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Aug. 11, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:26
Jonathan Safran Foer | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 63
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A lot of the ways that people talk about making a difference are not making a difference.
They just feel good.
And I think in the future, our children and our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, aren't going to look back and say, what did great-grandpa Ben feel?
They're gonna look back and say, "What did great grandpa Ben do?" Hey, hey, and welcome.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show, Sunday special.
We're joined today by Jonathan Safran Foer.
He's the author of, among other books, Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud, and Incredibly Close.
And most recently, Here I Am.
And he's here to talk about his brand new book, which is actually about climate change, We Are the Weather.
It's available on September 17th.
You can pre-order it now.
Jonathan, thanks so much for stopping by.
I really appreciate it.
Very happy to be here.
One of the things that's interesting about having you on is obviously my catchphrase is the whole facts don't care about your feelings shtick.
But so much of your writing is deeply felt.
How do you balance those elements when you're talking about public policy issues like how to deal with the possibility of future climate change?
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so how do you separate out what the thrust of what you're trying to say is from the feelings?
How much of it is reasoned argument and how much of it is just the drive toward a moral feeling that you're going for?
Well, to begin with a little humility, I don't know for sure, because feelings are distorting.
And oftentimes, we don't realize the extent to which our feelings are distorting our thoughts.
And we might think that we're being clear-headed, but we think that with the head that is clouded, right?
That slogan, though, could also have been the slogan of this book.
The central premise of We Are the Weather is that we are way too engaged with our feelings and not nearly enough engaged with the facts or our actions.
So for example, we've created this all important dichotomy between people who are climate change deniers, which is to say those who don't accept that human activity is changing our environment, changing the climate, and people who accept what 97% changing the climate, and people who accept what 97% of the scientists seem to agree on.
And what I say at the beginning of the book is this is not the right dichotomy to make.
Because in fact a lot of people who would consider themselves environmentalists behave in ways that are virtually identical to people who are so-called climate change deniers.
And in fact, denial comes in a lot of different forms.
Denial can of course be denial on the basis of information, but can also be a kind of denial in believing that accepting knowledge, accepting science is virtuous, which it isn't necessarily, not in and of itself.
If I found out that I had cancer, knowing that I have cancer is going to do nothing about stopping the spread of my cancer.
I have to seek the advice of people who know more than me, hopefully get multiple opinions, and then take an action that, however uncertain it might be.
seems to be the most thoughtful and careful action.
So, this is not... A lot of books about the environment... I've read a fair number of books, as I'm sure you have as well.
An awful lot of them move me for 15 pages, 20 pages.
Like most people, I can get very swayed by these sort of doomsday predictions without either questioning the validity of them, Or questioning what they have to do with me.
As if learning about these potential outcomes somehow was a way in participating in the avoidance of them, which it isn't.
So when I wrote this book I wanted to actually move beyond feelings and to be very careful about what is it that as an individual, I'm not a legislator and I'm not a particularly political person, I am a dad, I'm a New Yorker, I'm a Jewish person as we just said, and I'm a citizen of both America and the world.
What can I do in the confines of my home and with the voice that I have to make a difference?
And so that was what I started to research and what I found was a lot of the ways that people talk about making a difference are not making a difference.
They just feel good.
And I think in the future, our children and our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, aren't going to look back and say, what did great-grandpa Ben feel?
They're going to look back and say, what did great-grandpa Ben do?
Well, that is a really interesting question, because you're right that there has been this sort of weird political dichotomy over climate change denialism.
One of my big bugaboos has been the idea that if I disagree with somebody on policy, but I fully accept the IPCC estimates about the range of possibilities inherent in climate change, If I accept that sometime between now and the end of the century there will be a change in the climate that is largely related to human activity, somewhere between two degrees Celsius and six degrees Celsius, but I also disagree with a particular policy, this makes me a denier.
It seems like that is a form of virtue signaling that is unjustified by the facts.
And this does bring us to sort of the central contention of your book.
Your book is really based on what you say is individual activity, but I wonder if there are environmentalists who are going to criticize the book By pointing out that in the end, this is really a collective solution that's necessary.
So, you know, we can dig all the wells that we want and build all the solar panels on our houses that we want.
And we can do like Prince Charles and Prince William and talk about not having as many kids.
But in the end, If half the globe decides not to participate, none of this is going to make any difference at all.
So you talk a lot about what individuals can do.
How do you deal with the criticism that the focus on the individual is actually wrong-headed, that if you don't have governments cooperating on some sort of global solution, that in essence the free rider problem destroys any possibility of change in the first place?
Well, first of all, I would say your description of climate change is exactly right.
And it's admirable.
And it's worth acknowledging that there is a broad consensus.
Not only a scientific consensus, but a popular consensus.
Not only among Democrats, but among Republicans as well.
As to what you just said.
That we are on this path.
The temperatures are increasing because of human activity.
You even were bold enough to put numbers on it, which are the numbers I would put on it, and are the numbers that, frankly, 97% of scientists would put on it.
So we don't disagree about the science.
And that's a huge step forward.
The goalposts have really been moving in terms of the different kinds of denial.
It used to be the case that there was a fairly large swath of the population that said, it's just not happening.
And then it was, it's happening, but it's not happening because of human activity.
Then it was, it is happening because of human activity, but it's not that bad.
And now I think we're in a place where we say, this could be bad.
We don't know exactly how bad, but it could be bad.
And so let's be thoughtful about it.
And I would have a hard time respecting somebody who said this isn't happening in much the same way that I would have a hard time respecting somebody who believed in Bigfoot.
But if somebody says, I'm with you on the basic science and the ideas, I have a different notion of how we should address that.
I have nothing but respect for that.
And I might try to have a conversation where I share my perspective, and hopefully in a way that isn't binary.
Like, it's not as if we do it my way or we do it your way.
It may be that at the end of this conversation, you say, you know, I'm sort of compelled what you had to say about diet.
I'm not going to become a vegan.
I'm not going to become a vegetarian.
I could imagine eating beef one less meal a week, or two less meals a week.
