Kind: captions
Language: en
people all around the world their lives
are basically dependent on fossil fuels
and so the idea that we're going to get
people off by making it so expensive
that it becomes impossible for them to
live good lives is almost morally
reprehensible people who have the most
basic science literacy like who know the
most about greenhouse effect they're at
both ends of the spectrum
of views on climate dismissives and
alarmed what is likely the worst effect
of climate change
the following is a conversation with
Joan lomberg and Andrew revkin on the
topic of climate change it is framed as
a debate but with the goal of having a
nuanced conversation talking with each
other not at each other
I hope to continue having the base like
these including uncontroversial topics I
believe in the power of conversation to
bring people together
not to convince one side or the other
but to Enlighten both with the insights
and wisdom that each hold
Bjorn lomborg is the president of
Copenhagen consensus Think Tank and
author of false alarm cool it and
skeptical environmentalists
please check out his work at lombard.com
that includes his books articles and
other writing Andrew revkin is one of
the most respected journalists in the
world on the topic of climate he's been
writing about Global Environmental
change and risk for more than 30 years
20 of it at the New York Times
please check out his work in the link
tree that includes his books articles
and other writing
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in the description and now dear friends
here's Bjorn lomberg and Andrew rafkin
there's a spectrum of belief on the
topic of climate change and the
landscape of that Spectrum has probably
changed over several decades on one
extreme there's a belief that climate
change is a hoax it's not human caused
to pile on top of that there's a belief
that institutions scientific political
the media are corrupt and are kind of uh
constructing this fabrication that's one
extreme and then the other extreme
there's a
a level of alarmism
about the catastrophic impacts of
climate change that lead to the
extinction of human civilization so not
just economic costs hardship suffering
but literally the destruction of the
human species in the short term okay so
that's the Spectrum and I would love to
find the center
and my senses and the reason I wanted to
talk to the two of you aside from
the humility with which you approach
this topic is I feel like you're close
to the center and are on different sides
of that Center if it's possible to
define the central like there is a
political Center for Center left and
center right
of course it's very difficult to Define
but can you help me Define what the
extremes are again as they have changed
over the years what they are today and
where's the center oh boy uh well in a
way on this issue I think there is no
Center except in this if you're looking
on social media or if you're looking on
TV
there are people who are trying to
fabricate the idea there's a single
question
and that's the first mistake
we are developing a new relationship
with the climate system
and we're rethinking our Energy Systems
and those are very
disconnected in so many ways that
connect around climate change but the
first way to me to overcome this idea of
there is this polarized Universe around
this issue is to step back and say well
what is this actually and when you do
you realize it's kind of an
uncomfortable collision between old
energy norms and growing awareness of
how the how the planet works that you
know if you keep adding gases that are
invisible it's the bubbles in beer
if you keep adding that to the
atmosphere because it accumulates that
will change everything is changing
everything for thousands of years it's
already happening what do you mean by
bubbles and beer CO2 carbon dioxide the
main greenhouse gas why beer look
because I like beer it's also in
Coca-Cola well you were talking about
Cola before uh and it's so it's
innocuous we grew up with this idea as
CO2 unless you're trapped in a room
suffocating
yeah is innocuous gas it it's plant food
it's beer bubbles and the idea we can
swiftly transition to a world where that
gas is a pollutant
regulated Tamp down from the top
is is Fantastical you know having looked
at this for 35 years I brought along one
of my tokens
this is my 1988 cover story on global
warming
the greenhouse effect yes of 1988 Jim
Hansen the famous American climate
scientist the really he stimulated this
article by doing this uh dramatic
testimony in the senate committee that
summer in may actually spring lead
spring it was a hot day and it got
headlines and this was the result but
it's complicated look what we were
selling on the back cover
what you see is when you get to back
cigarettes different tobacco yeah yeah
you know looking back at my own career
on the climate question is no longer a
belief fight over is global warming real
or not you say well what kind of energy
future do you want that's a very
different question than
stop global warming and
um when you look at climate actually I
had this Learning Journey on my
reporting
where I started out with this as the
definition of the problem
you know the 70s and 80s pollution was
changing things that were making things
bad so really focusing on the Greenhouse
Effect and the pollution but what I
missed the big thing that I missed of
the first 15 years of my reporting from
through about 2007
when I was the period I was at the New
York Times
in the middle there
um was that we're building vulnerability
to climate hazards at the same time so
climate is changing but we're changing
too and we where we where we are here in
Austin Texas is a great example flash
flood alley named in the 1920s west of
here everyone forgot about flash floods
built these huge developments you know
along these river basins then one side
start saying global warming global
warming and the other side is not
recognizing that we've built willfully
uh greedily
uh vulnerability in places of utter
hazards same things played out in
Pakistan and in Fort Myers Florida
if you and you start to understand that
we're creating a landscape of risk
as climate is changing then that could
it feels oh my God that's more complex
right but it also gives you more action
points it's like okay well we know how
to design better we know that today's
coasts won't be tomorrow's coasts
work with that and then let's chart an
energy future at the same time
so the story became so different it
didn't become like
you know a story you could package into
a magazine article or the like and it
just led me to a whole different way of
even my journalism changed over time
so I don't fight the belief disbelief
fight anymore I think it's actually
kind of a waste I don't it's a good way
to start the discussion because that's
where we're at
but this isn't about to me going forward
from where we're at isn't about
tipping that balance back toward the
center so much as finding opportunities
to just do something about this stuff
what do you think Bjorn do you agree
that it's multiple questions in one in
one big question do you think it's
possible to define the center where is
the center I think it's wonderful to
hear Andy sort of unconstruct the whole
conversation and say we should be
worried about different things and I
think that's exactly or we should be
worried about things in a different way
that makes it much more uh useful
I think that's exactly the right way to
to think about it on the other hand that
was also where you kind of ended we are
stuck in a place where this very much is
the conversation right now uh and and so
I think in in one sense
um certainly the people who used to say
oh this is not happening they're very
very small and diminishing crowd and
certainly not right
um but on the other hand I I think to an
ex
increasing extent we've gotten into a
world where a lot of people really think
this is the you know the end of the
times uh if if you so the OCD did a new
survey of all oecd countries and it's
shocking so it shows that 60 of all
people in the OCD so the rich World
believes that global warming will likely
or very likely lead to the extinction of
mankind
and and and that's that's scary in a
very very clear way because look if this
really is true if if global warming is
this meter hurtling towards Earth and
you know we're gonna be destroyed in 12
years or whatever the number is uh uh uh
uh today then clearly we should care
about nothing else we should just be
focusing on making sure that that
asteroid get you know we should send up
Bruce Willis and get get this done with
but that's not the way it is this is not
actually what the U.N climate panel
tells us or anything else so I think uh
it's not so much about arcing against
the people who are saying it's a it's a
hoax that's not really where I am I
don't think that's where Andy are really
where the conversation is but it is a
question of sort of pulling people back
from this end of the world conversation
because it really skews our way that we
think about problems also you know if
you really think this is the end of time
and you know you only have 12 years
nothing that can only work in 13 years
can be considered and the reality of
most of what we're talking about in
climate and certainly our vulnerability
certainly our Energy System is going to
be half to a full century and so when
you talk to people in say well but we're
gonna you know we're really gonna go a
lot more renewable in the next half
century they look at you and like but
that's what 38 years too late uh and I
get that but so so I think in in your
question what I'm trying to do and I
would imagine that's true for you as
well is to try to pull people away from
this precipice and this end of the world
and then open it up and I think Andy did
that really well by saying look there's
so many different sub conversations and
we need to have all of them and we need
to be respectful of of some of these are
right in the in the sort of standard
media kind of way but some of them are
very very wrong and actually means that
we end up doing much less good both on
climate but also on all the other
problems the world faces oh yeah and it
just empowers people too those who
believe this then just sit back even in
Adam McKay's movie The don't look up
movie there was that sort of knee-list
crowd for those who've seen it who just
say you know fuck this or uh and and a
lot of people have that approach when
something's too big no
and
it just paralyzes you as opposed to
giving you these action points and the
other thing is I hate I hate it when
economists are right about stuff like
the I I I I uh
no no there are these phrases like I
never knew the words path dependency
until probably 10 years ago in my
reporting it basically says you're in a
system
the things around you how we pass laws
the Brokenness of the Senate you know
that those are we don't have a climate
crisis in America we have a decision
crisis as it comes to how the government
works or doesn't work so but those big
features of our landscape are
it's path dependency when you when you
screw in a light bulb even if it's an
LED light bulb it's going into a hundred
and thirteen hundred twenty year old
fixture
because and actually that fixture is
almost designed if you look at like 19th
century gas fixtures they had to screw
anything so we're like on this long path
dependencies when it comes to energy and
stuff like that that you don't just
click magically transition a car Fleet a
car built today will last 40 Years it'll
end up in Mexico sold on a used car et
cetera et cetera and
so this there is no quick no fix even if
if we're true that where things are
coming to an end in 13 years or 12 years
or eight years so most people don't
believe that climate change is a hoax so
they believe that there is an increase
there's a global warming of a few
degrees in The Next Century and then
maybe debate about what the number of
the degrees is
and do most people believe that it's
human caused at this time in in the in
this history of discussion or climate
change so is that the center still like
is there still the debate on this Yale
University the climate communication
group there for like 13 years has done
this six Americas study where they've
charted pretty carefully and ways that I
really find useful
what people believe and we could talk
about the word belief in the context of
science too but and they've identified
kind of six kinds of us there's from
dismissive to alarmed and with lots of
bubbles in between I think some of those
bubbles in between are mostly disengaged
people who don't really deal with the
issue and they've shown adrift for sure
there's much more majority now at the
alarmed or engaged bubbles then just the
dismissive bubble does a durable like
with vaccination and all lots of other
issues there's a durable never anything
belief group but on on the reality that
humans are contributing to climate
change most Americans when you're asked
ask them and it also depends on how you
write your survey you know I think I
think there's a component globally I
mean when you when you ask around I mean
and and this is you know if you hear the
story from the media of 20 years of
course that's what you'll believe and it
also happens to be true all right that
is what the sign I I think you know it's
perhaps worth saying and it's a little
depressing that you always have to say
it but I think it's worth saying that I
think we both really do accept you know
the climate panel uh science and you
know there's absolutely global warming
it is an issue uh and it's probably just
worthwhile to get it out of the way it's
an issue and it's caused by humans it's
caused by humans yeah okay but
vulnerability the losses
that are driven by climate-related
events still predominantly are caused by
humans but on the ground it's where we
build stuff where we settle Pakistan
in 1968 I just looked these data up
there were 40 million people in Pakistan
today there are 225 million and a big
chunk of them are still rural they live
in the floodplain of the amazing Indus
River which comes down from the
Himalayas extraordinary 5000 year
history of Agriculture there but when
you put 200 million people In Harm's Way
and this doesn't say anything about the
bigger questions about oh shame on
Pakistan for having more people it just
says the reality is
the losses that we see in the news
are and and the science finds this even
though there's a new weather attribution
group it's a WX risk on Twitter
this does pretty good work on
how much of what just happened was some
tweak in the storm from global warming
from CO2 changing weather
but and the media glom on to that as I
did you know in the 80s 90s 2000s
but the reports also have a section on
by the way the vulnerability that was
built in this region was a was a big
driver of of loss so discriminating
between loss
change in
what's happening on the ground and
change in the climate system
is never solely about CO2 in fact
Lawrence Bauer
b-o-u-w-e-r um
has for I first wrote on his work in
2010 in the New York Times And basically
in 2010 there was no sign in the data of
climate change driving disasters
climate change is up here disasters are
on the ground they depend on how many
people are in the way how much stuff you
built in the way and so far we've done
so much of that so fast in the 20th
century particularly
that it completely dominates it makes it
hard impossible to discriminate how much
of that disaster
was from the change in
weather from global warming so a
function of
uh greenhouse gases
to human suffering is
unclear that's and that's very much in
our control theoretically I mean the the
point I think is is exactly right that
you know if you look at uh the hurricane
em that went through Florida you have a
situation where Florida went from what
600 000 houses in 1940 to 17 million
houses yeah sorry 10 million houses so
uh so 17 times more over uh what a
period of 80 years of course you're
gonna have one yeah yeah you're going to
have lots more damage and many of these
houses now been built on you know places
where you probably shouldn't be building
and and so I think uh a lot of
scientists are very focused on saying
can we measure whether global warming
had an impact which is an interesting
science question I think it's it's very
implausible that eventually we won't be
able to say it has an impact but the
real question it seems to me is if we
actually want to make sure that people
are less harmed in the future
what are the levers that we can control
and it turns out that the CO2 lever uh
doing something about climate is an
incredibly difficult and slightly
inefficient way of trying to help these
people in the future whereas of course
zoning making sure that you have better
housing
rules what is it uh regulations uh that
that you maybe you know don't have
people building in the flash flood
lately what was it called flash flood
alley Alleyway yeah it's it's just
simple stuff and and because we're so
focused on this one issue we sort of it
it almost feels uh sacrilegious to to
talk about these other things that are
much more in our power and that we can
do something about much quicker and that
would help a lot more people so I I
think this is uh this is going to be a
large part of the whole conversation you
know yes climate is a problem but it's
not the only problem and there are many
other things where we can actually have
a much much bigger impact at much lower
cost maybe we should also remember those
can you
Steel Man the case
of Greta
who's a representative of alarmism
that we need that kind of level of
alarmism for people to pay attention and
to think about climate change so you
said the singular View
uh
is is not the correct way to look at
climate change just the emissions but
for us to have a discussion shouldn't
there be somebody who's
really raising the concern can you still
man the case of for alarmism essentially
or is there a better term than alarmism
uh
commit communication of like holy shit
we should be thinking about this so I I
think you know I I totally understand
why credit tunberg is doing what she's
doing I I have great respect for her
because if you know I I look at a lot of
kids growing up and they're basically
being told you're not going to reach
adulthood or at least not you're not
going to get very far into adulthood uh
and that of course you know this is the
media are hurtling towards Earth and
then this is the only thing we should be
focusing on I understand why she's
making that argument I I think it's at
the end of the day it's incorrect and
I'm sure we'll get around to talking
about that and one of the things is of
course that her whole generation uh you
know I can understand why they're saying
you know if if we're going to be dead in
12 years why would I want to study that
you know why would I really care about
anything so so I totally want to sort of
pull Greta and many others out of this
uh end of the world fear but I totally
get why she's doing it I think she's
done on a service in the sense that
she's gotten more people to talk about
climate and that's good because we need
to have this discussion I think it's
unfortunate and this is just what
happens in almost all policy discussions
that they end up being you know sort of
discussions from from the extreme groups
because it's just more fun on media uh
to to have sort of the the total deniers
and the and the the people who say we're
going to die tomorrow and it sort of
becomes that discussion that's more you
know it's more sort of a mutt wrestling
fight so what do you think the modern
wrestling fight is not useful or is
useful for communication for Effective
science communication on one of the
platforms that you're a fan of which is
Twitter
yeah I wrote a piece recently on my
sustain what column saying if you go in
there
for the entertainment value of seeing
those knock down fights I guess that's
useful if that's what you're looking for
the thing I found Twitter invaluable for
but it's a practice
it's just like the workouts you do or
you know
it's how do I put this tool to use today
thinking about energy sufficient energy
action in poor communities how do I put
this tool today learning about what
really happened with Ian the hurricane
you know who was most at risk and how
would you build back build forward
better I hit build back
um or you could go there and just watch
it as an entertainment value that's not
going to get the world anywhere you
don't think
entertainment I I wouldn't call it
entertainment but giving voice to the
extremes isn't a productive Way Forward
it seems to
you know to push back against the main
narrative it seems to work pretty well
in the American system we think
politics is totally broken but maybe
that works that like oscillation back
and forth you need a grata and you need
somebody that pushes back against the
ground to get everybody's
just to uh to get everybody's attention
the the fun of battle right over time
creates progress well and this gets to
you know people who focus on
communication science I'm not a
scientist I write about this stuff
if you're going to try to prod someone
with a warning like yeah this is three
years apart nuclear winner nuclear
winner global warming well yeah we'll
talk about it but look at look at that
you know this is three years apart in
the covers of magazine yeah and uh but
then you have to say to what end if
you're not directing people to a basket
of things to do and if you're if you
want political change then it would be
to you know support a politician if you
want energy access it would be to look
at this 370 billion dollars the American
government just put into play on climate
and say well how can my community
benefit from that and and I've been told
over and over again by people in
government
jigar Shah who heads this giant Loan
program the energy Department he says
what I need now is like 19 500 people
who are worried about climate change
maybe because Greta got them worried
but here's the thing you could do you
can connect your local government right
now with these multi-million dollar
loans so you could have electric buses
instead of diesel buses
and that's an action pathway
so without so you know alarm for the
sake of getting attention or clicks
to me is not any more valuable than
watching a an action movie and and again
I think also it very easily ends up sort
of skewing our conversation about what
are the actual Solutions uh you know
because yes it's great to uh to get rid
of the diesel bus but probably not for
the reason people think it's because
diesel buses are really polluting in the
you know in the air pollution sense
right that is why you should get rid of
them uh and again if you really want it
to help people for instance with
hurricanes you should have better you
know uh rules and Zoning in in Florida
uh which is a very different outcome so
so the the mud wrestling fight also gets
our attention diverted towards solutions
that seem uh easy fun you know sort of
the electric car is a great example of
this the electric cars somehow become
almost the sign that I care and I'm
really going to do something about uh
climate of course electric cars are
great and they're probably part of the
solution and they will actually cut
carbon emissions somewhat but they are
incredibly ineffective way of cutting
carbon emissions right now uh they're
fairly expensive you have to subsidize
them a lot and they still emit quite a
bit of CO2 both because the batteries
get produced and because they you know
usually run off of Power that's not
strong
okay let's go there let's go electric
cars okay educate us on uh the pros and
cons of electric cars in this complex
picture of of climate change what do you
think of the efforts of Tesla in Elon
Musk on pushing forward
um the electric car Revolution so look
electric cars are great I I don't own a
I don't own a car uh but you know I've
been driving there you go socially
signaling yeah but yeah I've uh we're in
Texas okay flew in here so it's not like
I'm I'm in any way uh virtuous guy on on
that path but but you know look uh
they're great cars and eventually
electric cars will take over a
significant part of our uh driving and
that's good because they're more
effective they're more effective they're
probably also going to be cheaper uh
there's a lot of good opportunities with
them but it's because they've become
reified as this thing that you do to fix
climate and right now they're not really
all that great for climate they uh you
need a lot of uh uh extra material into
the batteries which is very polluting
and it's also uh it emits a lot of CO2 a
lot of electric cars are bought as
second cars in the US so we used to
think that they were driven almost as
much as as a regular car it turns out
that they're more likely driven less
than half as much as a brachial cars so
you know 89 of all Americans who have an
electric car also have a real car that
they use for the long trips and then
they use the electric car for sure 89 89
yeah so so the the point here is that
that it has it's one of these things
that become more sort of a virtue
signaling thing and again look once
electric cars are sufficiently cheap
that people will want to buy them that's
great and and they will you know do some
good for the environment but in reality
what we should be focusing on is instead
of getting people electric cars in rich
countries where because we're
subsidizing typically uh in in many
countries it's uh you actually get uh uh
a sort of sliding scale you get more
subsidy the more expensive it is we've
sort of subsidized this to very rich
people to buy very large uh Teslas uh to
drive around in uh whereas what we
should be focusing on is perhaps getting
uh electric motorcycles and third world
developing cities where they would do a
lot more good you know they can actually
go as far as you need there's no you
know worry about running out of them uh
and they would obviously they're much
much more polluting uh just air
pollution wise and they're much cheaper
and they use very little battery so it's
a it's about getting our senses right
but that but the electric car is not is
not the it's not a conversation about is
it technically a really good or is it a
somewhat good uh Insight it's more like
