day 85 years ago and the following six months or so is likely what i would call the most famous story you never heard. the story reached all the way to boston because the trial which was one of the most celebrated trials of the decade, a decade known for famous trials like the scopes trial and leopold and loeb and so forth, this trial was one of the most captivating at the time but it has been lost to history. a footnote in a lot of books. this is a story that has made it into some places but never received its full treatment, i think. the context is the 1920s which i found to be a fascinating time. it was a time just after the world changed, when the soldiers -- the last living soldier of world war i, 110 years old, was

buried at arlington national cemetery. there are no more from that era and fewer we see every day from the greatest generation but the 1920s people came back from world war i and had to change views influenced by what they saw in europe and what we know about the 1920s 4 two things that were happening. what is the tremendous revolution in manners and morals in the country and casting of restraints. you have women voting and a lot of independents and a sexual revolution that goes on. you have all the media things that come along. radio begins to become a very popular medium and eventually becoming the media of the day. tabloid newspapers are very strong. the film industry had been around for a few years but really reached its traction in

the 1920s. along with that, the cult of celebrity came along. what andy warhol described as 50 minutes of fame existed before that in the 1920s. sports figures and golfers and baseball players and movie stars became famous. against that, you had this reaction to that revolution. it was described in an art word created from the beginning of the decade by warren harding who ran in the 1920s when he said we want to get back to what we call normal sleep. -- normalcy. the first republican to make up words. getting back to the way things used to be. that resonated because face of a country blowing apart. a lot of the values they held were changing. you had a number of things that came along at the same time that emerge. one was a movement called fundamentalism. when you hear about fundamentalism, what you used to

think of is associated awful lot with islamic fundamentalism and terrorism and also people throwing in with christian fundamentalism and make the mistake of using evangelicalism and fundamentalism as interchangeable. they are not completely interchangeable. fundamentalism was a reaction to the modern world. it began as a theological movement. reaction to the logical changes that were taking place in mainstream protestantism. it became a cultural thing. it was something for people to get involved with. it is hard for us to imagine today but it was such a pervasive movement in the 1920s that the famous sage of baltimore, h. l. mencken of the baltimore journal, said in the 1920s that if you were to throw and a from a pullman car anywhere in america you are bound to hit a fundamentalist and the head. there were millions of people who embraced it. it was more than religious.

it was a cultural reaction to the way things changed. another movement that was very big at least for a time in the 1920s and even here in the state of texas was the ku klux klan. it had seen a revival. there had been in many manifestations up to our time. many of them marginal. the most significant emergence of that particular movements were during reconstruction with the original plan but in 1915, there was a regrouping of the ku klux klan and in the 1920s this group, very patriotic, very pro america, very anti-immigrant, anti foreigners kind of thing really takes hold in the culture and for a moment in time there is a blending together a lot of commonality of fundamentalism and the ku klux klan.

this is something we have a difficult time acknowledging. they have a difficult time repudiating it because it is difficult to acknowledge it was part of the package. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> now on booktv, james dowlingpaul argues the modern environmentalism is made of socialists and communists. his main goal is to rule the world. it is about 50 minutes. >> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation. as director of lectures and seminars it is my pleasure to welcome everyone to those who join us on our heritage.org web site and those who will join us on c-span on a future occasion. we ask everyone in house to make the courtesy check that cellphone 7 turned off as we proceed. always good that the speaker

does that especially. and we will post a program within 24 hours on our web site for everyone's future reference. hosting our discussion this morning and introducing our special guest is nicked lawrence, policy analyst and thomas wrote institute for economic policy studies. he focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues and examined energy prices and other economic effects of environmental policies and regulations particularly looking at climate change or cap and trade legislation and articulate the benefits of free market environmentalism. he has appeared on many radio programs locally as well as serving as an associate for the charles cote charitable foundation before joining us at heritage. join me in welcoming nick lawrence. [applause] >> thank you all for coming here today.

