Based Camp - The Scam of Environmentalism

00:00:00.000 And one of the great ironies of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition and in previous ruling coalitions is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.

00:00:18.820 So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion that will last decades in German carbon emissions.

00:00:26.900 So if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be, and if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the lignite has to be there to keep the lights on, well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day.

00:00:54.140 You only count the solar and wind. If you actually count what power is generated and what is used when it is used, you're talking only about 10% green.

00:01:04.740 It is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for if you cared about the things you said you cared about.

00:01:13.460 It makes me have such a high level of animosity towards the movement.

00:01:18.260 Would you like to know more?

00:01:19.240 Well, I love you, Simone, and I am excited for our topic today because it's where you started your career.

00:01:24.820 Do you want to talk about your early career?

00:01:27.120 Absolutely. Being raised in super progressive Silicon Valley, I was determined to save the world by doing the most obvious thing, saving the environment, because that's what really needs our help.

00:01:38.500 Fucking flowers. 0.99

00:01:39.400 The flowers. The flowers. The flowers are very important. And so I looked at what I thought would make the most impact, I felt like. 1.00

00:01:47.920 Hold on. Actually, before you go further, I'd love you to explain why you thought saving the environment mattered.

00:01:53.480 Like, what about the environment was, like, intrinsically good?

00:01:56.240 Well, it was sort of an availability heuristic problem. Everything around me was the environment is falling apart.

00:02:04.760 In my science classes, we talked about environmental damage and pollution and climate change.

00:02:10.240 And then, of course, like, in the news, it was a big issue.

00:02:13.200 So it was just in terms of, like, problems in the world that need to be resolved.

00:02:17.360 It was the environment. Interestingly, actually, it wasn't human suffering.

00:02:22.340 It wasn't starvation. It wasn't disease.

00:02:23.960 And those were, like, really big issues that I would expect progressive groups to really care about.

00:02:29.040 Very weirdly, this is just not something that was in my evoked set.

00:02:32.760 I had been told, in fact, that in the past, parents used to tell their children who were not eating their dinners,

00:02:39.200 don't you know there are children starving in China, but that no one does that anymore?

00:02:43.540 Which kind of implied that, like, there weren't children starving anywhere anymore.

00:02:47.400 So that's the closest I got to awareness of starvation and hardship outside the US.

00:02:53.020 Continue, continue. So you started this first career.

00:02:55.460 Yeah, so I decided to go into environmental business because my understanding was that changing,

00:03:00.100 like, dealing with environmental problems through the public sector was ineffective.

00:03:04.540 You created this degree, right?

00:03:06.020 Yeah. So I went to the Georgia Washington University because they had a good undergraduate business school.

00:03:10.480 I didn't want to wait until graduate school.

00:03:11.860 I thought that was a waste of time because academia, even then, even then I knew academia was a waste of time.

00:03:17.640 And I created a sort of custom major using graduate classes in environmental business that they had.

00:03:24.560 And then I started, I volunteered and interned at environmental nonprofits.

00:03:29.640 I worked at the American Council of Renewable Energy.

00:03:32.380 I worked at Earth Day Network, which is the nonprofit that basically administers Earth Day and Earth Day festivals,

00:03:37.780 but then provides a year-round curriculum and all sorts of other stuff.

00:03:40.540 I extensively interviewed with people who worked as environmental consultants or environmental specialists within organizations or who worked as lobbyists for the environment.

00:03:51.980 And, of course, then I also took my classes.

00:03:55.280 And the more I learned, the more I was like, oh, my God, this entire industry is a complete scam.

00:04:02.940 The people that I interviewed who worked in the space basically said, I deeply care about this.

00:04:08.160 Don't do this because my work makes absolutely no difference and I'm not making any difference.

00:04:12.340 And then, of course, the most meaningful thing for me was studying historical geography, sorry, historical geology and learning that we are not the first organism to cause climate change,

00:04:28.280 to significantly alter the climate of our planet, that many other organisms before us have done this.

00:04:34.700 I mean, you can't study like the fossil record and like all of the past like errors of, you know, the natural climate and everything without discovering that.

00:04:44.860 And so like learning that, too, was just like, wait a second, guys.

00:04:49.200 The understanding was that climate change bad, humans unusual for causing this must stop it.