And I can imagine you telling me things that would persuade me to some extent.
And that's the kind of conversation, that's the spirit of the conversation that we really need to be having.
Are environmentalists going to be upset with my approach?
Of course, because environmentalists get upset about everything, and advocates get upset about everything, and that's frankly part of their job.
They are not level-headed legislators, and they are not people who live in my house with me making decisions that are very personal to my family.
I'm glad that they're out there.
I'm glad that PETA exists in the world, despite the fact that I disagree with so many of the things that they say and do.
But they're good at creating noise in the margin for us to look at and to remember.
I mean, do you wonder if, when it comes to PETA, for example, or some of the members of the environmental movement, if the alarmism actually undercuts support for ability to do things, meaning that it's enervating.
There's this push on some parts of the radical environmentalist movement, as you see in the animal rights movement with PETA, where PETA will do holocausts on your plate.
My first reaction is, I'm going to go eat a bucket of chicken right now, because a chicken is not a human being, and when you say that this is like a holocaust, my answer is, no, it's not.
When it comes to climate change, it's sort of the same thing.
When I see people saying, well, it's going to be the day after tomorrow, and Dennis Quaid is going to be wandering across the ski slopes in the middle of New York, and that's going to happen next year, and all of Miami is going to be underwater.
I mean, I saw a story just this week about somebody saying, well, if all the ice caps melted, then all of Florida would be gone, right?
And if an asteroid hits Earth, we'll all be dead.
I mean, that's not useful talk.
Well, I would say a couple of things.
First of all, my instinct isn't the same as yours.
I don't rush off to eat the chicken.
I would rush off to condemn PETA's rhetoric.
Right.
I hear.
I don't have a reflexive... I don't rise to meet the anger that inspired them to... I think that's fair.
And secondly...
I want to know if an asteroid is coming toward Earth.
I want scientists working on it.
And if scientists say to me, that's really no threat, or that's a threat that we just can't do anything about, then I will sleep soundly not stressing out about asteroids.
If there are five or six papers that say all of Florida is going to be underwater in three years, I'd say, I really need to know more.
An analogy that I often think about is if I were to get a cancer diagnosis.
If I went in for a regular physical, my physician calls me and says, your blood work came up a little bit weird.
I think it would be good to get a more extensive check by a cancer expert.
I wouldn't go and amputate my limbs.
I wouldn't go and sign up for chemotherapy the next day.
I'd say, who's the best doctor?
I want to go to the best doctor.
Do I trust doctors absolutely?
No.
Do I trust them more than I trust myself with medicine?
Of course I do.
If that doctor said to me, We have reasons to be concerned.
Here's what I would prescribe.
I'd say I want to get a second opinion, especially if the prescription was something really dramatic that I did not want to do, like chemotherapy.
If the second doctor said, I think this is serious, I would also suggest chemotherapy.
Perhaps a slightly different course of it, but I'd say I want to talk to a third doctor.
There is a number of doctors that I would talk to, where even though the accumulation of their advice would leave some uncertainty, there's enough doctors that I would talk to where I would say, I need to take action.
I don't know if this is the best action, but it is the one that's been most widely recommended to me by experts who have no strong incentive to send me through chemotherapy.
So, what are my choices?
My choices are to live with it for a while and see what happens, or to try to be proactive and treat it in advance of it metastasizing.
So what we know is that people who wait usually die.
Or at the very least, their quality of life is radically inhibited.
They're not able to work afterwards.
They're not able to lift their children into the air.
They're not able to enjoy meals.
They can't trout.
All of the things that make life valuable.
I wouldn't want that fate.
So chemo strikes me as something that would be incredibly shitty to experience and I would do just about anything to avoid.
But there are times when it's justified.
So my attitude about this, I'm not a climate expert.
I'm not a scientist.
I assume you would describe yourself the same way.
Yeah, of course.
I'm somebody who tries to read.
And I try to read broadly as much as I can.
Everything I have read has suggested that this is an unambiguous situation.
I'm not talking about projections 100 years out or 200 years out.
I don't know what coastal cities might flood or not.
I know that there are very good reasons to think we're going to have a lot of flooding, including the fact that we already have.
It seems to me sensible to start to make changes.
One thing that you've said before, which I was taken with, is that humans are good at adapting.
And that rings true to me.
The question is, when do we start adapting?
Right.
So it is interesting.
Over the weekend I was reading a book called Climate Casino by William Nordhaus, who's the Nobel Prize in Economics winner, talking specifically about sort of the range of outcomes that are possible here.
One of the things that makes the conversation So difficult is that there is this wide variety of outcomes that are possible.
And there are, I would say, unrealistic assessments of what we can do and more realistic assessments of what we can do.
So, for example, the Copenhagen Accords suggest that we are supposed to keep to a two degree climate change maximum.
It's not going to happen.
I mean, Nordhaus makes clear that there is effectively no chance of that.
He sort of suggests that we aim for four degrees Celsius.
There are real-time costs to the stuff that we are doing now.
We have to weigh those against the future costs that may accrue to an economy that, for example, will be a lot more developed in 100 years.
A lot of places that are impoverished now will presumably not be impoverished after 100 years of development, but the costs that we're talking about incurring now are costs that will be incurred right now, and largely not by the people who we're talking about.
Right now, we're talking about The people in the first world who are going to read your book are going to watch this show.
But the people who really are going to be cost the most if we cut back on carbon fuels, for example, are the people in the second and the third world, people who are living lifespans of 40, 45 years and who are burning dung for fuel.
And so in weighing the risks and the costs and the benefits, I feel like it's The conversation has become too simplified.
There are folks who just say we need to act and we need to act now, and it's chemotherapy, and then we don't define what the chemotherapy looks like, who actually pays the cost of the chemotherapy, and what the possibility is that the cancer is actually livable.
And this is where, you know, the cancer... Livable without treatment, you mean?
Or livable with treatment?
Well, it depends on the treatment.
So there are three types of treatment, in my view, and I think Nordhaus is right on this.
