and how much must be kept in reserve.

Mr. Milloy: By law, the federal government is supposed to conduct regular auctions for offshore and onshore leases and coal mining, so companies have been doing that. They were especially doing that during the Trump administration; purchasing leases, getting them approved, and getting permits. Then they produce oil as they see fit in the market, depending on demand. The big companies do a lot more of this because they have more money. The smaller companies are much more hand-to-mouth, so to speak. They don’t have these huge reserves.

Everybody is now producing oil to meet global demand, which has been a huge deal for the United States. It has grown a lot since Covid, and it will continue to grow. Everyone’s making money hand over fist because oil prices are pretty high, and they’re happy to produce. But they’re exhausting the amount of oil that is available for them to produce. They’re not being allowed to find new sources of oil.

Mr. Jekielek: What is the impact of the current policy on Russia?

Mr. Milloy: The current policy is just going to help Russia, because Russia is going to produce all the oil it can. It’s a poor country and its main source of revenue is energy; coal, oil, and gas. The sanctions against Russia really haven’t had much effect. Putin can’t take advantage of market prices, but he can sell more oil to China at lower prices. China is very hungry for oil, so he’s not really being affected by the sanctions.

But if the United States is crippling itself, we’re just empowering nations like OPEC and Russia to set the price of oil. The Trump years were really incredible, because we had seized this power back from OPEC and Russia. It got to a point where at the beginning of Covid, there was actually a production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. The price of oil actually

went negative for a bit. This was because of the U.S. producers, these small guys that Biden is now forcing out of business.

Mr. Jekielek: What policy do you recommend at this point?

Mr. Milloy: Essentially, we have an unlimited supply of oil and gas, as far as we know. We’re only limited by politicians and by the company economics of what’s possible for them to do. We should, as Sarah Palin famously said, “Drill, baby, drill.” We should be producing all the coal, oil, and gas that we can. Japan, Korea, and the European countries all love U.S. gas.

We can make a lot of money selling LNG [Liquefied Natural Gas] to those countries, and we should be able to do that. Producing coal would help us sell more LNG because we’re dismantling our coal fleet. We’re relying more on natural gas, and that natural gas should really be exported. We can have a robust oil and gas industry and get us back in charge of the price of oil.

Of course, that has strategic benefits because it weakens OPEC. It weakens Iran, it weakens Russia, it weakens China, and possibly makes China pay more for oil. What Joe Biden is doing by crippling our own energy production just doesn’t make sense. If people think, “We’re going to be reducing emissions,” that’s really not the case.

The United States only creates about 10 percent or so of global emissions. The United States could go dark forever, and you’re still going to have 90 percent and more of emissions. Emissions are just never going away. Oil and gas is never going away. We’re never getting to net zero. None of that stuff is happening.

We need to accept reality. If we have a change of administration in 2025, you will see that. The boot will come off the throat of the oil and gas industry, and hopefully the coal industry, and they'll be able to produce and make money and make America strong again.

Mr. Jekielek: When you say the big producers will weather this, do you mean weathering the policy until a new policy comes in?

Mr. Milloy: Yes, of course. They’re not necessarily even unhappy about these policies, because these policies are weakening the small companies first. Last year, ExxonMobil and Chevron announced $110 billion worth of purchases of smaller companies who have been weakened by Biden policies. They’re not sweating Biden’s policy so much. Oil companies are tremendously profitable when OPEC controls the price of oil, because they

make lots of money. Elon Musk has this new climate video where he says that this transition is inevitable and we need new energy sources that will last us a billion years. It’s truly nonsensical stuff.

We need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Maybe one day we won’t use oil and gas, but I can’t foresee when that is and neither can anybody else. Big oil knows this. They just buy up all the production they can in the U.S. and then allow OPEC to squeeze the price of oil. They will make more money that way.

Mr. Jekielek: Throughout the pandemic, we have experienced a massive centralization in many areas. In effect, this policy is the same thing, because it’s portrayed as this battle against oil and gas writ large. But you’re really saying this is a battle against the small producers.

Mr. Milloy: It’s a divide and conquer strategy. First, you can get rid of these small pesky producers, which were incredibly valuable in breaking OPEC’s stranglehold on the price of oil. It’s really incredible that these small startup companies in Texas and the Dakotas could produce so much oil and gas. Who would ever have thought that we would hurt OPEC? But we did. We were in charge and we just threw that away with Joe Biden.

Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned the U.S. creates 10 percent of the emissions, and 90 percent is from elsewhere. I was thinking that the U.S. had done very well at dealing with its emissions. But then you said, “That’s not what happened. What happened is we outsourced our emissions.”

Mr. Milloy: It’s true that we have reduced emissions a little bit by the fact that we have used natural gas to replace coal. Natural gas has half the emissions. We’ve had more reliance on wind and solar in parts of the country, so that has reduced fossil fuel emissions a little bit. But generally speaking, since the 1970s and 80s, we have been exporting our heavy industry to Asia. That is where the bulk of our so-called carbon footprint takes place. China does our emissions for us and we benefit economically.

If China was not this evil geopolitical actor and our adversary, it’s a policy that kind of makes sense. Because you can reduce emissions and make money at the same time. Of course, all we’re really doing is just exporting our emissions. This is supposed to be about global warming where global emissions matter, and all we’ve done is send them offshore.

Mr. Jekielek: It allows us to say, “Look at how well we’ve done with our emissions.”

Mr. Milloy: Yes. It lends itself to propaganda from green groups and people behind this climate agenda. They can say, “Look, we have reduced our emissions and we have raised our standard of living at the same time.” Actually, we have reduced our emissions because we sent them to China. We reduced our standard of living because we get cheaper stuff from China. But of course, this is supposed to be global warming and we’re supposed to be reducing emissions globally. People will know that emissions have been reduced when their standard of living collapses. Then you will recognize it. Europe is very happy to say, “We have cut our emissions by 30 percent since 1990, and we’re going to go 90 percent by 2040. All they’ve been doing is exporting their emissions to someplace in Asia; China, India, or Vietnam. Their emissions are not really going down until their standard of living does.

Mr. Jekielek: It is interesting that China under the Chinese Communist Party has become the dominant producer of all this green technology.

Mr. Milloy: You’re right. It’s quite ironic.

Mr. Jekielek: Please break that down for us.

Mr. Milloy: Not all windmills come from China, but a lot do. Not all solar panels come from China, but most do. Not all EV batteries come from China, but most do. But EV batteries and this green tech all depend on minerals and metals from China. China is very much a central player in all of this. Once again, China is not this benevolent actor out there saying, “We'll reduce your emissions for you, and you can have all this technology you want.”

No, China is actively making us dependent on them for energy, because every windmill, every solar panel, and every EV that is purchased makes us that much more dependent on China. That’s where all this stuff is made. All the green tech they buy in Western Europe comes from China or depends on China. If China were to shut down all of a sudden, the entire green agenda would be impossible, because not enough of these materials are made outside of China.

There’s one particular component for every EV battery that relies on processed graphite. Every bit of processed graphite comes from communist China. China could decide to embargo all these materials. As a matter of fact, China is already starting to do this. Some Korean and Chinese companies are working on EV battery manufacturing plants in the United

States.

It has occurred to China that this is not a good thing because they would be dependent on us. They would rather put export controls on this processed graphite that I just mentioned to control things. They know that the greener we get, the more dependent we are on China, and they’re taking advantage of it. That is part of their 100 year plan. They don’t want to go to war with anyone. They’re just going to own our economy and we won’t be able to do anything without China.

Mr. Jekielek: This is particularly troubling given the unstable nature of the Chinese economy. Their debt, even by our standards, is astronomical. The medical precursors for our key medicines are largely produced there. Here’s another piece about Huawei. The Central European countries are putting up a lot of money for Huawei, but should know better, having experienced how communist countries operate. Huawei is incredibly well-priced, because it’s a national security priority of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s not business in the way that we think of it. All these things are very strategic from the perspective of the Chinese regime, and it’s not just business.

Mr. Milloy: Right. That’s how they think. Everything they do is strategic. They have a 100-year plan and they’re very serious about it. They’re not worried about emissions and the environment. Go to China and look at the air quality over there. Go to the places where they mine and produce these materials and do the manufacturing.

Mr. Jekielek: I recently looked into what it takes to make one of these large EV batteries for a car. It takes a very large amount of material and there is a big environmental impact.

Mr. Milloy: A battery for an internal combustion car weighs 15 to 20 pounds. The battery for an EV weighs 1,000 pounds. It is difficult to procure the materials. I just mentioned Elon Musk, and he just put out this video talking about climate and clean energy transition. He makes Teslas in China, and all these Teslas are produced with coal power.

You have to drive these Teslas tens of thousands of miles before you break even on the carbon footprint because of all the coal that China burns. They’re planning to burn even more coal. They are building twice as many coal plants as the United States has right now. You don’t even have to be skeptical like I am about this whole climate scam.

