Bjørn Lomborg is author of "False Alarm". Andrew Revkin is a climate journalist (21 years at NY Times). Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings
- Linode: https://linode.com/lex to get $100 free credit
- InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off
- Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off

EPISODE LINKS:
Andrew's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Revkin
Andrew's Substack: https://revkin.substack.com
Andrew's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/revkin
Bjørn's Twitter: https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg
Bjørn's Website: https://lomborg.com
Andrew's Books:
The Human Planet: https://amzn.to/3MRuLUY
The Burning Season: https://amzn.to/3Dmr5Hq
Bjørn's Books:
False Alarm: https://amzn.to/3Sqt5D4
How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place: https://amzn.to/3gwoIJ7

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:51 - Politics of climate change
18:53 - Greta Thunberg
25:23 - Electric cars
32:45 - Economy
40:22 - Journalism
54:23 - Human emissions
1:12:11 - Worst-case climate change scenario
1:32:32 - Hurricanes
1:51:20 - Climate change vs Global warming
1:55:27 - Climate alarmism
2:10:17 - Economic models
2:41:44 - Climate change policies
2:57:46 - Nuclear energy
3:04:22 - Alex Epstein
3:14:52 - Public opinion on climate change
3:36:49 - US presidents
3:47:27 - Advice for young people
4:01:02 - Meaning of life

SOCIAL:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

People all around the world, their lives are basically dependent on fossil fuels.

And so the idea that we're gonna get people off by making it so expensive that it becomes impossible for them to live good lives is almost morally reprehensible.

People who have the most basic science literacy, like who know the most about greenhouse effect, they're at both ends of the spectrum of views on climate, dismissives and alarmed.

What is likely the worst effect of climate change?

The following is a conversation with Bjorn Lomborg and Andrew Refkin on the topic of climate change.

It is framed as a debate, but with the goal of having a nuanced conversation, talking with each other, not at each other.

I hope to continue having debates like these, including on controversial topics.

I believe in the power of conversation to bring people together, not to convince 1 side or the other, but to enlighten both with the insights and wisdom that each hold.

Bjorn Lomborg is the president of Copenhagen Consensus Think Tank and author of False Alarm, Cool It, and Skeptical Environmentalist.

Please check out his work at Lomborg.com that includes his books, articles, and other writing.

Andrew Refkin is 1 of the most respected journalists in the world on the topic of climate.

He's been writing about global environmental change and risk for more than 30 years, 20 of it at the New York Times.

Please check out his work in the link tree that includes his books, articles, and other writing.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Bjorn Lomborg and Andrew Rufkin.

There's a spectrum of belief on the topic of climate change and the landscape of that spectrum has probably changed over several decades.

On 1 extreme, there's a belief that climate change is a hoax.

It's not human caused to pile on top of that.

There's a belief that institutions, scientific, political, the media are corrupt and are kind of constructing this fabrication.

And then the other extreme, there's a level of alarmism about the catastrophic impacts of climate change that lead to the extinction of human civilization.

So not just economic costs, hardship, suffering, but literally the destruction of the human species in the short term.

And I would love to find the center, and my sense is, and the reason I wanted to talk to the 2 of you, aside from the humility with which you approach this topic, is I feel like you're close to the center and are on different sides of that center, if it's possible to define the center.

Like there is a political center for center left and center right, of course it's very difficult to define, but can you help me define what the extremes are again, as they have changed over the years, what they are today, and where's the center?

Oh boy, well in a way on this issue, I think there is no center except in this, if you're looking on social media or if you're looking on TV, there are people who are trying to fabricate the idea there's a single question.

We are developing a new relationship with the climate system and we're rethinking our energy systems.

And those are very disconnected in so many ways that connect around climate change.

But the first way to me to overcome this idea of there is this polarized universe around this issue is to step back and say, well, what is this actually?

And when you do, you realize it's kind of an uncomfortable collision between old energy norms and a growing awareness of how the planet works.

That if you keep adding gases that are invisible, it's the bubbles in beer.

If you keep adding that to the atmosphere because it accumulates, that will change everything, is changing everything for thousands of years.

CO2, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

We grew up with this idea is CO2, unless you're trapped in a room suffocating, is an innocuous gas.

And the idea we can swiftly transition to a world where that gas is a pollutant, regulated, tamped down from the top is fantastical.

Having looked at this for 35 years, I brought along 1 of my tokens.

This is my 1988 cover story on global warming.

Jim Hansen, the famous American climate scientist, really he stimulated this article by doing this dramatic testimony in a Senate committee that summer, in May, actually, spring, late spring.

It was a hot day and it got headlines and this was the result.

