I really enjoyed this interview, and did stick around to the end. I wish that you had dealt with Global Warming/Climate Change a little more though, because I didn't hear either of your guests budging on their apparent indifference to contra-indicators of climate change theory. The points you agreed on made sense to me, but your question remained important: why are you guys supporting policy decisions when the underlying support for those decisions is flawed? Speaking for myself, I do not have any problem with many of things being done to preserve our common environment, but I do disagree with some of those things and believe that climate change is a very bad argument to use to support anti-pollution and alternative energy efforts.
I don't buy climate change as a theory, but it doesn't stop me from having a smaller carbon footprint than almost anyone living outside of a tribal society. As a vegan who doesn't own a car and who does recycle, there isn't much more I could do beyond giving up my computer. My reasons for these choices have nothing to do with climate change however, and I'm glad of that because if they were, I'd have to seriously reconsider them based on recent revelations in the climate science industry. I'm vegan because I don't like to eat anything else. It is as simple as that. If I was vegan for political or moral reasons, I'd probably be constantly engaged in a battle of willpower that pits my stomach against my sense of moral responsibility. As it is, I can ignore all the arguments: for health, kindness to animals, and reduced environmental impact, because my reasons are different. All the data could be wrong in those areas and it wouldn't matter to me because I can't stand the idea of eating anything but vegan food. As for not having a car, it's cheaper, unnecessary, and I love to ride a bike. Add to that the fact that bike paths in Holland are plentiful, well-maintained, and very safe compared to their counterparts in the US, and I have a great set of reasons to ride a bike instead of drive a car. Carbon credits, global warming/Climate Change, environmental consciousness are all irrelevant (to me) beside those other factors. Recycling is a bit different. I recycle because my wife makes me and the city I live in has set up garbage bins in such a way that it is almost impossible not to recycle unless you want to be a litterbug. I don't want to be a litterbug, so I take the extra trouble to sort my trash into the different bins provided.
The point of mentioning all this is that if the end goal is that the carbon imprint of each member of a community is reduced, maybe it would be a good idea to use arguments that make sense to the people you are trying to convince. Climate Change strikes me as alarmist, fear-mongering, poorly supported, and riddled with fraud. Even if I believed in it wholeheartedly I wouldn't want to use it as a means to get someone to change their lifestyle if I had other, less easily faulted arguments at hand. This is even more true if those arguments are more meaningful to the person in question.
A long time ago, before I realized I was and always have been a conservative, I participated in a protest against the use of carriage horses in New York because it was cruel to the animals. While there, I saw protesters throw red paint on a woman's fur coat. At that moment I lost all sympathy for the protest group. I agree that fur coats, particularly when factory-farmed animals are grown for the purpose of skinning them, is an abominable and cruel practice, but ruining some woman's fur coat to get the point across is a terrible way to make the argument. I feel the same way about anti-vivisectionists who break up medical testing laboratories. As far as I am concerned, the torture and murder that takes place in those facilities is cruel and pointless. It should stop and I would love to see it stop. However, destroying a lab and "freeing" the already severely injured animals only multiplies the damage (more money to suppliers, more animals bought as replacements for the lost animals, and a hardened position on the part of scientists involved.) The results of educating each other may not be immediately apparent, making it difficult to see if progress is being made, but as long as people think that vivisection leads to cancer cures, there will be people who want to perform vivisection. And that is the problem: that people want to do it. That desire is the issue, and that is where the problem must be solved.
The problems that Climate Change theory attempts to solve are many, but addressing the issue as a scare tactic isn't much different from throwing paint on a red coat. What does wrecking a fur coat have to do with protecting animals? Not much, when the ruined coat is likely insured and will be quickly replaced thanks to the skinning of several dozen more animals. With Climate Change theory, we see many unintended consequences, some of which are economically costly with no real ecological return, and at the same time opinion hardens against the theory. What does that do? Does it make people more likely or less likely to worry about their carbon imprint? Why not create positive reasons to reduce their carbon imprint, like the beautiful bike paths that exist in the Netherlands, and not worry about complicated and flawed arguments like Climate Change?
AP