it's a virtual signal so just you know
I'm an I work with economists I'm
actually not an economist but I like to
say I claim I kind of am uh but but you
know the the fundamental point is we
would say well how much do you how much
does it cost to cut a ton of CO2 and the
answer is for most electric cars we're
paying in the order of a thousand two
thousand you know Norway they they pay
up to what uh five thousand dollars that
they're about you know huge amount for
one ton of CO2 uh you can right now cut
a ton of CO2 for about what is it 14 on
the Reggie or something uh you know you
can read this that's the regional
Greenhouse yes initiative so you can
basically cut it really really cheaply
why would we not want to cut dozens and
dozens of tons of CO2 for the same price
instead of just cutting one ton and the
simple answer is we only do that because
we're so focused on the election from
interrupt typical European come here in
Texas tell me I can't have my Ford F1
150 but I'll now you can have your F-150
Lightning yes that's true uh I'm I'm
just joking but uh what do you think
about electric cars if you just link on
that moment and uh yeah this particular
element of helping reduce uh
emissions well you talked about the
middle in the beginning and you know I
loved moving to the hybrid the Prius was
fantastic and did everything our other
sedan did but you know it was 60 miles
per gallon performance and you don't
have range anxiety because it has a
regular engine too
we still have a Prius we also inherited
my dad dear dad's year 2000 Toyota
Sienna which is an old 100 000 mile uh
Minivan and we use it all the time to do
the stuff we can't do in the in the
Prius like what taking stuff to the dump
all I mean in terms of the size of the
vehicle yeah we'll get yeah a size and
just you know convenience factor for a
bigger vehicle
um I would love a fully electrified
Transportation world uh it's kind of
exciting I think what Elon did with
Tesla I remember way way back in the day
when the first models were coming out
they were very slick Ferrari Style
cars and I thought this is cool and you
know there's a history of privileged
markets testing new technologies and I'm
all for that um I think it's done a huge
service prodding so much more r d and
you know once GM and Ford started to
realize oh my God
this is a real phenomenon you know
getting them in the game there was that
documentary who killed the electric car
which seemed to imply that uh you know
there's there were fights to keep this
Tamp down and it's it's fundamentally
cleaner funnily mentally better if
but then you have to manage these bigger
questions if we're going to do a build
out here how do you make it fair
as you were saying who actually uses
transfer cars and Jigger Shaw that guy
at the energy Department I mentioned who
has all this money to give out
he he wants to give loans to um
if you've had an Uber Fleet
those Uber drivers they're the ones who
need
electric cars as his work and and there
was a recent story in Grist also
said that most of the sales of Teslas
are the high end of the market they're
60 to 80 000 vehicles
each like the how the Hummer the
electric Hummer I can't there was a data
point on that
astonishing data point the battery in
that hummer weighs more than
I'd have to look it up it weighs more
than your price yeah I think it might
have been the Prius and and think of the
material costs there think of where that
battery the Cobalt and the lithium where
does this stuff come from
to build this stuff out
I'm all for it but we have to be honest
and clear about that's a new resource
rush like the oil rush back in the early
20th century and and those impacts have
to be figured out too and if they're all
big Hummers uh for rich people
there's so many contrary arguments to
that that I think we have to figure out
a way we I don't like the word we I use
it too much we all do but uh we all do
we usually refer when you say we we
humans we Society we the government yeah
there has to be some thought and
attention put to where you put these
incentives so that you get the best use
of this technology for uh for the carbon
benefit for the conventional city
pollution benefit
for the transportation benefit can I
step back and ask a sort of the big
question we'll mentioned economics
journalism
uh
how does an economist and a climate
scientist and a journalist uh that
writes about climate see the world
differently what are the strengths and
potential blind spots of each discipline
I mean that's just sort of just just so
people may may be aware I think you'll
be able to fall into the economics Camp
a bit there's climate scientists right
and there's climate scientists adjacent
people like who hang some of my best
friends are climate scientists kind of
which is I think where you fall in
because you're a journals you've been
writing it so you're not completely
in the trenches of doing the work you're
just up into the trenches every once in
a while so can you speak to that maybe
Bjorn like what's what does the world
look like to an economist
let's try to empathize with these beings
that uh you know unfortunately has
fallen into the
disreputable uh economics yeah so so uh
I think I think the the main point that
that I've been trying for a long time
and I think that's also a little bit
what Andy has been talking about for a
very long time the whole conversation
was about what does the science tell us
is is it global warming real and and to
me it's much more what can we actually
do what are the policies that we can
take and how effective are they going to
be so the conversation we just had about
electric cars is a good example of how
an economist think about look you gotta
you this is not a question about whether
you feel morally vert true so whether
you know you can sort of display how
much you care about the environment this
is about how much you actually ended up
affecting the world and the honest
answers that you know electric cars
right now in the next decade or so will
have a fairly small impact and
unfortunately right now at a very high
cost because we're basically subsidizing
these things at five or ten thousand
Dollars around the world uh per per car
that that's just not it's not really
sustainable but it's certainly not a
very great way to cut carbon emissions
so I would be the kind of guy and
Economist would be the types of people
who would say is there a smarter way
where you for less money can for cut
more CO2 and the obvious answer is yes
that's what we've seen for instance with
uh fracking uh the the fact that the US
went from a lot of coal to a lot of gas
because gas became incredibly cheap
because gas emits about half as much as
as coal does when you use it for elect
uh for power that basically cut more
carbon emissions than pretty much any
other single thing and we should get the
rest of the world in some sense to frac
because it's really cheap there are some
problems and absolutely we can we can
also have that conversation there is no
technology is Problem free but
fundamentally it's an incredibly cheap
way to get people to cut a lot of CO2
it's not the final solution because it's
still a fossil fuel but it's a much
better fossil fuel if you will and it's
much more realistic to do that so that's
one part of the thing the other one is
when we talked about for instance uh how
do we help people in Florida who gets
hit by hurricane or how do we help
people that get damaged in flash floods
the people who are in who are in uh in
heat waves and the symbol the simple
answer is there's a lot of very very
cheap and effective things that we could
do first so most climate people will
tend to sort of say we gotta you know uh
get rid of all carbon emissions we've
got to change our entire uh the the
engine the uh the the sort of powers the
world and has powered us for the last
200 years
and that's all good and well but it's
really really hard to do and it's
probably not going to do very much and
even if you succeed it it would only
help you know future victims of future
hurricane the ends in Florida a tiny
tiny bit at best so instead let's try to
focus on not getting people to build
right on the waterfront where you're
incredibly vulnerable and where you're
very likely to get hit where we
subsidize people uh with uh with Federal
Insurance again which is you know
actually losing money so we're much more
about saying it's not a science question
I just take the science for granted yes
there is a problem with climate change
but it's much more about saying how can
we make smart decisions can I ask you
about blind spots when you reduce stuff
to numbers the costs and benefits
is there stuff you might miss
about that are important to the
flourishing of the human species so
everyone will have to say of course
there must be blind spots but I don't
know what they are but yeah I'm I'm sure
uh Andy and would probably be better at
telling me what they are uh so we try to
incorporate all of it but obviously
we're not successful we you can't
incorporate everything for instance in
the cost benefit analysis but but the
point is in some way
um I I would worry a lot about this if
we were you know sort of close to
Perfection human race we're doing almost
everything right but we're not quite
right then we need to get the last
digits right but I think it's much more
the you know and the the point that I
tried to make before that we're all
we're all focused on going to an
electric car or you know something else
rather than uh fracking we're all
focused on cutting carbon emissions
instead of reducing vulnerability so
we're simply getting in orders of
magnitude wrong uh and and while I'm
sure I have blind blind spots I think
they're probably not big enough to to
overturn that point Andy was Bjorn and
economists are all wrong about
everything well the models we could
spend a whole day on models uh their
economic models there's this thing
called optimization models the there
were two big ones used to assess the
U.S plan this new big Ira inflation
reduction package and they're fine
they're a starting point for
understanding
what's possible but as this gets to the
journalism part or the public part
you have to look at the caveats you have
to look at what model economists
expressly exclude things that are not
modelable and if you look in the fine
print on the repeat project the
Princeton version of the assessment of
the recent giant legislation
the fine print is the front page for me
is a deep diving journalist because it
says we didn't include any sources of
friction meaning right resistance to
putting new transmission lines through
your community or people who don't want
um mining in America because we've
exported all of our mining we mine our
Cobalt and Congo you know and trying to
get a new mine in Nevada
was a fraught fight that took more than
10 years for lithium
so so if you're excluding those elements
from your model which on the surface
makes this 370 billion dollar package
have an emissions reduction trajectory
that's really pretty good
and you're not saying in your first line
by the way these are the things we're
not considering
that's the job of a journalist summarize
all of human history with that one word
friction
yeah well inertia friction implies
there's a force that's already being
resisted but there's also inertia which
is a huge part of our
you know we have a status quo bias
the scientists that I
in grappling with the climate problem as
a journalist I paid too much attention
to climate scientists
that's why all my articles focused on
climate change and it was 2006. I
remember now pretty clearly uh
I was asked by the week in review
section of the New York Times to write a
sort of a weekend thumb sucker we call
them on um
just sit and suck yourself and think
about something why is everybody so
pissed off about climate change it was
after Al Gore's movie The Al Gore movie
came out Inconvenient Truth the
hurricane Katrina's big senator inhofe
in the Senate from Oklahoma wasn't yet
throwing snowballs but it was close to
that and so I looked into what was going
on why is this so heated in 2006 the
story is called Yelling fire on hot
planet
and that was the first time this is
after 18 years of writing about global
warming
that was the first time I interviewed a
social scientist not a climate scientist
her name is Helen Ingram she's the UC
Irvine
and she laid out for me the factors that
determine why people vote or what they
vote for what they think about
politically
and they were the antithesis of the
climate problem
she used the words she said people go in
the voting booth
thinking about things that are soon
Salient and certain
and climate change is complex you know
has long time scales and and that really
jogged me and then I between 2006 2010
I started interviewing other social
scientists and I I this was by far the
scariest science of all it's the the
climate in our heads or inconvenient
Minds
and in how that translates into
Political norms and stuff really became
the monster not the not the climate
system is there social dynamics did the
scientists themselves because uh
I've gotten to witness a kind of
flocking Behavior with Scientists so
it's almost like a flock of birds within
the flock
there's a lot of disagreement and fun
debates and everybody trying to prove
each other wrong but they're all kind of
headed in the same direction and you
don't want to be the bird that kind of
leaves that flock no so like there's an
idea that science is a mechanism will
get us towards the truth but it'll
definitely get us somewhere but it could
be not the truth in the short term in
the long term a bigger flock will come
along and it'll get us to the truth but
there's a sense that I don't know if
there's a mechanism within science to
like
snap out of it if you're done the wrong
track usually you get it right but
sometimes you don't when you don't it's
very costly and there's so many factors
that line up to perpetuate that flocking
behavior
one is Media attention comes in
the other is funding comes in the
National Science Foundation or whatever
European foundations pour a huge amount
of money into things related to climate
and so you and then you your narrative
in your head is
shaped by that aspect of the climate
problem that's in the spotlight I I
started using this hashtag
a few years back narrative capture like
be wary of narrative capture where
you're
you're on a train and everyone's getting
on the train and this is in the media
too not just science and it becomes self
self-sustaining and
and contrary indications are ignored or
downplayed no one does replication
science because you don't your career
doesn't Advance through replicating
someone else's work so those contrary
indications are are not necessarily you
know really dug in on and this is for
this is Way Beyond climate this is of
many fields you as you said you might
have seen this in Ai and it's really
hard to find it's another form of path
dependency the the term I used for
the breaking narrative capture to me
for me has come mostly
from stepping back
and reminding myself of the basic
principles of Journalism
journalism's basic principles are useful
for anybody
confronting a big enormous Dynamic
complex thing is
who what where when why just be really
rigorous about not assuming because
there's a fire in Boulder County or a
flood in Fort Myers that climb it which
is in your head because you're part of
the climate team at the New York Times
or whatever
is the front
is the foreground part of this problem
what's the psychological challenge of
that
if you incorporate the fact that if you
uh try to step back and have Nuance you
might get attacked by the others in the
flock oh I was right well you you've
certainly been both of you get attacked
yeah continuously from different sides
so let me just ask about that how does
that feel and how do you continue
thinking clearly
and uh continuously try to have humility
and step back and not get defensive in
in that on as a communicator I I mean
there are other things happening at the
same time right I'm now 35 years into
almost 40 years into my journalism
career so I have some Independence I'm
free from the obligations of
you know don't really need my next
paycheck I live in Maine now in a house
I love I own it outright it's a great
privilege and honor and
um as a result of a lot of hard work and
and so I'm Freer to think freely and I
know my colleagues in newsrooms when I
was at the New York Times in The
Newsroom
you become captive to a narrative just
as you do out in the world
um
the New York Times had a narrative about
the about Saddam Hussein
drove us into
that war the times sucked right into
that and helped perpetuate it
um I think we're in a bit of a narrative
we the media my friends at the times and
others are on a train ride on climate
change depicting it in a certain way
that really I saw problems with how they
handled the Joe manchin issue in America
the the West Virginia senator they
really kind of piled on and zoomed in on
his Investments
which is really important to do but they
never pulled back and said by the way
he's
a rare species he's a democrat in West
Virginia and which to see there'll be
other otherwise occupied by Republican
there would be no talk of a climate deal
or any of that stuff without him and but
when you once you're starting to kind of
frame a story in a certain way you
carried along and as you said sometimes
it breaks in a new Norm arrives but
the climate train is still kind of
rushing forward and missing
the opportunity to cut it into its
pieces
and say well what's really wrong with
Florida
and it's for me when you ask about how I
handle the slings and arrows and stuff
it's it's partially because I'm fast
worrying about it too much
um I mean it was pretty intense 2009
Rush Limbaugh
suggested I kill myself on his radio
show it's a really great what was that
about I had this is actually this was a
meeting in Washington
in 2009 on population at the Wilson
Center
I couldn't be there so actually this is
pre-covered but I was zooming in or
something like Skyping in
and I was talking about
in a playful way I said Well if you
really want to worry about carbon this
is during the debate over uh carbon tax
model for a bill in America
we should probably uh have a carbon tax
for kids because a bigger family in
America is a big source of more
emissions it was kind of a playful
thought bubble some right-wing blogger
blogged about it it got into Russia's
you know pile of things to talk about
and and the clip is really fun awesome
meaning so uh if humans well these are
bad for the environment uh we can I can
imagine
that's how you know you've made it
explicit he said Mr revkin of the New
York Andrew rev kind of the New York
Times if you really think that people
are the worst thing that ever happened
to this planet why do you just kill
yourself and save the planet by dying it
was tough for you it was it was tough
for my family you know to me it did
generate some interesting calls and
stuff on my my voicemail and
um but but on the left I was also
undercut Roger Pilkey Jr a prominent
researcher of climate risk and climate
policy UC Boulder was actively
his career track was
derailed purposefully by people who just
thought his message was too off off the
path when you you know
even dealing with this for a very long
time so look I I just want to get back
to so the science I I don't think the
the science get it so much wrong as it
just becomes accepted to to make certain
assumptions as you just said we we
assume no friction so you know there's
there's a way that you kind of model the
world that ends up being also a
convenient message uh in many ways and I
think the the main convenient message in
climate and it's not surprising if you
think about it uh you know the main
convenient message is that the best way
to do something about all the things
that we call climate is to cut CO2
and that turns out to only sometimes be
true and with with a lot of caveats but
that's sort of the message it takes a
long time yes yes it's really really
difficult to do in any meaningful sort
of time frame uh and and and if you
challenge that you yes you're outside
the flock and you get attacked I've
always uh so uh somebody told me once uh
I think it's true they say it at the uh
Hobart law school if you have a good
case pound the case if you have a bad
case pound the table uh and so I've
always felt that when people go after me
they're kind of pounding to table
they're you know they're literally
screaming I don't have a good case I'm
really annoyed with what you're saying
and and so to me that actually means
it's much more important to make this
argument uh sure I mean I would love you
know everyone just saying oh that's a
really good point I'm gonna use that but
you know uh we're we're stuck in a
situation certainly in a conversation
where
a lot of people invested a lot of time
and energy on saying we should cut
carbon emissions this is the way to help
humankind and and just be clear I think
we should cut carbon emissions as well
but we should also just be realistic
about what we can achieve with that and
what are all the other things that we
could also do uh and it turns out that a
lot of these other things are much
cheaper much more effective will help
much more much quicker and so getting
that point out is just an incredibly
important for us to get it right so in
in some sense you know uh uh to make
sure that we don't do another Iraq and
we don't do another uh you know lots of
stupid decisions uh I mean this this is
one of the things mankind is very good
at uh and I guess uh I I see my role uh
and I think that's probably also how you
see yourself is trying to you know get
everyone to do it slightly less wrong so
let me ask you about a deep
psychological effect for you there's
also a drug of martyrdom
so whenever you stand against the flock
right no there is uh you wrote
a couple of really good books on the
topic the most recent false alarm
I stand as the holder of Truth
that everybody who is alarmist is wrong
and here's just simple calm way to
express the facts of the matter
and that's very compelling to a very
large number of people they want to make
a martyr out of you
is that are you worried about your own
mind
uh being corrupted by that by enjoying
standing against the crowd no no no
there's there's very little uh I I guess
I can see what you're saying sort of in
a literary way or something
poetic here yeah there's there's very
little Comfort or or sort of usefulness
in in in Annoying a lot of people uh you
know it just it just you know whenever I
go to a party for instance I know that
there's a good chance people are going
to be annoyed with me and I would love
that not to be the case but what I try
to do is you know uh uh so I I try to be
very polite and you know sort of not
push people's buttons unless they they
sort of actively say so you're saying
all kind of stupid stuff on the climate
right uh and then try to engage with
them and say well what what is it you're
thinking about and hopefully you know
during that party and then it ends up
being a really bad party for me but
anyway so I'll I'll you know I'll end up
possibly convincing one person that I'm
not totally stupid but no I'm I'm not
playing the Martyr and I'm not enjoying
that
see it's so interesting
the uh I mean they're the the
um martyr complex is all around the
climate question uh Michael Mann at the
far end of the spectrum of activism from
where Bjorn is uh was a climate
scientist is a climate scientist who uh
was actively attacked by
um inhofe and West in Virginia
politicians and
really abused in many ways he had come
up with a very prominent model of
looking at long-term records of climate
change and got this hockey stick for
temperature uh and he you know he
definitely sits there in a certain kind
of Spotlight because of that so it's not
unique at any particular vantage point
in the the spectrum of sort of prominent
people on the debate Andrew you co-wrote
the book The Human planet Earth at the
dawn of the anthropocene which is the
new age when humans are actually having
an impact on the environment let me ask
the question of what do you find most
beautiful and fascinating about our
planet Earth
it'd be cheap to say everything but just
walking here this morning under the
bridge over the Colorado River seeing
the birds knowing there's bat colonies
massive baton colonies around here that
I got to visit a few years ago I
experienced one of those bat explosions
it's fine mind-blowing uh the the I've
been really lucky as a journalist to
have gone to the North Pole just to camp
on the sea ice with Russian help at this
camp that was set up for tourists coming
from Europe every year there were
scientists on the sea ice floating on
the 14 000 foot deep Arctic Ocean and I
was with them for several days I wrote a
book about that too along with my
reporting
been in the depths of the Amazon
rainforest I've been when I was a very
young
I was the crew on a sailboat that sailed
two-thirds of the way around the world I
I was halfway across the Indian Ocean
again in 14 000 foot deep water we were
just there was no wind
and we were this is before way before I
was a journalist 22 23 years old
and we went swimming and swimming in 14
000 foot deep water
uh you know 500 miles from Land the
Western Indian Ocean halfway between
Somalia and the Maldives
is it like so mind-boggling chillingly
Fantastical thing with a mask on looking
at your Shadow going to the vanishing
point below you looking over at the boat
which is a 60-foot boat but just looks
like a toy and then getting back on and
being beholden to the elements the
sailboat you know heading toward um
Djibouti men's City in the power oh my
God and then you know and then um the
human
qualities are unbelievable you know the
anthropocene
I played a bit of a role as a journalist
and waking people up the idea that this
this era called the Holocene the last 11
000 years
you know since the last ice age had
ended I wrote my 1992 book on global
warming
thinking about all that we're just
talking about thinking about the wonders
of the planet thinking about the impact
of humans so far in our explosive growth
in the 20th century I wrote that perhaps
earth scientists of the future
we'll name this post Holocene
era for uh for its formative element for
us
