The panel was discussing why some environmental groups oppose a permitting reform bill that clean energy companies support. Shah said he had spent the previous day talking with friends at those groups. His advice to them is that blocking projects through court rulings is no substitute for winning the public over.
This I also have very low tolerance for because, and this also, this especially comes up in the permitting certainty discussions. And again, I just think it's really important to be honest about the counterfactual here, which is that he is wiping his ass with, like, it already did, it is bad. Like, what is currently happening is bad. The notion that legislating constraints is somehow going to make it worse makes no sense to me. Yeah, this is, I actually don't even understand it logically as an argument, frankly.
Jigger, how do you read the critiques and criticisms?
Well, first, you forever ruined my day thinking about Trump's ass. So like, you know, let's stop doing that. Look, I think when you think about some of the pushbacks, like I want to make sure that we're acknowledging them a little bit, right? One is, is that when we did the 2015 compromise on oil exports, I mean, it really did increase the amount of investment in the fossil fuel industry, right? And so, and, you know, I think that's a good thing. Like, I don't think that we should have wanted gasoline to be at $5 a gallon or diesel to be at $7 a gallon. So I think that in general, we need to provide affordable solutions to Americans. So I think it's fine. But I can see why environmental groups think that these kind of things are going to increase the amount of fossil fuel production, right? I think the second piece of it, though, for them is that you have this ability to issue permits that cannot be revoked, right? And so if the EPA issues many, many, many, many permits for natural gas power plants, for coal power plants, for whatever, you could imagine there being a trading mechanism in the future of those permits that were issued under the Trump administration being not able to be revoked and just constantly sold in the marketplace between Parties that want to like, you know, pollute more in the future, right? And so I think that there is some like, you know, concern over the way in which that was structured. But look, I think that the bottom line with the environmental groups, and these are all friends of mine that I've talked to over the last 24 hours, is that when we had the first Earth Day, 10% of the entirety of the United States of America came out for the first Earth Day. It is unclear whether 10% of the American public today would come out for any issue on the environmental side of the ledger, right? And so this esoteric blocking of projects using NEPA or using, you know, these sort of environmental rules is not actually causing them to have real American support for their positions. And a lot of what I've been counseling my friends on is to say, you need to get back to a place where 10% of Americans actually believe your point of view. And so whether that means you have to soften your point of view, whether that means you have to explain it to them more carefully, you can't just win an esoteric court decisions like the Center for Biological Diversity does or some of these other people do. Like you actually have to win them over to your side. And, you know, and that I think is the next phase of what this bill does is it tells the environmental groups, go shore up American support for your positions.
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One thing I was really struck by was the White House getting behind this. And Senator Heinrich talked about this in your interview, Jigger. He explained how this really started coming together when the White House moved with more urgency. What do you think is going on here? Is this that the reality of obstructionism is just not going to meet the moment that that was finally hitting them? Do any of you have any insight into what you think the White House's motivations were here?