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Joe Rogan Experience #1798 - Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is an author, president of the non-profit research group Environmental Progress, and a candidate for the governorship of California. His most recent book, "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities," is available now.

Joe RoganhostMichael Shellenbergerguest
Jun 27, 20242h 39mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:45

    San Francisco’s “radical hospitality” and the supervised drug-use site debate

    1. JR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) And we're up with the future governor of California, Michael Shelman. Hello, Michael.

    2. MS

      (sighs) Thanks for having me back, Joe.

    3. JR

      Nice to see you. Hey, um, I said that I wasn't going to do any more political podcasts-

    4. MS

      (laughs)

    5. JR

      ... but I had already booked this one.

    6. MS

      (laughs) Yeah.

    7. JR

      So, for people like, "What the fuck, man?"

    8. MS

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      But, you're, you're not just a political person. You know, your book, San Fransicko, what would you call that? That's a sociopolitical book, right?

    10. MS

      Yeah. Uh, it's a work of journalism.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. MS

      Commercial nonfiction, for sure.

    13. JR

      And a way for people to understand what can happen when bad policies get in the way of a city and turn it sideways, which is what has happened to San Francisco.

    14. MS

      Yeah, pathological altruism. I, I, I've held-

    15. JR

      Ooh, I like that word.

    16. MS

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      I like that expression.

    18. MS

      It's not mine. I mean, I just, I just, you know-

    19. JR

      Good.

    20. MS

      ... it's synthesized, a bunch of other people's stuff. But, yeah, I mean, I considered whether it was Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

    21. JR

      Mm, why so?

    22. MS

      Well, so Munchausen syndrome by proxy, of course, is when, like, a parent deliberately poisons her child in order to be able to treat the child for illness.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. MS

      So, we have... One of the things I-

    25. JR

      Is it just chil- children? It's, like, caretaker, right?

    26. MS

      I guess it could be. Yeah, it could be. I guess it could be, like, a nurse and a patient. But we... One of the things, since I've seen you last, uh, a few things have happened. Uh, I discovered, I was the first one to report that we have a supervised drug use site now, illegal, in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza, where people are using fentanyl and meth under city supervision. So, I guess, the difference is that, you know, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the, the adult or the, the caregiver is poisoning the person directly. In this case, people are poisoning themselves in front of the supposed caregivers, and the caregivers are there to monitor it, but-

    27. JR

      When they do something like that, did they have any proposal or any sort of protocol these people can follow to get off the drugs?

    28. MS

      They call it radical compassion. This is, you know, there's a chapter on my book called Love Bombing, but it's basically, this is the big blind spot for progressives, is that they just can't conceive that being radically compassionate could cause harm.

    29. JR

      And radical compassion, the idea is you're gonna accept these people for who they are, the, the fact they're drug users, and you're gonna give them a comfortable, safe place in order to do their drugs?

    30. MS

      Yeah, radical. Sorry. And by the way, it's radical hospitality, is, is what they call it.

  2. 3:45 – 5:26

    LA as the worst-case: Skid Row, visible collapse, and why it’s under-discussed

    1. MS

      But San Fransicko refers also to compassion sickness. San Fran-, you know, Saint Francis is the saint of, of compassion. You go too far, and you get pathological altruism. But the worst city, by far, is Los Angeles. There's no doubt about it.

    2. JR

      Really?

    3. MS

      Skid Row is just, it's, it's just insane. I mean, I don't even know. It's like, it's like visiting hell. It's-

    4. JR

      It's hard for people to believe if they haven't actually visited, and I'm saying this as someone who hasn't visited it in more than 15 years. But 15 years ago, it was insane. And Saagar, Saagar Enjeti from, uh, Breaking Points, he was just there.

    5. MS

      I saw that, yeah.

    6. JR

      And he told me, "You can't believe it."

    7. MS

      No.

    8. JR

      "You can't believe it's real."

