Transcription
Hello. Uh, welcome to uh science talk and my guest today uh is a retired professor uh who will introduce himself because he's has a such diverse um, you know, career in his life. So I am going to let him uh speak on his own behalf, how he introduced himself, and I think that's more appropriate instead of me uh introducing him. But uh, but let me welcome retired professor Dr. Iliot Jacobson. um, he has been talking about a lot of stuff related to climate change. I don't want to reveal too much in the beginning, but uh, professor, thank you and welcome to science talk.
>> Thank you for inviting me to be on your show. Much appreciated.
>> Absolutely. So let's start the conversation from who you are and how's your life and what what are you doing after your retired life.
So I was a professor of mathematics at a smaller university in Ohio for about 15 years. Um, I managed to get a position as a uh visiting associate professor at UC Santa Barbara. Um, we just got couple Nobells. So very proud of our local UCSB. I was in their computer science department uh as a visiting uh associate for a couple years and then I got hired as a lecturer, just a teaching position um, which was really what I wanted because I was pursuing a career in the casino industry at the time and so I could sort of have two careers. And after I built my casino career up to a certain level where I could just go independent uh in about 2009, I left UC Santa Barbara. Had about 8 years or so um as a consultant that to the casino industry internationally. I mean, anything you say, I did from marketing to game design to working with surveillance to figuring out how to beat every game in a casino in as many ways as possible. Um, got three books out of that. I retired in 2017 and uh I was looking for ways to sort of volunteer uh things to do. When COVID came around, I decided it was a good time to start um a YouTube channel on climate and I've just been going with the climate narrative pretty much for the last 5 years.
>> Awesome. Uh, so how uh, so somebody would uh who's listening uh right now would be thinking, how did a mathematics and computer science professor and the casino guy get into climate?
>> Well, I mean, I've been interested in this my whole life. I I I grew up in the 1970s, sort of came of age, you know, as a teenager, and that was the peak of the environmental movement. Um, really in the history of of modern civilization, there's never been as much accomplished as there was in the 1970s. And so, uh, you know, I was part of that. I went to Earth Day in 1977 and saw Timothy Liry at UC Davis. And, you know, this was this was my childhood. And uh certainly very depressed when Ronald Reagan came around. And so it was always in the back of my mind. You know, I had kids, I had a career and all those things, but uh pretty much my whole life I've I've been either directly or indirectly associated with environmentalism. So I I mean, it was very natural for me. Um, and I started paying attention um to sort of this climate doom narrative. I had uh, you remember the Okay Boomer thing that came around, right? So I was actually had a TV show locally on our public TV where I was interviewing young people uh about, you know, their beliefs and and I called it cross-generational conversations. And I asked this one young lady, this was probably 2018. I asked her, you know, where does she see herself in 15 years? And she said, well, she didn't think uh civilization would still exist in 15 years. And that was my first sort of um, in-your-face doomer that I met. And that got me very curious about why she would say such a thing. And I I really started investigating that side of it uh roughly 2018ish. And and so, you know, that's sort of how this modern iteration of myself came into be.
So would you say um, before we get into climate dumerism and climate emergency and you know, climate alarmism, like would you say was it more depressing at the Reagan's time or like is it more depressing now in 2024 and 2025?
>> Well, you have to understand what it was like in 1981 when Reagan was coming in. We had just gone through a decade of incredible progress environmentally. You know, the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, EPA, you know, all of these uh getting rid of lead and and on and on and on. There there's a dozen, two dozen great huge, you know, earth-shaking changes environmentally in this country uh during that time. And then, you know, Reagan came in and he removed the solar panels from the White House and he said, "You've seen one redwood, you've seen them all." Or or something to that effect. That's not an exact quote. And so, you know, the right turn, the the incongruity um at that moment in time was was profound. I mean, we honestly um this has felt more like like a slow drip drip because we've had the whole COP, you know, going on every year and we've seen the promises made and the promises not kept and um, yeah, I mean, it's certainly the case that climate is is more obviously um deteriorating now than it was then, but politically I think that was the hardest time in my life.
So um, so I would start asking you um to define, you know, what is a doomer. But I think you've been on climate chat with Dan Miller a year ago and that video has got a good amount of, you know, reaction and also like good amount of views um by keeping in view, like, you know, there's not many serious audience on these hardcore scientific topics we find. But uh, as Dan said, maybe a cat video may get 50 million views, but if a climate scientist is, you know, like kind of putting a report, that may not receive a 50 views. That's the era we live in. But uh, before we get into uh dumerism, did you see, I know I know you posted on X, but like, did you see the landmark report where 60 scientists uh published last week, I think, uh saying about coral reefs and how that is a tipping point, a first tipping point for climate change? Uh, and what do you make of that report?
