Pretty good. Were all doing what we can to share a moment, even those avoiding the contagion which supposedly presaged what was going to happenreally didnt capture the full scope. I guess my first question is about the book which is apocalypse never. Its a very definitive statement unless theres nuances that ive missed. It implies certainty in a world of interlaced. I describe our Current Situation as tripwires and landmines that are interlaced and complex and unpredictable in a complex system so are you confident when you say apocalypse never and i guess that depends on the definition of apocalypse. Thanks andy. The arguments in the book is Climate Change is real but its not the end of the world and its not even almost areas environmental problem. I plan climate activist for 20 years, and i see what im trying to do here is more if youre a cancer doctor and theres like a bunch of people are saying everybodys going to die of cancer or billions are going to die of cancer in 10 years going wait a second. I hear about this issue and i dont like to see that level of extremism, alarmism and exaggeration. So look, are there scenarios in which you can imagine Climate Change destroying human civilization . Sure, you can imagine. There is no scientific basis for it. By contrast there was a strong scientific basis for imagining the current pandemic. The warnings of the pandemic were eerily pressey and including coming from a coronavirus, coming from poor hygiene from chinese Small Farmers and markets so we cant say its impossible but to sort of say lets get our understanding of it straight. I think one of the most shocking things most people dont know and this is where i think the news media deserves a lot of blame for this is death from Natural Disasters have declined 90 percent over the last hundred years, 80 to 90 percent after over the last 400 years. Theres no scenarios in any reports that for that number to reverse itself and there is no basis for thinking that were going to see, we see people like Bill Mckibben saying its the biggest problem weve ever faced kind of like really . That would imply that we have some mechanism for the death toll to reverse itself or for damages from extreme weather events to increase or for them to be some class in Food Production but where producing 25 percent more food than we need and according to every report and a basic understanding those food surpluses should continued to rise as long as countries have access to fertilizer, tractors, irrigation and the other elements ofmodern agriculture so never say never. Certainly aliens could invade. There could be some cosmic problem we are not aware of no its not to say never but to say apocalypse, certainly i think that the title is also meant as a bit of a defiant. Its a starting letsnever have an apocalypse as much as it saying there will never be an apocalypse. I guess the goal is to prod and kind of get a new conversation going. Although i do wonder sometimes and i wonder this about all books, ive written some books, one out this year but i see the form is kind of brittle and it also ends up being the form where you generally see the books that are most visible in the public sphere are the ones that are against the archetype and you talk about so many of us have brought bought into this environmental emergency and even a book by mckibbens will sell hundred thousand or thats a good one. I think most people are actually not bought into this otherwise you would have listened to that end of the argument and i wonder sometimes if that argument, apocalypse never an apocalypse now are varying the saying that it doesnt need to be done. They are going for the edges and i know theres a lot in your book that i like and i embrace in my writing and i went from 1988 where this is my cover story on Global Warming, talk about a meltdown, apocalypse never. With tobacco ads on the back. Too much more nuanced reporting for the last 10 or 15 years. Which got at some of these basic underlying points you make in the book and you could really say about Energy Density and look at the landscape or what could happen in renewables with theoretically could happen with renewables, it is no contest in terms of kilowatt hours or terawatt which is what we need. Andyet , in the book i would love to see many could articulate how you moved from the prod to sort of a roadmap. The roadmap for nuclear is almost as fantastically improbable as the roadmap for rapid renewables extension so what is your sort of clarion call to the world on how you wouldget that done . Thanks for the question. I think so obviously titles are titles that you only get one or two words for the title. The book is basically a defense of human civilization. Its a defense of Human Development and human progress. It points out that sure, air pollution rises as nations industrialized and urbanized but we also see now that Carbon Emissions date in britain france and germany in the mid70s. Ap in the United States 15 years ago. Theres every reason to believe theyre going to be in developing economies within i dont know, 10 years. Some people think they already and are going to go down. Temperatures are unlikely to get above 30 degrees over preindustrial levels. Obviously theres a bunch of uncertainty there but remember the Nobel Prize Winner or his work on Climate Change William Lloyd helps at the optimal level was four degrees meaning that was the level where costs and benefits offossil fuels were properly accounted for. I dont rely on, i cited my book and i dont rely on models and im not crazy about models but the overall direction and the trends that im 22 are incredibly positive so human kinds biggest use of land is for half or meat production. It paid in 2000. Sorry, it 20years ago and it declined in an area almost the size of alaska and we should celebrate that. Human resilience to Natural Disasters we should celebrate. The client in infant mortality, these are all amazing trends. And i also point out an apocalypse never that that is not the end of