#17 || A PAID CLIMATE SKEPTIC SWITCHES SIDES
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Reckonings is produced to be heard, not read. The audio includes emotion and emphasis unavailable on the written page. Transcripts may contain errors, and corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print.
. . .
Hi everybody. So this episode is a little different, because it’s a collaboration with Inquiring Minds – a science and politics podcast produced by Climate Desk, which is a journalistic collaboration between The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other major publications.
Now if you are INTRIGUED by the idea of Reckonings collaborating with other podcasts, like, for instance: Strangers – which features beautifully-produced, deeply personal stories, or Death, Sex, and Money – which takes on the juicy questions that are left OUT of polite conversation, or TED’s Sincerely X – featuring anonymous ideas worth spreading, then let me know. Or better yet, let THEM know, cuz I’m the smaller fish here!
And to check out Reckonings’ previous collaborations – with Inquiring Minds and with Love+Radio – go to reckonings.show/episodes, and on the right, click on “co-production.” With that, here we go:
. . .
Jerry: I certainly don't argue that climate change isn't real it is real we know that the planet is warming you know industrial missions have a lot to do with it probably most of most of what to do with that warming comes from industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. But there's a lot of uncertainties here. According to the IPCC warming can be anywhere between one and a half degrees Celsius to four and a half degrees Celsius if we double pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gas emissions. And it turns out while the models are showing that the warming will be in the median the high side of that spread the data that we've seen suggests it'll be on the low side it turns out there are reasons to think that the climate is no where near a sense of the greenhouse gas emissions as we think. So I'm not arguing that the you know the scientific consensus is necessarily wrong. What I am saying at least what I was saying back then was that there's a lot of good reasons that are associated with the actual temperature increases that we've been seeing. I think that warming will be on the very low side of the most likely outcomes projected by the IPCC. And if that's the case then it's probably going to be a relative nonevent. So that was the old elevator pitch.
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Indre: I’m Indre Viskontas, the host of Inquiring Minds, a podcast exploring where science, soceity, and politics collide.
Stevie: I’m Stevie Lepp from Reckonings, which explores how people change their hearts and minds. And today, we are diving into the odyssey of Jerry Taylor. Who’s voice you just heard giving his elevator pitch from his days at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, where Jerry was based for over 20 years. He was the HEAD of Cato’s energy and environmental policy operation, and a PROMINENT SPOKESPERSON for climate skepticism. As you might have noticed in that clip and you’ll hear in the rest of this piece, Jerry Taylor is VERY good at selling ideas. While at Cato, he made regular appearances on the likes of CNN, NBC and Fox, waging TV battles against proponents of climate action. He ALWAYS won his TV battles. And it is HEADING INTO one of those TV battles / that this story begins.
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Jerry: I'm not sure what show it was. Can't even remember the network - might have been CNN or CNBC, I don't recall. But anyway, I was in a debate with Joe Romm. He's a scientist. And we had a debate about climate change. And i argued on screen that well James Hansen testified in front of congress in late 80's about climate change. That set off political explosions that then followed. And what dr. hansen argued is that if we continued business as usual and we didn't do anything to address emissions then we would see a tremendous amount… And he offered projections… Well it's been over a decade since dr. hansen testified before senate, we can go back now... and what do you know? we've seen far less warming than james hansen argued in fact only quarter and that suggested to me that climate... that doesnt mean climate change isn't happening does mean that models are running really hot. and a lot of debate is between theory and reality, we're just not seeing the kind of warming we should have been seeing by now.
Jerry: we go back to the greenroom and joe said, let me ask you a question: did you actually read? It's been a while… didn't read it before came on the air. So what was all this based on? it was based on climate skeptics. He said alright do me a favor, i'm sure you won't do it, because i imagine you're the total hack that i think you are, but if you're not, go back and read it again. and if you bother to do this jerry, here's what you'll find: he didn't give one, he gave three temperature projections based on different emissions profiles. Yes, he did offer scenario A which you reflected accurately, but he also gave B and C scenarios, which reflect different emissions assuming different policy actions… one of them had an emissions profile.. it's pretty much spot on.. So the bottom line is you're arguing that the models run hot and the warming we've seen prove it and the reality is that's not at all what that testimony suggests! he said or don't bother to look at it: just be a hack. by God i was gonna go back and re-read hanse's testimony and prove him wrong.
Jerry: And so i went back to my office and took joe up on the challenge. didn't take long to dig up the testimony, look it over again, and mirable dictu he was right. I figured i must have been missing something because after all, i work with scientists who have very strong opinions to the contrary. so i went to talk with a climate skeptic. a scientist. credentialed scientist who publishes in the peer review literature upon occasion. that had offered this narrative on multiple occasions in the past. and i told him what happened. and i said well look, i just finished reading hanse's testimony, and it looks like joe was right, so what am i missing here? what am i overlooking in this debate? and it turns out i wasn't missing anything for 20 minutes he hemmed and hawed… finally said look, i don't represent james hansen… my job is to put a spotlight on the fact that he's predicted more warming than we've seen, that's what i've done, and i don't know why we're having this conversation...
