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