Intelligent Investing #74 Glenn Leest, The Origins of ESG

The Origins of ESG 

What is PRI: 

·        Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) is a set of six principles that provide guidance to investors on how to incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into their investment decisions. The PRI was founded in 2006 by a group of investors, and it now has over 4,000 signatories, which represent trillions of dollars in assets.

The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has played a significant factor in the development of ESG in the following ways:

·        Setting standards and guidelines: The PRI has developed a set of six principles that provide guidance to investors on how to incorporate ESG factors into their investment decisions. These principles have been widely adopted by investors and organizations around the world, and they have helped to standardize the way that ESG is measured and managed.

·        Providing resources and support: The PRI provides a variety of resources and support to its signatories, including training, research, and networking opportunities. This support has helped investors to learn more about ESG and to develop the skills they need to incorporate it into their investment decisions.

·        Advocating for ESG: The PRI advocates for responsible investment policies and practices at the international level. They work with regulators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to promote the integration of ESG factors into the financial system.

·        Measuring and reporting: The PRI has developed a set of standards for measuring and reporting ESG performance. These standards help investors to assess the ESG performance of companies and investments, and they provide a common language for communicating ESG information.

·        Building a community: The PRI has built a global community of investors who are committed to responsible investment. This community provides a forum for investors to share ideas, learn from each other, and collaborate on initiatives to promote responsible investment.

PRI 6 Principles 

• Incorporate ESG factors into investment decisions: The PRI wants investors to consider ESG factors when making investment decisions, such as the environmental impact of a company's operations or the social impact of its products and services.
• Promote transparency and accountability: The

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Transcript

Alright, Glen Leest is here with us from WT Wealth Management. Mark Howt filling in as well. Um, we're going to talk and we, we hit on this in the past. Um, and I think this is going to be something that we're going to have to hit on more and more, which is, The ESG stuff, uh, environmental, social, social governance, governance.

Whew. That sounds like trouble to me. I know you defined what this is, Glenn, uh, just a couple of weeks ago, but I think we should start first. What does it mean? Yeah. So basically, it's a rating system that they, uh, use to rate different companies and how they score in each of these areas. So, um, they'll have different rating agencies.

They'll say, how are you doing with the environment? How are you doing with the social? How are you doing with governance? And the environment that things are looking for is, what is their impact on the environment? How are they using their natural resources? What are, you know, are they emitting greenhouse gases?

Are they doing anything to offset that? So that's going to be environmentally social is going to be like, what are the company's labor practices? How do they treat their employees and what kind of impact do they have on the community at large? And then governance is going to be, it's corporate structure.

You know what is there. board directors look like, you know, is it complying with the D E I standards, which is diversity, equity inclusion. And so, a lot of times they'll say, hey, you have a board of 12 people, you know, six of them must meet this certain demographic. Um, and so you, you're already going, hmm, yeah, it, it, it, some of these policies, while seeming good at the surface, can go awry really quickly, um, and they can change too.

They're all very subjective. So that's what ESG means. And now there's been a movement to, you know, all these companies want to get a good ESG score. And usually it's like one out of five stars, if you will. Um, and if you're above four, that it allows you to be included in more pension funds, you know, big retirement funds, asset managers will include you.

So, there's an incentive to, you know, get a good ESG score because if you don't, you know, it could have a huge impact on your business. And so that has been a financial motivator for a lot of companies to adopt these policies. Even if they're not a big fan of them, they're kind of forced to push it. Yeah.

Because so much money is involved. Is this what happened with an answer? Bush and Bud Light. Do you think? 100%? Yeah. Yeah. So, um. So, what, what are the big pushers? What, where is the big push of one to be included in the ESG? Where's that coming from? And a lot of it comes from the asset manager. So, like your black rock Vanguard state street, um, which together those three companies are like 70 trillion in mutual funds and assets under management.

So. You can, you know, and they're all pushing the ESG thing to say, hey, you need to have four stars or above, or we're not going to include you in any of the, you know, mutual funds that we have, or the assets that we manage. Um, and so, yeah, these companies, if they say like a target, they may have a 15 percent overall, you know, 15 percent of the company is owned by these asset managers.

So, say the asset managers. Pull, you know, their target shares. That's a huge loss of capital. So, a lot of these companies are kind of in a lot of ways forced to implement these policies, even if they don't want to. And frankly, sometimes the companies know that these policies are bad for business. I mean, I'm no marketing genius, but you look at some marketing campaigns that have come out there and you have a hard time.

