Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #18 "we’re addicted to fossil fuels" with Maarten Boudry

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Bad Idea #18 "we’re addicted to fossil fuels" with Maarten Boudry · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

• 0:00
  So fossil fuels are, of course, not evil.
• 0:02
  I mean, the version that I hear most often is slightly more
• 0:06
  moderate or slightly more nuanced is that fossil fuels are
• 0:09
  an addiction. This is something that you hear
• 0:11
  not just from climate activists, but also from very prominent
• 0:14
  politicians, also the secretary general of the UN.
• 0:17
  An addiction like crystal meth or cocaine is harmful to your
• 0:21
  body. This is completely different
• 0:23
  from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are, I think
• 0:26
  without exaggeration, literally the best thing that ever
• 0:29
  happened to human humanity. So of course fossil fuels have
• 0:32
  harmful effects. So in that sense they are
• 0:34
  analogous to to addictions. But unlike cigarettes and
• 0:37
  cocaine and heroin, they have tremendous benefits to humanity,
• 0:40
  which is exactly what makes the problem of fossil fuels such a
• 0:43
  such a moral dilemma. Something very intriguing and
• 0:47
  and paradoxical happened with environmentalism in the past
• 0:50
  century. Environmentalism used to be a
• 0:52
  very conservative phenomenon. I mean, you had aristocrats that
• 0:56
  were worrying about their their own lands.
• 0:59
  They were the ones that were complaining about The Dirty
• 1:02
  chimneys of coal factories and industrialization, etcetera.
• 1:06
  And then something very strange happens around the 60s or 70s
• 1:10
  where environmentalism as a movement almost completely
• 1:13
  switched political sites. So now you have progressive
• 1:18
  people, people who used to be opposed to environmentalism
• 1:21
  because they believed that it was a distraction from real life
• 1:24
  issues, from the social struggle, etcetera.
• 1:28
  Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
• 1:31
  I'm Mark Linus and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
• 1:34
  I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops and I
• 1:37
  also posed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
• 1:40
  science I found I got it wrong. Oops.
• 1:42
  I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
• 1:44
  time. So now I'm here to challenge the
• 1:46
  assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
• 1:49
  the future depends on us getting it right.
• 1:52
  Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
• 1:54
  Today's guest is a thinker known for challenging the orthodoxies
• 1:58
  of mainstream environmentalism, which is something I always
• 2:01
  enjoy as well. We're talking to Martin Boudre,
• 2:03
  if I said it right, who's a philosopher of science at
• 2:06
  Hergens University and a prolific author with a new book,
• 2:09
  which is currently only in Dutch, although I'd love to get
• 2:13
  a version done in English. Yeah, if you can do sort the
• 2:16
  smartphone because it's called the Betrayal of the
• 2:17
  Enlightenment and it's, well, you can tell us what it's about.
• 2:20
  But from what I've seen on your sub stack, it's, it's got some
• 2:23
  of the themes that I'm very interested in about reason,
• 2:26
  science, progress, that kind of stuff.
• 2:29
  We thought, we thought for you for a bad idea that you're
• 2:31
  saving the world from. How about fossil fuels are evil?
• 2:34
  Everyone thinks fossil fuels are evil.
• 2:35
  There was a great piece in the Guardian, I think it was two or
• 2:37
  three days ago by one of these UN special rapporteurs saying
• 2:41
  that, you know, fossil fuels are basically an abuse on the human
• 2:46
  rights of all the world's developing people.
• 2:49
  So I can imagine you'll find that kind of kind of triggering.
• 2:52
  Wow. Yeah, that's an even more
• 2:54
  extreme version of the yeah of the bad idea that we're going to
• 2:58
  tackle. Yeah, but it's it's out there.
• 3:00
  And as a climate person myself, I've long existed within the
• 3:04
  narrative that, you know, fossil fuel companies are the basically
• 3:08
  the root of much of the evil that's going on.
• 3:10
  They're funding denialism. They're the ones who are keeping
• 3:13
  us hooked on this addiction of fossil fuels.
• 3:15
  And we could very easily move to 100% clean energy.
• 3:18
  So like, give us give us a quick download on that.
• 3:21
  And and then we'll talk about some of the broader themes that
• 3:23
  you cover in your new book as well.
• 3:25
  Yeah, So fossil fuels are of course not evil.
• 3:29
  I mean, people don't mean it literally.
• 3:30
  Obviously. It's just a organic matter.
• 3:33
  It's it's it's it used to be animate.
• 3:34
  It's inanimate now. So it's doesn't it doesn't hurt
• 3:37
  anyone. It's just sitting under the
• 3:38
  ground. The the version of the of the
• 3:41
  bad idea that I that I hear most often is slightly more moderate
• 3:46
  or slightly more nuanced is that fossil fuels are an addiction.
• 3:50
  I think you already mentioned it.
• 3:52
  This is something that you hear not just from climate activists,
• 3:55
  but also from very prominent politicians.
• 3:58
  Also, the secretary general of the UN tweeted recently that our
• 4:04
  addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink.
• 4:07
  I mean, he obviously loves these kind of catastrophic narratives.
• 4:12
  I even found it in prestigious journals like like Nature and
• 4:15
  Science. So this is just not, not just a,
• 4:17
  a fringe ID. And I must say I've probably
• 4:21
  been guilty of that myself. I think if you, if you track
• 4:24
  down everything that I wrote in the in the past couple of years,
• 4:28
  I mean, I've been writing about the climate change for, for a
• 4:30
  number of years now. I think I wouldn't be surprised
• 4:32
  that at some point I have used the metaphor myself that the
• 4:35
  metaphor of fossil fuels being an addiction.
• 4:37
  And I think a couple of years ago, I had a sort of awakening,
• 4:42
  a hot or leapness where I suddenly realized, hang on.
• 4:45
  I mean, an addiction like nicotine or cigarettes or
• 4:49
  crystal meth or cocaine is harmful to your body.
• 4:53
  I mean, it's providing you a short term pleasure, of course,
• 4:55
  but in, in, in the long run, it's it's, it's only ravaging to
• 4:57
  your body. So of course it's something they
• 4:58
  have to get rid of. This is completely different
• 5:01
  from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are, I think
• 5:04
  without exaggeration, literally the best thing that ever
• 5:07
  happened to humanity. I think it's not a coincidence
• 5:10
  that in tandem with the Industrial revolution, we we saw
• 5:16
  this precipitous decline in in child mortality and an extreme
• 5:19
  poverty. So of course fossil fuels have
• 5:22
  harmful effects. So in that sense they are
• 5:24
  analogous to to addictions. But unlike cigarettes and
• 5:27
  cocaine and heroin, they have tremendous benefits to humanity,
• 5:31
  which is exactly what makes the the problem of fossil fuels such
• 5:34
  a moral dilemma. So I think this this, this
• 5:37
  notion that fossil fuels only have negative effects.
• 5:40
  I mean, you can call them an addiction or I mean, to push it
• 5:42
  even to its extreme, call them evil.
• 5:45
  Although fossil fuel companies are mostly portrayed as evil.
• 5:48
  But that I think is at the root of of many problems and also of
• 5:53
  at the root of what I call green colonialism, which we're
• 5:55
  probably going to talk about in a minute.
• 5:57
  I. Mean there's there's a lot of
• 5:58
  analogies that are used out there which are all all have
• 6:01
  this kind of very heavy moral symbolism.
• 6:05
  You know that there's a fossil fuel non proliferation treaty,
• 6:08
  which obviously is analogous then to fossil fuels like
• 6:11
  nuclear weapons. Another thing you you really
• 6:13
  don't need or even fossil fuels as as comparable to slavery.
• 6:18
  There's talk of prosecutions for crime against crimes against
• 6:22
  humanity for fossil fuel, you know, executives and yet they're
• 6:26
  producing a product which we all consume every day when we fill
• 6:29
  our cars, get on a plane in my case, and where human
• 6:34
  civilization has been built on the foundation of fossil fuels.
• 6:37
  And indeed, if there is to be further development in the
• 6:41
  global South, fossil fuels are still going to have to play some
• 6:45
  role in that, hopefully a diminishing one, but still some
• 6:47
  role. And I think the the Ledger is
• 6:51
  always very one sided. And, and you'll see this in
• 6:53
  pretty much everything that's written about climate.
• 6:55
  It's like there's this bad thing happening and it's causing
• 6:58
  climate change and we need to stop doing a bad thing.
• 7:00
  But actually there's, as you say, there's a lot of, I mean,
• 7:04
  just about everything from fossil fuels is absolutely
• 7:07
  critical to all aspects of modern life.
• 7:10
  Now that, that I think about it, there's actually there's two
• 7:13
  things going on here. There's the moral dimension,
• 7:17
  which is very prominent in the idea of fossil fuels as as a,
• 7:20
  as, as a proliferation issue, or the idea that fossil fuel
• 7:24
  companies or executives should be held accountable for human
• 7:28
  rights violations or, but there's also the idea that is.
• 7:32
  And so, so that's, that's, that's the one thing.
• 7:34
  But then the other element is just that fossil fuels are
• 7:36
  uniformly negative. And I'm also thinking now of an
• 7:39
  another example of this. And I wrote a piece about this,
• 7:42
  I think two years ago when the, when the movie came out.
• 7:44
  Don't look up. Famously, the metaphor or the
• 7:49
  allegory of fossil fuels in in this movie is represented by a
• 7:53
  comet that is hurting towards the earth and that that is on
• 7:56
  the on the verge of just wiping out humanity and all life on on
• 8:01
  our planet. Of course, it's a comet.
• 8:03
  It's an inanimate object. So that's not that doesn't
• 8:05
  really have a moral dimension. I mean, the moral dimension is
• 8:07
  also present in the film because of course there's also these
• 8:09
  greedy except, you know, CEOs of big companies that want to
• 8:14
  extract minerals from the from the company.
• 8:16
  So there is a moral dimension there as well.
• 8:17
  But I think it's even apart from that, even if you just leave,
• 8:20
  leave asides the the moral confusion, I think the idea
• 8:23
  itself that a comet is a good allegory for fossil fuels.