He says that, to break it down, there's adaptation, Which is the idea that people are going to move from the coast, you're going to see certain popular migrations from particular areas over the course of the next century, which is already happening.
And for all the talk about that's a crisis, well again, we're talking about migration over the course of 100 years, not the kind of wave you're seeing from Syria into Europe, which is the result of a right now crisis, everybody moving.
We're also seeing it in California right now as wildfires.
The wildfire season right around here is now 20% longer than it was two decades ago.
Right.
And you are seeing people move out of those towns.
But I think the stuff that people are talking about geopolitically is cross-border crises of millions of people swamping borders.
It seems like that will be a more gradual problem than a sudden problem.
What makes you think that it will be a more gradual problem?
That over the course of the next hundred years, the climate is going to gradually change unless you hit an inflection point, in which case the climate spikes dramatically.
So let's talk about that.
What happens if we hit that inflection point?
I agree with you.
We don't know.
We don't know where the inflection point is.
But you just said, unless, right?
Right.
So how do we deal with that uncertainty?
So that's exactly the question I'm asking.
So when it comes to that uncertainty, is the greater risk taking catastrophic climate action to cut down on carbon fuels in a dramatic way?
Or is adaptation a better solution in terms of assuming that over the course of the next century, there will be certain damage that is done by natural disasters, people moving across borders?
In other words, there's the possibility that you get hit by a car tomorrow.
How much life insurance do you take out?
And that's dependent on the premiums.
It's dependent on how much money you have in the bank account.
And so what makes the conversation so difficult is, on the one side, people failing to acknowledge that you could hit a tipping point and things could get disastrous, and on the other side, people inevitably assuming that we definitely will hit a tipping point and it will be a disaster, and thus we have to do catastrophic things to the American economy, for example, that hurt lots of people.
I mean, you hurt the American economy, you're going to hurt everybody's economy.
And how would you compare those catastrophic outcomes of acting with the catastrophic outcomes of mass migration in the United States?
Or the catastrophic outcomes of widespread drought?
Or the catastrophic outcomes of super storms?
I mean, Nordhaus tries to analyze this in sort of an economic fashion, looking at how much GDP globally would he forecast that it would cost for there to be a rise in natural disasters as forecast by the IPCC over the course of the next hundred years, and that sort of thing.
What he suggests is that the biggest damage will be in the sort of environmental area, not the industrial area.
So, the economy will basically be pretty Pretty durable.
People have a good way of adapting when it comes to economics.
And even in terms of rising disease, he thinks that will be fairly mild.
But in terms of environmental damage itself, ocean acidification, destruction of coral reefs, that sort of stuff, you will see deep damage.
And so, if you care a lot about that sort of stuff, then, obviously, Graver Necessity must be taken.
So I guess when it comes to remedies to get back to sort of the model I'm talking about, there's there's adaptation, which is not the only model.
And then there is geoengineering, which folks are talking about as a possible solution, the possibility of shooting sulfur into the air to cool temperatures or using properties to make the earth less dark in color so that it reflects more sunlight back into back outside and lowers the global temperature.
There's been talk about that and And obviously, technological.
And then there's been heavy focus put on mitigation.
And the mitigation is the stuff you really talk about in the book.
So, in your view, what are the proper measures of mitigation that we should be taking?
And how much should we be focusing on, again, what individuals do, and how much should we be focusing on what governments ought to be doing in terms of mitigation?
Because that seems like where all the focus is right now, because you can't predict what technology is going to do, and you can't really predict to a degree of certainty the sort of tipping points that we're talking about.
So I think that there's a danger and a temptation to have the conversation quickly accelerate to the ends.
Like, in a hundred years we're going to have five degrees of warming.
This is what the apocalyptic scenarios will look like.
These are the most dramatic possible solutions or mitigations, right?
Like sending, making the earth darker.
You know, that's radical.
Or lighter, yeah, yeah.
So what we know is that in order to reach the goals of the Paris Accord, which people now estimate we have about a 5% likelihood of doing.
Yeah, it's not happening, yeah.
But to do that, citizens have to have an individual carbon budget of about 4.5 million pounds per year.
4.5 million pounds per year.
I'm sorry, 2.3.
The average right now is 4.5.
So we have to somehow close that distance.
There's a huge difference between an American's carbon budget and a Bangladeshi's carbon budget, which is important and we can talk about.
But a two-thirds vegan diet, which is what this book is talking about, refraining from eating animal products for breakfast and lunch, and then for dinner you eat whatever you want, closes that gap by 1.3.
So this is not a small thing, and however much you might dislike that notion, and I have to say, I really dislike the notion of eating that way.
I've been a vegetarian on and off for most of my life, but I'm not the kind of vegetarian who finds meat disgusting, quite the opposite.
I always want to eat it.
I mean, I think it smells amazing, I think it looks amazing, I think it tastes amazing.
So, I am not proposing this as somebody who finds it easy.
I have no idea what your eating habits are, but I would guess that I would find this more difficult than you.
That having been said, do I find it radical?
Do I find it impossible?
Do I feel like anybody is grabbing something from my plate?
Do I feel like a choice is being forced upon me or restricted?
No.
I feel like this is the least I can do.
This is something I can do.
There's an analogy to home front efforts during World War II, which I write about at length in the book.
The home front efforts would not have won the war, obviously, on their own.
But we couldn't have won the war without home front efforts, without having people agreeing to carpool.
having a national speed limit of 35 miles an hour.
The highest income tax rate was 94% during the war, and the income that qualified for that tax was dropped 25-fold.
There were rations on food.
These are things that nobody likes, but everybody agreed to.
We're not in a war.
Or if we are, it doesn't feel like we are.
It feels like it's something that's happening over there than close at home.
So it's harder to make the kind of emotional connections or even the intellectual connections that would inspire one to change.
But the kinds of changes that we're talking about, if we are really just looking at the numbers and looking at the science, are not radical and they're not impractical.
And they will not be the solution, but they will be an enormous part of the solution.
