WEBVTT - Genevieve Guenther on the Language of Climate Politics 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:10.280 Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Last 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:14.440 week was Climate Week in New York and I went 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.079 for the first time. Actually, the main reason I was 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.400 there was to do a panel with Bill mckibbon and 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:26.160 Kendra Pierre leuis moderated by Genevieve Gunther on The Language 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.240 of Climate Politics, which is also the subject and title 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:36.000 of Genevieve's new book. In it, she looks at the 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:41.080 dominant narratives around climate policy and politics and whittles it 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.200 down to six key words that just keep showing up 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.120 over and over again. Each chapter is devoted to one 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.360 of those words and offers a deep dive into how 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.200 that word and the narrative it's attached to became so dominant, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:02.840 how it's been weaponized to block climate policy, and what 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.920 kind of messaging you could use to combat it. I 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.959 got to sit down with Genevieve after our panel as 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:13.520 well and talk about the book, why it's made some 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.880 people so mad on the Internet, and a lot more. 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.319 After the break, you'll hear her reading from a bit 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:23.640 of the book, and then we're going to have that 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:39.640 conversation that's coming up after this quick message. 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:43.920 Fossil fuel propaganda is spun out of six key terms 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:50.840 that dominate the language of climate politics. Alarmist, cost, growth, 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:57.040 India and China, innovation, and resilience. Together these terms weave 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:01.280 a narrative that goes something like this, Yes, climate change 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:05.600 is real, but calling it an existential threat is just alarmist. 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.560 In anyway, phasing out coal, oil and gas would cost 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.880 us too much. Human flourishing relies on the economic growth 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.080 enabled by fossil fuels, so we need to keep using 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.240 them and deal with climate change by fostering technological innovation 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:27.279 and increasing our resilience. Besides, America should not act unilaterally 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.000 on the climate crisis while omissions are rising in India 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.440 and China. This narrative is designed to foment the incorrect 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.160 and dangerous belief that the world does not need essentially 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:42.120 to stop using fossil fuels, either because climate change won't 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.200 be that destructive, or, in some versions of the story, 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.680 because the world can keep using coal, oil, and gas 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:50.840 and still halt global heating. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:55.919 Anyway, Yes, awesome, Okay, I want to have you start 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.320 by talking a little bit about where the idea from 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.919 the book can in general, and then how you whittled 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.440 it down to these six key words that I do 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.360 feel like really capture the essence of the sort of 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:09.639 discourse that we're hearing. 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:11.280 Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that. 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:12.000 Yeah. 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.600 Yeah. Because the book started out being much bigger, it 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.800 was sprawling. I had, like, you know, I don't know, 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.680 almost twenty seven words that I was thinking about writing about, 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.560 so definitely much smaller than it was in the beginning. 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:30.680 But I conceived of this book in twenty seventeen after 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.359 The New York Times hired this commentator named Brett Stevens 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:40.720 away from the Wall Street Journal, everybody's favorite voice at 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:41.240 the Times. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:41.640 Yes. 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:47.560 At the time, though Stevens was a pretty inveterate climate denier, 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.000 Like he was definitely on the more extreme end of 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.480 the skeptical spectrum, so to speak. Like he called, you know, 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.880 climate change a religion or climate change science a religion 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:02.360 presided over by like singularly unattractive hair fans, which I 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.480 just thought was a really obnoxious thing to say about anybody, right, 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:10.440 like what, And you know, his hiring generated a ton 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.680 of controversies. Many climate scientists and activists tried to get 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:16.920 the Times to rescind their offer to him, because they 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.320 just thought it was outrageous that someone who you know, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.080 was spreading these overt falsehoods would take a position at 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:27.000 the sort of paper of record. But of course The 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:32.040 Times doesn't respond to outside pressure very often or really ever. 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.120 So Stevens took his position, and he wrote arrogantly enough 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.480 his first column about climate change, and it was called 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.920 the column was called Climate of Complete Certainty. And what 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.080 this piece did was sort of recycle the fossil fuel 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.159 talking point that had been kind of dominant in the 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.400 discourse from I would say, about twenty ten all the 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.680 way through to twenty eighteen. And that talking point, as 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:59.960 you know yourself, was that the science of climate change 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.680 is too uncertain to motivate or justify the kind of 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.240 policy moves that we would need to make, or the 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.640 behavior changes we would need to make in order to 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.760 halt global heating and resolve the climate crisis, because the 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.400 climate crisis might not even be a thing right now. 