I have a hard time looking at and going. Did they not think this one through like what, why are you, you know, diving into all these different social issues that you know will divide your target was those are two ones where you know, Anheuser Busch, which you know, is the parent company of Budweiser Bush lost 26 billion with a beat that is massive.

Over one marketing campaign. Um, I believe that there was money, you know, wrapped up in marketing people, very smart marketing executives, and then, they made a conscious decision to do that campaign. Let me ask you this, because what you said earlier is these companies must, they want to get the good ESG score.

So, they pack the board under diversity, equity, inclusion, whatever, whatever. And I always want the most qualified person, regardless of any quota you send out, with the best person on. Let's say the board, let's say you're, you're, who assigns these board members is the, the, usually the CEO gets a big say in it or, um, you know, the shareholders.

So, if you're the asset manager, you're going to have 15, 20 percent shareholder value. So, you're going to, you're going to get someone on board. Yes. You're going to, you're going to be able to push your weight around. Yeah. So, if I had 15 percent and I say, I'm Glenn, you're going on the board. I want you on the board and make sure this company's straight, but it sounds like they're putting people on the board that are making more social decisions.

Yeah, then good practical business decisions. But I go back to something we've hit on a lot of Glenn in the past, which is what's the purpose of these companies and is it to make black rock happy or is it to make? Well, I guess BlackRock's a shareholder, isn't it? To return investment on the shares, make, make money.

Yeah. Yeah. So, every company that wants to stay in business, their model has increased shareholder value. So, make money, make more of it each year, be more profitable and make your customers happy. Customers or clients provide them with the goods or service that they enjoy. And so, when you start getting away from that model.

You're not going to be a business for long. You know, you just can't, that's businesses must be profitable to remain unless there, you know, some sort of government agency, which just gets tax revenue and they don't have to be profitable in that, in that aspect. So yeah, it's kind of mind boggling. Like, why would you Shift your focus from increasing shareholder value, which is exactly what some of these companies have had to do.

They've shifted it to say, well, we're going to increase the stakeholder value. Uh, that's our main goal in improving stakeholder value. Like what's a stakeholder? Well, it can be an employee. It can be a customer. It can be someone in the community. It could be all sorts of people that are affiliated with or have a tie with the company but have no financial interest in the performance and profitability of it.

So, cause if you're under that first threshold. improving profitability, you would be, you'd be violating your fiduciary duty to implement these policies that you knew were going to be bad for business, bad for profits and bad for the shareholders. Um, and so you'd have these companies have had to make that shift and it's, it's starting to become an issue.

So, you know, you named off target, that's another one that there, you know, One of their product lines they put out really, you know, we're upsetting to a lot of their customers and they lost 6 billion and I didn't even realize this myself, but my wife used to go to target a lot and she's like, I haven't gone there in three months.

She's like, they have not gotten a dollar from me because that campaign was upsetting. upset me. And I see the bills like there was a lot of money that we were spending at target. And so like, it just, it doesn't make sense to me why you'd want to implement these policies if your business, um, unless you're being pressured to, that's what I think is happening is they're being pressured.

And if the board of directors is not on board. Well, guess what? The, you know, asset managers will just Alstom and put in a new board and you, you hit on the D E I it stands for diversity, equity, inclusion. And what that is, is saying, we're going to make sure certain demographics. People are represented on the board of directors regardless of if they're the best candidate.

And so that becomes problematic because people may be elevated that are not qualified for the job. I mean, you want, you want any job to be based on merit competency and excellence, right? And whatever the person looks like, their gender, their skin color, anything else should be irrelevant. She's saying, I just want the best candidate.

Yeah. And that's how I've always thought business should be run. Um, that's how I thought it was run. Well, apparently not in America today. Yeah. And that's why these policies become so dangerous. In fact, D E I, um, instructors, um, and you know, is one of the fastest growing jobs in the nation. In the last couple of years, we've seen explosive growth because all these companies want to be able to check the box and say, hey, we did the diversity and equity inclusion thing.

We’ve done that. And so, we've done our, our, our parts to make the world a better place. But if you interview or watch YouTube, you'll see people that were those individuals teaching those classes. One of them I saw, he's like, he totally changed and went the opposite direction because he realized the content was being more divisive.

It was more exclusive and divisive. Because everything was an issue. Like if you look at someone and wink your eye or do something, it's like microaggression, or if you talk to them this way, it's this big thing. So, people are like, I don't even want to talk to anyone that looks different than me because I don't want to get in trouble of something that I may do wrong, and I don't even know it.

