Some Battles You May Not Realize You Won — Title IX at the Supreme Court, and Climate Hysteria's Retreat

Segment 01 · The Title IX Ruling You Probably Missed · 00:44

Mark:

Kimberly Hermann is the president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending liberty guaranteed by — not given by, guaranteed by — the Constitution. And they will sue the government when it violates those constitutional rights it's supposed to defend. And unfortunately, that does happen all too often. Kim, it's great to talk to you again. It's been a while.

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, it's great to be back with you.

Mark:

Yeah. So we want to talk about Title IX, because with all the furor over the whole birthright citizenship case, I really think this got overshadowed and that a lot of people may have missed it. So just to encapsulate this: the Supreme Court issued a landmark Title IX ruling on June 30, 2026, in West Virginia v. B.P.J., which was consolidated with Little v. Hecox, holding that Title IX permits states to ban transgender athletes from participating on girls' and women's sports teams based on biological sex. In a 6–3 decision, the Court determined that Title IX allows schools to maintain separate sports teams for men and women defined by biological sex, and that laws in West Virginia and Idaho restricting participation accordingly do not violate federal civil rights statutes. So walk us through this ruling.

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you — it was kind of overshadowed a little bit, but this is monumental. So what you actually had here was two states, Idaho and West Virginia, that passed laws saying biological boys cannot play in girls' sports. In Idaho, we had a biological male in college who wanted to play on a women's sports team. And in West Virginia, we had, I believe, a middle school student at the time who wanted to play on the girls' sports team. So they sued to challenge these laws, saying they violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. And what happened here was the Court came in and said no — these laws absolutely do not violate Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause. Sex, in both of those, means biological sex, and states can separate boys' and girls' sports if they want to. On the Title IX piece of this, we actually had a 9–0 ruling. That's also getting missed. So a really strong statement from the Court on Title IX.

Mark:

Yeah, in some ways I was really surprised to see that it was unanimous, because you've got one justice who wasn't even sure what a woman is — she couldn't define it in her hearing. As far as this case is concerned, some analysts are saying it's not maybe quite as thorough and one-sided as it possibly seems. Somebody said Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion says states “may” keep sports sex-separated, not that they “must.” And some analysts are saying this is kind of a narrow ruling that leaves bathrooms, locker rooms, and other spaces completely untouched. What are your thoughts on that?

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, so when you actually dissect the opinion, I think it says a lot more than what's in the language. Yes, the actual ruling says states can ban boys from girls' sports because that's what was before the Court — we've talked about this before, courts can't go outside the case to make extra rulings. But when the Court came down and said sex means biological sex, that opens the window for all of us to bring lawsuits against the other 23 states that allow boys to play in girls' sports, and against school districts in all 50 states that are allowing boys in girls' locker rooms and bathrooms — because if they base their policies on so-called gender identity instead of sex, that's a violation of Title IX, and arguably a violation of the Equal Protection Clause too. So they basically gave us the roadmap to bring those additional lawsuits. The fight is far from over, but the law is set — we know when we bring those cases, we are going to be winning them.

Mark:

Well, and that's so encouraging — the fact that this is one of many battles in this larger war, and to get this kind of ruling really says a lot. I have to share this, because you posted it on X — your daughter's schoolwork, where the assignment was to write about a new law she would make. Her argument was no boys in girls' sports, and among her reasons was that it would be unfair and dangerous because men are stronger. Did you ever imagine, growing up, a time when laws would be needed to codify the most obvious and basic biological fact that men are stronger and different than women — that it would take the Supreme Court to step in and say yes, men are in fact stronger than women, and they ought to be separated in sports?

Kimberly Hermann:

No — I never imagined that as a parent I would be having these conversations with my kids. My daughter's nine, my son is twelve. Saying to my daughter: if you show up to a softball game and there's a boy on the other team, we're forfeiting — we are not playing, because that puts you at risk and in danger.

Mark:

Absolutely. If you ever go in a bathroom and there's a boy or a man in there — because there are grown men —

Kimberly Hermann:

Right. We represented a mom in Pennsylvania where the coach from the other team was insisting on using the girls' locker room and changing in front of young high school girls. And he was allowed to do that, and his contract was renewed. Never in a million years did I think these were the conversations I'd be having with my nine-year-old daughter. But I'll tell you, that's why we fight. We have to educate our kids on these issues too, and not be afraid to talk to them about it.