Jerry: so that put me back on my heels. i mean my gosh i'm now dealing with someone i trusted who was purposely and consciously skewing the debate. and it shook me a lot! i told him it seemed to me he was dodging and misrepresenting the debate for short-term rhetorical gain. and i didn't like being put in the spot of going out on national television that he knows darn well that he fed me and was misleading!
Jerry: So from that point forward i began to do the due diligence with the scientific narratives from the scientific community i was relying on before i would carry them forward into debate. i found that far more often than not the same story would play itself out…either the stories cherry-picked data…not very good! they weren't in peer-reviewed journals… i was certainly aware that i was becoming less and less comfortable with my position but i thought that while the climate skeptics might be overstating their case overstating the argument by and large they have a plausible narrative, but since i didn't trust any of that conversation anymore and i didn't want to be a party to -- well, if you can't trust your source, you shouldn't be using your sources. so i was much more comfortable with the economics conversation.
The “economics conversation” revolves around the argument that addressing climate change is simply too costly for our economy to bear. And Jerry WAS more comfortable with that argument UNTIL he came across an article by economist Jonathan Adler.
Jerry: he argued that even if the climate skeptics are right, even if everything they say is correct, even if everything that the A-list climate scientists who testify… he said even if they're all right, that's still not a good argument against climate action! he said look: libertarians generally believe that government protect private property, and if party A are destroying the property of party B, then just because A gains more than B loses doesn't mean it's AOK. libertarians are not utilitarians. they believe that gov job is to protect property rights with no proviso that says unless you make a whole lot of money screwing with them. and i had never thought of it that way!
Okay. So let’s say you own a small vineyard on a rolling hilltop. Now, because of climate change, your growing season is getting shorter and hotter. This year, your grapes just dried out on the vines. You can’t sell wine from dry grapes. The point Jonathan Adler is making is that: Just because fossil fuel companies are making more money emitting greenhouse gases / than you’re LOSING because of how those emissions are damaging your vineyard / doesn't make it okay that THOSE EMISSIONS / ARE DAMAGING / YOUR VINEYARD. In other words: your property rights are being violated. And property rights are REALLY IMPORTANT to libertarians like Jerry.
So is addressing climate change too costly for our economy to bear? Well, some people – like you in this case – are ALREADY paying for it, in the form of violated property rights. And libertarians believe that government should protect property rights, which means: government should take climate action.
Jerry: i could not find a credentialed economist who would argue against climate action
not a single one! I was there to oversee cato's climate and energy and environmental policy operations and one of the biggest issues in my bailiwick is climate policy. and i felt uncomfortable talking about because i could not confidently make the case against climate action. but i didn't think there was any space for any other position at cato. so i found other things to spend my time on.
Stevie: how long?
Jerry: 3, 4, 5 years
Stevie: 3, 4, 5 years?! That’s a long time…
Jerry: i felt comfortable talking about other matters back then so i found ways to keep myself busy
Jerry: he was introduced to me via email by cliff asnis who's a hedge fund manager in new york. cliff is a friend of mine and a donor to the cato institute. and said hey look, my former boss at goldman, bob litterman asked if i might be able to provide an introduction. bob's still a good friend. you know, bob's kind of soft libertarian... but he's a climate activist. i'm with you, i'm not. but still he asked for connection to cato. i encourage you to get together. he's a great guy and even if you disagree, very smart. so i said fine, happy to meet him.
Jerry: so bob comes in to see me. and in the room with me was peter van dorn. and peter had shared my discomfort with our position on climate change. so bob came in and he introduced himself and explained his background. and turns out bob was a partner at goldman sachs but most notably he was one of the first, in fact i think he was the first director of a quant operation on wall street. and within the academic community he's known as one of the top risk management intellectuals in the world. so he said jerry, i deal with risk at goldman that are much like climate change every single day. we have a wide distribution of possible outcomes given different investment scenarios. and i can't tell you exactly what the chances are for each scenario to come to pass, but i do know that there is a distribution of risk and when we have a distribution of various outcomes, many of them quite costly and dangerous for our clients, we don't just ignore them. we don't, we have to price those risks. and after we price them, then we hedge or whatever, but we don't ignore! he says where a lot of this convo is going wrong is that you, the cato institute, and mainstream are in a hot war about most likely outcome. your folks on lower end, they argue high end. and i don't know. and maybe you're right what'll come to pass, i don't know. but if you price the risks associated with various outcomes, the arguments against climate action just fall apart. they just fall apart. and that's particularly true when you recognize the fact that climate change is a non-diversifiable risk. there's nothing i can invest in if climate change happens. then he says jerry in markets, when people are investing money and confront non-diversifiable risk in markets how much do they pay to avoid? they pay A TON to avoid risks like that. the case for action is UNDENIABLE.
