We know that logic is not highly valued in policy debates, but I have an addiction, so I will insist on using it. Everyone’s favorite example of logic failing elite intellectuals is the stories on the demographic crisis, where we are running out of workers, which alternate with the stories of AI causing us to run out of jobs. Somehow, people with advanced degrees can’t understand that we can’t both have a crisis of too few workers and too many workers. 

But that sort of sophisticated lack of thinking comes up all the time. I was struck by some pieces announcing Trump administration plans to increase logging at the expense of old-growth forests. Ostensibly, the argument would be that we need the money generated by the logging industry more than we need the areas that existing regulations preserve. 

There is a simplistic way to view the environment that does have a grain of truth to it. We can think of environmental preservation as a sort of amenity, like a newly painted house. If we need money to feed our family or heat our home, we will not be spending money on repainting the house. As much as it might be nice to have a clean coat of paint, it is much more important to keep our family from starving or freezing. 

To be clear, this is horribly oversimplistic. Environmental damage can kill our family, as when lead in the air causes brain damage and a wide variety of other conditions. And there is a very direct link between environmental damage and the economy in the era of global warming. The increased risk of wildfires has sent insurance costs in California and other states through the roof. And hurricanes and rising oceans may soon make parts of Florida uninhabitable. So, the simplistic misses a lot.

But there is a logic to the argument that richer people are better positioned to protect the environment. A comfortable professional can more easily afford an EV than a part-time minimum wage worker. (EVs are actually cheaper than conventional cars now, if we would allow people to buy them, but that’s another story.)    

This is where AI comes in. According to proselytizers like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, AI will lead to an era of incredible abundance. We will all be incredibly rich and won’t have to work. Most people know that these folks aren’t serious characters. After all, Musk is a guy who says 20 million dead people are getting Social Security and that millions of undocumented immigrants are voting. 

But more honest people have analyzed the likely impact of AI and do find that it can increase productivity and growth. If we take the high end of estimates by serious analysts, AI can make us 10 percent richer in 2036 than we would be in a world without AI. That comes to $3 trillion a year, about $22,000 per household.

I’m sure that people have all sorts of things they might want to do with their $22,000 AI dividend, but I suspect most would want to use at least some of it to make our country and world look nicer. If AI is really going to make us rich, or at least notably richer than we would otherwise be, then we should want to spend more money protecting the environment.

Instead, big AI proponent Donald Trump is rushing 180 degrees in the opposite direction. That’s not a surprise. Donald Trump was never a person who cared about being logically consistent. I’m sure the people who want to destroy our forests have made big payoffs to Trump and his friends. But if anyone ever develops an interest in coherent arguments, a belief in a big AI dividend should make us more committed to protecting the environment.