Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Okay. Uh, it's a few minutes after eight. So, uh, I will start now and I'll keep track of, uh, bringing people in. Uh, Emily, thank you for setting this up. Welcome to another edition of Morals and Markets. Um, I hope you can see me now. I have a new background thanks to the people at, um, t a s at the Atlas Society. Um, I hope you can see that. Does it look like I'm in the middle? I mean, I guess I'm in a city on Mars, something like that. But, um, it's probably better than the background of my office. Now. Uh, morals in market, for those of you who haven't joined before, is, uh, a webinar. Am I getting ma'am? You hearing feedback?
Speaker 0 00:00:47 Um, that might be a problem. Now it's not feedback. Okay. Um, uh, morals and markets deals with issues as, as the words imply, uh, the connection between moral philosophy and how markets work, but basically how capitalism works. So it's not really a course in economics, it's a course about, uh, or a series of webinars about the relationship between various moral issues and markets. Uh, I've been doing this for about a year now, and, uh, the, the topics have varied all over the place, uh, including corporate stakeholder issues and things like that. But today being Earth Day, I thought I would devote it to the issue of the relationship between environmentalism and capitalism. Now, those are two huge concepts, but, um, the format of this is I will take about 25 minutes or so and just lay the groundwork for what I think are some of the more interesting topics, and then open it up to discussion and question.
Speaker 0 00:01:47 Um, I'm really pleased to be joined also by David Kelly. Dr. Kelly is the founder and head of the Atlas Society, and also Jennifer Grossman, who is, uh, president of the Atlas Society. So, um, I'm hoping they will chime in with their comments as well. Really glad they're here. And one of the, uh, readings I gave you actually was, uh, from Dr. Kelly from many years ago. Um, something titled something like, whose Environment, when people Say, I Care about the Environment, it's like the, is capital t the environment. What does that mean? And so we'll talk about that a little bit. Um, now I'm in, I'm admitting Jefferson, so welcome Jefferson. When I talk to students about this in seminars, one of the first things I ask them is, what is the environment? And after some crickets and moments of silence, they'll say things like, well, the, the, the, the surround our surroundings or natural resources.
Speaker 0 00:02:44 Sometimes they'll say natural resources other than humans, which is interesting. The, so they start distinguishing between the non-natural world and the synthetic world and this kind of thing. Sometimes they'll broaden it to the planet or the universe. Um, but the point is, is something about their surrounding context. That's what they see environment to be. So then I say, well, if that we know what that is, what happens when you stick an ism on it? What is environmental ism? Because the isms we know from capitalism to socialism, to whatever are, are more systematic and ideological. So why should this thing call the environment, be idealized in, in a way that has a set of ideas associated with it? Then we talk about things like what's an ecosystem? Ecosystem seems a bit narrower than environment. Then we talk about things like, what's a habitat? Habitat seems even narrower, but habitat sounds like something tailored to the living thing or whatever the thing may be.
Speaker 0 00:03:40 I guess it could be inanimate as well. And now it's getting into something very interesting, like optimal habitat. What is not just an animal or organism's habitat, but what is their optimal habitat? So, you know, the one I like to throw out there is a very easy one. What is the optimal habitat of a fish? So the expression of fish out of water is just, okay, well, that's just not good for the fish. He's a fish out of water. It's out of his element, out of his habitat. Not good. But even if you get into the details of it, what kind of environment? Okay, in water, but is it in salt water or freshwater? Uh, is there a problem if he's in a fish tank, the fish tank seems unnatural. Uh, but on the other hand, there's no predators coming after the fish. In a fish tank, a little kid is feeding the fish. Anyway, the idea of an optimal habitat moves quickly to what is the optimal habitat of humans?
