WEBVTT - Carbon Bros, Ep 3: Climate Hysteria, Doomers, and Boy Math Solutions 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.760 Who is that, like, uh, save the whale kid or 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:06.960 whatever that was, like you were speaking for us. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.080 Oh, Gretituneberg, Gretituneburg. 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:09.680 What happened to her? 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.240 By the way, she would take a steamboat from Sweden 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.720 to yell at somebody on a on a on a soapbox. 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:18.160 How old is she now? Has she got an OnlyFans? 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:19.000 I don't. 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:21.320 Twenty two? 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:22.520 All right, she's of age. 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.480 Oh we're going to hell, we're going together. 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.360 Well, she got a solar powered vibrator. I remember. 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.120 She got my carbon foot finish. 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:34.000 You're listening to Carbon Bros. 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:36.520 I'm Daniel Penney and I'm Amy Westervelt. 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.120 And that was a clip of podcaster theovonn and comedian 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.599 Mark Norman talking about watching Gretaituneberg's OnlyFans. 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:49.239 Gross also classic also doesn't exist, so please don't google it. 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.800 Last time on Carbon Bros. We traveled back in time 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.600 to unspool the connections between masculinity and the domination of 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.840 women in the natural world. And we took a whistlestop 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:05.720 tour of the latest in seventeenth century thinking like man's 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.959 dominion over the creatures of the earth and women. 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:10.959 The doctrine of discovery and. 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:17.280 The sanctity of private property, keep off the grass, and 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.720 we ended with a gusher on petro masculinity, this idea 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.640 that modern manliness, with its obsession with cars in particular, 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:31.280 is just premised on light, sweet crude, and why some 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.720 men will defend to the death their right to burn 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:35.119 down the. 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:39.000 Planet from my cold dead Hams. 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.760 Today we're looking at why climate protest gets labeled hysterical 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.840 and how the techno solutions offered by ecomodernists and abundance 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.080 bros traffic in the same tropes we've been seeing since 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:55.000 the nineteen sixties when silly women like Rachel Carson just 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:56.320 didn't understand the science. 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.320 So that's one side of the coin, a bunch of 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:04.600 overly optimistic tech bros who think carbon capture and geoengineering 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.040 are all we need to live long and prosper. But 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.840 there's also the other side of the coin, the guys 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:14.160 who are certain that civilization is coming to an end. 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.520 And it is overwhelmingly men who hold this view, And 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.840 you think we should all either start building bunkers and 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:25.720 stocking up on canned beans, or more radically, who want 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.240 us to ditch Planet Earth and start colonizing space. 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.360 And don't get me started on the shape of those rockets. 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:39.080 Colonel, you better take a look at this radar. What 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.680 is it, son, I don't know, sir, but it looks 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:43.639 like a giant. 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:52.040 Those big, beautiful phallic rockets. And what these two reactions 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:54.920 to the climate crisis have in common is a weird 0:02:55.160 --> 0:03:00.480 masculine certainty that the solutions are either easy to technical 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.680 fixes or that they're so out of reach we might 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.919 as well give up now. One is a capitalist fairy 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:10.720 tale where everything will be fine if we just turn 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.639 on enough nuclear reactors and start hoovering carbon out of 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.600 the sky, and the other is a vision of apocalypse 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.639 and survival of the fittest. And it's always, of course, 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:21.960 these guys who are the most fit. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:27.720 Yeah, because they're biohacking Daniel. But ultimately they're both fantasies 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:32.320 of control and dependence and escape that ignore the messy 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:37.240 reality of other people in their existence or the possibilities 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:38.320 of other ways of. 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:45.040 Living after the break. Climate hysteria doomers and boy math solutions. 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.440 Let's start with climate hysteria. This is a major talking 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.160 point used to smear people who want to address the 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.200 climate crisis, and obviously it's pretty sexist. 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:08.480 Doctor. 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:10.760 What do you know of hysteria? 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:18.719 Ah, nothing, nothing, But it's a plague about time. 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:24.680 It stems from an overactive uterus. In its most severe forms, 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.680 it demands drastic measures, institutionalization, surgery. 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:29.760 Even. 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:31.479 Yeah. 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.400 So, while hysteria has long been debunked as a medical 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.840 condition afflicting only females, it's hung around as a way 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.200 to insult and dismiss women as irrational. 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.640 In the case of the climate crisis, female hysteria is 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.719 used to paint protesters as unreasonable. Their claims about what's 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.799 happening to the planet are too emotional and they should 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.880 just be quiet and leave the climate issue to experts. 