Mark:

Well, there's just something — I'm going to be frank here — it's just something weird about an adult male feeling he needs to be seen naked by a woman, or that he'd feel compelled to be in there with women. Even aside from the gender difference itself, there's something, I think, just wrong with a guy who feels he has to do that.

Kimberly Hermann:

Absolutely. Plus the fact that's an adult in front of a child — that's the worst part of it.

Mark:

Yeah.

Kimberly Hermann:

In addition to just the sick nature of it, right? When you're looking at it from that perspective — the fact that we have 23 states that are insisting our girls be faced with that on a daily basis, and school districts in all 50 states. We're suing schools — we've got cases in Kansas, Georgia, Florida, in the heartland of America, down in the South, where people don't expect this to happen — where we're having to fight through the court system to keep boys out of their bathrooms and locker rooms. It is appalling. As a lawyer, it's unconstitutional. As a mom, I will fight to the end for this.

Mark:

Yeah, absolutely — it needs to happen. All right, let's go take a break.

Segment 02 · Clarifying the Ruling — and a New Case That Shows Why It Matters · 09:04

Mark:

Welcome back. We're talking about winning some battles today, and we're doing that with Kim Hermann, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit constitutional litigation firm founded back in 1976. If you have cases, they would love to hear from you. So, Kim, I want to go back a little bit, because we had some conflicting numbers there and I want to straighten it out for our audience. I had said 6–3. You had said 9–0. So straighten those two numbers out for us.

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, so a lot of people are saying this is a 6–3 ruling, and when it comes to the reasoning, it is — but there were actually two cases here consolidated together. In one, the argument was that the state law violated Title IX; in the other, that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. That matters, because one is a statute passed by Congress and one is our Constitution. But ultimately, what we had was all of the justices agreeing that Title IX did not ban states from saying boys can't play in girls' sports. They just didn't all agree on the reasoning on the equal protection piece. So, very nuanced legal aspects that attorneys who do this every day can argue in court — but what it means for parents is that you can have confidence Title IX protects your kids. And just last week we filed another Title IX complaint — this one on behalf of a mom with a special-needs daughter who was told she had to use a restroom with a boy who identifies sometimes as a girl and sometimes as a furry. We're filing all these new Title IX complaints — that's just one — because we now have this assurance that Title IX really, really protects our girls just like we knew it did.

Mark:

Well, looking back at some of the arguments Justice Thomas wrote — that a man does not have a legal right to compete against women just because he believes he is a woman — I think that's pretty blunt. But it's still kind of surprising that both rulings weren't 9–0. So what was the reasoning of the three liberal justices, all three of whom are women? Why do they still seem confused over what a woman is and why she deserves to be separated from men?

Kimberly Hermann:

Oh my gosh — that's a loaded question. At the end of the day, you have different approaches to the Constitution — typically that's how you get these varied opinions, but here it's even more than that, it's really very ideological. You mentioned we have a justice who couldn't define what a woman is during her confirmation hearing — we also had lawyers in this case who couldn't define what a woman was. Justice Alito very pointedly asked that question of the plaintiffs' attorneys, and they couldn't answer it. So it's really just about reaching the end result you want and ideological differences. There's really no doubt that in 1972, when Title IX was passed, sex meant biological sex. And there's certainly no question that when the 14th Amendment became part of our Constitution in the 1800s, sex meant biological sex. To say otherwise is just so disingenuous. That's really what we're dealing with here.

Mark:

Well, we talked earlier about the psychology of some of this, and I think this is along those same lines. Why is it that so many people on the left — there's almost a psychosis there, like they're afraid — again, going back to that confirmation hearing — afraid to admit that men and women are different? I don't understand why you can't accept that that's basic biology. Have you ever thought about what's driving that mentality — why they insist you can just merge the two as if there are no differences?

