Latif Nasser
Appearances
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I know, I was going to say, do economists have some kind of wonky name for this?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And why that? Because remember, do you remember Thomas Malthus? Yeah. And if I remember, his whole thing was like, you tell me what his whole thing was like.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Right. Right? What is like the green revolution or whatever, right? Is that right? The fertilizer revolution.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Please. I love the guano story. We can do it quickly. I know the guano story, but I love the guano story. And I want to hear you tell the guano story.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Guano. Guano. Which is basically just bird poop.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
So what she did is she took the average gross domestic product worldwide, and that's a rough measure of economic growth, and that had been growing recently around 3%, which for economists is like a happy little growth number.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And that is on the order of like alchemy discovery. Like that is like this thing that is super abundant in the air all around us. It is literally the majority of the air. But it was unusable, and then there was a hack where we then figured out how to make it usable. That seems like—that's like a miraculous technological breakthrough.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I like it. I like it. And the swerve—so the swerve is like—it's like when you say swerve, I'm picturing like it's like— A car about to collide into a cliff and then right at the last second, whoop, swerves out of the way.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And Malthus is driving the car thinking that, of course, we're going to hit the cliff. Really, it's like the passenger who then just like yanks the steering wheel. It's like, nope, not going to happen. Right at the last second, we figured it out.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I find this somewhat of a relief. It is sort of encouraging, but it also seems like there's so much drama here. Yeah. Yeah. there might be a time where we can't swerve in time. Like what happens if and when we can't swerve in time? And also I would argue sometimes the swerves Sometimes we swerve right into another cliff.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
So, for example, the example you talked about, from charcoal to coal, which is great for the trees, except after a while, it's also bad for the trees, right? It's like global rising temperatures lead to wildfires, lead to trees not able to grow where they once were able to grow. It's true.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
more time fair right we've bought ourselves more time but then we just always use that time to step on the gas to the next thing right and then maybe when we do swerve then we swerve into something worse something that causes you know war or exploitation or or or just messes up the planet in a way that you that is unswerve backable from i mean yes that is all totally right uh it is a mess
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But Sandra took that 3%. And with some quick math, she started to just play it out year after year. And in her lecture, she's showing this chart where you can see this curve just shooting up.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Actually, first, we're going to swerve to break, but only for a minute. Then we'll swerve back and step on the gas directly towards a currently oncoming cliff.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Oh, we're in the middle of the Malthusian oil.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and even before that, like I think in the 70s and stuff, like it's like we keep having this conversation over and over again, peak oil, peak oil, peak oil.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Well, you just said it in 52 years or whatever. Like, you just said it.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But is that a swerve? Like, I mean, if we're—now we just found another way to get more fossil fuels. Like, is that even really a—that feels like we swerved and swerved right back in the same direction.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And she was basically like, look at all that growth. That's eating up Earth's resources.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But in a way, running out of oil isn't even necessarily the problem here. The problem is the thing it's doing for everything else.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
It's a much harder sell, though. It's a much harder sell to tell people we have too much of this thing that's going to hurt you as opposed to we have not enough of this thing. So take care of it.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Necessity is the mother of invention kind of thing.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Desperation is the inventor's best friend.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And so even though Earth should be good for 100 million years, we're going to just eat the planet up. We're going to devour the physical, material level of this planet. We're going to eat it up in more like a couple thousand years.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah, but it just feels like a trap. And an especially capitalist kind of a trap where the only thing that will inspire us to innovate or to swerve, to use your word, is the immediate danger of the cliff. Like, I mean, we're talking about resources and economics, GDP, and blah, blah, blah. But really, this is all like a head game. It's like all like people's minds work in this very specific way.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And long-term thinking is so hard for us. Yeah. And it's like we've got this system that leans into a thing that is already a problem with us and the way we think. It's like we're just going to use it as long as it's there. And when it starts to almost not be there, we'll figure out something else.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But, like, we're all so smart enough to... Can't we figure out a system where we don't have to just drive into the cliff and swerve at the last minute every time? You know? Yeah. If this was your... And there was, I mean, this is such a weird analogy.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
There's only one car and you, whoever is in the driver's seat, really it's all of us, but whoever's in the driver's seat keeps driving pedal to the metal, accelerating faster and faster at cliffs.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
You would take their keys away. You'd be like, sorry, this, you are not fit to drive. It's scary. Yeah. I don't know. Why do we keep doing that then? Like, do you think growth is inevitable? Do you think growth is good? What do you... After all this, what is your take on growth in particular?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And when I heard that, that was breathtaking and horrifying. And honestly, I haven't been able to stop thinking about that number, 3%. It sounds like a specific thing, but also it's kind of abstract and mathy, and I wanted help. I wanted help to parse this out. Like, how bad is that really? How bad could that possibly be?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