• 8:28
  It's just extremely misleading because again, a comet is only a
• 8:32
  destructive force, whereas fossil fuels, apart from the
• 8:35
  negative effects that it has in the long run on our climate,
• 8:38
  have been hugely beneficial to humanity.
• 8:41
  And I think also, that's probably what what is setting up
• 8:43
  this, this moral confusion. Because if you honestly believe
• 8:46
  that fossil fuels are just an addiction that we, we could just
• 8:49
  wean ourselves off cigarettes in a way that a, you know, an
• 8:52
  addict does without any side effects.
• 8:53
  I mean, you're going to have, you know, you're going to have
• 8:55
  to go and rehab for a couple. You're going to suffer for a
• 8:57
  couple of days or weeks, but then you're basically going to
• 8:59
  be fine. I mean, your health, health is
• 9:00
  going to be much, much better. And the fact that this doesn't
• 9:03
  happen, of course, I mean, countries are making all sorts
• 9:07
  of pledges and commitments and we're, you know, we're going to
• 9:09
  go to net zero, we're going to slash emissions.
• 9:11
  And it never happens because of course, I mean, because of all
• 9:17
  these benefits, it's extremely hard to to get rid of fossil
• 9:20
  fuels. And that makes climate activists
• 9:23
  extremely frustrated. So they think of fossil fuels as
• 9:25
  an addiction. And they say, why is it so hard?
• 9:27
  Like, why can't we just get rid of this?
• 9:28
  Just go like, what's the phrase called Turkey, just, you know,
• 9:34
  wean yourself off fossil fuels just like you do with a, with a
• 9:36
  regular addiction. And then they start blaming some
• 9:38
  people. Then, of course they come up
• 9:40
  with some sort of conspiracy theory that since fossil fuels
• 9:43
  are an addiction, this must be something that is constructed
• 9:46
  that is foisted upon us by these evil corporate executives or, or
• 9:52
  even the, you know, politicians that are greedy, etcetera.
• 9:54
  And, and that is a completely misguided way of framing the the
• 9:58
  the debate. And again, I mean, I keep saying
• 10:01
  that we're going to get to this point.
• 10:03
  It's causing joint harm in developing countries as well,
• 10:06
  because this delusion on the part of Western is actually
• 10:09
  causing all of harm elsewhere. Well, so let's get to that.
• 10:13
  I mean, we've recently launched a campaign called Just Stop
• 10:16
  Cooking is about which is the satirical title which Producer
• 10:20
  Rob came up with. My name producer Rob and it's to
• 10:25
  do with the need for LPG. So liquefied petroleum gas to
• 10:29
  replace charcoal and fuel wood in domestic cooking in
• 10:33
  sub-Saharan Africa. I think you wrote a piece
• 10:35
  actually about this in in a Dutch newspaper quite recently.
• 10:37
  So I know you're familiar with the issues, but yeah.
• 10:39
  It's translated now, but I hope hope to publish it in English as
• 10:41
  well. But yeah, now I'd love to see
• 10:43
  that. I mean, the issue being that the
• 10:46
  global N countries at the World Bank have been pushing against
• 10:50
  any fossil fuel investments, whether it's upstream or
• 10:53
  downstream. So that means that no money
• 10:55
  could go into sub-Saharan Africa to to give people clean cooking.
• 10:59
  And therefore, they've got to still be stuck with these solid
• 11:02
  fuels, which are both destroying the forests, of course, but also
• 11:06
  causing, I think it's 700,000 deaths per year from indoor air
• 11:10
  pollution, which is a higher mortality burden, even the
• 11:13
  malaria. So it's a, it's a huge issue
• 11:15
  and, and, and a lot of lives are being lost because of this
• 11:18
  obsession with fossil fuels, which of course, I understand
• 11:21
  what the motivations are for that.
• 11:22
  But there's got to be a more, you know, nuanced and a more
• 11:27
  complex way of, of addressing this so that fossil fuels can
• 11:30
  still be used in ways which are still very important to save
• 11:33
  lives in the global South. So you call this, you call this
• 11:35
  green colonialism. Tell me more why that is?
• 11:38
  The thing is that we, we have a bad habit of, I mean
• 11:41
  inadvertently, as you say, many of these people have good
• 11:44
  intentions and of course they want to solve a problem that is
• 11:46
  real and not denying that the problem is real.
• 11:49
  But we have a bad habit in in the West of forgetting the the
• 11:55
  roots of our prosperity and, and just imposing our rich country
• 12:00
  priorities on the rest of the world.
• 12:03
  The situation actually reminds me a little bit of that famous
• 12:05
  story by David Foster Wallace about the, the, the 2 little
• 12:08
  fish that are swimming in the sea.
• 12:11
  And one of them is, is asking the other morning boys, how's
• 12:15
  the water today? And the other one looks at them
• 12:17
  like water. What the heck is water?
• 12:19
  I've never heard of that. If you're surrounded by
• 12:22
  something for such a long time and you've never known anything
• 12:26
  else, then it becomes invisible, literally invisible.
• 12:29
  I mean, when people think about fossil fuels, first and
• 12:31
  foremost, of course, they think about coal and gas and, and, and
• 12:36
  oil in its physical forms. And you know, if we fill up our
• 12:38
  tanks of, of, of our cars, etcetera.
• 12:41
  But that's just only a very small fraction of everything
• 12:44
  that we consume. All that the houses that we live
• 12:46
  in, the clothes that we wear, all the, all the products in our
• 12:48
  fridge, all the, all the items that we order on Amazon, I mean
• 12:52
  the items themselves. And also the shipping is done by
• 12:54
  container ships, the, you know, powered by diesel fuels,
• 12:56
  etcetera. Everything, everything,
• 12:58
  everything involves fossil fuels.
• 13:02
  And if you're not aware of that, if you're just cushioned or by
• 13:05
  this prosperity for such, such a long time, you tend to forget
• 13:08
  this. And then you think, Oh no, in a
• 13:11
  couple of decades we're going to, you know, we're going to
• 13:14
  reach climate tipping points and, and, and, and there's going
• 13:17
  to be a catastrophic breakdown of the climate, etcetera.
• 13:20
  So in the, in the best interest of, of all these poor people, we
• 13:25
  should prevent them from making our mistakes.
• 13:27
  This is the, the euphemism that is, that is sometimes used.
• 13:29
  And this is a phrase actually that was literally used by
• 13:32
  Michael Mann. I mean, he's again, he's one of
• 13:34
  the most prominent climate scientists.
• 13:36
  He's the guy from the, the famous hockey stick in, in the
• 13:39
  90s. He literally wrote a couple of
• 13:42
  years ago that we should not allow them, meaning poor people
• 13:46
  to repeat our mistakes, meaning to dig up all these fossil fuels
• 13:51
  and, and, and to burden them because the planet, planet can,
• 13:54
  cannot handle it. But just the ID and, and this, I
• 13:59
  think is a central error of reasoning of, of, of these
• 14:03
  people. So there's this notion which is,
• 14:05
  which is true, that poor people in developing countries in
• 14:09
  Africa will be hit hardest by climate change, by the effects
• 14:12
  of climate change. They will bear the burden of the
• 14:15
  brunt of, of the effects of climate change.
• 14:19
  But then from that observation, they conclude, I think wrongly,
• 14:24
  that they stand to gain the most from stringent emission
• 14:29
  reduction policies. So we're doing it for them like
• 14:33
  we're doing it in, in in their best interest.
• 14:34
  But that's completely false. I mean, it's yes, they will be
• 14:37
  hit the hardest, but they have a completely different
• 14:39
  perspective. They if, if you have to worry
• 14:41
  about your kids finding foods everyday or the, your kids
• 14:47
  falling I'll because you cannot afford to pay for a doctor,
• 14:49
  etcetera, then you, I mean, thinking about your future
• 14:54
  hypothetical grandchildren or the fate of our planet is really
• 14:57
  a luxury that you cannot afford. And it's, I mean, there's
• 15:00
  something about Western is that that makes them just unaware of
• 15:05
  their own privilege. And I think, I mean, this is
• 15:08
  really this, this is the textbook colonialism.
• 15:11
  Of course, it's not literally colonialism in the sense of the
• 15:13
  historical colonialism of the of the Western nations starting in
• 15:18
  the 17th century, but it but it is basically the same
• 15:22
  colonialist playbook over over again.
• 15:25
  It's Western countries deciding what is best and what is in the
• 15:30
  best interest of these poor countries.
• 15:32
  And what is happening in practice is that institutions
• 15:34
  like the World Bank, which are still beholden to Western
• 15:36
  interests, I mean, let's face it, these are basically just
• 15:38
  Western institutions have decided, pressured by climate
• 15:42
  activists with the best of intentions, I'm not disputing
• 15:45
  that, that they're no longer going to fund fossil fuel
• 15:48
  investments in overseas territories or abroad.
• 15:54
  Again, a euphemism. What this comes down to, of
• 15:56
  course, it's it's it's poor countries, rich countries have
• 15:58
  enough money to fund their own fossil fuel extraction.
• 16:03
  So of course, the countries that need the most need, need these
• 16:06
  loans the most are developing countries, which is exactly the
• 16:09
  mandate of the World Bank. The world, the World Bank has
• 16:11
  been established to to help these poor countries to develop
• 16:15
  economically. But under the pressure of
• 16:17
  climate activists, they have, they have actually imposed their
• 16:19
  own Western priorities on these poor countries and they're
• 16:23
  preventing them from from following the same path that
• 16:26
  these Western countries have followed.
• 16:28
  And, and that brought them basically into paradise.
• 16:30
  That's how we escaped poverty. But somehow we have forgotten
• 16:34
  this, because again, we we only tend to think of fossil fuels as
• 16:36
  something bad, as something that we should get rid of, as
• 16:38
  something that is harmful and addictive.