>> Well, I absolutely saw that. I posted that to uh to YouTube. I mean, to I'm sorry, to Facebook, all my social media. I had people sending that article to me. I I mean, it's it's one of those things. You can proclaim we've passed this, but we've sort of already known that we've passed this for a while. I mean, the we've had these coral bleaching events going on right now. You know, what they're saying is is 80% uh of coral will be dead by the I I don't know whether it was 2050 or the end of the century, but but they're not saying like like right now today everything is dead. The coral reefs are dead. They're just saying that the death of coral reefs is now unstoppable, right? So that's the tipping point. It's important to understand because the communication about this is not something that's happened today, right? This is a tipping point that you've the chair is falling over. You can't stop it anymore. And that's where we are with coral. So, I think that that that's certainly um alarmism and you know, you see that breakthrough. CNN reported it and and it's actually been a headline that's that's been in the news, which is sort of striking uh amid what's going on in the Middle East and with with the all the other political things internationally to actually have a climate headline break through that noise. So, what do I think about it? I I think many of these tipping points are inevitable. It's just going to be uh, you know, when do we call it? Uh, it's certainly going to be the case with the AMOC, the uh, you know, the circulation, the ocean circulation. It's going to be that way with the Amazon, with Greenland ice, with boreal forests. So, I mean, there's a lot of these tipping points um that are are coming up and we could call all of them in the sense that they're inevitable now, given the rate of rise of greenhouse gases, the rate of acceleration of global temperatures. It's not like, you know, these things aren't going to happen. Um, most of them have a trigger point where we say, when the planet passes this sort of level of heating, then this tipping point is unavoidable. And so we're sort of passing the first one of those with 1.5C. Although I believe in the report, they said it was 1.2C was the actual tipping point for the coral, right? And and we've blown past 1.2C now um, you know, internationally. Um, so, you know, I think there's a a few more of these that are going to come before we hit 2.0.
>> So look for this headline to repeat in the near future.
>> Yeah. So uh, a couple of follow-up questions on that. So why is it important uh and why is it dangerous, you know, or like kind of uh such a tipping point about coral reefs? Uh, number one, and for for ordinary views, you know, like who do not understand hardcore science or like how this works and how this is like overall connected with ecological disaster or environmental impacts. So explain that, and then what is the difference between a tipping point and a triggering point? Uh, how do we like kind of go about it? I know it's all about framing and messaging, and these, you know, scientists are always on the conservative side, and I also wanted to ask like, why do you think that is the case? But first, before we get into that, like what is why is it important uh this coral reefs and everybody's like kind of almost trying to freak out?
Well, I think for the people who are actually uh living off of of uh the ocean around where there might be coral reefs, this is not news to them, right? This is if you lived in in the East Coast of Australia, the northeast coast, you know that these events have been happening. So, so this is not news to uh people who live in parts of Florida or, you know, where where fishermen are going out and and they're not able to harvest or get the same quality of of uh return from the ocean that they have, you know, for their livelihoods. But I mean, it's an entire ecosystem that's essentially breaking down. When it, it may be the most single critical ocean ecosystem in terms of of the amount of ocean life that depends uh either directly or indirectly on the coral. So, you know, when you have essentially a large part of the ocean ecosystem now now it's dying or it's going to be dead soon. Um, you know, that's that's worth noting. I think that it's sort of self-explanatory why, you know, that that is is going to be um make life of all sorts, not just human life, more difficult for many species. Um, so, you know, I I'm not an expert on coral, so I don't want to um go too far into that question. You know, your question about um the difference between a trigger point and a tipping point. Um, you know, I need clarification on what you mean by trigger because I haven't actually aware of that. So maybe you could just give me a little clarification of what you mean.
So like, yeah, you know, like, uh, sometime, these scientists attribute things, oh, we know the global temperature is rising because we are emitting too much, you know, CO2, right? So that's like kind of attribution. And then we say like, oh, so it's been like, we emitting this much emission, and here, what it triggers this event to be happening, like, oh, climate, you know, like kind of flooding or cloud busting or something like they find out, like they pinpoint point. This was the trigger behind what it happens. And then they say like, "Oh, that was the tipping point. That was, you know, like the point when we say like there is no like kind of way to stop this or like, you know, kind of it it was inevitable. It has to happen and now it happened. That's what we were, you know, like kind of warning you about, and now it has arrived." So like, how, how these things correlate when a scientist frame that, oh, these are the triggering points or these are triggers, and these are like the tipping points? Because a lot of people would say, I don't know what is a tipping point. I don't know what triggers this. Science is too complicated for me. I have other things to worry about. Why do I care about, you know, like these things happening in the deep of the ocean, and I'm living, you know, not off the coast, like especially like if you're not living close to the coast, you're just like in the Midwest or somewhere. Why do I need to care? And I just want you to like, kind of explain a little bit, like how do we kind of, not like we as as uh scientists, but like people who care about the planet and care about the ecosystem, care about the environment, frame and talk about these things, and how we make sense for like ordinary people.
So I mean, this is a great question and it it leads into something called attribution science and um, and there are people now who what they do is they look at events and see the extent to which that that event can be um correlated with an impact of of climate change with whatever it's going to be, increased sea surface temperatures, increased uh global temperatures, less Arctic ice, whatever the the attribution is. So I mean, this is a whole area now that has sort of been pioneered in the last few years. From a communication perspective, um, it's a very dangerous and delicate thing to um attribute some change in the climate to a weather event, right? Because weather events have have always happened and and some of them are fairly severe and they've happened, you know, at that level of severity before climate change. So, so this is a very delicate question. I don't think it's a good question for communication to a mass audience because it's so easily misused, right? This attribution. It's like, you know, how do you know that this hurricane was stronger um because of climate change? Well, we know it's stronger um because there is more energy in the system, because the ocean is hotter, because the atmosphere is hotter, and more energy tends to um create stronger storms, right? So, how do we know that the drought is attributable to climate change? Well, as the atmosphere heats up, um, for every degree Celsius of heating, it can absorb 7% more uh, water vapor on average. And that's an exponential curve. So, as the planet heats up, we're going to have um, droughts happening that are more severe, more prolonged, and and happen faster, essentially, right? So, so these these sort of impacts of climate change correlate with events that are happening, and it's a very delicate balance to say, well, that correlation also involves causation, you know, to some extent. And so, I'm going to leave it to those climate scientists who are who are dedicated to that question, you know, to to really go into that. And I think their work is is fantastic. Good for them that they're doing this, but it's also, um, one of the the attack points for climate deniers, you know, and so, um, I think it's good information in general for other scientists who understand the science, who know that this is valid work, but it's not necessarily good mass communication information. And you you can actually see that that um that sort of feedback happening, you know, whenever these things get published, there there is that that feedback.
>> Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we before we talk more, like, just just uh, you you just said um, like a few minutes ago that you met a climate doomer a few years ago, and that was your first interaction face to face with uh, with another climate doomer, and you uh, like kind of claim yourself or self-proclaimed climate doomer, and explain for the audience. You may have explained that 10 million times on your website, on other podcasts, but like, just for the audience, explain uh, what is a climate doomer, who a climate doomer is, and what they believe, and also how was your journey since then, since you met that person, and how it has evolved over time.
So I think this is always a a great question to try and answer, what is a doomer. Um, I always quote Sam Mitchell, who has a a YouTube channel called Collapse Chronicles, whenever it comes to being asked this question, which is he will say something generically like, "If you ask 12 doomers to define doomer, they'll give you 13 different answers." And that's how it is with me, too. I mean, I I've written an essay on being a doomer. It's on my website, climatecasino.net, where I kind of describe what doomer means to me. Uh, but I recently um also have been looking at that this very question, what is a doomer, and have traced back doomers. But I mean, you can trace them back to the Book of Revelations if you like in the Bible. You can Thomas Malthus was a doomer. James Lovelock, Paul Ehrlich were doomers. You know, the the idea that humans are temporary on this planet, that civilization is transient, is as old as as, you know, human civilization itself. And so the only change is that this is backed up by science. That this is this is based on my particular sort of mathematical scientific bent towards doomerism, as opposed to somebody who might be a population doomer like William Rees, right, who who sees, you know, the overuse of the planet and the fact that we're using, you know, 1.7 earths per year for, you know, on average per human. So we're using far more than the earth can replace, and eventually that's going to lead to collapse. Um, you have, you know, William Catton, who wrote the book Overshoot, where he described in very specific terms how how the population will eventually collapse, how civilization will eventually collapse. So, you know, this is not a new thing to me. There are many different takes on what it means to be a doomer. Um, my particular brand of doomer is, I I am a data person. You know, I come from a background of mathematics, computer science, and risk in in uh my casino life, right? So I understand probabilities, especially. And so my brand of doomerism is not about making predictions. It's not about saying this will happen by then, and you know, humans will be extinct, or that there, you know, there's going to be a huge die-off of humans by 2040, or civilization's going to collapse by 2030. Uh, my brand of doomer is to just track on a day-to-day basis what's actually happening with the data that is available to me to track it, and to to provide that to people along with with science that is out there, like you brought up uh earlier, for example, with the coral, to present that to people, right? And, you know, one of the other things I do, since you mentioned my daily postings, is I I do a daily doom quote, right? Where I am quoting, I'm not quoting from some small fraction of climate books that happen to be on. I'm I'm taking the mainstream climate books day after day after day. You know, whether it's written by uh um Bill McKibben, or I'm looking, I'm looking at my library to remember the names, you know, Merchants of Doubt, or whatever the book is. These are mainstream books on climate, right? Where you see over and over and over again people sort of saying that there's there's this thing that needs to change in civilization and how we we are as humans all over the planet, and if this thing doesn't change, then we're doomed, right? And it's not changing. It's, you know, it's absolutely not changing. You know, when the when the Paris agreement was written, >> I believe the idea was that we needed to decrease CO2 by roughly 6 to 7% per year in order to stay under 1.5. You know that number because we haven't, is now like 20% per year or something like that. And there are people who will argue that we're already above 1.5 now because last year was, and you know, my own mathematical predictions put us crossing 1.5 in late 2026, early 27. So, so, you know, this this sort of aspiration that civilization will come to its senses uh at some point and do the things it needs to do to not collapse, just seems so naive, given um everything we've seen from humans, you know, and and I say that, everything we've seen from humans since Ronald Reagan got elected, since Margaret Thatcher uh became prime minister, that was the change point, sort of political quickly.
>> So, uh, you you said a lot um in that. So, is that idea because I'm also like kind of thinking that you mentioned the Bible references, and I'm I'm I'm a Muslim by faith, and I'm thinking like, oh, there there's an idea in the religion that, you know, the world is going to end one day, and this is like kind of inevitable, and the day uh is not fixed. There are some indications, but it's not like, you know, it's going to be 2100 or 2500. There is no certain absolute timeframe, but there are certain indications that if this this this happens, it's going to be inevitable. I'm just kind of curious to hear like, is the idea of doomerism um coming from religious philosophies or scriptures, uh, does it trace back to those scriptures saying that this the the humans or other uh, you know, kind of creatures are on this planet for temporary, and they're not for here forever, and it's going to end one day, and it's going to be a collapse, but when there's no timeframe for that?
