The Climate Dilemma - "Life Boat Ethics" | Joel Kotkin

to come to the whole issue of how we're handling climate um if I can nip right back to the mid 70s I'm a young Australian fresh out of school and I find myself sitting in lectures being given by an American very high quality teaching I've got to say I've no idea where his politics would have learned that isn't that an incredible thing yeah I do I wouldn't know I wouldn't have known there and still couldn't guess now anyway it was an admirable American one day he said to the class do you know what life both ethics are life boat ethics none of us had any idea and in essence to cut to the chase it was the view of emerging Cutting Edge greens environmentalists of the day that the greatest challenge to Mother Earth was that there are too many of us right and the population bomb would have to cut our numbers and someone would have to make some very hard decisions about who stayed in the boat and who was thrown overboard and he said who do you think what do you think would be worse one of the ones to be thrown overboard or one of the ones who made the decision to throw someone else out and obviously you're a monster if you're going to make those sort of decisions why do I refer to that all that time ago I think we can see this emerging again with the absolute single-minded we've offended Mother Earth we humans are the enemy of the earth without Mercy you know we must sacrifice ourselves it somehow never seems to mean the biggest agitators for climate change as they fly around in their Jets somebody else is going to there's too many of us aren't we seeing a return of a sophisticated version of life but ethics oh yeah look what you have is a first of all this has been there for a long time you know if you go into the history of the environmental movement very early on it was the Rockefellers it was um the Ford Foundation it was the um the people who owned Fiat the ignelli family the the um uh the limits to growth I mean basically this has come from the from the high level and look I I've had quotes from members of the royal family members of uh you know Jacques Cousteau basically saying oh wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of Iris that killed half the population of the world I mean they literally say things like that or you know the idea that people shouldn't aspire to own a house and have a backyard I mean the whole idea is so anti-human now my feeling is if you want to deal with climate change and you want to have it work in the long run you got to do it in ways that people can deal with it over time you don't cut their electric electricity you you know if you have to use nuclear power you use nuclear power you you know you don't you push things like remote work so that people don't have to commute that's something that people like and you can and and and you you can I have real results but the problem is that it's not just an idea of how do we save the planet how do we reduce emissions California we've we did a little study on this with all our policies we've chased out so much industry and so many people that when those people move to Arizona or to Texas their footprint is much bigger than it was here because one thing is you know this is It's been hot the last few days but generally speaking we have a very mild climate and we tend to have relatively low usage so for instance if my wife and our family moved to Houston or carbon footprint would double right away because we'd have to run the air conditioner for six months of the year we probably would live in a more distant location up and and the the problem is that that that the what what has become is virtue signaling it's you know it's not hey you know what it's better for Australia to produce cleaner fossil fuel energy than have it done in China but we don't make that because our goal is to prove that Australia reduced its emissions by X percent aren't we great well it's global warming it's not Australian warming you know if we could take care of the the the the climate change by what we did in our individual countries that would be a different thing but clearly China is now emitting more ghg than the EU and the U.S put together and he's because I'm glad you say that because where's the critical thinking including I have to say amongst young people you teach them I made the point to a bunch of young people in Australia the other day that they're probably on board with the green thinking in Australia we should stop our extractive Industries right well while ever China is building 170 new coal-fired power stations in Indonesia 56 and India 45 and Vietnam 11 they're trying to lift people out of poverty that's not a bad goal in itself same thing in Africa Africa South Africa in particular you're going to be better off exporting Australian energy you know not all of our coal is cleaner but most of it is then coal that's going to be used out of Indonesia or China and it was a novel thought to these young people I hadn't thought of it like that well because you know they've been they've been they've been taught that you know of course they'll make the point well the Western societies created the all the carbon and all that okay first of all climate change was happening before the carbon now it may have made it worse which you know I'm not a scientist but I I could accept that that may be a factor but you know um climate has been a formative uh thing way before we had cars um you know if you read uh Carl Harper's great book the the the um the Fatal of Rome he talks about Rome almost as if when there was the warm period Rome did great when it got cold it began to decline these things have been happening there's the little Ice Age there's a lot of you know other things going on people don't have the whole picture and they and they they have therefore they have a very simplistic idea like everything was ideal until this well there were things happening before you know there was this thing we had here in this country called the Dust Bowl yeah in the 30s in the 30s temperatures were hotter it was drier we had we had a drought here in California in the 19th century which was so bad that they were considering abandoning the city of Los Angeles because there was no water left there was a drought in Australia in the 12th century that went for 37 years really yes see scientists tell us now I don't want to sound like a climate skeptic a change skeptic because I'm not it is changing I'm a farmer I'm at the interface uh you know of business right my livelihood all my family's livelihood and climate so it's important but it's the way in which you're not allowed to debate the way forward and the things that we've just said another classic example is that I think the International Accounting system's wrong so Mr Olaf um you know in Sweden thinks that because Volvos are no longer made there Sweden is doing better its numbers look better because Volvos are not being made they're made in China we're then taken back to Sweden right but Sweden's getting a lopsided accounting number as I understand out of it because it wasn't made there still consumed there but that's that's also I mean what we have here in California is we've chased out industry but we still buy the stuff yeah I mean so consumption rather than production right right but you see that might be a better way of measuring it but I think that the definitely a better way of measuring it but but the problem is that you have um in a place like California you know you you what you do is you chase out industry this was what may happen to Australia it certainly happened in the UK they're trying to turn around now but once you begin to destroy your industrial base which includes natural resource Industries and even agriculture then there's no Lobby for those interests anymore that's what's happened in California outside of the tech industry there's the public employees and the tech industry nothing nobody else has any any influence anymore because you've you know you've taken a state of California which which had a huge industrial base and you've essentially gutted it to the point that it's a fraction of what it was and therefore there's no and you're you're a politician or a former politician recovering politicians a Survivor a Survivor that's right or you've been through the 12-step program but but but but the reality is that that that what you have is you don't have the lobbies like here in California Agriculture just doesn't have the power it used to have yeah and then you start getting things which I think as a farmer like first of all on the question of how you deal with climate change the main thing is you have to adapt you have to how do we best adapt I don't want to hear oh there's going to be this huge um surge in the sea level which you know so far has not happened but let's say it happened well then prepare for it you know if if you're gonna have to change the crops because the climate's gotten warmer maybe you plan something different what we're doing now I mean with this the part of this extremism you're being a farmer you'd be interested in this you know the whole war on nitrates and then the attempts of in in the Netherlands in part from financed by Bill Gates to wipe out the the Dane the um Dutch agriculture industry you know the you know one of the most efficient Industries in the world is in in the Netherlands the Netherlands are particularly gifted in that area you you know you wipe that out now what Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is a great example if if yes you can get rid of nitrates but you're gonna have to then we're you know you're going to lose half of your productivity half of the globe's grain production is dependent on that at this stage we don't have the alternative technology foreign

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 33,013

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations, Climate change, ethics, politics

Id: VZVNtw3soK8

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 26 2022