And I don't know if you read, there's an article in the Guardian a day or two ago about a leaked report from the next IPCC report that said We have no hope of reaching the Paris Accord goals or anything like them without really changing how we farm, how we eat, and how we manage land.
So what I prefer is instead of, you know, reaching for a kind of hypothetical scenario that frankly I have no control over in any case, that I, that is It's too complicated to really converse about in any kind of sensible detail to think about what's a starting point.
So if I were to ask you, first of all, do you tend to agree with the idea that animal agriculture is a huge part of the problem?
I mean, statistically speaking, obviously agriculture represents, what, 25% of carbon emissions?
So sure.
Yeah, so we don't know exactly how many, because this is the other thing.
These are all interlinked systems, and they're extraordinarily complicated.
But it's at least 25%, and some estimates put it closer to 50%.
It all depends on what you include in your calculation.
So the people who say 25% are including all the carbon that is released when we clear-cut rainforests, which 80% of the time is done for animal agriculture.
91% of Amazon clear-cutting is done for animal agriculture.
But it's not including the amount of carbon that those trees would absorb.
So it's a little bit like a life insurance policy that covers the funeral but not your lost wages, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
So this is very well established.
You don't find people who think about and who know about the climate change science who would disagree with the idea that animal agriculture is, if not the leading cause... A heavy driver.
I mean, there's just no question.
Okay.
So if we start with that, right?
This is a truth.
So what do we do with that truth?
I don't feel, and I would be very surprised if you felt, that people should have choices taken away from them.
Right.
I don't feel that we should have no hamburgers available in supermarkets or restaurants.
I do feel that they could be labeled differently, with giving us a little bit more information about where the food comes from, what the practices of the farms are.
Information that, frankly, is very, very similar to the information we have on our refrigerators, on our A.C.
units, on pretty much anything you buy these days.
Washers and dryers and cars.
Inform us.
Let us make good decisions.
I think that we should hold the meat industry accountable for its environmental destruction.
You know, a company like Smithfield had 8,000 violations of the Clean Water Act in one year.
So if they had 10, you would say, shame on them.
If they had 100, you would say, we need better oversight.
8,000 is a business model.
And it's the business model of animal agriculture to create environmental destruction.
Not because they want to, in and of itself, but because it's a good business model.
If your idea of a good business is only making money.
So we should change subsidies, change regulations, so that the price of meat is just what the price of meat is.
And we should ask ourselves, what's possible for me?
I'm not asking this in an abstract way of every person on earth because different people will have different answers for good reasons.
There are people in the country who live in urban food deserts where they just don't have access to Any food that isn't McDonald's.
That's a shame.
We need to work on that problem rather than cite those people as a reason why you and I would not want to eat less meat.
I mean, that does raise the collective action problem, though.
So, obviously, there are a billion people living in China, a billion people living in India, and those folks are going to eat what those folks are going to eat.
Those of us in Europe or the United States, which is largely our audiences, Let's say they reduce their meat consumption heavily, but that meat consumption is not reduced in places like China or India.
In fact, in many places in the world, meat consumption is growing as prosperity grows.
So, are you asking people to do something that's in vain?
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So I'm actually warm toward your recommendation because I love the idea of individuals taking on things themselves as opposed to having it crammed down from the top.
But I do wonder at the collective action problem that's sort of inherent here.
So India is the most vegetarian country in the world.
Right.
China recently created an initiative to reduce meat consumption by half by 2030.
It's incredible.
Are they going to achieve it?
No.
For environmental reasons.
That was why they did it.
And we have American celebrities over there doing commercials, doing public service announcements to encourage the Chinese public to think about meat differently.
Now the question is, think about it how differently?
Think about it in some sort of futuristic, I'm going to be drinking Soylent and eating little pills for dinner?
No.
To think about it like their parents thought about it.
And that's what we need to do here.
This is conservative eating.
It's not radical eating.
We eat in America now 180 times as much chicken per person as we did a century ago.
We eat the equivalent of every citizen in the world in the year 1700, eating 900 pounds of beef and 1,200 gallons of milk every day.
Obviously, a lot of that is because of the population explosion, but a lot of it is because of the meat explosion.
What are we getting for this?
It used to be the case, like our parents, when they would eat chicken, it would be roasted.
They would buy it probably from somebody they knew.
the techniques for raising the chicken would have resembled nature cycles, you know, animals living outside, animals that did not need antibiotics, animals that did not have to be slaughtered after 30 days lest their body weight crush their bones, which is the case now, eating animals that are capable of sexual reproduction. eating animals that are capable of sexual reproduction.
Every turkey you've ever eaten in your life was incapable of sexual reproduction.
So does that sound conservative?
Is that what we think of when we conjure the, you know, a mental image of a farm?
Or does that sound like something that's being forced on us, however subtly?
20% of meals in America are now eaten in cars.
You know, if we're eating all this chicken, it's not because somebody's roasting it in the oven every night and we're eating it at a table that's set with plates and silverware and the place where families transmit values and tell stories.
We're eating McNuggets.
So what we need is not to do something that feels weird.
We need to do something that feels good.
We need to do something that resembles the kind of eating that our parents and grandparents did, where a meal was not a slab of meat that covered 60% of a plate.
It included all kinds of other things, and there was some amount of meat.
And I think we can do that.
I don't think it's a pipe dream.
If you were to ask me what are the odds that half of Americans or half of Europeans or half of Chinese are going to be vegetarians in 10 years, I would say zero.
What are the odds that half of the meals eaten in America and in Europe and in China are vegetarian in 10 years?
I would say I think that could happen.
I don't know if it's likely but I think it could happen.
And for me the best way of moving into that thought experiment and to moving in hopefully into a kind of optimism about it and an empowerment is to engage it on a person-by-person basis.
So, like, I'm sitting across from you, right?
You've acknowledged that climate change is happening because of human activities.
You've acknowledged that it is going to be a problem at some point.
We don't know how big a problem it's going to be.
We don't know when.
It's going to be a problem at some point.
The kinds of adaptations you've talked about are suggestive of your thinking it's going to be a big problem if people are going to have to, you know, leave cities.