Kimberly Hermann:

Oh, many, many times. There are books — tons of scholarship out there on this. But at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that there are people out there, as Justice Thomas pointed out in his concurring opinion — he wrote this — that when you're looking at gender dysphoria, that's a diagnosable mental health condition. And people don't want to recognize that. But there's also something so unbelievably wrong about all of this — it's not just locker rooms and bathrooms. You see drag queen story hours at libraries, and drag shows with kids brought — this isn't your RuPaul-in-a-dress-on-MTV-in-the-'90s kind of thing. These people are naked. When you actually look at what's happening at these shows, and they're in front of children — and apparently it's okay because it's a man who thinks he's a woman instead of just a man? How is that okay? There's just a sickness happening here, and it has infiltrated our schools, it has infiltrated our teachers' unions and beyond. We have to be diligent as parents.

Mark:

Absolutely. Oh yeah.

Kimberly Hermann:

I could just go on and on about it — you and I have talked about it off-air all the time, too. It's got to be stopped.

Mark:

Oh, absolutely it does. And just because somebody has a mental illness, it doesn't give them permission to do something — it might explain why they want to do something. You know, so they've got a mental illness that makes them want to expose themselves to children and be seen by children — okay, but that doesn't mean you should be able to do it. There are a lot of mental illnesses, and it's kind of like saying, okay, that guy's an alcoholic, so go ahead and let him drink. That's not how you help them. And we've got a situation now, too — we had talked to a psychiatrist a couple of years ago, she was running for state office here, and she said the mandate now by some of the psychology associations is that you need to affirm mental illness rather than try to correct it. That's especially dangerous, I think. I mean, if somebody came in and said, “Well, I'm Superman,” are you going to encourage them to jump out the window of a ten-story building?

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah — point very well taken there. And we also have parents who are losing their kids over this, right? You've got states like California — it may be the same out in Oregon where you are, I'm not sure if we've had a case there. In Colorado and stuff, where if parents aren't allowing their young children to alter their bodies and take drugs that will sterilize them, the state is coming in and taking them away. This is happening.

Mark:

Yep, yep. It's pretty scary. Okay, let's go take a break. We'll wrap up with Kim Hermann after this.

Segment 03 · How Title IX Got Hijacked — Plus a Bonus on Birthright Citizenship · 16:43

Mark:

Southeastern Legal Foundation fights to defend your constitutional rights when government decides to run right over them. Their website is slfliberty.org. We're talking with Kimberly Hermann, their president. Kim, we've been talking about Title IX, and looking back — you were in the room, I think back in January 2025, when Trump signed an executive order effectively undoing Biden's Title IX changes. Fast forward to just recently with this massive ruling — but along the way, how is it that Title IX, which was designed to ensure women had equal opportunities in things like sports and schools, went from giving women equal access to giving men access to women's locker rooms?

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, so it actually started during the Obama administration. What a lot of people don't realize is that during that administration, the Department of Education put out three memos. And, honestly, it was just a memo — it didn't go through the proper rulemaking process or through Congress. One of them said that if boys want to use the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms, schools have to let them. Another changed the legal standard you'd apply to determine whether Title IX was violated, from an objective standard to a subjective one — in other words, if someone felt their feelings were hurt or that they were offended, they could bring a case against you. And the third actually changed the definition of sex to mean gender identity. It was missed by so many people, because nobody even knew what gender identity meant back then — nobody was talking about it. So they were very sneaky in doing that. Trump 45 then undid all of that, but that's when it really started to take hold.

Mark:

You'd mentioned how this is impacting parents, and of course that's the big thing — you mentioned California, and I'm reasonably certain Oregon had a similar case. That, to me, is the real danger — allowing states to have this kind of parental impact. But even beyond that, getting back to the idea that these are our kids — growing up in the '80s and '90s, you were really working to protect the innocence of children, to separate them from these kinds of things. If somebody had pulled up in a van next to a high school or elementary school with pornography, he'd have been arrested. And now we have naked adults in schools, for heaven's sake. So as far as some of these other cases — parents losing their kids out in California or whatnot — is this ruling going to specifically affect those?

Kimberly Hermann:

Yes. It'll have a trickle-down effect, essentially, because you're no longer going to be able to lean on these definitions — so much comes out of what the definition of sex is in so many of these laws. What's really going to help those parents, though, is something we saw out of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice a few weeks ago, where they entered into an interagency agreement — sounds fancy, but what it does is give DOJ more enforcement ability to investigate situations like that. So when schools are hiding gender transition plans from parents, when schools are instigating these changes in kids and hiding it from parents, we're now seeing increased enforcement from DOJ, and I think it's just going to continue. They swore in about a hundred new attorneys yesterday, and a lot of them are going to be working on these civil rights issues. These schools better stop what they're doing, because their federal funding is going to get pulled.

