David Owen on the Environment, Unintended Consequences, and The Conundrum

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2012

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

David Owen of the New Yorker and author of The Conundrum talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his book. Owen argues that innovation and energy innovation have increased energy use rather than reduced it and similarly, other seemingly green changes do little to help the reduce humanity's carbon footprint or are actually counter-productive. Only large reductions in consumption are likely to matter and that prescription is unappealing to most people. Owen points out that New York City, ironically perhaps, is one of the greenest places to live because of the efficiencies of density. The conversation concludes with a discussion of how to best approach global warming given these seeming realities.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Today is February 1st, 2012, and my guest is David Owen, staff writer for
0:44.5	the New Yorker. His latest book is The Conundrum. David, welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you. This is a
0:51.4	fascinating short, engaging book on the small topic of saving the planet and the environment
1:03.4	generally. You've called your book The Conundrum. What is The Conundrum? The book is about unintended
1:11.6	consequences, and the conundrum is that even when we are acting with the very best of intentions,
1:20.2	the results are often cross-purposes with our goals. The subtitle of the book is How Scientific
1:26.9	Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions can make our energy and climate problems
1:31.7	worse, and the book is really a collection of examples of that, of how easy thinking about
1:40.7	these very difficult problems not only doesn't make things better, but in many cases I think
1:48.0	arguably makes things worse. Now you write for The New Yorker, correct? Yes. When does the
1:55.0	book come out? It becomes that very soon in a week or two. Okay, so that will be around,
2:00.0	that's first or second week of February, are you worried you're going to lose your job? I'm always
2:05.0	worried I'm going to lose my job. Good, that's smart, but this is an unpopular position to hold
2:13.0	that you've staked out in the book, that good intentions don't always turn out well. We're
2:20.5	kind of reaction to get from people when you tell them that. Well, it may go in a minute,
2:25.0	we'll go into some of the details obviously. And I think it's mixed, and I think that it's
2:31.0	hard to put an ideological label on it. It's been accused of being both a conservative
2:40.0	and climate denier and a, you know, a blaming liberal and socialist, so it's...
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