Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. On this week's show,
Speaker 2: we'll look at what's better for the planet running the
Speaker 2: dryer or using a clothesline. The answer might surprise you. Plus,
Speaker 2: since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic deaths in the
Speaker 2: US have risen sharply. What will it take to get
Speaker 2: those numbers back down? And finally, if Taylor Swift can't
Speaker 2: bring gen Z to the NFL, who can? But we
Speaker 2: begin with the heat. The global temperature continues to rise
Speaker 2: and scientists are beside themselves. Officials from NASA and the
Speaker 2: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say this past July was
Speaker 2: the hottest month for the Earth on record. NASA Administrator
Speaker 2: Bill Nelson.
Speaker 3: Certainly is self evident that the Earth is heating up.
Speaker 3: And what we find is that July of this year
Speaker 3: the temperatures are the hottest ever on record.
Speaker 2: And last month was the hottest September on record by far.
Speaker 2: This past June the warmest June ever recorded. Yeah, we're
Speaker 2: seeing the trend. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams,
Speaker 2: who covers climate change, and scientists are using some pretty
Speaker 2: unscientific language to describe the temperatures that they're seeing. If
Speaker 2: your column is any indication, Laura, what have you heard?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we've had dobsmackingly bananas. We've had astounding, staggering
Speaker 4: and nerving, bewildering, flabber dusting, dusting, distrioting, dobsmacking. Scientists have
Speaker 4: been really, really surprised by the kind of the level
Speaker 4: of heat that we saw in September compared to previous records.
Speaker 2: It is a bit alarming that they seem so surprised
Speaker 2: by this because they've been calling attention to climate change
Speaker 2: and climate change issues and the effects for years. Why
Speaker 2: did this catch them so off guard?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just because it's half a degree celsius higher
Speaker 4: than the previous record in twenty twenty, and so when
Speaker 4: we see these records getting broken, they're not usually broken
Speaker 4: by that margin. And so it is a kind of
Speaker 4: market in Greece, and it looks like it could be.
Speaker 4: Some are saying an acceleration in the rate of global
Speaker 4: woman which would be worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wondered was this an outlier, was just this
Speaker 2: is a one time thing. Is there's something that caused
Speaker 2: it specifically, or are we seeing an acceleration. It's going
Speaker 2: to just get hotter and hotter and hotter in the
Speaker 2: next few years.
Speaker 4: So that's something that scientists are debating. So there are
Speaker 4: two camps of scientists. The first camp and I spoke
Speaker 4: to sociologists and he'd kind of terms these guys accelerationists,
Speaker 4: and they are concerned that this is an acceleration. Basically,
Speaker 4: what we've seen, particularly this year, is there are these
Speaker 4: sulfur dioxide emissions which are comes from like crew like
Speaker 4: cruise ships and you know, ships like taking all our
Speaker 4: stuff across the oceans, and they've cleaned up their act
Speaker 4: and so we're seeing way fewer aerosols being emitted into
Speaker 4: the atmosphere. So that's a good thing for our health.
Speaker 4: But those aerosols have historically served to mass human induced
Speaker 4: climate change because they reflect the Sun's heats back into space,
Speaker 4: and so the fewer thing fewer of those that we have,
Speaker 4: the more solar radiation reaches the earth surface. The scientists
Speaker 4: that think that we've seen an acceleration point to that
Speaker 4: trend of you know, sulfur emissions going down, and point
Speaker 4: to the trend of you know, these these huge temperature
Speaker 4: records that we've seen over the past few months and
Speaker 4: say that it could be an acceleration.
Speaker 5: Now, I would argue that.
Speaker 4: The other team of scientists, the observationists, are right in
Speaker 4: that this is just you know, it's a few data points,
Speaker 4: and there's there's lots of things that could be making this.
Speaker 4: You know, this the Earth a lot warmer right now,
Speaker 4: a lot of temporary things. So of the September that
Speaker 4: we've just seen was one point seventy five degrees celsius
Speaker 4: warmer than pre industrial temperatures.
Speaker 5: Now that's very scary. Number.