it promises to be an educational and exciting event with our speaker. learning about these issues for a while, at the global recession hit you have seen a shift in the green movement away from warning about the catastrophic consequences of climate change and shifting toward the green jobs position and moving towards a clean energy economy and these policies have such far reaching implications on american households, on businesses and to arrest on a shaky set of assumptions about the scientific consensus when it comes to global warming and that is putting it lightly. our speaker will be more blunt about this, is troubling. the policies in the united states, you can list them endlessly. you have policies that artificially drive the price of energy up so people will use less. biofuel mandates, energy

efficiency regulations that restrict consumer choice and ignore the trade offs consumers make when purchasing a plants or light bulbs or vehicles. all these policies fundamentally alter the system of free enterprise. they all have an underlying goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. that is just scratching the surface. when you dig a little deeper and learn about the climate science and learn about the special interest politics that go on behind these political shifts and policies, that is when your eyes begin to balch and your blood begins to boil. i don't think many people that have done as much digging as our guest. james is a british writer, burn a list and blotter who helped expose the climategate scandal and is the author of numerous books including welcome to obamaland, i have seen your

future and it doesn't work, and 365 way to drive a liberal crazy. if you are looking for a way to drive a liberal crazy, james is your guy and his book is the one to read. in 2005 he received the charles douglas memorial trust award and in 2010 he won the prize for online journalism and on his web site, he notes that he is a fan of great white sharks and films about evil vampires. we can have those discussions another day. we can have james back again but now he is joining us to discuss his new book watermelons':the green movement's true colors of. join me in welcoming james dahlingpoll. >> if you want me to talk about great white sharks are am happy. thank you for welcoming me to dc, the home of small government

and liberty. before i talk a little more about my book watermelon, i would like to show you a little film. >> i would like to invite you. the idea is everyone stop putting their carbon emissions by 10%. safe for everyone eventually. it got to be a huge thing. i would love you and your family to think about this. >> what sort of things? >> making them last or taking your next holiday by train or buying energy savings lightbulbs. we are thinking of these as fantastic. it would be great to get a sense of how many of you might do

this. fantastic. tracy. absolutely fine. thank you so much for today and i will see you all tomorrow. before you go, let's press a little button here. everybody please remember to read chapters 5, and 6 except for lip and tracy. >> some brilliant ideas from lots of you. a quick show of hands everyone who wants to get involved. nearly everybody. just for the record, no pressure, those who aren't quite

convinced yet. no problem. your choice. those of you planning should probably get working on it. gorgeous. those of you who aren't -- excellent. have a great weekend, everyone. >> hello, everyone. great to be back here. not many of you remember me. what is this your doing, trying to cut carbon emissions by 20% this year. change the floodlights for lower energy. and matches on buses and trains and coming by car. >> i wouldn't do it.

>> you don't have to donate. just ignore it. >> got to end it there. >> hundreds of thousands of people, tool, business, hospitals and movie stars, presidents and government are passing climate change in 40 countries. care to join us? no pressure. >> sounded great to me. >> happy to help. >> what do you think? >> are you kidding me? a thought by doing this voice-over that was my contribution. >> absolutely. no pressure. >> okay. by.

>> today's talk is dedicated to the memory of philip and tracy. the kids who stood up against the eco fascist schoolteacher and died for their cause. how many of you have seen that video before? about a third of you. when people see that video for the first time their reaction often is that it must have been made by people like me to satirize the eco fascist leanings of the green movement. you may be surprised to learn that that film was made to recruit people to the cause of environmentalism. it was made entirely without irony. you can see the production values of that film are pretty high. it would have been very

expensive to make. people taking part in it, peter crouch, radio head providing the sound track at the end. gillian anderson from the plot or files played a schoolteacher. the film was directed and written by curtis, britain's most bankable, a director who directed nottinghill, four weddings and a funeral. the campaign was sponsored by organizations like sony, a mobile phone company, it was endorsed by all three main political parties. it had the enthusiastic endorsement of the prime minister, david cameron. at no stage during the making of