>> Well, I'm I'm sure for some people um, they are religious doomers. Um, and you know, you can just take for example, this this expectation that the rapture was going to happen, you know, sometime in September, I guess, and then October 8th. I mean, the rapture essentially is is doom, right? It it's it's everybody who's left behind is doomed, and then there's all of these events after that that are supposed to take place. Um, so, you know, I'm I'm sure that for some people, maybe maybe the largest fraction of doomers are religious doomers, you know, in some sense. Um, but that's in no way the kind of doomer I think of as myself. You know, you you mentioned your faith. I'm I'm an atheist, right? I have no religious beliefs whatsoever. And so, you know, it's just it's it just is tangential, but I think it it makes the point that this doomer philosophy has so many different manifestations, right? And and um, I tend to focus on the ones that are science-based or or >> at least based in something tangible in the world. Um, but that doesn't discredit the fact that that humans as a species tend to have these doom scenarios. I mean, dating back as long as there's been humans, I mean, we there there's some sense in which we want to know the end of the story, right? And we this is a a story that's been written for thousands of years, and we'd like to know how it ends. And the only way we could ever know how it ends is if it ends during our lifetime, right?
>> True.
>> So, that's the like we really hope it ends during our lifetime so we could know how it ends. I mean, that that's a cynical perspective, but you know, these doomsday cults, for example, you know, um, that the the guy Jones and in who poisoned all of his people, or this this cult that was waiting for um some space aliens to come and whisk them away, right? These are doomsday cults. >> And and that is a a huge, you know, thing for people. You could, one could argue that certain blocks of certain major religions are in fact doomsday cults, you know. Um, so, yeah, but but for me, that's not the flavor of doomer I look at for myself at all.
>> Yeah. So I because I was also like before on this conversation, I was watching there's a dual DW German TV documentary of a German guy. He's also a climate doomer and living in a very silo space where he doesn't meet other people, but like kind of more growing his own, you know, vegetables and eating and like kind of uh, that level. As you said, that the doomerism is there out there too. Uh, people are living the life uh, like that. So, um, you know, like on the climate, especially climate doomers, um, you know, there are reports every month, every year, there are like thousands of organizations from, you know, sea level rise to flooding to, you know, Antarctica and glaciers melting and and heating and all that. Reports are coming every month, every year from IPCC to, you know, United Nations to like all those organizations. For somebody like ordinary people, like it's so much information coming out, so much data. We know uh, that how this ecosystem is changing. How do you interpret these reports? Like, how do you read them? How do you make sense of these reports as as a doomer?
So one of the interesting things is that I'm often ahead of those reports because I'm tracking the data on a daily basis and so I put out the information and then two or three days later or a week or two weeks later, you know, like like the fact that September was the third hottest on record. So I wrote that on my uh social media on August 2nd after September's data came in. I said September was the hottest September, third hottest in the last 120,000 years. And then that was a headline a week later because the international organizations, you know, had made that same statement. So, you know, I would say that that when you ask that question, how do I react to these things? I react to them um sort of like like, okay, so now that information is getting noticed, I've already tried to say that. Right? But the other thing is that that there's a lot of information that's not getting noticed that really is sort of the critical information. Uh, and there there is this sense in which I wish that that we could just focus on two or three things, like rather than 40 or 50 things, you know, algae blooms off the coast of Australia is a huge issue, right? All these plants, right? There's this um huge heat wave in the North Pacific right now that's creating havoc for weather systems. Uh, you know, there the Antarctic krill are crashing, right? I mean, there there's so many individual things that you just wish that that we could just say, okay, >> what is the actual barometer by which we we sort of put all of these things together and present and here's where we are, right? And unfortunately, that barometer has become the global temperature, right? This 1.5 um, and that's just not sufficient in so many ways because the the the the it the way things happen is not linear. It's not like we go from 1.4 to 1.5 to 1.6, and and, you know, when ecosystems crash, they aren't recovering.
And getting those things sort of thrown at us all the time from all different directions. Now this ecosystem, now that one, you know, the coral reefs, everything. It is too much information. Um, you're you're exactly right about that. So, you know, how do I personally deal with all of this information coming in? I that that's why I try and post these things every single day. You know, I am reading all of the news. I wake up um, I used to wake up at 3:30 and do this. Now, I wake up about 5 to 5:30 and do this. Um, I go through every news article I can find and and try and find that article that has sort of the most severe um event report, analysis, whatever, you know, of the day. So, in the last 24 hours, and post that because that's, you know, if people are only going to read one thing, let let's give them the right thing to read so they're not being flooded with with >> Yeah. Because it's like literally too much. Uh, because people are, you know, they have life, they have, you know, like jobs and they have other things to worry about, and then all sort of information is coming from different sources, and it's it's hard to get your head around. Uh, most of the time, especially it's a hardcore scientific information. A lot of people are not literate on, you know, climate health science literacy in terms of how to make uh sense of that. But there was a new again talking about a new report, like, you know, there were also the amber report, right? Saying that we, it's like amber, E M, I think it's from England, uh, saying that the this is a great news. What is a great news is that we have surpassed that we are producing more energy from solar and wind and geothermal than fossil fuel. Look at that. We are phasing out from fossil fuel, right? We are transitioning. There's more energy. Like California, 100% renewable. Kenya, 93% renewable. Like many other countries, and these examples. What do you make of these and like, how do you see these transitions? Um, like when we talk about because whenever you talk with the climate scientists, the first thing they say, you have to phase out from fossil fuel. We cannot rely on fossil fuel. That's the number one thing. The rest of the things are secondary, but the primary thing is that you have to phase out from fossil fuel. Stop burning more coal and gas and and these things. So, is this a good thing? Is it like we're transitioning to renewable energy, or are we going to have in 50 years, in 100 years, then we're going to, oh, we're going to get rid of these windmills and these solar panels and let's move to something new?