because we're kind of
in charge in certain ways you know which
is hubristic at the same time it's like
you know the variability of the climate
system is still profound without with or
without global warming so this immense
powerful beautiful organism that is
Earth the all the different suborganisms
that are on it do you see humans as a
kind of parasite on this Earth no no do
you see it as a
um as something that helps the
flourishing of the entire organism that
can can
intelligence yeah hasn't yet
I mean is our is aren't we on uh the
ability of the collective intelligence
of the human species to develop all
these kinds of Technologies and to be
able to uh have Twitter to introspect
onto itself
I think you know I think we're doing a
we're it's always the way we are it's
ketchup we're always in catch-up mode
you know
um right uh I was at the Vatican for a
big meeting in 2014 on sustainable
Humanity sustainable nature our
responsibility and it was a week of um
presentations by like Martin Reese who's
this famed British scientist a physicist
who has been around his podcast yeah
great yeah well he's you know he's he's
fixated on existential risk right yes he
is so there's a week of this stuff and
um
the meeting was was kicked off by um
I wrote about it in the Cardinal
maradiaga who's I think from El Salvador
he's one of the Pope's kind of Posse he
gave one of the initial speeches and he
said nowadays
mankind looks like a technical Giant and
an ethical child
meaning our technological Wizardry is
unbelievable but it's way out in front
of our ability to step back and kind of
like
consider in the full Dimensions we need
to is it helping everybody is it uh what
what are the consequences of crispr uh
you know genetics technology and there's
no single answer to that if if I'm in
the African Union
I'm just using this as an example
crispr's emerged so fast it can do so
much by changing the nature of nature
will in in a kind of a programming way
not you know building genes not just
transferring them from one organism to
another
We've Only Just Begun to taste the
fruits of that literally
um
and it can wipe out a mosquito species
we know how to do that now you can like
literally
take out the Dengue causing mosquito the
scientists have done the work
and you think okay cool well that's
great uh now there's this big fight over
whether that should happen
African Union and I'm with their View
says hey if we can take out a mosquito
species that's causing horrific chronic
loss through Dengue which I had once in
Indonesia it's not fun and um we should
do it you know and here's the other side
of the European Union uh they're they're
saying using their
capital P precautionary
principle
says no we can't meddle with nature
right and this is just like we were
talking with climate you know there's
the real time question and the long-term
question and there's the uh
people who are just facing the need to
get through the day and be healthy and
survive and have enough food
which is not integrated sufficiently at
all into the climate
stop climate change debate and those who
like are trying to cut CO2 which will
have a benefit
you know in the future by limiting the
fat tail
outcomes of this journey we're on so so
when I think about the anthropocene I
think about this planet
I love that we're here right now I love
that our species has these capacities
I would love for there to be a little
bit more reflection
in where things come from and where they
might go whether you're a student a kid
what's your role the wonderful thing
about the complexity of it is everyone
can play a role if you're an artist
or a designer or architect or an
economist or a podcaster
whatever you do just tweak a little bit
toward um
examining these questions stepping back
from the simplistic label throwing
toward what actually is the problem in
front of me whether it's in Pakistan or
or in
Austin or wherever you know Florida you
know what do you find beautiful about
this collective intelligence machine we
have from an economics perspective it's
kind of fascinating they were able to
there's there is a machine to it that
we've built up that's able to represent
interests and desires and value and
hopes and dreams in sort of monetary
ways
um that we can trade with each other we
can make agreements with each other we
can represent our goals and build
companies that actually help and so on
do you just step back every once in a
while and Marvel at the fact that a few
billion of us are able to somehow not
create complete chaos and actually
collaborate and and have a collaborative
disagreements that ultimately or so far
have left led to progress yeah I think I
think fundamentally the point apart from
the fact that you know we should just be
joyful of the fact that humans live here
uh I think it's incredibly important to
remember how much progress we've had uh
you know most people just don't stop to
think about those stats yeah I get that
in the normal bustle of day but just you
know in 1900 the average person on the
planet lived to be 32 years
32 years that was our average life
expectancy uh today it's about 74. uh so
we've literally got two lifetimes on
this planet each one of us and and you
know every year you live in in the rich
world you get to live three months
longer and the poor world is about four
months longer because of medical
advances because we get better at
dealing both with cancer and especially
uh right now with uh with heart disease
uh these are amazing achievements of
course it's a very very small part of it
we're much better fed we're much better
educated we've gone from a world where
virtually everyone or you know what 90
percent were were illiterate to a world
where more than 90 illiterate this is an
astounding opportunity and and 200 years
ago
95 94 percent
of the world were extremely poor that is
less than a dollar a day today that uh
for for the first time in 2015 it was
down below 10 so there and and again
these are kind of boring statistics but
they're also astounding uh Testaments of
how how well Humanity has done so just
on on the point of uh we've kind of just
been focused on making our own world
better uh and in many ways you know so
we've hunted a lot of uh big animals
either to Extinction or uh down to much
much smaller populations there's much
smaller populations of fish in the ocean
so there's a lot of of things that that
sort of fare the brunt of our success
not it's not because we're evil in that
sense it's just because we didn't All
Care all that much about them uh I think
it is important as one funnel of that
I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it
uh but the fact that we're putting out
more CO2 in the atmosphere uh because
CO2 as you also mentioned before it's
actually plant food uh you know if if
you're if you're a greenhouse grower you
know if you put in CO2 in your
Greenhouse you actually get bigger and
plumper tomatoes and and that's
essentially what we're doing in the
world this has overall bad consequences
and and that's why we should be doing
something about it but one of the good
side effects is actually that the world
is getting greener uh so we get much
more green stuff now I don't know and
and this is where I sort of show my
Economist uh Roots uh because if you
just measure all living stuff in uh in
tons uh so in weight there's actually
more living stuff than there were a
hundred years ago because elephants and
uh all these other you know Big Fish and
stuff are actually really really small
fraction of the world
yeah the fact that we have yes so we
have an enormous amount of live stuff
but that doesn't even measure it it's
mostly just wood
wooden green stuff that yeah that's
dramatically increased in the world now
we're still not not there from what it
was in 1500 so we've we've still cut
down the world a lot but we're actually
making a much Greener World again not
because we really cared or thought about
it but just sort of a side effect of
what we're doing I think the crucial bit
to remember is
when you're poor and you worry about
what's going to happen the next day
this is just not your main issue yeah am
I killing too many large animals in the
world but when you're rich and and you
can actually sit in a podcast in a
convenient place in Austin you can also
start thinking about this so one of the
crucial bits I think if we want to get
the rest of the world to care about the
environment care about climate care
about all these other issues we really
need to get them out of poverty first uh
and it's a simple point that we often
forget and get them connected to all
these gifts yes
um I I have these memories of
well I was reporting on the next big
earthquake that's going to devastate
Istanbul in 2009
I was in a slum
immigrant poor neighborhood
and walking around with an engineer
pointing out to the buildings that were
going to fall down this is all known
there was an earthquake in 1999 and the
next one's coming
one of my advantages in covering climate
is I've covered other kinds of disasters
too so it keeps my contexts you know
made in touch with other things we can
do so I'm walking around and
interviewing everybody went to the
school that's being retrofit they
actually were getting ahead of it there
the world bank provided some funding to
put in iron bars in the brick building
and and I I met these kids
um and they came when you're a
journalist with a camera and stuff in a
pad you get swarmed by kids uh mostly in
developing countries and so these kids
are running up to me and they weren't
going like are you American or just they
were saying Facebook Facebook
and I went that's interesting and I they
led me to their little town a little
Community Center that had a bank of
eight or ten pretty
flimsy computers and they're all there
playing uh Farm it was a game that was
hot at that time on Facebook
Farmville Farmville yeah and and you
know my son back in the Hudson Valley I
remember him playing it and and I
thought wow that is so freaking cool
that these kids and actually I became
Facebook friends with a couple of them
afterwards we traded our and I thought
back to my youth when
we had pen pals I would write a letter
to a kid in West Cameroon
and he would write back and it took
weeks and it was a crinkly letter and I
never met him
and now you can kind of connect with
people and and that all through my
blogging you know at the New York Times
I was doing my regular reporting but I
still launched a Blog in 2007 called dot
Earth
which was all about what you were just
describing the newest fear the connected
world that's a term from uh these two
earliest 20 a Russian guy in early
fernatsuki and French Theologian and
scientist which is so interesting
tayard de charda they had this idea in
the early 20th century that we're
creating a planet of the Mind
that that human intelligence
can Foster
a better Earth and I just became smitten
with that especially meeting kids in
Istanbul slums who are on Facebook
looking for connectedness what can you
do with these tools which is what drives
me you know with my work now and
um but then there are these
counterweight counter currents that
if the connectedness can cut back you
know it allowed Al Qaeda to recruit use
decapitation videos to recruit
distributed
disaffected young people into extremism
and you know there's lots of these
systems are not they're just like every
other tool right they're just for good
or ill and and the efficiency thing the
econ the economics
of the world which I also wrote about a
little bit
you know late 20th century it was so
cool that everything became so efficient
that our supply chains are just in time
manufacturing you know
getting the the stuff from where the
sources of the material are to the car
factory and to get the car to the floor
just in time for someone to buy it and
that and everyone got totally sucked in
by that including me it's a great you
know super efficient cheaper and then
covid hit and the whole supply chain
concept crumbled and one of the big
lessons there hopefully and this is
relevant to sustainability generally
is efficiency matters but but resilience
matters too and resilience is
inefficient you need redundancy
or
or a variety of options right which is
not what corporate companies think about
which is not what if you're only focused
on a bottom line short-term timeline
those disruptions are not what you're
thinking about you're still thinking
about can we get that widget here just
in time for this thing to happen and
then on we go
so it's kind of I love the notosphere
this newest fear
idea the connectedness is fantastic oh
another thing like in the early 90s
when I wrote my first book on global
warming
it was for an exhibition at the Museum
of Natural History
um the environmental defense fund was
involved they were like a partner
one of these long-standing environmental
groups and they're very old-fashioned
it's mostly lawyers really just using
the Clean Air Act Clean Water Act to
litigate against pollution
and now EDF is vastly bigger
and they're actually this coming year
they're launching a satellite a an
environmental group
is launching methane sat and it's
providing a view an independent view of
where there's this gas
you know same thing natural gas is
basically methane so if you have a leak
whether it's in Siberia or in Oklahoma
you can cross-reference you can ground
true you can identify the hot spot you
can
know where the problem is to fix in so
many ways and that's just one example
I'm like if somebody told me in 1993
that EDF was going to launch it methane
satellite it would have laughed out loud
so technology plays a huge role
if it's kind of you know employed with
these the bigger vision and Leadership
so Bjorn you wrote
one of the books you wrote the most
recent one called false alarm how
climate change Panic costs us trillions
hurts the poor and fails to fix the
planet
good title by the way very intense makes
me want to read it what is likely the
worst effect of climate change first let
me just uh my my editor actually hated
the subtitle because it gives away the
whole book basically it tells you what
the book tries to make I I think you
know that's exactly what it should be
it's about getting this conversation out
in the in in the public sphere so the
worst thing that climate change can do
is like the worst thing that anything
can do is that it wipes out everything
and we all die so it's it's not like you
know if you're just looking for worst
case outcomes uh you know anything can
get to the worst case outcome
um imagine if we uh suggest what's the
worst thing that could happen from HIV
it breaks down of a one or more African
States because we don't fix it and then
you get sort of uh biological warfare
and terrorism throwing that in the mix
and then you get someone who makes a
virus and kills the whole world you know
you can make worst case scenarios for
everything so let's just call it I get
the point and sorry for an interruption
and and I appreciate worst case analysis
because I'm I am fundamentally computer
scientist and that was the thing that
defined the discipline of the to measure
the quality of the algorithm you measure
what is its worth worst case performance
that's the Big O notation that's how you
discuss algorithms what is the worst
possible thing uh in terms of
performance this thing can do but for
climate change let's even go crazy what
is exactly the worst case scenario for
climate change because uh
I have to be honest and say I haven't
really paid it deep attention I just
have a lot of colleagues who think about
climate and so on and there's a kind of
in the alarmism there was a sense what
this is this is a very serious problem
and then the sentence would never finish
what exactly is the problem well the
extinction of the human species okay
with a virus I understand how that could
possibly happen what is the mechanism by
which the human species becomes extinct
because of climate change
I'm not sure I would want to be able to
argue that because it really requires
you to have sort of very very extreme
parameter choices all down the line and
so it's more you know it's this kind of
idea that we that we hit some of these
unexpected uh outcomes so for instance
uh the Western Arctic ice sheet uh melts
really really quickly it doesn't look
like that can happen really really
quickly but let's just you know say that
this could happen within 100 years or
something so we basically get what
um seven meters what is that 20 feet of
sea level rise uh that will be a real
challenge to a lot of places around the
world this would have you know
significant costs uh it's likely and you
know there's actually been a study
that's tried to estimate could we deal
with that and the this the short answer
is yes if you're fairly well off you
know if you're a Holland you can
definitely deal with it it's also likely
that most developing countries are going
to be much closer to Holland towards the
end of the century because they'll be
much richer so they can probably handle
it but it will be a real challenge may I
ask a dumb question yeah what happens
when the C level rises exactly what is
the painful aspect of that
it is that all of your current
infrastructure and a lot of coastal
cities around the world that are
literally built on you know Jakarta is a
good example that are literally built on
the uh just you know inches above the
sea level uh if if you then get a sea
level rise they'll rise say what would
uh 20 feet if that would be like a third
or a fourth of a of a foot every year
yeah kind of thing yeah I see no
evidence that that's even well hold on a
second let's we're not talking about
evidence no talking about worst case
analysis and algorithms and and so so
basically you would see your
infrastructure all all your stuff very
quickly being very very challenged and
you basically have to put up huge sea
walls or uh migrate out of that very
quickly well very quickly as in in 50
years or something right right so like I
is that as a human species
were not able to respond to that kind of
course and and look again the point here
is then there's there's a lot of other
arguments and I I should just you know
put the disclaimer this is not what I
think is correct but you know you're
asking me what's the what's the worst
case outcome that you have uh uh so most
of global warming is really about that
we we're used to one way of doing things
so you know we we live in Jakarta
because it's right next to the Sea we're
used to the Sea being at this level uh
we grow our crops because we're used to
you know you grow a corn here you grow
wheat here because we're used to that
where the precipitation and the uh
temperature is the right for this kind
of crop if this changes and this is the
same thing with with you know with
houses if it gets colder if it gets
warmer it's suddenly uncomfortable
because you've built your house wrong so
our infrastructure will be wrong if the
world changes and that's what climate
change is at a large scale yes and so so
this is a problem in most of these
sentences but if you then sort of take
it to the extreme and say well imagine
that you're going to get a huge sea
level rise imagine that you're going to
get a very different sort of
precipitation for instance the the uh
what is it the rain season rain Monsoon
and and uh and and the Indian
subcontinent uh changes uh dramatically
that could affect a lot of Agriculture
and make it really hard to imagine that
you could feed India well there there
are these kinds of things where you can
imagine uh and then that this would be
very difficult to deal with and then if
you add all of it up you could possibly
get sort of a system collapse because
you know you just have too many problems
and is it possible to model those kinds
of things so what I understand is the
sea level rise itself
isn't the destructive thing it's it's
the fact that it creates migration
patterns and human tension battle over
resources and since start to get these
these human things human conflict so the
big negative impact won't be necessary
from the fact they have to move your
house it's the fact that once you move
your house that means something else
down the line and it's a secondary
tertiary effects that can have
potentially towards military conflict
can have this destabilize entire
economies all that kind of stuff because
of the migration power is it possible to
model those kinds of things so there are
people who looked at this and and
surprisingly again you know most people
will move within their country for a lot
of different reasons but you know mainly
language and and political structure you
have your money you have your
relationships there so it's not like
we're going to see these big moves you
know from uh from uh from the southern
Mexico and and Central America up to the
U.S or from Africa up to the EU that's
not predominantly because of climate
that's because there's a lot of you know
there's a lot of welfare opportunity uh
you can make your life much much better
you can become much more productive
octave if you move into a richer into a
richer country so so yes there are these
issues again uh you're asking me for
sort of what is it that could really
sort of break down the world I think the
the fundamental point is to recognize
that it's not like we haven't dealt with
huge challenges in the past and we've
dealt with them really well so just one
fun thing I I encourage everyone to just
look that up on on Wikipedia the rising
of Chicago
so in the uh in the 1850s Chicago is a
terribly uh uh uh dirty place and they
didn't have good sewers and so they
decided and we can't really make up all
my they decided to raise Chicago one to
two feet
and so they simply took one block at a
time they put like 50 000 Jacks
underneath a building and they would
just raise the building and then they'd
go on to the next building they race all
of Chicago one or two feet this is you
know almost 200 years ago of course we
will be able to deal with these things
I'm not saying it'd be it'll be fun or
that it'll be cheap of course we would
rather not have to deal with this but
we're a very inventive species and so
it's very unlikely that we'll not be
able to what about
covid pandemic just said hold my beer
uh the response of human civilization to
the covert pandemic
seems to have not
they didn't find the carjacks yeah she
seems to have not been as effective as I
would have hoped uh for uh as a human
that believes in the in the basic
competence of leadership and all that
kind of stuff it seems like given the
the code pandemic luckily did not turn
out to be a pandemic that's that would
eradicate most of the human species
which is something you always have to
consider and worry about that I would
have hoped we would have less economic
impact and we would respond more
effectively and
um in terms of policy in terms of
socially medically all that kind of
stuff so if the if the cover pandemic
brought the world to its knees then what
does
a sea level rise so I think there's a
different kind of thing that happened in
in the in the covet so politicians and a
lot of politicians I think made
certainly sub-optimal decisions but I
also find the fact that we actually
managed to get a vaccine in a year uh we
should not be uh you know sort of
unaware of the fact that yes we did a
lot of stupid stuff and a lot of people
were really really annoyed but
fundamentally we fixed this uh we could
have done it better and pretty I mean I
I uh rode through uh the covet pandemic
in southern Sweden uh so uh and uh yes
we we can have that whole conversation
it was certainly a much easier to live
there than than many other places but
the fundamental point was we actually
fixed it so yes we'll do and we'll do
that with climate we'll make a lot of
bad decisions and we'll waste a lot of
money like we do with all other problems
but it's are we going to fix this yeah
can you add on to that uncomfortable
discussion of what's the worst thing
that could possibly happen I'm not
worried about the sea level rise
component certainly not nearly as much
as the Heat and disruption of
Agriculture patterns and water supplies
and a lot of it relates to
again path dependency and history
farmers are the heroes of humanity all
through history because they're
incredibly adaptable
if you give them access to resources uh
in some cases it's just crop insurance
which is really basically still
impossible to get in big chunks of
Africa to get you through those hard
spots but but the heat issue is the one
that's most this most base basic element
related to global warming from CO2
buildup is uh hotter heat waves there's
still some lack of evidence of
the intensification but the duration and
and that's really matters for heat is
how many days
seems to be very powerfully linked to
global warming and uh so how many people
die as a result of that is important so
we're talking about
maybe you can also educate me what's the
average projection for the next
100 years as the temperature rises at
two two degrees Celsius well yeah
although this gets us into the modeling
realm um you're you're assuming you have
to assume different emissions
possibilities
you have to assume we still don't know
the basic physics like how many clouds
form
in a warming climate and how that
relates to limiting warming there are
aspects of the warming the fundamental
warming question there's still deeply
uncertain but the debate is like two
three or four Celsius it's in that rate
but the thing is
all of those are bad for this is an
educational question sure it uh doesn't
seem like that much from a weather
perspective if you just turn up the AC
and so on in your own personal home uh
but it is from a Global Perspective a
huge impact on agriculture well yeah and
and getting back to sea level and
Glaciers the the melting point of ice is
a is a number yeah and so if you pass
that number things change start to
change what became known about
Antarctica and Greenland more is that
it's ocean temperature
the the sea water in and around and
under these ice sheets because it kind
of gets under parts of Antarctica is
what's driving the Dynamics that could
lead to more abrupt change more than air
temperature glaciers these big ice
sheets live or die based on how much
snow falls and how much ice leaves every
year and
I was up on the Greenland ice sheet
2004.