• 16:40
  Yeah, and and the hypocrisy is as much evident as the Cologne
• 16:43
  green colonialism. I did did the report on this
• 16:46
  with with Patricia and Tessa and we planet Africa and I looked at
• 16:51
  some of the fossil fuel investments that are going in in
• 16:54
  Europe in particular. And just one of these big LNG
• 16:58
  plants. So natural gas plants going in
• 17:00
  in Germany could cover the you know, the same carbon, the same
• 17:03
  energy as all of sub-saharan Africa's cooking needs.
• 17:05
  And of course, nobody doesn't need to go to the World Bank
• 17:07
  because they've got their own money.
• 17:08
  So they don't no one has leverage over Germany whether it
• 17:12
  continues to add fossil fuels. The leverage is only applicable
• 17:14
  really to the poorer countries in the global S.
• 17:16
  The hypocrisy is particularly smelly.
• 17:21
  Yeah, exactly because, because. Germany is one of the major has
• 17:23
  been one of the major voices in in the World Bank and in the
• 17:26
  shareholders meetings, insisting that the bank should not invest
• 17:29
  in any fossil fuels, including including cooking fuels.
• 17:32
  Yeah, no, absolutely. I, I think what what is
• 17:34
  happening at at home in, in, in Germany and in, in other Western
• 17:40
  countries is that these politicians feel the pressure
• 17:42
  from climate activists and they want to demonstrate that they're
• 17:45
  on the right side of history. They want to flaunt their green
• 17:48
  virtue. So because it's popular, I mean,
• 17:52
  they want to invite Greta Thunberg over for coffee and pat
• 17:55
  her on the back and say how wonderful it is.
• 17:57
  And you know, you'd like, you'd like idealistic and young people
• 17:59
  and you care about the future of our planet, etcetera.
• 18:01
  So they want to be on that side. But then on the other side, on
• 18:04
  the other hand, they also know that if, if, if, if they really
• 18:11
  stop fossil fuel investments in their, in their own countries,
• 18:14
  then they're never going to get re elected.
• 18:16
  They're basically going to be mugged by reality, which is
• 18:19
  something that even green politicians have realized after
• 18:21
  the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
• 18:24
  They didn't hesitate to extend the lifespan of coal plants or
• 18:28
  to even give permits to construct new gas plants.
• 18:31
  Because when when push comes to shove, your your voters are just
• 18:35
  going to protest. So, so they're kind of in a
• 18:37
  bind. And I think what they have
• 18:39
  figured out, I mean, probably not consciously, is like, OK,
• 18:42
  how can we pretend to be on the right side of history, flaunting
• 18:44
  our green virtue and still, you know, have our feet firmly
• 18:49
  planted on the ground? What if we do it at the expense
• 18:52
  of poor countries? What if we just say that we're
• 18:54
  going to promise not to like, like fund in fossil fuel
• 18:57
  investments overseas? So then at least we can pretend
• 19:00
  that we're doing something for the climate.
• 19:01
  But it's of course, it's incredibly hypocritical.
• 19:04
  I mean, Norway is probably an even worse example because
• 19:07
  Norway is raking in billions every year because of its own
• 19:10
  gas exploration. Norway is just blessed by by a
• 19:15
  lot of gas reserves while simultaneously trying to lobby
• 19:20
  the World Bank to prevent gas extraction in in African
• 19:24
  countries. I mean it's.
• 19:24
  Just kind of. Our time.
• 19:27
  No, I have to interrupt you because the Norwegian ministry
• 19:30
  actually got in touch with us after we'd made this accusation
• 19:32
  in the report and and denied it and said that they fully support
• 19:37
  the aims of our Just Stop Crooking campaign.
• 19:40
  That it was a bit ambiguous about whether what they actually
• 19:44
  do in the World Bank meetings. However, because they said they
• 19:46
  had to vote with this block and this block was anti fossil fuel.
• 19:49
  I suspect they're talking a bit with forked tongue, but I've
• 19:52
  invited them to make a public declaration which will publish
• 19:55
  about their stance on this. So we'll keep an open mind for
• 19:58
  the moment, but certainly that's, that's the, the, the
• 20:01
  tunes that we've had in the past.
• 20:03
  That would be good news. That would be great.
• 20:04
  I think I read that in a piece by Ted Nordhaus and Vyaja
• 20:08
  Ramakhandran in in Foreign Policy that Noreen had this
• 20:10
  hypocritical stance. I I would have to look up the
• 20:13
  source, but if it's if it's if it turns out to be false or if
• 20:16
  they'd change their minds, then I mean kudos to them.
• 20:18
  Of course I mean it. I also, I find it breath dating
• 20:21
  that the, the hypocrisy is so blatant that I can't even
• 20:24
  imagine that after you just point it out to them, there's
• 20:26
  just no way to defend that. There's this, you can just look
• 20:29
  the other way and pretends you know that there's nothing there
• 20:33
  until somebody points it out to you.
• 20:35
  But then afterwards, I mean, there's really literally no way
• 20:37
  that you can justify something like that because they are, of
• 20:40
  course they, they, I mean, it's the last thing that you want is
• 20:42
  to be accused of, of new colonialism.
• 20:45
  So. Yeah, I mean, of course, the
• 20:47
  problem here is that that the the the biggest voice in support
• 20:50
  of what we're saying, what you're saying here is the Trump
• 20:52
  administration now. So how does that feel to be
• 20:55
  aligned with with Donald Trump on on on the climate?
• 20:58
  Well, OK, I'm going to do some throat clearing now.
• 21:02
  You, you don't have to convince me that Trump is, is, is bad
• 21:04
  news for the, for the world, including for the, for the
• 21:07
  climate. I mean, he's he's engaging in in
• 21:10
  in, in in a massive act of self sabotage at home by just
• 21:14
  slashing subsidies for clean energy, by just waging A
• 21:17
  vindictive war against universities, by just basically
• 21:21
  breaking up the whole international order,
• 21:24
  antagonizing all his friends and allies, like pulling back from
• 21:28
  the Paris climate agreement. OK, I don't I can just keep, you
• 21:34
  know, thrashing Trump. But Despite that, I think in
• 21:38
  this particular case, he's just perhaps not for the right
• 21:42
  reasons, but he's exploiting a weakness of his opponent.
• 21:47
  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
• 21:49
  And I think in this particular case, Trump's hour had had
• 21:52
  struck the the the energy secretary of Trump a couple of
• 21:55
  months ago. And then during Africa Summit in
• 21:57
  Washington, DC, basically made the argument that I was making
• 22:01
  that it's just to tell African countries that you're not
• 22:05
  allowed to extract fossil fuels because the, the, the planet
• 22:08
  cannot handle it. And we're just going to give you
• 22:10
  some solar panels and batteries and hopefully that will be
• 22:12
  sufficient for you. That's just insufferable.
• 22:15
  It's, it's, it's, I think in, in why it's worse.
• 22:18
  It's a, it's a neoclonal attitude that I just can't
• 22:20
  stand. And he was promising African
• 22:22
  leaders to to basically collaborate with them on an
• 22:28
  equal level. So as equal partners to develop
• 22:32
  Africa's energy resources, regardless of the source.
• 22:36
  Now, whether that this is sincere, I mean, we can, we can,
• 22:39
  we can debate this because I, I don't really Trump trust the
• 22:42
  Trump administration. But what it what is clear, I
• 22:45
  think, is that the Democrats are the progressives in general.
• 22:48
  Because I think the same thing is happening also in Europe have
• 22:51
  basically presented a gift wrapped opportunity for Trump to
• 22:57
  exploit his weakness and to score a lot of points with
• 22:59
  African leaders. Because Chris Wright, the energy
• 23:01
  secretary of Trump, received a standing ovation in Washington.
• 23:05
  And rightly so, because these African leaders were very relief
• 23:09
  that finally someone points out this huge hypocrisy that has
• 23:13
  been going on for decades, mostly driven by climate
• 23:16
  activists and indirectly by by progressive politicians.
• 23:20
  Not all of them have been, let's say, directly guilty of this
• 23:22
  colonialist attitude, but even the ones who have not have
• 23:28
  refrained from speaking out against it.
• 23:29
  I think because again, it's all for a good cause and it's all
• 23:33
  well intentions, etcetera. But I, I, I think we really have
• 23:37
  to stop this. And if if if we don't, then
• 23:39
  we're just going to basically give the the the power to
• 23:43
  conservative right wing forces because they have rightly
• 23:46
  figured out that this is indeed a weakness that that that they
• 23:49
  can exploit on progress part. So I'm actually very happy with
• 23:52
  the campaign by by we planet. I see we planet as a as a
• 23:55
  progressive organization. I mean, I see you as someone
• 23:59
  who's coming from a from a from a from the left, from a
• 24:01
  progressive side. And finally, they somebody from
• 24:06
  the left with, with progressive credentials is also pointing out
• 24:10
  this hypocrisy because we cannot just leave it to, to, to Trump.
• 24:13
  Because again, I don't even, I don't even know if Chris Wright
• 24:16
  is, is sincere about, about collaborating with Africa to,
• 24:19
  to, to develop. And perhaps he he just wants to
• 24:21
  score some points and then move on and then just drop them like
• 24:23
  a brick. If evil fossil fuel companies
• 24:26
  and evil fossil fuel executives, you know, is the wrong way to
• 24:29
  frame this, addiction's the wrong way to frame this, what is
• 24:32
  the right way to frame the, the challenge of climate change and
• 24:35
  how and also how serious do you think climate change is?
• 24:38
  Maybe you're a lukewarmist and you don't think we need to do
• 24:40
  too much about this issue. I don't know.
• 24:41
  I'd like to hear your, you know, tell us, tell us straight what
• 24:44
  your views are about how serious climate change is and also how
• 24:47
  we should tackle it. And you know what we need to do
• 24:50
  about the fossil fuels issue. Well, that's interesting
• 24:54
  actually, because when I read your bookmark, I think it was
• 24:57
  already the the new edition. When was that published?
• 25:00
  I think I read. It you mean the six degrees 1?
• 25:02
  So yeah, the six degrees one, yeah, 2020, I think.
• 25:05
  Yeah, I think I was largely on board.
