4.7 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2012
⏱️ 71 minutes
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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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