Speaker 0 00:04:38 I mean, besides the basic stuff like air and water and food and shelter, you know, the basics we know about. But I'm thinking more systematically because after all, that's what environment is. That's what people think about when they think about an environment. So now I'm, now I'm thinking in terms of social systems and making the case, uh, not just asserting it, but thinking about capitalism in the environment as the following. Capitalism is the optimal habitat for humanity. Capitalism is the optimal habitat for humanity. A controversial statement to be sure, cuz lots of people think capitalism is exploitative. But, um, if capitalism is, as Iran defined it, uh, the social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights pro, uh, in which all property is privately owned. And, and suppose the property rights include, uh, property in yourself, you own yourself. And the usual sequencing is, well, if you own yourself, then you own your labor.
Speaker 0 00:05:39 And if you own your labor, you own the fruits of your labor. So the beginnings of a lockian type or, or even ran type argument for private property comes from the idea that the humans are making wealth, the humans are creating wealth, but that takes a particular kind of environment. They produce, think, create, exchange with each other in certain habitats, but not in others. Other, other habitats are absolutely inhospitable to, uh, human trading and human action, uh, the anti-capitalist systems of which there are many. Um, so that's one take. I I wanted to start with just this idea of we think need to think a little more and, and not just casually throw around this word environment, that the context is all important. And whether it's a, an environment is healthy or not, whether it's, uh, deteriorating or not, um, has to be related to, uh, who's living in the environment, what's living in the environment, what they need to live.
Speaker 0 00:06:39 Now, the the second point I wanna make is, uh, something about the idea of humanism. Now, humanism goes way back earlier than environmentalism. It's even predates the word objectiveism. So humanism has a longer history, but humanism, if you look it up, is the rather interesting philosophy that says for humans, no big surprise here. Humans should take humans as the primary. They should value humans. They should gauge, uh, a range of things from science to ethics to other things. From a hu what's called a humanistic standpoint. And again, it's this idea of you cannot, uh, either value things or, or see their relation to humans unless you put them as a primary, unless you, uh, you know, refuse to sacrifice humans to what? To non-human. Um, in that regard, um, there is something very interesting about environmentalism, cuz some of them, some of them, now I'm saying them, the environmentalists, some environmentalists are humanists and some are not humanists. Now that's a nicer way to put it, that they're not humanists, but some of them are actually anti-human. And I'll, and I'll get to that in a moment, but, but it's an interesting distinction to make. And, and the best way to, to understand it, I think is to start with a little bit of, okay, is to start a little bit with history.
Speaker 0 00:08:06 Uh, those of us old enough on the call tonight will remember that the word in the 1960s and seventies was ecology, not environmentalism, but the ecology movement. And I'm being very, uh, benevolent here in interpreting the ecology movement as at least in its initial impetus, a much more geared to clean air and clean water. Uh, the recognition you look around the recognition of, well, you know, pollution seems to be a problem. Pollution seems to be a problem, uh, the rivers in the air, the smog over LA tends to be, uh, you know, polluted in some way. So let's do something about this. Now, whether, by the way the EPA was founded in 1970, um, I, I need to exactly, let me mute. Um, Jefferson Alvarez has, should mu mute themselves if they can. Um, there's some kind of noise going on there. The ecology movement in the seventies, as I said, was more geared to clean air and clean water.
Speaker 0 00:09:11 Now, if you think about it, I would call that a humanist perspective. Why? Cuz the concern was about human health. The hu the, the, the concern was about cleaning air and cleaning water for purposes of human health. And, uh, so you can dispute, you know, some of the other motives of people at that time. But that, that I do recall being a predominant motive. Now, I would date to the eighties and maybe early nineties, by the way, the first Earth Day, I think was 1970. In 1990 there was a big, um, on the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day, there was a big push, um, in terms of publicity to bring, uh, earth Day more into people's, uh, thinking and orbit. And at that time though, you were starting to hear more about environmentalism, but then specifically what I would call the intrinsicist, uh, angle on environmentalism. And, and intrinsicist goes something like this, the world or nature or the planet, however you want it, is of value in and of itself, apart from humans.