00:04:55.540 And then what I had learned was, was climate change normal, humans not unique in doing this and can't stop it.

00:05:04.120 Just like that was, it was, it was deeply different because if you do care about this problem, you know, you should be planning around it.

00:05:11.940 And we don't see a lot of that, at least performatively, people are talking about how do we handle migratory crises?

00:05:18.080 How do we, you know, how do we handle the fact that people are still buying coastal properties in a way that's going to lead to death and lots of destruction?

00:05:24.480 You know, how do we, how do we prepare for the inevitable climate change that is going to happen?

00:05:29.820 Simone, I want to, I want to pull on something you said.

00:05:31.840 This is a scam.

00:05:33.540 What specific parts of it do you feel are the most disingenuous?

00:05:37.760 I'm assuming you think that like the earth is getting warmer and that like there is a lot of climate destruction happening and a lot of species are going extinct.

00:05:44.620 That is all happening.

00:05:45.360 Yes.

00:05:45.780 Okay, continue.

00:05:46.380 And pollution is bad and all these other things are really bad.

00:05:48.900 However, the efforts that supposedly are supposed to be addressing this are not making a difference.

00:05:57.400 They're not making a difference.

00:05:58.680 They're not, they're not making the problem better.

00:06:00.780 They are just raising money and getting attention and not really changing.

00:06:08.960 That's the really important thing to know here is that the climate change industry is an industry and that the people in it, or at least from your, your interviews, when you were thinking of going into it, regretted their life choices, but they didn't feel they had any options left to them.

00:06:25.800 Yeah.

00:06:26.000 Well, and then, so there, there were two, right?

00:06:27.440 There were the ones that I interviewed who were like, don't go into this space.

00:06:30.080 And then they're the ones that I worked with and they were more like one group of them.

00:06:36.480 Like when I worked at the American council on renewable energy, these are people who are genuinely passionate about solar, but it was sort of like people who are really passionate about electric vehicles.

00:06:45.080 They're not like, it's not that they're like, I'm saving the environment.

00:06:47.680 They're like, no, Tesla's are so cool.

00:06:49.380 Or like the battery pack is really amazing.

00:06:51.780 Or like, you know, just here's this more efficient thing that I think we should really be rolling out.

00:06:56.660 So they were basically just solar otaku and then they actually made a positive difference of the groups that you worked with.

00:07:03.860 I mean, they, they were, yeah, of any, of everyone that I worked with, of everyone that I interviewed, I think the American council on renewable energy was effective at encouraging adoption and increasing education about, about solar power.

00:07:19.220 Like they, they were, they were well-focused and they were doing something practical and actionable, but I don't think it was to save the environment.

00:07:25.860 And I think it was because they were stoked about solar, you know, it was like, it was no different from like some American council on natural gas, you know, who were like, wow, natural gas is just such a great resource or fracking is amazing.

00:07:35.440 You know, it was just, that was, that was kind of the vibe.

00:07:37.720 And then the Earth Day Network and like those types of people were a lot like many other environmentalists, professional environmentalists, essentially, that I worked with where it really wasn't about making a difference.

00:07:48.880 It was about living a lifestyle.

00:07:50.480 It was about having this type of water bottle and eating this type of food and being vegan and essentially being a negative utilitarian, creating curriculum and sort of building people within your culture.

00:07:59.460 And that makes sense for an organization like Earth Day Network because our number one activity is hosting these big festivals every year, you know, where like, you have bands playing and, you know.

00:08:08.780 This was something from our childhood.

00:08:10.640 People may not, I don't know if like young people like, like Gen Z, like has any fucking idea what Earth Day is.

00:08:19.020 Like this used to be a thing, like on Nickelodeon, they'd take the day, like the whole week and it would be like Captain Planet and shit and like other.

00:08:25.300 I think there are still Earth Day festivals, but again, it's that life, it felt more like, like goth festival, you know, like annual goth or Burning Man, right?

00:08:36.560 Where like, you're just really into this community and you want other people to adopt it and know about it and you want to make it available to as many people as possible.

00:08:43.760 So it definitely felt like a cultural lifestyle business and not a, I mean, of course, they still talked about how like it's so important to recycle.

00:08:51.280 Did you have any specific moments where like it broke for you, where you're like, this is just not doing anything meaningful?

