BONUS - Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill vs Climate: Hot Take with BlueGreen Alliance’s Jason Walsh

[00:00:00] Jason Walsh: What became very clear to me is how effectively the coal industry working with the Republican party, turned what was fundamentally an economic issue into a culture war.

[00:00:17] Ed Whittingham: Hi Ed. Here on August 1st I spoke with Jason Walsh, executive director of the Bluegreen Alliance. If you don't know the Bluegreen Alliance, it's a coalition that tries to do something hard. Bridge the interest of US labor unions and environmental groups under one policy roof. Jason's organization made headlines recently for opposing the so-called one Big Beautiful Bill Act, president Trump's sweeping piece of legislation passed the summer.

That rules back many of the clean energy tax credits introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act. While a lot of the climate world focused on the emissions impacts, Blue-Green Alliance came out swinging over what they saw as a quiet gutting of labor standards, domestic manufacturing momentum, and the link between public investment and good jobs.

Jason's got deep experience. He worked in the Obama White House at the Department of Energy. And now leads one of the more interesting coalition groups in the US policy space. It was just the two of us for this one, but there's no shortage ground to cover. I hope you enjoy it. Jason Walsh, welcome to Energy vs Climate.

[00:01:21] Jason Walsh: It's great to be here, Ed,

[00:01:23] Ed Whittingham: I, I'd love to just know more about Bluegreen Alliance generally, and, and I say that I, I can tell some horror stories of my involvement with. The Bluegreen Alliance Canada and right back to when it got started in, in 2011 and 2013 when we're working with Canadian ENGOs up here and then working with United Steelworkers.

I don't know if the name's Ken Delaney and Charles Campbell ring a bell, but they were involved back then. But yeah, just tell me gi gimme the A, B, C 1, 2, 3 on Bluegreen Alliance in the us.

[00:01:53] Jason Walsh: Happy to do it then. I definitely want to hear your war stories. So we were founded back in. 2006. Yeah, we're gonna hit our 20th anniversary next year by our two original odd bedfellows, uh, the Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club, the biggest steel union in North America, as you know.

And, uh, big biggest environmental group. And we have since sit, since expanded to include. 15 national labor unions, uh, in some cases international labor unions and environmental groups who represent roughly 15 million members. The, the guiding principle that has always kept our partners together is a belief that we shouldn't have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment.

That we can have both, that we have to have both. We do a lot of public policy advocacy toward that end. And toward the end of building a high road worker centered, community centered economy energy economy, that, that is also driving down pollution. And we we work at the federal level, uh, so have a presence in DC but then we also work in states.

We've got state versions of our national coalition in nine US states. And then there's BG Canada, which I, I now want to hear a war story about.

[00:03:14] Ed Whittingham: Ha ha. Well, mine is, uh, Rick Smith, when he was running Environmental Defense Canada back in 2011, was pitching me and a colleague named Marin Smith and a prominent foundation to be part of Bluegreen Canada.

So that was Alliance between the Steelworkers and Environmental Defense Canada instead of the Sierra Club. And I thought, well, that's crazy enough. That it just might work. I was running a national clean energy think tank and then joined this, uh, very, uh, new board and, uh, it was the first time, you know, I've been in and around organized labor my entire career, but this is the first time that I actually sat at like a governance table or a strategy table or a a a tactics table talking about.

Common areas. And then at that time we had, let's say this, this shared advers adversary in terms of the, uh, the Canadian conservative government at the time of Stephen Harper, which had just run a conservative majority and then was running roughshod over both environmental and labor, uh, laws. The conversations were amazing and I found when you could get alignment.

It was magical because you would have, you know this, like you say, 15 million members across, what did you say? 15 groups? Yeah, something like that. You, you would hold hands, sing kumbaya and go in with a really big 10 coalition. And the policymakers really took notice.

[00:04:39] Jason Walsh: Yeah, exactly. And that's been our experience in the us Uh, we did a, a lot of work to get the original inflation reduction act to across the finish line. I mean, that would not have happened. Uh, unless the labor and environmental movements were fully aligned it's worth noting that there, there is no such alignment in Europe. I mean, look, our theory of of change is that it's necessary, right?

Like we're, we're not gonna get the kind of policies we need to, uh, meet this crisis without that kind of alignment.

[00:05:11] Ed Whittingham: Completely agree. And then not, not to focus on the bad, but then you would get issues that would split a room that you had to work through. And I'd, I'd take nuclear as an example. And, uh, it's not my personal, uh, opinion.