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.360 Nobody is on the receiving end of this attack more 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.680 than climate activists Greta Tuneberg. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.760 Let's go back to twenty nineteen, when the climate movement 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:10.000 was at a high point and Gretaituneberg addressed the UN 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:14.960 here's Australian conservative commentator Chris Kenny. 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:21.880 Instead of dividing facts science, economics, technology costs and benefits, and. 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.599 Of course, policy options, the United Nations hands. 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.839 The floor over to a hysterical teenager. 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:35.320 You'll come to us young people for hope. How dare you? 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.920 You have stolen my dreams in my childhood with your 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.840 empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:50.039 Well we the lucky ones, to hear about it. The 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.280 Aussies are weirdly obsessed with Greta. What's that about it? 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.600 There's definitely a lot of Rupert Murdoch to blame there, 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.880 and partly because of him. Now it's not just his 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.400 media but other you know, coal and oil barons have 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.080 kind of gotten in on gobbling up media entities. So 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.000 at this point, around seventy percent or so of Australian 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.480 media is actually controlled by fossil fuel interests of one 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:19.160 kind or another. There's this woman named Gina Reinhardt who's 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:24.160 like a coal baron who owns a bunch of stuff too. Anyway, 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:27.159 I feel like Australia does not get enough credit for 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:31.159 being a full hardcore petro state, and their version of 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:33.360 petro masculinity is like right up there with. 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:35.520 The US variety kriiche. 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.400 Yeah, So for sure, if it's a Murdoch network, they're 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:41.520 gonna be Greta bashing all day long. 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:43.240 And they've done a lot of. 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:52.560 It, and it's not just Murdoch's Australian channels. Here's Michael Knowles, 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.200 a Daily Wire contributor who was banned from Fox News 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.920 after making this remark. I guess it was a bridge 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:00.600 too far even for them. 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.680 The climate hysterian movement is not about science. If it 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.600 were about science, it would be led by scientists rather 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.880 than by politicians. And a mentally ill Swedish child who 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:14.680 is being exploited by her parents and by the international LaRue. 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.120 So what you're seeing here is a political movement and 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.320 a religious movement, and it's a fulfilling religious and political 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:23.360 goals of the left, but it isn't doing very much 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:23.880 for science. 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.120 Greta in this clip is being painted as just this 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.080 poor little girl with mental problems who's being exploited, and 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.760 you know, we need to leave this climate issue to 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.240 the real scientists. Of course they don't actually want to 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:39.800 do that either. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:44.680 No, when women with very specific scientific training on climate 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:48.400 speak up, they get hit with the same stuff, including 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.200 even stalking and death threats. Here's doctor Catherine Hajo, one 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.040 of the world's leading climate scientists. I'm talking, you know, 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:59.440 more than one hundred and fifty peer reviewed abstracts, journal articles, 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:03.560 and other publications, and she's contributed to four of the 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.520 national climate assessments for the US, so like she's not, 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.000 you know, a hobbyist. 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:11.920 She's a very legit climate scientist. 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:14.520 But she was venting to me about this a couple 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:16.360 of years ago, and I was kind of shocked at 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:17.400 just how bad it is. 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:19.520 I even get people calling me to go back to 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:21.160 the kitchen that the problem I have is that too 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:23.720 many women are working that well I should be back 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.400 taking care of my children, you know, stuff like that. 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.960 And then there's the safety concerns, yeah. 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.959 Because most of the people are men, and there are 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.400 some serious concerns with safety. The past year, two people 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.559 found my home address and sent stuff to my home 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.320 address that was really concerning and disturbing. And I have 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.600 multiple times seen men kind of wandering up and down 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.000 looking at the doors to see if they can find 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.200 my name, and the people I don't know, and then 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:57.400 when I see it, like oh are you got her? Hallo, 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:00.520 and I don't know who they are where they come from. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:05.240 Unfortunately, there is a much longer history of these sorts 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:09.439 of attacks against female environmental activists and scientists. This goes 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.640 back to the very beginnings of the modern environmental movement, 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.360 and the work of one woman in particular. 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.000 This is one of the nation's best sellers. First printed 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.600 on September twenty seven, nineteen sixty two, up to now 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.160 five hundred thousand copies have been sold, and Silent Spring 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:29.280 has been called the most controversial book. 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:29.680 Of the year. 