00:09:01.340 No, but by the end of my freshman year, I think it was the end of my freshman year, I gave up.

00:09:05.460 And then I started working at fashion magazines and chocolate factories and cupcake shops and medical device companies instead of. 0.97

00:09:13.740 So I had a moment for me that was my big, what the fuck are we doing? 0.91

00:09:19.660 Okay, what happened? 0.98

00:09:21.480 How old were you?

00:09:22.640 Old, old, because it was just to me the most glaring evidence I've ever seen.

00:09:27.880 And it was so glaring, I could never go back from it.

00:09:30.940 Oh, gosh, I don't know about this.

00:09:32.860 This is fun.

00:09:33.540 Yeah, well, I've talked about it before.

00:09:35.700 I just don't think you may realize.

00:09:37.340 So global warming, that the Earth is getting warmer.

00:09:42.020 No, no, no, it's not.

00:09:43.200 It's global climate change.

00:09:44.520 Don't forget that.

00:09:45.400 Climate change.

00:09:45.660 That climate is changing at a faster pace in modern years than it has historically.

00:09:51.160 I do believe that the evidence points to it happening.

00:09:55.740 Yeah, it's happening.

00:09:56.420 From us looking at the evidence, and you know we're skeptical people.

00:09:59.160 It appears to be very hard to deny that it's happening.

00:10:03.600 Not a hoax.

00:10:05.160 Not a hoax.

00:10:06.500 That humans are in part responsible for this.

00:10:10.160 That is something that I've looked at the evidence, and I'm sorry, it just appears to be yes.

00:10:18.240 Agreed.

00:10:18.460 I thought you were going to say no, and I was really intrigued by that.

00:10:21.200 No, there's people who will do cutoffs and weird graphs, and there's ways you can argue with evidence that things are overstated.

00:10:28.100 Like, do I think that we live in a world where I'm a climate scientist, and I published a study saying that humans are not the cause of climate change, that I am going to get fired?

00:10:37.800 Okay, absolutely.

00:10:38.880 Which makes it very hard for me to objectively analyze the data that's out there.

00:10:44.640 From the data I've looked at, it appears the answer is yes.

00:10:48.040 Yeah, but also, like, another reason to not be so doubtful of that is that far less, we'll say, conspicuous species have done this in the past.

00:10:59.040 Like, organisms have done this in the past.

00:11:00.600 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:01.460 Great oxidation event.

00:11:03.240 If a pathophagic tree can do it, I think, you know, humans doing all the crazy stuff.

00:11:06.640 So, no, no, no, no, no.

00:11:07.600 Here are the two questions. 0.99

00:11:08.800 Should I fucking care? 0.98

00:11:10.220 You know, this is question one, which we can get to. 0.99

00:11:13.680 That's like a whole other thing.

00:11:14.940 I think, yes, we should care a little, like, it matters, but it's not, like, this existential thing that matters more than, like, hundreds of thousands of humans starving to death every year.

00:11:24.760 Well, I guess it depends on how tractable it is, right?

00:11:27.220 That should determine how much you care.

00:11:30.120 Right.

00:11:30.660 But we're going to ignore this for now.

00:11:33.120 Like, when I look at all of the suffering in the world today, when I look at all of the various things, like getting off planet, X risks, everything like that, like, it matters that this is happening.

00:11:43.800 It just is not, like, thing number one, or I don't think it should be on any, like, sane person's list.

00:11:51.340 In fact, I think it should be even below preserving tracts of land and natural environments that are going to undergo change due to global warming if you want to preserve diversity.

00:12:02.720 So, if I'm going to word this differently.

00:12:07.440 I just don't know how practical it is to do that in the face of it.

00:12:10.020 Your time and money is better spent buying rainforest to keep it from being cut down a la...

00:12:17.160 Oh, yes. No, no, no, totally.

00:12:18.220 Mr. Beast did this.

00:12:19.320 Or, you know, protecting national parks in the U.S. than it is fighting global warming in the way that people are fighting it.

00:12:25.560 But here's the big thing for me.

00:12:26.940 Here has been my big thing with global warming.

00:12:28.780 It was during the pandemic.

00:12:32.280 Oh, right.