That's funny. That was probably the population of the entire Earth in Malcolm's time. Right?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah, I agree with that. Like, we all have needs and there are increasingly more of us. But I do think that taking, like, I still am sort of struck by the Sandy Faber's, like, stone cold, like, zoom out. Mm-hmm. There's nothing that's wrong about that logic either. She just has seemingly a different priority than most economists, which is like she's thinking at a different scale. Yeah.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
So I should tell you, we actually ended up talking to Sandy Faber.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And telling her about your Malthusian swerve idea.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And the thing that she was most concerned about was that energy is just so wrapped up in all these different parts of our lives, basically everything we do. And it has these huge effects on the environment. She says we're actually dealing with a bunch of different cliffs and a bunch of different kinds of cliffs all at the same time.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Basically, we're facing a crisis of crises.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
And so I turned to someone whose job it is to literally make sense of this exact kind of thing. Hello.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Hi, I'm doing well. How are you? And we had what I felt like was a kind of a roller coaster of a conversation. So I'm just going to play it for you right now.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I need you. I need you to help me. It's more than scratch and itch. I need you to help me.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I mean, well, she won the National Medal of Science, not the Nobel.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
My favorite kind of math. My favorite kind of math. It's so hand-wavy.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Using copper and needing copper the same way that we are. Yeah, yeah, sure. T minus 70.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay. Okay. So then what, but then, so that's, this seems to point exactly to Sandy Faber's point, right?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Oh, that's the end of it? I thought you were going to be like, but there's a giant, there's a copper thing that we're going to, no, there's no but, that's it. It's just like, yeah, she's right about copper.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay, wait, you want to go through more of them before we get to the but? Is that the idea?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, next one, okay, next one.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay, that sounds like a lot. I don't even know.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay. But it does seem like the whole point of sand is that it's like teeny tiny. It would take a lot of energy to turn that rock into sand.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Wait, so a quintillion based on the growth rate and the uses now. I would imagine this one is going to be, this one is not on Sandra Faber's side. I'm going to guess this one is like way, way, way far from now. Like this is going to be like a million years or something.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
That seems so short again. It does, doesn't it? That is way shorter for the whole crust.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. What got me thinking about economic growth was not all the stuff that's in the news, the tariffs, the fear of the recession, all that stuff that everybody's talking about. What started it was a lecture I heard a little while back by, of all people, an astrophysicist.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Oh, my God. That's not... Like, it's long, but it's not that long. Like, that's like... That is nuts.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
This is just making me more and more existentially worried. Okay, but keep going.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay, great. Good one. Good one. And lithium, you imagine there are like those giant deserts filled with those like sand flats or whatever, right?
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah. Okay. So this one will be again... Like I think this one... I feel like there's going to be a curveball in here where you're like, no, no, no, we haven't had enough for millions of years.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Right. That's kind of... Okay, so that's like in phones, electric cars, da-da-da-da-da.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Which is good, which is good, which means like more electric cars, more da-da-da-da, right? More recyclable batteries and stuff. That's great. Yeah.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
That sounds... A lot less than the sand. Like, this doesn't sound—this is going to get worrying. Okay, keep going.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I feel like you're going to say, like, I feel like you're going to say, like, so soon. Tomorrow.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Okay, 100 years again. Which is not bad. No, it is bad. It's bad, Jeff. It's bad. We need that. Like, we're going to need that later for even better stuff.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But hopefully we're weaning off of this one. So maybe this one is a different.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Like it's going in the opposite direction. Hopefully.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I don't think you have had a single piece of good news here. Just wait for it. Okay. All right.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Yeah, when you say it like that, it sounds quite alarming.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
But we do want to use less of it anyway. Right, yeah. I'm ambivalent about this. We're trying to. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Wow. Maybe. Maybe. I was worried about when Sandra Faber said we had thousands of years and you're like, you're taking me even an order of magnitude less in that.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Her name is Sandra Faber. She goes by Sandy. Brilliant scientist. She co-authored the Standard Model for Thinking About How Galaxies Form. She won a National Medal of Science back in 2011. And she started the lecture by saying, we have a pretty happy little planet to live on.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
I was just imagining the bellows. I was just imagining the bellows. Yes. Okay, cool. Okay. So that's the key innovation here.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Which is charcoal is made out of wood. Is that right? No.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
So they're like slurping down forests, basically. Yes.
Planet Money
PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Because we have one tree left and everyone's about to cut it down. We got to save the trees. The tree.