and so we think that private property gets treated pretty well relative to public property. and so, it's not the hit the of answer but it would reduce the extraction of fish and would create incentives because if one harvests the fish then they are not there to growing and reproduce the next year. >> let's back up a second. there's something that needs to be understood here, that there is a widespread agreement that what we are doing has to stop and that commercial fishing has to come into harmony with the natural order. it's not that anybody is arguing about that. it's not that, you know, the fisherman -- i open my book by saying there's no bad guys here. it's not that there are some people who are plotting to destroy the planet, and then we have to stop them to save it.

it's that we have to arrive at formulas that work, and it's likely those formulas are, that's where the arguments are. and they are trying lots of things and some things work and some things don't work. but it's more about figuring it out than the law enforcement problem. ..

>> that's more the kind of problem, so it's not a law enforcement problem as it's a problem of finding the right formula. >> thank you, mark. we'll take a question from this side of the room now. >> quick two concept response to the previous question. commons and trust. neither public nor private. my question, to me, it's apparent to what the solutions about our economic and

ecological problems, and let's remember both the words come from the greek word oikros, how you keep a home whether it's the third ball of clay from the son. it's from permaculture, design sciences, and things like mimics that are organic. that's obvious to me. we need to use that at the home level up to the nation state and beyond. the problem to me is that we're not willing to actually face the real problem of the pink radioactive elephant stomping in the room that has to do with an interlockingly based host of criminals around the world that control the energy industry -- >> thank you, do you have a question in >> that use nation

states to bomb to get resources. >> i think we get the gist of your question. thank you so much. [laughter] >> matt, you want to take that on? >> so i agree with most of that question. [laughter] a quick pressure group point. big oil, it makes big money, but in california we need leading very smart venture capitalists making big bets on the green economy, and, of course, there's an element of david versus go goliath here. could we get two new electric car ideas and how this competes as a driver on middle east product? with learning by doing and enough progress, even without a carbon tax, i'd love there to be a gas tax. the electric car could compete better against big oil if

there's significant green tech progress. >> other views? lawrence or mark want to add to that? >> well, you know, this thing about the evil ole gar kyes, it could be true, but it's just to counterproductive to approach issues in that way. >> to arrest the criminals? >> yeah, yes, to use the kind of rhetoric they're using is -- >> rule of law is illegal. >> yes, all of that is counterproductive. what you need to do in this world is understand where people are coming from and so -- and treat them with respect and find out what everybody's point of view is and try to work this out in a way that answer people's

issues. i've been writing about -- i don't only write about environmental issues, but i have been writing about environmental issues since the early 1970s starting with nuclear power, and i have noticed that where environmental movements are most successful is when they listen to the other people's point of view, when they don't use this kind of rhetoric, when they don't talk in terms of the good guys and the bad guys because it just doesn't get it done. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> okay, now we're going to take a question on this side of the room, and everybody think three sentences. [laughter] >> i applaud your optimism, but not your naivety. i'm concerned that the use of the term "tipping point"

trivializes what could be a run away train in terms of ecological collapse. now, what my question is how do you propose to muster the global will to both recognize what is happening and to take the necessary action to do it? >> so it's a very fair question. at the heart of my book, " "climatopolis" it's your family, what is the future of your family in climate change? if the city's quality of life suffers sharply, my family will sharper our day-to-day quality will suffer, our home falls in value. my model in my head is that individuals will catch on of the real threat that climate change poses and will vote with their

feet to move to a city to have a better life or demand political accountability. the next mayor of los angeles that he or she is expected to step up. if there's water scarsty in l.a., right now, it's a half cent of water. $10 gas, $1 water. i'm a consistent man. [laughter] this is the beginning of getting ready for the scarsty we'll face. it's the individual, not nations that will act to protect us. >> well, i understand what you're saying, and agree with that, but i'm concerned about reaction time. is it fast enough by that process? >> again, it's a very fair question. at the heart of the book, and i'm an economist, and everyone in the room loves economists. [laughter] i look like bernanke.