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.680 If we are ever to solved the basic problem of 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:38.120 the environmental contamination, we must begin to count the many 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.160 hidden costs of what we are doing. 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.920 That, of course, is Rachel Carson talking about her book 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.760 Silent Spring, which was published in nineteen sixty two. For 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.080 listeners who haven't read Silent Spring yet, you really should. 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:56.320 It's an amazing investigation into the damaged pesticides and other 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.559 agricultural and household chemicals were doing to the environment and 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:00.400 human health. 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.400 It's also like a really good read. I actually just 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.800 reread this recently, and I was like, dang, Rachel Carson 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:06.880 was a really good writer. 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.000 So it's like, yeah, it was. It was published in 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:09.280 the New. 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.440 Yorker, Yes, yes, exactly, and it revealed that the chemical 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.000 industry and the US government had been lying for decades 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.959 about the dangers of these products. So that kicked off 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:22.640 a whole public debate about just how much the public 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:27.160 should trust the word of industry experts. This is an 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:30.920 industry scientist responding to Carson at the time. 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.440 Carson maintains that the balance of nature is a major 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:42.720 force in the survival of man, whereas the modern chemist, 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:47.520 the modern biologist, the modern scientist believes that man is 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.120 steadily controlling nature. 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.400 It's important to remember that the chemicals industry was relatively 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.240 new at the time that Carson's book came out. I mean, 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.359 part of the reason that her book was so interesting 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.079 and sold while was that, you know, this was this 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.160 somewhat new industry that had only been around really for 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.120 like maybe ten twenty years, and that people had mostly 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:12.320 been told was like great and futuristic and amazing. So 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:14.920 for her to come in and say, I don't know, 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.120 it was challenging. And then there was this idea that 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.360 these guys, and they were always guys in their white 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.280 lab coats, like in the lab, creating things like this 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:49.320 was the future. 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:32.240 We want. 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:40.880 Every day that we. 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:47.480 Got everything for. 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:03.200 This was like progress for America versus these primitive biologists 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:07.440 outdoing field research and like hugging trees. Right, It's like 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:12.440 the guys in the lab were creating the future. Those 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:16.000 guys were just like catching butterflies and nuts. And add 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.240 to that the fact that Carson was a woman. 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:21.560 You get the idea of why this was like so 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:22.840 for them. 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.280 But it wasn't enough for them to just constantly point 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.920 out she's a woman. They really threw everything at Carson, 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.280 that you know she wasn't a real scientist, that this 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.559 was some sort of personal vendetta because she had cancer, 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:42.520 that she was a big old lesbian. Here's that industry 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.400 scientist again. In a CBS News special, his name was 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:48.160 doctor Robert White Stevens. 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:53.640 Miss Carson is concerned with every possibility of hazard and danger. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:58.000 What is the agricultural school has to concern itself with 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.480 the probability the likely hood of danger and assess that 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.880 against utility. If we had to investigate every possibility, we 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.800 would never make any advances at all, because this would 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:14.040 require an infinite time for experimental work and we would 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:14.840 never be finished. 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.720 Yet the public was being asked to accept these chemicals, 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:23.960 was being asked to acquiesce in their use, and did 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.520 not have the whole picture. So I said, about to 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:28.280 remedy the balance. 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:34.199 There, Wow, sounds like a classic case of hysteria. 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:37.160 Yeah, get that lady some bed rest and pills. 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:38.520 She's a star. 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.920 Star. And of course, what we see in the Carson 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.400 episode is not just women and environmentalists being branded as hysterical, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.440 but also the emergence of this idea that chemistry and 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:01.720 tech are uniquely masculine and therefore uniquely good at solving problems, 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.400 and that using science and tech to solve big problems 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.640 is obviously superior to caring about pussy shit like birds. 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:13.800 Yeah, fuck those birds, and yeah, the same attitude you'll 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:18.400 get from folks who push things like nuclear, geoengineering and 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:23.520 carbon capture as climate solutions. It's also not a coincidence 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:27.120 that the oil industry's favorite climate solution and the only 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:30.840 one who's funding wasn't cut in Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:33.000 was carbon capture. 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:33.960 Mm hmm. 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:37.360 I spoke with Michael Levian, a professor of sociology at 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:40.760 Johns Hopkins who studies the oil, coal, and gas industries, 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.240 and we talked about the hype around carbon capture in 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.840 his home state of Louisiana and what he calls reactionary decarbonization. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:53.040 It's being promoted by the fossil fuel industry. All the 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.720 companies involved are pretty much in the fossil fuel industry, 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.920 and this is just the extension of fossil fuel infrastructure. 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:00.320 But instead of just of. 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.200 Denialist talking points, they are now kind of positioning themselves 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:07.240 as leaders in carbage management, right, so they're actually going 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:09.440 to be the leaders of the energy transition. And all 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.920 the kind of silly protesters and so on who go 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.560 on about emissions are sort of like childish, and we're 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:20.120 doing the serious work of building the kind of low 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:21.280 carbon future. 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.440 Which is basically where CO two, either from refineries and 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:29.640 factories or from natural gas production, is captured and stored 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:35.960 either underground or in containers above ground, or it's transported 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.200 to an oil field where it's blasted underground to get 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.320 more oil out through a process called enhanced oil recovery, 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.960 which is absolutely not a climate solution. Yeah. 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.040 I love, I mean, this is like the most amazing, 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.720 magical thinking I think I've ever seen from the oil 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:56.040 and I mean, honestly, kudos to them, fucking genius move. Personally, 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:59.960 I prefer this the carbon sky vacuum, also known as 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:03.480 direct air capture, where they just try to suck CEO 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:06.880 two out of the sky so that theoretically we can 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.160 admit as much as we want forever. Yeah, carbon capture 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:13.720 is basically a way for oil companies to maintain the 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.360 status quo and pretend that they're solving climate at the 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:17.960 same time. 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.320 But setting aside the fact that the math behind carbon 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.440 capture does not add up, Michael's more interested in the 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:29.560 politics of this so called climate solution and how people 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:31.480 are accepting or fighting it. 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.600 The other piece of this is, you know that, and 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:37.600 this is why a lot of environmental justice groups are 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:42.600 opposed to ccs, is that one, okay, perpetuates the existing 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.960 petrochemical plants who they want to shut down that are 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.880 poisoning their communities, especially you know Louisiana Black communities in 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.320 Cancer Rally and around Lake Charles, and the kind of 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.440 CCS kind of prolongs their life and makes them seem 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.800 clean when in fact, you know, the carbon capture technology 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.960 only captures the co two. It doesn't capture the additional 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.959 pollutants that are coming out of those factories. 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.399 And you've got an industry that already has quite a 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.680 few spills from its pipelines building a whole new pipeline 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.760 infrastructure for a substance that can cause some real problems 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.080 if it leaks. While climate deniers love to talk about 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:27.080 CO two being good for plants in high concentrations, it 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:27.720 will kill you. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.560 So CO two is not toxic, but it's an asphyxiate, 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:38.280 so it displaces oxygen and can suffocate you. And in Starsha, Mississippi, 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:40.840 a handful of years ago, maybe it was four years ago, 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:45.679 one of the existing CO two pipelines running through that 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:49.560 state runs from City, Texas. It it leaked and it 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.879 sent forty something people to hospital almost you know, almost 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:56.720 ad asphyxiating, foaming. 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.840 At the mouth, which begs the question why would anyone 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.360 want this in their community? But Michael says, so far 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.680 it's mostly environmental justice groups fighting it, and that not surprisingly, 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:13.280 there's a pretty significant gender and racial divide on this issue. 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:16.520 Is there a reason why we see a lot of 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:21.720 the environmental justice struggles being organized by women, and is 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.760 that because of the way men are more absorbed into 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.639 the industrial economy through their jobs. Does it have to 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.920 do with the division of labor in the household and 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:37.280 who is home suffering from the pollution war of the 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.480 day or who is doing the care work for people 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.159 who are sick, dying of cancer, or kids who have 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:44.560 respiratory disease. 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.080 And they've put a neat little rhetorical trick here too. 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.760 Sometimes you'll see technocratic folks using the language of environmental 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.280 justice to push their ideas as better for the world 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:01.679 than things like reducing consumption or increasing efficiency. Darigrmitt goes, Roughly, 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.199 those environmentalists want to go back to some sort of 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:09.119 primitive state of pristine nature. But we want humans to 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.480 thrive and technology can do that for us. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:17.119 Yeah, don't you care about people in the third world? Amy, Yes, exactly. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:18.280 It's it's that thing. 