Babies v climate change; AI v IP; bonds v world

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Indicator from Planet Money Episode Title: Babies v Climate Change; AI v IP; Bonds v World
Release Date: June 27, 2025
Host/Author: NPR

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The Indicator from Planet Money is a daily podcast that distills complex economic ideas into digestible, engaging content. In the June 27, 2025 episode titled "Babies v Climate Change; AI v IP; Bonds v World," hosts Darian Woods and Adrian Ma, joined by guest Mary Childs, delve into three pressing topics: the impact of population growth on climate change, legal battles surrounding AI and intellectual property, and the current state of corporate bonds.

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1. Babies vs. Climate Change

Overview:
The episode opens with a thought-provoking discussion on the relationship between population growth and climate change. Darian Woods introduces the topic by referencing a study conducted by economists and demographers from the University of Texas at Austin and the City University of New York. The study explores two scenarios: one where the world population continues to grow and another where it declines.

Key Findings:

• Scenario 1: Population Growth
  In this scenario, the global population continues to increase, leading to greater resource consumption and emissions.

• Scenario 2: Population Decline
  Here, the population begins to decrease, theoretically reducing the strain on the environment.

Surprisingly, the study estimates that by the year 2200, the difference in global temperatures between the two scenarios would be less than 0.1 degrees Celsius. This marginal increase suggests that population growth alone may not be the predominant driver of climate change over the long term.

Discussion Insights:
Mary Childs expresses skepticism about the study's findings, highlighting the immediate and tangible impacts of population growth, such as increased consumption and energy use. Darian Woods clarifies that while population changes are significant, the study emphasizes the importance of reducing carbon intensity in the near term. Transitioning to electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, and more sustainable practices are crucial for mitigating climate change effectively.

Notable Quotes:

• Mary Childs [03:24]: "The one with more people driving more cars, consuming more plastic every day?"
• Darian Woods [03:56]: "The researchers estimated that by the year 2200, [...] the world would be only less than 0.1 degrees Celsius hotter under the population growth scenario."

Conclusion of Section:
The hosts conclude that while population growth does contribute to climate change, addressing carbon intensity and adopting sustainable technologies are more immediate and impactful strategies for mitigating environmental issues.

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2. AI vs. Intellectual Property (IP)

Overview:
The conversation shifts to the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence and its intersection with intellectual property rights. Adrian Ma introduces the topic by referencing Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot "Claude," which utilized approximately 7 million pirated books to train its language models.

Legal Battle:
Authors affected by Anthropic's practices filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement. However, in a significant ruling, a federal district court in San Francisco sided with Anthropic. The court deemed the use of these books as permissible under the "fair use" doctrine, particularly highlighting the transformative nature of AI training.

Discussion Insights:
Darian Woods notes that this ruling marks a milestone in the ongoing battle between creators and AI developers. While the court favored Anthropic, the decision underscores the complexity of defining fair use in the age of machine learning. Another case was briefly mentioned where Meta also triumphed, though the judge indicated that such practices could be illegal under certain circumstances.

Notable Quotes:

• Adrian Ma [06:32]: "Using books to train AI is fair use, according to this judge."
• Adrian Ma [07:04]: "Training models on authors' works could be considered unlawful in some circumstances."

Conclusion of Section:
The hosts highlight the precarious balance between innovation in AI and the protection of intellectual property rights. The outcome of these cases may set precedents that shape the future of AI development and creators' rights.

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3. Corporate Bonds vs. Global Economic Stability

Overview:
Mary Childs, dubbed the "bond queen," takes the spotlight to discuss the current state of the corporate bond market. She references an update from the New York Fed, indicating that their measure of corporate bond market distress has plummeted to the 15th percentile—a historical low.

Understanding the Indicator:
The New York Fed's index assesses various factors such as the volume of new debt issuances, bond pricing, and trading activity. A lower percentile suggests reduced distress in the corporate bond market.

Current Market Sentiment:
Despite external economic challenges like tariffs, labor force issues, and declining consumer confidence, the bond market remains unexpectedly stable. Mary Childs explains that while companies may be stressed—illustrated by giants like Ford and GM halting forward guidance—they haven't reached a level of distress that negatively impacts the bond market.

Potential Risks:
However, the hosts discuss looming concerns. Adrian Ma mentions economic forecasts predicting sluggish growth, and Fitch Ratings has expressed a deteriorating outlook for non-financial companies in North America due to inflation and slowing consumer spending. Mary Childs likens the current situation to Wile E. Coyote suspended midair, awaiting the fallout of mounting economic pressures.

Notable Quotes:

• Mary Childs [07:56]: "The bond market is where companies borrow big, huge sums of money to fund themselves, to do anything from, you know, build new factories, to expand their operations, or just to function, depending on the health of the company."
• Mary Childs [09:03]: "If you think about Ford and GM [...] they just can't predict. They stopped doing it. But that doesn't mean that there has been a negative impact just yet."
• Mary Childs [09:38]: "Perhaps you've heard [...] we might be in that split second. We'll find out."