Speaker 4: One point two degrees celsius of that we know is
Speaker 4: down to US burning fossil fuels. The remaining zero point
Speaker 4: five degrees celsius or so is due to with a
Speaker 4: combination of different factors, and so it could be aerosols,
Speaker 4: but it should also be the fact that we are
Speaker 4: in an l Nino cason, which is a naturally occurring
Speaker 4: climate pattern that warms global temperatures. It should also be that,
Speaker 4: you know, there was this huge underwater volcano which held
Speaker 4: an immense plume of water vapor, which is a greenhouse
Speaker 4: gas into the atmosphere last year, and that would be
Speaker 4: enough to temporarily elevate global temperatures for a few years.
Speaker 4: It would be partly aerosols, and it should partly be
Speaker 4: the fact that we'll see we've got we've had reduced
Speaker 4: ice at the poles this year. So the more dark
Speaker 4: sea that's exposed, the more heat that's absorbed by the water.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's a lot there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But no matter which side they're on, whether they believe
Speaker 2: that this is an acceleration or they believe this is
Speaker 2: just par for the course, the observationists, if you will,
Speaker 2: is there a new sense of urgency?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that.
Speaker 5: There's always a sense of urgency, and.
Speaker 4: I you know, whether it's an acceleration or not, the
Speaker 4: overwhelming trend is that the Earth is just in warmer
Speaker 4: and that we are still not doing enough to combat
Speaker 4: that warming. And so if it weights people up and
Speaker 4: is a reminder that we actually need to, you know,
Speaker 4: take some severe action to stop this trend, then I
Speaker 4: guess that, yeah, there could be a call for.
Speaker 5: A renewed sense of urgency.
Speaker 4: The urgency was needed all along, but yeah, I suppose
Speaker 4: that this would be a weight of call.
Speaker 2: We are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams about
Speaker 2: the quote gob smackingly Banana's heat, as scientists describe it,
Speaker 2: and as it's listed in your column on the Bloomberg terminal. Laura,
Speaker 2: it was a great read, very interesting to see how
Speaker 2: they are using terms that you might you might hear
Speaker 2: among the laypersons such as myself, you don't usually expect
Speaker 2: to hear from people who study this for a loving
Speaker 2: What do they believe this could mean for the coming
Speaker 2: winter months. Are we going to see a milder than
Speaker 2: usual winter or because it's an extreme, where we going
Speaker 2: to see a colder winter.
Speaker 4: That's a good question, and I guess we'll find out
Speaker 4: when the data comes out, But I think for now,
Speaker 4: October is looking to be warmer than average. And I
Speaker 4: would say that with you know the fact that we're
Speaker 4: in an El Nino that tends to make things warmer.
Speaker 5: It actually tends to make parts of.
Speaker 4: The world, So I think Europe might be might be
Speaker 4: CNA holder slightly tolder winter if their only pattern holds true.
Speaker 4: But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if we saw a
Speaker 4: warmer than average October and November.
Speaker 2: So there may be some disagreement about what these temperature
Speaker 2: trends are telling us right now among signs, but they
Speaker 2: do agree on one thing, and that there's an issue
Speaker 2: with political will. There isn't enough of it. Where does
Speaker 2: that stand?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, I would say that the fissure
Speaker 4: between science and political will is huge. We need to
Speaker 4: be deterbinizing with farmer urgency. So according to the website
Speaker 4: the Climate Actioning Tractor, which takes stock of all of
Speaker 4: the promises and policies of countries around the world, and
Speaker 4: then not a single country in the world is taking
Speaker 4: action that's compatible with limiting warm into one point five
Speaker 4: degree celsius above pre industrial temperatures. The UK has rolled
Speaker 4: backs and that zero tardets. Germany's approved bringing toll fired
Speaker 4: power plants back in line over the winter. US oil
Speaker 4: production is running at an all time high. It's not
Speaker 4: really how you'd expect country is reacting to climate crisis
Speaker 4: to be acting.
Speaker 2: Is that in part because of the geopolitical climate that
Speaker 2: we are dealing with right now, what's going on in
Speaker 2: uk and now what's going on in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and what it's going to mean for heating fuel being
Speaker 2: shipped out to those areas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, I think definitely the geobilistal you know,
Speaker 4: environment is not helping. And we've also got a you know,
Speaker 4: really high inflation, which is you know, stretching people's wallets,
Speaker 4: and whether we like it or not, we have to
Speaker 4: admit that, you know, sometimes net zero action is going
Speaker 4: to cost people more in the in the short term.
Speaker 4: In the long term, you'd hope that it would, you know,
Speaker 4: eventually bills should come down. We rolled out renewables enough,
Speaker 4: but certainly in the short term we're feeling in our wallets.
