Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV After Words 20130908

Cappiello Associated Press energy and environment reporter. This week environment a Leadership Program founder paul sabin and his latest book the bet paul ehrlich, julien simon and our gamble over earths future. And it the yale historian analyzes the 30yearold wager between an economist and biologist of the longterm effects of depleting Natural Resources and examines the opposing perspectives at the heart of the Climate Change debate. The program is about an hour. Host paul sabin thanks so much for coming to after words and talking about your book the bet. I found it fascinating as a reporter that covers policy politics and Climate Change i could not help to have a sense of deja vu. I have heard this argument before and i have heard it numerous times especially in this current congress. I wanted to start at the beginning which is where did the idea for this book come from . Was the kind idea that you always had that became right because of the current political context . Was it a chicken and egg thing . Guest it starts with an interest in looking back of the 1970s and the rise of the environments of movement and trying to the understand where were the successes and accomplishments of that era of Environmental Activism and legislation and also what were some of the limitations and constraints. Ive been interested in that for very long time and then when i was looking around or a new book topic i decided that i was really looking for a good story. A good story with strong characters and also one that would make me think and challenge me so that is how i ended up with this particular topic which i thought really lends itself to two strong individuals paul ehrlich and julien simon a very interesting iconoclastic so looking at the two of them in their lives and relating that to a larger trend happening within the Environmental Movement and the plot backlash against it and also within the country in terms of the clash between liberals and conservatives i thought it was just a right story to be told. Host so when we look at whats happening currently in congress or either the Obama Administration what lessons do you think the story of paul ehrlich and julia simon holds for this generation for today . Guest there are a number of different kinds of lessons. I think, and the lessons of the bed itself. Maybe i should tell you quickly what the bet was and what the bets are. So to paul ehrlich was the author of the book the population bomb in 1968 and which famously predicted that we were in danger of global famines and various ecological disaster and warfare as a result of overpopulation. Julien simon was a critic questioning the saying human ingenuity and markets and creativity would allow us to avert these kinds of threats. In fact more minds on the problem the humanity face. In 1980 they actually made a bet about the five metals and what their prices would go up or down in 10 years so it was a proxy for the two visions of the future whether population growth would ring disaster or humans would be able to adapt. Host and ehrlich lost. Guest spoiler alert ehrlich lost the bet. That was the initiative for me since i have an environmental background. Trying to figure out what are the lessons of that day so what are those lessons . One lesson is to, just the relationship between human societies and environmental change or not that simple. They are not a linear relationship and people are creative adaptable and they are able to adjust to changing circumstances. So rising prices for instance of energy resources, oil dont necessarily lead to our running out of oil but two different types of adjustments. Different types of fuels come into play different exploration conservation method so that is one important lesson is really an appreciation for the adaptability of people and then to understand the disjuncture i guess between them are mental changes that are happening in the world, the very real changes that scientists like paul ehrlich had documented and Human Welfare. Those two things are related but they are not directly they are not always moving in lockstep with each other. That would be one set but i think a second important point is about this bet which has become in the last decade since it was resolved in 1999 and 2001 , the current debate on the Climate Change is really sort of traveling in rats i guess, rats established by previous debates over population growth and resource scarcity. I think you can really only understand the gulf that exists between environmentalists and conservative critics if you go back and tend to these earlier battles over population growth. Host to go back to the bet for a moment you make the point that it really was the wrong bet because the prices of these metals really didnt do really anything to solve the divide between simon and ehrlich because they view the world and measured progress and change in very different ways. I mean if they were going to do the bed again, do you think there would be any kind of measure that would at least get them to respect each others opinions . They were so far apart. Guest let me Say Something about the bet itself. Which is another lesson which is how misleading the bet itself was. They chose these five metals chromium copper 10 nickel and tungsten important metals in our economy and the question was whether it would go up or down and whether that would signal that more people, 800 Million People are so were added to the World Population over the course of the decade whether it would lead to price increases on the resources. One of the lessons of this bet were simplistic measures dont account for the broader changes within the economy or the environment. And then there is another aspect of this switch is that many people who like to talk about the bet and talk about simons victory dont necessarily take into account the fact that simon really did get kind of lucky. The dates that they chose and when the communists had run the numbers over the last century or more they found ehrlich would have won the bet on these metal prices more times in the he would have lost. So taking as one example from the bet that they made, it