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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Last

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Speaker 1: week was Climate Week in New York and I went

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Speaker 1: for the first time. Actually, the main reason I was

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Speaker 1: there was to do a panel with Bill mckibbon and

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Speaker 1: Kendra Pierre leuis moderated by Genevieve Gunther on The Language

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Speaker 1: of Climate Politics, which is also the subject and title

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Speaker 1: of Genevieve's new book. In it, she looks at the

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Speaker 1: dominant narratives around climate policy and politics and whittles it

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Speaker 1: down to six key words that just keep showing up

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Speaker 1: over and over again. Each chapter is devoted to one

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Speaker 1: of those words and offers a deep dive into how

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Speaker 1: that word and the narrative it's attached to became so dominant,

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Speaker 1: how it's been weaponized to block climate policy, and what

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Speaker 1: kind of messaging you could use to combat it. I

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Speaker 1: got to sit down with Genevieve after our panel as

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Speaker 1: well and talk about the book, why it's made some

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Speaker 1: people so mad on the Internet, and a lot more.

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Speaker 1: After the break, you'll hear her reading from a bit

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Speaker 1: of the book, and then we're going to have that

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Speaker 1: conversation that's coming up after this quick message.

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Speaker 2: Fossil fuel propaganda is spun out of six key terms

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Speaker 2: that dominate the language of climate politics. Alarmist, cost, growth,

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Speaker 2: India and China, innovation, and resilience. Together these terms weave

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Speaker 2: a narrative that goes something like this, Yes, climate change

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Speaker 2: is real, but calling it an existential threat is just alarmist.

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Speaker 2: In anyway, phasing out coal, oil and gas would cost

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Speaker 2: us too much. Human flourishing relies on the economic growth

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Speaker 2: enabled by fossil fuels, so we need to keep using

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Speaker 2: them and deal with climate change by fostering technological innovation

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Speaker 2: and increasing our resilience. Besides, America should not act unilaterally

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Speaker 2: on the climate crisis while omissions are rising in India

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Speaker 2: and China. This narrative is designed to foment the incorrect

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Speaker 2: and dangerous belief that the world does not need essentially

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Speaker 2: to stop using fossil fuels, either because climate change won't

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Speaker 2: be that destructive, or, in some versions of the story,

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Speaker 2: because the world can keep using coal, oil, and gas

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Speaker 2: and still halt global heating.

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Speaker 1: Anyway, Yes, awesome, Okay, I want to have you start

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Speaker 1: by talking a little bit about where the idea from

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Speaker 1: the book can in general, and then how you whittled

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Speaker 1: it down to these six key words that I do

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Speaker 1: feel like really capture the essence of the sort of

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Speaker 1: discourse that we're hearing.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Because the book started out being much bigger, it

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Speaker 2: was sprawling. I had, like, you know, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: almost twenty seven words that I was thinking about writing about,

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Speaker 2: so definitely much smaller than it was in the beginning.

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Speaker 2: But I conceived of this book in twenty seventeen after

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Speaker 2: The New York Times hired this commentator named Brett Stevens

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Speaker 2: away from the Wall Street Journal, everybody's favorite voice at

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Speaker 2: the Times.

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Speaker 1: Yes.

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Speaker 2: At the time, though Stevens was a pretty inveterate climate denier,

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Speaker 2: Like he was definitely on the more extreme end of

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Speaker 2: the skeptical spectrum, so to speak. Like he called, you know,

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Speaker 2: climate change a religion or climate change science a religion

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Speaker 2: presided over by like singularly unattractive hair fans, which I

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Speaker 2: just thought was a really obnoxious thing to say about anybody, right,

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Speaker 2: like what, And you know, his hiring generated a ton

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Speaker 2: of controversies. Many climate scientists and activists tried to get

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Speaker 2: the Times to rescind their offer to him, because they

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Speaker 2: just thought it was outrageous that someone who you know,

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Speaker 2: was spreading these overt falsehoods would take a position at

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Speaker 2: the sort of paper of record. But of course The

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Speaker 2: Times doesn't respond to outside pressure very often or really ever.

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Speaker 2: So Stevens took his position, and he wrote arrogantly enough

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Speaker 2: his first column about climate change, and it was called

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Speaker 2: the column was called Climate of Complete Certainty. And what

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Speaker 2: this piece did was sort of recycle the fossil fuel

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Speaker 2: talking point that had been kind of dominant in the

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Speaker 2: discourse from I would say, about twenty ten all the

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Speaker 2: way through to twenty eighteen. And that talking point, as

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Speaker 2: you know yourself, was that the science of climate change

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Speaker 2: is too uncertain to motivate or justify the kind of

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Speaker 2: policy moves that we would need to make, or the

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Speaker 2: behavior changes we would need to make in order to

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Speaker 2: halt global heating and resolve the climate crisis, because the

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Speaker 2: climate crisis might not even be a thing right now.

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Speaker 2: I had just taken a college level course in climate science,

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Speaker 2: and so while I was reading this column, I was like,

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Speaker 2: wait a minute, this man is using the word uncertainty

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Speaker 2: in a kind of common sense, colloquial way. He's using

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Speaker 2: the meaning of the word to say uncertainty means not

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Speaker 2: having enough information or not knowing enough to come to

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Speaker 2: some sort of decision or judgment. Right, But this is

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Speaker 2: actually not the way that climate scientists use the word

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Speaker 2: in their research. So in or that.

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Speaker 1: Scientists in general like this is the language of science

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Speaker 1: in which uncertainly means something very.

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Speaker 2: Different exactly, And what it means means is the range

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Speaker 2: of possible outcomes that you can project out of a

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Speaker 2: model with confidence. I mean, confidence and uncertainty are actually synonyms,

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Speaker 2: because you can say the confidence interval or the uncertainty interval.

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Speaker 2: So when scientists would talk about the uncertainty of their research,

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Speaker 2: they were not saying they weren't sure whether their results

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Speaker 2: were correct or the phenomenon they were studying was real.

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Speaker 2: What they were saying was there's a range of possible

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Speaker 2: outcomes from bad to really bad that they could project

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Speaker 2: with confidence. But the problem was that because fossil fuel

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Speaker 2: interests had put this sort of other meaning of uncertainty

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Speaker 2: out into the public discourse through the media sphere, anytime

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Speaker 2: a climate scientist in his or her public communications would

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Speaker 2: talk about the uncertainty of their research, they would seem

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Speaker 2: to be confirming that they weren't sure whether climate change

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Speaker 2: was real or not. What fossil fuel interest had done

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Speaker 2: was a propriate weaponize and kind of distort the meaning

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Speaker 2: of the scientific term in order to kind of manipulate

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Speaker 2: scientists into confirming fossil fuel propaganda. So once I saw

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Speaker 2: this dynamic and uncertainty, I started to see it everywhere.

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Speaker 2: So I, like, you know, I got all these Manila

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Speaker 2: folder files because I'm very old school, and I you know,

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Speaker 2: made files in my email, and I started doing research

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Speaker 2: into the words that seemed to have salience for me

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Speaker 2: connected to climate change, you know. And I was doing

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Speaker 2: sort of database academic style research. I was reading research

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Speaker 2: in the social sciences, in rhetoric in climate science, but

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Speaker 2: I was also sort of pulling news articles and like

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Speaker 2: press releases and advertisements and tweets and sort of high

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Speaker 2: and low discourse news media discourse, and I was just

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Speaker 2: dumping it all into these files. And after about eighteen

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Speaker 2: months of this kind of very broad, almost sloppy way

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Speaker 2: of doing research, I noticed that the files for these

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Speaker 2: words were much thicker than the other ones, and that

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Speaker 2: in these files were often, you know, language that had

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Speaker 2: been produced by policymakers, by scientists themselves, in oil and

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Speaker 2: gas advertisements, like all the things that really sort of

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Speaker 2: centered and focused on what we're going to do to

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Speaker 2: try to resolve this crisis. And I was like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: these are the words that dominate the language of climate politics,

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Speaker 2: and I need to focus the book on these words.

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Speaker 3: Ye.

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Speaker 2: So that's what I decided to do.

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Speaker 1: And they all kind of relate to each other in

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Speaker 1: this way too that I think is really interesting to

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Speaker 1: create this Well, I think of it as like a

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Speaker 1: narrowing of available climate solutions or I don't know, it

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Speaker 1: sort of like puts these parameters on how we're allowed

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Speaker 1: to even talk about or think about this issue that's

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Speaker 1: very limiting.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting you say that, because you know, for

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Speaker 2: the chapter on growth, it took me a long time

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Speaker 2: to write this chapter because you know, first I had

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Speaker 2: to sort of really get my head around kind of

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Speaker 2: neoclassical resource economics, how standard economists talked about environmental concerns

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Speaker 2: and the climate crisis in order to understand what you know,

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Speaker 2: counter voices might be arguing against, right, And then I

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Speaker 2: read all the de growth literature and I sort of

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Speaker 2: first thought to myself, well, am I going to try

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Speaker 2: to talk about the language of growth in a de

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Speaker 2: growth frame?

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Speaker 3: Like?

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Speaker 2: What am I going to do here? And then I

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Speaker 2: realized that actually, we can't even have the conversation about

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Speaker 2: de growth. I don't think while almost everybody universally believes

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Speaker 2: that growth itself is a climate solution, like as long

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Speaker 2: as you believe that being rich will protect you from

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Speaker 2: climate devastation, why would anyone embraced growth? And so I thought, Okay,

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Speaker 2: this is what I keep bumping up against as I'm researching,

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Speaker 2: this belief that growth itself is a climate solution that

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Speaker 2: will be available to us even if the planet sort

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Speaker 2: of heats up to three degrees or more and that

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Speaker 2: the climate breils down to everyone infinitely exactly like growth

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Speaker 2: will never end. So I started digging into this, you know, because,

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Speaker 2: as you said, I felt like it was really kind

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Speaker 2: of limiting our imagination of how we might need to

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Speaker 2: transform the world in order to haul global heating. And

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Speaker 2: I discovered, as you know, I say in the chapter,

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Speaker 2: that this belief that growth will just continue no matter

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Speaker 2: what we do to the planet is based on absolutely enough.