the story. Theres very serious environmental problems we still need to deal with so i point to the fact that one to 2 billion people still use wood for fuel. One of the biggest threats to wild animals is we continue to eat them. And that goes for wild fish. And many of the things that environmental groups have advocated our ad for the environment so the renewables acquired 3 to 400 times more land andnatural gas plants and Nuclear Plants. On the question of i think my views have been badly misrepresented by some people who i think no better. People ive said michael youre just insisting its all nuclear. Thats simply not true. In apocalypse never i defend the right of indonesia to burn coal because burning coal is better than burning wood. I defend fracking for natural gas because natural gas is better than cole and michael they say are you pro natural gas or antinatural gas . Im in favor of natural gas when it replaces whole and nuclear and in my view eventually humans are going to be 100 percent nuclear. When will that be . Could be as early as 2100, probably not going to be, more like 2200 but its no more ridiculousto think we will be 100 percent nuclear and to think we will be under present fossil fuels. Whereas 100percent in terms of Natural Energy so i dont think its that farfetched. Nuclear and foremost is a technology we use to make the most powerful weapons that humans have ever made. Its the ultimate weaponand thats the primary use of Nuclear Energy. We then had this powerful Spinoff Technology which are Nuclear Power plants which are the only way to basically shrink humankinds energy imprint too close to zero. Even though uranium mining underground takes a tiny amount of land for nuclear so i dont see it as farfetched that the us is going to turn back to nuclear particularly at this moment when theres a back to national identity, there is a backlash against globalization and neoliberalism. So for me and im testifying in front of congress in a couple hours on this issue, for me a far bigger concern on Climate Change is the future of Nuclear Energy. Right now were ceding Nuclear Energy to the chinese and russians. Weve seen the last 10 months chinese are clearly in the midst of a genocide against their muslim ethnic minority and the russian president has declared himself dictator for life so as soon as the country is Building Nuclear plants with russia or china they are in the sphere of influence of russia and china and i always point out the line between power and hard power runs directly through Nuclear Energy so for me, nuclear is special and different in that sense from oil or gas or coal and in that it always has this dual use and i do think once we come to grips with what that dualuse is and remind ourselves of it there would be turned back towards nuclear. One of the good arguments for the us staying involved in Nuclear Energy work is that ive heard after fukushima particularly was that International Safeguards and standards are negotiated in ways that are only, you could only be a part of if youreactually involved in the industry. So that is another argument for staying involved but its also ive written a lot about this too as you know and i kept saying kind of like what you were saying a minute ago about a more nuanced menu. I was saying its easy to have a no nukes march. Its easy to have a yes new smart, its harder tohave a some nukes march. There isnt a placard that says some nukes and i think that is a way to look at the future of the United States. Cuomo, its shutting down. My wife and i disagree over whether it should have stayed operating. I wanted it to stay operating. Cuomo for political reasons that its so too close to new york city. He conceded what i think of as a some news policy that upstate plans where the economy is struggling most to support and has included those subsidies essentially. I wonder what the next step for you given what we just said about arguing from the edges and where is the middle . The middle isnt always right but where is the point where you can start to build an American Energy futurethat has some of the aspects you called for in the book . Thanks. I think the idea that the United States should compute on energy, i think its the right one. So you see countries likerussia and the uae. Building Nuclear Plants to replace their combustion of natural gas. Partly so they can export natural gas. Partly so that they can become leaders in building Nuclear Power plants which is an important export as well. My view of nuclear and i articulate it in apocalypse never is very different from most pronuclear people. I think that the Current Technology is basically fine. Its better than fine, its developing it for nearly 60 years. Its a, we have a lot of experience the current watercooled design then i dont thinktheres anything wrong with it. I think what is still, were still dealing with the trauma and the shock of having created such a radical technology so i think nuclear oil is 75 years its no, this technology is going to be with us for thousands of years unless the aliens give us their Antigravity Technology but unless that happens Nuclear Energy is the most revolutionary technology and its shocking in its power and military application so my view is that people need to really see nuclear for what it is. And stop adding things to it like this idea that Nuclear Waste could leak. It couldnt leak because were talking about solid metal fuel rods that really, thats the main event is just a change in public consciousness. Were starting to see britain considering building six fullsized French Nuclear reactors and its already building two of them in the next four would be standardized. Doing it mostly for National Security reasons, not exactly military because britain and islands ireland are supporting natural gas and if the United States comes back to Nuclear Energy it will be because theyre recognized as a threat to that china and russia opposed to dominating Nuclear Energy construction around the world. I will say in my defense