Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course mother Nature versus life as
Speaker 1: we know it. For the first time in more than
Speaker 1: eighty years, southern California was deluge by a tropical storm.
Speaker 1: A broad swath of the American Southwest, including long arid deserts,
Speaker 1: also got soaked. Lahina, the picturesque tourist destination on the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian island of Maui, got burnt to the ground by
Speaker 1: a fast moving wildfire that may have left at least
Speaker 1: hundreds of people dead. Weather's fickle and climate related catastrophes
Speaker 1: have become all too common in the US and around
Speaker 1: the globe. Deadly rain induced flooding interspersed with deadly heat
Speaker 1: induced fires have also visited the Koreas, Ethiopia, Australia, Pakistan, India, Brazil,
Speaker 1: the UK, Canada, Greece and other countries during this still
Speaker 1: new twenty first century. July twenty twenty three was the
Speaker 1: hottest month on record in the US, according to National
Speaker 1: Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Records. Records dating back to eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty We now live in a climate change world in
Speaker 1: which every season or region is host to the hottest,
Speaker 1: the driest, the coldest, or the wettest moment of the
Speaker 1: modern human era. The league tables keep changing, with each
Speaker 1: new climate disaster outranking its predecessor. We are witnesses to
Speaker 1: violent extremities that are often unpredictable and difficult to manage.
Speaker 1: We are the authors of the disasters and victims of
Speaker 1: the consequences. Mother Nature has had enough. Joining me to
Speaker 1: discuss climate change and what we can do about it
Speaker 1: is Mark Gonglof, the columnist with Bloomberg Opinion who specializes
Speaker 1: in covering the environment and climate change. He's a stellar
Speaker 1: writer and wonderfully clear thinking. Welcome Mark, Thank you Tim.
Speaker 1: I thought we could break up our conversation today into
Speaker 1: three parts flooding, fires, and solutions. Does that sound like
Speaker 1: a reasonable approach?
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's an enormous topic, and I am
Speaker 2: happy to be here to talk about such an enjoyable,
Speaker 2: you know, cheerful topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's an important topic. Sometimes the important topics
Speaker 1: aren't that cheerful, right, So let's get started. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the rains that recently soaked the American Southwest, just
Speaker 1: in a very basic way.
Speaker 2: What caused that, Well, there was a hurricane that formed
Speaker 2: in the eastern Pacific off the coast of Mexico, Hurricane Hillary.
Speaker 2: There was really really hot water and it went really deep,
Speaker 2: and so the hurricane went from zero to one hundred
Speaker 2: really fast, went up to a category four really quickly.
Speaker 2: And then a couple of freakish things happened that sucked
Speaker 2: that hurricane right up into California, one of which was
Speaker 2: a giant heat dome sitting over the central part of
Speaker 2: the US that kept air from blowing to the east.
Speaker 2: And then you had Ordinarily California's waters are really cold,
Speaker 2: and that kills hurricanes and tropical storms. But this was
Speaker 2: so strong that even that cold water couldn't really kill it.
Speaker 2: But also it was also not as cold as it
Speaker 2: usually is, because the oceans are hotter than they've ever
Speaker 2: been right now, and so it weakened dramatically to a
Speaker 2: tropical storm by the time it got to California, but
Speaker 2: it still contained a whole lot of water by the
Speaker 2: time it got up there, and kept dumping water all
Speaker 2: the way up into Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 1: And so is that a one off you know, as
Speaker 1: you noted, colder waters have traditionally protected the California coast
Speaker 1: at least and some of the inland regions from hurricanes
Speaker 1: and storms like this. But if the oceans are warming,
Speaker 1: that logic may change. Yeah. Do you suspect that this
Speaker 1: is only a one.
Speaker 2: Off, Well, I described it as sort of a freakish event.
Speaker 2: But a couple of those things are going to be
Speaker 2: with us for a long time. Hotter oceans, heat domes.
Speaker 2: I saw a scientist say that this used to be
Speaker 2: a once in a one hundred and eight year event,
Speaker 2: and now it's a once in thirty year event. And
Speaker 2: as the climate keeps warming, it could become more frequent
Speaker 2: than that because some of those conditions aren't going away. Yes,
Speaker 2: the water off coast to California will remain cold, it
Speaker 2: will remain hopefully rare, but not nearly as rare as
Speaker 2: it used to be.
Speaker 1: Whatever I try to understand when these things are happening.
Speaker 1: I think about those like snow globes or those toys
Speaker 1: I had as little kid, you know, where you would
Speaker 1: shake it up and different things would happen inside, you know,
Speaker 1: the sphere. But now all of the conditions that were
Speaker 1: used to for understanding how weather develops have shifted, so
Speaker 1: when the entire earth shakes like a snow globe, the
Speaker 1: cause and effect is radically changed in ways we're just
Speaker 1: starting to experience.
Speaker 2: Now, right, that's right. I mean, it's a great analogy.
Speaker 2: You know, used to think about climate change, or at
Speaker 2: least for a long time I thought about it. Maybe
Speaker 2: other people did too. Is just you'd hear about these
Speaker 2: tiny temperatures. You'd say, well, it's going to rise by
Speaker 2: two degrees celsius. And if you and I walk out
Speaker 2: of the building today and it's two degrees celsias warmer,
Speaker 2: we're barely going to notice. Right, that's you know, maybe
Speaker 2: four or five degrees fahrenheit. A lot of people would
Speaker 2: find that more pleasant. You might think, well, Canada is
Speaker 2: going to be warmer, Wisconsin's going to be warmer. Everything
Speaker 2: is going to be great. What's the worry? And I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the reasons people haven't been as
Speaker 2: worried about it as maybe they should be. But what
Speaker 2: we're discovering is that if you apply even that small
Speaker 2: amount of extra heat, we've warned by about one point
Speaker 2: one degrees celsius, so far above pre industrial averages. If
Speaker 2: you apply just that small amount of heat over an
Speaker 2: entire planet for a long period of time, you get
Speaker 2: weird things that happen. And so you can see Siberia,
Speaker 2: it doesn't rise up to like eighty degrees fahrenheit. It
Speaker 2: rises to one hundred as we saw earlier this year,
Speaker 2: which is just an incredible thing to think about. In
Speaker 2: Canada as much hotter, And that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: we can get into this later. While we're seeing record
Speaker 2: wildfires there this year, and so it's affecting wind patterns,
Speaker 2: affecting jet streams, affecting ocean currents. It has all kinds
Speaker 2: of things that we are discovering and living through right now.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting what you just brought up, the
Speaker 1: idea of data points. What do two degrees celsius mean
Speaker 1: when it's abstract? And for a long time scientists and
Speaker 1: climate specialists have been looking at this data and seeing
Speaker 1: the changes and warning us, But a lot of it
Speaker 1: felt data driven. Prepare for the future. If you don't
Speaker 1: prepare for the future, the world your children and your
Speaker 1: grandchildren live in might be adversely affected, probably will be
Speaker 1: adversely affected. But we weren't feeling dramatic change in our
Speaker 1: daily lives. Now, lo and behold we are you know,
Speaker 1: smoke is clogging our lungs, and as these floods have proven,
Speaker 1: their waters washing down our streets and into some of
Speaker 1: our homes. And it's no longer about the data, it's
Speaker 1: about lived experiences. And maybe this year in particular is
Speaker 1: a turning point in terms of people's awareness that it
Speaker 1: isn't just the data. Now we're seeing what climate change
Speaker 1: really means day to day.