Look what we were selling on the back cover.

You know, looking back at my own career on the climate question, it's no longer a belief fight over is global warming real or not.

You say, well, what kind of energy future do you want?

That's a very different question than stop global warming.

And when you look at climate, actually, I had this learning journey on my reporting where I started out with this as the definition of the problem.

You know, the 70s and 80s, pollution was changing things that were making things bad.

So really focusing in on the greenhouse effect and the pollution.

But what I missed, the big thing that I missed of the first 15 years of my reporting, from 1988 through about

when I was, that period I was at the New York Times in the middle there, was that we're building vulnerability to climate hazards at the same time.

So climate is changing, but we're changing too.

And where we are here in Austin, Texas is a great example.

Flash Flood Alley, named in the 1920s, west of here.

Built these huge developments, you know, along these river basins, that in 1 side starts saying, global warming, global warming.

And the other side is not recognizing that we built willfully, greedily, vulnerability in places of utter hazard.

Same things played out in Pakistan and in Fort Myers, Florida.

If you, and you start to understand that we're creating a landscape of risk as climate is changing, then that could, it feels, oh my God, that's more complex, right?

But it also gives you more action points.

It's like, okay, well, we know how to design better.

We know that today's coasts won't be tomorrow's coasts.

And then let's chart an energy future at the same time.

It didn't become like a story you could package into a magazine article or the like.

And it just led me to a whole different way of even my journalism changed over time.

So I don't fight the belief disbelief fight anymore.

It's a good way to start the discussion because that's where we're at.

But this isn't about, to me, going forward from where we're at isn't about tipping that balance back toward the center so much as finding opportunities to just do something about this stuff.

Do you agree that it's multiple questions in 1 big question?

Do you think it's possible to define the center?

I think it's wonderful to hear Andy sort of unconstruct the whole conversation and say we should be worried about different things.

And I think that's exactly, or we should be worried about things in a different way that makes it much more useful.

I think that's exactly the right way to think about it.

On the other hand, that was also where you kind of ended.

We are stuck in a place where this very much is the conversation right now.

And so I think in 1 sense, certainly the people who used to say, oh, this is not happening, they're very, very small and diminishing crowd and certainly not right.

But On the other hand, I think to an increasing extent, we've gotten into a world where a lot of people really think this is the end of times.

So the OECD did a new survey of all OECD countries And it's shocking.

So it shows that 60% of all people in the OCD, so the rich world, believes that global warming will likely or very likely lead to the extinction of mankind.

And that's scary in a very, very clear way.

Because look, if this really is true, if global warming is this meteor hurtling towards Earth, and we're gonna be destroyed in 12 years or whatever the number is today, then clearly we should care about nothing else.

We should just be focusing on making sure that that asteroid gets, you know, we should send up Bruce Willis and get this done with.

This is not actually what the UN climate panel tells us or anything else.

So I think it's not so much about arcing against the people who are saying it's a hoax.

I don't think that's where Andy or really where the conversation is.

But it is a question of sort of pulling people back from this end of the world conversation because it really skews our way that we think about problems.

Also, you know, if you really think this is the end of time and you know, you only have 12 years, nothing that can only work in 13 years can be considered.

And the reality of most of what we're talking about in climate and certainly our vulnerability, certainly our energy system is going to be half to a full century.

And so when you talk to people and say, well, but we're going to, you know, we're really going to go a lot more renewable in the next half century, they look at you and like, but that's what 38 years too late.

And I get that, but so, so I think in, in your question, what I'm trying to do, and I would imagine that's true for you as well, is to try to pull people away from this precipice and this end of the world and then open it up.

And I think Andy did that really well by saying, look, there are so many different sub conversations and we need to have all of them and we need to be respectful of some of these are right in the sort of standard media kind of way, but some of them are very, very wrong and actually means that we end up doing much less good, both on climate, but also on all the other problems the world faces.

Oh yeah, and it just empowers people too.

Those who believe this then just sit back.

Even in Adam McKay's movie, the Don't Look Up movie, there was that sort of nihilist crowd, for those who've seen it, who just say, fuck this.

And a lot of people have that approach, when something's too big.

And it just paralyzes you, as opposed to giving you these action points.

And the other thing is, I hate it when economists are right about stuff like the...

There are these phrases, like I never knew the words path dependency until probably 10 years ago in my reporting.

And it basically says you're in a system, the things around you, how we pass laws, the brokenness of the Senate.

Those are, we don't have a climate crisis in America, we have a decision crisis as it comes to how the government works or doesn't work.

But those big features of our landscape are, it's path dependency.

When you screw in a light bulb, even if it's an LED light bulb, it's going into a 113, 120 year old fixture.