and written about it forever since then
you know it's it's the same amount of
water that's in the Gulf of Mexico as if
you know God or some great force came
down and Flash flows the Gulf of Mexico
and plunked it up on land that's that's
the ice sheet it's a lot of water that's
23 feet if sea level rise if you but
we're not going to melt at all and the
pace at which that
erosion begins
and becomes sort of a runaway train
is still
not well understood
that changed from like a manageable
level of sea level rise from these ice
sheets to something that becomes truly
Unstoppable or that has these
discontinuities where you get a lot more
of a sudden isn't to me it's in the
realm of
what I've taken a calling known
unknowables like don't count on another
ipcc report magically including science
that says aha now we know it's going to
be five feet by 2100 because learning
there's a lot of negative learning in
science this may be true in your body of
science too
um there's a guy named Jeremy bassis
b-a-s-s-i-s
who wrote a paper about the this West
antic the the idea that you could get
this sudden cliff
breakdown of these ice shelves around
Antarctica leading to Rapid sea level
rise he did more modeling in physics and
it turns out that you end up with it's a
much more Progressive and self-limiting
phenomenon
but those papers don't get any attention
in the media because they're not scary
they're not scary and they're sort of
after the fact you know just this past
year there's been this cycle around uh
collapse the word collapse
and Antarctic Antarctic Ice um it
started uh actually several years ago
with the idea that this the West
Antarctic ice sheet is particularly
vulnerable
and some paper everyone's the science
Community like the birds we were talking
about flux to it and some high profile
papers are written
and then a deeper inquiry reveals that
you know it's more complicated than that
and we the journalists the media pundits
don't pay attention to that stuff
so and actually
which is why I've started to develop
kind of a dictionary like I call it
watch words like words to if you're out
there
you're you know you're just a public per
your person you want to know what's
really going on you hear these words
like collapse
in the context of ice what do you do
with that and so I've created
conversations around these words
geologists and Ice scientists use the
word collapse they're talking about a
centuries-long process
they're not talking about the World
Trade Center and
scientists would do well to be more
careful with words like that unless your
focus is what we're saying earlier
your idea that alarming people will spur
them to act then you use that word
carelessly uh can I just follow up on
the on the other point that you said you
know two three four degrees you know
that doesn't sound like much I can just
crank up the air conditioning I think
that sort of touches on a really really
important point that for most rich
people
much of climate change is not really
going to be all that impactful it still
will have an impact but fundamentally if
you're well off you can mitigate a lot
of these impacts and as a young
scientist at Carnegie Mellon Destiny
knock
she just was the lead author on a study
um
what poor and prosperous households do
in a heat wave when they have access to
air conditioning in a poor household
you wait they found through science
they delay turning on the air
conditioner four to seven degrees more
of heating before they start to use the
air conditioner and that create adverse
outcomes if you have an estimatic in the
house an old person you're you're
endangering endangering their lives and
that's just a little tiny microscopic
fractal example
this powerful real phenomenon that
there's a divide in vulnerability and
it's not just based on where you live
this is families in like Pittsburgh
we're not talking about you know
Botswana and
so that that divide and capacity to deal
with environmental stress is something
you can really work on and it gets
hidden
in all this talk of climate crisis
people and and that that's one of the
important parts is is both to say look
if seven billion people sorry eight
billion people will now have all
experienced this even though for each
one of them it's manageable it's still a
big problem because it's you know eight
billion people living through this and
the second condition eight billion yes
and and then it's uh it's the it's the
point of getting to realize it's very
very much about how do you help the
world's poor and that's very much about
making it more affordable uh yeah
basically getting them out of poverty
and remember getting out of poverty
doesn't just mean that they can now
afford to air condition themselves but
they get better they get better
education they get better opportunities
they get you know better lives in so
many other ways and then at the end of
it it is it's not just about making sure
that we focus on this one problem but
it's recognizing that these families and
and have have lots of different issues
that they would like us to focus on
climb climate and heat waves just being
one of them so you know it's sort of
taking Progressive steps back and
realizing all right okay this is a
problem
not the end of the world and one tiny
little last example you mentioned
Jakarta at the beginning
it's really valuable to look around the
world at places that are sort of leading
indicator places
whether it's sea level rise or heat and
you could do that Jakarta is sinking
like a foot a year literally a foot a
year it's some insane number
from withdrawing groundwater from gas
withdrawal from it's a Delta you know
it's sediment it's built on sediment I
wrote a piece of Ages ago the New York
Times calling it delta blues you know
I'm a musicians and and Jakarta so what
are they doing they're moving they're
moving the capital to uh another uh area
and so that says to me
there's a lot of plasticity too it's
it's a city that's going through this
that rate of sea level
of their relationship with the sea level
through syncing is way faster than
what's happening with global warming so
look there look to those kinds of places
and you can start to build a Tokyo had
the same thing in the 1930s so we're
also withdrawing a lot of water way too
fast uh and and so you know one of the
obvious things is maybe you should stop
withdrawing water so fast you know and
and again we seem to almost be intent on
finding the most politically correct way
to fix a problem or you know the most
the thing that sort of gets the most
clicks instead of the thing that
actually works the best uh so a lot of
these things are really you know not
rocket science Solutions we'll we'll get
there let me add one more on on top of
the pile of the worst case analysis so
what people talk about which is
hurricanes and earthquakes does is there
a connection that's well understood
between climate change
and uh the increased frequency and
intensity of hurricanes and earthquakes
I've dug in on both a lot the earthquake
connection to climate change I'm not
worried about compared to just the
earthquake risk that we live with in
many parts of the world already the
Himalayas
even with that earthquake in 2015 and
Kathmandu
that whole range is overdue for major
earthquakes and what has happened in the
last 50 years since they last had big
earthquakes huge development big cities
a lot of informal construction like the
stuff I wrote about in Istanbul where
the family builds another layer and
another they put a floor on every time
someone gets married has a kid you put
another flooring house and unfortunately
that's you know
the what was the term this Turkish um
engineer
um Rubble in waiting
it's rubble and waiting and we're
looking at it you know videotaping it
and there are people playing there so I
don't worry about the earthquake
connection to climate change
the Hurricanes I've written about for
decades um
and the most Illuminating body of
science
that I've dug in on literally
related hurricanes is this field that's
emerged it gets a tiny bit of money
compared to like climate modeling it's
called paleo tempestology
it's like paleontology you know they
look for evidence of past hurricanes
long coasts that we care about
and they dig down into the lagoons
behind like the barrier beaches along
Florida or the Carolinas or in Puerto
Rico
and what you have is a history book of
past hurricanes so there's this mud mud
mud mud mud mud mud mud made of
accumulating over centuries and then
there's a layer of sand
and seashells and what that indicates is
that there was a great storm that came
across the beach pushed a lot of
sediment into the mud and then there's
and when you look at that work I first
wrote about this in 2001 in the times in
a long story and then
kept track of these Intrepid scientists
putting these core tubes down and it
shows you we're in a landscape where big
bad hurricanes are
not they're the norm but
something that's rare and big is
something that's extreme when you think
about the word extreme right it means
it's at the end of the spectrum of
what's possible
they're rare
rare in human time scales
um hurricane Michael four years ago
devastated category five came ashore in
the panhandle of Florida
leveled that much photographed Town
Mexico Beach
and um people are actually the
Tallahassee National Weather Service
said unprecedented
hurricane
and the damage was unprecedented because
there hadn't been a community there
before
but the hurricane was not unprecedented
at all if you look at the history and
this is published research it's just
that no one bothers to
we have this blind spot for um
the longer time scale you need to
examine if you're thinking about big bad
things that are rare and hurricanes are
still rare I was recently covering Fort
Myers the awful devastation
there's a young climate scientist at
Florida Gulf Coast University Joe Muller
who's done that paleo tempestology work
there right in Fort Myers she lives
there and she was away in London at a
meeting of reinsurance companies that
reinsured all the world's big bad risks
when this was happening but she has done
the work that shows uh it's a
Thousand-Year record of past hurricanes
and it's super sobering
when you consider how fast people have
moved into
Florida and built vulnerably in an area
that hurricanes will Hammer that it part
of the fundamental dynamics of the Gulf
of Mexico and these storms come off of
Africa
it's a place where they would come now
the question of global warming impact is
subtle there are aspects of hurricanes
that haven't changed there's aspects
like rainfall that seem pretty
powerfully linked to global warming
of warmer atmosphere holds more moisture
so when you have a big disturbance like
a the heat engine of a hurricane comes
through it you get more rain
does rapid intensification you know how
quickly these storms
jump from like you know category one to
five or four before they hit
isn't is a new area of science so I
think it's still early days and knowing
because no one was looking for that
there were no data back 300 years ago
you know when these big bad previous
hurricanes came to know whether they
were rapidly intensified or not so I as
a journalist I try to
you know keep track of what we don't
know not to be too constrained and
think about new science as being
you know robust and let's it's
considering and actually actively
stating
we don't really know what's going on
with earlier Harkins
and all of that is swamped ultimately
literally
by the vulnerability building
vulnerability in these areas you know if
there's a marginal change in a storm
and you've quadrupled or sex tupled
how much stuff and how many people are
in the way
and if some of those people are poor and
vulnerable
or elderly and can't swim
you're creating a landscape of
Destruction so a lot of the human
suffering that has to do with storms is
about where and how you build
versus the frequency and the intensity
of storms still you didn't quite answer
okay the question
uh you know when I'm having a beer with
people at a bar and they say hey why are
you having a beer we're all going to die
because of climate change usually what
they bring up
uh and I'm just trying to add some
leaves no this is good usually what they
bring up is you know the hurricanes and
the most recent hurricanes saying like
this they're getting crazy hurricanes
all the time they're getting more
intense more frequent and so on as is
there I'm sure there's incredible signs
going on trying to look at this uh is
there is it possible is there evidence
and is it possible to have evidence that
there's a connection
between what would we can call Global
Warming and the increased frequency and
intensity of Storms and is okay no thank
you
if you're out of intensity you know it's
it's let me just get into this a tiny
bit more I mean hurricanes
I grew up with them in Rhode Island in
the new and you know in my youth and
there was a very active period of
hurricanes in New England
in the 50s and 60s 70s
and then in the North Atlantic generally
was very very active the number 50 when
I was a kid and
the Dynamics of them forming off of
Africa and coming here circling up the
coast was just prime time
then there was like what Kerry Emanuel
who's the most experienced hurricane
climate scientist around at MIT
I he was in he's in this story he's in
he's in my 1988 article
he and colleagues have found and others
that
there's what they call the hurricane
drought from like the 70s through about
1994. in the Atlantic specifically the
Atlantic basin
and there's been a lot of questions
about that people thought it was ocean
circulation something about the currents
do these multi-decatal
variabilities in the oceans right
and then now it looks robustly I can't
find a climate scientist who disagrees
that the thing that caused the drought
was pollution smog
and significantly in Europe and you
think well how did smog in Europe relate
to hurricanes
crossing the Atlantic and getting to
the United States it's because of the
smog was changing the behavior of the
Sahara Desert which is just south of
Europe
and and the Sarah Harrah does it kills
hurricanes sand and dust coming off the
Sahara you can see this every year and
when that's active
it stifles these big storms at the point
right in their Nursery they all form
there's this area for hurricanes off of
West Africa that's like the nursery Zone
and so if you're stifling those
hurricanes because of pollution in in
Europe before the Clean Air acts kind of
you know cleanups and then that goes
away
none of that has anything to do with
global warming it's another kind of
forcing in the climate system a local
one that created a regional dynamic that
created a quiet period when all these
friends in the bar
we're maybe they maybe they were born
you know in the 90s or whatever they
grew up in an area of like you know
where no hurricanes weren't a big deal
um
and now we have an end to that drought
because we cleaned up the air pollution
the sooty kind of air pollution sulfury
and
anyone who says global warming global
warming without saying well that's in
there too is kind of missing
that and when you look globally you know
there's still I think was it 90 or so
hurricanes a year to Cyclones hurricanes
typhoons globally that hasn't changed
the number of these tropical storms that
reach that ferocity has not changed it's
just a fundamental Dynamic of and and by
the way on the long time scale the
models
still indicate as you warm the planet
and remember the Arctic worms quicker
this is something people probably
understand
you're actually evening out the
imbalance between the Heat of the
Equator
and the cold that the in the northern
part of the hemisphere
and that calms the whole system down so
there could be fewer hurricanes later in
the century because of global warming
and for me you know that's a lot of
information but if I'm in a bar
I start with what what do you care about
you care about safety you care about
security you care about
having everybody safe not just you you
get in your car and you can evacuate
what about the old person
you know or the poor family
who can't do that they're not going to
leave their house what are we doing to
limit vulnerability now that I Circle
back to that over and over again I have
like a pocket card I have this
graphic card I created about risk and
like what we really care about is
climate risk like who's at risk what's
driving the risk how do you reduce that
it's car you can almost pull it out in a
bar I should print them you should do
that it's like a risk risk is
risk is the hazard like you know the
hazard is
is a storm
times exposure how many people how much
stuff
factoring in
um vulnerability or resilience
and
climate change is changing the hazard
for some things not for tornadoes not
for not for everything
exposure is this expanding Bullseye this
is another hashtag expanding bullseye
get out there and look for that and
you'll see I I've pushing these two
geographers who do this for every Hazard
wildfire
earthquake flood Coastal storm and we're
building an expanding Bullseye in an
area and Nature's throwing darts some of
the darts are getting bigger because of
global warming some of the darts we
don't know
what do you do like what do you do well
you get out of the way right you don't
want to be on the dartboard and that it
just simplifies the whole formula
to me it was it's kind of a
transformational
uh potential
to go into a bar maybe I should print
these things 100 and I should go ahead
with you more often they should be
coasters and bars because that was
fascinating about Smog and I mean it's
just it's nice to be reminded about how
complicated and fascinating the weather
system is let me try to answer the the
the questions slightly quicker before
your your friends have drunk too much uh
but never enough
or not enough
um so if you look at the amount of uh of
uh the number of hurricanes as uh as
Andy brightly pointed out
um it doesn't look like it's changing so
we see more because we have now much
better detection systems with satellites
but if you look since uh
1980 when we have good satellite
coverage for instance last year
was the year that had the lowest number
of hurricanes in the world
and you know you're sort of like that's
that's odd because it's probably the
year where I heard the most about
hurricanes and what that tells you is
that just because you hear a lot about
hurricanes doesn't actually mean that
there is a lot of hurricanes you can't
just go that way if if you remember uh
in the 1990s and 2000s uh there was an
enormous amount of talk about how
violence uh how crime was getting worse
in the U.S while all the objective
indicators showed that it was going down
but there's sufficient amount of
violence that you can fill every radio
and TV show with a new crime and so if
you get more and more TV shows that talk
about crime actually most people end up
thinking that there's more crime while
the real numbers going down so the
reality here is
yes climate change will probably affect
hurricanes in the sense that they'll be
the same number or slightly fewer as
Andy was mentioning but they will likely
be somewhat stronger this seems to be
the the best outcome we're not sure but
this seems to be the the outcome and
it's important to remember stronger is
worse than fewer is better
so overall
climate will make the world a little bit
worse so that's that's the that's the
sort of bottom line but and that's the
real issue here all the other things the
fact that people are much more
vulnerable is is just vastly outweigh
this which is why if you look at the
impact of hurricanes and impact of
pretty much everything is typically
going down if you look for instance in
percent of GDP you have to look at
percent of GDP because if you have twice
as many houses obviously you know the
same kind of impact will have twice the
the impact or if they're twice as worth
twice as much if you do that in percent
of GDP and even the UN says that's how
you should measure it's going down why
is that it's because we're becoming more
resilient you know just simply we you
know if you look at what happens with
when hurricanes come in we have much
better prediction in the long run that
means you now know you know two or three
days out that there's a big hurricane
that's likely to come here what does
that mean all the things that can be
moved so you know typically all All
Buses old trucks everything that's not
bolted down will leave this area and so
you'll get less damage from that you
will have more people knowing oh this is
going to be a big one they move to their
relative somewhere else so you'll have
fewer people being vulnerable there's if
people are responsive and aware yeah
yeah you can do this so the outcome and
this is important for the whole
conversation the outcome is that we're
actually becoming less vulnerable and
the damages are becoming smaller not
bigger but had they not been global
warming it would probably have gone down
even faster so we would have become even
better off quicker had there been no
global warming but this is a crucial
difference and this is what I find
really hard to communicate climate
change is not this oh my God everything
is going off the off the off the charts
and we're all going to be doomed kind of
thing climate change is a thing that
means we're going to get better slightly
slower and that's a very very different
kind of attitude it's one of the many
problems rather than this is the end of
all of us and by the way if you look at
what's happening in the world
um the data also show that in rich
places in four places we still are
moving into zones of Hazard faster than
climate is changing Beth Tillman
was at Columbia and she moved to Arizona
she and colleagues at this outfit called
Cloud to Street did an amazing study
showing this is a year or so ago I wrote
about showing
again we're moving into zones of Hazard
which it applies to me
um
just what Bjorn was saying that we
wouldn't be people wouldn't be doing
that if they thought that was going to
lead to Devastation and this is today
we're doing this now and it's flood
flood zones Wildfire zones
so that means there's these things to do
you there's so much plasticity in the
human behavior and how we build and
where we build you can make a big big
change in the outcomes I mean one of the
things to remember is you know people
move to where hurricanes hit because
when they're not there it's a really
beautiful place to be yeah yeah right so
so in in many ways we we make the
trade-offs and say look I'm I'm happy to
live you know have an ocean view and
then maybe a hurricane is going to hit
and of course it becomes a lot easier
than when the federal government is
actually subsidizing your risk by saying
we'll insure you really cheaply uh and
that's one of the things that we should
stop doing you know we should actually
tell people look if you want to live
where hurricanes sit maybe you should be
more careful yeah by the way what I was
saying about
um past storms the Paleo tempestology
past fires it's the same thing we've
suppressed fire in the United States for
100 years through much of the west
through uh wanting to save the forests
you know the whole Smokey the Bear thing
don't stop when these are Landscapes
that were that evolved to burn
and what happened in the last hundred
years a lot of people love the West we
love we love these environments we love
to live with the trees the Boulder
County area the explosive development in
zones of implicit hazard
leads to Big Bad outcomes when
conditions align and climate change is
worsening some of those conditions and
sometimes it's really counter-intuitive
a wet season builds more grass
dry season comes along parches the grass
then comes a human ignition it's almost
always human ignitions and then you have
this disaster where a thousand homes
burn in Boulder County and it's like
there's so many elements there that can
be worked on that give me confidence
that we can
change these outcomes you can natural
disasters are not natural disasters are
designed really as some people say can I
take a quick aside and ask about
terminology of climate change and global
warming so you use it interchangeably it
is an aside but it's one that's worthy
of taking do those carry different
meanings and has that meaning changed
over the years
uh between those two terms are they
really equivalent well some people say
there was this industry or
propagandistic shift from
let's see what was that which came first
oh no they're going to climate change
now like it's a new thing which is crazy
it's ridiculous
the intergovernmental panel on climate
change
in 1988 wasn't the intergovernmental
panel on global warming it was on
climate change
so these these terms have been there
they've been sort of evolving when I
wrote this cover story it was the
greenhouse effect
so green and that's fallen out of favor
greenhouse effect is not often talked
about well it's really that's that's the
physical effect that's holding in the
heat but see the it's not a good there's
terms that mean stuff and there's terms
that are actually used in public
discourse to designate what you're a
whole
umbrella of opinions you have and I
guess if somebody me who doesn't pay
attention uh to this carefully
you have to use terms carefully sure
because people will you know a noob that
rolls into the topic will often use
terms to mean exactly what they mean
like literally but they actually have
political implications and all that kind
of stuff so I guess I'm asking is there
like uh is is there uh are you signaling
something by using global warming versus
climate change or people have calmed
down in terms of the use of these no no
but the guardian newspapers made it
worse now they have their style book you
know every newspaper has a they they
prescribe they don't want their
reporters to use any of those terms
anymore they call it climate crisis
climate emergency oh no oh yeah Global
heating it's literally in their rule
book Global heating that sounds more
intense and that was the point well I
wrote about the global Heating
thing more than a decade ago that that's
been around but you know so they're
they're doing the um what was the movie
where the
the comedy the rock and roll comedy
where he sets his his loving yeah yeah
his amplifier goes to 11. you know the
idea that you turned up the rhetorical
volume and that's going to change
people's is ridiculous so so for me I
mean uh I use global warming and climate
change uh uh interchangeably and I think
it's it's fair there's you know there's
some technical ways that you can
differentiate them uh but the reality is
global warming is probably a better way
to describe a lot of it because this is
really what is the main Drive of what we
worry about uh climate change seems a
little diffuse but you know it's
convenient to when you talk about
climate all the time that you can call
both of them but I think the climate
crisis and the climate catastrophe is
really sort of this is the amping up uh
of of a catastrophe and again as we've
talked about before uh if it really were
true we should tell people uh but if
it's not true and I think there's a lot
of reasons why this is not a you know a
climate catastrophe this is a problem uh
we're actually doing everyone a
disservice because we we end up making
people so worried that they say we got
to fix this in 12 years or whatever the
number is and also that it makes it
almost impossible to have a conversation
of you know well you know maybe we
should be focusing on vulnerability
first and it a lot of people and I think
a lot of well-meaning uh and
well-intentioned people feel that it's
almost sacrilegious to do you know to
say it's a it's about uh vulnerability
because you're taking away you the guilt
of climate change you're taking away our
focus on on on dealing with climate
change whereas I think we would say no
it's about stuff that actually works and
you know doing that first right and and
by making it about
carbon dioxide you're impliciting
implicitly making it about fossil fuels
which implicitly gives you another great
narrative good guy bad guy
it's these big companies where's the
source of alarmism
so is it the ipcc the intergovernmental
panel on climate change like what
there's a chain here is there somebody
to blame along the chain or is this some
kind of weird complex as to where
everybody encourages each other can you
point to one place is it the media is it
the scientist I think the U.N climate
panel is fundamentally a really good uh
uh uh climate research group that you
can have some quipples with the way that
they sort of summarize it and
politically coordinated documents and
stuff but you know fundamentally I think
they do a good job of of putting
together all the research this also
means it's incredibly boring to read
which is why virtually Nobody Does it
I'm I'm sure you have but I'm pretty
sure a lot of climate journalists have
never sort of looked past the uh at
least the uh the summary for policy
climate panel they do like us they do
predictions as well no well they they
pull together all the stuff that people
have published in the period literature
and then try to summarize it and
basically tell you so what's up and down
with climate change they do that in four
four large volumes every four to five
six seven years or something uh and um
and yes it's it's you know I think it's
the gold-plated version of what we know
uh there tends to be a lot of
um uh well this is what they say
actually they say so many different
places with so many different people
that it's not quite clear exactly what
they're saying often you know you can
sort of find contradictions between one
volume with one set of authors and
another but yeah look I I think this is
fundamentally the right way that we know
about climate but then it gets
translated into how do you how do you
know about this when most people don't
read these 4 000 Pages you read a news
story in a newspaper and that new story
will be very very heavily slanted
towards you know if if you say so sea
levels could rise somewhere between one
and three foot what do you hear yeah you
obviously hear the three foot three foot
is just you know more fun more scary
more interesting than one foot uh and
and it's that way with all of these you
know so what what's the prediction for
for temperature arises it's uh somewhere
from not very scary to pretty damn scary
uh and again you hear the pretty damn
scary all the time uh and and then
there's there's obviously always
researchers who are saying well but
actually it could be a little more scary
than that and then they're likewise
researchers who say well you know it's
probably not going to be as scary as
that and most of the journalists will
you know interview do you really put the
blame fundamentally on the on the
journalists on the media setup look
media is simply trying to get clicks or
sell newspapers and if if you were just
going to say this is not a big issue it
just doesn't sell anything but I think
you're probably much better able to
address this well no I
folks can Google for my name revkin and
the words front page thought
in The Newsroom
every afternoon now we have a 24 7 News
cycle so it's different but
back in the day of the New York Times
when it was a flourishing print
institution every afternoon there was a
front page meeting and the big Pupa
editors to go in there and the desk
editors come in with their pitches for
the day
and my friend Corey Dean who is the
science editor for chunk of my time
uh you know I remember having a
conversation with her about some new
study of I think it was Greenland the
ice sheet and I laid it out for her and
she said where's the front page thought
in that
so we're all set up to look for the
that's scary but and the News
environment has gotten so much worse
than than 10 or 20 years ago at least
you had filters and
limited number of outlets and there was
some sense you could track what's good
or bad there's lots of problems with
that system too but now you have an
information Buffet
so if you're if you want to be alarmed
or you want to be con
stay in the tribe of those who think
this is utter bull you can find your
flow
and that that has led
but getting back to this specific
question I think the 2018 ipcc report
which was a special report commissioned
to learn about the difference between
1.5 degrees of warming and two which
sounds so weird and technocratic and
complicated that's the one that
generated the whole meme about eight
years left 12 years
and that's the one this was the uh the
idea that there's a point we're gonna if
we don't
cut emissions in half by whatever it was
2015. we're doomed that emerged from
that specific report and it wasn't
something that was in the report it was
in the spin around the report and that's
what captivated Greta appropriately as a
young person going you know and with her
unique vantage point and stuff and that
report I still need to dig in and write
something deeper about
what happened with that particular
Dynamics created this recent burst of