Speaker 0 00:10:20 Um, it has intrinsic value, not value for us or to us, or it shouldn't, at least this was the argument. And if you go through the literature, by the way, they themselves will call this what they call existence value. So they, their phrase for this is existence value. And a particular groups that took this attitude, the wilderness Society especially, was an example of this. That their view was, uh, the environment must be protected from humans, not for humans, not even for future generations, which itself would be somewhat of a humanistic argument, right? If you said, well, we current living humans must restrain ourselves for the benefit of future humans. I mean, that could be debatable, but at least they're still citing humans. But if someone says, humans should not touch the planet, cuz it's pristine, it has value in and of itself, it starts becoming, and almost by definition is, uh, an anti-human angle on things.
Speaker 0 00:11:16 And I would even go so far as to say some of them are inhumane. I mean, they would literally use phrases like, um, humans are a cancer on the planet. Um, if only the right virus came along and wiped us out, you know, the planet would be better off for it. So the, the whole idea again was that the planet had value above and beyond human beings. And that can be a very, as you can just imagine, a very dangerous premise. Um, and a very anti-human pre uh, premise. Uh, now just to concretize this a little bit, um, cuz that's a quite a, quite a claim to say that some, now how many of environmentalists are of this, uh, more radical intrinsicist approach is hard to gauge, but sometimes they are more vocal and have more influence over policy and other things. So that's more relevant.
Speaker 0 00:12:07 It's not just a matter of numbers, but I think, but of influence. Now, lemme give you some of concrete examples just from the energy sector that might put some, some meat on this. Um, if you think of the energy sector, um, which is a big debate among environmentalists, right? It's not the only thing. They also talk about climate change and things like that. But let me just say a couple things about, uh, energy, because the energy mix preference they have now is what, it's largely what they call renewables. It's what they sometimes call clean energy. That the idea is that there's dirty energy and clean energy and, and dirty energy for them tends to be the ones that most support human life. So, so fossil fuels and nuclear energy, uh, in their view, our suspect, to be, uh, either banished or heavily regulated to phase out of, I mean, that's what the Green New Deal is.
Speaker 0 00:13:03 And, and other things, the, the literally the attempt to phase out of these things now in favor of what? In favor of things like, um, solar, wind, biomass. What's interesting about these energy forms is that they're all pre capitalist. They're all pre-industrial. They've been around forever. They existed, you know, way before, let me mark, let me mark. The industrial revolution say is starting 1700. Um, I mean it literally be the equivalent of saying we need instead of cars, uh, horse and buggies. And this is considered progressive. This is considered enlightened and forward looking. But I think it's very telling, uh, that, and this is the beginnings of an argument, that it's not just anti-human. It's a recognition almost on their part that capitalism is the optimal habitat for humanity. So if this engine called capitalism can be deprived of its fuel, then maybe we can bring the system down.
Speaker 0 00:14:10 All right? So this is not workers of the world unite and take over the factories. This is get rid of all factories. Uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's worse than Marxism. Cuz Marx at least, uh, recognized the value of capital. There's just a fight over who gets to own and control the means of production. Remember? So, but then if the view is no, there should be no means of production, and that's what's spoiling the planet, that's a very different kind of conception. It's the conception that goes from, uh, listen, we don't want humans to exploit each other. Supposing Marx was right to, we don't want humans exploiting the planet. We don't want them touching it, even though humans are uniquely those animals who have to touch it. I mean, other animals do as well, but humans have to rearrange it. The the elements, they can't be passive about these things like a tree or an animal.
Speaker 0 00:15:04 They have to use their minds to actively investigate, penetrate mine. Fish grow things, cut things down, blow things up, create skyscrapers. It's a re it's a, if reimagining is the big word these days, right? It's, it's human beings reimagining an untouched planet and imagining how much nicer our environment could be if we rearrange things. A matter isn't destroyed, it's just rearranged, right? And humans are really good at, at doing that. So, as to the energy mix, I think I just wanna leave in, in your mind the thought that when, when you hear about someone saying, here's my preferred energy mix, it isn't just an issue of, well, why are you substituting your judgment for what the markets might decide? Well, no. Let the markets decide, you know, what part fossil fuels, what part nuclear, what part, uh, renewables. Uh, so quite apart from the issue of them wanting to centrally plan it, I think there's a deeper philosophical issue of them almost recognizing that the kind of energy sources they prefer, um, would not support maybe a 10th of the current planet population.