in terms of moderation, youll note that one of the characters, one of the heroines , many and maybe most of the heroines in my book are women and women of color but one of them is zion light who is a spokesperson for extinction rebellion. I am the book by noting in my conversation with her she told me she was pronuclear in two weeks before apocalypse never was released i ended up hiring her as my british director so shes running operations for us in britain and i think thats a testament to the fact that apocalypse never does articulate a moderate path towards expanded natural gas and Nuclear Solutions to Climate Change which republicans have always been fine with an even now i think most democrats at least most Democratic Leaders would agree that these are two fuels that we need todeal with Climate Change. How much of the resistance have you faced in that many others can look at the portfolio of Energy Options you would need to limit Global Warming and have to have nuclear on the menu, how much of what you see in that counterargument from the green conventional green like those who wanted a Green New Deal but so it was just renewable. A lot of what i see in their views is really about that worldview, about self control, distributed capacity and decentralized, capitalized capacity. Is that really the enemy of your argument more than any of the logic or numbers . Thats a great question. I think we have to just reflect on the fact that theres been a huge sea change in public attitudes, at least in the attitudes as expressed on the news media and social media. Just three years ago the dominant idea from the left was 100 percent renewable as proposed by Mark Jacobson from stanford. Now market jacobson is largely discredited in part because he sued our mutual acquaintance can counter and others, authors of the National Academy of science paper. Now the democratic plan, the climate plan, the biden plan is not call for 100 percent renewables, it. 40 carbon and thats huge, just in the long tradition of antinuclear advocacy on the left thats a huge shift. Now to the issue of why because much of the reason i wanted to write apocalypse never was i was this particular question that you see me wrestling with it for several years. Why if the left is so alarmist about Climate Change is it against Nuclear Energy and why would want renewable which has such a large impact on landuse action mark question was driving me bonkers for almost a decade. I feel like ive finally got to the bottom of. Obviously one big part of this is just a bomb but the bomb doesnt explain it all because obviously the grasses are much more concerned about the bomb and conservatives so it cant be uniform irrational fear thats sortof in all of us. Clearly its ideologically motivated and it comes from this tradition just to introduce jargon multiples unison which is based on the ideas of the 18th century british economist Thomas Malthus who said we would always overpopulate and result in famine and maltas was not disproved once, hes beendisproved every year since he was writing. Obviously if he was right there wouldnt be nearly 8 billion people on earth. Where obviously our environmental problems are almost all result of having been too successful as a species. We eat and take up too much of nature. So i tried to get at whats behind this idea that civilization must collapse, that theres something eminently wrong with the way we live and i look at three factors over the last three chapters of the book. Money, power and religion and ultimately conclude that the reason we see secular people more than traditionally religious people gravitate towards apocalyptic environmentalism is that its serving this same need that religion has traditionally served in terms of providing the kind of ritual transcendence, sense of immortality. And a feeling of being heroic as a climate activist or as a vegetarian or whatever it might be. And i think we see that the power of the morality. So whats interesting to me is theres no interest in the part of advocates of the Green New Deal of learning from past efforts to have a Green New Deal including the one i cofoundedin early 2000 called the new apollo project inspired by your writings. Theres no interest in learning about the historyand i dont think thats coincidental. I think whats being advocated is a kind of morality and immorality thats ahistorical. Other in other words if its truly good it should be good at all times and places so i see whats happening in terms of advocacy on climate as the religious movements area and i think once if its kind of looks like a religious movement, talks like a religion its a good bet it is a religion and of course i found a bunch of scholarship to support that so to me thats whats driving this and i think the anxiety about global system, the sense in which globalization is coming to an end is driving a lot of that anxiety and particularly among progressives and particularly among the elite. You feel that globalization is coming to an end . I dont think globalization is coming to an end. I think the global system is in crisis. I think every Major Institution in our society is in crisis and i was reflecting the other night that the thing everybody believes about the pandemic in the first few weeks is that washing your hands was the most important but we didnt need to wear masks. Now the thinking is that masks are of essential importance and washing your hands is like sure but we dont really know and it might transfer. World health organization, i dont think from that intentions, i just think theyre a discredited organization. I think the white house is a discredited institution. Im sorry to say this because i know its her former employer, i think the New York Times is not have the credibility once had area it reads like the guardian or the nation. It doesnt read like a newspaper. Im struck and andy im sure you are two common environment stories only have one side of the story. I read a bloomberg piece that puts our friends leah steps. It doesnt