[laughter] the model in my head is one of comparative advantage. the climate scientists improve their forecasts of the challenges they face and as an early warning system, provide this information so households live the best life they can, and we take action on the progress they make. if climate change is a tricky foe and we can't predict the consequences, your skepticism is well put, and i'm scared and would be scared. >> thank you. a question on this side of the room. >> hi, there. i read somewhere that by one calculation if you get rid of cow burps, the spire equation would balance out and there's no global warming anymore. is vegetarianism the answer? [laughter] >> lawrence, you're the scientist on the panel. >> it's actually a good point. methane emission from livestock

is significant in greenhouse gas, but unfortunately killing the livestock does not eradicate the problem, but it is a significant term. where vegetarianism comes into play though is that it takes an order of magnitude more biomass to produce roughly 100 kilograms of biomass in plant form to produce a few kilograms of meat. it's highly inefficient, and of course along with that comes much larger consumption of energy to consume the food in the first place. i think vegetarianism is efficient in curbing greenhouse gases by curbing food production to people in addition to the

methane gas you referred to. >> is there an estimate if we all became vegetarians how much climate change that prevents or how much greenhouse gases a year that curbs? >> i haven't seen the global study, but regional studies have been done. it is a significant impact. >> so, there's a question if the brazil rain forests gets shopped down in part because of pursuit of cattle raising, so it depends what land is used and whether that land was with carbon, and that's a hot research topic for nerds. [laughter] >> no, that's a huge issue because the rain forest in brazil is being cut down for soy beans to feed cattle and also for cattle grazing. that is the biggest factor in the destruction of the amazon. the indonesian rain forest is cut down for pom oil, another

issue all together. >> two questions, one for lawrence and mark? please? [laughter] >> okay. >> lawrence, should the republicans demand that the epa be lowered as they want to have obama pass the budget? that's one question. >> one at a time, and then we'll get to the next one. >> could you repeat that question? >> repeat that please. >> the republicans want to lower epa standards to pass the budget because it'll help the economy. how do you feel about that? >> put simply, that's short sided. [laughter] [applause] >> matt, do you want to say something about the epa budget? >> two words, if jim morrisson

showed up, he'd be shocked. the epa has done a world of good making our cities livable, healthier places, and there's huge economic benefits from that that the republicans should factor in, in houston as well. [applause] >> you know, the really great progress that was made on environmental issues all happened in the 70s, oddly enough under nixon, the clean air and endangered species, and we've been living off of them and profiting from them ever since and kind of taken them for granted. we really haven't progressed much from the 70 #s in terms of legislation, but we've greatly benefited from that legislation, and i think it's made a lot of people just kind of lackadaisical about environmental issues in

forgetting how hard these things were fought for and how important they are. >> well, i think it's true that the big laws were passed 30 years ago, but actually there's been a lot of revisions and regulations and new air pollution laws since then, and particularly in california, so -- >> the basis -- >> nobody's been sitting on their laurels. the air has been, you know, really bad here, and people are, you know, california's been passing legislation, and there was the crackdown on acid rain in the east, and there's just been a lot of activity since then, and all that -- >> it's based on things that happened in washington in the 1970s, and it's -- we've lost site of the kind of things that you're talking about, we've lost sight how that happened, how that got started, and, you know,

the effect of rolling back -- what the effect of rolling back on these things would be. >> if we can only keep reminding them that the environment is the republican issue; right? >> that's right. >> yes, you had another question? >> the nuclear reactor at fukushima is releasing chemicals into the waters, the pacific ocean, how safe are the fish we consume here in california and are they safe with elevated levels of radioactive materials and there's 75 million levels of radiation they detected. i go to the local retailer. i like white tuna. a teacher said we better get a stock of all of this now because it's not going to be edible. >> okay. >> got it.