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:22.000 I had just taken a college level course in climate science, 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.080 and so while I was reading this column, I was like, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.280 wait a minute, this man is using the word uncertainty 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.839 in a kind of common sense, colloquial way. He's using 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:40.360 the meaning of the word to say uncertainty means not 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.840 having enough information or not knowing enough to come to 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.640 some sort of decision or judgment. Right, But this is 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.400 actually not the way that climate scientists use the word 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.200 in their research. So in or that. 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.200 Scientists in general like this is the language of science 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.599 in which uncertainly means something very. 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.400 Different exactly, And what it means means is the range 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.200 of possible outcomes that you can project out of a 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:11.840 model with confidence. I mean, confidence and uncertainty are actually synonyms, 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.840 because you can say the confidence interval or the uncertainty interval. 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.400 So when scientists would talk about the uncertainty of their research, 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.640 they were not saying they weren't sure whether their results 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.280 were correct or the phenomenon they were studying was real. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.960 What they were saying was there's a range of possible 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.320 outcomes from bad to really bad that they could project 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.480 with confidence. But the problem was that because fossil fuel 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.600 interests had put this sort of other meaning of uncertainty 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.920 out into the public discourse through the media sphere, anytime 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:47.320 a climate scientist in his or her public communications would 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.960 talk about the uncertainty of their research, they would seem 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:55.119 to be confirming that they weren't sure whether climate change 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.000 was real or not. What fossil fuel interest had done 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:04.880 was a propriate weaponize and kind of distort the meaning 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.360 of the scientific term in order to kind of manipulate 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:13.000 scientists into confirming fossil fuel propaganda. So once I saw 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.840 this dynamic and uncertainty, I started to see it everywhere. 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.880 So I, like, you know, I got all these Manila 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:27.200 folder files because I'm very old school, and I you know, 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.760 made files in my email, and I started doing research 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:33.600 into the words that seemed to have salience for me 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.000 connected to climate change, you know. And I was doing 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:43.040 sort of database academic style research. I was reading research 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:49.600 in the social sciences, in rhetoric in climate science, but 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:53.000 I was also sort of pulling news articles and like 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:58.040 press releases and advertisements and tweets and sort of high 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:03.120 and low discourse news media discourse, and I was just 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.760 dumping it all into these files. And after about eighteen 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.600 months of this kind of very broad, almost sloppy way 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:10.880 of doing research, I noticed that the files for these 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:15.400 words were much thicker than the other ones, and that 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:21.120 in these files were often, you know, language that had 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:26.400 been produced by policymakers, by scientists themselves, in oil and 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:29.400 gas advertisements, like all the things that really sort of 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:34.240 centered and focused on what we're going to do to 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:36.080 try to resolve this crisis. And I was like, Okay, 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.840 these are the words that dominate the language of climate politics, 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:40.800 and I need to focus the book on these words. 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:40.920 Ye. 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:42.320 So that's what I decided to do. 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.280 And they all kind of relate to each other in 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.600 this way too that I think is really interesting to 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.640 create this Well, I think of it as like a 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:56.360 narrowing of available climate solutions or I don't know, it 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.880 sort of like puts these parameters on how we're allowed 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.880 to even talk about or think about this issue that's 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:04.760 very limiting. 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.440 Well, it's interesting you say that, because you know, for 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:13.320 the chapter on growth, it took me a long time 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.000 to write this chapter because you know, first I had 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.840 to sort of really get my head around kind of 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:27.400 neoclassical resource economics, how standard economists talked about environmental concerns 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:31.760 and the climate crisis in order to understand what you know, 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.640 counter voices might be arguing against, right, And then I 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:38.880 read all the de growth literature and I sort of 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.000 first thought to myself, well, am I going to try 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.959 to talk about the language of growth in a de 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:46.800 growth frame? 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:47.040 Like? 