    9. MS

      No, it's horrible. And, you know, it's, I'm a father of a 16-year-old and, 16-year-old girl, and you see, you know, young women, you see teenagers prostituting themselves in psychotic states, clearly not in control of their minds or their bodies. Why do we allow this? This is a complete breakdown of civilization. It's not civilized. It's barbarism, it's depravity.

    10. JR

      It's also rarely discussed when, when they bring up the key problems in LA. They bring up homelessness, but they don't bring up, like, literally the epicenter of homelessness in the United States, which is inside downtown LA. It's a crazy pla- It's, we're, we're talking about it, but it, I don- I think it defies description. I think you, you have to experience it. And again, I'm talking about it the way I saw it 15 years ago.

    11. MS

      Yeah.

    12. JR

      I think if you saw it today, it's probably measures worse, right?

  3. 5:26 – 7:40

    Responding to media criticism: street interviews, viral clips, and myths about homelessness

    1. MS

      Absolutely. I mean, one thing, one thing that happened since I saw you last, 'cause I was here in October, and we... The Time, The New York Times trashed my book, as we would have expected. One of the most crazy things they said is they said that I didn't interview any homeless people. (laughs)

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. MS

      Which is, like, bonkers. I interviewed hundreds of homeless people. So, I didn't even know how to respond to that because it was just so bizarre. So, finally, I was like, "All right, you know, that's how you guys wanna roll." So, I started putting up, uh, videos. I started, um, recording videos of folks on the street.... just being really, really honest. And it didn't take much at all. You know, the first people I interviewed, I was like, "Why are you here?" "Uh, I'm addicted to fentanyl and meth." You know? And-

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MS

      ... "Where are you from?" Louisiana, Texas. So, 'cause the, one of the mythologies is that everyone's just local and they couldn't afford the rent, and so then they decided to, like, live in a tent on the sidewalk. It's ridiculous. I've never met anybody that had that story. It's, it's, it's addiction and mental illness full stop. So-

    6. JR

      And have they moved to Los Angeles specifically 'cause it's easy to exist there like that?

    7. MS

      For sure. There's a slight-

    8. JR

      That's so ambitious. (laughs) Right?

    9. MS

      (laughs)

    10. JR

      I mean, it's hard for people to move outta state, right? It's hard to move outta state for a job. Imagine moving outta state for an addiction.

    11. MS

      A lot, a lot ... It's, it's actually a pretty classic story. I mean, it's slightly different stories that you hear in San Francisco and LA. A lot of people show up in LA, kinda Mulholland Drive style. You know, "I'm gonna try to make it here as an actor-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. MS

      ... in Hollywood," or whatever. And then they, you know, end up depressed, taking drugs, end up in skid row. San Francisco, people definitely go to San Francisco to service their addiction and they tell you that. They come from Ohio or Kentucky or, you know, wherever. So, I just started filming, I just started interviewing people on the street with my iPhone and posting them on Twitter, and they would go viral right away. I interviewed a guy, uh, that, one of them went viral. A guy told me he had sold fentanyl to a 15-year-old and I was like, "Why are you here?" And he's like, "Because they make it pretty fucking easy to be homeless here, man."

    14. JR

      Yeah. I've seen quite a few interviews like that-

    15. MS

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      ... where they describe how much money they get per month-

    17. MS

      Yes.

    18. JR

      ... and why would they move and-

    19. MS

      Right. Yeah.

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. MS

      That was a lot of my stuff. So fi- it was kind of like, that was my, that was my elaborate response to the, to the Times review. (laughs)

  4. 7:40 – 18:52

    Trust collapse in mainstream media and the rise of long-form and Substack

    1. JR

      The, the Times has, has gotten silly. I mean, listen, I'm a fan of the New York Times. I still subscribe to New York Times. I, I still think it's one of the greatest papers. Well, it's like, if you just look at their history alone, it's one of the greatest newspapers in the history of the world. But, and there's, there's so many blind spots. Like, C- Candace Owens, who has many blind spots of her own, was talking about how corrupt Ukraine is. So the New York Times contacts Candace Owens and says, "What are you basing this on? Why are you saying that the, that Ukraine is corrupt?" And she said, "How about articles from your own fucking newspaper?" And she sends them all these links that specifically talk about how corrupt Ukraine is. But these are from 2017, 2018-

    2. MS

      Hmm.