i'll give you the honest answer they are all thinking but nobody's saying. i don't know. [laughter] you know, to tell you something else, we don't know what the effect of all of the oil that's been spilled in the ocean is on fish, and we don't know what the effect of all the plastic that's floating around in the ocean that fish feed on is, we don't know the effect of climate change on fish. there's a lot of research that needs to be done about these things. it's remarkable that we live in a world where we do these things, and thing there's funding to research what we've done. [laughter] >> mark, we may not know about the radiation, but we do know about mercury in tuna, don't we? >> in terms of us? >> yeah. >> yeah, in terms of the effect on us, but we don't know as much as we should about how mercury

and chromium and the other things effect the life cycles of fish. you know, when you do things in fishery management that are supposed to have a result -- for instance, you close off an area from fishing, and you fish in another area, and the idea that you closed off, the stocks rebuild, and sometimes they don't, and we don't know why. that's because there's a lot of things going on that we don't understand. >> thank you. on my left here. >> yeah,s movie, "inconvenience truth" brings the idea of climate control to the fore front -- >> could you speak into the microphone, please. >> sorry. the movie, al gore, you know, the " inconvenient truth" movie brought climate control to the

forefront and afterwords there was push back and scientists wanted to debunk the statistics in that movie. did that have positive or negative effects on your research afterwards? >> lawrence, you can take that on since it's about science. >> yeah, i'd be happy to. as a life scientist, i dreaded watching that movie and put it off for two years before i watched it because i knew it would be so painful in inaccuracies. i was surprised. the science was 90% right and he even had the very latest ice core record from antarctica. war really brought on some very prominent climate scientists. that said, i think it's unfortunate that it was al gore in the movie because that

instantly politicized it, and it was a matter of federal science to a political debate when it's science. it's not political at all. the -- as far as the speck times push back, there's no bones about it. they may have scientific training, but they work in privately funded institutes funded by, you know, big oil and so forth, and the -- i'm amused, if i may take a moment -- as a climate scientist, i'm amused by the idea that somehow scientists are all in kahoots to get more grant dollars. i'm amused. the truth is the way scientists work is we are in competition with each other for ideas and breakthroughs, and if i could prove global warming was wrong, i'd do it in a second. [laughter] i'd be famous and it would make

a name for myself. no, with the serious sign tisk communities moved on from is it real or not to, okay, how fast is it happening, what are the sources and things, what is the tipping point, and how quickly will it unfold, and that's the impact? the al gore movie if you want a good review of the science at that time, and it's moved on, but it is quite excellent. >> thank yous, laurence. >> i have two questions, one national, another international. i want to direct it to matt. from from south america where despite mining practices, most of our rain forests are still pristine and the government proposed the developed country in north america and europe pay us to not do anything else to the forests. what does climb economists in a

developed country think when he hears something like that, is the first question. >> let's go with the answer to the first question. >> it's a free market environmentalist, and i love it, and my wife gives our money to the nature conserve and money is collected in a land trust in the u.s. and land is purchased from developers and set aside to just be pristine, and what you outline sounds similar. i -- if there's a question with the money collected say from the united states to your country, there's a question how the money is distributed. if i'm a poor person, do i get the dime or is it captured by the political elite? i having never been to your country, i want to believe the first one. >> they are full of practice call problems. >> yes, international trade in protecting natural capital in

return for capital flows to your country, all economists say that's a great thing. >> okay. my other question is eight years ago when i moved to l.a., my friend was very angry with me because i didn't buy a prius, but i couldn't afford one. >> are you outing me? [laughter] >> my car is about to die now and still can't afford a prius or solar panels and all the other neat stuff i want in my house. is there any indication when all this great stuff trickles down to the layperson? [applause] >> i'm just going to say one thing about that, and then i'll pass you to the economist, but i bought my prius secondhand, and it really was very cheap, i promise you. [laughter] >> i keep forgetting to turn my