Mark:

I certainly hope so. Yeah, I'm here for it — I'm here to watch it.

Kimberly Hermann:

And we're here to expose it too. One of the things we're doing at SLF is trying to expose those secret gender transition plans, trying to expose schools that are violating Title IX so the DOJ can come in. They issued an enforcement letter against a school in Kansas that we're fighting — our client's daughter has suffered severe emotional trauma from this.

Mark:

So, speaking of parents and cases — Oregon, of course, is pretty something with this kind of stuff — if somebody listening has a case they think you might be interested in, what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Kimberly Hermann:

On our website, slfliberty.org, there's a case inquiry button up in the top right — just submit that and it goes straight to our legal team, and if it's something we can help with, we'll get back to you.

Mark:

Okay, we only have a couple of minutes left with you, and we probably should have reserved an entire segment for this, but we can't let you go without getting your take on the birthright citizenship ruling. What's your thought?

Kimberly Hermann:

Yeah, my main reaction is that everyone thought it was going to be a 9–0 opinion against the administration, and it was not — it was 5–4. There's some legs to stand on there. I think what we need to be paying attention to are things like these insane billboards, and the insanity that it's becoming — birth tourism, if you will. The administration's not going to back down from fighting this, and they shouldn't — I hope they don't. We're going to see more cases, more action from them. We know Congress won't step in like it should. But this is certainly not the end of this fight.

Mark:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the best things I saw on this was a meme with a cartoon character saying, “So you're saying America was founded on stolen land, but now you're saying the child of a mother who was here less than 24 hours belongs to them?”

Kimberly Hermann:

I hadn't seen that one — that's a good one.

Mark:

Kim, unfortunately we're up against the clock. Thank you so much for your time today — this has been great.

Kimberly Hermann:

Thanks for having me.

Segment 04 · RIP Climate Etc. · 23:09

Mark:

This week on I Spy Radio it's about winning some battles — the war is not over, but we're at least winning some battles. In the first half of the show we talked about Title IX, and now we're shifting gears to winning battles against climate change. I'd like to bring back Craig Rucker — he's the co-founder and president of CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Craig, great to talk to you again.

Craig Rucker:

Hey, Mark. Thanks for having me on the program as always.

Mark:

Winning some battles — it's kind of amazing we're talking about this. The last time we talked, you were starting to see some daylight at the end of the tunnel. But one of the surprising ones was Dr. Judith Curry — one of the most respected skeptic voices in climate science. She just shut down her blog, Climate Etc., after 16 years, and her sign-off line was, “It's time to declare victory against climate stupidity and move on.” CFACT itself put out a tribute to her. What do you think — is she right that the war is basically won, or is that a bit premature?

Craig Rucker:

Well, where she is in life, she's gone through quite a bit. You're talking about a woman who used to be on the alarmist side — if you went back 20 years, then had kind of a coming-to-Jesus moment, looked at the data, and found that much of what people were advocating just didn't add up. She was really offended initially when she made that conversion — that she couldn't even raise questions without getting attacked. She was a professor at Georgia Tech, and we chronicled her in one of our movies, Climate Hustle and Climate Hustle 2. She wound up becoming a great warrior — could speak with great authority because she was a genuinely accredited climate scientist. I think she started kind of an avalanche — you had a bunch of other people, from Shellenberger to Bjørn Lomborg and others, come out after her, who had the courage to turn the corner too. I think it made a big difference in the scientific community. She was so prominent that Trump appointed her as part of a climate working group last year, and she worked with the Department of Energy to produce, for the first time, something with a government stamp of approval that challenged UN climate science. That wound up getting put under the table, unfortunately, because of a filing error. But nevertheless, she's been a great champion, a great warrior, and it gets fatiguing getting attacked all the time. She's leaving on a high note.

Mark:

Yeah, right now she's correct — this is one where, at this precise moment, we're winning. But if you've been in the game long enough, you know things are never quite as bad as they seem, but sometimes they're not quite as good as they seem either.

