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Our full discussion transcribed after the break:
by Rod D. Martin
September 17, 2026
I appeared on NTD Newsroom with Arleen Richards to discuss the Trump EPA’s rollback of Biden’s absurd power plant restrictions, and the scam of global warming.
Arleen and I discuss:
Why scrapping Biden’s absurd restrictions is good for both the economy and the environment.
Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant.
Why windmills are an environmental nightmare.
How nuclear power exposes the green movement’s dishonesty.
How AI data centers will supply the grid, not drain it, and bring down prices for everyone.
American energy abundance means good jobs at home and less money for our enemies.
It’s 12 minutes you don’t want to miss. Watch the interview, and pass it along!
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Our Full Discussion:
Arleen Richards: The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a major rollback of Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas-fired power plants. Joining us now to discuss is Rod Martin, geopolitical analyst and founder and CEO of Martin Capital. Good afternoon, Rod.
Rod D. Martin: Great to be here.
Arleen Richards: Now, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said that the Biden-era policies threatened reliable and affordable electricity. Now, do you agree with this? And also, do you see this as a positive move for the economy?
Rod D. Martin: This is an incredibly positive move for the economy, and it is a decade and a half overdue. The Obama EPA’s endangerment finding in 2009, which thankfully the administration has repealed, was the legal basis of a lot of this.
And I use the term “legal” very loosely. It provided the cover by which the green agenda could be shoehorned into the Clean Air Act. But the truth is, the Clean Air Act doesn’t authorize any of this. The guys who wrote the Clean Air Act understood perfectly well that carbon dioxide is plant food. It’s really important.
And in fact, we’ve watched from satellites over the last 30, 40 years, as so-called “greenhouse gases” have been emitted by industry all over the world — nowhere more than in China, which has incredibly lax environmental regulations and is building a new coal plant or two actually every week. And you know, what we’re doing here is we’re greening the earth.
Everywhere you look with the satellite data, whether you’re talking about the Amazon rainforest, whether you’re talking about the savanna of the Serengeti, it doesn’t matter: whatever you’re looking at is greener than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for that long-promised climate apocalypse.
The funny thing today, of course, is the Babylon Bee posted a story in which they said that climate activists blame global warming for the total lack of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic this year. Every year, we’re promised all these superstorms. And I know a little bit about that. I lost a home in a hurricane in 2004. And then after 2005, we went 11 years without any major hurricane making landfall.
That’s not what was predicted. And we’re not burning up. And the planet doesn’t have a fever. And it’s time we got their political agenda out of our laws, out of our tax code, and out of our government.
That’s exactly what the American people voted for. This will add about $300 to $400 billion to the U.S. economy. That’s on top of the $1.3 trillion saved by eliminating the endangerment finding.
Carbon Dioxide and the Cost of Climate Policy
Arleen Richards: Now, you mentioned earlier about the climate groups calling these greenhouse gases and how they’re emitting more of this. They argue that the rollback would allow major power plant polluters to emit more of this. But also, they’re saying that it would be more polluting and it would cause health impacts. So what do you say to this?
Rod D. Martin: Well, it’s bunk. The restrictions we’re talking about removing have to do with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. And I don’t care how many times Al Gore or Barack Obama pretends that it is. I repeat, it’s plant food.
Now, could it possibly warm the climate? I’ve seen science on both sides of that issue. That’s not really the point.
What is the point is that the Reason Foundation did a study a number of years ago where they compared the cost of Green New Scam-style programs to incremental mitigation as warming effects take place. What they found was that incremental mitigation over a century was cheaper and more effective than anything Al Gore and AOC want us to do.
So all of this is hokum. It has succeeded in making Al Gore nearly a billionaire. It has made all of those Chinese industries that make solar panels and windmills — which honestly are just bird blenders: they’re horrible for the environment — all these things have put money in the pockets of leftist donors who just happen to own the companies that built these “replacement” technologies. And none of this is valuable. It’s destructive to the economy. It’s destructive to the environment. And enough’s enough.
So this is not the end, but this is a big step toward it.
Lower Bills and Real Pollution Controls
Arleen Richards: Now, do you think the repeal of the Biden-era policies could lower energy costs?
Rod D. Martin: Absolutely. I mean, it won’t be an overnight thing. Nothing is. But yes, it absolutely reduces energy costs because it takes unreasonable burdens off gas and coal plants, burdens that just shouldn’t be there.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that coal is an unmitigated good. It’s got all kinds of problems. But we’ve gotten really good at filtering those emissions. There are very real pollutants in coal. We know how to capture them inside the smokestack.