resumed rhetoric that that I think
you're focusing on and it's all in the
external interpretations which
journalism laps up
because we're looking for the front page
thought but it's not just the
journalists it's the whole system uh
ngos environmental groups if you're if
in developing country uh well-meaning
leaders in developing countries
because of the structure of this treaty
that goes back to 1992 that's the Paris
agreement is part of
they are now um
really looking for a way to portray this
as a CO2 problem not a vulnerability
well there's a vulnerability aspect but
like in Pakistan they're they're um
climate Minister which they didn't even
have a climate Minister five years ago
is blaming everything that happened in
Pakistan on carbon dioxide warming the
climate creatings when a lot of what was
going on was also on the ground and you
can blame colonialism Pakistan's history
all kinds of things
but but under the treaty you want it to
be about CO2 because that puts the onus
on rich countries you're not paying us
where's our money and they're right you
know in the context of what everyone
agreed to there was supposed to be 100
billion dollars a year
from rich countries to poor countries
starting in 2020 it didn't happen it's
like basically
some money is Flowing but it's not
really made up of money yeah and so so
that whole dynamic they latch onto the
climate science and they they you know
so they're there and they're very handy
quotable people
and you have a Justice angle you have
bad guys and good guys
which fits all these narrative threads
that come together into this information
storm we're still living with and and
then of course it's not Pakistan's fault
either right I mean it also actually
almost all leaders now say it's because
of climate because then it's not you
know we didn't do anything wrong uh in
Germany for instance uh when we had that
flood last year it's it's not impossible
that the climate had a part in in that
but it's very very clear that the main
reason why so many people died in
Germany and Belgium was because the
Alarm Systems didn't work and this was
plainly the local leaders in Germany now
if I'm stuck here and basically have
caused the you know the death of 200
people would I rather say yeah that's on
me or what I climate it's just such an
easy scapegoat I don't want to place it
all in the journalists I think because
there's a lot of if I were to think
about what did you call it front page
thought there's a lot of really
um
narratives that uh result in destruction
of the human species so nuclear war
pandemics all that kind of stuff it
seems that climate is a sticky one so
the fact that it's sticky means there's
other interests at play like you guys
are talking about in terms of politics
all that kind of stuff so it's not just
a journalists I feel like journalists
will try anything for the front page but
it won't you won't stick unless there is
bigger interest to play for which these
narratives are useful so journalists
will just throw stuff out there and see
if it gets clicks and sure
um it all it's it's like a first Spark
maybe uh it's maybe a tiny Catalyst of
the initial stuffs but it has to be
picked up by the politicians by interest
groups and all that kind of stuff let me
ask you if you want about the um
first part of the subtitle how climate
change Panic costs us trillions
how does climate change depending cost
us trillions so we're basically deciding
to make policies that'll have fairly
little impact even in 50 or 100 years
that literally cost trillions of dollars
so you know give you two examples so uh
the European Union is trying to go to
Net Zero so our attempt to go halfway
there by 2030 uh will cost about a
trillion dollars a year uh and yet the
net impact will be almost unmeasurable
by the end of the century why is that
that's because the EU and the rich
countries is a fairly small part of the
emissions that are going to come out in
the 21st century now we used to be a big
part of it as that's mainly because
nobody else you know it was just the US
and and Europe and a few others have put
out CO2 in the in the 20th century so we
used to be big
but in the 21st century will be a small
bit player and so we're basically
spending a lot of money and remember a
trillion dollars is a lot of money that
could have been spent on a lot of things
that could have made you know Humanity
better on something that will only make
us a tiny bit better now it will do some
good
but you know the reasonable estimates is
if you do a cost benefit analysis and
again you know technically it's really
really complicated but the basic idea is
very very simple you just simply say
what are all the costs on one side and
what are all the benefits so the costs
are mainly that we have to live with
more expensive energy you have to forego
some opportunities you have to have you
know more complicated services that kind
of thing the benefit is that you cut
carbon emissions and that eventually
means that you'll have less climate
damage you'll have lower temperature
rises and so on if you try to weigh up
all those it's reasonable to assume that
the EU policies will deliver for every
dollar you spend it'll deliver less than
a dollar probably about 30 cents back on
the dollar which is a really bad way to
spend dollars because there's lots of
lots of other things out in the world
where you could do you know multiple you
know so for instance if you think about
tuberculosis or uh education of small
kids or nutrition for small kids and
that those kinds of things every dollar
you spend will do like 30 to 100 worth
of good so they're much much better
places where you could spend this money
likewise uh the us is thinking of going
Net Zero by 20 50. it's not actually
going to happen but it's sort of a thing
that everybody talks about Biden is
talking a lot about it if you look at
the models that indicate how how much
will that cost it's not impossible that
this will cost somewhere between two and
four trillion dollars per year by
mid-century and remember if the US went
carbon neutral today
by the end of the century that would
reduce temperatures by about 0.3 degree
Fahrenheit
so you would just be able to measure it
probably wouldn't in real life but you
know if you'd just be able to measure it
again this is not saying that there's
not some good coming out of it but
you're basically spending an enormous
amount of money on fairly small benefits
so that's that's my main point yeah this
reminds me of what we were saying
earlier about um
the things that models don't integrate
and the things that cost benefit leave
out because you really can't go there
one of the issues facing the world right
now is the reality that we're reminded
of that energy availability is a
geopolitical
destabilizer if you have uneven access
to energy
and you have Vladimir Putin coming into
office or something else happening
that disrupts that system you're you're
vastly increasing poverty you this is
playing out across the world fertilizer
process fertilizer comes from gas
um natural gas
um if you can Envision a world later in
the century where we're no longer
beholden on this material in the ground
at least fossil fuels you know Cobalt
and lithium for batteries
that's pretty cool you know because
you're taking away geopolitical
instability and
you don't but that's not factored in
right that's like way outside of what
you'd factor in but it does feel like to
me you know if I was going to make the
case for
you can choose your trillions whatever
that investing big
isn't for these marginal things it's for
looking at the big picture of Worlds of
abundant energy that doesn't come from
from a black rock or a gooey liquid that
when you burn it creates but isn't that
what the proposals are is investing in
different kinds of energy renewable
energy so what is but I don't think most
people are making that case what's in
the in the trillion and the T costs
what's in corporate what are the big
costs there so the big cost is that you
have slightly lower productivity gains
so basically again you know this is sort
of the opposite of what we just talked
about by climate change we're we're
going to get richer and richer in the
world this is all models also the UN
this is really the only way that you can
get big climate changes because
everybody gets a lot richer so also the
developing world gets a lot richer so
we're likely to get richer but one of
the things that drive uh wealth
production is the fact that we have
ample and cheap and available energy if
you make that slightly harder which is
what you do with climate legislation
because you're basically telling people
people you have to use a source of
energy that you'd rather not have used
had because if people wanted to do it
we'd already solved the problem so
you're basically tell them you've got to
use this wind turbine instead of this uh
natural gas plant or you know that kind
of thing it makes it's it's not that you
suddenly become poor or anything it
simply makes production slightly harder
what do you do when when the wind is not
blowing kind of thing and of course we
have lots of ways to somewhat mitigate
that but it's a little more costly a
little more complicated a little less
convenient and that means you grow a
little less that's the main problem with
with these policies that it simply makes
you somewhat less well-off the energy
becomes more inefficient yes so let me
challenge you here
uh try to steal man some critics so you
have critics
uh
uh I would love you to take it seriously
and sort of consider this criticism and
try to steal me in their their case uh
there's a bunch uh I could mention uh
this this list of criticisms from Bob
ward in London School of Economics I
don't know if you're familiar with him
but just on this point in terms of one
of the big cause being an energy
he criticizes your recent book in saying
you consider the 143 billion in annual
support for renewable energy but ignore
the 300 billion in fossil fuel subsidies
so a lot of the criticism has to do
with well you're cherry picking the
models which the models are always
cherry picking and you anyway so um but
you know you want to take those
seriously so uh he cleansed it you
ignore
you're not uh fully modeling the costs
the the trade-off here how expensive is
the renewable energy and how expensive
is the fossil fuel can you still manage
case sure so uh two things uh uh the
first the quote it's absolutely true
that the world spends a large a chunk of
money on fossil fuels and that's just
stupid and we should stop doing it we
should also recognize that this is not
rich countries this is not the countries
where we're talking about climate change
this is poor countries this is Saudi
Arabia uh no that's actually not a
terribly poor country uh it's China it's
Indonesia it's uh uh Russia uh it's
places where you're basically paying off
your population just like that you
subsidized bread you make sure that they
don't rebel by making cheap uh fuels
available that's dumb but it's not like
they you know they don't know what
they're doing they're mostly doing this
for things that have nothing to do with
climate so I totally agree we should get
rid of it it's hard to do Indonesia is
actually somewhat uh managed to to get
rid of it because remember if you spend
a lot of money on fossil fuel subsidies
you're basically subsidizing the rich
because you know poor people don't have
a car it's the rich people who can now
buy you know a very cheap gasoline
that's you know that's unjust as well so
it's dumb in so many different ways I
would never argue that you shouldn't
done I've plenty of time said we should
stop that but we should also recognize
these are mostly regimes that are not
going to be taken over either by my
argument or Bob Wards or anyone else's
they're doing this for totally different
reasons now on the model side
there is virtually no model that don't
show economic model that don't show this
has a cost and that's the fundamental
point is that the you know this is sort
of a basic point from from economics the
system is already working most
effectively because if it wasn't you
know you could actually make money
changing over so if you want to have a
change outside of what the system is
already doing it's because you're saying
you have to do something that you rather
not want to do namely use an energy
source that is less convenient or less
cost effective and so on and that will
incur a cost now there's a huge
discussion about just exactly how much
cost is that so there's definitely a
cost is the cost going to be one or five
trillion that's absolutely a discussion
about where do you take your models from
I try to do and and again this is not
possible everywhere I try to actually
take the average of all of the economic
models so there's a there's a group
called the Stanford energy modeling
Forum which tries to pull together all
these different groups that do the
modeling so some models a lot of this
cost actually comes down to uh uh the
fact that we don't quite know how much
more fossil fuels you're going to need
in the future and so if you're not gonna
if your projections are you're not going
to use that much the cost of reducing it
is going to be very small if you think
you're going to use a ton of extra
fossil fuels and you have to reduce that
the cost is going to be bigger so I
think that's just one of the variables
that's oh yeah yeah and there's many
many many more I think the the point
here is to say that if you take the
average of all the best model is a sort
of aggregated for instance at the
Stanford energy modeling form you're
pretty secure ground
and and uh so so again I I would argue
that uh Bob Ward yes I've had a lot of
run-ins with Bob board uh uh and and he
has a very different uh set of views on
on things uh but but I I just don't
think he's right in saying that I'm
cherry picking well yes and I mean he
also has similar criticism about the
estimate of the EU cost of climate
action uh based on the knob 2013 model
But ultimately these criticism have to
do is like what are the sources for the
different models and and just very
briefly I mean I'm I'm laying it out
very transparently where I get these
models of where I get these estimates
from in the book I've really tried to
document this and yes I mean look
there's nobody who sort of has all the
information and gets everything right in
all of these areas uh I I think most of
uh uh but Ward's uh argument is is not a
uh a good faith effort to uh to sort of
uh improve on on these estimates he's
he's right and saying some of these
estimates we only have a few estimates
and you know yeah I'd like to have more
of them I one thing I should mention is
that there is very little interest in
general and there's very little funding
in finding out how much do our climate
policies cost because that's you know
that's just inconvenient to everyone
yeah in in the whole game you know who
wants to know that that you know for
instance uh uh would would you want to
fund uh something that says that the
inflation reduction Act is not going to
be very effective of course you don't
want to do that right so so it's it
again it's a little bit the you know
flock of birds it will look some at
something else and and what I think is
that given that we're paying for at the
end this is you know this is public
money we're deciding we're going to
spend money here rather than there let's
at least you know look at what are the
best estimas out there I would love to
be have more estimates uh more estimates
is always better and just a quick
comment on the good faith part me as a
consumer looking for truth that's hard
to find who's good faith and not so it's
not only are you looking for
a sort of accurate information
you're also trying to infer about the
communicator of that information that's
very difficult it's uh you know you put
me on the on the podcast of course I'm
gonna say I'm a trustworthy guy but yeah
I mean but and we believe we're
trustworthy too but
um you know I've been reading for
various reasons but mostly because I've
been traveling to Ukraine and thinking
and just about the people's
um suffering through war I've been
reading a lot about World War II and and
Stalin and Hitler and you know from the
perspective of Hitler
uh he really believed he's doing good
for the world and he was
communicating from his perspective in
good faith
um he started to believe I think early
on his own propaganda so you're even
your understanding and perception of the
world completely shifted so it's it's
very very very difficult to understand
who to trust
um
and uh just because it's consensus in a
particular Community doesn't necessarily
mean it's a source of trust so it's a I
mean basically
I don't know how to operate in this
world except to have a humility and
constantly question your assumptions and
but not so much that you're completely
out in the ocean not knowing what is
true or not so it's this weird weird
world because I I ultimately bigger than
climate
my hope is to have institutions that can
be trusted
and that's been very much under attack
um in as as part of the climate debate
as part of the covid debate as part of
all these discussions and science to me
is one of the sources
of truth and the fact that that's under
question now is uh something that hurts
me on many levels uh deeply you said
something earlier as I took a note on
down here and I can't find it about
cooperation it was like collaborative
cooperation or something like that sure
what to me there was a point like in
after just dealing with all everything
you've been grappling with what if you
don't if you know you don't know how
this is going to work out what do you
work on
and I one morning I made a list of words
that kind of summarized
basically system properties that give
you confidence in a system trust or in
their transparency is one
as you were saying earlier
um
connectivity is another you know so
everyone's connected
so on the subsidy issue for example
they're young entrepreneurs in Nairobi
who are selling ingeniously using
nairobi's digital currency
uh propane the fuel that's in our
backyard barbecue grills
which comes out of gas Wells but it's a
separate fuel
in little increments that poor people
can use instead of charcoal
and LPG subsidies are helping them
get people off of charcoal which is a
horrific trade from The Source through
the Warlords in Somalia and elsewhere
who are getting the money to the
pollution in houses
so so having
be sure being sure when we're having
these big debates about who the World
Bank is going to give loans to and
drawing a simple line no more fossil
fuel subsidies
hurts a really good valuable
small scale but scalable
way to have people not die from cooking
smoke in their houses and and take down
for us so but that only is considered if
they're in the conversation so
connectivity full connectivity digital
access so so those entrepreneurs are in
the mix of people when they're thinking
about subsidies you're not just thinking
about big bad ex song you're thinking
about this little company in Nairobi
Pago Pago LPG I think is the name and
India the same thing so so you can list
those properties of systems
and the ipcc wasn't originally
transparent
when I started writing about it in 1988
and 1990 and now it's way more
transparent they have more public review
so it's even better than it was it's
like a really good example of a science
process of assessing the science
providing periodic output to the world
and iteratively improving the model
going forward because of critique
because because of you know scrutiny and
finding better ways for that to
interface with people so they have
information they can use from that big
thing and the media you know are not
doing a good job
um because of this front page thoughtism
um but we can all you know I work
partially in Academia Colombia on an
initial initiative partially in
communication Innovation like how can we
have an open landscape of access to
information that matters how can you
what can you do to Foster better
conversations so that words like
collapse aren't just thrown around like
emblems and so system properties give
you confidence I think and then you then
you don't have to like be flailing
around for Bjorn or Tom Tom Friedman or
uh Catherine hayho you can always right
now find your you're you're
your character to follow but I think
what would be better is if you actually
develop some skills to just have a basic
ability
to know how to cut to the chase
can I can I just follow up on that
because one of the things that I try to
do and and so my day job is actually
something else I work with I think thing
called The Copenhagen consensus uh where
we work with uh more than 300 of the
world's top economists and we work with
seven noble alerts in economics and and
the point there is really to talk about
where can you spend a dollar
and do the most good for the world
that's that's basically the the thing
that we try to do and and as as you
rightly point out look there are lots of
different estimates of what can you do
for instance on climate what can you do
on tuberculosis what can you do for uh
vulnerability in all kinds of different
different ways and and if these were all
sort of well you can spend a dollar here
and do 2.36 but you can spend it all
here and do 2.34 over here that I would
worry a lot but that's not how the world
works because we're terribly inefficient
so they're literally lots and lots of
amazing things you can do out there
there's a lot of little hanging fruit
and there's a lot of not terribly great
things that you can do and unfortunately
one of the things that I try to sort of
battle is that you know we get a lot of
things right that's why you know the
world is a lot better than what it used
to be uh but the things that are sort of
left left over are often you know the
boring things that happen to be
incredibly effective and the exciting
things that are often not that terribly
effective and and so I think one way to
look at this is basically to have people
do cost benefit across a wide range of
areas and we try to get a lot of
different economists to do this and they
come up with different numbers and
different models and different results
but if you sort of consistently get that
some things give you you know in tens or
maybe even hundreds of dollars back per
dollar remember this is not actually you
getting rich it's the world getting rich
it's the the world gets better worth a
hundred dollars for for every dollar you
spend and over here you can spend a
dollar and do somewhere between 30 cents
and maybe a couple dollars you should
probably be focused on the other
opportunity first and that's really the
point that I try to make with climate
there are some smart things we can do
and I hope we get to talk about them uh
in in climate but there's also a lot of
sort of the standard approaches to
fixing climate turns out to be very
likely below one dollars back in dollar
and certainly not terribly High you know
even if you're very optimistic it'll be
like two or three whereas many other
things are just fantastically better
Investments like the thing I've been
advocating uh a modest proposal to eat
the children the of the poor in England
was that the in Jonathan Swift Modest
Proposal from a few centuries ago
um so it's not just cause benefit it's
also in the context of what is moral and
not and all that the full the full
complexity of it but that you just hit
on something really important you know
having been on this beat for so long and
again on the disaster beat as well
earthquakes
I can't tell you how many disaster
science experts keep telling me like
everyone says preparedness invest for
preparedness a strict cost-benefit
analysis will always tell you a dollar
invested in resilience before a
community gets hit by whatever
is worth 10 you'll always have to spend
10 after and so it's fine to do the cost
benefit stuff but it's just the Baseline
then you have to look at the social
science which shows or history which
shows you how few times we do it it's
like we just don't do it therefore you
can bang that drum your work is valuable
but it's really constrained because show
me in the world
where that does happen and then how you
turn that success which is basically
something not happening into the story
just very briefly you know we we try to
so we we do this for a lot of countries
so we did it for uh Haiti for instance
uh uh funded by the Canadian development
uh Ministry because they're basically
saying we spent a billion dollars in
Haiti since the earthquake and we really
can't tell the difference so they want
it to fight they I mean they actually
say that right and so they said we want
to find out what are the really smart
things you can do in Haiti and so we we
uh together with lots of you know uh
people in Haiti and all the you know the
business community and the political
community and the religious community
and labor community and everybody else
what are the smart things to do and then
we had economists evaluate it and there
are a lot of these things that everybody
wanted that we're not all that smart
there's actually a lot of smart things
and yes the politicians didn't pick most
of them so our our senses we try to give
people uh you know you're thinking about
these 70 things
you should actually just think about
these 20 things right and then we
consider ourselves incredibly lucky if
they actually do one of them so you
wrote the book how to spend 75 billion
dollars to make the world a better place
so on can we just list some of the
things if I if if you got 75 billion
dollars what how do you spend them all
right so there's some incredibly good
and very very well documented things
that you could spend money on so we have
two big infectious diseases that almost
nobody think about uh because we only
think about you know covet but
tuberculosis used to be the world's
biggest infectious disease killer uh it
still kills about one and a half million
uh people every year the reason why we
don't you know really worry about it is
because we fixed it a hundred years ago
we know how to fix it it's just you know
it's just basically getting medication
to people it's also about getting them
to take it while when they're sort of
been cured because you need to take it
for four to six months and that's
actually hard to do so you also need to
incentivize that in some kind of way it
turns out it's incredibly cheap to
basically save almost all of the 1.5
million people these are people that die
in the prime of their lives they're
typically parents so you would also have
a lot of knock-on effects and basically
we find for a couple billion dollars you
could save the value number of these not
all of them but you could save the vast
number of them it will also improve you
know outcomes and all kinds of other
ways likewise with malaria another it
has some somewhat better uh PR it's
funny to think of malaria as PR and
tuberculosis 9 they need to improve
their PR department
those mosquitoes are the good PR but by
far the biggest infectious disease uh
that got good PR if you will was HIV
right yes because and that and and I'm
not trying to compare and say oh it's
worse or better to have HIV than to
tuberculosis or anything but I'm simply
saying we are under funding because it
doesn't really get the public
attention we just yeah we don't spending
money on that as uh in terms of benefit
a much bigger impact so every dollar you
spend on TB will probably do about 43
dollars worth of good so we'll do an
amazing amount of good basically because
it'll save lives they'll make sure
parents stay with their kids and be more
productive of in their communities and
it'll you know have a lot of knock-on
effects and it's incredibly cheap to do
same thing with malaria it's mostly
mosquito Nets that we need to get out
and you're saying just the contrast with
climate change the dollar you spend on
no not climate change but decreasing
emissions
does not have does not come close to the
43 dollar benefit no nobody nobody would
ever argue that so very very
enthusiastic climate Advocates would
probably say it'll do two or three
dollars worth of good for every dollar
so you know it's still worthwhile to do
that's what they would say I would argue
and I think a lot of the evidence seems
to side that way that a lot of the
things that we're doing deliver actually
lessen it all or back but but it's
certainly not nearly the same kind of
place but there's many many other things
and you know just if if you'll allow me
yeah I love this but uh yeah there are
lots of other things for instance uh
e-procurement so uh you know it's
incredibly boring so most developing
countries well actually most governments
spend most of their money on procurement
is typically incredibly corrupt so we
did this project for Bangladesh uh where
can you explain procurement yes so
that's governments buying stuff so a
large part of the government revenue is
spent on buying anywhere anything from
you know Post-it notes to roads and
obviously you know roads are much much
more expensive it's mostly
infrastructure stuff hugely corrupt uh
for instance in Bangladesh
um it would already have been decided
among the ruling Elite in that local
area who's going to get this so they'll
have this bidding competition where you
have to hand in an envelope a seal
envelope with your bid on it but you put
a goon outside the office so you
literally physically can't get in with
your uh with your bid
now what we found and this is you know
I'm not I'm not claiming any sort of
ownership to this a lot of smart people
have done this way before we're just
simply proving that it's a good idea
um it turns out that if you put this on
eBay essentially so if you do an
e-procurement system where bidders can
come in suddenly it becomes harder to
put up the Goon you can still do it but
it's harder to do it it also means you
get bits from all over Bangladesh and
and in general you'll get bids from all
over actually turns out you get better
quality but most important is you get it
much cheaper so basically you can simply
save money so we we did a scaled
experiment in Bangladesh where we had
about four percent go to uh to be uh
e-procurement and you could compare what
it would have cost and then what it did
cost and the average reduction was as I
remember it's seven percent and the
Finance Minister loved it you know
because that basically gives him a lot
more money or you know you can buy more
stuff at the same cost no digital
corruption
so it's it's basically you get rid of
some corruption there'll still be
corruption but less corruption Ukraine
has actually been big on this they I
have talked to them I talked to the
digital transformation Minister it's
kind of incredible I mean this is before
the war but still working uh it's like
the entirety of the government is in an
app and that one of the big effects
is the reduction of corruption and not
like from uh this was a politician say
to say we've reduced we've taken these
actions through this court no it
literally is just much more difficult to
be corrupt yeah the incentives aren't
quite there and they there's friction
for corruption yeah oh yeah yeah so
basically uh you can spend a little bit
of money and you can make a huge benefit
there's still about 70 countries that
haven't gone e-procurement so obviously
they should do that food for small kids
another thing so you know uh basically
you know it's morally wrong that people
are starving uh but it also turns out
that it's a really really dumb thing not
to get kids good food because if you get
them good food their brains develop more
so that when they get into school they
learn more and so when they come out in
adult lives they're much more productive
so we can actually make every kid in
especially in developing countries much
more productive by making sure they get
good food so getting good food is not
cost free so it probably cost about a
hundred dollars uh both in and you you
need some uh directed advertisement you
need to make sure that you actually get
some of the food out there that you help
the families and you also make sure you
don't just give it to everyone because
then it becomes a lot more expensive if
you do that right it costs about a
hundred dollars per kid but
for two years so it's for their first
two years of life
um and if you do that
you then get a benefit in that they
become smarter and go longer to school
and they actually learn more and become
more productive of forty five hundred
dollars remember this is far out into
the future so the this is discounted the
benefit is actually much higher and this
is one of the things that we also have a
conversation about in in climate change
because all and when you talk about
climate change costs and benefits all
the costs are now and all the benefits
are in the future but it's just like
that in education you know all the costs
are now all the benefits are far into
the future and if you try to do that
right and that's a whole other
conversation that we could have uh then