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Speaker 2: It's based on beliefs that have no appeir empirical foundation whatsoever.

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Speaker 2: It's almost itself a form of religious faith. So one

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Speaker 2: of these beliefs is that human beings will be able

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Speaker 2: to adapt to climate change no matter how bad it gets.

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Speaker 2: And you know, humans are pretty ingenious, we are adaptable.

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Speaker 2: But in fact, there is no research showing that any country,

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Speaker 2: including developed nations in the global north, have to date

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Speaker 2: adapted to climate change, and it's just going to get

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Speaker 2: harder to do that. And there's something nonlinear about these

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Speaker 2: climate change impacts. So you know, if you have a

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Speaker 2: sea wall, it'll keep the water out until the day

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Speaker 2: that the water gets so high that it won't keep

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Speaker 2: the water out anymore. But none of those complicated risks

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Speaker 2: that we're facing, and none of this sort of lack

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Speaker 2: of historical evidence that we are going to be able

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Speaker 2: to adapt to the climate crisis make it into economic models.

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Speaker 2: In fact, what economists do is the opposite. They look

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Speaker 2: at sort of historical relationships between say, heat and GDP

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Speaker 2: growth rates, and then they try to project those out

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Speaker 2: into the future, and then they adjust their results by

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Speaker 2: using a mathematical variable called adaptation, which allows them to

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Speaker 2: downplay or adjust the dangers that they project by looking

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Speaker 2: at the past and drawing it out into the future

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Speaker 2: using this mathematical variable that they give value to simply

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Speaker 2: based on the economist's belief in how much we're going

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Speaker 2: to be able to adapt in the future. So at

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Speaker 2: the bottom, it's just about the individual economists trust that

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Speaker 2: adaptation is possible and it's something that we're going to do,

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Speaker 2: not based on any kind of empirical data whatsoever. And

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Speaker 2: that's just one of the fan dies or the ephemeral

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Speaker 2: beliefs that support or at least justify this fundamental belief

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Speaker 2: of the entire planet that growth will just continue even

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Speaker 2: if we ruin our climate system.

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Speaker 1: It's so interesting because a lot of the things, like

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Speaker 1: a lot of the things in here had me also

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Speaker 1: thinking about how a lot of this stuff gets painted

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Speaker 1: in very gender terms or even just science versus humanities

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Speaker 1: kind of totally language too, where it's like, oh, economists

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Speaker 1: are hard science, objective measurement, whatever, but climate activists don't

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Speaker 1: understand that, or in technologies it's like, oh, well you

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Speaker 1: just don't understand the engineering behind totally or whatever. I've

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Speaker 1: had this experience of digging into an economic model and

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Speaker 1: realizing that it's just based on yeah, one person's assumptions

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Speaker 1: or beliefs or whatever exactly and being like, no, I

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Speaker 1: must be wrong, you know, I must not be understanding

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Speaker 1: the numbers or whatever, and like I.

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Speaker 2: Had that experience too. But let me be clear, every

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Speaker 2: single chapter in this book, the chapters on economics were

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Speaker 2: read by some of the most respected climate economists working today.

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Speaker 2: And the chapter that I wrote on innovation, which turned

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Speaker 2: out in climate discourse to be code for carbon dioxide

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Speaker 2: removal and carbon capture and sequestration so CDR and CCS.

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Speaker 2: So in that chapter, I had not only one of

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Speaker 2: the most prominent scientists who's working on CDR read this chapter,

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Speaker 2: but I had two other climate scientists read this chapter.

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Speaker 2: So I also thought, is this possible, like.

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Speaker 1: How asim as I think it is exactly.

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Speaker 2: And in fact.

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Speaker 3: It is.

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Speaker 2: And it's hard to to tell because very often when

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Speaker 2: we encounter these things in our public discourse, it's through

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Speaker 2: news media articles or sort of treatments that are decontextualized

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Speaker 2: or just sort of touch on one thing, but they

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Speaker 2: marshal these ideological beliefs that I try to sort of

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Speaker 2: disabuse in the book. And it only becomes clear how

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Speaker 2: this ideology is very often based on either no information

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Speaker 2: like in the growth case, or false information like in

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Speaker 2: the CDR case. And so once you compile all the

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Speaker 2: information and put it together, it becomes easier to show

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Speaker 2: how a lot of the beliefs that we hold about

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Speaker 2: growth and technological innovation are influenced or shaped by fossil

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Speaker 2: fuel propaganda themselves.

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Speaker 1: Yes, totally. Like I felt like that was one of

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Speaker 1: the very compelling things about this book is that you

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Speaker 1: see it, You're just like, oh, thank you, that's a

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Speaker 1: nice you like how that has shaped Okay, I want

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Speaker 1: to ask you about the Breakthrough Institute, because they've been

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Speaker 1: very mad about your book. Yes, also you mentioned them

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Speaker 1: in the book, and they have been quite adamant proponents

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Speaker 1: of some of these ideas. Yeah, and particularly in the

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Speaker 1: vein of kind of castigating climate people for not thinking

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Speaker 1: about growth in the right way or reivation in the

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Speaker 1: right way. But anyway, I wanted to ask you about

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Speaker 1: just kind of your thoughts on how much they have

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Speaker 1: shaped the public discourse and how they have been able

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Speaker 1: to do that.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, I got into the climate movement,

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Speaker 2: as I said in twenty seventeen, and so I don't

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Speaker 2: perceive them as people who are instrumental in shaping the discourse.

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Speaker 2: But I do see them as kind of exemplifying a

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Speaker 2: kind of centrist position, left center position on the climate crisis,

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Speaker 2: which is why they're very friendly with many centrist journalists

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Speaker 2: and business leaders, because they put this sort of impromoter

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Speaker 2: of environmentalism on this centrist position. And the problem with

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Speaker 2: this position, in my view, is not that it's advocating

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Speaker 2: for developing new technologies. Clearly we will need that, like

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Speaker 2: I am a proponent of lab grown need for example.

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Speaker 2: To me, it is not that they are pushing for

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Speaker 2: nuclear I actually also think that nuclear energy would be

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Speaker 2: an excellent thing to bring into our energy mix, maybe

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Speaker 2: for thermal heat things that are harder to produce with

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Speaker 2: solar or wind. For example. You know, like eight million

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Speaker 2: people a year die from fossil fuel pollution, right, and

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Speaker 2: the number of people that we can trace, of course,

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Speaker 2: who have died from nuclear accidents is probably a lot

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Speaker 2: small than that. So if you want to just judge

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Speaker 2: two different forms of energy based on the number of

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Speaker 2: people it kills historically, then obviously nuclear wins. Right. My

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Speaker 2: problem with the Breakthrough Institute is that they promote expanding

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Speaker 2: fossil fuels. That is my problem with them, because this

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Speaker 2: is to me, the belief, the false belief that is

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Speaker 2: really preventing our politics. Are business leaders, even our climate

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Speaker 2: movement advocacy from solving this problem or even really knowing

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Speaker 2: what to fight for. There is this idea that we

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Speaker 2: can do both. We can develop clean energy and we

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Speaker 2: can support expanding fossil fuel extraction. We can have more,

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Speaker 2: ever more oil and gas and ever more clean energy,

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Speaker 2: and somehow we're going to deal with climate change anyway.

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Speaker 2: So this is the false belief that is not just

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Speaker 2: coming from fossil fuel interests on the right, it's also

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Speaker 2: coming from these center left groups, which give a permission

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Speaker 2: structure for these fossil fuel interests to seem legitimate and

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Speaker 2: not like the murderous monsters they really are. And so

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Speaker 2: the Breakthrough Institute argues for increased fossil fuel production. They

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Speaker 2: say that coal plants in the Global South quote save lives.

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Speaker 2: I mean, let's be clear, it's electricity that saves lives,

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Speaker 2: and that electricity does not need to be generated by coal,

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Speaker 2: which is killing millions of people a year, mostly in

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Speaker 2: the Global South. And for them, they justify their argument

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Speaker 2: for increasing fossil fuel production, not by even saying that

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Speaker 2: we can capture the emissions with CDR, which is something

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Speaker 2: that they support. It's a position that they support and

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Speaker 2: they platform people who do make that argument. But really

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Speaker 2: the reason they say we can continue to expand our

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Speaker 2: fossil fuel production and consumption is that climate change will

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Speaker 2: never be that bad. It's never going to be worse

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Speaker 2: than I think. Northhouse called it a case of planetary diabetes,

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Speaker 2: right that you can just sort of manage with what

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Speaker 2: he calls medicine, which what he means is adaptation or whatever. Now,

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Speaker 2: climate scientists like Joel Gergis, the Australian climate scientist who

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Speaker 2: is one of the lead authors of the last IPCC report.

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Speaker 2: She figures climate change as a cancer, as a disease

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Speaker 2: in our planetary body that has been established and is

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Speaker 2: now getting worse, and that we have to cure and

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Speaker 2: cut out before it metastasizes out of control. But Northouse

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Speaker 2: and the Breakthrough Institute are very often on the opposite

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Speaker 2: side of that. They would call her an alarmist and

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Speaker 2: they would claim that actually, people who think that climate

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Speaker 2: change is like a cancer or will be very dangerous

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Speaker 2: as the planet continues to heat up our emotional hysterical

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Speaker 2: very often women in the climate movement, people who aren't serious,

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Speaker 2: and their kind of Lukewarmer position that oh, climate change

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Speaker 2: isn't going to be that bad is actually somehow the

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Speaker 2: serious position. But what I try to argue in the

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Speaker 2: book is that in fact it is a dishonest position.

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Speaker 2: It misrepresents what the science says is happening to our

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Speaker 2: planet and will happen if we do not phase out

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Speaker 2: fossil fuels, bring our emissions down to real zero, and

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Speaker 2: halt global heating. So it's not a realism, it's actually

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Speaker 2: a falsehood that they're advancing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do find it really interesting that Nordhouse

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Speaker 1: in particular takes these really strong stances on science when

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Speaker 1: he has no scientific background, you know, I mean, it

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Speaker 1: was a PR guy forever.

