Episode 1053 Scott Adams - Talking With Michael Shellenberger About Apocalypse Never, A Terrific Book
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- - Special Guest: Environmental activist, Michael Shellenberger - De Blasio paints BLM in front of Trump Tower - Startup Ground News compares multiple news sources - A list of people who have called for boycotts of other companies - Joe Biden's country destroying proposals - Unrestricted immigration and the black community ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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View segment →ttle bit better. Here it goes. The simultaneous sip. Mmm. Yeah. Yep. I can feel everything improving now. Now I have a special guest, which I'm going to wait for a moment until he gets on here. If the technology doesn't work today, we'll figure something out. So let me just check here. I'm trying…
View segment →ink that that would be a big deal. Now here's the fun part. So this little startup, I think calling them a startup is correct, Ground News, sends me this thing because they think I'd be interested and I was. It was pretty interesting. Now by the way there are also stories which show like a big crick…
View segment →re of the black vote than the experts assume. And I think it's going to because those two issues are pretty big ones. And I don't think that the black community will completely trust their own team when they see a different power base emerging. So that's what I got for you today and I will talk to…
View segment →Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of the whole day every single time. You think there'll be a day that goes by and you'll think, well, maybe today will be the day that the simultaneous sip and Coffee with Scott Adams is not the best part of the day. And then you find out it is, right? So you might as well just give in to it. It's the best part of the day. There's no way around it, and today will be no exception.
All you need for the simultaneous sip is a cup or a bucket or glass or tankard or canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything, including the environment, coronavirus, the economy, racism, all of it, a little bit better. Here it goes. The simultaneous sip.
Mmm. Yeah. Yep. I can feel everything improving now.
Now I have a special guest, which I'm going to wait for a moment until he gets on here. If the technology doesn't work today, we'll figure something out. So let me just check here. I'm trying to talk to Michael Shellenberger when he is available, which will be any moment now, about his incredible new book that I read. And you should be proud of me. It's kind of a big book and I actually read it. Wow, can you believe it? Yes, I did. All right, Michael, if you're having trouble getting on, I will be looking for a message from you just so as I know.
All right, Michael says he's there. But Michael, you say you're there, but when I look at my guest list you do not appear. So there's an icon at the bottom of your screen. Click the happy faces icon at bottom, and once Michael clicks that I will see him and then I will add him on, which I think might be happening right now. Yes, it is. So let's see if our technology works. Michael, can you hear me? Hey, it worked.
So let me tell the audience what we've got going here. So this is Michael Shellenberger, whose amazing new book, "Apocalypse Never," which you can see right here, which is just now, I just saw it's number seven on Amazon's most read books of the week. I don't know if all of you know this, but Amazon puts out a lot of books. If you could be number seven on their most read list, holy cow. It's number one in a bunch of categories that apply to it.
And Michael, would you describe yourself as an environmentalist activist still, or is that where you started and you've evolved? How would you describe yourself for the audience?
"I still consider myself an environmentalist and environmental activist. I spend a lot of my time making the case for nuclear power, which I think is one of the most important technologies in the world, certainly one of the most important environmental technologies. So yeah, I guess you can now say I'm a best-selling author too, which is pretty cool."
You know, the thing that I loved about your book, and by the way I don't usually like books, I have to admit, even when I read them I think, well, you know, maybe I shouldn't have. But I actually loved every part of your book because your writing is excellent. It keeps me engaged the whole time because your personal story was woven in with it all.
What would you say that if you and Greta Thunberg were ever in the same room that the matter and the antimatter would make you both explode and disappear?
"Yeah, that'd be a very interesting experiment, wouldn't it? I would want a lot of other people to be present, that's for sure. It would be quite a show."
All right. So your book is sort of a tour through the environmental not only the history and the psychology of it, which I found actually the most interesting part was the psychology of how we got to where we are in various ways. But when you looked into everything from ozone to whaling to the Amazon rainforest and all this, and you've done deep dives in all of these, where were you most surprised? And what would be the most surprising to the audience in terms of things that people generally believed to be true that just aren't true?
"Oh man, there's so many of them. I mean, I think one of the two most fun chapters in a way were the chapters on plastic waste and on meat, because these are two topics that I had certainly read about but I had never really properly researched, much less considered myself an expert on. So one of the most surprising things was I opened this chapter on plastic by describing this very famous viral YouTube video where a marine biologist pulls a plastic straw out of the nose of a sea turtle. And I learned more about the history of these sea turtles, and one of the things I learned is that they were being overharvested. They were being killed for their shells to make tortoiseshell glasses. The tortoiseshell was missing, and it was sea turtle because sea turtle shells were the original plastic, the original bioplastic. So it turns out that the plastics that we use today made from petroleum products actually helped to save sea turtles. They also helped to save elephants because they were substitutes for the ivory in elephant tusks. So stories like that where you discover these things that you're told are super terrible often had a really important role in protecting the environment."
And the surprising part about that is that the sea turtle that had the straw up his nose, I didn't even know sea turtles did cocaine. So that was surprising to me.
"No, turtles don't do cocaine. I just made that up."
All right. So one of the things I found most powerful about your book is the people who want to save the world seem to be destroying it, and they don't know why, but they don't know it. Okay, can you walk us through what a developing nation needs to do to become a good nation? And can they get there with solar power?
"I mean, this is, I joke that because I wrote this book, I dedicate this book to my children who are ages 14 and 21. So I wanted people to be able to read it who were just 14 years old. So I told a lot of stories. I tried to make it as simple as possible with a lot of stories. And I talked about how really the process of economic development, unless you're Saudi Arabia, is basically the same everywhere you go, from having a country where almost everybody is a small farmer to getting factories, people working in cities. And that the only way to do that is by moving away from renewables, away from wood and dung and waterwheels, towards fossil fuels and to some extent hydroelectric dams are very important. Hydroelectric dams I consider the highest form of renewables because they provide so much reliable power. But really it's a story of rising energy consumption. Increased energy consumption is actually good for the environment because energy is a substitute for matter, which is what we call the natural environment. So yeah, the reason this trend I criticize here, which is this idea that we should stop funding hydroelectric dams, roads, electrical grids, modern agriculture, and instead the World Bank is giving small farmers a solar panel and a battery and saying good luck with that, it's simply not going to work."
So would it be fair to say that environmentalists, if they got their way, would lock all of the poor people into poverty basically forever? Because nobody's figured out how to get out of poverty without doing it the way you just mentioned. So would, yeah, I mean Greta would be destroying the lives of poor people forever?
"Yeah, I mean what they would say is, well we should help them with some charity. But for sure the idea, and in fact they've succeeded. They basically persuaded the World Bank, the European Development Bank, all the big international development banks whose purpose after World War II was to lift everybody out of poverty. They have diverted basically all of that money from energy that can lift people out of poverty, whether it's a hydroelectric dam, a coal plant or a nuclear plant, to these little charitable experiments, the solar panel on a hut. They've actually also denied countries the money they need for irrigation, fertilizer or tractors, which is the basis for, because when you have factories and cities you have fewer farmers and they have to grow more food. It's just really simple. So yeah, I mean it's an agenda that basically, at the end of the book I have three chapters about why is everybody so crazy on this environmental issue. And I look at money, power and religion. And the power, definitely there's an effort by rich people in the rich countries, Greta Thunberg herself, Bill McKibben, the other characters in the book, are actively trying to keep poor nations in poverty. And I think it's unconscionable."
So that's the most amazing part about this. And I've always tried to figure out why people have different opinions on things where science should be the only opinion. And the environmental one is the most amazing one. And I don't know anybody who's looked into it as much as you have, who has your, I'll say, talent stack, the ability to analyze things and communicate them. I don't know anybody who comes down on a different side when they dig into it as much as you have. And it feels like the environmentalists are in some cases just in it for money or whatever. But in many cases I think they just don't have as deep a talent stack. In other words, they're just not capable of looking at the field in its entirety. They're just seeing part of the field. Does it feel like that to you?
"I mean I would say yes in some ways. What's striking to me, Scott, is that environmentalists, the people who want to control the energy and food production all around the world through the United Nations, this is not some conspiracy theory, I document all this in the book. These are people that have never spent any time in poor countries. These are people who have really never spent any time in the productive sectors of their own country's energy and food economies. I always joke that nobody's more alienated from nature than environmentalists. Environmentalists are people that live in a city. They want to put huge industrial wind turbines in the airshed of birds, bats and insects in places where they don't live. But if you ever get a wind turbine proposed for the coast of California or for the coast of Cape Cod, those of us in the rich cities and the rich coasts shut that down immediately. So there's a lot of hypocrisy at work. There's a lot of ignorance. It's hard to pull them apart exactly."
Now for the benefit of the audience, give us your view of climate change. Is it man-made? Is it alarming? Give us your overview on where you think climate change is heading.
"My view is that climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It's not even our most important environmental problem. I think it's taken up way more of our attention and money and time than it should. It's led us to not only neglect what I see as more serious environmental problems, which would be things like the loss of habitat and rainforests and the fragmentation of forests for endangered species, poverty, the overconsumption of wild animals including fish. We've basically forgotten about all those problems. They don't even really get into the newspaper as much anymore. And then it's led people to do things that are clearly harmful. The first one, and part of my motivation for writing the book, is that they've contributed to rising anxiety and depression among adolescents. I'm not saying they're the sole cause but they're certainly part of it."
You know, when I grew up we were taught that there was going to be a nuclear war in our lifetime and we'd probably all be dead. And it definitely had an effect on my whole mental makeup, probably permanently. And I can't imagine that that's not messing up kids.
You talk about, there's a fascinating part towards the end of the book where you're talking about maybe the psychological underpinnings of the death cults. Could you say something about that?
"Well yeah, the last chapter in the book, and I think you know I ended up, I'm actually hiring somebody from Extinction Rebellion, which is crazy. But basically the last part of the book I'm in London. I'm actually advocating for nuclear. I went to 10 Downing Street, went to Parliament, met with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and I was making a case for nuclear. But I'm trying to get through Trafalgar Square and it's just this crazy Extinction Rebellion protest. Thousands of people are arrested and it's very disturbing. They have up signs that say things like 'climate change kills children,' which is just ridiculous. It's pseudoscience. And I spent some time trying to figure out what's going on here. What is this? Well obviously, or maybe not obviously, but I think it's very clear when I review the research and I certainly think about my own history, that this is a religious movement. You could say it's a religious cult. I quote somebody, one of the best British columnists on this, called it the upper-middle-class death cult, which is not inaccurate. And so what's going on? And I sort of point out that really these apocalyptic environmentalists tend to be people who don't believe in traditional religion but they still have the need to believe in something. They still have the need for personal transcendence, for some sense of immortality."
Now is that, do you think, that a sense of immortality is that they're saving the world so that's their legacy? What, how does the need for immortality or our basic need to feel like we have some lasting impact, is that where it is? And saving the world?
"Yeah it's really exaggerated, right? I mean it's like a Marvel superhero story of yourself. I contrast it like if you think about if I look at my parents when my kids and my brothers and sisters' kids, when we're all home for Christmas, my parents are the happiest I ever see them because they see their grandkids. They are immortal, right? They see that they are living on through their grandkids. That's a healthy, normal fantasy or a story of immortality that they have. I think for this idea that I as a person am going to save the planet from climate change, I mean it's identical in structure to a Marvel superhero story. It's so over the top. It's so ridiculous. And what we find is that basically a lot of what these apocalyptic environmentalists, the story they're telling is a Judeo-Christian story of saving the whole planet from Armageddon. But they don't even know that. They think they're just talking science. They think that they're actually describing the world as it is. They don't know that they're in the grip of a religion."
Yeah, one of the hardest things for anybody is to know what you don't know. And one of the things that I've noticed is that the environmental movement skews young. Wouldn't you say that it's a young person's movement? Is that a fair statement?
"Yeah, I mean I think there's, I see a lot of the leaders and the activists in the apocalyptic climate change movement being adolescents and middle-aged people, which are a kind of two existential moments in your life where you're kind of like, who am I? What am I doing here? What is my purpose? You have it as an adolescent and you often have a midlife crisis. So I think it reflects some insecurities, some personal insecurities that people have around their own lives. And then they become part of a movement. It gives our lives meaning. But ultimately if I could sort of break it down like this, the difference between an environmentalist activist and what you are is that you know more than they do. I mean it kind of comes down to that, isn't it? You've just looked into it in more detail and so you can see the whole field and you can see that for example the solar isn't going to solve all our problems. But the person who hasn't done the work is going to say, well you know Elon Musk says solar, it's going to work, without realizing that Elon Musk is a competitor to other forms of energy, which is one of the things you talk about."
Can you say something about that? About what is it that's caused people to think that solar could solve their problems when it's so obvious that it can't?