Speaker 2: Have they been able to get any traction with this,
Speaker 2: to get the attention of those lawmakers and those leaders
Speaker 2: who would be able to take the lead on this,
Speaker 2: or are they being shouted down, if you will, or
Speaker 2: drowned out by what is going on in the rest
Speaker 2: of the world and the really urgent need in the
Speaker 2: rest of the world for things like heating fuel because
Speaker 2: of what's happening in Ukraine and Israel.
Speaker 4: For sure, I think that at the moment, it definitely
Speaker 4: feels like, you know, the scientists are being drowned out
Speaker 4: just because of the urgency of these other prices. It
Speaker 4: will be really interesting to see at COP twenty eight
Speaker 4: in Dubai in December, what kind of happens there, you know,
Speaker 4: whether we're able to kind of come around the table
Speaker 4: and re you know, set our sights on more ambitious
Speaker 4: climate action there and kind of you know, center ourselves
Speaker 4: around that, or whether indeed, you know, the under end
Speaker 4: conflicts kind of again makes it another kind of non event, all.
Speaker 2: Right, and we're going to watch it with you. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much, Laura for bringing us up to speed
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: Larah Williams a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She covers climate change
Speaker 2: and coming up, we're going to continue this climate change conversation.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about what's better for the earth. Using a
Speaker 2: clothesline to dry your clothes or just run the dryer
Speaker 2: might surprise you. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com.
Speaker 1: The iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Okay, what's
Speaker 2: better for the planet running your clothes dryer or hanging
Speaker 2: your clothes on a line outside? It might depend. We
Speaker 2: welcome Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling, who covers energy and commodities. David,
Speaker 2: thank you for taking the time with us. Your column
Speaker 2: starts with this intriguing thought when running the dryer maybe
Speaker 2: actually be better for the planet. And this is all
Speaker 2: about solar power changing how grids operate bring us up
Speaker 2: to speed.
Speaker 7: Yeah, sure, well, I mean this literally was a dilemma
Speaker 7: that confronted me a few weeks ago on a Saturday
Speaker 7: afternoon when I'd just done a load of laundry and
Speaker 7: it was a lovely day for putting laundry out on
Speaker 7: the line. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny spring day.
Speaker 7: I'm in Sydney, of course, so it's spring here at
Speaker 7: the moment. But then I am someone who regularly writes
Speaker 7: about energy, and so a thought occurred to me, which is,
Speaker 7: if the weather is so good for the sun drying
Speaker 7: clothes on the line. It's probably also very good for
Speaker 7: powering solar panels, and Australia is one of the most
Speaker 7: heavily solar rooftop solar dense places in the world. You know,
Speaker 7: per capital, we have more solar panels than any other country.
Speaker 7: And so of course what this means is, in the
Speaker 7: same weather conditions, you're actually going to have a surge
Speaker 7: of solar generation hitting the grid, which is possibly going
Speaker 7: to be too much for the grid. I had a
Speaker 7: look at the website of the grid operator and it
Speaker 7: turned out that at that point the price of electricity
Speaker 7: wholesale in the market was about minus seventy Australian dollars
Speaker 7: about minus fifty US dollars per per meguar tower. So
Speaker 7: it was a negative price there was. You know, normally,
Speaker 7: obviously you have to pay for electricity, but this was
Speaker 7: the opposite because there was so much solar hit hitting
Speaker 7: the grid at this point that they were essentially the
Speaker 7: market was prepared to pay people like me. Of course,
Speaker 7: I was not actually going to get any money from
Speaker 7: this because of the way bills are structured, but it
Speaker 7: was prepared to pay users to take the electricity off
Speaker 7: their hands. So this completely changes the calculus of it,
Speaker 7: because if you want to have strong grids, and if
Speaker 7: you want to have also a you know, a financially
Speaker 7: viable renewables sector paying into the grid, you actually you
Speaker 7: want to be running the dryer at the middle the
Speaker 7: middle of the day. You don't want to be putting
Speaker 7: the stuff on the line because you actually want these
Speaker 7: imbalances in the grid to sort themselves out.
Speaker 2: So the balance of power then in the most hyper
Speaker 2: local energy infrastructure within your own home hyper local, that's
Speaker 2: got to be a challenge because you have to pay
Speaker 2: attention to that. You have to pay attention to how
Speaker 2: much is hitting the grid.
