Hello everyone. I'm talking today with Dr. Scott Tinker. I met Scott at the

Art Conference Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in London at the end of October

where he gave a very well-received talk on the nexus between energy and the environment and it's been the most popular talk on the

ARC website on YouTube racking up about 1.2 million views as of today.

And so I felt for a variety of reasons that it would be worth delving into

Scott's thought and his background in more detail.

I've had a number of people on the podcast

who've talked about the energy environment relationship,

particularly as it pertains to climate, which is obviously a determining element when you're plotting forward

an energy strategy.

We talk a lot about the relationship between energy and the rectification of absolute privation.

There's a lot of people in the world are still living hand to mouth, you might say, and a huge part of the reason for that is that they don't have access to clean, reliable, plentiful, inexpensive energy in whatever form and are reduced to doing things like burning dung or wood if they're fortunate.

The problem with that is that poor people, there's many problems with that, but one of the problems is that poor people living hand to mouth don't take a long-term view of such niceties, let's say, as environmental sustainability, which doesn't occupy the forefront of your thinking

if you're trying to figure out how to scrounge around in the dirt so your children don't starve like today.

And so there is evidence that working to eradicate absolute privation around the world

with the provision of more inexpensive energy, for example, would simultaneously

be the best possible pathway to genuine environmental

sustainability as when people become more wealthy or even a little bit

wealthy they start thinking over a long term and are more concerned with the viability of the environment, for example,

or even able to conceptualize such a thing.

And so we delve into that in great length, trying to flesh out what a more multi-dimensional view of human flourishing

and environmental sustainability might be.

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