"Well that's right. When you see people, this incredible love for renewables and the anger that people have at you when you point out all of the obvious problems with it, you know like the wind turbines are spinning blades that kill a lot of endangered species or that the solar panels require covering four hundred times more land than a natural gas or a nuclear plant require. When you just point out those problems, advocates of renewables, apocalyptic environmentalists, they get really angry in the same way that a true believer gets mad when you suggest that their God isn't real. So you know I think it's clear, you see it in all of the literature, you see it in the advertising. Renewables have always been viewed as a way to harmonize human society with nature. So nature ends up playing the role of God. And where we used to try to get right by God and by God's laws, there's now by supposedly secular people an effort to get right by nature. And science becomes kind of a new religion."
You know, I've always noticed people always have this need to be part of something that's bigger than themselves and maybe get approval from something bigger than themselves. So as you're talking about, it's like you try to get God's approval if you're a believer. But if you're not a believer, maybe you need nature's approval. Maybe we're just wired so we need that approval from the bigger power.
So I gotta ask you about nuclear. Is our country going in the right direction finally? I know the president doesn't say much about nuclear but the Department of Energy does seem to be doing some things. Is it moving in the right direction in your opinion?
"Not really, unfortunately. I'm afraid the nuclear industry itself is committed to managed decline. They announce a lot of R&D projects but honestly there's no effort to maintain our existing nuclear plants or build new ones. So what we've got is a lot of demonstration projects that are attempted to kind of make us feel better about a basically bad situation."
Now is that not at least in part because there's some desire to get to so-called generation 4 that we don't know how to do yet?
"Exactly. So there's some iteration and testing in government that they build some kind of a test facility to do that, didn't they? Or they're building it?"
"Yeah that's the idea. The problem is I've just done so much, I just know so much about the history of this that we see this repeatedly where there's all these demonstration efforts. There's been so many prototypes and demonstration reactors made and they don't ever go anywhere. What really gets nuclear plants built is when utilities decide to build plants and they usually end up building the same kind of plant or a very similar kind of plant to one that's been operating. So my concern is not that I have no problem with the demonstration efforts. My problem is that we're not doing the things that the Russians and the Chinese and the French and the people that are serious about having a nuclear expansion are doing, which is to build full-sized light water reactors. That's why I'm so obsessed with Britain right now. Britain's considering building six full-size light water reactors. It's got the construction. That's what it looks like when countries are going seriously on nuclear. And unfortunately we're not doing that."
And for our audience that's not up to date, the types of nuclear that other countries are looking at building would all be types, would you call it third generation, which has never had a meltdown that killed anybody yet. Is that true?
"Oh yeah, of course. Even Fukushima's radiation didn't kill anybody and that was Gen 2. So yeah, it's Gen 3. These are in some ways honestly they're just over-engineered. In the book I talk about the fear of nuclear and the irrational and ideological nature of the fears. But my view has always been on nuclear that we too often make the perfect enemy of the good. And really what works is to just build good plants, have the same guys building the same reactors over time. That's how costs come down."
So if you were to say you were the President of the United States instantly and you're going to say all right and fix nuclear energy in this country, would you look at forced standardization? Would you just get out of the way and remove regulations if some of them are unnecessary? I don't even know if they are. Where's the lever? What would you focus on to change first to fix it?
"The most important thing is to have a national consensus on a long-term plan for taking nuclear from 20% to 50% of our electricity by 2050. And that's a pretty reasonable goal. You would then work with the utilities and the states because we do have a fragmented utility system. Most countries it's a single utility or a couple of them. We have so many utilities because we're such a big country. The most important thing is to have a goal and work towards it. And yeah, I think standardization would be the obvious way. But I thought the real problem is that the economics don't work because it just takes so long to get it approved. If you don't fix that it doesn't matter how much leadership you have, does it?"
"If you're doing unapproved designs, sure. But we have a perfectly great, I mean it's really great, advanced pressurized water cooled reactor called the AP1000. They're building two of them in Georgia. Those workers are literally a national asset. I mean those construction workers, because they know how to pour cement and make rebar and weld at nuclear-grade standards. After they're done they should move up the road to South Carolina and build two more nuclear reactors there. If I had a national building program it would just spread because the key is that the workers themselves, there's so much specialized skill involved, speaking of skill stacking, that they are. These workers, it's tragic if we don't build more nuclear plants after those two AP1000s. We're going to lose so much valuable asset in those workers. It's scary."
Is this the same kind of skill, I know pouring concrete is not the same skill you'd need to make a nuclear engine for a submarine or for later for a Space Force, but we have the same problem, right? Because space will be nuclear-powered. That's a guarantee, isn't it?
"Oh yeah. If you're serious. So if we don't have a big nuclear energy capability, a robust nuclear industry in the United States, we're not going to own space. And whoever owns space owns the Earth. That's pretty much a guarantee, wouldn't you say?"
"Absolutely. I haven't done enough on this question. I'm very interested in space. I'm very interested in national security implications of space. And you're right, nuclear, the innovation on nuclear has really come from the military. That's how we got our existing light water designs. And the left, the pro-nuclear left has often condemned our existing light water technology by saying it came from the military. But that's the strength of it. That's where our microchips came from. That's where personal computers came from. That's where the internet came from."
Yeah, right. Why are we embarrassed about the military roots of these technologies? That's why they're so great, right?
"Yeah, that's such a weird thing to be angry at."
So Michael, is there anything you want to leave us with? I'm going to go on to some other topics here. Is there anything that we need to know that I didn't ask?
"I just wanted to say that first of all thank you Scott for plugging the book. People get it. You should know that I've been now censored twice. I was censored by Forbes who took down my original column announcing the book and then I was censored by Facebook after an absolutely outrageous unscientific attack on my book by a sort of star chamber of climate apocalyptic jerks who basically got my articles censored on Facebook. So please sign up at Environmental Progress to get updates directly from me. Please buy the book. I would love to hear from readers. It's really exciting to have the conversation."
All right. It's "Apocalypse Never," Michael Shellenberger. It's a bestseller written all over it and it's already a bestseller. And congratulations on the book. It's really, this is a really good book. I mean it really is. You did a great job on this. So thank you, Michael.
"Thanks Scott."
All right, take care.
All right, that was very interesting. Let's talk about some other things. For example, Trump's taxes. So let me summarize the entire situation about Trump's taxes. Blah blah blah, some legal stuff, blah blah blah, lawyers disagree, blah blah blah, court, blah blah blah, will be appealed, blah blah blah, will take a long time, blah blah blah, may not make any difference for the election because it may be delayed until after that, blah blah blah, precedent. There you go. That's everything you need to know about Trump's taxes.
I am loving the story about Mayor de Blasio and the protesters painting this giant Black Lives Matter, I don't know why you'd call it a sign or a message, on the road directly in front of Trump Tower. And here's what I love about it. I always put myself in the story and say, well what if I were Trump? If I were Trump and I knew that the city was mocking me by putting Black Lives Matter right in front of my high-end building, what would I think about that? And I had the following feeling. When I first saw the workers doing their thing, you know they're painting, you can't see what they're doing yet, you just see that people are doing something. My first thought was it's going to be an eyesore and I wish we wouldn't waste our time on such things. And then you see the aerial view of it and I'm thinking to myself they're actually pretty good at making stuff. Whoever mapped out the letters in Black Lives Matter and picked the color and the font did a really good job. So I'm looking at this thing and I'm thinking I kind of like it, you know, just artistically. Because let me give some context. I also like tattoos and scars because they tell you a story about a moment in time. And the Black Lives Matter thing not only looks good in the same sense that Mount Rushmore just looks good. You know if Mount Rushmore were done poorly would you go to see it just because there's big important presidents' heads on it? If they didn't quite look like the presidents would you bother going to see it? No, it matters it's done well. That's what makes Mount Rushmore so impressive. It's done well plus it's big. So this Black Lives Matter thing, I'm looking at it and thinking I kind of like it. If I were the president I'd say thank you. I would just say I didn't love the idea but when I saw you did a good job on it I think I liked it. Imagine if the president said you know it kind of looks good there. Let's keep it maintained. Let's make sure that nobody ruins it. What would that do to people's heads? Would they explode?
Now of course I don't think the president can do that because Black Lives Matter refers to not only the idea but also the organization. And he's not so pro the organization. But of course he like everybody in the world would agree with the concept. So if I were him I'd just say, I would call it a concept not an organization. I would say it's kind of cool. Let's leave it there. That's how I treat it because I actually do like it.
This was interesting. So yesterday I got a direct message from a small, I guess you'd call them a startup, they're kind of new, called Ground News. Ground like the ground you stand on, news. And what they do is they take all the news stories on a topic and they see if the left-leaning news sites or the middle or the right-leaning news sites are focusing on it more. And then you can see how it's covered differently by the left and the right. So it's a really good idea to give you more of a landscape of the bias in the news industry. But they sent me one that they thought I might be interested in yesterday which was the story about Trump signed executive order expanding educational and economic opportunities to Hispanics. And it's funny because you look at the Ground News chart and it shows that the people on the left, the media on the left, just ignored the story like it didn't exist. But the outlets on the right and the middle, like well it's a story, the president's doing it, it's a national story, of course we're going to write about it. But the left, crickets.
Now think about that. Think how important the Hispanic American vote will be. And here's Trump signing, I don't know what the details are, but he's expanding educational and economic opportunity for Hispanics. And you would think that that would be a big deal. Now here's the fun part. So this little startup, I think calling them a startup is correct, Ground News, sends me this thing because they think I'd be interested and I was. It was pretty interesting. Now by the way there are also stories which show like a big crickets on the right. So the story about Trump's Southern District of New York legal stuff, that was covered mostly by the left and Fox News and that was about it. So it works both ways. But I will note that Fox News is a little bit more likely to cover all the stories than other outlets, at least that's what it looked like. But here's the fun part. So I tweeted the little story about the executive order and I woke up this morning and Trump, President Trump, retweeted it. So this little startup Ground News woke up to something like 60 times the amount of traffic they normally get. So that was fun anyway.
Well let's see. You know I tweeted this as a prediction. Let's see what you think. So I predicted this. There's some day somebody is going to compile a list of companies that employ people who have publicly called for boycotts on other companies. All right, so wouldn't you like to know, when you see somebody on Twitter calling for a boycott, wouldn't you like to know where they work? Because that's just fair, right? The whole point of a boycott, the point of this cancellation culture, is that the cancelers are safe because you don't know much about them. But they found out something about whatever that our target is, whoever they're going to boycott or cancel. They know something extra about that person that causes them trouble. Is it not fair that we just have a little more transparency? Wouldn't you like to know who accuses you in the legal system? You have a right to know who your accuser is. What kind of world would it be if you didn't know who your accuser was? But I think you should also know where they work. You know, what's their job? Because if somebody goes after somebody else's job I think that person has a right to know where do you work? Where do you work, right?
So if you were calling for a boycott on this company Goya, the CEO said some nice things about President Trump and now the left wants to cancel them. Wouldn't you like to know where all those cancelers work or where they work in the future? Because I think that it needs to be mutually assured destruction. You know we need to probably in order to have free speech in this country in a way that the, let's say the market allows as well as the Constitution. Right now the Constitution says yes but the free market says no. Well maybe you can't say those things without losing your job. So with that, with some sense of mutually assured destruction that's somewhat immediate and personal, I don't see any of it ever changing. Because in my opinion it's completely fair to complain about somebody's opinion. Completely fair, of course that's freedom of speech. But when you go after somebody's job because of their opinion, your own job should be at risk. That feels like the minimum, right? If you punch somebody in public, the reason you don't do that is you think you'll get punched back. You know you're even more so than you're worried about going to jail, you'll immediately be punched back. So there's a reason people don't punch people in public. But right now there's no reason you can't try to cancel somebody in public.
Now in my case since I'm a public figure and everybody knows my job, you know if I say something negative about somebody they usually say boycott Dilbert, we're going to boycott, we're going to call all your newspapers and cancel you. To which I say isn't that fair? Isn't it fair then if I were to criticize somebody on social media that they know who I am and where I work? I think that is fair. I would also like to know who they are and where they work. Yeah, just so we have full transparency. I don't think you can solve this otherwise.
So here's some fun news. Cartoonist Gary Larson has decided to come out of retirement and draw some new comics. So you can Google Gary Larson The Far Side. You'll see his site. It'll pop up. So that was just announced. I knew about this for a while because we have the same syndication company but it's exciting there. And he's actually got some new comics there. What's fun about this is that Gary Larson when he retired he had still been drawing on with paper and pen and that was part of his frustration. It's just really hard and not that fun to draw with pencil and paper and pen. And so for his new stuff he's teaching himself to use a digital something like what I use. Imagine he's using the same thing. This is my drawing surface. It's just a computer screen that you can also draw on with a stylus from Wacom. And so you'll see some of his new digital art. Some of you will be very interested in that.