I think we should be building new gigawatt scale nuclear today, but I, I don't think that's possible in Canada. But it'd be one of those issues where, you know, the, the NGOs and the unions would be on separate sides. What. What are the thorny issues that through Blue-Green in the US you're working through right now?

[00:05:40] Jason Walsh: We put out a Solidarity for Climate Action platform in 2019 that unequivocally said that we're supportive of. All zero electricity, you know, emission sources, which of course very much includes nuclear. And we supportive of tax incentives in the IRA, uh, for, for nuclear as well. It still remains tricky, particularly when safety and waste issues come up and, and those, those are issues, they don't go away.

Right. So, and I think particularly for the newer technologies and. Small modular reactors. Uh, we still got to, we have some work to do. Right. But I, I'm feeling like we're in pretty good shape on nuclear carbon capture is, is is another hard one. Uh, always has been. May, maybe to step away from individual technologies.

What I, what we find is that whenever we shift the conversation from policy and, and investment and. Building new clean stuff and focus on blocking pipelines or, you know, individual projects, which are great. You know, I, as an organizer, like I understand that those are powerful things to organize around, but it sets environmentalists against, against workers.

And it, and it. Toxifies, the relationship, honestly, and, and what our experience has, has been that then you can't work on other unifying positive stuff because it's so poisoned. The political space.

[00:07:11] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Yeah. And our strategy of Blue-Green Canada, which just take some of those thorny issues and frankly not talk about them, it's like, well, if we can't get an agreement, no.

Exactly. Take it off the table and focus what we can get to agreement on. And I do. So I do really want to get into IRA and the Republican budget bill and your and Bluegreen's perspectives on it. But just because it's very topical right now, does Bluegreen have a position on tariffs? And I say this, uh, just a timestamp, this recording, it's uh, August 1st.

So appear in Canada, we've just had a new tariff goal in place that have jacked up from 25% to 35% pending some sort of deal. Canada will hopefully craft with the United States.

[00:07:49] Jason Walsh: We are supportive of tariffs when they are strategic and targeted. Uh, and we are on the record supporting some Biden administration tariffs.

Particularly focused on unfair trade practices from China. We are not at all, uh, supportive of the tariff regime, if you can even call it that, being promoted. Uh. By, by the Trump administration and I, I find it particularly painful that needlessly and dangerously he has started a trade war.

It's become even bigger than that with some of our close IT allies, including, including Canada. Um, none of our partners think that makes sense. Surgically applied tariffs to our, in our minds can be a tool in the toolbox for industrial policy. But there, you know, there are, there are a lot of other tools as well, right?

Investment regulation, et cetera, et cetera. Procurement and the Trump administration is positing that the only thing they need to do to strengthen US manufacturing is, is tariffs. And while at the same time they pull back everything else. Whi, which in in this context are actually the more effective levers.

[00:09:06] Ed Whittingham: And that seems to be the fallacy of, of Trump's tariff argument is that it's gonna create this, you know, rash of reshoring. And yet I was listening to a commentator recently. I think through the New York Times Daily podcast and saying that there still isn't any evidence suggest since tariffs have gone into place.

And you can say it's too early, you know, just companies are drawing down existing inventories that it has created any new jobs.

[00:09:31] Jason Walsh: No, I mean, in fairness it would be too soon, but it would only work if, if companies had some. Confidence that said tariff would be consistent, long-term, et cetera, right?

They're looking for durability of that signal, and that's the last thing anyone anticipates from Donald Trump, who changes his mind and changes tariff rates, uh, week to week. Um, so you'd have to be crazy as a company to make big CapEx decisions based on that kind of. Attention deficit disorder.

Policymaking.

[00:10:07] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Which is part of the problem. And, and if we wanna talk about industrial decarbonization, that still creates a lot of good jobs. And I can bring in an example in a little bit of a conversation and not just capture, but this is Beck's bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and talk to a project developer.

It, it's fantastic in terms of increasing productivity and, and jobs, but let's, so let's go and do a compare and contrast with IRA versus what you call the Republican budget bills. Some people call oba. We agree that we want to take out a b. It's not beautiful and so yeah, it's, call it the two B oba or just the big ugly bill.

