WEBVTT - Mother Nature vs. Life As We Know It 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:05.040 Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.479 social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:14.280 Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course mother Nature versus life as 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.239 we know it. For the first time in more than 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.200 eighty years, southern California was deluge by a tropical storm. 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:26.680 A broad swath of the American Southwest, including long arid deserts, 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.360 also got soaked. Lahina, the picturesque tourist destination on the 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:34.599 Hawaiian island of Maui, got burnt to the ground by 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.560 a fast moving wildfire that may have left at least 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:42.640 hundreds of people dead. Weather's fickle and climate related catastrophes 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:45.960 have become all too common in the US and around 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.840 the globe. Deadly rain induced flooding interspersed with deadly heat 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:58.480 induced fires have also visited the Koreas, Ethiopia, Australia, Pakistan, India, Brazil, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.560 the UK, Canada, Greece and other countries during this still 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:07.240 new twenty first century. July twenty twenty three was the 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.319 hottest month on record in the US, according to National 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:15.080 Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Records. Records dating back to eighteen 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:18.920 fifty We now live in a climate change world in 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.040 which every season or region is host to the hottest, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:26.000 the driest, the coldest, or the wettest moment of the 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:29.680 modern human era. The league tables keep changing, with each 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:35.000 new climate disaster outranking its predecessor. We are witnesses to 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:39.960 violent extremities that are often unpredictable and difficult to manage. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.200 We are the authors of the disasters and victims of 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:48.760 the consequences. Mother Nature has had enough. Joining me to 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.120 discuss climate change and what we can do about it 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:56.000 is Mark Gonglof, the columnist with Bloomberg Opinion who specializes 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.240 in covering the environment and climate change. He's a stellar 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:04.000 writer and wonderfully clear thinking. Welcome Mark, Thank you Tim. 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:06.600 I thought we could break up our conversation today into 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.880 three parts flooding, fires, and solutions. Does that sound like 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:12.000 a reasonable approach? 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.160 It sounds like it's an enormous topic, and I am 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.480 happy to be here to talk about such an enjoyable, 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:18.680 you know, cheerful topic. 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.760 Yeah, well, it's an important topic. Sometimes the important topics 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.519 aren't that cheerful, right, So let's get started. Let's talk 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.280 about the rains that recently soaked the American Southwest, just 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:30.399 in a very basic way. 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.680 What caused that, Well, there was a hurricane that formed 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.960 in the eastern Pacific off the coast of Mexico, Hurricane Hillary. 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:42.080 There was really really hot water and it went really deep, 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.680 and so the hurricane went from zero to one hundred 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.760 really fast, went up to a category four really quickly. 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.840 And then a couple of freakish things happened that sucked 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.400 that hurricane right up into California, one of which was 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.560 a giant heat dome sitting over the central part of 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:01.760 the US that kept air from blowing to the east. 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.360 And then you had Ordinarily California's waters are really cold, 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.920 and that kills hurricanes and tropical storms. But this was 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.680 so strong that even that cold water couldn't really kill it. 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:14.440 But also it was also not as cold as it 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.480 usually is, because the oceans are hotter than they've ever 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.480 been right now, and so it weakened dramatically to a 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:22.520 tropical storm by the time it got to California, but 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:24.840 it still contained a whole lot of water by the 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:26.720 time it got up there, and kept dumping water all 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.160 the way up into Boise, Idaho. 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:31.040 And so is that a one off you know, as 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:35.640 you noted, colder waters have traditionally protected the California coast 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.000 at least and some of the inland regions from hurricanes 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.760 and storms like this. But if the oceans are warming, 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.400 that logic may change. Yeah. Do you suspect that this 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:46.200 is only a one. 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:48.760 Off, Well, I described it as sort of a freakish event. 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:50.760 But a couple of those things are going to be 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.560 with us for a long time. Hotter oceans, heat domes. 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.240 I saw a scientist say that this used to be 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:57.880 a once in a one hundred and eight year event, 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.200 and now it's a once in thirty year event. And 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.320 as the climate keeps warming, it could become more frequent 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.920 than that because some of those conditions aren't going away. Yes, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.880 the water off coast to California will remain cold, it 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.440 will remain hopefully rare, but not nearly as rare as 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:12.920 it used to be. 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:15.800 Whatever I try to understand when these things are happening. 