All right. Biden has coming out with some specific proposals that look like they would destroy the country completely. And I've never had that feeling before. I've never actually had the feeling, have you in the past when there have been presidents that were candidates that maybe I liked more than the other? I never really thought that the other candidate would destroy the world. You know when Gore and Bush were running didn't you think well it's not going to be that different no matter who gets elected? Turns out it was quite different because we got a couple of wars out of Bush. But I didn't think in advance it was the end of the world if one got elected versus the other. And generally speaking you know that's what I think. I don't think it would have been the end of the world if Hillary Clinton had been elected because she's sort of moderate, right? You might not like it but it wouldn't be the end of the world. But when I look at the Biden situation and I see that first of all he's not the guy in control, that's obvious. So you don't know who's in control which is pretty scary. Wouldn't you like to know who the president is? We have a situation where you won't actually know who's in control if he did get selected. But he's got some ideas that could actually destroy the whole civilization. Let me give you an example. I'd like to see somebody who's in favor of relaxing borders describe what it looks like in their mind. Like what does the world look like in a year or two years or whatever if they get exactly what they want? What happens? How does it look?
Now if you say if the president says you know I want to close borders he can draw a picture of what that looks like pretty well. There's still some immigration but you know we're trying to fit the employees to the jobs without burdening employment in this country. You kind of know what that looks like, right? It looks a lot like now but with better border control, maybe a little less crime coming in. But who knows if you'd even notice. But what does it look like if you don't have border control and you've got more sanctuary cities that Biden is suggesting? Is there any world in which that would not attract the cartels for example? Is there any world in which the United States would not eventually be run by Mexican cartels for all practical purposes? I can't imagine any way that wouldn't happen if we have enough people coming across the border. So it's a question of numbers. So I'd like to see people ask that question of what that looks like.
It's the same question with the Green New Deal which seems to be sort of pushed into the back burner for the moment. But as I was talking with Michael Shellenberger, what do people think it looks like for countries if the Green New Deal happens? Like fast forward that. What happens with your solar panels and your windmills in some African country that's trying to develop and that just doesn't work? You know where are they in 20 years? They're still where they were, right? They haven't gone anywhere.
All right. So Biden's new campaign slogan, the slogan is Build Back Better. Build Back Better. Biden says Build Back Better. What do you think of that? Build Back Better. On one hand it's sort of catchy because you are encouraged to repeat it in your head. Build Back Better. It's got a lot of B's in it. Build Back Better. It's not bad but I don't find it easy to remember. Build Back Better. I feel as if there will be a point where he won't remember his own slogan. Whereas Make America Great Again, you try to hear that once and you'll remember it forever, right?
So let me give you a writing tip. Listen to the percussion of these two things. Make America Great Again. Just listen to the percussion. Imagine that it was an instrument. Make America Great Again. Now listen to Build Back Better. One of them is more musical, right? If you had to listen to something forever, you know only one slogan and it just had to play forever, would you rather hear Build Back Better, Build Back Better? Would you rather hear Make America Great Again? There's a big difference. So I would say the Build Back Better was probably designed by a political operative and not an expert on persuasion. So that you know if this had been designed by let's say a Cialdini or somebody with that kind of level of knowledge of persuasion it would look like this. This is sort of a tell for a political slogan as opposed to President Trump who is the brander himself. And so he's got a whole different level of goodness in his slogan because he knows how to do that.
All right. I didn't hear anything about nuclear energy from Biden so that would be interesting to hear him answer to that. And I guess Biden says he's taking it or at least as reported he took a firm tone towards China and he wants aggressive trade enforcement actions. That sort of sounds like nothing, doesn't it? It's kind of come down to this. It seems that the Republicans are, and this is just a relative thing, right, relatively open to working with Russia but tough on China. The Biden proposition seems to be not open to working with Russia but very friendly to China. So it's almost as if our election has become do you pick China or Russia? Yeah you could ignore the candidates. You can ignore the candidates and say which world do you want to live in? The one where we're nice to China and China abuses us as they have or the one in which we're nice to Russia and maybe they try to abuse us the way they have. So you've got two choices there that don't feel great.
And he wants to put a bunch of money into building and investing in Buy American etc. Pretty ordinary stuff.
All right. At this point it seems that the Biden campaign is getting more complicated. There's some more meat on the bones but it also should doom Biden because one advantage that Biden has had, it's a pretty big advantage, is that until he said what his own policies are with some detail as is coming out now, until that happened he didn't have to talk about anything complicated. Let me ask you this. So part of his campaign is putting money into 5G, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and 5G into research, research mostly I guess. Now if Biden were to take a question on 5G how would that go, right? If Biden were to take a question on nuclear energy and his plan for that or the climate how would that go? Just consider that now Biden has a whole new bunch of new information he has to speak to if anybody ever gets to ask a question. So his complexity is just going through the roof while his capability continues to plunge as we see. So I think he's getting into increasingly dangerous territory and we'll see if that works out for him.
Now the president said recently that he had taken a cognitive test and everybody was surprised he did so well. What's up with that? But what was missing in the story is the timing of it. I think the president was talking about when he took the test a while ago but the way it was reported, because he didn't talk about the timing of when it happened, they reported it as if it happened recently. I don't know if that did happen recently. I don't know if it did.
So when he's fact-checking of that Build Back Better, somebody says yeah, Basement Biden is going to Build Back Better. Now the word back is not exactly a good word to have in your slogan because back literally suggests going backwards. So I don't think anybody likes it back. But what's interesting, think of this loaded slogan Build Back Better. Does your brain see the word black instead of back? Build black. So you're in the middle of this Black Lives Matter protests so your brain has been primed for Black Lives Matter or black black black black black black. So you're primed for that. Now there you hear the slogan Build Back Better. That back ends up in your brain turning into black. I don't know if that's, I don't know if that works in their favor or against them actually. I'm just pointing it out that your brain will make that translation. So if it was intentional I don't know, kind of clever if they've somehow calculated that that will be a plausible. But here's something that it feels to me is true. I believe that Biden is very clearly saying that his future lies with the Hispanic community. It feels like the Democrats have chosen the Hispanic community as being a higher priority to them politically than the black community. Do you know why that is? Because they already have the black vote. They don't have to do anything for the black community. Nothing. In fact Biden didn't even suggest anything for the black community. I don't, maybe he did. I don't remember seeing it. You probably did. I just don't remember seeing it. So it wasn't featured obviously.
So you see President Trump talking about black employment when it was a few months ago when it was good. And you see him doing the opportunity zones and the jail, the prison reform, etc. And so you see that Trump is literally doing things for the black community. Then you see Kanye saying that he would run as a Republican if he ran. Now if he doesn't run he still sort of moves votes a little bit just because his influence moves things. So it started to look like, and I said this I don't know five years ago, I think I've said this the first time, that the black community is the most natural ally with Republicans. Because Republicans have a, let's say a system and a way of thinking of things that the black community would just fold into easily. Here's what I mean. The black community is religious. The conservative community also religious. So they start with that same religious base. There are a lot more conservative black citizens than you hear about. So you got that going for you. But more importantly it looks like the Democrat plan is to give citizenship to, Biden says, 11 million people in this country. Now I'm not giving you my opinion whether this is good or bad. I'm not sure I even have complete opinions on the whole immigration stuff. I'm just describing it. It seems that the Democrats have decided that their primary focus is going to be the Hispanic community.
If you were a Democrat and you were black how would you feel about being demoted in your own party? Because it's going to feel like that. It feels like yeah the black community problems are important but we're going to bring in 11 million Hispanic voters. Are those 11 million Hispanic voters going to vote for more things for black people or maybe more things for themselves? For example what the president was signing on his executive order it was for the Hispanic community. If you add 11 million more Hispanic voters are you likely to get more good things for the black public or more good things for the Hispanic public? Kind of obvious, right? So there seems to be a power shift on the Democrat side toward the Hispanic power base. The black Democrats are a little bit abandoned. And the Republicans are saying you know we got a lot in common. We're pretty proud of bringing down the employment rate. And by the way Republicans think you should have good schools. How about that? Republicans are for school choice. Biden wants to get rid of that. Biden wants to get rid of school choice.
Let me tell you two things that Black Lives Matter are not in favor of. You ready? When I say Black Lives Matter I don't mean the few organizers. I mean the people who would consider themselves members who are also black. Here are a few things they're not super enthusiastic about and you can find this out yourself. Just talk to anybody in Black Lives Matter and ask who is also black. Don't talk to a white person who is supporting Black Lives Matter. Talk to a black citizen who is in Black Lives Matter and privately ask these two questions. What do you think of unrestricted immigration? What will the Black Lives Matter person who is just a member of Black Lives Matter say about unrestricted immigration? Don't love it. Not big fans, right? They may not come out against it but they're not big fans because it sort of works against their interests. It creates more competition. What about charter schools and just school choice? What do you think they'd say about that? They don't like it. Because if you don't fix schools you're basically doomed. There's nothing else. There's nothing you can do after that that makes a big difference. You gotta fix schools. That's where all the big improvements could be. And the Democrats want to reduce those options.
So I feel like there's sort of a trend building where the Republicans just have a better package. We'll see. We shall see. I'm going to predict that President Trump will get more of the black vote than the experts assume. And I think it's going to because those two issues are pretty big ones. And I don't think that the black community will completely trust their own team when they see a different power base emerging.
So that's what I got for you today and I will talk to you tomorrow.
pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in it's time for coffee with Scott Adams the best part of the whole day every single time yeah you think there'll be a day that goes by and you'll think well maybe today will be the day that the simultaneous sip and coffee with Scott Adams is not the best part of the day and then you find out it is right so you might as well just give in to it it's the best part of the day there's no way around it and today will be no exception all you need for the simultaneous is the copper a bucket or glass of tanker chelators diana canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine here is a day the thing that makes everything including the environment coronavirus the economy racism all of it a little bit better here it goes the simultaneous it mmhmm yeah yep I can feel everything improving now now I have a special guest which I'm gonna wait for a moment until he gets on here if if the technology doesn't work today we'll we'll figure something out so let me just check here I'm trying to talk to Michael Shellenberger when he is available which will be any moment now about his incredible new book that I read and you should be proud of me it's kind of a big book and I actually read it Wow can you believe it yes I did alright Michael if if you're having trouble getting on I will be looking for a message from you just so as I know all right Michael says he's there but but Michael you say you're there but when I look at my guest list you do not appear so there's an icon at the bottom of your screen click the happy faces icon at bottom and once Michael clicks that I will see him and then I will add him on which I think might be happening right now yes it is so let's see if our technology works Michael can hear me hey it worked so well let me let me tell the audience think you know what we've got going here so this is Michael Shellenberger who's amazing new book apostle apocalypse never which you can see right here which is just now it's I just said it's number seven on Amazon's most read books of the week I don't know if all of you know this but Amazon puts out a lot of books if you could be number seven on their most read list holy cows it's number one in a bunch of categories that apply to it and Michael would you would you describe yourself as an environmentalist activists still or is that where you started and you've evolved how would you describe yourself for the audience I still consider myself an environmentalist and environmental activists I spend a lot of my time making the case for nuclear power which i think is the most one of the most important technologies in the world certainly one of most important environmental technologies so yeah I guess you can now say I'm a best-selling author too which is pretty cool you know the the thing that I loved about your book and by the way I don't usually like books I I have to admit I you know even when I read them you know I think well you know maybe I shouldn't have but I actually loved every part of your book because your writing is excellent it keeps me engaged the whole time because your personal story was woven in with with it all what would you say that if you and Greta tunberg were ever in the same room that the the matter and the antimatter would make you both explode and disappear yeah that's a be a very interesting experiment wouldn't it I would want a lot of other people to be present that's for sure it would be quite a show all right so your book is sort of a a tour through the environmental not only the history and the psychology of it which I found actually the most interesting part was the psychology of how we got to where we are in various ways but what when you looked into everything from soldier to Whidden to you know the Amazon rainforest and all this and you've done deep dives and in all of these where were you most surprised and what would be the most surprising to the audience in terms of things that people generally believed to be true that just aren't true oh man there's so many of them I mean I think one of the one of the most fun the two most fun chapters in a way were the chapters that on plastic waste and on meat because these are two topics that I had certainly read about but I had never really properly researched much less consider myself an expert on so I mean one of the most surprising things was you know I opened this chapter on plastic by describing this very famous viral You.