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:23.040 This has basically become the abundance line. 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.080 Yes, And of course we are talking here about the 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:30.400 book Abundance by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:33.800 you've probably seen clips about all over social media if 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.080 you are a person with internet access in twenty twenty five. 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.119 And we should say about Abundance as our client's book. 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.520 We don't want to paint it in like a completely 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.719 broad brush. There are some ideas in there that are 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.919 worth debating or exploring, but the thing is that it 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:55.240 has become a kind of wedge or like an icebreaker 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.600 being used by the right to force through all kinds 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:05.160 of policies that are absolutely not climate solutions totally. 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:08.440 The thing that I find really interesting about the abundance 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:13.320 stuff is that I don't know whether Ezra kleine knew 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.520 that the Koch brothers and people like Chris Wright, our 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:20.840 energy secretary, were using this framing for like the last 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.560 ten years as like a really pretty clever way to 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:30.440 push expansion of fossil fuel development. But they were, they 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.840 have been for quite a while, and this just he 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.560 just mainstreamed it. I don't know if you meant to, 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:40.960 but that's the net result. And so now it's become 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:45.520 this shorthand of like you're either for abundance and like 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.600 who's against abundance, right, or you're like, you know, a 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:53.720 colorless shrew who doesn't want anyone to ever have any fun, 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.280 like Greta Tunberg. Every time I hear the word, I 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.520 think of this like I think of like a really 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:05.160 like foul smelling men's cologne, passion fire. 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:06.480 Their abundance. 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:08.760 It stays so good. 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:14.200 So you know, this is not a new idea for 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.800 the climate sphere either. There are a lot of people 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.040 who have been kind of pushing the argument, which is 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.159 overarchingly that are you know, this is obviously it's a 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:26.920 whole book, so like, don't let us stop you from 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.840 reading it. By all means, read the whole book. There 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.320 are some good ideas in there, and there are some 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.720 you know, there's some stupid ones too. 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:39.280 Yeah, but but in. 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.959 General it's it's the same old, same old of like, 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.000 you know, if we can get everyone up to a 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:50.680 certain level of economic stability, then that will be what 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:55.879 kind of fixes everything else. We can tech and growth 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.160 hack our way to solving a bunch of these problems. 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:01.119 In that way, we don't have to ask anyone to 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:06.040 sacrifice anything or scare anyone with climate crisis narratives and 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.360 things like that. A lot of that stuff, and that's 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.640 been around for quite a long time, especially the techno 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:16.639 optimist side of it, although it has gone under a 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.040 different brand name in the climate space for a while back. 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:24.000 When I started working as a climate journalist, we called 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:28.639 it ecomodernism. Here's Ted Nordhaus, author and the director of 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.360 research at the Breakthrough Institute, laying out the ecomodernist argument 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:34.880 in an interview we did a couple of years ago. 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:38.800 You know, historically there have been sort of two defining 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:42.720 ideas in the modern environmental sort of discourse, and one 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:46.159 is that we sort of need to shrink the human footprint, 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:49.199 the footprint of human activities to reduce the impact on 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:51.600 the environment. And the second is that we need to 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.240 harmonize human societies with nature and with the natural world. 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.560 We need to get back closer to nature. And in 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:00.720 the manifesto we argue that you can do one of 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:02.840 those things, but you can't do both of them. And 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:05.800 obviously we argue that it's the former that in a 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:10.120 world with seven billion people going on nine or ten 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:12.879 billion people, most of whom want to live something that 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.360 looks like a modern life, you just need much more 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:20.280 efficient technologies, you know, environmentally efficient, you need cities, you 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.520 need energy density, you need intensive, really efficient agriculture. And 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:26.840 if you don't have those things, you're just going to 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:33.199 turn the entire planet into like a kind of big farm. Basically, 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:36.320 people are going to be poor, they're actually going to 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:40.800 be higher emission, and you're going to just destroy all 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:44.720 of the biodiversity that remains. And so, you know, better 0:23:44.840 --> 0:23:49.240 technologies are the thing, and technology is the kind of 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:53.760 key folk rum that kind of mediates that relationship between 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:58.560 living standards and environmental consequences of those living standards. 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:02.800 But Nordoues didn't spread the good word alone. He co 0:24:02.880 --> 0:24:05.840 authored the Ecomodernist Manifesto with a bunch of guys, but 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:10.520 especially with one guy who'd been his longtime collaborator and 0:24:10.560 --> 0:24:14.000