CA candidate for governor Michael Shellenberger on the governor's race, energy, and Fossil Future
37:54 Share

Welcome to Power Hour. I'm Alex Epstein. Very exciting episode today. It is the launch day of my favorite thing I've ever done, Fossil Future, why global human flourishing requires more oil, coal, and natural gas, not less. And I'm going to be talking about the power of energy.

And to celebrate launch day, I have one of my favorite guests ever. Full disclosure, he came on yesterday, which was Monday the 23rd. It's Michael Schellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never, good friend of this show, guy who helped me preempt the Washington Post by mentioning that whole saga episode.

on Joe Rogan and running for governor of California. So he was gracious enough to come on and we talked a lot about the energy landscape, about fossil future, and of course about his candidacy, which I am a big supporter of. So before we get into it, just two links to know. One is

You're going to hopefully be convinced that he's a good guy to support, but just so you know now, Schellenbergerforgovernor.com to support his campaign. And then make sure to not only order your copy of Fossil Future this week, help it get on the big bestseller list, hopefully the New York Times bestseller list, if

If they don't totally screw me, at least make it so that they have to screw me for me not to be on it. And then I can make a big stink. But yeah, we want this to be a big blockbuster. There's such an opportunity right now to reeducate the world about energy. But when you order it, make sure to take advantage of some amazing pre-order bonuses we have. I've talked about them in the past, so I won't go too long into them. But we've got exclusive conversations with Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey. We've got the Alex Notes of the book.

We've got this live event, How to Talk to Anyone About Climate Change. We've got a six-month premium subscription to my Substack Energy Talking Points newsletter. So

You just got, I broke the bank on this. Take advantage. All you need to do is buy the book and then email your receipt to fossil future at alexepstein.com fossil future at alexepstein.com. And that is available until the end of Saturday. I think I originally had it as a pre-order thing due by the end of today, the 24th, but

I got started really late on actually making people aware of this. So the best thing to do is just make it by the end of Saturday, because that's the end of the initial week of launch anyway. And the goal is to have as many people get the book launch week as possible. So again, buy this book in any format. So it can be Kindle, Audible, or hardcover, or you can buy it in multiple formats. Then crucially send the receipt to FossilFuture at alexepstein.com.

All right. Now, get ready for an awesome interview with Michael Schellenberger. Joining me now, very happy to have him here during my book launch celebration, one of my favorite all-time guests and really favorite people in the world, future governor of California, I hope, Michael Schellenberger. Michael, welcome back. Great to be with you, Alex, and congratulations on your book launch. I'm very happy for you.

Thank you very much. It was good to see you about, I guess, a month ago. We saw each other in person and that was really fun. And okay, so let's talk about how we can get you elected governor. Oh, well, that's great. We have two, it seems like you have two goals. Get me elected governor and then to make your book into a bestseller.

Yes. Well, all I need to do there is just get you on the show and you're such a celebrity that it'll just draw attention. So we've accomplished that part of it. We need to get canceled. We need more cancellation efforts. Let a thousand cancellation efforts bloom, I think is what we want to do. Yeah. They're so weird. These cancel, especially after the last one that people think this is a good idea. Just one quick comment is,

Even I am surprised, maybe you're not surprised, but I am surprised by how many climate journalists just make these crazy comments with no evidence. They kept saying I gave no evidence that the Washington Post story was bad when I gave an hour of evidence.

And now somebody is saying there's this client, I guess he's a professor and he keeps saying like, oh, read this detailed ref, look at this detailed refutation of Alex's book. And it's literally a five minute video with 15 distorted seconds of an interview I did on a Bitcoin podcast by someone who hasn't read the book.

just riffing. And this guy, he can't even bother to look at a YouTube video to know it's not a review. Like there's no journalism. They feel no need. It's really shocking to me. And I didn't think I was capable of being shocked. Well, yeah, I mean, I think we're, I mean, this is, I think we're, I've been thinking about this more. I still find people that still think that at some point we're going to go back to how journalism used to be or how we used to imagine it being. But, you know, both Martin Gurry

he wrote a book called Revolt of the Public, and then Bhatia Angar Sargon wrote a book called Bad News. And they both argue that this period of sort of objective journalism was just a kind of moment in time from like post-war era to, you know,

2016. I mean, really, it starts then before that. And that really we're reverting back to what we used to call yellow journalism, but which is basically all journalism as politics. So if you kind of go, what is politics? Politics is the process of making friends and enemies. That's all journalism is. I mean, I read an NPR story today and it was just like there was no

Objectivity to at all at all, you know, I mean the NPR is it NPR New York Times Washington Post are clearly advocacy newspapers at this point so I think that that's sort of the way it's evolved, you know, I mean you would hope that Twitter and social media would retain their role as a town square where there can be free thought that is increasingly under threat.