Tube video where a marine biologist pulls a plastic straw out of the nose of a sea turtle and I learned more about the history of these sea turtles and one of the things I learned is that they were being over harvested they were being killed for their shells to make tortoiseshell glasses tortoiseshell glasses the tortoiseshell was missing and it was sea turtle because sea turtle shells were the original plastic the original bio plastic so it turns out that the plastics that we use today made from petroleum products actually helped to save sea turtles they also help to save elephants because they were substitutes for the ivory in elephant tusks so stories like that where you discover these things that you're told are super terrible often had a really important role in protecting the environment you and plastic the the surprising part about that is that the sea turtle that had the straw up his nose I didn't even know sea turtles did cocaine so that was surprising to me no turtles don't do cocaine I just made that up alright so one of the one of the things I found most powerful about your book is the people who want to save the world seem to be destroying it and they don't know why but they don't know it ok can you walk us through what a developing nation needs to do to become a good nation and can they get there with solar power I mean this is I mean I joke that because I wrote this I wrote this book I dedicate this book to my children who are ages 14 and 21 so I wanted people to be able to read it who were just 14 years old so I told a lot of really I try to make it as simple as possible with a lot of stories and I talked about how really the process of economic development unless you're Saudi Arabia is basically the same everywhere you go from having a country where almost everybody is a small farmer to getting factories people working in cities and that the only way to do that is by moving away from renewables away from wood and dung waterwheels towards fossil fuels and to some extent hydroelectric dams are very important hydroelectric dams I consider the highest form of renewables because they're they provide so much reliable power but really it's a story of rising energy consumption increased energy consumption is actually good for the environment because energy is a substitute for matter which is what we call the natural environment so yeah I mean the reason this this trend I condemn I criticize here which is this idea that we should stop funding hydroelectric dams roads electrical grids modern agriculture and instead the World Bank is is giving small farmers a solar panel and a battery and saying a good luck with that it's simply not gonna work so would it be fair to say that environmentalists if they got their way would lock all of the poor people into poverty basically forever because that nobody's figured out how to get out of poverty without doing it the way you just mentioned so would yeah I mean Greta would be destroying the lives of poor people forever yeah I mean what they would say is well we should help them with some charity but for sure the idea and in fact they've succeeded they basically persuaded the World Bank the European Development Bank all the big interaction develop banks whose purpose after World War two was to lift everybody out of poverty they have diverted basically all of that money from energy that can lift people out of poverty whether it's a hydroelectric dam a coal plant or a nuclear plant to these little charitable experiments the solar panel on a hut they've actually also denied countries the money they need for irrigation fertilizer or tractors which is the basis for because when you have factories and cities you have to at your farmers you have fewer farmers and they have to grow more food it's just really simple so yeah I mean it's an agenda that basically you know at the end of the book I have three chapters about kind of why is everybody so crazy on this environmental issue and I look at money power and religion and the power definitely there's an effort by rich people in the rich countries got a tunberg herself Bill Mc.
Kibben the other the other characters in the book are actively trying to keep poor nations in poverty and I think it's unconscionable so that's the most amazing part about this and I've always tried to figure out why people have different opinions on things where where science should be the only opinion and the environmental one is is the most amazing one and I don't know anybody who's looked into it as much as you have who has your I'll say talent stack the ability to analyze things and communicate them I don't know anybody who comes down on a different side when they did dig into it as much as you have and it feels like the environmentalists are in some cases just things for money or whatever but in many cases I think they just don't have as deep a talent snack in other words they're they're just not capable of looking at the field and its entirety they're just seeing part of the field does it feel like would you like that to you I mean I think what I mean I would say yes in some ways I mean what's striking to me Scott is that environmentalists the people who want to control the energy and food production all around the world through the United Nations this is not some conspiracy theory I document all this in the book these are people that have never spent any time in poor countries these are people who have really never spent any time in the productive sectors of their own country's energy and food economies I mean I always joke that you know nobody's more alienated from nature than environmentalists you know environmentalist or people that live in a city they want to put huge industrial wind turbines in the air shed of birds bats and insects in places where they don't live but if you ever get a wind turbine proposed for the coast of California or for the coast of Cape Cod you know those of us in the rich cities and the rich coast shut that down immediately so there's a lot of hypocrisy at work there's a lot of ignorance it's hard to pull them apart exactly now for the benefit of the audience give us your view of climate change you know is it man-made is it alarming give us give us your overview on where you think climate change is heading so my view is that climate change is real but it's not the end of the world it's not even our most important environmental problem I think it's taken I think it's taken up way more of our attention and money and time than it should it's led us to not only neglect what I see is more serious environmental problems which would be things like the loss of habitat and rainforests and the fragmentation of forests for endangered species poverty the overconsumption of wild animals including fish we've basically forgotten about all those problems they don't even really get into the newspaper as much anymore and then it's led people to do things that are that are clearly harmful the first one and part of my motivation for writing the book is that they've contributed to rising anxiety and depression among adolescents I'm not saying they're the sole cause but there's certainly part of it yeah you know when I grew up we we were taught that there was going to be a nuclear war in our lifetime and we'd probably all be dead and it definitely had an effect on my whole mental makeup probably permanently and I can't imagine that that's not messing up kids you you talk about there's a fascinating part towards the end of the book where you're talking about maybe the psychological underpinnings of the the death cults could you say something about that well yeah I mean the last chapter in the book and and you I think you know I ended up I'm actually hiring somebody from extinction rebellion which is crazy but basically the last part of the book I'm in London I'm actually advocating for nuclear I went to 10 Downing Street went to Parliament met with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and I was making a case for nuclear but I'm like trying to get through Trafalgar Square and it's just this crazy extinction rebellion protests thousands of people are arrested and it's very disturbing I mean they have up signs that say things like climate change kills children which is just ridiculous it's like pseudoscience and I spent some time trying to figure out what's going on here like what is what is this well obviously you know or maybe not obviously but I think it's very clear when I review the research and I certainly think about my own history that this is a religious movement you could say it's a religious cult I quote somebody one of the best British columnist on this called the upper middle class death cults which is not which is not inaccurate and so what's going on and I sort of point out that really these are you know apocalyptic environments tend to be people who don't believe in traditional religion but they still have the need to believe in something they still have the need for personal transfor transcendence for some sense of immortality now is that do you think that a sense of immortality is that they're safe the world so that's their legacy what how does the need for immortality or our basic need to feel like we have some some lasting in fact is that where it is and saving the world yeah it's really exaggerated right I mean it's like a Marvel superhero story of yourself you know my I contrast it like if you think about if I look at my parents when my kids and my my brothers and sisters kids when we're all home for Christmas my parents are the happiest I ever see them because they see their grandkids they are immortal right they see that they are living on through their grandkids that's a healthy normal fantasy or a story of immortality that they have I think for this idea that I as a person I'm going to save the planet from climate change I mean it's identical in structure to a Marvel superhero story it's so over-the-top it's so ridiculous and what you know we find is that basically a lot of what these apocalyptic environmentalists the story they're telling is a judeo-christian story you know of saving the whole planet from from Armageddon but they don't even know that they're they don't they think they're just talking science they think that they're actually describing the world as it is they don't know that they're in the grip of a religion yeah the one of the hardest things for anybody is to know what you don't know and one of the things that I've noticed is that the environmental movement is skews young wouldn't you say that it's it's a young person's movement is that a fair statement yeah I mean I think I think there's I see a lot of the leaders and the activists in the apocalyptic climate change movement being adolescents and middle-aged people which are is a kind of two existential moments in your life where you're kind of like Who am I you know what am I doing here what is my purpose you have it as an adolescent and you often have a midlife crisis so I think it reflects some insecurities some personal insecurities that people have around their own lives and then they become part of a movement it gives our lives meaning but ultimately if I could sort of break it down like this I mean the difference between an environmentalist activist and what you are is that you know more than they do I mean it kind of comes down to that isn't it you you've just looked into it in more detail and so you can see the whole field and you can see that for example the solar isn't isn't gonna solve all our problems but the person who hasn't done the work is gonna say well you know Elon Musk says solar it's gonna work without realizing that Elon Musk is a competitor to other forms of energy which is one of the things you talk about can you say something about that about how how what is it that's caused people to think the solar could solve their problems when it's so obvious that it can't well that's right I mean when you when you see people this incredible love for renewables and the anger that people have at you when you point out all of the obvious problems with it you know like the wind turbines are spinning blades that kill a lot of endangered species or that the solar panels require covering four hundred times more lands than a natural gas or a nuclear plant require when you just point out those problems advocates of renewables apocalyptic environmentalists they get really angry in the same way that like a true believer gets at mad when you suggest that their God isn't real so you know I think it's clear you see it in all of the literature you see it in the in the in the advertising renewables have always been viewed as a way to harmonize human society with nature so nature ends up playing the role of God and where we use to try to get right by God and by God's laws there's now by supposedly secular people an effort to get right by nature and science becomes kind of a new religion you know I've always noticed people always have this need to be part of something that's bigger than themselves and maybe get approval from something bigger than themselves so in as you're talking about it's like you try to get God's approval if you're a believer but if you're not a believer maybe you need nature's approval maybe we're just wires so we need that approval for the bigger power so I gotta ask you about nuclear is our country going in the right direction finally I know the president doesn't say much about nuclear but the Department of Energy does seem to be doing some things is it moving in the right direction in your opinion not really unfortunately I'm afraid the nuclear industry itself is committed to manage decline they announced a lot of R&D projects but honestly they're you know there is no effort to maintain our existing nuclear plants or build new ones so what we've got is a lot of demonstration projects I think that that are attempted to kind of make us feel better about a basically bad situation now is that not at least in part because there's some desire to get to so-called generation 4 that we don't know how to do yet exactly so there's there's some iteration and testing and government that they build some kind of a test facility to do that didn't they or they're building it yeah that's the idea I mean the problem is I've just done so much I just know so much about the history of this that we see this repeatedly where you know there's all these demonstration efforts there's been so many prototypes and demonstration reactors made and they don't ever go anywhere I mean what would really gets nuclear plants built is when utilities decide to build plants and they usually end up building the same kind of plant or a very similar kind of plant to one that's been operating so you know my concern is not that I'm not I have no problem with the demonstration efforts my problem is that we're not doing the things that the Russians and the Chinese and the French and the people that are serious about having a nuclear expansion are doing which is to build full-sized light water reactors that's why I'm so obsessed with Britain right now Britain's considering building six full-size light water reactors it's got 200 construction that's what it looks like when countries are going seriously on nuclear and and unfortunately we're not doing that and for our audience that's not up to date the the types of nuclear that other countries are looking at building would all be types would you call it you know a third generation which has never had a meltdown that killed anybody yet is that true oh yeah of course I mean I mean really we haven't had I mean you know even fukushima's radiation didn't kill anybody and that was Jen too so yeah it's Jen three these are in some ways honestly they're just over engineered in the book I talk about the fear of nuclear and deeper rationality and ideological nature of the fears but my view has always been on nuclear that we make we too often make the perfect enemy of the good and really what works is to just build good practice building have the same guys building the same reactors over time that's how costs come down if so if you were to say you know you were the President of the United States instantly and you're gonna say all right and the fixed nuclear energy in this country would you look at forced Standardization would you just get out of the way and remove regulations if some of them are unnecessary I don't even know if they are where's the lever what would you what would you focus on to change first to fix it I mean the most important thing is to have a national consensus on a long-term plan for taking nuclear from 20% to 50% of our electricity by 2050 and that's a pretty reasonable goal you would then work with the utilities and the states because we do have a fragmented utility system you know most countries it's a single utility or a couple of them we have so many utilities because we're such a big country the most important thing is to have a goal and work towards it and yeah and I think standardization would be the obvious way but I thought the real problem is that the economics don't work because it just takes so long to get it approved if you don't fix that it doesn't matter how much leadership you have does it if you're doing those if you're doing unapproved designs sure but we have a perfectly great I mean it's really great advanced pressurized water cooled reactor called the ap1000 they're building two of them in Georgia those workers are are literally a national asset I mean I go those construction workers because they know how to pour cement and make rebar and weld at nuclear grade standards after they're done they should move up the road to South Carolina and build two more nuclear reactors there they would then you would basically if I have a national building program it would just spread because the key is that the workers themselves there's so much specialized skills involved speaking of skill stacking that that they are these workers I mean it's it's tragic if we don't build more nuclear plants after those two 