off because you couldn't hear it, but -- [laughter] i think there's a very large issue there. you know, when you talk about $10 a gallon oil, and you said that's the first thing, what came to my mind is how are you going to operate a fishing boat? a dollar for water, i'm constantly pointing out that fish has to be more expensive. people like mike talking about making produce more expensive where solving the world's problems by completely excluding court people, and at some point we have to come to terms with that, so there's two pieces, and mark, i'm surrounded by good debaters. a key question, imagine if we had kahn's $10 gas and $7 was

tax revenue. the state of california has billions of extra dollars in tax revenue. the correct question is what do we do? we say give it to ucla. [laughter] a more reasonable person would say there are poor and deserving -- that this was price gouging, let's lump money back to the deserving poor. it's to make others have price consumption, but recycle the money back in a second step for those who have trouble oikros justing, -- adjusting, but future boats due to technology advancements are less research intensive, but economists are more politically correct than you would guess, and that there are ways to protect the poor while simultaneously making people face the costs of their actions to face the right incentives. >> there's a really interesting

little section in "climatopoli" that matt talks about and people in l.a. waste water, and sprinklers going all the time, and yet water is cheap, and you use the official of a crept or whatever, and people don't think anything of spending $1 # -- $100 a month on cable, but they would scream if their water went up $20. >> i wondered why l.a. has green grass, and when we moved to l.a., my wife ripped out the grass, and our neighbors want to speak to us even less. [laughter] i'm a believer, in a desert, there's so many swimming pools and green grass, i don't deny

you the freedom, but if that's what you want in an age of scarcity, i want you to face the costs of your actions, and we will make better choices if we do. [applause] >> okay. we only have five more minutes which means a very quick question and a very quick question there, and short answers. >> okay. this is maybe more than a five minute question, but i keep hearing people say that the only way to reverse global warming is to go nuclear. what do you think? >> laurence? >> i was hoping not to get that question. [laughter] of all of the carbon-free sources of energy out there, nuclear is the one that's most ready to go -- no, not ready, but they have the most presence already here and now. you know, 15%-20% of the

electricity portfolio in the world were higher in the case of france and japan. it's carbon free. it really is. that white smoke -- >> [inaudible] >> carbon, in terms of co2 emissions, the white stuff coming out is water vapor, not co2, but, man, look at what just happened, look at the incredible damages. i find myself really torn over nuclear. i don't have a clear answer for you of all the energy sources, it's what i struggle with the most. >> okay. going to this gentleman over here with the last question. >> there's a lot of talk of $10 gas and depletion of the resources. how do you comment on our country's approach to ethanol and subsidizing corn. does that make since -- sense the way we're doing it? >> i have a section on it in the book, and i'll pass it to matt.

simply, corn ethanol, bad. sugar ethanol from brazil or caribbean that are islands of sugar, why not develop caribbean economies and why we don't is beyond me. >> matt? >> i agree with my esteemed ucla colleague. [laughter] i -- >> ucla. [laughter] >> the only intelligent point i add to that -- [laughter] is government doesn't have a great record at picking winners, and i prefer government send price signals of what is scarce and leave it up to the 300 million americans to grope around and to experiment and to try different efforts to see what will workment. top down scares me and i like california's ab32, and i think, this may be wishful thinking

again, we will set up a series of incentives sending signals to the bright entrepreneurs and individual efforts launched to decarbonize our economy. >> thank you very much to coming, to our panel, and congratulations to our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> that was a lot of fun. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> that wraps up the first day of live coverage of the festival of the books. it's now in its 16th year, and it's the first year at usc campus which is where we are now. the crowds are still pretty intense here. we're told over the course of two days, 140,000 people are expected to come through, more than 400 authors featured here, and hundreds of exhibitors as you can see. you can see them over my

shoulder here. more coming up tomorrow. this is the first sunday of the month tomorrow, the day we do our in-depth program, and we'll feature a libertarian writer, author of more than 30 books live from the set here at usc. following that, our coverage of the day two of los los los angeles times festival. we'll be here with a number of panel sessions covering live on nonfiction books, and in between, a number of nonfiction book authors take your telephone calls including walter mosley. look forward to spending more time with you