Speaker 1: M ready to be pod pilled, gonna take the podcast
Speaker 1: pill well it is it is too late. You already
Speaker 1: have you're listening to this podcast right now, this podcast
Speaker 1: is it could happen here The Daily Show. Welcome. I'm
Speaker 1: Garrison and today we have an interview with the author
Speaker 1: of the book The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace Wells. David
Speaker 1: is a journalist who covers climate, among other topics, UM
Speaker 1: and his book was very useful for putting together the
Speaker 1: first half episodes of the scripted Daily Show. UM. It
Speaker 1: does a really good job laying out the different physical
Speaker 1: effects that climate change will have on environments and ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and the differences between like one point five degrees celsius
Speaker 1: to a degree celsius and you know, the potentiality of
Speaker 1: like three or three degrees or even four degrees um.
Speaker 1: The book is is you know is it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: scary to to read. But David in person on in
Speaker 1: in the interview was actually a lot more optimistic about,
Speaker 1: you know, different ways we can prevent some of the
Speaker 1: worst effects. You know, the book came out in there's
Speaker 1: been new reports and new stuff that's come out since
Speaker 1: then about the different ways that can be mitigated and
Speaker 1: adapted to. And you know, talking to David on the
Speaker 1: interview was was, you know, not quite what I what
Speaker 1: I expected based on based on the book. It was.
Speaker 1: He was a very very interesting talk. But I don't
Speaker 1: need to tell you that because you can listen to
Speaker 1: it right now. The interview was a bit longer than usual,
Speaker 1: so we split it up into two episodes. Part one
Speaker 1: is you're you're listening to it right now, and part
Speaker 1: two will come out tomorrow. So that's enough of me talking.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the actual interview. So the first thing
Speaker 1: I'm curious about, David is kind of since publication of
Speaker 1: your book, Um, some some real world weather events have
Speaker 1: happened that uh, I mean, like I I think that
Speaker 1: kind of the mainstream coverage I've seen is like this
Speaker 1: is all happening much faster than than we had anticipated,
Speaker 1: and like one point I've see is going to be
Speaker 1: a lot worse than you know, had previously been anticipated,
Speaker 1: which is stuff that that you wrote about. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of wondering has personally, what what's happened in the
Speaker 1: last you know, year in change, has has that impacted
Speaker 1: at all how you feel about what you've you've written,
Speaker 1: has it changed in any way kind of your opinion
Speaker 1: about the pace things are occurring at I think there's
Speaker 1: sort of a few different stories unfolding at the same time,
Speaker 1: and they're sometimes not all running in the same directions.
Speaker 1: So the ultimate lesson is a little bit unclear, um
Speaker 1: on the signs of impacts. You know, I've been personally
Speaker 1: struck by how there hasn't been like a week since
Speaker 1: my book came out in early twenty nineteen that there
Speaker 1: wasn't some kind of natural disaster or extreme weather event
Speaker 1: that got in time it changed back in the news.
Speaker 1: It's not to say that it has always been, you know,
Speaker 1: occupying the place on the front page of the newspapers
Speaker 1: that it should, or that it has even done that
Speaker 1: very often, but nevertheless, it was, Um, I felt like
Speaker 1: I was issuing a kind of a p see and
Speaker 1: then almost as soon as the book came out, like
Speaker 1: the real world was illustrating that and making people feel
Speaker 1: the same way that I did about what was coming
Speaker 1: our way. That's been you know, really alarming. UM. I
Speaker 1: did think that I was writing a book largely about
Speaker 1: climate impacts, um Um, not climate impacts that we're going
Speaker 1: to terrify us in the year and the ones that
Speaker 1: we've seen this year. That the heat dome in particular
Speaker 1: was you know, as as has been written about quite extensively, um,
Speaker 1: like literally off the charts of what most climate models predicted.
Speaker 1: And that's really scary. Um. These are models that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not simple. They're supposed to include essentially any possible outcome. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, they have like their fifth percentile outcomes and
Speaker 1: the entile outcomes. It's really not supposed to happen that
Speaker 1: something comes along that that break that. And that's really scary.
