NC leftists sue to turn off the power (12-17-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Alrighty, so the town of Carrboro is hoping to make history by suing the company that gives us our energy. What could go wrong? The town is suing Duke Energy over what it said is the supplier's impact on the climate. On the climate. So Duke Energy, how dare you give us all this?

[00:01:00] The climate crisis is here. And we are in an urgent fight for the future of the planet. And the window is closing, said Mayor Barbara Foushee. The mayor and council voted unanimously to take on Duke Energy and waste a whole bunch of taxpayer funding over what they claim is climate deception.

[00:01:23] It's according to ABC 11.com. It's according to ABC 11.com, a piece by Tom George.

[00:01:30] They're suing Duke Energy for pushing fossil fuels over cleaner sources of energy for decades, damaging the environment and costing the town money.

[00:01:40] The case was filed in Orange County Superior Court.

[00:01:46] Mayor Pro Tem Danny Noel.

[00:01:49] Well.

[00:01:50] Well.

[00:01:51] Or now.

[00:01:52] Yeah, like Noel.

[00:01:54] No.

[00:01:55] Well.

[00:01:56] Quote, if we are going to meet this moment with the urgency that it requires corporations like Duke Energy must be made to reinvest their ill gotten gains into the communities that they have deceived.

[00:02:11] Ill gotten gains.

[00:02:13] Ill gotten gains.

[00:02:15] Do you know what that term means?

[00:02:18] Ill gotten gains.

[00:02:21] You are aware that Duke Energy operates as basically a monopoly.

[00:02:25] So.

[00:02:27] It's not like they're stealing anything.

[00:02:29] The government has.

[00:02:31] Like carved out a unique position for energy providers because it's pretty important.

[00:02:36] I'm not sure you're aware, but you could go over and look in Western North Carolina.

[00:02:40] What happened to people that were there and then lost all their power for, you know, days or weeks or even months.

[00:02:46] And it's pretty bad.

[00:02:48] If you don't have power, like you're probably going to die.

[00:02:54] And if you don't have power, you know what you end up doing?

[00:02:57] Yeah.

[00:02:58] Burning stuff.

[00:03:00] Burning wood.

[00:03:01] All sorts of fossil fuels and stuff.

[00:03:03] You burn all this stuff and you're not.

[00:03:05] You don't even have those scrubbers or whatever on top of your campfire or fireplace.

[00:03:10] So you're just just straight piping that stuff into the atmosphere.

[00:03:15] So I'm not sure that's a not sure that's a winning argument.

[00:03:18] Also.

[00:03:20] Like, I'm unclear.

[00:03:21] You're saying Duke Energy should have what?

[00:03:24] What was the course correction that Duke Energy should have embarked upon decades ago, as you say, for decades?

[00:03:31] That what they should have been putting solar panels all over the landscape, more windmills off the coast.

[00:03:38] That they should that that's where they should have been generating the power, even though that technology to this day still cannot support the grid.

[00:03:48] And I say that as one who has solar panels.

[00:03:51] I have solar panels.

[00:03:53] I'm not anti solar panel.

[00:03:57] But I also recognize that it does not create enough power for my household to operate.

[00:04:03] On a consistent, constant basis.

[00:04:08] You may want to sit down for this.

[00:04:10] Solar panels generate power from the sun and the sun is not out all day long.

[00:04:18] I know when this it when the sun sets, you don't generate power.

[00:04:23] I can show you on my app.

[00:04:25] It'll tell me all the power I generate throughout the day.

[00:04:28] I don't even use some of the power generated throughout the day.

[00:04:32] I don't use a lot of it.

[00:04:33] So I sell that back to Duke Energy, although they're trying to stiff me on the prices now.

[00:04:38] But like I I sell that back to their system.

[00:04:42] So I'm helping because I went and put solar panels on my you know, my you know, my power bill is on a monthly basis from Duke.

[00:04:48] It's like ten dollars.