Jerry: so after about an hour and a half of talking this over with bob, he walked out of my office and, i turned to peter and said it looks like our position just got shredded to pieces
Jerry: it was kind of invigorating. i'm the kind of person who when he runs into clever, intriguing…wants to talk about it. even climate skeptics will go back and say look, there's a lot we don't know… scott priutt at EPA does that. uncertainty is an argument used by skeptics. but reality is if you're in risk management business, like bob at goldman, like we are as a society, uncertainty is the reason that you hedge against risk! Uncertainty is WHY you want to manage risk. the very fact of uncertainty DEMANDS the policy response! so that's how i responded to convo with bob, i was pretty excited!
Jerry: imagine yourself if you're at a holiday party with the mother jones staff. i think the NRA has a point… could you imagine doing that at holiday party? well when you're among conservatives and you say al gore was right… well that's a pretty strong cup of tea for some of my old friends.
Jerry: the fact is is that i became increasingly uncomfortable with my position at the cato institute. and so by the spring of 2014 i decided it was time to liberate myself from the constraints of institutional orthodoxy and to re-engage with libertarian-friendly rhetoric not just on climate but on a whole host of issues.
Jerry Taylor is the only paid climate skeptic who has ever flipped. So WHY did he knowingly challenge his views on climate change? WHY was he receptive to what Jim Hansen and Jonathan Adler and Bob Litterman had to say?
Jerry: most people who do what i do for a living are not in the business of wrestling with the strongest arguments and strongest advocates for the other side. they're in the business of being the best spokesmen for their cause within their choir. and i wanted to do something beyond that. and so because i had greater aspirations for myself, it required me to wrestle with the best arguments from the other side. most skeptics don't know the best arguments from the other side. they don't know strongest lit…data…evidence. cuz it's irrelevant to them. if all you're doing is talking to people who read fox news etc. it's pretty certain that your crowd is not up on this stuff. as long as you're telling conservatives and GOP what they wanna hear and you say it with brillo and esprit decor and tree huggers and cream cheese, you'll be just fine. you'll be on tucker carlson. you'll get your job done. but i didn't want to embarrass myself! and i didn't want to be diced and sliced on tv. now there are a lot of people, they don't mind being humiliated on tv…they don't care. because they are playing their role in the script they're playing…and they don't care if they don't sound smart to smart people, because they don't care about that audience. they only care about the choir audience
Jerry: i also was very aware of the fact that there were conservatives who trusted me to give them solid information. so if i got a phone call from jon stossel at fox or a ring from george will when he was at the washington post. and they wanted to talk about a policy issue in my area, i had a responsibility to give them as bullet-proof an argument and a solid set of data as i possibly could, cuz they're relying on me! and if i don't do that and then they go on the air or they go in print and they offer garbage and they get shredded then they ask well how the hell did that happen? why / how did this -- oh it's THAT guy that I listened to.
Which is exactly what happened to JERRY / that sparked his transformation in the first place: He’d parroted a bunk scientific narrative on national television. And then felt betrayed by the scientist who’d fed it to him.
So in a way, it was Jerry’s commitment to being a SUCCESSFUL climate skeptic / that made him open to change: It was precisely because he wanted to persuade people BEYOND his choir / and be a RELIABLE source for conservative pundits / that he: re-read James Hansen’s testimony. And confronted that climate scientist when it looked right. And was a – shall we say, inquiring mind – doing the due diligence that led him to convincing counter-arguments. AND what made him open to changing not just his views on climate change, but his RELATIONSHIP with his views more broadly.
Jerry: most people aren't in the business of looking skeptically at things that they already agree with or want to agree with as they are if they're looking at things that they don't agree with or don't want to agree with. that's just motivated cognition. my engines of motivated cognition were on full tilt when i was at the cato institute. it turns out that if you're smart…you can believe crazy. but if you're not so motivated to hold a tribal line, with those engines cut off a little bit, things can become very different.
Jerry: i was having lunch with a friend of mine - John Pascatando of Greenpeace. i got to know john when we used to debate. turns out he's a nice guy, lives close, likes fishing… And i was chatting with him about the niskanen center. i told him i was gonna leave the cato institute and start the niskanen center. And i told him what issues we were gonna deal with, and climate wasn't one of them. and he said jerry you really should deal with climate. you got a whole lot of bad karma and not a lot of time to do something about it. man, life's short. life's short. look you're the best opponent i've ever had... which means you have a lot of making up to do. He said look, do what you want to do. i think you'd be a happier person if you engaged on the issue that you probably are better equipped to engage on than any of the other issues that you want to invest in at Niskanen center
Jerry: the reality is is that, i was in a position that few people were and that i understood exactly why people gravitate towards climate skepticism on the right. i know climate skeptics really well, i know libertarians pretty well, I know conserative republicans very well… i have a good relationship with a lot of them and i can sit there with credibility and say: look, I used to believe exactly what you believe. Hell, I wrote your talking points. I know where this comes from and for 20 odd years, I was there! So I understand EXACTLY. but let me tell you why i'm not there anymore. i have a unique opportunity to talk to conservatives and right-of-center political audiences in a way that most people don't.
