The Scam of Environmentalism

<p>In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze the disingenuousness and ineffectiveness of much environmentalist activism. We argue the movement is frequently performative, serving more as a cultural identity than driving real change.</p><p>Many proposed lifestyle sacrifices around plastic usage and commuting fail to meaningfully impact emissions at scale. We see Germany's Green Party as an egregious example, increasing carbon reliance on coal due to aesthetic policy preferences.</p><p>Ultimately we contend environmentalism resembles a religious culture focused on moral posturing over pragmatism. Some tech interventions merit attention, yet visions of voluntary collective austerity seem doomed. Preparing for adverse climate impacts could better ready society.</p><p>[00:00:00] And one of the great ironies... Of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition, uh, and in previous ruling coalitions, is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.</p><p>So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion. Uh, that will last decades in German carbon emissions. So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar, that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be. And if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on... Because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the light that has to be there to keep the light on?</p><p>Well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day. You only count the solar and wind. .</p><p>If you actually count what power is generated and [00:01:00] what is used, when it is used, you're talking only about 10 percent green.</p><p>.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> It is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for. If you cared about the things you said you cared about, it makes me have such a high level of animosity.</p><p>Towards the movement.</p><p>Would you like to know more?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, I love you, Simone, and I am excited for our topic today, because it's where you started your career.</p><p>Do you want to talk about your early career?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Absolutely. Being raised in super progressive Silicon Valley, I was determined to save the world By doing the most obvious thing, saving the environment because that's what really needs our help. And flowers, the flowers, the flowers are very important. And so I, I looked at what I thought would make the most impact.</p><p>I felt like</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Actually, before you go further, I'd love you to explain why you thought saving the environment mattered. Like, what about the environment was like intrinsically good?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, it was sort of the, an [00:02:00] availability heuristic problem. Everything around me was the environment is, is falling apart. In my science classes, we talked about environmental damage and pollution and climate change.</p><p>And then of course, like in the news, it was a big issue. So it was just, in terms of like problems in the world that need to be resolved, it was the environment. Interestingly, actually, it wasn't human suffering. It wasn't starvation. It wasn't disease. And those are like really big issues that I would expect progressive groups to really care about.</p><p>Very Evoked set. I had been told, in fact, That in the past parents used to tell their children who were not eating their dinners. Don't you know, there are children starving in China, but that no one does that anymore, which kind of implied that, like, there weren't children starving anywhere anymore. So that's the closest I got to awareness of starvation.</p><p>And hardship outside. So</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you started this first</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> career. Yeah. So I decided to go into environmental business because my understanding was that changing, [00:03:00] like dealing with environmental problems through the public sector was ineffective. You created this degree, right? Yeah. So I went to the Georgia Washington university.</p><p>Because they had a good undergraduate business school. I didn't want to wait until graduate school like that. That was a waste of time because academia, even then, even then I knew academia was a waste of time. And I created a sort of custom major using graduate classes in environmental business that they had.</p><p>And then I, I started I volunteered and interned. at environmental nonprofits. I worked at the American Council of Renewable Energy. I worked at Earth Day Network, which is the nonprofit that basically administers Earth Day and Earth Day festivals, but then provides year round curriculum and all sorts of other stuff.</p><p>I extensively interviewed with people who worked as environmental consultants or environmental specialists within organizations or who worked as lobbyists for the environment. And of course, then I also took my, my classes and the more I learned, the more I was like, Oh my God, this [00:04:00] entire industry is a complete scam.</p><p>The, the people that I interviewed who worked in the space basically said, I deeply care about this. Don't do this because my work makes absolutely no difference and I'm not making any difference. And then of course I, the most meaningful thing for me was studying historical geography, sorry, historical geology.</p><p>And learning that. We are not the first organ, organism to cause climate change to significantly alter the climate of our planet. That many other organisms before us have done this. . I mean, you can't study like the fossil record and like all of the past, like errors of, you know, the natural climate and everything without discovering that. And so like learning that too, was just. Like, wait a second, guys, the understanding was that climate change, bad humans, unusual for causing this must stop it.</p><p>And then what I had learned was, was climate change, normal [00:05:00] humans, not unique in doing this and can't stop it. jUst like that was, it was, it was deeply because if you do care about this problem, you know, you should be planning around it. And we don't see a lot of that, at least performatively, people are talking about how do we handle migratory crises?