80 1000s we're gonna lose so much valuable asset in those workers it's it's scary is it is this the same kind of skill I know pouring concrete is not the same skill you'd need to make a nuclear engine for you know for a submarine or for later for a space force but we have the same problem right because space will be nuclear-powered that's a guarantee isn't it oh yeah I mean if you're serious so so if we don't have a big nuclear energy capability you know a robust full industry in the United States we're not gonna own space and whoever owned space owns the earth that's pretty much a guarantee wouldn't you say absolutely I think you make it I don't I think I haven't done enough that this question I'm very interested in space I'm very interested in in national security implications of space I mean I and and you're right I mean really nuclear the the innovation on nuclear has really come from the military that's how we got our existing light-water designs and the left has the pro-nuclear left has often condemned our existing light water technology by saying it came from the military but that's the strength of it I mean that's where our microchips came from that's where personal computers came from that's where the internet came from yeah right why are we embarrassed about the military roots of these technologies that's why they're so great right yeah that's so that's a weird thing to be angry at so well Michael is there anything you want to leave us with I'm going to go on to some other topics here and is there anything that we need to know that I did ask I just wanted to say that first of all thank you Scott for plugging the book I people get it you should know that I've been now censored twice I was censored by Forbes who took down my original column announcing the book and then I was censored by Facebook after an absolutely outrageous unscientific attack on my book by these by a sort of star chamber of climate apocalyptic jerks who who basically got my articles censored on Facebook so please sign up at environmental progress to get updates directly from me please buy the book I would love to hear from readers it's really exciting to have the conversation alright it's apocalypse never Michael Sheldon Berger it's a best-seller written all over it and it's already a bestseller and congratulations in the book it's really it's really this is this is a really good book I mean it really is you did a great job on this so thank you Michael thanks Scott all right take care take care all right that was very interesting let's talk about some other things for example Trump's taxes so let me summarize the entire situation about Trump's taxes blah blah blah sand legal stuff blah blah lawyers disagree blah blah blah court blah blah blah will be appealed blah blah blah will take a long time blah blah blah may not make any difference for the election because it may be delayed until after that blah blah blah precedent there you go that's everything you need to know about Trump's taxes I am loving the story about mayor de Blasio and the protesters painting this giant black lives matter I don't know why you'd call it a sign or a message on the road directly in front of Trump Tower and here's what I love about it I always put myself in the story and saying well what if I were Trump if I were Trump and I knew that the city was mocking me by putting black lives matter on my you know right in front of my high-end building what would I think about that and I had the following feeling when I first saw the workers doing their thing you know they're painting you can't see what they're doing yet you just see you know that people are doing something my first thought was it's gonna be an eyesore and you know I wish we wouldn't waste our time on such things and then that you see the aerial view of it and I'm thinking to myself they're actually pretty good at making stuff whoever whoever mapped out the letters in black lives matter and picked the the color and the font did a really good job so I'm looking at this thing and I'm thinking I kind of like it you know just artistically because it let me give some context I also like tattoos and scars because they tell you a story about a moment in time and the black lives matter thing not only looks good in the same sense that Mount Rushmore is just looks good you know if Mount Rushmore were done poorly would you go to see it just because there's bacon there were presidents heads on it if they didn't quite look like the presidents would you bother going see it now it matters this done well that's what makes Mount Rushmore so impressive it's done well plus it's big so this blacklivesmatter thing I'm looking at it and thinking kind of like it if I were the president I'd say thank you I would just say you know I I didn't love it the idea but when I saw you did a good job on it I think it I think I liked it imagine if the president said you know it kind of looks good there let's keep it maintained let's make sure that nobody ruins it what what would that do to people's heads would they explode now of course I don't think the president can do that because black lives matter refers to not only the idea but also the organization and he's he's now so pro the organization but of course he like everybody in the world would agree with the concept so if I were him I'd just say I would call it a concept not an organization I would say it's kind of cool let's leave it there that's how I treat it because I actually do like it this was interesting so yesterday I got a direct message from a small I guess you'd call them a startup they're kind of new called ground news ground like the ground you stand on news and what they do is they take the all the news stories on a topic and they see if the left-leaning news sites or the middle or the right-leaning news sites are focusing on it more and then you can see how it's covered differently by the left and the right so they're so it's a really good idea to give you more of a landscape of the bias in the news industry but they so they send me one that they thought I might be interested in yesterday which was the story about Trump signed executive order expanding educational and economic opportunities to Hispanics and it's funny because the you look at the ground a news chart and it shows that the people on the left the media on the left just ignored the story like it didn't exist but the but the outlets on the right in the middle like well it's a story the president's doing it is a national story of course we're gonna write about it put the left crickets now think about that think how important the the Hispanic American vote will be and here's Trump signing I don't know what the details are but he's expanding educational and economic opportunity for Hispanics and you would think that that would be a big deal now here's the fun part so this little startup I think I think calling them a startup is correct ground news sends me this thing because I think I'd be interested and I was it was pretty interesting now by the way there are also stories which show like a big crickets on the right so the story about Trump's Southern Southern District of New York legal stuff that was covered mostly by the left and Fox.
News and that was about it so so it works both ways but I will note that Fox News is a little bit more likely to cover all the stories than other outlets at least that's what it looked like but here's the fun part so I tweeted the little story about the executive order and I woke up this morning and Trump President Trump a treat we did it so this little this little startup ground news woke up to something like 60 times the amount of traffic they normally just sighs blow it up so that was fun anyway well let's see you know I tweeted this as a prediction let's see what you think so I predicted this there's some day somebody is going to compile a list of companies that employ people who have publicly called for boycotts on other companies all right so wouldn't you like to know when you see somebody on Twitter calling for a boycott wouldn't you like to know where they work because that's that's just fair right the whole point of a boycott to the point of this cancellation culture is that the counselors are safe because you don't know much about them but they found out was something about whatever that our target is whoever they're gonna boycott or or cancel they know something extra about that person that causes them trouble is it not fair that we just have a little more transparency wouldn't you like to know who accuses you in the legal system you have a right to know who your accuser is what kind of world would it be if you didn't know who your accuser was but I think you should also know where they work you know what's their job because if somebody goes after somebody else's job I think that person has a right to know where do you work where do you work right so if you were calling for a boycott on this company gorya geo why a I guess there's food company the CEO said some nice things about President Trump and now the left wants to cancel them wouldn't you like to know where all those cancel errs work or where they'll work in the future because I think that it needs to be mutually assured destruction you know we need to probably in order to have free speech in this country in a way that the let's say the market allows as well as a constitution right now the Constitution says yes but the free market says no well maybe you can't say those things without losing your job so with that with some sense of mutually assured destruction that's somewhat immediate and personal I don't see any of it ever changing because in my opinion is completely fair to complain about somebody's opinion completely fair of course that's freedom of speech but when you go after somebody's job because their opinion your own job should be at risk that feels like the minimum right if you punch somebody in public excuse me if you punch somebody in public the the reason you don't do that is you think you'll get punched back you know you're even more so than you're worried about going to jail you'll immediately be punched back so there's a reason people don't punch people in public but right now there's no reason you can't try to cancel somebody in public now in my case since I'm a public figure and everybody knows my job you know if I say something negative about somebody they usually say boycott Dilbert we're gonna boycott we're gonna call all your newspapers and cancel you to which I say isn't that fair isn't it fair than if I were to criticize somebody on social media that they know who I am and where I work I think that is fair I would also like to know who they are and where they work yeah just so we have full transparency I don't think you can you can solve this otherwise so here's some fun news cartoonist Gary Larson has decided to command if retirement and draw some new comics so you can google Gary Larson the far side you'll see his site it'll pop up so that was just announced I knew about this for a while because we have the same syndication company but it's exciting there and he's actually got some new comics there what's fun about this is that Gary Larson when he retired he had still been drawing on with paper and pen and that was part of his frustration is it's just really hard and not that fun to draw with pencil and paper and pen and so for his new stuff he's teaching himself to use a digital something like what I use imagine he's using the same thing this is this is my drawing surface it's just a computer screen that you can also draw on with a stylus from Wacom WAAC and om w AC om and so you'll see some of his new digital art some of you will be very interested in that all right Biden has coming out with some specific proposals that look like they would destroy the country completely and I've never had that feeling before I've never actually had the feeling have you in the past when there have been presidents that were candidates that maybe I liked more than the other I never really thought that the other candidate would destroy the world you know when when gore and Bush were running didn't you think well it's not gonna be that different no matter who gets elected turns out it was quite different because we got a couple of wars and a bush but I did I didn't think in advance it was the end of the world if one got elected versus the other and generally speaking you know that's what I think I don't think it would have been the end of the world if Hillary Clinton had been elected because she's sort of moderate right you might not liked it but it wouldn't be the end of the world but when I look at the Biden situation and I see that first of all he's not the guy in control that's obvious so you don't know who's in control which is pretty scary wouldn't you like to know who the president is we have a position situation where you won't actually know who's in control if I didn't get selected but he's got some ideas that could actually destroy the whole civilization let me give you an example I'd like to see somebody who's in favor of relaxing borders describe what it looks like in their mind like what does the world look like in a year or two years or whatever if if they if they get exactly what they want what happens how does it look now if you say if the president says you know I want to close borders he can draw a picture of what that looks like pretty well there's still the numeration but you know we're trying to you know fit the employees to the jobs without you know burdening employment in this country you kind of know what that looks like right it looks a lot like now but with better better border control maybe a little less crime coming in but you who knows if you'd even notice but what does it look like if you don't have border control and you've got more sanctuary cities that Biden is suggesting is there any world in which that would not attract the cartels for example is there any world in which the United States would not eventually be run by Mexican cartels it for all practical purposes I can't imagine any way that wouldn't happen if if we have enough people coming across the border so it's a it's a question of numbers so I'd like to see people to ask that question of what that looks like it's the same question with a the green new deal which seems to be sort of pushed into the backburner for the moment but as I was talking with Michael Shellenberger what do people think it looks like for countries if the green new deal happens like fast-forward that what happens with your solar panels and your windmills in you know some African country that's trying to develop and that just doesn't work you know where are they in 20 years they're still where they were right they haven't gone anywhere all right so Biden's new campaign slogan the slogan is build back better build back better Biden says build back better what do you think of that build back better on one hand it's sort of catchy because you you are encouraged to repeat it in your head build back better it's got a lot of bees in it I didn't build back better it's not parts good but I don't find it easy to remember build back better I feel as if there will be a point where he won't remember his own slogan whereas make America great again you tried to hear that once and you'll remember him forever right so let me give you a writing a writing tip listen to the percussion of these two things make America great again just listen to the percussion imagine that it was an instrument make America great again now listen to build back better one of them is more musical right if you had to listen to something forever you know only one slogan and it just had to play forever would you rather hear built back better build back better would you rather hear make America great again this is a big difference so I would say the build back better was probably designed by a political operative and not an expert on persuasion so that so that you know if this had been designed by let's say you know a Jill Dini or somebody with that kind of level of knowledge of persuasion it look like this this is sort of a tell for a political slogan as opposed to the President Trump who is the Brander himself and sousou's he got a whole different level of goodness in his slogan because he knows how to do that alright I didn't hear anything about nuclear energy from Biden so that would be interesting to hear him hear him answer to that and I guess Biden says he's taking it or at least Lisa's reported he took a firm tone they say towards China and he wants aggressive trade enforcement actions that sort of sounds like nothing doesn't it it's kind of come down to this it seems that the Republicans are and this is just a relative thing right relatively open to working with Russia but tough on China the Biden proposition seems to be not open to working with Russia but very friendly to China so it's almost as if our election has become do you pick China or Russia yeah you could ignore the candidates you can ignore the candidates and say which world do you want to live in the one where were nice to China and China abuses us as they have or the one in which were nice to Russia and maybe and they try to abuse us the way they have so you've got two choices there that don't feel domestic and he wants to put a bunch of money into building and investing in bond America etc pretty ordinary stuff all right at this point it seems that the Biden the Biden campaign is getting more complicated there's some more meat on the bones but it also should doom Biden because one advantage that Biden has had it's a pretty big advantage is that until he said what his own policies are with some detail as is coming out now until that happened he didn't have to talk about anything complicated let me ask you this so part of his campaign is putting money into 5g artificial intelligence electric vehicles and five chief into research research mostly I guess now if Biden were to take a question on 5g how would that go right if Biden