    3. JR

      ... whatever. But it's like, you don't, you guys didn't even look through your own fucking archives before you're trying to dunk on someone? Like, your own newspaper talked extensively about corruption in Ukraine. You know, it's, it's super complicated because obviously there's, uh, bigger problems than the corruption in Ukraine. It's, you know, a giant superpower is trying to take over another country and, uh, it's put the whole world on notice, and we're all terrified of World War III. But still, you guys are supposed to be the New York fucking Times. Like y- you gotta know whether or not you wrote articles (laughs) about something that you're criticizing someone for talking about.

    4. MS

      It feels like, it feels like the, the nuanced stories are kinda gone now. And so it's either a defense of, you know, the president or a defense of some progressive person, or it's a hit piece, is what it feels like basically.

    5. JR

      Yeah. There's a lot of a- there's a lot of activism. And this is, I think this is a problem today with young people that are getting involved in media and that are getting involved in social media, uh, companies and, uh, and that are getting involved in even, in, uh, even big corporations like Google and Facebook and, and Netflix even, is they feel like they have a duty to be an activist. But the best way to really get the truth out there, if you are, if you wanna be a journalist, a real journalist, you can't do both. You can't put, like, these political one-sided spins on things and then have people trust you across the board about all the complexity that's involved in corruption and international dealings between l- large superpowers and corporations, and what is the, what's the entanglement here?

    6. MS

      Hmm.

    7. JR

      Well, if I think that you are completely biased towards the right or completely biased towards the left, everything you say, I'm gonna be cynical about. Everything you say, I'm gonna be like, "Eh, how much, how much of this is true? How much of this is real? How much of this is es- a political slant? How much of it is bullshit?"

    8. MS

      Right.

    9. JR

      Like, the New York Times used to be ... I mean, obviously they've always had opinion pieces, but the New York Times was the best source of objective journalism.

    10. MS

      Right.

    11. JR

      It was so good. You know, it's like you, you, you got no bullshit. You knew what you were reading was true and that they had vetted it and it'd been, like, these hard-nosed editors who'd been out there for fucking decades pounding the pavement, doing real journalism. They were the ones responsible for giving the green light to whether or not this story makes it into the New York fucking Times.

    12. MS

      And there was sort of a, a kind of humanism in it, which is a sense ... Uh, trust is the right word, by the way. And there's a sense in which we're all in it together. We're all mortals.

    13. JR

      Yes.

    14. MS

      There's not a kind of making of monsters that you have now, that if you are on the wrong side or whatever, you're a monster. And so it's just gotten, um ... Yeah. There's, like, no, like ... It's that, it's that moment where, um, was it Murrough, uh, uh, who stood up to McCarthy and was like, "Have you no decency?" It feels like that's the moment again-

    15. JR

      Hmm.

    16. MS

      ... which is like, what's the basic ... You know, they're going after a friend of mine, um, Alex Epstein. He just texted me, very upset before I came in, about the Post running a hit piece against him for something he said when he was 18, supposedly alleging he's a racist. I know he's not a racist. That's ridiculous. So, I mean-

    17. JR

      How old is he now?

    18. MS

      I think he's in his, must be in his late 30s-

    19. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    20. MS

      ... maybe early 40s. You know? So it's kinda like, "Well, but even if he-"

    21. JR

      What did he write it on when he was 18?

    22. MS

      I have no... I don't even know. I haven't even looked into it yet. But it's just kinda like, what are we doing here, guys? Like, what, like, what are we trying to do?

    23. JR

      They're trying to get clicks. They're trying to get people outraged and they're trying to get clicks.

    24. MS

      They're trying to get clicks and de-legitimize somebody 'cause he defends fossil fuels.

    25. JR

      Oh.