That's a big problem.
You agree that animal agriculture is, if not the most important thing that an individual can do changing our relationship to animal agriculture, if it's not the most important thing, it's one of the most important things.
So what seems possible to you?
I'm not talking legislatively, just in your own family.
As I say, I don't know how big a problem climate change is going to be, but I also hear the idea that on an individual level, if there is something that I can do to mitigate the chances of bad things happening in the future, and On an honest level, if it's not at too much cost to me in my personal life, then I'm willing to do it.
That's one of the things that I actually do enjoy about the book, is that you actually talk about your own struggles with the, you know, I'm a crusader, I'm a visionary, I'm going to do this and then tomorrow you're eating kind of what you want.
And that is part of it.
I do wonder, you know, you talk in the book about, you sort of compare this to the crusade against tobacco that happened in the United States.
And I wonder if that is because it wasn't really a moral crusade against tobacco.
That was a you're preserving your own health crusade.
You're preserving your own health in real time.
It's not you're saving your grandkids, right?
It's not you're saving in 100 years, maybe your great-grandchild is going to have to move from Miami inland to Tallahassee or something.
It was you're going to die of cancer if you keep smoking.
Is there a better pitch?
I've said before on my own show that when it comes to moral issues, there are certain moral issues where we look back in 100, 150 years and we say, how could people have ever done that?
That's insane.
Obviously slavery, Jim Crow come to mind in the modern context, but I've said, I think on abortion 50 years from now people will go crazy, but I think certainly on vegetarianism.
I think in 100 years when it is possible for people to get the protein that they need, increasingly it's happening now, without having to kill animals, then they're going to look back and say, who are these barbarians who are slaughtering animals in mass numbers?
And not only that, there's fairly good research that suggests that heavy intake of anything from chicken to beef, less so fish, but chicken and beef is actually not very good for you.
Too heavy intake of those is going to hurt you health-wise.
Why not make the health pitch as opposed to making the global warming pitch?
Specifically because it feels like you're being moralized on global warming.
In the book you make comparisons to people who kind of look the other way during the Holocaust, for example.
Why make one pitch as opposed to the other?
And you've made the other pitch in eating animals, for example.
Well I would make both pitches.
And the smoking analogy is a good one because we knew for a very long time that smoking caused cancer.
And it's taken, I mean people talk about it as a triumph, our ability to cut smoking as we have, and I look at it as a failure.
It's just taken way too long given all the information that we have.
I would add that smokers are three times as likely to die of cancer as non-smokers.
People who eat diets heavy in animal protein are four times as likely to die of cancer as people who are vegetarian.
So it's a rather startling statistic that if what you want to do is avoid death by cancer, you'd be better continuing to smoke and stop eating burgers.
There are a lot of ways of thinking about these issues, and I think a little bit of moralizing isn't the worst thing in the world.
We disagree about abortion, but when you were just talking about it as something that we will look back at in 50 years and say, how could they have?
That's moralizing, and I disagree with you, but I'm glad that you feel the way that you do.
I'm glad that your opinion is not only informed by information, but informed by passion, and you care.
And when something bad is happening, something we perceive that is wrong, I think it's a good thing to speak up.
Even if it risks a certain amount of alienation, even if it risks sounding condescending, even if it risks, as I have risked at many, many, a dinner party, coming off like an asshole, like an annoying asshole.
You know, you risk that, right?
- Pretty much every day.
- Yeah. - And the risk doesn't always pay off, I'll tell you. - But you, I would say a couple of things One is, what are the options?
To keep your mouth shut or to moderate everything until it means nothing?
Also, time matters.
There's an urgency to these problems.
Again, I don't agree with you about abortion, but somebody who holds your opinion, this every day matters, right?
Of course.
So when I look at factory farming, there are 50 billion animals being factory farmed right now every year in the world.
Time matters.
The conditions matter.
And this is another thing that I think we need to think about.
Again, and it's a kind of movement away from the binary to the specific and to the process.
We are not all going to die because of climate change, or at least I don't see that happening, and experts don't really see that happening.
It's not apocalyptic.
It's a question of how much are we willing to lose, because we're going to lose a lot.
We're going to lose the coral reefs.
We're going to probably lose the Amazon.
And how much of this loss are we comfortable with?
How many people have to become, how many tens of millions, how many hundreds of millions of people have to become climate refugees?
Before we say, now that's a number too high for me.
How many days a year do you want your kids to be able to play outside?
Before you say, that's too few.
Like, how many species have to be lost?
Right, but getting back to the point that I was making earlier, this is where I think that the conversation about what we can do on a personal level is more appealing to me than the Doomsday Talk.
Because once you get into Doomsday Talk, then what I hear coming down the rails is, Green New Deal, destroy the American economy, if we really want to fight this problem, bomb all the coal factories in China and India and finish this thing off right now, because otherwise You know, we're all doomed.
Why make the global warming pitch, which I gotta say is a lot more off-putting than some of the other pitches that you've made?
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so the argument that as a mitigation against future risk and as a personal benefit to your own health, you should eat less meat.
That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Once we get into it's a crisis, it's a crisis that has to be handled right now or human beings will inevitably meet with Harsh consequences that are unsustainable.
I think there's a lot more play in those joints.
And frankly, I think that on an emotional level, you can get into a situation that proves too much.
Meaning, if it's that big a deal, where do you draw the line in terms of, well, this far I'm not willing to go.
So the solution that you're proposing sounds a lot more reasonable than the rhetoric that maybe you're pushing in order to get to that solution.
I can be easily convinced by the idea that I should eat less meat.
In fact, I'm fairly well convinced that you're right, that people should eat less meat.
I'm pretty much ready to get on board.
I've been trying to do some of it myself.
The question becomes, in the rhetoric that we use about climate change, And it forces a binary choice between sort of all and nothing that I don't think you're actually proposing in your solutions.
No, I'm not.
But at the same time, I'm not proposing the attitude of, I can sort of see that.
I can imagine trying.
