Genevieve Guenther on the Language of Climate Politics

[00:00:00] Amy Westervelt: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Last week was Climate Week in New York, and I went for the first time, actually.

The main reason I was there was to do a panel with with Bill McKibben and Kendra Pierre Louis, moderated by Genevieve Gunther on the language of climate politics, which is also the subject and title of Genevieve's new book. In it, she looks at the dominant narratives around climate policy and politics and whittles it down to six key words that just keep showing up over and over again. Each chapter is devoted to one of those words and offers a deep dive into how that word and the narrative it's attached to became so dominant, how it's been weaponized to block climate policy, and what kind of messaging you could use to combat it.

I got to sit down with Genevieve after our panel as well and talk about the book, why it's made some people so mad on the internet, and a lot more. After the break, you'll hear her reading from a bit of the book, and then we're going to have that conversation. That's coming up after this quick message.

[00:01:21] Genevieve Guenther: Fossil fuel propaganda is spun out of six terms that dominate the language of climate politics: alarmist, cost, growth, India and China, innovation and resilience. Together these terms weave a narrative that goes something like this "yes, climate change is real, but calling it an existential threat is just alarmist. And anyway, phasing out coal, oil, and gas would cost us too much. Human flourishing relies economic growth enabled by fossil fuels, so we need keep using them and with climate change by fostering technological innovation and increasing our resilience. Besides, america should not act unilaterally on the climate crisis while emissions are rising in India and China."

This narrative is designed to foment the incorrect and dangerous belief that the world does not need essentially to stop using fossil fuels, either because climate change won't be that destructive or in some versions of the story because the world can keep using coal, oil, and gas and still halt global heating anyway.

[00:02:32] Amy Westervelt: Yes. Awesome. Okay. I want to have you start by talking a little bit about where the idea from the book came in general and then how you whittled it down to these six key words that I do feel like really capture the essence of the sort of discourse that we're hearing

[00:02:49] Genevieve Guenther: so glad to hear Yeah. Yeah, because the book started out being much bigger. It was sprawling. I had like, you know, I don't know, almost almost 27 words that I was thinking about writing about. So definitely much smaller than it was in the beginning. But I conceived of this book in 2017, after the New York Times hired this commentator named Brett Stevens away from the Wall Street journal. favorite voice at the Times.

At the time though, Stevens was a pretty inveterate climate denier. Like he was definitely on the more extreme end of the skeptical spectrum, so to speak. Like he called, you know, climate change a religion or climate change science a religion, um, presided over by like, Singularly unattractive hairfans, which I just thought was a really obnoxious thing to say about anybody, right?

[00:03:44] Amy Westervelt: Right. Like... what?

[00:03:46] Genevieve Guenther: And, you know, his hiring generated a ton of controversy, many climate scientists and activists tried to get the Times to rescind their offer to him because they just thought it was outrageous that someone who, you know, was spreading these overt falsehoods would take a position at the sort of paper of record. But, of course, the Times didn't want to... doesn't respond to outside pressure very often or really ever so Stephens took his position and he wrote, arrogantly enough, his first column about climate change. And it was called the column was called a climate of complete certainty And what this piece did was sort of recycle the fossil fuel talking point that had been kind of dominant in the discourse . And that talking point as you know yourself You Was that the science of climate change is too uncertain to motivate or justify the kind of policy moves that we would need to make, or the behavior changes we would need to make in order to halt global heating and resolve the climate crisis because the climate crisis might not even be a thing.

[00:04:48] Amy Westervelt: Right.

[00:04:50] Genevieve Guenther: Now, I had just taken level course in climate science. so while I was reading this column, was like, wait a minute. this man is using the word uncertainty in a kind common sense, colloquial way. He's using the of word to say uncertainty means not enough information or knowing enough come to some sort of decision or judgment. Right. But this is actually the way that climate scientists use the word research. So in...

[00:05:26] Amy Westervelt: or that scientists in general, like this is the language of science in which uncertainty means something very different.

[00:05:32] Genevieve Guenther: Exactly. And what it means is the range of outcomes you can project out of a model with confidence. I mean confidence and uncertainty are actually synonyms say the confidence interval or the uncertainty interval. So when scientists would talk about the uncertainty of their research, they were not saying they weren't sure whether their results were correct or that what they were studying was real. What they were saying was there's a range of possible outcomes from bad to really bad that they project confidence. But the problem was that because fossil fuel interests put this sort other meaning of uncertainty out into the public discourse through the mediasphere, anytime a climate scientist in his or her public communications would talk about uncertainty of their research, seem to be confirming that they weren't sure whether climate change was real or not.

