Latest / One Universe, Two Books / The rise of religious ecology. Robert Lackey
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us on this episode of One Universe two books, brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. One U two B, as we like to call it when we don't feel like typing out the whole name, explores the intersection of science and religion, faith and reason, but more broadly how we create alternate narratives that we use to make sense of the one universe we all inhabit. I'm here today with my colleague and co host Ian Oxnavad. Say hello to our viewers, Ian. speaker-1: Thanks for having Scott. So I'm Dr. Ian Oxtavad. I am the senior fellow for foreign affairs and security studies here at NAS. most of you probably know me more familiarly from Cafe Berlin and our work on China and foreign influence and higher ed. But believe it or not, I also have a theological background. So that's why I'm here and we hope you enjoyed this episode. speaker-0: Yeah, and since you mentioned those other podcasts, let me just encourage our viewers to have a look at our other podcasts. we've got a wide range of topics that we cover on those. Okay. So on to today's show. We have a very interesting guest today. He's Robert Lackey, who is an emeritus professor of fisheries science in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He has for many years been involved in fisheries conservation, focusing on perhaps the Northwest's most important fishery, that is salmon. He's led various long running conservation initiatives in the Pacific Northwest, including the Pacific Northwest twenty one hundred project and the Salmon twenty one hundred project. In these efforts, he's been closely involved with the interface of science and policy. And he has some interesting things to say about how the relationship is working and where it may be going astray. We're having him on today at one U twoB because he recently published an article in the journal Fisheries titled The Emergence of Religious Ecology, and I'll let him speak for himself what he means by this. Okay, so let's bring in our guest, Robert T. Lackey. So welcome Bob to One Universe Two Books. We're really excited to have you here. speaker-1: Well, I'm glad to be here. I look forward to it. speaker-0: Yeah. So when we introduced you, we mentioned that you had recently published this paper called The Emergence of Religious Ecology. And let's just start with a basic question. What do you mean by religious ecology? What are you talking about there? speaker-1: Well, religious ecology was really an intention getting title because a lot of people read a lot of my colleagues read the earlier versions of this and they said, You gotta sip this up, no one's gonna read this. So it could have been values based, getting value based decision making, policy biased science, so forth. but I said a lot of religion because in my view, a lot of especially in the areas I work, environmental science, ecology, forestry, fisheries, wildlife, that kind of stuff. A lot of the science that we think of as science essentially has embedded policy preferences. And that science makes it not really science per se, it really makes it advocacy science, policy bioscience, or in my case I call it religious science. And it's not nothing to do with formal religions, it's religious as in tenets that people have about things that they hold very strongly, and in fact it's embedded. And that's what's happened to that science. speaker-0: Yeah, so you know, you you you probably have touched a sore point among many of your colleagues here, because it's really taking a very different approach to how science should influence policy compared to what we say how science should influence policy. So as you know the the trope is that well, scientists can come along and provide objective evidence to policymakers so that they can make scientifically informed judgments. I think what you're saying there is that religious ecology is kind of turning that on its head, right? speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's so prevalent in the fields I work in now that essentially scientists collectively, and this is not to I don't want to overly broaden it, but many scientists are perceived to be just one more advocate. They wrap their advocacy in science. They obviously have scientific credentials, they talk like scientists, but they're essentially pitching a policy position. And I think that undermines trust in the scientific interrupt. Enterprise a lot. speaker-0: So in your paper on religious ecology, you you outlined well you had some very interesting things in the area, but you outlined ten examples of of areas where this kind of quasi religious approach to to how science should in should inform policy. among them are deciding which species to save from extirpation. And of course there's all kinds of interesting Things there, one of the tropes as when you talk about conservation is the charismatic megafauna that are the ones that are that are singled out for for e extreme efforts in in species conservation. And whereas things like you know, an endangered termite or an endangered endangered liver wart doesn't really attract that much attention. And you go on to talk about all sorts of interesting things like wildfires and forest management, climate change, let's see, manipulating water resources, and y you you basically say that we all have a preference really for for trying to conserve pristine ecosystems or going to the idea that there's a kind of a Garden of Eden world out there that we have degraded and that we need to use policy and science to return to. I've seen lots of other things like that. like I say you've you've laid out ten. Do you have any comments on each of those? speaker-1: I think there's there's nothing wrong with any of those in terms of policy positions. They're value based positions, but science that has no policy bias, at least in th in theory it has none. And so let use your example of a charismatic speech like a wolf or some liverwart in Guatemala or something like this. well, it's sci society's right to say, hey, wolfs are more important, we made that judgment, it's a value based decision. And a liverwart, no one cares about it, forget it. There's nothing in the science that says either species is preferable. You've got to apply a value, a policy preference. and c science of course is clearly not value free, but it should be policy neutral. speaker-0: But it's not. And why do you suppose that is? speaker-1: I think that you know, we as a society at large tend to defer to the scientists. I mean, I think scientists, at least historically, have had a lot of credibility. Tell us what we need to do to solve this problem. Now science can lay out options, the trade offs. If you do number one option, here's what happens, that's what we do great. Number two, here are the trade offs here, you're gonna do this instead. But at the end of the day, it's not our job to decide between and a democracy, indirectly at least, that's decided by