Speaker 2: That's right. The future is here, The future is now.
Speaker 2: You can't even call this a new normal. This is
Speaker 2: a road. We're on a path to a much much
Speaker 2: worse new normal if we continue down the road we're
Speaker 2: going with al Nino. This year. You mentioned July was
Speaker 2: the hottest month. It was the hottest month on record.
Speaker 2: So far, August looks like it's going to set another record,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about maybe going to one point five
Speaker 2: degrees celsius above pre industrial averages for this month for
Speaker 2: this month alone. Again, very abstract number. It doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense to a lot of people when they hear that,
Speaker 2: but the effect of that tiny change in temperature is
Speaker 2: what we're seeing now. We're seeing multiple disasters happening. We're
Speaker 2: seeing heat domes over the middle of the country, a
Speaker 2: massive flooding in China and India, wildfires and Maui and Canada,
Speaker 2: massive heat in winter in South America. It just goes
Speaker 2: on and on. Corals dying in Florida. This is with
Speaker 2: just one point five degrees of warming. So we are
Speaker 2: living the experience, as you say now. And if there
Speaker 2: is one hopeful thing to take out of this sort
Speaker 2: of my asthma of disaster, it's that it is I
Speaker 2: think I hope starting to wake people up to the
Speaker 2: reality of what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thinking hope our interesting concepts right now because we
Speaker 1: can get into climate change denihialism later. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you a really basic question. Since we're on water
Speaker 1: in this opening act, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the mechanics of flooding. Why do floods occur?
Speaker 2: There are a few different reasons. On the coasts. It
Speaker 2: happens when you get a big storm surge, and especially
Speaker 2: if that happens during high tide, as we saw during
Speaker 2: Hurricane Sandy. You had a Hurricane Cane, big storm surge
Speaker 2: at high tide flooded the coastal area. Another way you
Speaker 2: get is if you live on a river and you
Speaker 2: get a bunch of rain dumped and the rivers overflow
Speaker 2: their banks, creeks overflow their banks, you get river rain flooding. Now,
Speaker 2: all those things are affected by climate change. Of course,
Speaker 2: all those things are made worse by climate change. The
Speaker 2: other weird thing we're seeing with climate change is just
Speaker 2: sudden bursts of water coming out of nowhere. Because when
Speaker 2: you talk about the snow globe shaken up, climate change
Speaker 2: is about energy, and the hotter the air gets, the
Speaker 2: more energy is in there, and the more snow is
Speaker 2: dancing around in the globe, and that has all kinds
Speaker 2: of effects. And one of the effects is it holds
Speaker 2: more water. And so when you get rainstorms, when you
Speaker 2: get regular thunderstorms, as we saw in Vermont and New
Speaker 2: York recently. That wasn't a hurricane or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It was just a big kind of a bad storm,
Speaker 2: but it dumped tremendous amounts of rain. It dumped like
Speaker 2: months of rain in a period of a day, just
Speaker 2: like we're seeing in California infacted.
Speaker 1: There wasn't the stat on California that they expected to
Speaker 1: get a year's worth. Yes, of rain in three days.
Speaker 2: That's right. And we're seeing things like that happen all
Speaker 2: the time. We're seeing it in India, we're seeing it
Speaker 2: in China, we see it in Vermont. And so what
Speaker 2: happens is you get all this rain coming all at once,
Speaker 2: it overwhelms. Our systems were not designed to handle this.
Speaker 2: You know, you've got these drainage systems and culverts, the
Speaker 2: things that run under bridges so that doesn't swamp the bridge.
Speaker 2: All that stuff was built for periods of time when
Speaker 2: you might get an inch of rain at worse during
Speaker 2: a day. You know, now you're getting five or six
Speaker 2: inches of rain, and all that stuff gets overwhelmed. And
Speaker 2: so that's a big factor and why we're getting some
Speaker 2: of the flooding we're seeing now.
Speaker 1: You know, predictions when Hurricane Hillary first formed were much
Speaker 1: more dire before it was downgraded into a tropical storm.
Speaker 1: It became a tropical storm. If it had stayed a hurricane,
Speaker 1: what might have happened that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: We would have seen a lot more flooding, a lot
Speaker 2: more destruction. You could have seen more scenes like we
Speaker 2: saw in Vermont, where a lot of more people had
Speaker 2: to be evacuated. People did have to be evacuated in
Speaker 2: parts of California, and one of the lessons we can
Speaker 2: take from what happened with Hillary is that local officials
Speaker 2: were prepared for it. They saw it coming. In Vermont,
Speaker 2: New York, you didn't quite see it coming. You had
Speaker 2: no idea. You saw a storm coming, but you didn't
Speaker 2: know you're going to get that kind of rain. With Hillary,
Speaker 2: fortunately everybody was scared about it and they had time
Speaker 2: to prepare people, and they could track the storm exactly.
Speaker 2: They could track the storm, they knew it was coming.
Speaker 2: They could tell people to get in their houses, get
Speaker 2: out of dangerous areas, and so they saved a lot
Speaker 2: of lives doing that because it could have been worse.
Speaker 2: Even with the we did get a lot of rainfall,
Speaker 2: even though it wasn't as much as people expected, But yes,
Speaker 2: it could have been much worse. We really got lucky.
Speaker 2: And you know, we're rolling the dice with nature all
Speaker 2: the time, and sometimes we come up lucky, as we
Speaker 2: maybe did with Hillary.
Speaker 1: So one of the distinctions you're pointing out is that
Speaker 1: there's some flooding you can anticipate ahead of time, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of flooding you can't, yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: going to put a lot of burden on communities to
Speaker 1: plan for the unknown.