So our nomenclature might jump around. Yeah. But you, you advocated and sounds like you were quite involved in the inflation reduction act. We've felt, uh, a lot of positive, well, I'd say positive and negative. Repercussions up here and positive. I've been able to use that, uh, as a FOMO lever to go in and get in my own advocacy work like tax credits here in Canada and actually crack the nut on a government understanding that you, it can use the, the tax system to actually drive.

Productivity and environmental gains and clean energy gains. The negative side is companies genuinely say for a time, they're like, well, it's just more competitive in the us and why would we build, say, a, a zero carbon cement plant in Canada when we can do that in the us? But putting that aside, let's just talk about what you, how were you involved in IRA and its creation?

[00:11:45] Jason Walsh: Uh, deeply involved, uh, both in very specific provisions. And then deeply involved in getting it across the finish line. In the US Senate. If you recall, it was passed by the house and then there was a long dance with Senator Manchin from West Virginia, and we worked with him and his staff and his constituents in West Virginia for yeah, a full, a full year.

It was very important to us to attach labor standards to, to the the clean energy tax credits, which. Had not been attached before. And by labor standards, I mean we call it Davis Bacon in the us it's basically a wage floor, right? So you are, you're leveling the playing field between contractors who are paying their workers a living wage versus contractors who are just racing to the bottom right, and sometimes hiring temp workers.

And, and unfortunately that, you know, in the development of the, particularly the wind and solar industries, over a 10, 15 year period in this country. A, that low road business model prevailed and very little of it was unionized. So we did a, a bunch of work with, with our, our partners, the building trades in particular, to, to attach both that wage floor, the labor, that labor, and then, and then a requirement to use.

Skilled workers and apprentices from registered apprenticeship programs, a certain percentage of them on projects over a certain size, changing the dynamics of, of renewable energy industries in, in good ways and improving job quality and unionization in those, in those ways. I mean, I mean, in summary to, just to say it, when when it ultimately passed, we viewed it, we viewed the inflection reduction Act as not only the, the.

Certainly the, the, the biggest investment in clean energy deployment and climate action in, in US history, arguably world history, but also the most fully formed embodiment of industrial policy in our country since Roosevelt's new deal. It that lawmakers were making strategic investments. In, in critical sectors of our economy that, um, were viewed as really strategic and important for the future of our economy, not to mention the future of the planet, and then really tried to target those investments to maximize the benefits for workers.

And, and, and parts of our country. And this is one of the great ironies of what just happened, parts of our country that had been left behind, uh, e energy communities, coal communities who had been experiencing far more economic pain than economic gain, right? As we made this transition. And, and we were able to attach a 10% bonus to any project that was, you know.

That was happening in a community where a coal plant had shut down or a coal mine had shut down. There were other sort of energy community indicators as well, so a lot of investment was being driven to some of the most Republican parts of the country. So there was, there was some confidence, I think among among some, not me that Republicans would obey the law of political physics.

And not vote to kill something that was creating jobs and economic growth in their, uh, districts or states. Uh, and yet they did.

[00:15:04] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, it, and this is the part that's really caused, I know observers like us up here. The whiplash is the, the theory of change was that so many of the benefits accrue to red states the benefits associated with ira, that it's gonna be sticky and it's gonna be politically resilient.

Um, and, and people were saying that as orthodoxy. Pretty much right up until its demise. Yeah. And, and then they found that, well, it, it, it actually doesn't matter. What matters is a loyalty test. Right. You know, rather than, you know, being able to bring home the, uh, the congressional pork to your, your, your district.

And, and that was, that was kind of gobsmacking for a lot of us.

[00:15:47] Jason Walsh: Yeah. I, I will say we, we strongly questioned that orthodoxy. We like everyone else, you know. Lobbied Republican members of Congress pointed out all the jobs being created in their dis, I mean, we did all that stuff, right? But yeah, that was all based on the premise of the Republican Party being a normal political party when it's really become a personality cult.

And I, you know, I think the X factor for, for, for everyone at the start of this was how much is Trump himself gonna get involved? And he got involved, really made it impossible for. With a few brave exceptions, almost every re Republican member of Congress who was supportive of clean energy or any form of climate action, even if they can no longer say that word to, just to back down in some ways, this w I've been waiting for this to happen.

I mean, so, and, and if, if you don't mind, I'll share a story. So I had the privilege of, of working in the Obama administration both in our Department of Energy and in the White House. And when I was in the White House my job was was to figure out how we could, as a federal government drive.

Investment to parts of the country that were really suffering economically from the shift, from coal to actually natural gas in the power sector. Right. And, and so you were seeing like depression, era unemployment numbers in very specific parts of like West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, right.