doesnt really prove prices are always going to go down. Host it reminds me a few bet on oil prices. The president talked about expanding offshore trilling and then you have a disaster that could throw off any kind of wager that you have on commodities. Guest and thats a lesson or one of the important things to understand about how the markets work for commodities and for resources. They are dependent on the factor so during the 1980s they were macroeconomic factors related to oil prices and Economic Growth and slowdowns and also everyday market factors, things like the growth and production in 10 thane and there was this cartel type agreement that fell apart and also collapsed or you have new substitutes and new substitutions for copper fiberoptic cable and satellites and all this that led to in addition to increase production that responded to higher prices with copper prices going down. Host would there have been it better way to measure you get into the book and he can explain this to the audience of the bet that ehrlich and schneider strike a new bet that they thought was a better measure of the points they were trying to make. Can you talk a little bit about that and then comment on what you think if there was an ideal bet to have between simon and ehrlich that could perhaps bridge this gulf between them what would it have been . Guest in 1995 after simon won the bet in 1990 and was very proud of that and he would not to california and he wrote an oped for the prodigal rubbing ehrlichs nose in it and challenging him for al gore to another bet. Ehrlich and his colleague scientist Stephen Schneider who has passed away, came up with some other metrics that they thought would be better than medal match prices and with prove that simon was wrong. They chose 15 different metrics including concentration of Carbon Dioxide come to the state of the ozone layer and things like that and environmental indicators that they thought would get over time. Simon refused to take the bet and he said what do they show . Show that the world is changing and they dont necessarily mean that humans are going to suffer. Part of his idea was we would adapt to the idea that changing planet and what needed to be measured was human Life Expectancy are rather than measuring the size of the ozone hole measure skin cancer rates to see whether people were adjusting and adapting. And i think that really captures the gap between their two ways of looking at these problems because simon was very focused on Human Welfare and ehrlich was focused on environmental metrics and the relationship between the two of those was very difficult to establish. In fact both mens assertions could in fact be true that the ozone layer could be diminishing at the same time we may have come up with ways to adapt to that and kept skin cancer rates from going up and things like that. So they were unable to agree on a metric and that symbolizes their inability to have a conversation with each other, a conversation which they are talking on the same terms and trying to find some kind of mutual agreement. In terms of what would be a better measure thats very difficult to come up with because you have to figure out a way to measure. Do you want to measure environmental changes or do you want to measure the welfare of human societies . Those can be related but also be different. Host one of the things that keeps coming coming up and someone has covered these issues very closely in washington is obviously you hear a lot of what the simons of the world say in the present day which is is it going to kill jobs and kill the environment . Will it be horrendous for the economy and the response to that by the administration and its supporters has been well, if you look look at the sweep look at this week that the marmot of regulations and all the things we have done with air pollution gdp has steadily gone up even as we have curved air pollution and put more regulations in place. Would simon have said hey yeah i believe that. What is your response to that counter argument because that is one that is used over and over again on the hill and testimonies and the administrative that gdp has gone up as we have worked on our environmental issues. Guest two things to talk about. One is simon died in 1988 and the other is it involved counterfactuals. What would the gdp be if these regulations had been in place . Smile and view is that the assertions of the cost of these regulations often are not well substantiated. They go back all the way to the 1970s and part of that actually has to do with the very points that simon made about human adaptability. Not only can people adapt to changing environments but also to regulatory schemes. The assertion that the change in the regulatory structure that governs Economic Activity is going to lead to a whole cascade in series of disasters including unemployment and stagnating employment growth, that assumes that people cant adapt or figure out how to have less pollution and that really runs counter to the evidence of the last 40 years. Host i guess one i was reading this book and how to say this eloquently ehrlich was concerned about reaching our limit. That population would reach a level that we would reach a limit in the resources that we need to feed people, to have Potable Water what have you and then it seemed that simon was saying but as it gets closer to this limit you no, people get smart and do things that set the limit out further. There are so many examples of that. You look at natural gas today with hydraulic fracturing where we are now talking about the debate is about exporting natural gas because we have so much of it. But i guess from a policy stem point i guess the question is, whether you believe its always going to happen. Whether the yardstick is going to keep moving basically and when you kind of have to say do you really want to risk this to see if we can push it forward . Guest i think those are exactly the questions we should be asking right now and some of the implications for the story for the current debate about climate and also energy so a couple of points to make on that one of which is we cant assume just because we had success in the past that we are