Speaker 7: I mean, I should say hardly anyone is paying attention
Speaker 7: to this, and there's several reasons for that. I've actually
Speaker 7: I used to have pounds on my roof at my
Speaker 7: current place. I only moved in about nine months ago,
Speaker 7: so I don't actually have that at the moment, So
Speaker 7: it doesn't make any difference to my electricity costs. I
Speaker 7: pay the same tariff regardless of the time of day.
Speaker 7: That makes no difference at all. In addition, in almost
Speaker 7: every market that the wholesale price of electricity does not
Speaker 7: reflect the retail price of electricity, and the only extent
Speaker 7: to which it does is actually something that in a
Speaker 7: lot of markets is very anachronistic. I can get a
Speaker 7: I can get a an electricity tariff whereby it cost
Speaker 7: me less to run appliances at night. I get a
Speaker 7: cheap off peak tariff at night, and I'll get a
Speaker 7: on peak tariff, particularly you know, at the peak in
Speaker 7: the evening, it'll be the highest. Now, it's probably right
Speaker 7: that it's highest in the evening, but actually night is
Speaker 7: not really a time when you want to be making
Speaker 7: it cheaper to get electricity, because in places like Australia
Speaker 7: and other places. You know, California is actually the first
Speaker 7: market that really saw this, and we've seen it in
Speaker 7: Germany and other places as well. It's the middle of
Speaker 7: the day when the sun is shining most brightly and
Speaker 7: all those cellar panels are just pumping out electricity. That's
Speaker 7: actually the time when you really need to fix some
Speaker 7: of these imbalances that are happening in the grid.
Speaker 2: We are talking to Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about
Speaker 2: how to manage power from the solar grid and how
Speaker 2: sometimes running the clothes dryer could be good for the planet. Okay,
Speaker 2: So David, would it be the up to the consumer
Speaker 2: to adjust that imbalance that you were describing, or is
Speaker 2: this just one of the growing pains that we're finding
Speaker 2: as more places are converting to more renewable sources of energy.
Speaker 7: Is this this part of it, it's not going to
Speaker 7: be really for the consumer to sort of out. It's
Speaker 7: a hard thing for the consumers. Sort of the easiest
Speaker 7: way you can you can fix it as a consumer,
Speaker 7: but this will only apply to fairly affluent consumers. Certainly
Speaker 7: people in Australia and California and Germany would apply. Is
Speaker 7: of course, to attach a solar to a battery to
Speaker 7: your solar system. The time the toughest time, well, the
Speaker 7: two to toughest times for grids at the moment, or
Speaker 7: of course, the middle of the day, which we were
Speaker 7: talking about, and the evening the sun goes down. Everyone
Speaker 7: gets home, they switch on appliances, air conditioning, televisions, you know,
Speaker 7: or manner of things, and of course the solar that
Speaker 7: was there in the middle of the day is no
Speaker 7: longer there within your own home home solars, you know,
Speaker 7: home system. If you attach a battery to it you
Speaker 7: can be charging it in the middle of the day
Speaker 7: and discharging it in the evening, and that that potentially
Speaker 7: works quite well. But across the you know, across grids
Speaker 7: as a whole, things much more ambitious need to be
Speaker 7: done than that, and it's and it's a significant problem.
Speaker 7: You know, we're seeing things like here in Australia, for instance,
Speaker 7: there is a very big pumped pumped hydro project being
Speaker 7: built at the moment, which essentially what happens is when
Speaker 7: there is too much electricity in the middle of the day,
Speaker 7: a load of water is pumped uphill to a lake
Speaker 7: high up on a mountain just sort of southwest of Sydney,
Speaker 7: and then during the evening, when all that electricity is needed,
Speaker 7: then the water goes down through turbines like a standard
Speaker 7: hydroectionri dam and it will do this day after day.
Speaker 7: And there are lots of places, I think in California
Speaker 7: the same thing applies. There are lots of places where
Speaker 7: pump hydro is being used. And of course batteries as
Speaker 7: well for dispatchable power will be you know, utility scale
Speaker 7: batteries will be more active. But I think one of
Speaker 7: the problems that we're facing over the coming years. Is
Speaker 7: that the speed with which households are installing are installing
Speaker 7: solar power is faster than the sort of utility scale
Speaker 7: storage solutions can catch up. And dispatchable power, of course,
Speaker 7: dispatchable power, by which I mean you can switch on
Speaker 7: and off, you know, with the flick of a switch,
Speaker 7: which of course is not the case with any renewable power,
Speaker 7: also not really the case with is not the case
Speaker 7: with nuclear either. With dispatchable power, you know, most of
Speaker 7: it is fossil fossil fired, and that's a real problem
Speaker 7: because of course we want to get rid of fossil
Speaker 7: fossil fire electricity right now.