the people. speaker-0: Yeah, there are there are different realms of science as as you know. You know, there's excuse me, there's the academic sciences, you know, and this is where we're all supposed to be kind of detached from the world, if you will, you know, following truth wherever the facts lead us and and offering unbiased advice. And then you have you know, government science agencies like the National Wildlife Service or the or the A fisheries service or Department of the Interior. And those things are legitimately policy driven, that those are subject, at least normally, to oversight by, you know, elected officials, we hope, rather than, you know, entrenched bureaucrats. and so that's kind of appropriate there to ask those kinds of questions. You know, that's really a political question, isn't it? Whether we prefer wolves over liverworts. And and What seems to have happened is that is that that ethos, if you will, that's perfectly appropriate in government science agencies has bled over into the academy and basically taken over. Now everything is political, right? Even the supposedly objective evidence that we are supposed to be giving policymakers. And I know that you've been heavily involved in the interface between science and policy. What's your thought on you know how much how much politics has infused its way and taken over, if you will, academic sciences like departments of conservation science in your own department? speaker-1: I think that academic science is in an odd situation because you have science that's done by people who are paid to do something else, usually teaching, and you know, th they're largely free and pick the topic and move on f fine. I would say in that context they still ought to be policy neutral. They ought to be policy relevant. Ideally what they're doing could be should be useful and policy based. Being useful is not arguing aside. Now in government agencies or the part of academia that's funded, somebody funded that and that makes that a value choice. Perfectly legitimate. I mean we're not gonna taxpayers aren't gonna send out money and say go forth and do good. It's gonna be to accomplish something. Well the decision to accomplish something is a value choice and totally appropriate. Once it's done, then the science should be policy relevant to that funder as well as policy neutral. speaker-0: Yeah, so what who should be the initiators here, do you think? You know, I I I I mean should should the academic sciences or academic scientists should they wait should they be waiting for government to come to them and ask for advice or should they be proactive and say to the government, Look, you really need to be doing this differently from the way that you're doing now? And I mean, who should be the leader here if if I either? speaker-1: Yeah, that's a loaded question. But but I I think I am very much for being involved in the science pol the policy issues. I I'm not one of these people say, sit in your laboratory and you know, when finally finish the paper you send it out of the door at twelve o'clock Saturday morning. Forget that. I don't believe that, especially if people pay for it. Now, I also think that scientists ought to give candid advice, and that is, by the way, you're doing X, you're shooting all these invasive owls. It will very unlikely do any good to save the native species. I I would argue that's a fact, assuming that's true. That's a fact. Now, if that how that affects policies is up to other people. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And you it looks like you have something to say. speaker-1: I I I do. So having been in very close proximity with some environmental policy politics people, when I was still in the university, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say that these were the hard scientists, but there was a almost a there was a f a fairly cult like worldview that they all had about the role of nature and the h humanities position vis-a-vis nature and how basically human civilization kind of needed to regress. There was like a very normative sort of thesis that underlined most of of what they did. And I can't help but wonder if if that's kind of what you're getting at when you're seeing it on the translated through policy into the science side, because these people were often embedded in science programs, even though they weren't scientists. A lot of these people were actually policy or political scientists who were, ensconced, if you will, in you know, departments that were studying water and and and things like that. And it was all about v pushing a very specific sort of ideological narrative that then translated into policy that then guided the science research. And it it almost like there's a supply chain of ideologically driven science. Is that is that kind of what you're getting at here? I think it's exactly what I'm getting at. And I I've I've have a copy here so I can remember what I said. But anyway, I would say in what you basically laid out, I think very accurately, is essentially an application of the amendment or a commandment three. And for example, I would argue that many people in our our fields collectively now adopt this and the others. And this one is thou shalt not Thou shalt know that the balance of nature is delicate and easily upset. Therefore, any proposed changed ecosystem should be avoided. I think there are lots of scientists in the fields that I work in as take that as a given. It's not even up for debate. It's a given. And there's others here too like that. But I think what you're saying in terms of people in these interface roles, including the scientists, oftentimes come with basically a set of religious tenets. These things we take as a given. speaker-0: Yeah, let me just jump in here and and and and say that Commandment three, one of the features, one of the sideboxes of your paper on the emergence of religious ecology was the Ten Commandments of religious ecology. And you know, we'll we'll post we'll post an image of that on webinar. speaker-1: That that actually Yeah Yeah. The full credit for that, I taught teach the ecological policy class for graduate class for a long time. And over the years I've learned a lot from my students. And so I run tests by them and say, Does this make sense to you? Is this would you take this as a given? And these are all masters and PhD students. They almost all will take this as a given. I mean, it is that is true. I mean, they will say this is a tenant and I don't even think about it. It's true. Yeah. You don't you get into issues about delicate and easily upset. You don't want to get in issues about our is there anything about e historical debates about ecological stability, and is there any natural state of an ecosystem? Those are debates that are not even relevant to this topic. It's just a religious tenet. I take it as a given. Well, it's it it it seems very it seemed very and still seems very anti-human in the sense where you have this environment that we're not allowed to touch. And, it and I