Speaker 1: I mean, it means that a lot of other climate
Speaker 1: impacts are likely to you know, probably be worse than
Speaker 1: we were expecting right now. It means possibly that the
Speaker 1: global temperature models that we have for projecting where we'll
Speaker 1: end up given a certain amount of emissions are also
Speaker 1: clouded with even more uncertainty than we thought. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's really scary. I mean it's scary for me, maybe particularly,
Speaker 1: but I think this is true of a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You know, the bleak formulations of climate science were obviously bleak,
Speaker 1: but you could also tell yourself, like if you process them,
Speaker 1: you were also in a way preparing for them, and
Speaker 1: to know that we now have to treat even those
Speaker 1: quite alarming high end estimates as incomplete pictures of what
Speaker 1: is possible and maybe insufficient um as a projection of
Speaker 1: the world we will be living in relatively soon. It's
Speaker 1: quite bad because that those those um, those projections were
Speaker 1: pretty bleak to begin with. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we are living in a differ in world
Speaker 1: when it comes to climate consciousness and climate action um
Speaker 1: than we were a couple of years ago. The fact
Speaker 1: that all of these countries made net zero pledges during
Speaker 1: the pandemic and did it, you know, outside of the
Speaker 1: realm of pressure, in like a paras style of negotiation, um,
Speaker 1: without bullying each other or shaming each other, but just
Speaker 1: because they thought it was in their self interest to
Speaker 1: decarbonized quicker. That's really really different than the place we
Speaker 1: were in just a few years ago. And you know,
Speaker 1: I take all those pledges with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Basically none that's ever been made in the past has
Speaker 1: ever been fulfilled. On the other hand, you know, it
Speaker 1: is definitionally progress that like many more people are concerned
Speaker 1: about climate change, maybe particularly many more people in positions
Speaker 1: of power in the political and corporate worlds are concerned
Speaker 1: enough about it to at least be paying lip service
Speaker 1: to it. There's a lot more to do, but you know,
Speaker 1: it feels like, for the first time, the world is
Speaker 1: beginning to take this whole challenge seriously. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've wasted so much time. We're not going
Speaker 1: to avoid what was once called catastrophic warming, but we
Speaker 1: may manage to keep the level of the temperature level
Speaker 1: to something close to that, to degree celsius. And you know,
Speaker 1: it may it may mark me as it totally grim
Speaker 1: apocalyptic alarmist that I think that that's like a good outcome.
Speaker 1: I'm in a happy outcome, But um, I do. I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, much better to land at two
Speaker 1: point three degrees than at three point seven degrees or
Speaker 1: four point eight degrees or something. Um And so it's
Speaker 1: sort of all stories at once. I was just, um,
Speaker 1: I was just giving a talk at like a book
Speaker 1: conference this weekend where I was talking about, you know what,
Speaker 1: the climate change at three speeds was like the name
Speaker 1: of my talk. The first speed was climate impacts, the
Speaker 1: second was the speed of climate action, and then the
Speaker 1: third was the speed of our disorientation. And I still
Speaker 1: think we haven't really like started to think about just
Speaker 1: how profoundly all of these forces are going to shake
Speaker 1: the way that we think of the world and our
Speaker 1: place in it and our culture, and um, that's all
Speaker 1: changing really pretty quickly too. Yeah, And I have a
Speaker 1: couple of questions based on that answer. One of them
Speaker 1: would just be one of the things I find interesting
Speaker 1: about the way your book is framed is that you're
Speaker 1: coming at a from a very different perspective than most
Speaker 1: of the people are read than Garrison and I are,
Speaker 1: because we're we're definitely more in kind of the ecological
Speaker 1: end of things, Like I appreciate the woods more than
Speaker 1: I appreciate being around people, and like that's a big
Speaker 1: part of like my desire for for conservation, And you're
Speaker 1: coming at it more from like a, well, I'm worried
Speaker 1: that like people aren't going to be able to like
Speaker 1: handle what's coming and the changes that are coming. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm, I think that's much closer to the perspective.