Speaker 0 00:16:15 The current plan planet population is something like 7 billion. And, uh, Michael Shellenberger and others, uh, uh, who I guess would call themselves former environmentalist, one of the reasons they became former environmentalist, Shellen Berger's new book, by the way, is called, not Apo Apocalypse Now, but Apocalypse Never. So he, the book makes fun of the repeated bad forecasts of, uh, environmentalists, which I'll mention in a moment. But that issue of, well, what would the new energy mix support? Well, if it would only support 10%, at most 20% of the current global population, that's 70, that's 7 billion. You know, that leaves something like five and a half billion people without energy. What does that mean? And some of them, you know, do believe in depopulation. They do believe that one of the great problems burdening the planet is too many people. So, I mean, this goes way back to Malus Malus in the late 17 hundreds worrying about population growth, outstripping food production and things like that.
Speaker 0 00:17:22 So the whole, what's called the Malian worries, the Malthusian concerns about humans, um, consuming more, they more than they produce. Well, that's course been totally refuted by capitalism's amazing, productive prowess. And yet here we are today in 2021, still worrying about population. And, and at some point you have to say, well, I, maybe they're not really humanists who care about population health. They just don't want population. They just don't want humans, uh, on the planet. So that's misanthropy, if you know how to spell it. Misanthropy or misanthrope is someone who hates humans. So misanthropy is the philosophy, I guess it would be the opposite of humanism. Whereas humanists love humans and want them to survive and flourish. Misanthropes basically hate humans. I I'm actually not sure of any other species that hates itself or would want to commit mass suicide. It is quite odd. I I, I'm not a anthropologist or biologist or zoology.
Speaker 0 00:18:25 I guess zoology is really the, the field, um, lemmings, I understand do go over the edge of the cliff and follow each other into the a this, but that's the clo that's the closest thing I have. And I've heard expressions about dog eat dog, but I've never actually seen dogs eating each other. Uh, but humans do do that. They engage in cannibalism, uh, they will go to war with each other, and some of them want to shut down, um, industry knowing it provides, um, enormous comfort and pleasure to humans. One last thing on this ener just on this energy thing. And then I wanna say something about climate and climate change. Um, I, I actually get this idea from Alex Epstein in his book. Uh, the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels is a fascinating book cuz there's a lot of science and energy in there as well.
Speaker 0 00:19:18 Not just moral argument, but I get this idea from him where he says something very interesting. He says, now if capitalism literally going to the root, is the system, you know, where we use capital freely, of course you need property rights, but the essence of it is brainiacs invent, uh, machines, tools, capital for labor saving purposes. So there's labor saving devices. One of the great wonderful things about capitalism we're substituting mechanism, mechanistic ma thing, machines for, uh, physical labor. Well, what's interesting about that system is just as humans need food and drink, these machines need their own food and drink. Now, what is it? What form does it take though? Electricity, fossil fuels, the burning of all these energies. So this energy thing is not just a, a kind of a side issue of, you know, what is our energy mix? I, I think it's so, I think it's really closely related to this issue of capitalism, uh, uh, a system, highly advanced, but then also highly dependent on, uh, advanced forms of energy.
Speaker 0 00:20:34 The machines have to be fueled, the machines have to be fed, so to speak, uh, just as humans would, no human could produce in the fields, even in an agricultural setting, you know, without being fed, clothed and having drinking water. And so if you think of it that way, the more capitalistic a country, a, a nation becomes, the more it needs diversified and affordable and usable energy sources. And so to ch attempts to kind of cut that off, to cut the fuel lines, if you will, to, uh, to capital equipment, literally to factories, to machines is, uh, is one way of bringing down capitalism that does not involve, uh, whipping up the resentment and envy of the workers.
