WEBVTT - Climate Science, Explained 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.400 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:11.640 How can scientists predict future climate trends? How can they 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:15.480 know the prehistoric past? And what to do about deniers, 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:21.400 including the President? My guests today answer those questions with 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.320 humor and simplicity. Peter do Memical is the dean of 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:30.040 science at Columbia University. Kate Marvel has a PhD in 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:34.400 theoretical physics from Cambridge and does research at NASA. They 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:36.720 could have had any job they wanted, but both of 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.519 them chose to bring their talents to bear on climate 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.840 change because, as Kate argues, if we don't fix that, 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:49.000 not much else will matter. And yet millions of Americans 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.800 still want to debate whether there's even a problem to solve. 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.400 Whenever we have a cold day, people are always like, oh, 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.960 where's your climate change? Now? What do you tell? Sometimes 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.720 I don't respond because you know, if somebody still believes that, 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.199 what what are you gonna do? Um? But it's really 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:10.120 important to note that weather is short term and climate 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:12.959 is these long term averages. Right. I cannot tell you 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.920 what the weather in Boston next year in January is 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.920 going to be like, But I can guess that it's 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:20.560 going to be cold because I know what the climate 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.240 of Boston is. I don't know if it's gonna be snowing, 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:23.920 if it's gonna be sunny, but I know it's going 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.440 to be cold in January in Boston. Where that gets 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:32.520 complicated is that weather doesn't exist independent of climate, and 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.320 by changing the climate, we're changing everything about the Earth, 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.199 including the weather. Um. And I think of this kind 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.160 of like bear with me here. I think it is 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.120 kind of like Lance Armstrong. Right, So lands Armstrong is 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.920 really good at riding his bike. He would beat me 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:52.880 in any bike race ever. Um. But lands Armstrong was doping. 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:56.560 And when we find out that lands Armstrong was doping, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.160 we don't go back to every single race he's ever 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.160 written in and say, okay, well that one he would 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.440 have come third, that one he would have been fifty seven. No, Like, 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.880 we know he was doping, and we know what doping does. 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.440 So a lot of times when we ask how much 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.120 did climate change cause this particular flood or drought or 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:20.880 heat wave, that's not necessarily the right question because we're 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.720 doping the weather, and we know what doping does. How 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:29.480 much of it is some cyclical geologic history. And even 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:31.800 if the contribution we're making it just the one straw 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.120 that breaks the camel's back, isn't that enough to get 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.320 you don't want to curtail our behavior. I think that's 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.640 actually a really good question. I'm glad you asked it 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:43.079 because people keep telling climate scientists like, oh, the climate 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.840 has always changed, and we're like, we know, we told 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.400 you that. We are essentially the people who study that. 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:53.280 We figured that out. What percentage of the warming right 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:59.240 now are humans responsible for? Over humans are responsible for 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.800 more than all of the warming, because if it wasn't 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.600 for us, the Earth would be cooling very slightly. It 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:07.000 would be because of what the Sun is doing. The 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.520 Sun is getting ever so slightly weaker. So yeah, if 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.639 it wasn't for us, tiny variation in the Sun's output 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.840 would be making a cold. Peter I think studied geology, 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.560 so he can put this really in the context of 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.680 the entire Earth history and the climates that we've experienced 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:24.760 over the entire history of the planet. And actually, many 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.160 people have talked about climate cycles, and this is often 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.840 one of the discounts on what's causing global warming. So 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.880 as part of some natural cycle and Indeed, in the 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:37.240 past there have been geological cycles of warming and cooling 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:40.720 that have been driven by orbital variations, variations in the 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.040 Earth's orbit around the Sun, which are very gradual. The 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:46.480 shortest of these cycles is about twenty tho years long, 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:49.160 and that's what's caused the pacing of the ice ages. 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.000 In the past. We've had ice ages, we've had warmer times, 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:55.400 ice ages, warmer times, and what those resulted from? What 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.040 when the Earth froze and you've had an ice age 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:00.960 that was the result of what? So, what the orbits 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.120 do is they change the amount of sunlight you get 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.120 during a given season. So I'll say northern hemisphere summer, 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:08.880 where we're further from the Sun. It's the Earth's sun geometry. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.120 In other words, what causes the summer. This is great. 