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Speaker 1

00:00

People all around the world, their lives are basically dependent on fossil fuels. And so the idea that we're gonna get people off by making it so expensive that it becomes impossible for them to live good lives is almost morally reprehensible.

Speaker 2

00:13

People who have the most basic science literacy, like who know the most about greenhouse effect, they're at both ends of the spectrum of views on climate, dismissives and alarmed.

Speaker 3

00:23

What is likely the worst effect of climate change? The following is a conversation with Bjorn Lomborg and Andrew Refkin on the topic of climate change. It is framed as a debate, but with the goal of having a nuanced conversation, talking with each other, not at each other.

Speaker 3

00:44

I hope to continue having debates like these, including on controversial topics. I believe in the power of conversation to bring people together, not to convince 1 side or the other, but to enlighten both with the insights and wisdom that each hold. Bjorn Lomborg is the president of Copenhagen Consensus Think Tank and author of False Alarm, Cool It, and Skeptical Environmentalist. Please check out his work at Lomborg.com that includes his books, articles, and other writing.

Speaker 3

01:18

Andrew Refkin is 1 of the most respected journalists in the world on the topic of climate. He's been writing about global environmental change and risk for more than 30 years, 20 of it at the New York Times. Please check out his work in the link tree that includes his books, articles, and other writing. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

Speaker 3

01:41

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Bjorn Lomborg and Andrew Rufkin. There's a spectrum of belief on the topic of climate change and the landscape of that spectrum has probably changed over several decades. On 1 extreme, there's a belief that climate change is a hoax.

Speaker 3

02:02

It's not human caused to pile on top of that. There's a belief that institutions, scientific, political, the media are corrupt and are kind of constructing this fabrication. That's 1 extreme. And then the other extreme, there's a level of alarmism about the catastrophic impacts of climate change that lead to the extinction of human civilization.

Speaker 3

02:29

So not just economic costs, hardship, suffering, but literally the destruction of the human species in the short term. Okay, so that's the spectrum. And I would love to find the center, and my sense is, and the reason I wanted to talk to the 2 of you, aside from the humility with which you approach this topic, is I feel like you're close to the center and are on different sides of that center, if it's possible to define the center. Like there is a political center for center left and center right, of course it's very difficult to define, but can you help me define what the extremes are again, as they have changed over the years, what they are today, and where's the center?

Speaker 2

03:12

Oh boy, well in a way on this issue, I think there is no center except in this, if you're looking on social media or if you're looking on TV, there are people who are trying to fabricate the idea there's a single question. And that's the first mistake. We are developing a new relationship with the climate system and we're rethinking our energy systems.

Speaker 2

03:35

And those are very disconnected in so many ways that connect around climate change. But the first way to me to overcome this idea of there is this polarized universe around this issue is to step back and say, well, what is this actually? And when you do, you realize it's kind of an uncomfortable collision between old energy norms and a growing awareness of how the planet works. That if you keep adding gases that are invisible, it's the bubbles in beer.

Speaker 2

04:04

If you keep adding that to the atmosphere because it accumulates, that will change everything, is changing everything for thousands of years. It's already happening.

Speaker 3

04:11

What do you mean by bubbles in beer?

Speaker 2

04:13

CO2, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Speaker 3

04:16

Why beer?

Speaker 2

04:17

Well, because I like beer. It's also in Coca-Cola. We were talking about Cola before.

Speaker 2

04:23

And so it's innocuous. We grew up with this idea is CO2, unless you're trapped in a room suffocating, is an innocuous gas. It's plant food, it's beer bubbles. And the idea we can swiftly transition to a world where that gas is a pollutant, regulated, tamped down from the top is fantastical.

Speaker 2

04:48

Having looked at this for 35 years, I brought along 1 of my tokens. This is my 1988 cover story on global warming.

Speaker 3

04:56

The greenhouse effect, this cover,

Speaker 1

04:58

1988.

Speaker 2

05:00

Jim Hansen, the famous American climate scientist, really he stimulated this article by doing this dramatic testimony in a Senate committee that summer, in May, actually, spring, late spring. It was a hot day and it got headlines and this was the result. But it's complicated.

