Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1053 Scott Adams： Talking With Michael Shellenberger About Apocalypse Never, A Terrific Book

00:00:00.000 bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum 0.99

00:00:09.120 bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in it's time for coffee Scott Adams the best part of

00:00:18.960 the whole day every single time yeah you think there'll be a day that goes by and

00:00:25.320 You'll think, well, maybe today will be the day that the simultaneous sip

00:00:29.300 and coffee with Scott Adams is not the best part of the day.

00:00:33.380 And then you find out it is, right?

00:00:36.080 So you might as well just give in to it.

00:00:38.060 It's the best part of the day.

00:00:39.760 There's no way around it.

00:00:41.700 And today will be no exception.

00:00:44.060 All you need for the simultaneous sip is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank

00:00:47.480 or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:00:53.300 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:55.320 I like coffee.

00:00:57.960 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,

00:01:01.760 the thing that makes everything, including the environment, coronavirus,

00:01:08.260 the economy, racism, all of it a little bit better.

00:01:12.920 Here it goes, the simultaneous sip.

00:01:18.360 Mm-hmm.

00:01:18.960 Yep.

00:01:20.760 Yep.

00:01:21.400 I can feel everything improving now.

00:01:25.320 Now, I have a special guest, which I'm going to wait for a moment until he gets on here.

00:01:31.240 If the technology doesn't work today, we'll figure something out.

00:01:40.240 So let me just check here.

00:01:41.880 I'm trying to talk to Michael Schellenberger when he is available, which will be any moment now,

00:01:48.980 about his incredible new book that I read, and you should be proud of me.

00:01:56.120 It's kind of a big book, and I actually read it.

00:01:59.280 Whoa! 0.71

00:02:00.200 Can you believe it?

00:02:01.940 Yes, I did.

00:02:02.840 All right, Michael, if you're having trouble getting on, I will be looking for a message for you, just so as I know.

00:02:15.300 All right.

00:02:16.400 Michael says he's there.

00:02:19.200 But, Michael, you say you're there, but when I look at my guest list, you do not appear.

00:02:27.160 So there's an icon at the bottom of your screen.

00:02:32.540 Click the happy faces icon at bottom.

00:02:43.960 And once Michael clicks that, I will see him, and then I will add him on, which I think might be happening right now.

00:02:51.400 Yes, it is.

00:02:52.220 So let's see if our technology works.

00:02:58.200 Michael, can you hear me?

00:03:01.140 Hey, it worked.

00:03:02.720 So let me tell the audience what we've got going here.

00:03:07.560 So this is Michael Schellenberger, whose amazing new book, Apocalypse Never, which you can see right here,

00:03:15.540 which is just now – I just said it's number seven on Amazon's most read books of the week.

00:03:20.880 I don't know if all of you know this, but Amazon puts out a lot of books.

00:03:25.600 If you can be number seven on their most read list, holy cow, it's number one in a bunch of categories that apply to it.

00:03:34.000 And, Michael, would you describe yourself as an environmentalist activist still, or is that where you started and you've evolved?

00:03:45.380 How would you describe yourself for the audience?

00:03:47.220 I still consider myself an environmentalist and an environmental activist.

00:03:51.760 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,

00:03:59.520 certainly one of the most important environmental technologies.

00:04:02.100 So, yeah, I guess you can now say I'm a best-selling author too, which is pretty cool.

00:04:05.980 You know, the thing that I loved about your book – and by the way, I don't usually like books, I have to admit.

00:04:13.620 You know, even when I read them, I think, well, you know, maybe I shouldn't have.

00:04:17.980 But I actually loved every part of your book because your writing is excellent.

00:04:22.280 It keeps me engaged the whole time because your personal story was woven in with it all.

00:04:28.220 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?

00:04:37.960 Yeah, that would be a very interesting experiment, wouldn't it?

00:04:42.180 I would want a lot of other people to be present, that's for sure.

00:04:45.160 It would be quite a show.

00:04:46.400 All right, so your book is sort of a tour through the environmental – not only the history and the psychology of it,

00:04:55.780 which I found actually the most interesting part was the psychology of how we got to where we are in various ways.

00:05:02.520 But when you looked into everything from solar to wind to, you know, the Amazon rainforest and all this,

00:05:11.000 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

00:05:18.480 in terms of things that people generally believe to be true that just aren't true?

00:05:24.360 Oh, man, there's so many of them.

00:05:26.380 I mean, I think one of the most fun – the two most fun chapters in a way were the chapters that –

00:05:32.480 on plastic waste and on meat because these are two topics that I had certainly read about

00:05:38.540 but I had never really properly researched, much less consider myself an expert on.

00:05:43.080 So, I mean, one of the most surprising things was, you know, I opened this chapter on plastic

00:05:48.300 by describing this very famous viral YouTube video where a marine biologist pulls a plastic straw

00:05:55.740 out of the nose of a sea turtle.

00:05:58.980 And I learned more about the history of these sea turtles.

00:06:02.480 And one of the things I learned is that they were being over-harvested.

00:06:06.660 They were being killed for their shells to make tortoise shell glasses.

00:06:12.700 Tortoise shell glasses.

00:06:13.880 The tortoise shell was misnamed.

00:06:15.200 It was sea turtle because sea turtle shells were the original plastic.

00:06:20.600 They were original bioplastic.

00:06:22.640 So it turns out that the plastics that we use today made from petroleum products

00:06:27.440 actually helped to save sea turtles.

00:06:31.080 They also helped to save elephants because they were substitutes for the ivory in elephant tusks.

00:06:36.660 So it was stories like that where you discover these things that you were told are super terrible,

00:06:41.720 often had a really important role in protecting the environment, even plastic.

00:06:46.700 The surprising part about that is that the sea turtle that had the straw up his nose,

00:06:51.440 I didn't even know sea turtles did cocaine.

00:06:54.260 So that was surprising to me.

00:06:56.780 No, turtles don't do cocaine. 0.68

00:06:59.600 I just made that up.

00:07:00.680 All right, so one of the things I found most powerful about your book is the people who want to save the world

00:07:09.620 seem to be destroying it, and they don't know why.

00:07:12.820 They don't know it.

00:07:14.420 Can you walk us through what a developing nation needs to do to become a good nation,

00:07:21.000 and can they get there with solar power?

