In this episode, I'm joined by Michael Schellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never, to talk about his new book, "Apocalypse never," and how he and Greta Thunberg are the only two people in the world who know more about antimatter than anyone else.
00:03:02.720So let me tell the audience what we've got going here.
00:03:07.560So this is Michael Schellenberger, whose amazing new book, Apocalypse Never, which you can see right here,
00:03:15.540which is just now – I just said it's number seven on Amazon's most read books of the week.
00:03:20.880I don't know if all of you know this, but Amazon puts out a lot of books.
00:03:25.600If 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.
00:03:34.000And, Michael, would you describe yourself as an environmentalist activist still, or is that where you started and you've evolved?
00:03:45.380How would you describe yourself for the audience?
00:03:47.220I still consider myself an environmentalist and an environmental activist.
00:03:51.760I 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,
00:03:59.520certainly one of the most important environmental technologies.
00:04:02.100So, yeah, I guess you can now say I'm a best-selling author too, which is pretty cool.
00:04:05.980You know, the thing that I loved about your book – and by the way, I don't usually like books, I have to admit.
00:04:13.620You know, even when I read them, I think, well, you know, maybe I shouldn't have.
00:04:17.980But I actually loved every part of your book because your writing is excellent.
00:04:22.280It keeps me engaged the whole time because your personal story was woven in with it all.
00:04:28.220Would 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?
00:04:37.960Yeah, that would be a very interesting experiment, wouldn't it?
00:04:42.180I would want a lot of other people to be present, that's for sure.
00:11:21.940I mean, I think – I mean, I would say yes in some ways.
00:11:25.560I 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 –
00:12:32.720Give us your overview on where you think climate change is heading.
00:12:37.340So my view is that climate change is real, but it's not the end of the world.
00:12:41.100It's not even our most important environmental problem.
00:12:44.480I think it's taken up way more of our attention and money and time than it should.
00:12:53.480It'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.
00:13:10.720We've basically forgotten about all those problems.
00:13:13.040They don't even really get into the newspapers much anymore.
00:13:16.040And then it's led people to do things that are clearly harmful.
00:13:20.060I 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.
00:13:26.940I'm not saying they're the sole cause, but they're certainly part of it.
00:13:30.520Yeah, 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.
00:13:39.820And it definitely had an effect on my whole mental makeup, probably permanently.
00:13:46.160And I can't imagine that that's not messing up kids.
00:13:49.340You 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.
00:15:02.140I quote somebody, one of the best British columnists on this, called it the upper middle class death cult, which is not inaccurate.
00:15:10.880And 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,
00:15:19.700but they still have the need to believe in something.
00:15:24.160They still have the need for personal transcendence, for some sense of immortality.
00:15:29.000Now, is that, do you think that sense of immortality is that they're saving the world, so that that's their legacy?
00:15:36.420How 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?
00:26:41.080You should know that I've been now censored twice.
00:26:43.400I was censored by Forbes, who took down my original column announcing the book.
00:26:47.820And 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.
00:27:04.080So, please sign up at Environmental Progress to get updates directly from me.
00:28:12.300That's everything you need to know about Trump's taxes.
00:28:15.140I 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.
00:28:34.320I always put myself in the story and say, well, what if I were Trump?
00:28:40.560If 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?
00:31:22.120So yesterday, I got a direct message from a small, I guess you'd call them a startup.
00:31:29.460They're kind of new, called Ground News.
00:31:32.820Ground, like the ground you stand on, news.
00:31:35.700And 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.
00:31:46.880And then you can see how it's covered differently by the left and the right.
00:31:49.820So it's a really good idea to give you more of a landscape of the bias in the news industry.
00:31:59.220So 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.
00:32:11.520And 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.
00:32:23.320But the outlets on the right and the middle are like, well, it's a story.
00:34:36.280The 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.
00:34:45.820But they found out something about whatever their target is, whoever they're going to boycott or cancel.
00:34:51.380They know something extra about that person that causes them trouble.