[00:04:51] Now, here's the other thing in the wintertime.

[00:04:56] The the the solar panels, they don't get as much sun as they get in the summertime.

[00:05:03] Sorry, I should have told you to sit down for that one, too.

[00:05:06] That could be a very big development.

[00:05:08] You were not aware.

[00:05:09] Also, wind turbines.

[00:05:11] They don't they don't generate electricity when it's not windy.

[00:05:16] Also, when you have them like too far out at sea where there is more wind going on, they're out there.

[00:05:23] But you've got to now pipe that power back in.

[00:05:28] And the longer the transmission line is.

[00:05:31] The more energy gets dissipated along the route.

[00:05:34] So if you if you put them too far away, you generate power, but you can't ever get it back to like a storage battery or something because it's too far away.

[00:05:45] So there are again, there isn't a silver bullet in all of these discussions, right?

[00:05:52] All of these things have tradeoffs.

[00:05:55] All of these different power generation methods have tradeoffs.

[00:06:00] So you suing Duke Energy because you want them to do more solar, more wind.

[00:06:07] I don't know.

[00:06:08] Are they allowed to do hydroelectric?

[00:06:10] Is that still green?

[00:06:11] It kills a lot of fish.

[00:06:12] So I don't I don't know if that counts as green anymore.

[00:06:16] But.

[00:06:18] Back to the ABC 11 story.

[00:06:20] While several other states have filed lawsuits over climate change, town leaders said this is among the first of its kind for a municipality in the countries,

[00:06:28] specifically seeking damages from an electric utility for, quote, climate deception, climate deception.

[00:06:38] Although a jury would determine an amount, the town lawyers estimate that years of storm damage, heating and cooling costs and damage to roads and infrastructure from climate change would add up to 60 million dollars.

[00:06:52] All right.

[00:06:52] So it's a shakedown.

[00:06:53] OK, because here's the deal.

[00:06:55] How much of Duke Energy's energy production over the decades, however long the decades are that you're saying, I don't know, let's we'll we'll we'll call it what?

[00:07:05] 50 years.

[00:07:06] Sorry.

[00:07:07] How much of the energy production over 50 years?

[00:07:11] has contributed to the climate change.

[00:07:15] In your town.

[00:07:17] They've pegged it at 60 million.

[00:07:18] OK.

[00:07:18] Well, what about all of the states and energy providers to the west of Duke Energy?

[00:07:30] Why does that matter?

[00:07:32] Well, 50 years ago, if they were burning coal, as most power plants did, they would be belching all of the coal and smoke into the air.

[00:07:43] And the wind, the prevailing westerlies, if you will, they come from.

[00:07:48] That's right.

[00:07:49] The west.

[00:07:50] And they they blow across the country and they come over the mountains and then they come through North Carolina.

[00:07:57] And so anything to the west of us would also have to be included in that.

[00:08:02] Now, you may want to sit down for this also, but the earth, despite what you may have heard on some social media sites, the earth is round.

[00:08:09] And to the west of America, there's another country way over on the other side of the globe.

[00:08:17] China, they've been cranking out a metric crap ton of pollution and they've been doing it for a very, very long time.

[00:08:28] I've seen stats where they're I mean, they're putting like four coal fired plants online like every day.

[00:08:35] It's ridiculous.

[00:08:35] The amount of energy production that China is building.

[00:08:39] So.

[00:08:41] You've got to do like a prorated approach here, do you not?

[00:08:45] Right.

[00:08:45] I mean, if you're looking for damages for the climate change related storm damage and such, then you've got to you've got to incorporate all energy production globally.

[00:08:55] Do you not?

[00:08:56] And then you would have to prorate that down because it's all one big ecosystem.

[00:09:00] Right.

[00:09:00] So it's the whole planet.

[00:09:01] So you've got to get all those numbers together and then you've got to carve out a little part for whatever the percentages that do contributed.

[00:09:10] Right.