necessarily going to have success in the future and we are able to adapt to growing populations doesnt necessarily mean that Climate Change is not a problem. They are very Different Things. The second is Climate Change is not population growth. Population growth is more diffuse occurrence that leads to ramifications throughout the economy and society. Host the u. S. Population is in growing. We are huge global gas emitters so it is consumption as well. Guest the dangers of population growth is much more diffuse and the ability of societies to adapt and adjust as simon argued. Climate change is a much different question involving a specific phenomenon of putting gases into the atmosphere that have specific consequences for the planet and i think scientists have very welldocumented that this is happening and people are causing this to happen so i guess its quite different from population growth. This gets to simons own arguments where he said he made the claim that problems led people to devise solutions that ultimately whittled leave Society Better off that one of the necessary things that has to happen for the problemsolving is there has to be a willingness to recognized that the problem exists and they think that is where the problem of todays Climate Conversation is. There are many people unwilling to accept the existence of the problem. Its always going against the very ideas that julien simon was advocating. To apply our own ideas and. Host i love the image because its dead on around this issue. Who is that ehrlich and the simon today . You mentioned al gore and earth and the balance in the latter half of the book that even al gore seems to kind of have doing his stance on the hill and is not then so out there as he has been in the past. Is there a temporary counterpart for ehrlich today or for simon that represents the respective routes if you will . Guest in terms of specific people. Host i thought of james hansen on the ehrlich side as a scientist. You have this portion in the book where ehrlich basically says its like a scientist calling people out when they are uninformed. Guest hanson does take some of ehrlichs role as a scientist as intervener and the Public Policy process. And he has made assertions about by guess the ehrlichs of today are the people who say civilizations civilization are going to collapse and this is imminent as opposed to thinking about how civilization is going to adapt and change. And the other side one of the more prominent people and i think also they come out in favor of Nuclear Power and adaptations that people should take to adjust to the climate problem. Host you mentioned at the outset that your initial interest in the subject matter was about the 70s. Im a child of the 70s so when you look at the Environmental Movement of today and i think keystone xl is way up there in terms of the line being set in the sand. What differences and what similarities do you see from the 70s . Theres a passage in the book in todays context around earth day and the formation of the epa and the years where we were passing almost unanimously environmental laws. We cant get people to talk about light olds. Its a mandate to tell us what lightbulbs to put in our house so where do you i guess, whered you put the health of the Environmental Movement today versus the movement of its heyday which was the 1970s . Guest they are quite different and this is a big topic. There are many different aspects of it and many different elements to this. First let me say i think the Environmental Movement today is split in some ways between a set of the larger more abstract claim about the future society and civilization. The Keystone Pipeline is a symbolic issue in that debate and then the more pragmatic aspects of environmentalism which are happening at the local level and happening at the state level with the new creation of green businesses and the penetration of Environmental Concerns of every aspect of our society. On the one hand the country is divided. Theres a tremendous gulf between the two Political Parties and what to do about the Environmental Policies and the inability of the National Level to find Common Ground and pass legislation. At the same time the country is moving forward. We are more environmental. Host states are moving. Guest states are moving and businesses have embraced environmental aspects of their brand so i dont want to misrepresent the Environmental Movement to mean one thing or just being the National Conversation about climate which i think is just one component of that battle or the struggle related to environmental issues. That would be one point that i would make on that. The secondary point is just and all the other activities youd see the tremendous success in the Environmental Movement over the last years in aspects of society. Host one thing to go back when we talk about keystone and back to my prior question of who is the ehrlich of today the other names that came up was perhaps Bill Mckibben who is in charge of keystone and do do you see any similarities there in terms of ehrlich . Obviously there are different backgrounds but do you see any similar issues . Guest i think there are similarities. He has been concerned about population and a strong concern of mckibbens and he tends to speak eloquently about the end of nature was his first book and of the transformation and civilization and the danger to civilization and the collapse of the aspects of civilization. In that aspect he does make as modernday ehrlich type person but theres one interesting difference about mckibben that i really admire about his work which is the way in which he is tried to shift the conversation to be about our values and our values about the future and what we care about and the idea that of a Climate Movement that is more of a Cultural Movement and about our social priorities. That is really part of the conclusion of this book for me is the need to move away from the idea that biology tells us what to do or economics tells us what to do which is what ehrlich thought and what simon thought but rather we need to learn from science and learn from economics and then we have to figure out how to weigh the risks and the uncertainties and