Speaker 2: Right and of course, even with the flooding that you
Speaker 2: can predict, we saw Hurricane Sandy coming right, and it
Speaker 2: still caused tremendous destruction. At some point, there's only so
Speaker 2: much planning you can do, and then you have to
Speaker 2: prepare in advance for these things by building up better
Speaker 2: coastal defenses, building better culverts, building better drainage systems, things
Speaker 2: like that. So it's not just about, oh, a storm's coming, everybody,
Speaker 2: you know, head for the hills. It's about we are
Speaker 2: hardened against these disasters that we know are coming, and
Speaker 2: we still haven't really done that as a country, not
Speaker 2: only with flooding but also with wildfires, as we can
Speaker 2: discuss later too.
Speaker 1: Let's go overseas for a minute. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: places we could go and we talk about flooding, but
Speaker 1: Pakistan resonates with me as one of the most traumatic,
Speaker 1: you know, victims of floods in the climate change era.
Speaker 1: It's annual almost now, but in certain recent years it's
Speaker 1: all been just devastating, with tens of millions of people
Speaker 1: dislocated and in many parts of the country they still
Speaker 1: haven't recovered. Does this hit developing nations? You know, economically
Speaker 1: developed nations have measures for dealing with some of this.
Speaker 1: Does flooding hit economically undeveloped countries in more severe ways?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they don't have the infrastructure to
Speaker 2: begin with. Maybe they don't have good governance that can
Speaker 2: help with relief afterward or preparing people for disasters ahead
Speaker 2: of time. A lot of these places in Pakistan, India,
Speaker 2: they have monsoon seasons that they get regularly, but those
Speaker 2: monsoons are turning out to be much more destructive than
Speaker 2: they have ever been before. So there are a lot
Speaker 2: of ways that they are unprepared for this. I will say,
Speaker 2: of course, we can't feel too great about how we
Speaker 2: respond to things in the US and in the developed
Speaker 2: world either. We have a lot of our own issues
Speaker 2: which we can get into. I'm thinking about I visited
Speaker 2: the Virgin Islands last year, and you know that's a
Speaker 2: UK protectorate. They had a massive hurricane there five years ago.
Speaker 2: They're still rebuilding from it. And when I talked to
Speaker 2: the locals there about it, they said that the only
Speaker 2: way they got some of the things up and running
Speaker 2: was local billionaires Larry Page and people like that pumped
Speaker 2: money into helping to rebuild and get infrastructure up and
Speaker 2: running there. But there are still buildings that are wiped
Speaker 2: out there from a hurricane that happened five years ago.
Speaker 2: So you take that kind of issue and multiply by
Speaker 2: ten or one hundred, and you get what you see
Speaker 2: in like Pakistan and other places like this that don't
Speaker 2: have any infrastructure at all or any way to help
Speaker 2: the people recover from these disasters.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I reported from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and
Speaker 1: that's for the Caribbean, a much more developed territory and
Speaker 1: they're still struggling with the impact of that event. All
Speaker 1: of this raises, I think a pretty interesting issue, which
Speaker 1: is the global North versus the global South. Because the
Speaker 1: global North created the industrializations in many different countries, primarily
Speaker 1: Western Europe, in the US, moved into China and India.
Speaker 1: That's created a lot of forces that have caused climate change.
Speaker 1: And while the global North seeks to mitigate those forces,
Speaker 1: the global South is dealing with the impact of climate
Speaker 1: change in a more ruthless way. And then also as
Speaker 1: those economies attempt to modernize. They're being told not to
Speaker 1: do what the global North did when it was creating
Speaker 1: all the wealth that came out of the industrialization era.
Speaker 1: So there's an enormous amount of tension here that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem easily resolvable to me between the global North and
Speaker 1: the global South.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of unfairness there. As you say,
Speaker 2: the US and Western Europe are responsible for the majority
Speaker 2: of the climate change we're seeing now. They pumped out
Speaker 2: the most emissions over the past several decades of any
Speaker 2: other countries in the world. China has caught up a
Speaker 2: lot recently, but they're still lagging the US in terms
Speaker 2: of emissions, and the US has cut its emissions, but
Speaker 2: not nearly enough. This goes from the high level to
Speaker 2: the low level to the personal level. Wealthy people in
Speaker 2: this country are responsible for more of the emissions that
Speaker 2: this country produces than poorer people. But the people of
Speaker 2: lower income and marginalize people suffer the brunt of climate
Speaker 2: disasters in this country, and they're suffering the brunt of
Speaker 2: climate disasters around the world. So they're angry about that.
Speaker 2: They want money from us, They want reparations of a
Speaker 2: sort from US, and of course the West or the
Speaker 2: global North doesn't want to give that money to them.
Speaker 2: But there is an issue. There's a big issue here,
Speaker 2: a big conflict. They want to develop, and they have
Speaker 2: a right to develop, and they aren't responsible for the
Speaker 2: climate change. They have a right to develop. They need
Speaker 2: air conditioning because it's getting hotter. They need air conditioning
Speaker 2: to survive. Right, it's a matter of life and death.
Speaker 2: Where a lot of people in these countries to have
Speaker 2: ac they have to run that some way with electricity.
Speaker 2: If we don't help them somehow develop that electricity in
Speaker 2: a green way, in a sustainable way, they're going to
Speaker 2: go to the coal plants they already have running. And
Speaker 2: there is an argument to be made. Some people would
Speaker 2: disagree with this. It's a controversy that you need economic
Speaker 2: growth in order to produce the financing that can lead
Speaker 2: to a greener future. And these countries deserve to develop
Speaker 2: the way we did. And now we in China produce
Speaker 2: solar panels and wind turbines and all that neat stuff.
Speaker 2: These people have to get a chance to do that too.
Speaker 2: But we can help shortcut around the whole. We're going
Speaker 2: to destroy the planet for fifty years before we finally
Speaker 2: turn green. We can help shortcut that whole thing by
Speaker 2: just going ahead and giving them the money they need
Speaker 2: to do grain development right now. And it's a hard
Speaker 2: argument to make here in the US Congress, for example,
Speaker 2: but it's an argument we need to be having or
Speaker 2: a conversation.
Speaker 1: The US Congress. Don't get me going. Yeah on that note,
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break Mark to hear
Speaker 1: from one of our sponsors, and then we'll come right back.
Speaker 1: We're back with Mark Gangloff of Bloomberg opinion columnists specializing
Speaker 1: in the environment and climate change. Mark. We just spent
Speaker 1: a chunk of time talking about floods as one manifestation
Speaker 1: of climate change. Let's change direction and talk about heat.