put anybody critical ofrenewables at all. Thats standard now so these institutions are i think in crisis ridden there in a crisis of credibility and trust. I dont think that means institutions are going to go away, what it means is those institutions are going to need new leaders who have a different worldview. Actually are more comfortable expressing the fact that we dont know if masks might work or not but you might want to wear them or are worried about them being, the real issue is theyre worried about their not having enough masks but instead of saying that there was this kind of manipulation so i dont think globalization is coming to an end. I think nations are going to get back in touch with the fact that were all competing with each other in some essential way andwhere all economic nationalists. I think without kind of thinkingabout it. But these institutions are ultimately going to need to be kind of regenerated by new leadership and new ideas. Lets talk about climate diplomacy briefly and i want to get to ecology and jesse asked about a couple of people. But something you said to my concept that i focused on when the Keystone Pipeline argument came in and i was writing from a macroeconomic lens saying that pipeline was fine but if you do that oil will find its way. And i was being punished is what you said. And i was googling words on cooperation. That cant like minded, see it as a goal, as sustainable for Human Experience on the planet. Acknowledge diversity and pathways, is that possible . And im googling the response , there was this 2003 paper by a congressman in stockholm. What is doing to ecosystems that are resilient for those that, its not the number of species. Its the number of responses to those species that function in an ecosystem so to me that was a cool moment. Its adaptive, you think like a human adventure, youve got china, the United States and we all have different sensibilities, geographies, histories and that kind of scrum that results is fundamentally adaptive. Which gets to your point about a uniform, the danger of having uniformity or a uniform and terry and mill you and if youre not with us youre against us. And weirdly when i was writing about the paris climate accords i noticed it has all the attributes you would want. Its elastic, its adaptive. Not determinative, all the things that it was yelled at for being weak attributes. It creates this hundred year landscape of change. And i guess that makes me optimistic about and i wonder how well that fits with your articulation of a pathway of how to think as anindividual and how to act as a country. Does the response todiversity makes sense . Its a great observation andy. You know i view on the united nations, i just dont think implements will have much influence over the divisions that nations make about food and Energy Supply. I think the decisions that need to be made about Energy Supply are based on local geography but also whats possible we think is i believe there is a clear trend from energy dilute fuels like wood and dung and coal towards my energy dense ones like natural gas and nuclearbut on your broader point im wholeheartedly agree. Everything i complain about , i can find something positive so the New York Times and bluebird and most elite media now are very onesided. At the same time, we have twitter and we get most of us , i dont even go to the New York Times anymore, i just go to twitter and as a activist and as a journalist, i thinking to writing a column forcourts. Its, i love my relationship with forms. It has some challenges there. But nonetheless im able to publish articles that are much more widely read environmental articles in the New York Times and i know because i can see the traffic on them but i can get 1 million or 2 million views. Even though i dont work at the New York Times just because im writing about things people care about. Similarly on the one handits incredibly polarized. We are left in currently polarized on the other hand theres a bunch of stuff that are not clearly left or right issues right now i think nuclear is one of them. Not clear that thats traditionally was seen as a bipartisan technology, then it became a republican technology, now theres other democrats who supported. Housing is another issue where i dont know if its conservative or liberal to be because incalifornia we have both liberal and conservative nimbys. I think theres other elements of that and im very interested in them where its not obvious that some things are more liberal or more conservative than others and how much is being determined by partisan polarization. So i think theres actually more space opening up and i think were at the beginning of it and i credit social media or a lot of this area i know that social media is a little like platos discussion of medicine which is that is it a poison, is it a medicine, its both and it depends on what how you use it and what the dose is so i think were in an interesting time i think potentially social media is creating some collective madness but i also think some amount of madness can be very creative. I view that as well given the initiative, how do you make information matter in this newinformation environment. Matter meeting you didnt ask the question of course. How many species, how hot and all questions that dont have simple answers. But it and to ecology. You just spent a big chunk of the book on amazon where we lost 10 times and on headlines versus realities and thereto im with you on the extension being much more knowledge this is all we know in 10 million years. And its too long of a time scale to care about actually rightnow. And everything in the planet ismuch more diverse. At the same time, there was a section on ed wilson early in the species area concept area a very simple formula that proved wrong in terms of taking an island style extinction to the planetary level and recent book, i kind of like it. I dont like the specificity of how. What i like about it was this concept of if you leave room for nature, nature will do some reading it will be itself. Even here in the Hudson Valley, a mile from where i live theres an old corey is now hardly recognizable forest landscape. 