00:12:33.840 Yeah. 0.99

00:12:34.160 During the pandemic, we shut down, like, fucking everything. 0.99

00:12:38.700 People weren't commuting to work. 0.99

00:12:40.960 People weren't flying.

00:12:43.060 People weren't leaving their houses.

00:12:45.420 People weren't eating at restaurants. 0.83

00:12:47.300 We were living the environmentalist dream that we had been told we should be making all of these sacrifices for for so fucking long.

00:12:57.320 It was like we were making all of these insane sacrifices that we had been told to make at a global scale.

00:13:05.080 And for people who do not know this, that year, we barely met the incremental carbon reduction that was needed to make a meaningful dent in global warming.

00:13:21.260 So I will word this in different words, okay?

00:13:24.140 To prevent global warming, you know, if carbon's going, you know, like this, right?

00:13:28.840 Like we need to, or suppose it's even a straight line, like we need to start going down, right?

00:13:33.680 But we need to keep going down.

00:13:36.000 It did the one-year decrease it needed for that year, but we wouldn't need to have kept up COVID restrictions.

00:13:44.800 We would need to literally double COVID restrictions every year for like a decade.

00:13:51.780 So on top of everything we were doing, we needed to do all of that in terms of carbon reduction while still not going back out, still not commuting to work, still not using planes.

00:14:03.360 Still not using restaurants.

00:14:05.820 And that's what I realized.

00:14:06.820 I was like, oh, what's being asked is comically unrealistic.

00:14:12.540 What's being asked at like a base case to prevent this is obviously never going to work.

00:14:19.420 It's never going to do what they want.

00:14:22.100 This is a huge deal to me, right?

00:14:24.080 Like we are being told you as a people can fix this. 1.00

00:14:28.480 And then thing happens and we learned, oh shit. 1.00

00:14:31.660 Like I think even environmentalists, when they were looking at that, that should have been this moment of like, oh shit. 1.00

00:14:37.400 It's really stupid to fight global warming by telling people to make sacrifices in their daily lives. 0.99

00:14:43.260 But I didn't see almost any environmentalists taking that away for this. 0.92

00:14:48.600 It meant that if you're going to fight this, I guess you could do it with like carbon sequestration and stuff like that.

00:14:52.880 But a lot of people are like, I would say, I would say now there's less, it seems, focus on, oh, everyone has to go and do these things.

00:15:02.380 It's more, hey, governments, you need to change this.

00:15:04.680 Hey, this infrastructure has to change.

00:15:07.080 You know, this regulation has to change, which is smart because all this nonsense about like start, you know, start recycling when like recycling doesn't work because many municipalities just don't do it at all.

00:15:18.180 Recycling is mostly a scam for people who don't know.

00:15:21.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:21.680 I'm sure you can link to some video on it.

00:15:23.260 But even speaking of that, there was an interesting study done on like lifestyle sacrifices that people were making of Gen Z's generation.

00:15:29.760 And another thing is that it turns out, despite Greta Thornburg saying, you old people have sold our future, that Gen Z makes dramatically fewer lifestyle sacrifices to protect the environment than millennials or boomers do. 0.54

00:15:44.480 The point being is that they just do a lot less.

00:15:46.720 If you look at an environmentalist rally, I don't know if you guys have seen one recently. 1.00

00:15:51.220 It's fucking old people. 1.00

00:15:53.460 You look at like the people. 1.00

00:15:55.200 Oh, you know, maybe it's the Gen Z nihilism. 1.00

00:15:57.760 People love to doom about it, but they're doing it because all humans love to doom.

00:16:03.160 That's why apocalyptic memes are so viral. 1.00

00:16:05.600 That's why there's a bunch of idiots going around now saying AI is going to kill us all. 1.00

00:16:09.820 We've done a lot of episodes on this. 1.00

00:16:11.900 It is not.

00:16:12.900 There's like mathematical proof that it's not.

00:16:15.660 Look at our reverse grabby alien theorem video.

00:16:18.260 Yeah, guys, stop.

00:16:19.460 Stop trying to make AI apocalypticism a thing.

00:16:23.480 It's not a thing.

00:16:24.520 Not a thing.

00:16:25.620 LLMs are not going to kill us.

00:16:27.760 I'm not saying no AI could kill us.

00:16:29.980 I just don't think that we're anywhere near that level of technology.