</p><p>How do we, you know, how do we handle the fact that people are still buying coastal properties in a way that's going to lead to death and lots of destruction? You know, how do we, how do we prepare for the inevitable climate change that is going to happen?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Simone, I want to, I want to pull on something you said, that this is a scam, what specific parts of it do you feel are the most disingenuous? I'm assuming you think that like the earth is getting warmer and that like there is a lot of climate destruction happening and a lot of species are going extinct. That is all</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> happening. Yes. Okay, continue.</p><p>Pollution is bad and all these other things are really bad. However, The efforts that supposedly are supposed to be addressing this are not making a difference. They're not making a difference. They're not, they're not making the [00:06:00] problem better. They are just raising money and getting attention and not</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> really doing.</p><p>That's the really important thing to know here is that the climate change industry is an industry and that the people in it, or at least from your, your interviews, when you were thinking of going into it, regretted their life choices, but they didn't feel they had any options left to them.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, and then, so there, there were two, right?</p><p>There were the ones that I interviewed who were like, don't go into this space. And then they're the ones that I worked with. And they were more like one group of them. Like when I worked at the American council on renewable energy, these are people who are genuinely passionate about solar. But it was sort of like people who are really passionate about electric vehicles.</p><p>They're not like, it's not that they're like, I'm saving the environment. They're like, no, Teslas are so cool. Or like the battery pack is really amazing or like, you know, just here's this more efficient thing that I think we should really be rolling out. So they were basically just. Solar otaku.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> [00:07:00] And then they actually made a positive difference of the groups that you worked with.</p><p>I mean,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> they weren't of any of everyone that I worked with everyone that I interviewed. I think the American Council on Renewable Energy was effective at encouraging adoption and increasing education about about solar power. Like they, they were, they were well focused and they were doing something practical and actionable, but I don't think it was to save the environment.</p><p>I think it was because they were stoked about solar, you know, it was like, it was no different from like some American council on natural gas, you know, who are like, wow, natural gas is just such a great resource or fracking is amazing. You know, it's just, that was, that was the kind of the vibe. And then the earth day network and like those types of people were a lot like many other environmentalists, professional environmentalists, essentially that I worked with where.</p><p>Yeah. It really wasn't about making a difference. It was about living a lifestyle. It was about having this type of water bottle and eating this type of food and being vegan and essentially being a negative utilitarian, creating curriculum and sort of building people within your culture. And that makes [00:08:00] sense for an organization like Earthy Network because our number one activity.</p><p>It's hosting these big festivals every year, you know, we're like, you have bands playing. And,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you know, this was something from our childhood. People may not, I don't know, like young people, like, like Gen Z, like has any f*****g idea what Earth Day is. Like, this used to be a thing, like on Nickelodeon, they'd take the day, the whole week, and it would be like Captain Planet and s**t, and like, other.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I think there are still Earth Day festivals but again, it's that life, it felt more like goth festival, you know, like annual goth or burning man, right? Where like, you're just really into this community and you want other people to adopt it and know about it and you want to make it available to as many people as possible.</p><p>So it definitely felt like a cultural lifestyle business and not a. I mean, of course, they still talked about how, like, it's so important to recycle</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> and here's the whole Did you have any specific moments where, like, it broke for you? Where you're like, this is just not doing anything meaningful? [00:09:00]</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> No, but by the end of my freshman year, I think it was the end of my freshman year, I gave up.</p><p>And then I started working at fashion magazines and chocolate factories and cupcake shops and medical device companies instead</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> of So, so I had a moment for me that was my big What the f**k are we doing? Okay,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> what happened? How old were you?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Old, old. Because it was just to me the most glaring evidence I've ever seen.</p><p>And it was so glaring I could never go back from it. Oh</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> gosh, I don't know about this. This is fun. Yeah,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> well I've talked about it before. I just don't think you may realize, so global warming that the earth is getting warmer is No, no,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> no, it's not, it's global climate</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> change, don't forget that. Climate change.</p><p>That climate is changing at a faster pace in modern years than it has historically. I do believe that the evidence points to it happening from us looking at the evidence. And you know, we're skeptical people. It [00:10:00] appears to be very hard to deny that it's happening. Not a hoax. Not a hoax. That humans are in part responsible for this.</p><p>thAt is something that I've, I've looked at the evidence and I'm sorry, it just appears to be yes. I</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> thought you were going to say no, and I was really intrigued</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> by that because there's people who will do like cutoffs and weird graphs and there's, there's ways you can argue with evidence that things are overstated.