So uh, I mean, it's a big question you asked, but let me go back to the the first part of that, which is this report, cuz I read that and um, I actually got in a bit of trouble on Facebook when I I responded to this report and my response was, what they're talking about is electricity. >> They're not talking about total energy. And when you look at the total energy picture, including, you know, cars that are that are on the road and trans uh ships and and airplanes and factories and total energy, then in fact, CO2 um is at or near its record rate of growth right now. So the fossil fuel generation of greenhouse gases is as fast as it's ever been in the history of of humans producing these gases. The actual peak was in 2019, and then in the aftermath of COVID, it kind of fell. And so I watch this this statistic on a multi-year track and um, because I want to make sure that that we sort of balance out all of these these short-term effects and um, we are right back at a peak, and in fact, it's already been documented that 2024 saw the highest release of greenhouse gases uh of CO2 ever, right, as a year. So I think it's very it's a very disingenuous report. It makes it sound as though we have accomplished something when we haven't accomplished that. Simply generating more electricity is not the same as cutting fossil fuel use. Right? And yes, there is more electricity, and there are times of the day in certain locations on the planet where um, essentially, all of the electric need is being um covered by, you know, renewables and um, some climate scientists like to make great fanfare out of that fact, and yes, that's even happened here in California. Um, meanwhile, there's millions of people driving their fossil fuel cars on the road that are not being accounted for in that equation. Right? So so we just have to be careful with with understanding um this. And, you know, the other problem with all of this in terms of a long-term future is that these technologies also degrade the environment. Right? There there, you know, you talk about um, we have to end fossil fuels, right? But in fact, what we have to do is end the destruction of the environment. That's what we have to do. And this this whole notion that we can replace one thing that destroys the environment with another thing that destroys the environment. Um, but that that second thing is less destructive >> is absolutely anti-environmental. Right? Environmentalists, at least the ones I grew up with in the 1970s, they chained themselves to the tree, right? They they lived in that tree. They they, you know, they did not want that thing to be built that destroyed that ecosystem. And now, you know, you have China essentially covering over entire valleys with solar panels. Um, and that being applauded by, you know, the global environmental movement, that China is is destroying vast ecosystems, you know, to go solar. Well, good for them, they're going solar, but bad for them that they're destroying ecosystems. Um, so, you know, I I my belief is that environmentalism has completely lost its way in this and it no longer is about saving the environment. What environmentalism has become is how can we prolong the slow death of this civilization right for the longest possible time?
>> Of saying, uh, if I interpret correctly, like you're saying it's a lesser of two evils that we um, we are saying that we are saving ourselves as a humans from the catastrophes of climate change, and then these um, you know, windmills and these solar panels and these energy systems are going to save us, if not forever, but at least for a longer period of time.
Well, I mean, they'll they'll prolong collapse, but then they will make it more severe when it happens. Right. So, this is the the Senica cliff idea that that we're going to go off the cliff sooner or later, >> and it would be best >> it would be best to go off the cliff in a controlled fashion >> rather than to continue to find new ways to to destroy the planet. I mean, for me, I I um would much prefer we not destroy anything new environmentally anywhere, right? So how do how do we do that?
>> Well, collapse is going to happen sooner or later, right? So what a doomer would argue is it's better to have controlled collapse and um, some would call it degrowth. Um, you know, you the the way to collapse um is unfortunately, it's not going to happen right in a controlled fashion. Would require incredibly draconian uh measures, you know, limiting travel, limiting foods, limiting um, you know, all use of fossil fuel for heating and cooling, limiting the products that we can buy, you know, essentially you have to say, what is absolutely necessary for human life? All right? Do we need to travel to see our grandparents? No. Right? Do we need to watch television? No. Do we need to eat processed foods? No. I mean, and everything that's not necessary has to go away. That's the only way to avoid this cliff.
>> So, what what is the possibility of degrowth? What what is the possibility? Because humans, you know, are more on this planet than ever before. And it's continuing, more than 8 billion people. And we're not seeing any like kind of tangible actions that it's going to slow down. Maybe in some parts of the world, but like not in many parts of the world that we are going to have more humans, we are going to have more consumption, hyper more, you know, ultra-processed everything. Uh, because we are destroying the environment. There's no agriculture being left. It's everything is corporate sector, right? Mass production of things because we're consuming more, right? So how do we like go not consuming things and have minimalist and more of, you know, kind of I don't need another pair of shoes. I don't need another shirt. I don't need another laptop. I don't need a new iPhone every year. Like all those things as an individual level. But then on the other hand, you when you see these reports, it's like, oh, only 97 companies are responsible for 70% of, you know, the global emissions or heating. And then like ordinary people would say, like, oh, look at that, like what my iPhone is going to do when like, you know, one company is polluting more than, you know, 100 billion people or something like that.