the kind of world we want to live in. That is the whole conclusion i think to the extent that people like mckibben and others can shift the conversation to be about our values and our choices about the world we are creating. I think the Environmental Movement will be a much foundation and that is the goal of the book for me and why a wrote this book and what im hoping for to establish a Stronger Foundation for thinking about these issues. Host you made the point and i think its a really interesting one. As a biologist all the data in the world on the biology side of things that we have seen currently, there are some who dont believe it despite the overwhelming evidence and numerous things that are happening is going to convince those people. Guest right, so the people who believe the science and that doesnt sway them but i would go another step forward. Science doesnt ask the tell us what to do. It tells us what we think is going to happen and then we have to make choices about that. Because one of the implications of simons line of argument is that the earth is always changing and societies going to change and adapt in many ways. Of course we dont know that is necessarily the case with the climate problem. There may be something we can adapt to that if you take that idea that society can adapt it leaves us with the question of even if we can adapt this is the kind of world we want to live in . The droughts in the Sea Level Rise and things that we care about are endangered by the changes happening and we do have a choice about this. That is what i really think is the fundamental question that we face today. If you go back and look at the inability of ehrlich and simon to make that it is because theyre they are not bringing these two ideas together and trying to make them into a whole. I think the whole ultimately is around the question of social values. Host is there anyone bridging that gap . I think as an observer of obama and his Environmental Energy policies it seems he is trying to make that case. His rhetoric on climate has changed and he is talking i think a little bit about morals and his responsibility to generations and his personal conviction. Have you seen that change . Do you think he is trying to make that case . What does he have to do to you think to make that case to the American Public which i think is really what its going to take to get something happening . Guest its so difficult to know how to persuade the American Public of the nature of Climate Change and i think obama is trying to strike the right note. He has focused on trying to combine Environmental Concerns and growing Economic Opportunity and new businesses and what is the kind of country we have in the future . I admire the efforts he has taken and setting in the framework of values. That is a good way to talk about it. Host i wanted to ask this question so badly. Where does he fit on the Ehrlich Simon spectrum because he doesnt seem in obama fashion to be in neither camp. He seems to be a combination of both. If you look at his private policy its about mitigation and its about reducing emissions. Reducing the toll on nature on our resources and yet he is also pushing and alloftheabove strategy on energy. Over if you dont want to do a Ehrlich Simon you did carter reagan. He is part carter part reg and in some ways and molding these two halves together. If you can put the president where he is in this ruts. Guest i think hes trying to straddle these different perspectives and an element of this program is separation of the shortterm from the longterm which has taken on a number of different issues. In the short term developing different kinds of Energy Sources and we obviously dont know whats going to work out in the future so we should be exploring many avenues. But in the longterm we want to be reducing carbon emissions. So by capandtrade or carbon taxes or a variety of different mechanisms out there or regulating power plants which he is trying to pursue through executive action you have a longerterm goal. It is somewhat similar in some ways to the deficit. Theres the longterm objective in the short term so i think that is the right way to think about it. Host one of the things, the point you made in the book which is a point made by the ehrlichs is people kind of have to up for a of a better word and make temporary adjustments for longerterm benefits. Guest what do you mean . Host we make temporary changes so an example would need in capandtrade or carbon tax or electricity prices potentially going up and that is a cost that we have to temporarily bayer now for a longerterm change. You mentioned this in the context of the ehrlich believes but it seems obama at the outset hit that. He is widely quoted in terms of of necessarily have to skyrocket. So how do you kind of get what with paul ehrlich say because it seems that you pull at the ap and you youre pulling everyone and everyone is on the ehrlich side. They want a better planet and they dont want people burdening the planet and they and they talk about what you have to do to solve the problem. People start dropping off like flies and dont want to deal with higher gasoline prices job losses as coal plants have to shut down. Guest this is one of the interesting limitations. As i said going back to study insights but also limitations of the earlier Environmental Movement. One of the limitations of ehrlich and people like him was the unwillingness to recognize there were costs to the actions they were calling for so he wrote in the population bomb for example if im right essentially we will save the planet and if im wrong well we will still be better off. Essentially there werent costs or consequences and i think that is misleading and where the conversation gets interesting and where i think we want to be moving the conversation about energy and climate is this area of tradeoffs and priorities short versus long term, how much much if we put a carbon tax on now how big should it be now as opposed to later . This is where the more pragmatic approach to addressing a problem is where its not satisfying to people on either side ideologically but i guess its thats where the United States has accomplished this pragmatic