00:16:33.000 And I think that the data backs this.

00:16:34.900 And even so, we're probably dealing more with a relative danger versus an absolute danger, i.e.

00:16:41.120 if it's going to kill us, it will definitely eventually kill us.

00:16:44.820 And so everything we do up until that point is actually more of a risk.

00:16:47.620 And that if it's going to kill us, we would kill ourselves once we reached a certain level

00:16:51.680 of intelligence.

00:16:52.200 Like we would converge on a utility function.

00:16:54.360 There is terminal convergence of utility functions.

00:16:57.220 But anyway, and I think that the data supports this.

00:16:59.200 I think that this is actually what's supported by the inverse grabby alien theorem.

00:17:03.320 But back to the topic at hand.

00:17:07.060 So global warmingism.

00:17:08.580 Yeah, I think it's something that people just use to masturbate this dumerism they have without

00:17:12.880 really having to engage with anything that's particularly hard to engage with.

00:17:16.120 If anything, also, like I do feel like the majority of it non-commercially, like so when

00:17:23.720 we leave the nerds who are into something that is environmentally adjacent, like they're

00:17:27.100 just super nerdy about carbon sequestration for some reason or like whatever.

00:17:31.340 Like I feel like there are lots of just weird otaku about weird tech that, you know, come

00:17:35.780 across as environmentalists.

00:17:37.100 But really, they're just enthusiastic about the intervention.

00:17:40.220 So like when we take those out, I think it's a culture thing.

00:17:42.940 I think it's just like, oh, I'm a crunchy green person.

00:17:46.180 And I think what's really interesting now, actually, when I look at social media and when

00:17:49.840 I look at what people are talking about, at least like from the shorts that I'm seeing,

00:17:55.600 the new version of that culture, the new version of like what now is an environmentalist

00:18:00.760 isn't like, oh, you know, don't use that because it's not sustainable.

00:18:05.320 They're like, don't use that because it has endocrine disruptors.

00:18:09.020 And don't use that because, you know, it has.

00:18:11.200 Endocrine disruptors are a conservative thing.

00:18:13.520 What are you on about?

00:18:15.300 Well, I actually think that like many of the people who used to be super progressive

00:18:20.420 environmentalists are going more conservative and they're concerned about pollutants.

00:18:24.240 And I don't think endocrine disruptors are necessarily a conservative thing.

00:18:28.560 I actually think that like.

00:18:31.320 Well, it'd be great if we can get a cross aisle thing.

00:18:34.500 I think it crosses the aisle.

00:18:36.040 I mean, they may not be using the same words and they may not have the same concerns.

00:18:39.120 Right.

00:18:40.300 Like they're not like, oh, my child's fertility. 0.99

00:18:42.320 They're literally concerned about the frogs turning gay. 0.83

00:18:44.840 The conservatives are, but I think the progressives are more just like. 0.95

00:18:48.340 No, no, no. 0.98

00:18:48.380 I mean, the conservatives are concerned about the implication of the frogs turning gay. 0.93

00:18:53.260 Yeah. 0.90

00:18:53.420 The progressives are concerned that there's not going to be any more frogs.

00:18:56.720 Yeah.

00:18:57.020 Well, that and that like their children are being poisoned just kind of generally like, oh, it's

00:19:02.100 bad for you.

00:19:02.760 And it, you know, it'll, it'll mess with my child's, it'll give them ADHD.

00:19:07.560 I don't know.

00:19:08.620 I think you're off the boat with progressivism these days.

00:19:11.140 There was an interesting paper.

00:19:13.040 I can't remember where this came out, but it was, it was shocking to me, which was looking

00:19:17.300 at pollutants in the environment.

00:19:20.380 Like how much do different pollutants affect like health outcomes of babies?

00:19:25.300 And there was pushback at like the university or something saying that the paper was intrinsically

00:19:30.200 eugenic and that it was trying to ensure healthy babies were born. 1.00

00:19:35.460 Oh no.

00:19:37.500 You might be surprised how far off the cliff they've gone.

00:19:40.680 Are you sure you weren't thinking about the, the argument that a female to male trans person

00:19:47.120 should not be allowed to continue to take their exogenous hormones while pregnant? 1.00

00:19:52.000 Yeah.

00:19:52.340 It was during that.

00:19:53.220 You're referring to that.