Speaker 2

05:17

Look what we were selling on the back cover.

Speaker 3

05:19

What you see is only tobacco.

Speaker 1

05:21

Cigarettes. Tobacco,

Speaker 2

05:24

yeah. You know, looking back at my own career on the climate question, it's no longer a belief fight over is global warming real or not. You say, well, what kind of energy future do you want? That's a very different question than stop global warming.

Speaker 2

05:37

And when you look at climate, actually, I had this learning journey on my reporting where I started out with this as the definition of the problem. You know, the 70s and 80s, pollution was changing things that were making things bad.

Speaker 3

05:53

So really focusing in on the greenhouse effect and the pollution.

Speaker 2

05:56

But what I missed, the big thing that I missed of the first 15 years of my reporting, from 1988 through about

Speaker 1

06:02

2007,

Speaker 2

06:05

when I was, that period I was at the New York Times in the middle there, was that we're building vulnerability to climate hazards at the same time. So climate is changing, but we're changing too. And where we are here in Austin, Texas is a great example.

Speaker 2

06:21

Flash Flood Alley, named in the 1920s, west of here. Everyone forgot about flash floods. Built these huge developments, you know, along these river basins, that in 1 side starts saying, global warming, global warming. And the other side is not recognizing that we built willfully, greedily, vulnerability in places of utter hazard.

Speaker 2

06:45

Same things played out in Pakistan and in Fort Myers, Florida. If you, and you start to understand that we're creating a landscape of risk as climate is changing, then that could, it feels, oh my God, that's more complex, right? But it also gives you more action points. It's like, okay, well, we know how to design better.

Speaker 2

07:03

We know that today's coasts won't be tomorrow's coasts. Work with that. And then let's chart an energy future at the same time. So the story became so different.

Speaker 2

07:12

It didn't become like a story you could package into a magazine article or the like. And it just led me to a whole different way of even my journalism changed over time. So I don't fight the belief disbelief fight anymore. I think it's actually kind of a waste.

Speaker 2

07:30

It's a good way to start the discussion because that's where we're at. But this isn't about, to me, going forward from where we're at isn't about tipping that balance back toward the center so much as finding opportunities to just do something about this stuff.

Speaker 3

07:46

What do you think, Bjorn? Do you agree that it's multiple questions in 1 big question? Do you think it's possible to define the center?

Speaker 3

07:53

Where is the center?

Speaker 1

07:54

I think it's wonderful to hear Andy sort of unconstruct the whole conversation and say we should be worried about different things. And I think that's exactly, or we should be worried about things in a different way that makes it much more useful. I think that's exactly the right way to think about it.

Speaker 1

08:11

On the other hand, that was also where you kind of ended. We are stuck in a place where this very much is the conversation right now. And so I think in 1 sense, certainly the people who used to say, oh, this is not happening, they're very, very small and diminishing crowd and certainly not right. But On the other hand, I think to an increasing extent, we've gotten into a world where a lot of people really think this is the end of times.

Speaker 1

08:41

So the OECD did a new survey of all OECD countries And it's shocking. So it shows that 60% of all people in the OCD, so the rich world, believes that global warming will likely or very likely lead to the extinction of mankind. And that's scary in a very, very clear way. Because look, if this really is true, if global warming is this meteor hurtling towards Earth, and we're gonna be destroyed in 12 years or whatever the number is today, then clearly we should care about nothing else.

Speaker 1

09:16

We should just be focusing on making sure that that asteroid gets, you know, we should send up Bruce Willis and get this done with. But that's not the way it is. This is not actually what the UN climate panel tells us or anything else. So I think it's not so much about arcing against the people who are saying it's a hoax.

Speaker 1

09:35

That's not really where I am. I don't think that's where Andy or really where the conversation is. But it is a question of sort of pulling people back from this end of the world conversation because it really skews our way that we think about problems. Also, you know, if you really think this is the end of time and you know, you only have 12 years, nothing that can only work in 13 years can be considered.