• 25:10
  I, I, I, perhaps I had some misgivings about mentioning the
• 25:14
  possibility of human extinction. I think at some point.
• 25:17
  And then 6° on, on the even on the, on the, the back of the
• 25:20
  book, you mentioned human extinction.
• 25:23
  I have, I have changed my mind about that a little bit.
• 25:26
  I've, oh, I still, I still of course believe that it's, it's a
• 25:30
  very real and, and serious problem that we should tackle.
• 25:32
  And if we don't, I mean, if, if we fail to act, then it's going
• 25:35
  to get worse and worse. But I no longer believe that it
• 25:38
  is an existential threats. And I think, and perhaps you,
• 25:42
  you will not fully agree with that, that the framing of
• 25:46
  climate change as an existential threats.
• 25:48
  And I think also indirectly the, the, the, the way that in which
• 25:52
  we underestimate humanity's ability to adapt to, to a
• 25:55
  changing climate is actually feeding into this neo
• 25:58
  colonialist attitudes. Because if you really think that
• 26:01
  the end of the world is nigh, then perhaps you even have a
• 26:05
  rational justification for preventing Africans from from
• 26:10
  the from developing, from extracting their fossil fuels.
• 26:12
  Is really if, if the future of humanity is at stake.
• 26:15
  I mean, it's not just when it comes to climatics and in
• 26:18
  general catastrophism or or doomsday thinking can set up a
• 26:22
  very perverse utilitarian calculus where you say we really
• 26:25
  have to make like huge sacrifices because everything is
• 26:28
  at stake. So it's kind of less of sorry.
• 26:34
  Kind of lifeboat ethics where you have to push people from
• 26:37
  getting into the lifeboat so that everyone, you know, anybody
• 26:39
  can be saved. Yeah.
• 26:40
  Yes, exactly. I, I wrote a piece of a couple
• 26:42
  of years ago where I basically said, also somewhat ironically,
• 26:46
  that I'm actually relieved that I don't think many climate
• 26:49
  catastrophists actually believe what they profess to believe.
• 26:52
  I mean, you're not one of the exceptions.
• 26:54
  And I, I gave you a compliment in that piece because I think
• 26:56
  for me, the litmus test of climate catastrophes has always
• 26:59
  been nuclear energy. If you really believe that the
• 27:01
  planets is on the verge of, of, of total destruction because of
• 27:07
  greenhouse gases, but then you're still going to sabotage
• 27:10
  our most powerful weapon to combat climate change.
• 27:14
  I mean, I don't really take you seriously.
• 27:16
  And you're one of the exceptions because you're both, I mean, a
• 27:19
  catastrophist of sorts. I'm not sure if you would
• 27:23
  embrace that label. But you're also very pro
• 27:25
  nuclear, which I think is a consistent position to take.
• 27:27
  But for the people who say, oh, the planet is going to be
• 27:29
  destroyed by greenhouse gases, but let's just still shut down
• 27:33
  these the nuclear power plants because whatever radiation
• 27:37
  meltdown, blah, blah, blah, I don't really think this, this,
• 27:39
  this is serious. And actually, I'm glad that many
• 27:42
  of them are not that serious because you don't want to live
• 27:45
  in a world where millions of people believe that that the the
• 27:49
  planet is going to be destroyed unless we take drastic measures
• 27:52
  to prevent that. There's this novel that was
• 27:54
  published a couple of years ago by Kim Stanley Robinson, the
• 27:58
  Ministry for the Future, which actually features climate
• 28:01
  terrorists shooting down private jets and then any kind of fossil
• 28:04
  fuel powered plane because they're just so desperate.
• 28:08
  And it kind of makes sense. I think if you're so desperate,
• 28:11
  then people resort to drastic matches.
• 28:13
  I mean, there have been books published by with titles like
• 28:15
  how to blow up a pipeline by Andrea's mom.
• 28:18
  And this is worrying me a little bit at at at least, even if it
• 28:21
  like a small fraction of the climate activists community is,
• 28:25
  is really completely sincere in their beliefs.
• 28:28
  This can, this can get dangerous, I think.
• 28:30
  But to, to, to return to your question, how should we frame
• 28:34
  climate change? And so it is a, it is a very
• 28:36
  real threat. It's probably one of the
• 28:38
  defining challenges of, of the century.
• 28:40
  I'm not sure if it's the defining challenge.
• 28:42
  This is perhaps something that I would have said five years ago.
• 28:44
  I'm not not really completely confident about that anymore.
• 28:47
  I think if you compare it to the threat of nuclear war, I, I
• 28:49
  would still think that nuclear war is, is a more serious issue.
• 28:51
  The real proliferation, You know, I think the way I would
• 28:55
  frame it, it's just a huge strategy.
• 28:58
  It's well-intentioned. It's just the thing that allowed
• 29:01
  us to escape from poverty, the thing that really like landed us
• 29:04
  in paradise is exactly the thing that is messing up the climate.
• 29:09
  I, I don't want to say destroying the planet.
• 29:10
  And it's a collective action problem as well, because I mean,
• 29:13
  the, the, the, the harms of greenhouse gases are
• 29:17
  collectivized, but the benefits are individualized.
• 29:20
  So they're private. If if you use cooking fuels, for
• 29:24
  example, then of course you're going to personally benefit in
• 29:27
  the case of African women who no longer have to cook with woods
• 29:30
  or charcoal or dung, even it's, it's a huge benefit.
• 29:33
  But of course, in the long run, it will, it will hurt the
• 29:36
  climate. Even we plan it in its campaign.
• 29:37
  We're not denying that this happens.
• 29:39
  So it's, it's a huge tragedy, but I think it's something that
• 29:42
  we, that we can solve. And if we are going to solve it
• 29:46
  at all, I think it's not going to be through tremendous
• 29:52
  sacrifices. So the, the, and I'm, I'm, I'm
• 29:55
  ironically somewhat of a pessimist when it comes to
• 29:58
  changing our behavior. I, I think that some people are
• 30:01
  willing to, to, to give up travel or to, to stop eating
• 30:04
  meat, etcetera. But that's only a small fraction
• 30:07
  of the population. I think if we really want to
• 30:09
  solve the problem, we have to find ways to, to have the best
• 30:14
  of both worlds, to have our cake and eat it too.
• 30:16
  We have to, I mean very specifically, find a way to get
• 30:20
  a plane in the air without fossil fuels.
• 30:22
  We have to find synthetic meats or precision fermentation that
• 30:27
  allows us to enjoy exactly the same experience or even better
• 30:32
  with a better taste, better nutrition, but without actual
• 30:35
  animals because of course, animal agriculture that's also
• 30:38
  hugely contributing to to climate change.
• 30:40
  So I think it's a it's a technological problem.
• 30:42
  It's a huge, it's a moral tragedy because there were,
• 30:44
  there were no bad intentions. Even the the CEOs of fossil fuel
• 30:47
  companies. I don't, I don't think these are
• 30:49
  evil people. I mean, I think they're,
• 30:51
  they're, I mean, this is of course, comes straight out of
• 30:53
  their propaganda playbook. But I think it's, it's, it's
• 30:55
  true that they say, when they say that they have actually
• 30:58
  been, you know, brought tremendous benefits to humanity.
• 31:01
  I think that's right. I think we just have to give
• 31:03
  them credit for it. And of course, I'm against
• 31:08
  fossil fuel subsidies at this point.
• 31:10
  I really think we should stop subsidizing these, these fuels.
• 31:13
  But just make no mistake about it, even if, even if we abolish
• 31:18
  all fossil fuel subsidies, they're still selling an
• 31:21
  extremely extractive product that all of us are depending on,
• 31:25
  even in rich countries. I mean, even a country like
• 31:28
  Germany, as you, as, as you rightly point out, is still
• 31:31
  burning coals. How the hell could we expect a
• 31:33
  country like Nigeria to only like to rely like exclusively
• 31:38
  on, on solar panels and on wind farms?
• 31:41
  So I think it's, it's, it's a moral tragedy that that like,
• 31:46
  like a lot of moral tragedies, I, I, that I think can be solved
• 31:49
  with technological means. I actually believe in love that
• 31:51
  moral progress is often facilitated by technology.
• 31:54
  I think one of the reasons why we abolished slavery, of course,
• 31:56
  is because of social activism. Of course, it's because of
• 31:58
  arguments is because of the Enlightenment is because of the
• 32:01
  belief of the equality of of all humans, but it's also because of
• 32:05
  technology. It's because of the industrial
• 32:06
  revolution, because suddenly we had this huge source of
• 32:11
  reliable, affordable and relatively clean energy
• 32:16
  mechanical force that we could use to basically enslave
• 32:19
  machines instead of fellow human beings.
• 32:21
  And I think something similar will happen with with climate
• 32:24
  change. It's not going to be a huge
• 32:25
  moral awakening. It's going to be a technological
• 32:28
  revolution. I mean, a gazillion different
• 32:31
  kinds of technological revolutions because of course, I
• 32:33
  mean, so many different applications of fossil fuels.
• 32:36
  So yeah, in a nutshell, that's that's how I would frame that
• 32:39
  the issue, not as a in terms of a moral evil, but as a as a
• 32:42
  moral tragedy. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain
• 32:45
  amount 1 can do to live a green lifestyle, but it it's often a
• 32:48
  reflection of privilege. You know, I can have a heat
• 32:51
  pump, I can have electric cars. I mean, I don't use any fossil
• 32:54
  fuels in my daily life, but that's because I'm in a
• 32:57
  privileged enough position to be able to afford to do that and to
• 32:59
  and to pay for these somewhat more expensive technologies.
• 33:02
  My only kind of Achilles heel is aviation.
• 33:05
  So I do need somebody else to solve that problem.
• 33:07
  And of course the entire. Supply, at least we're doing
• 33:09
  this podcast online, so we're not.