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Speaker 2: I love that he was a PR guy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and then started the breakthrough and like you know,

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Speaker 1: now kind of does PR for their ideas, right, Like.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I will just say that they've been coming

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Speaker 2: after me for a couple of weeks now at the

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Speaker 2: point we are recording this, they've been coming after me

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Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks now. And first he tried

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Speaker 2: to suggest that I didn't have the credentials to write

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Speaker 2: this book, right, And then I thought, well, wait a minute,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to go look at his academic credentials. I

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Speaker 2: have a PhD in English literature for UC Berkeley, and

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Speaker 2: he is a BA in history from UC Berkeley. So

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Speaker 2: I don't understand how he's just on that metric more

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Speaker 2: credentialed to talk about the climate crisis than you are

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Speaker 2: than I am. And I'm talking about the rhetoric that

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Speaker 2: leads to political beliefs, which is literally something I've been

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Speaker 2: studying since I went to graduate school because that was

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Speaker 2: what I was studying in the English Renaissance too. Like,

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Speaker 2: this is not a different topic for me. It's just

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Speaker 2: a different domain into which I'm bringing my expertise. But

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Speaker 2: it's interesting because other ways. So once I sort of

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Speaker 2: like disabused him of that strategy, then they started to

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Speaker 2: suggest that somehow I wasn't a serious scholar because there

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Speaker 2: were some sloppy errors and the footnotes they found what

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Speaker 2: I would claim or two errors among three hundred in

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Speaker 2: three chapters. The book has six hundred footnotes, and it's

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Speaker 2: been peer reviewed and extensively fact checked and every single

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Speaker 2: book in the world will have one or two details

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Speaker 2: that are wrong. But what they're doing is they're trying

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Speaker 2: to come after me to suggest that I'm not serious,

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Speaker 2: I'm all vibes, I don't have research credentials because they

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Speaker 2: don't want to engage with my arguments. They have never

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Speaker 2: defended their position on supporting fossil fuel use. They have

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Speaker 2: never explained why they believe that economic growth will just

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Speaker 2: continue indefinitely and shield the wealthy from climate devastation. They

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Speaker 2: have never engaged any of the arguments that I make

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Speaker 2: in the book and defended them. They have only come

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Speaker 2: after me with these ad hominem attacks because they know

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Speaker 2: they don't have a position from which to argue. In fact,

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Speaker 2: Northouse on Twitter or x or whatever you want to

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Speaker 2: call it these days, he got mad at me because

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Speaker 2: I quoted him as having said that the agenda to

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Speaker 2: phase out fossil fuels was impossible, And so I said, okay,

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Speaker 2: does that mean right here that you're going to say

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Speaker 2: that it is possible to phase out fossil fuels? And

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Speaker 2: he sputtered and fulminated, but then reiterated that the climate

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Speaker 2: movement's agenda to phase out fossil fuels in the next

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Speaker 2: decade is impossible. And then I like tweeted a screenshot

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Speaker 2: of my book which is quoting him saying that exact thing,

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Speaker 2: and I was like, dude, what is your problem? The

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Speaker 2: problem is is that they're scared of what I say

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Speaker 2: in the book, because I honestly think, and not to

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Speaker 2: be arrogant about this, but I think this is the

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Speaker 2: first book that ties what we think of as traditional

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Speaker 2: climate denial on the right to these centrist democratic positions,

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Speaker 2: showing that actually the reason our climate politics is blocked

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Speaker 2: is not that it's polarized, even though that's a problem too,

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Speaker 2: but because it's weirdly unified on this belief that we

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Speaker 2: don't need to phase out fossil fuels when we absolutely do.

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Speaker 1: Yes. I have been seeing this in the last couple

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Speaker 1: of years, you know, increasingly, this weird hesitancy to just say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we need to phase out fossil fuel, yes, and almost

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Speaker 1: a shift towards acting like that's a radical stance. Totally, totally,

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Speaker 1: it's very strange.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's comms. I mean, it's a I'm not saying

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Speaker 2: it's an easy problem, because there is comm's research that

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Speaker 2: shows that people don't like it when you tell them

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Speaker 2: they can't use something they're already using, right, So that

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Speaker 2: I mean it's it's a fiercely challenging problem to communicate

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Speaker 2: that we do need to phase out fossil fuels. I

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Speaker 2: don't want to downplay that, and so I think people

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Speaker 2: shy away from saying it because it does seem like

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Speaker 2: tricky or radical, and it has radical implications for our

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Speaker 2: whole economic system for sure. But if you believe that

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Speaker 2: climate change is real, if you understand what the science

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Speaker 2: is saying about what's going to happen to our climate

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Speaker 2: system and the links between our planet and our economy,

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Speaker 2: if the planet just keeps heating up, and if you

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Speaker 2: understand that the planet will keep heating up until emissions

415
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Speaker 2: get too net zero or real zero, then you know,

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Speaker 2: every scientist will tell you that we need to stop

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Speaker 2: using coal, oil and gas. It's really not up for

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Speaker 2: debate anymore.

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Speaker 3: Including like you know, the IEA, the I yes, yes,

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Speaker 3: so this is what I quote in that, This is

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Speaker 3: what I quote in the introduction to the book.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, in their Synthesis Report, the IPCC

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Speaker 2: said that we already have enough fossil fuel infrastructure, yes,

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Speaker 2: because that infrastructure is projected to omit the total carbon

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Speaker 2: budget for two degrees celsius, which means that we actually

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Speaker 2: have to like strand some of that infrastructure, strand some

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Speaker 2: of those assets because the total carbon budget has to

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Speaker 2: include like agriculture and wildfires and other things. So people,

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Speaker 2: so to me, you can say, yes, climate change is bad. Yes,

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Speaker 2: I believe in climate change until the cows come home.

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Speaker 2: But if you are denying that fact, you are a

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Speaker 2: climate denier. I mean, just think about being an alcoholic,

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Speaker 2: right You're drinking a lot of booze, your liver is

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Speaker 2: about to croak, and your doctor says to you, you're

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Speaker 2: an alcoholic, you have to stop drinking, And you say, okay, yeah,

437
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 2: I'm an alcoholic, but I'm not going to stop drinking.

438
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 2: Like we all know that that person is still in denial.

439
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 2: If you say climate change is real, I want to

440
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 2: help stop it, but I'm going to ignore the fact

441
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 2: that we already have too many fossil fuels to hault

442
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,159
Speaker 2: global heating at a relatively safe level. I'm sorry you

443
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 2: are a climate denier.

444
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the Innovation chapter in more

445
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:26,919
Speaker 1: detail because We've been doing this series too on like

446
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: on CDR and carbon capture and will eventually get to

447
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: like hydrogen and biofuels and all that stuff too, the

448
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: solutions exactly exactly. But it is like I find it

449
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: interesting how the industry and then like people who are

450
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 1: kind of carrying water for them do really mess with

451
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: the building blocks of information in this way of like

452
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,959
Speaker 1: it's like because I feel like there's been there has

453
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: been like this real focus on disinformation, which I almost

454
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: see as like the end result of all of this.

455
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 2: Stuff, right exactly.

456
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, like that's what we end up with,

457
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: But like that gets built by you know, very strategic

458
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:17,959
Speaker 1: investments in particular types of research or like you know,

459
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: white papers from thought leaders or whatever it is. You know,

460
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 1: it's like it gets built in that way. So I'm

461
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: curious how you honed in on CDR and CCS as

462
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 1: like the things that you wanted to focus on in

463
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: that chapter.

464
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

465
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: I really.

466
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 2: Didn't set out to focus on those two technologies in particular.

467
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: Yeah at all.

468
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 2: I was just like, why are people talking about innovation

469
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:47,479
Speaker 2: in this way?

470
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 1: Yeah?

471
00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 2: Why are people talking about innovation as a independent climate solution?

472
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 2: What does this word mean, that's so vague. And usually

473
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 2: when you drill down, this was often in sort of

474
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 2: you know, climate journalism, or even just political journalism or

475
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 2: business journalism, and you would drill down and it would

476
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 2: be about these technologies that would either capture or remove emissions.

477
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 2: And then I started to see Exxon Mobile and other

478
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 2: oil and gas companies use the word innovation in their

479
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 2: advertising and on their websites and whatever, and then drilling

480
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 2: down into that, I was like, Oh, for them, innovation

481
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 2: also means carbon capture and to some degree also carbon

482
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 2: dioxide removal. I was like, Wow, this word is actually

483
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 2: code in climate discourse for CCS and CDR. And it's

484
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 2: interesting because I don't think it is anymore because I

485
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 2: think that oil and gas companies were really greenwashing themselves

486
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 2: with very thick paint right after the IPCC report on

487
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 2: one point five in twenty eighteen, in the rise of

488
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 2: the global climate movement, blah blah blah blah, they all

489
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:00,959
Speaker 2: came out with net zero targets.

490
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: They you know, they they no longer feel the needs.

491
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, so a Exxon.

492
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: Partly because of all of this rhetoric that yes, thank

493
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: you exactly we can it's fine because we can decarbonize

494
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: oil and gas exactly one, thank you, that's exactly the point.

495
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: So what happened was, around this question of innovation, oil

496
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: and gas companies started to claim that they were going

497
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: to turn themselves into carbon management companies and they were

498
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: going to be able to either capture the emissions of their.

499
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 2: Products or they were going to be able to decarbonize

500
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 2: their products, decarbonize oil by removing the emissions, removing the

501
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 2: carbon from the atmosphere after their products had been used

502
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 2: and combusted. So, you know, usually I don't start with

503
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 2: the research. Usually I start with the rhetoric. But I

504
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:07,680
Speaker 2: started this chapter with the research into how challenging it's

505
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 2: going to be. Well, first, the historical account of the

506
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 2: fact that most, I mean if not all, carbon capture projects,

507
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the technology that captures emissions at

508
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 2: the source, most if not all carbon capture products to

509
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 2: date have failed. Yes, they have captured nothing close on

510
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 2: like a very large scale, a very large scale. They

511
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 2: have captured nothing close to their targets, and very often

512
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 2: they've had to build an additional fossil fuel plant to

513
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 2: power the technology, which means, if you do a full

514
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 2: life cycle assessment. They're actually carbon additive and not carbon neutral.