What fossil fuel interests had done was appropriate, weaponize, and kind of distort the meaning of the scientific term order kind manipulate scientists into confirming fossil fuel propaganda. So I saw this dynamic uncertainty, I started see everywhere.

[00:06:47] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:06:49] Genevieve Guenther: So I like, you know, I got all these folder files because I'm very old school. And I, you know, made files email and I started research into the words that seemed to have salience for me connected climate change. And I was doing sort of database academic style research. I was reading, research in the social sciences, in rhetoric, um, in climate science. But I was also sort of pulling news articles and like press releases and advertisements and tweets and sort of, high and low discourse, um, news media and I was dumping it all into files.

And after about 18 months of this kind of very broad, almost sloppy way of doing research, I noticed that the files for these words were much thicker than the other ones.

[00:07:42] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:07:43] Genevieve Guenther: And that in these files were often, um, you know, language that had been produced by policymakers, by scientists themselves in oil and gas advertisements, like all the things that we sort of centered and focused on. What we're going to do to try to resolve this crisis. And I was like, okay, these are the words that dominate the language of climate politics.

And I need to focus the book on these words. So that's what I decided to do.

[00:08:10] Amy Westervelt: And they all kind of relate to each other in this way too, that I think is really interesting to create this, well, I think of it as like a narrowing of climate solutions too, it sort of puts these parameters on how we're allowed to even talk about or think about this issue that's very limiting.

[00:08:31] Genevieve Guenther: Well, it's interesting you say that because, you know, for the chapter on growth, it took a long time to write this chapter because, you know, first I had to sort of really get my head around kind of neoclassical resource economics, how standard economists talked about environmental concerns the climate crisis in order to understand you counter voices might be arguing

[00:08:56] Amy Westervelt: Right.

[00:08:56] Genevieve Guenther: And then I read all the degrowth literature. Um, and I sort of first thought to myself, well, am I going to try to talk about the language of growth in in degrowth framework?

What am I going to do here? And then I realized that actually, we can't even have the conversation about degrowth, I don't think, while everybody universally believes that growth itself is a climate solution. Like, as long as you believe that being rich will protect you from climate devastation, why would anyone embrace degrowth? And so I thought, okay, this is what I keep bumping up against as I'm researching this belief that growth itself is a climate solution that will be available to us. even if the planet sort of heats up three degrees or more

[00:09:48] Amy Westervelt: and that will be available to everyone infinitely

[00:09:51] Genevieve Guenther: A hundred percent. Exactly. Like growth will never end. So I started digging into this, you know, because as you said, I felt like it was really kind limiting our imagination of how we might need to transform the world in order to halt global heating. Yeah, and I discovered as I say in the chapter that belief growth will just Yeah. no matter what we do to the planet is based on absolutely nothing. It's based on beliefs that have no empirical foundation whatsoever.

[00:10:24] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:10:25] Genevieve Guenther: It's almost itself a form of religious faith. So one of these beliefs is that human beings will be able to adapt to climate change no matter how bad it gets. And you know, humans are pretty ingenious. we are adaptable, but in fact, there is no research showing that any country, including developed nations in the global north, have to date adapted to climate change. And It's just going to get harder to do that. And there's something nonlinear about these climate change impacts. So, you know, if you have a seawall, it'll keep the water out until the day that the water gets so high that it won't keep the water out anymore. But none of those complicated risks that we're facing and none this sort of lack of historical evidence that are going to be able to adapt to the climate crisis, make it into economic models. In fact, what economists do is the opposite. They look at sort of historical relationships between say heat and GDP growth And try to project those out into the future. And then they adjust their results by using a mathematical variable called adaptation, which allows them to downplay or adjust the dangers that they project. by at the past and... And drawing it out into the future, by using this mathematical variable that they give value to, simply based on the economist's belief in how much we're going to be able to adapt in the future. So at the bottom, it's just about the individual economist's trust that adaptation is possible, and it's something that we're going to do. Not based any kind of empirical data whatsoever. And that's just one of the fantasies or the, the ephemeral beliefs that support, or at least, um, justify this fundamental belief of the entire planet, that growth will just continue even if we ruin our climate system.

[00:12:34] Amy Westervelt: It's so interesting because a lot of the things in here had me also thinking about how a lot of this stuff gets painted in very gendered terms too, or even just science versus humanities kind of language too, where it's like, oh, economists are, , hard science, objective measurement, whatever.

But climate activists don't understand that or certain technologies. It's like, oh, well, you just don't understand the engineering behind it or whatever. I've had this experience of digging into an economic model and realizing that it's just based on, yeah, one person's assumptions or beliefs or whatever.

And being like, no, I must be wrong. It can't be that. You know, I must not be understanding the numbers or whatever. And like...