But no, you're absolutely right. The strategy they'll use with your book, they do the same thing with me, is they'll be like, oh, no, that book's been debunked. And then they'll point to something. And then you'll look at it and you'll go, but they didn't even try to debunk it. But it's just a way to get people to not take it seriously and

Anyway, you know how to handle this. Didn't they have... So Kuhn and they did this with Scientific American. They had this really bizarre piece that I think two of the three attacks were based on a Washington Post column about his book, not by him. And this is in Scientific American. And then they didn't let him publish a response. But I remember, didn't Scientific American go after you as well? Or was it some other prominent publication? I forget. Yeah, the way that they did it with me was they did...

Climate Feedback, which is this propaganda website. And then also Yale, a Yale blog. Oh, the E360 one? E360. Well, it's no, it was Yale Climate Communication. Oh, Connection. Yeah, it's one of those. I know you're talking about. Climate Connections. And so they all just kind of go, that's the one and that dismisses it. But, you know, I mean, you know, it's a big media ecosystem now. So people obviously will see it and, you know.

Don't let the haters get to you. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's just interesting. I mean, I feel like they actually are doing me a favor. Yeah. In terms of, because, you know, a lot of my point in Fossil Futures, I talk a lot about our knowledge system and how the system that's supposed to give us expert research and synthesize it and disseminate it to us and help us evaluate it is a failure. And part of it, it doesn't give us anything remotely accurate with climate. And a lot of the people involved are not ethical and actually don't care about humans.

And that's kind of hard to show, but these guys can clearly just distort a cut and dried story, like pretending that me responding to false racism accusations for an hour is a baseless accusation against a journalist.

or that they can, you can have dozens of members of the climate community just pile in on this attack with no evidence, no basis, no apology. So it really shows the ethical nature as well. So I feel like they're doing me a favor because the climate stuff is complicated, whereas this stuff is just obvious that they're being non-objective and unethical. So as long as you know how to fight it and, and, you know, whenever they go after you or Bjorn is in this category too, I'm just thinking like, what are these guys thinking? Because

Cause we work really hard to prepare our stuff. Like I wouldn't want to go up against you particularly or Bjorn Lomborg. I mean, I would, if it came down to it, but I wouldn't think it would be easy. I wouldn't think I can just put out some smear and lay back and watch everyone approve. Yeah. I think, Oh, I'm going to get a hell of a response and I better be ready for this. Yeah. Well, I hope your book gets a lot of attention. It's obviously coming at the moment of the worst energy crisis in 50 years and

I've been saying that since the fall, and now it appears that other people now recognize that that's what this is. It also struck me that when I wrote a piece about the Ukraine invasion, a couple of weeks, just like two or three weeks after the Russians invaded,

I argued that this shows that you have to have reliable power to be energy secure. And the energy security is very clearly tied to national security. That appears now to be a pretty mainstream argument. I see it even in the New York Times. So it does seem like your book is arriving at a moment where people understand more acutely, even if they aren't fully willing to acknowledge it, that obviously you can't power the world on unreliables.

on unreliable renewables. So it seems like it should get some more attention and a greater hearing, but who knows? People are still so dogmatic. I think for sure. I mean, I'm very excited about

David Price : This moment, I mean i've been excited in the last few years, watching you know your book succeed and you succeed and bjorn and Steve coonan. David Price : In part, because I like you guys, but also because it shows this big picture humanistic approach to energy and climate. David Price : has real appeal, and I think now we've got another factor in our favor, which is an energy crisis that's causing people to rethink their assumptions.