50 years ago it was a quarry. And i wonder if theres, i wont say middleground but if you had to specify, im not sure if you have this in your book but how much, what is does conservation mean in the 21st century. You have a section on thatbut if you can articulate now for you what would be a conservation success look like. Im going to make one observation before i answer totally which is that to claim that i made that are very controversial but i think are scientifically accurate are we are not causing a massextinction and Climate Change is not making Natural Disaster worth. The response to both of them was a form of hypothesis that i think would justify the science so for example we could pause extension, sure but thats a possibility but not having now. And then ive heard from other people including some of the people that criticize me, it could be that Natural Disasters would have killed fewer people had there not been Climate Change. Thats not science, that hypothesis so thats one of the challenges were dealing with is that people are inflating hypothesis is an important part of the Scientific Method with scientific evidence. On the latter one, its clear that the climate has changed from co2. Translating that into some component of low hurricane is impossible but at the same time it would be impossible to state categorically there is no effect when you know that. Michael mann and i debated in twitter, as you said every need iraq the jewel that has changed and that means theres sunny days and theres with four items that we had. Those are Climate Change to i think what some people have latched onto is the definitive idea that there is no role for Climate Change. Itjust is not measurable. It can change climate where a storm is having. It would be implicitly impossible to say Climate Change is not in there. I think that the disagreement you and i might have or i might have with others anymore about what is appropriate science medication rather than what is scientific so for example the reason i spoke, a big part was that theclaim that millions of people will die, design , that the human, half of the public around the world believe that Climate Change will makehumans extinct. This is not and it needs to be pushed back against. Its causing Mental Health problems, one out of five british have nightmares of Climate Change. Its intruding to anxiety and depression , let me give you a different example area another aliens example because its in. If thepresident of the United States were to say aliens are not invading the United States. If a reporter says aliens are not invading, that reporter could make the exact same arguments against my statement which is to say well, you cant say that for sure. We have navy pilots who have reported Close Encounters with whatappeared to be alien spacecraft. We now has Video Evidence thats been released and confirmed by the pentagon and the pentagon has a special group studying it so how can you be sure the United States is not beinginvaded by aliens . Thats going philosophically from you cant prove a negative area and the burden of proof is showing at the president of the United States wants to avoid which is what was incorrect by. But if the president doesnt want to create panic he says aliens are not invading the United States. He doesnt say we cant be sure but it appears to be and if there is an alieninvasion. But i think you have to explain clearly and then if it turns out that the death toll from Natural Disaster reverses itself and starts going up because of extreme events which i acknowledge arebecoming more severe in many cases , then we know that we have to have a kind of facetoface on it. I can go back to the extinction if you want. I agree with you on written, i was talking about the work of norma bauer, a disaster analyst who does a lot of work that was in the ipcc report and in 2010 he did an analysis and the think thats conflated too much and he did a good job of disentangling the authors and the meteorological events. Theres three things, theres a meteorological event and changes in the meteorological event like a hurricane and then theres Climate Change and how that might change the behavior of a storm or a coastal surge. When you look at loftus and roger junior whos been a defendant in the past two, i think hes reported extreme events, i acknowledge that point that the prime driver is where people are settling and living. Recently some of the supports said for the next several decades the measure of loss and damage under the terms of the perez agreement need to get confiscated are going to be out of luck because theres so much building and development in harms way and that this is the danger that you will be able to discern that Going Forward. That i do feel there has to be a way forward in distinguishing between changes in the storm, the phenomenon from changes in the lawsuits and impact it might have. So thats i think again, your book is a good provocation to try to get tothat kind of landscape. There would be a next step if you were going to write something specifically on that point about a new way to the cco and you are confronted by the ipcc. Im not sure probably on the Nuclear Section and on the working group to which is that impact. Is there a productive way to start to measure things differently so we could have more same conversations . I think the ipcc science is pretty darn good. I defendant in the book though im critical of working group 3 which is the recommendations of what to do. Im critical of the publicity some policymakers, the press release but i defend working group 1 and working group to. I think they do a good job. Theres some of that mealymouthed stuff but i say thats what you should get out of an institution like that. I dont have that big of a problem. I kind of defend the ipcc the way they talk about chain of events and for