[00:09:12] And then whatever damage you've assessed, if you've got 60 million dollars of climate change related damages in Carrboro.

[00:09:19] First off, I don't believe you.

[00:09:21] Second of all, you would have to then prorate that 60 million damage and you would have to sue all of the other production entities over the last 50 years.

[00:09:33] I'm just approaching this from a logical perspective.

[00:09:35] OK.

[00:09:37] I don't know if Carrboro's got a case.

[00:09:39] They don't.

[00:09:39] But I don't know.

[00:09:41] Now, the lawsuit, according to our old pal, associate editor at McClatchy, Ned Barnett, he says the lawsuit won't be supported by taxpayers.

[00:09:54] It's being paid for by a activist, an activist group called N.C.

[00:10:00] Warren, an advocacy group for the left wing activist group.

[00:10:05] That's what they are.

[00:10:06] N.C.

[00:10:06] Warren for utility customers and the environment.

[00:10:09] The lawsuit presents a history of Duke and its affiliates downplaying or denying climate change as the utility continue to release carbon and methane into the atmosphere.

[00:10:18] To establish Carrboro standing to sue, the lawsuit details the infrastructure repairs and other town expenses that it attributes to warmer temperatures and heavier rainfall.

[00:10:30] What about snow?

[00:10:31] What about cold?

[00:10:33] What what about warm and no rain?

[00:10:37] Because everything is climate change, right?

[00:10:39] That's that's what I've been told.

[00:10:41] Whenever it's cold, that's an example and evidence of climate change.

[00:10:44] And whenever it's hot, that's evidence of climate change.

[00:10:47] And when it rains, that's climate change.

[00:10:49] And when it doesn't rain, that's climate change.

[00:10:51] When it snows, when it doesn't snow, when there are hurricanes, when there are no hurricanes.

[00:10:55] Right.

[00:10:55] All of these things are climate change.

[00:10:57] Everything goes to climate change.

[00:10:59] So basically it's weather.

[00:11:01] Right.

[00:11:02] Right.

[00:11:03] So like, why are you just limiting it to these warmer temperatures?

[00:11:07] I don't know.

[00:11:07] Carrboro, by the way, town of 21,000 people.

[00:11:12] That's how many people are in Carrboro.

[00:11:13] And apparently it has been captured by leftists.

[00:11:16] Which makes sense because it's not very big.

[00:11:18] Easy to capture.

[00:11:20] And it's right near Chapel Hill.

[00:11:21] So I think I know where all the professors live.

[00:11:23] No, I'm kidding.

[00:11:24] But maybe not.

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[00:12:27] So the city of Carrboro, the town of Carrboro, 21,000 people just west of Chapel Hill, known

[00:12:34] for its progressive politics, because of course, they are suing Duke Energy over climate change.

[00:12:40] In a completely unrelated story, I think I have a potential site for a new nuclear reactor.

[00:12:48] If Duke is interested, hit me up.

[00:12:51] Pete at thepetecalendorshow.com.

[00:12:54] Ned Barnett over at the McClatchy newspapers, an associate editor.

[00:13:00] He says that the similarity in this lawsuit to the tobacco manufacturer scandal and the

[00:13:06] potential liability for spewing hazardous gases into the atmosphere is an apt one.

[00:13:13] Attaching culpability to cigarette manufacturers was slow and then sudden.

[00:13:18] That's the preference cascade right there.

[00:13:21] Anyway, the same could happen with those who continue to fuel global warming at the expense

[00:13:27] of the public's general welfare, because there's no public general welfare in having heat in your

[00:13:34] home or air conditioning.

[00:13:37] I added that last sentence.

[00:13:39] Is that public welfare?

[00:13:40] Does that help the public general welfare to have air conditioning?

[00:13:46] Does Ned Barnett use air conditioning?

[00:13:50] Does he have a cell phone?

[00:13:52] A computer?

[00:13:53] A tablet?