Craig Rucker:

Yeah, and I think she's leaving at the right time. I always said that about NFL quarterbacks — I kind of wonder if Brett Favre had left a couple of years before he did, whether it might not have been better. So in some ways, I think she's taken a strategic exit, and this is a good time to do it.

Mark:

Yeah, well, I don't think it's over quite yet, and I think RealClearScience pushed back a bit on that, saying it's too early to declare victory because the activist infrastructure in schools and the media hasn't gone anywhere — they're just certainly more quiet. Curry cited some measurable numbers: media climate coverage was down 32% in 2025, then took a huge drop, 42%, in the first quarter of 2026. The Washington Post cut its climate desk from a much larger team down to five. NPR folded its ten-person climate desk into general news. Those are some pretty big shifts when the biggest promoters of climate change are suddenly saying, we're not going to cover this so much.

Craig Rucker:

Well, yeah, exactly — and that's coupled with Bill Gates stepping back from what he'd said about the end of the earth not coming. He still thinks it's an important issue, but maybe we're not all going to die from it tomorrow, was kind of his assessment. And you also had them not able to agree on a phase-out of fossil fuels last year at the climate conference — a number of countries now reconsidering their net-zero position, and Europe in general taking a second look at what they're doing. So on balance, it isn't a bad time for her to leave. But I also know how quickly the winds of fortune can change — if you look at where we were just four years ago, climate was the number-one priority of the Biden administration, and they caused all sorts of damage. I'm still not sure we're not, especially in many blue states, still reaping what they did to their energy infrastructure. It took a while to get into it, it'll take a while to get out. But God bless her — she was a real trooper, and we're gonna miss her.

Mark:

Well, we'll come back to those blue states, because there was a study on that I think is really interesting. As far as why the media is pulling back — do you think it's the media following the audience, that there just isn't as much interest in climate change? Or is the media maybe following federal grants and marketing dollars that have dried up?

Craig Rucker:

Yeah, I think that really started with COVID — they were on a march of ascendancy up until that episode, where “trust the science” became suspect with the public. And I think it helps having a commander-in-chief where Trump routinely calls climate change a hoax — people understand what he means. What he's talking about is what Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, and the UN are saying, and he's been validated for a long time on that. We have RCP 8.5 — the most extreme climate scenario — that was just admitted to be a fraud. Even people writing for the green side are saying, yeah, we threw that out there, and that's a scary admission, but they made policy on it, thinking things would be far worse than they really were. So they were kind of blowing smoke on a lot of what they did. I think Trump was validated in that, and I think it's had a real public impact.

Mark:

I agree, and I think pulling the money has certainly made a huge difference too. You mentioned how damaging the Biden years were — within the Inflation Reduction Act alone, according to Al Gore, giving a speech in Paris, he said that one bill was going to be $639 billion for the green energy movement. Imagine the uproar if just one billion dollars had gone to the NRA — the left would still be screaming about it.

Craig Rucker:

You're right.

Mark:

Here's a reason for some caution on this — when I say things are never as bad, but never quite as good as they seem either: the environmental movement is still well-funded. You can do an AI search — I did one recently for a talk I gave in Germany — and it's astounding how much the top ten green organizations get. Something over $4 billion. If you look at the top ten conservative groups working on climate, including Heritage Foundation, it's under $200 million. Take out Heritage, it's under $100 million. Take the top five groups — Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland, CFACT, the CO2 Coalition — you're talking under $25 million combined.

Craig Rucker:

So, $25 million, yeah — as long as they're sitting on a $4 billion war chest, I think they could probably make that last for a few years, waiting for the next Democrat administration to kick in.

Mark:

All right, everyone stay with us — we'll continue with Craig Rucker after this, looking at winning some battles on the climate change front.

Segment 05 · New York Guts Its Own Climate Law · 31:54

Mark:

Welcome back. We're talking about winning some battles — started the show with Title IX victories, and now we're talking about some victories on the climate change front, with Craig Rucker, co-founder and president of CFACT — you can visit them at cfact.org. Speaking of cfact.org, every once in a while you come across a headline you think, okay, is that a typo, or too good to be true? I came across one that says, “New York wisely guts landmark climate law.” I might have thought it was clickbait, but it was on cfact.org, so I figured it had to be real. Talk to us about what happened here.

