this is all wrong I shouldn't be up here
I should be back in school on the other
side of the ocean yet you all come to us
young people for hope how dare you you
have stolen my dreams in my childhood
with your empty words yet I'm one of the
lucky ones people are suffering people
are dying
entire ecosystems are collapsing we are
in the beginning of a mass extinction
and all you can talk about is money and
fairytales of eternal economic growth
how dare you
[Applause]
so I was wondering whether you thought
climate change could be an issue that
could unite us all or left and right
moving us beyond debates about c16 to
discussions at the UN Katowice next
month where perhaps humanity might
finally discover its global map of
meaning No
I mean those there's a couple of reasons
I mean the first reason is is that I
spend a lot of time reading I worked for
UN committee for two years on
sustainable economic and ecological
development and read a very large amount
during that period of time and learned a
lot much of which made me much more
optimistic than I had been before I read
the relevant literature which was a real
shock to me but the climate change issue
is an absolutely catastrophic
nightmarish mess and the idea that that
will unite us is that's that's that's
not going to unite us I mean first of
all it's very difficult to separate the
science from the politics and second
even if the claims the more radical
claims are true we have no idea what to
do about it
and so no and besides it's even worse
than that
here's though here is one of the worst
things about the whole masses so as you
project outwards with regards to your
climate change projections which are
quite unreliable to begin with and the
unreliability of the measurement
magnifies as you move forward in time
obviously because the errors accumulate
and so if you go out 50 years the error
bars around the projections are already
so so wide that we won't be able to
measure the positive or negative effects
of anything we do right now so how in
the world are you going to solve a
problem when you can't even measure the
consequence of your actions like how is
that even possible and and besides that
what's the solution what are we going to
do switch to wind and solar well good
luck with that just try it and see what
happens we can't store the power Germany
tried it they produce more carbon
dioxide than they did when they started
because they had to turn on their
coal-fired plants again that wasn't a
very good plan well we don't want
nuclear it's like okay what happens at
night huh the Sun Goes Down well isn't
that something we shouldn't have taken
it that we should have taken into
account our we gotta flip on the
coal-fired plants well so it was a
complete catastrophe and all that
happened was the price of electricity
shot up there's like zero utility that's
that's not a solution so what are we
gonna do about it
well we should cut back we can't consume
as much as we should as we as we are all
consuming it's like well maybe except
the data that I've read indicate that if
you can get the GDP of people up to
about five thousand dollars a year then
they start carrying about the
and the environment cleans up so you
could make a perfectly strong case I
think at a reasonable one perhaps even a
humane one that the actual idea would be
to get everybody in the world who's poor
desperately so out of poverty as fast as
possible which would increase
consumption in the short term because
then they'd start to care about the
environment and things would clean up
it's like okay well what are we gonna do
about global warming well good luck
figuring that out I don't see a solution
on the horizon I look at Bjorn long
Berg's work I really like Bjorn Lomborg
I think he's a real genius you can look
them up if you want
he took the UN Millennium Goals there's
200 of them that's way too many goals if
you're serious about goals by the way
because 200 goals isn't a plan it's a
wish list you have to prioritize I'm
serious you have to prioritize but they
won't prioritize because each of the
goals has its constituents and if you
prioritize then you irritate the
constituents and but if you don't
prioritize then you can't implement the
plan
so what Lumbergh did was gather a team
of teams of economists multiple teams
some of whom were Nobel prize-winning
economists he had them assemble teams he
had them rank order development goals in
terms of the return on investment
all of the teams then he averaged across
the teams and came up with a final list
and an addressing global warming wasn't
even on the list the the most
fundamental he wrote a book called how
to spend seventy five billion dollars to
make the world a better place and that's
not very much money on a global scale
almost everything that he recommended
had to do with increased child nutrition
in developing in developing countries
it's like these things are complicated
man
these are complicated it's like well
let's fix global warming it's like okay
well good luck with that first of all
how are you going to do that and to
think that will unite us but certainly
not uniting us so far so no and it's
just it's just it's the kind of low
resolution thinking that just gets us
absolutely nowhere I like what Lumbergh
did way better I think it's way more
intelligent so you know maybe if you if
you increase child nutrition enough and
and you produce another I don't know 10
million geniuses as a consequence of
that and maybe whether they must figure
out what to do about global warming well
I'm serious about that you know
it's not a bad thing to increase the
total sum of human brain power you know
and so we pretreat these things so
lightly well let's fix the planet well
we're going to concentrate on global
warming
well wide global warming well cuz
everyone thinks that's the biggest
catastrophe well maybe it is but if you
don't have a solution well then what
about all those other problems what are
you gonna do about them well we'll
ignore them because we can feel good
about you know being concerned about
global warming it's like I don't I don't
you know one of the reasons there's more
trees in the northern hemisphere than
there were a hundred years ago no one
knows that but it's true and by
substantial margin you know why in part
because people burned coal instead of
wood it's like everyone says well we
shouldn't burn coal it's like ok fair
enough
what do you want to do burn trees
instead because that's what poor people
would have done
it's like coal isn't good well it's
better than burning wood so these things
are complicated so they're unbelievably
complicated and so no it's not going to
unite us and we're not gonna do a damn
thing about it either so it doesn't
really matter so well what are we gonna
do you're gonna stop like having heat
you can stop having electricity you
gonna stop driving your cars
you're gonna stop taking trains it's
like you're not gonna stop using your
iPhones you're not gonna do any of that
and no wonder so so no thank you for
thank you for that