Let’s just say that emissions are causing the harms that are claimed. The

harms are all happening in China, India, and Asia. Then you have Africa that wants to develop. Western governments are desperately trying to make sure Africa doesn’t develop and remains poor. They are trying to somehow bribe African governments not to develop oil and gas and trying to force wind and solar on them.

If they dare to want electricity, they have to have this wind and solar stuff. It’s ridiculous. These poor people have needed electricity to develop and increase their standard of living ever since the malaria wars and DDT. The greens and Leftists have been trying to deny Africa the right to develop. It’s very sad.

Mr. Jekielek: When we last had you on, we were talking about the Sunnylands Statement, with the United States and China making a promise about energy and emissions. How has that played out so far?

Mr. Milloy: Nothing has changed. China is burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, and the Biden administration is doing everything it can to reduce fossil fuels. The agreement is just some rapprochement between John Kerry and China on climate, which is now being turned over to John Podesta.

Mr. Jekielek: I'll repeat some of the major points. They are proposing triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, accelerated substitution for coal, oil, and gas, and absolute power sector emission reduction. These are the non-binding types of things.

Mr. Milloy: None of these things are happening. It is possible to replace some fossil fuel use with wind and solar. Europe has done it to some extent, but it has made electricity tremendously more expensive. If the Chinese use their low-wage labor to produce this stuff, possibly some emissions can be reduced. Generally speaking, to do the sort of industrial output that China is doing for the world, they’re going to need fossil fuels forever and continue to burn more and more.

That’s why China used to tell John Kerry, “We‘ll peak fossil fuel use by 2030. We’ll try to be at net zero by 2060.” This is just talk from the Chinese. They’re not building coal plants now so that they can shut them down in 10, 20, or 30 years. Coal plants are assets that last a long time. China has plenty of coal. They have more serious things to worry about than emissions. Emissions are very low on their list of priorities.

Mr. Jekielek: What do you make of this shift from John Kerry to John

Podesta?

Mr. Milloy: John Kerry was essentially the client of most of the coal plants that we’ve been working with. His portfolio, I suppose, was climate, but he really had no authority to do anything. John Podesta is a completely different creature. John Podesta is a D.C. insider, and used to be a lobbyist. Most importantly, Biden has assigned him the responsibility of spending the $369 billion of climate money that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act.

When you think about it, it’s really quite interesting. John Podesta has all this money to spend on green tech. Where does all the green tech come from? It comes from China. John Podesta, the climate envoy, is essentially the climate ambassador to China. He has this huge budget. What could go wrong?

Mr. Jekielek: We’re talking about more than a third of a trillion dollars. Is that contributing to inflation?

Mr. Milloy: It’s not. It’s just making energy more expensive. We have inflation because of Joe Biden’s fossil fuel policies. It’s not really just $369 billion. Goldman Sachs has said that these subsidies don’t sunset, they just keep going. Goldman Sachs has priced the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act as actually exceeding a trillion dollars. A lot of that money is going to go to China.

Mr. Jekielek: What portion of the Inflation Reduction Act is for these green initiatives? Why are they in this bill in the first place?

Mr. Milloy: It was a Democrat bill and it’s essentially the Green New Deal. They were able to pass it by the narrowest of margins with the help of Joe Manchin, who was initially against it. In Congress, if you can spend money, everybody likes it. People want EV battery facilities or wind or solar.

Unfortunately, we have empowered the green tech industry; the wind industry, solar industry, and electric cars. We have subsidized them to the point where they’re a real political force, even in red states. They build a lot of facilities in red states, so they get Republican support now. The entire Democrat Party is for this green energy stuff, and maybe half of the Republican Party as well.

Mr. Jekielek: It appears that this doesn’t have anything to do with inflation reduction.

Mr. Milloy: It doesn’t. Most of the Inflation Reduction Act money has not been spent yet. But that said, ever since we have gone down this road of wind and solar energy, it has been a very difficult time. The price of energy has just gone up. To accompany this, with these mandates and subsidies for new technology, we have also made it more expensive to burn fossil fuels.

Gas prices more than doubled under Biden in 2022, which sent inflation through the roof. It’s a disastrous policy. The Inflation Reduction Act is a totally Orwellian name. It’s the Inflation Accretion Act, or the Inflation Increase Act.

Mr. Jekielek: We’ve documented over the years numerous ways in which the Chinese Communist Party is influencing the policies of the American government. With these green energy initiatives, there are some very direct links, but they can be hard to find.