Conclusion of Section:
While the corporate bond market currently appears resilient, underlying economic uncertainties suggest that the stability may be temporary. Companies' inability to forecast and the broader economic indicators hint at potential future distress, warranting close monitoring.

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Final Thoughts

The episode of The Indicator from Planet Money skillfully navigates through the intricate relationships between population growth and climate change, the legal ramifications of AI training practices, and the nuanced state of the corporate bond market amidst global economic uncertainties. Through insightful discussions and expert analyses, the hosts provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of these multifaceted issues, emphasizing the importance of both immediate actions and long-term strategies in shaping our economic and environmental future.

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This summary captures the essence of the episode, highlighting key discussions, insights, and notable quotes with proper attribution and timestamps to provide a coherent and informative overview for those who haven't listened to the podcast.

Transcript

[NPR]

Npr.

[Darian Woods]

This is the Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods.

[Adrian Ma]

And I'm Adrian Ma. And connecting with the Indicator crew this week is the very merry Merry Childs.

[Mary Childs]

I'm merry to be here, folks.

[Darian Woods]

And merrily we all row into Indicators of the week.

[Adrian Ma]

That's right. We have looked at interesting numbers in the news this week and we are here to tell you all about them.

[Darian Woods]

On today's episode, how bad are babies for climate change really?

[Adrian Ma]

How to train your AIs on books and then get sued for it.

[Mary Childs]

And I know you're gonna be shocked to hear this, guys, but I'm here to talk about corporate bonds.

[Darian Woods]

The bond queen.

[Mary Childs]

Let's go. Woo, woo, woo.

[NPR]

After the break, this message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab with its original podcast on investing. Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Cathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy and more. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or or wherever you get your podcasts, support for NPR and the following message come from Edward Jones what does it mean to live a rich life? Maybe it's full of brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes and everything in between. And with over 100 years of experience, your Edward Jones financial advisor can help. Edward Jones, Member SIPC Support for this.

[Mary Childs]

Podcast and the following message come from Thrive Market, built for those who value transparency in their food, organic first clean label groceries all delivered, get 30% off and a $60 gift.

[NPR]

At thrivemarket.com podcast, this message comes from Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots are using square to do everything from covering cash flow gaps to expanding to new locations. Wherever your business is growing, Square meets you there. Go to square.com go NPR to learn more.

[Adrian Ma]

Okay, indicators of the week starting off. Darian, what you got?

[Darian Woods]

My indicator is a heat related indicator. It's been very hot here in the Northeast. Don't know about where you guys are, but it is sweltering.

[Adrian Ma]

Tell me about it.

[Darian Woods]

It's got me thinking about climate change and how much I should blame people having babies.

[Mary Childs]

It is probably almost certainly the baby's fault.

[Darian Woods]

Yes, but what do the numbers say before we accuse, you know, an innocent child? A bunch of economists and demographers from the University of Texas at Austin and the City University of New York wanted to analyze this. So they fed some scenarios into a model scenario 1 population growth. The world population Grows and grows. People keep having lots of babies. Scenario two, population decline. So this means that by the year 2200 there are billions more people in the growth scenario. Can you guess which makes the planet hotter?

[Mary Childs]

The one with more people driving more cars, consuming more plastic every day?

[Darian Woods]

Yes, yes, that is releasing more burps.

[Adrian Ma]

And belches and farts just tootin everywhere.

[Darian Woods]

That is the obvious answer. But what was surprising is that it's only extremely marginally. The researchers estimated that by the year 2200, so in 175 years, the world would be only there, less than 0.1 degrees Celsius hotter under the population growth scenario. That is my indicator of the week. 0.1 degrees Celsius.

[Adrian Ma]

Right. And countries have been trying to limit global warming to 2 degrees. So what you're saying 0.1 degrees warmer is not a huge increase in the scheme of things?

[Darian Woods]

Correct.

[Mary Childs]

So I guess I'm just curious how that actually works, because I'm pretty sure that children eat a lot and require a great deal of driving around and like clothing and just they're very energy intensive. So how could it be that they have only marginal climate effects?

[Darian Woods]

So the insight here is that any shifts in population take many decades to take effect. So even if there was a completely unrealistic decree that nobody can have any babies, what's the population going to be tomorrow? It'll still be 8 billion people. And so it would take decades and decades for the population to really start decreasing meaningfully if people start having much fewer kids. And so the idea is that as we start using electric vehicles more instead of combustion engines, as we electrify our heating, as we use solar power instead of coal, the average life will be much less carbon intensive in a few decades time. So what really matters for climate change is how carbon intensive our world is over the next few decades. Not in these faraway generations.