Speaker 2: And so it sounds like the two big things that
Speaker 2: need to be resolved would be managing the storage issue,
Speaker 2: the battery, making sure that those can be not only
Speaker 2: a portable but easy to acquire and quickly charged. And
Speaker 2: the infrastructure as a whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean one other solution, of course, which is again
Speaker 7: a lot of this depends on having the right market
Speaker 7: settings in place, and regulators I think in many ways
Speaker 7: have been somewhat slow to catch up on some of
Speaker 7: these things because it is all changing so very fast.
Speaker 7: But of course one thing to bear in mind is
Speaker 7: is we're seeing surging cells of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles
Speaker 7: another thing that should be sucking up power in the
Speaker 7: middle of the day and potentially could be used to
Speaker 7: discharge electricity in the evening, but at the moment in
Speaker 7: most markets there is very little regulation that would allow
Speaker 7: people to do that, you know, so instead we're seeing
Speaker 7: things like in South Australia, one of the states in
Speaker 7: Australia which has a particularly high volume of solar. Basically,
Speaker 7: the grid operator can switch off rooftop solar panels when
Speaker 7: there is too much of it, which is something that's
Speaker 7: possibly necessary to stop to stop stress on the grid.
Speaker 7: But ideally you want to find ways to use it.
Speaker 7: You don't want to be reducing the amount of zero
Speaker 7: carbon power that you're producing. You want to be using
Speaker 7: it more productively. So we're seeing a lot of these
Speaker 7: teething pains at the moment.
Speaker 2: David, this is just fascinating. Thank you for taking the
Speaker 2: time with us today.
Speaker 7: No, it's lovely to talk.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickleing covers energy and commodities. Don't
Speaker 2: forget We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or
Speaker 2: your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may you Morris Now. Since
Speaker 2: the beginning of the pandemic, traffic depths in the US
Speaker 2: have risen sharply, and during the high ight of the
Speaker 2: pandemic shutdown, speeding related accidents actually increased. At the time,
Speaker 2: Pamela Fisher of the Governor's Highway Safety Association explained, why.
Speaker 8: Fewer cars on the road, you should have fewer crashes.
Speaker 8: But the behaviors that were happening out there. People were
Speaker 8: seeing open highway, open roadways, local roads as well, not
Speaker 8: just on highways, and they were driving at really crazy
Speaker 8: speeds and engaging in other unsafe behaviors.
Speaker 2: Well, it hasn't improved much since then. Preliminary numbers from
Speaker 2: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate forty six
Speaker 2: twenty people died in accidents involving motor vehicles in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. That's down just a bit from twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: but still eighteen percent more than in twenty nineteen. Let's
Speaker 2: look at what's happening. Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox covers
Speaker 2: Business and joins me, Now, Justin, you have voluminous amounts
Speaker 2: of data and some really nifty helpful charts to kind
Speaker 2: of guide us as to why all of this is happening.
Speaker 2: And you were even able to use this information to
Speaker 2: a limit. They some of the candidates for what is
Speaker 2: causing this? But what is the problem?
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I mean when you bring this up that
Speaker 6: traffic fatalities are up in the US, and there's been
Speaker 6: a big jump since twenty nineteen, but they'd already started
Speaker 6: rising around I don't know, twenty fifteen or so. And
Speaker 6: a lot of times people will bring up smartphones or
Speaker 6: just the pandemic.
Speaker 2: But if you.
Speaker 6: Compare the US to other rich countries, I made a
Speaker 6: chart of the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the UK.
Speaker 6: None of the rest of them have had this stall
Speaker 6: in the improvement in traffic fatalities like the US has.