[00:13:54] A television?

[00:13:55] What?

[00:13:56] What do you charge your electric vehicle with?

[00:13:59] Where does that sucker plug into?

[00:14:02] It's not a wall.

[00:14:04] Oh, no, that's...

[00:14:06] The wall is just the facade.

[00:14:08] You're plugging into an outlet, and that outlet then goes someplace else.

[00:14:14] Where does that go?

[00:14:16] He says,

[00:14:17] The liability Carrboro's lawsuit asserts is not about the cause of climate change.

[00:14:23] It is about Duke's alleged dismissal of the danger combined with efforts to hold back

[00:14:29] the development of clean energy alternatives.

[00:14:32] Like nuclear, Ned?

[00:14:34] Does nuclear count?

[00:14:36] Because that was leftists who did that.

[00:14:39] They were the ones who blocked all of the nuclear generation from coming online.

[00:14:42] By the way, have you heard this old axiom?

[00:14:46] What did leftists use to light their homes before candles?

[00:14:51] You know the answer to that?

[00:14:54] Light bulbs.

[00:14:58] It's funny because it's true.

[00:15:02] Clean energy advocates, he says, say that the utilities investing too heavily in gas-fueled

[00:15:08] plants and should be doing more to promote solar and offshore wind energy and the battery

[00:15:13] storage of that energy.

[00:15:15] So that's their plan.

[00:15:18] Solar panels.

[00:15:21] And not nuclear.

[00:15:25] That's the idea.

[00:15:26] There's a reason why Carrboro is dubbed Cuckoo Carrboro.

[00:15:32] All right.

[00:15:32] Hey, real quick.

[00:15:32] If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times

[00:15:38] a day, send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:15:44] It's super affordable.

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[00:15:51] it the best bang for your buck.

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[00:15:53] Pete at the Pete Calendar show dot com and I can show you how it works.

[00:15:57] Run the numbers with you.

[00:15:58] Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar show dot com.

[00:16:02] Let's head over to the phones and chat it up with Ralph.

[00:16:05] Hello, Ralph.

[00:16:06] Well, as I'm writing down the Moore's Roll Expressway, your last segment brought up some

[00:16:13] memory lane moments.

[00:16:15] In 2012, East Lincoln High School played Carrboro and they were going for their fifth state

[00:16:24] championship.

[00:16:25] Carrboro was?

[00:16:27] Yeah.

[00:16:28] OK.

[00:16:29] What was that?

[00:16:30] Carrboro was going for their fifth state championship?

[00:16:33] That is correct.

[00:16:34] OK.

[00:16:35] In 2A football.

[00:16:36] Yeah.

[00:16:37] It was a back and forth game and my son, Ralphie Jr., was the center.

[00:16:42] So to kind of make it fair, he accidentally hiked the ball over Jarrett Young's head and

[00:16:51] gave him an extra two points.

[00:16:53] Oh, that's nice.

[00:16:54] But we were, we went back and forth and everything.

[00:16:57] In the end, we were victors.

[00:17:01] And so it was just a great, great year, 17-0.

[00:17:07] And number 66, a.k.a.

[00:17:10] Jake is my son.

[00:17:12] But anyway, but...

[00:17:13] Well, but how was it such a close game if all of the Carrboro players didn't have any

[00:17:21] kind of padding?

[00:17:22] Because the padding is obviously made from like plastic material and that sort of stuff that

[00:17:26] is climate change related.

[00:17:28] So they, I'm assuming they weren't playing in any of those types of egregious equipment.

[00:17:34] Yeah.

[00:17:35] But you know, one other small point.

[00:17:37] Todd Gurley had graduated the year before.

[00:17:41] That's why they were able to successfully have four championships.

[00:17:46] He later went on to Georgia and the Rams and stuff.

[00:17:50] But Chaz and Sage Sturet also went to the NFL.

[00:17:55] Okay.