Speaker 1: You have to have to get Americans on board with
Speaker 1: doing something about it, because clearly the whole um we're
Speaker 1: damaging nature. Um, isn't a big sell hasn't been a
Speaker 1: big selling point up to this point, And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how in your in conversations with people who are maybe
Speaker 1: kind of like only tangentially paying attention to climate change
Speaker 1: when there's a disaster, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: recommend trying to get trying to get people on board
Speaker 1: with the severity of the issue and the necessity of action. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I think is really important, as like a
Speaker 1: starting point is just to understand that like basically nobody
Speaker 1: on planet Earth is living as though this is the
Speaker 1: emergency that it is. And that includes me, and it
Speaker 1: includes probably both of you, absolutely it maybe not, maybe
Speaker 1: doesn't include Greta. But like, you know, the number of
Speaker 1: people who are truly living like this is the emergency
Speaker 1: that it is are you know, you could probably count
Speaker 1: them on a couple of hands. And that means that,
Speaker 1: like the differences between those of us who are alarmed
Speaker 1: about it and those who haven't yet gotten there or
Speaker 1: having yet started freaking out, I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: that distance is smaller than we often really acknowledge, and
Speaker 1: we we we sort of tell ourselves, especially given like
Speaker 1: the partisan lens of everything that we, um, you know,
Speaker 1: everything we do in our lives that like people on
Speaker 1: the other side are just impossibly distant from us. But
Speaker 1: I think functionally, like the average NORMI liberal who says
Speaker 1: climate change is an existential threat but hasn't done anything
Speaker 1: about it and hasn't even really changed the way that
Speaker 1: they vote in response to it, is not all that
Speaker 1: far from the Republican who says, you know, okay, maybe
Speaker 1: climate change is happening, but whatever, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: I don't need to worry about it. Like in terms
Speaker 1: of concrete behavioral and political action, they're not that different, um,
Speaker 1: Which means I think that there's a lot of common
Speaker 1: ground there. And you know, I think that my own
Speaker 1: awakening on this may be more instructive than say yours,
Speaker 1: in the sense that um, as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think of myself as sometimes joked on like a
Speaker 1: human chauvinist. Um. You know, like if I could snap
Speaker 1: my fingers and save all the world's forest and all
Speaker 1: the world's ecosystems and all the world's fishes, that would
Speaker 1: be nice. But if I had to trade them for
Speaker 1: the well being of all future humans on the planet,
Speaker 1: I would take that trade. Um. And when you just
Speaker 1: walk through, um, you know, everything that science projects for
Speaker 1: what life will be like let's say two or three
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. Um. You know, I have like a little
Speaker 1: spiel that I can give about how bad that is.
Speaker 1: But then even beyond that, I say, you know, these
Speaker 1: are like tens of thousands of scientific papers. If three
Speaker 1: quarters of them we're totally wrong and the remaining quarter
Speaker 1: turned out to be overly alarmist, we would still almost
Speaker 1: certainly be dealing with an unprecedented ecological catastrophe. This is
Speaker 1: not We're not asking you to believe every single scientist
Speaker 1: who's working in every single university, and we're not asking
Speaker 1: you to believe, you know, the the guy who is
Speaker 1: running away from civilization and trying to like build a
Speaker 1: prepper hut in the wilderness. UM, We're just saying, like,
Speaker 1: the number of things that are being disturbed, are already
Speaker 1: being disturbed, are well beyond anything that humans have ever
Speaker 1: experienced in there. You know, depending on how you count,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years or millions of years on
Speaker 1: the planet, and our capacity to respond to that is
Speaker 1: very very much in question, especially when you look around
Speaker 1: and see how poorly we are today responding to the
Speaker 1: challenges right in front of us. So I think that
Speaker 1: there's like, um, you know, there's a there's a relatively
Speaker 1: simple way to talk about you know, not like your
Speaker 1: life will be threatened directly in talking to somebody. But
Speaker 1: the climate basis for everything that you know of as
Speaker 1: normal is already gone. And exactly what will endure from
Speaker 1: the civilization that we have inherited is actually an open question.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that I think humans are
Speaker 1: going to go extinct or you know, um, civilization will collapse,
Speaker 1: but like, this does represent an unbelievably dramatic challenge to
Speaker 1: every aspect of our lives, um, and the aspect every
Speaker 1: aspect of everybody's life on the planet. And um, we're
Speaker 1: going to be living around that obstacle and navigating around it,
Speaker 1: um for the rest of the century at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am. The term I've been using increasingly that I
Speaker 1: did not come up with, but that I think adequately
Speaker 1: describes where we are right now is is post normal um.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of the challenge when it
Speaker 1: comes to taking effective action, even just for adaptation, is
Speaker 1: convincing people, um that we're post normal, because as you
Speaker 1: pointed out, even those of us who write entire books
Speaker 1: about the severity if the problem have not changed our
Speaker 1: lives to the extent that we um that we that
Speaker 1: we would need to if we were really taking the
Speaker 1: problem like and and it's it's hard to like. I
Speaker 1: I don't know how. I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that frightens me because when I think about the different
Speaker 1: kinds of responses we could see and we we just
Speaker 1: talked to one of the authors of the book Climate Leviathan,
Speaker 1: which kind of poses some of the c Yeah, good book.