515
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 1: That's right. There's really good research from Mark Jacobson on

516
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: that in particular.

517
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 2: So insofar as you want to use methane gas as

518
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 2: a kind of firm generation instead of batteries or something else,

519
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 2: you might want to slap CCS on that, but it

520
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 2: would be very challenging to do it in a way

521
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 2: that would actually be carbon neutral, and it would be

522
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 2: much much more expensive even potentially than building out a

523
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 2: system of redundancy and lots of storage are nuclear or

524
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 2: something else. So you know, and even if the economics

525
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 2: pencil out better fors CCS just doesn't work. So that's

526
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 2: really what you need to come back to.

527
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 1: And the technology has been around for a really long time,

528
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: like exactly. It doesn't mean it's impossible that it will

529
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: improve at some point whatever. But yeah, there are a

530
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: lot of plans being made with the assumption that CCS

531
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: will somehow magically start to work better than it ever has.

532
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 3: You know.

533
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 2: What's so interesting, So the rhetoric and I'll get to

534
00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 2: CDR in a minute, but the rhetoric about CCS from

535
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:05,000
Speaker 2: oil and gas company these and from advocates trade advocates

536
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 2: is that CCS is a proven technology.

537
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: Yes, right, that's what they say. So I've been around

538
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:11,479
Speaker 1: for so long, right.

539
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 2: And it's a proven technology. They've been using it for decades.

540
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 2: This is great. And so now the EPA has come

541
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 2: up with a new regulation saying that by a certain date,

542
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,280
Speaker 2: fossil fuel power plants need to have CCS attached.

543
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: And then in their public comments, they're all like, but

544
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. You can't hold us to this. It's hilarious.

545
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 2: So the climate guy at the Cato Institute requested a

546
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:38,319
Speaker 2: review copy of my book because he said he wanted

547
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 2: to write a review about it. Okay, I don't know

548
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 2: if he's actually going to write a review about it,

549
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:43,360
Speaker 2: because then and then he tried to like chase me

550
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,280
Speaker 2: down on Twitter to ask me about this EPA regulation.

551
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,280
Speaker 2: He's like, how what do you think about the EPA,

552
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:55,239
Speaker 2: you know, requiring requiring this if it's not a proven technology,

553
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 2: you know, do you think the EPA is being dishonest?

554
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,399
Speaker 2: And I was like, dude, talk to your industry. They

555
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,400
Speaker 2: have been saying that read public comics exactly.

556
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 1: Exxon API. They all were like, this is asking too much, but.

557
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 2: This is after literally decades of saying it was a

558
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 2: proven technology, and then ironically they've also been lobbying on

559
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 2: the hill for tax breaks to help them get ccs

560
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 2: in place and working and economical. And it's not clear

561
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,839
Speaker 2: to me why you need tax breaks for innovation if

562
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 2: you already have a proven technology. But anyways, that's a

563
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 2: whole other issue. So this is one boon doggle that

564
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 2: people use to justify keeping fossil energy in the mix.

565
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 2: And then the other boon doggle is carbon dioxide removal.

566
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: Yes, so.

567
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 2: Just to say upfront, in order to create a net

568
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 2: zero economy, we are going to need some form of

569
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide removal that you know, we do not add

570
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:05,800
Speaker 2: to the stock of carbon in the atmosphere because things

571
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 2: like agriculture you know, emits carbon, and wild files will

572
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 2: emit carbon and so on. So you need some form

573
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:14,600
Speaker 2: of carbon diet.

574
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 1: And there are legitimately hard to abate sectors. Correct, might

575
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: need this, correct because there isn't a ready alternative. Power

576
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,399
Speaker 1: generation is not one of them, right, that's the thing.

577
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 1: I'm just like, yeah, but we have an alternative. We

578
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: have alternatives for that that are cheaper and more effective,

579
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 1: But fossil fuel interests are claiming that we can use

580
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: these technologies to continue to expand fossil fuel production. But

581
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:52,240
Speaker 1: as Jennifer Grenholm once said, in a way that's clean.

582
00:36:53,000 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: The National Academies modeled how much solar we would need

583
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 1: to remove one million tons of carbon dioxide from the

584
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 1: atmosphere with the technology called direct air capture. And I

585
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: want everyone to keep in mind who's listening to this,

586
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:13,640
Speaker 1: that one million tons of.

587
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 2: Carbon dioxide is about fifteen minutes of our annual emissions,

588
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 2: so a quarter of an hour of a whole year

589
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 2: of emissions. And just to do that, we would need

590
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 2: to cite solar panels on like around twelve hundred football

591
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 2: fields worth of land.

592
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: Wow.

593
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 2: And we would also, at least in their model, need

594
00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 2: to build another methane gas plant to power the thermal

595
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 2: energy that the process needs to capture the carbon from

596
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:51,760
Speaker 2: the atmosphere. So you know, that's a lot of land.

597
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 2: We have it. We have enormous amounts of agricultural land

598
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 2: that could be repurposed. But the point is it's not

599
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 2: a simple, easy solution to just say, oh, we're just

600
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 2: going to remove these emissions with CDR. Furthermore, it's extremely

601
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:10,280
Speaker 2: expensive to do this, like basically you're trying to put

602
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 2: back together some like a bowl that's already been broken,

603
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 2: and it's very time consuming and it's very labor intensive.

604
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:24,320
Speaker 2: So you know, I quoted a review essay in the

605
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 2: chapter that said most of the sort of lower estimates

606
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 2: for how much this is going to cost comes from

607
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 2: industry or from startup advocates, and the scientists who are

608
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 2: not connected to those interests proposed that it's going to

609
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 2: be kind of unlikely to get this down to or

610
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 2: down below around five hundred dollars a ton, Like right now,

611
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:53,880
Speaker 2: I think it's about seven hundred and fifty dollars a ton,

612
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 2: but they think a realistic goal for price would be

613
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 2: about five hundred dollars a ton. Now, even if you

614
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 2: wanted to remove like ten gigatons, which is only a

615
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 2: quarter of our annual emissions, right, that's just an enormous

616
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 2: amount of money, Like it's it's five trillion dollars or

617
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,799
Speaker 2: something like that. So we are not going to use

618
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 2: this to decarbonize the fossil fuel system. We are going

619
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 2: to use this at the margins to capture what I

620
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 2: call in the book these essential emissions. And so the

621
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 2: message must be not that we need CDR or CDR

622
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 2: can decarbonize oil, but that we need to phase out

623
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 2: fossil fuels. But the reason that this propaganda from.

624
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,359
Speaker 1: The fossil fuels or whatever is left, that's well, that's

625
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 1: the other issue.

626
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh my god. That's the other issue.

627
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 2: Is that one thing we would also want to do

628
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,760
Speaker 2: if we could, is achieve negative emissions, where we start

629
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 2: drawing carbon dioxide or carbon out of the atmosphere so

630
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 2: that you know, hopefully we could maybe start to reverse

631
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 2: some of the warming that we've seen. So you're never.

632
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: Going to be able to do that if you don't

633
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: decarbonize first. And that's exactly the piece that I feel

634
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: like I really appreciate. Like David Hoe and Jane Flagel

635
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: and c.

636
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 2: House Father, all of whom are researchers in the CDR space.

637
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: They are all researchers in CDR. They're all positive about

638
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: CDR and its potential usefulness in addressing some of this stuff,

639
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:29,399
Speaker 1: and all every single one of them says, it's not

640
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: going to do anything if we don't decarbonize first. But

641
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,359
Speaker 1: it is the equivalent of like continuing to.

642
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 4: Fill a bucket of holes with water to exactly not

643
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 4: decarbonized first, it's very very and yet the supposed like

644
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 4: you know, smart guys in the room continue to kind

645
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 4: of repeat this idea that like, oh, it's going to

646
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 4: be fun because they.

647
00:40:55,680 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 2: Don't know anything. They haven't actually read the scientific research

648
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,720
Speaker 2: which they're taking their cues from so called think tanks

649
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 2: like the Breakthrough Institute, who are not actually facing reality

650
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:13,239
Speaker 2: and coming up with plans that can get us to

651
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 2: where we need to go.

652
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: That's the piece that I find troublesome about Breakthrough because yeah,

653
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: I'm not like de facto opposed to technology or even

654
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 1: market based.

655
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 2: Us to this stuff.

656
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: But if the proposed solution is so obviously flawed and

657
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:34,479
Speaker 1: or if you're you're misrepresenting what.

658
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 2: It can do right exactly.

659
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,799
Speaker 1: You know, then the problem that's not what you're doing right,

660
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:43,359
Speaker 1: you know. That's the piece that I'm just like, it's

661
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: not that you promote nuclear or you're optimistic about CDR.

662
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: It's that you're overstating the solution and understating the problem.

663
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:58,919
Speaker 2: So in my chapter on innovation, you know, again, these

664
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 2: ideas don't take root unless they're being repeated by both sides, right,

665
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 2: It's not just sort of disinformation that's coming from the right,

666
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 2: which is easily mockable. This is disinformation that's circulating and

667
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:17,239
Speaker 2: creating a kind of bipartisan centrist consensus that upholds the

668
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 2: status quo. And you know, even even Democrats, a majority

669
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 2: of Democrats want America to pursue in all of the

670
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 2: above energy strategy. Yes, because partially, I think they don't

671
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 2: know that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to halt

672
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 2: climate change. Because the majority of Democrats who want the

673
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 2: US to pursue in all of the above energy strategy

674
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,399
Speaker 2: is the same majority that says they want the United

675
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 2: States to achieve net zero by twenty fifty, like sixty

676
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 2: nine percent of Americans. More broadly, which means that like,

677
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,359
Speaker 2: you know, practically one hundred percent of Democrats support net

678
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 2: zero by twenty fifty, but don't understand that actually we cannot.