00:07:24.140 I mean, I joke that because I wrote this book.

00:07:28.020 I dedicated this book to my children who are ages 14 and 21,

00:07:32.340 so I wanted people to be able to read it who were just 14 years old,

00:07:36.980 so I tried to make it as simple as possible with a lot of stories,

00:07:41.300 and I talked about how really the process of economic development,

00:07:45.900 unless you're Saudi Arabia, is basically the same everywhere.

00:07:49.780 You go from having a country where almost everybody is a small farmer

00:07:53.300 to getting factories, people working in cities,

00:07:59.020 and that the only way to do that is by moving away from renewables,

00:08:03.060 away from wood and dung, water wheels, towards fossil fuels.

00:08:08.840 And to some extent, hydroelectric dams are very important.

00:08:12.320 Hydroelectric dams, I consider the highest form of renewables

00:08:16.200 because they provide so much reliable power.

00:08:20.540 But really, it's a story of rising energy consumption.

00:08:25.140 Increased energy consumption is actually good for the environment

00:08:27.840 because energy is a substitute for matter,

00:08:30.640 which is what we call the natural environment.

00:08:34.140 So, yeah, I mean, this trend I condemn, I criticize here,

00:08:38.460 which is this idea that we should stop funding hydroelectric dams, roads,

00:08:43.300 electrical grids, modern agriculture,

00:08:45.700 and instead the World Bank is giving small farmers a solar panel and a battery

00:08:50.560 and saying, hey, good luck with that.

00:08:53.000 That's simply not going to work.

00:08:56.240 So would it be fair to say that environmentalists, if they got their way,

00:09:00.900 would lock all of the poor people into poverty basically forever?

00:09:05.740 Because nobody's figured out how to get out of poverty without doing it the way you just mentioned.

00:09:11.400 So would Greta, Greta would be destroying the lives of poor people forever? 0.99

00:09:17.040 Yeah, I mean, what they would say is, well, we should help them with some charity.

00:09:20.540 But for sure, the idea, and in fact, they've succeeded.

00:09:23.040 They've basically persuaded the World Bank, the European Development Bank,

00:09:26.480 all the big international development banks,

00:09:28.560 whose purpose after World War II was to lift everybody out of poverty.

00:09:32.340 They have diverted basically all of that money from energy that can lift people out of poverty,

00:09:38.680 whether it's a hydroelectric dam, a coal plant, or a nuclear plant,

00:09:42.640 to these little charitable experiments, a solar panel on a hut.

00:09:47.620 They've actually also denied countries the money they need for irrigation fertilizer, tractors,

00:09:54.280 which is the basis for – because when you have factories in cities,

00:09:58.800 you have to – your farmers, you have fewer farmers, and they have to grow more food.

00:10:02.940 It's just really simple.

00:10:04.720 So, yeah, I mean, it's an agenda that basically – you know, at the end of the book,

00:10:08.860 I have three chapters about kind of why is everybody so crazy on this environmental issue.

00:10:13.900 And I look at money, power, and religion, and the power – definitely there's an effort by rich people in the rich countries.

00:10:22.380 Greta Thunberg herself, Bill McKibben, the other characters in the book,

00:10:27.280 are actively trying to keep poor nations in poverty, and I think it's unconscionable.

00:10:33.440 So that's the most amazing part about this.

00:10:36.340 And I've always tried to figure out why people have different opinions on things where science should be the only opinion.

00:10:43.860 And the environmental one is the most amazing one.

00:10:47.620 And I don't know anybody who's looked into it as much as you have, who has your, I'll say, talent stack,

00:10:54.480 the ability to analyze things and communicate them.

00:10:57.400 I don't know anybody who comes down on a different side when they dig into it as much as you have.

00:11:02.280 And it feels like the environmentalists are, in some cases, just doing things for money or whatever.

00:11:08.380 But in many cases, I think they just don't have as deep a talent stack.

00:11:12.580 In other words, they're just not capable of looking at the field in its entirety.

00:11:17.660 They're just seeing part of the field.

00:11:19.020 Does it feel like that to you?

00:11:21.940 I mean, I think – I mean, I would say yes in some ways.

00:11:25.560 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 –

00:11:37.900 this is not some conspiracy theory.

00:11:39.540 I document all of this in the book – these are people that have never spent any time in poor countries.

00:11:45.220 These are people who have really never spent any time in the productive sectors of their own countries' energy and food economies.

00:11:52.640 I mean, I always joke that nobody's more alienated from nature than environmentalists.

00:11:58.980 Environmentalists are people that live in the city.

00:12:00.440 They want to put huge industrial wind turbines in the air shed of birds, bats, and insects in places where they don't live.

00:12:08.180 But if you ever get a wind turbine proposed for the coast of California or for the coast of Cape Cod,

00:12:14.100 those of us in the rich cities and the rich coast shut that down immediately.

00:12:17.760 So there's a lot of hypocrisy at work.

00:12:19.480 There's a lot of ignorance.

00:12:20.260 It's hard to pull them apart exactly.

00:12:23.580 Now, for the benefit of the audience, give us your view of climate change.

00:12:29.300 Is it man-made?

00:12:31.080 Is it alarming?

00:12:32.720 Give us your overview on where you think climate change is heading.

00:12:37.340 So my view is that climate change is real, but it's not the end of the world.

00:12:41.100 It's not even our most important environmental problem.

00:12:44.480 I think it's taken up way more of our attention and money and time than it should.

00:12:53.480 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.

00:13:10.720 We've basically forgotten about all those problems.

00:13:13.040 They don't even really get into the newspapers much anymore.

00:13:16.040 And then it's led people to do things that are clearly harmful.

00:13:20.060 I mean, the first one, and part of my motivation for writing the book, is that they've contributed to rising anxiety and depression among adolescents.

00:13:26.940 I'm not saying they're the sole cause, but they're certainly part of it.

00:13:30.520 Yeah, 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.

00:13:39.820 And it definitely had an effect on my whole mental makeup, probably permanently.

00:13:46.160 And I can't imagine that that's not messing up kids.

00:13:49.340 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.

00:14:01.140 Can you say something about that?

00:14:03.580 Well, yeah.

00:14:04.020 I mean, the last chapter in the book, and I think you know, I ended up actually hiring somebody from Extinction Rebellion, which is crazy.