• 33:13
  Fly all the way to Kent, but I don't know, I think I think the
• 33:19
  jury's out and I kind of it's a work in progress, the clean
• 33:22
  energy transition. And so I think there's a lot of
• 33:26
  win wins in terms of very large scale clean energy investment
• 33:30
  that can go on in the global South and can be supported with,
• 33:33
  you know, more concessional financing from the likes of the
• 33:35
  World Bank. And that's what these countries
• 33:37
  are desperately clamoring for. And you know, the mainstay of
• 33:42
  the of the new energy economy will probably be solar and
• 33:46
  batteries, I guess with nuclear as well as a sort of a junior
• 33:50
  partner to that right. I don't I don't think I see the
• 33:53
  need for very large fossil fuel investments in 2025 going
• 33:58
  forward, even in the global SI mean you just.
• 34:00
  That's an interesting point because I think we had the
• 34:03
  discussion before and I remember a private discussion we had
• 34:06
  perhaps in in Berkeley or where was it, where we were at that
• 34:11
  breakthrough. Oh, in, in, in San Francisco and
• 34:14
  Sosolito, Yeah. Yeah, Sosolito.
• 34:16
  So, yeah, you, you seem to be convinced that that even in
• 34:20
  developing countries, I mean apart from the the cooking fuel,
• 34:22
  I guess you're on board with that.
• 34:24
  So that that at least temporarily they are allowed to
• 34:27
  to use cooking fuels until they have electrical furnaces or
• 34:29
  something that is even better. Of course, I'm not so sure about
• 34:32
  that. So I would, I would, I wonder
• 34:35
  what we planet would think of, of coal.
• 34:37
  Of course. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's
• 34:38
  smart of you to, to focus on, on natural gas because natural gas
• 34:42
  is of course much cleaner than than coal and also than wood and
• 34:45
  charcoal and and dung, etcetera. So it's, it's, it's a huge
• 34:48
  benefit. It's basically a no brainer when
• 34:50
  it comes to coal. It's, it's more complicated, but
• 34:53
  I would, I think I would bite the bullet and say, look, we can
• 34:57
  try to convince them. I mean, you can try to offer
• 34:59
  them a better alternative and say like perhaps you don't need
• 35:01
  this coal plant. But it's basically it's their
• 35:03
  call and we should not prevent them from doing so.
• 35:05
  I think we should even help help them.
• 35:07
  The only way that we we could actually prevent them from doing
• 35:10
  so in a morally responsible fashion is just by freely
• 35:14
  offering them a superior products like a small nuclear
• 35:18
  reactor, for example, that were just handing out for free.
• 35:21
  That is in all respects superior to a coal plants.
• 35:24
  Because the fact that Paul is polluting, I mean polluting,
• 35:26
  they're aware of that. And it's not, it's not that
• 35:28
  they're it's, it's, it's that this is something that they
• 35:30
  already taking into account so. Yeah, that's, that's, I think, I
• 35:37
  think solar is now a superior product in coal any pretty much
• 35:40
  anywhere in, in, in any, any, you know, sunny country.
• 35:43
  And that's pretty much all of the, you know.
• 35:45
  Well, no, it, it, it depends on it, it, well, it depends on the
• 35:48
  country, as you say, the, the availability of sun, it also
• 35:50
  depends on the, the, the, the storage options, the reliability
• 35:54
  of the grids, the specific needs of the country.
• 35:56
  So I don't think we should make those decision on on, on behalf
• 35:59
  of those poor countries. I would hope indeed for many of
• 36:03
  them, solar would be the most attractive option.
• 36:06
  I mean, it's not either or of course.
• 36:07
  I mean, they can have, I mean, 70% solar that is backed up by
• 36:10
  some, some gas or coal. But if they decide to go ahead
• 36:15
  with coal, I mean, would we really say, OK, let me put it
• 36:17
  like this. If if you were the head of the
• 36:18
  World Bank and you have a discussion with Nigeria, for
• 36:21
  example, and they say, OK, yeah, you're right that solar is
• 36:24
  attractive, but but still it's unreliable.
• 36:26
  We don't have the storage is expensive.
• 36:28
  We really want some money to build some coal plants.
• 36:30
  Can you please give it to us? Would you, would you?
• 36:33
  I for me, I would definitely, you know, without a, without
• 36:36
  hesitation, I would regret it for the climate, but I would do
• 36:39
  it. I actually wouldn't.
• 36:40
  I mean, I agree that so long as Germany is burning coal, there's
• 36:44
  no moral case to be. Made for this.
• 36:46
  Why would you do it then? Because because you've got a,
• 36:49
  you then have a, a stranded asset that's going to need to
• 36:50
  operate for 30-40 years into the future.
• 36:54
  And by that time, I mean, there's no question that clean
• 36:56
  energy will be, will be the, the cheapest and the most available
• 37:00
  alternative. In fact, they already are.
• 37:01
  I mean, these solar panels from from China where they've got
• 37:03
  huge overcapacity, they're dirt cheap.
• 37:05
  Batteries are coming down in price enormously.
• 37:07
  So the storage options are there as well.
• 37:09
  And so the issue is still. Burning a lot of coal at the
• 37:12
  same time? Yeah, it's still burning around
• 37:14
  the pool. Yeah, although it's, it's
• 37:15
  probably peaking around this year by the looks of things.
• 37:19
  So there's you know, and that's a reflection of both their huge
• 37:22
  renewables investment and also and also some some additional
• 37:25
  nuclear. But you know, in terms of the
• 37:28
  the assets now for the for clean energy, they are really, they
• 37:32
  really are widely available and that's where the concessionality
• 37:34
  financing has to come in. So yes, the extent to which
• 37:37
  solar plus storage is slightly more expensive than that coal
• 37:40
  plant, that's the additional bit that the World Bank needs to
• 37:42
  come in and support, you know, in very concessional ways so
• 37:46
  that these countries aren't racking up future debts into the
• 37:48
  future as well. I think we should move on and
• 37:50
  talk about some of the broader themes that you cover in your
• 37:53
  book. There's a whole worldview of
• 37:55
  environmentalism here which you take issue with in that it's
• 37:58
  kind of a counter enlightenment narrative, I think.
• 38:02
  So you know, the Malthusianism of it, the the idea of going
• 38:06
  backwards, all of this sort of stuff.
• 38:07
  So, you know, are you, are you to any extent some
• 38:10
  environmentalists or do you just reject the entire premise of the
• 38:13
  modern environmental movement? That's a good, that's a good
• 38:16
  question. I've been definitely raised as
• 38:18
  an environmentalist. I've been brought up with, you
• 38:20
  know, magazines of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife and and,
• 38:25
  and being extremely worried about desertification and about
• 38:28
  species extinction, etcetera. And I think that some part of me
• 38:32
  that's still part of my worldview, I I really care about
• 38:35
  nature and I want, yeah, I want this, the problem of climate
• 38:39
  change to to be solved. And I think every species that
• 38:43
  we that we lose is, is, is, is that's a that's a tragedy.
• 38:45
  It's something that we absolutely should prevent.
• 38:49
  But I wouldn't sign up to the the creed of environmentalism.
• 38:53
  I mean, the fact that it's an isn't, it's almost, you know,
• 38:56
  like inevitably that you're placing like the environment on
• 39:00
  a, on a, on a pedestal or as if it's something that is, has
• 39:03
  intrinsic moral value. So that's perhaps the, the first
• 39:05
  fundamental disagreement that I have.
• 39:07
  I think nature only has value in the eyes of the beholder and
• 39:11
  we're the only beholder around. There's, there's no harmony or
• 39:15
  balance in nature that we have to restore.
• 39:17
  Nature is, is, is a, is a rat and tooth and claw.
• 39:19
  It's, it's, it's ruthless. It's, it's extremely
• 39:24
  competitive, but it's beautiful and, and it's, and we want to
• 39:28
  enjoy that beauty, that natural beauty, because that's just
• 39:31
  deeply ingrained in our brains. So we have to do it for our
• 39:33
  sake, not for the sake of nature, not even for the sake of
• 39:36
  these species, because species themselves don't really have a
• 39:39
  moral value. I think so.
• 39:42
  So I wouldn't really like identify as an environmentalist,
• 39:47
  although I do care. I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm a big fan
• 39:50
  of we planet and of eco modernism.
• 39:52
  So I, I, I do think that we can, we can, what is it elevate
• 39:55
  humanity and, and restore nature at, at at the same time.
• 39:58
  I think that's a beautiful project.
• 40:00
  What I do find concerning, and now we're getting into the weeds
• 40:04
  of exactly what environmentalism stands for these days.
• 40:07
  Something very intriguing and and paradoxical happened with
• 40:11
  environmentalism in the past. Century, a little over a century
• 40:16
  actually. Environmentalism used to be a
• 40:18
  very conservative phenomenon. It used to be firmly on the on
• 40:22
  the rights. I mean you had aristocrats that
• 40:25
  were worrying about their their own lands, like the pristine
• 40:29
  land that they used for, you know, hunting game, etcetera.
• 40:33
  They were the ones that were complaining about The Dirty
• 40:36
  chimneys of coal factories and industrialization, etcetera,
• 40:40
  because again, they had servants they could afford to, you know,
• 40:43
  to live the luxuries they they didn't really need the
• 40:45
  industrial revolution that was based based mostly benefiting
• 40:47
  the poor people. And that's been like that for a
• 40:51
  long for the longest time. Even Thomas Malthus that you
• 40:53
  already mentioned, he was a counter enlightenment figure.
• 40:58
  He was basically, I mean, this whole tract the on, on the the
• 41:03
  principle of population or what's the exact title, was
• 41:06
  written against Condor K and, and some Enlightenment thinkers.
• 41:09
  So that was against this idea that we could eradicate poverty
• 41:14
  and feed all of humanity. And then something very strange
• 41:17
  happens around the 60s or 70s where environmentalism as a
• 41:22
  movement almost completely switched political sites.
• 41:26
  So now you have progressive people, you know, people who
• 41:30
  used to be opposed to environmentalism because they
• 41:33
  believed that it was a distraction from real life
• 41:36
  issues, from from the social struggle, etcetera.
• 41:39
  Now these progressive people started to gradually embrace
• 41:42
  environmentalism and as a reaction against that,
• 41:46
  conservative people started to move away from environmentalism.
