Who's that going With all that? Ask not what your country can do for
you, Ask what you can do for your country. Mister Gorbutschoff, Tear
down this wall, read my lips. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson
and me, James Lawleix and Stephen able De sitting in to Peter Robinson,
and we're going to talk to Bjorn Lambert, the skeptical environmentalist about twelve things
we can actually do. So let's have ourselves a podcast. A short time
ago, an American aeroplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, then destroyed its usefulness
to the enemy. That bomb has more power than twenty thousand tons of t
n T. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. Welcome
everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, Episode number seven thousand, four hundred
and thirty two. NAS And I think I got it wrong last week.
I think I said something in the three hundreds which was which was presidential elections
ago decades ago? It seems no. This is six five four in the
waning portion of the beautiful Summer, in the Year of Our Lord, twenty
twenty two, kidding twenty twenty three. I'm James Loleys here in Minneapolis,
joined by Stephen Hayward was sitting in for Peter Robinson, who will be back?
Peters? You know it's it's not like we're getting letters with cut out
pieces of words from newspapers magazines demanding and ransom. No, he's we know
where he is and he's coming back. Rob Long will be along shortly.
Stephen, how are you on this fine summer day. I am just staying
dry in a rare summer rainstorm out here in California and wondering exactly where Peter
is stashed in the Witness Protection program because I'm right well, we'll see him
like Henry Hill waving from the door in Arizona somewhere as he picks up the
newspaper. I did hear the distinctive, inimitable chuckle of Rob Long, rob
Are you got? I am here? Thank you, James. I was
just briefly like not visible, but I'm now visible and rizzible. As they
say, rizzible is one of those words I don't I don't use it because
I'm never sure if I'm using it correctly. So I'm turning to Steve now
and saying, Steve, is it it's like bad. Right, Yeah,
it's like bad in a sense, like it's not risible, is it's not?
I don't look this up, but I'm right with you. I write
the words, sometimes I usually don't say it because I'm never I mean,
I think rizzible is the correct pronunciation, but I always want to say riseable,
which I think is quite wrong. And but it doesn't mean it's worse
than bad though. I mean, you would never say, well, you
would say this is a bad piece of pie. You know, it's dried,
it's overcooked, it's favor. You would never say a rizzible piece of
pie, unless you meant that the cook was so incompetent or deliberately trying to
give you a bad piece of pie. I don't know if that mean I'm
just making this up off the top of my head, but you and I
just looked it up. It means provoking laughter. Oh yeah, it's a
ridiculously bad That's also another one, right, it's so you would like John
Kerry as our climate negotiator. That that's a risible spectacle. That's a risible
president. President Joe Biden, that's a risible president. Yes, okay,
all right, that gets you know, the one word I do like to
use all the time because I love pronouncing it properly is error to err.
Yeah, And I just like that because I just feel, always feel very
very smart when I say, well that I don't I don't mean to err
in that respect, And then people like oh, I thought, oh yeah,
yeah, that was the great weird George H. W. Bush.
You know he had. He was very very in many ways a very admirable
person, but he wasn't used to talking to people, and especially on a
campaign trail, and so he would almost always when he would answer questions,
answer using the concluding sentence of the briefing paper. So when people say,
well, you know, you know, mister vice president, he's running.
You know, you have a history of being sort of pro choice on abortion,
and now you see your pro life, so could you explain it?
And he and his response would be like, err on the side of human
life, which, if you like, like what does that even mean?
Like you had that was like the tenth step of the proof he was trying
to use, and it was always baffled people. So I but I still
like using the word error. But I did want to instead of erring since
we brought up the topic. I think I don't even know what the iset
bounced off by our by our office wi fi here. The next thing I
know, Rob is talking about erring as opposed to erring when you're human life.
It's like, oh, we made a mistake. Nobody's dead. And
how do you and Rob, how do you handle an error text as the
as the academic error text to you? Right? Exactly, so, speaking
of er to erring on the side of human life. Ohio is one more
state that is kind of fundamentally conservative. Ohio, along with Missouri or Kansas,
that have when they when the voters have given been given the option to
restrict abortion laws or the proxy option. I guess because Ohio was sort of
a you know, it wasn't a direct vote, it was sort of a
proxy vote. They have opted in conservative places to preserve abortion rights. Steve,
how much trouble is the prolect movement in at this point? I mean,
they got what they wanted, right they a rov Wade is overturned,
but it seems like part two they didn't have that quite worked out. It's
like the marijuana It's like the marijuana legalization parties. Now, what do we
doing Minnesota, we have a marijuana legalization party. There's looking around. I
mean, they're gonna be like the March of Dives. They're gonna assume,
you know, well we cured that, so we'd better disband. Now we
had all this fundraising stuff going, Let's figure out something else to do.
Anyway, Steven, go ahead. Yeah, Well, I think I think
you overstated maybe a little bit, Rob. I mean, I think that
the pro life movement has misread public opinion. There's a large group in the
middle who are they don't like late term abortion. They're open to some restrictions
like a fifteen weeks or something like that, but also I don't think they
they're comfortable writing it into state constitutions. And so actually, you know,
you live in California for a long time, there's always a built in bias
for a no vote, especially for a measure that would lock something in a
state constitution. And so this vote was like, you know, sixty forty
almost rejecting changing the threshold for voters to make a change the state constitution of
sixty percent. That's because for listeners who may not be following, there's an
initiative that's been put on the boat in the fall. I think by the
approach choice folks that would right into the constitution, very sweeping abortion rights that
are it was radical as ROVERSUS way. You know, abortion right up to
the point of birth, and it only needs fifty percent plus one vote to
pass under the current system. I think a lot of voters. My prediction,
Rob is that that vote when it comes in November will be closer than
the vote we saw this week. I think that I'm not sure that the
pro life community won't win at the end, but they do have to make
arguments, and that's something that Republicans were totally unprepared to do after the Dob's
decision last year. It's really a shocking failure to anticipate what would come next.
I mean, we had the decision leaked as we know, so they
ought have been gearing up right. Nobody seems to have done that. But
can I ask you another question, do you think there's something is there something
odd about this where you know, whatever they do polls. I don't mean
just at Poles in the United States, but Poles could in Europe. Yeah,
everyone kind of comes down to abortion rights first term, big fat question
mark. Second term pretty much an X on the third term. That's kind
of where that's where some people who to insist that they are pro choice are.
That's where some people who insist they are pro life are. Neither one
of those positions, Neither one of those positions pro choice of pro life really
embraces that big, wide middle American argument. Who's going to get there first?
I mean, who's going to get to the to where normal Americans are
first? Because it seems like the pro life movement keeps talking about conception and
contraception, and the pro choice movement keeps talking about, well you should be
able to apport that kid a few days before you know, elementary school,
Like when when it when? Who's going to read the American public correctly first?
