Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. We want to
Speaker 1: get to the author of a new book, Earthly Order,
Speaker 1: How Natural Laws Define Human Life, So let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Salima Lee is professor of Energy and the Environment at
Speaker 1: the University of Delaware. Also, as Carol just mentioned, the
Speaker 1: author of Earthly Order, How Natural Laws to Find Human Life? Selim,
Speaker 1: how are you very well? Thank you Tim, Well, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us here. When you when you
Speaker 1: write about natural laws defining human life, what do you mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it's basically looking at some of the fundamental constraints that
Speaker 1: the planet has on us. So, you know, when we
Speaker 1: talk about markets, markets are ultimately dependent on some aspect
Speaker 1: of natural resource constraints. And uh so we're going back
Speaker 1: to the basic laws of nature essentially and making sure
Speaker 1: that we align our economic and social systems in congruence
Speaker 1: with those constraints. You know. It's I've talked about this
Speaker 1: before on air, so listeners will be familiar with it.
Speaker 1: But I grew up in California and I had a
Speaker 1: professor in college. I went to college in Maine, a
Speaker 1: professor in college, you said California is a place where
Speaker 1: nobody should ever have lived because of the lack of
Speaker 1: water and the wildfires. And I'm wondering, professor, if if
Speaker 1: the market is failing in that sense, because you see
Speaker 1: California home prices still just out of control. And I
Speaker 1: say to myself, wait a second, and this is somebody
Speaker 1: who has family in California. Why are people living in
Speaker 1: a place where there is no water? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: if you go back to that classic Hollywood film Chinatown,
Speaker 1: you know, it goes to that kind of the heart
Speaker 1: of that challenge in California in terms of water security.
Speaker 1: And one could say the same of Phoenix, Arizona. I mean,
Speaker 1: so many places where we have designed human habitation without
Speaker 1: really considering, um, the natural constraints there, and especially the
Speaker 1: number of people who lived there. I mean, perhaps you
Speaker 1: could have some level of population. But that's that's a
Speaker 1: good example pull of that. And engineers have given us
Speaker 1: this illusion that we can basically uh use technology to
Speaker 1: construct all these systems. And for the short term, yes,
Speaker 1: they work fine, and but in the long term, the
Speaker 1: stress is going to build up eventually, and and that's
Speaker 1: what we have to be conscious of. Well, and I
Speaker 1: do wonder about, you know, as you think about this
Speaker 1: order and the things that are so connected, and maybe
Speaker 1: and how we teach it to our younger generation, like
Speaker 1: how do we need to be rethinking things? Because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you speak and I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: is it time for us to tell the world back off,
Speaker 1: stop consuming so much because earth can handle it? Like
Speaker 1: I've really been thinking about or such a consumption lead society,
Speaker 1: but it's really being brought uh down as a result.
Speaker 1: But tell us a bit about how everything kind of
Speaker 1: connects with one another, natural social systems, you know, and
Speaker 1: and how it can maybe you know, give us heads
Speaker 1: up on where we're going good or bad? Ad? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I am very much. Um. You know, approaching
Speaker 1: this from a practical point of view, we we are
Speaker 1: going to need to consume in order to uh sustain livelihoods,
Speaker 1: but we need to move towards constructive consumption rather than
Speaker 1: having consumption which is not considering some of those natural constraints.
Speaker 1: So I'm all for green growth. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: many ways in which you can use the capitalist system
Speaker 1: in a very constructive way. Um, But what we have
Speaker 1: done is we have not really considered some of those
Speaker 1: fundamental constraints that physics puts on us. I mean, for example,
Speaker 1: many years ago, you know, in the nineteen six seventies,
Speaker 1: there was an economist who wrote a book. You know,
Speaker 1: it was published by Harvard University Press, was called The
Speaker 1: Entropy Law and Economics. His name was Nicholas georgesco Rogin
Speaker 1: Romanian immigrant who wrote this, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: a wonderful book. But and what it tried to do
Speaker 1: was to link some of those physical constraints to economics.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately we have we we lost our way at
Speaker 1: some point and we could have great growth, we could
Speaker 1: have markets functioning, but we just need to do them
Speaker 1: within those constraints. All right. So if we did that,
Speaker 1: I mean, how would how would markets react? How would
Speaker 1: our world change? Well, we would just have different kinds
Speaker 1: of products. And we I mean we're seeing that now,
Speaker 1: but to some degree we're seeing you know, the growth
Speaker 1: of of green products, but it has happened as a reaction.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's still very neat. Rather than can I
Speaker 1: can I jump in for a second. So then do
Speaker 1: you think when we're seeing the constraints of energy supplies
Speaker 1: as a result of the Russian warranty Ukraine, that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't necessarily release supplies produce more because ultimately it's a
Speaker 1: fixed commodity. At some point it's going to run out.
Speaker 1: But let innovation disruption happen all the energy. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm saying, yeah, I mean, I mean with regard to
Speaker 1: part of it is that we are also very knee
Speaker 1: jerk in our approach to looking at even environmental problems.
Speaker 1: And so it's not just I don't want to just
Speaker 1: put all the blame on the markets. I think environmentalists
Speaker 1: share the blame that they don't make science based decisions.
Speaker 1: So for example, with the war and Ukraine. You know,
Speaker 1: three weeks ago, Europe had to pass new legislation to
Speaker 1: basically classify nuclear energy as clean energy. And that's because
Speaker 1: they completely had this panic attack after Fukushima and they
Speaker 1: didn't consider that actually, from a natural science perspective, nuclear power,
Speaker 1: especially existing nuclear power plants which were already operating, made
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to provide baseload power. And now
Speaker 1: they have no baseload power, so they have to either
Speaker 1: be important gas from Russia or they have to reclassify nuclear.
Speaker 1: So the environmentalists share this blame that we do not
Speaker 1: have science based decision making. We have what I call
Speaker 1: environmental awareness, but we don't have environmental literacy. And so
Speaker 1: that's the real challenge we have, and that's what Earthly
Speaker 1: Order tries to do. I don't want to be, you know,
Speaker 1: just a bleeding heart environmentalist in the book, I really
Speaker 1: want to make the connection between practicism and consumerism. So
Speaker 1: then come back again, because we would love to continue
Speaker 1: with this and there's certainly a topic that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot. Salimali, Professor of Energy in the Environment at
Speaker 1: the University of Delaware. His book Earthly Order, How Natural
Speaker 1: Laws define Human Life