</p><p>Do I think that we live in a world where if I'm a climate scientist and I published a study saying. That humans are not the cause of climate change that I am going to get fired. Okay, absolutely. Which makes it very hard for me to objectively analyze the data that's out there from the data I've looked at.</p><p>It appears the answer is yes.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. But also another reason to not be so doubtful of that is, is that. Far less we'll say conspicuous species have done this in the past, like organisms have done this [00:11:00] in the past. Like, Oh yeah.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Great.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I think, you know, humans doing all the crazy</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no.</p><p>Here, here are the two questions. Should I f*****g care? You know, this is question one. Which, which we can get to. That's like a whole other thing. I think, yes, we should care a little. Like, it, it matters. But it's not like this existential thing that matters more than like hundreds of thousands of humans starving to death every year.</p><p>Well, I</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> guess it depends on how tractable it is, right? That's, that should determine how much you care.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> We're going to ignore this for now. Like, like, when I look at all of the suffering in the world today, when I look at all of the various things, like getting off planet, X Risks, everything like that, like, it matters that this is happening, it just is not, like, thing number one, or I don't think it should be on any, like, sane person's list.</p><p>In fact, I think it should be even below preserving tracks of land and natural environments that are going to undergo [00:12:00] change due to global warming, if you want to preserve diversity. So if I'm going to word this differently,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I just don't know how practical it is to do</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> that in the face of your time and money is better spent.</p><p>Bent buying Rainforest to keep it from being cut down a lot. Oh, yes. No, no, no. Totally. Yeah. Mr. Beast did this or, or, you know, protecting national parks in the US than it is fighting global warming in the way that people are fighting it. But here's the big thing for me here has been my big thing was global warming.</p><p>It was during the pandemic, um, and Oh, right. Yeah, during the pandemic, we shut down like f*****g everything. People weren't commuting to work, people weren't flying, people weren't leaving their houses, people weren't eating at restaurants. We were living the environmentalist dream that we had been told we should be making all of these sacrifices for, for so f*****g long.</p><p>It was like we were [00:13:00] making all of these insane sacrifices that we had been told to make. At a global scale, and for people who do not know this, that year we barely met the incremental carbon reduction that was needed to make a meaningful dent in global warming. So I will word this in different words, okay, to prevent global warming, you know, if, if carbon's going, you know, like this, right, like we need to, or suppose it's even a straight line, like we need to start going down, right, but we need to keep going down.</p><p>It did the one year decrease it needed for that year. But we wouldn't need to have kept up COVID restrictions. We would need to literally double COVID restrictions every year for like a decade. So on top of everything we were doing, we needed to do all of that in terms of carbon reduction while still not going back out, [00:14:00] still not getting to work, still not using planes, still not using restaurants.</p><p>And, and that's when I realized I was like, Oh, what's being asked is. Comically unrealistic. What's being asked at like a base case to prevent this is obviously never going to work. It's never going to do what they want. Well, this is, this is a huge deal to me, right? Like we are being told you as a people can fix this and then thing happens and we learned, Oh s**t.</p><p>Like I think even environmentalists, when they were looking at that, that should have been this moment of like. Oh s**t, it's really stupid to fight global warming by telling people to make sacrifices in their daily lives. bUt I, I didn't see almost any environmentalist taking that away for this. It meant that if you're, if you're going to fight this, I guess you could do it with like carbon sequestration and stuff like that, but But a lot of people are,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> like, I would say, I, I would say now There's less, it seems, focus [00:15:00] on, oh, everyone has to go and do these things.</p><p>It's more, hey, governments, you need to change this. Hey, this infrastructure has to change, you know, this regulation has to change, which is smart because all this nonsense about like, start, you know. Start recycling when like recycling doesn't work because many municipalities just don't do it at all.</p><p>Recycling</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> is mostly a scam for people who don't know,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> but yeah,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> so like, you know, video on it. But but, but even speaking of that, there was a interesting study done on like lifestyle sacrifices that people were making of Gen Z's generation. And another thing is that turns out despite Greta Thornburg saying you old people have sold our future.</p><p>That Gen Z makes dramatically fewer lifestyle sacrifices to protect the environment than Millennials or Boomers do.?</p><p>The point being is that they just do a lot less. If you look at a environmentalist rally, I don't know if you guys have seen one recently, it's f*****g old people. You look at, like, the people who are in this whole</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> situation Oh, you know what, maybe it's the Gen Z nihilism,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> people love to doom about it, [00:16:00] but they're doing it because all humans love to doom.