And in this case, it's pretty clear the anti-fossil fuel movement has a lot to do with it because they said don't invest in fossil fuels, don't produce them, don't transport them. And now suddenly they're super expensive and we want them and we're begging dictators for them. And then in my case, and I think others, I have a very public track record of saying, if you do this,

it's going to lead. So I just published something today for my Senate testimony in 2016, where I said, hey, the price of energy determines the price of everything. If Europe and America keep doing what they're doing, prices are going to skyrocket and food prices are going to skyrocket. And I just published this. And Barbara Boxer's response was, I don't appreciate being lectured by a philosopher. That was her response to me. And I said, well, you need somebody to integrate the big picture data. So

I'm very big on taking credit for being right. Oh, yeah. Having the other side blame for being wrong because they're not going to accept blame for being wrong.

but they need to get blamed because part of a functioning system is the people who are wrong need to be discredited and either apologize and correct or be jettisoned. And they're not going to do it themselves. So we need to do it for them. Right. Well, I also think, you know, actions speak louder than words. And so you would go, so if we thought that renewables were what people say they are, then why are we taking extraordinary measures to import oil from Venezuela? Right.

rather than to import solar panels from China. You know, in fact, as far as I can tell, I haven't tracked it super closely, but the Biden administration appears to be following through on tracking whether or not the solar panels are being diverted from China into Malaysia and Southeast Asia and being hidden basically, you know, to escape the restrictions.

But if it were if our lives depended on it, we would just be trying to get as many solar panels from China as possible. But instead, we're trying to get oil from Venezuela. So it's like, what else do you need to know? I do think that this is also because I think that like the love of renewables is in a kind of is a spiritual quest, as you know, you know, that's sort of the punchline of the pockets never. And so.

It's not like, so people kind of go, they kind of snapped out of it a little bit. You know, there's a kind of return to earth. There's like, oh yeah, yeah, right, right. Like we need actual energy right now, you know? And I think the other interesting thing is of course, like the climate legislation that was supposed to be happening appears to be dead. I don't know where, I mean, maybe there's some possibility. We keep hearing that Manchin, you know, is trying to do something, but you're also kind of like, is Manchin like Lucy with the football?

You know? Yeah, yeah, no, this time I'm going to hold the football. That's true. They're going to use that.

They're going to use it. By the way, the other thing I totally agree about the renewables slash unreliables. The other thing I think of is, so there's this realization that, yeah, we need reliable energy or real energy. The other element, which you've helped bring attention to is I think the halo is off of them because it is, there is this religious element and they have this halo of, oh, they're perfectly clean and green and sustainable. And so you've been pointing out, okay, well, what about the waste of them? What about dealing with that? And what about...

By the way, slavery, do we not care about people actually being slaves in China? And then obviously being produced mostly using coal and all of these things and dumping. And so now they're in the category of, oh, this is another attempt to produce energy. Let's look at the pros and cons of it versus here's this godlike energy.

superior gift from Gaia and let's just use that and everything will be wonderful. And once you start weighing costs and benefits of alternatives, whether with energy or thinking about climate as well, it's a totally different game. And then people have to think about it in a rational way versus a religious way. That's right. I also see it as so, okay. I mean, so the other interesting thing, of course, that's going on is that, so lithium prices have, I think they've like

they've increased sevenfold almost or something, right? So we now know Tesla's in trouble or EVs are, they're kind of, we're getting some trouble with supply chain issues.

We now know we've known that rare earths are disproportionately in China. We've had some rare earth problems. So that's going on at the same time that Elon Musk is out there trashing ESG for not including him, but including some of the oil majors. I mean, I have to say, it seems like great confusion prevails, you know, and it's like there's just a lot of

mystification about this, but I do think that the EVs are taking a big hit right now with everything that's going on. I don't know how you see it, but I find it, on the one hand, you're kind of like, because I've, of course, been a critic of Elon Musk

in Apocalypse Never, the claims that he made about solar panels were not accurate. And I've been critical of that. On the other hand, I'm delighted with him pushing back against the kind of radical wokeism and the censorship on Twitter. And now he's pushing back against ESG. I'm curious your view of what Elon has been doing and saying. Yeah, I have an interesting relationship with Elon. I think you might know he blocked me years ago because I wrote a Forbes piece called the Tesla Model S is a really good fossil fuel car.

I had no idea that he blocked you. That sounds terrible. A long time. We know quite a few people in common. Yeah, I mean, sort of one interesting view on Elon that I've heard, which is compelling, is he's a very good gauge of where the culture is because he's very into being cool and he is cool in many, many ways.