679
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 1: Do both, right. I think the other thing that I

680
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 1: was thinking about reading your book too, that I was like, Oh,

681
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: this is an important thing for people to clock is

682
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: that I think a pretty significant number of Democrats and

683
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 1: even climate people have been convinced by some of this

684
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: stuff that's out there that it's not actually possible to

685
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: get off of the fossil fuels, and that's the piece

686
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 1: that I think is so dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

687
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 1: hear people kind of like reiterate this stuff.

688
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, firm generation, firm generation or something sensical like that.

689
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, or about it as like securing the base like

690
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: base load energy to go with intermittency and all that stuff. Right,

691
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: But like even if you accept that we need some

692
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:58,479
Speaker 1: amount of gas to continue to do that, we don't

693
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 1: need increase in the amount of gas is being generation

694
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: to do that. You know, It's like we can do

695
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 1: that easily with what we have correct still have access.

696
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:14,240
Speaker 1: The US is the number one exporter of natural gas now,

697
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:19,920
Speaker 1: Like we are not generating this stuff just to support

698
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: the expansion of renewables now, not at all. And we

699
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 1: know from like internal documents from all these companies that

700
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: they very explicitly were like, in order to keep people

701
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: thinking of gas as a clean.

702
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,800
Speaker 5: Fuel, we need to tie it to renewable We need

703
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 5: more research into academic research funded by BP, who make Yes,

704
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,200
Speaker 5: that makes that precise argument exactly.

705
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's BP that like laid out that whole strategy.

706
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 2: I mean, people are ignoring all the actions that these

707
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 2: companies are taking through their trade associations in particular to

708
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:01,320
Speaker 2: block the passage of climate policy to sh public belief

709
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 2: that we need fossil fuels and that climate policy is

710
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 2: dangerous to living things and themselves. Like it just totally

711
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 2: ignores how these people, these companies are bad actors in

712
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 2: the space, right, Why would they embrace the energy transition

713
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 2: that they're fighting with every resource to block. Yes, I

714
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,760
Speaker 2: mean the myopia. You have to look at the whole,

715
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 2: especially for something like climate change, which is this sort

716
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:35,800
Speaker 2: of like extremely systemic broad issue.

717
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about something that I saw

718
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 1: recently and it made me think of this innovation chapter

719
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: because there were actually and of the stuff you talk

720
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,960
Speaker 1: about with uncertainty and early climate denial too. Because there's

721
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,840
Speaker 1: this there is a carbon capture pipeline project in the Midwest.

722
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 1: It's called the Summit Pipeline. Have you heard about this ye?

723
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: It goes across five Midwestern states and there's been a

724
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 1: ton of pushback against it, right, and it's created some

725
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,839
Speaker 1: kind of unusual bedfellows in the opposition because it's got

726
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 1: like see our club people an indigenous rights activists and

727
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,759
Speaker 1: like land and water defenders and then it's also got

728
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: John Bird's Society. Yeah, just like they don't like it

729
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: because they're using eminent domain to take land right to

730
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:24,600
Speaker 1: build this pipeline. But there's this whole faction of people

731
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:28,440
Speaker 1: that are opposed to it because they are climate deniers.

732
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: They're like, you guys told us that this wasn't a problem,

733
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:34,800
Speaker 1: and now you want to take a bunch of people's

734
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: land for us to thanks for this problem. And to me,

735
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is a really interesting rhetorical bind that

736
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 1: the industry finds itself in.

737
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 2: Now.

738
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 1: Yes, they have been saying that it's not that big

739
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: of a deal and we don't really need to do

740
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: that much about it, and it's all in hand, but

741
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 1: now they're trying to get like these billions and billions

742
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of tax credits from carbon capture and

743
00:46:57,239 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: to build these hydrogen hubs and they're all of these

744
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: things are going to require infrastructure, which means they're going

745
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,920
Speaker 1: to be land use changes and all of this stuff, right,

746
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: And like that's so interesting that, Yes, So I'm curious

747
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:11,800
Speaker 1: what you think about that of like like, yeah, I

748
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:14,280
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know, like what we can maybe

749
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: expect to see them do to try to like have

750
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: both those things hold.

751
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I low see industry

752
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 2: investments in carbon capture and carbon dioxide removal as line

753
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: items in their pr budgets, and people are trying to

754
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 2: create the carbon dioxide removal industry as a for profit industry, right,

755
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:39,839
Speaker 2: but really it's it's it's a public utility in a way.

756
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 2: I don't see what the profit structure would be here.

757
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: Jeez, you know what it would be is I mean,

758
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:49,880
Speaker 1: this is the thing that I'm using the carbon for

759
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: enhanced oil production.

760
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 2: Well, that's but then it's not a climate solution. So

761
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 2: if you're going to have like CDR as a climate solution,

762
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 2: you're really only going to get that with the same

763
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:06,879
Speaker 2: politics that's going to get us the renewables transition, that's

764
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 2: going to get us sort of less meat eating, that's

765
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 2: actually going to be systemically transformative because nobody's going to

766
00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 2: pay for CDR. Nobody's going to like get on board

767
00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 2: with CDR unless they're already on board with solving the

768
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 2: climate crisis. So I don't think oil and gas companies

769
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 2: are too worried about that necessarily, because I just think

770
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 2: they're trying to sort of extract as much profit from

771
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:33,319
Speaker 2: our children as they can while they can. But I

772
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 2: do think that CDR advocates who are arguing that we

773
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 2: can just use CDR to to carbonized fossil fuels, to

774
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 2: carbonized oil, keep the system in place and not do

775
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 2: anything disruptive don't realize that actually building out a global

776
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:52,040
Speaker 2: CDR industry is a climate action, and it's going to

777
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 2: take the kind of support that any kind of climate

778
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 2: action is going to take.

779
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: So, you know, industrial facilities to which I feel like

780
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:01,440
Speaker 1: people forget about one.

781
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 2: Hundred percent like seven stories tall with giant worring fans.

782
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 2: I mean, nobody wants that in their backyard. I'd rather

783
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 2: have a solar panel.

784
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Like as it's funny because you you know,

785
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: there's been some community resistance to industrial scale renewables, some

786
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: of which is very authentic to the community, and I

787
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: feel like this is this is a thing that like, no,

788
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:28,759
Speaker 1: for sure, climate people didn't handle particularly well initially, where

789
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:32,960
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, like if you move to a small

790
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 1: town in you know, a rural county, you're not it

791
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 1: didn't it probably wasn't on your radar that you might

792
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 1: end up living next to industrial.

793
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:43,240
Speaker 2: Exactly facility exactly.

794
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:46,359
Speaker 1: Like that is actually a significant change in you know,

795
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: people's conception of where they live and all of that stuff.

796
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: Really like they need to like be able to talk

797
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,640
Speaker 1: through that and not be accused of being like a

798
00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 1: climate denier or whatever. Right, absolutely, And like, of course

799
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:03,279
Speaker 1: the energy trans needs to be equitable. You know, it

800
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: doesn't work if it costs people more money to use

801
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:09,399
Speaker 1: renewable energy. That's where there are fewer jobs or any

802
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:11,720
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Right, Like, all of that I totally

803
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: agree with. But like the thing that I find interesting

804
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, so if you are in favor of CDR,

805
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:24,280
Speaker 1: where's that deep canvassing on CDR?

806
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's what it's going to be the same issue.

807
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 6: It's the same issue, you know, Like it's exactly the

808
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 6: same issue. Yeah, It's interesting because the most illuminating part

809
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 6: of this Climate Week for me was going to a

810
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 6: panel on disinformation in the Clean Energy space in which

811
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:46,240
Speaker 6: Tim Ands Roberts a Brown University and J. L. Halsman,

812
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 6: the journalist at heat map who's written deeply on this,

813
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 6: and a bunch of other incredibly expert and brilliant people.

814
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 6: We're talking very knowledgeably about how disinformation, you know, intersects

815
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 6: with the community engagement issues and other economic questions, et cetera,

816
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 6: to create community resistance to these projects. And then a

817
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 6: few days later I was on a panel with leaders

818
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 6: of industry trade groups clean energy trade groups, and they

819
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,839
Speaker 6: were talking about their experience of being kind of confronted

820
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 6: with disinformations like the lie that building out wind turbines

821
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:28,359
Speaker 6: is killing whales, Like this was being spread when there

822
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 6: was literally no construction in the Atlantic at all of

823
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 6: any turbines.

824
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 2: Right. But by the time the industry actually came in,

825
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 2: people had already arrayed themselves against new wind projects because

826
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:43,080
Speaker 2: they thought old wind projects, which had never even been built,

827
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 2: were killing whales. And they were just shocked by having

828
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 2: to deal with this information pollution when they see themselves

829
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 2: as investors who are going to create jobs and deliver

830
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,480
Speaker 2: value to rate payers through the grid. Right. So there's

831
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 2: this sort of of disconnect between researchers and the climate movement,

832
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 2: who know a lot about this issue and how to

833
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:10,840
Speaker 2: combat disinformation, and then the industry, who are business people

834
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:13,640
Speaker 2: and are only now beginning to realize that they are

835
00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 2: going to have to start doing this kind of community engagement.

836
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:18,720
Speaker 2: They are going to have to start doing pre bunking.

837
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 2: They have to put a line for advertising in their

838
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 2: project proposals because they actually have to go in there

839
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:31,320
Speaker 2: and sell these projects to the community because the fossil

840
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 2: fuel industry is there. They're there through private Facebook groups.

841
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 2: They're there for they find sort of vociferous opponents, correct,

842
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:44,800
Speaker 2: and then they fund them, you know, they.

843
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:48,600
Speaker 1: Feed them more information exactly they can get like exactly

844
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: in a lot of these situations, I feel like you

845
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: end up with both things happening at the same time.

846
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:59,839
Speaker 1: You have some amount of like organic community level resistance

847
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:02,239
Speaker 1: that's then weaponized by that's right.