that film did anyone stop to think hang on a second. what are we saying here? are we really saying that people who don't believe in the theory of after projected global warming deserve to die? that is what they were saying. i think to appreciate the sinister absurdity of this u.s. yourself imagine any other minority group. imagine if they decided the best idea for gays would be to execute them or disabled people. yet it seems that according to the people who made that video, people who do not believe in man-made global warming are so

beyond the pale of reasonable human discourse that the only just and fair penalty for them, albeit in laugh a minute, the fashion is death. how did we reach this path? how did we get into this mess? i contend in my book watermelon that the man-made global warming industry, and it is an industry. a costly industry. represents the biggest outbreak of mass hysteria in history. it is also probably the most expensive. i correct that. certainly the most expensive outbreak of mass hysteria in history. one of the questions i set out to answer in this book is if it

is not true, if it is a myth, climate change, man-made climate change, catastrophic man-made climate change, why is it that so many people think otherwise? and how can it be that we are in a situation where politicians like david cameron and barack obama find themselves in bed with eco loons, activists like george mondieu, ed begley junior carbon traders like al gore, in bed with oil companies like exxon and bp. make no mistake. big oil puts far more money into

the global warming industry than it does funding skeptics, contrary to what you might read in the blogowsphere. and australian lager you may be familiar with research how much had been spent on the man-made global warming industry. since 1989, u.s. government and the european union and so on have spent approximately five times the manhattan project funding research into man-made global warming. that is a lot of money. people sometimes ask me why would the scientists cheat the data? why would they lie to us? i can answer that in three

words. follow the money. the manhattan is reputed to have been the most expensive scientific project in history. we have spent five times that. cure scientists, and you want to research the feeding habits of gray squirrels. you are looking to get more funding. if you are a scientist and want to research how the breeding habits of gray squirrels have been affected by climate change, you will get the funding. i would like to dispute for a moment the word denier that is constantly used against people like me. i am not denying that the climate changes. nobody that i know is denying that climate change as it has done over millennia, does it all

the time. we had the medieval warming period when it was warmer than it is now. we had the little ice age. we're currently emerging from the little ice age. climate changes all the time. the idea that anyone is denying climate change as a reality is nonsense. we all believe in climate change. what we don't believe, this is where the two ideas get conflated, the ideas that climate change, when the greens use that phrase what they want you to think is man-made climate change. this is where we do dispute it. those of us on my side of the argument. catastrophic man-made climate

change, if you look at the intergovernmental panel on climate change's reports over the last 20 years, the ip cc has been increasingly shrill in its prognostications about man-made climate due in. in that period no convincing evidence has been produced to show that human influence on climate is so significant or dangerous that we are all going to fry. on the contrary, global warming actually stalls were flattened out over ten years ago now. we are entering a period of cooling. i think we need to remember that if you look at human history and

look at what man has done in times of cooling as opposed to warming, society, civilization flourisheds in times of warming. we are designed for warm weather. not that we can't cope in colder climates. we are very adaptable. we have igloos and stuff like that. i was telling you earlier i would like to live in california. there's a reason i would like to live in california. it is the weather climates. it is nice and warm. we are drawn to warmer weather. warm weather sophistry to of our main problems. how to keep ourselves and how to feed ourselves. in periods of warmth you can grow things like wheat at higher latitudes to help feed the world. the first part of my book watermelons covers the science

of climate change but i am not a scientist. this isn't a part that really interests me about this whole debate. it is where these ideas come from. it is the sow ceo politics of climate change if you like. if the science is flawed, how come so many people believe in it. one reason is i think there is built into our dna this in 8 catastrophism. i think every generation believe that somehow it will be the last. that it will be the one that so shapes the world that it will destroy it through its own evil. if you look at religions through the ages, but they are all about in one way or another is atoning

for sans. to try to appease the gods. the aztecs dealt with this by sacrificing people and sucking blood out of their hearts, still beating hearts. in medieval times christian person did it by wearing half shirts and flagellating themselves. to david green movement does it by imposing taxes on flights and forcing everyone to use crappy flicker yellow light bulbs that give you a headache. there is this idea that we have all sinned and must punish ourselves to make the world better place. it is my contention in the book, which may initially seem quite controversial but the facts bear