And actually that fixture is almost designed, if you look at like 19th century gas fixtures, they had this screw in thing.

So we're like on this long path dependencies when it comes to energy and stuff like that, that you don't just magically transition a car fleet.

It'll end up in Mexico, sold as a used car, et cetera, et cetera.

And so there is no quick fix, even if we're true that things are coming to an end in 13 years, or 12 years, or 8 years.

So most people don't believe that climate change is a hoax, so they believe that there is an increase, there's a global warming of a few degrees in the next century, and then maybe debate about what the number of the degrees is.

And do most people believe that it's human caused at this time in this history of discussion of climate change?

Yale University, the climate communication group there for like 13 years has done this 6 Americas study where they've charted pretty carefully in ways that I really find useful what people believe.

And we could talk about the word belief in the context of science too, and they've identified kind of 6 kinds of us.

There's from dismissive to alarmed and with lots of bubbles in between.

I think some of those bubbles in between are mostly disengaged people who don't really deal with the issue.

There's much more majority now at the alarmed or engaged bubbles than the dismissive bubble.

There's a durable, like with vaccination and lots of other issues, there's a durable never anything belief group.

But on the reality that humans are contributing to climate change, most Americans, when you ask them, and it also depends on how you write your survey, you know, think there's a component.

globally, I mean, when you ask around, I mean, and this is, you know, if you hear this story from the media of 20 years, of course that's what you will believe.

That is what the science, I think it's perhaps worth saying and it's a little depressing that you always have to say it.

But I think it's worth saying that I think we both really do accept the climate panel science.

And there's absolutely global warming, it is an issue.

And it's probably just worthwhile to get it out of

But vulnerability, the losses that are driven by climate-related events still predominantly are caused by humans, but on the ground.

It's where we build stuff, where we settle.

Pakistan, in 1960, I just looked these data up, there were 40 million people in Pakistan.

They live in the floodplain of the amazing Indus River, which comes down from the Himalayas.

Extraordinary 5, 000 year history of agriculture there.

But when you put 200 million people in harm's way, and this doesn't say anything about the bigger questions about, oh, shame on Pakistan for having more people.

It just says the reality is the losses that we see in the news are, and the science finds this, even though there's a new weather attribution group, it's WXrisk on Twitter.

This does pretty good work on how much of what just happened was some tweak in the storm from global warming, from CO2 changing weather.

But, and the media glommed onto that, as I did, you know, in the 80s, 90s, 2000s.

But the reports also have a section on, by the way, the vulnerability that was built in this region was a big driver of loss.

So discriminating between loss, change in what's happening on the ground, and change in the climate system, is never solely about CO2.

In fact, Lawrence Bauer, B-O-U-W-E-R, I first wrote on his work in 2010 in the New York Times.

And basically in 2010, there was no sign in the data of climate change driving disasters.

Climate change is up here, disasters are on the ground.

They depend on how many people are in the way, how much stuff you built in the way.

And so far, we've done so much of that, so fast in the 20th century particularly, that it completely dominates, it makes it hard, impossible to discriminate how much of that disaster was from the change in weather from global warming.

So a function of greenhouse gases to human suffering is unclear.

And that's very much in our control, theoretically.

I mean, the point I think is exactly right that if you look at the Hurricane Ian that went through Florida, you have a situation where Florida went from what, 600, 000 houses in 1940 to 17 million houses.

Sorry, 10 million houses, so 17 times more.

Over a period of 80 years, of course you're going to have, what?

And many of these houses now have been built on places where you probably shouldn't be building.

And, and so I think, a lot of scientists are very focused on saying, can we measure whether global warming had an impact, which is an interesting science question.

I think it's, it's very implausible that eventually we won't be able to say it has an impact.

But the real question it seems to me is if we actually want to make sure that people are less harmed in the future, what are the levers that we can control?

And it turns out that the CO2 lever, doing something about climate is an incredibly difficult and slightly inefficient way of trying to help these people in the future.

Whereas of course, zoning, making sure that you have better housing rules, what is it?

Regulations that you maybe don't have people building in the flash flood.

And because we're so focused on this 1 issue, It almost feels sacrilegious to talk about these other things that are much more in our power and that we can do something about much quicker and that would help a lot more people.

So I think this is going to be a large part of the whole conversation.

Yes climate is a problem, but it's not the only problem.

And there are many other things where we can actually have a much, much bigger impact at much lower cost.

Can you still man the case of Greta, who's a representative of alarmism, that we need that kind of level of alarmism for people to pay attention and to think about climate change.

So you said the singular view is not the correct way to look at climate change, just the emissions, but for us to have a discussion, shouldn't there be somebody who's really raising the concern?