[00:13:22] Genevieve Guenther: I had that experience too, but let me be clear. Every single chapter in this book. Yeah. chapters on economics were read by some of the, Most respected climate economists working today and the chapter that I wrote on innovation, which turned out in climate discourse to be, code for carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture and sequestration. So CDR and CCS. So in that chapter I had. not only one of the most prominent scientists who's working on CDR read this chapter But I had two other climate scientists read this chapter. So I also thought is this possible like it it as flimsy as I think it is? Exactly. in fact It is. And it's hard to tell because very often when we encounter these things in our public discourse, it's through news media articles or sort of treatments that are decontextualized or just sort of touch on one thing. But they marshal these like ideological beliefs that I try to sort of disabuse in the book. And it only becomes clear how this ideology is very often based no information like in the growth case or false information like in the CDR case.

[00:14:51] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:14:51] Genevieve Guenther: So once you compile all the information and put it together, it becomes easier to show how a lot of the beliefs that we hold about growth and technological innovation are influenced or shaped by fossil fuel propaganda themselves.

[00:15:05] Amy Westervelt: Yes, totally. One of the very compelling things about this book is that you see it. You're just like, Oh, thank That's

[00:15:12] Genevieve Guenther: That's so nice, thank you

[00:15:13] Amy Westervelt: like how that has shaped. Um, okay. I want to ask you about the Breakthrough Institute cause they, they've been very mad about your book and also, you mentioned them in the book and they have been, quite, adamant proponents of some of these ideas and particularly in the vein of kind of castigating climate people for not thinking about growth in the right way or innovation in the right way.

But anyway, I wanted to ask you about just kind of your thoughts on how much they have shaped the public discourse and how they have been able to do that.

[00:15:52] Genevieve Guenther: I mean, i, you know, I got the climate movement, as I said, in 2017. so I perceive them as people who are instrumental in shaping the discourse. I do see them kind of, um, exemplifying a a kind of centrist position, center position climate crisis, which is why they're very with many centrist journalists, and leaders because they put the of imprimatur of environmentalism on this centrist position. Right. And the problem with this position, in my view, is not that it's, you know, advocating for developing new technologies. Clearly, we will need that. Like, I am a proponent of lab grown meat, To me, it is not that they are pushing for nuclear. I actually also think that nuclear energy would be an excellent alternative thing to bring into our energy mix, maybe for thermal heat things that are harder to produce with solar or wind, for example.

You know, like 8 million people a year die from fossil fuel pollution, right? And the number of people, that we can trace, of course, who have died from nuclear accidents is probably a lot smaller than that. So if you want to just judge two different forms of energy based on the number of people it kills historically, then obviously nuclear wins, right? problem with the Breakthrough Institute is they promote expanding fossil fuels.

That is my problem with them because this is to me, the belief, the false belief that is really preventing our politics, our, business leaders, even our, climate advocacy from Solving problem or even really knowing there is this idea we can do We can develop clean energy and we can support expanding fossil fuel extract extraction. We can have more evermore. more and gas and ever more clean energy. And somehow we're gonna deal with climate change anyway. So this is the false belief that is not just coming from fossil fuel interests on the right. It's also coming these center left groups, which give a permission structure for these fossil fuel interests to seem legitimate and not like the murderous monsters they really are. And so the Breakthrough Institute argues for increased fossil fuel production. They say that coal plants in the global south, quote, save lives.

Let's be clear, it's electricity that saves

Right.

that electricity does not need to be generated by coal, which is killing. Millions of people a year, mostly in the global south. And for them, they justify their argument for increasing fossil fuel production, not by even saying that with CDR, um, which is something that they, support.

It's a position that they support, and they platform people who do make that argument. But really, the reason they say we can to expand our fossil fuel production and consumption is that climate change will never be that bad, right?

It's never gonna be worse than I think Nordhaus called it a case of planetary right? Um, that you can just sort of manage with with what he calls, you know, medicine, which what he means is adaptation or whatever. Now, climate scientists like Joelle Gerges, the Australian climate scientist, who's one of the lead authors of the last IPCC report. She figures climate change as a cancer, as a disease in our planetary body has been established and is now getting worse and that we have to cure cut out. Before it metastasizes out of control. but Nordhaus and the Breakthrough Institute are very often um, on the opposite side of that. They would call her an alarmist, and they would claim that actually, People who think that climate change is like a cancer or will be very dangerous as the planet continues to heat up are emotional, hysterical, very often women in the climate movement people who aren't serious.

