Ron and Ed are fired up to welcome Reason Magazine science editor, Ronald Bailey to the show.
A Bit More About Ronald:
Ronald Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason, where he writes a weekly science and technology column. From 1987 to 1990, Bailey was a staff writer for Forbes magazine, covering economic, scientific and business topics. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Commentary, The Public Interest, Smithsonian, TechCentralStation, National Review, Reader’s Digest and many other publications. In 1993, he was the Warren T. Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In 2006, Bailey was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who have made the “most significant contributions” to biotechnology in the last 10 years. Prior to joining Reason in 1997, Bailey produced several weekly national public television series including Think Tank and TechnoPolitics, as well as several documentaries for PBS television and ABC News. He’s author, along with Marian Tupy [See Episode #304 for our interview with Marian], of the newly released book: Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting.
Ron’s Questions: Segment One
Ron, welcome to The Soul of Enterprise. I've been reading you for a long time. I first read one of your first books in 1993, Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse. You have a very impressive career, and have changed your mind, and evolved your thinking, so we'll talk about that for sure. But I have to ask you, did you know Warren Brookes? [Author of The Economy in Mind].
Brookes had a powerful impact on me with his book The Economy in Mind. One of the reasons we use the Reagan quote, which is the Moscow speech he delivered written by Joshua Gilder, George Gilder’s nephew, is that he quotes in there the economy in mind. When I saw that you were the Warren Brookes fellow so I had to ask you. Ron, how have you been holding up, personally, with all this COVID and all this other craziness going on, we're in the middle of an election?
And I want to ask you about that. But first, how would you grade the government's response to this pandemic, both at the state and federal levels
Was that just the FDA, just bumbling the whole thing, or just trying to keep control?
I am going to make a confession to you Ron. I haven’t received the book yet. As a result, I am going to stick with COVID and climate change with you. I've been reading a lot of your posts and articles and you wrote one a few days ago about a vaccine, and how Americans are worried that the approval process is being driven more by politics than science. And that's on a bipartisan basis, both sides, but yet 62% said they would they would take the vaccine prior to the election. [Source: “Poll: Americans Worry COVID-19 Vaccine Approval Is Politicized,” Reason, September 1, 2020]. Would you take the vaccine?
Your co-author, Marian Tupy, we had him on and he made that point about how we're just accelerating vaccines, which is fantastic. And you actually anticipated my next question. I was going to ask you about all these regulations that have been removed or relaxed during this crisis. Do you think it'll stay that way? Or will those come back?
I hope you're right on that. And you know, I re-listened to a broadcast you did with Jonah Goldberg, because we love The Remnant podcast. And you were on May 7, and you guys were talking about the lock downs. Do you think the cost of the lock downs exceeded the benefits from an economic perspective?
Ed’s Questions: Segment Two
And the book is Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting, by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy. Marian was a guest of ours about a month ago. First, I want to congratulate you on the book Ronald but also to say it's beautiful. It's just a beautiful book.
Well, I'm thinking honestly several copies of for people at Christmas, because it's something that needs to be distributed among my family members. And not because they're anti this, but because I think they are often misinformed. Let's open with a question that you asked in the Introduction to the book: Why do so many smart people wrongly believe that, all things considered, the world is getting worse?
I haven't read every word of it. I perused through the whole thing, and I'm about halfway through the full book. But one thing I wanted to know, thousands of years from now people are going to dig up our stuff and wonder why many of them have an apple, half bitten apple on them, right? They'll be able to figure it out from our records, not just that. So let's talk about the Ten Trends. The first trend is the Great Enrichment, and we've had Deirdre McCloskey on [twice, Episode #6 and Episode #293] Trend Two is the end of poverty.
I want you to take it even a step further. Because you do mention this, at the very end of the section, you say the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, expects the economy will grow by $600 trillion by 2100. What will that mean for our children and our grandchildren and even the grandchildren of those in Sub-Saharan Africa?
I've said there are people worried about future shock. I have future glee. And I want to be around for some of this stuff. All right, well, trend number three asks a question. So I'll just ask it: Are we running out of resources?
And then I hear this, “but what about the rare earths that are all in China? What about the rare earths?”
So Trend Four is a peak population. Shorter answer is we haven't reached it, but we're getting close. But my question to you is what happens when the population starts to decline since we've not experienced that, except for tragedy. This would be a situation where it's not tragic?
Well, let's try to get another: Trend Five in here before our break, and that is the end of famine, which is just amazing. But the question that I hear after I mentioned this to people that famines have gone away is, “Oh, but what about GMOs?” But that is what has prevented famine.