[00:17:56] I'm going to put you in touch with the guys down the hall at WFNZ.

[00:18:01] I hate you, man.

[00:18:02] All right, buddy.

[00:18:02] But anyway, great, great segment.

[00:18:04] All right.

[00:18:05] And I think Carrboro is going to get their hopes dashed in this lawsuit.

[00:18:09] They probably will.

[00:18:11] Yeah, I think so.

[00:18:11] I hope so.

[00:18:12] Ralph, I do appreciate the call.

[00:18:14] Cuckoo Carrboro, population 21,000.

[00:18:17] This is from the Carolina Partnership for Reform.

[00:18:19] They have a median income there of $77,000, which is about 10 grand higher than the state average.

[00:18:26] It's about 150 miles from the ocean.

[00:18:31] When, not if, Cuckoo Carrboro loses its lawsuit, it won't just be the town's well-off residents that foot the bill for Duke Energy's lawyer fees.

[00:18:40] It'll be every North Carolina ratepayer.

[00:18:42] We are all going to pay for Duke's defense on this.

[00:18:47] It seems increasingly apparent this whole exercise may be intended to be one big media and fundraising spectacle.

[00:18:56] The left-wing activist group, NC WARN, wrote an e-blast that said, quote,

[00:19:02] We have already drawn tons of national, state, and local news coverage, led by two days of coverage in the New York Times.

[00:19:09] So far, Duke Energy seems handcuffed in responding to the media.

[00:19:13] Please donate here.

[00:19:17] Here's a news release from the Consumer Choice Center.

[00:19:21] Quote, this is their deputy director, Yael Asowski.

[00:19:27] Quote, litigation like this is less about meaningful environmental progress and more about scoring political points at the expense of energy consumers.

[00:19:36] These kinds of suits have cropped up in Honolulu, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and even Australia in local, more ideological courtrooms.

[00:19:45] Unlike prior cases such as the Our Children's Trust that sued Montana over allegations that oil drilling threatens the well-being of future generations,

[00:19:55] this is the first major lawsuit focused on an electric utility investing heavily already in clean energy technologies like nuclear power.

[00:20:03] The Supreme Court has declined to get involved in advancing these climate lawsuits as recently as November.

[00:20:11] This effort is meant to prop up a nationally struggling solar industry and slow down the process or progress of nuclear energy in providing a reliable clean energy future.

[00:20:22] A cause these groups and the plaintiff in North Carolina claim to champion.

[00:20:33] Matthew Iglesias, he is hardly a conservative.

[00:20:37] He's one of the founders of Vox.com.

[00:20:43] And he has a sub-stat called Slow Boring.

[00:20:47] And he wrote a piece a couple weeks ago, we need reality-based energy policy.

[00:20:54] He said, I think the adjustment Democrats need to make is relatively modest.

[00:20:59] He wrote about this after the election.

[00:21:01] He says, I don't want to suggest that the adjustment is unimportant.

[00:21:04] Small errors on a huge topic are a big deal.

[00:21:08] He said, we should take environmental problems seriously.

[00:21:11] Again, he is of the left.

[00:21:13] He said, we should prioritize anti-pollution measures that do, in fact, actually make people better off,

[00:21:21] rather than an arbitrary grab bag of measures.

[00:21:25] I found out last week that over on Blue Sky, which has become just a sewer,

[00:21:30] I'm on a prominent block list for climate deniers and trolls, is what the list is called.

[00:21:39] Matthew Iglesias, leftist, creator of Vox.com, is on a block list by environmentalists.

[00:21:50] While he does admit to doing some trolling, he's not a denier in climate change.

[00:21:54] I'm not a denier of climate change.

[00:21:57] Of course the climate changes.

[00:21:59] How much does man have an effect?

[00:22:01] Don't know.

[00:22:02] Is it a lot?

[00:22:03] I don't believe so.

[00:22:05] The only reason denialism ends up entering the picture, he says, is that a significant group of people have described climate change as posing an extinction-level threat to humanity.