People laugh at the idea of “clean coal.” Well, I laugh at the idea that anything is clean. There is nothing clean about a windmill. It takes far more coal and petroleum to produce a windmill than all the electricity any of them will ever produce over their lifetimes.
So the idea that any of this stuff is clean is a scam. It’s not true. Meanwhile, if we are restricting the pollutants that come out of power plants that really actually can hurt you, that give you cancer, that hurt your lungs, that do all these terrible things. Wait, we’ve been doing that since the Clean Air Act in the 70s. We know how to do that. We don’t need to put unrealistic, stupid restrictions on industry just to hold them back and give China an advantage, which has been the Democrats’ agenda for years.
Powering AI and the Nuclear Renaissance
Arleen Richards: Now, we have this situation now where U.S. electricity demand is increasing with the AI and data centers. So can the U.S. meet the demand if it limits fossil fuels?
Rod D. Martin: Limiting fossil fuels is just crazy. I mean, we’ve got an insane amount of them. You and I probably both lived through the 2000s when we were told every day that we’d hit Peak Oil and it was all downhill from there. There could never be any more production whatsoever, and pretty soon there’d be no oil at all.
Well, here we are less than 20 years later and America has tripled oil production. We’re by far the biggest natural gas supplier in the world. We’ve got all kinds of coal we don’t even bother to use, primarily because of these Obama- and Biden-era climate policies. And the truth is we’re crazy not to use that. It’s cheap. It’s also easy to keep the pollutants contained.
We’ve been working on that since I was a little tiny child. We’re good at it.
But the real key to this is something else the Greens have consistently opposed: nuclear power. If you really believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant, there’s nothing you should support more than nuclear power, because it emits nothing whatsoever.
We had a nuclear accident in this country in 1979 when I was 10. And at Three Mile Island, the person who got the most radiation of everyine exposed got less radiation than I get every time I fly in an airliner at 30,000 feet. This is all just nonsense. Moreover, technology has advanced a lot since 1979. I think most people may have noticed that.
And that includes nuclear. So we can build nuclear plants now that cannot melt down. They cannot have the problems Three Mile Island had. And moreover, the fuel pellets can contain the radiation inside themselves. There’s nothing to release.
We are crazy not to be deploying those all over the country. This administration has seen to it that we’re going to. They’ve brought five small modular reactors online, or at least critical in 11 months’ time, which is just extraordinary. We went 40 years without any new nuclear plants. Five in 11 months is pretty wild.
And what that does is it gives us a shocking amount of new power that will bring down prices, but that will also allow Texas and Louisiana and North Dakota and Oklahoma and the rest to sell all the oil and gas they want to, because we don’t have to burn it.
This is the way. Progress actually produces prosperity. And that’s what we’re seeing here.
When Americans Could See the Benefits
Arleen Richards: To your point earlier, you said that the pollutants are cheap and easy to contain. So finally, what do you say to the argument that delaying the energy transition could hurt the U.S. in the long term? When can Americans expect to see the benefit?
Rod D. Martin: Well, the green energy transition has already hurt us to the tune of trillions of dollars in needless costs. As a result of the repeal of some of these regulations, we’ll get more use of gas and coal and other things. We should see some price relief over the next 18 to 24 months based on that.
The nuclear revolution is an even bigger thing. It might take a little bit longer for people to see. But one of the most positive developments has been both the president’s position and in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott’s position that the big data center operators have to actually build their own power. So they’re not drawing from the grid.
They’re actually adding to the grid because those plants actually produce more power than the data centers need. So when that feeds back into the grid, the AI company makes money because they’re selling electricity to the grid, but also the consumer gets a much lower price. So all of these things work together.
All of this is to the good. All of this will make us more prosperous and bring down our bills and all the things that we’ve been wanting. But the biggest single thing is that in 2008, we sent $700 billion to our enemies for their oil. We’ve reversed that. Now that money is coming to Texas and Louisiana and North Dakota and Oklahoma. That is transformative.
I lived through the gas shocks in the 70s, sitting in the backseat of my mom’s car while she was only able to buy gas on even- or odd-numbered days, depending on the license plate. That was terrible. We’ve reversed that now. We have moved the center of gravity of the global energy industry from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America.
That process is continuing. It is creating a ton of good jobs. And no, we do know how to handle the pollution. We’ve been handling the pollution pretty well for 50 years, and it’s only gotten better as we’ve gone along.
Arleen Richards: All right. Rod Martin, thank you so much for your expertise on this. We appreciate you coming on.
Rod D. Martin: Thank you.