me its all like the hero of the story was roger pelkey who i defendant but also richard told who argued this is a manageable problem and we should stop striving as the road to hell as he says. I can, i still am eager to address your questions about extinction but im fine to stay on the extremes if you want. There both impacts, there certainly impacts and creating pathways forward that makes sense. Lets circle back to ed wilson. Its pretty clear that anyone working in extinction and endangered species climate, that the old formulations, the initial formulations dont really work. And theres lots of papers that have come out recently till defending this idea of extinction close so given all of that, to me given the uncertainty, which we still havent hardly measured anything when we talk about bio biodiversity, more effectively than when i was writing my book in 1989, talking to terry irwin who is the, got 1000 species of people down there so knowing what we dont know. Knowing that the reality of the extent of extinction is still to be determined and or maybe never in human timescales. What do you do . So Subsaharan Africa, areas where cities are in important landscapes, the amazon. Weve already despoiled our north american region so fantastically and its hard for us to say we should do that but you got, lets talk about amazon. You have some time on the ground in brazil area and we do have balls and arrow in power now which has changed some dynamics. It just sort of like saying the amazon is not learning as much as it did in the 1980s. Its not the end point but what do we do now. Creative policy and what the role of empowering indigenous communities . Great. I think the first thing i would try to do in both the amazon and the other place i spent a lot of time is now working with which is where the mountain gorillas are. Its where homo sapiens have evolved is a very special place in the book. The first thing im just trying to do is to show that the degradation of Natural Environment and the killing of species and the rest of extinction are not being carried out by evil peoplewho hate nature. Its often being carried out by people that are desperately poor, poor in ways that young people who are alarmed by polar bears and Plastic Straws have no understanding of. And you i dont understand it because you go to those places so the first thing i want to do is ring my kids and kids my daughters age 14 or 15 or 16, writing simple stories of characters and show what their struggles are. You see in the amazon chapter i just object to this kind of elitist literally looking down flying over the amazon condemning the people on the ground for what theyre doing. These are desperately poor people. I lived in communities of former slaves or the children of former slaves. The descendents of former slaves from brazil. I point out that there certainly we would all like to, all things being equal we would like theamazon forest to be intact. I dont want any temperature change on earth. Weve adapted to these temperatures but all else is not equal. Theres 2 billion really poor people so that the first thing in the second thing is it so important. I had my main character on amazon who now regrets having spoken to me because he spoke so freely and i know you know him well to. He spoke so freely with me because he was upset as i was either Media Coverage saying the world but he revealed his important thing which is that in demanding small is beautiful conservation measures, greenpeace forced the fragmentation of parts of the amazon forest that should never have occurred so what we know is that if you want to produce more food unless land you need to concentrate Agricultural Production and you need tointensify it. That should happen in the savanna region which is in the southern south of the amazon forest area its actually much more for agriculture, its less bio diverse,. That would then allow you to protect more of the amazon but greenpeace insisted that armorers maintain their land in forest and ended up creating these forest islands that make it more difficult for apex predators big cats to move between them so i think that was a very important finding. If i go over to the albertine rift in africa, some of the heroes of that chapter were also conservation scientists who had been working with Oil Companies to develop oil safely in National Parks so that it can be used as a substitute for wood fuel. Wood fuel is the worst fuel. Its the fuel that disrupts forest life. Americans, we tend to Pay Attention to the millions who died from eating toxic smoke but the people may use the fuel what they complain about is the time it takes the fourth impact on forests is devastating to have hundreds of thousands of people going for the fourth inning wild animals and using those for wood in those cases i think im argument for a moderate view which is to intensify agriculture in the savannas of brazil. And to allow some extracted industry for petroleum and albertine riftso that people can be liberated from wood as fuel. I wrote the book in part because if i just work this day on cnn or msnbc i think there should be oil drilling, in baroda National Park i would be, i would be crucified for that. But once you read this book i think its hard to read chapter 4 which is the chapter about species extinction and leave that chapter and think that somehow that its wrong. How could it be wrong . I note that all the americans and europeans are flew there on jet planes and enjoy petroleum our lifestyle so the idea that Petroleum Drilling even in the amazon or induced parks is worse than wood fuel is also wrong wood fuel is just massively worse for the Natural Environment and some oil out of the ground. I think in some of making a moderate case, thats what im arguing and im arguing there is a way to balance conservation but we do need to have some appreciation of the importance of moving up the Energy Ladder and of the importance of growing more food unless land through concentrated agriculture. I did a lot ofreporting