Jerry: there are plenty of climate skeptics out there. because of my perch at cato i was one of influential of the bunch i'd been on TV etc…more times than i can remember
Jerry: i wish earlier in my career i had done the due diligence with the arguments that i was trafficking in far earlier than i began to undertake that mission. i do regret that. so that's something that i feel i have a lot to make up for
Jerry: so i walked out of that lunch thinking: he's right.
The same DAY he left the Cato Institute, Jerry started the Niskanen Center – a libertarian think tank that promotes market-based solutions to climate change – primarly through a carbon tax. And in looking to persuade climate skeptics, the Niskanen Center uses what worked for Jerry.
Jerry: our aim is to talk to people who don't agree with us and to make the case for why they ought to entertain changing their minds and agreeing with us. because i think people CAN be persuaded by good arguments but you have to understand that you have to frame it in ways that they can appreciate. you have to make the case it with moral and value arguments that speak to them. you will waste your time speaking about equity issues to libertarians who does not care. but they care about other things… and it turns out that THAT is a more invigorating and challenging life than simply one-offing an op-ed for national review or putting in appearance at fox to shout with the howler monkeys.
Jerry: it is tremendously liberating to be in a position to argue what you want and to take positions that you’re totally comfortable with without having to answer to an administration or a management that you don't agree with!
Jerry: one of the most useful witticisms that i've come across is from ck chesterton
who cautioned against the person of the one book. the person who might read atlas shrugged or. you know name a book that's all the political rage in certain communities. and they become militant on this. so chesterton argues against the person of the one book because they will invariably find themselves in a well-lit prison cell. in a well-lit intellectual prison cell that they can't escape from. and when we find ourselves using our engines of motivated cognition to stay within the tribe and to constantly police ourselves against the possibility of being tempted by heretical thoughts and uncomfortable observations about reality, what we're really doing is arming our inner policeman to keep watch on this penitentiary that we've voluntarily locked ourselves in. and one of the reasons why it's been an incredibly invigorating thing for me to be at the niskanen center is that it’s an incredibly invigorating thing to not be in a penitentiary anymore. to not be in an ideological penitentiary or some sort of tribal penitentiary. and i fear that too many people - not just in climate skepticism and not just on right – but on the left as well, because they are captured by these dogmatic and ideological loyalties, that they are in a sense locking themselves in a rather exhausting jail cell, and they would be far better to let these things go and think with open minds.
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Stevie: what’s unique about his story is that he’s a rare bird whose mind was changed by information…
Indre: Ya i think one of most interesting part of the interview is where he talks about his realization. Where he starts to see how other individuals are cherry-picking data…. I think it takes a real shift in mind to recognize those tricks… Because for so many people, that's the way they do research, hard to recognize cherry-picking… Here he is saying: shoddy research! When you look at consensus, things come out the other way. So I was really excited to have you bring his story to us so we can get more insight into how an individual DOES change. Especially when motivated cognition! Not motivated to change his tune.
Stevie: Lingering question: brought anyone on his journey from skepticism to activism?
Indre: …well maybe there's a new reckoning
Stevie: Broader implication: inoculate ourselves with skepticism and critical thinking
Indre: …opinion still aligns with the available evidence
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Indre: That’s it for another Inquiring Minds episode…
Stevie: And Reckonings would love to thank: Helena de Groot, Vika Aronson, Phil Groman, and Patricia Adler for their editorial guidance. Louisa Tavlas, for coordinating our conversation with Jerry. And of course, Jerry Taylor himself – for uh having the courage to release himself from his tribal penitentiary and put his values to work. Next up, we’ll hear from someone who helped INCITE those howler monkeys to howl. A young man who was the PROTÉGÉ of the late Fox news chairman, Roger Ailes.
Stevie: I'm Stevie Lepp, you can find ME on Twitter @ Steph Lepp. Thank you for tuning into this joint episode of Reckonings and Inquiring Minds
Jerry: in the 60's, a lot of env's argued that cancer was product of pollution. and unless we do something, we'll all die of cancer. now we know that didn't play out that way. in the 70's, there was a tremendous amount of concern about how we were gonna get… we were gonna have a dramatic resource extinction, and unless we planned the economy to account for that we were heading towards economic disaster. that never played out. prior to that we heard of course that if we didn't address population explosion, and do a lot of aggressive family planning, even do something like the China one child policy, we'd all kill ourselves… and that never happened. and so to the conservative mind, climate change is just the latest in wolf-crying exercises. and HL Mencken once said, politics means keeping public alarmed… so when environmentalists come to you and say we have to act as if WWII mobilization, as Bill McKibben would have us believe, most conservatives think: ya well, how convenient for you that you found reason #374 why capitalism must die. and your track record isn't very good. and i'm going to require some real serious evidence before i engage in this suicidal exercise. i can still bring it, can't i?