Speaker 0 00:21:21 Uh, let me leave that for a moment and, and turn to, I only have about five more minutes. I wanna say something about prediction predictions going awry in an, in environmentalism. Um, and then something about climate change. So now predictions, I, I often will, um, show students, uh, this is going on now 50 or 60 years of a whole array of forecasts of gloom and doom coming from environmentalists, you know, whether we're gonna run out of this or run out of that, or there'll be nasty population starvation again, all due to capitalism, not due to, to socialism. Predictions of their predictions of the end of the world, predictions of global cooling and a freeze that was very popular in the seventies, and then a shift to global warming that was very big in the eighties. Then when they couldn't figure out what direction it was going in, they just shifted tolo, uh, climate change.
Speaker 0 00:22:16 They're just against change itself, not, not the temperatures going up or down. One way to cover your forecast if they're wrong, is just say, um, they're gonna change. Yes, they will change. But so now that's why the word climate change is out there now. Uh, but, but this issue of bad forecasts, I, I have heard it said, sometimes students will say, okay, I get it. The forecasts are very bad. You know, uh, what was it? A o c said, we only have 12 years. 12 years, and if we don't cut emissions in half, uh, we're the world is gonna end. Uh, there have been 12 year forecasts like that for 60 years. They're rolled out every 10 years or so. Anyway, the students will say, okay, we're not fallible. Uh, we are fallible. We're not omni mission. You can't hold it against environmentalism that they have this terrible forecasting record.
Speaker 0 00:23:04 And, and I think in any field, I don't, I don't mean just in climatology or, but in any field, like stock market forecasting or, um, what do, what do, uh, auditor, what accountants do they forecast death rates, morbidity rates and things like that for insurance premiums, right? Uh, astronomers forecast, uh, the motion of the planets so they can get probes up on Mars the right way. Okay? So what I'm thinking of is just epistemologically, uh, we know we're not omniscient, but if someone has a good forecasting record, my guess is it's because they have a good theory. In other words, they have a good explanation of the facts. And to get a good explanation of the facts, you'd have to go still deeper and say, do I have a good description of the facts? Have I gathered the data, uh, the relevant data, right? But notice how that whole sequence, all of it's required for good forecasting.
Speaker 0 00:23:59 In other words, collect good data that's description, find a theory that explains the cause and effect, that's explanation. And then the third level would be prediction. And you're just not gonna have a good predictive record if either your description's bad or faulty or tainted, or your theories are bad. And so I think there is something to be said for, listen, the environmentalist forecasting record is terrible because their theories are terrible and their theories are terrible, in part because they might be in a, a con a condition of wishing to make it so hoping, hoping, hoping, as the Marxists have for years, that capitalism will come to an end. And it, it, it might be a similar phenomenon within environmentalism. There's such an emotional attachment to having this system come to an end, that they're prone to apocalyptic forecast that never pan out. I, I'm just saying, we shouldn't let them off the hook and let them keep having a terrible forecasting record.
Speaker 0 00:25:03 Now, the other, of course, the other thing is sometimes forecasts of an apocalyptic nature are made in order to get people to act, in order to get people fearful and sometimes even guilty. So I would say environmentalists do two things very well. They, they make us feel guilty for the capitalist pleasures we enjoy, but they also make us fearful that the whole thing's gonna become collapsing down on our head. Just like Mark said, only this time, it's the environment that's gonna fight back. The planet's gonna fight back, not the workers. Um, so fear and guilt are, are a big motivator for those who want to control you.
Speaker 0 00:25:43 Okay, one last thing on climate change. Um, yeah, everyone heard the phrase, they're a climate denier. You hear this all the time. It, it's very intriguing to me, the language, someone will say it's really been truncated down to You are a climate denier. And I think about this and I think, well, wait a minute, who says the climate doesn't exist? Now, come on, that very bare level <laugh> I know of no one who denies that there's a climate, so there are no climate denier. So, so what have they truncated it down to? Oh, they've truncated it down from, uh, climate change. Now, now, even then, if you said you're a climate change denier, <laugh>, I don't know of anyone who's a climate change denier. I mean, if you know just anything about the record, the climate changes. It's been changing for thousands of years. It's been changing before humans have been known to be on the planet.