[00:22:15] Or, at a minimum, likely causing the collapse of civilization.

[00:22:20] And these aren't just fringe actors, right?

[00:22:22] Joe Biden said it.

[00:22:23] Joe Biden said it's the ultimate threat to humanity.

[00:22:28] And it's not true.

[00:22:29] It's pretty clearly not consistent with the Biden administration's actual policies, right, where he drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

[00:22:37] Right?

[00:22:38] Why would you do that?

[00:22:39] If this is an extinction-level threat, why are you doing that?

[00:22:42] He says Democrats should not run around saying this.

[00:22:45] Of course, the fact that something won't result in the extinction of our species does not mean that it isn't a serious problem.

[00:22:51] But the distinction here is important.

[00:22:54] If the planet were in the path of an asteroid that stood a large chance of wiping out civilization, well, then you'd be willing to do some crazy and extreme things, right?

[00:23:03] Even if your actions got hundreds of millions of people killed, you would still probably do those things if it saved the entire planet.

[00:23:11] If the asteroid is small and it risks wiping out a whole city, that's still catastrophic, but the range of trade-offs under reasonable consideration would be very different.

[00:23:22] You're not an asteroid denialist if you insist on estimating the harms correctly.

[00:23:29] It's actually very important to distinguish between different degrees of badness to make policy decisions that make sense.

[00:23:40] And God forgive me, Matthew Iglesias is right.

[00:23:43] Oh, my gosh.

[00:23:44] I can't believe I just said that.

[00:23:47] Got a message from Jan who says, when it is too cold or too hot, I thought that that just meant that my wife was in charge of the thermostat.

[00:23:55] Like, that's usually the case.

[00:23:59] We cannot put that much pollutant into the air without an effect.

[00:24:02] I take offense that data was changed to prove humans were the only cause.

[00:24:08] Right.

[00:24:08] What about the cow farts?

[00:24:10] I thought cow farts played a huge role.

[00:24:13] Why aren't we suing dairy farms and such?

[00:24:20] Do the dairy cows fart as much as the pasture ones?

[00:24:25] I don't know.

[00:24:26] Do we have like a comparison?

[00:24:28] I don't want to know the answer to that, actually.

[00:24:29] John says, I have it on good authority that Ned Barnett, author of that op-ed for the McClatchy Papers, charges his phone and computers as well as most of the electricity in his house from a stationary bike made from bamboo.

[00:24:46] The stationary bike was invented by Roy Hinckley in the 1960s.

[00:24:51] Hinckley perfected this electricity producing stationary bike when he was stranded on a deserted island for several years with several other people that were going on a three-hour cruise.

[00:25:04] The weather turned bad and they would have all been lost had it not been for the fearless crew.

[00:25:12] In fact, the electricity producing stationary bike was able to power the radio that the skipper of the boat used to finally radio for help.

[00:25:21] There was a millionaire there and his lovely wife and they were stranded on the island along with a random farm girl and a Hollywood actress.

[00:25:29] So that's a fascinating.

[00:25:31] I was not.

[00:25:32] Oh, you know what, though?

[00:25:33] I think I did see that documentary.

[00:25:35] Yeah, I think I did see that.

[00:25:39] Matthew Iglesias writing at slowboring.com.

[00:25:44] He says it's important to identify policy measures that have relatively low costs associated with their adoption and implementation and relatively large benefits in the form of emission reduction.

[00:25:57] Right.

[00:25:57] Low cost, high return.

[00:25:59] He says by far the biggest levers available are those that operate through the innovation channel.

[00:26:06] If U.S. public policy leads to breakthroughs in areas like small modular nuclear reactors, geothermal power, battery technology, carbon removal, low carbon manufacturing processes.

[00:26:22] That has a large impact on the long term global picture because those technologies would be widely adopted if they existed.

[00:26:30] Right.

[00:27:00] Thank you.

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