A big part of why I have gone into so much economics is that I want people to look at the alternatives and the trade-offs and to make some rational choices. If we spend all this money reducing CO2 emissions, we can’t spend that money on other things that can have far greater impact on improving human welfare, improving our environment, providing long-term benefits to society, individuals and wildlife that are far, far greater than reducing CO2 emissions.

Q: Do you have a favorite example of something that was invented -- like the air conditioner example in your book -- that shows how markets and human ingenuity can solve some of these global warming problems better than governments?

A:  I have more general examples than a very specific example, and that is, as developed countries become more developed and wealthier, we’ve been able to spend a lot more money and we’ve focused a lot more on cleaning up our environment. This is pretty common and it makes a lot of sense; it’s fairly intuitive sense. As we become wealthier we are not so concerned with feeding ourselves, getting shelter and feeding our children.  Now we have a little bit more disposable income. We’ve taken care of some of those crucial issues to life, and now we can  take some of our resources and start thinking more about our longevity and some of the amenities that exist around us. We want cleaner air, we want cleaner water, both because it makes us live longer but because it is more enjoyable.

If we can’t pay to put food on our table, we don’t have any money to be concerned with those issues.  Taking care of our basic needs is really important, and beyond that, then we can start thinking about the environment. Developing countries like China and India, they are still trying to take care of their basic needs. It’s really hard to get them to start thinking about taking care of their environment when they can barely put enough food on their table to feed themselves. So to me, this is one of the places where we’ve seen example after example of markets being very effective at improving people’s wealth and well-being far better and far faster and far more effectively than command-and-control societies.

Q: What’s an “enviropreneur” and why do you encourage kids to become one?

A: Enviropreneurs are people who are out there protecting the environment and making a profit while they are doing it. I encourage everybody to be enviropreneurs because I do care about the environment; that’s why I live in Montana, because it’s a beautiful place to be. If you can actually make money or make a living while you are improving the environment, then it makes everybody well off. It’s the old adage of Adam Smith's -- “doing well by doing good.”

Q: Are you fighting a winnable battle? Most adults don’t question the consensus view on global warming or accept that it’s man’s fault and there will be a big problem if we don’t do something drastic soon.

A: I’m an optimist and I think I’m fighting a winnable battle. As more information becomes available, as science gets better -- science is about learning -- we’ll understand more and people will start to get a better grasp of what’s going on out there. Sad to say, on the other side, as that stuff starts to happen, the interest in global warming will sort of wane and some other big issue that people are going nuts over -- whether it’s right, wrong or otherwise -- will gain a lot more attention and people will focus there instead. I just hope I can help this battle move forward before we have lots of costly regulations that provide us little benefit at a huge cost.

Q: Have you seen kids "get" these arguments -- it’s counter to the liberal media consensus.

A: I think a big part of it is working through things with kids. It’s not just a kid sitting down and reading a book and saying, “Oh, gosh, now what am I to believe?”  With kids, you really have to sit down and talk with them. So I wrote the book not just for kids but also for parents -- and any other adult for that matter -- to read together and to explore together.

Again, not just to think about global warming, because I think the issues about global warming will eventually wane -- but to become critical thinkers so they can learn to think outside of the box on many, many different issues and to be able to look at information and say, “OK, here’s what I gather from this information, but there are lots of questions to be asked still. I have to ask some of those questions. Let’s find a way to come up with some answers to those questions” -- and then do some comparisons.  

In fact, a great way to look at my book is to sit down with my book and sit down with Al Gore’s movie or Laurie David’s book and read both of them side-by-side and say, “OK, wait a minute here. There are some differences here. They show the exact same graph but they come up with some very different implications from that graph. Let’s look closer ourselves and figure it out.”