00:19:54.840 I don't, I don't think they're talking about endocrine disruptors.

00:19:57.060 They were just saying, you should have the right, sorry, he should have the right to

00:19:59.960 take testosterone.

00:20:01.060 And they said that the research on this was eugenic because it was looking at baby health.

00:20:04.800 The point I'm hearing is you think that they care about the health of children where I

00:20:09.520 think they think the health of children is eugenic.

00:20:11.640 They really, look up crunchy moms. 1.00

00:20:15.520 Okay.

00:20:16.080 Okay.

00:20:16.220 Look up crunchy moms. 1.00

00:20:17.380 It is not, it is typically not, I need to save the environment.

00:20:20.840 It is, it is an aesthetic thing that I think is, is more honest than original and like

00:20:25.720 previous environmental.

00:20:26.500 Let's talk about it being an aesthetic thing because this actually bothers me about the

00:20:29.180 movement, right?

00:20:29.860 Okay. 0.99

00:20:30.700 So this is where you get like in Germany, the fucking green party banning their nuclear 0.99

00:20:35.840 plans, right? 0.99

00:20:36.840 Like it's aesthetic.

00:20:37.600 Well, it's aesthetic, but it objectively hurts global warming and the environment by a dramatic

00:20:46.100 amount.

00:20:47.000 And there's actually, I want to see if I remember to do this link to Peter's I have videos on

00:20:50.880 this because he does some great videos on like how bad Germany is in terms of its environmental

00:20:56.320 impact.

00:20:56.720 But they're like one of the worst countries in Europe and they hide it in their government

00:20:59.940 statistics because what they'll do is you'd have to go to Zyhan's videos on this, which

00:21:04.200 he does a very good job of this.

00:21:05.180 Of these, the only bit that is sustainable is the lignite because that is actually produced

00:21:10.180 in Germany.

00:21:11.460 And one of the great ironies of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition and in

00:21:17.360 previous real ruling coalitions is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively

00:21:21.780 low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal

00:21:28.780 and especially lignite.

00:21:30.240 So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion that will last decades

00:21:36.460 in German carbon emissions.

00:21:38.500 And there's really no way around that.

00:21:40.460 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:21:41.720 They have spent something like $2 trillion now building up a power network and putting

00:21:46.280 in solar and wind.

00:21:47.300 But I don't know if any of you have ever been to Germany, but the sun doesn't shine in Germany.

00:21:50.880 Germany, in terms of reliable output, when people actually use the electricity, Germany

00:21:58.800 only gets about, I think it's 8 to 11 percent of their electricity from green sources.

00:22:04.540 Now, they will tell you that it's 40 to 70 percent based on the season, but what they're

00:22:08.420 not telling you is how they collect the data.

00:22:10.320 So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar that

00:22:16.740 has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be, and if

00:22:21.400 you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on because it takes more than 24 hours to spin

00:22:26.060 that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down and the solar goes away, the lignite has

00:22:30.020 to be there to keep the light sign, well, you don't count the electricity that it generates

00:22:36.700 during the day. You only count the solar and wind. And if you're in August when all the

00:22:41.460 Germans are on vacation and the sun actually finally is shining, all of those electrons have

00:22:47.460 nowhere to go, so you dump them into France, Poland, and the rest. Count those two. If you 1.00

00:22:52.280 actually count what power is generated and what is used when it is used, you're talking only about

00:22:58.880 10 percent green. This is why on like a per-person basis, Germany is so environmentally unfriendly

00:23:04.960 compared to other countries. It's because of the environmental party. They lied about their

00:23:09.920 output, right? There has been no real push to be honest about their measuring systems.

00:23:15.800 And two, the reason they're in this fucking situation is because mostly due to Russian 0.97

00:23:20.960 money that was trying to increase their reliance on Russian gas, they shut down all their nuclear 0.99

00:23:25.320 plants, which was an insane thing to do if you care about the environment in anything other

00:23:29.720 than the most aesthetic and vague sense. And I think that it is this level of disingenuousness,

00:23:36.260 this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for if you

00:23:40.820 cared about the things you said you cared about. It makes me so, and have such a high level of

00:23:47.160 animosity towards the movement. 0.80

00:23:48.840 You just don't like the hypocrisy. That's, that's your problem. 0.79

00:23:51.760 Yeah. I mean, my take on the environment right now, like if I was going to optimize for my beliefs

00:23:55.980 around the environment, I think that we should create full genome sequences of as much of the

00:24:01.700 planet's diversity right now as possible.

