What were your politics in 1971 . I think a martian left would be the easiest way to sum it up. I was a leftwinger, but i didnt make enough sense to actually be a communist or a trotskyite or anything. When did the transformation occur . It was gradual. I just wrote about this. There is a book coming out from the huber institution is backing this. Edited by Mary Eberstadt called why i turned right and its the story of a bunch of us and why we became right and it is a long story and i wont tell it but ill give the shortversion. I was a radical leftist. Very much in favor of some sort of marcus socialist thing in america. I got a job. I got a job paying hundred 50 a week. I was a messenger in new york , hundred 50 in new york a week was a lot of money as far as i wasconcerned, i was on the Lower East Side and i was very broke. We got paid every two weeks and i was lookingforward to that 300 bucks. And so was my landlord i may say. And my drug dealer. And a number of other people and i go
We are going to be looking at and wire mental legal doctrine, more broadly its social philosophical, kind of issues to grapple with. We also talked at the beginning of the semester, about how society deals with times of aggregate. The big pitchers the effects of large numbers of individual personal disputes on the big picture. And we will be dealing in talking about aggregates a little bit today. The class will lead to a couple of Big Questions big question number one, how much can we regulate in the interest of protecting the environment, big question number two who actually gets to advocate on behalf of the environment, or governmental issues. Those are the two things we are going to be focusing on all right, im going to begin today on talk about environmental change in u. S. History, including what was and what was not instinctive about the consciousness we refer to as environmentalism. When it came onto the scene in the mid 20th century. And let me introduce you to problems. And he
Limit our fossil fuel consumption and so we cant just talk about banning fracking without talking about specifics on alternatives to liquid transportation fuels and alternatives to natural gas in the power sector obama did call it a bridge fuel in terms of getting us off coal but it seems to be much more of a geo political issue we see with the fracking and the doubling of production its really hailed across bipartisan issues as like where the Number One Oil producer in the world so once it jumps to that level it becomes way more difficult to get off it what do you think about this the Obama Administration could take this is a when i think weve seen the world flip flop from 2008 to today weve basically seen the us go from importing 50000000 barrels a day of oil to down to less than 2000000 barrels a day at the same time china is now importing. Almost 10000000000 barrels a day so now china has become what we were in the seventys and we had the oil crisis i mean the next problem with oil
Environmental issues related to fracking which involves injecting water because with chemicals in particular its like sand very High Pressure deep into hard rock formations youre basically putting a jet engine on the drill and using water at High Pressure instead of the drilling operation so theres tons of Environmental Issues water issues but theres also Climate Change the more oil and natural gas produce we produce the more Greenhouse Gas emissions we emit into the atmosphere and so i think what young people are responding to is we have to respond to the Climate Crisis and the only way to effectively respond to the Climate Crisis is to limit our fossil fuel production to limit our fossil fuel consumption and so we cant just talk about banning fracking without talking about specifics on alternatives to liquid transportation. In fuels and alternatives to natural gas in the power sector obama did call it a bridge fuel in terms of getting us off coal but it seems to be much more of a geo
Seen the us go from importing 50000000 barrels a day of oil to down to less than 2000000 barrels a day at the same time china is now importing almost 10000000000 barrels a day so now china has become what we were in the seventys and we had the oil crisis i mean the next problem with oil come out of the middle east our strategic rival china is going to a big problem and over here were going to be pretty much selfsufficient so i think in terms of domestic resources it was a win in terms of Climate Change it was a win the u. S. Is the only region in the world that has actually reduced its emissions since 2005 reduced about 7 percent and thats because were replacing the dirtiest fuel coal with natural gas so this idea of banning fracking is a big gain of pollutants absolute you would watch it you would see number one our Living Standards are completely dependent on our electricity production so to just oh no trying to ban Something Like that weve built the entire Energy Infrastructure arou