• 41:50
  So once you end up in the in the, in the Reagan era, for
• 41:52
  example, environmentalism is basically seen as a big hoax by
• 41:57
  the Latin. It's basically a ruse.
• 41:59
  It's a conspiracy by left wing people to just destroy
• 42:02
  capitalism and our way of life. But so that's the basically the
• 42:06
  right wing discourse starting from the 19, late 1970s or
• 42:08
  1980s. So that's a that's almost a
• 42:11
  complete reversal of, of, of political allegiances.
• 42:15
  And unfortunately, the left wing environmentalism that started to
• 42:19
  emerge in the late 60s and the 70s has also adopted all these
• 42:25
  anti humanist, Maltusian, anti growth, anti modernity, anti
• 42:29
  technology baggage of the old guard of environmentalism on,
• 42:34
  on, on the right wing. So now we have people like Paul
• 42:37
  Ehrlich and the Club of Rome and, and, and then later on, you
• 42:42
  know, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg saying that growth is the, the
• 42:45
  root of all evil. And that's technology is, is,
• 42:50
  you know, they just disparate technology as a technofix and
• 42:53
  and modernity was a was a huge mistake.
• 42:55
  This is something that Naomi Klein, for example, right.
• 42:57
  So part of my book is about, I mean, the, the 3rd chapter of my
• 43:00
  book is, is exactly about the betrayal of enlightenment on the
• 43:04
  part of progressus in this domain of climate and and and
• 43:09
  nature. I mean, there's a bunch of other
• 43:10
  betrayals. I discuss postmodernism.
• 43:12
  I discuss the, the postcolonialist movements, the
• 43:15
  distinction between our, the, the binary division between
• 43:19
  oppressors and victims. But then the 3rd chapter, a very
• 43:22
  extensive chapter is about how progressives turned against
• 43:27
  enlightenment and modernity, actually against the idea of
• 43:29
  growth. If you go back 100 years in the
• 43:31
  someone like Karl Marx, Of course, I have my disagreements
• 43:33
  with Karl Marx. I don't really think that his
• 43:35
  particular way of, you know, bringing us to paradise turned
• 43:38
  out very well. But I do share his dream, His,
• 43:42
  his, his, his ID. I mean, he basically in the in
• 43:44
  the Capitalist Manifesto, he that was an ode to capitalism
• 43:47
  that there was an ode to, to modernity at the the bourgeois
• 43:50
  modernity that had brought like greater wonders and marvels than
• 43:54
  all of the the rest of the the previous centuries combined.
• 43:57
  He wanted to have more growth, more prosperity, more affluence.
• 44:01
  At the start of my chapter, I, I used this pamphlet, socialist
• 44:05
  pamphlet by Sylvia Bankhurst, the British suffragettes,
• 44:08
  feminists, socialist writer who's basically arguing that
• 44:12
  socialism is not about is not a doctrine or a creed of, of self,
• 44:18
  of sacrifice, of scarcity. It's affluence for all we want
• 44:22
  to elevate poor people. It's not about taking away money
• 44:24
  from the rich. It's about making everyone rich.
• 44:27
  And I think progressives have forgotten about this.
• 44:30
  I mean, not we plan it because I think we plan it is a is a is a
• 44:33
  counter movement, but you're very much in the minority.
• 44:35
  I think many progressives nowadays, nowadays, if you think
• 44:38
  of like what is a progressive vanguard today, the degrowth
• 44:41
  movements, that's that's the suddenly that that's something
• 44:43
  that people now find like it, like the the pinnacle of radical
• 44:47
  left wing thought, the idea that growth itself is a problem and
• 44:50
  that we have we have too much prosperity and affluent.
• 44:53
  I mean, that's such a betrayal of what people like Karl Marx
• 44:58
  and Sylvia Pankhurst were standing for.
• 45:00
  And I'm not even talking about the whole anti nuclear and anti
• 45:04
  technology movement. So that's just a puzzle to me.
• 45:08
  And that's a puzzle that I try to explain in my book.
• 45:10
  And of course, I also call for a new progressive movements that
• 45:13
  really lives up to its to its own name progressive like what's
• 45:17
  in a name? Progressives, they believe in
• 45:19
  progress. What is exactly progressive
• 45:20
  about degrowth, about the idea that progress was all a big
• 45:23
  mistake and we should revert to some earlier states, you know,
• 45:27
  some lost harmony with nature or whatever it is that they they,
• 45:30
  they want to refer to I. Mean I can see the the reason
• 45:35
  for the critique, though, I mean, with kind of late stage
• 45:38
  hyper consumerist capitalism where, you know, it's just like
• 45:42
  fast fashion, everything's wrapped in plastic.
• 45:44
  It's very alienating. You know, is this a system that
• 45:48
  you're rushing to defend in terms of how, you know,
• 45:51
  rapacious it is and how destructive it is, both in terms
• 45:55
  of ecosystems and and societies and even psychology?
• 45:58
  You know, there's so much wrong about the way that capitalism,
• 46:02
  you know, consumer capitalism exploits people and, and
• 46:05
  exploits the environment that it's, it's difficult to, to just
• 46:07
  swing around and defend it, which you seem to be doing.
• 46:10
  Well, I'm not sure if I would agree that capitalism is
• 46:14
  exploiting the environment because as, as as I'm sure
• 46:16
  you're aware, in different economic systems and socialism,
• 46:20
  the environment was even being extracted more ruthlessly.
• 46:25
  There was more environmental damage in the Soviet Union and
• 46:29
  other socialist countries because of course their economy
• 46:32
  was extremely inefficient. They basically almost haunted
• 46:35
  the whales to extinction. This is not something that the
• 46:37
  capitalist should be blamed for because they actually respected
• 46:40
  the embargo against whale hunting.
• 46:45
  So I don't really think it's capitalism's fault.
• 46:49
  It's just, I mean, it's our, it's a side effect of our
• 46:52
  prosperity in climate change is one side effect.
• 46:55
  There's a bunch of other side effects, deforestation,
• 46:57
  etcetera, plastic soups in the ocean.
• 47:00
  I mean, we could, you know, the, the, the nitrogen crisis.
• 47:06
  Do I object to something like fast fashion?
• 47:08
  Yeah, I, I do have like on the moral level, it's, it's
• 47:11
  something that is distasteful to me.
• 47:13
  There's also certain certain forms of conspicuous luxury
• 47:16
  consumption that are distasteful to me.
• 47:17
  But I'm a liberal, I don't really think that.
• 47:19
  I mean, people can choose, we can, we can try to tax it, we
• 47:23
  can try to internalize the, the externalities and I'm all in
• 47:26
  favor of that. But I don't really think that
• 47:28
  this is something that we should ban.
• 47:32
  So I don't, I, I, I don't really think that fast fashion is at,
• 47:35
  at, at the root of our, of our problem.
• 47:38
  It's just part of that the, the larger economic system.
• 47:40
  And I approve of the economic system because economic system,
• 47:42
  by and large, in spite of all the side effects that we just
• 47:46
  mentioned, has been hugely beneficial to humanity.
• 47:49
  It's capitalism that has in the last 30 years like costs global
• 47:55
  poverty to drop from what was it like 25% or 30% to to to less
• 47:59
  than 9%. I mean, even if I agree with you
• 48:02
  that there's some, you know, there's some some parts of it
• 48:04
  that are that are just distasteful and and morally
• 48:08
  objectionable, like fast fashion or luxury consumption, it's
• 48:11
  still a pretty good bargain, I think.
• 48:13
  And I'm afraid that if we, if, if we destroy the machine, if
• 48:16
  we, you know, come up with a different economic system, that
• 48:19
  we're also going to lose all the benefits.
• 48:21
  So I think I'm all in favour of, of tinkering and trying to
• 48:24
  improve capitalism, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't
• 48:28
  want to smash the, the machine altogether because that, because
• 48:31
  I don't, I don't really see any alternative.
• 48:33
  Definitely not socialism because I mean, we've tried that a
• 48:36
  couple of times and it's, you know, it fails over and over
• 48:38
  again. We also should take into
• 48:39
  account, this is something that I learned from David Deutsch,
• 48:42
  The, the, the, the physicists, one of my intellectual heroes,
• 48:46
  his book The Beginning of Infinity, where he's basically
• 48:48
  rising every solution to a problem will cause new problems.
• 48:52
  So we shouldn't be surprised that there's things like plastic
• 48:54
  soup in the ocean or the nitrogen crisis, or let's take
• 48:58
  the nitrogen crisis. OK, that's true.
• 49:00
  We have a huge problem in the Netherlands now.
• 49:01
  There's just too much nitrogen in the soil and we have to do
• 49:03
  something about it. Does that mean that just like
• 49:07
  artificial fertilizer was a big mistake that we shouldn't have
• 49:09
  started? No, because like literally 3
• 49:12
  billion people wouldn't have lived today or they would have
• 49:15
  starved to death without without artificial fertilizer.
• 49:18
  It's just a side effect. That is, even though it's, it's
• 49:23
  still harmful, it's just way less harmful than the original
• 49:26
  problem that we were trying to solve in the 1st place.
• 49:28
  And it's just, it's a fresh problem to solve.
• 49:30
  We can also solve this one. We can also solve the, the
• 49:32
  plastic soup in the ocean and we can just one after, after the
• 49:37
  other, we can try to reduce and remove all the, all the negative
• 49:40
  externalities of the capitalist system.
• 49:42
  I'm not a free market fundamentalist.
• 49:43
  I think some markets, sometimes markets, yeah, especially when,
• 49:47
  when, you know, when we're talking about externalities.
• 49:51
  Markets will not solve problems out of their own accords.
• 49:53
  There's a role to be played by government, by regulation,
• 49:55
  etcetera. But I wouldn't be in favour of
• 49:57
  abolishing capitalism, I think. Like, Are you sure you're not
• 50:00
  just a conservative? I mean, I can't see what, and
• 50:04
  I'm asking this actually quite genuinely, because, you know,
• 50:07
  you throw away all the elements of what people, what aggressive
• 50:09
  things think they are. What have you got left?