848
00:53:02,520 --> 00:53:06,040
Speaker 2: And very often in these community meetings there isn't someone

849
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 2: who's arguing for the project because the industry or the

850
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 2: developer hasn't put someone into the community, and there's no

851
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 2: one in the community who's actually playing that role. And

852
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,959
Speaker 2: you know, they found that when community members do play

853
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 2: that role, usually these projects go through. Like on Long Island,

854
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 2: there were wind turbines that were built off Montauk Point

855
00:53:26,719 --> 00:53:28,919
Speaker 2: and the cable for them was going to go under

856
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:31,880
Speaker 2: this very storied street in this little hamlet called Wainscott,

857
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:35,800
Speaker 2: where like incredibly wealthy people have houses like the Laughters,

858
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 2: and you know, lots of other people. And so there

859
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 2: was this woman, Bonnie Brady, who lives in Montalk, who

860
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 2: is just a vociferous clean energy opponent and who was

861
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 2: clearly being funded by industry, so she was out there

862
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 2: on the front lines too. So she had industry funding,

863
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 2: Bonnie Brady, And you had these very wealthy people arrayed

864
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:01,600
Speaker 2: against this project because they just didn't want this cable

865
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 2: under the street. But the rest of the community was very,

866
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 2: very vocally supportive of clean energy. There's actually a lot

867
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 2: of climate change awareness on the East end of Long Island,

868
00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 2: and so there was a lot of conflict in the

869
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 2: community meetings about the project, but ultimately the project went

870
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:23,359
Speaker 2: through and I find that incredibly inspiring. But it does

871
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:26,400
Speaker 2: mean that industry itself, where they get clean energy, industry

872
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:29,719
Speaker 2: has to understand that they can't just be businessmen, that

873
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 2: they're any business women and then they're in a political battle.

874
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they had a lot of like pretty

875
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:39,399
Speaker 1: naive assumptions that they would be like welcomed with open arms, yes,

876
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: like everyone loves clean energy, you know, and it's like no,

877
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: that's in fact no, or that yeah, people would know

878
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: that their energy bills are going to go down.

879
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 2: People don't know anything about anything, and.

880
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:57,400
Speaker 1: The thing that they've heard the most is scary stuff

881
00:54:57,560 --> 00:55:02,279
Speaker 1: like exactly, they're electricity's going to be intermittent, that you know,

882
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:07,840
Speaker 1: these industrial things might harm animals or land or soil

883
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:08,799
Speaker 1: or whatever.

884
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:11,279
Speaker 2: Exactly, or like that solar panels give off some sort

885
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:14,280
Speaker 2: of electricity radiation exactly.

886
00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:17,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know again is not to say because

887
00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 1: I feel like this is this weird way that this

888
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:24,400
Speaker 1: conversation gets polarized too. I like, I'm fully aware of

889
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 1: the many, many problems with rare mineral mining. Yeah, you know,

890
00:55:30,600 --> 00:55:34,279
Speaker 1: I actually I had this like very clearly illustrated when

891
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:36,200
Speaker 1: I was working on the story a couple of years ago.

892
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 1: I was covering the Line three resistance in Minnesota, and

893
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 1: I was at like a resistance camp and all the

894
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 1: people there were mostly Indigenous people, were packing up to

895
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 1: go fight the exact same fight at Saker Pass Nata

896
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,799
Speaker 1: over Lithia mine, you know. So to me, I think

897
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:58,360
Speaker 1: it is a very good example of like having to

898
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:02,560
Speaker 1: really think through bigger strugsructural changes so that the renewable

899
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:06,279
Speaker 1: energy does not become as extractive exactly. The fossil fuel

900
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 1: energy exactly. And I think that this like community engagement

901
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,239
Speaker 1: in community building is an important part of that.

902
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 2: It's absolutely essential. And I also think that clean energy

903
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:18,319
Speaker 2: developers should think about how to make their projects as

904
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 2: beautiful as possible. Yeah, I think that that's a completely

905
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 2: legitimate concern.

906
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,799
Speaker 1: Totally, you know, yes, because I have seen a very

907
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 1: unfortunate kind of like oh, these people need to like

908
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:32,359
Speaker 1: get over it and just deal with it, which I

909
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:36,440
Speaker 1: find interesting because I'm like, this is the United States.

910
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:40,839
Speaker 1: We don't have a deep history of putting aside our

911
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:47,240
Speaker 1: personal exactly, like goals, well being, whatever the common good ever,

912
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,879
Speaker 1: like except maybe in World War Two it's not rewarded, right,

913
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 1: you know, But now all of a sudden, you want

914
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,319
Speaker 1: people to just make this huge leap to ring. You know,

915
00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:02,319
Speaker 1: I don't care about my neighborhood completely changing, because it's

916
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:05,280
Speaker 1: for the greater good that work needs to happen too.

917
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 1: I think actually that stuff is kind of a necessity

918
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:14,799
Speaker 1: for climate action in general, like just like people have

919
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 1: got to start to think about the greater good, the

920
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 1: common well being.

921
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:24,320
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you know, we talked earlier about how

922
00:57:24,360 --> 00:57:27,920
Speaker 2: there's little support for phasing out fossil fuels. But the

923
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 2: same research that found that also found that if you

924
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 2: talk to people about love and the people they love,

925
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:41,920
Speaker 2: the places they love, what they care about, and you

926
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 2: juxtapose wanting to protect and wanting to cultivate these things

927
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 2: that you love with pollution, which nobody likes, then support

928
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 2: actually does rise for fossil fuel phase out. And if

929
00:57:56,400 --> 00:58:01,080
Speaker 2: I may just plug my book please five seconds? Yeah, yeah, yes,

930
00:58:01,960 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 2: So I actually had the messages because so the chapters

931
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:12,080
Speaker 2: are deep investigations into fossil fuel propaganda, but they also

932
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:16,920
Speaker 2: each end with new messages that you can use in

933
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 2: your own, you know, work about climate change or even

934
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 2: just talking to your friends about climate change. And I

935
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:26,800
Speaker 2: had those messages pull tested by Lake Research Partners.

936
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:27,640
Speaker 1: That's awesome.

937
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 2: And if you know, and the book is written for

938
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:33,240
Speaker 2: people who are already concerned about climate change. It's not

939
00:58:33,280 --> 00:58:36,120
Speaker 2: written for like deniers. It's written for people to talk

940
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 2: to other people who are concerned about climate change but

941
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 2: who don't know or don't believe that we need to

942
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 2: phase out fossil fuels. And among those people Democrats and

943
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 2: Republicans who are concerned about climate change. The messages in

944
00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 2: this book increase support for phasing out fossil fuels by

945
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:54,960
Speaker 2: up to ten points, so they do shift the needle

946
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 2: a little bit, and that sort of you know, shifting

947
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,560
Speaker 2: the needle, I think is is basically all you can

948
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 2: ask of a book totally.

949
00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: Now I love that that it's like it lays out

950
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: the problem, but there are recommendations. Okay, can we talk

951
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 1: about this, especially because you're right that I come across

952
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:18,919
Speaker 1: this all the time people that genuinely are concerned, they

953
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: want there to be action, write whatever, and then we'll

954
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 1: immediately follow it up with like, but you know, we

955
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 1: can't just like get off of fossils. Well, actually we can.

956
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:33,720
Speaker 2: We can, and I show in the second chapter of

957
00:59:33,800 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 2: the book on how the rhetoric around the cost of

958
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,880
Speaker 2: climate change has benefited fossil fuel interest today that yes,

959
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:46,560
Speaker 2: there are going to be major investments into these transformations,

960
00:59:46,560 --> 00:59:50,600
Speaker 2: into new systems, into new modes of production and consumption.

961
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 2: But on the other side of this transformation, yeah, everybody

962
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:59,720
Speaker 2: is going to be wealthier and healthier because our electricity

963
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 2: bills will go down, our transportation bills will go down,

964
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,360
Speaker 2: our heating bills will go down, and our healthcare costs

965
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:08,800
Speaker 2: will go down. Yep, because you take the effects of

966
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 2: fossil fuel pollution out of the American economy, even if

967
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 2: no other country decarbonizes, and the savings are something like

968
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:17,680
Speaker 2: I don't know, but since I have the book right

969
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 2: in front of me, I think I can just double

970
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 2: check it. Drew Schindel, who's at Duke University, testified in

971
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 2: front of Congress and said that decarbonizing quickly enough to

972
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 2: halt global heating a two degrees celsius would in the

973
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 2: next fifty years prevent roughly four point five million premature deaths,

974
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:42,200
Speaker 2: about three point five million hospitalizations and emergency room visits,

975
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:46,160
Speaker 2: and approximately three hundred million lost work days in the

976
01:00:46,240 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 2: United States alone, even though US air quality is actually

977
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 2: relatively good already.

978
01:00:50,400 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: Wow.

979
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:54,600
Speaker 2: And avoiding this sickness and death amounts to a healthcare

980
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 2: and labor savings of over seven hundred billion dollars per year.

981
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:01,439
Speaker 2: Seven hundred billion dollars per year, an amount of money

982
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 2: that will pay for the majority of the transition to

983
01:01:03,600 --> 01:01:05,760
Speaker 2: net zero. I mean, you know net not.

984
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: Directly, of course, right, but that's the things It's like

985
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: that again, I feel like because of the way that

986
01:01:12,080 --> 01:01:15,360
Speaker 1: cost has been discussed and because of the way that

987
01:01:15,400 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: these models have been built. There's this idea that it's

988
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: just all trade off, no benefits.

989
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:25,479
Speaker 2: Exactly, and their bensites are huge. Yeah. The trade off

990
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:28,720
Speaker 2: is the for the industry and for the super wealthy

991
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:33,040
Speaker 2: people who are heavily invested in that industry and adjacent

992
01:01:33,040 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 2: industries and whose life is basically a festival of fossil

993
01:01:39,840 --> 01:01:43,480
Speaker 2: fuel consumption, whether it's their yachts or their private jets,

994
01:01:43,760 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 2: or they're you know, going to the fashion collections four

995
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:49,200
Speaker 2: times a year and buying a whole new wardrobe four

996
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:51,600
Speaker 2: times a year or whatever it is. Yeah, those are

997
01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:55,640
Speaker 2: the people who are going to be facing some trade offs, right,

998
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: But the rest of us are going to be healthier, wealthier,

999
01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:01,720
Speaker 2: and guess what, we get to have a Liverpool planet

1000
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:04,960
Speaker 2: for our kids. So, you know, I don't know, to me,

1001
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 2: that seems like a really good deal.