Like, if we're going to be serious about individual responsibility and individual choice, as opposed to the things that you buck against, which are kind of, you know, legislation are enforced in the absence of choice.
Right?
Then we have to be really serious about the choices that we're making and not take them lightly.
There is a responsibility that you take on when you frame this as something that you are going to do.
So just to push you a little bit, you know, you have said you can imagine this.
This is something that you're starting to try.
So if we just walk through it in specifics, right?
You are going to have dinner tonight.
So, can you imagine at your dinner tonight, just to begin with, not eating red meat?
Take that as a starting point.
I mean, sure.
That's easy.
Can you say you won't?
I can.
You would say you won't?
Yeah.
Then Shapiro's not going to eat beef tonight.
It also happens to be when we're filming this, the nine days, so I'm actually Jewish law forbidden from eating meat tonight, but sure.
Even if we weren't.
There's a wonderful analog to kashrut, by the way, but we may not get around to that.
Can you imagine breakfasts?
I don't know about you, but for me breakfast is not that big of a deal.
Yeah, I go pretty light on breakfast.
Can you imagine saying, I, Ben Shapiro, am not going to eat animal products at breakfast?
Yep, I pretty much don't now.
Not, I pretty much don't now.
Can you say, I just won't do it?
This matters to me.
I am somebody who puts his money where his mouth is.
I've just said climate change is happening.
I've just acknowledged that animal agriculture is the most important thing that I can do.
My relationship to food is the most important thing I can do as an individual.
And I've said I don't want other people forcing me to make changes.
So I'm taking it upon myself to make changes.
So what stops you from saying, I won't?
The capacity for human sin and the fact that I like creamer in my coffee every so often.
Well, I would say those infringements on a kind of model of living don't undermine it.
And that's another thing we really have to move away from, is these identities of, what are you?
I'm a vegetarian.
What are you?
I'm a vegan.
What are you?
I'm a pescatarian.
Well, that's sort of what I'm saying.
I mean, I'm saying that the measures that you're calling for are actually relatively moderate in terms of what human beings can do.
And that's why, instead of me just saying hard and fast, I'm never going to eat animal products at breakfast again, me saying that most of the time, I can commit that most of the time I won't eat animal products at breakfast, that's something that I feel like is reasonable and something that I can do.
Saying bar none, I'm never going to eat an animal product at breakfast again.
That's not necessary.
Right.
But there's a huge difference in saying, you know, it's why religion works.
Right?
If you said, I'm going to really do my best not to eat pork, that's not what you say.
Right.
I assume.
Correct.
You say, I'm just not going to do it.
It's a good question.
I mean, I'm not firmly convinced that it is morally sinful to eat animal products in the same way that it would be for me to violate the Word of God, for example, in my religious belief.
Well, the Word of God is also not to inflict unnecessary harm on other living things, not to desecrate God's creations, to be good stewards of the earth.
Right.
I would say it perfectly extends to this.
Again, that's a very strict reading of eating a hamburger.
Not if you've visited a factory farm.
It's really not.
I can pretty much promise you that if you and I traveled not that far from here and went to a factory farm, you would say this is grossly out of line with my Jewish values.
So again, this is the case for vegetarianism that I like better than the global warming case.
That's what I was saying earlier.
The case that you make on an ethical level for not eating animals or on a health level for not eating animals is an argument that I actually like better than the sometime in the foreseeable future there will be consequences that we can't exactly forecast but know some will be harmful.
That's harder because we're not going to know until we get there how bad things are going to be and sort of projecting that back into the present is a lot more difficult than saying here and now there's something bad that's going on I totally respect that.
The environmental argument can add to the other arguments that are maybe more persuasive to you.
There's no reason in the world it should detract.
I agree with that.
That's why I guess I'm pushing back a little bit against the extent of the rhetoric on the environmental stuff just because that stuff is harder.
on an individual level to know than it is to know that it's mistreatment of an animal to cage it in a small cage where it can't move and grow it beyond all boundaries where its bones collapse in on itself.
It's a lot easier.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people on Earth who feel just the opposite.
Who would say, I'm extremely concerned about the fate of our planet and the kind of, what I'm going to leave for my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
And animals are kind of just animals.
Like, it's regrettable, but it's not a big deal to me.
So one of the really interesting things about thinking about animal products is how differently different people respond.
Some people are only compelled by the animal welfare argument.
Some people are only compelled by the environmental argument.
And there are an awful lot of people who are only compelled by personal health.
It is a comprehensive argument.
There is no argument that I know of in favor of eating meat indiscriminately.
Again, all of that is fair.
I think that the reason I'm bucking you a little bit and fighting back against you a little bit on the global warming stuff particularly is because with the moral case against eating animal products on the basis of cruelty to animals, there's a particular problem that has an obvious solution.
When it comes to the health case, there's a particular problem that has an obvious solution.
When it comes to global warming, because of the inherent vagary of the forecast in the future, as I say, anywhere from 2 degrees Celsius to 6 degrees Celsius, with tipping points that we don't know where they exist, we don't know what future technologies are going to be, it becomes a little bit less obvious.
And you are going to encounter, particularly on the right, accusations that I think, in some cases, not your case, but I certainly know people, Are justified of virtue signaling that what you're really implying is that I don't care about my own grandkids if I eat this hamburger.
Whereas I think that you can much more easily make the argument that, yeah, I care about my grandkids.
I disagree with you about the extent to which global warming is going to be a full scale disaster if I eat this hamburger.
But where I can't argue with you is on a topic where you know more and have seen more, which is the cruelty to animals or the health effects of eating meat.
What is wrong with virtue signaling?
What's wrong with saying, we know for sure, this is not ambiguous, this is not controversial.
If you can find somebody to come in and join us, I will fly back here and have that conversation.
If you can find somebody who will say, animal agriculture is not a huge environmental problem.
And by the way, we're not just talking about climate change.
You know, the UN has said it's among the top two or three causes of every significant environmental problem on the planet.
We agreed on that.
Air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity.
So again, this goes back to the, okay, so why are you calling on people to do two-thirds meat reduction as opposed to complete meat reduction, like no meat at all?