If I had a hunch, but it's I don't know, I have
to take odds on it. I think Republicans will, although it's going to
be difficult, and only because you know, look the Democratic Party today.
You know, it's an amazing thing. I'd like to point out the people
that within our lifetime, a Republican presidential candidate named George McGovern had two pro
life running mates, you know, the first Tom Eagleton and then Sergeant driver.
And by the way, McGovern, you know, he was stigmatized as
the cast the candidate of asset amnestyin abortion McGovern's view in nineteen seventy two.
Now that was before Row. This is a matter for the states to decide.
That's the Republican position or the you know, the post Row legal position.
And as we know the Democratic Party now is that is the litmus test
if you even want to speak at a republic a Democratic national convention. And
so I think that they're dug into the extreme abortion position because of their the
fanaticism of the feminists and others in their party. Republicans have more running room,
but it's difficult because the you know, the pro life community is very
strong in the Republican Party, and you know in places like Florida with a
six week band and other places. I think they are out of step with
majority opinion, and they're gonna persuade people if they're gonna want to have restrictions.
That's significant. Yeah, that was sort of a big blunder I think
for Governor de Santis. I was talking to my old dear friend and culture
and sometimes Ann we'll just start yelling at me and I'm not really sure what
she's yelling about. And she was yelling about the Santist the six to six
week rule or whatever what it was. And I kept couldn't figure out why
she was yelling at me because I'm, as you know, I'm not the
governor of Florida just quit a habit with her and start yelling at But then
I realized, oh, no, she's making a political argument. She think
that was very foolish that he could have He could have set the actual pro
life movement or the abortion restriction movement back by being that draconian. I'm not
sure I believe that, but I thought it was an interesting argument. Yeah,
I don't know. I don't know exactly the sequence of events there,
because remember it was a bill. The letter just lat your past, and
he has a lot of sway with the legislature, and could he could have
told them that's too severe, but vetoing that bill would have been I think
equally damaging to him politically. Yeah, he was caught in a tough spot,
and I'm not sure if he was paying attention or just what that was
about. Well, I think now we can probably positive that he might not
have been paying attention. He doesn't. He's he's not quite the killer candidate
that I was hoping for. Nope. I mean he's got time to turn
around. As I'm not making any prognostications, but I'm disappointed in his performance.
No, in the future, he will be seen as one more element
that led to the inevitable assumption of Gavin Newsom as President of the United States.
So, and that'll be fun. Hey, from abortion, let's switch
to something that's a little less contentious. Global warming, climate change, all
the rest of these things. But you know, you can either talk to
an idiolog about it, or you can talk about somebody passionate about the case
and knowledgeable and not running around with hair on fire. And that brings to
mind, of course, your Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center,
author of the skeptical environmentalist False Alarm, and most recently Best Things First,
the twelve most efficient solutions for the world's poorest and our global STG That would
be sustainable Development Goals, promises to them. Gardon, welcome back to the
show. Oh, thank you, it's great to be back. Well,
you know, the obvious thing is to say, we don't want to hear
all twelve solutions, because we have to leave something for people to get when
they get the book. But let's pick a few solutions that because the solutions
that are always being fed to us are always a sort of a morphous but
dire. We have to stop doing certain things immediately. We have to stop
driving our cars. We have to stop eating hamburgers, we have to stop
getting on planes, a variety of things that most people reject out a hand
because essentially they're being told that their life has to constrict down to a little
dot and they can't move more than sixteen blocks. That's not what you're talking
about some of these solutions, then, of the twelve, give us a
few off the top of your head. Yes, James, So thanks a
lot, and it's great to be back. I should probably just preface this
with saying that what the best things first book is about is all the other
problems in the world. So what we're trying to look at is, remember
everyone in the rich world, we'll be talking about climate change because that's you
know, that's what left when your kids are not dying from easily curable infectious
diseases, and you kind of fix nutrition and all these other issues. But
the reality is when you look across the globe. We promised a lot of
things. The UN and that means also the US and everybody. Every other
country in the world has actually promised to pretty much deliver everything by twenty thirty.
It's something called the Sustainable Development Goals. We promised to fix poverty,
and fix hunger, and fix education and fix pretty much anything you can come
up with. So we're also going to stop wars, We're going to end
corruption, we're gonna end uh global warming and everything else in between. We're
also going to get organic apples and community gardens to everyone. So we've literally
promised everything to everyone. What we try to do with this book is to
say, look, if you actually want to do good, where should you
start? Because we're failing badly in all of these promises. And so these
twelve things that we're talking about here are not climate change, because it turns
out it's really expensive to do just a tiny bit about climate change, but
it's incredibly effective to do something about very simple things. So I'm going to
give you a few examples. Two of them would be maternal in newborn health
and education. So the first one this blew my mind and I didn't know.
I'm pretty sure you didn't know either, that it's still incredibly dangerous for
most women around the world to give birth. So about three hundred thousand moms
die each year, and perhaps depressingly, two point three million kids die in
the first twenty eight days of their life. So this is not rocket science.
They basically die because a lot of these things could have been avoided at
very very low cost. Let me give you one example. So about seven
hundred thousand kids die each year because they don't start breathing when they're when they're
being born. This happens in rich countries as well. But we have a
very simple technological pick so that eighty percent of all kids that are born come
out fine, start breathing. Fifteen percent need to flap in the back that
you know you get when you just get born and then you start breathing.
The last five percent need positive air pressure. They basically need a mask on
top of their mouth, get some air in there, and then they go.
Then they go and they're ready to go. We need to get that
out. So we need to get women into facilities around the world, and
we need to have very basic things like the church and antiseptics, and we
need to have these uh these medical masks. They cost sixty five dollars and
they can say about twenty five lives over the next three years of the lifetime.
