Reducing Entropy in the Human Project

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

To stay alive, you have to reduce entropy. This is what biological organisms do. We are simultaneously refrigerators and power plants in our bodies. So i think as we go through life, even as children, we understand that the inexorable pressures of entropy and everything that we must do in order to overcome and a withstand them.

Of all the scenarios that keep astrophysicist Sandra Faber up at night, it's not the Earth's increasing volcanism, the loss of photosynthesis, or even the impact of a massive asteroid. Rather, it's the collapse she's certain will result from the unbridled growth of the world's economies. Join Faber and EconTalk host Russ Roberts as they explore what the most inexorable law of physics has to do with economics and whether the world's growing economies pose a problem or provide the solution for the finiteness of planet Earth.