00:34:56.300Is it not fair that we just have a little more transparency?
00:35:01.780Wouldn't you like to know who accuses you?
00:35:03.840In the legal system, you have a right to know who your accuser is.
00:35:09.160What kind of world would it be if you didn't know who your accuser was?
00:35:12.600But I think you should also know where they work.
00:35:30.160So if you were calling for a boycott on this company, Goya, G-O-Y-A, I guess they're a food company.
00:35:37.280The CEO said some nice things about President Trump, and now the left wants to cancel.
00:35:42.600Wouldn't you like to know where all those cancelers work or where they'll work in the future?
00:35:49.080Because I think that it needs to be mutually assured destruction.
00:35:54.260You 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.
00:36:04.140Right now the Constitution says yes, but the free market says no.
00:36:08.040Well, maybe you can't say those things without losing your job.
00:36:13.400So without some sense of mutually assured destruction that's somewhat immediate and personal, I don't see any of it ever changing.
00:36:22.760Because in my opinion, it's completely fair to complain about somebody's opinion.
00:36:40.960If you punch somebody in public, the reason you don't do that is you think you'll get punched back.
00:36:51.880You know, you're even more so than you're worried about going to jail, you'll immediately be punched back.
00:36:58.960So there's a reason people don't punch people in public.
00:37:02.200But right now there's no reason you can't try to cancel somebody in public.
00:37:05.980Now, 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.
00:40:39.560Now, 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.
00:40:47.620There'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.
00:40:57.300You kind of know what that looks like, right?
00:40:59.420It looks a lot like now, but with better, better border control.
00:41:04.800Maybe a little less crime coming in, but who knows if you'd even notice.
00:41:11.220But what does it look like if you don't have border control and you've got more sanctuary cities that Biden is suggesting?
00:41:19.000Is there any world in which that would not attract the cartels, for example?
00:41:24.580Is there any world in which the United States would not eventually be run by Mexican cartels, for all practical purposes?
00:41:34.380I can't imagine any way that wouldn't happen if we have enough people coming across the border.
00:42:05.540What 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?
00:43:37.160If 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?
00:43:52.860So I would say that build back better was probably designed by a political operative and not an expert on persuasion.
00:44:01.200So 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.
00:44:14.560This is sort of a tell for a political slogan, as opposed to President Trump, who is the brander himself.
00:44:24.340And so you see, he got a whole different level of goodness in his slogan because he knows how to do that.
00:44:58.440It seems that the Republicans are, and this is just a relative thing, right, relatively open to working with Russia, but tough on China.
00:45:12.040The Biden proposition seems to be not open to working with Russia, but very friendly to China.
00:45:23.080So it's almost as if our election has become, do you pick China or Russia?
00:45:28.400You know, you could ignore the candidates.
00:45:30.000You could ignore the candidates and say, which world do you want to live in?
00:45:35.180The 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.
00:45:45.540So you've got two choices there that don't feel domestic.
00:45:49.180And he wants to put a bunch of money into building and investing and buying America, et cetera.
00:46:04.680At this point, it seems that the Biden campaign is getting more complicated.
00:46:12.640There'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.
00:50:10.940So you see President Trump talking about black employment when it was a few months ago when it was good.
00:50:20.820And you see him doing the opportunity zones and the jail, the prison reform, etc.
00:50:29.140And so you see that Trump is literally doing things for the black community.
00:50:35.220Then you see Kanye saying that he would run as a Republican if he ran.
00:50:41.180Now, if he doesn't run, he still sort of moves votes a little bit just because his influence moves things.
00:50:48.140So 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,
00:50:56.220that the black community is the most natural ally with Republicans.
00:51:01.460Republicans, 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.
00:52:13.260It feels like, yeah, yeah, the black community problems are important, but we're going to bring in 11 million Hispanic voters.
00:52:20.600Are those 11 million Hispanic voters going to vote for more things for black people or maybe more things for themselves?
00:52:31.460For example, whatever the president was signing on his executive order was for the Hispanic community.
00:52:37.820If 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?