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.720 Half of Harvard undergraduates get this wrong. What causes the 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.559 seasons is the tilt of the Earth the sun towards 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:19.919 the Sun. We're closer to the Sun in our winter 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.960 exactly point the years ago. We were closer to the 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:27.080 Sun when we were pointed toward it. And what I 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.640 see now is that the fall is gone and the 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.280 spring is gone. You're not wrong, um, and sort of 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:38.359 the The earlier arrival of spring actually has implications for 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.600 things like growing seasons for crops um. It also has 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:47.080 implications for things like pestborn diseases, and so scientists have 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:51.480 checked these things, and there's a whole rigorous area of 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.440 attribution science where people look at long term trends and 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.560 people do statistics to answer these questions. So is this 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.840 a fluke or is this something that's really happening? And 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.599 changes in the seasons, not just in New York but 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.560 all around the world are something that we expect and 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:12.239 we see actually happening. I'll ask this question to Peter. 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.279 Do you feel that people are always talking about some 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.520 radical solution. I was reading online and they talk about 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.360 dimming the sun was the article. The other day They're 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.039 going to spray the clouds and the atmosphere with a chemical. 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.840 Does that concern you that that kind of attitude and 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:31.680 there's some quick fix that can happen. Absolutely, that concerns me. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.359 I mean, first, it just begets this kind of hubrist 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.920 that humans can control everything, and we're far from that. 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:41.200 I mean, there's nothing more humbling than trying to solve 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.880 the climate problem. The work that Kate does for example, 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.080 and the climate modeling. It's an incredibly hard problem and 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:49.840 you know, the the amount of intellectual horsepower that has 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.280 to go and just to pose the question to understand 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.520 what the attribution story is, how much of the global 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.080 warming is due to human activities and natural factors, that's 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:02.600 a tremendously complicated problem. Describe for me, Kate, what exactly 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.120 is the work you're doing now? So? I work on 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.600 climate models, which are computer simulations of the climate, and 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.279 those allow us to do projections into the future, but 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.719 they also let us do experiments that we couldn't do 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:17.640 in the real world. So you know, what if a 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:21.359 volcano went off in London? What would that do? Um? 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.200 What if humans didn't exist? What would the earth look like? Um? 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:27.800 So I work with climate models. I work with an 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.440 incredible amount of data that comes out of those models. 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.880 And because I sit at an office of NASA, I 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.159 work with satellite data sets to try to see what 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.680 are the models telling us what's actually happening and are 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.680 those the same thing? And what about you, Peter, what 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.279 kind of work are you doing now? So? As Kate mentioned, 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.640 I'm a geologist, so I'm a marine geologist, and I 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:52.080 use ocean sediments, which are the ultimate repositories of sediment. 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.800 And so they are these encyclopedias of Earth history that 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.720 accumulate very quietly and in a very hidden way in 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:00.719 the bottom of the oceans. And so we take sediment 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:02.800 course and we can read these like a book, and 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:05.800 so we can see how climate has changed in the past, 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.760 what caused those changes, and more importantly, it allows you 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.280 to put what's happening today and into the future in 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.400 the context of the geological past. You go to the 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.400 yield the most information. Fortunately, the Earth is mostly covered 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:20.080 with ocean, so there's a lot of places we can 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.440 do our work. Uh For me, in particular, I do 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.040 work off of West in East Africa, so I study 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:30.440 how the North African climate, the Saharan Desert has changed 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:35.240 over time. The Sahara Desert was once completely vegetated region, 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:39.760 filled with crocodiles and hippopotamus and people, and then it transitioned. 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.920 What happened. What happened was because of this variation in 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:44.440 the Earth orbit that I was telling you about, this 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.640 wobble of the Earth that changed the intensity of the 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.440 African monsoon, which brings in rainfall from the ocean. Into 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.280 the interior, it got weaker, and so the place became 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.280 drier and drier, and suddenly the sands took over. And 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:58.720 one of the instinct discoveries we made was that that 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.920 transition from wet dry happened within a couple of centuries, 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:09.040 so it's just really rapid transit. And Kate, what about you. 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.360 Have you always been in this field and has it 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.240 always been weather and climate related for you? No? Actually? Um? 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:19.440 So I did my PhD in cosmology, so specifically string theory, 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.880 which is the physics of the entire universe. Um. And 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:25.440 I kind of realized midway through my PhD that you know, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.520 the universe is great, but but really this is the 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:32.120 best place, Like the Earth is by far the best planet. Um. 