So what we estimate is by focusing on maternal and newborn health for about
five billion dollars a year. It's not nothing, but you know, in
the big scheme of things and certainly everything else we're talking about, it really
is couter change. Five billion dollars a year. We could save one hundred
and sixty six thousand moms from dying each and every year, and we could
say one point two million kids each and every year. That translates into every
dollar spent will deliver eighty seven dollars worth for good. That's just a fantastic
thing. It's one of those things we should be doing. It's one of
those things we don't talk about, but we should be doing it. I'm
dying to know because this is fascinating, and I do want to know the
other things you have to mention. But who is responsible We set up this
goal then, right, and nobody sits down to figure out how we can
achieve the end that you just spoke about. Who would be responsible, who
would be who is responsible for doing the things that you're talking about, And
if they're not doing it, what instruments should we use to make sure that
this happens because it seems simple and obvious. So when everybody in the world
comes together in New York and promises to do all good things, of course
nobody is really responsible. Everyone is responsible. We've just all made these amazing
problems, which is one of the reasons why we've just made all of the
promises, because yeah, why wouldn't you If you're already getting going, you
might as well just promise everything. And so the reality is it's both third
world government, so you know, the poor country governments that should be investing
in these things, and they're not sufficiently. One of the reasons, for
instance, in hospitals is if you're a doctor, do you really want one
more of those masks that will resuscitate children? Well, yeah, in principle,
of course you would like that, but you'd much rather have the MRI
machine. That's more fun and sort of you know, the machine that says
playing if you know, the Monty pipe done skid right. So the idea
here is to say it's about those boring, slightly odd things that really care
all much about. Those are the kinds of things. So yes, development,
developing governments should be focused on this. Philanthropists should be focusing more on
this. And again it doesn't have the cachet of doing something grand, but
it happens to just save a lot of lives or USA idea and other development
spending. We've still spend about one hundred and almost two hundred billion dollars a
year on development spending. We should focus some of that money on those particularly
effective ways, so we all share that responsibility. But what I'm trying to
do with this new book, The Best Things First, it's basically to get
everybody to focus on their twelve amazing things that for very little money to do
amazing good. Why don't we do more of that? So that's truly the
basic idea. The other one, let me just give you one on education,
because it's you know, everybody sort of agrees that education is incredibly important.
But the problem is we've managed to get almost all kids into school with
technically teaching them to learn, so they've become literate, so they've actually learned
to sort of identify the individual words. But when you So we have about
a third of a billion kids in school and the poor half of the world,
and we estimate the eighty percent of them are failing really really basic things.
Let me just give you one of those examples. They ask ten year
olds, so they give them a sentence to read. The sentence, go
V J has a red hat, a blue shirt, and yellow shoes.
What color is the hat? The answer is red? Right, But unfortunately,
wait a minute, they want to you want to word it a mathematician,
but I'll take your word for it. Yeah. The terrible thing is
eighty percent can't answer this question. And the simple point is you have learned
to identify the individual words, but you can't string together into a sentence.
And of course that means you're not going to be very product when you grow
up to be an adult. That's one of the things that education helps you
with that you actually become proficient and you become productive. So what we estimate
is if we could make kids more, learn more, learn better, they
could become more productive. They would help both their societies and of course themselves
and their families become richer in the future. There are some really, really
good ways to do this. There are also some really bad ways to do
it. So a lot of people will argue, we should have more teachers,
we should pay teachers more than that's all well and good, but actually
turns out Indonesia did this. So they promised to double the spending on teachers.
They have one of the lowest class ratios in the world. They doubled
the spending on teachers. And because of the way they did it, and
they did in different regions at different times, you could actually do a pseudorandomized
control trial study and one of the most famous papers is called double for Nothing.
It basically investigate that, yes, you double the pay of teachers.
It made the teachers more appy, by the way, not surprisingly, but
it didn't actually change the impact on the students. There is no learning impact.
The way you should do it, and we know this very very well,
is to teach the individual student at his or her level. So imagine
a class of fifty. You know the kids at are far ahead of the
teacher, and there are kids that are struggling terribly. The teachers should teach
each one of those at his or her own level. But of course you
can't do that if you have fifty kids. But what you can do is
to put them in front of a tablet one hour day. The tablet has
educational software, and that tablet very quickly finds out exactly your level and teaches
you at that level. What happens if you do this one hour day.
You're only doing it one hour day because you have to share this tablet with
many other kids. But if you do that one hour day, at the
end of that school year, you've had seven hours of still boring, not
very effective teaching, and then one hour of tablet you have actually learned what
you would normally learned for three years. So you've just gotten much much better.
Now. Remember it's still not terribly well, but it means that these
kids will become much more productive in their in their adult life. We estimate
this will cost about ten billion dollars in total. But the benefit so the
poor part of the world, will be that they will be about six hundred
billion dollars better off each and every year. This is just an astounding so
you know about sixty five dollars back the long So, but I think of
you as an environmentalist because that's the most important problem that we face. Because
I read the newspaper and I watched television and keep up with the news.
And Hawaii is on fire and there are wildfires everywhere and the weather is getting
worse. Morris, Morris, and climate change is going to destroy the world
very soon. Fact, it's depending on who you talk to, it's it's
overdue. It's the destruction of the world and the destruction of our oceans is
is running late. It should have happened a few years ago. And it
just soaks up all the attention, all of these little kind of what do
you want to give everybody an iPad? All this stuff is like, so
what, man, the world is on fire? Why are we Why are
you trying to get me to get an iPad for some kids in ind in
each I don't get it. And moreover, you're talking about more kids surviving,
which means overpopulation, and you're telling you Abo, you're getting here ahead
of me. There, James about to nail them on that too. And
more productivity, which is more earth destroying. Better, we have fewer people,
they don't do anything. Yeah, those are very good points, and
I think a lot of people have them in their heads. Uh, And
so I should just say I've never just been the environmentalist more than for more
than twenty years. I've run the Cohagen Consensus when, which is really as
center where we work with more than the three under the world's top economists and
seven noble lords and trying to tess where can you spend an extra dollar and
do the most good. Now, one of the things you should spend money
on, because we're rich civilization and we can you know, walk into gum
is fixed in climate change smartly. But there's also a lot of other issues.
If you ask most people around the world, they actually not surprisingly care
about the fact that their kids might die tonight from malnutrition or from easily curable
infectious decision. That's their main concern. And you know, we would be
the exact same thing if we were at that point. So but wait,
let me just took it. But isn't it just just can I just gonna
Isn't that what the environmental movement is trying to do. They're trying to get
the emergency on the ass as a track imminent emergency number one. I mean,
if you read the paper, they are basically trying to convince you that
your children aren't going to die tonight. If you don't, I don't know.
Put your plastic recycling bin. Yes, and I think that's systemably,
that's systemably wrong when you talk about the world is in fire. I just
recently pointed out that the NASA satellite studies actually showed that. So we haven't
had satellite will put that links a great pace journal. We're going to put
that link in. Yes, you go to the thank you. So since
two thousand and one, we've had satellites covered the entire world being able to
pick up where is the world and fire where is it not? It used
to be about three percent of the world in the early two thousands was in
fire. The last year in twenty twenty two, it was at two point
two percent. It's never been that low. Now this doesn't mean that obviously
the two point two percent of the world that did burn, that's terrible for
those places. But it's still much much better than three percent burning. And
we need to recognize that why this is happening mostly because people actually don't like
fire, and so we take active measures to make sure that it doesn't burn.
This is smart. Sometimes it's a dumb lake in California if you don't
actually make put script of fire as you've build up of fuels, and there
are lots of you know, bad political arguments and bad so called solutions to
this, but the fundamental point is to recogn this is not a world that's
getting worse and worse or spinning out of control. This is a world where
mostly where lived longer, we're better and better health than we have many many
different benefits. And when you're talking about these things, for instance, on
fire, you need to look at the global stated. Just like when you
look at how many people die from climate related to disasters like bloodstrout storms and
wildifius, turns out that one hundred years ago, about half a million people
died each year. Last decade, about ten thousand people died each year.