    26. MS

      You know, at a time, by the way, when we needed a lot more of them, you know, (laughs) um, at a time when the idea that you could power the world on renewables has come, you know, crashing to a- an end in, in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So, you know, I just think you kinda go, this just all feels like... That's where it's like, you don't trust it 'cause it's like, why are they going after Alex Epstein? It hasn't had anything to do with what he said when he was 18, you know? It has to do with-

    27. JR

      His stance on fossil fuels.

    28. MS

      Yeah, his stance on fossil fuels.

    29. JR

      Hmm. Yeah. It's a problem.

    30. MS

      Yeah.

  5. 18:52 – 36:08

    Fear, groupthink, and “woke” social coercion (and its right-wing counterpart)

    1. MS

      Yeah. I'll tell you something interesting. I just started reading this book called The Scout Mindset, which sort of summarizes cognitive errors that we make. It's sort of in that tradition of, um, of behavioral economics, and, and sort of... But I think my concern with it was, when they're sort of, when she's describing, and she does a very good job describing the state of the science as far as I can tell, but in my experience, it's usually things like fear, social fear that lead us to get it wrong. In other words, for me, it was like, my, my thing I'm most famous for having changed my mind about is nuclear. My hesitation to come out as pro-nuclear and to raise concerns about renewables, it wasn't like a cognitive error. I was scared of the backlash.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MS

      I was scared of being attacked. It wasn't like-

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. MS

      And I think that I see that a lot more, where it's not just like, "Oh, I, you know, made some cognitive error due to our evolutionary biology." I mean, that, certainly that exists. But it's more like, no, I was scared of losing my friends and losing my employment. And, you know, I heard another story of a, of a, someone last night just telling me that, uh, Carnegie Mellon dean, uh, of this great university put, um, his pronouns in his Twitter bio, and his, and this donor who was donating to Carnegie Mellon was like, "Why did you do that?" Like, "Did you feel then, you know, were you worried that people didn't know that you were a man?"

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. MS

      (laughs) And the guy, and the guy's like, he's like, "No, I'm," and I'm totally, he was upset about it, he was embarrassed, but he was like, "I'm scared. You know, I'm scared of the students, you know? It's the scared of the Maoist students." And so-

    8. JR

      That's so crazy. (laughs)

    9. MS

      I know. And so-

    10. JR

      That's hilarious.

    11. MS

      ... but, but that's not like, "Oh, I made a cognitive error and I wasn't sure if I was a, if I was a man or a woman anymore." It's like, "No, I was bullied into it."

    12. JR

      It's so preposterous, especially for an older man-

    13. MS

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... who grew up in a different time-

    15. MS

      Oh, yeah.

    16. JR

      ... to be jumping on board the woke shit right now.

    17. MS

      Right.

    18. JR

      Yeah. The, that fear, that social fear is a real problem.

    19. MS

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      It's a real problem, and it leads people to, to adopt groupthink just for their own safety.

    21. MS

      Right. And then it, and then it was, and then it's, and what's terrible too, of course, and Berry does a good job describing this on her, has other people describe it too, is, is then it becomes contagious.

    22. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. MS

      You know, and so then it's like, you see people you respect cave to the bullies-

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. MS

      ... and the woke mob, and then, and then other people feel the need. So it just becomes... Now, the reverse is true too. You know, one person stands up, and people feel emboldened, and I think we see, I mean, that's part of what's so inspiring about Ukraine, right, is you kinda go, when the president says, "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition-"

    26. JR

      Did he really say that? I hope he did.

    27. MS

      I don't know. I- (laughs)

    28. JR

      Sounds awesome.

    29. MS

      Am I repeating this information? I don't know. (sighs)

    30. JR

      No, but it's, it's one of those quotes that's so good-

  6. 36:08 – 40:09

    From anxiety culture to energy policy: masks, radiation fears, and unintended consequences

    1. JR

      Yeah, and of course social media is just gasoline on that fire.

    2. MS

      Yep.

    3. JR

      Because you get a bunch of people like-minded in an echo chamber all freaking out about something together, like f- climate change or like... You know, I watched this whole thread the other day, just a couple days ago, where people were talking about, "I'm not, uh, not going out without a mask on." And then all these other people-

    4. MS

      Hmm.