Mr. Milloy: Yes. About this time last year, there was a report from a group called the Energy Foundation about gas stoves, and how gas stoves cause asthma and negative health effects in people. That started off the notion that Biden was coming after our gas stoves. The Biden administration proposed new gas stove efficiency regulations requiring manufacturers to make cleaner and more efficient gas stoves.

Of course, there is nothing to this. Properly functioning gas stoves don’t cause asthma or harm anyone’s health. They are perfectly safe and we’ve been using them for 100 years. They are fine. But this report came along and just scared a lot of people. It turns out, as was just reported recently, this report was funded by communist China. This is par for the course for communist China.

They spend money with green groups in the United States aiming to advance the climate agenda or the green agenda, which subverts the American economy. I first noticed this about 10 years ago. A businessman from Hong Kong, which basically means Communist China, purchased the Harvard University School of Public Health. They changed the name to Harvard T. H. Chan School Public Health. They completely rebranded it for $350 million.

There are all these Chinese researchers now at Harvard. They are constantly putting out studies that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] is using to ratchet down air quality regulations. Just recently, the EPA announced it was tightening air quality regulations for particulate

matter. This is going to put a lot of U.S. states and counties out of compliance with the EPA rules. This gives the EPA even more power over the state’s economies. These studies are being funded by communist China.

Before the Democrats took Congress in 2019, Republicans were investigating the communist China funding of green groups. As soon as Democrats took over, that investigation just went away. It just stopped. But this is an ongoing problem. It’s cheaper for China to subvert America than it is to fight America. If China can have others push green policies and get us dependent on products that are made in China, then China makes money. China makes us dependent on them.

I look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being funded by what I call climate idiocy. Ever since the Kyoto Protocol, Europe has been getting off fossil fuels. They’ve stopped mining for coal and producing their own natural gas. Where did they export their emissions? To Russia. Russia is more than happy to do that. Russia was enriched by Europeans buying coal, oil, and gas. Russia was empowered because Europe made itself dependent on Russia.

Much of the energy inflation we’ve seen since the Russian invasion was because Europe was caught flat footed. Now the United States has to come to Europe’s rescue with LNG. In probably the strangest twist of all, Joe Biden has now put a moratorium on new LNG export terminals. How are we supposed to help Europe? Unfortunately, the green parties in Europe have so much power. The Europeans have not figured out that they have plenty of natural gas and coal and they could produce their own, but the greens block all this.

Britain is trying to produce more gas from the North Sea, but the green groups are blocking it. In Europe you have this European climate movement, which has been funded by Putin to block Europe from producing its own energy. The other side knows what the West’s weaknesses are and they fund them, much to our detriment.

Mr. Jekielek: As we speak, there’s an effort in Congress to deal with the carbon border tariff. Please explain what that is and how it works.

Mr. Milloy: A carbon border tariff is essentially a tax. The tax would be placed on goods coming from other countries where emission standards are not as strict as in the United States. This is an effort that’s being led by Senator Kevin Kramer from North Dakota and Senator Bill Cassidy from

Louisiana. They have a bill which is also being done in Europe. The core problem they’re trying to address is stem the flow of Chinese goods and bring manufacturing back to both Europe and the United States. Of course, that’s a really good idea.

We can’t have these vital industries outsourced to China. We need to have them in the United States, but the way they’re going about it is really kind of stupid. This whole idea that we’re going to start taxing energy is regressive and just hurts everybody. Our policy should be to bring back vital industries like steel, energy, and telecommunications back to the United States, because we need to have them here, in case we have a problem with China or Russia.

We don’t need to pretend that we produce steel cleaner in the United States than the Chinese do or the Koreans do. If we bring industry back, the idea would be that we produce these things here and we would grow our economy at the same time. I take a dim view of the carbon border tariff. It’s not going to work here and it’s not going to work in Europe. In the end, it’s just going to make things more expensive and not accomplish anything.

Mr. Jekielek: Bringing manufacturing back here in one key area is important for us, especially given the increased risk around Taiwan, where all of the most important microchips are produced. There’s at least one plant in Arizona that’s being built from a Taiwanese manufacturer. But there are regulatory restrictions here, even with the chip manufacturing itself, never mind bringing back steel or other manufacturing.

Mr. Milloy: I’m not an expert in chip manufacturing, but I can certainly believe that is true. Manufacturing anything is going to involve emissions and resource use, especially water. It’s very difficult to get those sorts of operations permitted in the United States. There has been talk in the United States about mining for the rare earths that we need for all this green tech. But that’s only part of the battle, because you can’t just mine them. The greens would never allow that to start with, because mining is dirty. Then you have to process it, which means you need to build processing facilities where you need water and energy.