Note: Reckonings is produced to be heard, not read. The audio includes emotion and emphasis unavailable on the written page. Transcripts may contain errors, and corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print.
. . .
Hi everybody. So this episode is a little different, because it’s a collaboration with Inquiring Minds – a science and politics podcast produced by Climate Desk, which is a journalistic collaboration between The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other major publications.
Now if you are INTRIGUED by the idea of Reckonings collaborating with other podcasts, like, for instance: Strangers – which features beautifully-produced, deeply personal stories, or Death, Sex, and Money – which takes on the juicy questions that are left OUT of polite conversation, or TED’s Sincerely X – featuring anonymous ideas worth spreading, then let me know. Or better yet, let THEM know, cuz I’m the smaller fish here!
And to check out Reckonings’ previous collaborations – with Inquiring Minds and with Love+Radio – go to reckonings.show/episodes, and on the right, click on “co-production.” With that, here we go:
. . .
Jerry: I certainly don't argue that climate change isn't real it is real we know that the planet is warming you know industrial missions have a lot to do with it probably most of most of what to do with that warming comes from industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. But there's a lot of uncertainties here. According to the IPCC warming can be anywhere between one and a half degrees Celsius to four and a half degrees Celsius if we double pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gas emissions. And it turns out while the models are showing that the warming will be in the median the high side of that spread the data that we've seen suggests it'll be on the low side it turns out there are reasons to think that the climate is no where near a sense of the greenhouse gas emissions as we think. So I'm not arguing that the you know the scientific consensus is necessarily wrong. What I am saying at least what I was saying back then was that there's a lot of good reasons that are associated with the actual temperature increases that we've been seeing. I think that warming will be on the very low side of the most likely outcomes projected by the IPCC. And if that's the case then it's probably going to be a relative nonevent. So that was the old elevator pitch.
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Indre: I’m Indre Viskontas, the host of Inquiring Minds, a podcast exploring where science, soceity, and politics collide.
Stevie: I’m Stevie Lepp from Reckonings, which explores how people change their hearts and minds. And today, we are diving into the odyssey of Jerry Taylor. Who’s voice you just heard giving his elevator pitch from his days at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, where Jerry was based for over 20 years. He was the HEAD of Cato’s energy and environmental policy operation, and a PROMINENT SPOKESPERSON for climate skepticism. As you might have noticed in that clip and you’ll hear in the rest of this piece, Jerry Taylor is VERY good at selling ideas. While at Cato, he made regular appearances on the likes of CNN, NBC and Fox, waging TV battles against proponents of climate action. He ALWAYS won his TV battles. And it is HEADING INTO one of those TV battles / that this story begins.
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Jerry: I'm not sure what show it was. Can't even remember the network - might have been CNN or CNBC, I don't recall. But anyway, I was in a debate with Joe Romm. He's a scientist. And we had a debate about climate change. And i argued on screen that well James Hansen testified in front of congress in late 80's about climate change. That set off political explosions that then followed. And what dr. hansen argued is that if we continued business as usual and we didn't do anything to address emissions then we would see a tremendous amount… And he offered projections… Well it's been over a decade since dr. hansen testified before senate, we can go back now... and what do you know? we've seen far less warming than james hansen argued in fact only quarter and that suggested to me that climate... that doesnt mean climate change isn't happening does mean that models are running really hot. and a lot of debate is between theory and reality, we're just not seeing the kind of warming we should have been seeing by now.
Jerry: we go back to the greenroom and joe said, let me ask you a question: did you actually read? It's been a while… didn't read it before came on the air. So what was all this based on? it was based on climate skeptics. He said alright do me a favor, i'm sure you won't do it, because i imagine you're the total hack that i think you are, but if you're not, go back and read it again. and if you bother to do this jerry, here's what you'll find: he didn't give one, he gave three temperature projections based on different emissions profiles. Yes, he did offer scenario A which you reflected accurately, but he also gave B and C scenarios, which reflect different emissions assuming different policy actions… one of them had an emissions profile.. it's pretty much spot on.. So the bottom line is you're arguing that the models run hot and the warming we've seen prove it and the reality is that's not at all what that testimony suggests! he said or don't bother to look at it: just be a hack. by God i was gonna go back and re-read hanse's testimony and prove him wrong.
Jerry: And so i went back to my office and took joe up on the challenge. didn't take long to dig up the testimony, look it over again, and mirable dictu he was right. I figured i must have been missing something because after all, i work with scientists who have very strong opinions to the contrary. so i went to talk with a climate skeptic. a scientist. credentialed scientist who publishes in the peer review literature upon occasion. that had offered this narrative on multiple occasions in the past. and i told him what happened. and i said well look, i just finished reading hanse's testimony, and it looks like joe was right, so what am i missing here? what am i overlooking in this debate? and it turns out i wasn't missing anything for 20 minutes he hemmed and hawed… finally said look, i don't represent james hansen… my job is to put a spotlight on the fact that he's predicted more warming than we've seen, that's what i've done, and i don't know why we're having this conversation...