it turns out that for every dollar spent
you do 45 dollars worth of good again
remember about a a third of all kids
that go to school right now just don't
learn pretty much anything yeah and if
we could make them more productive in
the school system we have another
proposal and how to do that in the in
the school system but you know by just
simply making sure that they're that
they're smarter when they get into
School we've been focusing so much on
making the education system better which
is really hard but it's actually really
easy to make the kids smarter then when
you say the education system is not
working well that's we're talking about
not the American education system we're
talking about globally yes we're talking
about globally you know so about a third
of the teachers in the developing
countries have a hard time passing the
tests of the things they have to teach
their students right and and you know
all these students have lots of other
issues you know there's there they need
to do farm work they they need uh yeah
uh they they're constantly considering
should I just go out and start working
instead uh you know there's there's
constant disruption there's a lot of
teachers that don't show up in India you
know you have uh you have this absurd
situation where all the teachers are
basically paid and hired for eternity
for the rest of their lives and so not
surprisingly a lot of them decide not to
show up so now they've hired assistant
teachers that basically have taken over
so they're paying you know for I think
it's seven million teachers that I'm not
saying they're not all all not working
but a lot of them are not working as
much as they should and we now hired
another seven million teachers that have
it will eventually you know stop working
as well they're they're working much
better right now because they're you
know they're they're not on on permanent
contracts but eventually they'll get
empowerment contracts and then you have
the same problem again there's lots of
these issues and you know it's just
simply about saying we can't fix all
problems but there are some problems
that are incredibly easy to solve and
there are some that are incredibly hard
to solve why don't we start with solving
the easy and effective ones and this of
course Bears them that whole
conversation on climate change because
in some ways you know that's that's also
Andy's point of saying look if you want
to save people from from the impacts of
hurricanes let's fix this simple easy
things about vulnerability first whereas
we have somehow latched on to this let's
fix the hardest thing to do which is to
get everyone to stop using fossil fuels
which is basically what's Driven the
last 200 years of development that's
going to be that's a tall order no
matter how you look at it there's some
really cool elements that you guys just
brought up would you mentioned that word
moral before I wasn't alleged on it
because it relates to
these time scales that really are
immeasurable if you know it's going to
take decades to confirm the benefit of
some investment now
that implies you're doing the investment
with some moral imperative not because
you can do a spreadsheet and come up
with a number
and that that process letting go of the
need
for kind of a mechanistic cost benefit
approach thinking about kids education
in poor countries or several things we
talked about seems to be really
important and it's very hard for all of
us to do philanthropists suck at it I've
worked at National Geographic Society
for a year building some new programs
when they got a big infusion money they
have a whole department that's called M
and E it's measurement and evaluation
which is if you don't prove it it goes
away I mentioned Spotify earlier Spotify
killing a climate podcast because that
podcast didn't measure measure out for
their
impact you know what they want to do and
um if we're always making the judgments
based on strict cost benefit we're going
to miss
larger realities another thing is
another a really exciting example of
what you're talking about
in terms of in Ukraine with the trust
and lack of less corruption and stuff
was in India
for all of his issues Modi um
recognized that middle class people in
India Cook on LPG propane or on piped
gas natural gas if they're in cities
much cleaner much healthier
in so many ways and actually compared to
like chopping down trees and cook
cooking on wood it's actually better for
the climate even though it's a fossil
fuel
so he
he and others there was the American
scientist Kirk Smith who worked this all
out
um if you find a way you had to tr they
were getting a subsidy they had they had
that energy subsidies you were talking
about many poor countries subsidized
energy just to stay in office you know
to make something cheap that everyone
wants
um but they wanted to shift the subsidy
away from the middle class to the poor
poor people who were cooking on firewood
and dying Young from pneumonia
and what the the critical Factor was
India's digital currency India went to a
digital economy
very poor families there now if you have
a phone you basically that's your bank
and you could make the case to the
public that we're we're going to be
starting to shift your
LPG your propane subsidy to poor people
but we know they're poor
we know they're not just going to be
using it behind their restaurant which
was you know the when it was a general
subsidy people were hoarding the LPG and
and the system has worked they've
shifted a lot of
capacity to cook on a clean blue flame
that turns off and on in homes that
previously where the woman would spend
hours collecting firewood
Smokey fire cooking clean the pots and
start all over again but it's all built
on trust all built on the digital
economy and the same thing in Nairobi so
that excites me every day you know with
all the doomism
I just hope people can literally
take a breath
look for these examples
um that show the potential when you have
a trustworthy system when you have a
clear path to making lives better
and then knowing you know that kid
having electric light as opposed to a
kerosene lamp we don't know how much
that's going to improve his homework
and lead to a better outcome but we know
from history that sometimes it does ban
ki-moon former Secretary General so the
most powerful story I ever heard from a
U.N Secretary General was like 2012 when
they were rolling out
this sustainable energy for all
initiative which is not just climate
it's just like getting people energy
they need to
survive and thrive
he's he was growing up in post-war Korea
everyone's poor everything was broken
destroyed sadly
like so much of you many parts of
Ukraine and he would do his homework by
kerosene lamp
he said when he was studying for his
finals his mom would give him a candle
because it was a brighter flame you know
better grades maybe and he became
Secretary General
it's a hell of a story
so which uh
for climate change which policies work
which don't
which are when we look at this formula
of one dollar in forty five dollars out
for climate change what dollar in what
policies for dollar in and and dollar
out are good and which are not yep so so
we actually did a a whole project back
in 2009 when when the The Whole World
Circus was coming to Copenhagen and we
were going to save the world there
uh we brought together about 50 climate
economists and three Noble alerts to
look at where can you spend a dollar and
do the most good for climate and what
they found was a lot of these things as
we've been talking about before that
that basically investing in in the
current sort of technology that we're
trying very hard is at best at pretty
dicey outcome uh much of it's probably
less than a dollar back in the dollar uh
there's some uh Investments and on
adaptation for instance that's pretty
good but it's you know sort of two three
dollars back in the dollar
the obvious thing is that you built a
dike for a sea level rise or that you
make people uh you get some apps that
people know that there's a hurricane
coming or that you know so you can adapt
infrastructure right yeah it is the
physical and the digital infrastructure
the point is that people are really good
at doing this already because they have
a strong incentive to do it so the extra
thing that governments can do outside is
somewhat good but it's not amazing or
anything what we found by far the best
uh investment in the long run was on
investment in energy Innovation so and
and I think this also sort of
corresponds with what we would think in
general uh if we could innovate so you
know for instance Bill Gates is arguing
we should have fourth generation Nuclear
So the next uh the more advanced than
what we currently have in third
generation nuclear which would be uh
industrial scale process you'd just be
building these you know uh modular
nuclear power plants they would be
instead of being these artwork that we
design once for every different plant
which is one of the reasons why they're
so expensive they would just be mass
produced and you'd have one you know uh
uh they'd all be recognized in one go so
be much cheaper they would also be
passively safe so uh if if all the power
goes they'll shut down rather than go
boom uh so that's that's another very
good thing and then they'll also uh be
very hard to transform into nuclear uh
weapons so you can actually imagine them
being out in a lot of different places
where we'd perhaps be a little worried
about having you know plutonium lying
around now this is all still being
worked out but imagine if that actually
comes out and again remember the other
three generations they were we were also
told they'll be incredibly safe and
it'll be incredibly cheap and it didn't
turn out that way so let's let's wait
but it could be
and so the argument is invest in these
ideas for instance fourth generation
nuclear and if fourth generation nuclear
becomes cheaper than fossil fuels we're
done everyone will just switch not just
Rich well-meaning Americans or Europeans
but also the Chinese the Indians
everybody in Africa the rest is uh
Indian subcontinent that's how you fix
these issues right so the idea here is
to say instead of thinking that we can
sort of push people to do stuff they
really don't want to do
which is basically saying let's let's
use more of the uh you know the solar
and wind that you would otherwise have
invested in force people to buy an
electric car by giving huge subsidies
because otherwise they're clearly not
all that interested in buying it and so
on then get the Innovation such that
they become cheaper than fossil fuels
and everyone will switch this is how we
solved problems in the past if you think
in in Los Angeles in the 1950s was
hugely polluted place mostly because of
cars this sort of standard climate
approach today would be to tell everyone
in Los Angeles I'm sorry could you just
walk instead and of course that just
doesn't work that doesn't pay off you
never get you know politicians voted in
office or at least staying in office if
you make that kind of policy what did
solve the problem was the innovation of
the catalytic converter you basically
get this little Gizmo and it cost a
couple hundred dollars and you put it on
your tailpipe and then you can drive
around basically almost not pollute and
that that's how you fix the air
pollution in Los Angeles basically we've
solved all problems in humanity all big
difficult problems with Innovation we
haven't solved it by telling everyone
I'm sorry could you be a little less
comfortable and a little more cold and a
little poorer and believing that that
can go on for you know decades and and
while it possibly Works in some pockets
of the US and I I think actually in
large parts of Europe at least it used
to uh the this uh the the war in Ukraine
is definitely sort of changing that
whole perspective but yeah there's a
willingness to say we're gonna you know
suffer a little bit then we'll fix this
problem but the point is we're going to
be willing to suffer a little and so fix
a tiny bit of the climate problem
instead of actually focusing on
Innovation so what we found was if you
spend a dollar on Innovation you will
probably avoid about 11 of climate
damage in the long run which is a great
investment and the terrible thing is
we have not been doing this so because
everybody is focused on saying we need
the solution within the next 12 years it
means you're not thinking about the
Innovation we're actually spending less
money not more money on uh on Innovation
globally so everyone is really missing
and reducing carbon emission versus
innovating on Alternate energy you're
basically focusing on putting the
existing solar panels or wind turbines
which are either you know just about
inefficient or inefficient instead of
making the Next Generation or it's more
likely the 10th Generation after that
that comes with lots of you know a
battery backup power or you know a
fourth generation nuclear or you know
Craig Venter has this great idea Craig
venzo the guy who cracked the human
genome back in 2000 he has this idea of
growing algae out on the ocean surface
these algae they'd be genetically
modified and they would basically soak
up sunlight and CO2 and produce oil then
we could basically just grow our own
Saudi Arabia on the ocean surface and
we'd Harvest it we'd keep our entire
fossil fuel economy but it'd not be Net
Zero because we just soaked up the CO2
out there one dollar invested in the
portfolio of different ideas
back I I first wrote about that in the
New York Times it was one of my actual
page one stories
um in 2006 it was declining r d in
energy at a time of global warming and
the Baseline is so low for this that
it's a it's a supermarket we were
in during the there was during the
energy crisis the 70s the first energy
crisis in the 70s before the current one
um
are
annual spending the United States and
constant dollars on R D research and
development for energy
was about five billion dollars and then
it just dribbled away
since then and recently now there's a
big burst of new money coming through
these new bills that got passed but what
I was told over and over again by people
in that Arena
is you can't just have these little
bubbles of investment you don't get
young people
away from thinking about Wall Street for
jobs towards thinking about energy
Innovation if there isn't like a future
there and a lot of the in the United
States and Europe the presumption was
the wage that future was taxing
carbon
you'd make that so punitive that the
your basically the leveling even in the
landscape for cleaner stuff that's more
expensive that's a that has failed
completely they're little examples in
Europe where it's working
and what's happened now is well the
United States this big chunk of money
is designed to take us over a Finish
Line
that was started with not just
Innovation but with the production
efficiency too this is one thing I got
wrong I think a little bit my reporting
I was so fixated on the Innovation part
just because I love science too I saw
this untapped possibility
that others were saying no no production
efficiency the more people are producing
batteries the cheaper they'll get this
is Elon musk's uh you know path and many
others
and it really is both so when you were
talking about purchasing power for
governments for example
that can stimulate production
capacity for batteries or whatever the
good thing is and take you down faster
and it's all about getting that margin
of the new thing out competing the old
and it's not just Innovation it has so
many parts of the pipeline that need to
be nurtured so so
and and the other thing is relative
costs the United States when I was
writing about this in 2006
our budget for DARPA the advanced
research project Agency for for the
defense department
for just for science for was 80 billion
a year
for health from for medical Frontier
research on cancers of 40 billion energy
was two or three
so we weren't taking this remotely
seriously so now that if we get that up
to me to me there's like this level
you know we're taking something
seriously when it's like in the tens of
billions for r d it's not that r d would
solve the problem but are but it's a
proxy for what we really care about We
Care a shitload about defense
what's the defense budget in the United
States now like 800 billion it's some
insane number who's County when you're
having fun yeah yeah yeah and so um
Innovation is not just like for the
better
you know camera the better solar panel
the better battery social Innovation
actually matters hugely like the guy in
nairobia mentioned
with a company doing micro payment gas
to get people off charcoal
we need that as much as this and I
actually I interviewed Bill Bill Gates
uh we had to spend an hour with him in
Seattle
in 2016
um
was when he was rolling out his
breakthrough energy thing I got to spend
it was 45 minutes me and Bill Gates
which was pretty fun but I I brought
this up I said you know because he's all
about the new nuclear thing that will
solve The World's problems and I yes yes
but we all brought up nuclear Sergeant
oh he did oh sure so he's interested in
one of the oh he's investing heavily in
nuclear but he invests in everything you
know he's got a big portfolio
um
but I brought up a guy I met in India
um
who runs a little outfit called Selco
that they do really interesting cool
Village to Village
they're like an energy analyst will come
to your house here in the states and
tell you how to weatherize your house
but they do it at the Village scale
and in a village that has um
where they're Milling wheat he'll put in
a solar powered wheat wheat Mill
and
you know that's not going to solve The
World's problems but it gives them a way
to control their energy they don't have
to buy something to grind their wheat
and that needs just as much attention as
the the things I really like too the
cool Technologies and and I I thought I
cornered Bill the gates I was like
because he really does focus on these
big wins the big you know like nuclear
that would make Net Zero completely
doable and I said well you know
what about nuclear like New York City
where I was still living at the time or
near and I said it's got a million
buildings
New York City has one million buildings
and in 2013 the Bloomberg government
analyzed they said looking ahead to 2050
75 of the buildings in New York City
that will exist in 2050 already exist
think about these Brave New Futures
right like we're just going to come in
have these shiny cool passive house
cities and I so I put this to Bill and I
said so
what's how do you do that how do you how
do you retrofit all those boilers many
of which were coal-fired like 20 years
ago
to get a zero energy New York City and
he I thought I kind of thought I had him
yeah he immediately he kind of sat back
and went well but if you have unlimited
clean power coming into that City it
doesn't really matter
it's a pretty good Bill Gates impression
really good that's a good answer I mean
there's a good he said oh yeah it's a
leaky bucket but you know pour in zero
carbon energy then it doesn't matter
but I still think we have to figure out
the other part too the that end how do
you how do you innovate at the household
level of the village level
it's much more of a distributed problem
we used to think the one the one big
change I've had in my own thinking too
is
is from top down to distributed
everything about the climate problem
through the first three decades of my
reporting was that the
the ipcc will come out a new report the
the framework convention the treaty will
get us on board
we'll all behave better this it has this
like top-down you know parent to child
architecture
and everything's I've learned has gone
the other way it's distributed capacity
for improved lives you know kids getting
through school
women not having to spend three hours
collecting firewood and if it means
propane for that household in that
context that's a good thing so stop with
all your yammering about ending all
fossil fuel subsidies and
you know what's in America look like
that has some claim climate safe Energy
Future
find your part in that
don't get disempowered by the scale of
it there's just like a thousand things
to do when you start to cut it into
pieces so so it's very different it's
not a top-down thing
you know no one's going to magically
come in and and and that's that's where
I think so I agree that everyone should
try to play their their part and and and
do you know whatever they can uh but I
also think you know just the the sheer
incentives you know what we saw
happening with you know with the Shale
gas is a great example when Shale gas
becomes so cheap that you just stop
using coal but then you don't really
have to convince you know lots and lots
of people you know because it wasn't
labeled a climate no it wasn't a climate
thing it was an energy thing it was
totally uh and and and the point is just
you know the power of an innovation is
that you you almost don't see it anymore
it just happens uh and and I think
that's really the only way we're gonna
fix you know these big problems if you
think about you know of the uh nutrition
problem back in the 60s 70s uh we
worried a lot about India and other
places uh solution is not worrying or
the solution was not you know us eating
a little bit less and sending it down to
India wherever the solution was the
Green Revolution right it was the fact
that some scientists made ways to make
every seed produce three times as much
so you could grow three times as much
food on an acre and you know that's what
basically made it possible for India to
go from a basket case to what the
world's leading uh rice exporter uh and
and and that's how you do these things
you know you solve these big problems
true Innovation and again I'm not saying
that you know we're actually arcing our
carbon tax is a smart thing to do you
know that's what any Economist would
tell you to do but it also turns out
that it's partly is not going to solve
most of the problem and it's incredibly
politically hard to do so it may also
just be the wrong sort of tree to bark
up against you know if you can do it
please do uh but this is not the main
thing that's going to solve climate the
the main thing is that we get these
innovations that basically make green
energy so cheap everyone will just want
we mentioned nuclear quite a few times
yeah that you know there was a for a
long time it seems to have shifted
recently maybe you can clarify and
educate me on this but there for the
longest time people thought that nuclear
is um
is almost unclean energy or dangerous
energy or all that kind of stuff when
did that shift what was the source of
that alarmism uh and what maybe is that
a case study of how alarmism can turn
into
um though a productive constructive
policy
productive from whose standpoint
um is it not is it not like uh nuclear
we're not trying to do you mean
productive in terms of yay we banned it
or protect it for those oh I see I see
what you mean yes I meant productive for
human civilization no the alarmism over
nuclear power dominated any alarmism
over global warming
absolutely yeah really oh yeah just in
the United States um Three Mile Island
then you turn Chernobyl there
and the traditional environmental
movement will still won't go there they
still
the big groups nrdc edfs that whole
alphabet soup of the big greens are
reluctant to put forward the nuclear
option because they know a lot of their
aging donors
basically grew up in the thinking about
nuclear as as the problem not the
solution I lived for the last 30 years I
moved to Maine recently uh
but I lived in Hudson Valley 10 miles
from the Indian Point Nuclear Power
Plant which was built in the 60s 70s
and had some problems none of them were
to the point of
a meltdown or the threat of it or even
the theoretical possibility of one
I've been I was in it twice as a
reporter you know looking down in the
cooling pool I can send you a fun video
of bubbles in the cooling pool with the
rods and
progressively they demonstrated how to
handle waste in the United States now
the waste is uh because we haven't
figured out how to move it across state
lines
it's uh
glassified it's put into kind of
containers that sit there at the plant
we just simply don't have a long-term
solution
um
the Nevada
politicians were successful in saying
not here not here not Yucca Mountain and
um
but my wife who I've been married to
well I met 30 years ago and she lives
with me she's an environmental educator
she was very happy when Cuomo shut it
down
said we're going to shut it down three
or three or four years ago which just
happened a year it actually is shut down
now it's being mothballed and I was like
that sucks we need if she's happy yeah
and we still love each other she's
environmentalist so that that just
speaks to a lot of environmentals still
see nuclear as bad oh totally oh yeah
you know and you bring in the way the
weapons proliferation issues and but
it's a safety thing it's a generational
thing I think young people are different
I hope
these small modular reactor designs
several of which there's a couple of
phds from
MIT who did transatomic power they're
both like in their early 30s
we need so much more of them and just
briefly the one thing I say about
nuclear is like with so many of these
things like subsidies don't talk to me
about yes no nuclear talk to me about
what do you want to do with existing
nuclear power plants
and what do you want to do about the
possibility of new ones let's parse this
out in chunks that we can have
constructive conversations about the
idea of no nuclear drives me crazy just
like no fossil fuel subsidies is silly
in the world we inhabit that has these
pockets of with no energy so that that's
just my you know my sustain what mantras
start with some dividing it and divide
and conquer to conquer the dispute over
by saying let's at least get real
this power plant has been in the Hudson
Valley for 30 years it was the base load
it was base load base load is a real
thing
and guess what has filled the Gap since
that power plant is turned off
natural gas natural gas but and you
don't hear that from the environmental
community that was so eager to turn off
the Indian Point I I think both the
point of you know saying that people are
saying it's the end of the world but no
I don't want a new clip it just doesn't
make sense right
um and Andy's absolutely right to talk
about so existing nuclear power plants
we already paid for them we already have
them we already committed to
decommissioning them eventually while
they're running they're pretty much the
cheapest power you can possibly have on
the planet because it costs almost
nothing to run them day to day so you
know it's basically cheap or almost free
CO2 base load power there's just nothing
there that is that doesn't you know you
should embrace now new nuclear power
plants turn out to be very expensive
currently so you know the one they built
in Finland and some and and and and the
UK and France and several other places
turn out to be incredibly expensive so
they're much more expensive than you
know the the the costliest uh Renewables
you can imagine so they're actually not
a solution right now
and that's why we need the Innovation
that's why we need the potentially
fourth generation new clip how it's just
simply it's a bad deal and that's why
you know nuclear is never going to win
on its third generation now it may never
get there you know who knows but it's
certainly a a a a a a possibility and we
should be looking into it and there are
there are you know wonky realities that
need to be dealt with the nuclear
Regulatory Commission in the United
States their approval process is still
locked and designed on this 50 year old
model of big giant power plants there's
an intense discussion right now about
evolving a new regulatory scheme for
small modular ones because of all these
implicit advantages they offer and that
so it along with the Innovation you need
to have this
right get out of the way or you're never
going to have the investment so it
really isn't all the above thing and
looking at these systems uh problems
systems Solutions is really important
uh let me ask you about Alex Epstein
so he wrote I'm not sure if you're
familiar who he is but he wrote a couple
of books it's just interesting to ask a
question about fossil fuels because
we're talking about reality and he's
somebody that doesn't just talk about
the reality of fossil fuels but he wrote
a book uh moral case of fossil fuels and
uh fossil future where he makes the case
that as a subtitle says Global human
flourishing requires oil coal and
natural gas or more oil coil and natural
gas not less
uh what do you think about the argument
he makes so he he pushes we've had this
kind of speaking of the center of this
balanced discussion of the reality of
fossil fuels but also investing a lot
into renewable energy and that having
the one dollar to eleven dollar return
so he says like
well I'm not sure exactly how to frame
it but like investing and maintaining
investment to fossil fuels also as a
positive return because of how efficient
the energy is I've read the first book
yeah I haven't read I've got this second
one I've been planning to have them on
my webcast my tiny webcast
no he makes the name of the webcast
sustain what everything I do is sustain
what because it's like don't talk to me
about sustainability sustain what for
whom how then we're talking you know
um interrogatory approach to things so
um
I think the valuable part of what he has
done is to remind people
particularly in the west or north or
whatever the developed world that
everything we take for granted
low fertilizer from low fertilizer
prices to air conditioning to everything
else exists because we had this bounty
that we dug out of the ground or pumped
out of the ground
it's a boon it's been an amazing Boon to
society period so start there which
means going forward what we're talking
about is a substitution
or
having your fossil fuel isn't eating it
too meaning getting rid of the carbon
dioxide if you focus on the carbon
dioxide
which is the thing warming the planet
not the burning of the fuels
then that's another way forward that
could sustain fossil fuels as far as I
can tell from at least the first book he
makes the moral case the fossil fuels
are essentially a good
overall
um I don't think he adequately accounts
for the need
to stop global warming you know I think
that we have to slow slowing global
warming is a fundamental need in this
coming in this Century we're in
and that's just not factored into his
math well I think that's where and I've
had a few sort of offline conversations
with them and I think he he said because
I mentioned I'm talking to the two you
said that he that's probably why he
disagrees about sort of the the level of
threat that
um global warming causes well Steve coon
and there's another one uh he he's a
brilliant guy he lived right close to me
in Hudson Valley he was in the Obama
Administration energy Department it's
k-o-n-i-n he wrote a bestseller that
came out recently on
skepticism about climate and
other there are other smart people who
somehow feel we can literally adapt our
way forward without any constraint on
the gases changing the climate and I you
know
I've spent enough time on this I I think
I'm pretty level-headed reporter when it
comes to this issue and I think having
some sense that
we can adapt our way into the world
we're building through Relentless
climate change with no new normal
remember
more gas accumulating in the air every
year
these are not static moments
that that's a good thing to do is
doesn't strike me as
um
smart I'll probably say that I I think
it's more sort of a at least the thing
that I take away from Alex is
um is the fact as as you point out that
we need to recognize that fossil fuels
is basically the backbone of our society
today we get 80 of our energy from
fossil fuels to still as we did 50 years
yeah four years ago yeah yeah and and
people have no sense of this right so
they have the idea because you see so
many wind turbines and solar panels and
everybody's talking about that this is
huge big things but the reality is
remember only about a fifth of all
energy uses electricity the rest is you
know in processes and heating industrial
processes and so on so uh actually you
know solar and wind right now produces
one percent from of of energy from wind
and 0.8 percent from solar this is not a
huge thing it's a fairly tiny bit and
growing explosively yes it's absolutely
gross but actually it's growing slower
than what nuclear it was growing in the
70s and 80s which I thought was a fun
Point not by a little amount by like two
or three times so so we're we're still
talking about you know something which
is you know somewhat Boutique at least
and and when you then look out into the
future and and I think this is the
interesting part of it when you look out
into the future if you look at the Biden
administration's own estimate of what
will happen by 2050.