    5. JR

      ... were, like, chiming in, "Me neither. I don't care what they say." And th- it was like all of these crazy people-

    6. MS

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... who are hypochondriacs have like, they've grouped up together and they're, like, enforcing each other. And this one guy was wearing a respirator and it was like, people, you know, "I went to the supermarket, I was the only one wearing masks." I'm like, "Bro, it's over. It's a cult now."

    8. MS

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Like, what are you... Why are you wearing a respirator? Like, are you gonna wear this in five years? Like, what-

    10. MS

      People in their cars with masks.

    11. JR

      Oh, my God. And gloves.

    12. MS

      People on the hiking trails.

    13. JR

      Yeah. Masks and gloves.

    14. MS

      Yeah, I don't know. I... Yeah. I mean, I... So it's interesting when I see it because I do all this work on nuclear and I saw very similar amounts of neuroticism around radiation.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. MS

      So, you know, radiations naturally existing, obviously you don't wanna have too high of exposure, but, you know, dose makes the poison.

    17. JR

      Yeah. Radiation is in rocks. If you-

    18. MS

      Yeah. It comes from the sky.

    19. JR

      ... you sit on a rock that's outside, you're getting radiation-

    20. MS

      For sure.

    21. JR

      ... off that rock.

    22. MS

      For sure.

    23. JR

      But the radiation that exists from nuclear power plants scares the shit out of us because of Chernobyl and-

    24. MS

      Right.

    25. JR

      ... Three Mile Island and Fukushima.

    26. MS

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      Like those things.

    28. MS

      Yes.

    29. JR

      Those are, uh, legitimate concerns. But, you know, my understanding is that the technology that's involved in the construction of nuclear power plants has kind of, like, hit a stagnant point only because people are afraid of it. But the capabilities are much higher than they were. Like when they built Fukushima, they had a backup power plant and all that got wiped out by... A backup power generator rather, all that got wiped out by the tsunami and they didn't have a fail-safe. They didn't have, like, step three, what if a tsunami hits? So when the tsunami hit and everything went down, they're fucked. I mean, that thing is still... It's just a nuclear disaster. I mean, it's what it is. It's leaking nuclear radiation into the ocean. They... You know how they had to... They dug a hole around it, that was one idea, and they, they were freezing it, you know that whole-

    30. MS

      Right. Right.

  7. 40:09 – 46:59

    Fracking: emissions, methane, wastewater, and debunking ‘Gasland’ narratives

    1. JR

      Let's talk about fracking because the, the general consensus amongst the public is that fracking is bad on the left and on the right it's that fracking is necessary.

    2. MS

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      So like on the left you watch like Gasland, that Josh Fox documentary and you see people lighting their tap water on fire and you see, you know, these places where the air is, you know, there's been gas leaks so the air is literally filled with gas and it stinks and it's... They've had to abandon their farms and... How much of that is... What, what... How much of a concern do we have about fracking in terms of the long-term environmental consequences?

    4. MS

      Well first just look at the carbon emissions. So, um, US carbon emissions declined more than any other country's carbon emissions had declined between 2005 and 2020. Really 2020, 2021. Why? Because we replaced a lot of our electricity coming from coal with electricity coming from natural gas which produces half as much carbon emissions. So to give you a sense of it our Paris, United Nations Paris Climate Commitment was to reduce carbon emissions 17% between 2005 and 2020. We reduced them 22%. So we exceeded, which almost never happens by the way, we always make promises and then co- you know, politicians make a promise and then future politicians break them. So the main way we reduce carbon emissions in the United States was by, just by switching from coal to natural gas and to the extent that renewables helped with it, they were enabled by having natural gas power plants to provide that backup power. In terms of the methane that leaks from natural gas production, methane being natural gas by the way, methane is like y- The, uh, and reason the natural gas industry has an interest in reducing methane leaks is because that's a valuable, that's their fuel, they don't want to lose that fuel, they want to sell it. We saw a decline during the time while fracking was expanding we saw a decline in methane leaks. What about water? The big issue is the disposal of frack fluid because that stuff is contaminated, it's dirty. Well, that's just a matter of regulating it well and making sure that you dispose of it well and we know how to do that and to the extent to which it hasn't been happening, it's a failure of regulation.

