Peter Zeihan

California deserves a lot of the shit that they get.

But when it comes to regulation, the state legislature has empowered their regulatory bodies to create these regulations to say, you know, we want to be carbon-free or we want to be on the grid by this year.

We want to have no non-EVs sold in the state by this year.

And as time moves on, if the technology is not manifesting to make that policy –

The regulator has the authority, without going back to the state legislature, to move the date or change the mandate.

It's a little bit more intelligent than most people give California credit for, and we're going to probably see a lot of places climbing down.

We've seen a lot of countries in the last couple of years back away from a lot of what they've done with EVs because it's just not working out.

At scale, the Chinese are the ones in the biggest pickle.

They import about 70% of their oil, about similar number for natural gas, and the vast majority of that comes through the Strait of Malacca, probably originating in the Middle East.

And so if you ever have a real dust-up with either Japan or the United States or India or Vietnam or Australia or Sri Lanka or Pakistan or Oman, that all stops.

It's really easy to cut completely.

For more traditional places, the Europeans are getting clever.

I'm not as worried about the Europeans as I used to be three years ago.

There's plenty of reason to be worried.

Three years ago when the Ukraine war started, the Europeans were in the situation where they thought that if they didn't side with the Russians, the lights were going to go out.

But in the three years since, they've built a lot of infrastructure to bring in carbon energy from other places, and it has been broadly successful.

And so they've backed away from a political –

goal that was questionable economically and made a very clear strategic decision that is broadly working out for them but they didn't sacrifice all of their plans so they realize you know maybe solar and wind does not work in the world's least windy least sunny continent

But conservation and efficiency are still very good plans.

So you've seen some change in mindset and a little bit more realism in the policy, and it's showing benefits.