remember these these these debates, reading these whole books about do trees have rights and like efforts to actually bestow legal rights upon, you know, the the flora and the fauna that then third parties could sue over. It seems I mean it seems like it's it's trying to displace I I would say what is the classical position of the human being Inside of knowledge in general in the Western tradition, where the human being is at the center. Instead, the human being is almost a parasite without calling it that in these in these disciplines. Well, I refer here to Commandment Nine, which is a my experience of broadly adopted. And it is, it says, Thou shalt acknowledge that humans have no more right to the earth's resources than any other species. Therefore. Meeting human priorities should not decrease biological diversity. But they have a right to the funding. They have a right to the funding. So you know it depends depends exactly what is the topic now. And if I you know, it's like when these things change. I work a long time on the acid rain program and everything was acid rain. You're doing earthworms or liver warts, it's how acid rain affects liver warts. And when that went away, yeah, it all became climate change. Everybody's ever whatever you were doing, it's now climate change. And I it'll the next one will be the same kind of a quote crisis. But they all come back to the view that what humans do may be tolerated, but they're certainly not inherently good. And that is a great position, but it's not science. And if s a scientist has that view, they've got to work hard to keep it out of their science. speaker-0: Yeah. You know, this is hardly a new phenomenon. You know, I I I I remember when I was an undergraduate this was a long, long time ago. I don't want to say well, I'm gonna I'm gonna give myself away when I when I talk about Garrett Hardin and and his his discussions of well, I'm not sure I even want to call them discussions, his advocacy of lifeboat ethics and those kinds of things. And you know, this is This is in with the whole par aerlic population bomb controversy. And as you say, it's just kind of trans transmographied into climate change and other kinds of imagined catastrophes. So this this this tendency towards the pristine, favoring the pristine, opposed to any kind of progress that helps the human species supposedly over others, I'm not convinced that's always the case. has been entrenched in ecology for for decades now. And, you know, you're you're someone who, I think kind of you know, calls the bluff on those kinds of things. And I'm I'm curious, you know, w what what are the what is your reception from your colleagues to saying these almost heretical things about their science? Have you been excommunicated? speaker-1: well, I wouldn't be excommunicated, but I'm probably on probation. So it's a yeah, speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: and and of course part of the problem is you never hear criticisms, but I do hear a lot of criticisms, so I'm assuming there's more than what I don't hear. And I would say that criticisms fall in a variety of ways. Whose team are you on? We're trying to save the earth here, and you're not helping. In fact, you're worse you're giving information ideas to the enemy. and I'm not stupid enough to say precisely tell me who the enemy is and all that. But that's that's the view. You're not helping at all. Then there's another view. You're essentially underlining trust in scientists. And we here in academia and else and federal agencies are the same. they rely on selling their research. I mean I worked in federal research for a long time and you know it was not that different much in academia. You had to sell your research or you weren't doing it. You'd go away. And they don't even have the teaching. It's all research. So there's those kinds of things. I and I think and then there's others that basically say, God, I'm glad I was I wish I was at my end of my career, I could write these kind of things too. But I'm not saying anything because I would be excommunicated. So anyway, there's a range of and then there's there to be honest, there's a a a good castle of them that say, God, I'm grad glad you actually wrote this. It's great. I'm gonna send it to my grad students. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. I've had that experience myself, I I've I've been involved in some kind of controversial ideas ra related to evolutionary thought, you know, and and I've had that experience. I was at a conference once where I gave my spiel and then the coffee break afterwards, two groups of people came up to me. One was a group who said, Well, I was talking about intentionality and those kinds of things in in biology. I said, Great talk, but I wish you hadn't mentioned intentionality. And then there was a smaller group that came by very, very quietly and said, I'm so I'm so glad you mentioned intentionality. So a lot of this praise i is i is actually kind of sub rosa, right? y people who might agree with you are are almost fearful of of coming out and speaker-1: I think that's absolutely that's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. I have another paper that's in the pike that looks at the salmon recovery issue on the West Coast. And it and we spend U the U.S. spends billion has spent billions, tens of billions of dollars to bring back salmon. There's absolutely no way you're going to bring back wild salmon runs to anything approximating historic numbers. It's not going to happen. it's that's not a that's a scientific analysis. This is just not going happen. And every and I know all the people who work in this field. And they all agree with that off the record. And then you say the obvious question, well, why don't you ever say that? You think I have a death wish? My f my job will go away. And so basically and that that's not unique to salmon. I mean there's a lot of other programs where you pour money into it. Kind of a symbolic politics thing where you the the political process is doing something, but we all know it's not gonna work. Yeah. And that is But again, I think the best indicator I always get is the students. They come through, at least my students in graduate class, and they'll just take these ten commandments. Not that when you f when you structure it this way, they know it's a trick. But when you ask them the questions, does this seem reasonable? yeah, absolutely. It's a given. speaker-0: Yeah. Are you finding receptivity among your students to this kind of view that you're you're promulgating? speaker-1: Yeah, d there's definitely receptivity and I think a lot of them, most of them would just say, I never thought about it. I just never thought about it. I just assumed this was true. Biodiv lar high biodiversity is inherently good and altered or n natural habitat is inherently better to alter. And I use my the example I often use with a swamp, whether it should be a cornfield or a swamp. And there's nothing in science that will tell you which is preferred. But you