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.839 I think about those like snow globes or those toys 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:20.680 I had as little kid, you know, where you would 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.359 shake it up and different things would happen inside, you know, 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.120 the sphere. But now all of the conditions that were 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:31.200 used to for understanding how weather develops have shifted, so 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.880 when the entire earth shakes like a snow globe, the 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.640 cause and effect is radically changed in ways we're just 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:39.120 starting to experience. 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.200 Now, right, that's right. I mean, it's a great analogy. 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.480 You know, used to think about climate change, or at 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:45.080 least for a long time I thought about it. Maybe 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.400 other people did too. Is just you'd hear about these 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.680 tiny temperatures. You'd say, well, it's going to rise by 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.080 two degrees celsius. And if you and I walk out 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.559 of the building today and it's two degrees celsias warmer, 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.080 we're barely going to notice. Right, that's you know, maybe 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.760 four or five degrees fahrenheit. A lot of people would 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:01.760 find that more pleasant. You might think, well, Canada is 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.760 going to be warmer, Wisconsin's going to be warmer. Everything 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:06.400 is going to be great. What's the worry? And I 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.000 think that's one of the reasons people haven't been as 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.080 worried about it as maybe they should be. But what 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:15.000 we're discovering is that if you apply even that small 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.359 amount of extra heat, we've warned by about one point 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.400 one degrees celsius, so far above pre industrial averages. If 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:23.600 you apply just that small amount of heat over an 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.200 entire planet for a long period of time, you get 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.400 weird things that happen. And so you can see Siberia, 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.320 it doesn't rise up to like eighty degrees fahrenheit. It 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:34.600 rises to one hundred as we saw earlier this year, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.920 which is just an incredible thing to think about. In 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.839 Canada as much hotter, And that's one of the reasons 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.200 we can get into this later. While we're seeing record 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:46.160 wildfires there this year, and so it's affecting wind patterns, 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.640 affecting jet streams, affecting ocean currents. It has all kinds 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.080 of things that we are discovering and living through right now. 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.599 You know, it's interesting what you just brought up, the 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.159 idea of data points. What do two degrees celsius mean 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:03.000 when it's abstract? And for a long time scientists and 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:05.760 climate specialists have been looking at this data and seeing 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.640 the changes and warning us, But a lot of it 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.400 felt data driven. Prepare for the future. If you don't 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.040 prepare for the future, the world your children and your 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:17.720 grandchildren live in might be adversely affected, probably will be 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.400 adversely affected. But we weren't feeling dramatic change in our 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.240 daily lives. Now, lo and behold we are you know, 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.320 smoke is clogging our lungs, and as these floods have proven, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.800 their waters washing down our streets and into some of 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.240 our homes. And it's no longer about the data, it's 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.479 about lived experiences. And maybe this year in particular is 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.640 a turning point in terms of people's awareness that it 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.360 isn't just the data. Now we're seeing what climate change 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:46.360 really means day to day. 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:48.640 That's right. The future is here, The future is now. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:50.880 You can't even call this a new normal. This is 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.360 a road. We're on a path to a much much 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:55.680 worse new normal if we continue down the road we're 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.960 going with al Nino. This year. You mentioned July was 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.599 the hottest month. It was the hottest month on record. 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.000 So far, August looks like it's going to set another record, 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:06.560 and we're talking about maybe going to one point five 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.720 degrees celsius above pre industrial averages for this month for 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.120 this month alone. Again, very abstract number. It doesn't make 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.640 any sense to a lot of people when they hear that, 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.600 but the effect of that tiny change in temperature is 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.000 what we're seeing now. We're seeing multiple disasters happening. We're 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.400 seeing heat domes over the middle of the country, a 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:28.760 massive flooding in China and India, wildfires and Maui and Canada, 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.800 massive heat in winter in South America. It just goes 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.560 on and on. Corals dying in Florida. This is with 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.360 just one point five degrees of warming. So we are 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:41.680 living the experience, as you say now. And if there 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:43.440 is one hopeful thing to take out of this sort 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.280 of my asthma of disaster, it's that it is I 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.480 think I hope starting to wake people up to the 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:50.920 reality of what's going on. 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.440 Yeah, thinking hope our interesting concepts right now because we 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.960 can get into climate change denihialism later. I want to 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.320 ask you a really basic question. Since we're on water 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.000 in this opening act, tell me a little bit about 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.400 the mechanics of flooding. Why do floods occur? 