this out, that actually you don't have to make a choice between either the environment for economic growth. on the contrary. real environmentalism and economic growth go hand in hand. i will give you one example of this. in victorian times at the height of the british empire, when the tax rate was 10%, the british economy was thriving, the tens, the river that runs through london was a stagnant, like washington in the summer, it would grow so putrescent in the summer months that it was known

as the great stink. discussed in stuff flow past. as people got off the train on a railway stations near the river they would sometimes at the nauseating stench. why did this no longer happen? the victorians under that regime of 10% had enough money to invest in that sewage system. they built an embankment. they could do this because they didn't have big government. they didn't have the epa imposing taxes and regulation to make the river cleaner. of their own accord they thought hang on a second. we don't want this river to smell discussed in. we like it to be clean. we don't like vomiting when we get off the train because that

is not nice. what do we do about it? let's build a sewage system. and this is what they did. nowadays when you get off the train at waterloo you don't throw up. the river is actually clean air. much cleaner than it was in victorian times. the river was cleaner than it was 300 years ago. why? because as economies grow more mature, people can spend money making the world cleaner, better, more fragrant. look at the great environmental disasters of the last century. where did the really bad stuff happen? it happened in the soviet union. it is happening now in north

korea. in china. this is what happens when people have their economic freedom constrained by big government. so what my book really is about in the end is a plea for a more rational discourse by the environment. i want to stress here in case there are any people who think i am one of those evil nasty people who doesn't care. i want to point out that high and kind of vague nature boy. i really love long country walks in beautiful unspoiled countryside where the views are spoiled. i like surfing. i like looking at animals. one of the great propagandas

victories that has been scored by the green movement is to portrays this world in which there are two kinds of people. on the one hand the caring, sharing bunny hugging types who are members of green peas and you care about nature and on the other hand there are these evil capitalists with big fat cigars in their mouth and dollar signs on their pinstripe suits like capitalists do. i want to destroy the world. ..

>> but we can achieve that world without bombing our economy back to the dark ages, in the name of saving it. there is a mentality i think in the green movement in order to save the city we must destroy it. and i think that theory is wrong. i think it is self-destructive. i think it is not borne out by the facts, and if you want to discover more about this you can ask me interesting questions, and read my book because it's bloody good. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you james. we're going to opened up for for questions now, so just three simple rules. one, wait for the mic afford to comes we are taking this so everyone can hear you. stager name and affiliation, and leave it to a question and not diatribe as to why james is either right or wrong. i will let you dictate the questions. >> i don't want any attacks aren't trying to rip my clothes off and have sex with me, either. now your questions, please. yes, you, sir. >> i am with the tax foundation, and i've read matt's book and you sound very similar, but he considers himself a lukewarm or. do you think is right or wrong? >> you know, i think you can get

so bogged down in stuff one can really answer just because nobody knows. people like bjorn consider themselves lukewarmers. i think it's very easy in this debate to get bogged down in kind of a satiric stuff about trying to predict the future based on your particular theory. i don't know. even richard lindzen dozer line of what's going to happen to the climate, so i prefer to concentrate on things that i know about, you know? i read books. i can see stuff happening in the world. i can see it in localities but i would not want to procrastinate too much on -- i spoke to a lot of scientists at last year's conference and they seem to be very much of the view that we

are entering a cooling period. you know, it tends to move in 30 year cycles. i think what is clear from the evidence so far is that yeah, we are warming gently, although i hope we carry on warming gently because actually, as i said earlier, warming is better than cooling. cooling is what we must really fear your it will only take a couple of degrees centigrade drop in the global average mean temperature for wheat production to be jeopardized. i mean, why is the arab spring happening at the moment? is it because they'll all watched south park? is a because there's an outpouring of sudden, you know, kind of liberalism in the middle east?

no. it's because of well, it's because of the same thing that always causes revolutions like the french revolution, for example. bread shortages. why are their bread shortages at the moment? can anyone tell me? it's one word and it begins with be and ends in iofuels. they are being taken up the use of biofuels. why is this biofuel business going -- well, because bonding interests are cozying up to big government. and because environmentalists have told him that biofuels are the way of saving the world or they are not. they are actually destroying the world. kind of answer your question in kind of a roundabout way. yes, user.