Speaker 1

09:57

And the reality of most of what we're talking about in climate and certainly our vulnerability, certainly our energy system is going to be half to a full century. And so when you talk to people and say, well, but we're going to, you know, we're really going to go a lot more renewable in the next half century, they look at you and like, but that's what 38 years too late. And I get that, but so, so I think in, in your question, what I'm trying to do, and I would imagine that's true for you as well, is to try to pull people away from this precipice and this end of the world and then open it up. And I think Andy did that really well by saying, look, there are so many different sub conversations and we need to have all of them and we need to be respectful of some of these are right in the sort of standard media kind of way, but some of them are very, very wrong and actually means that we end up doing much less good, both on climate, but also on all the other problems the world faces.

Speaker 2

10:53

Oh yeah, and it just empowers people too. Those who believe this then just sit back. Even in Adam McKay's movie, the Don't Look Up movie, there was that sort of nihilist crowd, for those who've seen it, who just say, fuck this.

Speaker 2

11:07

And a lot of people have that approach, when something's too big. And it just paralyzes you, as opposed to giving you these action points. And the other thing is, I hate it when economists are right about stuff like the...

Speaker 1

11:22

IIIII...

Speaker 2

11:26

There are these phrases, like I never knew the words path dependency until probably 10 years ago in my reporting. And it basically says you're in a system, the things around you, how we pass laws, the brokenness of the Senate. Those are, we don't have a climate crisis in America, we have a decision crisis as it comes to how the government works or doesn't work.

Speaker 2

11:48

But those big features of our landscape are, it's path dependency. When you screw in a light bulb, even if it's an LED light bulb, it's going into a 113, 120 year old fixture. And actually that fixture is almost designed, if you look at like 19th century gas fixtures, they had this screw in thing. So we're like on this long path dependencies when it comes to energy and stuff like that, that you don't just magically transition a car fleet.

Speaker 2

12:16

A car built today will last 40 years. It'll end up in Mexico, sold as a used car, et cetera, et cetera. And so there is no quick fix, even if we're true that things are coming to an end in 13 years, or 12 years, or 8 years.

Speaker 3

12:32

So most people don't believe that climate change is a hoax, so they believe that there is an increase, there's a global warming of a few degrees in the next century, and then maybe debate about what the number of the degrees is. And do most people believe that it's human caused at this time in this history of discussion of climate change? So is that the center still?

Speaker 3

12:57

Is there still debate on this?

Speaker 2

12:59

Yale University, the climate communication group there for like 13 years has done this 6 Americas study where they've charted pretty carefully in ways that I really find useful what people believe. And we could talk about the word belief in the context of science too, and they've identified kind of 6 kinds of us. There's from dismissive to alarmed and with lots of bubbles in between.

Speaker 2

13:24

I think some of those bubbles in between are mostly disengaged people who don't really deal with the issue. And they've shown a drift for sure. There's much more majority now at the alarmed or engaged bubbles than the dismissive bubble. There's a durable, like with vaccination and lots of other issues, there's a durable never anything belief group.

Speaker 2

13:47

But on the reality that humans are contributing to climate change, most Americans, when you ask them, and it also depends on how you write your survey, you know, think there's a component. And this is also true

Speaker 1

13:59

globally, I mean, when you ask around, I mean, and this is, you know, if you hear this story from the media of 20 years, of course that's what you will believe. And it also happens to be true. That is what the science, I think it's perhaps worth saying and it's a little depressing that you always have to say it.

Speaker 1

14:14

But I think it's worth saying that I think we both really do accept the climate panel science. And there's absolutely global warming, it is an issue. And it's probably just worthwhile to get it out of

Speaker 3

14:27

the way. It's an issue and it's caused by humans.

Speaker 1

14:30

It's caused by humans, yeah.

Speaker 2

14:31

But vulnerability, the losses that are driven by climate-related events still predominantly are caused by humans, but on the ground. It's where we build stuff, where we settle. Pakistan, in 1960, I just looked these data up, there were 40 million people in Pakistan.

Speaker 2

14:52

Today there are 225 million. And a big chunk of them are still rural. They live in the floodplain of the amazing Indus River, which comes down from the Himalayas. Extraordinary 5, 000 year history of agriculture there.