And so I think part of him being in this direction is that he senses, even the thing he said about, oh, I'm not voting for Democrats. He's sensing, oh, right now, even being like a center-right Democrat is kind of problematic. And this is the cool thing. And ESG is not cool. So right, and even the oil, remember the oil thing he said, this is a guy who's been

who's been a villain in my view in terms of restricting oil investment, production, transportation, been promoting climate catastrophism. But you look at him recently and he'll say, no, we need to increase oil production. And I don't know if you've seen this, but he's also been saying in a recent TED interview saying, look, the world's not going to end. It's not going to be that bad. We're going to be fine. Things are going to be better by 2050. And he's just, oh, we just have to kind of slowly move, which

which is a far cry from when he was promoting- Wow, I had not seen that. That was in his interview with Chris, the Ted guy. Yeah, there were two recent Ted interviews and I believe it was the second one, but it was pretty much literally what I said, versus if you look at say,

he never admits that his view changes, but look at the Powerwall introduction. And it's just fossil fuels suck. They ruin the world. It's just a fiery inferno of an earth telling us, oh, we need to get these batteries quickly. Otherwise, everything is going to go to a literal like earthly hell. So it's great though, that he's kind of

because I think it shows where the culture is. And of course he himself has influence. So I think he then pushes it that way. And of course he was great on nuclear. I think he went to Germany and told the Germans they needed to do more nuclear. After not being pro-nuclear forever though and being like a solar fanatic, which that was always the thing that bothered me that he just, he would never talk about, we've got this, he's pretty good as a pro-technology person. And in particular, he would put forward this ridiculous statement

ideal of sustainable. That is, we only want to do things as quickly as possible. We want to get into a way of life where we're repeating the same thing over and over, which is really what renewable or like, that's not what you stand for. You stand for progress. You stand for terraforming Mars. That means always using the best thing and then seeking the next best thing, which is why I love fossil fuels now. I wish we had more nuclear now if we hadn't criminalized it in the 70s.

but I want more nuclear in the future. And I think we're going to have a nuclear future. Like that's progressive energy. That's what he should stand for. Not sustainable, which I mean, Egypt was sustainable for thousands of years. Was that good? I totally, I love your, I love that. I love your rap on sustainability. I totally agree with it. Yeah. I mean, I find myself

I find myself weirdly in the mainstream on nuclear. People hear about me running for governor. They've never heard of me before. And they'll come onto my Twitter page and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, but do you support nuclear power? Really? Yeah. I'm kind of like that. Little do they know. Little do they know.

Okay, fine. You want to save Diablo Canyon, but what about new nuclear? You know, so it's, it's things have changed, you know, you, you saw, obviously I'm sure you saw, you know, Gavin Newsom is saying that he's open to keeping Diablo open tracks. The polling shows there's a plurality of support for keeping Diablo Canyon open. And you, you, and you may know also, you know, we could be 5,000 megawatts short of electricity this summer and,

you know, going to 10,000 megawatts by 2025. So they're genuinely freaked out. You know, we may have blackouts this summer. So we're having, you know, simultaneous, I found myself, interestingly enough, in this campaign talking about water, you know, and I didn't, I don't have a chapter in Apocalypse Never about water, but I did find out, you know, because I searched my own book. I'm like, oh, I did mention desalination. Thank God, you know, it's in there.

And the other interesting thing, and you'll find this interesting, is on Twitter, I'll be like, we need abundant. I find myself using that. That's a really turned out to be a really nice word for people. I said, we need abundant energy, water and housing. But just on and people go, there's like, I mean, every day I say it, somebody like several people on Twitter go, oh, what are you going to make it rain?

as though like I'm peddling like witchcraft to produce abundant fresh water. And so there's the earth is mostly water, as Joe Rogan said. Yeah, of course. And so you kind of go, well, no, you know, you can store water, you can recycle wastewater and you can desalinate. And the Israelis have the, this world-class, you know, desalination program. They've brought the prices down by making it more efficient. You know, they're just pulling the water through these membranes and

And people go, oh, well, that creates these huge salt blooms. Well, only if you don't capture the salt. I find myself kind of going back to like all these basic elemental things about material production. I mean, whether fertilizer runoff or nuclear waste or anything is that, well, these things are controllable. I mean, like you can, you don't have to like let all the salt go into the ocean. You can capture the salt. And, but I find it, um,

I'm struck by the default scarcity mentality among a fair number of voters, of course, more left of center voters than others. You know, farmers in California who tend to be more right of center are just much more familiar with water management, of course, obviously. But they're much more like, yeah, why are we not doing desal? And of course, when you look at who has who is the opposite of desalination, obviously,

all the usual suspects. I mean, you would just write there, Sierra Club, NRDC. So everybody who's against nuclear, everybody who's against natural gas are the same people against desalination plants. So little wonder that we have an energy and water shortage. That's by design. It's what they've wanted to create scarcity to reduce the population and keep California for a small little group of petty aristocrats, so to speak.