Can you still man the case for alarmism, essentially?

Communication of like, holy shit, we should be thinking about this.

So I think, I totally understand why Greta Thunberg is doing what she's doing.

I have great respect for her because if, you know, I look at a lot of kids growing up and they're basically being told, you're not going to reach adulthood or at least not, you're not going to get very far into adulthood.

And that of course, you know, this is the meteor hurdling towards Earth.

And then this is the only thing we should be focusing on.

I understand why she's making that argument.

I think it's, at the end of the day, it's incorrect.

And I'm sure we'll get around to talking about that.

And 1 of the things is, of course, that her whole generation, you know, I can understand why they're saying, you know, if we're gonna be dead in 12 years, why would I wanna study?

You know, why would I really care about anything?

So I totally want to sort of pull Greta and many others out of this end of the world fear.

I think she's done a service in the sense that she's gotten more people to talk about climate.

And that's good, because we need to have this discussion.

I think it's unfortunate, and this is just what happens in almost all policy discussions, that they end up being sort of discussions from the extreme groups, because it's just more fun on media to have sort of the total deniers and the people who say, we're gonna die tomorrow, and it sort of becomes that discussion.

So what do you think, the mud wrestling fight is not useful or is useful for communication for effective science communication on 1 of the platforms that you're a fan of, which is Twitter.

Yeah, I wrote a piece recently in my Sustain What column saying if you go on there for the entertainment value of seeing those knockdown fights, I guess that's useful if that's what you're looking for.

The thing I found Twitter invaluable for, but it's a practice.

It's just like the workouts you do, or it's how do I put this tool to use today, thinking about energy action in poor communities?

How do I put this tool today, learning about what really happened with Ian the hurricane, who was most at risk, and how would you build forward better?

Or you can go there and just watch it as an entertainment value.

You don't think entertainment, I wouldn't call it entertainment, but giving voice to the extremes isn't a productive way forward.

It seems to, you know, to push back against the main narrative, it seems to work pretty well in the American system.

We think politics is totally broken, but maybe that works, that like oscillation back and forth.

You need a Greta, and you need somebody that pushes back against the grid to get everybody's attention.

The fun of battle over time creates progress.

Well, and this gets to the, you know, people who focus on communication science, I'm not a scientist, I write about this stuff.

If you're gonna try to prod someone with a warning, like, this is 3 years apart,

Global warming, well yeah, we'll talk about it.

But look at that, this is 3 years apart in the covers of a magazine.

And, but then you have to say to what end if you're not directing people to a basket of things to do.

And if you want political change, then it would be to support a politician.

If you want energy access, it would be to look at this $370 billion the American government just put into play on climate and say, well, how can my community benefit from that?

And I've been told over and over again by people in government, Jigar Shah, who heads this giant loan program, the energy department, he says, what I need now is like 19, 500 people who are worried about climate change, maybe because Greta got them worried, But here's the thing you could do.

You can connect your local government right now with these multimillion dollar loans so you can have electric buses instead of diesel buses.

So without, so you know, alarm for the sake of getting attention or clicks to me is not any more valuable than watching an action movie.

And again, I think also it very easily ends up sort of skewing our conversation about what are the actual solutions, You know, because yes, it's great to, to get rid of the diesel bus, but probably not for the reason people think it's because diesel buses are really polluting in the, you know, in the air pollution sense.

And that is why you should get rid of them.

And again, if you really wanted to help people, for instance, with hurricanes, you should have better rules and zoning in Florida, which is a very different outcome.

So the mud wrestling fight also gets our attention diverted towards solutions that seem easy, fun.

Sort of the electric car is a great example of this.

The electric car has somehow become almost the sign that I care and I'm really going to do something about climate.

Of course, electric cars are great and they're probably part of the solution.

And they will actually cut carbon emissions somewhat.

But they are an incredibly ineffective way of cutting carbon emissions right now.

And they still emit quite a bit of CO2, both because the batteries get produced and because they usually run off of power that's

Okay, educate us on the pros and cons of electric cars in this complex picture of climate change.

What do you think of the efforts of Tesla and Elon Musk on pushing forward the electric car revolution?

I don't own a car, but I've been driving a Tesla.

flew in here, so it's not like I'm in any way a virtuous guy on that path.

And eventually, electric cars will take over a significant part of our driving and that's good because they're more effective, they're more effective, they're probably also going to be cheaper, there's a lot of good opportunities with them But it's because they've become reified as this thing that you do to fix climate.

And right now, they're not really all that great for climate.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Climate Change Debate: Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin | Lex Fridman Podcast #339