area. Host this is a perfect segue because i think one of the things i took away from the book was how do you get and everybody listening to this program in washington and beyond who watches how this town has worked and kind of how entrenched the two camps are on this, the book offers somewhat of a solution and kind of this value and different type of conversation but in terms of a real practical way i mein kompf have how do you get out of these ruts . Yes ruts have been happening now for a while. As a reader i was like this is in happening since the days of carter and reagan. We are on this merrygoround and the same rhetoric is coming back when we talk about environmental regulation or trying to solve these problems so how do we get people out of their camps and start even talking about this . Guest that is where there are many factors in play here and no one is going to solve that problem in washington. But, the goal of my book was really to try to help both sides really understand each other and to see that there were merits. There were significant insights on both sides that were worth listening to and to try to have a conversation instead of yelling at each other. And that if we try to understand what are the insights and what were ehrlichs insights that were important in terms of the role of ecosystems and our economy and our humans is pendants on nature, the way in which those things are changing documenting that owes some being depleted or the insights of economists like simon that people can adapt and regulations can impose burdens. There are a variety of insights on both sides. If you can try to have more of a conversation i think that would perhaps lead and go back to the middle ground. And i dont want to be too optimistioptimisti c that this is going to happen in our 24hour news cycle and all the pressures of the political structure but i do think that is the key element of the. Part of it i guess really is i think those sides in this divide tend to say that its the other ones fault and what i argue in this hook is that the gulf between the two parties has been mutually created over time and we have to find our way back into a conversation. Host i have to ask this question too as a journalist. How do you think the popular press has covered these this divide and how could it do a better job . Talk about this all the time as his borders especially Climate Policy where we are trying to be fair and balanced and how do you balance two sides that arent even speaking the same language at the end of the day . You dont want my job. Guest exactly. Thats a challenge. I dont think balance necessarily means taking both sides that face you particularly related to the science. For instance whether Climate Change is happening and its time for the press to move on as many have done to accepting the consensus that the world is changing and that climate is changing so now we need to move onto a conversation about what we are going to do about that and what that means. To the extent that the press can help with is towards that conversation and the questions that it asks in the stories that it writes i think is going to be what is important and the goal. Host i have trouble with this all the time. Going back to the Common Ground question for a little bit one of simons people that he admired was a person that talked about pollutions of commodity and obviously capandtrade is a market the system. I know simon isnt living but did he have a position on that in terms of basically putting a price on pollution . That seems like something that conservatives back in the day would have supported. Sulfur dioxide trading as a public idea. I know people on the hill would say the waxmanmarkey bill corrupted the market in ways and that is why they opposed that legislation but would simon have a standing mayor to pricing carbon is a solution to this problem . Guest well i think simon if he were alive today would probably have a different view of simon even in the early 90s when he is skeptical of the Climate Science and certainly about the level of alarm that many environmental scientists were expressing but i think today he liked many conservatives might have changed and evolved in his attitude towards the science. He was a man who is focused on data. He was interested in data and facts and i think you might change. Say were say that were the case but i think he might offense quite skeptical of the capandtrade dont as a structure for addressing the cost of carbon but he like many other economists may well offend favorable to the idea of taxation which most economists would lean. Host a flat tax. Guest a tax on carbon. Even with sort of a rebate a returning of that money to the American People for lower payroll taxes or sending it back. So i think any economists both more conservative and liberal see thats the place to start which would then lead to the types of adaptation that simon advocated that would respond to price signals and it would adjust and there would be an ablution in the economy in this direction. Host obviously simon was a proponent of ingenuity, of technology trying to solve these issues and to put that kind of in the present day context. You hear the president speak and talks about we have to be in charge of that technology and alternative energies such as solar and wind and geothermal and getting fuel from algae and you name it but it seems the conservatives on the hell are against subsidies to help those things along. Would simon be where they are on that or would he support basically a way to jumpstart that ingenuity or that ingenuity has to be for of a better word, organic. Guest i think you would tend to have been skeptical of the idea of state driven Investment Strategies to choose as critics like to say choose winners or losers because often the government isnt the best risktakers so to the extent that that he probably would have been more interested in funding basic Scientific Research in that type of support from the government for research that might lead ultimately to technologies that the actual choosing of specific technologies was the kind of thing he most likely would not have supported. I think he would you would haven more in favor of say