Speaker 1: I'm concerned because the pot the responses to climate change
Speaker 1: that I see is most frightening in that book are
Speaker 1: all based around promising people one way or the other,
Speaker 1: will get back to normal. We will get you back
Speaker 1: to the things on the shelf that you're used to
Speaker 1: having and the kind of lives that you're used to having.
Speaker 1: And I think the actual adaptations that we need to
Speaker 1: make and the ones that will lead to the world
Speaker 1: I consider at least more livable, are ones that um
Speaker 1: are accepting that normality has gone. And I don't know
Speaker 1: how you you thread that needle and get people to
Speaker 1: accept the end of normal. I think that's what I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the real challenge there is that we're we're
Speaker 1: unbelievably good at normalizing. Yeah. Um. And I mean there's science,
Speaker 1: social science suggesting that the basic timeline on which most
Speaker 1: of us base our you know, our expectations for the
Speaker 1: near future is five or ten years, which means that
Speaker 1: we're only ever you know, that's like the baseline we
Speaker 1: carrying to the future, not like the pre industrial climate,
Speaker 1: not even a climate of our childhoods, but the climate
Speaker 1: that we've experienced over the last five or ten years.
Speaker 1: And if you think about like what that means in
Speaker 1: the context of, for instance, like you know, wildfires in
Speaker 1: the American West, it means that we've already totally accepted
Speaker 1: a level of burning in a in a in a
Speaker 1: modern wealthy state, modern wealthy set of states that fifty
Speaker 1: years ago would have seen seemed truly truly apocalyptic. And
Speaker 1: a lot of these fires today look apocalyptic. We are
Speaker 1: horrified by them when we see the images on our
Speaker 1: scrolling on our phones. We watched some of those dash
Speaker 1: camp videos and they terrify us. And on the other hand, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's still forty million people living in California
Speaker 1: and you know, I do think that there's a there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an awakening ongoing at the moment
Speaker 1: having to do with the air pollution effects from those fires.
Speaker 1: I think a few years ago, we really thought that
Speaker 1: the main fear was about having your house burned down
Speaker 1: or having to outrun you're playing or something. And now
Speaker 1: it's understood much more broadly that there are these real
Speaker 1: health risks and that those don't um, they don't stay
Speaker 1: put like, so you can't escape them even if you're
Speaker 1: you know, living in a flat land away from away
Speaker 1: from the woods or something UM. And I see the
Speaker 1: same dynamic in my own life, which is to say,
Speaker 1: you know, I often find myself these days describing myself
Speaker 1: as as much as I hate to talk about climate
Speaker 1: change in terms of like mood relatively more optimistic than
Speaker 1: I was a few years ago. But that's because my
Speaker 1: baseline of expectation was, like, while I was writing this
Speaker 1: apocalyptic book, I'm still so much more alarmed than I
Speaker 1: was ten years ago. And yet in thinking about my
Speaker 1: own recent like what's not what counts is normal, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about like I'm not thinking about me. And then
Speaker 1: in that interim I had this you know, huge and
Speaker 1: really grim awakening, which is already now I basically like
Speaker 1: retired to the you know, the dustbin of of memory
Speaker 1: that I don't I don't even think about it anymore.
Speaker 1: And you know, I often worry about how profound that
Speaker 1: capacity and how pervarousive that reflex is in humanity. That
Speaker 1: we we already accept a ton of suffering and dying
Speaker 1: that's totally unnecessary in the world today, and that we
Speaker 1: will will respond to new threats to some degree by
Speaker 1: adapting and protecting ourselves, but also in some significant way
Speaker 1: by just defining upward what is an acceptable level of
Speaker 1: pain and human dying, And um, that could lead to
Speaker 1: a quite grim future, not just because it involves all
Speaker 1: that human pain, but also because it means that we're
Speaker 1: not really ever going to take control of the problem.