• 50:10
  I mean, you're basically just justifying the status quo,
• 50:12
  aren't you? No, and that's a bunch of
• 50:15
  things. What why I really think I mean,
• 50:16
  I can list all of them, but let's let's just take stick to
• 50:22
  to the issues that we're talking about now.
• 50:23
  I want to eradicate poverty. I think there's this just a
• 50:25
  tremendous amount of avoidable suffering in the world that we
• 50:29
  should tackle. We should eradicate diseases, we
• 50:31
  should elevate Africans and allow them to endure our levels
• 50:36
  of, of prosperity. We should fight against
• 50:38
  discrimination and racism and sexism and any kind of
• 50:41
  oppression. I think the, the, the very idea
• 50:45
  that it's conservative to, to be in favor of capitalism is, is in
• 50:48
  itself like a, a contingent state of affairs, because
• 50:52
  conservatism in itself is not really in favor of any sort of
• 50:56
  economic system. Conservatives just tend to adapt
• 51:00
  to any kind of economic system that they find themselves in.
• 51:03
  So the conservatives in China, for example, or in Eastern
• 51:07
  European countries, there's actually some research about
• 51:09
  this, tend to be in favor of redistribution, economic
• 51:13
  equality and a very strong government are how can
• 51:17
  conservatives be in favor of that?
• 51:18
  But that's just what the tradition there represents.
• 51:20
  That's their that's their conservative tradition.
• 51:23
  And so conservatives will always defend the things that, you
• 51:26
  know, they have been getting used to for decades after
• 51:29
  fighting against them. And you think about like, for
• 51:31
  many decades, conservatives have faults, gay rights and even gay
• 51:35
  marriage. And now all of a sudden they're
• 51:37
  marching under the banner of gay rights, you know, to protect our
• 51:39
  civilization against the hordes of migrants.
• 51:41
  That's I mean, I'm not a conservatist for that reason
• 51:44
  only because they're directionless.
• 51:45
  They don't really know what they're defending.
• 51:47
  I'm a progressive in the sense that I'm very pragmatic.
• 51:49
  I just want to solve misery. And to the best of my knowledge,
• 51:53
  capitalism, the system that we have developed is the best, is
• 51:57
  the best. Or is, I mean, it's like Winston
• 52:01
  Churchill quote about democracy being the worst form of
• 52:05
  government, except for all the alternatives that have been
• 52:06
  tried. You can say something similar
• 52:08
  about capitalism. So yes, capitalism is sometimes
• 52:10
  ugly and distasteful, but really I can't really, I can't think of
• 52:14
  any better system. And if someone can come up with
• 52:16
  a better system, I'm I'm going to be on board.
• 52:19
  It's the same with nuclear energy.
• 52:20
  I always say that I'm not like whether it's to nuclear energy,
• 52:24
  it's, it's not really something that I'm attached to.
• 52:26
  If someone can, can come up with a, with a better solution, like,
• 52:29
  OK, I have my misgivings about solar plus batteries now, but
• 52:32
  but if, if they really, if it, if it's really as promising as
• 52:35
  you presented, then I don't really care.
• 52:37
  Let's, let's just do it. Whatever it takes to lift these
• 52:40
  people out of poverty. And I, I think along the same
• 52:43
  lines when it comes to capitalism, I think
• 52:45
  pragmatically, just just look again at, at the, the global
• 52:48
  poverty rates that we have experienced over the past 30
• 52:51
  years. I mean, people can rant against
• 52:52
  neoliberalism and capitalism all they want.
• 52:54
  This is really for me, what is the most important issue as a
• 52:56
  progressive? That's the, that's the the
• 52:58
  greatest moral evil in on our planet, that there's still
• 53:01
  people that are desperately poor.
• 53:02
  And we're talking about extreme poverty now.
• 53:04
  So even the people that have escaped it, what is it?
• 53:06
  It's like $2.00 per day. That's still nothing.
• 53:08
  I mean, that's still, it's still almost extreme poverty.
• 53:12
  And this is something that we have to tackle as quickly as
• 53:15
  possible. That I think is a very
• 53:16
  progressive sentiment. And I and I do feel that when
• 53:19
  I'm talking with my conservative friends, for example, I try to
• 53:22
  preach the gospel of eco modernism and effective
• 53:24
  altruism. They're not really that excited
• 53:27
  about it because conservatives tend to be a little bit cynical
• 53:29
  as well. Like, you know, like all this
• 53:31
  economic, like development doesn't really work and
• 53:36
  poverty's always going to be there.
• 53:37
  Like this. This kind of standard Africa is
• 53:40
  just hopeless. I think I'm, I'm much more at
• 53:43
  home with fellow progressors. Like again, I'm, I'm not sure
• 53:46
  I've been calling you progressors a number of Times
• 53:48
  Now. So you can, you can disown that
• 53:50
  if you want, Mark. But I, I do, I do see you as a,
• 53:53
  as someone who's on, who's on the left.
• 53:55
  And, and that's, that's, I think what originally progressives
• 53:59
  used to stand for. And that's still what I identify
• 54:01
  with. But I do agree that in a lot of
• 54:02
  respects, yeah, I'm, I'm being portrayed as right wing because
• 54:07
  I'm deviating in a lot of respects from the, from the
• 54:09
  progressive orthodoxy. Let me put it like that, but OK,
• 54:13
  not to. I don't want to come across as
• 54:14
  arrogant, but I actually do. I do think I represent more the
• 54:17
  left, what it originally stood for, and all these other people
• 54:20
  have been LED astray somehow. Yeah, that's really interesting,
• 54:25
  because you sort of find it's a lot easier to get stuff
• 54:27
  published in the Wall Street Journal and in the Guardian, and
• 54:29
  you think I'm just going to have to admit that I'm a
• 54:32
  conservative. Then there's change.
• 54:34
  It's me. And you don't feel that way
• 54:36
  clearly. No, no, but you, you're right.
• 54:39
  I mean you, you must have had the same experience.
• 54:41
  People have probably accusing been accusing you of being right
• 54:43
  wing because you're defending nuclear energy because you're
• 54:46
  published in the the Wall Street Journal ring.
• 54:48
  I'm not sure if you ever published in Colette.
• 54:50
  That's even worse. Don't do it.
• 54:51
  I mean to to protect your left wing reputation.
• 54:55
  I think it's a battle of IDs. And if, if, if he wants to
• 54:59
  progressives to come to their senses, then we have to keep on
• 55:04
  fighting and. So what does that?
• 55:06
  But I think we should assist on that we're the real progresses
• 55:09
  and not and not the people who are standing for degrowth and
• 55:12
  anti technology. I think there's a psychological
• 55:14
  element to this as well, in that it's almost about optimism and
• 55:17
  pessimism, certainly with regard to the kind of technology
• 55:19
  paradigm. Like pessimists think that each
• 55:23
  new innovation is going to create new problems which are
• 55:27
  worse than the old ones. And optimists think, as you
• 55:29
  outlined earlier so eloquently, that new solutions will
• 55:32
  essentially reduce our stock of problems.
• 55:34
  Yeah. You know, is this, is this
• 55:35
  psychology, is this politics? Was this something actually more
• 55:38
  fundamental to to to our world views and our societies?
• 55:41
  I think it's definitely partly psychology.
• 55:44
  I've always been very interested in deeply ingrained human
• 55:51
  intuitions that, that, that, that are probably just, you
• 55:54
  know, that that we have evolved with, that have been evolved
• 55:58
  through natural selection that make us predisposed to certain
• 56:02
  errors of thinking, certain fallacies.
• 56:06
  I think by and large, when it comes to pessimism and optimism,
• 56:09
  we're a very anxious and fretful species for a very good reason,
• 56:13
  because there's a huge asymmetry in an evolutionary environment
• 56:16
  between fitness benefits and fitness costs.
• 56:20
  I mean, the, the best thing that can happen to you on any given
• 56:23
  day is you find the stack of foods or in the like, you hunt
• 56:26
  down a large animal and OK, that's, that's good.
• 56:29
  Or you find an unexpected romantic opportunity, for
• 56:33
  example, OK, that's you have an opportunity to spread your
• 56:35
  genes. That's, but that's, that are
• 56:39
  very small benefits that are accruing over a long term.
• 56:41
  But on the other side of the Ledger, like any kind of the
• 56:45
  smallest moment of inattention or of stupidity and it's over,
• 56:48
  your fitness is totally reduced to 0.
• 56:52
  And it makes sense that from. You've been eaten by a Saber
• 56:54
  tooth tiger or something. Yeah, you're been eaten or you
• 56:56
  fall off a, off a Cliff or, or you, yeah, or you've been
• 57:01
  murdered by one of your fellow human beings.
• 57:03
  I mean, that also happened, of course, a lot of violence and
• 57:06
  war in ancestral environments. And I think for that reason,
• 57:10
  because of this huge asymmetry between the benefits and, and,
• 57:13
  and fitness costs, we tend to fret a lot about all the things
• 57:17
  that that can go wrong. So we we're not naturally
• 57:21
  optimistic. And just in the same way that
• 57:25
  our craving for sugar is no longer adaptive in the modern
• 57:28
  environments, because we all get obesity now until what's what's
• 57:34
  the, the, the, the drug again? Yeah, exactly.
• 57:38
  Now we're actually back. Now, perhaps it will turn out to
• 57:41
  be adaptive after all. But in the same way that our
• 57:43
  craving for sugar is no longer adaptive, our pessimist streak
• 57:47
  is also no longer adaptive. We've never experienced this,
• 57:50
  this kind of extremely safe, extremely clean, extremely
• 57:54
  healthy environments and, and our brains just, we have to make
• 58:01
  a conscious effort to, to, to fight against that.
• 58:03
  I'm not, I'm not saying that it's inevitable.
• 58:04
  That would be pessimistic in its own rights.
• 58:06
  Like, OK, our reins are just wired like that.
• 58:08
  There's nothing that we can do about it.