1002
01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:08,960
Speaker 1: Let me ask you what I always ask people, which

1003
01:02:09,000 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: is like, what is the thing that you wish people

1004
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:14,560
Speaker 1: would ask you about your book that you haven't been

1005
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:17,800
Speaker 1: able to talk about in interviews? Is there a question

1006
01:02:17,880 --> 01:02:19,600
Speaker 1: that you're like, Man, I wish someone would ask me

1007
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:21,040
Speaker 1: about this so I can talk about it.

1008
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:28,200
Speaker 2: I mean, weirdly, nobody asks me about China, like I actually.

1009
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:30,640
Speaker 1: Wanted to ask all about that, but too like actually,

1010
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,160
Speaker 1: but then you get it's hilarious to me how quickly

1011
01:02:33,200 --> 01:02:36,000
Speaker 1: we've gone from like, oh, but India and China or

1012
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:39,840
Speaker 1: the problem, to China's taking over the solar industry.

1013
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 2: Well, I mean to they have already taken it over. Yeah,

1014
01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:46,440
Speaker 2: I mean they came back from the Copenhagen conference and

1015
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:51,320
Speaker 2: in twenty ten designated solar, rare, earth minerals, electric vehicles,

1016
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 2: and environmental conservation as quote strategic emerging industries and then

1017
01:02:56,640 --> 01:03:00,560
Speaker 2: just invested and had domestic content and deployment real requirements

1018
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:05,040
Speaker 2: on the subsidies. And you know now they absolutely have

1019
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 2: cornered the markets for all of those technologies that we're

1020
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 2: going to need. But the thing that really blew my

1021
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,919
Speaker 2: mind when I was researching this book that nobody talks about,

1022
01:03:13,320 --> 01:03:15,400
Speaker 2: and even after the book came out, nobody can get

1023
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 2: their head around this is that China actually has the

1024
01:03:18,360 --> 01:03:25,080
Speaker 2: most comprehensive, detailed and actionable climate policy in place in

1025
01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 2: the whole world. When I started researching the India and

1026
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:31,200
Speaker 2: China chapter, I was really worried because I had totally

1027
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 2: bought that talking point hook line and sinker. I was like, how,

1028
01:03:36,000 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 2: I know it can't be truthful because it's being spread

1029
01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:42,080
Speaker 2: by fossil fuel interests, but I don't know exactly how

1030
01:03:42,120 --> 01:03:44,720
Speaker 2: it's not true or whatever. And then I discovered that

1031
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 2: not only has the United States often played or invariably

1032
01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 2: actually played the spoiler role in international climate negotiations, you

1033
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:57,920
Speaker 2: know China in fact, once they pledged to peep their

1034
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:01,120
Speaker 2: emissions at twenty thirty and zero them out by twenty sixty,

1035
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 2: just put in this, like all of government, all of

1036
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 2: society policy architecture that actually has real targets and a

1037
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 2: reward and punishment system in place for the bureaucracy to

1038
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:15,680
Speaker 2: actually meet those targets. So you know what I say

1039
01:04:15,680 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 2: the message, and that is that if America doesn't get

1040
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:24,120
Speaker 2: its proverbial tushy off the pot, we're going to have

1041
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 2: an authoritarian government dominating the economy of the post carbon

1042
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:35,440
Speaker 2: society and essentially being in a position to set international

1043
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 2: governance norms.

1044
01:04:36,720 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: Please.

1045
01:04:37,080 --> 01:04:40,200
Speaker 2: I mean it. To Biden's credit, I think Biden recognized it,

1046
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 2: which was part of what he wanted to do with

1047
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:46,320
Speaker 2: IRA the Inflation Reduction Act to try to de risk

1048
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 2: the supply chains and have American clean energy manufactured domestically

1049
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:54,920
Speaker 2: so that we wouldn't be in this position of being

1050
01:04:55,080 --> 01:04:56,920
Speaker 2: essentially dependent on China.

1051
01:04:57,080 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 1: And actually it's funny because I talked to people UK

1052
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:06,800
Speaker 1: government shortly after the IRA passed and they they and

1053
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:10,320
Speaker 1: that you start did start to really freak out about

1054
01:05:10,400 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 1: oh shit, now America has moved. Yes, now we're you know,

1055
01:05:14,040 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 1: And it did have that impact of like totally you know,

1056
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 1: which in some ways I'm like, well, maybe that is

1057
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:24,680
Speaker 1: the you know, that is the market based mechanism at work,

1058
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:28,200
Speaker 1: like you know, they're competing and whatever. I don't know,

1059
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:30,000
Speaker 1: but like I like it.

1060
01:05:30,200 --> 01:05:32,720
Speaker 2: I think it's good. I would like people to compete

1061
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:36,920
Speaker 2: to achieve net zero first. You know, the US government

1062
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 2: has acted as the protector of corporate profits for decades now,

1063
01:05:42,760 --> 01:05:47,920
Speaker 2: you know. And and I think we need to shift

1064
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 2: our priorities because climate change is an existential threat. It's

1065
01:05:54,600 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 2: a timed test later is too late, and we don't

1066
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:04,120
Speaker 2: get a do over at the end either, So I

1067
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:06,640
Speaker 2: just you know, That's the piece.

1068
01:06:06,440 --> 01:06:09,920
Speaker 1: I find really interesting about about a lot of this rhetoric, too,

1069
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:14,120
Speaker 1: is that it does all really contribute to this idea

1070
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:20,320
Speaker 1: that like there's just sort of endless amounts of political compromise, right, yeah, exactly,

1071
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 1: That's not actually how the atmosphere works.

1072
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:24,920
Speaker 2: No, that's not how physics works, and that's not how

1073
01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:28,240
Speaker 2: time works either, you know, And I realized that political

1074
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 2: exigencies are real. But the problem is to my mind

1075
01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:38,480
Speaker 2: that these political fights and the question of what we're

1076
01:06:38,520 --> 01:06:43,560
Speaker 2: going to compromise on and not compromise on is taking

1077
01:06:43,600 --> 01:06:46,760
Speaker 2: place on an arena where we haven't agreed that we

1078
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 2: need to phase out fossil fuels, where we still think

1079
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:53,000
Speaker 2: we can do both. So I don't know, I just

1080
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:56,919
Speaker 2: feel like, yes to compromise, but like you compromise on

1081
01:06:57,080 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 2: what field? Like, there has to be a kind of

1082
01:07:00,120 --> 01:07:03,000
Speaker 2: parameter around the debate that I feel like is still

1083
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:04,439
Speaker 2: missing into my mind.

1084
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:08,560
Speaker 1: No, I totally agree. There really isn't another political issue

1085
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:12,840
Speaker 1: that is similar to that, like where exactly actually there

1086
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:17,720
Speaker 1: is an objective reality and real baked in consequences no

1087
01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 1: matter what you know. It's like, of course, there are

1088
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:23,840
Speaker 1: consequences to policies, right, Like you know, the ongoing healthcare

1089
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 1: debate costs plenty of people money, time, health lives. Right,

1090
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:34,000
Speaker 1: there are real consequences to that stuff. However, you can

1091
01:07:34,240 --> 01:07:40,040
Speaker 1: infinitely really like iterate on exactly exactly, you know, and

1092
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: you just don't have that in this situation.

1093
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:46,400
Speaker 2: Now later is too late. Yeah, And you know, I

1094
01:07:46,440 --> 01:07:48,080
Speaker 2: talk about this in the first chapter of the book

1095
01:07:48,080 --> 01:07:50,720
Speaker 2: a little bit too, that there really was this sort

1096
01:07:50,760 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 2: of ground swell of alarm. Yeah, after that IPCC report

1097
01:07:55,520 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 2: and through the way Greta Thunberg amplified indigenous activists and

1098
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:07,160
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And then this narrative emerged from the

1099
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:11,200
Speaker 2: Breakthrough Institute, mind you, that we had made so much

1100
01:08:11,360 --> 01:08:16,439
Speaker 2: progress that now we have averted the worst case scenario.

1101
01:08:16,640 --> 01:08:19,599
Speaker 2: So I detail the recent history of climate politics, this

1102
01:08:19,800 --> 01:08:24,240
Speaker 2: rise of alarm, this narrative filtering through the media ecosystem,

1103
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:26,519
Speaker 2: that we've avoided the worst case scenario and we can

1104
01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:30,080
Speaker 2: all exhale, and then I end the chapter with you

1105
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:35,000
Speaker 2: talking about the latest science, which shows that, in fact,

1106
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:39,400
Speaker 2: it's turning out that the impacts of warming, how warming

1107
01:08:39,479 --> 01:08:43,559
Speaker 2: affects the climate system, is emerging, or the impacts are

1108
01:08:43,640 --> 01:08:48,160
Speaker 2: emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes.

1109
01:08:48,720 --> 01:08:52,200
Speaker 2: So even if it seems like we're headed towards three

1110
01:08:52,240 --> 01:08:55,000
Speaker 2: degrees celsius of warming or a little under by twenty

1111
01:08:55,040 --> 01:08:58,599
Speaker 2: one hundred. It turns out that that warming is going

1112
01:08:58,640 --> 01:09:00,880
Speaker 2: to look a lot more like the four degrees we

1113
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:03,080
Speaker 2: thought were five degrees we thought we had avoided, that

1114
01:09:03,320 --> 01:09:06,719
Speaker 2: we had anticipated. So actually we can't exhale at all.

1115
01:09:07,320 --> 01:09:12,000
Speaker 2: And you see, now climate deniers like Ross Dothit, who's

1116
01:09:12,000 --> 01:09:15,280
Speaker 2: a Lukewarmer. I mean, there's no air between the position

1117
01:09:15,320 --> 01:09:18,280
Speaker 2: of the Breakthrough Institute and the predition of Ross Dothit

1118
01:09:18,720 --> 01:09:22,599
Speaker 2: and the predition of someone like Matt Iglesias, who all say, yeah,

1119
01:09:22,640 --> 01:09:25,800
Speaker 2: climate change is real, but you know, we can take

1120
01:09:26,120 --> 01:09:28,599
Speaker 2: time for markets to solve it. We need to increase

1121
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:33,880
Speaker 2: oil and gas production because Americans like that and don't

1122
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:36,439
Speaker 2: worry because we've avoided the worst case scenario. This is

1123
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:44,160
Speaker 2: their take now, and it's so wrong and it's so dangerous.