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.760 And so I was able to use my physics background 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.400 to study the physics of the Earth's climate and it's 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.880 so fascinating. What would be I'll go with you first, Peter, 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.560 what would be some of the things that you would 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.800 do right now to address this problem? Right? So, if 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:49.920 I was king of the world, the thing that I 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.600 would do right now is support the Green New Deal, 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:59.880 which is this investment in UH infrastructure and resupplying REPO 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:04.080 owering the planet. It's a shift towards renewables, it's adopting 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.680 wide scale battery storage. It's basically building up in this 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.520 country national climate resilience as a way of addressing the 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:15.520 climate problem, because there's, in my opinion, there's no solution 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.280 towards this other than an economic market based one. We 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.160 can't drive the world into poverty. We can't drive the 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.480 world into uh, you know, a dramatic way of of 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:27.640 living relative to where we are now. Certainly in the 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.480 time scale we're talking about, which is my lifetime. This 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.000 is not even my children's full lifetime. This is at 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.360 the end of our lifetimes, we're gonna be seeing these impacts. 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.280 We can see this, for example, in real estate prices, 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.640 so in houses that are right next to each other. 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.440 I let's say the Long Island Coast or in Florida, 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.320 and which is to most recent examples, these are neighboring houses. 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.959 One is more susceptible to flooding because it's slightly lower, 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.760 the other one is less. The one that is more 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.000 susceptible to flooding and selling at a five to fift 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.320 discount relative to its neighbor. So this is happening Now, 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.559 this is not the economic really, yeah, you know, this 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.960 is billions of dollars that are moving, that are evaporating 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.520 from the economy as we speak. The fires in California. 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.640 There's a paper that just came out just just a 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.600 couple of days ago that estimates the economic impact of 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:21.000 the California fires alone at four billion dollars. Just put 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.320 that in context, that's half of that's a little bit 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.120 more than half of the U. S Military budget per year. Um, 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:27.800 what about you? What would you do if you were 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:29.520 the I don't want to. I want to get it 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.160 right gender wise. If you were the king, I can 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:36.840 be whatever I want. Um. Right now, emitting carbon dioxide 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.880 is free. We don't charge anybody to do that, And 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:43.280 I don't think it should be free because there is 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.200 a cost to it. We're all paying that price. And 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:48.599 so I would put a price on carbon dioxide. I 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.320 would say, you cannot do this for free. You actually 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:53.960 have to pay the social costs. And friends of mine 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:58.040 who work in related fields teach me that domestic usage, 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:01.920 all the cars we drive round that even those are 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.800 significantly less than what industry does that causes air pollution. 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:09.400 That industry itself is a far greater polluter than individuals. 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.480 Do you agree with that or no? That's true, but 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.240 I think it's important to keep in mind that industry 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:19.640 is making products that we then consume. Um. So there's 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:22.679 This is why climate change is such a hard problem 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.680 to talk about, because it's an individual problem, but it's 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.560 also a social problem. So you can lower your personal 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.559 carbon footprint. You can eat less meat, you can make 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.160 your home more energy efficient, you can drive less, you 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.199 can fly less, and that up your appliances in your home, 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.679 upgrade your appliances. You can do all these things and 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.880 that will lower your personal carbon footprint. But if everybody 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.520 only does a little, will only do a little. And 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.400 that's because climate change is fundamentally a large scale problem. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.600 We need action at a very large scale to address 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.040 this problem. And so when people ask me what's the 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.520 number one thing I can do to combat climb to change, 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.960 it's a vote. Is there anything the two of you 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:09.320 disagree about? Almost certainly. I mean this is the thing. 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:14.319 Scientists don't agree on anything. We fight all the time. 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.200 If you go to a scientific conference, you will just 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.480 see knockdown, drag out fights about stuff like how fast 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.120 dirt drives out on the sun. You would not believe 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.880 it's a really big problem. It's a huge Maybe we 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:30.559 can start a fight about this right now. Um. And 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:35.120 so for science, for there to be a scientific consensus 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.120 on something that's a really big deal. And I think 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:42.560 it's also important to not confuse the word consensus with 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.439 meaning that everyone agrees on exactly the same thing. The 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:50.200 consensus is on the fundamental question of whether the observed 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.440 warming we're seeing today, the weird weather we're seeing today, 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.360 can be linked to human activity, specifically carbon emissions, and 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:59.200 the vast majority of the scientists, basically everyone agrees on 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:04.480 that central topic. Does it infuriate you the major oil 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.240 manufacturers have been obscuring the facts of climate change so 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.680 that they can make money. What do you say to them? 