Craig Rucker:

Well, Governor Hochul had kind of a waking-up moment — had to wake up and smell the coffee, I guess. A little background: back in 2019, the New York legislature passed a law saying they wanted the state to get a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030. Part of that also required the implementing rules to be released by 2024. Well, these are fairly painful things to actually implement, so 2024 came and went and they didn't make any rules — I guess they didn't want to get run out of town with elections coming up. A bunch of green groups sued the state, saying they had to make the rules because it was law. Hochul said, no, it's not law, they're just goals. A judge disagreed and said, no, that's a law, you have to actually come forward with it. With rising electricity rates in the state, she appealed that, but the judge gave them until this year, 2026, to come up with some sort of hard-hitting rules for New Yorkers. They never did it. The legislature passed a law in late May that basically moves the deadline to 2040 and makes it just a recommendation, not a rule. So they gutted the whole law that required a hard reduction, made it flexible — more or less a goal. New York had to do this because what they'd actually achieved was only a 10% reduction, according to one of our analysts, and that was achieved basically by shutting down coal plants and replacing them with gas-powered plants — which is how a lot of states have actually reduced emissions — but also by having a lot of heavy industry leave New York. So now that they've got pretty much all the industry they're going to lose out of the state, the remaining reductions would have to come from something far more painful. So they just booted the decision down the road. You don't get many victories in a blue state, but we'll take this one as going in the right direction.

Mark:

Yeah, absolutely — it's really astonishing that one of the ways they hit the reduction was by losing industry, and that ended up fitting their carbon goal. That's horrible when you think that's one way you can meet these targets — I know that wasn't their intention, but for heaven's sake, that's astonishing. New York is hardly a booming economy right now for attracting business, because of these kinds of mandates. And it's the same thing in all these blue states.

Craig Rucker:

You see it elsewhere too — the Rhode Island governor there had a 100% renewable mandate by 2033, and he's backtracking on that, trying to get rid of it just like Hochul did, and he's removed subsidies for solar — they said that will save the state a billion dollars. Massachusetts is cutting their surcharges on utility bills for efficiency upgrades. California's CARB, the Clean Air Board, adjusted its cap-and-invest program to ease the transition on their emissions cap. So it seems to be a trend in blue states — not abandoning the net-zero philosophy entirely, but scaling it back.

Mark:

I'm encouraged to hear all of this moving at least somewhat toward common sense. I have not yet heard whether Oregon is going to abandon its own Climate Protection Program. Industry insiders have said that by 2028, when phase two kicks in — conveniently after the next election — natural gas prices will increase 300% from additional fees. So I'm glad to hear other states are doing this, I'm just not holding my breath for Oregon. But we'll see.

Craig Rucker:

Certainly, if they get a new governor in there, that could change things.

Mark:

There was a study we touched on earlier that found the increase in prices within blue states — the summary says 86% of states with above-average electricity prices voted Democrat in both 2020 and 2024, and one estimate puts the gap at roughly 38% higher average residential rates in blue states, with blue-state rates up 32% since 2014 versus 18.5% in red states. Is that pretty much entirely due to these renewable mandates?

Craig Rucker:

It is. Our friends at the Institute for Energy Research have done a number of really good studies on this. What they're finding is — some people say, well, elect Democrats and that happens — it has nothing to do with that. It's the energy policies Democrats have imposed in these blue states — things like cap-and-trade. In the Northeast, they call it the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. California has one too, they call it cap-and-invest.

Mark:

What they do is typical cap-and-trade — I guess “cap-and-enslave” doesn't play so well.

Craig Rucker:

Exactly. So they call it cap-and-invest. They take some of the money from auctioning off carbon credits and put it into clean energy measures, or help low-income people afford efficiency upgrades. Either way, it's contributing to skyrocketing electricity costs, and as they keep shutting down coal and fossil fuel plants, rates rise further. A lot of these states also have renewable energy mandates — 30%, 60%, 80% of electricity, Rhode Island's 100% by 2033. That's not going to sustain their economy. In every one of these states with these mandates, the only way they survive is by going to red states and asking for electricity to be shipped to them. California is a net energy importer — it does not export electricity. But for Arizona, Texas, Nevada, and other states pumping electricity to them, they would not survive.