he were to embrace the idea that the social cost of carbon can be incorporated through a carbon tax and then allow the marketplace to work itself out. That would have been more the type of position he would have favored and i think many conservatives today might favor that as well. I think again this is where the conversation gets interesting because there really are important insights on both sides of this question. Certainly going back in time you can find many examples of poor government investments in technology and there are merits on both sides of this debate and you have to figure out where we want to end up. I think that is where the conversation gets interesting. Host you did obviously talk to ehrlich or the book because you interviewed him several times. Where is he today . It seems like that cover his things pretty closely. Ive interviewed gore and attribute hansen and they are really up out front on these issues. Where is he today . Is he still fighting the same fight and where does he stand on some of these issues . Guest well i think paul ehrlich has been very consistent over his career in his convictions and the Vantage Point that he has taken. He feels that society is on a path to ruin essentially and some kind of collapse or potential collapse of civilization that humans are fundamentally undermining the Natural Systems that support society and we are headed towards disaster. I think he still feels that way and hes mostly sticking to his guns. He has gotten very interested in the idea that there needs to be a cultural revolution to help society become more sensitive to its own peril i guess is his interest. Host and does he equate this looming disaster that he talks about what Climate Change now . Guest yes, sir i think he thinks climate is the main factor and also things like species extension species extinction. Climate change i would say is one of the main focuses and the increasing populations lead to increased in house gas emissions and also rising consumption has that kind of effect. Host does he still see it as a population problem or does he have other ideas for solving at . Guest well i think that paul ehrlich still does believe that population growth is at the heart of it and he has come out with essays in the last decade or so in which he has made try to assert what would be the optimal population of the world and has come up with numbers along the lines of 1. 5 billion people which is a significant reduction in the numbers of people we have today. So i do think that he thinks population is the heart added. He is a complex thinker and does recognize the role of technology and consumption and affluence and a variety of fact years but he does have the basic idea that the sheer numbers of people leads to environmental consequences. One of the things that is interesting about this is his original research on butterflies and the idea of the growth of populations of butterflies leading to a crash in the population. This is really the origin of some of his thinking from a translation of other types of species to the human populations. I guess simon countering was that was ehrlichs idea the cycle of all populations in humans are no different. I guess this is the fundamental question. People in science say people are different from other animals and we can adapt in the way that butterflies or rabbits other types dont do. Host two members of obamas team are mentioned in your book and one is john holdren who is the science advisor. John which i did not know was obviously very tight with ehrlich. Spending time in colorado together. Obviously very in sync from this viewpoint that population was a major problem that had to be addressed. Without going into specific policies because i know like me you are not the ins and outs of the administration. Are you surprised that he was part of obamas team and part of the Scientific Advisory and do you think his view has evolved or do you think you really holds the view that the doesnt talk to about as forcefully as his buddy ehrlich does . Guest i think ehrlich and holden have the and how they talk about these issues. In the 1970s they talked about ideas of deep development. If the economy d. Developed and they realized that phrase doesnt work for people that wont get much traction. I think they also have backed away from some of the predictions about exactly how populations reach problems and trying not to talk about population numbers as much. The conversation shifted more to a discussion of Climate Change being the real central issue of our time and that sort is in some ways perhaps an evolution in thinking but also i think its more of a political evidence of what issues worked and what issues worm are salient. Host the reason i asked the question to go back to the obama question a little bit because obviously holdren is in the administration is that he seems to be embracing not only the root causes of the problem which is obviously the emissions but also talking about adaptation and technological fixes to the problem. It seems that the whole trend that was hanging out with ehrlich back in the day when you talk about the technological fixes as much as solving really what they thought the problem was which was population, too many people, too much pressure on the planet. Guest i think this is the important shift more generally which is the shift from the abstract arguments about population and resource scarcity to more pragmatic approacheapproache s to solving problems. Maybe that evolution occurs when one is in government in positions of responsible in trying to bring together in the form of actual policies and programs things that are going to work both politically and practically. I think that may be one component of it. Going back to the evolution of holdrens ideas and this i guess is an example. The evolution of his ideas. When he was up or his confirmation hearing he faced a whole barrage of questions about his past predictions and his relationship with ehrlich and did he still believe that Climate Change was going to lead to billions of people dying as a result within the next five, 10 come for 15 years and he backed away from those specific kinds of predictions and saying it was less