We've seen a reduction of ninety eight percent. Again because when you're rich,
you're more resilient. So okay, I know Steve wants to get into this
before, and I used have one more because I always ask myself, you
know, whenever I'm confronted with almost any question like what would Thomas Soul say?
I feel like that's good. And the one mess one phrase that that
Soul uses all the time, and it's it's in my life. I can't
get rid of it. It's there are no solutions, There are only tradeoffs.
The solution to emissions, people think are electric cars which run on batteries
which use cobalt, and cobalt is now dug in Africa by children their fingers.
It's a it's I mean to say, Dickensian is not even approaching the
misery of the the child labor happening to dig cobalt out of the earth.
And you know, in a phone battery it's a tiny amount of cobalt.
In an EV battery, it's a huge amount of cobalt. More evy batteries
means more misery off screen, we don't have to see it. We can
still drive around on our fancy EV cars and that is a tradeoff. But
people don't ever think of the tradeoffs. So your argument is, well,
you know, let's let's let's do what we can around the edges, make
life better for more people in the most efficient way, and and like we'll
tackle climate change. So if I'm talking to a climate change activists, I
say, well, I just supposed to be on lumboard at we'll get to
that. In like, I think I think the argument is more hopeful than
that. So, first of all, we're rich and smart civilization. As
as I mentioned, we can walk, can chew gum, we can actually
both be working smartly on climate. But instead of maybe spending one point two
trillion dollars as we're spending right now mostly in buying solar panels and UH and
wind turbines that are not terribly effective, we should be spending much less money
but much smarter on green energy R and B. So fundamentally, if we
can make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels, we can make everyone switch,
not just rich, well meaning Americans and Europeans, but also the rest of
the world, which of course is China, Indian Africa, which is going
to be the vast amount of emissions in the twenty first century. So that's
the way you go. You know, they're constant arguments that maybe we've cracked
fusion. I would still hold off on buying the stocks yet, but you
know, but if we can actually make that happen, we're fine. We
have plenty of energy for the entiret civilization at very little or no environmental impact.
That's how you solve problems. That's how the US became the biggest reduction
in certainly over the last decade in greenhouse gas emissions, not because of Obama
or Trump, but because you had fracking, and fracking basically meant that gas
became much cheaper than coal. So you switched a lot of your especially electrician
production, from coal to gas. And since gas emits about half as too
much too two for energy unit, you reduced your emissions dramatically, not because
that was the main point, but simply because green innovation made it cheaper.
But at the same time, we can also and you you mentioned tink around
the edges. I actually think this is a little more. So just give
you the blunt, sort of basic bottom line of the book. The best
things first, the twelve amazing things the world can do. We estimate the
total cost of all these twelve things. There's about thirty five billion dollars a
year. Admittedly I don't have that. I don't think any of you have
that amount of money. But yeah, Steve's got it. In the big
scheme of things, this really is couch change right for the world. Thirty
five billion dollars a year could save and this is the astounding thing, It
could save four point two million lives each and every year. That's not tinkering
at the edges. That's you know, sort of every seventh stath and the
poorer part of the world that we could avoid. And it can make the
poorer part of the world. So the four billion people in the world,
it can make them one point one trillion dollars richer each a year. That's
almost one dollar per person per day. For the four billion fourth people in
the world, we could basically spend thirty five billion dollars and do on average
about fifty two dollars worth of good with that for every dollar spend. That's
just astounding. So we should certainly be addressing climate change, but do it
smartly, and that leaves tons of money to actually do all these other things
that for most people I'm much more important, I would argue, certainly morally
is also an important thing to do. So instead of telling you your environmental
friend, you know, no, no, we'll get to climate change in
thirty years, it's saying, let's fix climate change smartly, but let's make
sure it doesn't soa got so much of the oxygen that we don't also address
many other issues that are actually much more important. So born it's Steve Hayward
out in California. Great les see you again. I forgot to wear my
black biorn lawnborg T shirt blue color blind. The last time we were together,
I addressed listeners just like beyond to look like, except I don't have
the h I want to continue in this climate thing for just a moment.
I mean, of course, we weigh shocking amount some money. We're going
to spend four hundred billion dollars on green energy in the US. That's more
than ten years of your budget for making the world a better place, right
and get very little for it. On the other hand, I wonder if
we're not and of course climate hysterius, you know, ratchet it all the
way up to eleven and beyond. I wonder if we might not be at
a turning point right now, happening in real time in front of us.
But what I mean by that is, you know, the UN, the
head of the UN, said we now live at a time of global boiling.
But then, and I bet you caught this, the new head of
the IPCC, the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, he said, when
he was a week or two ago, said you know, we need to
cool it with the climate panic. Cool it. By the way, the
title of one of your books a few years back, taking your advice.
And then the other thing I notice is all around the developed world governments are
trying to gracefully back away from some of their net zero by twenty fifty commendments.
It's happening all over Europe. Both parties in Britain are trying to back
away from it gracefully. And then the other thing I notice is, you
know France last week, France for a while said we're going to move to
wind and solar as our nuclear power plants age out. Well they just announced
no, actually we're going to do a whole new generation nuclear plants handed up.
Just yesterday announced that they may restart a power plant they closed down ten
years ago. And here in the US we finally turned on our first significant
nuclear power plant, first one in forty years. I'm starting to think that
realism is finally overtaking the rhetoric. And I don't know what's your sense of
things. Are you optimistic that with all the foolishness we have to put up
with, that reality is finally starting to gain the upper hand. So I'll
say this much, Steve, You're absolutely right that when governments are faced with
the realization that this is going to cost literally trillions of dollars. Remember,
a net zero by twenty fifty is going to cost the world at least five
point six trillion dollars each and every year. So that's more than five percent
of global GDP. That's more than what we spend on education. It's more
than what we spend on most things in the world. And remember, you
know, it assumes that India would spend nine percent of its GDP. It
assumes that the world would spend about a third of its global tax and take.
And this is in the most optimistic case that's never going to happen.
So fundamentally, you're right to say this is not going to happen. I
worry though, that the sentiment still seems to be all right. So we're
not actually going to achieve what we promised, but we are going to try
to spend as much money as we possibly can get away with within the green
conversation. Uh and and and again, you know, from an efficiency point
of view, and certainly recognizing that there are no solutions that are only trade
offs, we really need to understand that if we spend a truckload of money
on green and especially if we do it as way we done right now,
which delivers fairly little at very high cost. We're basically throwing away an opportunity
to do so much more good and also be more efficient with the money that
we should be spending on climate. So my worries, yes, there's you
know, things are not quite as bad as they could have been. But
I think if you ask most people, they think, when they see this
constantly on the news, here's another fire, here's another flood, here are
more heat waves, We're all going to be killed, We're all going to
be doomed. We need to spend as much money as is necessary. Oh
wait, actually I don't want to spend all that much, but spend almost
all of it. That's not a good sign of anything. And of course
what we really forget. I was just this morning, I was on one
of the Indian CHET twenty meetings in Mumbai virtually, and you know, they
care a lot more about all these other things that we just talked about.