d they're very different. it's such a simple idea, but it everybody knows a swamp is better than a wheat field or a corn. speaker-0: Is it right? Yeah. speaker-1: I just to to chime in here, I don't think people realize how important this conversation actually is because of how it affects them. and being in California, where we have we we are as our as our state leaders always like to say, we are people look to California for environmental guidance. I'm thinking, no, they really don't, but they they If you look at how these approaches to the environment and the assumptions, which are these Ten Commandments, how they translate into policy, it has real-world ramifications. It affects things like water conservation, water use, fire mitigation. you know, as an undergrad, I took a I took I took a c I remember this specifically, I took a class on natural disasters and There is a whole thing on fires and how Mexico handles fires differently than California. Because in California, our idea is we have to put out the fire immediately at all costs. And we don't actually mitigate it or work with the environment at all. And in Mexico, if it's burning, unless it's threatening structures, they pretty much let it burn. And that actually leads to more natural outcomes that are actually safer in the longer term for civilization as opposed to you can't touch it. And you can't save the water. You just have to let it do its thing. And as a result, we wind up with these rotating burn and wash away cycles where as Robin Williams likes to put it, California became God's etch a sketch. And that's largely a policy decision. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I can't argue with those boards. I mean the the fi the fire the fire situation is a real I mean, that's a a direct one. I mean, oftentimes California's a chaparral compares to what Australia does, which is very different. There's no There's no right answer, but they all have trade offs. you if you deny the analysis of showing the trade offs, you basically sh undermine the whole political process. If the people don't have the facts that are unbiased and policy neutral, is they're gonna go down a road that they're gonna be very disappointed 'cause it's not gonna work, you know. And fire is you know, the classic example, forest fires, you know. speaker-0: Well, you made the point in in your psychology headed towards the pristine that, you know, if you look at an open savannah grassland, you know, that's a result of of native populations coming in and periodically burning everything off to actually enhance grazing. And is that a preferable state to, you know, a lush forested system? And you know, this is This is again, humans imposing value judgment on on ecology, if you will. But in some cases it seems to be okay and in other cases it doesn't. The thing about fire policy and and actually this whole issue of religious ecology is just how entrenched and persistent it is. You know, I One of my heroes when I was in grad school was a w was a man named Raymond Coles. He was at UCLA and in the nineteen fifties he was making the point that Ian just made. Look, you worry about fires, this is a fire. No, this is a fire. Okay, yeah, no no worry. speaker-1: No, you you keep talking. I'm just gonna turn it off. speaker-0: Okay. you know, we're if you're worried about fires, Southern California is a fire-driven ecosystem. And all that happens when you suppress fires, as as Ian has pointed out, and as we've seen many, many times since then, all you do is build up kindling and the forest fires are are the fires there are much, much worse than they would be if it had just been allowed to burn. And again, I come back to the persistence of this idea. argument forty, you know, actually longer than that, seventy, eighty years later. It's been there forever. Yeah, how do you change it? That's my well. speaker-1: My small effort to try to change it is this piece, but I you know who knows how well it's gonna do in the larger issue. But I think on the fire issue, I think that's one where presumably collectively scientists have not conveyed to policymakers these are the trade-offs. Look at the Australian example, look at the Mexico comparative, look at the historical big burn and all the rest of them. And that's fine. You could you could try to put every fire out possible, but here are the likely consequences. If you choose to do that, here's what's likely gonna happen. Fine if you want to go ahead, but go ahead with the basic facts. I think people short circuit that, because when people see the stark trade-offs in fire control, they my god, that's my house. Malibu's gonna burn up. this is a bad situation. We gotta do something about it. And let's just finesse the science. We can give it window dressing. I prefer to that as policy advocacy wrapped in science. It's essentially advocacy, clear cut, but you wrap a bunch of science around it. Say it's well, the scientists told us we had to do this. speaker-0: Yeah, one of my colleagues at NAS, David Randall, has described that as I I need to make sure I get this right, policy based evidence making, you know. It's actually a a brilliant phrase. I've actually I actually saw it in Instapundit today, by the way. Again, this is an example of what you're talking about, how science the ability of scientists to make rational and informed recommendations to policymakers has been totally flipped on his head and it seems to persist. speaker-1: Totally I wouldn't totally blame the scientists because policy makers, political people, particularly staffers on the Hill, for example, they know darn well they want to wrap their their policy in science. So they will tend to either fund science that's I would call motivated science. We know what the outcome's gonna be, and so they can use that to wrap their policy. And policy is really just a question of picking winners and losers. There's no win win. And so it rather than mask that, they need to wrap it in science which is kind of makes it bulletproof. speaker-0: Mm. speaker-1: Is is another way of putting this are are we is what this amounts to just a industrial scale confirmation bias that we see in science? Is that is that really what this is? I yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I I guess confirmation bias, in my view, is if you walk in with the some of the Ten Commandments or others as givens, you're gonna your research naturally results you're gonna package in cons concert with those Ten Commandments. That I would think if you go into wild or natural or unaltered is inherently good, it's very hard to do science that's really neutral, policy neutral, because you already have a strong given. It's kind of like humans. You know, the metaphor of human health works for humans because everybody agrees, almost everybody agrees, that a dead human is is not good and an alive human is much better. Therefore, how close you are to being dead or healthy And there obviously people argue around the edges. What state of an ecosystem is healthy? is it the