What we call central Appalachia and. What be as I dug into that, what became very clear to me is how effectively the coal industry working with the Republican party turned what was fundamentally an economic issue into a culture war. Thi this was not about like, uh, utilities look looking at, at their balance sheet and looking at the price of, of natural gas versus coal.

It was. The Democratic party and, and cosmopolitan elites who were trying to destroy your way of life. And I suspect that formula has been used in Alberta and, and other parts of Canada. But what Trump has done and what I was worried he would do in this pres, his, this, this second presidency was, was to nationalize that and, and to turn, turn any form of, of clean energy and climate action into, into full on culture war where the response from an authoritarian like him. Culture warrior like him is, let's kill it all.

[00:18:22] Ed Whittingham: It just, it, it twigged for me a couple of past shows, 'cause you'd mentioned the shift from coal to natural gas. We actually, we've talked about that and the risk of promoting our back catalog with a woman named Dore Vino in 2023 and, uh, who works on the ground in a coal affected community, a coal transition affected community named Hannah Alberta, and talked about the impact on workers at the time.

On the show gave a bit of a meia culpa because I was working on the climate side advocating for the phase out of coal, which we won, and at the time didn't think enough about the impact on workers and communities until I went and did some work in that community and saw firsthand what the impacts were like in terms of housing prices and job losses and, and and whatnot.

Uh, and, and the other one just. Talking about what has happened. We, I, I know he is a friend to the Bluegreen Alliance, Jesse Jenkins. So we had him on in early March who, uh, on a, uh, a show we cheekily called, uh, the USA versus Climate and, uh, how it was shaping up then in terms of the getting of IRA provisions.

I do, I do wanna go back within, uh IRA. And, and this is, and I wanna talk about because it made its way up into the investment tax credits that we advocated for and won here in Canada, the provisions around prevailing wage, apprenticeship rules, uh, red seal trades. So those became embedded. And in order to get.

The tax credit, whether it be for a solar project or wind or clean tech manufacturing or direct air capture or carbon capture, you needed to make these provisions and actually worked on one of them with a company quite closely, a cement manufacturer named Heidelberg. And the general thought was, well, it's great to have these, but for a lot of the big companies, they're, those provisions are already table stakes.

They're already doing it. So it didn't seem like it was actually. Driving a better deal for labor up here. Now that's, maybe it's changed, but it sounds like, tell me, was IRA did actually, it wasn't just inst institutionalization of status quo. It actually drove companies to do better on prevailing wages and apprenticeships and red seal trades.

[00:20:30] Jason Walsh: Maybe the, the, the story here is just the. Significantly greater union density in Canada versus the United States. Right. Um, yeah, as I was alluding to earlier, you know, the most of, of the solar and wind projects were non-union in, in this country. Before the passage of, of IRA, it sounds, it sounds like you were able to attach labor standards for manufacturing investments.

We tried to do that. Uh, and were blocked in the inflation reduction act. Uh, and, and, and, and so the political economy consequences of that were, were that the, the unionized building trades in the US were like some of the strongest defender, strongest defenders of. Of these investments in, in, in the oub, but our manufacturing unions had less stake.

Right. Because all, you know, the, the IRA was already doing its job in terms of reshoring supply chains to the, but, but most of them were locating in, in what we call right to work states where it's very hard to, to organize a union. And so most of the new facilities were non-union, in some cases hostile to the unionization.

But going back to your original question. Yeah, it, it was not table stakes for us. It was about transforming these sectors.

[00:21:46] Ed Whittingham: Gotcha. What, what does the new bill do for tightening or weakening domestic content thresholds and, and new sourcing restrictions? My superficial understanding is it's on the tightening side, but the pushback to that would be, well, the tightening of these domestic contact provisions, content provisions.

You know, don't make a difference if you're actually then gutting the tax credits that were driving demand for us made clean energy tech in the first place. Right? Did I get that right?

[00:22:16] Jason Walsh: You, you, you got that right? Yeah. There, there were two bonuses in the original, uh, IRA. I've already alluded to the labor standards bonus.

Also, there was a 10% bonus for domestic content. Those were both preserved, but then it's a little moot if the underlying investment goes away. Right. I will say this does not affect Canada as much, but there were also a set of provisions added in the Republican bill, the foreign entity of concern, fiat provisions that basically play put a, a, a, a set of restrictions on any manufacturer product or component coming from a foreign entity of concern, which, which is just a handful of companies.