Speaker 1: Remember I said I was optimistic. No, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. I think that one of the things
Speaker 1: that has to become post normal is our understanding what
Speaker 1: optimistic means, because um, you know, in the communities. I
Speaker 1: just did an a M A on the collapse subreddit,
Speaker 1: which both has a lot of collects a lot of
Speaker 1: useful information about problems with supply chains and environmental catastrophe,
Speaker 1: and also provides this pervasive air that like everything's going
Speaker 1: to fall apart, and I think that actually is. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's based on the kind of narcissism that
Speaker 1: total collapse narratives always are because we almost never see
Speaker 1: that in history. You see areas collapse, you see countries collapse, UM,
Speaker 1: you see geographic regions experience aspects of collapse, but like
Speaker 1: more of what you see is things get worse for people,
Speaker 1: but the broad systems, you know, stay together UM, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that there is. AM. I have
Speaker 1: the same basic view of the collapse reddit subreddit as
Speaker 1: you do. But I would say there are some reasons
Speaker 1: to think that we may be more vulnerable to that
Speaker 1: kind of threat, which is to say that we are
Speaker 1: much more globalized and linked civilization now. Our supply chains
Speaker 1: are stretched very thin, our food supply is UM has
Speaker 1: very little redundancies in and even in those parts of
Speaker 1: the world like where we live, where you and I live, UM,
Speaker 1: where like food is not really a problem, we still
Speaker 1: have incredibly fragile UM supply chains. And in the same
Speaker 1: way that we didn't see global pandemics until there was
Speaker 1: some form of globalization UM. With the Roman Empire UM,
Speaker 1: we are now entering, you know, entering into what is
Speaker 1: likely to be an age of intensifying UM, you know,
Speaker 1: disease spread because of how interlinked we are. It's also
Speaker 1: the case that our vulnerabilities are shared and that other
Speaker 1: parts of the world are not necessarily do not necessarily
Speaker 1: offer you know, this sort of system redundancy is UM
Speaker 1: that they might have in the past. And I think
Speaker 1: another thing that's overlooked by to go to the other
Speaker 1: side of the equation, a thing that's overlooked by those
Speaker 1: two who think the relational collapses is likely or imminent,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the things that we're talking
Speaker 1: about UM, A lot of the suffering that we're talking
Speaker 1: about coming as the result of climate change UM is
Speaker 1: already present in many parts of the world. Who which
Speaker 1: are which are full of suffering, but which are not
Speaker 1: UM lawless UM, you know, on the brink of UM
Speaker 1: mass death UM. In the way that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the sort of you know, cor mc McCarthy
Speaker 1: imagination would suggest, and you know, one thing that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about turning it over in my head a
Speaker 1: lot recently is something that you know, some people who
Speaker 1: are they're not climate deniers, they're sort you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: called like luke warmers or people who think we can
Speaker 1: we can adapt away through everything. We'll say where they will,
Speaker 1: they say, um, you know, how bad could it get?
Speaker 1: You know, it could be uh, it could get as
Speaker 1: bad as the twentieth century. And you know, the twentieth
Speaker 1: century was really bad. Like there were a lot of famines,
Speaker 1: they were we had a couple of really big wars
Speaker 1: like you know, um, there there were there were some
Speaker 1: really big pandemics like um. But we already regard, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the life of the first half of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century as impossibly distant from our own in terms
Speaker 1: of expectations of wealth and prosperity and security. And one
Speaker 1: big question is, you know, if we do return to
Speaker 1: I mean, it won't be exactly like a rewind to
Speaker 1: that period of time, But if we returned to a
Speaker 1: world that is as defined by general fragility and instability
Speaker 1: as that one was, will it feel human and modern
Speaker 1: or will it feel um, you know, like the stone
Speaker 1: ages um. And I don't totally know the answer to that,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly the case that someone living in nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: London wasn't like this is the end of the world.
Speaker 1: They thought actually they were at the you know, the
Speaker 1: pinnacle of the world. There were some problems, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some things we need to say, you know, and
Speaker 1: it'll be really interesting to see how all of these
Speaker 1: dynamics play out going forward. If we start to see yeah,
Speaker 1: like a return of um, some scale of suffering and
Speaker 1: disease and death um that we have that we at
Speaker 1: least in a in a wealthy West, haven't been comfortable with.