we will be at you know if all countries
do all the stuff that they promised and
everything we will be at 70 percent
fossil fuels by 2050. globally this this
is just yes it's a it's a better world I
I think it's good that we're now down to
70 instead of uh of 80. but it is still
a world that's fundamentally dependent
on fossil fuels for almost everything
that we really like about the world and
forgetting that and I think we are doing
that in the sense as you also mentioned
that people say no fossil fuels and you
know we're in all development
organizations we're now telling the poor
countries you can't get any funding for
anything that has to do with fossil
fuels we have literally reduced our our
uh investment in uh in oil and gas by
more than half since 2014 and much of
this is because of climate concerns this
has real world consequences this is why
and Enterprises have gone up it's not
the only reason covet also certainly the
war in Ukraine but this is an underlying
systemic reason why fossil fuel costs
will go up dramatically now a lot of
greens will sort of tend to say well
that's great because you know we want
fossil fuels to be expensive we want
people to be forced over to Renewables
but that's very easy to say if you're
rich you know it's the kind of thing
that New Yorkers will say you know when
when you go to Rich well-meaning uh
Green New Yorkers and say Yes gasoline
should cost twenty dollars a gallon well
you don't have a car just right at the
Metro it's very easy for you to say that
but lots of people both in the rich
world but you know in in poor parts of
the U.S but all around the world their
lives have basically dependent on fossil
fuels and so the idea that we're going
to get people off by making it so
expensive that it becomes impossible for
them to live good lives is almost
morally reprehensible and I think Alex
has the right point there we need to get
people to realize we're not going to get
off fossil fuels anytime soon so we need
reasonably affordable fossil fuels for
most of the world and that's of course
course why we need to focus so much more
on the Innovation so that we can get to
the point where we no longer need fossil
fuels as soon as possible but to say to
everyone look we're going to make fossil
fuels expensive way before we have the
solution is just terrible and the rich
the so much is on the rich countries of
the world
um
I did a conversation recently with
Johann rockstrom who's a famed
sustainability scientist in Stockholm
actually Potsdam now um right and he's
come up with the idea of planetary
boundaries you know there's lots of
things he has said that I as a
journalist I'm still looking into about
that planetary boundaries yeah that
there are limits to what Earth can
absorb in human our use of water
phosphorus or carbon dioxide loading in
the atmosphere there are these tipping
there are these boundaries if we cross
them we're in a Hot Zone a danger zone
right he's an interesting thinker but on
this point last year at the Glasgow
climate talks he gave a very important
talk about
the equity thing here that you
he basically laid out a landscape
saying the rich nations of the world
need to greatly ramp up their reduction
of emissions or what they're going to
pay for countries to do
to allow poor countries
some of which have fossil resources like
in Africa to have the carbon space to to
own whatever space or time is left to be
able to develop their their
fossil fuels
as a fundamental right because also
they're starting from this little
Baseline gagana hasn't contributed squat
to the global warming problem in terms
of emissions Ghana has natural gas and
right now this month the environmental
groups are
outside the world bank today actually
tonight
saying this was on their list of dirty
projects World Bank should stop
financing Ghana's right to get gas out
of the ground to develop its economy get
its people less poor make them more
productive Innovative parts of humanity
it's to me that's really reprehensible
one of the other projects on their list
as the World Bank kind of gotcha like
how dare they give money
was for a new for a fertilizer Factory
in Bangladesh
that is designed to get three times as
much fertilizer from the same amount of
natural gas as the old plants that are
not dormant
that's this is in a time when we're
facing High Energy prices high gas
prices high high food prices when food
insecurity is spreading rapidly when a
country like Bangladesh has millions of
rice farmers who need
urea
tablets to put in the rice fields and to
say that shouldn't that that how dare
they finance that because there's a
fossil fuel involved is demoral so so
yes on that point from Alex so this is
2022 poll
polls
uh just this is a bunch of different
ways to look at the same basic effect in
the United States
Democrats younger Americans identify
dealing with climate change is the top
priority U.S adults
42 say uh 42 say that dealing with
climate change should be a top priority
11 of Republicans 65 percent of
Democrats
and we could see this effect
throughout
46 of Americans say human activity
contributes a great deal to climate
change by the way this is a little bit
different than what we're discussing I
was uh just looking through different
polls
in the public there seems to still be
uncertainty about the how much humans
contribute to climate change
more than
scientifically it would only be 24 that
disagree with the U.N climate panel
right three three quarters I would agree
are you uncomfortable about the 29 I I
know 29 is actually it's exactly right I
mean okay well everyone doesn't say it's
all well they say that could be the
Border case but anyway this is
interesting but to me across all these
polls if you look Republican versus
Democrat yeah Republican
um it's say that 17 say it's a great
deal Democrats say 71 say it's a it's a
great deal and you just see this
complete division
I think you probably
would call it pandemic
uh you know you can ask a lot of
questions like this do masks work are
they an effective method to slow
transmission of a pandemic you'll
probably have the same kind of polls
about Republicans and Democrats and um
while the effectiveness of masks to me
is a scientific question but
um so there's different truths here
apparently one is a scientific truth
uh one is a truth
held by the scientific Community which
seems to be also different than the
scientific truth sometimes uh and the
other is the public perception that has
that's uh polluted or affected by
political affiliation and then there's
uh whatever is the
uh narrative that's communicated by the
the media they will also have a question
the answer to the question of whether
masks work or not and they will also
have an answer to the question about all
these climate related things so that's a
long way of asking the question of what
how is politics mixed into all of this
yeah on the communication front on the
figuring out what the right policy is
front on the friction of humanity in the
face of the right policies well I've
written a ton on this after I had that
conversion about the social science when
2006 I began digging in a lot more on
how people hold beliefs and what they do
as opposed to what they think and
questions about polling and there's two
things that come to me that make me not
worry about the basic literacy like is
is climate change X percent of whatever
I don't really care about that and I'll
explain why
um for one thing
more science literacy more basic
literacy like what is a greenhouse gas
all that stuff Dan cahane a k-a-h-a-n at
Yale he's actually a law school
the last decade he did all this work in
what he calls cultural cognition
which is and he did uh studies that
showed
you know how what you believe
emerges based on culture based on your
background you know your red blue
your where you are in the country
and one of the one of the really
disturbing findings was
that the people who have the most basic
science literacy like who know the most
about
greenhouse effect or whatever
they're at both ends of the spectrum
of views on climate dismissives and
alarmed Steve coonan as I mentioned is a
good example he's brilliant physicist
and he knows every all the science and
he's completely at the end of skepticism
um will happer Who was
close to being Trump's science advisor
was even more out there and he's on
they're both on the uh Jason committee
that advises the government on big
strategic things
um and people at the who are really
alarmed about it also have the same
belief so as a journalist I was thinking
do I just spend my time writing more
explanatory
stories that explain the science better
no do I dig in on this work to
understand what brings people together
and then these same surveys the same
science shows you
if you don't make it about climate among
other things this becomes
you don't have to worry about this
anymore if you could Google for Google
for no red blue divide climate revkin
you'll find a piece I did with some
really good graphs essentially it shows
that in America this is the Yale group
again the uh their climate communication
group there's no red blue divide on
energy Innovation none we need more
climate energy clean energy Innovation
there wasn't even a divide
country bias state by state on
whether CO2 should be regulated as a
pollutant
but it's all like what are the questions
you ask if you ask about
Innovation if you ask about more and
more incentives for Renewable Power
Oklahoma Iowa you know I did a piece
when I was at propublica showing that
the 17 states that were fighting Obama
in court over his clean power plan
we're actually the majority of them were
actually meeting the targets that the
clean power plan had
because they're expanding wind power
already not because of the climate
because it makes money sense and energy
sense so you don't think there's a
political divide in this there is on
climate if you call it climate if you
say it's a climate do you believe in the
climate crisis you're not asking
what kind of energy future do you want
in your town
and so if you if you ask that question
the polarization goes away
well I guess I'm asking is there
polarization on policy no well well
there again
the bipartisan infrastructure law that
was passed last November that was
bipartisan
all of Congress said yes and that's a
trillion dollars
several hundred billion of which are for
cleaner energy and resilience
yeah but that's
but it's not a climate Bill and it
wasn't a tax
it's it's a it's a it's a it's
incentives so the word climate and
similar words are just used as part of
the signaling like masks it's it's
absolutely it's not as Dan cahane's work
the guy at Yale um he really
demonstrated powerfully abortion gun
rights
um climate in a more parse level nuclear
power
has enduring camps that for and against
what what why do the camps form
some of its cultural cognition it's how
you grew up it's what you fear P there's
no common human frame because like like
folks like certain individuals like Al
Gore
ah like he would make a film he cares
about this thing he's a Democrat
therefore I hate this thing that
therefore I don't like this thing yeah
oh sure yeah you know when people get
attached to an issue if that's what pops
into your head
when you hear climate then and it got
politicized it became
emblematic
and and the you know the whole vaccine
thing
I mean I'm not American so I should stay
a little bit out of this but I think uh
it seems to me that a lot of the thing
that people believe and talk about is
really about what they worried that that
will lead to in terms of policy down the
line so a little bit like do masks work
I'm I'm sort of imagining I don't know
whether this is true but I think part of
it is if I say masks work they're gonna
force me to wear it for the next year so
it doesn't work because then I don't
have to wear it kind of thing that it's
really uh uh you're you're looking much
further down the line and certainly on
climate it seems to me that a lot of the
people who say it's not real it's not
because they don't know it's of course
it's real but it's that they don't want
you to then come and regulate it heavily
yeah uh so it's because they don't like
top-down government yeah and also
because they don't want another tax and
you know there's lots of of so it's it's
really it's not a science it's not a
straight science question it really is a
question what do you want to do and
that's where I think Andy you're much
much more right in saying we should you
know have that discussion so what do you
want to do because that will be a much
easier conversation to say do you want
to do really smart cheap stuff or do you
want to do pretty dumb expensive stuff
when you put it that way you you can get
most people of course it's not as simple
as that I know and it gets back to what
you said earlier that again you talked
about collaborative cooperation or
whatever
there's a guy at Columbia Peter Coleman
who runs this thing called the difficult
conversations Laboratory
yeah yeah that's awesome and when I
first heard about it I was like oh man
we need that you know and uh his
background's the psychology and uh
conflict resolution mostly at the global
scale related to
atrocities the countries are trying to
get over and
um and there's there's a science to how
to hold a better conversation is you
either through experience or whatever no
um you could if you hold a debate like I
wouldn't want to be in a debate with
Bjorn we could find lots of things we
disagree on but that's that takes it
back to the win-lose model right who
want that's not how you make progress
and what Peter
when I what I learned absorbed from him
Peter Coleman
because I was thinking like we need room
for agreement I need to build a room for
agreement my blog and at the times and
then the stuff I do now you know it's
like how can we talk
and come to agreement he says no no you
don't want agreement you want
cooperation
that allows you to hold on to your
beliefs
but to we're good you know we can
disbelieve it we can disagree on all
these things but let's cooperate on that
one thing
and that's that's a really valuable
distinction that's needed so much in
this Arena because
as I said earlier you can parse it right
down to
the home menu of things Joe manchin
wanted you know transmission lines
you're now we're going to have big
fights over transmission lines we've got
billions of dollars to spend expanding
America's grid
in every community in America is going
to say not here so how do you
Foster a federal local dialogue that
allows that to happen if you want to
have any hope of a better grid
um so that's like
that those insights come from behavioral
sciences that I think are completely
under
valued um in this area Pilkey loves to
quote uh I can't I think it's liberate
but oh Walter Lipman Lipman yes that uh
democracy is not about you know
everybody agreeing but it's about
different people disagreeing but doing
the same thing yeah together yes I mean
agreeing that we're going to do this
thing so you can disagree but still do a
thing you know possibly for very
different you know reasons there's an
amazing video clip that shows this so
powerfully
2015 was the build up to the Paris talks
that led to the Paris agreement you know
this
and a really talented journalist at CNN
at the time John Sutter who's from
Oklahoma originally he um
he saw another Yale study that was a
county by county study of American
attitudes on global warming like right
down to the county level and there's
this little glowing
data point in Woodward County West uh
Oklahoma Woodward County Oklahoma was
Ground Zero for climate skepticism
climate denial what everyone call it and
he's like oh I'm going to go there and
he went there just as a just to meet
people on the street to talk to them
about energy and weather and
he did these little interviews and
there's this one with this guy who's
like a middle-aged Oil Company employee
like a business like a administrator
Thai Thai kind of guy
and he he starts out the interview and
the guy is saying like well you know God
controls the environment
and if you're watching this you're going
okay this is going to be interesting
and the backstory by the way is the guy
he he paid for the local uh playground
to have dinosaurs and people like toy
dinosaurs and people all the playground
Because he believes in creation you know
six thousand a year creation yeah so so
that's the guy right and and then he
gets to energy and the guy says you know
the same guy who believes God controls
the environment
says you know we have half of our roof
covered with solar panels and we want to
get off the grid entirely
and when I show this I show this to
audiences I say just pause and think
about that for a second
if you went why do you think that's
happening and it's because he's
independent he wants to have his own
source of power he's libertarian he just
want the government telling what to do
he would never vote for Hillary I
guarantee you this is 2015.
but he wanted to get off the grid
entirely to be his own
to be to be himself and so then I say
okay so if you were going around the
country with your climate crisis placard
and you go to Woodward County
do you think that would be a productive
way to go to that place and make your
case
and the answer is pretty obvious no if
you go in there and you listen like
listening is such an important property
that we all forget including journalists
um you much more have to find a path to
cooperation
you could talk to him about
I guarantee if I went there today maybe
I should go to talk about this new bill
370 billion dollars how do we make that
work you know at the local level
how do we answer that guy at the energy
Department Jigger Shaw so how do we put
this to work to get our buses off
electricity to get electrified or
transition our street lamps and stuff
you could have a good chat with him if
you go in there say I'm here to debate
you to death on global warming
forget about it
actually let me ask you a question given
your roots as a journalist yeah
um so yeah talking to a guy you disagree
with that's one thing
what about talking to people
that might be Society might consider
bad unethical even evil
what's the role of a journalist in that
context
so climate change is a large number of
people that believe one thing yeah that
believe another thing
uh it turns out even with people that
Society deems as evil there's a large
number of people that support them
what's your role as a journalist
to talk to them well when I I have
talked to really bad people when I wrote
about the murder of Chico Mendez a
Brazilian
Amazon rainforest activist in 1989 I
interviewed The Killers
um one was in jail several of them were
just ranchers who
you know they had their point of view
they were there in the Amazon rainforest
to
the word in Brazil in Portuguese is
limpar to clean the land you know
they're the bandarantes the pioneers of
Brazil they go into these Frontiers and
tame them like we had in our West you
know and they would bring that up too
they would say to me well you did this
out you know didn't say you murdered
your your Native Americans and stuff but
they could easily have said that to and
you deforested all your Landscapes um so
who are you to come down here to but if
I didn't talk to them uh that would be
not a way to do journalism but when you
talk to them did you empathize with them
or did you push back
that's the ultimate question like if you
want to understand
like uh if you talk to Hitler in 1941
you empathize with him or do you push
back
because most journalists would push
because they're trying to signal to a
fellow journalist right and to people
back home that this me the journalist is
on the right side
but if you actually want to understand
the person you should empathize
uh if you want to if you want to be the
kind of person that actually understands
in the full
Arc of History
you need to empathize I find that
journalists a lot of times perhaps
they're protecting their job their
reputation their sanity are not willing
to empathize yeah well I think this
happened with Joe manchin I'm not doing
any kind of equation here related to
history yes yes or Trump I mean Trump I
interviewed the guy will happer I
mentioned who was a physicist at
Princeton who thinks carbon dioxide is
the greatest thing in the world and we
should have more of it in the atmosphere
I profoundly disagree on that point
um but I interviewed him for an hour and
and it was so interesting because he was
trying to kind of rope-a-dope me
into
making it about CO2 and climate because
he's a super smart physicist
and I kind of said let's let's talk
about some other things and we started
talking about education and Science
Education he went on for like 20 minutes
about the vital importance of better
Science Education for Americans he drew
on people he knew from Europe Hungary a
bunch of Nobel Prize winners came from
some some town in Hungary for at least a
couple and he said that he learned their
teachers at any rate we he went in a
long Exposition on that he he then
defended climate science he said we need
more climate science he says I love this
stuff I love the ocean buoys there are
now thousands of them in the oceans
charting clear pictures of ocean
circulation and satellites and he said
something really important that many
people discount which is we need
sustained investment in monitoring this
planet
uh we let our system we neglect our
systems that just tell us what's
happening in the world and that's
happened over and over again
um so if I had left it if I'd gone into
the terrain of the fight over CO2
some journalist friends might say oh
that was good mashup you know match up
and but I found these really profound
and important things that I wanted the
world to know about
in the context of whether Trump was
going to have him as a science advisor
and so if I hadn't gone there and a lot
of people if you look back I got
hammered for doing that from even from
Friends
and then later John holdren who had been
Obama's science advisor for eight years
he said I would rather have
will happer as Trump's science advisor
the no science advisor in other words
there's a landscape of things that are
important he recognized that happer is
really smart about defense and all kinds
of things too so it's like you do have
to sort of screw up your ideally screw
up your courage but then not necessarily
get into the
it's like with the guy in Oklahoma you
know
if you go in looking for the differences
you'll find them you can amplify them
you can leave
with us
paralyzed sense of
nothing having happened that was useful
or you can find these nuggets that are
everyone is a human being I can't play
the mind game of what I would have said
asked to Hitler
but um
I played that mind game all the time but
that's that's for another conversation
yeah yeah that many in my family
um that have suffered on them
nevertheless he is a human being
yeah and I you know people sometimes
caricature Hitler is saying like that
that's when you mentioned Hitler the
conversation all right
but I don't agree I think sort of these
extremes are useful thought experiments
to understand because if you're not
willing to take your ideals to that
extreme then then maybe your ideals need
some rethinking and from a journalistic
perspective all that kind of stuff a
number of years ago my wife and I were
with our veterinarian who was
german-born
Dr Bach b-a-c-h we were talking about
the dog and stuff and then we were
talking about Trump and
and he just mentioned in passing he said
my mother voted for Hitler
wow that hit me like a brick yeah
because it was so yeah these at the very
least understanding how
Pathways that lead to
people doing things like he did and
ordered it's essential and the only way
to understand that is to
dig in and ask questions and get
uncomfortable that still makes my hair
prickle when I think back to him saying
yeah my mom voted for Hitler I somehow
makes it super real like oh yeah yeah
wow yeah there's elections There's real
people living their lives and exactly
struggling with a broken economy and all
kinds of having their own Littles
personal resentments and all that kind
of stuff let me ask you about presidents
American presidents
um what who had a positive or negative
impact on climate change efforts in your
view Clinton Bush Obama Trump Biden or
maybe you could say that they don't have
much of an impact so like they in public
discourse presidents have a kind of um
maybe disproportional like we imagine
they have a huge amount of impact how
much impact do they actually have on on
on climate policy
very I don't know if you have comments
on this well the there is a background
decarbonization rate that's happened for
150 years you know we moved from wood to
uh charcoal to Coal to oil and gas is
cleaner it's more hydrogen less carbon
and
when you I asked recently I asked some
really smart scientists who studied
these long trajectories of energy
when you look at those curves is there
anything in that curve that says oh
climate treaty 1992. oh yeah oh Paris
and it's really hard or China I mean
when China came in
with his huge growth and Emissions that
that created a
bit of a recarbonization blip but that
was this huge growth in their economy
they pulled a bunch of people out of out
of poverty
um so yeah no presidents don't really
change anything on time scales that we
would measure as meaning where you could
parse it out I I think that's not to say
that
Obama's and the current focus on on the
stimulus that's happening
which includes a lot more money for
research
Etc and innovation
I do think that will have to be
beneficial in a very very long run but I
have to say
you know when Obama stood up and
made credit you know took credit for
reductions from moving from coal to gas
because of fracking
that was actually Cheney who said that
emotional thing I was thinking I would
say Bush not because I like him or
anything but he's the guy who
inadvertently started fracking right and
it goes further back than that it was a
federal investment in fracking in the
60s and 70s and then this one guy in
Texas right here in Texas uh George
Mitchell who you know cobbled together
technology
and that led to this real dramatic
change from gas to Coal that mostly
played out in the Obama years but that
really was stimulated by Cheney's early
energy task force the 2001 when they
were getting into office and also bush
bush did something interesting
in the whole wonky climate treaty
process
it was under Bush that they started to
focus on sectors
let's do a they did a oh and also on big
emitters let's this isn't about 200
countries
it's about basically eight or ten
countries let's get them into a room and
let's have these little sub rooms on
like electrification on mining on
whatever and by parsing it out
and Obama picked up the same model they
had different names for it because
presidents always named something
different than the last president when
was the major economies forum and then
it was the major emitters something or
other
and that getting away from the treaty
dots and dashes toward just sectoral
big sectors that matter you know gas
electrification
makes a difference but but again you
couldn't ever measure enough it's always
the lag time and also I I think one very
under reported fact the uh uh so the
unep the environment program uh they
come out with a what they call a gap
report every year uh where they estimate
how much is the world doing compared to
what should it or has it promised to do
emissions um yeah and uh in 2019 so just
before covet hit they actually did a
survey of the 2010s so the last big sort
of report on how well are we doing and
their takeaway quote and I'm not going
to get this right but it's pretty much
what they said was
if you take the world as if we hadn't
cared about climate change since 2005.