So I love, I love the messaging and you know the feeling about just abundance and abundant energy and abundant water and you know with with nuclear that's sort of the ultimate enthusiasm right because you've got this incredibly compact material the almost unlimited supply of and it could just create so much more abundance of anything even than we've seen.

So far, which is this is of course another reason why I want you to be governor. So let's talk about how that campaign is going I mean I'll just tell everyone my know my view so I prior to Mike. I don't know if I had ever publicly endorsed a candidate I forget if I have but I don't remember it. And the most I ever gave was $1,000 and I think that was to get into a fundraiser where I wanted to talk to some people, honestly, whereas Mike, I gave doors publicly gave $5,000.

did not get invited to any special fundraisers, just public discourse. I went to your event. That's right. I invited him. We had a great event that, by the way, if you pre-order Fossil Future and you send your receipt to FossilFuture at alexepstein.com, you can see this event that only about 60 or 70 people went to. Peter Thiel was there. We had a really good conversation. Palmer Luckey, I had a follow-up conversation that I don't think Mike saw, but some of the people who've seen it say it was actually the highlight event.

of the event. So anyway, you came to that and yeah, hopefully you met some people. So I'm, yeah, I'm shilling for this guy, campaigning for this guy. So, and part of the reason is, is that I think he can win and I'm particularly confident that he can win head to head with Newsom. Like those debates, I think will go very, very badly together.

for Newsom. And there's Mike has a lot of natural advantages over Newsom, including being a much better person, but also he's not a Republican. So he doesn't have some of the liabilities of California voters. The question is, how the hell do we get you to the, to that part? So tell us how that is going, what, what the challenges are, what the opportunities are, and then, and then what people will get if they contribute or what can likely happen if they contribute.

So, I mean, things are going amazing. I mean, we're definitely outperforming what anybody thought on the official campaign side. I did CNN on Saturday, Alex. Alex, it had been nine years since I had been invited on CNN. Because we were always like... You had some different views back then, too. Well, I was on for nuclear, you know, in 2013. But nonetheless, no, I mean...

You know, I mean, I'm sure some of it is classic. Some of it is CNN changed and some of it was that I had changed, but nonetheless, I was happy to get on CNN on Saturday. They stuck me at the 6.30 a.m. Pacific slot. So it wasn't not as big of an audience as Joe Rogan, as you might imagine, but nonetheless, it was a great day.

Happy to go on CNN. I'm doing Bill Maher on June 3rd. So, you know, things on our side, yeah, I did Joe Rogan twice. So, you know, in terms of earned media, things are going well. I've been, you know, mistreated by my hometown paper, but getting a good- Which one? The Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, the nefarious Chronicle, you know, but been, you know, treated more or less objectively and fairly by other, you know, media. Times of London did a great piece on,

you know, other newspapers, LA Times actually treated me fairly. I had a Q&A in the Washington Post that was treated fairly, a different division than the people that went after you. So, you know, it's been going great.

You know, we're feeling very optimistic about coming in second on June 7th. That's the objective. Who's going to come in first? Gavin Newsom. Oh, he's in that too? Yes. Oh, it's a, okay. So can you just explain how this, how the primary system works? Yeah, yeah. I've been in California for almost 20 years and I don't really understand. Yeah, yeah. So no, it's simple. It's an open primary. So anybody can vote for anybody in the primary. Republicans can vote for Democrats. Democrats can vote for Republicans. Anybody can vote for

no party preference, which is what we call independence in California. That's what I am. I'm drawing equal support in the polling we did from, you know, Republicans, independents, Democrats. I've been, you know, the issue we knew we would win on homelessness. You know, it's the most acute issue in the state, though energy is a big issue and it's becoming a bigger issue. And now water scarcity is becoming a big issue. Mm hmm.

But it's been going great, man. I mean, you know, it just, you know, it helps that the state is a total disaster. I mean, everything seems to be falling apart. It's we spend more money. I mean, you know, we spend so much money on our taxes. We have these super high taxes and yet we have the worst homeless crisis. You know, we've been doing these videos. I've been going out and interviewing homeless people and we go around and it's just,

you know, there's just garbage everywhere. I mean, that's part of what strikes you is you're like, we have a hundred billion dollar surplus because we overtax our citizens, but yet we don't have anybody to pick up the trash, you know, and we don't have enough homeless shelters. And it's bizarre. You know, it's like you're living on the one hand, you travel around these so-called homeless encampments, which are really open drug scenes. And it just feels like a third world country. You know, even the governor says that.