00:14:13.320 But basically, the last part of the book, I'm in London.

00:14:16.520 I'm actually advocating for nuclear.

00:14:18.160 I went to 10 Downing Street.

00:14:19.520 I went to Parliament, met with former labor leader Jeremy Corbyn.

00:14:23.720 And I was making a case for nuclear, but I'm like trying to get through Trafalgar Square.

00:14:27.280 And it's just this crazy Extinction Rebellion protest.

00:14:30.320 Thousands of people are arrested.

00:14:32.320 And it's very disturbing. 0.94

00:14:35.040 I mean, they have up signs that say things like climate change kills children, which is just ridiculous. 0.94

00:14:42.160 It's like pseudoscience.

00:14:43.520 And so I spent some time trying to figure out what's going on here.

00:14:48.480 Like, what is this?

00:14:50.280 Well, obviously, you know, or maybe not obviously, but I think it's very clear when I review the research,

00:14:55.320 and I certainly think about my own history, that this is a religious movement.

00:15:00.380 You could say it's a religious cult.

00:15:02.140 I quote somebody, one of the best British columnists on this, called it the upper middle class death cult, which is not inaccurate. 1.00

00:15:10.880 And so what's going on, and I sort of point out that really these are, you know, apocalyptic environmentalists tend to be people who don't believe in traditional religion,

00:15:19.700 but they still have the need to believe in something.

00:15:24.160 They still have the need for personal transcendence, for some sense of immortality.

00:15:29.000 Now, is that, do you think that sense of immortality is that they're saving the world, so that that's their legacy?

00:15:36.420 How does the need for immortality or our basic need to feel like we have some lasting effect, is that where it is in saving the world?

00:15:47.340 Yeah, it's really exaggerated, right?

00:15:50.020 I mean, it's like a Marvel superhero story of yourself.

00:15:53.560 You know, I contrast it.

00:15:55.660 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,

00:16:02.480 my parents are the happiest I ever see them because they see their grandkids.

00:16:06.680 They are immortal, right?

00:16:08.700 They see that they are living on through their grandkids.

00:16:11.540 That's a healthy, normal fantasy or story of immortality that they have.

00:16:17.340 I think for this idea that I, as a person, I'm going to save the planet from climate change.

00:16:23.920 I mean, it's identical in structure to a Marvel superhero story.

00:16:27.640 It's so over the top. 0.98

00:16:29.260 It's so ridiculous. 0.90

00:16:31.000 And what, you know, we find is that basically a lot of what these apocalyptic environmentalists, 0.92

00:16:35.880 the story they're telling is a Judeo-Christian story, you know, of saving the whole planet from Armageddon.

00:16:44.000 And, but they don't even know that they're, they don't, they think they're just talking science.

00:16:48.500 They think that they're actually describing the world as it is.

00:16:50.960 They don't know that they're in the grip of a religion.

00:16:54.440 Yeah.

00:16:55.380 The, one of the hardest things for anybody is to know what you don't know.

00:16:59.540 And one of the things that I've noticed is that the environmental movement skews young, wouldn't you say?

00:17:06.140 That it's, it's a young person's movement.

00:17:08.760 Is that a fair statement?

00:17:10.140 Yeah.

00:17:10.420 I mean, I think, I think there's, I see a lot of the leaders and the activists in the apocalyptic climate change movement

00:17:17.620 being adolescents and middle-aged people, which are, is a kind of two existential moments in your life

00:17:26.500 where you're kind of like, who am I?

00:17:29.600 You know, what am I doing here?

00:17:31.120 What is my purpose?

00:17:32.660 You have it as an adolescent and then you often have a midlife crisis.

00:17:35.240 So, I think it reflects some insecure, some personal insecurity that people have around their own lives

00:17:42.600 and then they become part of a movement and it gives their lives meaning.

00:17:46.580 But, but ultimately, if I could sort of break it down like this, I mean, the difference between an environmentalist activist

00:17:53.140 and what you are is that you know more than they do.

00:17:57.360 I mean, it kind of comes down to that, isn't it?

00:17:59.360 You've just looked into it in more detail and so you can see the whole field

00:18:03.640 and you can see that, for example, solar isn't, isn't going to solve all our problems.

00:18:09.800 But the person who hasn't done the work is going to say, well, you know, Elon Musk says solar is going to work

00:18:17.100 without realizing that Elon Musk is a competitor to other forms of energy, which is one of the things you talk about.

00:18:25.180 Can you say something about that, about how, how, what is it that's caused people to think that solar could solve their problems

00:18:33.200 when it's so obvious that it can't?

00:18:36.240 Well, that's right.

00:18:36.920 I mean, when you, when you see people, this incredible love for renewables and the anger that people have at you

00:18:44.620 when you point out all of the obvious problems with it, you know, like the wind turbines are spinning blades

00:18:50.340 that kill a lot of endangered species or that the solar panels require covering 400 times more land

00:18:57.120 than a natural gas or a nuclear plant require.

00:19:00.000 When you just point out those problems, advocates of renewables, apocalyptic environmentalists,

00:19:05.340 they get really angry in the same way that like a true believer gets mad when you suggest that their God isn't real.

00:19:12.900 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.

00:19:19.660 Renewables have always been viewed as a way to harmonize human society with nature.

00:19:24.040 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.

00:19:31.120 There's now by supposedly secular people, an effort to get right by nature and science becomes kind of a new religion.

00:19:40.360 You know, I've always noticed people always have this need to be part of something that's bigger than themselves

00:19:45.640 and maybe get approval from something bigger than themselves.

00:19:49.040 So, as you're talking about, it's like you try to get God's approval if you're a believer,

00:19:54.380 but if you're not a believer, maybe you need nature's approval.

00:19:57.960 Maybe we're just wires, so we need that approval from the bigger power.

00:20:03.080 So, I gotta, I gotta ask you about nuclear.

00:20:07.220 Is our country going in the right direction finally?

00:20:10.620 I know the president doesn't say much about nuclear,

00:20:13.420 but the Department of Energy does seem to be doing some things.

00:20:16.620 Is it moving in the right direction, in your opinion?

00:20:19.980 Not really, unfortunately.

00:20:21.840 I'm afraid the nuclear industry itself is committed to manage decline.