Speaker 0 00:26:38 It's changed before, uh, the onset of capitalism. So e so even on that list, so that's like the second level first, there's climate. Nobody denies it. The next level is climate change. I know of no one who denies it. Now, if the third level would be humans plus other factors make the climate change, okay, now we're getting into something that might be, well, that needs to be investigated. Humans and other factors actually cause climate change. I, I suppose you can deny that, but now you're in the mode of well, what, to what extent to what fraction? And now it becomes to be an interesting issue. But that's, it's, it's more plausible to say, I don't know about that. I don't know how much we really influence the change in the climate. Now here's a, here's yet another level. If you go to the next level and say, can you deny this, the causes and effects of climate change entail a net loss or gain to humans, say, this isn't the issue of whether humans are influencing climate change.
Speaker 0 00:27:37 But if you went to the next level and said, well, is it gonna hurt us or help us, that the climate changes in whatever direction it changes. And that notice that becomes even more complex issue to measure. And so if someone says, you know, I kind of deny that it's gonna hurt us that much, uh, that to me is not really anti-science as much as it is. Well, let's explore the issue. Let's go from there. I have other levels all the way up to, um, can we do anything about it? In other words, if you answer all these questions yes, yes, yes, yes. And that suppose it might harm us in some suppose you could calculate, yeah, if it keeps warming, it's gonna hurt humans, it would still be an issue of is that a reason to drop capitalism? Is that a reason to now, uh, surrender this wonderful habitat for humanity that we already know is a wonderful habitat for humanity?
Speaker 0 00:28:33 Um, and, and so those are just, I think some of the complications. I say the, the long and short of it is, I believe as the title of my message tonight was that that environmentalism as an ism and especially as an anti-human set of doctrines, is very anti-capitalist. And, and in that regard, a an all out assault on this habitat for humanity, uh, that we really require if we want to, uh, live, survive and flourish. Alright, so I hope I kept that the 30 minutes. Now, I wanted to open this up, but I, I did wanna start with asking Dr. Kelly. He and I did talk about this a little briefly beforehand. And, and he has this wonderful essay on <laugh>, was it, is it titled Who's Environment? I Forget, uh, or what is what, what do you mean by the environment? So I wonder if you would, uh, talk about that, just talk about that wonderful encounter you had. I think it was in Washington when someone came up to you. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2 00:29:38 Uh, well, thank you, Richard. Yes. The essay, uh, was a short essay as somewhat a, uh, Juda brie, you know, just, uh, I, uh, basing, reflecting on a, a sree walk encounter I had when someone asked me, do you have a minute for the environment? And, uh, began thinking, well, she's, she asked that as if I, everyone understood what the environment was. Yeah. And I thought, wait a minute, what is the environment? And, um, you know, along some of the lines that, that you've laid out tonight. But I, I, you know, my view is that environment is basically a biological concept. You know, there's reality and then there, there, and if there were no living things, there would be no environment. There'd just be reality. But, um, we do have living things. And for every living thing to survive, it has to interact with its surroundings, and it has certain capacities to, uh, act in that en environ in, in its surroundings and certain needs. It has to get from that surrounding. And that's its environment. Every environment is relative to a given species. There's no such, there lit is literally no such thing as capital t the environment.
Speaker 0 00:30:59 Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:31:00 Um, and then I, then I got thinking, well, the human environment, as you were laying out the human environment, given our rational nature, our productive nature is, um, a world in which, uh, we create things and live among those creations. Uh, I, I, I live in Washington now, but I like New York City as a better example. Um, and, um, you know, those city streets and skyscrapers were my environment when I lived there. Yeah. Just as much as the grass on that occasionally peeped out from, um, unpaved areas in the city. So, um, or you know, the woods that I like to walk in when I get there, although most of them are second growth, uh, as a result of human effort, it's very hard to find anything untouched nature anywhere. Right, right. But the point is that the, the human environment involves our civilization, our knowledge, our, uh, and especially I would say our freedom, our freedom to produce our institutional and political environment that either allows or squelches our human nature.