That is an excellent question and one that I wrestled with and in part I think I was responding to my own limits.
I am not a vegan.
Do I know that it would be the right way to live according to all the arguments I make?
Yes.
But then we run into this problem, which is really interesting and fruitful and fun and productive to talk about because it can actually nudge us and nudge the other toward behaving more in line with one's ideals, like acting more like the person you want to be.
It would certainly be better for the environment, it would certainly be better for our health, and it would be better for animals to go all the way.
I don't realistically see that happening, and I think it's extraordinarily important and urgently important to move forward.
Instead of measuring the distance from some sort of ethical perfection that nobody's going to achieve anyway, to measure the distance from doing nothing.
And breakfast is a place to start.
If I were to ask everybody in this room, I don't know, maybe there's what, 10 people in this room right now?
Hey, who here thinks they can never eat animal products again?
I think it's extremely unlikely anybody would say me.
If I were to say, who thinks it's possible not to eat animal products for breakfast tomorrow?
I think everybody would say yes.
Fairly straightforwardly.
If I were to say lunch, it would be harder.
But we could have a conversation, and it would have to be an ongoing conversation, and one that's had not between me and each person, but between each person and himself.
You know?
Just a moment of pause.
And it's really tricky.
I know this from experience.
Because, you know, to be frank, I hate it.
I really hate it.
Like, I have cravings.
You know, I love the taste of meat.
I also love the functions it serves.
Like, I love family barbecues.
I love that my grandmother would show her love through a particular chicken dish that she would always make.
I love the Fourth of July.
I love Thanksgiving.
It sucks to give these things up.
And if I were a lion, my obligations would end with my cravings.
But I'm not a lion.
I'm a human being.
You often hear people say, well, the human brain wouldn't have evolved to be what it is if we hadn't eaten meat throughout history, which is true.
The question now is, what do we do with these big brains And what distinguishes us from the other animals is the ability to override our cravings with reason, which is something we do constantly.
You could probably think of a hundred examples of your having done that today.
There's a balance, which we've now touched on in a number of different aspects of what's too much to ask, right?
Because there is a point at which it's just too much to ask.
And we might have different ideas about what's too much to ask, either legislatively or within our own lives.
But it is good and necessary to figure out what that is in your own life and to really challenge yourself.
So when you say, yeah, I could probably do it, that doesn't sound to me like you challenging yourself.
You're saying, I'm going to do it.
And if I fall short, I'm not going to beat myself up.
I'm not going to suddenly see myself as somebody who isn't trying.
The term fallen vegetarian just makes me want to pull my ears off of my face.
Fallen vegetarian?
Why?
Don't worry about it.
You're trying to do something good.
I try to tell the truth as much as I can.
If my mom comes down the stairs, she's wearing a dress, she says, do I look nice in this dress?
I'm going to say yes, right?
Whatever she, whatever, even if it's not my favorite.
That doesn't then make me feel like, oh, there goes my attempt to be a truth teller.
I'm going to now tell lies at every available opportunity.
No.
Instead I look at myself as somebody who wants to tell the truth, not as a religious identity, not as an inflexible identity, but as an effort that I'm constantly making.
And constantly making because it's informed by an argument that I'm constantly having with myself.
It's just not easy.
And I think eating is exactly the same.
We need to move away from Do you realize your shoes are leather?
By the way, my shoes are leather.
Do you realize that this was in that meal?
And move much toward something like congratulating each other.
Like that's really cool that you're trying.
That's amazing.
But the trying has to be serious.
And it can't be the amount of trying that is Everything that you're saying here is the most appealing part of what you say.
So what are the practical steps that you see toward getting individuals to do this sort of stuff?
So you were going through this exercise with me a minute ago, and we can continue on the exercise, because I actually would like to hear how you What sort of commitment would you look for from somebody, and how would you get them to do it?
Because, again, I think that what religion has been pretty good at is getting people to feel a moral obligation.
The downside of religion generally is the shaming culture, and I think everybody sort of feels that.
And the problem with environmentalism is the shaming culture as well.
As soon as you feel that you're being shamed, you're out.
So how do you get people to do this?
What are the practical steps people should take?
I'm with you.
I'm out when I get shamed, and this is something I believe in very strongly.
I just turn off.
I lose interest.
And there's a funny thing about climate change, which is despite how broad and serious a problem is, it's really easy to get bored with, or it's very easy to stop thinking about, both because we have such strong incentives not to think about it, And because, as it's been described, it is maybe the most boring subject that's ever had to be brought to the public.
The most boring scientific subject.
So, what is my strategy?
There's a reason I'm here, right?
Like, when I told people I was going to be on this show with you, a lot of them said, like, why?
I wanted to be here with you because you're a thoughtful guy, and you're a very smart guy, and my sense, having listened to you a lot, is that You are open and you're not open to, you'll meet an attack with an attack, but you will meet like an extended hand with an extended hand.
And I have no interest in attacking your position because frankly I'd be attacking my own position, which is we are both in different ways and perhaps to different extents climate change deniers.
Like, in the sense that we are not doing anything with what we know.
We're talking a lot, we're sharing opinions, which is useful, but in our own lives we're not doing very much.
My dream was to come here and to hear you out, exactly as we've been doing, and to hear you say, I could try.
That seems like something I could try.
You have an enormous reach.
If you were to turn to whichever camera and say to the two million people who watch you and listen to you, hey guys, I'm not telling you what to do.
This is not a religion.
I'm not being hysterical.
No one's taking anything away from you.
But there are some facts we all need to agree on as sensible people, and we should really try to eat less of this kind of food.
You can decide for yourself what less means.
Honestly, I'm willing to do that right now into the camera.
I think that the biggest problem that folks have and the pushback is always going to be exactly the shame that you're eschewing, which is why this is effective.
It's why this conversation is good, which is, okay, so I say I do that, and then the next thing is, yet you drive a car, yet you fly in a plane. - But I haven't done that. - I know you haven't, and that's why I'm saying that your appeal is different.