Excuse me, countries, North Korea, Russia, but most importantly fundamentally China. And without going into great detail about those provisions, which are enormously complex. Our, our fear is that they, they are so complex that they will choke off investment in, in, in a wide range of projects, e even where the tax credit survives and, and our advanced manufacturing production tax credit survives and, and cri Critically, they rely on, they will rely on guidance from the US Treasury.

Those were tough to do in, in a fully motivated Biden administration with really, really good staff. And in the Trump administration, they have a gutted the federal workforce of, of any expertise, and b, are openly hostile to clean technologies of any kind. So I, I suspect they'll use that to choke off what they don't like and that they're already making moves toward that actually, um, in a pretty significant way.

[00:23:53] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, so you've been clear that you don't see it as the one big beautiful bill act. You see it as the one big ugly bill act. But I like Oub or maybe oub

[00:24:01] Jason Walsh: ba. We've, we've, we've, we oub, uh, la la I think we coined a new acronym here, ed. There we go. There

[00:24:08] Ed Whittingham: we go. Not bad for a Friday morning. But is there anything in there that could have made it salvageable?

For Bluegreen Alliance?

[00:24:16] Jason Walsh: Um, no, but there, there are pieces that survive that are notable, right? Like probably the biggest tax credit, certainly in terms of of dollars and scoring was a technology neutral, uh, tax credit. Uh, both, both in investment tax credit and production tax credit. And that that was for a broad range of, it was agnostic tech technology, all based on emissions reduction.

Basically they continued that for every, everything except solar and wind. So, so with the caveat that the fiat provisions I've already described are, are, are, are potentially, uh. W something that the, the Trump administration can use to really screw with what survived. There, there, there, there is some good investment there that, that remains.

Gotcha.

[00:25:04] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. And of course we've paid a lot attention and what really got this whole rash of tax credits in place in Canada was the 45 Q and it was the fact, and in this. Case in Canada, it was the oil industry coming together with labor groups, with indigenous groups, uh, with cement manufacturers, fertilizer manufacturers, et cetera, to say, Hey, we need a tax credit regime that is similar and, you know, keeps us competitive with the us.

[00:25:29] Jason Walsh: Yep. And that's survived and, and no phase out for 45 q

[00:25:32] Ed Whittingham: And, and maybe then I'm going back and thinking of the conversation we had with Jesse Jenkins back in March. What, tell us, like for clean energy manufacturing, y you know, we talked about, you know, globally if, if the US pulls back, it might not make a difference.

A big difference when you've got, when you've got now. The clean energy economy being $2 trillion a year where you've got Canada or Canada, the Freudian slip, China has embedded it. What a Freudian slip. China has embedded it firmly in its industrial policy. And you know, the, although we've had a bit of a blowback moment, when when you've got that level of investment, 2 trillion bucks a year, you know, 2% of global economy, then really you could say.

We're going forward and on the fight against climate change, it's not a matter of if we're gonna solve it, it's just are we gonna solve it in time before bad things start happening. But what does this mean that the the pullback of IRA and the, the, the big ugly bill, what does it mean specifically for clean energy progress in the United States?

[00:26:38] Jason Walsh: United, I think, um, what I mean just in numbers terms, channeling our mutual friend Jesse, it, it basically. Cuts projected emission reductions in the US in half. One doesn't have to be sort of US-centric to believe that a a, a complete failure of leadership and a stepping back, but from, from the world's biggest economy and biggest historic polluter.

Sends a signal, uh, to the rest of the world that, you know what? And particularly to to, to the countries that would, would love to imitate what Donald Trump is doing, right? To just backslide on their NDCs, right? That, that, that the commitments they made under Paris, I think we're already seeing signs of that and, and, and so that ripple effect is what worries me.

The most from a global standpoint, for, from a US more parochial standpoint. What, what it means, it's very concrete. I mean, it means hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of lost jobs. It, it means big, uh, electricity price spikes at a time when we are seeing demand for power grow for, uh, for the first time.

And it will continue to grow for the first time in like 20 years. And it means seeding manufacturing leadership, particularly clean manufacturing leadership to China. I mean, we had started to bend the curve. We saw more investment in EVs in the United States last year than, than in China. That, that was an enormous deal.

And we've, we have, the Trump administration had, has reversed all of that in their effort to turn to basically double down on the United States, uh, being a petrostate in perpetuity and. As you know, well, that's not where the global economy is going. Right. So, so this will be enormously damaging for the United States.