So, it's like unintentionally, very nervous. So, Glenn, I don't understand why the asset managers, you know, these big investors, what is their motivation for wanting the SG, the DEI, what control? Control. 100%. So, it, uh, ESG was started by an individual, Larry Fink, right? He has got more money than he knows what to do with.

He's, there's nothing he can't buy or own. Now, once you have money, what's the next thing that you're going to want? You know, you know, money, influence, and power. Yeah. So that's why I think the play is, is they want power because I was thinking about that too. Why the push for this stuff? Cause you know, it's bad for business and, and some of these social issues are ever changing.

So, what may be a social today. You know, it's going to change from five years from now. And so, it's like this, almost this impossible, you know, bar that keeps being raised. Never reach the rainbow. Yeah. You're never going to reach, you know, the rainbow if you will, um, because the bar always changes. So, I a hundred percent believe it's about power.

So, if you have three companies, you know, state street, black rock, and Vanguard, and three of the people that are head honchos of that going together in a room and they're all friends. That is 70 trillion assets, and you control that much, you know, that's a lot of power. It really is. And you might argue that more power than some of our elected officials because they have so much sway to determine how things go.

Why would they want to sway it with this ESG stuff? Why not something else that It's more interesting. You know, I don't get why this culture thing, perhaps, you know, was that the thing that was hitting in popular culture that get a better traction when you, when you buy products. I was, I was drinking cranberry juice.

This morning it said, you know, pledged climate friendly and that's what it said on one of their on the label. So, you have all these products that are saying we're climate friendly, we're pledging to reduce emissions and in the plastic bottle or all these other social issues that they're doing.

And you're like, Oh, great. You know, I'm, I'm buying a pair of yoga pants that aren't racist. You know, like, really? Like, I don't understand. Like, as a consumer, some of this stuff is kind of insane. I mean, that's a funny example, but it's, um, I think Chris Rock actually did a comedy routine on that about the non-racist yoga pants costing 90 than the Walmart ones, you know, costing 80 bucks.

are awful. But it does bring up a good point. Like, shouldn't we just be concerned about the product itself and the excellence of the product? You know, why do all those other things matter? Cause for me as a consumer, it doesn't matter, you know, all those other areas. I want a good product. I want a good product.

And I would hope the companies treat the environment and do all that. Well, but that's, if you see a company and they're dumping stuff over the, the, into the lake all the time, you know, like you hear about it and you're like, wait a second, I don't want to buy from you. You're poisoning the water. You're doing this, but.

These guys are going so far. They're, they're hitting on the social issues. So, I use this example. So, um, Walmart, uh, Walmart. I forget their names now. They're big into mountain biking. So, they've gone into Arkansas and said, hey, we're going to build trails. You know, basically the government gets on board with us because this is what we want.

And because they, again, have so much money, they don't need money. They don't, they just want to build more trails. They want to do something that they enjoy. Yeah. But I'm like these guys that you're mentioning, is this what they really enjoy? The ESG? I mean, is this like what they're, you get sucked up in the power, I think Glenn's on it.

I would just, Glenn's on it. I would just want to go out and have fun? It’s their hobby. It's their thing. It's their thing. It's like they're sucked like ski resorts. That's the thing. They already have all that. And if you look at an interview of Larry Fink, you know, um, there's one where he basically says he's God.

He's like, I am the next iteration of God or something like that. Oh, am I literally hearing this? I think it was like a documentary I watched, uh, about the ESG, um, in the last week. And so, it was kind of illuminating. Like, I, I am learning more and more about the stuff. So maybe that helps answer your question.

I don't know. I've never met these individuals, so I can only, you know, um, have an educated guess and it's just an opinion, but I think it's about power. He's worth his current to this 1 billion. It's kind of a smaller, smaller player compared to Elon Musk or something, you know? Sure. But look at his influence.

Look at his influence. Yeah. He's got me. Maybe musk should buy out the company, something like that kind of money. And that I just didn't care about making more money. I'd be thinking along the lines of. Let's buy American farmland or, you know, to control the power, control the food that's built Bill Gates.

Bill Gates is playing right now. That type of play would be much, that's a smart to me. Yeah. I think that's everybody's always going to need food. That seems like the way to go. Or if you control the farmland and you can control the prices, you can control the food prices, but you can also choose not to grow stuff.