    5. JR

      Can I, can I pause? (clears throat) Excuse me.

    6. MS

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      Can I pause you there?When you say the f- the fluid is contaminated, what is it contaminated with? Is it contaminated with these chemicals that they use?

    8. MS

      Yes. Yeah.

    9. JR

      And, and-

    10. MS

      And sand.

    11. JR

      ... and, and, i- is it possible to filter that stuff out? Is there any sort of plan that's in place to try to do that?

    12. MS

      There is. Um, I'm not, I'm not totally up-to-date on it, but there's always ... I remember when I did this work a lot, when it was a hot issue, you know, 10 years ago, there were these companies that were ... There were ways to, you know, and as usual, it's one of those things where it's like a lot of these processes where it's like, does it take more cost and money to recycle the wastewater or just to dispose of it well? Um, so that's been the issue. And I think there are companies that have ... that are finding ways to do it. I just don't know the latest state-

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MS

      ... of the technology. But in terms of like fr- I mean, so Frackland or sorry, Gasland-

    15. JR

      Gasland.

    16. MS

      ... was full of misinformation. I mean, the famous scene where the guy's lighting the faucet on fire, that's not from fracking. That was from an older well. So the older ... These wells, they can be sealed to prevent the gas from leaking out of them.

    17. JR

      Natural gas that's in the ground.

    18. MS

      Yeah. The natural gas from leaking out of them. Um, and by the way, gas leaks. So I mean, we discovered ma- I mean, the original, like the indigenous people and others, they would ... When lightning would strike, they would discover, you know, gas and oil would catch on fire, and that was how we sort of ... We always knew that that was, that was where like the original kerosene came from, and the oil and gas revolution came out of an awareness that these, that there was this natural oil and gas leaks. People think oil and gas spills are completely human. In fact, w- you know, Earth is spilling oil and gas in many places. So that was m- that was totally misleading, as like a lot of technological processes, we've just gotten a lot better at regulating the industry. So that's not to say there's not more to do or that we don't need, you know, tighter regulations, we probably do, to reduce methane, but it's, it's not the main event.

    19. JR

      What other misinformation was in that movie?

    20. MS

      I mean, that was one of the most important ones. I think the other was that, you know, we never ... The New York banned fracking. So, and I, I don't know if that scene of the faucet on fire was in Colorado or New York, but they were suggesting that the fracking was causing these problems in New York. Well, it couldn't have been because New York banned fracking. Um, I think the other, uh, misinformation, the big piece of misinformation is that natural gas is more polluting than coal, which is just absurd. Like, like try, try lighting coal in your kitchen. (laughs) I mean, your kitchen would be filled with toxic smoke instantly, whereas you cook with natural gas in your kitchen all the time. So sort of transparently, gas is burning cleaner than coal is burning. There was also these estimates, "Well, the methane, because it's a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, would outweigh the benefits of lower carbon dioxide." That argument depends on looking at a really short timeframe, because the methane, while it is ... Methane, natural gas, while it is a more potent greenhouse gas, it's also shorter-lived. It breaks down in the atmosphere in a period of decades, as opposed to carbon dioxide, which is in the atmosphere for centuries.