Speaker 1: They're familiar with for a few generations, but which really
Speaker 1: do you know, they are sort of part of the
Speaker 1: fundamental human experience, even the modern human experience. Yeah, um, Garrison, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I think we talked about we talked
Speaker 1: a bit about this yesterday, but it is you you
Speaker 1: brought it up again. How almost the the new normal
Speaker 1: is going to be radical and radical un normal nous
Speaker 1: like like having like things always be changing. That's going
Speaker 1: to be like the thing that we're all gonna be
Speaker 1: used to now is switching back and forth between extremes
Speaker 1: kind of all of the time. Um. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: like you're I mean, I would say, like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of with Robert. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: I often like, as a strawman, set up the phrase
Speaker 1: the new normal to them, say really it's the end
Speaker 1: of normal and you know, never never normal again. But
Speaker 1: I also think, um, you know, we've been living in
Speaker 1: a we've also been living in a civilization that runs
Speaker 1: on change for a long time, especially those of us
Speaker 1: in you know, the US, and um, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of years ago, I had a long
Speaker 1: series of conversations with them. William Gibson, the sci fi Nopolists,
Speaker 1: I'd like, interviewed him for the Paris Review Writers at
Speaker 1: Work series, and you know, he was just obsessed with
Speaker 1: the Victorians because he was like, these were the first
Speaker 1: this was the first time that you could really see
Speaker 1: the world changing in the space of a single generation.
Speaker 1: And we think of the Victorians as being defined by
Speaker 1: their propriety, their sexual um you know, primness and you know,
Speaker 1: overdone morality about almost everything. Um there refused to believe
Speaker 1: that they were anything but you know, um, incredibly refined,
Speaker 1: civilized people. But he's like, when you when you really
Speaker 1: look closely at those novels and read those diaries, there
Speaker 1: was an enormous amount of just technological anxiety and um disarray,
Speaker 1: produced simply by the speed of change. And now that
Speaker 1: has become he said, you know, that has become the
Speaker 1: basis of our entire civilization, and such that like we
Speaker 1: expect our phones to get better every three years, you know,
Speaker 1: we um, we expect novelty in our culture, in our food,
Speaker 1: we expect we get bored with old politicians really quickly.
Speaker 1: We want new faces like these are all um that
Speaker 1: the like desperate addiction to the new is one of
Speaker 1: the really defining features of modern American, modern Western life.
Speaker 1: And so in a certain way, we're already acclimated to
Speaker 1: rapid radical change, or at least we've been trained to
Speaker 1: not just so live in that world, but to demand it.
Speaker 1: It's just a sort of a what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is a different kind of a change, um that is
Speaker 1: much less about giving us things we want and much
Speaker 1: more about imposing, you know, great burdens and suffering on
Speaker 1: us and demanding that we make changes and adaptations that
Speaker 1: we may not be so happy about. And as I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier, there are a lot of signs, especially
Speaker 1: in our politics, that you know, for all our cultural
Speaker 1: capacity for change. We may be UM in terms of
Speaker 1: policy and at the social level, like a little too
Speaker 1: sclerotic in our capacity to to move. How do you
Speaker 1: see at least in like the short term, like the
Speaker 1: next you know, few years, more politicians or tech capitalists
Speaker 1: like business people starting to realize and it is starting
Speaker 1: to put those changes in Or do you think it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen yet? Do you think it require
Speaker 1: do you think it will require more more things to
Speaker 1: happen before they'll like start addressing it more urgently. You know,
Speaker 1: I guess it's it all sort of depends on what
Speaker 1: you mean by it, you know, Like in the Reconciliation
Speaker 1: Bill it's currently being um debated in DC. There is
Speaker 1: a clean electricity standard UM that you know that would
Speaker 1: be a major major step forward for American climate policy,
Speaker 1: really a major major step forward. It's not even something
Speaker 1: that we're like talking all that much about, UM, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, at the moment, by far the biggest
Speaker 1: and most impactful thing that American politics could deliver. And
Speaker 1: it's on the table UM, and it would not have
Speaker 1: been on the table five years ago or probably ten
Speaker 1: years ago. UM. There's some people who think we could
Speaker 1: have done in the earlier aboutom years, but I'm skeptical
Speaker 1: of that. And you know, we have all of these
Speaker 1: world leaders talking about climate like it's a top shelf issue.
Speaker 1: They're not yet designing their economic policies as though it's
Speaker 1: like the paramount issue. But it's you know, if someone's
Speaker 1: making a you know, take Barack Obama in two doesn't
Speaker 1: for the Democratic National Convention. If someone is making that
Speaker 1: kind of speech really hoping to announce themselves on the stage,
Speaker 1: is a major political figure in this country. They could
Speaker 1: not not talk about climate change in that speech, like
Speaker 1: it would have to be part of the way that
Speaker 1: they talked about the future. And that's really that's really
Speaker 1: different from how it was not all that long ago.