Speaker 2

15:05

But when you put 200 million people in harm's way, and this doesn't say anything about the bigger questions about, oh, shame on Pakistan for having more people. It just says the reality is the losses that we see in the news are, and the science finds this, even though there's a new weather attribution group, it's WXrisk on Twitter. This does pretty good work on how much of what just happened was some tweak in the storm from global warming, from CO2 changing weather. But, and the media glommed onto that, as I did, you know, in the 80s, 90s, 2000s.

Speaker 2

15:46

But the reports also have a section on, by the way, the vulnerability that was built in this region was a big driver of loss. So discriminating between loss, change in what's happening on the ground, and change in the climate system, is never solely about CO2. In fact, Lawrence Bauer, B-O-U-W-E-R, I first wrote on his work in 2010 in the New York Times. And basically in 2010, there was no sign in the data of climate change driving disasters.

Speaker 2

16:24

Climate change is up here, disasters are on the ground. They depend on how many people are in the way, how much stuff you built in the way. And so far, we've done so much of that, so fast in the 20th century particularly, that it completely dominates, it makes it hard, impossible to discriminate how much of that disaster was from the change in weather from global warming.

Speaker 3

16:48

So a function of greenhouse gases to human suffering is unclear.

Speaker 2

16:57

And that's very much in our control, theoretically.

Speaker 1

17:00

I mean, the point I think is exactly right that if you look at the Hurricane Ian that went through Florida, you have a situation where Florida went from what, 600, 000 houses in 1940 to 17 million houses. Sorry, 10 million houses, so 17 times more. Over a period of 80 years, of course you're going to have, what?

Speaker 2

17:25

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

17:26

You're going to have lots more damage. And many of these houses now have been built on places where you probably shouldn't be building. And, and so I think, a lot of scientists are very focused on saying, can we measure whether global warming had an impact, which is an interesting science question.

Speaker 1

17:43

I think it's, it's very implausible that eventually we won't be able to say it has an impact. But the real question it seems to me is if we actually want to make sure that people are less harmed in the future, what are the levers that we can control? And it turns out that the CO2 lever, doing something about climate is an incredibly difficult and slightly inefficient way of trying to help these people in the future. Whereas of course, zoning, making sure that you have better housing rules, what is it?

Speaker 1

18:14

Regulations that you maybe don't have people building in the flash flood. What was it called?

Speaker 2

18:21

Flash flood alley. Flash flood alley.

Speaker 1

18:23

It's just simple stuff. And because we're so focused on this 1 issue, It almost feels sacrilegious to talk about these other things that are much more in our power and that we can do something about much quicker and that would help a lot more people. So I think this is going to be a large part of the whole conversation.

Speaker 1

18:44

Yes climate is a problem, but it's not the only problem. And there are many other things where we can actually have a much, much bigger impact at much lower cost. Maybe we should also remember those.

Speaker 3

18:53

Can you still man the case of Greta, who's a representative of alarmism, that we need that kind of level of alarmism for people to pay attention and to think about climate change. So you said the singular view is not the correct way to look at climate change, just the emissions, but for us to have a discussion, shouldn't there be somebody who's really raising the concern? Can you still man the case for alarmism, essentially?

Speaker 3

19:33

Or is there a better term than alarmism? Communication of like, holy shit, we should be thinking about this.

Speaker 1

19:44

So I think, I totally understand why Greta Thunberg is doing what she's doing. I have great respect for her because if, you know, I look at a lot of kids growing up and they're basically being told, you're not going to reach adulthood or at least not, you're not going to get very far into adulthood. And that of course, you know, this is the meteor hurdling towards Earth.

Speaker 1

20:05

And then this is the only thing we should be focusing on. I understand why she's making that argument. I think it's, at the end of the day, it's incorrect. And I'm sure we'll get around to talking about that.

Speaker 1

20:16

And 1 of the things is, of course, that her whole generation, you know, I can understand why they're saying, you know, if we're gonna be dead in 12 years, why would I wanna study? You know, why would I really care about anything? So I totally want to sort of pull Greta and many others out of this end of the world fear. But I totally get why she's doing it.

