Dennis Prager Show - Bjorn Lomborg on Desalination
Aired: 2021-07-09
Duration: 03:05


=== Bjorn Lomborg's Insights (03:04) ===

[00:00:01]  Dennis Prager here.
[00:00:03]  One of my favorite people is Bjorn Lomborg.
[00:00:07]  He is at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
[00:00:11]  Latest book is False Alarm about climate change.
[00:00:15]  Founder of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
[00:00:19]  And he is Dutch.
[00:00:24]  A member of a people I consider...
[00:00:27]  He's Danish.
[00:00:27]  He's Danish, I'm sorry.
[00:00:29]  I'm sorry.
[00:00:30]  Woo, that was terrible.
[00:00:31]  Bjorn, I can't believe.
[00:00:33]  That was one of the great boo-boos of my radio career.
[00:00:36]  Okay, what am I going to do?
[00:00:39]  I should remember, because I had you say happy birthday in Danish, and I found that to be one of the more challenging linguistic phenomena.
[00:00:49]  Would you say that again, though, for those who are having a birthday today?
[00:00:58]  No, it was just Telugu?
[00:01:00]  That was it?
[00:01:01]  There was one much longer one.
[00:01:03]  Happy New Year?
[00:01:05]  Well, okay.
[00:01:05]  Telugu versus Titan.
[00:01:07]  Now we're talking.
[00:01:09]  Now we're talking.
[00:01:10]  That's what I remember from my days in Copenhagen.
[00:01:13]  So I have two dreams.
[00:01:17]  Nuclear power and desalinization plans.
[00:01:20]  I have not...
[00:01:22]  I read you on the second, and maybe you don't have a foreign policy, but I'm gambling on the belief that you do.
[00:01:29]  Oh, I mean, look, desalinization is an obvious solution to a problem that a lot of countries, especially hot countries, have.
[00:01:38]  They don't have enough potable water.
[00:01:41]  And I don't know if you remember, but...
[00:01:43]  Back in the late 1990s, a lot of people would be saying the last wars were about oil, but the next wars in the 21st century will be about water.
[00:01:54]  But of course they're not, because people build desalization plants.
[00:01:59]  So again, this is one of those places where if you have enough energy, if you have enough technology and innovation, you can solve pretty much all problems.
[00:02:10]  Exactly.
[00:02:12]  So what stops people from building?
[00:02:14]  I mean, I live in California.
[00:02:16]  We're told what a terrible drought we're having, which is true.
[00:02:20]  And why are we not building more desalinization plants?
[00:02:26]  I don't know specifically for California, but certainly in general, it's a very good question why you don't do this if the economics are there.
[00:02:36]  Remember, a lot of water right now is used often to subsidize.
[00:02:41]  Pretty inefficient farmers, which is often, not in California, I would imagine, but many places, not a very effective use of water.
[00:02:50]  But certainly water for people, that is municipal water, is a very good investment and something that you should just have your desalination plant.
[00:03:01]  Well, God bless you.
[00:03:02]  I'm sorry, my friend.
[00:03:04]  All right, Bjorn, thank you again.