>> Yeah. I mean, that's the tragedy of the commons right there. It's like, why should I do it when um, you know, I unless everybody does it, it doesn't help. And so, why am I sacrificing myself when all these other people aren't doing it? Yeah. So, I mean, really, what you've done is just highlight why collapse is inevitable. Um, why why a very um difficult and um, you know, we're we're starting to see more and more sort of this fascist um element taking over, you know, and this is certainly one of the elements of collapse. As as we get, for example, more um people needing to flee from parts of the planet that are no longer habitable because of temperature or storms or whatever, the the ecosystems degraded so they can't grow food, whatever it is. Um, we're going to have more immigration, right? More people looking for another home, which means we're going to have more closed borders. We're going to have more reactionary governments, um, you know, that are anti-immigrant. Um, we're going to have more, you know, sort of internal political battles because of that, because there's people who side with the immigrants than people who don't. And so, you have more internal tension, more civil wars, you know. So, so this is what's coming, right? When you look at the United States and say, "Oh, this is, you know, a one-off because we we have this guy who has these political views that are very extreme, that's a one-off." No, that is the inevitable consequence of climate change. And we see the same movement in other countries, right? This movement of international banks to sort of give up their climate um, you know, policies. They have these movements in Germany or UK or Australia that are anti-green, you know, I mean, I mean, this is what's what's a natural progression. These are not um somehow a temporary aberration, and then we're going to get back on, you know, the wagon of figuring this thing out. Um, this is going to get worse, right? It's going to continue to get worse and continue to get more authoritarian um, because power is going to defend itself, and we are we are the the um, you know, what's being used is is human capital in this battle. So um, >> I I don't know. I don't I don't have the least bit of optimism and I don't have the least way of describing a path that will avoid um the worst-case scenario.
Yeah. I I think when I talked uh a week, two, three weeks ago with um, you know, Dr. Peter Kalmas, you may have heard or known him. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> And he was saying that uh, I asked him, what is the one thing uh, I'm going to ask you later as well. Uh, one, what is the one thing we uh, we should be talking as a society and we're not talking about it uh, related to climate change? And he said that we, I wish climate scientists and people who care about the planet talk more about the rise of fascism and authoritarianism and how it is relates to overall ecological disaster and calamities. And because as you said, there's going to be a lot of internal and external conflicts because it's about resources, it's about capital, it's about, you know, uh, humans and migration because of these um, catastrophes. So, um, one of the things is that um, how do we need to declare, like, I mean, me, me, we means like as as a countries or societies, do they need to declare climate emergency? Is it going to fix the problem? Because a lot of people talk about, including Peter Kalmas, like I wrote OPAD and OPAD and letters to lot of letters to Joe Biden asking him to declare climate emergency, but they didn't. So, is it like short-term, long-term solution? Is it a solution at all, or like how do we, and what are the thresholds that we say like, okay, these criteria are met, now we are going to declare climate emergency?
So I think um, Antonio Guterres has already declared a climate emergency, right? I mean, he has used every metaphor uh he can think of um, you know, from the um, the oceans are boiling to the ticking time bomb to, I mean, every metaphor that he can come up with, he's used and and, you know, you could write a a dictionary of metaphors, climate metaphors, just based on his own language, his own way of communicating. So I mean, if not him, I mean, who else has the power um to put it in place? Because it needs to be international. It doesn't matter what we as a country here in the US do if this is not an international um, you know, decision. And there are enough people who understand the sort of the full scope of what would need to change and have spelled that out. And, you know, we all you have to do is look for the "we need to" or "we must" or "we have to" kind of languaging to see how often sort of solutions have been put out there that that would work if the big "we" actually could do any of this stuff. But there there is no big "we." I mean, we we have Vladimir Putin, we have Donald Trump, we have, you know, a bunch of uh, we have uh China, we have India, you know, we have Indonesia, you know, Brazil, you know, we have countries that that are autonomous, you know, free-thinking countries that are going to go their own way on these things. And, you know, we don't have the power to just tell um Biden to declare a climate emergency and suddenly that climate emergency is going to mean, okay, no more driving, Allah, you know, the freeways are empty, right? No more flying, um, you can only shop on on um, you know, every third day or something, I whatever it is. And, you know, the thing is that that if you read these climate books, you know, the ones that are sort of solution-oriented, whether it's Katherine Hayhoe or Dana Fisher or, you know, just the ones that are they're saying, we have a solution, you know, that that solution is so transparently impossible over and over again. Um, you know, for example, Katherine Hayhoe, she wrote this book Saving Us, where the solution was, we just have to learn how to talk to each other, to really explain so everybody understands what the climate crisis is, then, you know, we'll have a big kumbaya moment and and suddenly we'll be taking the right actions. Or or Dana Fisher, she has this um idea, what is it called, um, the Anthro Shift. Her idea is the Anthro Shift, and and the idea is that there's going to be some climate shock at some point, right? Maybe maybe it's some um heat wave in India where a million people die, you know, like like um, you know, what is that book, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the book, um, Ministry for the Future, right? In that book, where it opens with this huge, huge um heat wave that kills millions of people in India. You know, are we going to have an event like that? Yes. Is that event going to suddenly change um, sort of the consciousness of all the humans on the planet? And so there's this Anthro Shift, so that now we'll actually do the things we need to do, right? Well, it might change some people in India. And the way that book progressed, if you actually read that book, is that what India did in response was geoengineering, right? So, so okay, they didn't actually change lifestyles. They just tried to physically change the climate by pumping sulfates into the atmosphere.
>> Yeah. I I don't think so. I I honestly disagree based on looking at the actions. You know, action speaks louder than words. Back in Pakistan.