on booking fuel a couple of years ago. And its where the issue was antipathy and a lot of European Countries to supporting projects of natural gas, propane which is a side product of natural gas. And there was a lot of hypocrisy here that no man has an Oil Development Program Based on the health of countries like ghana and developing oils more effectively so they wont spend money to help bring help to committees that are burning wood. And so im with you on these levels of hypocrisy. And doublespeak and crashing agendas that can remind us in manydifferent agendas. I want to talk briefly about population and globes, 10 years ago, i wrote a piece in my daughters log at times , 12 years ago. On the demographer joseph shimmies work. And jesse noted that the old model of population was total fuel. But i called it a population cluster bomb. Meaning population high fertility rates are devastating social and in some places environmentally and i look at the numbers in nigeria and is heading towards a population of 750 Million People in just nigeria in 27 years and its easy on a globalscale to say population doesnt count anymore. And a new study there was a new report on the depopulation that actually says were going to have a reasonable population by the end of the century but this population cluster bomb concept what i see missing again this bigcosmic argument. Apocalypse, not apocalypse missing the local context that should be so troubling. Just the fertility rate of six is, tell me anywhere in the room that thats going to lead to good outcomes so i dont know, is population in area where more work is needed as well and kind of getting a more nuanced approach left and mark. For sure. Ive obviously humans are having a huge impact. Theres so many of us we have , the only food and energy. You did a good job of describing the basic food energy population issue. Soyou sort of start with that. I think it would be, i think the main key thing i want to point out though is that what determines environmental impacts is not so simple as just more people. Its depending on if people live in an Apartment Building and they consume their food out of highenergy greenhouses and all of their electricityis from Nuclear Power plants , their footprint is tiny. They incinerate all their weights or even landfill, your footprint is really small whereas like several thousand of families around the National Park again in the central part of africa we were talking about using wood for fuel and eating wild animals, can be devastating. The story i tell i report this original story area did a lot of work on it is that it appears that the park director in creating antagonism with the local communities created a backlash that mayhave killed 250 of the parts 300 elephants. It doesnt take a lot of people to kill that elephants. So really when youre looking at impact i think its, i think its easy to kind of go one person is the same everywhere and its clearly not but thats sort of the first thing the second thing is i totally agree. I think that its pretty clear that i believe that the land demographers say it what will determine at what level but human population peaks and when it starts to go down is overwhelmingly what happens in Subsaharan Africa so i make the case for urbanization, industrialization concentrated energy sources, concentrated Food Production in places like the congo. In part so we can take the pressure off of the park. I would like to see baroda National Park continue to just decades and centuries into the future id love to see the elephants come back. We could see the gorilla population increasing. Theyre considering guarding some of those gorillas and actually helicopter in them two different habitats. I think its going to be very ambitious when you have that vision so the question is how do you do that . How do you get urbanization and industrialization area is a huge challenge because china totally dominates Global Manufacturing i put ethiopia which has done what reportedly does dance its rivers and invited in h m to have factories. I talk about how factories have been liberating for women how theyve been the driver of Economic Growth for poor people around theworld for centuries. So for me if youre worried about a lot of people in nigeria, definitely 750 million in nigeria sounds like a lot of people then you should support industrialization and urbanization and opposed them and i point out the ways in which many climate brooks have been targeting fast fashion meaning h m. Other i guess gap and other companies but when in fact h m has been a benevolence i dont say benevolent. It had a benevolent impact in terms of empowering women and creating jobs and moving people away from the farm where they have 6 to 8 kids, where they have to have 6 to 8 kids because those are there workers. Its a city where they might have 2 to 3 kids. Because they dont want or need that many. We have a few minutes left and i want to circle back to me neil s latest book, i got to share it. 300,000 words, goes it kind of surprised me. I talked to him for 20 years now. And there always this tension in his thinking. He is one of the most nervous analysts of Global Trends anywhere. And he talks a lot about the intensification youve described here. But the book is not the same articulation as the famous book of that title. That the world of 2050 cant be like the world today of today and there are these limits to environmental terror along with this sort of uber quantified reality checkon things. Do you have your own crystalline picture of growth as you see it and whether or not it has limits . Just give me a thumbnail sketch of that concept of growth and then the last thing would be environmental humanism. If we can save enough time to get your going away thoughts on that so lets talk about that. If you are related so i can neil and i relied heavily on many of his writings for the book. One of the things i saidfrom the book is to use as few of my own calculations as possible. I wanted to be able to refer people