1124
01:09:44,360 --> 01:09:48,320
Speaker 2: And I realized that there are these, you know, waves

1125
01:09:48,360 --> 01:09:50,559
Speaker 2: to history. And we've just been through like a global

1126
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:53,920
Speaker 2: trauma with the COVID nineteen pandemic and people have deep

1127
01:09:54,640 --> 01:09:59,200
Speaker 2: crisis fatigue and we're still kind of recovering from that emotionally, economically,

1128
01:09:59,240 --> 01:10:03,320
Speaker 2: et ceter But again, it's like climate change is accelerating.

1129
01:10:03,760 --> 01:10:07,640
Speaker 2: It's here right now, and you know, no matter what

1130
01:10:07,680 --> 01:10:10,280
Speaker 2: else is going on. If you're being pushed off a cliff,

1131
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 2: you've got to find a way to stop yourself or

1132
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 2: else you're going to go over. I really really don't

1133
01:10:16,320 --> 01:10:18,800
Speaker 2: want us to go over, you know. I love the kid,

1134
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:21,240
Speaker 2: I love all with his little friends, Like, I just

1135
01:10:21,439 --> 01:10:25,839
Speaker 2: don't want that to be what humans are on this planet.

1136
01:10:25,960 --> 01:10:28,880
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I feel like, in a way that

1137
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:33,600
Speaker 1: mismatch between what scientists were kind of warning about and

1138
01:10:33,640 --> 01:10:36,960
Speaker 1: then what they're finding now that it's like actually even

1139
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:40,479
Speaker 1: slightly worse. I do feel like, and at least for

1140
01:10:40,600 --> 01:10:45,479
Speaker 1: some scientists, that the discourse around alarmism, uncertainty and all

1141
01:10:45,520 --> 01:10:49,840
Speaker 1: that stuff did put pressure on them totally to make

1142
01:10:49,920 --> 01:10:54,599
Speaker 1: more conservative protection totally. And it's like a really good

1143
01:10:54,640 --> 01:10:57,320
Speaker 1: example of like the result of this stuff.

1144
01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:00,639
Speaker 2: And so that's you know. So in the first chapter

1145
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:03,320
Speaker 2: where I talk about this tactic of accusing people of

1146
01:11:03,320 --> 01:11:06,559
Speaker 2: being alarmists, I talk about how there are actually lots

1147
01:11:06,560 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 2: of different positions within the climate movement, and that the

1148
01:11:10,320 --> 01:11:14,680
Speaker 2: majority of them actually kind of reinforce or give a

1149
01:11:14,760 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 2: kind of legitimacy to the accusation that people who talk

1150
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:21,160
Speaker 2: about danger are alarmists. So you've got the lukewarmers like

1151
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:25,960
Speaker 2: the Breakthrough Institute of Gleasias's, etc. The Ross staffits, everyone

1152
01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:27,760
Speaker 2: at the Wall Street Journal. And then you have the

1153
01:11:27,800 --> 01:11:32,960
Speaker 2: techno optimists, someone like Hannah Ritchie, who is very aware

1154
01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 2: of how much danger we're in but feels that it's

1155
01:11:36,439 --> 01:11:42,920
Speaker 2: more effective to point to what's hopeful and to kind

1156
01:11:42,960 --> 01:11:45,840
Speaker 2: of create a sense of can do optimism. And you know,

1157
01:11:46,160 --> 01:11:48,760
Speaker 2: not every message works for everybody, so there might be

1158
01:11:48,800 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 2: a role for that in the discourse. But she also

1159
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:55,719
Speaker 2: kind of, at least in some of her writings around

1160
01:11:55,760 --> 01:11:57,559
Speaker 2: her book Not the End of the World, she also

1161
01:11:57,640 --> 01:12:01,920
Speaker 2: sort of bashes people who exaggerate the dangers or seem

1162
01:12:01,960 --> 01:12:05,000
Speaker 2: a little bit emotionally unstable to kind of distance her

1163
01:12:05,120 --> 01:12:07,599
Speaker 2: climate discourse from them. But I feel like what an

1164
01:12:07,720 --> 01:12:12,520
Speaker 2: unintended consequence of that strategy is to end up downplaying

1165
01:12:12,600 --> 01:12:16,520
Speaker 2: dangers in a way that's ultimately unhelpful. So it's very complicated.

1166
01:12:16,760 --> 01:12:18,880
Speaker 2: And then you've got the scientists, as you just said,

1167
01:12:19,360 --> 01:12:23,960
Speaker 2: who are like, you know, being so scrupulous because this

1168
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:26,679
Speaker 2: is a tactic of the deniers to pounce on any

1169
01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:30,800
Speaker 2: little error or any little misspeaking and like shred the

1170
01:12:30,880 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 2: person to try to make them seem untrustworthy, as the

1171
01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:38,280
Speaker 2: Breakthrough Institute just did with me. And also they don't

1172
01:12:38,320 --> 01:12:41,000
Speaker 2: ever want to exaggerate because now they want to just

1173
01:12:41,200 --> 01:12:45,320
Speaker 2: say only what they can absolutely back up one hundred percent.

1174
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:49,280
Speaker 2: And also like science is supposed to be this dispassionate,

1175
01:12:49,600 --> 01:12:53,719
Speaker 2: objective endeavor, so they're just like it's overdetermined for them

1176
01:12:54,240 --> 01:12:56,880
Speaker 2: to err on the side of least drama. But then

1177
01:12:56,920 --> 01:13:00,479
Speaker 2: what ends up happening there is that they in a

1178
01:13:00,520 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 2: way end up reinforcing the message that people who talk

1179
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:07,040
Speaker 2: about the dangers of climate change are just like either

1180
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:11,640
Speaker 2: stable or like trying to manipulate everyone into accepting socialism

1181
01:13:11,720 --> 01:13:12,240
Speaker 2: or whatever.

1182
01:13:12,479 --> 01:13:12,680
Speaker 1: You know.

1183
01:13:13,479 --> 01:13:18,160
Speaker 2: So it's a very messy and complicated media ecosystem. But

1184
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:21,120
Speaker 2: I just feel like there's no way to read the

1185
01:13:21,160 --> 01:13:26,559
Speaker 2: scientific research to trace what's already happening on our planet

1186
01:13:27,200 --> 01:13:31,519
Speaker 2: and not feel fear. And I feel like, you know,

1187
01:13:32,760 --> 01:13:36,559
Speaker 2: fear was motivating for me. That's what got me into

1188
01:13:36,600 --> 01:13:39,240
Speaker 2: the climate movement. I know a lot of people became

1189
01:13:39,360 --> 01:13:42,240
Speaker 2: active around climate change after they read David Wallace Wells's

1190
01:13:42,240 --> 01:13:46,200
Speaker 2: book The Uninhabitable Earth because it scared them. So fear

1191
01:13:46,360 --> 01:13:49,760
Speaker 2: can be motivating, you know. And also it's not even

1192
01:13:49,840 --> 01:13:53,120
Speaker 2: like a question of whether it's instrumentally positive or not.

1193
01:13:53,200 --> 01:13:57,559
Speaker 2: It's like, when people feel bad things, you have to

1194
01:13:57,600 --> 01:14:01,880
Speaker 2: see that and validate that, acknowledge that, because part of

1195
01:14:01,920 --> 01:14:05,639
Speaker 2: what feeds into denial is just like feeling overwhelmed and alone.

1196
01:14:05,800 --> 01:14:08,439
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, I didn't fly for a while

1197
01:14:08,479 --> 01:14:11,360
Speaker 2: because I just felt like it just felt bad at

1198
01:14:11,360 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 2: a certain point, like I was like the only one

1199
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:16,360
Speaker 2: not flying. It felt like and you nothing is worse

1200
01:14:17,000 --> 01:14:18,559
Speaker 2: than feeling like you're alone.

1201
01:14:18,640 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 1: You're out on like a crusade on your own.

1202
01:14:21,960 --> 01:14:23,560
Speaker 2: And so like, I'm not saying that people need to

1203
01:14:23,560 --> 01:14:26,240
Speaker 2: stop playing. I'm just saying that sometimes even just thinking

1204
01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:28,479
Speaker 2: about climate change or talking about it in your social

1205
01:14:28,520 --> 01:14:32,439
Speaker 2: circles will make you feel like you're alone or something,

1206
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:37,439
Speaker 2: and like you're not alone. Vast majorities of people in

1207
01:14:37,439 --> 01:14:41,200
Speaker 2: this country are concerned or alarmed about climate change, and

1208
01:14:41,240 --> 01:14:45,120
Speaker 2: they don't know that other people are, but like people are,

1209
01:14:46,560 --> 01:14:49,479
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's in what I say ultimately in

1210
01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:52,560
Speaker 2: the end of this chapter on alarmism, it's not a

1211
01:14:52,600 --> 01:14:56,680
Speaker 2: symptom of emotional weakness to feel this fear. It's a

1212
01:14:56,720 --> 01:15:00,479
Speaker 2: symptom of courage. It's a sign that you are enough

1213
01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:03,640
Speaker 2: to look at the science to see what it implies,

1214
01:15:04,240 --> 01:15:06,840
Speaker 2: and then not to look away, to stay with that

1215
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:09,200
Speaker 2: and to kind of engage with it because you want

1216
01:15:09,200 --> 01:15:12,280
Speaker 2: to fight against these interests that are willing to trash

1217
01:15:12,680 --> 01:15:15,960
Speaker 2: our miracle of a planet just to make some more

1218
01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:19,479
Speaker 2: money for a few more years. It's courage, and courage

1219
01:15:19,520 --> 01:15:21,800
Speaker 2: is a really important virtue and you should embrace it.