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.440 There are a few different reasons. On the coasts. It 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.080 happens when you get a big storm surge, and especially 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:13.760 if that happens during high tide, as we saw during 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.280 Hurricane Sandy. You had a Hurricane Cane, big storm surge 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.720 at high tide flooded the coastal area. Another way you 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:22.080 get is if you live on a river and you 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.320 get a bunch of rain dumped and the rivers overflow 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.040 their banks, creeks overflow their banks, you get river rain flooding. Now, 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:30.880 all those things are affected by climate change. Of course, 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.280 all those things are made worse by climate change. The 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.280 other weird thing we're seeing with climate change is just 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:41.000 sudden bursts of water coming out of nowhere. Because when 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:43.960 you talk about the snow globe shaken up, climate change 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:46.600 is about energy, and the hotter the air gets, the 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.320 more energy is in there, and the more snow is 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.280 dancing around in the globe, and that has all kinds 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.280 of effects. And one of the effects is it holds 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:58.000 more water. And so when you get rainstorms, when you 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:00.960 get regular thunderstorms, as we saw in Vermont and New 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.840 York recently. That wasn't a hurricane or anything like that. 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:05.600 It was just a big kind of a bad storm, 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.360 but it dumped tremendous amounts of rain. It dumped like 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.440 months of rain in a period of a day, just 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:12.520 like we're seeing in California infacted. 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:14.840 There wasn't the stat on California that they expected to 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:17.520 get a year's worth. Yes, of rain in three days. 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.679 That's right. And we're seeing things like that happen all 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:21.120 the time. We're seeing it in India, we're seeing it 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.560 in China, we see it in Vermont. And so what 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:25.480 happens is you get all this rain coming all at once, 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.920 it overwhelms. Our systems were not designed to handle this. 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:31.600 You know, you've got these drainage systems and culverts, the 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:34.360 things that run under bridges so that doesn't swamp the bridge. 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:36.880 All that stuff was built for periods of time when 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:38.800 you might get an inch of rain at worse during 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:40.720 a day. You know, now you're getting five or six 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.400 inches of rain, and all that stuff gets overwhelmed. And 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.400 so that's a big factor and why we're getting some 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:47.600 of the flooding we're seeing now. 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:53.240 You know, predictions when Hurricane Hillary first formed were much 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.480 more dire before it was downgraded into a tropical storm. 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:59.959 It became a tropical storm. If it had stayed a hurricane, 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:02.600 what might have happened that didn't happen. 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:05.920 We would have seen a lot more flooding, a lot 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.640 more destruction. You could have seen more scenes like we 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.880 saw in Vermont, where a lot of more people had 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.200 to be evacuated. People did have to be evacuated in 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.920 parts of California, and one of the lessons we can 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.480 take from what happened with Hillary is that local officials 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:21.800 were prepared for it. They saw it coming. In Vermont, 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:23.520 New York, you didn't quite see it coming. You had 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:25.320 no idea. You saw a storm coming, but you didn't 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.640 know you're going to get that kind of rain. With Hillary, 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.880 fortunately everybody was scared about it and they had time 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.720 to prepare people, and they could track the storm exactly. 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.400 They could track the storm, they knew it was coming. 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.280 They could tell people to get in their houses, get 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.480 out of dangerous areas, and so they saved a lot 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.280 of lives doing that because it could have been worse. 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:43.160 Even with the we did get a lot of rainfall, 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.640 even though it wasn't as much as people expected, But yes, 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:47.640 it could have been much worse. We really got lucky. 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:49.760 And you know, we're rolling the dice with nature all 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.400 the time, and sometimes we come up lucky, as we 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:53.880 maybe did with Hillary. 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.600 So one of the distinctions you're pointing out is that 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.120 there's some flooding you can anticipate ahead of time, and 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.160 there's a lot of flooding you can't, yeah, and that's 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.600 going to put a lot of burden on communities to 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:06.679 plan for the unknown. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.040 Right and of course, even with the flooding that you 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.559 can predict, we saw Hurricane Sandy coming right, and it 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.080 still caused tremendous destruction. At some point, there's only so 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.000 much planning you can do, and then you have to 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.560 prepare in advance for these things by building up better 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.880 coastal defenses, building better culverts, building better drainage systems, things 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.280 like that. So it's not just about, oh, a storm's coming, everybody, 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.720 you know, head for the hills. It's about we are 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.720 hardened against these disasters that we know are coming, and 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.520 we still haven't really done that as a country, not 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.920 only with flooding but also with wildfires, as we can 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:42.160 discuss later too. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:44.880 Let's go overseas for a minute. There's a lot of 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.680 places we could go and we talk about flooding, but 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.719 Pakistan resonates with me as one of the most traumatic, 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.640 you know, victims of floods in the climate change era. 