Speaker 0 00:32:24 And, and there seems to be much less concern for that. I mean, even including things like what political architecture to, again, to use the habitat metaphor, what kind of, what kind of political architecture, what kind of constitution do we need to live under so that things don't collapse upon our heads so that we're not flooded with tyranny or things like that. You know? And that's the constitution making and restricting majority tyranny rule and things like that are, are also a kind of habitat, isn't it? I mean, that's what political scientists are supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be figuring out like an, like an engineer, making sure a bridge doesn't fall down or, or a tunnel doesn't flood. Like, shouldn't, shouldn't these political scientists be working on proper political engineering, so to speak? I don't mean social engineering, which has a bad connotation, but just the choice architecture. Sometimes it's called for how humans interact with each other and it can be done badly or well.
Speaker 2 00:33:25 Absolutely. And if I could just add one more thing, Richard, to, um, what you were saying about the forecasting issue.
Speaker 0 00:33:31 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:33:32 Uh, I'm, I'm not a climatologist, I don't know the science. Um, and, and therefore I'm open to, you know, what the scientists say. I know some meteorologists and they are on different sides and different issues. Yeah. Um, they're doing great work, but at the end of the day, these forecastings are based on two things. One, weather forecasting and two economic forecasting generations out.
Speaker 0 00:34:01 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:34:02 Uh, weather forecasting is not my, my image of a hard, predictable science like astronomy. We know where Mars is gonna be at a certain time. Yeah. What the weather's gonna be like even, uh, three days from now.
Speaker 0 00:34:17 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:34:18 I don't know. I make a guesstimate. And, uh, economic forecasting is you, is, you know, better than I do, is based on the, uh, fallacy that we can assemble all the relevant information into one place and run, uh, uh, formulate or principles or, you know, yeah. Erythematic rules. That's the basis of government planning, which has never worked. It is impossible. Human beings are innovative. They keep changing the equations. And so any, any, any use of economic forecasting on the part of, of predictions, uh, about the consequences of global warming, to whatever extent they have scientific value, are more, less useless as far as I can see unless I misunderstand economics altogether.
Speaker 0 00:35:14 Yeah. And I, I'm particularly worried about cases where the forecasts are there. There's almost real no attempt to be very scientific about them, about the forecast. And then they're used to induce action. And sometimes you can see that very clearly. Uh, Michael Mann is known for doing what's called the hockey stick forecast. So, you know, straight, straight, straight, and then all hell breaks loose. And it is a kind of an a apocalyptic type, uh, approach, but for purposes of inducing action, political action usually. Um, so that's troubling. You know, sometimes Dr. Kelly, I hear students, they'll say, well, you reminded me when you said, uh, you know, you like to go for hikes in the woods. I do too. So sometimes students will say, wait a Dr. Sason, how can you be so skeptical of environmentalists? Um, don't you like to take nature walks and don't you like to go to national parks and stuff like that?
Speaker 0 00:36:11 Absolutely. I, and I say to them, absolutely. But, uh, I, I, Lisa and I went hiking in the ones in Utah a couple of years ago. The five great, you know, bright, um, Zion, others love it. But I also noticed in walking around them that they would be completely inaccessible, had humans not created the, the walkways, the ridges, the parking lots, the resorts that are right nearby, you know, the access to water and things like that. If, if you just looked at these rather beautiful canyons and areas and stripped out all the things you knew were human <laugh>, I wouldn't get clo we wouldn't get close to the place. We really would not get close to the place or something like skiing, love skiing. Um, but again, when you look at a, a ski resort, you look at going down a mountain on skis, I mean, these are tools.
Speaker 0 00:37:00 These are this capital equipment. Some of it's expensive. The ski lift, you know what I mean? The lodge, the, you couldn't possibly enjoy it without those things. But the key is if someone's asking how to enjoy it, you're already a hu you're already a humanist. Right. You're already, at least in that camp of saying, this is a value to us. And yes, recreation's of value to us, and therefore these other things of value to us. Sometimes they get the impression that if you want a completely unregulated economy, you know, the country would be paved from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean with just paved over, you know, and that's just not, that's just not true.