00:24:03.640 Yeah. Like a seed bank, but for all biological things, right? That can be copied a number of

00:24:08.580 times. And then we can recreate it on some other planet in the future when we have more shit. But for 0.99

00:24:16.480 now, things look pretty fucked. And I don't see anything really realistically we can do other than 0.97

00:24:23.360 create a genetic library at the moment. We might even be able to recreate it on earth one day. But for

00:24:29.460 now, we need to be realistic about where things are going and realistic about how to optimize the things

00:24:35.000 that we, anyone says they care about.

00:24:39.160 Hmm. Yeah, I would really, I'm concerned about making sure that there are migratory treaties in place

00:24:48.720 that would allow for people to more easily leave areas when they become deeply unsafe.

00:24:56.280 I, I really, I don't think that's as relevant when you look at how quickly population's crashing

00:24:59.960 or a real crash.

00:25:01.280 I guess, although things are happening now, like we're already getting to a place where

00:25:05.520 temperatures reach untenable levels. Like as in, if there's a power outage plus this heat wave,

00:25:10.600 many people will die kind of thing. And that, you know,

00:25:14.000 we're not doing anything. You're not going to get migratory treaties. It's completely unrealistic.

00:25:21.820 Would you, what is a migratory treaty? We've done insane things with environmental controls. Like

00:25:25.420 we've done, we've done impossibly impressive things. Like the least we can do is figure out.

00:25:31.720 No. Well, what is a migratory treaty really? Like, what are you saying if you do an inter-country

00:25:35.780 migratory treaty, right? I know, I know.

00:25:38.000 That's conquest. That's what you have to fight people for is to take their land. Now you're just saying,

00:25:42.780 oh yeah, just move your population to another country.

00:25:45.980 Yeah. Like what? Give India a discount on Greenland, you know? Just a little discount.

00:25:54.940 Just a little.

00:25:56.180 Yeah. No, I mean, it's a, yeah, yeah. I don't think that you're going to do anything. I think

00:26:01.660 there's going to be a lot of suffering in regards to climate change. I think it's happening. It's,

00:26:05.920 it's man-made, but there's also like literally nothing we can do about it except for carbon

00:26:11.080 sequestration, which I think it's potentially a very big thing we could do about it. But I think

00:26:15.180 it is hugely underfunded when you contrast it was stupid climate efforts, like banning straws or 0.99

00:26:21.120 something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that just stands out to me as I look 0.99

00:26:26.800 back on all of it is the difference between the cultural movement and like the nerds. And the

00:26:31.660 cultural movement never really cared. It was always just about aesthetics and about in enforcing 0.56

00:26:37.080 uniformity within their community. They weren't shaming you for drinking out of a plastic straw

00:26:42.200 because they believed that it was going to hurt the environment like deeply and intellectually.

00:26:47.220 They shamed you because in your culture, in this community, we don't drink out of plastic straws.

00:26:53.420 It was an internal status hierarchy.

00:26:55.300 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just like, you know, how dare you dress like a prep? This is the goth club, 0.98

00:27:02.200 that kind of thing.

00:27:02.920 So you said something at the beginning of this interview when you were like, I'm not interview

00:27:06.240 talk, but I sort of treated it like an interview at the beginning. When I was asking you like,

00:27:10.620 okay, so you're young. Why specifically? Like if you had to explain to somebody why you cared

00:27:15.460 about the environment, what would you say? Like, like, like I, other than just it's around,

00:27:21.180 like if you had to justify to me, I am a conservative who met you, not a conservative,

00:27:24.960 a weirdo, a weirder who hates the environment.

00:27:26.600 I would say it's one of the most existential threats that faces humanity at this time.

00:27:30.120 And you would explain why you don't believe that's the case, but I would fully believe

00:27:34.260 that is the most important thing. Largely because I'm, I was at the time unaware of many

00:27:40.740 other important problems, including that we need an environmental stasis to survive as a species.

00:27:47.080 I mean, we have destroyed many environments. You want to talk about fucking up environments?