00:20:27.060 They announce a lot of R&D projects,

00:20:29.900 but honestly, there, you know, there is no effort to maintain our existing nuclear plants or build new ones.

00:20:38.060 So, what we've got is a lot of demonstration projects, I think,

00:20:42.140 that are attempted to kind of make us feel better about a basically bad situation.

00:20:46.980 Now, is that not, at least in part,

00:20:49.620 because there's some desire to get to so-called Generation 4

00:20:53.720 that we don't know how to do yet, exactly?

00:20:56.880 So, there's some iteration and testing,

00:20:59.500 and the government, they built some kind of a test facility to do that, didn't they?

00:21:03.900 Or they're building it?

00:21:04.660 Yeah, that's the idea.

00:21:07.020 I mean, the problem is I've just done so much,

00:21:09.380 I just know so much about the history of this,

00:21:11.300 that we see this repeatedly,

00:21:12.700 where, you know, there's all these demonstration efforts.

00:21:16.100 There's been so many prototypes and demonstration reactors made,

00:21:20.700 and they don't ever go anywhere.

00:21:22.800 I mean, what really gets nuclear plants built

00:21:24.920 is when utilities decide to build plants,

00:21:28.060 and they usually end up building the same kind of plant

00:21:31.460 or a very similar kind of plant to one that's been operating.

00:21:34.660 So, you know, my concern is not that I'm not,

00:21:37.500 I have no problem with the demonstration efforts.

00:21:39.580 My problem is that we're not doing the things

00:21:42.740 that the Russians and the Chinese and the French

00:21:45.580 and the people that are serious about having a nuclear expansion are doing,

00:21:48.940 which is to build full-size lightwater reactors.

00:21:52.200 That's why I'm so obsessed with Britain right now.

00:21:54.340 Britain's considering building six full-size lightwater reactors.

00:21:58.180 It's got two under construction.

00:21:59.480 That's what it looks like when countries are going seriously on nuclear,

00:22:03.860 and unfortunately, we're not doing that.

00:22:06.400 And for our audience that's not up to date,

00:22:08.800 the types of nuclear that other countries are looking at building

00:22:12.240 would all be type three?

00:22:14.600 Would you call it, you know, a third generation,

00:22:18.000 which has never had a meltdown that killed anybody yet?

00:22:21.760 Is that true?

00:22:22.860 Oh, yeah, of course.

00:22:23.880 I mean, really, we haven't had a, I mean, you know,

00:22:27.620 even Fukushima's radiation didn't kill anybody, and that was Gen 2.

00:22:30.640 So, yeah, it's Gen 3.

00:22:32.720 These are, in some ways, honestly, they're just over-engineered.

00:22:36.860 In the book, I talk about the fear of nuclear

00:22:39.220 and the deeper rationality and ideological nature of the fears.

00:22:43.360 But my view has always been on nuclear that we make,

00:22:48.640 we too often make the perfect enemy of the good,

00:22:51.300 and really what works is to just build, get practice building,

00:22:55.120 have the same guys building the same reactors over time.

00:22:57.740 That's how costs come down.

00:23:00.660 If, so if you were to say, you know,

00:23:03.780 you were the president of the United States instantly,

00:23:06.000 and you were going to say, all right,

00:23:07.280 I'm going to fix nuclear energy in this country,

00:23:09.480 would you look at forced standardization?

00:23:14.460 Would you just get out of the way and remove regulations

00:23:17.340 if some of them are unnecessary?

00:23:19.660 I don't even know if they are.

00:23:21.420 Where's the lever?

00:23:22.440 What would you focus on to change first to fix it?

00:23:26.900 I mean, the most important thing is to have a national consensus

00:23:29.600 on a long-term plan for taking nuclear from 20% to 50% of our electricity by 2050.

00:23:37.600 I mean, I think that's a pretty reasonable goal.

00:23:40.140 You would then work with the utilities and the states

00:23:42.600 because we do have a fragmented utility system.

00:23:45.200 You know, most countries, it's a single utility or a couple of them.

00:23:50.220 We have so many utilities because we're such a big country.

00:23:53.600 The most important thing is to have a goal and work towards it.

00:23:56.680 And yeah, I think standardization would be the obvious way.

00:23:59.880 But I thought the real problem is that the economics don't work

00:24:03.060 because it just takes so long to get it approved.

00:24:05.800 If you don't fix that, it doesn't matter how much leadership you have, does it?

00:24:10.600 If you're doing unapproved designs, sure.

00:24:13.900 But we have a perfectly great, I mean, it's really great,

00:24:16.780 advanced pressurized water-cooled reactor called the AP-1000.

00:24:22.360 They're building two of them in Georgia.

00:24:24.900 Those workers are literally a national asset.

00:24:28.780 I mean, I go those construction workers because they know how to pour cement

00:24:31.600 and make rebar and weld at nuclear-grade standards.

00:24:36.060 After they're done, they should move up the road to South Carolina

00:24:38.560 and build two more nuclear reactors there.

00:24:41.380 They would then, you would basically, if they have a national building program,

00:24:44.500 it would just spread because the key is that the workers themselves,

00:24:48.580 there's so much specialized skills involved, speaking of skill stacking,

00:24:52.820 that they are, these workers, I mean, it's tragic.

00:24:57.380 If we don't build more nuclear plants after those two AP-1000s,

00:24:59.860 we're going to lose so much valuable asset in those workers.

00:25:04.260 It's scary to me.

00:25:05.440 Is this the same kind of skill?

00:25:07.800 I know pouring concrete is not the same skill you'd need to make a nuclear engine

00:25:12.320 for a submarine or later for a space force,

00:25:17.700 but we have the same problem, right?

00:25:19.700 Because space will be nuclear-powered.

00:25:22.180 That's a guarantee, isn't it?

00:25:24.020 Oh, yeah.

00:25:24.740 I mean, if you're serious.

00:25:25.780 So if we don't have a big nuclear energy capability,

00:25:32.760 you know, a robust, full industry in the United States,

00:25:35.560 we're not going to own space.

00:25:37.820 And whoever owns space owns the Earth.

00:25:40.180 That's pretty much a guarantee, wouldn't you say?

00:25:43.400 Absolutely.

00:25:44.440 I think you make a, I don't, I think I haven't done enough with this question.

00:25:47.240 I'm very interested in space.

00:25:48.940 I'm very interested in national security implications of space.