Speaker 1: All of those major storms and floods were also living
Speaker 1: in an unusually hot era. Are those things contradictory fire
Speaker 1: and water.
Speaker 2: Not at all. In fact, they're part of the same thing.
Speaker 2: This energy we're talking about, this extra energy that goes
Speaker 2: into the atmosphere that holds more water. That same heat
Speaker 2: also leads to drier spells, more droughts. You can see
Speaker 2: this in Hawaii. We're talking about the Mali wildfires. Hawaii
Speaker 2: is a perfect example of this. The southwest sides of
Speaker 2: those Hawaiian islands are protected by mountains from trade winds
Speaker 2: that come down from the northeast, and those trade winds
Speaker 2: bring a bunch of rain to the northeast sides of
Speaker 2: those islands. On the northeast sides of those islands, they're
Speaker 2: getting more rain than ever. On the southwest sides, they're
Speaker 2: getting less rain than ever. They're drier than ever. And
Speaker 2: so that's one of the factors that led to the
Speaker 2: Mali wildfires. There was extreme drought on the southwestern side
Speaker 2: of Maui down there, and of course you know, they'd
Speaker 2: also done away with plantations banana and I think sugarcane
Speaker 2: plantations and replace them with like this dry grass. And
Speaker 2: when you have drought and climate change, it gets hotter, drier,
Speaker 2: the undergrowth gets drier faster, and so you have all
Speaker 2: this tin and becomes like kindling exactly. I was just
Speaker 2: going to say, yeah, and so you have all that
Speaker 2: and all it takes is a spark to light all
Speaker 2: that up. And that's exactly what happened in Maui. So
Speaker 2: that is what's happening sort of in the world writ large.
Speaker 2: You have drier dries, hotter hots and wetter periods of
Speaker 2: rain and storms.
Speaker 1: Climate change also essentially increases both the frequency and the
Speaker 1: intensity of these various events we're talking about. Is there
Speaker 1: more we haven't discussed that's behind that kind of vortex
Speaker 1: of each event almost feeding on its predecessor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We talk a lot about like tipping points, and
Speaker 2: there are things like the Atlantic meridianal overturning current, which
Speaker 2: is just this big conveyor belt of water that goes
Speaker 2: from the South Atlantic up to the North Atlantic that
Speaker 2: controls all kinds of weather patterns in Europe and the US.
Speaker 2: A changing climate hotter seas is affecting that. It's slowing
Speaker 2: that down, which is causing droughts in Africa that are
Speaker 2: leading to political unrest in Africa and wars. And it's
Speaker 2: all connected in different ways. You know, Canada, wildfires in
Speaker 2: Canada hundreds of miles away affected the air in the
Speaker 2: US to the south. One of the factors that caused
Speaker 2: the big wildfire and Maui was a hurricane that was
Speaker 2: hundreds of miles to the south and just sitting in
Speaker 2: the middle of the Pacific, And you would think that
Speaker 2: would be harmless, but it was causing these hurricane force
Speaker 2: winds to blow up into Malli. So you had the
Speaker 2: high winds that helped drive the fire when it got sparked.
Speaker 1: Like a bellows to get the logs in their fireplace
Speaker 1: roaring exactly.
Speaker 2: And so the planet is all connected. Something that happens
Speaker 2: and the Antarctic will affect the weather or a disaster
Speaker 2: in Europe. And again, you know, you've got all this
Speaker 2: extra energy in the atmosphere making these disasters more likely.
Speaker 2: I mean, there have always been wildfires, there have always
Speaker 2: been hurricanes, there've always been droughts. All of these things
Speaker 2: have always happened. But by ratcheting up the energy level
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere, we're making these things more likely and
Speaker 2: more unpredictable and more destructive when they do appen.
Speaker 1: There's so much of climate change currently that feels to
Speaker 1: me like sci fi movies coming true. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a Blade Runner fan, and when the wildfires in Canada
Speaker 1: turned you know, the New York sky orange, it looked
Speaker 1: very Blade Running at me.
Speaker 2: It was very Ridley Scott.
Speaker 1: It was very Ridley Scott. And maybe this is our
Speaker 1: punishment we have to actually live now in the sci
Speaker 1: fi movies we make. But Another kind of facet of
Speaker 1: sci fi made real is heat domes. Like the term
Speaker 1: heat dome, you know, invokes in my mind, I think
Speaker 1: exactly what it is, But it's also so extraordinary. I
Speaker 1: have this image with this giant atmospheric flying saucer sort
Speaker 1: of just sitting and hovering over a section of the
Speaker 1: country and not letting anything escape from its perimeters. In
Speaker 1: this case heat and just sits above it and traps
Speaker 1: the heat and cooks everything beneath it. Am I offering
Speaker 1: a crude description of what goes on?
Speaker 2: Actually, that's a really good description of what a heat
Speaker 2: dome is. It's like a lid, giant lid on a pot.
Speaker 2: The jet stream, you know. Again, this is we talk
Speaker 2: about climate change's effects. Climate change moves the jet stream around,
Speaker 2: It makes it wobble in a wider track than it
Speaker 2: usually does. Usually it flows in a nice predictable pattern,
Speaker 2: and it helps airflow from west to east. With climate change,
Speaker 2: you will make the jet stream jut up to the
Speaker 2: north and just sit there for a long time. And
Speaker 2: that's part of the reason we get these heat domes.
Speaker 2: It doesn't allow the air to escape, It keeps air
Speaker 2: trapped over one part of the country for a really
Speaker 2: long time. When we're experiencing that right now in the US,
Speaker 2: and in fact, you know, you talk about disaster movies.
Speaker 2: I think it was in the Day After Tomorrow there's
Speaker 2: there's a there's a screenshot of like five hurricanes all
Speaker 2: happening at once. Well, somebody there was a real picture
Speaker 2: that somebody sent around earlier this year of four massive
Speaker 2: heat domes over the planet, one over the US, one
Speaker 2: over the Atlantic, one over Africa, and one over India,
Speaker 2: just these massive heat domes, and it was like the
Speaker 2: planet appears to have gone haywire.
Speaker 1: And of course in the Day After Tomorrow movies like that,
Speaker 1: when they see that up on their screens, they go,
Speaker 1: oh good god. Yeah, yeah, you know, and again it's happening.
Speaker 2: In reality, it is, it is, and some of us
Speaker 2: did say, oh good God, and I hope more of
Speaker 2: us did, but yeah, we are living through that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what the heats on miss. It's a giant lid
Speaker 2: that keeps air trapped in place, doesn't let the heat escape,
Speaker 2: doesn't let cold air in. You know, that's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons Phoenix cooked at one hundred and ten degrees
Speaker 2: plus for thirty one straight days earlier this year.