>> No, no, no. I disagree with those ideas that like if if there's going to be a big shock. I mean, I look at the wars in the world right now. There were two active wars over the last three years. How many people it has changed, and what actions did we take to prevent in the future? And I mean, that shows the picture because I remember 2013, 2015, 10 years ago, almost 2,000 people died in Pakistan due to heat wave in one single city.
>> Well, you had you 2022, you had that flood, right? Then you have like >> not in 2025 again. 2025 again, like literally it was like 40% of the country was underwater. 40% of the country. What did we do? >> Nothing. We just came at the UNGA General Assembly and, you know, threw some words and
And you know, shake our hands and go back. So, as you were saying, that like these independent countries, and I, I wanted to ask, recently there was a United Nations General Assembly meeting, you know, at the United Nations, uh, in New York City, where, you know, thousands and thousands of people fly over, contributing more to emissions, and then they come here, and the majority of them, it didn't even talk about climate change. So, what do we expect from these leaders and from independent countries to do something about climate change when they do not even talk about it, uh, you know, at the United Nations General Assembly?
Uh, so, you know, you're asking me questions where I, I think we, we kind of know, you know, maybe you're a doomer too. Um, you know, I just, I just look at things like, you know, there is this whole Just Stop Oil movement in the UK, right? About, you know, and any oil that they didn't, um, you know, they decided that any progress that was made there, Norway has stepped in and said, "Okay, we're going to, you know, get all that oil, you know." So, so I mean, the, the idea that that we're going to leave wealth untouched, you know, like, "Oh, there's all this money right here and we just grab it and take it, you know, for ourselves, for our country, for whatever." Oh, but no, we shouldn't do that, you know, is it's not sort of compatible with how the history of countries and nations has has evolved, right? We are plunderers by design, right? If you have it, I want it.
Yeah. You know, it's going to help make my people, um, more likely to survive. Absolutely. You know, this sort of tribal idea. So, um, I don't see, I mean, these things are good for their feel-good, you know, we can make the big speeches. We can have the meetings that show solidarity on on the cause. Um, you know, but what is the action? Well, if the action is, we are going to approve more windmills, approve more solar, you know, ease export restrictions on solar panels, um, we're going to fund, um, reparations for, you know, Africa climate, um, funds to help. Well, you know what I mean? This is one of the things that that about this whole idea that of climate justice, and I'm sure you know a lot about this topic, but I mean, one of the things that's always struck me about this is it's not like these third-world countries that are suffering the, you know, by and large the effects of climate change. It's not like they just want money so that they can build infrastructure. They really want a lifestyle that's equal to ours, right? They say, "Well, you have all these things, we should have those things too, right?" This is, you know, how could, how could you just think that somehow by the grace of God you live in a place that has resources and we that you're entitled to all that, right? So, climate justice means this sort of equalizing, uh, of lifestyles, which is where deep growth comes in, right? Because the whole idea is, well, we will lower our standard here and ship out the the excess to, you know, third world to bring them up and we can we can equalize. I mean, just the implied growth of these societies through the building of infrastructure and energy imports, you know.
Um, and, um, what is the country, um, is it Guiana, um, am I even saying that right, that they just recently discovered huge oil reserves and, you know, the the government there is like pledged to not open these oil reserves. Oh. Because because of its commitment to climate, you know, and you know that's a one-off. Yeah, absolutely. So, so what, what, uh, so I, I just want to talk a little bit about the, you know, solution-oriented or policy thing. What is the doomer narrative proposed for policy changes? What kind of policies do we need? Maybe like we already have too many policies, that itself is a problem, or do you think the way we approach, which even overall policy process is kind of not the way it should be?
Again, quite a question you asked there. What is the doomer perspective on policy? I would say that that we are in a predicament. We are not in a situation where there is a problem. Problems have solutions. Predicaments have outcomes. So, understanding that we're in a predicament and there will be outcomes means, um, that policy should be directed towards understanding the outcomes and, um, mitigating the suffering and displacement associated with those, not just human, but but all life, whether, you know, whatever the life is in the area that's being impacted. So, you know, even for coral, I mean, a doomer might say, well, we should be investing in seeing if we could genetically engineer heat-resistant coral that we can replant in these, you know, these areas that have been, um, destroyed. And there are some, you know, there is some research into doing exactly that sort of thing. So, I, I would not, um, prescribe any policy, you know, personally, whose primary purpose is to prolong, um, civilization. So, for me personally, I am not only anti-fossil fuel, I'm also anti-wind, anti-solar, I am anti-all energy, right? And so if you are, if you are against energy, you know, then the result of that is collapse because you're simply not able to continue to build the infrastructure to to support a growing population. So, you know, the consequence of of sort of being anti-energy is pro-collapse.
Um, is it, um, I, I want to ask, I, I'm trying to ask everybody, every one of my guests about AI. It's a hype, it's a buzzword, it's everywhere. Uh, and I, I like to describe that as, you know, early 2000 or early 90s or 80s when we had an internet and we thought, "Oh, it's going to revolutionize the world." Of course, it did in many different positive and negative ways. Same with social media. It brings a lot of good things but a lot of bad things. Misinformation, disinformation, you know, what is real, what is not real. That new debate, fact-checking, all of those, uh, things. Now AI is there and, you know, these big tech corporations are, you know, pumping billions of dollars into this new thing. They are promising that it's shiny, it's great, it's going to change the world and it's going to save humanity, civilization. There are people who are talking about, you know, ethics and building more human AI and more humanely possible AI for good. Where do you stand when it comes to artificial intelligence?