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.600 It's annual almost now, but in certain recent years it's 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:04.000 all been just devastating, with tens of millions of people 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.400 dislocated and in many parts of the country they still 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:13.080 haven't recovered. Does this hit developing nations? You know, economically 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:17.040 developed nations have measures for dealing with some of this. 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:22.520 Does flooding hit economically undeveloped countries in more severe ways? 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.079 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they don't have the infrastructure to 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:27.920 begin with. Maybe they don't have good governance that can 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:32.520 help with relief afterward or preparing people for disasters ahead 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:35.480 of time. A lot of these places in Pakistan, India, 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.240 they have monsoon seasons that they get regularly, but those 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.240 monsoons are turning out to be much more destructive than 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.720 they have ever been before. So there are a lot 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.559 of ways that they are unprepared for this. I will say, 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.199 of course, we can't feel too great about how we 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.040 respond to things in the US and in the developed 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:55.840 world either. We have a lot of our own issues 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.600 which we can get into. I'm thinking about I visited 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:00.599 the Virgin Islands last year, and you know that's a 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:04.760 UK protectorate. They had a massive hurricane there five years ago. 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:07.440 They're still rebuilding from it. And when I talked to 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:09.160 the locals there about it, they said that the only 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:10.839 way they got some of the things up and running 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:15.120 was local billionaires Larry Page and people like that pumped 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.880 money into helping to rebuild and get infrastructure up and 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.040 running there. But there are still buildings that are wiped 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:22.480 out there from a hurricane that happened five years ago. 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:25.960 So you take that kind of issue and multiply by 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:27.640 ten or one hundred, and you get what you see 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:29.640 in like Pakistan and other places like this that don't 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.320 have any infrastructure at all or any way to help 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:34.160 the people recover from these disasters. 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.440 Yeah. I reported from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:42.480 that's for the Caribbean, a much more developed territory and 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.520 they're still struggling with the impact of that event. All 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:48.880 of this raises, I think a pretty interesting issue, which 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.280 is the global North versus the global South. Because the 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:57.160 global North created the industrializations in many different countries, primarily 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.839 Western Europe, in the US, moved into China and India. 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:05.320 That's created a lot of forces that have caused climate change. 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:09.199 And while the global North seeks to mitigate those forces, 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.199 the global South is dealing with the impact of climate 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.560 change in a more ruthless way. And then also as 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.880 those economies attempt to modernize. They're being told not to 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:23.680 do what the global North did when it was creating 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.040 all the wealth that came out of the industrialization era. 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.400 So there's an enormous amount of tension here that doesn't 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.640 seem easily resolvable to me between the global North and 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:33.440 the global South. 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.160 Yeah, there's a lot of unfairness there. As you say, 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.040 the US and Western Europe are responsible for the majority 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.600 of the climate change we're seeing now. They pumped out 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.840 the most emissions over the past several decades of any 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.680 other countries in the world. China has caught up a 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.040 lot recently, but they're still lagging the US in terms 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.320 of emissions, and the US has cut its emissions, but 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.080 not nearly enough. This goes from the high level to 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:00.200 the low level to the personal level. Wealthy people in 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.280 this country are responsible for more of the emissions that 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.280 this country produces than poorer people. But the people of 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.240 lower income and marginalize people suffer the brunt of climate 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.840 disasters in this country, and they're suffering the brunt of 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.920 climate disasters around the world. So they're angry about that. 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.200 They want money from us, They want reparations of a 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:21.760 sort from US, and of course the West or the 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.880 global North doesn't want to give that money to them. 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.720 But there is an issue. There's a big issue here, 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.800 a big conflict. They want to develop, and they have 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:33.320 a right to develop, and they aren't responsible for the 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.600 climate change. They have a right to develop. They need 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.560 air conditioning because it's getting hotter. They need air conditioning 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:41.560 to survive. Right, it's a matter of life and death. 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.080 Where a lot of people in these countries to have 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.200 ac they have to run that some way with electricity. 