Welcome to season three of Saving The World From BAD IDEAS Bad Idea #35: ‘THIS is the Future’ Why Forecasts Fail – with David Wallace-Wells In the season three opener of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with David Wallace-Wells, New York Times columnist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth, to tackle a deceptively simple bad idea: the belief that we can predict the future with confidence. David explains how even sophisticated models can be wildly sensitive to small assumptions, drawing on examples from climate economics and the pandemic era, when many expert forecasts failed to anticipate outcomes even a couple of weeks ahead. The conversation moves from climate targets and energy transitions to the psychology of “normalisation”, the social aftershocks of COVID, and the way politics can swing dramatically with small changes in public mood. The result is a wide-ranging, clear-eyed discussion about uncertainty, risk, and how to stay serious about climate and democracy without pretending the future comes with a reliable timetable. 🧠 Topics Discussed: Why long-range climate and economic modelling can hinge on fragile assumptions What COVID forecasting revealed about the limits of near-term prediction How humility about uncertainty gets weaponised by those who want inaction David’s shift since The Uninhabitable Earth: less apocalyptic certainty, more systems thinking Faster-than-expected clean energy rollout, and the stubborn unknowns around fossil retirement “Normalisation” as a human superpower, and as a moral failure when disasters fade from view The post-pandemic social hangover: loss of trust, atomisation, and the politics of public health Vaccine backlash, the contradictions inside “anti-establishment” health coalitions, and what might endure Why the “world is drifting inexorably right” narrative misses how messy politics really is A cautious look toward 2050: warming, geopolitics, AI hype cycles, and nuclear risk 👩🏫 Guest Bio: David Wallace-Wells is a journalist, writer, and weekly columnist at The New York Times. He rose to global prominence with his 2017 essay “The Uninhabitable Earth”, later expanded into the bestselling book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. His work spans climate change, politics, and the social consequences of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic. David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Penguin Random House) David Wallace-Wells, “After Climate Alarmism” (New York Magazine, 2021) Martin L. Weitzman, “Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change” (Review of Environmental Economics and Policy) 💬 Quote Highlights:“Everything we think we know about where we’re heading is bedevilled by epistemic problems.” David Wallace Wells “The future is more manageable than what we feared, though the system is still full of unknowns.” David Wallace Wells “We normalise a lot, and that will govern a lot of our climate future.” David Wallace Wells “Every small shift in the vibes feels permanent, until a few weeks later it doesn’t.” David Wallace Wells “Treating one percent per year as a precise forecast feels abstracted from how decisions actually get made.” David Wallace Wells 🌐 About WePlanet: WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement advancing bold, evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and prosperity. We challenge bad ideas and champion better ones, grounded in human wellbeing and ecological restoration. Learn more at weplanet.org. 📥 Join the ConversationEmail: podcast@weplanet.org Subscribe: weplanet.org/podcast Follow on X: @WePlanetInt
