Senator Brian Schatz

We don't have to make that argument anymore.

Even if you don't care about the climate crisis, even if all you want is cheap electricity on the grid, even if all you want is relief on your electricity bill, solar and wind and geothermal and nuclear power are the way to go.

coal and burning low sulfur fuel oil for electrons and gas, it's all more expensive than solar.

And right now we're, and you just pointed this out, we are facing a big shortage of electrons on the grid.

And that's kind of at the beginning of the data center boom.

It's true that the data centers are going to create this huge crunch.

It's also true that we're actually already seeing a doubling of electricity prices as against inflation.

It's rising twice the rate of inflation, and that's basically before most of these data centers come online.

One of the things that I want people on the left to talk about in the energy context is

Look, like I said, my main thing is climate action, but we don't have to talk about climate action.

We can simply say wind is cheap, solar is cheap.

They're stopping wind and solar because this guy has very strange ideas about the energy mix.

And it is consistent with the rest of his political and economic philosophy, which is if there's less of everything, then it gives him more authority to kind of dole out favors and have people ask for sort of indulgences from the king.

Look, I think that there's two ways to look at this.

The first is we should have total clarity about where he wants to go.

And there's plenty of evidence that he is walking down that path with the mobilization of the guard into Portland and Chicago over the objections of the governors and the mayors, most recently with the threat to jail, JB Pritzker and the mayor of Chicago, obviously with the indictment of James Comey.

All of that indicates that he's not actually kidding about where he wants all of this to end.

That is a different thing.

And I want to be really clear.

That is a different thing from declaring that we are no longer a democracy, because that question is still up to us.