Speaker 1

20:37

I think she's done a service in the sense that she's gotten more people to talk about climate. And that's good, because we need to have this discussion. I think it's unfortunate, and this is just what happens in almost all policy discussions, that they end up being sort of discussions from the extreme groups, because it's just more fun on media to have sort of the total deniers and the people who say, we're gonna die tomorrow, and it sort of becomes that discussion. It's more sort of a mud wrestling fight.

Speaker 3

21:06

So what do you think, the mud wrestling fight is not useful or is useful for communication for effective science communication on 1 of the platforms that you're a fan of, which is Twitter.

Speaker 2

21:17

Yeah, I wrote a piece recently in my Sustain What column saying if you go on there for the entertainment value of seeing those knockdown fights, I guess that's useful if that's what you're looking for. The thing I found Twitter invaluable for, but it's a practice. It's just like the workouts you do, or it's how do I put this tool to use today, thinking about energy action in poor communities?

Speaker 2

21:49

How do I put this tool today, learning about what really happened with Ian the hurricane, who was most at risk, and how would you build forward better? I hate build back. Or you can go there and just watch it as an entertainment value. That's not gonna get the world anywhere.

Speaker 3

22:06

You don't think entertainment, I wouldn't call it entertainment, but giving voice to the extremes isn't a productive way forward. It seems to, you know, to push back against the main narrative, it seems to work pretty well in the American system. We think politics is totally broken, but maybe that works, that like oscillation back and forth.

Speaker 3

22:29

You need a Greta, and you need somebody that pushes back against the grid to get everybody's attention. The fun of battle over time creates progress.

Speaker 2

22:43

Well, and this gets to the, you know, people who focus on communication science, I'm not a scientist, I write about this stuff. If you're gonna try to prod someone with a warning, like, this is 3 years apart,

Speaker 3

22:57

nuclear winter. Nuclear winter,

Speaker 2

22:59

we'll Talk about that. Global warming, well yeah, we'll talk about it. But look at that, this is 3 years apart in the covers of a magazine.

Speaker 2

23:05

And, but then you have to say to what end if you're not directing people to a basket of things to do. And if you want political change, then it would be to support a politician. If you want energy access, it would be to look at this $370 billion the American government just put into play on climate and say, well, how can my community benefit from that? And I've been told over and over again by people in government, Jigar Shah, who heads this giant loan program, the energy department, he says, what I need now is like 19, 500 people who are worried about climate change, maybe because Greta got them worried, But here's the thing you could do.

Speaker 2

23:46

You can connect your local government right now with these multimillion dollar loans so you can have electric buses instead of diesel buses. And that's an action pathway. So without, so you know, alarm for the sake of getting attention or clicks to me is not any more valuable than watching an action movie.

Speaker 1

24:07

And again, I think also it very easily ends up sort of skewing our conversation about what are the actual solutions, You know, because yes, it's great to, to get rid of the diesel bus, but probably not for the reason people think it's because diesel buses are really polluting in the, you know, in the air pollution sense. Right. And that is why you should get rid of them.

Speaker 1

24:30

And again, if you really wanted to help people, for instance, with hurricanes, you should have better rules and zoning in Florida, which is a very different outcome. So the mud wrestling fight also gets our attention diverted towards solutions that seem easy, fun. Sort of the electric car is a great example of this. The electric car has somehow become almost the sign that I care and I'm really going to do something about climate.

Speaker 1

24:59

Of course, electric cars are great and they're probably part of the solution. And they will actually cut carbon emissions somewhat. But they are an incredibly ineffective way of cutting carbon emissions right now. They're fairly expensive.

Speaker 1

25:12

You have to subsidize them a lot. And they still emit quite a bit of CO2, both because the batteries get produced and because they usually run off of power that's

Speaker 3

25:21

not totally clean. Strong words from your in-law. Okay, let's go there.

Speaker 3

25:24

Let's go electric cars. Okay, educate us on the pros and cons of electric cars in this complex picture of climate change. What do you think of the efforts of Tesla and Elon Musk on pushing forward the electric car revolution?