And then force people to buy artificially created lab food or something like that. That's true. Beyond meat stuff.

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Okay. So, I can tell that you think they're too powerful. I mean, obviously too much power, um, too much influence. What can people do, Glenn? I guess that's the next big thing. I have two questions here. What can people do? Um, and this is another fad America seems to do everything's like 10-year bubbles and everybody gets into these things and then they crash and burn because they, they, they're just not practical.

Is the ESG movement, especially considering, uh, Bud Lighthizer, Anheuser Busch and Target, and there's probably going to be others. People step back and speak. Oof. Wait a second. I'm good. So, let's start with that. Is this a fad? Is this something that will probably go the wayside or not? It depends on society because I think society has really adopted it and run with it.

And in all honesty, our firm has both an ESG and an anti ESG portfolio. So, some of the clients that are with our firm really liked the ESG stuff. And, and hey, if that's for you and that's what you want power to you, you know, it's fine. You know, we want to be able to provide that. I personally think from a dollar standpoint and profitability standpoint, I think there's some inherent issues with ESG.

The premise seems good, right? You're like, who doesn't want to save the environment? But a lot of times those environmental policies to get the extra check, like here's a good example. Tesla scores awfully on the ESG scale, but Phil Morrison, a tobacco company scores incredibly well. And you're like, okay, well they grow plants.

Yeah. I don't understand this. Like I don't understand this. It's like, yeah. I thought Tesla was supposed to be helping the environment, helping the world with electric cars. And then, you know, you dive more into EV and renewable energies, and you realize maybe it's not as, uh, clean and perfect as a solution as we've been told because, you know, it's got its inherent, you know, byproducts issues.

I mean, you drive a Tesla, and the battery goes out, you pretty much must destroy your car because you see the Tesla out front. Because the cost to replace the battery in the Tesla is going to be probably more than almost was what you bought for because they build the car around the battery because the battery cannot be punctured.

If it's punctured, it just explodes. There's a Tesla out front that Bruce, a good buddy of mine, has got to get towed to Phoenix. It's got 4, 000 batteries underneath. The car weighs 6, 000. It's 4, 000 of batteries. Wow. Yeah. And so, what do they do with those depleted batteries when it's done? Yeah. Um, those are toxic waste, and you can't just recycle it.

So, you're like, yes, you save some, you know, the environment by not having as many emissions, but then you have this other problem over here. So that's what I'm just saying. It's, it's never perfect or, oh, we built a bunch of windmills. You're like, okay, well, where'd you get the fiberglass stuff? I ever less never break down, never biodegradable.

And how many years does that thing need to be running for it to offset his carbon footprint? So, you're like, so these are good questions. It's like, that's where I'm saying ESG can very, be very subjective and it just depends on whose opinion and who's being subjective at the time. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Since it's new, still newer. Education over time, people will be like, okay, I question this and maybe it'll go by the wayside. Yeah. Um, so what can people do? Yeah, that's the next question is what people can do if they're not into that or if they're into it, I guess. Yeah. So if they're into it, there's, there's plenty of ESG funds.

They'll, they'll say socially aware or ESG at the end of it. Um, so there's plenty of options for that. Um, it used to be strangely enough, uh, if you were a 401k plan provider, like you're an employer and you offered a 401k plan, you couldn't offer an ESG fund in your 401k lineup because you'd be violating your fiduciary duty because you knew that it was an underperforming fund.

So, there is, uh, recently some, um, legislation that came out of the white house that basically says, Hey, we're going to give those pass. Like you can include ESG even though we know it doesn't, or we know it goes against the, you know, Produce, sherry duty to provide the best options. It's for the better good, you know, that sort of thing.

So, what can people do? Um, you know, you could boycott the companies in some instances that works, right? There's plenty of light beers, right? There's Modelo Stella or twa, which like both of them. There's Corona. I mean, there's, there's lots of alternatives, but What about some companies that we can't boycott that are so ingrained, like Verizon, we're talking about them.

If you want good, reliable service in Northern Arizona, you know, Verizon is, you know, going to be one of the tops, you know, options Verizon or T Mobile. Like, yeah, you got some of these other smaller players, but nationally, I don't know how well they stack up. So, it's like, even if you didn't like what Verizon is doing, your kind of trapped or, you know, imagine if we tried to live without Walmart, Target, Home Depot, you know, that’d be really hard, right?