we can't tell the difference between
that world
and the world that we're actually living
in
so despite the fact that we've had 10
years of you know immense focus on
climate and everybody talks about it and
the Paris agreement which is perhaps the
biggest Global sort of agreement and
what we're going to be doing you can't
actually tell
and that I think is incredibly important
because what it tells you is all that
we're doing is not even on the margin
it's sort of smaller than that and I'm
not sure what that is but you know we're
basically dealing in you know so for
instance the UK loves to point out that
they have dramatically reduced their
carbon emissions and they have they've
really dramatically lowered their
emissions but mostly because they've
de-industrialized they've basically said
look we're just going to be Bankers for
all of you guys and then everybody else
is going to produce our stuff which of
course is great for Britain or I don't
know if it's great for Britain but we
can't all do that and and so most of
what we're trying to do right now is is
sort of you know this virtue signaling
it makes us feel good it's sort of yeah
on the margin or in the very tiny margin
but you know what we basically in those
those Andy your point with China
and the reason why we can't tell the
difference of course is because China
basically became the workshop for
everyone yeah and and so not only did
they lift more than half a million
people out of poverty sorry yes half a
billion people out of poverty but they
also you know basically took over most
production in the world uh and so of
course you know much many rich countries
could decarbonize and or or at least
reduce their carbon emissions and feel
very virtuous about it but fundamentally
we haven't solved how does the world do
this and and that's why I think we're
also left with this sense of not only
are we being told this is a you know
unmitigated catastrophe and that's why
this is the only thing we should be
focusing on but also somehow and and we
can all fix it and and I don't think we
have any sense of how hard this is
actually going to be and that's of
course why I would go back and say look
the only way you're going to fix this is
through Innovation because if you have
something that's cheaper than fossil
fuels you fixed it if you have something
that's harder and you know costlier and
more inconvenient no well you're just
not going to make it and getting more
time by cutting vulnerability yes the
pockets of vulnerability on the planet
are huge and they're identifiable and
you know what to do what are the biggest
pockets of vulnerability well the
infrastructure of cities no it's where
people are living and what their
capacities are um involving people how
do you how do you decrease the
vulnerability in the world what are the
big affordable housing one reason so
many people moved out of San Francisco
and adjacent cities into the countryside
and then had their houses burned down
it's because they can't afford to live
in the city anymore
so affordable housing in cities can
limit exposure to in that case Wildfire
Durban South Africa that terrible
devastating flood they had this year
past year
who was who was washed away poor people
who don't have any place to live so they
settle on in a flood plain along a
stream bed that's livable you know when
it's not raining buckets and those are
vulnerabilities that are there because
of um dislocation housing Taco ban this
typhoon that hit the Philippines
terribly ahead of the Paris talks or was
it the previous one in 2013 I believe
yeah yeah yeah thousands died um most of
the stories that were written were
framed around climate change because the
pope made a deal about it it was just
before the climate talks of that year
and
what happened partially why there were
so many losses was
Tacloban City had quadrupled in
population in the last 30 years and most
of the people coming into the city were
poor looking for work and settling in
marginal places where a surge storm
surge killed them so those are things we
we the whatever the we is in the
different places
really can work on and that gives more
Flex for sure and thinking about how
this long trajectory that seems so
immovable and so hard the
decarbonization part
there's there's no excuse I wrote a
piece not I guess a year ago
I said there's a vulnerability emergency
hiding behind this ex this climate
emergency label that that's really what
needs work and and also on the taco Bond
I mean the the hurricane that hit in
2013 there was almost a similar
hurricane in the early part of uh 1900s
that hit pretty much the same pretty
much the same strength and it eradicated
half the city it killed half the city uh
and so what's happened since then is you
know people just got much much richer
you know from early 1900 to 2013 we've
just moved a lot of people out of
poverty now
and yeah Bangladesh is even a bigger
example of that in the 1970s they had
horrible Cyclones one of which was the
Beatles of George Harrison's concert for
Bangladesh great album
that I still have somewhere hundreds of
thousands it's a it was he did a concert
a fundraising concert the concert for
Bangladesh after this terrible Cyclone
tragedy had hit Bangladesh and I think
there was there were several hundred
thousand which were killed uh and a
couple like that around that time
Bangladesh has been hit by comparable
storms recently and it's terrible every
death is terrible but it's like 123
deaths and it's not just because of
wealth it's because people know what to
do it's because there's cell phones it's
because they have elevated Platforms in
many towns in many communities in the
flood Plains there that you know to get
to so they went from hundreds of
thousands of deaths
in a cyclone to 123. and we were working
with Bangladesh it's no longer the
problem of of people dying it's the fact
that their cattle dies so you know they
want it they want to cattle places where
you could herd your cat this this is
their capital and it's not to make fun
of it but you know it's an amazing
progress that you've stopped worrying
about your you know your parents dying
and you worry about your cows dying and
when I was talking about social
Innovation the other hour there's a
model emerging in Bangladesh for uh
Farmers to move from raising chickens
poultry to ducks
and it's working and Ducks actually
fetch a higher price at the market
and guess what when you get flooded they
survive you can still have your income
and your future
let me ask you to give advice put on
your Sage
wise hat and give advice to young people
that are looking into this sure yeah um
into this world and see how they can do
the most good we talked about
what is the one dollar that can do the
most positive Improvement and to lead to
forty dollars forty five dollars and so
on what advice would you give to young
people in high school in college
how to have a positive impact on the
world how to have a career they can be
proud of maybe ask Bjorn first and how
to have a life to be they can be proud
of
so I think and and this really you know
pretty well reflects the whole
conversation we've had we've got to sort
of take the the uh the catastrophism out
of the uh of the climate conversation uh
and and you know this really matters
because a lot of kids literally think
that the world is going to end pretty
soon and that obviously makes any other
kind of plan uh uh uh uh meaningless so
first of all look you're not going to
die uh you know that that poster that
people that a lot of kids have you're
going to die from old age but I'm gonna
die from climate no you're not you're
gonna die from old age and you're gonna
die much older very likely right so the
reality is the world is has improved
dramatically and it's very likely to
improve even more so the Baseline is
good this is just you know the facts
then there's still lots and lots of
problems and what you should do as a
young person is stop being you know
Paralyzed by fear and then realize what
you can do is basically help Humanity
become even smarter
there's a lot of different places you
can do I mean the obvious thing when
you're talking about climate is what if
you could become the guy that you know
develops fourth generation nuclear up
it's very likely something that neither
of us know anything about right now but
develop that you know the energy source
they'll basically power the rest of
humanity how cool would that be that's
one of the many things you could do but
again also remember there are lots and
lots of other things that need Solutions
so what about you come become the guy
that makes the or the girl that makes
the uh the social innovation in in
Tanzania or in Kenya sorry in Kenya or
what about if you become the person who
finds a way that is a much cheaper more
effective way to tackle tuberculosis
right now it needs four to six months of
medication that one of the big problems
is once you've popped the pills and
you're you're fresh it's really hard to
get people to do it for the other five
and a half months right and and and you
need that otherwise you actually have a
big risk of of getting multi-drug
resistant tuberculosis which is a real
Scourge on the on the earth so you know
what if you develop that so the the
truth is not only can your life be much
better when you sort of ditched that uh
that doomerism but it also becomes much
more possible for you to be a positive
part of making sure that you do that
progress why has the world improved so
much because our parents and great
grandparents they made all this work you
know this was all their Innovations and
a lot of hard work and I'm incredibly
grateful that they've done it but now
it's kind of time to pay back so you
know you got to do this for our you know
our grandkids you've got to make those
Innovations make those uh policy
opportunities they'll make the world
even an even better place
totally and and to me
there's never been a better time to be
effective as a young person because the
internet
connectedness you can brainstorm with
someone in another country just as
easily as you can brainstorm with
someone down the block when we were kids
as I said earlier with my my pen pal
with letters taking weeks to come and
um so the Key Properties
ideally that young people
would do well to cultivate our um well
certainly adaptability
because change is changing not just you
know the rate of change is changing
these layers of change are all piling up
on each other
um
having an ability to understand the
information environment
is this fundamental need now that wasn't
a need when we were growing up we read
that a few newspapers my dad would turn
on the Nightly News and Walter Cronkite
would say that's the way it is because
that's the way it is and that's so not
the way the media environment is now so
courses in media literacy should be kind
of fundamental
parts of curriculum from like
kindergarten on or parents can do the
same thing that there's a woman at URI
University of Rhode Island Renee Hobbs
who teaches a course in propaganda
literacy
and she said you know the the the
history of the word is not bad
propaganda could be good it's Pro it's
for the for the church yeah she did a
wonderful chat with the uh she laid this
out and but understanding when it is
propaganda like the tobacco you know
there is hopefully a difference between
that and and that right cigarette ads
and and and and
journalistically acquired information
so Akita all everything Bjorn was
talking about too is just understanding
how how to not be sucked into this
information environment and spit out as
a paralyzed doomist entity
because once you have the ability to
step back
then you can use Twitter or whatever
you're on
to find people who might have a skill
set you don't have that is something you
need to do to to incorporate to harness
to do the thing you want to do in the
world
finding your way to make the world
better and it can have nothing to do
with climate
but if it makes a few more people's
lives better then overall you're leading
toward better capacity for all this
stuff so that and and then the climate
problem the Prismatic giant nature of it
is what makes it
so daunting but it's also it gives
everybody an opportunity
like there's something for artists
scientists poets everybody needs to get
into the game
I just spent some time with Kim Stanley
Robinson who wrote that book Ministry of
the future which is this sprawling novel
about
a worst case a worst case outcome where
everyone in India is dying and and uh
you know so fiction can help
experiment different kinds of fiction
different kinds of Arts can help us sort
of experiment with what the future might
look like different ways and just get
get started and the other thing
unfortunately that's needed
I think I first said this in 2008 when
someone asked me something about climate
I said
weirdly you have to sort of have a sense
of urgency but a sense of patience at
the same time
like just roll those words around in
your mind like what does that mean
urgent and patient how could that
possibly be
but actually it really is the reality
you there is an urgency with this
building gas that's cumulative that
doesn't go away like smoke when when the
when it rains
and every year that happens it's adding
to risk and you can kind of wake up
completely freaked out urgent
but when you realize energy transitions
take time then you have to sort of find
patience or whatever your word is for
that
yeah I think you have to oscillate back
and forth throughout the day having a
sense of urgency when you're trying to
actually be productive and a patience so
you can have a calm Header by you in
terms of putting everything into
perspective yeah and like you said with
information
that is interesting especially in the
scientific Community I think you've
spoken about this before
you know that there is some
responsibility or at least an
opportunity for scientists to not just
do science but to understand the
Dynamics of
the different mediums in which
information is exchanged so it could be
Twitter for a few years then it could be
Tick Tock then it could be you know I'm
a huge believer in the power of YouTube
over the next
several years perhaps decades I mean
it's a very interesting medium for
education and communication for debate
and that's Grassroots that's from like
the bottom up you know that that every
scientist is able to communicate their
work and I I personally believe have the
responsibility to communicate that work
if anything the internet made me realize
the science is not just about
doing the science it's about
communicating it
like that this is not some kind of
virtue signaling on my part no no no
like I feel like if the tree falls in
the forest and nobody's around to hear
it it really didn't fall
like that's not you should there should
be a culture of
um whoever at MIT
is a place called the media lab yes sir
where they really emphasize
uh like you always be able to demo
something to show off your work they
really emphasize showing off their work
and I think that was in some part
criticized in the bigger MIT culture
that
you know that's that's like being
focusing too much on the pr versus doing
the science but I really disagree with
that of course there's a balance to
strike you don't want to be all smoke
and mirrors but there really is a lot of
value to communication and not just sort
of some broad you almost don't want to
teach a course on communication Because
by the time you teach the course at 38
too late it's always being on top of
how what is the language what is the
culture and the etiquette what is the
technology of communication that is
effective yeah I actually had a big
conversation about that in my my
University because I think and this is
perhaps especially true for for social
sciences but I think it's probably true
for everyone uh just simply
communicating what it is that you've
done in research makes it possible for
you to sort of get an outsider's
perspective and see did I just go into
an incredibly deep uh you know whole
that you know just three other people
really care about in the world or is
this actually Something That Matters to
the world and and being able to explain
what it is that you've done to everyone
else uh makes you know my sort of sense
is if you can't say it in a couple
minutes it's probably it's not
necessarily true but it's probably
because it wasn't all that important
there was a hashtag
generated maybe seven years ago by a
Caltech PhD candidate a woman
and it was fantastic the hashtag was I
am a Scientist because
and she posted it with a picture of
herself with her answer you know
and that I when I talked to scientists
or basically anybody about communicating
I say start don't start with I am a I'm
a phytologist and I use a
spectrophotometer to do X
start with I'm a scientist because
the world is endlessly interesting and I
just found these salamanders
which are going to vanish if we don't
stop this fungus from coming to the
United States utterly interesting and
then you then you've got people hooked
but it's the motivation part because
everyone grew up as a kid and a kid is
basically like a scientist wow what the
hell is this how does this work so you
can connect with people that way the but
the this other issue you approached is
really important and what I love about
MIT particularly I spent a lot of time
there over the decades not just talking
to the hurricane guy
um Amy Smith who's the development lab
in the basement there somewhere most of
my team looks like it's the basement but
yeah it's sort of like this part of the
charm here but it's a usability function
as part of a lot of that goes on there
it's engineering and Science and it
reminds me of 1997
these two very different scientists Dan
Cameron at Berkeley and Michael Dove at
Yale
wrote a Manifesto it was um the virtues
of mundane science that's what they
called it it was a prod to the
scientific Community to actually it's
about useful utility because the whole
arena is set up to advance your career
through
revealing new knowledge that will get
you 10 years someday and
actually doing useful science is
disincentivized having a conversation
and especially if it involves
more than one discipline
because as a young scientist I there was
some science some postdocs at Columbia
who wrote this other Manifesto paper
saying here are the things universities
need to do
to Foster the collaborative capacity we
need to have sustainable development
and it was like four or five things that
universities don't do
give you time to become fluent and
for a for a physicist to talk to an
anthropologist and understand how
anthropology works for sociology takes
time and then building a relationship
with a community that has a problem that
you want to fix takes time
and you so you do these like quick
turnaround papers
that get you toward your little micro
career goal but they're not actually
getting you what you want in the world
those are really hard problems going
forward but starting with that idea of
usability
what can I do with my skill sets you
know a lot of great physicists I know
are dug in on string theory and stuff
and this some someone has to dig in on
that too but I'd like to pull a little
bit of their brain power away to think
about some of the Practical things Bjorn
thinks about too
so the the two of you have been
thinking about some of the biggest
questions
which is life here on Earth the history
of life here the future of life here on
Earth
of Earth itself
and how to allocate our resources to
alleviate suffering in the world so let
me ask the big question what do you
think is the the why of it all
what's the meaning of it what's the
meaning of our life here on Earth
you you waited till the last moment to
ask us that question yes yes in case
there's
uh yeah in case in case I can trick you
into finding an answer
well so I mean again I'm just going to
take a stab in this because uh I think
in some ways it's um it's the same thing
that you were talking about before it's
not about getting everybody sort of on
the same track and all agree on
something but it's about getting a lot
of people with very different you know
uh goals and targets and ways of
thinking about the world to go in the
same direction so for me the goal of
Life certainly Michael but I think for
for most people is to make the world a
better place it sounds incredibly
pedestrian because it becomes so
overused but that really and literally
is the point you you know your point of
your life is to you know when when one
of your friends is uh sad to make sure
that they sort of get out of that and
and find out why they're sad and maybe
move them a little bit in the right
direction and you know and and all the
things that we've talked about you know
stop people from dying from tuberculosis
and live longer lives and fix climate
change but fix it in such a way
that we actually use resources smartest
because there are lots of problems so
let's make sure we you know we we deal
with them adequately this is this is
very unsexy in some sense uh but I think
it's also very basic and really what it
matters well you know biologically
Evolution that has demanded that life is
about finding sources of energy
and perpetuating yourself right so
that's the Baseline
and that's led us into a bit of a
bollocks because we have this easy
energy that's come from the ground so
far and
um but our Brilliance has
given this this larger awareness of
everything about the planet is
transitory
and I said well how do you work with
that productively is is really an
important question I could just sort of
you know try to be as rich as possible
and use as much energy as possible and
have other people
I mean Alex Epstein I think again this
is one of the constraints on my support
for what he says is he's just talking
about
growth and progress in that sense but
there are consequences and there are
long-term trajectories here that have to
be taken into account too
um so what do you wake up
to do to me it's finding your part of
this
and as Bjorn said
finding a way to pursue and expand
betterment
when I taught I was at Pace University
for six years
and one of the courses I launched there
was called blogging a better planet
and it was for grad students mostly in
communication it wasn't an environment
it wasn't like better Planet like save
the climate it was but my task for the
students was to blog about something
they're passionate about first of all
because you can't do this just like you
can't do your conversations if you don't
wake up in the morning wanting to do
what you're doing right you're doing
this I used to call myself a selfish
blogger because I was learning every day
I still am I loved this you know I would
I would my wife laughs she thinks I work
too much
but I'm always like asking those
questions like sustain what yeah so so
my charge to the students was
harness a passion build a Blog either
alone or with others
that not just the world a little bit
towards some better better outcome and
so there was a musician who did a thing
on music musicians who use their art for
their work for making the world better
some of it was like music therapy you
know bands contributing money whatever
another one did her blog was on Comfort
comfort food all around the world and I
thought it was my favorite it was a
video this year I think it should be
viral actually
it was like looking at the world every
different cultures
that she was in Queens so every culture
every Cuisine is there in Queens 200
countries right yeah but she would go
and talk to people's moms and have them
cook the food of that country that's
their comfort food I mean I just love
this because it's through we all need to
eat and you're getting this expanded
sense of what Comfort is by thinking
about what other cultures you know
choose and that felt like a great course
because it was not directive it was just
it gave them this potential to go
forward you know I'd love to think
they've all gone on to become Superstar
whatever is I don't know that's the
giving that's the Letting Go part
even if one did something special then
that makes me feel job done
and you know
when I after I've been writing about
climate for 30 years
2016-ish I
did a lot of writing about what did I
learn unlearned and stuff and I had had
a stroke in 2011. which is interesting
it was the first time I really thought
about my brain
you don't think about your brain on a
day-to-day basis but this is my brain
telling me you know ding ding ding ding
some weird shit's happening
and when I was thinking about climate or
confronting climate change it felt like
some of the things I learned about my
own existence you know I'm going to die
but you don't really absorb that is that
the first time you kind of that was like
my face yeah this is really the shit you
know or at least deep disability if not
death and
um that that ability is transitory and I
thought about the climate problem we're
not going to solve the global warming
problem at least not in our lifetimes
but you you work on making
those trajectories sustainable you know
the end of life particularly you work on
making sure other people don't get
strokes if they can avoid it in my case
I wrote about I was blogging about my
stroke while I was having it I was
tweeting about it there's a funny tweet
that's kind of mistyped because
um you know um
yeah yeah right right so so if you so
that's like share your knowledge share
your learning and everyone can do this
now like on whatever platform and then
um
there's also this like giving up part
but not in a depressing well maybe you
could call depressing I started to zoom
in years ago and the idea of the
Serenity Prayer the sobriety thing you
know it's like know what you can change
know what you can't grab me the serenity
to accept the things that cannot change
the courage to change the things that
can and the wisdom to know the
difference yeah see those three
properties are really important right
now
some aspects of this we know absolutely
what we can work on cutting
vulnerability
energy transitions take time science can
help us discriminate the difference
and that's an iterative changing
landscape going forward
but at the same time
science
like I personally on climate modeling or
like narrowing how hot it's going to get
or more clarity on
when an ice sheet is going to collapse I
think those are what I call known and
Nobles so being able to
I've seen enough evidence
that those are deeply complex problems
that we're not going to get there
quickly so then that gives you a
landscape to act on
and that you know whether you bring God
into the mix is irrelevant it's really
know what you can change know what you
can't and know what that gives you the
quality to work on them and serenity is
comfort with
that this is transitory that the human
Journey
like anyone's individual Journey
will have some and that doesn't mean it
has to be near it does this anthropocene
that I've been writing about for decades
is uh
can still be a good anthropocene
or at least a less bad one in terms of
how we get through it and you're also a
musician so in context one one of my
favorite songs of yours an album a very
fine line I should mention that with the
stroke coming close to death the lyrics
here are quite brilliant I have to say
oh yeah it's a very fine lie between
winning and losing
a very fine line between living and
dying a very fine line by the way people
should listen to this I can't play this
because YouTube will give me trouble a
very fine line between loving and
leaving
most of your life you spend walking a
very fine line and the rest of the
lyrics are just quite brilliant it is a
fine line yeah I'm glad you walked in
with me today gentlemen you're brilliant
kind beautiful human beings thank you so
much for having this quote-unquote
debate that was much more about just
exploring ideas together Bjorn thank you
so much and uh Andy thank you so much
for talking today you know these kinds
of
extended conversations or the more of it
the better and finding ways to
spread that capacity just to get people
out of this win-lose thing is really
important so thanks for what you're
doing yeah
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Bjorn lomberg and
Andrew revkin to support this podcast
please check out our sponsors in the
description and now let me leave you
with some words from Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over
our heads
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time