Speaker 1

25:40

So look, electric cars are great. I don't own a car, but I've been driving a Tesla.

Speaker 3

25:47

There you go, socially signaling.

Speaker 1

25:49

Yeah, but yeah, I've- We're

Speaker 3

25:51

in Texas, it's okay. Well, I

Speaker 1

25:52

flew in here, so it's not like I'm in any way a virtuous guy on that path. But, you know, look, they're great cars. And eventually, electric cars will take over a significant part of our driving and that's good because they're more effective, they're more effective, they're probably also going to be cheaper, there's a lot of good opportunities with them But it's because they've become reified as this thing that you do to fix climate.

Speaker 1

26:19

And right now, they're not really all that great for climate. You need a lot of extra material into the batteries, which is very polluting. And it's also it emits a lot of CO2. A lot of electric cars, are bought as second cars in the U S.

Speaker 1

26:36

So we used to think that they were driven almost as much as a regular car. It turns out that they are more likely driven less than half as much as a regular cars. So, you know, 89% of all Americans who have an electric car also have a real car that they use for the long trips and then they use the electric car for short trips.

Speaker 3

26:56

Yeah, true.

Speaker 1

26:56

89%. 89, yeah. So, the point here is that it's 1 of these things that become more sort of a virtue signaling thing. And again, look, once electric cars are sufficiently cheap, that people will want to buy them.

Speaker 1

27:10

That's great. And they will do some good for the environment. But in reality, what we should be focusing on is instead of getting people electric cars in rich countries, where because we're subsidizing typically in many countries, you actually get a sort of sliding scale, you get more subsidy the more expensive it is. We sort of subsidize this to very rich people to buy very large Teslas to drive around in.

Speaker 1

27:37

Whereas what we should be focusing on is perhaps getting electric motorcycles in third world developing cities where they would do a lot more good. They can actually go as far as you need. There's no worry about running out of them. And they would obviously, they're much, much more polluting, just air pollution wise, and they're much cheaper and they use very little battery.

Speaker 1

27:59

So it's about getting our senses right. But the electric car is not a conversation about, is it technically a really good or is it a somewhat good insight? It's more like it's a virtual signal. So just, I work with economists.

Speaker 1

28:15

I'm actually not an economist, but I like to say I claim I kind of am. But but you know, the fundamental point is we would say, well, how much do you how much does it cost to cut a ton of CO2? And the answer is for most electric cars, we're paying in the order of a thousand 2000, you know, Norway, they they pay up to what? 5000 dollars or thereabouts, you know, huge amount for 1 ton of CO2.

Speaker 1

28:39

You can right now cut a ton of CO2 for about, what is it, $14 on the Reggie or something? You know, you can do

Speaker 2

28:46

this- That's a regional greenhouse gas initiative.

Speaker 1

28:48

So you can basically cut it really, really cheaply. Why would we not want to cut dozens and dozens of tons of CO2 for the same price instead of just cutting 1 ton? And the simple answer is We only do that because we're so focused on electric.

Speaker 3

29:01

If I may interrupt, typically European come here in Texas, tell me I can't have my Ford F-150, but I'll- Now

Speaker 2

29:09

you can have your F-150 Lightning.

Speaker 3

29:10

Yes, that's true. I'm just joking, yes. But What do you think about electric cars, if you could just link on that moment and this particular element of helping reduce emissions?

Speaker 2

29:24

Well, you talked about the middle in the beginning and I loved moving through the hybrid. The Prius was fantastic. It did everything our other sedan did, but it was 60 miles per gallon performance and you don't have range anxiety because it has a regular engine too.

Speaker 2

29:42

We still have a Prius. We also inherited my Dad, dear dad's year 2000 Toyota Sienna, which is an old 100, 000 mile minivan. And we use it all the time to do the stuff we can't do in the Prius. Like what?

Speaker 2

29:58

Taking stuff to the dump.

Speaker 3

30:00

Oh, you mean in terms of the size of the vehicle?