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MS

      And we worry the most about climate change in the next century, you know, in a century or two. The, the higher te- the, the higher temperatures are the temperatures that we worry the most about. But overall, I mean, look, even global ... This is new data that nobody is talking about, but basically carbon emissions globally were flat and even slightly declined over the last decade, both because of the transition from coal to natural gas and also because of less land use change, namely less conversion of forests and grasslands into farmlands, which emits a lot of greenhouse gases as well. So there's just been a lot of good news on the environmental front where y- we produce more food with less land. My view is that the worst environmental problem in the world remains the conversion of rainforests into farmland. That's what kills endangered species. It takes away their habitat. It also results in a significant amount of carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. That's the main event, is you wanna protect the Amazon, we wanna protect the rainforests of Africa. Well, those trends should also all go in the right direction, but it requires the same things that we did, which is that we have greater urbanization, industrialization, peop- people moving from the, from low-efficiency, low-intensity farming to more modern forms of agriculture. And then moving, you know, the basic picture is moving away from wood and dung towards coal, oil, natural gas, and eventually to uranium. In that process, you'll reduce our environmental footprint. And the, you know, the, the final piece of that is nuclear power, which can effectively reduce humankind's en- energy footprint to near zero.

  8. 46:59 – 1:12:24

    Nuclear power as the ‘main event’: waste, safety, and California’s Diablo Canyon fight

    1. JR

      Yeah. The ... We have to change public perception about nuclear power, right? (clears throat) That seems to me-

    2. MS

      That's the main event. That's the main event.

    3. JR

      Yeah.

    4. MS

      There's, it's not a ... There's technological things, but like you said, like, we're making progress on the fuels themselves that you get these fuels that can't melt down or will take longer to melt down. Where also the training is better. I always point out, you know, jet planes, the jet planes are better than they were in 1950, but the same basic technolo- it's the same basic technology that we had in 1950. Same thing with nuclear power plants. What really changes with, uh, jet planes is that the entire system is so much better. Air traffic control is better, the pilots, the safety systems. So you see this huge increase of air miles traveled and a huge decline in fatalities from aircr- from airplane crashes. Same thing with nuclear. The worst accidents were all, you know, closer to the invention of commercial nuclear power. The, you know, the, and even Fukushima, where, which was, uh, one of the worst nuclear accidents, according to the best available science, somewhere between zero and one people died from the radiation of Fukushima.

    5. JR

      Really, that's it?

    6. MS

      That's it. Yeah. Now, people... What really killed people was the evacuation, the dislocation, the relocation of people, which was much more exaggerated and longer-lasting than it needed to be.

    7. JR

      But that place is fucked for a long time. I mean, obviously it's not good. Like, you can't use the area around that nuclear reactor for a long time. I- I-

    8. MS

      Uh, a small area, a small area, but most of the farmland is now coming back and they've been able to clean it up. I mean, really, they over-cleaned it. They scraped all of this beautiful Fukushima... 'cause it was a beautiful agricultural area, they scraped all the topsoil off that they didn't need to do. They were doing... There was a study in the British Medical Journal of the people who lived in some of the most heavily impacted areas, and they had... and they had, they tested the radiation in their bodies and the radiation in the foods and the soil, and they had levels below, you know, what was considered dangerous. So, it's just, it's just a... It was a panic. You know, it was... People were scared of radiation.

    9. JR

      But rightfully so, right?

    10. MS

      It went too far. It went too far.

    11. JR

      It went too far.

    12. MS

      Yeah. (laughs)

    13. JR

      Now, is that because just we're terrified of nuclear disasters to begin with-

    14. MS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... which is one of the reasons why it's so-

    16. MS

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      ... difficult to try to convince people that nuclear power is the future?

    18. MS

      For sure.

    19. JR

      Do you th-... Uh, are there... I mean, I know that there's some uses for nuclear waste now, productive uses for nuclear waste as a potential recyclable fuel.

    20. MS

      Yeah, there always have been. I mean, the dream was... So, yeah, I mean, over 95% of the energy is still in the used fuel rods. The dream in the '50s was that you would have basically what they called a closed loop, where you would then reuse the fuel and a pro- and, uh, reprocess the fuel. France does that.

    21. JR

      Really?

