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Former President Trump wants to know: Would you rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark?
On Sunday, during a rally in Las Vegas, the Republican nominee floated the question for what is
at least the second time this campaign season (an odd choice, perhaps, given that Nevada is hardly shark territory, and therefore his supporters there are unlikely to have given the question much thought).
Trump’s fear of sharks is
well documented at this point, and I myself have given that question a fair bit of thought, as well. Personally, I’d choose electrocution because of its merciful speed, but unfortunately for both me and Trump, “electrocution” isn’t a realistic option in the scenario he went on to describe. According to Trump, an unidentified “they” want to make boats all-electric, which — according to the representative of a “boat company” Trump spoke to in “South Carolina” — would require a battery so heavy that “it can’t float.”
As Trump goes on:
“I said, let me ask you a question. And he said nobody ever asked this question. And it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there.”
Can you believe nobody ever asked this question?! “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, you notice that?,” Trump briefly digressed before returning to his main point:
“... Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking — do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because, I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it's a good question.’”
Luckily for Trump,
I answered his question last year. And, as the former president ought to be reassured, while all-electric boats are still in their relative infancy (and no mysterious “they” is trying to make them all-electric, anyway), boats more generally have been using batteries for over a century.
Furthermore, marine architects actually design their boats with the understanding that they may get wet. It’s true! The electric boat manufacturers I spoke with
for my article told me that their designs typically meet a waterproofing standard similar to what is required for submarines, and that the high-voltage batteries on board are kept in puncture-resistant shells to prevent exposure even if the boat were to get incredibly mangled.
While electric shock
is a danger in water, electric shock drowning is usually caused by faulty wiring at a dock or a marina. However, this overwhelmingly happens in lakes and rivers; saltwater, where most sharks live, is a better conductor of electricity than human bodies, so it will go around a swimmer to ground unless they grab something that is electrified, such as a dock ladder or a boat propeller.
All this is a long way of saying: If your boat — electric or otherwise — is sinking, electrocution might not even be an
option for a swift, toothless death. You’ll have to deal with the shark 10 yards away, whether you’d rather or not.
And for that, I can offer no reassurances. After all, as a “very smart” person recently observed, there have indeed been
a lot of shark attacks lately.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress
A major solar energy trade group now says the Trump administration is refusing to do even routine work to permit solar projects on private lands — and that the situation has become so dire for the industry, lawmakers discussing permitting reform in Congress should intervene.
The Solar Energy Industries Association on Thursday published a letter it sent to top congressional leaders of both parties asserting that a July memo from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum mandating “elevated” review for renewables project decisions instead resulted in “a nearly complete moratorium on permitting for any project in which the Department of Interior may play a role, on both federal and private land, no matter how minor.” The letter was signed by more than 140 solar companies, including large players EDF Power Solutions, RES, and VDE Americas.
The letter reinforces a theme underlying much of Heatmap’s coverage since the memo’s release — that the bureaucratic freeze against solar decision-making has stretched far beyond final permits to processes once considered ancillary. It also confirms that the enhanced review has jammed up offices outside Burgum’s purview, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees wetlands, water crossings, and tree removals, and requires Interior to sign off on actions through the interagency consultation process.
SEIA’s letter asserts that the impacts of Burgum’s memo stretch even to projects on private lands seeking Interior’s assistance to determine whether federally protected species are even present — meaning that regardless of whether endangered animals or flowers are there, companies are now taking on an outsized legal risk by moving forward with any kind of development.
After listing out these impacts in its letter, SEIA asked Congress to pressure Interior into revoking the July memo in its entirety. The trade group added there may be things Interior could do besides revoking the memo that would amount to “reasonable steps” in the “short-term to prevent unnecessary delays in energy development that is currently poised to help meet the growing energy demands of AI and other industries.” SEIA did not elaborate on what those actions would look like in its letter.
“Businesses need certainty in order to continue making investments in the United States to build out much-needed energy projects,” SEIA’s letter reads. “Certainty must include a review process that does not discriminate by energy source.” It concludes: “We urge Congress to keep fairness and certainty at the center of permitting negotiations.”
Notably, the letter arrived after American Clean Power — another major trade group representing renewable energy companies — backed a major GOP-authored permitting bill called the SPEED Act that is moving through the House. Although the bill has some bipartisan support from the most moderate wing of the House Democratic caucus, it has yet to win support from Democrats involved in bipartisan permitting talks, including Representative Scott Peters, who told me he’d back the bill only if Trump were prevented from stalling federal decision-making for renewable energy projects.