Speaker 2

30:02

Yeah, yeah, size and just, you know, convenience factor for a bigger vehicle. I would love a fully electrified transportation world. It's kind of exciting.

Speaker 2

30:13

I think what Elon did with Tesla, I remember way, way back in the day when the first models were coming out, they were very slick Ferrari style cars. And I thought, this is cool. And there's a history of privileged markets testing new technologies and I'm all for that. I think it's done a huge service prodding so much more R and D.

Speaker 2

30:36

And once GM and Ford started to realize, oh my God, this is a real phenomenon, getting them in the game. There was that documentary who killed the electric car, which seemed to imply that there were fights to keep this tamp down. And it's fundamentally cleaner, fundamentally better. But then you have to manage these bigger questions.

Speaker 2

31:00

If we're gonna do a build out here, how do you make it fair? As you were saying, who actually uses transformed cars? And Jagir Shah, that guy at the energy department I mentioned who has all this money to give out, he wants to give loans to, if you had an Uber fleet, those Uber drivers, they're the ones who need electric cars. As his work, and there was a recent story in Grist also, said that most of the sales of Teslas are the high end of the market.

Speaker 2

31:31

They're 60, $80, 000 vehicles. Like the Hummer, the electric Hummer, I can't, there was a data point on that, astonishing data point, the battery in that Hummer weighs more than, I'd have to look it up, It weighs more than

Speaker 1

31:48

a car.

Speaker 2

31:48

Yeah, I think it might have been a Prius. And think of the material costs there. Think of where that battery, the cobalt and the lithium, where does this stuff come from to build this stuff out?

Speaker 2

31:59

I'm all for it, but we have to be honest and clear about that's a new resource rush, like the oil rush back in the early 20th century. And those impacts have to be figured out too. And if they're all big hummers for rich people, there's so many contrary arguments to that that I think we have to figure out a way, we. I don't like the word we.

Speaker 2

32:20

I use it too much, we all do.

Speaker 1

32:22

But- We all do.

Speaker 3

32:23

You usually refer when you say we, we humans.

Speaker 2

32:26

We society, we government, yeah. There has to be some thought and attention put to where you put these incentives so that you get the best use of this technology for the carbon benefit, for the conventional sooty pollution benefit, for the transportation benefit.

Speaker 3

32:42

Can I step back and ask a sort of big question? We mentioned economics, journalism. How does an economist and a climate scientist and a journalist that writes about climate see the world differently?

Speaker 3

32:58

What are the strengths and potential blind spots of each discipline? I mean, that's just sort of, just so people may be aware. I think you'll be able to fall into the economics camp a bit. There's climate scientists and there's climate scientists adjacent people, like who hang some of my best friends are climate scientists, which is I think where you fall in because you're a journalist, you've been writing it, so you're not completely in the trenches of doing the work, you're just stepping into the trenches every once in a while.

Speaker 3

33:31

So can you speak to that maybe beyond, what does the world look like to an economist? Let's try to empathize with these beings that,

Speaker 1

33:41

you know. Unfortunately has fallen into these disreputable economics, yeah. So I think the main point that I've been trying for a long time, and I think that's also a little bit what Andy has been talking about, for a very long time, the whole conversation was about what does the science tell us?

Speaker 1

33:59

Is global warming real? And to me, it's much more what can we actually do? What are the policies that we can take and how effective are they going to be? So the conversation we just had about electric cars is a good example of how an economist think about, look, this is not a question about whether you feel morally virtuous or whether you can display how much you care about the environment.

Speaker 1

34:24

This is about how much you actually ended up affecting the world. And the honest answer is that electric cars right now in the next decade or so will have a fairly small impact. And unfortunately right now at a very high cost because we're basically subsidizing these things at $5, 000 or $10, 000 around the world per car. That's just not really sustainable, but it's certainly not a very great way to cut carbon emissions.

Speaker 1

34:50

So I would be the kind of guy and economists would be the types of people who would say, is there a smarter way where you, for less money can, for instance, cut more CO2? And the obvious answer is yes. That's what we've seen for instance with fracking. The fact that the US went from a lot of coal to a lot of gas because gas became incredibly cheap.