00:27:51.120 Look at the environments of the Americas after the Native Americans got here, right? Like, 1.00

00:27:55.980 there's a fucking reason you're not seeing giant sloths anymore. 0.99

00:27:59.900 Oh, you're blaming humans for giant, were they hunted to extinction? 0.99

00:28:03.920 Oh, most certainly. Yeah. Humans destroyed almost all megafauna. Honestly, I think that humanity

00:28:08.680 was a megafauna hunting species and we were specifically designed for like evolution.

00:28:13.580 We're bringing them back. Don't worry. Don't worry. It's fine. We're going to fix it.

00:28:16.700 I'm bringing back the mammoths and stuff. We're going to fix it.

00:28:18.260 Well, I want to see giant sloths. That's what I want to see.

00:28:20.520 I want to know how fucking scary they were. I bet mammoths tasted really good. Or maybe 0.99

00:28:26.700 it was too funny. We'll find out soon, hopefully. Right?

00:28:29.080 No, actually, there was a group of people who like cooked them when they found it. Remember

00:28:32.060 they found one that had like meat? Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. What did they say tasted like?

00:28:36.740 Hmm. I don't remember. But I mean, it probably, I mean, if it's that old, you know, like things

00:28:44.060 in the freezer that, you know, you won't even eat hamburger meat that we've frozen. So I

00:28:50.340 doubt that it tasted good.

00:28:52.860 Okay. Well, no, I, I, I do hear what you're saying. Yeah. So historically, yeah. Humans

00:28:58.720 really fucked up environments when they first got to them. Yeah. But so have other organisms. 0.99

00:29:02.980 It is a thing that things do. It is a thing that living, living stuff does.

00:29:09.380 Yeah. But humans were uniquely good, but I'm talking about, you know, aboriginal humans.

00:29:13.540 I'm talking about native Americans. I'm talking about, this is not a European thing.

00:29:19.140 Like we're apex predators. What do you want? That's what we do. We're apex. I mean, I guess

00:29:26.180 my, my thing is like, as time has gone on, I've been asking myself more and more like other

00:29:34.380 than cultural preservation and outside of genetic preservation of the environment, like a genetic

00:29:39.880 catalog of the environment. I just see the issue as much less existential when contrasted

00:29:46.900 with other issues. Yeah. I mean, I guess per our value set in our worldview, it's important

00:29:53.980 that we have a stable world long enough to get off planet and things get a lot harder when

00:30:00.860 the environment breaks down. If like, you know, if, if undersea currents reverse and cause severe

00:30:07.240 weather changes, you know, when people start focusing more on surviving than getting us off

00:30:12.360 planet, that's going to set us back. You know, this is, these are things that are not ideal.

00:30:16.740 And I will clarify that there are some like genuine risks around global warming. Like the case of a

00:30:22.740 chain reaction, you know, recurring cycle greenhouse effect due to like sulfur melting in the ocean

00:30:30.940 floor and stuff like that. I don't remember exactly how we're talking about. I'm really worried about

00:30:34.200 sea currents. Well, and sea currents reversing would have a major effect in some areas. So,

00:30:39.160 so there's some like really fucking serious shit that's going to happen as part of this process. 0.99

00:30:44.240 But one, I think that the true, like, just like out of control chain reaction, when I look at the 0.99

00:30:49.880 science, it just doesn't seem to be there. It doesn't seem to be likely. And when I look at,

00:30:54.920 or at least it's dramatically less likely than something like a killer AI. And when I look at other

00:31:00.660 things like, like the sea current and stuff like that, there's just not a lot we can do about that

00:31:04.060 at this point. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the, that's the problem that I think about more.

00:31:08.900 Simone, I loved chatting with you about this. I loved that as a youth, you know, you went exploring

00:31:13.920 something that you were told had value by your cultural group, but you were still open to learn

00:31:19.460 and have your ears open and have your opinion changed even before you met me on this issue.

00:31:25.820 Yeah. I can get some credit for that. Don't I?

00:31:30.060 I love you, Simone. I love you too. Gorgeous.

00:31:32.460 Gorgeous.

00:31:36.640 Go ahead.

00:31:37.980 Gorgeous.

00:31:38.760 Go ahead.

Based Camp - November 24, 2023

The Scam of Environmentalism

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