marsh in the middle of the w the desert? Is it is it the southeast areas that are overgrowing now coming back after the native population's been reduced, great reduced? there's no inherently right ecosystem state unless you apply a value to it. And that's not science's role. speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. And I I do remember a controversy a a while ago in ecology and conservation biology. what should be the object of an ecosystem? You know, is it is it is it a matter of how an ecosystem channels matter and energy through it, irrespective of what food webs might apply there? Or do we take this this ecosystem which supposedly pristine and do we try to preserve that? And you have have written about that quite eloquently in your papers. thoughts? speaker-1: Yeah, I think this I would go back and look at that issue is very prevalent in restoration ecology. And basically the question, and it's not ex usually explicitly asked, but fundamentally the starting point is fourteen ninety one was the Garden of Eden. Ever since fourteen ninety one has been down the tubes. Now that's a great policy position. I have no policy if somebody wants to have that view, but don't embed it in science. And then you raised the issue about the Southeast. It didn't look like this in 1491. It was very, very different. there was a heavily mod a lot of the areas were heavily modified, but somehow it's gotten ingrained that that is the Garden of Eden and we need to go back to it. And even when you point that out, people usually just scientists, they well, I don't want to go there. Whole restoration ecology is based on some prior unaltered state. But we're in the sciences that say that. Well, it doesn't really, but everybody knows that's right. All of us in his profession. that's right. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: We're g we're gonna be like anthropology pretty soon, basically. speaker-0: Okay, now you're scaring me. speaker-1: Well, people criticize anthropology for being politically biased. maybe we shouldn't throw any stones. I I don't know. I think I think most disciplines are just the playthings of political science. The other disciplines just haven't figured it out yet. Yeah, that's could be I it it's interesting that you mentioned that science is is value neutral and I think No, it's policy neutral policy neutral. Yeah. I think that's I think that's true. But what's what's fascinating to me is how anti civilization this a lot of the assumptions and and questions that are being asked that drive this science really are. You know, you know, the the sort and the fourteen ninety one thing is interesting too because, you know, I don't think it'd seem like the Garden of Eden if you were one of the tribes, subjugated by the Aztecs. That's right. And and twenty five million of them sitting down there. Not exactly a small unpopulated area. So there's a lot of human activity. And and just the assumptions that people when they drive to this and the policy flows from this and it actually has real economic and health implications and things like that. w any modern meal that you eat pretty much anywhere in the world is only made possible because people severely altered ecosystems. You know, if you had a cup of coffee, unless it came from a couple of places in like Ethiopia, I think, that was because of massive alteration to the to the local ecology somewhere. Well and and usually oftentimes the plant ourselves, you know. So a lot of a lot of current crops, corn being a classic one, is how you look at the wild version, it looks like a weed. speaker-0: So in the introduction we had occasion to mention the initiatives, long term initiatives that you've been involved in. one was Pacific Northwest two thousand twenty twenty one hundred, that's it. Yeah and then Salmon twenty one hundred and and I imagine that you've been bringing the approach that you've been talking about to to those initiatives. How you doing on that? speaker-1: Well, i there's a couple that's a good question. first of all, I'm very big to reiterate the point is I think scientists, if there's if it's relevant what they're doing, policy relevant, they ought to be involved in policy. I'm not, you know, this ivory tower kind of thing, especially if it's funded by taxpayers. So I think people ought to be involved. And the way I'm involved in that particular project is basically forecasting out the twenty one hundred and say what's the likely state. And it's driven by a lot of things, the likely Northwest population or West Coast population, especially Northwest in twenty one hundred and and a lot and a number of other things. what are you gonna do about water? Energy's an issue and a lot of that's involved environmental issues. And so I just try to look at those things and forecast what the problems are gonna be. And I laughed a bit about it because Paul Ehrlich, was always on the population bomb. We're gonna be b my God, it's gone the opposite way. How are we gonna keep the welfare programs going? The people are going away. And our school district here is closing a bunch of schools because there's no kids. And you got a country like South Korea, it's got a reproductive rate of point six. they're not gonna exist in by twenty one hundred. So I've had to revamp my forecast and say, well, wait a second, maybe the issue is not so much more people in the Northwest, maybe we gotta figure out What's gonna happen as it declines over the long term? Now, one caveat, the Northwest is fill in country. It the internal growth isn't that great, but people are coming from elsewhere. But you know, it if populations are declining, it presumably there's gonna be less people coming in. So speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I anyway, they're not they're going well work wise, but there's more challenges technically now. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. I can see you running into conflict, s especially with the declining cohorts of young people. I can see you running into the rather formidable f force of political force of the teachers' unions and public education and those kinds of things. I was just recently listening to a podcast from National Review called Radio Free California, and the guest on there was talking about just as you described, the declining enrollment cohort in the LA public schools, Los Angeles public schools. And rather than doing the realistic thing, which is to say, well, maybe we don't need quite so many teachers, the number of teachers is being defended and actually increasing the number of teachers with the result that you have some class sizes that are less than ten, you know, and and so this is a pretty Pretty pretty serious minefield that you're wandering into there. Have you have you run into any kinds of confrontations with other political groups that are not receptive to what you're saying about maybe declining population is the thing we need to worry about? speaker-1: well I guess you go to Germany, France, UK, and those programs are already essentially bankrupt. So people can look for s parallel activities. So I don't think factually it's much of an argument. I think generally people look at what I say and just wish it would go away because it rocks the boat, either the funding boat or the their own personal commandments they want to make happen. And so they're gonna humor me. Now And and others who write similar things. the other side is the professional societies, including the one that published this one, I mean, they were not enthused about publishing it. I mean, this is gonna shake people up and you know. Now it's got essentially five thousand views, so that kind of they they're they're more interested in having views of their journal, I think. And so they feel better about it, but I They were really worried. This is gonna upset our researchers and you're gonna tell the policymakers the true story about science and not gonna help. speaker-0: No. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: I I have a I have a methodological question for you because the population bomb now bust, the population bomb theory seems to have guided so much research for probably 30 years, maybe even more. And at least in the social sciences, theories don't die very easily. They keep motivating research and the assumptions behind it, even though those theories really should die. And I'm wondering if that population, if that's creating a problem like with the population bomb thing, you know, if that's motivating, if you're having to go back to the drawing board, in ways that necessarily the disciplines didn't have to before, because I know that the way I always approach questions was if I saw a phenomenon, I'd be interested in explaining it as opposed to trying to find what reified theory, you know, would it would fit best with unlike everybody else in my field. And and I always try to approach that differently. And I'm wondering if if that's a problem or not with what you're doing. I think it's talking about specifically about the change in director of the pop human population. I think I just happen to have a commandment for that. Number five. And speaker-0: I'm not speaker-1: and in fact and it's becoming the Talmud. That's right. it's actually I kinda made this tongue in cheek with the students over years, but then again it bec it's incredibly uncannily accurate. Scary actually. The scary is for the professional scary. speaker-0: We should read out Commandment five here. We should read out Commandment Five. Thou shalt acknowledge that Earth is a highly constrained is highly constrained because it is limited in size and possesses finite resources. Therefore, in italics, humans should aggressively reduce their ecological footprint. speaker-1: Now that's not nothing to do, they won't use the word population bomb or unbomb or whatever it is. It's just a it's a tenet of faith. Too many humans you should reduce it. So I I don't think they're gonna adopt your view is that well that's not that might go away if per Paul Ehrlich is no one talks about anymore. And that might go away, but the basic concept is there. It's a religious tenet. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've never got a straight answer for just what the caring capacity of the earth for humans is. Have you had any better luck there, Bob? speaker-1: well, I dunno think you can do that because the Green Revolution completely changed it. that's ever the first the first part was that we're all gonna starve. I mean there's the quotes that always go around, we're all gonna be starved by nineteen ninety. There'll be riots in the street and people fight over food. And my god, food costs in the United States ten percent of the average person's income. No place in history has it ever gone got down that low. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: And actually there's worldwide, there's the food situation is better worldwide than it's ever been. Not just recently ever. Yeah. I we're in a weird position now where, even people in poverty, unlike every era in human history, are are dealing with obesity issues. and that raises the question of, you know, how much of the food that we actually have is really food. You know, there was a I think it was about peanut butter recently that it had to have a certain amount of peanut butter for it to actually be legally called peanut butter. as opposed to something else. You're you're you're you're caught throwing stones at my favorite food, so watch it there. Anyway, no, I I'm only being facetious because I'm thinking I've watched a video last night on YouTube where all s all knowledge is and it was about the Irish potato famine. People were dead in the streets. I mean they literally died houses they couldn't go in because the bodies smell so much. They just literally died all over the place. We don't have that anymore. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, famines are more weapons of internal strife and civil war than they are due to a shortage of food. And of course the greatest rate of population increase is actually in countries that are supposedly so poor they should be starving. Or s so overpopulated and so poor there should be mass starvation, but there's not to underscore your point there, Bob. So Yeah. speaker-1: So you got really coming up with some serious questions here. Do you speaker-0: We have fun doing it and I hope you're having fun. speaker-1: We don't do light topics here. This is not one of the light topics. But again, I wanna always want to reiterate I do think scientists ought to be involved in policy. Of course. Just ought to do it, stick to the science. And I that often gets overlooked. And I will not argue that science is not value free. Somebody selected the priority to do the research and that's a value based choice. And given that, the science still ought to be policy neutral within it, what you're doing. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, an important distinction, definitely. So well, we've been peppering you with questions quite a bit, Bob. Do you have any questions for us? speaker-1: Well I I would ask you both the the question is kinda how do you see things standing back in your respective fields? does this ring true? It's this is maybe I'm looking at this as anthropology, or not. But but is this does it ring true? speaker-0: I'll let you go first, Ian. speaker-1: I think I think in my field, policy's a natural outgrowth of political science in general. it whether you're looking or you're studying geopolitics, you're looking at strategy outputs, foreign policy outputs, you're looking at economics, you know, economic policy is a natural outgrowth of that. So I mean, in some sense, I think my discipline almost gets a pass. The only caveat to that is that there's such a homogeneous worldview that doesn't allow really for dissenting voices that you're dealing with, and there's actually studies on this, like we don't actually train people in political science or even international relations anymore how to win a war. And and