were to take a question on nuclear energy and his plan for that or the climate how would that go just consider then now Biden has a whole new bunch of new information he has to speak to if anybody ever gets to ask a question so his complexity is just going through the roof while his capability continues to plunge as we see so I think he's getting an increasingly dangerous territory and we'll see if that works out for him now the president said recently that he had taken a cognitive test and everybody was surprised he did so well what well what's up with that but what was missing in the story is the timing of it I think the president was talking about when he took the test a while ago but the way it was reported they because he didn't talk about the timing of when it happened he they reported it as if it happened recently I don't know if that did happen recently I don't know if it did so when he's fact-checking of that build bigger basement somebody says yeah baseman Biden is gonna build back better now the word back is not exactly a good word to have in your slogan because back literally suggests going backwards so I don't think anybody likes it back but what's interesting think of the think of this load and slogan build back better does your brain see the word black instead of back build back so you're in the middle of this black lives matter you know protests so your brain has been primed for black lives matter or black black black black black black so you're praying for that now there you hear the slogan build back better that back ends up in your brain turning at the black I don't know if that's I don't know if that works in their favor against them actually I'm just pointing it out that your brain will make that translation so if it was if it was intentional I don't kind of clever if it's a if they've somehow calculated that that will be a plausible but here's something that it feels to me is true I believe that Biden is very clearly saying that his future lies with the Hispanic community it feels like the Democrats have chosen the Hispanic community as being a higher priority to them politically than the black community do you know why that is because they already have the black vote they don't have to do anything for the black community nothing in fact did by didn't even suggest anything for the black community I don't maybe he did I don't remember saying it you probably did I just don't remember seeing it so it wasn't featured obviously so you see President Trump you know talking about black employment you know when it was a few months ago when it was good and you see him during the opportunity zones and the jail the prison reform is cetera and you so you see you see that Trump is literally doing things for the black community then you see Kanye saying that he would run as a Republican if she ran now if he doesn't run he still sort of moves votes a little bit just because his influence moves things so it started to look like and I said this I don't like five years ago I think I've said this the first time that the black community is the most natural ally with Republicans because Republicans have a let's say a system in a way of thinking of things that the black community would just fold into easily here's what I mean the black community is religious the conservative community also religious so they start with that same religious base there's a lot there are a lot more conservative black citizens than then you hear about so you got that going for you but more importantly it looks like the Democrat plan is to give citizenship to Biden says 11 million people in this country now I don't I'm not giving you my opinion whether this is good or bad I have I'm not sure I even have complete opinions on the whole immigration stuff I'm just describing it seems that the Democrats have decided that their primary focus is going to be the Hispanic community if you were if you were a Democrat and you were black how would you feel about being demoted in your own party because it's gonna feel like that it feels like yeah yeah the black community problems are important but we're going to bring in 11 million Hispanic voters are those 11 million Hispanic voters going to vote for more things for black people or maybe more things for themselves for example what the president was signing on his executive order it was for the Hispanic community if you add 11 million more Hispanic of voters are you likely to get more good things for the black public or more good things for this banning public kind of obvious right so there's there seems to be a power shift on the Democrat side toward the Hispanic power base the black Democrats are a little bit abandoned and the Republicans are saying you know we got a lot in common we're pretty proud of bringing down the employment rate and by the way Republicans think you should have good schools how about that Republicans are for school choice Biden wants to get rid of that Biden wants to get rid of school choice let me tell you two things that black lives matter are not in favor of you ready when I say black lives matter I don't mean the the few organizers I mean the people who would consider themselves members who were also black here are a few things they're not super enthusiastic about and you can you can find this out yourself just talk to anybody in black lives matter and ask who is also black don't talk to a white person who is supporting black lives matter talk to a black citizen who is in black lives matter and privately asked these two questions what do you think of unrestricted immigration what will the black lives matter a person it was just a member of black lives matter say about unrestricted immigration don't love it nah big fans right they may not come out against it but they're not big fans because it sort of works against their interests it creates more competition what about charter schools and just school choice what do you think they'd say about that I didn't like it because if you don't fix schools you're basically doomed there's nothing else there's nothing you can do after that that makes a big difference you gotta fix schools that's where all the big improvements could be and the Democrats want to reduce those options so I feel like they're they're sort of a trend building where the you know the Republicans just have a better package we'll see we shall see I'm going to predict that the president Trump will get more of the black vote than the experts assume and I think it's going to because those two issues are pretty big ones and I don't think that the black community will completely trust their own team when they see a different power base emerging so that's what I got for you today and I will talk to you tomorrow
pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come
on in it's time for coffee with Scott
Adams the best part of the whole day
every single time yeah you think
there'll be a day that goes by and
you'll think well maybe today will be
the day that the simultaneous sip and
coffee with Scott Adams is not the best
part of the day and then you find out it
is right so you might as well just give
in to it
it's the best part of the day there's no
way around it and today will be no
exception all you need for the
simultaneous is the copper a bucket or
glass of tanker chelators diana canteen
jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill
it with your favorite liquid I like
coffee and join me now for the
unparalleled pleasure the dopamine here
is a day the thing that makes everything
including the environment coronavirus
the economy racism all of it a little
bit better here it goes the simultaneous
it mmhmm yeah yep I can feel everything
improving now now I have a special guest
which I'm gonna wait for a moment
until he gets on here if if the
technology doesn't work today we'll
we'll figure something out so let me
just check here I'm trying to talk to
Michael Shellenberger when he is
available which will be any moment now
about his incredible new book that I
read and you should be proud of me it's
kind of a big book and I actually read
it
Wow can you believe it yes I did
alright Michael if if you're having
trouble getting on I will be looking for
a message from you
just so as I know all right
Michael says he's there but but Michael
you say you're there but when I look at
my guest list you do not appear so
there's an icon at the bottom of your
screen click the happy faces icon at
bottom and once Michael clicks that I
will see him and then I will add him on
which I think might be happening right
now
yes it is so let's see if our technology
works Michael can hear me hey it worked
so well let me let me tell the audience
think you know what we've got going here
so this is Michael Shellenberger who's
amazing new book apostle apocalypse
never which you can see right here which
is just now it's I just said it's number
seven on Amazon's most read books of the
week I don't know if all of you know
this but Amazon puts out a lot of books
if you could be number seven on their
most read list
holy cows it's number one in a bunch of
categories that apply to it and Michael
would you would you describe yourself as
an environmentalist activists still or
is that where you started and you've
evolved how would you describe yourself
for the audience I still consider myself
an environmentalist and environmental
activists I spend a lot of my time
making the case for nuclear power which
i think is the most one of the most
important technologies in the world
certainly one of most important
environmental technologies so yeah I
guess you can now say I'm a best-selling
author too which is pretty cool you know
the the thing that I loved about your
book and by the way I don't usually like
books I I have to admit I you know even
when I read them you know I think well
you know maybe I shouldn't have but I
actually loved every part of your book
because your writing is excellent
it keeps me engaged the whole time
because your personal story was
woven in with with it all what would you
say that if you and Greta tunberg were
ever in the same room that the the
matter and the antimatter would make you
both explode and disappear yeah that's a
be a very interesting experiment
wouldn't it I would want a lot of other
people to be present that's for sure it
would be quite a show all right so your
book is sort of a a tour through the
environmental not only the history and
the psychology of it which I found
actually the most interesting part was
the psychology of how we got to where we
are in various ways but what when you
looked into everything from soldier to
Whidden to you know the Amazon
rainforest and all this and you've done
deep dives and in all of these where
were you most surprised and what would
be the most surprising to the audience
in terms of things that people generally
believed to be true that just aren't
true
oh man there's so many of them I mean I
think one of the one of the most fun the
two most fun chapters in a way were the
chapters that on plastic waste and on
meat because these are two topics that I
had certainly read about but I had never
really properly researched much less
consider myself an expert on so I mean
one of the most surprising things was
you know I opened this chapter on
plastic by describing this very famous
viral YouTube video where a marine
biologist pulls a plastic straw out of
the nose of a sea turtle and I learned
more about the history of these sea
turtles and one of the things I learned
is that they were being over harvested
they were being killed for their shells
to make tortoiseshell glasses
tortoiseshell glasses the tortoiseshell
was missing and it was sea turtle
because sea turtle shells were the
original plastic the original bio
plastic so it turns out that the
plastics that we use today made from
petroleum products actually helped to
save sea turtles they also help to save
elephants because they were substitutes
for the ivory in elephant tusks so
stories like that where you discover
these things that you're told
are super terrible often had a really
important role in protecting the
environment you and plastic the the
surprising part about that is that the
sea turtle that had the straw up his
nose I didn't even know sea turtles did
cocaine so that was surprising to me no
turtles don't do cocaine I just made
that up alright so one of the one of the
things I found most powerful about your
book is the people who want to save the
world seem to be destroying it and they
don't know why but they don't know it ok
can you walk us through what a
developing nation needs to do to become
a good nation and can they get there
with solar power I mean this is I mean I
joke that because I wrote this I wrote
this book I dedicate this book to my
children who are ages 14 and 21 so I
wanted people to be able to read it who
were just 14 years old so I told a lot
of really I try to make it as simple as
possible with a lot of stories and I
talked about how really the process of
economic development unless you're Saudi
Arabia is basically the same everywhere
you go from having a country where
almost everybody is a small farmer to
getting factories people working in
cities and that the only way to do that
is by moving away from renewables away
from wood and dung waterwheels towards
fossil fuels and to some extent
hydroelectric dams are very important
hydroelectric dams I consider the
highest form of renewables because
they're they provide so much reliable
power but really it's a story of rising
energy consumption increased energy
consumption is actually good for the
environment because energy is a
substitute for matter which is what we
call the natural environment so yeah I
mean the reason this this trend I
condemn I criticize here which is this
idea that we should stop funding
hydroelectric dams roads electrical
grids modern agriculture and instead the
World Bank is is giving small farmers a
solar panel and a battery and saying a
good luck with that
it's simply not gonna work so would it
be fair to say that environmentalists if
they got their way would lock all of the
poor people into poverty basically
forever because that nobody's figured
out how to get out of poverty without
doing it the way you just mentioned so
would yeah I mean Greta would be
destroying the lives of poor people
forever yeah I mean what they would say
is well we should help them with some
charity but for sure the idea and in
fact they've succeeded they basically
persuaded the World Bank the European
Development Bank all the big interaction
develop banks whose purpose after World
War two was to lift everybody out of
poverty they have diverted basically all
of that money from energy that can lift
people out of poverty whether it's a
hydroelectric dam a coal plant or a
nuclear plant to these little charitable
experiments the solar panel on a hut
they've actually also denied countries
the money they need for irrigation
fertilizer or tractors which is the
basis for because when you have
factories and cities you have to at your
farmers you have fewer farmers and they
have to grow more food it's just really
simple so yeah I mean it's an agenda
that basically you know at the end of
the book I have three chapters about
kind of why is everybody so crazy on
this environmental issue and I look at
money power and religion and the power
definitely there's an effort by rich
people in the rich countries got a
tunberg herself
Bill McKibben the other the other
characters in the book are actively
trying to keep poor nations in poverty
and I think it's unconscionable so
that's the most amazing part about this
and I've always tried to figure out why
people have different opinions on things
where where science should be the only
opinion and the environmental one is is
the most amazing one and I don't know
anybody who's looked into it as much as
you have who has your I'll say talent
stack the ability to analyze things and
communicate them I don't know anybody
who comes down on a different side when
they did dig into it as much as you have
and it feels like the environmentalists
are in some cases just
things for money or whatever but in many
cases I think they just don't have as
deep a talent snack
in other words they're they're just not
capable of looking at the field and its
entirety they're just seeing part of the
field does it feel like would you like
that to you I mean I think what I mean I
would say yes in some ways I mean what's
striking to me Scott is that
environmentalists the people who want to
control the energy and food production
all around the world through the United
Nations this is not some conspiracy
theory I document all this in the book
these are people that have never spent
any time in poor countries these are
people who have really never spent any
time in the productive sectors of their
own country's energy and food economies
I mean I always joke that you know
nobody's more alienated from nature than
environmentalists you know
environmentalist or people that live in
a city they want to put huge industrial
wind turbines in the air shed of birds
bats and insects in places where they
don't live but if you ever get a wind
turbine proposed for the coast of
California or for the coast of Cape Cod
you know those of us in the rich cities
and the rich coast shut that down
immediately so there's a lot of
hypocrisy at work there's a lot of
ignorance it's hard to pull them apart
exactly now for the benefit of the
audience give us your view of climate
change you know is it man-made is it
alarming give us give us your overview
on where you think climate change is
heading so my view is that climate
change is real but it's not the end of
the world
it's not even our most important
environmental problem I think it's taken
I think it's taken up way more of our
attention and money and time than it
should it's led us to not only neglect
what I see is more serious environmental
problems which would be things like the
loss of habitat and rainforests and the
fragmentation of forests for endangered
species poverty the overconsumption of