Speaker 1: And you know Phoenix cooking. I was there a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago in the middle of the last time
Speaker 1: it got very thoroughly baked, and I was at the
Speaker 1: time writing about the water levels in Lake Meat and
Speaker 1: what was happening to the water supply in the Southwest.
Speaker 1: We have these towns that we've built in the desert
Speaker 1: that were probably never meant to be inhabited in the
Speaker 1: way that we inhabit them. But electric grids, roadways and
Speaker 1: of course air conditioning have made places like Phoenix or
Speaker 1: Las Vegas inhabitable, at least inhabitable in far larger numbers.
Speaker 1: There were indigenous people who lived there quite well for
Speaker 1: a long period of time before we displace them. But
Speaker 1: the current world we're in right now is telling us
Speaker 1: this isn't sustainable.
Speaker 2: Yes, as you say, people lived in those places for
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of years before. But a couple of
Speaker 2: things that were different is they had acclimated to the
Speaker 2: heat because they didn't have ac it wasn't as hot.
Speaker 2: They also had adjusted their architecture their lifestyles. You see
Speaker 2: it all over the world. People live in very hot places,
Speaker 2: but they build buildings to let airflow. They don't work
Speaker 2: in the middle of the day. What we have done
Speaker 2: is we've tried to take the typical American lifestyle with
Speaker 2: a car and a big house and a bunch of
Speaker 2: air conditioning, and we never have to suffer through the
Speaker 2: heat or suffer through any kind of like physical pain,
Speaker 2: and we've tried to transplant that into the desert. And
Speaker 2: one of the things about those indigenous peoples is that
Speaker 2: when the water went away, as it did periodically, the
Speaker 2: civilizations went away too. Like they fought over water and
Speaker 2: they killed each other off, or they left, they moved on.
Speaker 2: We are not doing that. We're choosing to stay there
Speaker 2: and keep fighting against nature. But nature is currently winning.
Speaker 2: We're running out of water. The Colorado River, which you visited,
Speaker 2: like meat, is drying up. They're at all time low
Speaker 2: water levels there. They're starting to fight over water. They're
Speaker 2: starting to have big conflicts.
Speaker 1: Well, just like the indigenous people. I was thinking that
Speaker 1: you've brought up that great element of this is that
Speaker 1: the Colorado River was never designed to serve the number
Speaker 1: of states and the amount of people that it's now
Speaker 1: being called upon to serve millions a week. So you
Speaker 1: have states now fighting each other for access to the river.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're straining electrical grids. If you build these
Speaker 2: McMansions and sprawl them out across to the desert around Phoenix,
Speaker 2: you have electrical goods being strained, and we're having to
Speaker 2: rethink the way we build these cities. There's just no
Speaker 2: escaping it.
Speaker 1: What happens to the human body when it's exposed to
Speaker 1: extreme heat. We have a lot of exterior manifestations of
Speaker 1: climate change. Obviously we're talking about flooding and wildfires, but
Speaker 1: our bodies as well can't sustain the kind of atmospheric
Speaker 1: temp we're now in countering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as human beings, we evolved in a part of
Speaker 2: Africa where if you think about your favorite temperature, I
Speaker 2: mean this is not everybody. I know some people who
Speaker 2: love it when it's one hundred degrees, I hate it.
Speaker 2: But if you think about your favorite temperature, it's like
Speaker 2: seventy four, not humid at all. We evolved in a
Speaker 2: part of Africa where the weather was like that pretty
Speaker 2: much all the time, and so our bodies are designed
Speaker 2: to like thrive in that kind of environment. So and
Speaker 2: we can live in extremes, We can live at the poles.
Speaker 2: We live in deserts. Humans can live anywhere, but our
Speaker 2: bodies are designed to maintain a certain level of heat,
Speaker 2: and it is very easy to overheat us. A great
Speaker 2: book that I recommend about this is called The Heat
Speaker 2: Will Kill You First, Very again, a very cheerful peat title.
Speaker 2: Very cheerful for recommending that to our Yes, yes, it's
Speaker 2: something to read. A bedtime for Happy Thoughts by Jeff Goodell.
Speaker 2: It's a great book and it talks about how the
Speaker 2: human body responds to heat. He tells some horror stories
Speaker 2: that I won't get into here, but it doesn't take
Speaker 2: long to sort of overheat a human body, and you
Speaker 2: can be very healthy. You can be a marathon and
Speaker 2: you can get overheated very quickly, and you can drink
Speaker 2: all the water you want. There are firefighters who were
Speaker 2: fighting fires and drinking gallons of water to stay hydrated,
Speaker 2: but they still overheated. Because it's not about the water
Speaker 2: you drink. The water you drink helps you sweat out,
Speaker 2: but if it's too humid out, or if your body
Speaker 2: temperature rises to a certain level, the only thing that
Speaker 2: you can do is to bring that body temperature down.
Speaker 2: And what we saw in places like Phoenix recently. Is
Speaker 2: they were taking body bags and filling them with ice
Speaker 2: and putting people inside the body bags filled with ice
Speaker 2: just to like cool them down enough. Because you start
Speaker 2: to get organ failure, you start to get heatstroke. And
Speaker 2: you can see that right away. If you're out running
Speaker 2: or something in the heat and you feel dizzy or
Speaker 2: you feel disoriented, you are starting to suffer from heatstroke,
Speaker 2: and you need to like stop what you're doing and
Speaker 2: go get cool right away.
Speaker 1: Now, let's think about that from an modern civilization has
Speaker 1: brought us to the point where it's sticking people in
Speaker 1: giant ice bags, Yeah, to make sure they can survive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a good sign, you know.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a bit about the Malibu fires of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, which capped a few previous years of fire.
Speaker 1: Were there any lessons from the fires at ravage Malibu?
Speaker 1: They also ravaged Napa. They were among again the most
Speaker 1: vivid examples of climate change, not being abstract but coming
Speaker 1: into people's homes, coming into people's vineyards, coming into people's streets.
Speaker 1: Mountains were stripped naked of trees and looked prehistoric in
Speaker 1: They're awake. What lessons came out of those fires.
Speaker 2: Learned a few different things. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 2: obviously climate change is making fires more frequent, more destructive.
Speaker 2: Another thing is we are moving into these urban wildlife
Speaker 2: interfaces more and more, testing the boundaries, moving into nature,
Speaker 2: partly because we don't have affordable housing in the cities.