00:25:53.580 I mean, I, and you're right.

00:25:55.280 I mean, really, nuclear, the innovation on nuclear has really come from the military.

00:26:01.640 That's how we got our existing lightwater designs.

00:26:03.720 And the left has, the pro-nuclear left has often condemned our existing lightwater technology

00:26:10.780 by saying it came from the military, but that's the strength of it.

00:26:13.840 I mean, that's where our microchips came from.

00:26:15.540 That's where personal computers came from.

00:26:17.000 That's where the Internet came from.

00:26:18.260 Yeah, right.

00:26:18.700 Why are we embarrassed about the military roots of these technologies?

00:26:21.880 That's why they're so great.

00:26:23.220 Right.

00:26:23.560 Yeah, that's a, that's a weird thing to be angry at.

00:26:27.540 So, well, Michael, is there anything you want to leave us with?

00:26:30.340 I'm going to go on to some other topics here.

00:26:32.920 And is there anything that we need to know that I didn't ask?

00:26:36.960 I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you, Scott, for plugging the book.

00:26:40.040 I hope people get it.

00:26:41.080 You should know that I've been now censored twice.

00:26:43.400 I was censored by Forbes, who took down my original column announcing the book.

00:26:47.820 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 article censored on Facebook.

00:27:04.080 So, please sign up at Environmental Progress to get updates directly from me.

00:27:09.100 Please buy the book.

00:27:10.420 I would love to hear from readers.

00:27:12.080 It's really exciting to have the conversation.

00:27:14.440 All right.

00:27:14.740 It's Apocalypse Never, Michael Schellenberger.

00:27:17.640 It's a bestseller written all over it.

00:27:20.060 And it's already a bestseller.

00:27:21.860 And congratulations on the book.

00:27:23.200 It's really, it's really, this is, this is a really good book.

00:27:26.360 I mean, it really is.

00:27:27.240 You did a great job on this.

00:27:28.780 So, thank you, Michael.

00:27:29.920 Thanks, Scott.

00:27:30.760 All right.

00:27:31.060 Take care.

00:27:32.000 Take care.

00:27:34.760 All right.

00:27:35.980 That was very interesting.

00:27:37.520 Let's talk about some other things.

00:27:40.280 For example, Trump's taxes.

00:27:44.380 So, let me summarize the entire situation about Trump's taxes.

00:27:50.600 Blah, blah, blah, some legal stuff.

00:27:53.560 Blah, blah, lawyers disagree.

00:27:56.420 Blah, blah, blah, court.

00:27:58.540 Blah, blah, blah, will be appealed.

00:28:01.020 Blah, blah, blah, will take a long time.

00:28:03.640 Blah, blah, blah, may not make any difference for the election because it may be delayed until after that.

00:28:09.460 Blah, blah, blah, precedent.

00:28:11.220 There you go.

00:28:12.300 That's everything you need to know about Trump's taxes.

00:28:15.140 I am loving the story about Mayor de Blasio and the protesters painting this giant Black Lives Matter, I don't know what you'd call it, a sign or a message, on the road directly in front of Trump Tower.

00:28:32.500 And here's what I love about it.

00:28:34.320 I always put myself in the story and say, well, what if I were Trump?

00:28:40.560 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?

00:28:53.800 And I had the following feeling.

00:28:57.020 When I first saw the workers doing their thing, their painting, you can't see what they're doing yet.

00:29:03.300 You just see that people are doing something.

00:29:05.300 My first thought was, ah, it's going to be an eyesore and, you know, I wish we wouldn't waste our time on such things.

00:29:13.460 And then you see the aerial view of it and I'm thinking to myself, they're actually pretty good at making stuff.

00:29:21.240 Whoever mapped out the letters in Black Lives Matter and picked the color and the font did a really good job.

00:29:30.340 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 you some context.

00:29:40.200 I also like tattoos and scars because they tell you a story about a moment in time.

00:29:47.960 And the Black Lives Matter thing not only looks good in the same sense that Mount Rushmore just looks good.

00:29:56.900 You know, if Mount Rushmore were done poorly, would you go to see it?

00:30:02.320 Just because it's big and there were presidents' heads on it?

00:30:05.320 If they didn't quite look like the presidents, would you bother going to see it?

00:30:09.740 No, it matters that it's done well.

00:30:12.060 That's what makes Mount Rushmore so impressive.

00:30:14.060 It's done well plus it's big.

00:30:16.380 So this Black Lives Matter thing, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, I kind of like it.

00:30:20.820 If I were the president, I'd say, thank you.

00:30:26.480 I would just say, you know, I didn't love it, the idea, but when I saw it, you did a good job on it.

00:30:32.980 I think I like it.

00:30:35.240 Imagine if the president said, you know, it kind of looks good there.

00:30:39.440 Let's keep it maintained.

00:30:41.140 Let's make sure that nobody ruins it.

00:30:43.760 What would that do to people's heads?

00:30:46.120 Would they explode?

00:30:46.960 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.

00:30:57.220 And he's not so pro the organization, but of course, he, like everybody in the world, would agree with the concept.

00:31:06.180 So if I were him, I'd just say I would call it a concept, not an organization.

00:31:10.480 I'd say, it's kind of cool.

00:31:13.860 Let's leave it there.

00:31:14.600 That's how I treat it, because I actually do like it.

00:31:20.000 This was interesting.

00:31:22.120 So yesterday, I got a direct message from a small, I guess you'd call them a startup.

00:31:29.460 They're kind of new, called Ground News.

00:31:32.820 Ground, like the ground you stand on, news.

00:31:35.700 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.

00:31:46.880 And then you can see how it's covered differently by the left and the right.

00:31:49.820 So it's a really good idea to give you more of a landscape of the bias in the news industry.

00:31:59.220 So 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.

00:32:11.520 And it's funny, because you look at the ground and 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.

00:32:23.320 But the outlets on the right and the middle are like, well, it's a story.

00:32:28.160 The president's doing it.

00:32:29.460 It's a national story.

00:32:30.960 Of course we're going to write about it.

00:32:32.980 But the left, crickets.

00:32:36.240 Now think about that.

00:32:37.480 Think how important the Hispanic American vote will be.

00:32:43.140 And here's Trump signing, I don't know what the details are, but he's expanding educational and economic opportunity for Hispanics.