On the other hand, we're rich. I mean, you know, you have this huge budget surplus because we overtax everybody. So it's a surreal experience. I think people are frustrated. I definitely, because I'm still such a bleeding heart liberal, you know, I always talk about the humanitarian disaster. The women are being sexually assaulted. People are dying of drug overdoses.

But various folks were like, they were like, you need to emphasize that we're all being ripped off, you know, so I've been emphasizing that more too, you know, we pay, you pay all this money in taxes, you should have great services, you know, you should be safe to travel mass transit. You know, I'm a pretty brave person, so I go almost anywhere, but my 16 year old daughter, you know, she can't travel on like BART or walk around large parts of San Francisco.

So that's been the issue that we've been hammering away on that we feel like we're making a lot of traction on. You know, my opponents don't really have much to say about it when they interview them and they're just kind of stuck in the past. So we've gotten a bunch of big endorsements. I mean, I'm sure I'm the only political candidate now and for a long time that will have been endorsed by Alex Epstein, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and.

Tom Wigley, climate scientist, founder of climate science, Kerry Emanuel, climate scientist, you know, Richard Rhodes, you know, also a strongly liberal person. So we're, you know, and Steve Pinker, you know, so basically, you know, a huge number of positive endorsements from both the right and the left. And I think it's I think that's surprised people. It's interesting to people. You know, my latest thing that I'm obsessed with, I sort of say, you know, I'm a liberal in my

compassion for the vulnerable. I'm a libertarian in my passion for freedom, and I'm a conservative in my care, my demand for civilization, because without civilization, you can't have either freedom or, or caring. And I think that's resonated with a fair number of people. Um,

So anyway, it's been going great, man. And I appreciate your support and need the support of all your podcast listeners. Yeah. So what can we do to make it greater? And where I guess, so it's what I've seen from my end is it's been amazing to see all this public support. And even a lot of it I've seen not even just following you. I've just seen it just apart from that, which is much more exciting because obviously I follow you directly.

If I had a worry, my worry would be that somehow all this like mainstream national attention doesn't fully translate into California votes because I just imagine we have this unbelievably corrupt machine where, or in some ways biased machine where either like the default Republican candidate will just get all of these votes or something. So what's kind of what that's the concern there.

That's the concern. Gavin is running ads. So this is the, just the twisted nature of this. Gavin is running ads attacking my main Republican opponent on Republican media. So you may know there's this podcast that Steve Bannon, the former Trump advisor runs called war room. It's a big Republican podcast. Gavin is buying ads on war room, attacking my Republican opponent in a way to increase his name identification and

And so the concern is that if we don't have enough money and we can't counter in terms of the advertising, then we worry that it'll increase

the vote for Brian Dolly among Republicans. You know, Republicans, you know, to their credit, but to our disadvantage, tend to be very loyal to party. And so, you know, there's more sophisticated people on the center right, like yourself, who will be like, I want to vote for, you know, we got to vote for Schellenberger. There's no way in hell a Republican will win in California. But there's just a lot of Republicans that

don't bring that level of sophistication into this and are just voting party preference. And so if they feel like Brian Dolly is the Republican frontrunner, they'll end up voting for Brian Dolly. So that's our concern. And that's why we need everybody listening to your podcast to go to Schellenbergerforgovernor.com and make a donation right now.

But yeah, that is the concern is that it's just, it's less that it's a national, that we're being too successful nationally, not in California. It's just that we're, that Twitter is among elites. Social media, Twitter is only 20% of the population, you know, and just, you know, as you know, you'd be shocked, but it's like a huge percentage of people never go on Twitter and they just listen to radio and watch TV. Yeah.

And probably a lot of people on Twitter don't actually vote because they're on Twitter all day and it takes time to go vote. Well, we've made it as you know, super easy, all mail-in ballots in California. So yeah, we'll see. But the good news is the ballots are coming in slowly. And so most people haven't voted. So there's still plenty of time for us to reach people.

And, you know, it's election is June 7. And yeah, we just need people to donate so we can, you know, it's a sad state of our politics, but turns out you need a lot of money to be elected governor of the fifth largest economy of the world. How's your fundraising compared to the others? I mean, very good. Gavin's but yeah, yeah, it's, I think it's good. I think we have about $900,000 that we've raised.

