The Exchanges

Q Uh, yet now we live in a world where nearly half the population believes that climate change will extinguish humanity. Like, what's, what's, what's happened over the last couple decades since then? It seems like they're still censoring. It seems like there's, they're still being alarmist on this. Are people realizing a little better what the actual truth is? Have you, have you, have your views changed in 20 years?

A So, well, I, I would like to believe that what I'm actually trying to argue for is what the reality of climate change is, that it is a problem, But it's by no means the end of the world. That's I think what the UN climate panel very, very clearly tells us. Uh, I would say I've been terribly unsuccessful because the world has become more and more alarmed. Uh, so as, as you just mentioned in the quote, now more than half the world's population literally believes climate change is going to be the end of mankind. That's nowhere near what the UN climate panel is telling us, you know, uh, by the end of the century, Climate change, if we don't do anything about it, will probably cost us, say, three, four percent of GDP, which is a substantial amount of money. It's not a hundred percent. It's not the end of the world.

AI assessment note: “I would say I've been terribly unsuccessful because the world has become more and more alarmed.”

Q more moderate than me, yet my videos are not flagged with warnings on YouTube. I think every one of your videos, they warn about climate skepticism. What's going on with that? What's going on with that? Like why, I mean, it's obvious you're a thoughtful, moderate person. These people clearly hear something wrong with them. Like they don't want scientific debate. They don't want other points of view. What's happening?

A I, I would like, I don't know. I, I can't see into their, uh, into their heads. I think a lot of people, certainly a lot of the people I've met are really well-meaning people. But if you've come to the conclusion that this is the big civilizational, uh, threat, somehow, you know, if you're, if, if you're sort of a weirdo far out on the left or the right, that's not very challenging. So maybe they don't care all that much about it. But if I'm actually good at making the arguments, I think I happen to make really, really good arguments. That's really scary. Yeah, it actually could end up threatening some of their favorite positions. So I get the idea that if you really believe the world is coming to an end and that Bjorn guy is really making it harder for us to do something about, I understand that you're very annoyed about it, but I happen to believe that it's actually because I have good arguments, both on saying There are some things we should be focused on, like education and tuberculosis, as we talked about, and we should stop spending a lot of money on really bad climate policies.

AI assessment note: “if I'm actually good at making the arguments... That's really scary.”

Q I want to zoom out to policy and philanthropy before we end. Uh, your research is obviously directed both the policymakers and philanthropists. I think a lot of philanthropy is wasted or misguided or directed for the wrong reasons. What's, what's your view of effective philanthropy? Have you seen certain groups or certain organizations or frameworks that are really helpful for this to align with what you're doing?

A So I think, you know, uh, effective altruism is obviously a great idea. And they're very, very much in the same wavelength as what we are. Uh, but my, my, my senses are, uh, we often disagree because see, they have sort of gone off on this more interesting rich world trend of saying, oh, but the big thing is the longterm survival of humanity. And so they become worried about gray goo and, and, you know, AI and all that stuff. I'm happy that they're, you know, that there are people out there worrying about it, but for most of the world's, uh, you know, inhabitants, The problems are right here. It's tuberculosis. It's not, you know, rocket science stuff, uh, out there. The second part is I, I do worry that a lot of these things end up focusing a lot just simply by, by, by virtue of us being so focused on climate change, they end up saying, yes, we should also do a lot for climate change. The problem is most of the things that we're spending money on in climate are very ineffective. What we should be spending more money on It's innovation. Innovation is what's going to solve climate change, just like it's the thing that solved most other problems.

AI assessment note: “effective altruism is obviously a great idea. And they're very, very much in the same wavelength”

Q so that's a good return. Let's focus on the education bit. Obviously, I think we're all for education. Um, when I see people saying spend money on education, I get very skeptical these days, living as I do in 2024, where you have crazy people running governments everywhere, wasting money. So what does it actually mean to spend money on education? Because there's lots of bad ways to spend money.

A Oh, God. Yes. Yes. So the problem is that we used to think the big issue was get kids in school. And obviously, if you're not in school, there's no way you're going to learn. But the problem is now we've gotten pretty much all kids in school. Remember, there's about half a billion kids In primary school, mostly in developing countries, in poor countries. Most of them are learning virtually nothing. There's one great example I give in the book. Uh, the, the UN has actually asked about 60,000 kids, uh, this very simple question. You have to read it in order to see why it doesn't work. You have to get them to read this following sentence. Vijay has a yellow hat, red, uh, uh, pants and blue shoes. What color is the hat? Now, if I just say it to you, it's not very hard because you can remember this thing.

AI assessment note: “we used to think the big issue was get kids in school.”