But because you know, if you're not as rich, you have other and
more significant priorities. So I think we need to recognize we're not going to
get most of the world on board with our sort of very elaborate and very
expensive policy. We need to spend smarter and cheaper, but we're not there.
So I would argue there's two parts. One is the climate bit,
where you start getting people to realize you think this is the end. We've
heard a lot about heat waves, and absolutely it is to be expected.
As temperatures rise because of global warming, we will see more heat waves and
those will be more deadly unless we make sure that people can actually afford to
have air conditioning and turn on the power when they need so. Remember in
the FEEDIX the Financial Times that study in this and pointed out that there are
a lot of people dying from up with four hundred people dying in FEEDIX from
from heat. Most of these people were homeless, many of them, most
of them were drug addicts. It's unclear to what it's there was a strong
or small open lap on those None of them died if they had access and
could afford to turn on their air conditioning, because you don't die from these
things. Similarly, of course, you need to recognize that many more people
around the world, both rich and poor countries, many more people die from
cold. So about nine times as many people die in cold globally in India
it's still seven times as many. We have this idea that heat is really
dangerous. Yes, you should certainly take care in the heat, but cold
globally much much more dangerous. And again you need this cheap energy. So
we should make people aware this is not the end. There are problems,
there are also benefits because we actually see less cold waves and that means a
lot fewer people actually die from cold. This should be welcomed and we should
be celebrating that. And at the same time, of course, we need
to remember for the four billion pours, there are many other issues. And
what I'm trying to do with the with the book is really try to get
people enthusiastic about Look, it's not just that there are a lot of problems.
There are a lot of really really cheap solutions. There are things that
we can do that cost compared to most of the things we're talking about,
pittance and would do an amazing amount of good. I would love to see
us not just you know, wallering and in the world is ending kind of
thing, but actually saying there are a lot of things we can do,
and not just for climate. You know, you're right, You're right,
but there is there's there's an attitude amongst the misanthropist, small enthusian element that
regards humanity as a virus, as a plague, as as an imposition on
this earth, an unnatural imposition that the more we have of people, the
worst off the world is going to be. And that's why when you talk
about things like nuclear power, and I'm sure you've seen the stories this week
about nuclear fusion right at a little bit more hint, you know, it's
always the greatest power source that's not quite there yet, but they're getting closer.
And there's the sense that if we unlock a key and we have unlimited
cheap energy, too cheap to meter, that there has become this sort of
moral halo that surrounds the idea of reducing consumption and reducing it and reducing all
the things that we do, that it's almost detached from the actual perils that
we may follow. That that there's this moral construct that is, even if
you had the cheapest power in the world, that they still would say we
shouldn't consume that we are that we that and and that's the difficult idea that's
taken seems to have taken written the culture that needs to be dislodged, written
branch says me. But but I think it's taking root for a very long
time. And I love this expression that I didn't come up with it,
so I can say that. But you know, it seems always to be
that when people say there are too many people, it's you know, just
enough of me, too many of you, Right, that's that's really good
with this conversation, and and and and you know that that that I think
is really hard to defend morally for most people when you push them on it.
And of course it also has absolutely no purchase for most part of the
world. They're not going to say, oh, yeah, I'm sorry,
I have too many kids. And of course, remember one of the things
that happened when you actually start saving people is that you get fewer kids,
you get fewer more people. Were not in a situation where this is a
runaway sort of the world is it's going to be hugely overpopulated. Probably most
parts of the world is going to be worried about us being too old and
having too few kids towards the end of the century. But the second part
the idea of worrying about well, maybe it's maybe it's good that we don't
have all that much. We should start talking talking about d growth and all
those kinds of things. Again, first of all, I think it's worth
pointing out this is just no purchase for most people. Uh, you know,
certainly not in the poorer part of the world, but really not in
the rich part of the world either. It's it's a few academics who,
funnily enough, you know, fly into conferences in nice places and talk about
how everyone else needs to degrow. But but but I think fundamentally what we
have to recognize is that we saw the very same thing back in nineteen eighty
nine. I don't know if you remember, there was a brief out of
where everybody believed there might be cold fusion. It was called back then,
uh, and so Los Angeles reporter called the environmentalists and said, let's assume
that this is actually true. It turned out not to be true. Let's
assume that this is clean. What do you think? And they were all
against it. Yeah, this is back in eighty nine. They were like,
oh, that's you know. The argument is, but a green bulldozer
can can fell trees just as well as a as a as a dirty one,
and you know, it's like Paula Erlick was, it was like giving
an idiot child a machine gun. Uh yeah. And what that tells you
is that, yes, these people are going to object no matter what,
and some sense that seems to indicate that this is something entirely different. It
is the world where they want to focus a lot more on having enough and
you know, finding out what's the meaning of life with yourself and not having
a lot of extra stuff with it and stuff like that. That's great.
Hey, I'm happy if they want that, but they're not going to foster
on the rest of us, and I don't think most people are going to
allow them. So again, my argument is it's much much better to keep
this on a positive point, to say, look, there's a real problem.
We go a before, and it's not really as bad as what you're
telling us, but it is a problem and we should try and fix it.
But we should fix it smartly instead of stupidly as we've done for the
last thirty years, which is basically wasting trillions of dollars and achieving almost nothing.
But that doesn't mean that there's not a lot of other issues as well,
like kids not being educated well enough, like these all these diseases.
Increasingly, we're also looking at chronic diseases. For instance. Remember most people
die not from infectious diseason or climate, but from from heart disease or cardiovascal
disease and cancer. It turns out the cancer is pretty expensive. Tod with
heart disease is incredibly cheap. It's basically about getting people hypertension drugs. We
know this. It works well in the rich world. That's why we dramatically
reduced the cost of of of high potension and the deaths from hypertension. We're
estimating that we could do the same in the poorer part of the world.