Speaker 1: And that's true really all around the world, you know,
Speaker 1: all the way from the authoritarian end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: to the liberal democracies of the world. Um, it's even
Speaker 1: true when you listen to um leaders of petro states
Speaker 1: in the Middle East and sort of quote unquote climate
Speaker 1: deniers like Scott Morrison. He's not even in Australia, he's
Speaker 1: not even talking the same way about climate that he
Speaker 1: talked two or three years ago. Like they're there are
Speaker 1: all of these really dramatic shifts taking place. You know,
Speaker 1: we're still like way short of what science says is
Speaker 1: necessary serry to avert a catastrophic level of warming. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to do that. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're already starting to see I think our politics and
Speaker 1: our culture turn around climate in a quite profound way.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, that's a sign that like,
Speaker 1: we are living in a climate century. This is the
Speaker 1: meta narrative of our era, and um, there's sort of
Speaker 1: no gatting around it. Um. You're starting already starting to
Speaker 1: see more climate stories and in Hollywood and people talking
Speaker 1: about climate anxiety with their therapists, and you know, in
Speaker 1: addition to the obvious direct extreme weather events, and it's
Speaker 1: just pervasive and um, front of mind in a way
Speaker 1: that it wasn't before. And I've I've personally been kind
Speaker 1: of astonished at that speed of change because when I was,
Speaker 1: you know, writing my book a few years ago, I
Speaker 1: looked back at I looked at the environmental movement at
Speaker 1: the present, say like and I looked back at a
Speaker 1: couple of generations worth of environmental activism, and I thought,
Speaker 1: these guys are like the same people, they're kind of
Speaker 1: saying the same things, and they've never made any progress
Speaker 1: at all, um, And I was, you know, I knew
Speaker 1: that the path to the theoretical path to progress was political,
Speaker 1: but I also didn't really see all that much reason
Speaker 1: for hope on that front. But the last few years
Speaker 1: have been, you know, this incredible global political awakening where
Speaker 1: you know, Gret is the sort of face of it,
Speaker 1: but she's certainly not all of it. She's you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of other incredibly brave and noble climate strikers sunrise
Speaker 1: extinction rebellion. And then you have like, you know, the
Speaker 1: head of the Bank of England and you know, the
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Treasury talking about climate is like an
Speaker 1: existential threat, like this is just a it's a really
Speaker 1: really different world than we were living in a few
Speaker 1: years ago. And you know, as I said, we're not
Speaker 1: nearly moving as fast as we as we need too,
Speaker 1: but at the level of like cultural recognition, personally, I'm
Speaker 1: actually kind of impressed at how quickly we've moved. Do
Speaker 1: you think like the so called like green movement or
Speaker 1: climate climate justice movement has had that much of an
Speaker 1: impact in the past two years because I mean, like
Speaker 1: we are seeing more and more rhetoric from politicians, definitely,
Speaker 1: But if you look at someone like Justin Trudeau or
Speaker 1: even what the Biden has done the past the past
Speaker 1: few months, you know, because when Pon was campaigning, he
Speaker 1: talked about banning fracking and with things that of course
Speaker 1: he's probably not going to do. Do do you think
Speaker 1: like they've given people in power language that makes them
Speaker 1: sound like they're doing the right thing. But do you
Speaker 1: do you actually see the climate justice movement like getting
Speaker 1: people to do actionable things or do you think it's
Speaker 1: going to be more I think like there's like a
Speaker 1: term like um greenwashing, right, like like like you say
Speaker 1: the right thing, but you're not actually doing the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not one of the I think. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a very pragmatic approach to it. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of empty rhetoric, um, there's certainly
Speaker 1: a lot of pledges that are being unfulfilled. Um. But
Speaker 1: there's also a lot more investment and mobilization than would
Speaker 1: have seemed possible a few years ago. And you know,
Speaker 1: from my point of view, I mean, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: activists may be frustrated with that and may want to
Speaker 1: push for more. I think they should, but I also personally,
Speaker 1: I'm going to count that as as progress. So um
Speaker 1: and you know, it's interesting, I am this is a
Speaker 1: bit of a side note, but my my mother was
Speaker 1: this sort of like radical progressive education innovator. She she
Speaker 1: started this public school that I went to, UM in
Speaker 1: East Harlem in the seventies, and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it just like embraced all of these quite quite progressive
Speaker 1: values about you know, um, educating kids for democracy but really, um,
Speaker 1: you know, all this stuff that is it's become quite
Speaker 1: common in the way that teachers and schools operate, like
Speaker 1: project based learning and you know, emphasis on individual um
Speaker 1: tracks and um you know, open classroom and um, you know,
Speaker 1: building play into the you know, the experience of and
Speaker 1: when I and not like now that I'm a person
Speaker 1: who has kids, and my kids aren't quite ready for
Speaker 1: a proper school, but I have a lot of friends
Speaker 1: who are, you know, I hear the way that they
Speaker 1: talk about their schools, and it's like every single school
Speaker 1: now runs their classrooms this way. And when I talked
Speaker 1: to my mom about it, she thinks they lost the
Speaker 1: whole fight, like she thinks that it's like a total
Speaker 1: disaster defeat because there there are some things that they
Speaker 1: would have wanted to see happen they didn't get happen.