to other published scholars so there would be a debate about our own research so i relied heavily on neils calculation of power density which showed moving uptowards the Energy Ladder from nuclear is the right path. That growth book which of course ive read and appreciate in so many ways , its a fascinating book. He does the same thing malthusians have done which hes asserting theres limits to growth and im struck by theres one part were talking about how devastating cities are and hes got a good point which is cities are built on these really for tile river and coastal landscapes that just get hammered by cities. The area where i live or the Hudson Valley where you live, its not what it was before humans were there. Surethats different from suggesting theres going to be some kind of resource is. So what is the source of the resource scarcity and i find he does the same thing malthusians have often done which is he says were going to have resource yesterday because we could use more Nuclear Energy for example. This is one of the most interesting things is one of the things i discovered in the research for apocalypse never was the people who say were going to run out of resources had to constantly attack the technology that would allow for more resources so malthus said we shouldnt use contraception to stop having kids, they said were never going to run out of energy or we can have industrial farming because we have limited fossil fuel resources and now malthusians say we cant, youre going to run out of resources or we cant solve Climate Change because we cant use Nuclear Energy. Get weapons reasons so i think that what i love about him is you can combine in the same person a really disciplined science but also somebody who i think comes from a certain amount of animus towards the human species. I want to say this in the nicest way possible. [inaudible] every time i have an interaction with him i learned something and hetalks about how he was reading zola. And hes using solar but i think hes hostile to humans in a fundamental way area he hates consumer culture. I think that the factory worker who i profile in indonesia, shes a consumer and shes enjoying prosperity. I think vaclav looks at that as terrible, i see some amount ofliberation and that. Were down here to the end and its been a great hour talking with you. Theres much more to go over Going Forward im sure and will try to have you on conversations in person otherwise and your concept of environmental malthusians, the vatican is leading to humanity has a sustainable nature and thats an open discussion that mitigates response diversity or climbing that space between important conversation. So thank you for having this conversation today area. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed at our website at booktv. Org. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events. All of cspans Public Affairs programming on Television Online or listen on our free radio app and part of be part of the conversation through the washington journal programsor through our social media fee. Cspan created by americas table Cable Television companiesand brought to you today by your television provider. Tv on cspan2 has nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up at noon eastern on indepth our lives to our conversation with us combat veteran and Rhodes Scholar westmore author of several books including the other westmore , the work and his latest, five days the fiery reckoning of an American City area he will be taking our phone calls, comments and tweets. And at 5 pm eastern on after words, Michael Shellenberger on what he calls apocalyptic environmentalism. Hes interviewed by columbia universitys andrew raskin. What book tv on cspan2 sunday. During a Virtual Author Program lindsay sharansky historian at the White House Historical association discussed the formation of George Washingtons president ial cabinet. Heres a portion of her talk. Washington doesnt get enough credit for being politically savvy. For having good Leadership School skills, for being actively involved in the president ial process. And as i mentioned with the leadership he was dealing with some big personalities. They were sometimes arrogant. Have their own ambitions. Have their own ideas about how to do things including someone who famously liked to bring in his pounds which i as a dog lover personally think is great anyone who knows hounds knows they can be quite loud and perhaps not conducive to a good meeting environment so hes just a colorful boisterous environment and hehad to manage all those personalities. And when washington was president he certainly had fewer people that he had to manage in a small space. But anyone who has seen hamilton knows that hamilton and jefferson really didnt like each other and really didnt get along so that management was crucial. The other reason management was important is washington was setting precedent in every single action he was taking. Everything from how to correspond with the secretaries or how to interact with congressman. How to respond to anaverage person on the street. The sort of social events that take place but someone who is capable of managing these details and managing the people beneath him was crucial when you are talking about making a government structure that isnt in the constitution and isnt passing legislation so that management becomes essential. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website booktv. Org. Search lindsaysure penske for the title of her book the cabinet. Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you for joining us. We have folks tuning in to this call from philadelphia, chicago, the bronx, brazil, cape town south africa, london, portland oregon, germany, minneapolis and florida among other places around the world. Just want to thank youagain so much for being here. My name is misha, im a writer and an editor at haymarket books and im honored to be hosting todays conversation
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