Um, I use it all the time. So I am, um, so AI uses energy, right? It uses electricity, especially. And there is this idea of Jevons paradox that, um, you may be familiar with. And, you know, a brief description is that an increase in inefficiency of any resource generation, um, does not lead to a decrease in the use of of, you know, that that resource. So, when we have more electricity, it doesn't mean that we're going to have, um, fewer, uh, fossil fuel cars. It means we're going to find another way to use that electricity, right? And I mean, we're just seeing this over and over again that this Jevons paradox play out with, um, all of the solar and wind generated electricity that's coming in. We have these data centers. We have AI, huge consumers. Um, and we're never going to catch up. There's never going to be a day that says, "Oh, now we finally have enough uses for this stuff, and we can start replacing, um, fossil fuel energy with this other energy." And, you know, which goes back to one of the earlier questions. So, all that means is that as long as civilization is growing, right? I'm not going to take a stand and say, "Well, this is my line in the sand. Civilization has grown too much. I'm no longer going to use this, that, or the other technology because it's past the line in the sand for what I consider civilization should be, right?" And so I make full use of AI, um, all the time. I've, I've tested it for coding, um, and it can, you know, replicate some of the codes that I used to do when I was a casino consultant. I was writing, you know, code for casino games. Um, so it's a very powerful tool and, um, I, I see it, you know, impacting all manner of of life to benefit civilization in the short run. Um, in the long run, the resource depletion is going to accelerate and and worsen collapse.
Absolutely. So, um, that's certainly also, you know, the downside of it. So, you know, some, it's a tradeoff. It's kind of a tradeoff, like, do you want to be part of that or do you want to exclude yourself from these things? And regardless, it's, it's continues.
Well, yeah, and there's always going to be something else, you know, the next, like you say, the next pretty thing that comes along. I, I think that one of the problems with AI is this idea of AI slop. Um, so, for example, if I want to find something with a Google search now, I, I essentially can't find, you know, original sources because there's been so many AI-generated versions of something similar, and those have somehow migrated to the top of the search window. So, you know, I, it's hard to find things now. Uh, and this is really accelerated. And when I started posting these daily moments of doom, you know, a few years ago, I would go on to Google search in the morning and I could type in "climate crisis" into the search engine and down would come, you know, Reuters and Financial Times and New York Times and Washington Post, right? And I could look through mainstream media articles and find something. And and now what I get are these weird, um, domain names that that don't even make sense. They're like random letters, right? That and and they they just lead you nowhere. They lead you to stories that don't have an author, you know, they just have the story there. Um, sometimes at the bottom, you will say, you know, "Some of this content has been, uh, generated, um, you know, through technology." They don't tell you which technology, right? So, you know, there are there are tremendous near-term downsides to this technology as well. Um, I have published a couple of articles on my blog that are AI-generated. Um, and there's a lot of pushback for that. Um, one of the recent ones I just published was, um, I published an article called "The 15 Types of Doomers." And I already had in my mind a list of individuals and books. Um, and so I gave, uh, AI a prompt that was quite lengthy that included these individuals and and this data and stuff, and it wrote this essay, right? And I went through it and corrected it and changed it and reorganized it, but essentially it saved me hours and hours and hours of work. Yeah. I would have written the same thing. It it said exactly what I wanted to say, right?
So, um, yeah. So, I think it's, it's time to to wrap things up. So, what is, I, I'm going to ask you that question too. Uh, what is something that as a society we are not talking about and we should be talking or spending more time talking about when it comes to ecological disaster, or it can be about doomerism, it can be about climate change, environment, it can be any of those things. I think that that one of the key things about being a doomer is this idea of alarm and fear, right? That those are the things that draw attention. Yes. And I would really like to see, as a doomer, that this perspective not be mocked by mainstream climate scientists. You know, you have a book that was recently written, uh, by Genevieve Gunther, right? "The Language of Climate Politics," that that opens on page 10 attacking doomers. You have Hannah Ritchie attacking doomers. You have Michael Mann, you have Katherine Hayhoe, you have all of this anti-doomer sort of of, um, propaganda out there. I think this perspective that civilization is collapsing in real time and we are witnessing it. We are here witnessing it, right? This is not fear. This is not attempting to alarm people. This is saying, "Here are the facts." The coral reefs are dying, right? We passed a tipping point. The Arctic just hit its thinnest point ever recorded in the month of August. You know, here are facts over and over again. Let's, let's stop lying about where we're heading. Civilization is collapsing. And allowing that to become mainstream, and believe me, these people talk about it behind closed doors, they know.
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. You know, allowing this to become a mainstream conversation, I think, would do have have tremendous healing impact for the sorts of conversations we could have with each other, you know, not saying that we're only allowed to talk about this half of the bell curve and the other half of the bell curve, "Oh, that's off-limits." You know, that you can't talk about those events, even though, you know, they're as probable or more probable than the half you are allowed to talk about. So, so for me, the, the, um, the biggest change I would say is is in sort of this taboo against this, this fact-science belief, you know, view of the future, um, by mainstream climate scientists and media. It is really important as far as allowing the conversation to take place in a more meaningful way.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think we, we have to leave it there. Uh, Professor Ilad, thank you so much for your time. It was a wonderful discussion and I hope that people would, uh, like it and also give their feedback, um, in in a more constructive, constructive and positive way, what we have discussed today. Thank you so much.