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:48.320 What am I going to do here? And then I 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:52.720 realized that actually, we can't even have the conversation about 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:59.439 de growth. I don't think while almost everybody universally believes 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:03.319 that growth itself is a climate solution, like as long 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.520 as you believe that being rich will protect you from 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:11.640 climate devastation, why would anyone embraced growth? And so I thought, Okay, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.880 this is what I keep bumping up against as I'm researching, 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.719 this belief that growth itself is a climate solution that 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.320 will be available to us even if the planet sort 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.920 of heats up to three degrees or more and that 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:31.040 the climate breils down to everyone infinitely exactly like growth 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:39.800 will never end. So I started digging into this, you know, because, 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.000 as you said, I felt like it was really kind 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:45.520 of limiting our imagination of how we might need to 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.000 transform the world in order to haul global heating. And 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.800 I discovered, as you know, I say in the chapter, 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:56.640 that this belief that growth will just continue no matter 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.959 what we do to the planet is based on absolutely enough. 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:04.720 It's based on beliefs that have no appeir empirical foundation whatsoever. 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:10.000 It's almost itself a form of religious faith. So one 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.000 of these beliefs is that human beings will be able 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.720 to adapt to climate change no matter how bad it gets. 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:22.480 And you know, humans are pretty ingenious, we are adaptable. 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:28.200 But in fact, there is no research showing that any country, 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.360 including developed nations in the global north, have to date 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:37.319 adapted to climate change, and it's just going to get 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.880 harder to do that. And there's something nonlinear about these 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.760 climate change impacts. So you know, if you have a 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.959 sea wall, it'll keep the water out until the day 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.600 that the water gets so high that it won't keep 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.600 the water out anymore. But none of those complicated risks 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.000 that we're facing, and none of this sort of lack 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.560 of historical evidence that we are going to be able 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.600 to adapt to the climate crisis make it into economic models. 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.960 In fact, what economists do is the opposite. They look 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:13.040 at sort of historical relationships between say, heat and GDP 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.360 growth rates, and then they try to project those out 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.400 into the future, and then they adjust their results by 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:25.680 using a mathematical variable called adaptation, which allows them to 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:34.079 downplay or adjust the dangers that they project by looking 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:38.000 at the past and drawing it out into the future 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.240 using this mathematical variable that they give value to simply 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:45.240 based on the economist's belief in how much we're going 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:47.440 to be able to adapt in the future. So at 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:52.400 the bottom, it's just about the individual economists trust that 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:54.920 adaptation is possible and it's something that we're going to do, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.679 not based on any kind of empirical data whatsoever. And 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.679 that's just one of the fan dies or the ephemeral 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:11.320 beliefs that support or at least justify this fundamental belief 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:14.280 of the entire planet that growth will just continue even 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:15.760 if we ruin our climate system. 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:18.520 It's so interesting because a lot of the things, like 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:20.839 a lot of the things in here had me also 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:25.040 thinking about how a lot of this stuff gets painted 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:30.880 in very gender terms or even just science versus humanities 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:35.280 kind of totally language too, where it's like, oh, economists 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:41.640 are hard science, objective measurement, whatever, but climate activists don't 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.679 understand that, or in technologies it's like, oh, well you 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:47.920 just don't understand the engineering behind totally or whatever. I've 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.120 had this experience of digging into an economic model and 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:55.480 realizing that it's just based on yeah, one person's assumptions 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.480 or beliefs or whatever exactly and being like, no, I 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:03.520 must be wrong, you know, I must not be understanding 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.000 the numbers or whatever, and like I. 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.800 Had that experience too. But let me be clear, every 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:14.520 single chapter in this book, the chapters on economics were 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:21.680 read by some of the most respected climate economists working today. 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:26.320 And the chapter that I wrote on innovation, which turned 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:31.359 out in climate discourse to be code for carbon dioxide 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:36.240 removal and carbon capture and sequestration so CDR and CCS. 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:40.160 So in that chapter, I had not only one of 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.240 the most prominent scientists who's working on CDR read this chapter, 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.360 but I had two other climate scientists read this chapter. 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.480 So I also thought, is this possible, like. 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.520 How asim as I think it is exactly. 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:56.960 And in fact. 0:14:58.200 --> 0:14:58.560 It is. 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.640 And it's hard to to tell because very often when 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:06.120 we encounter these things in our public discourse, it's through 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.960 news media articles or sort of treatments that are decontextualized 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.680 or just sort of touch on one thing, but they 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.120 marshal these ideological beliefs that I try to sort of 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:24.920 disabuse in the book. And it only becomes clear how 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:29.680 this ideology is very often based on either no information 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.600 like in the growth case, or false information like in 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.720 the CDR case. And so once you compile all the 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.000 information and put it together, it becomes easier to show 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.520 how a lot of the beliefs that we hold about 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:47.480 growth and technological innovation are influenced or shaped by fossil 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:49.000 fuel propaganda themselves. 