>> i just want to ask a little bit about the effect on health. i think there is some documentation, and that's all tied into this. the fact that there's air pollution, particles in the air, toxins, effect on children, children's health, things of that nature. so if you'd comment on that aspect of this. >> yes. there's a café i go to sometimes when i stay with my brother. in the northern hills. and the café is run by kind of very keen and fundamentalists. and on the wall of the café is a picture of these cooling towers with this white stuff coming out. and you can bet your bottom dollar that 95%, if not more, of the people who come into his café and look at that picture and think, pollution.

this stuff coming out of those cooling towers is water vapor. i think people have a complete, completely flawed idea about what constitutes pollution and what doesn't. the epa believes that co2 is a pollutant. co2 is plant food. co2 is not a pollutant. not for a second would i dispute that we need to limit pollution, wherever we can. you know, as i said earlier we want a cleaner environment. but i would contend that the way to achieve that is to our natural human instinct to make, you know, obviously occasionally you need doors to stop people, you know, to stop businesses

dumping. for example, when businesses use africa as a dumping ground. i consider africa a part of my world. i like africa. i want to go there on holiday. i don't want it to be toxic and file. obviously, you need to regulate against that kind of thing but i think the overregulated. there was a very interesting story, quite interesting story which i tell in my book, about julian simon, the tombs later he was known as. julian simon was the great sparring partner of the doom monger and he won a famous bet which i won't go into here. julian simon was once giving, was on a panel in london talking about the environment, and the woman before him showed him what

a dramatic improvement to the air quality, the introduction of a clean air act in london have had. and julian simon, what a masterstroke this was, produced a graph of his own going back much, much earlier showing the air quality had been improving anyway. the palu should was going down -- the pollution was going down quite natural to the process, this yearning i mentioned before to make things even cleaner. there is this fantasy that environmentalists nurture that without them, without their intervention the world would go to hell in a hand cart. i would contend this is a much not the case.

i hope that answers your question. >> could you tell us something about shifts in public opinion, if any, in britain in the wake of the climate gauge scandal which showed massive pollution and corruption across the board got? among those scientists who recipients of tax dollars have is the environmental group in britain any weaker as a result of that? >> i'm glad you asked that question. yes. the brilliant thing about climate gauge was that afterwards how gore said he was very sorry for being wrong, stupid about everything. greenpeace disbanded. the epa stopped regulating. know.

none of these things happened. they ought to have happened because, as you say, quite correctly, what the climate gauge e-mail showed was that the scientists at the very heart of the ipcc which president obama has described as the gold standard of scientific understanding of global warming were behaving not like scientists, not like this passion is -- dispassionate seekers of truth, but more like activists. now, i know of many people who were previously agnostic, or even on the other side of the argument for me, who shifted. it was, for them it was a game changer in the that so many

americans, 9/11 was the thing that turned them from liberalism to more conservative views. the opinion polls suggest that people, the public is growing more skeptical in britain and in america, and has been since "climategate." they are sick of being, this propaganda and now increasingly sick of the tax rises and the regulations which are being imposed on them in the name of the seemingly nonexistent problem. but the problem is not where the public is going. it is what the political class is going. where the environmental movement is going. that video i showed you at the beginning i think is indicative of that. rather than admit that they've got things wrong, environmentalists are growing more shrill and dangers,

frankly, and during the siegfried life. they got a dimmer route i think. you know, this talk of ocean acidification, for example, is like okay, so maybe co2 doesn't make the world get hotter, but it does make the oceans more acidic and that's bad, too. you know, they are constantly looking for new ways of justifying their position. and i fear that this is going to be a long hard battle to counter, counter that. they will not surrender very easy. yes. >> sean kennedy, u.s. senator can i ask you to reflect, take a step back and reflect on a line isn't as not just in global warming but the human interest in alarmism, what exactly is the