[00:28:40] Ed Whittingham: So why is it, and I, I want to hit upon something that was actually newsworthy up here, and that's when. Teamsters President Sean O'Brien. You know, he made those headlines by speaking at the Republican National Convention. He said some flattering things about Trump and so what's, what has, what's going on within the labor movement right now?

Because from listening to you, I would think the labor movement would be firmly on one side of this partisan issue, but. When you get a guy like Sean O'Brien showing up the Republican National Convention, it gets confusing.

[00:29:12] Jason Walsh: It does. It confused a lot of people, and with the caveat that I I, I never pretend to speak for the US Labor Movement.

Setting aside, Sean O'Brien the, the labor movement, uh, was almost uniformly in support of Harris's candidacy. Recognizing that the Biden Harris administration was, was the most pro-labor administration in, in, certainly in our lifetimes. And, did a lot of work to try to prevent the outcome that we got.

now having said that, it is true that, that a lot of union members, particularly in in the industrial unions in the building trades voted for Donald Trump. But we still see a gap between pretty significant gap, 15% roughly between U Union members, uh, and how they voted. In this case Trump versus Harris, between them and, working class voters more, more, more generally.

Right? So, so, and that I think, reflects a bunch of things, including the fact that they, they get accurate information from their unions, which is a source of information they trust and, and have a better understanding of what these candidates are actually proposing and what, what we expect them to do now.

It'd be interesting if you asked Sean O'Brien today wh whether he's still supportive of, of Donald Trump. I, I think there has certainly been a, a lot of rhetoric from this administration about being pro worker, but anyone who pays close attention knows that's complete bs. If you look at the, I mean, we're talking about the clean energy provisions, uh, and the, and the climate consequences of the oub.

Let's, let's talk about the other implications, which is throwing. Roughly, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 10 million Americans off of health insurance rating, food assistance for the neediest. Just in terms of distributional impact about a, a, you know, about a third of all of the tax benefits in this enormous bill will go to the wealthiest 1% in our country.

So pretty hard for a Republican or Donald Trump with a, with a straight face to say they're pro worker based on this, this piece of legislation.

[00:31:26] Ed Whittingham: Well, if you're able to actually talk to Sean O'Brien and get an updated perspective as hi of his, let us know. We can get you back on. Thank you. I'd, I'd love to know.

Yeah, and, and you do raise the question of just, you know, political durability and how do we stop? Issues from being a political football 'cause Yeah, certainly looking at the US we get whiplash when you have Trump and then you have Biden, and then you have Trump and you know, we're friends and then we're not friends anymore.

And that's before we even get to the clean energy transition because as you said earlier, with uncertainty, you know, the companies don't wanna move. Why are they gonna invest big? The industrial de-carbonization capital that we need to really turn the corner on this issue. If you're constantly suffering from whiplash, it's, it's a tough environment right now.

Jason, last question. Do you, do you talk to the, the Blue-Green Canada folks? Much?

[00:32:17] Jason Walsh: Not enough. And this conversation is making me realize I've been remiss, so I, I I will, I'm gonna reach out to them. After this call.

[00:32:25] Ed Whittingham: Oh, good. Yeah, I deal, I've dealt with Christine Jones there, Jamie Kilpatrick, but yeah, they're, they're good folks and I've enjoyed,

[00:32:31] Jason Walsh: yeah, no, I know.

We've talked before, worked together before, but, I need to catch up with them.

[00:32:36] Ed Whittingham: Good. Hey Jason, thanks so much for the time. I know you gotta run to the airport. Uh, I think you're heading back to the sweltering heat of dc is that right?

[00:32:43] Jason Walsh: Unfortunately.

[00:32:45] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, we, yeah.

Uh, we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us from San Francisco today.

[00:32:50] Jason Walsh: Hey, it's a, a pleasure to, to join you. Uh, really enjoyed it.

[00:32:55] Ed Whittingham: Thanks for listening to Energy vs Climate. The show is created by David Keith. Sara Hastings-Simon and me, Ed Whittingham, and produced by Amit Tandon. Our title in show Music is The Windup by Brian Lips.

This season of Energy vs Climate is produced with support from the University of Calgary's, office of the Vice President Research and the university's global research initiative for the support comes from the Trottier Family Foundation, the North Family Foundation, the Palmer Family Foundation, and our generous listeners.

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