Jerry: so that put me back on my heels. i mean my gosh i'm now dealing with someone i trusted who was purposely and consciously skewing the debate. and it shook me a lot! i told him it seemed to me he was dodging and misrepresenting the debate for short-term rhetorical gain. and i didn't like being put in the spot of going out on national television that he knows darn well that he fed me and was misleading!
Jerry: So from that point forward i began to do the due diligence with the scientific narratives from the scientific community i was relying on before i would carry them forward into debate. i found that far more often than not the same story would play itself out…either the stories cherry-picked data…not very good! they weren't in peer-reviewed journals… i was certainly aware that i was becoming less and less comfortable with my position but i thought that while the climate skeptics might be overstating their case overstating the argument by and large they have a plausible narrative, but since i didn't trust any of that conversation anymore and i didn't want to be a party to -- well, if you can't trust your source, you shouldn't be using your sources. so i was much more comfortable with the economics conversation.
The “economics conversation” revolves around the argument that addressing climate change is simply too costly for our economy to bear. And Jerry WAS more comfortable with that argument UNTIL he came across an article by economist Jonathan Adler.
Jerry: he argued that even if the climate skeptics are right, even if everything they say is correct, even if everything that the A-list climate scientists who testify… he said even if they're all right, that's still not a good argument against climate action! he said look: libertarians generally believe that government protect private property, and if party A are destroying the property of party B, then just because A gains more than B loses doesn't mean it's AOK. libertarians are not utilitarians. they believe that gov job is to protect property rights with no proviso that says unless you make a whole lot of money screwing with them. and i had never thought of it that way!
Okay. So let’s say you own a small vineyard on a rolling hilltop. Now, because of climate change, your growing season is getting shorter and hotter. This year, your grapes just dried out on the vines. You can’t sell wine from dry grapes. The point Jonathan Adler is making is that: Just because fossil fuel companies are making more money emitting greenhouse gases / than you’re LOSING because of how those emissions are damaging your vineyard / doesn't make it okay that THOSE EMISSIONS / ARE DAMAGING / YOUR VINEYARD. In other words: your property rights are being violated. And property rights are REALLY IMPORTANT to libertarians like Jerry.
So is addressing climate change too costly for our economy to bear? Well, some people – like you in this case – are ALREADY paying for it, in the form of violated property rights. And libertarians believe that government should protect property rights, which means: government should take climate action.
Jerry: i could not find a credentialed economist who would argue against climate action
not a single one! I was there to oversee cato's climate and energy and environmental policy operations and one of the biggest issues in my bailiwick is climate policy. and i felt uncomfortable talking about because i could not confidently make the case against climate action. but i didn't think there was any space for any other position at cato. so i found other things to spend my time on.
Stevie: how long?
Jerry: 3, 4, 5 years
Stevie: 3, 4, 5 years?! That’s a long time…
Jerry: i felt comfortable talking about other matters back then so i found ways to keep myself busy
Jerry: he was introduced to me via email by cliff asnis who's a hedge fund manager in new york. cliff is a friend of mine and a donor to the cato institute. and said hey look, my former boss at goldman, bob litterman asked if i might be able to provide an introduction. bob's still a good friend. you know, bob's kind of soft libertarian... but he's a climate activist. i'm with you, i'm not. but still he asked for connection to cato. i encourage you to get together. he's a great guy and even if you disagree, very smart. so i said fine, happy to meet him.
Jerry: so bob comes in to see me. and in the room with me was peter van dorn. and peter had shared my discomfort with our position on climate change. so bob came in and he introduced himself and explained his background. and turns out bob was a partner at goldman sachs but most notably he was one of the first, in fact i think he was the first director of a quant operation on wall street. and within the academic community he's known as one of the top risk management intellectuals in the world. so he said jerry, i deal with risk at goldman that are much like climate change every single day. we have a wide distribution of possible outcomes given different investment scenarios. and i can't tell you exactly what the chances are for each scenario to come to pass, but i do know that there is a distribution of risk and when we have a distribution of various outcomes, many of them quite costly and dangerous for our clients, we don't just ignore them. we don't, we have to price those risks. and after we price them, then we hedge or whatever, but we don't ignore! he says where a lot of this convo is going wrong is that you, the cato institute, and mainstream are in a hot war about most likely outcome. your folks on lower end, they argue high end. and i don't know. and maybe you're right what'll come to pass, i don't know. but if you price the risks associated with various outcomes, the arguments against climate action just fall apart. they just fall apart. and that's particularly true when you recognize the fact that climate change is a non-diversifiable risk. there's nothing i can invest in if climate change happens. then he says jerry in markets, when people are investing money and confront non-diversifiable risk in markets how much do they pay to avoid? they pay A TON to avoid risks like that. the case for action is UNDENIABLE.