Speaker 1: I think it's just like, you know, activists are by
Speaker 1: nature quite demanding and uncompromising, and that's good, but it
Speaker 1: shouldn't blind us to the fact that, like you know,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden really has a lot of people in administration
Speaker 1: who are really serious about climate. Now, they're still making compromise.
Speaker 1: This is what the fossil field business. That's not good.
Speaker 1: There's still worrying about you know, political realities of UM
Speaker 1: what it means in Swing States to you know, to
Speaker 1: ban fracking. I wish that weren't the case too. But
Speaker 1: it also is just like dramatically different than as recently.
Speaker 1: It's like whatever it was like Barack Obama was bragging
Speaker 1: about expanding um oil drilling in the US, like that
Speaker 1: is just not okay. Maybe Biden doing a little bit
Speaker 1: of that, but he's not gonna go on stage and
Speaker 1: be like, you guys, you gotta thank me because I'm drilling. More. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a really different um It's a really
Speaker 1: different kind of reality and when you get down to
Speaker 1: the like nuts and bolts of it, especially if all
Speaker 1: the stuff in the Infrastructure Bill and the Reconciliation Bill
Speaker 1: go through, we're really talking about an unprecedented level of
Speaker 1: public investment in the decorganization of the American economy. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Again, like just to be clear, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's sufficient. I wish that there were more, but
Speaker 1: it's not just the same old business um. And when
Speaker 1: you look around the world, I see basically the same
Speaker 1: pattern that there's a lot of momentum in the right direction.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, as fast as I would like,
Speaker 1: and it's um compromised with all these other things that
Speaker 1: are you know, politicians have to do, but I think
Speaker 1: they have to do. But when I was writing my book,
Speaker 1: it was a completely defensible which it's a completely defensible
Speaker 1: thing to say business as usual scenario was for four
Speaker 1: and a half degrees of warming this century and now.
Speaker 1: But I think the best analysis suggests that current policies
Speaker 1: may land us under three degrees. So that's three years
Speaker 1: and we may have shaved a degree and a half
Speaker 1: off our base case expectation. That's kind of incredible. I
Speaker 1: think that there's not all that much more to do that.
Speaker 1: Some of those policies and ambitions already sketch out that
Speaker 1: sort of maximal ambition that we can really achieve in
Speaker 1: the societies that we have. You know, to take the
Speaker 1: American example in particular, Biden wants to decarbonize the American
Speaker 1: power sector by could we do that? By that seems
Speaker 1: really um. You know, when you hear about these companies
Speaker 1: in these countries that are banning gas powered cars, by um,
Speaker 1: you're like, could you could they do that? By could
Speaker 1: they really build new factories to supply all the new cars?
Speaker 1: That seems really fast, maybe even over the ambitious. So
Speaker 1: my own perspective on all those pledges is that even
Speaker 1: more important than getting people to announce more ambitious ones
Speaker 1: is to just sort of hold them to the promises
Speaker 1: they've already made, um, even though those promises may not
Speaker 1: be quite up to you know, what the science says
Speaker 1: is is necessary to give us the future we we
Speaker 1: might once have hoped to secure. And that wraps up
Speaker 1: part one of our interview with author and journalist David
Speaker 1: Wallace Wells UM. You can find him on Twitter at
Speaker 1: d Wallace Wells and you can find his book I
Speaker 1: don't know wherever books are sold, local bookstore, online, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can figure it out. Um. So that
Speaker 1: that wraps up our show today too, and in tomorrow
Speaker 1: to check out the second part of the interview. That's
Speaker 1: all today, save pods, save casting. So yeah, M