response of the next alarm? how do we inject skepticism early enough. i feel like we're behind the curve on this, and they got to jump on us and only after the scandals have we seen public opinion turned back. >> you are absolutely right. i'll give you a classic example of what you've just said. gas land. shale gas is the energy revolution which was going to transform all our lives. it's cheap. it's usually abundant -- usually abundant across the world. it is relative if you believe in such things it is relatively low carbon. it is relatively environmentally friendly. and it is available in places

which aren't evil like poland, for example. one of the big problems in the world now is that our energy supplies are in places like the middle east, which is, you know, powder keg, places like russia which is got massive supplies of gas. places like france. so shale gas is like a dream come true, because what we want is cheap, abundant energy that's going to make is, in these dark economic times what we need is cheap energy, not expensive energy. i think we can all agree on that. and yet before most of us even knew the existence of shale gas, last year, for goodness sake, this guy, josh fox makes this

film called gas land, showing that when someone turns on a tap in colorado, a faucet i believe you call these things, nothing comes out and he likes the stuff from his tap water thing. how did this guy it in there so soon? they are very, very quick to get their propaganda. i think there is, i think there is in the conservative disposition, i consider myself a conservatives rather than libertarian, or you know classical liberal, whatever, i think the reason i took this position, the slight tendency towards complacency, but it's we believe that the world should be, should function on the level of logic, or of the in ear

system. we look at what works and what is true. and, therefore, things will take care of themselves because it's logical and right. the philosophy of the green movement, of progressives and liberals generally is i think about the nine, denying reality. it is about winning the argument not through for ask -- not to facts and debate but through propaganda. i don't think there'll ever be a solution to your problem because the other side, they fight dirtier than we do. so we've just got to be, we've just got to hope that in the end a kind of justice will prevail, sort of natural justice.

i'm seeing that, for example, in the delicious collapse of the carbon trading market. you know, al gore, golden facts, set up the chicago carbon trading exchange. i think a couple of years ago, carbon or co2, plant food you and i might call it, was trading at $7 a ton. i think last year just before the carbon trading exchange closed it was trading at 7 cents a ton. the carbon trading market is tanking in europe now, which suggests you really can't fight the markets and that is good thing that there is a kind of natural capsules justice system which cancels out all this stuff. we hope.

yes, please ask a question. >> scott montgomery, catholic university. a quick question, just to dovetail what you said. are you being lampooned in britain about, to try to marginalize your views? >> what? yeah. i had the university report me to the commission which is kind of the big deal. they are trying to destroy my career. by getting into trouble. i mean, i do have kind of a sassy style. i don't take too many -- i can be a bit rude. but i do at least like to have a factual basis to argue. i mean, there's an example in my book, al gore and incident in

portland, oregon, although it delights me as an enemy of al gore he was caught out in this way and he's not to be trusted and stuff, that is not the basis of my argument against al gore. it's the cherry on the icing on the cake but it is not the thrust of my argument. might argument with al gore is he is distorting the evidence, he is a rent sinking businessman. that's my problem with al gore. the way that the other side treats people like me, they don't even want to engage with our arguments. they just want to destroy us, and any means will do. for example, christopher munching. he has a medical condition called graves' disease. it gives and the slightly bulging eyes. that is not a reason why his argument should not be trusted and what is wrong. it just means his graves'

disease. they fused the fact that i once wrote i had manic depression. so i'm kind of mentally ill. so you've got the university, you know, using public money essentially to launch this case against me. it was all carefully constructed. the bbc, which has been one of the arch advocates for global warming, you know, it is not a neutral party in this debate, the bbc teamed up with the new president of the royal society who is a nobel prize-winning geneticist, to construct essentially what was a hit job on me. it was a neutral science documentary exploring the pros and cons of global warming. so get this.

what actually emerge in this, and this is not, you know, this is not sour grapes. i'm annoyed by this. it's not needing defensive, i'm just telling you what happened. the thrust of this documentary was, one, in what he doesn't believe in man-made global warming is essentially anti-science and ignorant and irresponsible. number two, that if you don't believe in man-made global warming, you fit into the same category as people who think that a, it is not caused by the hiv virus, and the same category as people who destroy fields of crops. it was a complete smear job and it was constructed in that way, and i was very naïve to take part in it. by and i kind of naïve and trusting god when i was approached by the bbc, i thought hang on a second. i'm going to get a nobel prize or ill come to my house and the bbc has assured me, i can show you the e-mail.