Speaker 1

35:13

Because gas emits about half as much as coal does when you use it for power, that basically cut more carbon emissions than pretty much any other single thing. And we should get the rest of the world, in some sense, to frack because it's really cheap. There are some problems and absolutely we can also have that conversation. No technology is problem free, but fundamentally it's an incredibly cheap way to get people to cut a lot of CO2.

Speaker 1

35:42

It's not the final solution because it's still a fossil fuel, But it's a much better fossil fuel if you will and it's much more realistic to do that So that's 1 part of the thing The other 1 is when we talked about for instance How do we help people in Florida who gets hit by a hurricane or how do we hit help people that get? Damaged and flash floods the people who are in were in in heat waves and The simple the simple answer is is there's a lot of very very cheap and effective things that we could do first. So most climate people will tend to sort of say, We got to get rid of all carbon emissions. We got to change our entire, the engine that sort of powers the world and has powered us for the last 200 years.

Speaker 1

36:25

And that's all good and well, but it's really, really hard to do. And it's probably not going to do very much. And even if you succeed it, it would only help, you know, future victims of future hurricane Ian's in Florida a tiny, tiny bit at best. So instead, let's try to focus on not getting people to build right on the waterfront where you're incredibly vulnerable and where you're very likely to get hit, where we subsidize people with federal insurance again, which is just actually losing money.

Speaker 1

36:53

So we're much more about saying, it's not a science question. I just take the science for granted. Yes, there is a problem with climate change, but it's much more about saying, how can we make smart decisions?

Speaker 3

37:03

Can I ask you about blind spots? When you reduce stuff to numbers, the cost and benefits, is there stuff you might miss about that are important to the flourishing of the human species?

Speaker 1

37:16

So everyone will have to say, of course, there must be blind spots.

Speaker 3

37:21

But I don't know what they are.

Speaker 1

37:23

Yeah, I'm sure Andy would probably be better at telling me what they are. So we try to incorporate all of it, but obviously we're not successful. You can't incorporate everything, for instance, in a cost benefit analysis.

Speaker 1

37:36

But the point is in some way, I would worry a lot about this if we were close to perfection, human race, we're doing almost everything right, but we're not quite right, then we need to get the last digits right. But I think it's much more of the, and the point that I tried to make before, that we're all focused on going to an electric car or something else rather than fracking. We're all focused on cutting carbon emissions instead of reducing vulnerability. So we're simply getting in orders of magnitude wrong.

Speaker 1

38:10

And while I'm sure I have blind spots, I think they're probably not big enough to overturn that point.

Speaker 3

38:16

Andy, wise, Bjorn, economists are all wrong about everything.

Speaker 2

38:21

Well, the models, we could spend a whole day on models. There are economic models, there's this thing called optimization models. There were 2 big ones used to assess the US plan, this new big IRA, inflation reduction package.

Speaker 2

38:38

And they're fine, they're a starting point for understanding what's possible. But as this gets to the journalism part, or the public part, you have to look at the caveats. You have to look at what model, economists expressly exclude things that are not modelable. And if you look in the fine print on the repeat project, the Princeton version of the assessment of the recent giant legislation.

Speaker 2

39:05

The fine print is the front page for me as a deep diving journalist because it says we didn't include any sources of friction, meaning resistance to putting new transmission lines through your community, or people who don't want mining in America because we've exported all of our mining. We mine our cobalt in Congo, you know, and trying to get a new mine in Nevada was a fraught fight that took more than 10 years for lithium. So if you're excluding those elements from your model, which on the surface makes this $370 billion package have an emissions reduction trajectory that's really pretty good. And you're not saying in your first line, by the way, these are the things we're not considering.

Speaker 2

40:00

That's the job of a journalist.

Speaker 3

40:02

Summarize all of human history with that 1 word, friction. Yeah, well, inertia,

Speaker 2

40:08

friction implies there's a force that's already being resisted, but there's also inertia, which is a huge part of our, you know, we have a status quo bias. The scientists that I, in grappling with the climate problem, as a journalist, I paid too much attention to climate scientists. That's why all my articles focused on climate change.