Speaker 2: People are living in a wilderness out in California because
Speaker 2: they can't afford to live in downtown San Francisco or
Speaker 2: La because it's just too expensive. So we're pushing people
Speaker 2: to the margins, and again that's where the bad climate
Speaker 2: stuff happens. Another issue was the electrical wires. Pacific gas
Speaker 2: an Electric has been blamed for about thirty of the
Speaker 2: wildfires that have started in California since twenty seventeen. They
Speaker 2: deny a lot of that, but they did pay a
Speaker 2: fifty five million dollars settlement last year to avoid criminal
Speaker 2: prosecution and two of the big wildfires. This is again
Speaker 2: part of our issue with not being hardened against climate disasters.
Speaker 2: We have these above ground electrical lines that are aging
Speaker 2: that need a lot of maintenance. When we're running wires
Speaker 2: out to houses in the middle of this urban wildlife interface,
Speaker 2: you're putting these things in contact with very dry trees.
Speaker 2: The same thing happened in Maui allegedly or so well.
Speaker 1: In Maui was dangling wires contact. Yes, the underbrush that
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier exactly, not trees, but it was initially
Speaker 1: started by this kindling we talked about.
Speaker 2: That's right, and electrical wire was involved in that too.
Speaker 2: So what's the solution to that, Well, you bury a
Speaker 2: bunch of electrical lines underground. But think of the cost
Speaker 2: of that. And again, this is one of the things
Speaker 2: we were talking about the cost of helping emerging countries
Speaker 2: developing countries against climate change. We have to harden our
Speaker 2: own country against climate change too, but it is enormously
Speaker 2: expensive and politically controversial to do that.
Speaker 1: I have found Canada's recent struggle wildfires to be compelling, scary, humbling,
Speaker 1: all the things that climate change makes you feel. But
Speaker 1: the other thing it raised for me was this idea
Speaker 1: of climate haven's, which you've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: writing about. Canada recently had to evacuate the majority of
Speaker 1: its population from the Northwest territories because the wildfires that
Speaker 1: were approaching parts of British Columbia were devastating, and Canada
Speaker 1: as well to the north of US. Obviously, it's known
Speaker 1: for snow and ice and many other things. And it's
Speaker 1: not immune from climate changes reach either, is it.
Speaker 2: That's what we're finding out is like nothing is immune.
Speaker 2: There's an article I read and this goes back to
Speaker 2: the idea of the concept that climate change or global
Speaker 2: warming is just a gentle turning up of the global
Speaker 2: thermostat by a degree or two. You know, what's the
Speaker 2: big deal. It's going to make Canada more pleasant. We'll
Speaker 2: all go live in Wisconsin, will all go live in Buffalo,
Speaker 2: warmer winters, warmer winters, more farmland, just fertile farmland in Siberia.
Speaker 2: What's the problem. Well, Siberia is not just fertile farmland now,
Speaker 2: it's getting up to one hundred degrees You've got Siberian
Speaker 2: permafrosts that can thaw out and release all kinds of
Speaker 2: prehistoric diseases. Canada is drying out, and heat domes can
Speaker 2: settle over Canada too, Maybe less likely because of the
Speaker 2: jet stream, but anyway, it gets really hot there. We're
Speaker 2: finding out hotter than we had expected, and hot enough
Speaker 2: to help spark these massive wildfires. Vermont is listed as
Speaker 2: maybe the biggest climate haven in the United States, and
Speaker 2: they were all underwater just a month or so ago.
Speaker 2: There really are no climate havens. I mean, as we
Speaker 2: talked about in New York, we were suffering. We had
Speaker 2: an apocalyptic scene outside this building because of wildfires. We're
Speaker 2: hundreds of miles away in Canada. We are all in
Speaker 2: this together. Is the message here. There are really no havens.
Speaker 2: There are places that will deal with it better. You know,
Speaker 2: places at the tropics will be more consistently under stress
Speaker 2: and uninhabitable than say Wisconsin. So maybe you want to
Speaker 2: move to Wisconsin, or maybe you want to move to Buffalo,
Speaker 2: but you also be prepared there, but me to be
Speaker 2: prepared there for climate change's effects to reach you too.
Speaker 1: Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, Mark, and then when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about solutions or at least approaches to all
Speaker 1: of this, trying to find the brighter side in this
Speaker 1: challenge while facing We're back with the great Mark Gangloff,
Speaker 1: columnist Extraordinary talking about climate change. Mark, We've been talking
Speaker 1: about some of the most apparent manifestations of climate change, flooding, drought, wildfires.
Speaker 1: We're leaving frost off the menu today so we can
Speaker 1: devote part of the show to solutions. I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: say that the first step in all of this is
Speaker 1: for everyone to take climate change seriously and stop the
Speaker 1: charade of saying it's a media invented myth. You don't
Speaker 1: have to agree with me, but that feels like a
Speaker 1: useful first stop.
Speaker 2: That'd be a good first step. Admitting you have a
Speaker 2: problem is always the first step to recovery. You could
Speaker 2: also look at it as I kind of feel like
Speaker 2: most of us have moved on. If you think about
Speaker 2: it in the stages of grief, I think you know,
Speaker 2: denial is the first one, and then anger and then bargaining.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people are now in the
Speaker 2: bargaining phase. I mean, when I write a climate column,
Speaker 2: I still get on social media and in my inbox
Speaker 2: a lot of people saying, oh, it's a myth, Climate's
Speaker 2: always been changing, scaring tactics exactly. Most people don't agree
Speaker 2: with that. Now, about seventy percent of the country agrees
Speaker 2: the climate change is real. They may disagree about why
Speaker 2: it's happening, but most of the country agrees that humans
Speaker 2: are causing it. At this point. And if you go
Speaker 2: to Congress and talk to individual Republican congress people, they'll
Speaker 2: tell you they admit it's real, they admit it's happening.
Speaker 2: But now the issue is what do we do about it?