</p><p>That's why apocalyptic means are so viral. That's why there's a bunch of idiots going around now saying AI is going to kill us all. You've done a lot of episodes on this. It is not. There's like. Mathematical proof that it's not. Look at our reverse grabby alien theorem video.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, guys, stop. It's, stop trying to make IA apocalypticism a</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> thing.</p><p>It's not a thing. Not a thing. LLMs are not going to kill us. Not saying, no way I could kill us. I just don't think that we're anywhere near that level of technology and I think that the data backs this. And even so, we're probably dealing more with a relative danger versus an absolute danger, i. e. if it's going to kill us, it will definitely eventually kill us. And so everything we do up until that point is actually more of a risk. And that if it's going to kill us, we would kill ourselves once we reached a certain level of intelligence, like we would converge on a utility function.</p><p>There is terminal convergence of utility functions. But anyway and I think that the data supports us. I think that this is [00:17:00] actually what's supported by the inverse grabby alien theorem back to the, the topic at hand. So, global warmingism. Yeah. I think it's something that people just use to masturbate this dumerism they have.</p><p>Without really having to engage with anything that's particularly hard to engage with. If</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> anything, also, like, I do feel like the majority of it non commercially, like, so when we leave the nerds who are into something that is environmentally adjacent, like, they're just super nerdy about carbon sequestration for some reason, or like, whatever, like, I feel like there are lots of just weird otaku about weird tech that, you know.</p><p>Come across as environmentalists, but really they're just enthusiastic about the intervention. So like when we take those out, I think it's a culture thing. I think it's just like, oh, I'm a crunchy green person. And I think what's really interesting now, actually, when I look at social media and when I look at what people are talking about, at least like.</p><p>From the shorts that I'm seeing the new version of that culture, the new version of like, what now is an [00:18:00] environmentalist isn't like, Oh, you know, don't use that because it's not sustainable. They're like, don't use that because it has endocrine disruptors and don't use that because you know, it has endocrine</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> disruptors are a conservative thing.</p><p>What are you on about? Oh, well, I</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> actually think that like many of the people who. Used to be super progressive environmentalists are going more conservative and they're concerned about pollutants and I don't think endocrine disruptors are necessarily a conservative thing. I, I, I actually think that like,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> well, integrated, we can get across, across I think, I think</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> it crosses the aisle.</p><p>I mean, they may not be using the same words and they may not have the same concerns. Right? Like, they're not like, oh, my child's fertility. They're</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> literally concerned about the frogs turning gay. No,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> no, no, the conservatives are, but I think the progressives</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> are more just like No, no, no, I mean the conservatives are concerned about the implication of the frogs turning gay.</p><p>Yeah. The progressives are concerned that there's not going to be any more frogs.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, well, that and that like their children are being poisoned, [00:19:00] just kind of generally, like, oh, it's bad for you. And it, you know, it'll, it'll mess with my child's, it'll give them ADHD.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I don't know. I think you're off the boat with progressive as on these days, there was an interesting paper.</p><p>So I, I can't remember where this came out, but it was, it was shocking to me, which was looking at. Pollutants in the environment, like how much do different pollutants affect, like the health outcomes of babies. And there was pushback at like the university or something saying that the paper was</p><p>intrinsically eugenic in that it was trying to ensure healthy babies were born.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Oh,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> no. You might be surprised how far off the cliff they've gone. Are</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> you sure you weren't thinking about the. The argument that a female to male trans person should not be allowed to continue to take their exogenous hormones while pregnant. Yeah, it was</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> during</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> that. You're, you're referring to that. I don't, I don't think they were talking about endocrine disruptors.</p><p>They were just saying like, you should have the right, sorry, he should have the right to [00:20:00] take testosterone.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> And they said that the research on this was eugenic because it was looking at baby health. The point I'm getting is you think that they care about the health of children, where I think they think the health of children is</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> eugenic too.</p><p>Look up Crunchy Moms. Look up Crunchy Moms. It is not... It is typically not, I need to save the environment. It is, it is an aesthetic thing that I think is, is more honest than original and like previous. Let's</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> talk about it being an aesthetic thing, because this actually bothers me about the movement. Right.</p><p>Okay. So this is where you get like in Germany, the f*****g green party banning their nuclear plants. Right. Like it's aesthetic. Well, it's aesthetic, but it objectively hurts global warming and the environment by a dramatic amount. And there's actually, I want to see if I remember to do this, link to Peter Zahan's videos on this, because he does some great videos on like, how...