00:32:50.440 And you would think that that would be a big deal.

00:32:54.040 Now here's the fun part.

00:32:56.560 So this little startup, I think calling them a startup is correct.

00:33:01.100 Ground News sends me this thing because I think I'd be interested.

00:33:04.100 And I was.

00:33:05.040 It was pretty interesting.

00:33:06.720 Now, by the way, there are also stories which show like a big crickets on the right.

00:33:13.240 So the story about Trump's Southern District of New York legal stuff, that was covered mostly by the left and Fox News.

00:33:25.580 And that was about it.

00:33:27.380 So it works both ways.

00:33:29.760 But I will note that Fox News is a little bit more likely to cover all the stories than other outlets.

00:33:35.760 At least that's what it looked like.

00:33:37.580 But here's the fun part.

00:33:38.540 So I tweeted the little story about the executive order.

00:33:44.240 And I woke up this morning and Trump, President Trump had retweeted it.

00:33:49.580 So this little startup, Ground News, woke up to something like 60 times the amount of traffic they normally get.

00:33:58.120 There's sites blowing up.

00:33:59.740 So that was fun.

00:34:01.480 Anyway.

00:34:04.480 Well, let's see.

00:34:05.640 You know, I tweeted this as a prediction.

00:34:10.320 Let's see what you think.

00:34:11.460 So I predicted this.

00:34:13.060 That someday somebody is going to compile a list of companies that employ people who have publicly called for boycotts on other companies.

00:34:24.100 All right.

00:34:24.560 So wouldn't you like to know when you see somebody on Twitter calling for a boycott?

00:34:29.220 Wouldn't you like to know where they work?

00:34:33.880 Because that's just fair, right?

00:34:36.280 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.

00:34:45.820 But they found out something about whatever their target is, whoever they're going to boycott or cancel.

00:34:51.380 They know something extra about that person that causes them trouble.

00:34:56.300 Is it not fair that we just have a little more transparency?

00:35:01.780 Wouldn't you like to know who accuses you?

00:35:03.840 In the legal system, you have a right to know who your accuser is.

00:35:09.160 What kind of world would it be if you didn't know who your accuser was?

00:35:12.600 But I think you should also know where they work.

00:35:17.460 You know, what's their job?

00:35:19.100 Because if somebody goes after somebody else's job, I think that person has a right to know, where do you work?

00:35:27.880 Where do you work?

00:35:29.620 Right.

00:35:30.160 So if you were calling for a boycott on this company, Goya, G-O-Y-A, I guess they're a food company.

00:35:37.280 The CEO said some nice things about President Trump, and now the left wants to cancel.

00:35:42.600 Wouldn't you like to know where all those cancelers work or where they'll work in the future?

00:35:49.080 Because I think that it needs to be mutually assured destruction.

00:35:54.260 You know, we need to probably, in order to have free speech in this country in a way that, let's say, the market allows as well as the Constitution.

00:36:04.140 Right now the Constitution says yes, but the free market says no.

00:36:08.040 Well, maybe you can't say those things without losing your job.

00:36:13.400 So without some sense of mutually assured destruction that's somewhat immediate and personal, I don't see any of it ever changing.

00:36:22.760 Because in my opinion, it's completely fair to complain about somebody's opinion.

00:36:28.200 Completely fair.

00:36:29.300 Of course.

00:36:30.180 That's freedom of speech.

00:36:31.200 But when you go after somebody's job because of their opinion, your own job should be at risk.

00:36:38.900 That feels like the minimum, right?

00:36:40.960 If you punch somebody in public, the reason you don't do that is you think you'll get punched back.

00:36:51.880 You know, you're even more so than you're worried about going to jail, you'll immediately be punched back.

00:36:58.960 So there's a reason people don't punch people in public.

00:37:02.200 But right now there's no reason you can't try to cancel somebody in public.

00:37:05.980 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.

00:37:17.220 We're going to boycott.

00:37:18.220 We're going to call all your newspapers and cancel you.

00:37:20.420 To which I say, isn't that fair?

00:37:24.440 Isn't it fair that if I were to criticize somebody on social media, that they know who I am and where I work?

00:37:33.800 I think that is fair.

00:37:35.520 I would also like to know who they are and where they work.

00:37:38.880 You know, just so we have full transparency.

00:37:42.240 I don't think you can solve this otherwise.

00:37:45.540 So, hey, here's some fun news.

00:37:49.620 Cartoonist Gary Larson has decided to come out of retirement and draw some new comics.

00:37:54.600 So you can Google Gary Larson, the far side.

00:37:57.480 You'll see his site.

00:37:58.400 It'll pop up.

00:37:59.720 So that was just announced.

00:38:00.920 I knew about this for a while because we have the same syndication company.

00:38:05.520 But it's exciting.

00:38:06.960 And he's actually got some new comics.

00:38:08.800 Now, what's fun about this is that Gary Larson, when he retired, he had still been drawing with paper and pen.

00:38:14.880 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.

00:38:24.960 And so for his new stuff, he's teaching himself to use a digital something like what I use.

00:38:31.820 I imagine he's using the same thing.

00:38:33.640 This is my drawing surface.

00:38:35.160 It's just a computer screen that you can also draw on with a stylus from Wacom, W-A-C-M-O-M, W-A-C-O-M.

00:38:46.600 And so you'll see some of his new digital art.

00:38:50.100 Some of you will be very interested in that.

00:38:52.560 All right.

00:38:52.760 Biden is coming out with some specific proposals that look like they would destroy the country completely.

00:39:01.640 And I've never had that feeling before.

00:39:06.400 I've never actually had that feeling.

00:39:08.320 Have you?

00:39:08.660 In the past, when there have been presidents that were candidates that maybe I liked more than the other,

00:39:17.720 I never really thought that the other candidate would destroy the world.

00:39:22.320 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?

00:39:28.580 It turns out it was quite different because we got a couple of wars out of Bush.

00:39:31.920 But I didn't think in advance it was the end of the world if one got elected versus the other.

00:39:38.180 And generally speaking, you know, that's what I think.

00:39:40.920 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?

00:39:47.820 You might not have liked it, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

00:39:51.020 But when I look at the Biden situation and I see that, first of all, he's not the guy in control.

00:39:57.000 That's obvious.

00:39:57.600 So you don't know who's in control, which is pretty scary.