Speaker 2: And how fast do we do something about it? And
Speaker 2: this is why I think it's the bargaining phase. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe it's real, but do we really have to, you know,
Speaker 2: drive electric cars? Do we really have to put wind
Speaker 2: turbines out in the ocean? Do we really have to
Speaker 2: do all this? To do we really have to overhaul
Speaker 2: our economy. We don't really want to do that because
Speaker 2: it scares us and we're worried about economic growth. And
Speaker 2: I can get into how much the destruction of climate
Speaker 2: change is going to cost us, way more than the
Speaker 2: stuff we need to do to prevent it, but anyway,
Speaker 2: they don't think like that. Whatever, that's the phase we're
Speaker 2: in now, And so I think my thing is getting
Speaker 2: to the next phase of acceptance and realizing, Okay, this
Speaker 2: is a real problem. As we've been discussing, this is
Speaker 2: a real problem right now. It's affecting us right now,
Speaker 2: and we just start making some changes right now. And
Speaker 2: I do again As I said earlier, I think the
Speaker 2: one hopeful thing to take out of this is that
Speaker 2: maybe we're being smacked in the face almost literally, if
Speaker 2: you have to go outside New York with a mask on,
Speaker 2: as opposed to inside three years ago. You have to
Speaker 2: go outside with a mask on just to be able
Speaker 2: to breathe normally, if your house is about to catch
Speaker 2: fire out in Malibu, you can't avoid, you can't escape
Speaker 2: these impacts, and maybe it will make people think harder
Speaker 2: about what we can do to mitigate this in the future.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the entities that participate
Speaker 1: in solutions. Let's start with government. We could go down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole just talking about the Federal Emergency Management
Speaker 1: Agency and the National Flood Insurance Program that it sits
Speaker 1: underneath it as manifestations of the US government's effort to
Speaker 1: deal with this. But do you have thoughts about proactive,
Speaker 1: smart government actions that we know can help.
Speaker 2: Well, first, we really need to overhaul them. FEMA has
Speaker 2: always been controversial. It's radically underfunded. We saw it in
Speaker 2: Hurricane Katrina. We see it again and again and again.
Speaker 2: It struggles to respond to the disasters, and we're seeing
Speaker 2: more of these disasters, and so it needs to be
Speaker 2: bulked up to respond to them. It's about to run out.
Speaker 1: For a minute, when we talk about mindset is states
Speaker 1: or citizens who are say their anti government or they
Speaker 1: don't think the government can help. You See, time and again,
Speaker 1: after there's a natural disaster, whether it's a flood or
Speaker 1: hurricane or a wild bar, they actually call on the
Speaker 1: federal government for assistance and want FEMA on their doorstep
Speaker 1: as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: For sure, everybody's a libertarian until you get into your
Speaker 2: house is knocked over by a hurricane. And FEMA is
Speaker 2: about to actually run out of money. And speaking of hurricanes,
Speaker 2: hurricane season hasn't even really gotten started yet, and FEMA
Speaker 2: is about to run out of money because we've already
Speaker 2: had so many billion dollar disasters in this country that
Speaker 2: it just doesn't have the money to handle many more.
Speaker 2: And speaking of which, you know, the National Flood Insurance
Speaker 2: Program is also about to expire. Congress is about to
Speaker 2: re up that, and this is another just inefficient, wasteful.
Speaker 2: You know, five million people in this country rely on
Speaker 2: that for home insurance, but it heavily subsidizes wealthy homeowners
Speaker 2: who are building McMansions on the coast of Florida, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't help out the people who need it the most.
Speaker 2: It also hasn't updated its risk assessments for climate change.
Speaker 2: It hasn't updated its flood models for flood maps. It's
Speaker 2: flood maps. People in Vermont didn't think they were in
Speaker 2: floodplains and oops, they discovered way too late that they
Speaker 2: were in floodplains. And that's going to happen more and
Speaker 2: more often, and so we're nowhere near prepared. So we
Speaker 2: haven't made the economics of flooding rational. We're starving these
Speaker 2: agencies because we're not putting a price on our lifestyle
Speaker 2: on the way we were not properly pricing the risk.
Speaker 1: Of pricing consumption. Water is too cheap. Yeah, certain forms
Speaker 1: of energy are mispriced.
Speaker 2: Well, this gets into when you ask about the bigger
Speaker 2: level things that government can do. The number one thing
Speaker 2: that I think this government can do, which every other
Speaker 2: developed country in the world aside from Australia, has done,
Speaker 2: is put a real price on carbon. We have to
Speaker 2: start charging people for pumping carbon into the atmosphere. And
Speaker 2: instead what we're doing is we're still subsidizing fossil fuel companies.
Speaker 2: We're still subsidizing fossil fuel use and consumption. That is
Speaker 2: going away. We're starting to take gas stoves out of homes. Controversial,
Speaker 2: Every step of this is controversial, right, primy gas stove
Speaker 2: out of my cold, dead hands. All of this is controversial.
Speaker 2: But we're starting to do that. But we need to
Speaker 2: do that faster. You know, the Inflation Reduction Act last
Speaker 2: year was the biggest climate bill we've ever had, but
Speaker 2: it's a bunch of incentives. It's a bunch of we'll
Speaker 2: give you some money if you build a wind farm
Speaker 2: or whatever. We need to start cracking down now. We
Speaker 2: need to start getting tougher on just the wasteful burning
Speaker 2: of carbon dioxide and energy. So you know, talk about pricing.
Speaker 2: That's what we need to price. Is this has a
Speaker 2: huge price on our society and we're not adequately reflecting that.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing we need to do is
Speaker 2: that IRA put in place a lot of clean energy investment.
Speaker 2: And that's great, but it takes years and years and
Speaker 2: years to get this stuff connected to the grid. It
Speaker 2: can take a decade for a wind farm to go
Speaker 2: from the planning stage to actually producing energy for somebody,
Speaker 2: and that's just way too much time. We don't have
Speaker 2: a decade. We've got months or years at best.
Speaker 1: And the grid itself, it's a crazy quilt of different
Speaker 1: state systems. That's not big enough, it's not expansive enough,
Speaker 1: not connect doesn't it's not connected enough, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: generate enough power to meet some of the green solutions
Speaker 1: that we want to embrace. That's right.
Speaker 2: If we want to have everybody driving electric cars in
Speaker 2: a couple of years or by twenty thirty five or whatever,
Speaker 2: we need a lot more charging stations. I got an
Speaker 2: electric stove in my house earlier this year, and I
Speaker 2: had to rewire my kitchen because my house was built
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago. It was built for like one
Speaker 2: plug or whatever, and so I had to rewire my kitchen.
Speaker 2: Get a new electrical panel in the basement costs a
Speaker 2: lot more money than I expected. But we're going to
Speaker 2: have to do that across the country. You know, if
Speaker 2: we're going to electrify everything, we need to upgrade all
Speaker 2: of our electrical stuff. We need to hire more electricians,
Speaker 2: aiproof career idea for you. You want, we have to
Speaker 2: rebuild our infrastructure for this. Again, costs a lot of money.
Speaker 2: But if we're going to meet our goals and cut
Speaker 2: emissions and keep these disasters from getting much much worse,
Speaker 2: which we can still do, then this is the kind
Speaker 2: of stuff we need to do.