It's why I enjoy having this conversation.
It's why I think that the AOC, Green New Deal appeal, fell completely flat, because the idea there was, we're gonna completely remake the American economy, no more flying, no more hamburgers, no more of anything, of the things that you like, because the problem is just that urgent.
What I like about your approach is that it is multifaceted and multirational, meaning that you're using, yes, the environment as a push point on eating habits, but that that is combined with other reasons why you shouldn't be doing all of this.
So this is all, it's good for you for a variety of reasons why you should be doing this, and that you're not coming at it from a perspective of, now we're going to shame you.
It's why you get the pushback from the right very often, from a lot of folks who are environmentalists.
Well, you took a private jet to this particular Davos meeting to talk about climate change, and you took your limo there.
Well, the approach that you're taking is one that sort of forecloses that, because you're basically saying we all do the best that we can, and the best that we can means pushing yourself a little bit more.
That, I think, is a much better approach, and frankly, I wish that more people would take it.
I think we could talk about flying as well.
Like, there is zero chance that I'm going to stop flying.
There's zero chance that you're going to stop flying.
There's zero chance that the American public is going to stop flying.
Can I imagine taking one less flight a year?
Yeah, that's actually fairly easy to imagine.
I like going on camping trips with my kids.
We could take a train, we could take a car.
Can I imagine taking two less trips a year?
This is the goal I've now set for myself.
Taking two less trips a year creates a huge impact, a really significant impact.
If we could start at the beginning rather than at the end, I think you would find a lot of people not only Being open to that, but being inspired by that.
And again, I'm not talking about students on the Berkeley campus.
I'm talking about everybody who watches this.
Well, you're starting from normal human behavior, then you're just saying, okay, we can ratchet it down a degree.
As opposed to, what would our ideal human look like?
They'd live in a cave, not using fire, and they would never contribute anything to the climate change environment.
They wouldn't contribute any carbon emissions.
And so, how close can we get to that?
Again, I'm praising your approach, and I'm hoping that more people who are on the environmentalist side of the ledger, where, I mean, frankly, I consider myself an environmentalist to the laughter of, I'm sure, many people on the left who disagree with me.
No, I think there's nothing laughable about that.
Again, the way we started this conversation was your description of climate change, which is perfectly in agreement with the most liberal description.
I mean, I talked to professors at Caltech about this.
It's pretty obvious what exactly the problem is.
The range of outcomes is less obvious, and then what government action should look like in response to that range of outcomes is even less obvious than that, because that is a variety of policies with uncertain ends.
But again, what you're pushing is something that, as a religious person, appeals to me.
I like the idea of taking on additional burdens.
It's something that I actually enjoy, and I think it breeds a certain level of responsibility.
So, for folks in my audience who may not be familiar with your work or what you've done in the past, where do you come from?
What's your background?
Well, shame on them for not knowing.
Where did I come from?
I was born and raised in D.C., but my parents weren't involved in government.
As you know, there's a population in D.C.
that's transient and a population that's permanent, and so my family was part of the permanent population.
That is, after my grandparents immigrated, my mother was actually born in a D.P.
camp in Poland and came shortly after the war.
And experienced a kind of American dream.
My grandparents spoke virtually no English when they arrived, had very few family connections and started working in grocery stores and ultimately managing them and then owning a few and were able to send their kids to college.
I was raised as a conservative Jew.
We were not particularly religious, but we were at least twice a year religious.
But I was very much raised in the kind of soil of Jewish stories and Jewish values, which have surfaced in my life in a lot of unexpected ways, particularly through writing, when I would have least expected it, frankly.
And I presently live in Brooklyn, like everybody else who wears glasses.
And what else can I tell you?
I mean, why don't you tell me a little bit how you got into fiction writing?
How'd you get into writing?
So in certain ways, you know, there's two kinds of writers it seems to me.
Those who always wanted to be writers and who kept diaries when they were young and would read books under the covers after they were told to go to bed.
And writers like me who came to it much later in life and sort of through the back door and often through the process of eliminating everything else that they might possibly be.
You know, I didn't want to be a doctor.
I didn't want to be a lawyer.
And so on and so forth.
am not a great lover of books, actually.
And it might be surprising to you or to some of your viewers to hear that I'm not a huge reader of books, but I do love and value what books can do, and especially what they can do for me in my own life, which is organizing chaotic thoughts and feelings, giving me a context which is organizing chaotic thoughts and feelings, giving me a context to engage with my own thoughts and The poet W.H. Auden said I look at what I write so that I can see what I think, and that's been my experience with novels, and it's been my experience with nonfiction.
I've never started a book with clear ideas.
I've never started a book with arguments to make or characters that I wanted to delineate or a plot that I wanted to unspool.
I usually start books with a few very weak instincts and in the process of sitting with myself in a room over time and devoting myself, my energy and that time to Just looking inside and figuring out what it is that's going on inside and figuring it out through the process of organizing it.
I've come to get some reflections of who I am that I'm very grateful for and it's why I would encourage everybody to write.
You know, the world doesn't necessarily need more novels.
The world doesn't necessarily need more non-fiction, but it does need more people who are figuring out what they think and feel.
I assume it's how you think about your own show as well.
Like, this room is a kind of context to figure out what one thinks and feels.
Oh no, that's exactly right.
I mean, before I talk about particular issues, very often I have to organize my thoughts in a piece of writing, and then I sort of know exactly how I want to structure the show, or how I want to structure my own thoughts about any particular subject.
I do have one more question for you, and we're going to get to that in just one second.
But first, you need to go and subscribe over at dailywire.com.
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You can hear the end of our conversation over there.
Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for stopping by.
It really is a pleasure to have somebody on who is not from our sort of typical walk of life.
The book is We Are the Weather.
It's available September 17th.
You can pre-order it right now.
Really, thank you for your time.
Thank you.
I The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is directed by Mathis Glover and produced by Jonathan Hay.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boren.
Associate producer, Colton Haas.
Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.
Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingara.
Editing by Donovan Fowler.
Audio is mixed by Mike Peromino.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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