We could say one and a half million people, mostly older people, so
we would save them on an average about five or six years. But that's
still incredibly good. That's really worthwhile. And what we find is, yes,
this you know, there's a lot of chronic disease. It will cost
about four point four billion people dollars a year, but it would say one
point five million people from from dying from chronic diseason. There are a lot
of these smart things. Let's emphasize those amazing smart a solution. So hey,
I'm now referring to this week and last week, we had Mary and
two beyond last week who wrote a book called Superabundance, And so this week
and last week, I mean, these are obviously very different books, but
they are kind of positive. I mean, this is sort of good new
good news two weeks we've had, right. I mean, all the other
news I don't know if you've noticed, is really really lousy, but you
guys seem to be giving us good news. I guess what I would say
is that I'm looking at all the things that you say are kind of wrong
that would be easy to fix or not easy to fix, but could we
could fix sooner? Yeah, and we don't do it. And so part
of me is optimistic because it seems like you've set up very concrete problems that
have very concrete solutions that are actually kind of well within our wallet, and
we don't do it. So my question is, are you optimistic about possibility
but pessimistic about what might happen? Are you optimistic about both things? Because
it's very easy for me to read your book and say, man, here's
what we ought to do, and then realize that we're never going to do
it. Are we never going to do it? When did we When did
it work? When did this kind of thing work? So two things,
I think. First of all, there's all all of the things that we
look at are well proven things that you can do. And again, we're
not assuming that people will be magically phenomenal at doing this. We're assuming that
people will be incompetent and they will be corrupt just like they normally are.
And even then with all the you know, yes, some of these iPads
are going to get stolen, some of these teachers want you some right,
some of the kids are not going to actually pay attention. All that stuff
that's all included in the estimates of what we find is such an amazing opportunity.
So these are these are proven things that we know we can do.
And look, they've happened in a lot of places. So, uh,
we're working with Malawi, one of course countries in the world. They're actually
rolling out iPads to all of their primary students across the country right now.
So these things are happening. We're just trying to push push this uh a
little further. U is all of it going to happen? I think that's
that's your real question. I would love to be able to say yes,
the true answer, of course, is no. What we're trying to do,
we have saying in my organization is uh, it's not about getting right,
although I would love that's about getting it slightly less wrong right. We're
trying to move the world a little bit towards being smarter about this. I
actually find that a lot of people pick up on this and say, yes,
these are the kind of very pragmatic, very simple things that we can
all agree on. I think that's also an important part. I mean,
as you just be a little bit of a shrink and we gotta let you
go. But why do we as a culture and maybe as a people,
why are we always gravitating towards the the armageddon, towards the the end time
scenario, towards the giant disaster rather than and I have my own theory,
right, which is that it's much easier, in a weird way, to
think about this huge tidal way of the misery that's going to hit us than
it is to say, well, actually, you know, if you roll
up your sleeves here and you do this, this and this and this,
I mean, it's harder work to do what you're talking about than it is
for me to sit and complain and to march and yeah, sort wrap up
question from Bob rob along there, which is like hours of discussions. So
yeah, I mean, I'm not going to be able to tell you the
shrink answer, but I think that it just simply has a lot more sort
of commercial appeal. It has more, much more interest appeal to talk about
all this stuff that bad. That's why you constantly see this. This is
just clickable in a totally different way than positive news is. Just to give
you one example, there's a study where you gave people a pile of good
news and a pile of bad news, and you ask people beforehand which one
do you want to read, and everybody said the positive news, and then
of course, in actual facts, we all end up reading the bad news
because it's more fun. So the truth is, yes, we have the
terrible sort of negativity bias. One of the things that I think is totally
overlooked and really is the argument that we need to emphasize us. If you
look up the last twenty five years, each and every day, the world
has lifted one hundred and thirty eight thousand people out of Polly. Each and
every day of the last twenty five years. Every newspaper in the world could
have had this in their front page every day for twenty five years, last
twenty four hours, one hundred and thirties eight thousand people who are lifted out
of poverty. You never heard it because it just happened every day. And
so that says we need some time to sort of take a step back and
realize, yes, there are lots of problem but fundamentally we are actually civilization
that solves more problems than we create. That doesn't mean we shouldn't fix climate
change. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do all these great things that you've never
heard of, you know, with moms and kids dying, uh, and
something we can do something about incredibly cheaply. But we should take our time
to not just wallow in the self pity and this terribleness and actually say we
can make an incredible change. That's what you know. Best things first is
about I man, grant, I know we got to run, but do
you think that psychologically we need to make our peace and embrace prosperity because the
prosperous nations love to complain about it. When you tell progressive to make people
in Africa are are are being lifted out of poverty, They're not, or
India especially thrill about that as they should be, right, I don't know.
I'm not going to bet against human nature. I just somebody think it
is what it is. But what we need to do is to tell people,
look, every once in a while, I'm glad you had to be
on last week. Every once in a while, let's take a step back,
realize things actually going much better, and then say, all right,
this doesn't mean I'm not tomorrow. I'm still going to consume a lot of
bad news, but at least I should recognize that there are some very concrete
things that I can do if I'm smart about it. If I'm just going
to wallow in this self pity, I'm gonna do dumb things. Why don't
I do a little less dumb things and a little more smart things. So
fix climate changed effectively by focusing on R and D, greening on R and
D, and then fix on these twelve simple, smart things that would make
the world amazingly much better. That's the problem, simple and smart. Because
we like to wallow in grand visions of apocalyptic nonsense, because we're bored.
We're bored, and we're comfortable, and we fear somehow that we are deserving
come up and say it. We'll come in the form of these things.
And you're right about the sensational news that people will choose. But it used
to be the sensational news that people read was man bites dog Now the news
is dog bites are up global warming climate change to blame experts suggest, I
mean, so it's a new religious doctrine into which they can plug all these
things. Best things first, though, is what we best consider, and
that's Bjorn Lornberg's latest book, The Twelve Most Efficient Solutions for the World's Poorest
and our Global Sustainable Development Goals promise. Oh oh, here's the problem.
How do the answer Rob's everybody else? How do we get them to go
along with it? We tell the people who are doing these programs, Look,
these are gonna have noticeable effects. These are gonna be really effective,
and they may actually solve some problems for good. But don't worry. You
guys will all still have your jobs. I think once they're assured that even
after we solve problems, they'll have their jobs, they'll be on board because
as long as they're still problems. The money flows as always a great pleasure.
We learn so much and there's so much more we can talk about.
So we will have you back as soon as possible. Thank you, Thank
you for rapping up. Good news, August. Yes, that's what it's
been. Good news, August. Gentlemen. Interesting thing here in terms of
energy consumption and and the like. Rob right now, he's trying to figure
out if I'm going to a commercial. I'm not. I kind of am.
I'm searching through the rundown. See what the hell is. It's probably
a dynamic insert, as we call it in the business. Now I am
on that. She said. That's what she said. Battery good thing.