Or a food company. Like you don't want to go shop at Kroger. Like, yeah, good luck. What are your other options? If you boycott Kroger, you're going to get a local corner one. Yeah. So, one of the ways we have a response for that is boycott doesn't always work. Um, and so what we've done is say, let's go back to where the power is at.

Um, yes, there's power in the, in the dollars and how we shop with business, but there's also power in the shares. So, if we can say, Hey. We as a total conglomerate have 18%, you know, shares of this one company because we're, you know, now launching a, um, a different movement that says, hey, we just want to focus on what is good for profitability for the companies.

So pro-growth of the shareholder value. That's what we want to focus on. Well, if you have an 18%, you know, total amount, then yeah, you can go up against some of these, you know, heavy hitters and, and vote them down and say, no, we don't want. These social issues are these other things that are bad for business.

We just want the company to make a good cup of coffee. And that's the main goal, right? We don't need to dive into those social issues. So, we've launched a fund that allows our clients to still own those companies, but make real change from the boots on the ground. Um, and so we're excited.

We just launched that last week. So, it gives people an option if they feel kind of powerless or like, if I don't like this ESG stuff and it's not for me, what can they do without sacrificing? You know, good returns, right? Because the anti-issue or like woke, you know, woke mitigation, or maybe you just say, hey, we're just going to go back to focusing on increasing shareholder value.

Like that's the, you know, that's what it was 15 years ago for all companies, but we've kind of straight away. So that's something we're now offering. It's gone live and we're really excited about it. That's good. I, I'm me personally, and I don't give any financial advice. Of course. I see woke DEI, anything like that.

Yes. I’m just running, I'm running for the exit. That's just me personally, though. Yeah. You know, I'm sure there's some smarter people than me that can make plenty of money on it. You can say, hey, whether morally I agree with it or not, it's neither here nor there. People ought to be able, right? That's what I'm looking at for a company.

And that's, what's the most, isn't that the whole point of investing right? Is to invest, obviously. within reason, right? There are certain areas of the market that we're not going to touch. You know, we're not going to touch adult industry gambling. We're not going to, you know, chemical warfare. Um, we're not going to do tobacco.

Those are just areas that we as a firm, like I think everyone, even though tobacco, they got the good, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go figure that it's, it's a topsy turvy kind of world now, right? Yeah. Some of the oil companies score pretty good, pretty good. They buy enough, um, yeah. Carbon offsets or windmills or solar panels or whatever.

All right. I guess something to be extremely aware of when you're working with all this stuff, it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. However, maybe people will kind of wake up to it or go wake up to it and say, okay, this is for me, this isn't for me. And as it. It moves along here. I think maybe it'll be a little different.

People like, man, not for me. Yeah. We're getting to a point I noticed where not everybody's just sitting down being quiet when people show up and say, you must do this. They're like, okay, we went far enough. And I think we're seeing that in America right now. Prime example is media has radically shifted over the last five years.

I mean, the amount of people watching cable TV in broadcast networking is just, you know, down substantially. People want to watch long form podcasts. Why? Because people can sit there and talk for 30, 62 hours and you, it’s hard to fake it. Whereas when you're doing 32nd spots on the, you know, TV.

It's easy to put up a facade. So, I think there's an actual better connection. I think a lot of us, you know, are busy so we can listen while we're doing other things. So, I think that's why traditional media is frankly dying. Like I think it's going to be gone here real soon. Um, you know, it's going to be very specialized.

It's just so much out there and people want something a little deeper nowadays. Yeah, you know, and there's a lot of influence too. Like in these big networks, who are the advertisers? Whoever's paying the bills for the advertising is going to determine the views of that network. That's just how the game's playing.

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Finish or continue with Mark Howitz. Uh, and Glenn Leest a lot more to come and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and follow me on rumble as well. Hang tight back in just a minute.

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is the Jeff Horowitz show. Funny story. So, the background was while I created an anti ESG fun. Oh, he did one too. Okay. Yeah. So, this is called strive. Um, and so his fund is one that we look to integrate into our models at some level. Um, but yeah, he's basically, you know, seems like a smart guy.

Very smart. Like the more I watch them, the more I'm like, yeah, he's sharp, you know, he's like, he’s, my age. So. Yeah, he's fighting for number two position, fighting for that number two position. I will say, you know, I was talking about your anti-woke thing, and it'd be a curious thing to take 5, 000, put it in anti-woke fund and 5, 000 in ESG fund and just see what happens.