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.880 If we don't help them somehow develop that electricity in 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.640 a green way, in a sustainable way, they're going to 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:54.840 go to the coal plants they already have running. And 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.480 there is an argument to be made. Some people would 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.320 disagree with this. It's a controversy that you need economic 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.360 growth in order to produce the financing that can lead 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.120 to a greener future. And these countries deserve to develop 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.880 the way we did. And now we in China produce 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.800 solar panels and wind turbines and all that neat stuff. 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:15.000 These people have to get a chance to do that too. 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.440 But we can help shortcut around the whole. We're going 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:20.800 to destroy the planet for fifty years before we finally 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:23.360 turn green. We can help shortcut that whole thing by 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:25.320 just going ahead and giving them the money they need 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:27.760 to do grain development right now. And it's a hard 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:30.920 argument to make here in the US Congress, for example, 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:32.960 but it's an argument we need to be having or 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:34.200 a conversation. 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.800 The US Congress. Don't get me going. Yeah on that note, 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:38.480 We're going to take a quick break Mark to hear 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:40.280 from one of our sponsors, and then we'll come right back. 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.520 We're back with Mark Gangloff of Bloomberg opinion columnists specializing 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.360 in the environment and climate change. Mark. We just spent 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.440 a chunk of time talking about floods as one manifestation 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.880 of climate change. Let's change direction and talk about heat. 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.080 All of those major storms and floods were also living 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:07.720 in an unusually hot era. Are those things contradictory fire 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:08.480 and water. 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.680 Not at all. In fact, they're part of the same thing. 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.280 This energy we're talking about, this extra energy that goes 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.920 into the atmosphere that holds more water. That same heat 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.920 also leads to drier spells, more droughts. You can see 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.800 this in Hawaii. We're talking about the Mali wildfires. Hawaii 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.760 is a perfect example of this. The southwest sides of 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.440 those Hawaiian islands are protected by mountains from trade winds 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.119 that come down from the northeast, and those trade winds 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.240 bring a bunch of rain to the northeast sides of 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:39.160 those islands. On the northeast sides of those islands, they're 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.160 getting more rain than ever. On the southwest sides, they're 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:44.679 getting less rain than ever. They're drier than ever. And 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:46.359 so that's one of the factors that led to the 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:50.240 Mali wildfires. There was extreme drought on the southwestern side 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:52.440 of Maui down there, and of course you know, they'd 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.280 also done away with plantations banana and I think sugarcane 0:17:56.280 --> 0:18:00.360 plantations and replace them with like this dry grass. And 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.280 when you have drought and climate change, it gets hotter, drier, 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.640 the undergrowth gets drier faster, and so you have all 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.240 this tin and becomes like kindling exactly. I was just 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:11.080 going to say, yeah, and so you have all that 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.080 and all it takes is a spark to light all 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.240 that up. And that's exactly what happened in Maui. So 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.880 that is what's happening sort of in the world writ large. 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.879 You have drier dries, hotter hots and wetter periods of 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:23.040 rain and storms. 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:28.239 Climate change also essentially increases both the frequency and the 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.840 intensity of these various events we're talking about. Is there 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.919 more we haven't discussed that's behind that kind of vortex 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.200 of each event almost feeding on its predecessor. 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:41.879 Yeah. We talk a lot about like tipping points, and 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.840 there are things like the Atlantic meridianal overturning current, which 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.119 is just this big conveyor belt of water that goes 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:51.919 from the South Atlantic up to the North Atlantic that 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.200 controls all kinds of weather patterns in Europe and the US. 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.639 A changing climate hotter seas is affecting that. It's slowing 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:02.800 that down, which is causing droughts in Africa that are 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:07.360 leading to political unrest in Africa and wars. And it's 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.560 all connected in different ways. You know, Canada, wildfires in 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.280 Canada hundreds of miles away affected the air in the 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.600 US to the south. One of the factors that caused 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.159 the big wildfire and Maui was a hurricane that was 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:22.680 hundreds of miles to the south and just sitting in 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.120 the middle of the Pacific, And you would think that 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.480 would be harmless, but it was causing these hurricane force 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:28.399 winds to blow up into Malli. So you had the 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:32.240 high winds that helped drive the fire when it got sparked. 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.840 Like a bellows to get the logs in their fireplace 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:37.400 roaring exactly. 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.320 And so the planet is all connected. Something that happens 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:44.920 and the Antarctic will affect the weather or a disaster 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.359 in Europe. And again, you know, you've got all this 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.400 extra energy in the atmosphere making these disasters more likely. 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.359 I mean, there have always been wildfires, there have always 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:55.760 been hurricanes, there've always been droughts. All of these things 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:58.560