you would think that that's kind of an abstract thing, but then you realize, well, okay, foreign policy since you know the end of the Cold War hasn't done very well. And, you know, the actual people that used to do pretty well at it. the the World Wars generation and the Cold War generation, we don't really train people for that anymore. it's and we we look at these things like international organizations, which don't really have any presence, you know, we think of them as things as opposed to you know just ephemeral ramifications of actual power politics. We don't even really talk about power anymore. We think sovereignty is passe And I think those are all products of a worldview that's calcified and ideologically captured to the point of it being honestly a threat to civilization at this point, because you see these policies translating into elite policy circles all over the world, certainly in the West. And it's leading to serious implications, including, ironically enough, in environmental policy, because you know, the you the the powers that be will actually look at environmental policy as a tool to try to do whatever thing with their coalition, et cetera. So I think, there's a past but it it with political science, but it's darker in a sense because of the homogeneity there, as opposed to a byproduct that just happens in other disciplines. Yeah, I deal a lot with political scientists and I find them in the lotteries I agree with the homogeneity of of political slant. There's no question about that. we've got a few here that are outside the box, but not that many. but I think they too tend to look at science as one piece, useful piece sometimes in policy making, but I think scientists tend to see science as the piece. and and I think, you know, I'm always wondering about I do wonder right now, what kind of folks in government and I don't mean the current administration, I mean the last twenty year administration, right? You're going back to Clinton, you know, what did bozos do? You let North Korea get the atomic bomb. What are you couldn't you do something there? this is not a good sign. And and I I think it's okay. Literally, I could literally point to theories that just still guide people's thinking that people still think we live in the nineteen nineties, world war is not a thing, you know, we live in a post nuclear age, it's all democracy and tech and everything is great, but we have to worry about the environment. Those are the commandments, if you will, of The orthodoxy in political science. Yeah. And just a disaster. Politically that is very scary. That's very scary. mean it's kind of a unilateral disarmament thing. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, right? Right? With Russia invading Ukraine. I told you so, but you did a list of But it was worse than that, because it was worse than that. We promised Ukraine that we would protect you if you give up your nuclear weapons. They gave up their nuclear weapons. The Buddha the the Budapest Accords. And by the way, we have no weapons. We gave them up. Are you guys gonna come over here and help us? No. So what's where's this trust where does trust go? speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess turns to me to answer your question there, Bob. You know, and and this might seem to be a bit rambling, but there's two parts to it. one is is my age, you know. I was we're talking about nearly fifty years since I got into college and so I saw a pretty pretty broad span of thought. Now I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. and i if if anyone if you know anything about UC Santa Cruz, it was the ultimate countercultural, crunchy prototype for a lot of this in environmental stuff. And I remember that when we sat down and we spoke to and I spoke to scientists, which is what I was studying. There was a a standoffish attitude among the scientists towards that that kind of mentality, the basically the mentality that you're describing in your paper, Bob. And and and so there was there was a kind of realization, a kind of pride in holding science apart from the crunchier aspects of what was going on at UC Santa Cruz. And I thought that was a very healthy thing, right? and I saw over the course of my career, my academic career, that the rise of these kinds of attitudes that you describe in your in your paper on religious ecology. And I was at a college of environmental science. That's where I spent my academic career. And and so, you know, I saw a kind of blending of of the distinctive nature of science sort of being overwhelmed, if you will, by this kinds of kind of quasi-religious approach to it. So that's one thing, and I'm gonna try to remember the second thing here. yeah, okay. So you know, I I've I've I've seen this change and I've spent a lot of time thinking, well, why did this happen? And and yeah, you know, the the the main thing I can come up with is that is that what's happened is you've had a greater and greater intrusion of of government and politics into the academy. And of course, with that that's supported by increasing amounts of money and as you mentioned, you know, whoever's paying kind of gets to call the shots. And and I think that that's part of the e explanation behind the persistence of these kinds of strange anti scientific ideologies that you that you discuss. And that's not a view this popular among many of my colleagues, I have to say, because it it means that we're having to look at at money as a kind of corrupting influence on what science is supposed to be doing, which is providing, you know, dispassionate, as you say, policy neutral advice to policymakers. That boundary between scientists and and policymakers is has become increasingly blurred. And because it's the policymakers who bring lots of money into it, they're the ones who whose views prevail. And so that's kind of my answer to your question. speaker-1: No, I think it's that's good both these are good analyses in my from my perspective. And I think the issue I would always say is science deals with the is and policy deals with the ought. And those are just different worlds. You know, political science spends a lot of time on the aughts and what are the trade offs with the various possible aughts. And science provides basic information relevant to the topic. That's it. Yeah. Don't get in there and try to convince them. I would add one thing, I mean spent a fair amount of time at D C working with Hillstaff and others. And my experience is those are very bright people, in general, including politicians. That's a cardinal sin, but the ones I dealt with I thought were pretty smart. And they also knew what how they could use science. And they basically know who to fund. You know, all of us, all of our disciplines have certain groups of people or individuals who have a certain worldview. And it y it's useful to support a particular policy position. And they will fund those people because they're essentially want to wrap their policy advocacy in science. And you know, people a lot of