You're hedging. Yeah, because I kind of tried to do that on my own. When I was like, I'm going to go buy Cracker Barrel, you know, solid Christian company, the family company. And then suddenly, they got a little woman and their stock dropped about 10%. Did they go woke? Just something woke. I didn't follow them too much.

It got their base upset. Yeah. Then, they dropped about 10 percent of their stock instantly. Yeah. Yeah. Right when I bought, of course. And, uh. I just noticed I don't get as many muffins anymore. I did the same thing with Alaska Airlines. I was like, that's a good conservative company. And then, they went a little bit towards the woke.

Yeah. And, uh, their stock dropped like crazy. I was like. Remember who your customers are nowadays. And I, I, I hate these companies that are trying to be everything to everybody. There's so much business out there like we can do this show and we appeal to, I hope everybody listens and learns something, but I understand the base of who we appeal to and that's, that's fine.

And there's enough companies out there that also have the same view and enough, um, enough customers that are like, hey, I want to do business with that. And there's nothing wrong with that. There are other companies on the other side that liked that. I think there's enough business to go around. And I've adopted that over the last couple of years is that my business has grown as like, I'm just going to be Glenn, right.

And be respectful of everyone that comes to my doors and, you know, be respectful of their opinions. But I'm also not going to be shy away from what I, what I, what my true convictions are to say, Hey. If you hire me as your investment advisor, here's what is important to me. And if those align with your values, great, we'll have a great working relationship.

But if we see it differently, that's okay. Like I'm at the point where I want to help people, but if it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. And that's okay. There are other investment groups to work with that. Maybe, you know, you align with more. Um, but. I, like I said, like to win. So, I'm always looking at like, how do we get the best return and do the best, you know, we can and always be looking forward.

I mean, we can talk all about AI and robotics and the, our outlook there. Cause I think that's going to be a, you know, growing industry very quickly. Yeah, it already is, but you know, we can go to rabbit hole in that one. Yeah, we'll set that one next time. But no, it is, there's enough too. You know, when I first started this show seven years ago, there were some people that wouldn't come on board.

It was a little harder at first. And this was a time when people like Beck and Linda and others were getting boycotted. And that's not saying that can't happen, but just by, you could say something stupid, I guess. But we're. We're careful about that, but we just speaking our viewpoints every day that used to be the cancelable item you’re going to get boycott and then you're going to go to your sponsors knock on wood.

That's harder now because there's so many people doing it and there's people who have realized, hey, you know what? There's, there's enough to go around. That's, that's not working anymore. No, you got to be real. You have got to be yourself. Yeah. I mean, there's people that are going to boycott you because you don't have LED light bulbs in every, in every...

Yeah, no, that's, that's fine. That's, you know... You just got to be you. Yeah, you got to be, you got to be you. And that's, I think that's the biggest thing nowadays. Okay, so, you got me in a rabbit hole, but... You know, at one point in time, they had to change and reduce the length of time that light bulbs could last because they would last for so long that they wouldn’t be able to make any money.

So, they like some laws in place to say you can't have them last more than this amount of time. Cause some of the incandescent like the last 50, 70, 80 years, it's insane. Like as long as you don't hit them, there's like some. Fire Department in New York City that has had the light on for like the last hundred years.

It's still on. It's still working. They last, yeah. It's kind of true of everything though, like appliances. I, we had a washer, a dryer goes out at our house, and I was like, I ordered a new one from Home Depot. Cause you can't, there's no local appliance company anymore, but in the meantime, I called up the local appliance guy.

I was like, yeah, maybe you can just fix it. So, he came over and he fixed it and he's like, yeah, you know. Cancel the new one. You don't want the new one. The old one is going to last you so much. I just had to replace it. I know that appliance guy. I just had to replace the fuse. That's all I had to do. Yeah.

Go in their and... I think I deal with the same guy. And, um, he'll tell you, yeah, it's, you can't go anymore. Or most of the time they're like, get the part. If you can still get the part, keep that old one going. And I was just trying to find a dryer that wasn't connected to the internet. Yeah, dishwashers are really bad now because they have all these restrictions for how much water is used, you know, how long each cycle can be, how much liquid is being used.

Um, and you frankly end up having to wash your dishes twice in the dishwasher. So yeah, you may have saved. But then you didn't, you know, reach your target or you would end up washing by hand afterwards. And you're like, wait, wasn't the whole goal to save water? I think we're spending more water and more frustration, more time.

Let's just go back to where they were because those old dishwashers were just their tanks. I mean, you could put it in a whole birthday cake on like a platter and come out sandy clean. You're like, I don't know where all the birthday cake went. Well, I mean, that's just the difference in technology. I had one of those recently that it was five years.