Ed’s Questions: Segment Three
Ed Kless here again with my friend Ron Baker, and we have today the author of the newly released book Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting and I love that subtitle, too. Unfortunately, we're probably not going to get to the many others that you'll find interesting today but let's talk a little bit more about Trend number Six. You alluded to this in the last segment toward the end, which was the end of famine, and Trend Six is more land for nature.
Trend Seven is planet city. We all remember the planet city in Star Wars fame. I think this is an interesting trend. One thing I did want to ask you about this, though, is do you still feel the same in light of COVID-1—that we are going see this trend continue towards cities?
Outstanding. Trend number Eight is democracy on the march. The chart really shows the incredible increase in democracy across the world not since like the 1940s when you would think it is, but actually since the 70s is really when the switch began to occur. And yet again, there's still fear, just today I had a friend post on Facebook if you vote for x you are voting for the end of America as we know it.
Trend number Nine is the long peace. I felt very personally connected to this one, because both my grandfather and father—I can remember conversations with them—who said, “You know, Ed, it’s likely that you or your brother will end up going to war at some point.” I grew up in the 70s and early 80s. And it was still the belief among that generation that this would happen. But this trend shows the number of wars and interstate wars have just been trending down and that's been a wonderful thing. So talk about the long peace.
Let me just give you an opportunity on both democracy on the march, and the long peace, something that's been in in the news lately. China, and maybe specifically comment on Hong Kong, is there a concern there?
Just quickly as follow up, are you concerned about that at the government level or more at the private sector level with say, Facebook, Twitter, that kind of thing? It's convoluted.
Yeah because the private sector is like the government could take that over. Well, the last Trend in the top 10, as I said, I think there are 78 total trends in the book, and maybe we'll get to one or two of the others. But number 10 is a safer world. And by that you mean the significant reduction in deaths from natural disasters from 1900 until the present. Talk a little bit about that.
Great stuff. Well, that rounds out the top 10. Now, I'm excited to have about three minutes to get to some of the some of the other trends and the one that jumped out at me is Trend number 14, which is global inequality is falling. And then the response is always “But what about local inequality?” And Ron and I like to ask this question, “Is it fair that Jeff Bezos is so rich? And what's my fair share of his money anyway?”
All right, well, let me see if I can sneak one of the later trends in on you, because this is one I think that most people would not even get close if you asked them what the percentage was that have access to electricity. Trend number 60 reveals that 86% of the world has access to electricity. I don't think there's anybody that I know would get that right at all.
No, I don't want to camp one night, 100,000 years of human civilization means I sleep inside. Unless you want to great but I don't want to. Well, the book again is Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy. We highly recommend it.
Ron’s Questions: Segment Four
Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Ronald Bailey, the science correspondent for Reason magazine. And Ron, I know that your first article in Reason on global warming was back in 1992. And you thought back then that the threat was overblown. And you even published a book, Eco-Scam, in 1993, I believe, which I read—I think that was the first book of yours that I read—and it really had a big impact on me. But you've changed your mind. And now you think it could well be a significant problem. What changed your mind? [Source: “Climate Change: How Lucky Do You Feel?,” January 2020, Reason].
No, that's a great point. And I also want to ask you, I just finished reading, about a month ago, Bjorn Lomborg's new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, what's your take on that?
Like you said, take [econometric and computer models that project one hundred years into the future] with a vat of salt, not a grain of salt. I love that.
We've only got a couple minutes. But I’ve got to get this question to you too, because you probably know this guy, Patrick Moore. One of original founders of Greenpeace. I also just finished his book Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. Why the hostility to nuclear power from those most worried about climate change? China Syndrome?
Yeah, you know, Michael Moore's new movie, Planet of the Humans, apparently blasts solar and wind power as really expensive, but he's reverting back to the population problem. It's too many people. We have too many people.
Excellent. Well, Ron, thank you so much. It's been such an honor having you on long, we are longtime fans. Keep up the great work. And Ed, what do we have coming up next week?
Ed: Next week, We're going to welcome Margaret Wheatley to our show, author of Leadership and the New Science, and some other really wonderful books.
Ron: Fantastic. All right, I'll see you in 167 hours.
Bonus Content is Available As Well
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Bonus episode 107.1 — “Conversation with Robert Wood” AND 107.2 — “DOJ moves against Google” — features our new partnership with 90Minds and an amazing rant from Ron about the DOJ.