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:14.560 I mean, what do you say to their scientists that 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:18.000 are on their payroll? Well, they know, Um, you know, 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.360 the scientists who work for Exxon know that climate change 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:23.800 is real. They know that it's happening, and they know 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:28.200 that it poses a major threat to their business. Um. 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:33.040 What I would say to not necessarily an oil industry executive, 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:37.840 but you know your uncle who doesn't believe in climate change? Um, 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.600 I'm a scientist right. So I'm tempted to show graphs 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.600 and charts and be like, read this paper and and 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:47.440 that doesn't work. That never works because a lot of 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:51.280 this isn't about the facts. It's not about the science, 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.600 and if we just give people more facts, that almost 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.160 never changes their mind. Something that has a narrative that 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.240 has really worked for some of my conservative family members 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:06.160 has been first, the military. The military takes climate change 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.760 extremely seriously. They view it as a threat multiplier and 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.920 all of the naval bases are at sea level, so 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:17.880 they are very very concerned about this. Um. The insurance industry. Um, 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:22.280 if you were an insurance executive or reinsurance executive, so 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.000 the insurers of the insurance industry, and you didn't believe 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.760 in climate change, you could undercut everybody else by coming 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.360 along and offering lower rates. And if climate change isn't real, 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.000 there's no incentive to take it into consideration. And yet 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:40.920 the entire reinsurance industry takes this really seriously. So people 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:46.600 with an economic motivation to take this seriously take it seriously. UM. 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.040 And that's something that's worked for my family members, Like 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:52.880 you won't listen to your daughter who is a scientist, 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:56.000 but you'll listen to the reinsurance industry. Um, And I 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.040 think it's just it's about the messenger, it's about the narrative, 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:00.960 it's about the language that we use. And there's no 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.240 one thing that's going to work on everybody. Not to 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.240 pile on to you know who. But it's safe to 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.479 assume that the voice that would collate all this information 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:15.080 and present two disparate sections of society should be the 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.320 President of the United States, as far as you're concerned 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.480 in an ideal or LEAs, so that that's correct, I think, um, 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:23.520 you know, it does need that kind of leadership. Indeed, 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:27.200 the kind of transition we're envisioning for the future that 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:31.800 will happen in our lifetimes requires that kind of leadership. Now, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.240 in the absence of that leadership, and there's this great 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.200 expression that's called we're still in, which is that the 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:39.640 United States is still part of Paris. The United States 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:44.000 still committed, committed to the goals of pairs despite the 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.600 right So yeah, so despite what you know who has 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:52.400 said about pulling out of pairs, that's that's that's just artifice. 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:57.560 The reality is that the large industries, statewide coalitions, large 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.680 emitters have gotten together and said we can do. Was 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.880 there something in your community where when Trump was elected 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:05.760 you just thought, oh god, this, it couldn't be any 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.520 worse in terms of political leadership for this issue. The 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.280 guy that comes up in cit because we're gonna bring 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.560 that coal. We know so much coal, he said, so 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.320 many jobs in coal, And you're like, uh huh, really 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.240 what you know? Yeah, exactly, And that's um, well, it's 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.440 amazing is that I think certainly. I'll speak for myself. 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.280 I mean I was. I was shocked at the implications 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:28.200 I thought it would have for me at that point, 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.880 and I am just so much more shocked now. Um, 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.760 just in terms of the multiplication of the problem as 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.800 times as progressed. I mean, beyond the president who said 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.360 we're all in for Paris and we're all in with 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.360 these goals, do we need to look like, for one example, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.720 I'm someone who's thinking we have to have real action 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.120 on a number of levels, so that we would have 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.920 a federal order that all fleet vehicles that would be 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.760 used by institutions in the country had to be hybrid 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:02.240 cars and electric cars every school. Where's the government program? 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.040 When you just order that, you just make that? So 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:06.560 is that an answer as far as your concerned. So 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:13.040 here's the problem with talking to scientists. Um, okay, my 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:18.200 dream is to be completely irrelevant to the climate conversation. 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.280 Um my dream is just to to do science and 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.520 to learn about the planet. But all the fights we're 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.719 having are about policies, are about should the government just 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.120 mandate this or is there another way to do this? 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.800 And I feel like that's an issue that reasonable people 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:40.840 can disagree on. But we're stuck in this conversation where 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.399 it's is climate change real? Yes, it's real? Is that 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.640 us more than is us? And so you know, what 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.520 you say sounds like a great idea. I'm on board. 