SEIA has deliberately set itself apart from ACP in this regard, telling me last week that it was neutral on the legislation as it stands. In a statement released with the letter to Congress, the trade group’s CEO, Abigail Ross Hopper, said that while “the solar industry values the continued bipartisan engagement on permitting reform, the SPEED Act, as passed out of committee, falls short of addressing this core problem: the ongoing permitting moratorium.”
“To be clear, there is no question we need permitting reform,” Hopper stated. “There is an agreement to be reached, and SEIA and our 1,200 member companies will continue our months-long effort to advocate for a deal that ensures equal treatment of all energy sources, because the current status of this blockade is unsustainable.”
In a statement to Heatmap News, Interior spokesperson Alyse Sharpe confirmed the agency is using its “current review process” on “federal resources, permits or consultations” related to solar projects on “federal, state or private lands.” “This policy strengthens accountability, prevents misuse of taxpayer-funded subsidies and upholds our commitment to restoring balance in energy development.” The agency declined to comment on SEIA’s request to Congress, though. “We don’t provide comment on correspondence to Congress regarding Interior issues via the media,” Sharpe said.
At Heatmap’s event, “Onshoring the Electric Revolution,” held last week in Washington, D.C. every guest agreed: The U.S. is falling behind in the race to build the technologies of the future.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat who sits on the Senate’s energy and natural resources committee, expressed frustration with the Trump administration rolling back policies in the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act meant to support critical minerals companies. “If we want to, in this country, lead in 21st century technology, why aren’t we starting with the extraction of the critical minerals that we need for that technology?” she asked.
At the same time, Cortez Masto also seemed hopeful that the Senate would move forward on both permitting and critical minerals legislation. “After we get back from the Thanksgiving holiday, there is going to be a number of bills that we’re looking at marking up and moving through the committee,” Cortez Masto said. That may well include the SPEED Act, a permitting bill with bipartisan support that passed the House Natural Resources Committee late last week.
Friction in the permitting of new energy and transmission projects is one of the key factors slowing down the transition to clean energy — though fossil fuel companies also have an interest in the process.
Thomas Hochman, the Foundation of American Innovation’s director of infrastructure policy, talked about how legislation could protect energy projects of all stripes from executive branch interference.
“The oil and gas industry is really, really interested in seeing tech-neutral language on this front because they’re worried that the same tools that have been uncovered to block wind and solar will then come back and block oil and gas,” Hochman said.
While permitting dominated the conversation, it was not the only topic on panelists’ minds.
“There’s a lot of talk about permitting,” said Michael Tubman, the senior director of federal affairs at Lucid Motors. “It’s not just about permits. There’s a lot more to be done. And one of those important things is those mines have to have the funding available.”
Michael Bruce, a partner at the venture capital firm Emerson Collective, thinks that other government actions, such as supporting domestic demand, would help businesses in the critical minerals space.
“You need to have demand,” he said. “And if you don’t have demand, you don’t have a business.”
Like Cortez Masto, Bruce lamented the decline of U.S. mining in the face of China’s supply chain dominance.
“We do [mining] better than anyone else in the world,” said Bruce. “But we’ve got to give [mining companies] permission to return. We have a few [projects] that have been waiting for permits for upwards of 25 years.”
A literal fire has erupted in the middle of the United Nations conference devoted to stopping the planet from burning.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Today is the second to last day of the annual climate meeting known as COP30, taking place on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Belém, Brazil. Delegates are in the midst of heated negotiations over a final decision text on the points of agreement this session.
A number of big questions remain up in the air, including how countries will address the fact that their national plans to cut emissions will fail to keep warming “well under 2 degrees Celsius,” the target they supported in the 2015 Paris Agreement. They are striving to reach agreement on a list of “indicators,” or metrics by which to measure progress on adaptation. Brazil has led a push for the conference to mandate the creation of a global roadmap off of fossil fuels. Some 80 countries support the idea, but it’s still highly uncertain whether or how it will make its way into the final text.
Just after 2:00 p.m. Belém time, 12 p.m. Eastern, I was in the middle of arranging an interview with a source at the conference when I got the following message:
“We've been evacuated due to a fire- not exactly sure how the day is going to continue.”
The fire is in the conference’s “Blue Zone,” an area restricted to delegates, world leaders, accredited media, and officially designated “observers” of the negotiations. This is where all of the official negotiations, side events, and meetings take place, as opposed to the “Green Zone,” which is open to the public, and houses pavilions and events for non-governmental organizations, business groups, and civil society groups.
It is not yet clear what the cause of the fire was or how it will affect the home sprint of the conference.