Speaker 6: There In all those countries, they've kept going down. In
Speaker 6: the US, they stopped going down about a decade ago,
Speaker 6: and they've really gone up significantly over the past few years. So, okay,
Speaker 6: what's different about the US from these places? And one
Speaker 6: thing that's been brought up is we have these gigantic
Speaker 6: pickup trucks and SUVs that are you know, really safe
Speaker 6: if you're in them and get it in a crash, but
Speaker 6: not so great for people in the other cars, and
Speaker 6: especially for pedestrians. I think there's some really big issues
Speaker 6: with the really high bumper pickups and SUVs being extreme
Speaker 6: pedestrian risk because they just you can't see what you're
Speaker 6: doing as well. So there's some research on that and
Speaker 6: the thought that maybe some percentage of the increase ten
Speaker 6: percent something like that is caused by the bigger trucks,
Speaker 6: and so that lame leaves Okay, well, what happened in
Speaker 6: the US since twenty nineteen that didn't happen in other places.
Speaker 6: And obviously it was this sort of national conflict rethinking
Speaker 6: argument about the role of the police, you know, especially
Speaker 6: in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Although obviously this
Speaker 6: discussion been going on for longer, you can sort of
Speaker 6: date it really coming to the fore to you know,
Speaker 6: Ferguson back in which I think was the end of
Speaker 6: two thousand and fourteen, and it if you look, you know,
Speaker 6: there aren't great national statistics on police stops for traffic violations.
Speaker 6: There's you know, there's a ole that the Bureau of
Speaker 6: Justice Statistics does and they're definitely down a little bit.
Speaker 6: But if you look at specific cities, it's pretty I mean,
Speaker 6: San Francisco is the champion in the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaker 6: was the first to report this a few weeks ago
Speaker 6: that traffic stops are down ninety four percent in San
Speaker 6: Francisco over the last eight years. But you find and
Speaker 6: Seattle is almost that much. You find a lot of
Speaker 6: other cities where they're down pretty significantly too.
Speaker 2: Now you ascribe some of this, at least to that
Speaker 2: sort of conflict between police and society what happened with
Speaker 2: the killing of George Floyd during the height of the pandemic.
Speaker 2: But could speed cameras, red light cameras, those types of
Speaker 2: traffic cameras also be a factor. Where you have an
Speaker 2: electronic eye versus a human eye keeping tabs on how
Speaker 2: we are on the highway.
Speaker 6: Right, those are much more common in most of these
Speaker 6: other countries that have had big, continued declines in traffic fatalities.
Speaker 6: We have some in the US, not many speed cameras
Speaker 6: outside a few big cities, a lot of red light cameras,
Speaker 6: but actually fewer than there were a decade ago. And
Speaker 6: that's something that there's been a lot of research done
Speaker 6: on over the years that especially the speed cameras seem
Speaker 6: to have a really pretty dramatic effect on reducing traffic fatalities.
Speaker 6: And it's I mean, I knew I've written about them
Speaker 6: before and I got lots of emails from people and
Speaker 6: I got them again now that just Americans hate this idea,
Speaker 6: and I think the one way to think about it
Speaker 6: is we also a lot of these other countries are
Speaker 6: kind of a little more reasonable about their speed limits,
Speaker 6: like Germany or something. You can drive really fast on
Speaker 6: the autobot in Germany. You just if you drive faster
Speaker 6: and you're allowed, you are likely to get in trouble.
Speaker 6: And I think the UK has been really the toughest
Speaker 6: on this and has had a really amazing decline in
Speaker 6: traffic fatalities. So yeah, it's like, Okay, we've dramatically cut
Speaker 6: back on the kind of traffic enforcement that we mostly
Speaker 6: do in the US, and at the same time, we're
Speaker 6: still really reluctant to embrace this other way of doing
Speaker 6: that has been pretty effective in other countries. It is,
Speaker 6: I mean, I will and I haven't checked if Kevin
Speaker 6: Newsom has signed it yet, but California has legislation that
Speaker 6: the Assembly and the Senate passed that would at least
Speaker 6: allow San Francisco and a few other cities to start
Speaker 6: experimenting with speed cameras, and I mean there aren't like
Speaker 6: New York has tons of both, and I think in
Speaker 6: general they have been shown to be pretty effective in
Speaker 6: making the city a lot safer than it used to be,
Speaker 6: although again New York has had a pretty big drop,
Speaker 6: you know, not like ninety percent, it's more like twenty
Speaker 6: or forty or something in enforcement and an increase in
Speaker 6: fatal accidents.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox
Speaker 2: about these sharp rise in traffic related deaths and what
Speaker 2: can be done about it. I want to get back
Speaker 2: to the speed camera, the red light camera situation, because
Speaker 2: you said something about how people just really aren't getting
Speaker 2: behind it. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I
Speaker 2: would cover local news local traffic issues, local neighborhood issues
Speaker 2: in the Washington, DC area, If you are a driver
Speaker 2: a motorist, no, you are not crazy one hundred percent
Speaker 2: in love with those of the traffic cameras. But if
Speaker 2: you were in a neighborhood, you know, take that driver
Speaker 2: out of the car and put him in his living
Speaker 2: room with the kids who are outside playing in the yard.