• 58:10
  I can still feel the pull of these intuitions once in a
• 58:12
  while. I, I still, I, I also know that
• 58:15
  when I'm, you know, scrolling through social media or just
• 58:18
  opening the newspaper and there's all these biases that
• 58:20
  kick in. And I, sometimes I think like,
• 58:22
  wow, like the world is really going down the drains.
• 58:23
  And I have to like, I have to remind myself that like, this
• 58:25
  is, this is the sort of image you're only thinking of the, I
• 58:28
  mean, this is only the bad news that you're seeing because bad
• 58:30
  news is much more invisible. And of course you're going to
• 58:32
  think about all the bad news because bad things happening to
• 58:35
  you is very important. And you should, you know, your
• 58:37
  brain is programmed to do this kind of stuff.
• 58:39
  I love watching disaster movies and and horror movies because,
• 58:42
  yeah, this is just something that is fascinating about it
• 58:44
  exactly because it is so important to our survival, to
• 58:47
  our fitness. But I think we can also fight,
• 58:50
  fight against that. And this is the reason why I'm
• 58:53
  over the past couple of years, I've written a lot of
• 58:55
  psychological pieces, basic basically.
• 58:57
  And there was a piece about the seven laws of decline ISM or
• 59:00
  pessimism that I wrote in Colette, I think last year,
• 59:04
  which is basically almost 90% psychology.
• 59:07
  It's explaining why despite all appearances, despite everything
• 59:12
  that you read in a newspaper, the world is still getting
• 59:14
  better. And it's, I mean, these are
• 59:16
  laws, tongue in cheek a little bit that explain why we tend to
• 59:21
  get the mistaken impression that the world is, is going downhill.
• 59:27
  So you have to get back to, to your question.
• 59:29
  So you you, you were asking about the the psychology of
• 59:32
  optimism versus pessimism, right?
• 59:34
  Yeah. But actually I want to I mean,
• 59:36
  we should we should wind up now because we're sort of at the
• 59:39
  hour. I'd love to talk all night and
• 59:41
  I'm sure people would love to listen all night.
• 59:43
  But we should probably wrap up. But like, I want to see your
• 59:47
  book in English. How can we make this happen?
• 59:49
  If you sold the right, So you waiting for translation, Do you
• 59:52
  need, do you need pub? If there's any publishers
• 59:54
  listening, do you want them to get in touch?
• 59:56
  Oh, and how is this different from Steven Pinker's book
• 59:58
  Enlightenment now? Because it sounds like, well,
• 1:00:00
  obviously the type you've got, you've got the same word
• 1:00:02
  enlightenment in the title. But give us a very quick, like,
• 1:00:06
  you know, rundown of what the next steps are.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah, if there's any publishers or agents listening, I don't
• 1:00:12
  have a contract yet. I'm, I'm, I'm translating some
• 1:00:16
  excerpts and chapters, some of them already published, but I'm
• 1:00:21
  procrastinating a little bit. So I really should get, get down
• 1:00:24
  to business and, and start translating and also reaching
• 1:00:27
  out to, to to some agents and publishers.
• 1:00:31
  I think the difference is with with with people like Steven
• 1:00:34
  Pinker and and Johan Norberg and and Matt Ridley is that this
• 1:00:39
  book is really about how progressives have have lost the
• 1:00:45
  weight. I think the counter
• 1:00:47
  enlightenment is as old as the Enlightenment itself.
• 1:00:50
  That's something that Stephen Bigger would agree to.
• 1:00:52
  It's I think it's good by Isaiah Berlin.
• 1:00:54
  From the very first day, there were always reactionaries,
• 1:00:57
  people who wanted to restore the end, the NCI regime, etcetera.
• 1:01:00
  That is nothing new. What is really new today is that
• 1:01:04
  the people that you would least expect it from are turning
• 1:01:07
  against the Enlightenment and turning against modernity, the
• 1:01:09
  progressives. And the basic angle of the book
• 1:01:12
  is how can we, perhaps, you know, get progressives to their
• 1:01:19
  senses again? Or perhaps we need a new
• 1:01:21
  progressive movement that really lives up to its to its
• 1:01:24
  principles, because we can't just leave it to the
• 1:01:26
  conservatives. The conservatives have been
• 1:01:28
  growing used to, to capitalism and to markets and perhaps a
• 1:01:31
  little bit to innovation, but their first impulse is still to,
• 1:01:34
  to you hit the brakes like say, no, no, no, let's not make it
• 1:01:37
  too crazy. Like what's synthetic meat?
• 1:01:39
  What are you talking about? This is nonsense.
• 1:01:41
  Think about what Maloney is doing in, in Italy.
• 1:01:43
  This is really, this is the conservative impulse.
• 1:01:45
  And I'm not saying that we don't need conservatives.
• 1:01:47
  Something I, I think you, you need to have a balance between
• 1:01:49
  people who want to, you know, forge ahead and, and, and come
• 1:01:52
  come up with radical new plans and then the people who say, oh,
• 1:01:55
  easy, don't move too fast or you will break things.
• 1:01:57
  So there's a natural competition going on between these camps,
• 1:02:00
  but we really needed the progressives as well.
• 1:02:02
  And I feel that at this point, I don't really know what
• 1:02:05
  progresses stand anymore there. There's so much anti modernity,
• 1:02:09
  anti enlightenment and reactionary thought.
• 1:02:13
  I mean, honestly that I think we we we really need a new
• 1:02:17
  progressive movement. So.
• 1:02:19
  Otherwise, otherwise everyone, yeah, otherwise everyone's
• 1:02:21
  looking to go backwards. I mean, America Great Again is
• 1:02:24
  looking back to presumably the 50s or something.
• 1:02:26
  And that's a nostalgic viewpoint.
• 1:02:27
  The environmentalists are nostalgic about the, you know,
• 1:02:30
  pre industrial, you know, Arcade Arcadia.
• 1:02:34
  So like, there's nobody pushing for a more progressive future.
• 1:02:37
  So tell us. Yeah.
• 1:02:37
  What does that? Look like Elon Musk and that
• 1:02:39
  that's also the thing that the people that are pushing for
• 1:02:42
  really radical innovation, I mean, yeah, they really have the
• 1:02:45
  best reputation and they're actually damaging.
• 1:02:47
  So one of the things that I'm worrying in now is that Elon
• 1:02:50
  Musk is poisoning the well now, because let's think about the
• 1:02:53
  problem of of demography, the fact that we have this fertility
• 1:02:55
  crisis. It's a very it's a huge problem.
• 1:02:58
  And I think progressives really care about that.
• 1:03:00
  If you love humanity, you like, you don't want humanity to
• 1:03:02
  shrink and or go extinct in the worst possible scenario.
• 1:03:06
  But just because Elon Musk is just all over the place about
• 1:03:08
  this and about exploring Mars and all these other things
• 1:03:11
  because of the tribal mechanisms and dynamics in our political
• 1:03:15
  environment, then progressives are are even going to turn
• 1:03:17
  against it even harder. And this is something that is
• 1:03:20
  really worrying me that we should not leave this to
• 1:03:22
  reactionaries or to right wing people or to crazy, you know,
• 1:03:27
  techno optimists in Silicon Valley.
• 1:03:29
  This is something that should be part of a broader progressive
• 1:03:32
  movement. And by the way, I think
• 1:03:33
  something is already happening in the US with a, with a book
• 1:03:36
  like Abundance by Derek Thompson and and Ezra Client.
• 1:03:39
  I think it's very much part of the same spirits.
• 1:03:42
  Then rather than say that we should regulate everything and
• 1:03:44
  then we should stop building and we already have too much,
• 1:03:47
  etcetera, etcetera, We should have abundance, we should build
• 1:03:49
  more. We should have.
• 1:03:51
  This is not the, this is not the end of history.
• 1:03:53
  I mean, this is just like, just like we have.
• 1:03:56
  What is it like? We're 30 times as rich as our
• 1:03:59
  great grandparents in the 19th century.
• 1:04:01
  It's perfectly possible that our great grandchildren will be 30
• 1:04:04
  times as rich and as prosperous and and happy and free as as as
• 1:04:09
  we are. And that's.
• 1:04:10
  Not that's not a complete dystopia in your mind.
• 1:04:14
  Well, if you can remove all the environmental harms, which I
• 1:04:18
  think is perfectly possible, then no, this is not a dystopia
• 1:04:21
  to me at all. And there's going to be a lot of
• 1:04:23
  fast fashion then, Mark, and I'm sorry to tell you that it's.
• 1:04:27
  Well, maybe. Maybe you and I can be wearing.
• 1:04:29
  Different kinds of different pairs of clothes at every day
• 1:04:32
  and I. Should have changed my clothes
• 1:04:34
  about five times showing a century in that case.
• 1:04:36
  Yeah, exactly. Disposable clothes.
• 1:04:39
  That's that's the future. Right.
• 1:04:41
  And look, we, we, we, we, we've got so much more we can talk
• 1:04:43
  about. I'd love to have you have you
• 1:04:45
  back on Martin. But yeah, any publishers listing
• 1:04:48
  any agents? So it sounds like the, the
• 1:04:50
  English language writes your book.
• 1:04:52
  What's it called again? The.
• 1:04:54
  Well, the betrayal of enlightenment.
• 1:04:56
  How progress, why we need the new progress movement.
• 1:04:59
  That's that's the literal translation.
• 1:05:01
  And if you don't find it, and we'll publish it ourselves with
• 1:05:03
  Green Planet, because I think this is this is what the world,
• 1:05:05
  the world needs to see this. And you're such an eloquent
• 1:05:10
  spokesperson for, for, for these ideas.
• 1:05:12
  So thanks again, Martin for for coming on, and thanks for
• 1:05:15
  everything you do to save the world from bad ideas.
• 1:05:19
  It's my pleasure. See you next time.
• 1:05:24
  Thanks so much for listening to Saving the World from Bad Ideas,
• 1:05:27
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• 1:05:30
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• 1:05:32
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• 1:05:34
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• 1:05:36
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• 1:05:38
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• 1:05:43
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• 1:05:45
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• 1:05:48
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• 1:05:53
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