Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
somewhere around, I think it's 40 to 60,000 homeless people in the whole county. Madness. And then the other is the electrical wires that brush up against the vegetation and create fire. With that, you want to clear the vegetation from around the wires. That's obvious. And then you can also just stop. I mean, this is a not great solution, but you could certainly do it in a pinch if you need to.
You just stop the electricity from going into those homes for some period. I mean, it's a drag. I live in the Berkeley Hills, which is also a dangerous fire zone. And when the winds are really strong, they'll just cut off power as a precaution so that to prevent an ignition.
I think the thing that – the reason I wanted to come on your show, even though I'm in the midst of a huge book deadline, is because I'm really concerned about this nihilistic discourse that there's literally nothing that could be done. I mean, that is exactly where the politicians want to go. I worry that ordinary people have that idea. The problem is – I mean, it's absurd.
I mean, this idea that you couldn't live in Los Angeles, right? It's like – It's like you can say it about anywhere. You'd be like, oh, it's there's snowfalls in this place during winter, you know, or hurricanes. I mean, we're in an area that's Hurricane Valley, right? Like huge amounts of hurricanes. That's that's not how humans roll.
Like we're capable of living in many different environments, including with extreme weather conditions. And it's like saying I can't stop my kids from dying of tetanus.
Right.
Yes. Right. So there's no nihilistic agency. No, that's so nihilistic. And you trace it back. I mean, the best, the most articulate advocate of that view is a Marxist named Mike Davis, who wrote this book called City of Courts. It's a crazy nihilistic book, but he he had an essay and also this chapter in that book called Let Malibu Burn. I mean, it's classic Marxism.
kind of radical left politics is classic sort of envy or sour grapes. I mean, sour grapes goes, I can't remember the parable, but basically it's like some animal wants to eat these grapes, but they're up too high. And then he says, oh, well, those grapes were sour anyway. It's a consolation for your own personal weakness and failure. That's just, you know, let Malibu burn.
I mean, you know, you have an ideology of Marxism that is based on resentment and envy. And so then you go, well, yeah, those all those rich houses should go up in flames. It's a fantasy. I mean, it's a left wing fit. I should know. I was on the radical left, like the fantasy. You hate the rich people because you because you want their wealth and you you admire them in some level.
But, you know, you can't get it. So, I mean, this is how envy works. So you end up constructing this whole political ideology. I mean this is what Marx has done. And it's infected like the citizenry. I mean it's infected the politicians. And so there's this – I think that even though it's not consciously – the politicians aren't consciously saying – Oh, let's let Malibu burn.
That is the behaviors they have taken have had that impact. So I think that what you're seeing in real time in these fires in Los Angeles, these destructive fires, is the manifestation of a nihilistic ideology. It's an emergent quality. It happens through a million small steps.
But this heavy focus on left-wing ideology, whether it's DEI or ESG or climate apocalypse or just class resentment, manifests itself in like the most spectacular, beautiful neighborhoods just being turned into ashes and cinders.
Well, because, of course, they're all trapped by this ideology. I mean, these are the neighborhoods that voted overwhelmingly for Kamala, that voted overwhelmingly for Gavin Newsom, that voted overwhelmingly for Karen Bass. I mean, Tucker, I saw focus groups yesterday. In 2022, two Latinos, men and women separated, Latino group and a white group. And the Latinos were great.
I mean, they were just like, when they started talking about the mayoral race, they were like, well, what are their positions? And like, what are their policies? And what do they want to do? And whatever. They were very rational about it. They're very, as you would hope, they were self-interested. Yeah, what do I get out of this? What do I get out of these candidates? Fair, fair question.
The white, the whites... I mean, it was amazing. First of all, every focus group when the moderator would just be like, oh, hey, how's it going around here? They don't even try to lead the conversation anywhere. And everybody just starts talking about the homeless situation and the crime, which is basically continuous with homelessness.
And then they would be like, oh, yeah, okay, well, about the remedies, oh, there's a mayoral race coming up. I think it was in the – it was like in the summer, you know, that these focus groups were held. Caruso versus Bass. Caruso versus Bass. And they hadn't really been thinking a ton about it, but there's a moment there where you see it dawns on the white focus group participants.
And they were not like recruiting like leftists or Democrats or anything. It was just supposed to be a mixed group of swing voters. Yeah. and they just as soon as it dawned on them that there was a black woman running they were like oh well i mean that's i mean got a vote for the black woman like it was the most racist like you would think like in the in the most racist moments in american history
you know, the stereotypes that we would have, you know, about the South or whatever, you know, reconstruction or something like people would not be as open and honest about it, but they were just like openly like, well, we have to vote for the black woman. And then in the rest of the focus group,
A lot of them knew who Caruso was because he's famous for these really spectacular housing developments. And also they're kind of calling them malls is a kind of beautiful outdoor shopping centers with lawns. And you can get fantastic restaurants and you can have the kids can play freely on these lawns. I mean, it's sort of tragic because, of course, it's all private. It's not public spaces.
But nonetheless, you feel safe. You go in there. It's an amazing place. So they knew him for that. I want these white participants. I was watching them through basically over the next hour, hour and a half. Explaining why Caruso was a bad guy for just running against this black woman, like it was just outrageous. And what is he trying to do? He's trying to make money.
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