wild animals including fish we've
basically forgotten about all those
problems they don't even really get into
the newspaper as much anymore and then
it's led people to do things that are
that are clearly harmful
the first one and part of my motivation
for writing the book is that they've
contributed to rising anxiety and
depression among adolescents I'm not
saying they're the sole cause but
there's certainly part of it yeah you
know when I grew up we we were taught
that there was going to be a nuclear war
in our lifetime and we'd probably all be
dead and it definitely had an effect on
my whole mental makeup probably
permanently and I can't imagine that
that's not messing up kids you you talk
about there's a fascinating part towards
the end of the book where you're talking
about maybe the psychological
underpinnings of the the death cults
could you say something about that well
yeah I mean the last chapter in the book
and and you I think you know I ended up
I'm actually hiring somebody from
extinction rebellion which is crazy but
basically the last part of the book I'm
in London I'm actually advocating for
nuclear I went to 10 Downing Street went
to Parliament met with former Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn and I was making a
case for nuclear but I'm like trying to
get through Trafalgar Square and it's
just this crazy extinction rebellion
protests thousands of people are
arrested and it's very disturbing I mean
they have up signs that say things like
climate change kills children which is
just ridiculous it's like pseudoscience
and I spent some time trying to figure
out what's going on here like what is
what is this well obviously you know or
maybe not obviously but I think it's
very clear when I review the research
and I certainly think about my own
history that this is a religious
movement you could say it's a religious
cult I quote somebody one of the best
British columnist on this called the
upper middle class death cults which is
not which is not inaccurate and so
what's going on and I sort of point out
that really these are you know
apocalyptic environments tend to be
people who don't believe in traditional
religion but they still have the need to
believe in something they still have the
need for personal transfor transcendence
for some sense of immortality now is
that do you think that a sense of
immortality is that they're safe
the world so that's their legacy what
how does the need for immortality or our
basic need to feel like we have some
some lasting in fact is that where it is
and saving the world yeah it's really
exaggerated right I mean it's like a
Marvel superhero story of yourself you
know my I contrast it like if you think
about if I look at my parents
when my kids and my my brothers and
sisters kids when we're all home for
Christmas my parents are the happiest I
ever see them because they see their
grandkids they are immortal right they
see that they are living on through
their grandkids that's a healthy normal
fantasy or a story of immortality that
they have I think for this idea that I
as a person I'm going to save the planet
from climate change
I mean it's identical in structure to a
Marvel superhero story it's so
over-the-top it's so ridiculous and what
you know we find is that basically a lot
of what these apocalyptic
environmentalists the story they're
telling is a judeo-christian story you
know of saving the whole planet from
from Armageddon but they don't even know
that they're they don't they think
they're just talking science they think
that they're actually describing the
world as it is they don't know that
they're in the grip of a religion yeah
the one of the hardest things for
anybody is to know what you don't know
and one of the things that I've noticed
is that the environmental movement is
skews young wouldn't you say that it's
it's a young person's movement is that a
fair statement yeah I mean I think I
think there's I see a lot of the leaders
and the activists in the apocalyptic
climate change movement being
adolescents and middle-aged people which
are is a kind of two existential moments
in your life where you're kind of like
Who am I you know what am I doing here
what is my purpose you have it as an
adolescent and you often have a midlife
crisis so I think it reflects some
insecurities some personal insecurities
that people have around their own lives
and then they become part of a movement
it gives our lives meaning
but ultimately if I could sort of break
it down like this I mean the difference
between an environmentalist activist and
what you are is that you know more than
they do I mean it kind of comes down to
that isn't it you you've just looked
into it in more detail and so you can
see the whole field and you can see that
for example the solar isn't isn't gonna
solve all our problems but the person
who hasn't done the work is gonna say
well you know Elon Musk says solar it's
gonna work without realizing that Elon
Musk is a competitor to other forms of
energy which is one of the things you
talk about can you say something about
that about how how what is it that's
caused people to think the solar could
solve their problems when it's so
obvious that it can't well that's right
I mean when you when you see people this
incredible love for renewables and the
anger that people have at you when you
point out all of the obvious problems
with it you know like the wind turbines
are spinning blades that kill a lot of
endangered species or that the solar
panels require covering four hundred
times more lands than a natural gas or a
nuclear plant require when you just
point out those problems advocates of
renewables apocalyptic environmentalists
they get really angry in the same way
that like a true believer gets at mad
when you suggest that their God isn't
real so you know I think it's clear you
see it in all of the literature you see
it in the in the in the advertising
renewables have always been viewed as a
way to harmonize human society with
nature so nature ends up playing the
role of God and where we use to try to
get right by God and by God's laws
there's now by supposedly secular people
an effort to get right by nature and
science becomes kind of a new religion
you know I've always noticed people
always have this need to be part of
something that's bigger than themselves
and maybe get approval from something
bigger than themselves so in as you're
talking about it's like you try to get
God's approval if you're a believer but
if you're not a believer maybe you need
nature's approval maybe we're just wires
so we need that approval for
the bigger power so I gotta ask you
about nuclear is our country going in
the right direction finally I know the
president doesn't say much about nuclear
but the Department of Energy does seem
to be doing some things is it moving in
the right direction in your opinion not
really unfortunately I'm afraid the
nuclear industry itself is committed to
manage decline they announced a lot of
R&D projects but honestly they're you
know there is no effort to maintain our
existing nuclear plants or build new
ones so what we've got is a lot of
demonstration projects I think that that
are attempted to kind of make us feel
better about a basically bad situation
now is that not at least in part because
there's some desire to get to so-called
generation 4 that we don't know how to
do yet exactly so there's there's some
iteration and testing and government
that they build some kind of a test
facility to do that didn't they
or they're building it yeah that's the
idea I mean the problem is I've just
done so much I just know so much about
the history of this that we see this
repeatedly where you know there's all
these demonstration efforts there's been
so many prototypes and demonstration
reactors made and they don't ever go
anywhere I mean what would really gets
nuclear plants built is when utilities
decide to build plants and they usually
end up building the same kind of plant
or a very similar kind of plant to one
that's been operating so you know my
concern is not that I'm not I have no
problem with the demonstration efforts
my problem is that we're not doing the
things that the Russians and the Chinese
and the French and the people that are
serious about having a nuclear expansion
are doing which is to build full-sized
light water reactors that's why I'm so
obsessed with Britain right now
Britain's considering building six
full-size light water reactors it's got
200 construction that's what it looks
like when countries are going seriously
on nuclear and and unfortunately we're
not doing that and for our audience
that's not up to date the the types of
nuclear that other countries are looking
at building would all be types
would you call it you know a third
generation which has never had a
meltdown that killed anybody yet is that
true oh yeah of course I mean I mean
really we haven't had I mean you know
even fukushima's radiation didn't kill
anybody and that was Jen too so yeah
it's Jen three these are in some ways
honestly they're just over engineered in
the book I talk about the fear of
nuclear and deeper rationality and
ideological nature of the fears but my
view has always been on nuclear that we
make we too often make the perfect enemy
of the good and really what works is to
just build good practice building have
the same guys building the same reactors
over time that's how costs come down if
so if you were to say you know you were
the President of the United States
instantly and you're gonna say all right
and the fixed nuclear energy in this
country would you look at forced
Standardization would you just get out
of the way and remove regulations if
some of them are unnecessary I don't
even know if they are where's the lever
what would you what would you focus on
to change first to fix it I mean the
most important thing is to have a
national consensus on a long-term plan
for taking nuclear from 20% to 50% of
our electricity by 2050 and that's a
pretty reasonable goal you would then
work with the utilities and the states
because we do have a fragmented utility
system you know most countries it's a
single utility or a couple of them we
have so many utilities because we're
such a big country the most important
thing is to have a goal and work towards
it and yeah and I think standardization
would be the obvious way but I thought
the real problem is that the economics
don't work because it just takes so long
to get it approved if you don't fix that
it doesn't matter how much leadership
you have does it if you're doing those
if you're doing unapproved designs sure
but we have a perfectly great I mean
it's really great advanced pressurized
water cooled reactor called the ap1000
they're building two of them in Georgia
those workers are
are literally a national asset I mean I
go those construction workers because
they know how to pour cement and make
rebar and weld at nuclear grade
standards after they're done they should
move up the road to South Carolina and
build two more nuclear reactors there
they would then you would basically if I
have a national building program it
would just spread because the key is
that the workers themselves there's so
much specialized skills involved
speaking of skill stacking that that
they are these workers I mean it's it's
tragic if we don't build more nuclear
plants after those two 80 1000s we're
gonna lose so much valuable asset in
those workers it's it's scary is it is
this the same kind of skill I know
pouring concrete is not the same skill
you'd need to make a nuclear engine for
you know for a submarine or for later
for a space force but we have the same
problem right because space will be
nuclear-powered that's a guarantee isn't
it
oh yeah I mean if you're serious so so
if we don't have a big nuclear energy
capability you know a robust full
industry in the United States we're not
gonna own space and whoever owned space
owns the earth that's pretty much a
guarantee wouldn't you say absolutely I
think you make it I don't I think I
haven't done enough that this question
I'm very interested in space I'm very
interested in in national security
implications of space I mean I and and
you're right I mean really
nuclear the the innovation on nuclear
has really come from the military that's
how we got our existing light-water
designs and the left has the pro-nuclear
left has often condemned our existing
light water technology by saying it came
from the military but that's the
strength of it I mean that's where our
microchips came from that's where
personal computers came from that's
where the internet came from yeah right
why are we embarrassed about the
military roots of these technologies
that's why they're so great right yeah
that's so that's a weird thing to be
angry at so well Michael is there
anything you want to leave us with I'm
going to go on to some other topics here
and is there anything that we need to
know that I did ask I just wanted to say
that first of all thank you Scott for
plugging the book I
people get it you should know that I've
been now censored twice I was censored
by Forbes who took down my original
column announcing the book and then I
was censored by Facebook after an
absolutely outrageous unscientific
attack on my book by these by a sort of
star chamber of climate apocalyptic
jerks who who basically got my articles
censored on Facebook so please sign up
at environmental progress to get updates
directly from me please buy the book I
would love to hear from readers it's
really exciting to have the conversation
alright it's apocalypse never Michael
Sheldon Berger it's a best-seller
written all over it and it's already a
bestseller and congratulations in the
book it's really it's really this is
this is a really good book I mean it
really is you did a great job on this so
thank you Michael
thanks Scott all right take care take
care all right that was very interesting
let's talk about some other things for
example Trump's taxes so let me
summarize the entire situation about
Trump's taxes blah blah blah sand legal
stuff blah blah lawyers disagree blah
blah blah court blah blah blah will be
appealed blah blah blah will take a long
time blah blah blah may not make any
difference for the election because it
may be delayed until after that blah
blah blah precedent there you go that's
everything you need to know about
Trump's taxes I am loving the story
about mayor de Blasio and the protesters
painting this giant black lives matter I
don't know why you'd call it a sign or a
message on the road directly in front of
Trump Tower and here's what I love about
it I always put myself in the story and
saying well what if I were Trump if I
were Trump and I knew that the city was
mocking me by putting black lives matter
on my you know right in front of my
high-end building what would I think
about that
and I had the following feeling when I
first saw the workers doing their thing
you know they're painting you can't see
what they're doing yet you just see you
know that people are doing something my
first thought was it's gonna be an
eyesore and you know I wish we wouldn't
waste our time on such things and then
that you see the aerial view of it and
I'm thinking to myself they're actually
pretty good at making stuff whoever
whoever mapped out the letters in black
lives matter and picked the the color
and the font did a really good job so
I'm looking at this thing and I'm
thinking I kind of like it
you know just artistically because it
let me give some context I also like
tattoos and scars because they tell you
a story about a moment in time and the
black lives matter thing not only looks
good in the same sense that Mount
Rushmore is just looks good you know if
Mount Rushmore were done poorly would
you go to see it just because there's
bacon there were presidents heads on it
if they didn't quite look like the
presidents would you bother going see it
now it matters this done well that's
what makes Mount Rushmore so impressive
it's done well plus it's big so this
blacklivesmatter thing I'm looking at it
and thinking kind of like it if I were
the president I'd say thank you I would
just say you know I I didn't love it the
idea but when I saw you did a good job
on it
I think it I think I liked it imagine if
the president said you know it kind of
looks good there let's keep it
maintained let's make sure that nobody
ruins it what what would that do to
people's heads would they explode now of
course I don't think the president can
do that because black lives matter
refers to not only the idea but also the
organization and he's he's now so pro
the organization but of course he like
everybody in the world would agree with
the concept so if I were him I'd just
say
I would call it a concept not an
organization I would say it's kind of
cool let's leave it there that's how I
treat it because I actually do like it
this was interesting
so yesterday I got a direct message from
a small I guess you'd call them a
startup they're kind of new called
ground news ground like the ground you
stand on news and what they do is they
take the all the news stories on a topic
and they see if the left-leaning news
sites or the middle or the right-leaning
news sites are focusing on it more and
then you can see how it's covered
differently by the left and the right so
they're so it's a really good idea to
give you more of a landscape of the bias
in the news industry but they so they
send me one that they thought I might be
interested in yesterday which was the
story about Trump signed executive order
expanding educational and economic
opportunities to Hispanics and it's
funny because the you look at the ground
a news chart and it shows that the
people on the left the media on the left
just ignored the story like it didn't
exist but the but the outlets on the
right in the middle like well it's a
story
the president's doing it is a national
story of course we're gonna write about
it put the left
crickets now think about that think how
important the the Hispanic American vote
will be and here's Trump signing I don't
know what the details are but he's
expanding educational and economic