I believe my opponents are all around that same level. So we're all, I think we have, I think I have two main opponents that have come in at around that same level, but I've got, you know, 20 times more social media followers than any of them, at least that. So, yeah, I mean, we're feeling confident, but we definitely need, we need the additional support.

And so that's going to go toward ads mostly? At this point, everything else is paid for. Every dollar you donate, it's like the opposite of like a normal charity, right? As you know, you said the same thing. The staff is all paid for, you know, all of the overhead. So every dollar that comes in goes to enriching Mark Zuckerberg. So where do you do the ads?

It's a lot of Facebook ads, a lot of Google ads, just like you would imagine. I think it's 100% digital at this point. And, you know, but hopefully we'll have enough to do more TV and radio in the last couple of weeks. Is there some dream mark that you want to get to? We felt like if we could get to in terms of like what percentage of voters do we need to win? Or I was thinking money, but I'm also interested in that now. Yeah, we were our goal was $2 million. Yeah.

So yeah, we just need, and that's not that hard to get. If you, you know, it's, if people max out at 30,000, you'll need, well, how many do you need? I guess you need 30. Well, to get 900,000 more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. I've yeah. I gotta, I gotta keep pushing people, but those of you watching whom I know who have a lot of money more than, so if you take my net worth and take what percentage $5,000 is of that,

you can all afford $30,000 very easily. Alex, there's a shocking number of people that can afford $30,000. That's the crazy thing. Yeah. And so it's time to, it's time to, now is the time. Yeah. Now is the time. It's time to start. But well, thanks for having me on man. And good luck with the, good luck with the book launch and, and thank you for thumping this before we got two more weeks for people to give and

make it happen. And so it's June 7th is June 7th. That's right. Yep. And go to Schellenberger for governor.com energy abundance for human flourishing and, and, and water abundance and lots of other good stuff. All right. Schellenberger for governor.com Schellenberger for governor.com. All right. Donate now. Give a lot of money. Yeah. That's it, brother. Thanks, Alex. It was great seeing you, man. Good luck with the book launch. I'm rooting for you. Thanks, man. See ya.

Thanks again to Michael Schellenberger for coming on the show. It means a lot to me that he would come given that he's got a lot going on right now. And part of that I take as, well, he's a good friend and a supporter and he really believes in this message. But the other thing is he, I think is rightly hoping that he'll find some good supporters of his candidacy, his campaign in this audience. I know we have a lot of successful people in this audience. I know people tend to be suspicious of candidates, uh,

in the stage of the primaries. Many people I know who are wealthy and contribute will only contribute like once the final, once there are only two campaigns left. But in this case, I think it's worth making an exception because he has a real chance. He's going to bring a lot of attention to the right issues. It's a good thing in general for him to be more and more prominent, for his good ideas about energy and other things to be more and more prominent. And look, if we have a chance to

to dislodge the governor of California and replace him with somebody who not only knows a little bit about energy, but is one of the better thinkers in the world about energy, shouldn't we support them? So if you have the financial means to do so, please support him as much as you can. Go to Schellenberger4Governor.com.

All right. That is it for this episode. I have at least one more cool celebratory power hour for launch week of Fossil Future prepared this week. It is actually a mixed martial arts and wrestling superstar that we're going to bring on next.

I'm interviewing him tomorrow. And so it'll probably be out on Thursday. I'll leave you in suspense as to who that is. Maybe you can figure it out if you've been following me on social media, but this is somebody who didn't know about me at all, got him a copy of fossil future. And now he is pretty obsessed. It's going to be fun to talk about his journey and what we can learn about that journey and, and, um,

and, you know, what we can learn in terms of how to win hearts and minds, as well as I just have a lot of kind of questions for him about general things, since he's a smart and really accomplished guy. All right. So we will be back in the next couple of days, uh, as usual, or as always, if you have any questions, comments, love mail, or hate mail, email me at Alex at Alex Epstein.com. Follow me on Twitter, all that good stuff, energy talking points.com sign up for the newsletter and

And most importantly, well, let's put it side by side with giving Schellenberger money to become governor of California. Buy Fossil Future and send your receipt to FossilFuture at AlexEpstein.com. All right, that is it for now. We'll be back soon. Until then, I'm Alex Epstein. This has been Power Hour.