    22. MS

      Yeah. It has this huge facility, I think it's like a mile long, and they reprocess the fuel and they recycle it. Now, it's, it's also then a process that allows you to create significant quantities of plutonium, which, of course, is, is weapons-grade material. That was used to alarm people. There's some debate about whether you should be alarmed. Bill Gates is developing a new reactor that would basically do something similar. The Russians have this reactor that would be a faster reactor that would allow for basically a much more efficient use of the fuel. For me, as an outsider to the industry, I was always like, "All right, is there a shortage of uranium? No. Is it much cheaper to recycle the fuel? No." In fact, it's more expensive, because it's more complicated. So, for me, I'm satisfied that there's so little waste byproduct created. You know, all of the nuclear fuel rods, the used nuclear fuel rods, can fit on a single football field stacked 50 feet high in the United States. For me, that's a much safer, simpler, straightforward event. 22nd century, sure, we'll be recycling those fuels. We should definitely do the R&D. But right now, in California, the governor is trying to shut down our last nuclear plant-

    23. JR

      Why?

    24. MS

      ... at a time of blackouts.

    25. JR

      Why is he doing that?

    26. MS

      Ostensibly because... Well, okay, the o- ostensi-... The official reason is because... (laughs) This is so absurd, I have to laugh, is that it's causing impact to marine life. And the reason that's so absurd is that there's no evidence of any decline of fish population. And when you visit the plant, the warm water that leaves the plant, slightly warm water, it's not even that hot, and, of course, as soon as it goes into the ocean, it's like... The ocean's so vast, it becomes cold immediately. But there's all these seals and sea lions, like, hanging out on the discharge area. So, it's clean, super clean discharge water, and all these sea l-... 'Cause the sea life, they love the warm water, just like we do. So, it's a joke that it would have some negative impact on sea life. That's the ostensible reason.

    27. JR

      This is the one that's near San Diego?

    28. MS

      Uh, that one was shut down. That was San Onofre. This one is near San Luis Obispo.

    29. JR

      Oh.

    30. MS

      Called, it's called Diablo ca- unfortunately named Diablo Canyon.

  9. 1:09:35 – 1:29:51

    Cal Psych and ‘shelter first’: emergency powers, camping bans, and a centralized treatment system

    1. MS

      And that's ... You know, it's not super new, but when I start thinking about, like, what would it look like for us to do Cal Psych, for us to have rehab, to have some kinda standards-

    2. JR

      Cal Psych? What is that?

    3. MS

      Well, so the big idea is that we need to have this statewide psychiatric and addiction care system. And that means that you can have rehab facilities, psych beds, f- 'cause, you know, we have, we have officially 166,000 homeless, of whom 116,000 are unsheltered, but that's now two and a half years old.

    4. JR

      Can I ask you this though?

    5. MS

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Are w- ... Is California responsible for all the homeless people that migrate there? At a certain point in time, when you get to a number, like, whatever that number is, and then you do a survey of these people and you find out, oh, they're coming from L- you know, Louisville, Kentucky and this place and that place, because they heard that California's an easy place to be homeless 'cause they give you money.

    7. MS

      Right.

    8. JR

      And they take care of you. Like-

    9. MS

      And they don't enforce drug laws.

    10. JR

      Right. Well then, then you have to deal with the crime that-

    11. MS

      Right.

    12. JR

      ... comes outta that. 'Cause not everyone's gonna be immediately-

    13. MS

      Yep.

    14. JR

      ... rehabilitated. And, like, how do you regulate that?

    15. MS

      Well, here's what I would do. If I become governor and I'm inaugurated-

    16. JR

      Wait, excuse me. Excuse me.

    17. MS

      Yeah?

    18. JR

      When?

    19. MS

      Okay (laughs) .

    20. JR

      When? You have to say it like that.

    21. MS

      Thank you (laughs) .

    22. JR

      You have to say it that way.

    23. MS

      (laughs)

    24. JR

      Otherwise, people are like, "Oh, this guy doesn't even really believe it."

    25. MS

      (laughs) I do, actually. I believe it.

    26. JR

      "When I become governor."

    27. MS

      When I become governor ...

    28. JR

      Ooh, look at that. Sounds good.

    29. MS

      (laughs)

    30. JR

      (laughs)

Episode duration: 2:39:22

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