Right now we do all this stuff in China, and the Chinese do it in a very dirty way, because they don’t care. They don’t have any environmental regulations. As clean as we could do it in the United States, the environmentalists still don’t want to let it happen. Everybody says they’re interested in the environment. Nobody spends any time learning anything

about it.

There’s a lot more to these issues than reading a newspaper or watching a TV show, because there’s a lot of lying that goes on about the environment. The environment can be quite complicated. It involves science, politics, and economics. There are air issues, water issues, and waste issues.

Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned aesthetics, which is actually important.

Mr. Milloy: Aesthetics, yes. It’s a lot for anybody. Around the year 2000, dioxins were thought to be the most toxic substances known to man. On the back of one of its ice cream cartons, Ben and Jerry’s said that there is no safe level of exposure to dioxins. Of course, there are dioxins everywhere. They’re naturally created from forest fires and any combustion process. I found a lab and had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream tested for dioxins.

A single scoop of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla contained 2,000 times the amount of dioxin that the EPA said was safe. I went and testified to the EPA’s Science and Biology Board about this, and that was the end of that, because it’s obviously stupid. No one thinks Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is toxic. But you could basically test for dioxin in any food.

I just did it for Ben and Jerry’s because they said there’s no safe level. I knew that I would find it there, but they didn’t. They were saying, “There’s no safe level.” Why would they say that? It just blew the whole thing up.

Mr. Jekielek: We share a great interest in George Orwell’s lesser known book, Animal Farm. You envision what’s happening now as being along the lines of that story.

Mr. Milloy: Yes. Everyone read Animal Farm in the eighth grade, because it was an easy book to read. People may remember it was an allegory about Stalinism, but it’s more than that. Orwell had two major works, Animal Farm, and 1984. In Animal Farm, we had the pigs convincing the farm animals that they need to have a revolution to make their lives better, so the farm animals join in.

It’s ironic because there’s actually a windmill in Animal Farm, which falls down. Basically, the windmill keeps failing. They keep rebuilding it, but it never works. At the end of the story, everything the pigs had promised was a lie. Nothing worked. But did the same thing happen to the pigs as happened to the farmer? No. They kept their power.

Animal Farm is the story of the process of how you get to a place like 1984.

We put all our faith in the central government that has all these grandiose ideas, which we are seeing really don’t work. In the end, they’re still in charge. We have less power and are subject to them, so we are headed straight for 1984.

Mr. Jekielek: What is the Steve Milloy prescription here?

Mr. Milloy: I hate to get political, but we have an election coming up. We have all these choices. We have seen what has been going on in this country since Covid and none of it is good. We have an overreaching government that is reducing our standard of living, taking away our liberties, and not really accomplishing any sort of commensurate benefits for us.

People are oblivious to all this. They get caught up in these mindless political debates and controversies. They do not recognize that their standard of living is going down, while the government is becoming a bigger and bigger part of their lives. We have this inflection point coming up, this election. Are you happy with how the world and the economy has been going for the last three-and-a-half years?

It’s sad to me that it’s going to be a very close election. We are at a crossroads in America right now. It’s pretty clear that we have a political party that will do anything to obtain and maintain their power. Climate is all about controlling everything we do.

They want to tell you where to live, what to drive, what kind of energy to use, what you can invest in, what kind of food you can eat, what kind of toilets you can have, what kind of housing you can have, and what kind of light bulbs you can use.

They want to control every aspect of your life, and it’s just going to get worse. Fossil fuels have taken us from less than a billion people, preindustrial, to now more than eight billion people. Climate idiocy began in the 1950s and 1960s. Paul Ehrlich was really the first person with his book, The Population Bomb, to come up with this notion that the Earth’s capacity is two billion people.

Paul Ehrlich has never been right. He’s still alive,and 50 years later, he still says, “We can only have two billion people.” That means that more than six billion people need to go away.

I look at what the Biden administration and the Western Europeans are doing. They’re attacking our energy supplies and they’re attacking our food

supplies. Those two things made these eight billion people live longer, healthier, wealthier, and freer lives than ever before.

That’s exactly what is being attacked. They are not really attacking emissions so much as they’re attacking the energy production and food production we need to survive. What conclusion can you draw from that? It is not a good one.

Mr. Jekielek: Steve Milloy, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Milloy: Jan, thanks for having me.

Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Steve Milloy and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.