00:40:02.120 Wouldn't you like to know who the president is?

00:40:04.860 We have a situation where you won't actually know who's in control if Biden gets elected.

00:40:11.240 But he's got some ideas that could actually destroy the whole civilization.

00:40:17.560 Let me give you an example.

00:40:20.660 I'd like to see somebody who's in favor of relaxing borders describe what it looks like in their mind.

00:40:28.800 Like, what does the world look like in a year or two years or whatever?

00:40:33.800 If they get exactly what they want, what happens?

00:40:38.300 How does it look?

00:40:39.560 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.

00:40:47.620 There's still immigration, but, you know, we're trying to, you know, fit the employees to the jobs without, you know, burdening employment in this country.

00:40:57.300 You kind of know what that looks like, right?

00:40:59.420 It looks a lot like now, but with better, better border control.

00:41:04.800 Maybe a little less crime coming in, but who knows if you'd even notice.

00:41:11.220 But what does it look like if you don't have border control and you've got more sanctuary cities that Biden is suggesting?

00:41:19.000 Is there any world in which that would not attract the cartels, for example?

00:41:24.580 Is there any world in which the United States would not eventually be run by Mexican cartels, for all practical purposes?

00:41:34.380 I can't imagine any way that wouldn't happen if we have enough people coming across the border.

00:41:40.860 So it's a question of numbers.

00:41:42.940 So I'd like to see people ask that question of what that looks like.

00:41:47.640 And it's the same question with the Green New Deal, which seems to be sort of pushed into the back burner for the moment.

00:41:54.260 But as I was talking with Michael Schellenberger, what do people think it looks like for poor countries if the Green New Deal happens?

00:42:03.620 Like, fast forward that.

00:42:05.540 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? 1.00

00:42:14.480 You know, where are they in 20 years?

00:42:16.840 They're still where they were, right?

00:42:18.080 They haven't gone anywhere.

00:42:20.300 All right.

00:42:21.740 So Biden's new campaign slogan is, build back better.

00:42:27.400 Build back better.

00:42:29.600 Biden says, build back better.

00:42:31.680 What do you think of that?

00:42:33.480 Build back better.

00:42:35.460 On one hand, it's sort of catchy because you are encouraged to repeat it in your head.

00:42:43.000 Build back better.

00:42:44.480 Hey, it's got a lot of B's in it.

00:42:45.780 Biden, build back better.

00:42:47.220 So that part's good.

00:42:48.560 But I don't find it easy to remember.

00:42:52.640 Build back better.

00:42:54.320 I feel as if there will be a point where he won't remember his own slogan.

00:42:59.480 Whereas, make America great again, you kind of hear that once and you'll remember it forever, right?

00:43:05.860 So let me give you a writing tip.

00:43:14.020 Listen to the percussion of these two things.

00:43:19.000 Make America great again.

00:43:20.420 Just listen to the percussion.

00:43:24.580 Imagine that it was an instrument.

00:43:27.040 Make America great again.

00:43:29.340 Now listen to build back better.

00:43:32.260 One of them is more musical, right?

00:43:37.160 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?

00:43:45.680 Build back better.

00:43:46.540 Or would you rather hear make America great again?

00:43:49.560 There's a big difference.

00:43:52.860 So I would say that build back better was probably designed by a political operative and not an expert on persuasion.

00:44:01.200 So that, you know, if this had been designed by, let's say, you know, a Cialdini or somebody with that kind of level of knowledge of persuasion, it wouldn't look like this.

00:44:14.560 This is sort of a tell for a political slogan, as opposed to President Trump, who is the brander himself.

00:44:24.340 And so you see, he got a whole different level of goodness in his slogan because he knows how to do that.

00:44:31.200 All right.

00:44:32.620 I didn't hear anything about nuclear energy from Biden, so that would be interesting to hear him answer to that.

00:44:42.620 And I guess Biden says he's taking, or at least it's reported, he took a firm tone, they say, towards China.

00:44:50.260 And he wants aggressive trade enforcement actions.

00:44:53.700 That sort of sounds like nothing, doesn't it?

00:44:56.780 It's kind of come down to this.

00:44:58.440 It seems that the Republicans are, and this is just a relative thing, right, relatively open to working with Russia, but tough on China.

00:45:12.040 The Biden proposition seems to be not open to working with Russia, but very friendly to China.

00:45:23.080 So it's almost as if our election has become, do you pick China or Russia?

00:45:28.400 You know, you could ignore the candidates.

00:45:30.000 You could ignore the candidates and say, which world do you want to live in?

00:45:35.180 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. 0.64

00:45:45.540 So you've got two choices there that don't feel domestic.

00:45:49.180 And he wants to put a bunch of money into building and investing and buying America, et cetera.

00:45:58.060 Pretty ordinary stuff.

00:45:59.780 All right.

00:46:04.680 At this point, it seems that the Biden campaign is getting more complicated.

00:46:12.640 There's some more meat on the bones, but it also should doom Biden, because one advantage that Biden has had, and 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.

00:46:32.860 Let me ask you this.

00:46:36.020 So part of his campaign is putting money into 5G, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and 5G, into research, mostly, I guess.

00:46:49.220 Now, if Biden were to take a question on 5G, how would that go?

00:46:55.200 All right.

00:46:55.680 If Biden were to take a question on nuclear energy and his plan for that, or the climate, how would that go?

00:47:02.860 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.

00:47:12.960 So his complexity has just gone through the roof while his capability continues to plunge, as we see.

00:47:19.640 So I think he's getting in increasingly dangerous territory, and we'll see if that works out for him.

00:47:28.800 Now, the president said recently that he had taken a cognitive test, and everybody was surprised he did so well.

00:47:38.580 What?

00:47:39.800 What's up with that?

00:47:41.320 But what was missing in the story is the timing of it.

00:47:44.220 I think the president was talking about when he took the test a while ago.

00:47:49.740 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.

00:48:00.360 I don't know if that did happen recently.

00:48:02.880 I don't know if it did.

00:48:04.680 So we'll need some fact-checking on that.

00:48:06.220 So build bigger basement, somebody says.

00:48:14.200 Yeah, basement Biden is going to build back better.

00:48:17.260 Now, the word back is not exactly a good word to have in your slogan, because back literally suggests going backwards.