Speaker 2: You want those traffic cameras in your neighborhood. I've talked
Speaker 2: to many people who are actually lobbying, petitioning to get
Speaker 2: a traffic camera in their neighborhood to slow people down.
Speaker 6: Right, And that's like one reason why we have lots
Speaker 6: in New York City, because drivers are in the minority
Speaker 6: here and the people who are worried about getting hit
Speaker 6: by drivers are in the majority exactly. But that's just
Speaker 6: a really hard equation in a lot of the country.
Speaker 6: And I mean, I do think there's some history of
Speaker 6: the speed cameras being used by you know, small towns
Speaker 6: in Texas to nab people without adequate warning. And because
Speaker 6: Texas is one of the states that the legislatures outright
Speaker 6: banned them. I think there are nine states that have
Speaker 6: banned speed cameras and eight red light cameras, and then
Speaker 6: most states just don't have any law permitting them and
Speaker 6: therefore don't really have any But then they're like Maryland
Speaker 6: has tons.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I just think American motorists and I get it because
Speaker 6: so many people are so dependent on their cars to
Speaker 6: do everything in their lives. But American motorists are the
Speaker 6: most entitled people in the world. Like when they're thinking
Speaker 6: in car thought, sometimes when they get out of the
Speaker 6: car and realize, oh, I live in a neighborhood with
Speaker 6: that cars drive through, then they can change that. But
Speaker 6: just the knee jerk reaction from people, you know, I
Speaker 6: don't think the enforcement should be unreasonable, in the speed
Speaker 6: limit should be reasonable, but yeah, why not have automated
Speaker 6: enforcement rather? Because it has been shown pretty clearly. There
Speaker 6: was a really interesting, very recent study done using data
Speaker 6: from lyft and lift drivers in Florida where they could,
Speaker 6: because of lift's location data, tell exactly how fast the
Speaker 6: cars were going. They knew who all the drivers were,
Speaker 6: and black drivers were significantly who were driving the exact
Speaker 6: same speed as white drivers were significantly more likely to
Speaker 6: be pulled over. And yeah, with speed cameras, you don't
Speaker 6: have that. It's really it sort of Police jobs are
Speaker 6: the kinds of jobs that are hard to hire people
Speaker 6: for right now. I mean, across the economy, there's this
Speaker 6: big shortage of young people. I mean, there's lots of
Speaker 6: them doing it, but the demand, there's this big demand
Speaker 6: and supply mismatch of especially young people coming into non
Speaker 6: college degree requiring and police is one of them. And
Speaker 6: so there's this sort of overall issue. And I just
Speaker 6: think in a lot of cities people feel like, yeah,
Speaker 6: do I really want to be a cop? In San Francisco,
Speaker 6: it doesn't. They pay pretty well, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 6: like a high status job, and all the police cars
Speaker 6: are thirty years old, so I don't know.
Speaker 2: Justin it is a great column. I recommend everybody check
Speaker 2: it out. Thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I n Amy Morris, it's.
Speaker 8: The problem makes me.
Speaker 2: Actually, Taylor Swift isn't the problem for the NFL at all,
Speaker 2: but she might not be enough either because for the
Speaker 2: most part, gen Z couldn't care less about traditional sports.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this now with Bloomberg opinion
Speaker 2: columnist Adam Mentor, he covers the Business of sports, and
Speaker 2: he joins us, Now, Adam, what will it take besides
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift for the NFL to win over gen Z?
Speaker 9: They've spent years worrying about this, and one of the
Speaker 9: things they're finding is that no matter what they do, overall,
Speaker 9: the interests of gen Z in their product and in
Speaker 9: other pro sports traditional sports products is declining. So they're
Speaker 9: looking and Taylor Swift, they hoped, would provide that a
Speaker 9: little bit of and temporarily she has, but once she's gone,
Speaker 9: they're looking for some way to fill that vacuum.