Mark:

Yeah, so that's the case universally — not just in the U.S., it's global.

Craig Rucker:

Yeah, and of course that impacts the larger economy too — especially with some of these trade deals Trump has, where trillions of dollars are coming into the United States. When companies decide where to site, are they going to do it in an expensive utility state like Oregon, or go to a red state where it's a lot less expensive?

Mark:

All right, everyone stay with us — we'll wrap up some victories here with Craig Rucker from CFACT. Stay with us.

Segment 06 · Duke Walks Away From Offshore Wind · 40:36

Mark:

Welcome back to our final segment. We're talking today to Craig Rucker, president and co-founder of CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow — find out more at cfact.org. Craig, we've been talking about these mandates driving up electricity costs, which we all knew was happening, and these blue states are the epicenter of that. So here's a question — I know you're not an attorney and CFACT isn't a law firm, but do you know if there are, or could be, or will be, lawsuits to sue states for unnecessarily high prices because of those mandates?

Craig Rucker:

Yeah, good question. If they do, they'll probably be suing the wrong people — not the utilities themselves, but probably some of the users, and I'd put paramount in that group things like data centers. But actually, a lot of data centers produce their own energy, and a lot of the places with the most data centers actually have among the lowest electricity rates — rising slower too, because they're going into red states with ample electricity. The real culprits are the state planners for electricity use, not the data centers. So the bottom line is, I think it would go against the wrong people — kind of like what we're seeing in Boulder, Colorado, where people want to sue energy producers like Exxon over bad weather around the world. It's a way for Boulder to cash in on “climate sins” they claim big oil created.

Mark:

Yeah, absolutely crazy. So another victory here in the battles against climate change — Duke Energy just agreed to walk away from its Carolina Long Bay offshore wind lease, taking a $129 million federal buyout and redirecting that money into nuclear and natural gas generation instead. I found this rather odd — the company's own filing said offshore wind is “not currently the most reliable, cost-effective energy source.” That's a company that had just been trying to put in windmills. Are they admitting defeat on this? Do you expect to see more of these buyouts?

Craig Rucker:

My hope is yes. That seems to be the experience of the wind farm off Massachusetts — one of the only ones that actually got up and running, because it predated Trump's ability to stop it — and it's been producing about half the electricity it promised, at a much higher cost. We've been warning about that for a long time; there have been lawsuits trying to stop the Vineyard Wind facility. I think Duke was wise to take that buyout and move on. A lot of companies have abandoned this — Ørsted, BP, others have walked away from offshore wind entirely. My hope is that this won't see the light of day going forward, and utilities learn their lesson and don't go this route.

Mark:

I would hope so. My own guess is that a lot of it comes down to federal money drying up for these kinds of things. And as far as climate change is concerned, it was always a religion, never a science — you weren't testing it, dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to see if it's really directly related. It's always funny what you can afford to believe when it's someone else's money. So now that the hysteria has largely dissipated — and hopefully we keep seeing more of these victories — what ought people and governments be doing about actual climate variation? Things like more forest management, building dams and reservoirs — California at one point had enough dams and reservoirs to withstand six years of severe drought. Do you think we'll start seeing practical applications to actually mitigate changes in climate?

Craig Rucker:

Well, honestly, I think most of the weather we're seeing isn't particularly extreme — doesn't really require much mitigation, because it's mostly natural weather variation. People make a big deal — yes, it's a hot summer right now. We have Chris Marsh, a meteorologist on our staff, who looked into it — the media was calling three hot days around the Fourth of July proof of climate change. Well, back in 1901, there were seven consecutive days over 100 degrees, before climate change could have been the culprit. I think most of what measures should account for is regional and urban warming — because of concrete and asphalt. My speculation — and it's not just speculation, it's actually been documented — is that urban areas are the ones warming up. I think just getting air conditioning to people to cope with that artificial urban warming matters. Which is why, when the mayor of Paris says she won't allow more air conditioning — only about 25 to 27% of Europe has it — you see heat deaths go up. What she's really saying is, everybody else turn your air conditioning off, mine will be on full blast.

Mark:

Unfortunately, we're up against the clock here with Craig. I want to thank you so much for your time.

Craig Rucker:

Well, thank you, Mark — always a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Mark:

Absolutely.