00:48:30.260 So I don't think anybody likes back.

00:48:33.080 But what's interesting, think of the slogan, build back better.

00:48:40.140 Does your brain see the word black instead of back?

00:48:45.320 Build back. 0.95

00:48:46.540 So you're in the middle of this Black Lives Matter, you know, protest.

00:48:51.000 So your brain has been primed for Black Lives Matter, black, black, black, black, black, black. 0.98

00:48:57.520 So you're primed for that.

00:48:58.600 Now you hear the slogan, build back better.

00:49:04.080 That back ends up in your brain turning into black.

00:49:09.140 I don't know if that works in their favor or against them, actually.

00:49:13.660 I'm just pointing it out, that your brain will make that translation.

00:49:17.740 So if it was intentional, I don't know, it's kind of clever if they've somehow calculated that that will be a plus.

00:49:27.880 But here's something that it feels to me is true.

00:49:31.900 I believe that Biden is very clearly saying that his future lies with the Hispanic community.

00:49:40.360 It feels like the Democrats have chosen the Hispanic community as being a higher priority to them, politically, than the black community.

00:49:50.200 Do you know why that is?

00:49:52.700 Because they already have the black vote. 0.96

00:49:55.140 They don't have to do anything for the black community. 0.77

00:49:58.600 Nothing.

00:49:58.960 In fact, did Biden even suggest anything for the black community?

00:50:04.860 I don't, maybe he did.

00:50:06.320 I don't remember seeing it.

00:50:07.640 He probably did.

00:50:08.420 I just don't remember seeing it.

00:50:09.580 So it wasn't featured, obviously.

00:50:10.940 So you see President Trump talking about black employment when it was a few months ago when it was good. 0.99

00:50:20.820 And you see him doing the opportunity zones and the jail, the prison reform, etc.

00:50:29.140 And so you see that Trump is literally doing things for the black community.

00:50:35.220 Then you see Kanye saying that he would run as a Republican if he ran.

00:50:41.180 Now, if he doesn't run, he still sort of moves votes a little bit just because his influence moves things.

00:50:48.140 So it's starting to look like, and I said this, I don't know, like five years ago, I think I said this the first time,

00:50:56.220 that the black community is the most natural ally with Republicans.

00:51:01.460 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. 0.53

00:51:12.360 Here's what I mean. 0.51

00:51:13.660 The black community is religious.

00:51:17.420 The conservative community, also religious.

00:51:20.300 So they start with that same religious base.

00:51:23.880 There are a lot more conservative black citizens than you hear about.

00:51:29.080 So you got that going for you.

00:51:32.620 But more importantly, it looks like the Democrat plan is to give citizenship to, Biden says, 11 million people in this country.

00:51:41.240 Now, I'm not giving you my opinion whether this is good or bad.

00:51:45.960 I'm not sure I even have complete opinions on the whole immigration stuff.

00:51:50.940 I'm just describing.

00:51:51.920 It seems that the Democrats have decided that their primary focus is going to be the Hispanic community.

00:52:02.020 If you were a Democrat and you were black, how would you feel about being demoted in your own party?

00:52:11.080 Because it's going to feel like that.

00:52:13.260 It feels like, yeah, yeah, the black community problems are important, but we're going to bring in 11 million Hispanic voters.

00:52:20.600 Are those 11 million Hispanic voters going to vote for more things for black people or maybe more things for themselves?

00:52:31.460 For example, whatever the president was signing on his executive order was for the Hispanic community.

00:52:37.820 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?

00:52:48.860 Kind of obvious, right?

00:52:49.860 So there seems to be a power shift on the Democrat side toward the Hispanic power base.

00:52:57.360 The black Democrats are a little bit abandoned.

00:53:02.360 And the Republicans are saying, you know, we've got a lot in common.

00:53:06.800 We're pretty proud of bringing down the employment rate.

00:53:10.860 And by the way, Republicans think you should have good schools.

00:53:14.640 How about that?

00:53:15.720 Republicans are for school choice.

00:53:19.600 Biden wants to get rid of that.

00:53:22.320 Biden wants to get rid of school choice.

00:53:26.940 Let me tell you two things that Black Lives Matter are not in favor of. 0.58

00:53:32.280 You ready?

00:53:33.500 When I say Black Lives Matter, I don't mean the few organizers.

00:53:37.620 I mean, the people who would consider themselves members who are also black.

00:53:44.220 Here are a few things they're not super enthusiastic about.

00:53:48.240 And you can find this out yourself.

00:53:50.960 Just talk to anybody in Black Lives Matter and ask who is also black.

00:53:55.840 Don't talk to a white person who is supporting Black Lives Matter.

00:53:59.780 Talk to a black citizen who is in Black Lives Matter and privately ask these two questions.

00:54:06.440 What do you think of unrestricted immigration?

00:54:11.040 What will the Black Lives Matter person, who is just a member of Black Lives Matter, say about unrestricted immigration? 0.65

00:54:20.080 Don't love it.

00:54:21.780 Not big fans.

00:54:24.000 Right?

00:54:24.660 They may not come out against it, but they're not big fans because it sort of works against their interests.

00:54:30.400 It creates more competition.

00:54:31.600 What about charter schools and just school choice?

00:54:38.100 What do you think they'd say about that?

00:54:40.740 Kind of like it.

00:54:42.160 Because if you don't fix schools, you're basically doomed.

00:54:45.040 There's nothing else.

00:54:45.940 There's nothing you can do after that that makes a big difference.

00:54:49.200 You've got to fix schools.

00:54:50.980 That's where all the big improvements could be.

00:54:53.960 And the Democrats want to reduce those options.

00:54:56.880 So, I feel like there's sort of a trend building where the Republicans just have a better package.

00:55:08.000 We'll see.

00:55:10.120 We shall see.

00:55:11.820 I'm going to predict that President Trump will get more of the black vote than the experts assume. 0.93

00:55:19.180 And I think it's going to be because those two issues are pretty big ones.

00:55:24.120 And I don't think that the black community will completely trust their own team when they see a different power base emerging.

00:55:33.500 So, that's what I've got for you today.

00:55:35.880 And I will talk to you tomorrow.

00:55:38.240 We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 10, 2020

Episode 1053 Scott Adams： Talking With Michael Shellenberger About Apocalypse Never, A Terrific Book

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