It's like you're lucky to get five years now. It used to be you go for a couple decades. We have a lot of these appliances; we have an old washer. That's got to be many decades. So, if you look at that from an environmental standpoint, you say, well, maybe this is less efficient, but It lasts for 20 years and I can get it serviced versus the new one.

It lasts, it lasts four or five times longer than the old one. Isn't that better for the environment? Or Mark and I were talking housing recently and you know, they want to go on, they want to retrofit everything. They want to do this are 9 million, whatever, or 60, yeah, on and on. And it's like, well, yeah.

Okay. Maybe I have an older drafty house, but it's there. Yeah, it already exists. You don't have to. Maybe I have an older car, but the car, the body of the car, all of that, is already there. Maybe it's not as fuel efficient, but it's you're not creating a new one. You're not having to dig things out of the ground.

I don't think they think about that. So, if you look at China, they've got the largest Evie market in the world and they're starting to run into those issues of, you know, they have the EV vehicle out on the road for five or six years. And then it's, it's, it costs more to put a new battery in than it would be to just buy a new car.

Like look at the depreciation values on a Tesla. You buy it. And then two years later, it's lost half its value or more because the batteries just don't last that long. Um, and then it's like, well. If it costs more to put a new battery in, you might as well just take it to the scrap yard and then buy another one.

You're like, wait a minute. I thought we're trying to do better with, you know, our resources. That doesn't seem like that's helping. That seems like that is counterintuitive. And this is coming from someone that drove a Tesla like three weeks ago. It was a blast. Right? I love a fun car. Except when you must charge it, you're like, that's a nightmare.

So, I was in Seattle, and I was like, oh my gosh, like it took, and I thought Seattle would have them everywhere, but you'd show up, the one would be broken, and it wouldn't be working and get out of service or one of them, 10 people waiting. You're like, oh, like is Tesla going to contribute to heart disease?

Now here's my, here's my argument. All the Tesla charges. All right. Yeah. Put a disclaimer here. You know, you, you go to the Charger Tesla, it's next to a gas station. Okay. And you're going to be there for 45 minutes. What are you going to eat? You're going to eat outside of the gas station. So now you're eating junk food while you're eating fried chicken and hot dogs at a gas station?

I thought you were going to go somewhere completely different. I thought you were going somewhere completely different with that, too. But I mean, really, I We stop, and I see these tests of people sitting there for 45 minutes. Okay. So, there's electrical charge going on my Slurpee when we were filling up our car, recharging it.

My wife's like, let's not sit in the car. I'm like, why? She's like, you were literally sitting on top of a battery that all this electrical current being pushed into. Do you really want to be sitting close to it while it's doing that? I'm like, yeah, okay. We'll sit outside, like make a good point. But yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. That's a good thing. Yeah. Kids are ready.

We're all thinking internal thoughts. No, I, I think those are questions that need to be answered. And I think that's the problem with new technology is it's all on. It's all on paper, you know, in the beginning, and it's like, oh, we're going to switch this because it's going to be great until we switch to it.

And it's like, we realized the problem is like anything you can have the best business plan in the world. But until you run the business, start the business, you're like, yeah, that, that didn't work out. Well, look at asbestos, right? It'll make your house fireproof. Your siding will last forever, but it's asbestos and nobody knew.

Yeah. Nobody knew. 15, 20 years later. Yeah, it's like Mike. It's like Mike Tyson. As you know, I got a great, everybody's got a great plan to get punched in the face and change rapidly. Well, even some of these newer technologies, I think we've, uh, foregone some of the older technologies and just automatically assume newer is better.

So, you go back to looking at nuclear energy. They've really improved it. They could get cold. fusion now, which has no, you know, capacity from what I understand of having a nuclear meltdown. And yet you can have pretty much infinite unlimited energy, um, you know, production. You're like, why are we not doing more of that?

Like, you know, why are we trying to make these windmills and solar panels, which I have solar in my house. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against it, but I'm just like trying to think same thing with oil. Like we're trying to move away from oil because it's so bad, but when you do pencil off the mat for having the EV car versus the gas, I think you're going to be very surprised It might be about the same cost to just drive the gas car around.

Again, the Tesla that's sitting out front is, is Bruce Siblings and he's talked about it. It broke down here a couple, a week or two ago and he's got to get towed down to Phoenix. And it's fine, Bruce, I'm not, I don't care. You can leave it out there as long as you want. He's, he's, he's, he owns two. He bought them early and he said, “This is a car you, you just must be patient with.