people, especially those that aren't that close to science, put a lot of faith that we're, you know, policy neutral, reasonable people, and not but we're essentially in many cases being used to paper over a political decision that has nothing to do with science. speaker-0: Yeah. And this the distinction you point out between is and ought is is a profound one that I think we've we've largely forgotten, except in the persons of people like you, Bob. so okay, well we're at the end of our time here. Ian, any final thoughts? speaker-1: Well, I think I think this is a repeated almost theme that's emerging since we've started the podcast. And and it looks at what how do questions come about? Because all the all the work, whether, you know, it it be hard sciences or social sciences or even philosophy that we've that we talk to, they they all arise out of questions. And how you ask questions and why you ask questions, and more to the point, what motivates those questions, is what's going to ultimately drive the research and I think that's organic and I think the problem that we're seeing is that on the one hand you have an ideological issue that's limiting the number of questions that can be asked. And on beyond that you have a funding issue of what what questions are we willing to fund. And between the two, actual human inquiry, broadly speaking, is getting smothered out. No, I I think that's very reasonable. And the the joke that I when I teach the class policy class, the one I use is look for the adjectives. Adjectives will tell you where a person's coming from. For example, if you look at that wheat field and call it degraded, I can guess where your policy preference is. It's seep through. Or if you look at this swamp and say there's a healthy ecosystem, my interpretation if I wasn't you know, you know, uninformed about this topic, it these people are experts, they must know it's healthy, good. and so I think those kind of things Those are the kinds of wording changes that convert regular science to normative science. And it's they're slick. i I watch a lot of these packaging and they are very slick to sound like science, but it's nothing but advocacy. speaker-0: Okay, Bob, do you have any final thoughts? speaker-1: No, I think I've probably told you pretty much everything I know about the subject. speaker-0: Okay. All right. Bob, again, thank you very much for coming onto One Universe Two Books with us. I really enjoyed talking to you and yeah, it was great. So thank you for joining us today. speaker-1: You're most welcome. speaker-0: Well, Ian, I thought that was fascinating. the guy is deeply embedded in the interface of policy and science. He has some interesting things to say about how the interface is working and how it's not working. to me one of the striking things was just how persistent these quasi religious ideas are in ecology and the interface with policy. I mean, you know We're having the same debates and arguments eighty years over the past eighty years or so. In other words, longer than my my own lifespan here. And I thought that was probably the most interesting thing to come out of our discussions with Bob Lackey. What about you, Ian? speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's the the biggest takeaway that I have is almost something that, we see firsthand. We see it with with this, we see it with, with Lackey's work and what he's pointing out, but we also see it in other disciplines and you know, pretty much any everyone in NAS who's touched a university at some point would probably agree with this, but people on the outside don't I don't think understand this is that the worldview and the motivations and funding affect the questions that get asked. The questions that get asked ultimately affect the research output. And the research output affects real world life. It affects whether you're talking about social sciences, you're talking about taxation, economic policy, tariffs, foreign policy, or you're talking about, ecology and the the effects of needing to preserve a fishery, that that can inhibit economic growth for whole hosts of towns along a river, that affect the GDP of a state and, all these other things that affect real world. decisions, for example, when does life begin? We see that with a with debates on abortion and, you know, stem cell research and climate change, you know, do we need to regress the economy? You know, these are all things that real people in power are talking about. And it all comes from where the questions ultimately come from. And it almost makes me wonder if like physics, astrophysics and quantum physics are some of the last places where you actually get real science that's not inhibited by these things and it's actually driven by people asking the questions as opposed to, just a pursuit of power or funding or whatever your myopic worldview will allow you to question. speaker-0: Yeah, and of course his framing of the question in terms of a religious ecology raises an interesting contradiction. You know, our public schools are ostensibly adamantly opposed to any introduction of religion into the public schools, but of course what they mean is they're adamantly opposed to one particular kind of religion, and this kind of Under the table religion has a tendency to sneak into our public schools in some rather pernicious ways. speaker-1: Yeah, it's a it's almost a it's almost a it, you know, not to cut you off, but it's almost a neo paganism by another name. That's really what it is, where it's, you know, how do I relate to the ecosystem and how do I serve the ecosystem? And, you know, in another era they actually would have deified all these different things. In some cases you actually have ecologists who are super into this who actually do deify the the things that they study. And it's it's really kind of interesting to see. speaker-0: Yeah. And we see that quite extensively in the whole idea of Gaia theory. And that's worth a whole other episode right here. Yep. we don't have time to go into it right now, but you see the same kind of quasi-religious stuff creeping in. Okay, that was this episode of One Universe Two Books. Bob Lackey gave us some really interesting insights and conversation. And just to sign out, One Universe Two Books is a production of the National Association of Scholars. We're very interested in what happens in higher education and its interface with science and policy and all those other kinds of things. We have a I think a unique view on these things. And of course, One Universe, Two Books is one aspect of that diverse worldview. And if you enjoy this content, re remember that we are a membership supported organization. If you are already a member, thanks very much. if you're not a member, you know, maybe think about joining us. And of course, we're always happy for donations. stay on for a little while and you'll see a QR code that gives you a handy link to sending some resources our way. Okay, until next time, this is One Universe Two Books, and I will bid you adieu until next time.