opportunity for Hispanics and you would
think that that would be a big deal now
here's the fun part
so this little startup I think I think
calling them a startup is correct ground
news sends me this thing because I think
I'd be interested and I was it was
pretty interesting now by the way there
are also stories which show like a big
crickets on the right so the story about
Trump's Southern Southern District of
New York legal stuff
that was covered mostly by the left and
FoxNews and that was about it
so so it works both ways but I will note
that Fox News is a little bit more
likely to cover all the stories than
other outlets at least that's what it
looked like but here's the fun part
so I tweeted the little story about the
executive order and I woke up this
morning and Trump President Trump a
treat we did it so this little this
little startup ground news woke up to
something like 60 times the amount of
traffic they normally just sighs blow it
up so that was fun
anyway well let's see
you know I tweeted this as a prediction
let's see what you think so I predicted
this there's some day somebody is going
to compile a list of companies that
employ people who have publicly called
for boycotts on other companies all
right so wouldn't you like to know when
you see somebody on Twitter calling for
a boycott wouldn't you like to know
where they work because that's that's
just fair right the whole point of a
boycott to the point of this
cancellation culture is that the
counselors are safe because you don't
know much about them but they found out
was something about whatever that our
target is whoever they're gonna boycott
or or cancel they know something extra
about that person that causes them
trouble is it not fair that we just have
a little more transparency wouldn't you
like to know who accuses you in the
legal system you have a right to know
who your accuser is what kind of world
would it be if you didn't know who your
accuser was but I think you should also
know where they work you know what's
their job because if somebody goes after
somebody else's job I think that person
has a right to know
where do you work where do you work
right so if you were calling for a
boycott on this company gorya geo why a
I guess there's food company the CEO
said some nice things about President
Trump and now the left wants to cancel
them wouldn't you like to know where all
those cancel errs work or where they'll
work in the future because I think that
it needs to be mutually assured
destruction you know we need to probably
in order to have free speech in this
country in a way that the let's say the
market allows as well as a constitution
right now the Constitution says yes but
the free market says no well maybe you
can't say those things without losing
your job so with that with some sense of
mutually assured destruction that's
somewhat immediate and personal I don't
see any of it ever changing because in
my opinion is completely fair to
complain about somebody's opinion
completely fair of course that's freedom
of speech but when you go after
somebody's job because their opinion
your own job should be at risk that
feels like the minimum right if you
punch somebody in public excuse me if
you punch somebody in public the the
reason you don't do that is you think
you'll get punched back you know you're
even more so than you're worried about
going to jail you'll immediately be
punched back so there's a reason people
don't punch people in public but right
now there's no reason you can't try to
cancel somebody in public now in my case
since I'm a public figure and everybody
knows my job you know if I say something
negative about somebody they usually say
boycott Dilbert we're gonna boycott
we're gonna call all your newspapers and
cancel you to which I say isn't that
fair isn't it fair than if I were to
criticize somebody on social media that
they know who I am and where I work
I think that is fair I would also like
to know who they are and where they work
yeah just so we have full transparency I
don't think you can you can solve this
otherwise so here's some fun news
cartoonist Gary Larson has decided to
command if retirement and draw some new
comics so you can google Gary Larson the
far side you'll see his site it'll pop
up so that was just announced I knew
about this for a while because we have
the same syndication company but it's
exciting there and he's actually got
some new comics there what's fun about
this is that Gary Larson when he retired
he had still been drawing on with paper
and pen and that was part of his
frustration is it's just really hard and
not that fun to draw with pencil and
paper and pen and so for his new stuff
he's teaching himself to use a digital
something like what I use imagine he's
using the same thing this is this is my
drawing surface it's just a computer
screen that you can also draw on with a
stylus from Wacom WAAC and om w AC om
and so you'll see some of his new
digital art some of you will be very
interested in that all right
Biden has coming out with some specific
proposals that look like they would
destroy the country completely and I've
never had that feeling before I've never
actually had the feeling have you in the
past when there have been presidents
that were candidates that maybe I liked
more than the other I never really
thought that the other candidate would
destroy the world you know when when
gore and Bush were running didn't you
think well it's not gonna be that
different no matter who gets elected
turns out it was quite different because
we got a couple of wars and a bush but I
did I didn't think in advance it was the
end of the world if one got elected
versus the other and generally speaking
you know that's what I think I don't
think it would have been the end of the
world if Hillary Clinton had been
elected
because she's sort of moderate right you
might not liked it but it wouldn't be
the end of the world but when I look at
the Biden situation and I see that first
of all he's not the guy in control
that's obvious so you don't know who's
in control which is pretty scary
wouldn't you like to know who the
president is we have a position
situation where you won't actually know
who's in control if I didn't get
selected but he's got some ideas that
could actually destroy the whole
civilization let me give you an example
I'd like to see somebody who's in favor
of relaxing borders describe what it
looks like in their mind like what does
the world look like in a year or two
years or whatever if if they if they get
exactly what they want what happens how
does it look now if you say if the
president says you know I want to close
borders he can draw a picture of what
that looks like pretty well there's
still the numeration but you know we're
trying to you know fit the employees to
the jobs without you know burdening
employment in this country you kind of
know what that looks like right it looks
a lot like now but with better better
border control maybe a little less crime
coming in but you who knows if you'd
even notice but what does it look like
if you don't have border control and
you've got more sanctuary cities that
Biden is suggesting is there any world
in which that would not attract the
cartels for example is there any world
in which the United States would not
eventually be run by Mexican cartels it
for all practical purposes I can't
imagine any way that wouldn't happen if
if we have enough people coming across
the border so it's a it's a question of
numbers so I'd like to see people to ask
that question of what that looks like
it's the same question with a the green
new deal which seems to be sort of
pushed into the backburner for the
moment but as I was talking with Michael
Shellenberger what do people think it
looks like for
countries if the green new deal happens
like fast-forward that what happens with
your solar panels and your windmills in
you know some African country that's
trying to develop and that just doesn't
work you know where are they in 20 years
they're still where they were right they
haven't gone anywhere all right
so Biden's new campaign slogan the
slogan is build back better build back
better Biden says build back better what
do you think of that build back better
on one hand it's sort of catchy because
you you are encouraged to repeat it in
your head
build back better it's got a lot of bees
in it I didn't build back better it's
not parts good but I don't find it easy
to remember build back better I feel as
if there will be a point where he won't
remember his own slogan whereas make
America great again
you tried to hear that once and you'll
remember him forever
right so let me give you a writing a
writing tip listen to the percussion of
these two things make America great
again
just listen to the percussion imagine
that it was an instrument make America
great again now listen to build back
better one of them is more musical right
if you had to listen to something
forever you know only one slogan and it
just had to play forever would you
rather hear built back better build back
better would you rather hear make
America great again this is a big
difference so I would say the build back
better was probably designed by a
political operative and not an expert on
persuasion so that so that you know if
this had been designed by let's say you
know a Jill Dini or somebody with that
kind of level of knowledge of persuasion
it
look like this this is sort of a tell
for a political slogan as opposed to the
President Trump who is the Brander
himself and sousou's he got a whole
different level of goodness in his
slogan because he knows how to do that
alright I didn't hear anything about
nuclear energy from Biden so that would
be interesting to hear him hear him
answer to that and I guess Biden says
he's taking it or at least Lisa's
reported he took a firm tone they say
towards China and he wants aggressive
trade enforcement actions that sort of
sounds like nothing doesn't it it's kind
of come down to this it seems that the
Republicans are and this is just a
relative thing right relatively open to
working with Russia but tough on China
the Biden proposition seems to be not
open to working with Russia but very
friendly to China so it's almost as if
our election has become do you pick
China or Russia yeah you could ignore
the candidates you can ignore the
candidates and say which world do you
want to live in the one where were nice
to China and China abuses us as they
have or the one in which were nice to
Russia and maybe and they try to abuse
us the way they have so you've got two
choices there that don't feel domestic
and he wants to put a bunch of money
into building and investing in bond
America etc pretty ordinary stuff all
right
at this point it seems that the Biden
the Biden campaign is getting more
complicated there's some more meat on
the bones but it also should doom Biden
because one advantage that Biden has had
it's a pretty big advantage is that
until he said what his own policies are
with some detail as is coming out now
until that happened he didn't have to
talk about anything complicated let me
ask you this so part of his campaign is
putting money into 5g artificial
intelligence electric vehicles and five
chief into research research mostly I
guess now if Biden were to take a
question on 5g how would that go right
if Biden were to take a question on
nuclear energy and his plan for that or
the climate how would that go just
consider then now Biden has a whole new
bunch of new information he has to speak
to if anybody ever gets to ask a
question so his complexity is just going
through the roof while his capability
continues to plunge as we see so I think
he's getting an increasingly dangerous
territory and we'll see if that works
out for him now the president said
recently that he had taken a cognitive
test and everybody was surprised he did
so well what well what's up with that
but what was missing in the story is the
timing of it I think the president was
talking about when he took the test a
while ago but the way it was reported
they because he didn't talk about the
timing of when it happened he they
reported it as if it happened recently I
don't know if that did happen recently I
don't know if it did so when he's
fact-checking of that
build bigger basement somebody says yeah
baseman Biden is gonna build back better
now the word back is not exactly a good
word to have in your slogan because back
literally suggests going backwards so I
don't think anybody likes it back but
what's interesting think of the think of
this load and slogan build back better
does your brain see the word black
instead of back build back so you're in
the middle of this black lives matter
you know protests so your brain has been
primed for black lives matter or black
black black black black black
so you're praying for that now there you
hear the slogan build back better that
back ends up in your brain turning at
the black I don't know if that's I don't
know if that works in their favor
against them
actually I'm just pointing it out that
your brain will make that translation so
if it was if it was intentional I don't
kind of clever if it's a if they've
somehow calculated that that will be a
plausible but here's something that it
feels to me is true I believe that Biden
is very clearly saying that his future
lies with the Hispanic community it
feels like the Democrats have chosen the
Hispanic community as being a higher
priority to them politically than the
black community do you know why that is
because they already have the black vote
they don't have to do anything for the
black community nothing in fact did by
didn't even suggest anything for the
black community I don't maybe he did I
don't remember saying it you probably
did I just don't remember seeing it so
it wasn't featured obviously so you see
President Trump you know talking about
black employment you know when it was a
few months ago when it was good and you
see him
during the opportunity zones and the
jail the prison reform is cetera and you
so you see you see that Trump is
literally doing things for the black
community then you see Kanye saying that
he would run as a Republican if she ran
now if he doesn't run he still sort of
moves votes a little bit just because
his influence moves things so it started
to look like and I said this I don't
like five years ago I think I've said
this the first time that the black
community is the most natural ally with
Republicans because Republicans have a
let's say a system in a way of thinking
of things that the black community would
just fold into easily here's what I mean
the black community is religious the
conservative community also religious so
they start with that same religious base
there's a lot there are a lot more
conservative black citizens than then
you hear about so you got that going for
you
but more importantly it looks like the
Democrat plan is to give citizenship to
Biden says 11 million people in this
country now I don't I'm not giving you
my opinion whether this is good or bad I
have I'm not sure I even have complete
opinions on the whole immigration stuff
I'm just describing it seems that the
Democrats have decided that their
primary focus is going to be the
Hispanic community if you were if you
were a Democrat and you were black
how would you feel about being demoted
in your own party because it's gonna
feel like that it feels like yeah yeah
the black community problems are
important but we're going to bring in 11
million Hispanic voters are those 11
million Hispanic voters going to vote
for more things for black people or
maybe more things for themselves for
example what
the president was signing on his
executive order it was for the Hispanic
community if you add 11 million more
Hispanic of voters are you likely to get
more good things for the black public or
more good things for this banning public
kind of obvious right so there's there
seems to be a power shift on the
Democrat side toward the Hispanic power
base the black Democrats are a little
bit abandoned and the Republicans are
saying you know we got a lot in common
we're pretty proud of bringing down the
employment rate and by the way
Republicans think you should have good
schools how about that Republicans are
for school choice Biden wants to get rid
of that Biden wants to get rid of school
choice let me tell you two things that
black lives matter are not in favor of
you ready when I say black lives matter
I don't mean the the few organizers I
mean the people who would consider
themselves members who were also black
here are a few things they're not super
enthusiastic about and you can you can
find this out yourself just talk to
anybody in black lives matter and ask
who is also black don't talk to a white
person who is supporting black lives
matter talk to a black citizen who is in
black lives matter and privately asked
these two questions what do you think of
unrestricted immigration what will the
black lives matter a person it was just
a member of black lives matter say about
unrestricted immigration don't love it
nah big fans right they may not come out
against it but they're not big fans
because it sort of works against their
interests it creates more competition
what about charter schools and just
school choice what do you think they'd
say about that
I didn't like it because if you don't
fix schools you're basically doomed
there's nothing else there's nothing you
can do after that that makes a big
difference you gotta fix schools that's
where all the big improvements could be
and the Democrats want to reduce those
options so I feel like they're they're
sort of a trend building where the you
know the Republicans just have a better
package we'll see we shall see I'm going
to predict that the president Trump will
get more of the black vote than the
experts assume and I think it's going to
because those two issues are pretty big
ones
and I don't think that the black
community will completely trust their
own team when they see a different power
base emerging so that's what I got for
you today and I will talk to you
tomorrow