Speaker 1: I suppose talking about what the private sector should do
Speaker 1: dovetails with the public sector, But is there anything the
Speaker 1: private sector can do that we haven't landed on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, the same kind of stuff. And I think
Speaker 2: they have been leading the way. I mean during the
Speaker 2: Trump administration, he got us out of the Paris Accords,
Speaker 2: he tried to undo all of the stuff that the
Speaker 2: previous administration had done. But in the meantime, plugging along
Speaker 2: in the background, private industry was you know, electrifying, and
Speaker 2: they were getting a lot of this stuff done, and
Speaker 2: the rest of the world was doing that. And so
Speaker 2: the market forces are working in that direction and they
Speaker 2: just need to keep doing that. They need to be
Speaker 2: brave about it, and I think they still are. You know,
Speaker 2: there's this whole ANTIEESG movement happening, but people are still
Speaker 2: investing in green energy. At least. I think even if
Speaker 2: you get a CEO he feels squeamish about you know,
Speaker 2: whatever woke politics or whatever they still realize that they
Speaker 2: don't want their warehouse to burn down or flood. They
Speaker 2: realize that it's cheaper to run a plant on soular
Speaker 2: energy than it is on gas or whatever. So they're
Speaker 2: getting those financial incentives just from the market, which is
Speaker 2: one of the few optimistic things we can say here today.
Speaker 1: And then maybe they don't want their grandchildren to live
Speaker 1: on a burning marble.
Speaker 2: I mean you would think.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Lastly, what about individuals? What can individuals do that
Speaker 1: they're not doing? I think people dutifully try to recycle, more,
Speaker 1: people are adopting evs, electrifying their stoves. Are there any
Speaker 1: big things that people need to do on moss as
Speaker 1: individuals that would help things?
Speaker 2: The biggest thing is help elect politicians. I don't care
Speaker 2: what party they are, but politicians that take this seriously
Speaker 2: and want to do something about it. Because you, as
Speaker 2: an individual, you can get an electric car, you can
Speaker 2: electrify your house, you can get rid of your pets.
Speaker 2: Pets are a big climate change thing, but you shouldn't
Speaker 2: get rid of your pets. If you la have pets,
Speaker 2: keep them. But if you do all these things, you
Speaker 2: will reduce your carbon footprint by I don't know by
Speaker 2: a few tons a year. Walmart can do some of
Speaker 2: these things and reduce its carbon footprint by millions and
Speaker 2: millions of tons of years. So your individual carbon footprint
Speaker 2: is not that big in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 2: And one of the things we have to do as
Speaker 2: people is stop feeling guilty about this and stop feeling
Speaker 2: hopeless about this. And I think it's this sort of
Speaker 2: evil genius that the fossil fuel industry came up with
Speaker 2: the idea of the carbon footprint about you know, fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago or so, and said, you know, look at
Speaker 2: how much you're burning, look at how much carbon you're
Speaker 2: pumping into the atmosphere. So that we would feel guilty
Speaker 2: about it and feel helpless about it. You can still
Speaker 2: maybe take a few flights less, maybe get an electric
Speaker 2: carb You can afford it. Again, the wealthier people in
Speaker 2: this country can afford to make the bigger changes. All
Speaker 2: those things help. Being conscious consumers helps, you know, you
Speaker 2: help drive the market, You help raise demand for sustainable things.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, our voices and our attitude are the most
Speaker 2: powerful forces that we have. We can raise those voices
Speaker 2: to our neighbors, to our friends. We should realize that
Speaker 2: most of the country is worried about climate change. Whether
Speaker 2: you're in a red state or a blue state, most
Speaker 2: people share this concern. So recognizing that first, and so
Speaker 2: feeling free to use that voice to express that and
Speaker 2: to elect people that want solutions and try to push
Speaker 2: solutions on our own backyard in mass Those are the
Speaker 2: most powerful things that we can do as individuals.
Speaker 1: Mark, I call you the climates are inside Bloomberg opinion.
Speaker 1: What have you learned about climate change that you didn't
Speaker 1: know before?
Speaker 2: I am learning that the changes are much more complicated
Speaker 2: than I even realized at first. The biggest thing, though,
Speaker 2: I think, is just the energy transitions can be so expensive.
Speaker 2: I mean, Bloomberg and EF I always hate to say
Speaker 2: this number because it's so terrifying, but Bloomberg a nif
Speaker 2: estimated the world is going to have to spend two
Speaker 2: hundred trillion dollars to get our emissions down to avoid
Speaker 2: the worst climate disasters. And that sounds like a lot,
Speaker 2: But that is over the next between now and say
Speaker 2: twenty fifty, and then if you start to add up
Speaker 2: the costs that happen. Claudia Sam Great Economists were a
Speaker 2: column for us that said, it's going to cost maybe
Speaker 2: three hundred billion dollars a year in lost worker productivity
Speaker 2: due to heat alone by twenty fifty. And so you
Speaker 2: take those little effects and the effects of hurricanes and
Speaker 2: drafts and wildfires and just general health. We haven't even
Speaker 2: gotten into the health effects of climate change. How diseases
Speaker 2: are moving there, are expanding their horizons and moving into
Speaker 2: new areas. All that stuff adds up. And so the
Speaker 2: biggest thing I've learned is to think about these things,
Speaker 2: the transition, the spending on green energy and the like,
Speaker 2: as investments rather than costs, because the real costs are
Speaker 2: what happened if we don't do anything. What we're spending
Speaker 2: to avoid that stuff is an investment and a better future.
Speaker 1: Mark, we're out of time. Thank you for sitting down
Speaker 1: with me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Mark Gongloff is a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion who specializes
Speaker 1: in covering the environment and climate change. You can find
Speaker 1: his work on the Bloomberg Opinion website in the Bloomberg Terminal.
Speaker 1: You can also find him on Twitter at Mark Gongloff.
Speaker 1: Here at crash Course, we believe the collisions can be messy,
Speaker 1: impressive challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In today's Crash Course,
Speaker 1: I learned that fire and flooding aren't really polar opposites
Speaker 1: in this new era of climate change. They are actually
Speaker 1: manifestations of one another. What did you learn? We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 1: handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the
Speaker 1: hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our
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Speaker 1: episode was produced by the indispensable Annamazarakas, Moses On Dam
Speaker 1: and Me. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we
Speaker 1: had editing help from Sage Bauman, Katie Boyce, Jeff Grocott,
Speaker 1: Mike Nize and Christine Banden Bylark Blake Maples does our
Speaker 1: sound engineering, and our original theme song was composed by
Speaker 1: Louis Skara. I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another Crash Course