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.720 I'd vote for you. But I think reasonable people could 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.720 probably disagree with that. But I don't think reasonable people 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.359 can disagree that that this is happening and that this 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.720 is a problem. I would agree. I mean, I would 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.479 love it if I became obsolete. I really think that's Uh, 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.560 that's really my life's ambition is to have made a 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:14.840 difference to the same way about my Trump impression. Yeah, so, um, 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:16.520 you know, I do think you know, one of the 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.080 things that society can really galvanize around, or at least 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.639 American society can galvanize around. Is that climate change is 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:26.760 costing us. Now it's real dollars. I mean last year 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:29.560 it was roughly three billion dollars in climate and weather 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.919 related damages. This year, with with the California fires, it 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.280 looks like it's maybe even more than that. These are 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:39.080 real dollars. This is, and this is so regardless of 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.400 whether you believe in climate change or not. Imagine you're 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:43.760 in some deeply read state and a deeply red county 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.720 in that state. You are paying for this. You may 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:48.280 not like it, you don't want to call it climate 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.920 change or whatever, but you for sure someone is paying 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.760 that bill, and it's us. Well more of California experience 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.680 longer droughts and therefore be susceptible to what happened what 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.240 was happening there now on our current traductory, the answer, 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.840 unfortunately as yes, that we're just getting a taste. How 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.479 can be about to use film analogy, I'd like to 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:12.280 pan left to another world where we've adopted a much 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.800 more widespread uh sourcing of let's say, renewable power. We've 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:18.560 come up with ways of of storing that power and 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:22.919 allowing capacitance to the grid when you imagine a United 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:27.680 States that's generating much more of its electricity supply from 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.320 non fossil fuel related sources. There's been this quiet revolution 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.360 that no one knows about, which is called grid parity, 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.760 which is at state by state, there's been this toppling 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:42.680 of renewables becoming cheaper per unit of what created than 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.639 fossil fuel sources. And so now there's a majority of 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.240 states where it's cheaper to build out renewables and and 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:51.719 deploy that energy than it is to build a fossil 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.040 fuel plant. If you look at the price of solar panels, 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.200 they're getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper every year, um. 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.920 And that gives me a lot of hope that eventually 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.399 it will just be nuts to use fossil fuels, and 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.360 we can do things to make that day come way sooner. 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.160 But eventually maybe it'll be a hobby, right, like riding 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.600 a horse. It's it's not the way you get to work. 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:19.720 That's crazy. The coal industry in the US employs fewer 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:23.399 people than Arby's, and you wouldn't destroy the planet to 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:30.000 save Arby's. World renowned Columbia climate researchers Peter Domenical and 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:37.320 Cape Marvel. One thing climate scientists, environmentalists, indigenous activists, and 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:41.560 tourists all agree on is the importance of protecting forests. 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.320 A pioneer on the business side of that effort is 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:49.520 conservation biologist Charles Mutton. I'm a big believer in creating 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.960 parks and Indian reserves and as and protecting them. Tom 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:55.919 Ecotourism has to be part of the mix, because you 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.160 only need to have one lodge in partnership with local 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:01.399 Indians at the mouth of the river of a million 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:05.200 acre rainforest park. And yet that one small lodge can 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.399 have turnover maybe one or two million dollars a year, 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:09.320 and it protects a million acres behind it because it 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:11.520 keeps people from getting in behind it. So it's a 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.280 It's a very inexpensive way to protect enormous pieces of forest, 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.240 and anything you can do that can slow down deforestation 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.879 will help slow down climate change. The rest of my 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:25.600 conversation with eco tourism innovator Charles Munn can be found 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:29.520 in our archive that Here's the Thing dot org. When 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.840 we returned Peter Domenico and Kate Marvel on having kids 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:37.439 in a warming world and on walking the line between 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:52.439 despair and complacence. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:56.480 to here's the thing this week. I'm talking to climate 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:01.119 science researchers Kate Marvel and Peter Domenico. When you really 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:06.159 understand the implications of climate change, some common life decisions 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.879 take on extra weight. Do you have kids? Twin girls? 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:14.200 You have kids, Kate, I have a child? How old? Three? 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:16.600 So you had your kid more recently, you had your 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:21.960 kid fully inside the consciousness bubble of global warming. When 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:24.000 you were having a kid that you where you're like, 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.240 you know, bringing a kid into the warmed world. I 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:31.119 mean absolutely, um, And there's nothing that kind of makes 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.000 those projections concrete like having a kid. You know, I 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:37.600 used to think about um. You know, like you you 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:39.560 run your computer model, you look at what it says, 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:42.720 you look at the conditions of the planet in and 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:45.359