I love this car. You must understand it, its limitations and that's, that's perfectly fine. “Um, enthusiasts,” he said, are going to absolutely love it or situations where you're in a bigger city and you have lots of charging ports and you're commuting shorter distances. There's, there are limitations just, just like anything.

And I think consumers should be aware of that. Yeah. Like I think exactly what you're saying. Like I wouldn't be opposed to having a Tesla. Um, but I charge it at my house. It's still a gas-powered car. So that way I can put it around town. I'm not going long distances because one of the big issues is finding charging stations on the road.

But hey, I've got solar, you know, pretty much you can argue like I'm charging up that Tesla for pretty much free. Um, no, that's, that's, that's a great side. Yeah. Yeah. So, I, you know, I think all these things, like you're saying, they just have, they all have their place, I think. Yeah. And, um, the government can't regulate it or can't.

Mandate it to happen a whole new economy basically and say trying to do you see inflation reduction act where they're like 7, 500 bucks if you buy a new tesla and 14, 000 or something. If you get a solar installation, there's all sorts of incentives. I didn't even know about that until the solar guy came.

knocking on my door is like, yeah, you'll get a 14, 000 tax credit. And I'm like credit. So how much do you put out of your pocket if you're really doing your house? I mean, it's, it's my finest at all. So, like I didn't have to do anything down and then, and then you still get the rebate, the tax rebate financing.

Solar has been a big thing. It's, I'm sure you can testify to it. It's got its problems. If you're going to stay in your house. It's probably okay. If you go to sell it, then you've got the, it's that extra amount you have finance. Oh, you're carrying it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But yeah, it may work out in the long term in Arizona.

Solar panels, probably a good idea in upstate New York. Well, and the ability to not... Fully rely on the grid is really a nice feature. Yeah. So that's the next thing I want to do is put the actual battery system in there. So, I can store energy as well. Um, because I live in Kachina village and our power goes out, you know, here and there, you got a lot of shade there too.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but if you don't have like, I found out the hard way, if your, your energy goes out and your natural gas goes out and it's middle wintertime, you're so well, so we put in a gas burning stove. So at least, okay. Worst case scenario, we're not going to freeze gas or wood. Uh, wood. Okay. Um, yeah. So yeah, we just chopped down the wood or whatever.

And there's, we got a little bit of wood out there. Talk about helping the environment. Talk about helping them, doing something for the environment and your health. Yeah. Forest management. You know, it's hard work. It's good for you. It was like, you don't chop your, you know, leg off or something. So, so going on another tangent, California ran to the issue where they weren't doing enough, uh, management of the forest.

They weren't cutting down enough trees because they were in that, in nature, usually lightning would strike, and it would. takeout part of the rainforest. But now if that happens, we go and put the fire out. So, we have to kind of offset that by reducing some of the, you know, the bottom layers. You know, my wife's father is a, you know, he's been in the forest service for years.

Um, and so a little bit, but, um, and then they have these huge wildfires in California because they have so much backed up stuff that they should have been clearing out. And here, but they were like, hey, we don't want to chop down trees because it's, it's bad for the environment. You were like, well, what about all those trees you just burned down?

Because the fire and all the houses told to, so you're like, okay, you know, nothing's ever perfect. I just think you need to look at and go, okay, let's prioritize people first. And then the environment seconds, you know, not to say the environment's not important, but we need to put people's first, like, you know, who?

Yeah. If you got rid of oil overnight, you'd probably have a hundred million people died just instantly. And so, I heard Greta Thunberg, I don't know, I was like watching a clip of her and she's pretty adamant. Like we need to get rid of oil today. And I was thinking, well, what would oil be like without oil?

And it would be, you know, there'd be a cast rock human, you know, costs just to save the world. You're like the world's important, but more important than the world is the people living in the world. If you got rid of oil. You'd have no food for a lot of people. Yeah. And in the Northeast, the heat there is with oil.

Yes. People would freeze to death. Yes. It's just impossible, you know. Airline traffic stops. Cruise, the cargo ships stop. Everything stops. Your medicine is not coming. Yeah. How are things transported across the states? Uh, through railroad and big rig trucks. And those are not solar power. They're, uh, diesel turbine engines.

They're gas overnight. Yeah. You're not getting your fudge rounds. You know, it's just, it's gone.