Speaker 2: So there was a little bit of a boost, but
Speaker 2: that didn't last. Where does this indifference come from?
Speaker 9: You know, if you grew up like I did, you
Speaker 9: sort of had your sports fandom passed on generationally. You
Speaker 9: watched the football game on Sunday with Grandpa or you
Speaker 9: watch it with dad, and then you went to school
Speaker 9: and everybody was talking about what they watched on Sunday
Speaker 9: with grandpa or dad or mom or whoever it was,
Speaker 9: and maybe that was inspiration to go and join the
Speaker 9: high school or elementary school football team. That's breaking down
Speaker 9: because everybody has their own screen at home now, and
Speaker 9: so you aren't getting what people who study this called
Speaker 9: generational fandom. It's not being passed on any more. People
Speaker 9: either have to find it on their own, they have
Speaker 9: to find their own way of embracing football, baseball, hockey,
Speaker 9: whatever it is, or they're just going to find other
Speaker 9: ways to entertain themselves. And increasingly that's the case. And
Speaker 9: it's a reason for panic for the NFL, the NHL,
Speaker 9: and all the major sports leagues.
Speaker 2: So does this also impact say, the NCAA and those
Speaker 2: leagues as well.
Speaker 9: Yes, and no. I mean yes in the sense that sure,
Speaker 9: you know you're gonna learn to watch Alabama with your
Speaker 9: parents who was an alum. But even so, you still
Speaker 9: have your own screen that you can sit on the
Speaker 9: couch and watch esports on. And we're finding that esports
Speaker 9: are incredibly popular for gen z, you know, roughly aged
Speaker 9: twenty six and younger. You know, then it used to
Speaker 9: be that way. If you're sitting on the couch and
Speaker 9: there's one TV in the house and it's tuned to
Speaker 9: the Alabama game, you're watching the Alabama game, not somebody
Speaker 9: playing you know, League of Legends, you know, with somebody
Speaker 9: else in Hong Kong.
Speaker 2: Is there a cultural or even economic impact that comes
Speaker 2: from the indifference.
Speaker 9: Right now, we're seeing, you know, huge media rights deals.
Speaker 9: For example, for the NFL. You know, the NFL is
Speaker 9: has just started this year a multi billion dollar deal.
Speaker 9: Amazon is paying a billion dollars a year to show
Speaker 9: Thursday Night NFL games. That deal is going to last
Speaker 9: for years. But you know gen Z is starting to
Speaker 9: age into its prime earning years. And you know the companies,
Speaker 9: the Googles, the ABC's, the espns, the ESPN, ABC are
Speaker 9: the same. You know, as they start projecting out what
Speaker 9: these media rights deals are going to be worth in
Speaker 9: five or ten years, they're going to look at these
Speaker 9: demographics and say, hey, wait a second. You know gen
Speaker 9: Z isn't as interested in this stuff as the millennials
Speaker 9: were or gen X was, and thus we're not going
Speaker 9: to pay as much. So it is a long term
Speaker 9: risk to their business models.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, how do you win over
Speaker 2: the next generation, But it sounds like they don't really know.
Speaker 2: They haven't figured that part out yet.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean that's the thing they're struggling. One of
Speaker 9: the things that you hear the league say in the
Speaker 9: network say, well, we have to meet the fans where
Speaker 9: the fans are. Well, you know, that used to be
Speaker 9: at the one television in the living or more or
Speaker 9: at the stadium. It's not so easy now Now you
Speaker 9: have to meet them on TikTok. You know, you have
Speaker 9: to meet them on other social media sites. That gets harder.
Speaker 9: Who's going to create the content that attracts them?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 9: One of the things that the NFL is doing is
Speaker 9: they're starting to hire influencers, gen z influencers, people who
Speaker 9: are popular, you know, on these social media service.
Speaker 5: Is it working?
Speaker 9: You know, I don't think anybody can say yet. You know,
Speaker 9: you're not going to see, certainly a Taylor Swift tight
Speaker 9: bump from a well known influencer on TikTok, you know,
Speaker 9: reflected in this week's TV ratings, but maybe long term
Speaker 9: you will.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Mentor covers the business of sports
Speaker 2: and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We're
Speaker 2: produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find all of
Speaker 2: these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as
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Speaker 2: Stay with us Today's top stories and global business headlines.
Speaker 2: Just ahead, I may me Morris. This is Bloomberg.