Peter wasn't here. He blushed so hard. He's fun. Peter can stay
out for a while. We have some jokes. It'll be good news working
Blue, August, oh man, if this if this room worked, Blue,
who you have no idea? I know, I know I'm on battery
part, which is interesting, and I can't get any of my chords to
work here. I lost Wi Fi before having all these technological situations. So
I'm looking at a countdown ticker here that says I'm going to be out of
business shortly. The good thing is I got new time enough here for rob
A to tell you about the necessity of meeting up in person, in the
flesh with the Ricochet people. Yeah, you're going to be as blue as
you want, and then also to discuss the other issue of the day,
which we'll get to, he said, promoting it in a second. So
I do have to say to reworking Blue if you do go to one of
the Ricochet meetups, they are fun and you know, there's as you know,
we have a very strict dress code for comments and posts on Ricochet.
We try to keep it clean, and that's what that's kind of what we
try to do with Ricochet. You know, you you join Ricochet and be
a member, and you know that you're going to have a good civil debate
or conversation or even civil small talk either way. But when you get together
in real life irl with members and you have a couple of cocktails, it
gets salty and it's a lot of fun. And I don't think I don't
think it got any saltier than it did when we were in New Orleans.
But that seems that's the place when in Rome, right, So if you
love Ricochet, and please go and check us out and see if they want
to go to a meet up. If you are listening to this podcast you
think what is all this Ricochet stuff, go to ricochet dot com. We
would love to have you join our club. The reason we want you to
have you join is because we keep it civil. And I say this all
the time, or I used to say it all the time, but it
bears repeating that if you pay a little money and very little money every month
to join the club, you have skin in the game. And that's one
of the ways we keep the conversation civil, interesting, lively, and fun.
To join, and you get you get such great stuff. I don't
know if you saw in them. The member feed is not just a bunch
of people to be, you know, conventioning about this or that. Jenna
s wrote just a great piece about American graffiti and American culture and the rest
of the time, whether or not we're still capable, et cetera, et
cetera. It's it's something that I've read in various forms over the years.
But she is, she's a member, she's a mom, she works a
job, she doesn't make her living putting words together but she's like better at
the eighties seven ninety four percent of the pig that you do embarrassingly, yes,
which which I just love. And you can find these people on Ricochet
anyway, going ahead, R yeah, so yeah, absolutely. And also
when when things happen in uh, in the world, I mean, you
know, there's a whole bunch of very very smart military members who are giving
us info when things happen in construction. Whenever thing has happened, there's members
of Ricochet kind of joining the conversation there. But that's online. We also
meet in person, I RL. If you want to meet up with us,
we would like to meet up with you, so please join Ricochet.
The next meetup, well, the next scheduled meetup that I knew about was
in Cookville, Tennessee, Labor Day weekends there one to four. Go to
rickchet dot com, go to member feed and check that out. We'd love
to see there. But this just popped up, which is August twenty eighth
in Montgomery, Alabama. Paul Ray, who is a long time rick Strut
contributor. Wonderful guy, brilliant guy uh and kind of a weird rye sense
of humor, character, very kind of sly like very funny guys, also
brilliant, like you know, a brilliant presidential story and brilliant American historian and
constitutional scholar. He's giving a lecture at the Air War College in Montgomery on
August twenty eight, and so some members are thinking of a meeting up before
or after Paul Race lecture. If they are the Rick Schet members that I
know and love, they will be beating up before and after, and so
if you like to join, join them. And Montgomery, by the way,
if you have been, has a couple amazing things to see. Uh,
if you're a Hank Williams fan, that's his birthplace and there's a beautiful
statue of him sort of in the center town and a museum for his him,
and there's also the uh it's and this is I'm I'm mispronouncing it.
I'm not calling it what it is. It's the National Memorial for Peace and
Justice, which sounds very vague, but that's it's really, it's really the
Lynching Museum, and it's it's moving, but it's incredibly fascinating. It's beautiful,
and it's kind of very sobering but not it's exactly how America really should
be acknowledging the past in a way that isn't an accusatory and scream me and
yelling, and you know, marching the streets sober, thoughtful and beautiful,
physically beautiful. And Montgomery is a beautiful town and it's really worth visiting.
So I would mean I would go for Paul right, I'd go for Paul
Ray, stay for Hank Williams, and for the Ricochet meet up. And
that's August twenty eight, and those are the meetups we have for till the
end of the summer, and they'll be more in the autumn. If these
appeal to you, please show up and join and say hi if they if
the idea feels for you. But that's the wrong time, the wrong place.
Here's what you do. You join Ricochet, You post something out the
member of you say hey how about here and and then and people will show
up because Ricochet members will show up. Oh yeah, it's like adding water
to see monkey powder. They just need go, you know exactly. We're
going back and forth on Slack a little bit about the apocalypse thing here,
and Stephen said we're hardwired for apocalypse and Perry, who's behind the boards was
saying, apocalypse makes us feel instantly interesting and leaves responsibility win win. That's
true. We we do love this and it brought to mind, I mean
hardwired for it could be just being chased by saber tooth tigers and Willy mammliss
and the rest of it, and just right thinking that's the end of the
world. It's built into us. But I saw Oppenheimer and I'm not gonna
give you review, so it's it's a it's a good, solid, impressive
piece of cinema. I think the fifth hour drags a little, but the
people man and Api and he was a communist, he was he was a
comm Sorry, but it's it's it's what I think. I was one of
the few people in the movie theater. And I don't say this to buff
myself up, but you probably agree. It's like, yes, Edward Teller,
it's good old sweaty edge. But at the end of it, we're
supposed to walk out of that movie feeling horrible and feeling miserable and all the
rest of it. But the apocalypse that it prefigures is not with us yet.
It's not off the table. But I did not come out of that
movie feeling incredibly depressed because the end scenes are imaginary, and we used that
thing and it brought a conflict to a close fairly quickly. So the debate
about it has been interesting. Subsequently, they're on Twitter. A lot of
people were complaining that for a movie about that, it centered the white men
and there was absolutely nothing about the Japanese people, who the people, you
know, the people who who became apparently a put upon ethnic minority in the
context of the Oppenheimer movie. There's story if I can interrupt James there.
The last complaint yesterday in Nature magazine is not enough of the women men who
worked at Los Alamos are depicted in the film, So you know we're getting
we're getting the whole spectrum. Okay, yeah, all right, well good,
so I brought that up. Only I guess that this is going to
stand as a fascinating rob you can get into this here because you're a writer
and you guys are in strike, right, is that this is going to
stand as an interesting summer with two cultural bookends, the likes of which I
don't think we've seen it. Which the culture actually the over culture of the
pop culture. Everybody made a point of binding together Barbie and Oppenheimer. There's
no better way to book and the culture. And it's and it's great because
the Barbie movies we talked about last week is not a stupid, vacuous,
vapid movie is if you want it to be, but it isn't. So
this is a really interesting cultural moment that I think is pretty interesting and and
good and salutory. I just don't have the perspective that people will have in
twenty forty three to tell me how it all turned out. So that's my
statement, sticking to it. Don't even know what I said. Rob.