this guy has not made up his mind what he thought about global warming. you know, he really wanted to find out the truth. he really did. he was a neutral party in all this. i thought hey, great, this'll be my chance to put our side of the argument across. had i done my research, what i would have realized is that a year before he made this documentary he hosted a dinner for the rockefeller foundation at his house in new york, attended by george soros. have you heard him? and ted turner, to name two. i can say that george soros and ted turner are not neutral parties in this debate. you know? so i was -- this is how they operate. i'm glad to be able to put this on the record, because i think, you know, this is sort of a,

james delingpole is such a fool because he was exposed as a scientific illiterate by a nobel prize-winning scientist. well, all nurses fields is genetics. i read english literature at oxford and i'm not ashamed of that. if i were going to make a documentary about their wealth, i would not consult somebody in the virginia woolf's study department. summit in the virginia both studies department is not necessary going to be able to vouch the credentials of someone in the bear wolf department. scientists are not obscene. scientists do not all know everything. in fact, science is becoming increasingly diverse. it's about specialities. so do you think is poor nurses in a position to make

pronouncements on what is happening in the field of climate science, which let this is one of the more nebulous fields of science anywhere. it's more of a social science and the hard science. i thank you for that. >> i think we're running up against the deadlines, so please join in thanking james delingpole and congratulating him on his book. [applause] >> far more on james delingpole and his work, visit james delingpole.com. >> what are you reading this summer, booktv wants to know.

tell us what you're reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. >> this notion in mexico that you don't want to confront, you don't want to pick a fight, because you can't walk away from a fight. once you walk into a fight you to stick with it all the way. and so better not to have it and have it and then have to back away from it. so i go to these different traits and the reality of the country i described how the country has become what i considered to be a full-fledged majority middle-class society with extraordinarily impressive achievements on all counts over the last 15 years. on issues as different as housing, health, cell phones, plasma tvs, access to credit,

vacations, private education, private health insurance, the works. this is now a full-fledged majority middle-class society. barely 55, 56, 57%, not more. it's been a bit stagnant the last couple of years, although in housing the boom continues and continues and continues. i go into the impressive status of the open economy in mexico, how open it is with the contradictions, with for example, this absurd notion we have whereby since the 1930s, since the constitution and reinforce in the 1930s we have what are called, the foreigners cannot owned land on beachfront. cannot owned beachfront land. and they can't owned land on the border. on the border i can see the logic of it. beaches, unless you think that somebody is going to swim up and invade you, there's a lot of swimmers our side wins or god knows what, because the other guys don't need to own beachfront.

these guys that we have not come up and in submersibles and submarines and land on the beaches, they don't seem to need to on beachfront properties to dump their merchandise from colombia, drive it on up to the united states. but we continue to forbid, not allow as you all know, for foreigners to own beachfront property since the 1930s. that's on the one hand. we were saying before. we are fantastic in mexico at and thinking stupid laws and think ingenious ways to get around stupid laws. this is a stupid law for a country that wants to attract tourism, that once american retirees to retire in mexico, that wants them to buy houses, buy homes in mexico, but doesn't want them to own them. now, the problem with people, americans and canadians over 65 who have access to mortgage would like to make sure they can

inherit their homes to their children, buy them and sell them whenever they want is that they like to own their homes. most people do. buy a home, you wanted to be yours. you can't do that in mexico, but we want them there anyway. so we invented since the 1950 1950s, whereby you get around the law, you can, in fact, more must own your home, but you can't get a mortgage on it, but you can't really inherit it, but you can't really use it as a deposit on something else. so we have this absurd situation whereby, on the one hand we have laws that are not applicable, and an ingenious ways to get around them because reality demands that we get around them. and all this does is feed the total disrespect for the world law. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> you been watching