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:53.880 Yes, totally. Like I felt like that was one of 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.640 the very compelling things about this book is that you 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.520 see it, You're just like, oh, thank you, that's a 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:04.880 nice you like how that has shaped Okay, I want 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:10.240 to ask you about the Breakthrough Institute, because they've been 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.720 very mad about your book. Yes, also you mentioned them 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:18.560 in the book, and they have been quite adamant proponents 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.880 of some of these ideas. Yeah, and particularly in the 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:27.840 vein of kind of castigating climate people for not thinking 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.760 about growth in the right way or reivation in the 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.320 right way. But anyway, I wanted to ask you about 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:35.600 just kind of your thoughts on how much they have 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:39.520 shaped the public discourse and how they have been able 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:40.040 to do that. 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.760 I mean, I you know, I got into the climate movement, 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.160 as I said in twenty seventeen, and so I don't 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.760 perceive them as people who are instrumental in shaping the discourse. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:56.600 But I do see them as kind of exemplifying a 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:03.160 kind of centrist position, left center position on the climate crisis, 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:07.880 which is why they're very friendly with many centrist journalists 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:14.480 and business leaders, because they put this sort of impromoter 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:20.679 of environmentalism on this centrist position. And the problem with 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.120 this position, in my view, is not that it's advocating 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.879 for developing new technologies. Clearly we will need that, like 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:30.640 I am a proponent of lab grown need for example. 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.679 To me, it is not that they are pushing for 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.560 nuclear I actually also think that nuclear energy would be 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:42.560 an excellent thing to bring into our energy mix, maybe 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:45.600 for thermal heat things that are harder to produce with 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.760 solar or wind. For example. You know, like eight million 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.280 people a year die from fossil fuel pollution, right, and 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.080 the number of people that we can trace, of course, 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:59.680 who have died from nuclear accidents is probably a lot 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:01.919 small than that. So if you want to just judge 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.159 two different forms of energy based on the number of 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:08.919 people it kills historically, then obviously nuclear wins. Right. My 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:13.560 problem with the Breakthrough Institute is that they promote expanding 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.880 fossil fuels. That is my problem with them, because this 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:23.240 is to me, the belief, the false belief that is 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:31.200 really preventing our politics. Are business leaders, even our climate 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:36.359 movement advocacy from solving this problem or even really knowing 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.119 what to fight for. There is this idea that we 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.280 can do both. We can develop clean energy and we 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:47.080 can support expanding fossil fuel extraction. We can have more, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.919 ever more oil and gas and ever more clean energy, 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.440 and somehow we're going to deal with climate change anyway. 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:58.560 So this is the false belief that is not just 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:03.119 coming from fossil fuel interests on the right, it's also 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.840 coming from these center left groups, which give a permission 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.479 structure for these fossil fuel interests to seem legitimate and 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.800 not like the murderous monsters they really are. And so 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:21.440 the Breakthrough Institute argues for increased fossil fuel production. They 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.600 say that coal plants in the Global South quote save lives. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.200 I mean, let's be clear, it's electricity that saves lives, 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.320 and that electricity does not need to be generated by coal, 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.399 which is killing millions of people a year, mostly in 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:43.320 the Global South. And for them, they justify their argument 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:47.560 for increasing fossil fuel production, not by even saying that 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:51.280 we can capture the emissions with CDR, which is something 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.840 that they support. It's a position that they support and 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.840 they platform people who do make that argument. But really 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.840 the reason they say we can continue to expand our 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.920 fossil fuel production and consumption is that climate change will 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.679 never be that bad. It's never going to be worse 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.520 than I think. Northhouse called it a case of planetary diabetes, 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:18.320 right that you can just sort of manage with what 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:24.040 he calls medicine, which what he means is adaptation or whatever. Now, 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.359 climate scientists like Joel Gergis, the Australian climate scientist who 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.119 is one of the lead authors of the last IPCC report. 