[Adrian Ma]

I mean, we seem to be on the path to having fewer babies anyway, which is actually the topic of an upcoming episode next week.

[Darian Woods]

Yeah, I look forward to hearing more.

[Mary Childs]

This news is going to land like an anvil in the anarchy community. Okay. This is going to upend a lot of their assumptions. I look forward to that.

[Adrian Ma]

Speaking of upending, let's talk about something that is going to upend potentially our whole industry, which is the world of AI. My indicator has to do with Anthropic, which is the company behind the AI chat software, Claude. And the indicator is 7 million. That's the number of pirated books the company downloaded into its own internal database. A few Years ago. And since then, the company has used some of those pirated books along with books that it purchased to train its large language models. And this, of course, did not sit well with some of the authors of those books. What these authors did was they sued Anthropic for copyright infringement. And this week, a federal district court in San Francisco ruled in the company's favor. So the court said using a lot of these books to train large language models is actually okay under a legal doctrine known as fair use. Fair use is this long standing exception to the general rule that copyright infringement is a no, no.

[Darian Woods]

Okay. So using books to train AI Fair use, according to this judge.

[Adrian Ma]

Basically, the judge said that what Anthropic did qualifies for the fair use exception, in part because it was transformative, another legal term. And sure, Anthropic didn't get the author's permission, but by using the books to train an LLM, Anthropic created something really different from the original. And that helps get it to that exception.

[Darian Woods]

I've been watching cases like this for a while. We've covered artists suing AI companies before. This seems like a milestone in this big battle.

[Adrian Ma]

That is right. And actually shortly after there was a second victory for an AI company. A US District judge also in San Francisco ruled against authors in favor of Meta, although it's worth noting that the judge in that case said that training models on authors works could be considered unlawful in some circumstances. So it'll be interesting to see how these cases play out.

[Darian Woods]

Well, thank you, Adrian. We will keep watching the space with interest. Mary, what's your indicator this week?

[Mary Childs]

As with every week, I am thinking about bonds, specifically this week, corporate bonds, because the New York Fed just updated its measure that it tracks of corporate bond market distress. And that measure has fallen, did you know, to its historical 15th percentile. That is my indicator of the week. 15th percentile, meaning this index is near the bottom of the range where it has been ever.

[Adrian Ma]

So in basic terms, what does this mean?

[Mary Childs]

Okay, so you know, the bond market is where companies borrow big, huge sums of money to fund themselves, to do anything from, you know, build new factories, to expand their operations, or just to function, depending on the health of the company. And this index that the New York Fed has, it measures things like how much new debt companies are issuing and are the prices where they're issuing high or low, are people trading those bonds, etc.

[Darian Woods]

Okay. The bond market's super chill right now, which stands in marked contrast to the world outside with tariffs, the labor force and the immigration crackdown and companies being nervous. Consumer confidence is in the pits. What the heck is happening? Mary?

[Mary Childs]

So I think it's that companies are stressed out, but they are not distressed. Like if you think about Ford and GM and all of those companies that have suspended their forward guidance, they're not going to say any longer how much they expect to sell in the next quarter or whatever because they just don't know what's going to happen in the market to themselves with the tariffs. They just can't predict. So they stopped doing it. But that doesn't mean that there has been a negative impact just yet.

[Darian Woods]

Okay, but what if it's just going to come soon?

[Mary Childs]

Yeah, right. So that's kind of the sentiment right now. For example, S and P Global on June 24 forecasts that the US economy will grow just 1.7% this year, which is pretty blah. And then the next year will also. And earlier this month, Fitch Ratings said that non financial companies in North America have a deteriorating outlook thanks to negative trends they expect to see in the economy like inflation and slowing consumer spending. And that's yet another thing that people expect to get worse. But it just hasn't really started to filter through yet.

[Adrian Ma]

We just talked about this the other day on the show. We talked to a lot of listeners who spend a ton in the past few months just to get ahead of tariffs and then pulled back.

[Mary Childs]

Yeah, people were doing some spending to buy ahead of tariffs hitting, but they seem to be pulling back. We're getting data in still, so it remains to be seen what the real impact will be. We're just in wait and see mode. Perhaps you've heard that a lot lately and I've also heard analogies. Perhaps you have too to, you know, Wile E. Coyote being suspended in midair having just gone off a cliff holding an anvil and he's just like hovering there for a second. We might be in that split second. We'll find out.

[Darian Woods]

Well, I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Indeed, with a chill bond market.

[Mary Childs]

Yes, it's a nice view from here.

[Darian Woods]

Mary Childs, thank you so much for joining us.

[Mary Childs]

Thank you for having me.

[Adrian Ma]

This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Kwesi Lee. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez Edited by Julia Richie Kate Concannon is our editor and the indicators are production of npr.

[NPR]

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