You may nor what I said and go on something completely different, or restate
my point and make it as your own. No I will. I would
like to do the last the ladder U. I would just say that they
you know, I'm you know, everybody's wondering about media. What happens,
what happens? What happens? What happens is it all gets busted up.
It always is, and then you know, and then the companies, the
big companies kind of you know, they have to break themselves up and get
spot and sold and to be some corporate sharks coming in M and A.
But what happens is not going to change the business. People like movies,
and I like TV shows. They want to laugh, they want to enjoy,
they want to get They like stories. Right, So everybody who writes
stories or acts and stories is gonna be fine. The people who are investing
in these companies are probably not going to be as fine, which is okay.
That's called capitalism. That's perfectly legitimate. I would just say, if
I were giving advice to studio heads and media investors, which I attempt to
do all the time, and they never listen because they're stupid, they should
listen to me, I would just ask them to cast their minds back the
Summer's path. Now, I'm sure Barney is a great movie, and I'm
sure Openheim is a great movie. I can't probably, but in the Summer's
past, I mean, I write comedy, so I focus on that.
I remember two or three or four or ten comedies coming out one every weekend
Loud Noisy, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, John Canny, John Canty.
Yeah, that was like really well, but like you know, Will Ferrell,
Anchorman. I mean, the summer had these big, fat, funny
comedies and they you would go and you'd lap and they were crazy. I
remember seeing Anchorman and thinking this is this, well, this doesn't make any
sense, and it was hilarious. I remember seeing Zoolander in a crowded theater
and there's this ridiculous these models, these male models are like dancing around a
gas station having a water fight with gasoline. It's so crazy and it's hilarious.
And where's that comedy? Where are those you're sitting in Hollywood? Yeah,
if you're either for comedy. Yeah, Well, although I think you
guys haven't seen either movie yet? Is that? Am I correct in that
I have? I've seen them both. Okay, well i've seen them both
too, James So, and I think that I think a lot of Barbie's
got some really funny stuff in it. Now it's not passed as a comedy,
it's it's a whole lot of things. I do think that a lot
of people on our team have overreacted to Barbie in the way the patriarchy is
overdone, in the same way that the left can't get Blazing Saddles, right,
I think they can't get it today. Back then, back then,
when I went there as a liberal kid in high school, I thought it
was the funniest thing I've ever seen because it freed a liberal approach to culture
and humor and everything else, freed us all from the old strictures of racism
and the rest of it, and we could enjoy it for what it was,
for all the times it had poked a thumb right in the front.
But now produce it down to identity politics, it's completely forbidden. Yeah,
well I think, I mean it's longo is body change the whole thing.
I mean, I thought the whole patriarchy business in Barbie was so over the
top that you had to realize it was mostly satire and couldn't take it seriously.
But on Oppenheimer, so a quick story. I was at the Reagan
Library for a long conference about Reagan last weekend, and one of the panels
was about the day after remember that thing on ABC? You know, right,
you know that that had like, you know, super Bowl level of
viewership. Oh my god, it was a big political problem. And boy,
if you see it today, you can find clips on YouTube. It's
really clunky. I think Oppenheimer was less apocalyptic. I mean, yeah,
it's implied here it has to be with nuclear weapons, I think, James,
but it's a little more open ended. And that brings me back to
just one point about the apocalypse, and I'll shut up. Which is the
problem with the modern and I'll put it this way secular apocalypse is they lack
the hope you have in the end times of any major religion, right,
the apocalypse in the Bible and another faiths is always hopeful, it's going to
be the redemption of the earth and the redemption of humanity. The environmental apocalypse
from the beginning has always been hopeless. Uh. And you know that's why
I think it ultimately doesn't work. They don't offer any kind of redemption or
hopefully the redemption comes from saving the earth. The redemption comes in becoming selfless
christ like figures who are willing to expire so that an undistribed, verdant paradise
can spread and and and and sustain. And that's why sustainability is again.
Sustainability is the version of being saved, is the version of entering grace.
It has all the same terms, it has all the same satisfactions, but
it has none of the transcendent human moral emotional qualities that we ascribed with the
great religions. It's just it's paganism with the with the with the self hatred
of humanity, build baked right into it. And I say, it's spinach
into hell with it. I would just like to the one of the one
of the most important or meaningful books to me that I read long, long
time ago is by Paul Fussell, who one of them class and anyone wonderful
book essays called Thank God for the Adam Bomb. And I was looking for
it, and I was trilloking for this one quotation because he talks about people
having second guessing the dropping of the Adam bomb, and he talks about John
Kenneth gall Brith, who at the time was the wartime economist, and he
was persuaded the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion, and
so the A bombs were unnecessary, unjustified because the war was ending anyway.
It meant, you know, at most two or three weeks. Of course,
there was no indication that we're gonna do that at the time. And
of course ALEC casually was running over seven thousand per week, so two or
three weeks is fourteen thousand, and this is this is, this is,
this is one of his big paragraphs that I remember reading when I was I
think twenty or twenty one. Two weeks more means fourteen thousand more killed or
wounded. Three weeks more twenty one thousand. Those weeks mean the world if
you're one of those thousands are related to one of them. During the time
between the dropping of Nagasaki bomb on August nine and the actual surrender on the
fifteenth, the war pursued it a customed course. On the twelfth of August
eight captured American flyers were executed, their heads were chopped off. Fifty first
United the fifty first United States submarine Bonefish was sunk and all the board drowned.
The destroy at Callahan went down the seventieth to be sunk, and the
destroy Escort Underhill was lost. That's a bit of what happened in the six
days of the two or three weeks posited by Gaulberg is what we should have
been waiting. What did he do during the war. He worked in the
Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don't demand that he was experienced,
that he experienced having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn't.
And because Fussle was at that point training on Iwuijima for the invasion of
the mainland. My father was a Navy air flyer operating out of the Philippines
at in July and August of nineteen forty five, and he's a flyer of
the whole war, mostly out of Australia and the other islands. And he
said the last six weeks of air operations were the big losses of the entire
war. Lost almost half a squadron. You know, they had not stop
fighting, right, and we forget all that. Yeah, yeah, No,
my dad was on that ship in the Pacific as well, headed there
to fight. Uh. He was machinist made but a battlestation with manning a
gun on the deck. So yeah, my daughter and I were having this
conversation and she was just I mean, she was not she was just exploring
morality of the whole thing, as one does when one is young, and
I just had to pull you know, the unfair mard. Well, you're
you're here, probably because it happened, ye would, But in a sense
it's not unfair because it's a choice that we all have to make. We
all have to say, would I sacrifice my existence for this? For object
X for historical act X for this thing you know before you know, as
as as the quote that Bjorn had more you know, the problem is me
more of me, but less of you. However, we want more of
you, and we want more of you to go to app will give us
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