Jerry: so after about an hour and a half of talking this over with bob, he walked out of my office and, i turned to peter and said it looks like our position just got shredded to pieces
Jerry: it was kind of invigorating. i'm the kind of person who when he runs into clever, intriguing…wants to talk about it. even climate skeptics will go back and say look, there's a lot we don't know… scott priutt at EPA does that. uncertainty is an argument used by skeptics. but reality is if you're in risk management business, like bob at goldman, like we are as a society, uncertainty is the reason that you hedge against risk! Uncertainty is WHY you want to manage risk. the very fact of uncertainty DEMANDS the policy response! so that's how i responded to convo with bob, i was pretty excited!
Jerry: imagine yourself if you're at a holiday party with the mother jones staff. i think the NRA has a point… could you imagine doing that at holiday party? well when you're among conservatives and you say al gore was right… well that's a pretty strong cup of tea for some of my old friends.
Jerry: the fact is is that i became increasingly uncomfortable with my position at the cato institute. and so by the spring of 2014 i decided it was time to liberate myself from the constraints of institutional orthodoxy and to re-engage with libertarian-friendly rhetoric not just on climate but on a whole host of issues.
Jerry Taylor is the only paid climate skeptic who has ever flipped. So WHY did he knowingly challenge his views on climate change? WHY was he receptive to what Jim Hansen and Jonathan Adler and Bob Litterman had to say?
Jerry: most people who do what i do for a living are not in the business of wrestling with the strongest arguments and strongest advocates for the other side. they're in the business of being the best spokesmen for their cause within their choir. and i wanted to do something beyond that. and so because i had greater aspirations for myself, it required me to wrestle with the best arguments from the other side. most skeptics don't know the best arguments from the other side. they don't know strongest lit…data…evidence. cuz it's irrelevant to them. if all you're doing is talking to people who read fox news etc. it's pretty certain that your crowd is not up on this stuff. as long as you're telling conservatives and GOP what they wanna hear and you say it with brillo and esprit decor and tree huggers and cream cheese, you'll be just fine. you'll be on tucker carlson. you'll get your job done. but i didn't want to embarrass myself! and i didn't want to be diced and sliced on tv. now there are a lot of people, they don't mind being humiliated on tv…they don't care. because they are playing their role in the script they're playing…and they don't care if they don't sound smart to smart people, because they don't care about that audience. they only care about the choir audience
Jerry: i also was very aware of the fact that there were conservatives who trusted me to give them solid information. so if i got a phone call from jon stossel at fox or a ring from george will when he was at the washington post. and they wanted to talk about a policy issue in my area, i had a responsibility to give them as bullet-proof an argument and a solid set of data as i possibly could, cuz they're relying on me! and if i don't do that and then they go on the air or they go in print and they offer garbage and they get shredded then they ask well how the hell did that happen? why / how did this -- oh it's THAT guy that I listened to.
Which is exactly what happened to JERRY / that sparked his transformation in the first place: He’d parroted a bunk scientific narrative on national television. And then felt betrayed by the scientist who’d fed it to him.
So in a way, it was Jerry’s commitment to being a SUCCESSFUL climate skeptic / that made him open to change: It was precisely because he wanted to persuade people BEYOND his choir / and be a RELIABLE source for conservative pundits / that he: re-read James Hansen’s testimony. And confronted that climate scientist when it looked right. And was a – shall we say, inquiring mind – doing the due diligence that led him to convincing counter-arguments. AND what made him open to changing not just his views on climate change, but his RELATIONSHIP with his views more broadly.
Jerry: most people aren't in the business of looking skeptically at things that they already agree with or want to agree with as they are if they're looking at things that they don't agree with or don't want to agree with. that's just motivated cognition. my engines of motivated cognition were on full tilt when i was at the cato institute. it turns out that if you're smart…you can believe crazy. but if you're not so motivated to hold a tribal line, with those engines cut off a little bit, things can become very different.
Jerry: i was having lunch with a friend of mine - John Pascatando of Greenpeace. i got to know john when we used to debate. turns out he's a nice guy, lives close, likes fishing… And i was chatting with him about the niskanen center. i told him i was gonna leave the cato institute and start the niskanen center. And i told him what issues we were gonna deal with, and climate wasn't one of them. and he said jerry you really should deal with climate. you got a whole lot of bad karma and not a lot of time to do something about it. man, life's short. life's short. look you're the best opponent i've ever had... which means you have a lot of making up to do. He said look, do what you want to do. i think you'd be a happier person if you engaged on the issue that you probably are better equipped to engage on than any of the other issues that you want to invest in at Niskanen center
Jerry: the reality is is that, i was in a position that few people were and that i understood exactly why people gravitate towards climate skepticism on the right. i know climate skeptics really well, i know libertarians pretty well, I know conserative republicans very well… i have a good relationship with a lot of them and i can sit there with credibility and say: look, I used to believe exactly what you believe. Hell, I wrote your talking points. I know where this comes from and for 20 odd years, I was there! So I understand EXACTLY. but let me tell you why i'm not there anymore. i have a unique opportunity to talk to conservatives and right-of-center political audiences in a way that most people don't.