</p><p>Bad Germany is in terms of its environmental impact, but they're like one of the worst countries in Europe and they hide it in</p><p>their [00:21:00] government statistics because what they'll do is You'd have to go to Zion's videos on this, which he does a very good job of this</p><p>Of these, the only bit that is sustainable is the lignite, because that is actually produced in Germany. And one of the great ironies... Of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition, uh, and in previous ruling coalitions, is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.</p><p>So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion. Uh, that will last decades in German carbon emissions. And there's really no way around that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They have spent something like 2 trillion now building up power network, but</p><p>the sun doesn't shine in Germany, uh, in terms of reliable output. Uh, when people actually use the electricity. Uh, Germany only gets [00:22:00] about, I think it's 8 to 11 percent of their electricity from green sources. Now, they will tell you that it's 40 to 70 percent based on the season. But what they're not telling you is how they collect the data.</p><p>So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar, that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be. And if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on... Because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the light that has to be there to keep the light on?</p><p>Well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day. You only count the solar and wind. And it's here in August when all the Germans are on vacation, and the sun actually finally is shining. All of those electrons have nowhere to go, so you dump them into France, Poland, and the rest. You count those, too.</p><p>If you actually count what power is generated and what is used, when it is used, you're talking only about 10 percent [00:23:00] green.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> This is why on like a per person basis, Germany is so environmentally unfriendly compared to other countries. It's because of the environmental party. They lied about their output, right? There has been no real push to be honest about their measuring systems. And two, the reason they're in this... situation is because mostly due to Russian money that was trying to increase their reliance on Russian gas, they shut down all their nuclear plants, which was an insane thing to do.</p><p>If you care about the environment, anything other than the most aesthetic and vague sense. And I think that it is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for. If you cared about the things you said you cared about, it makes me so and have such a high level of animosity.</p><p>Towards the movement. You just don't</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> like the hypocrisy. That's, that's a problem. Yeah.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I mean, my take on the environment right now, like if I was going to optimize for my beliefs around the environment, I think that we should create full genome [00:24:00] sequences of as much of the planet's diversity right now as possible.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Like a seed bank, but for all</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> biological, right. That can be copied a number of times. And then. We can recreate it on some other planet in the future when we have more s**t. But for now, things look pretty fucked and I don't see anything really realistically we can do. Other than create a genetic library at the moment, we might even be able to recreate it on earth one day, but for now, we need to be realistic about where things are going and realistic about how to optimize the things that we, anyone says they care about.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, I would really, I'm concerned about making sure that there are migratory treaties in place that would. allow for people to more easily leave areas when they become deeply unsafe. I, I</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> really think that this is relevant when you look at how quickly populations [00:25:00] crashing or will crash.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I guess, although things are happening now, like we're already getting to a place where temperatures reach untenable levels, like as in, if there's a power outage plus this heat wave, many people will die kind of thing.</p><p>And, and that, you know, We're not doing anything.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> You're not gonna get migratory treaties. It's completely unrealistic. Yeah, would you what is the</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> same things with environmental controls like we've done we've done impossibly Impressive things like the least we can do Is figure out</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> no, well, what is the migratory treaty?</p><p>Really? Like, what are you saying? If you do an intercountry migratory treaty, right? I know. I know. Like conquest. That's what you have to fight people for is to take their land. Now. You're just saying, oh yeah, just move your population to another country.</p><p>Yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> like what give India a discount on Greenland, you know.</p><p>A little discount,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> just a little. Yeah, no, no, I mean it's yeah, yeah, I [00:26:00] don't think that you're going to do anything. I think there's going to be a lot of suffering in regards to climate change. I think it's happening. It's, it's, it's man made, but there's also like literally nothing we can do about it.</p><p>Except for carbon sequestration, which I think it's potentially a very big thing we could do about it. But I think it is hugely underfunded when you contrast it with stupid climate efforts like banning straws or something like that.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that just stands out to me as I look back on all of it is the difference between the cultural movement and like the nerds.</p><p>And the cultural movement never really cared. It was always just about aesthetics and about enforcing uniformity within their community. They weren't shaming you for drinking out of a plastic straw because they believed that it was going to hurt the environment like deeply and intellectually. They shamed you because in your culture, in this community, we don't drink out of plastic straws.