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Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is July 27, 2010, and my guest is Robert Laughlin, the anti and Robert M. Bass Professor

of Physics, and the 1998 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Bob, welcome to Econ Talk.

My pleasure.

You recently wrote an article in the American Scholar called What the Earth Nose. It's

an interesting title, but the cover of the issue had a more provocative title. The

Earth doesn't care if you drive a hybrid. That could be very disparaging to some people,

and it could be very encouraging to others. What was your argument?

The argument was that the scales of the Earth are so long that all it cares about is whether

you burn up all the coal and oil. It doesn't care whether you take 200 years to do it,

or 300 years to do it. If you're concerned about the Earth instead of yourself, you would

have to bring your carbon consumption down to zero on the scale of people. Whether that's

likely to happen is another conversation, but anyway, that's the answer to your question.

Should we worry about climate change based on your argument? What was the thrust on that

event?

Obviously, you should worry about climate change some. It's one of the many things you

have to worry about, of course, like keeping your job and making sure that your kids are

OK and making sure you've got enough money in bank for education and so forth. Sure,

...