Jerry: there are plenty of climate skeptics out there. because of my perch at cato i was one of influential of the bunch i'd been on TV etc…more times than i can remember
Jerry: i wish earlier in my career i had done the due diligence with the arguments that i was trafficking in far earlier than i began to undertake that mission. i do regret that. so that's something that i feel i have a lot to make up for
Jerry: so i walked out of that lunch thinking: he's right.
The same DAY he left the Cato Institute, Jerry started the Niskanen Center – a libertarian think tank that promotes market-based solutions to climate change – primarly through a carbon tax. And in looking to persuade climate skeptics, the Niskanen Center uses what worked for Jerry.
Jerry: our aim is to talk to people who don't agree with us and to make the case for why they ought to entertain changing their minds and agreeing with us. because i think people CAN be persuaded by good arguments but you have to understand that you have to frame it in ways that they can appreciate. you have to make the case it with moral and value arguments that speak to them. you will waste your time speaking about equity issues to libertarians who does not care. but they care about other things… and it turns out that THAT is a more invigorating and challenging life than simply one-offing an op-ed for national review or putting in appearance at fox to shout with the howler monkeys.
Jerry: it is tremendously liberating to be in a position to argue what you want and to take positions that you’re totally comfortable with without having to answer to an administration or a management that you don't agree with!
Jerry: one of the most useful witticisms that i've come across is from ck chesterton
who cautioned against the person of the one book. the person who might read atlas shrugged or. you know name a book that's all the political rage in certain communities. and they become militant on this. so chesterton argues against the person of the one book because they will invariably find themselves in a well-lit prison cell. in a well-lit intellectual prison cell that they can't escape from. and when we find ourselves using our engines of motivated cognition to stay within the tribe and to constantly police ourselves against the possibility of being tempted by heretical thoughts and uncomfortable observations about reality, what we're really doing is arming our inner policeman to keep watch on this penitentiary that we've voluntarily locked ourselves in. and one of the reasons why it's been an incredibly invigorating thing for me to be at the niskanen center is that it’s an incredibly invigorating thing to not be in a penitentiary anymore. to not be in an ideological penitentiary or some sort of tribal penitentiary. and i fear that too many people - not just in climate skepticism and not just on right – but on the left as well, because they are captured by these dogmatic and ideological loyalties, that they are in a sense locking themselves in a rather exhausting jail cell, and they would be far better to let these things go and think with open minds.
. . .
Stevie: what’s unique about his story is that he’s a rare bird whose mind was changed by information…
Indre: Ya i think one of most interesting part of the interview is where he talks about his realization. Where he starts to see how other individuals are cherry-picking data…. I think it takes a real shift in mind to recognize those tricks… Because for so many people, that's the way they do research, hard to recognize cherry-picking… Here he is saying: shoddy research! When you look at consensus, things come out the other way. So I was really excited to have you bring his story to us so we can get more insight into how an individual DOES change. Especially when motivated cognition! Not motivated to change his tune.
Stevie: Lingering question: brought anyone on his journey from skepticism to activism?
Indre: …well maybe there's a new reckoning
Stevie: Broader implication: inoculate ourselves with skepticism and critical thinking
Indre: …opinion still aligns with the available evidence
. . .
Indre: That’s it for another Inquiring Minds episode…
Stevie: And Reckonings would love to thank: Helena de Groot, Vika Aronson, Phil Groman, and Patricia Adler for their editorial guidance. Louisa Tavlas, for coordinating our conversation with Jerry. And of course, Jerry Taylor himself – for uh having the courage to release himself from his tribal penitentiary and put his values to work. Next up, we’ll hear from someone who helped INCITE those howler monkeys to howl. A young man who was the PROTÉGÉ of the late Fox news chairman, Roger Ailes.
Stevie: I'm Stevie Lepp, you can find ME on Twitter @ Steph Lepp. Thank you for tuning into this joint episode of Reckonings and Inquiring Minds
Jerry: in the 60's, a lot of env's argued that cancer was product of pollution. and unless we do something, we'll all die of cancer. now we know that didn't play out that way. in the 70's, there was a tremendous amount of concern about how we were gonna get… we were gonna have a dramatic resource extinction, and unless we planned the economy to account for that we were heading towards economic disaster. that never played out. prior to that we heard of course that if we didn't address population explosion, and do a lot of aggressive family planning, even do something like the China one child policy, we'd all kill ourselves… and that never happened. and so to the conservative mind, climate change is just the latest in wolf-crying exercises. and HL Mencken once said, politics means keeping public alarmed… so when environmentalists come to you and say we have to act as if WWII mobilization, as Bill McKibben would have us believe, most conservatives think: ya well, how convenient for you that you found reason #374 why capitalism must die. and your track record isn't very good. and i'm going to require some real serious evidence before i engage in this suicidal exercise. i can still bring it, can't i?