</p><p>It was an internal status hierarchy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just like, you know, how dare you dress like a [00:27:00] prep? This is the goth club. That kind of thing.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So you said something at the beginning of this interview when you were like but not interview talk, but I, I sort of treated it like an interview at the beginning.</p><p>When I was asking you like, okay, so you're young. Why specifically? Like if you had to explain to somebody why you cared about the environment. What would you say like, like, like I, other than just it's around, like if you had to justify to me, I am a conservative who met you, not a conservative, a weirdo, a weirdo</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> who hates the environment.</p><p>I would say it's one of the most existential threats that faces humanity at this time. And you would explain why you don't believe that's the case, but I would fully believe that is the most important thing, largely because I'm, I was at the time unaware of many other important problems. Including</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> disease and starvation.</p><p>We thought that we needed environmental stasis to survive as a species. I mean, we have destroyed many environments. You want to talk about f*****g up environments? Look at the environments of the Americas after the Native Americans got here. Right? Like, there's a f*****g reason you're not seeing giant sloths anymore.[00:28:00]</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Oh, you're blaming humans for giant sloths? Were</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> they handed to extinction? Almost certainly, yeah. Humans destroyed almost all megafauna. Honestly, I think that humanity was a megafauna hunting species and we were specifically designed for, like,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> evolutionary reasons like that. Don't worry, we're bringing them back.</p><p>Don't worry, don't worry, it's fine. We're gonna fix</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> it. We're bringing back the mammoths and stuff? We're gonna fix it. Well, I wanna see giant sloths. That's what I wanna see. Yeah. I wanna know how f*****g scary they were.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I thought mammoths tasted really good. Well maybe it was too fatty. We'll find out soon,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> hopefully.</p><p>Right? No, actually there was a group of people who like cooked them when they found it. Remember they found one that had like meat in it? Oh yeah! Oh</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> gosh, what did they say it tasted like?</p><p>I don't remember. But I mean, it probably, I mean, if it's that old, you know, like things in the freezer that taste not good, you know.</p><p>You won't even eat hamburger meat that we've frozen. So I doubt that it tasted good.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, no, I, I, I do hear what you're saying. Yeah. So historically yeah, humans really fucked up [00:29:00] environments when they first got to them.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, but so have other organisms. It is a thing that things do. Does a thing that living.</p><p>living stuff does.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, but humans were uniquely good. But I'm talking about, you know, aboriginal humans. I'm talking about native Americans. I'm talking about, this is not a European thing.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Like we're apex predators. What do you want? That's what we do. We're apex</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> predators. I mean, I guess my, my thing is like, as time has gone on, I've been asking myself more and more.</p><p>Like, other than cultural preservation, and outside of genetic preservation of the environment, like a genetic catalogue of the environment, I just... They see the issue as much less existential when contrasted with other issues.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I guess per our value set in our worldview, it's important that we have a stable world long enough to get off planet and things get a lot [00:30:00] harder when the environment breaks down.</p><p>If like, you know, if, if. Undersea currents reverse and cause severe weather changes, you know, when people start focusing more on surviving than getting us off planet, that's going to set us back, you know, this is, these are things that are not ideal. And</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I will clarify that there are some like genuine risks around global warming.</p><p>Like the case of a chain reaction, you know, recurrent cycle greenhouse effect</p><p>due to like climate change. So, I'm going to leave it at that. sulfur melting in the ocean floor and stuff like that. I don't remember exactly how we're I'm really worried</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> about sea currents.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, and sea currents reversing would have a major effect in some areas.</p><p>So, so there's some like really f*****g serious s**t that's going to happen as part of this process. But one, I think that the true, like, just like out of control chain reaction, when I look at the science, it just doesn't seem to be there. doesn't seem to be likely. And when I look at or at least it's dramatically less likely than something like a killer AI.</p><p>And when I [00:31:00] look at other things like, like the sea current and stuff like that, there's just not a lot we can do about that at this point.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the. That's the problem</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> that I think about more. Simone, I loved chatting with you about this. I loved that as a youth, you know, you went exploring something that you were told had value by your cultural group, but you were still open to learn and have your ears open and have your opinion changed even before you met me on this issue.</p><p>Yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I get some credit for that, don't I? I love you, Simone. I love you too, gorgeous.</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe</a>