conclusive and a little bit more uncertain and what was likely to happen. Host the other person obviously that had a role and obama obamas of was Larry Summers who was also on the shortlist i believe for fed chairman. Obviously he has mentioned very briefly but basically he seems to be on simons cited things talking about the limits of growth book and how kind of the models are kind of baloney. Did i read that right . Guest i think that talking about the relationship of julien simon to more mainstream economics and economists. Simon went further than many economists and some of his claims in the way talked about population being issued through us that we have more people that can be living lives. That was further than most economists were willing to go but his ac critique of the idea limits of growth and of ehrlich is widely shared among part of the economics profession, the idea that human adaptability and the role of markets and people adjusting to various problems, i think there is a criticism going back to the early 70s. Who can focus on the pragmatic problems on the outside of missions and the legislation around that if people are focused on the apocalypse by the computer making forecasts in the book limits to growth. I think summers gets within that school of thought and is clearly skeptical in terms of how things are going to play out. On the other hand, like many economists favors and i dont know specific policy positions but many economists economists like summers favorite carbon taxes and the idea that you can incorporate the social cost of carbon into the cost of business so thats a more pragmatic path that many economists like summers would want to take. Host there is an interesting thing that was highlighted and drew my attention. One is that you have two men with very different views of the world, but they had similar upbringings. They were both jewish both grew up in my home state of new jersey in the jersey suburbs. And talk a little bit about this , especially with ehrlich how moving to the suburbs which it one point in new jersey and i cant believe this about my home state. Butterflies and insects, the massive suburban sprawl of development. Guest ehrlich is representative of the whole process happening in the years after world war ii of people moving out to the suburbs and coming to be closer to nature, so he would wander the fields around maplewood and be fascinated by butterflies and have aquariums. Host they both did. They both had you said guest i dont think simon had that in his bedroom but he was an eagle scout. I think what happened is a fascinating story of suburbanization. He was seeing these subdivisions going up to try to control mosquitoes and seeing endangering the nature he was becoming so passionate about and for him and for many others including john hart one of his friends who was the third member who joined with ehrlich and simon, seeing what was happening in suburbanization, that was part of the foundation of the environments of ideas and the passion for the environment. Host and back to my thesis on radical environmentalism because im really interested in it in general, a lot of people that are involved in that the earth firsts and the movements come from suburbia and its really fascinating. The other thing i thought was really interesting was you mention that julien simon suffered from depression yet in this book, he is the optimist. He was the glass is halffull guy and its ehrlich who is the of apocalyptic pessimist glass is half empty guy. I thought that was really interesting heres this guy who studied this for 13 years. He is like hey the earth is going to survive then we are going to get out of that. Guest one is whether its hard to probe the psychology of someone like simon from a distance after he has died but to one extent one extent his euphoric attitude come from his own determination to see that the world was better. Overcoming depression and things werent so bad. There may have been some link in terms of the passion that he brought to his euphoria. Actually i think paul ehrlich would actually say that he is an optimistic person and the reason why is because he believes that there is still hope and the whole reason why he is so passionate to devoting his life to inform and educate and mobilize people is he thinks there still time to change. I think that is true. He is very put pessimistic about the direction we are going but still holds out hope that i can change. Host does he have a new deadline . We are talking deadlines. Tell me if im wrong, 2000 . Guest there were a series of when things would happen. Famines and a series of different deadlines. He pushed them back several decades but the idea that there is going to be one of a friday Different Things that can happen Worldwide Disease outbreaks plagues, warfare so the collapse of ecosystems or social collapse. Host we talk about Climate Change like this kind of building issue where there is accumulation in the atmosphere and a long timeframe but ehrlich thought it was a sudden thing that happened like egg. Guest write, and that is the language of the population biologist who studies the eruption of the population and then its crash. Biologists often talk about the crash of that cycle with human Population Society as well and i think the idea of a Nuclear Warfare or a massive disease outbreak are more of a sudden response to overpopulation than he predicted and i think he would say and i guess around Climate Change would focus on the idea of a Tipping Point that there would be some moment when things spiral out of control. That may very well happen and that is the point i want to make about the idea. They made this little bed but we are involved in this little bad about her own future and thats an important point i want to emphasize about this. There are multiple bets in my book and one is the best that we are all engaged in and theres a lot we dont know that is going to happen. Host we are all gambling about her future. Guest we are gambling on the future the planet. Host thank you so much. It was a wonderful read and i think he would inform anybody about what is happening today on these very issues. Guest thanks, it was great talking with you