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:35.240 She figures climate change as a cancer, as a disease 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.439 in our planetary body that has been established and is 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:44.959 now getting worse, and that we have to cure and 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:51.520 cut out before it metastasizes out of control. But Northouse 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:57.240 and the Breakthrough Institute are very often on the opposite 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:00.159 side of that. They would call her an alarmist and 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:04.320 they would claim that actually, people who think that climate 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:07.119 change is like a cancer or will be very dangerous 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.679 as the planet continues to heat up our emotional hysterical 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.520 very often women in the climate movement, people who aren't serious, 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:21.040 and their kind of Lukewarmer position that oh, climate change 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:23.520 isn't going to be that bad is actually somehow the 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:25.800 serious position. But what I try to argue in the 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:30.720 book is that in fact it is a dishonest position. 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:35.080 It misrepresents what the science says is happening to our 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:37.720 planet and will happen if we do not phase out 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.520 fossil fuels, bring our emissions down to real zero, and 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:46.000 halt global heating. So it's not a realism, it's actually 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.240 a falsehood that they're advancing. 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.400 Yeah, yeah, I do find it really interesting that Nordhouse 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:59.440 in particular takes these really strong stances on science when 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.680 he has no scientific background, you know, I mean, it 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:05.800 was a PR guy forever. 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:07.800 I love that he was a PR guy. 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.520 Yeah, and then started the breakthrough and like you know, 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.840 now kind of does PR for their ideas, right, Like. 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.240 I mean, I will just say that they've been coming 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.960 after me for a couple of weeks now at the 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.240 point we are recording this, they've been coming after me 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.560 for a couple of weeks now. And first he tried 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.600 to suggest that I didn't have the credentials to write 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.439 this book, right, And then I thought, well, wait a minute, 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.439 I'm going to go look at his academic credentials. I 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.199 have a PhD in English literature for UC Berkeley, and 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:44.600 he is a BA in history from UC Berkeley. So 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.200 I don't understand how he's just on that metric more 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.160 credentialed to talk about the climate crisis than you are 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:54.840 than I am. And I'm talking about the rhetoric that 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.239 leads to political beliefs, which is literally something I've been 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.320 studying since I went to graduate school because that was 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:03.919 what I was studying in the English Renaissance too. Like, 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:06.960 this is not a different topic for me. It's just 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.560 a different domain into which I'm bringing my expertise. But 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:13.840 it's interesting because other ways. So once I sort of 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:19.480 like disabused him of that strategy, then they started to 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:23.000 suggest that somehow I wasn't a serious scholar because there 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:28.560 were some sloppy errors and the footnotes they found what 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:31.359 I would claim or two errors among three hundred in 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:34.040 three chapters. The book has six hundred footnotes, and it's 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.480 been peer reviewed and extensively fact checked and every single 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:41.320 book in the world will have one or two details 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.760 that are wrong. But what they're doing is they're trying 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:48.119 to come after me to suggest that I'm not serious, 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:53.320 I'm all vibes, I don't have research credentials because they 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.560 don't want to engage with my arguments. They have never 0:23:56.640 --> 0:24:02.080 defended their position on supporting fossil fuel use. They have 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:06.000 never explained why they believe that economic growth will just 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:10.400 continue indefinitely and shield the wealthy from climate devastation. They 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:13.320 have never engaged any of the arguments that I make 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:16.640 in the book and defended them. They have only come 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:19.359 after me with these ad hominem attacks because they know 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:23.960 they don't have a position from which to argue. In fact, 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:26.879 Northouse on Twitter or x or whatever you want to 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:30.639 call it these days, he got mad at me because 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:33.879 I quoted him as having said that the agenda to 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:37.560 phase out fossil fuels was impossible, And so I said, okay, 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:40.600 does that mean right here that you're going to say 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:43.560 that it is possible to phase out fossil fuels? And 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:47.760 he sputtered and fulminated, but then reiterated that the climate 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:50.280 movement's agenda to phase out fossil fuels in the next 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:53.480 decade is impossible. And then I like tweeted a screenshot 0:24:53.520 --> 0:24:56.600 of my book which is quoting him saying that exact thing, 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:00.080 and I was like, dude, what is your problem? The 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:03.080 problem is is that they're scared of what I say 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:05.679 in the book, because I honestly think, and not to 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:08.080 be arrogant about this, but I think this is the 0:25:08.119 --> 0:25:12.639 first book that ties what we think of as traditional 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:17.720 climate denial on the right to these centrist democratic positions, 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:21.840 showing that actually the reason our climate politics is blocked 0:25:21.880 --> 0:25:24.640 is not that it's polarized, even though that's a problem too, 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:29.560 but because it's weirdly unified on this belief that we 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:32.920 don't need to phase out fossil fuels when we absolutely do. 0:25:33.280 --> 0:25:36.359 Yes. I have been seeing this in the last couple 0:25:36.320 --> 0:25:44.040 of years, you know, increasingly, this weird hesitancy to just say, yeah, 0:25:44.080 --> 0:25:46.480 we need to phase out fossil fuel, yes, and almost 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:50.480 a shift towards acting like that's a radical stance. Totally, totally, 0:25:51.160 --> 0:25:52.520 it's very strange. 0:25:53.160 --> 0:25:55.960 Well, there's comms. I mean, it's a I'm not saying 0:25:55.960 --> 0:25:59.919