[00:20:18] Amy Westervelt: Yes

[00:20:18] Genevieve Guenther: And their kind of, um, lukewarmer position that, Oh, climate change isn't going to be that bad is actually somehow the serious position. But what I try to argue in the book is that in fact, it is. a dishonest position. It misrepresents what the science says is happening to our planet and will happen if not phase out fossil fuels, bring our emissions down to real zero , and halt global heating. So it's not a realism, it's actually a falsehood that they are advancing

[00:20:52] Amy Westervelt: it's fantasy. Yeah. Yeah. I do find it really interesting that Nordhaus in particular takes these really strong stances on science when he has no scientific background. You know, He was a PR guy forever and then

[00:21:09] Genevieve Guenther: I know. I love that he was a that he's a PR guy.

[00:21:11] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. And then started the breakthrough and like, you know, now kind of does PR for their ideas.

[00:21:18] Genevieve Guenther: Right? Right. Exactly. But like, um, I mean, I just say that. They've been coming after me for couple of weeks now, at the point we are recording this. They've been coming after for a couple of weeks now. And first he tried to suggest that I didn't have the credentials to write this book.

[00:21:35] Amy Westervelt: Right.

[00:21:36] Genevieve Guenther: And then I thought, wait a minute, I'm go look at his academic credentials. I have a Ph. D. in English literature from UC Berkeley, and he has a B. A. in history

[00:21:46] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:21:46] Genevieve Guenther: from UC Berkeley. So I don't understand how he's, you know, just on that metric, more credentialed to talk about the climate crisis than I am.

And I'm talking about the rhetoric that leads to political beliefs, which is literally something I've been studying since I went to graduate school, because that was what I was studying in the English Renaissance too. Like, it's not a different topic for me. It's just a different domain into which I'm bringing my expertise. But it's interesting because other ways, so, so once I sort of like disabused him of that strategy.

Then they started to suggest that somehow I wasn't a serious scholar because there were some, you know, sloppy errors in the footnotes. Um, they found what I would claim are two errors among 300 in three chapters.

The book has 600 footnotes and it's been peer reviewed and extensively fact checked and every single book in the world will have one or two details that are are wrong,

What they're doing is they're trying to come after me to suggest that I'm not serious I'm all vibes. I don't have research credentials, because they don't want to engage with my arguments they have never defended their position on supporting fossil fuel use.

They have never explained why they believe that economic growth will just continue indefinitely and shield the wealthy from climate devastation. They have never engaged any of the arguments that I make in the book and defended them. They have only come after me with these ad hominem attacks because they know they don't have a position from which to argue. In fact, Nordhaus on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it these days-- he got mad at me because I quoted him as having said that the agenda to phase out fossil fuels was impossible. And so I said, Okay, does that mean right here that you're gonna say that it is possible to phase out fossil fuels and he he sputtered and fulminated But then reiterated that the climate movement's agenda to phase out fossil fuels in the next decade is impossible And then I like tweeted a screenshot of my book which is quoting him saying that exact thing and I was like, what? Dude, what is your problem?

[00:24:01] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:24:01] Genevieve Guenther: Their problem is, is that they're scared of what I say in the book because I honestly think, and not to be arrogant about this, but I think this is the first book that ties what we think of as traditional climate denial on the right to these centrist democratic positions showing that actually the reason our climate politics is blocked is not that it's polarized, even though that's a problem, too, but because it's weirdly unified on this belief that we don't need to phase out fossil fuels when we absolutely do.

[00:24:35] Amy Westervelt: Yes, I have been seeing this in the last couple of years, you know, increasingly, this weird hesitancy to just say, yeah, we need to phase out fossil fuels and almost a shift towards acting like that's a radical stance

[00:24:51] Genevieve Guenther: Totally, totally.

[00:24:53] Amy Westervelt: It's very strange.

[00:24:55] Genevieve Guenther: Well, there's comms, I mean, it's a, I'm not saying it's an easy problem. Because there is comms research that shows that people don't like it when you tell them they can't use something they're already using, right?

So that, I mean, it's, it's a fiercely challenging problem to communicate that we do need to phase out fossil fuels. I don't want to downplay that. And so I think people shy away from saying it because it does seem like like tricky or radical. Um, and it has radical implications for our whole world. economic system for sure. but if you believe that climate change is real, if you understand what the science is saying about what's going to happen to our climate system and our, the links between our planet and our economy, if the planet just keeps heating up, and if you understand that the planet will keep heating up until emissions. get to net zero or real zero, then, you know, every scientist will tell you that we need to stop using coal, oil, and gas. It's really not up for debate anymore.

[00:25:58] Amy Westervelt: Including like, you know, the IEA, the IPCC, like it's,

[00:26:03] Genevieve Guenther: So this is what I quote in the, this is what I quote, In the introduction to the book In 2023, in synthesis report, IPCC said that we already have enough fossil fuel infrastructure. Because that infrastructure is projected to emit the total carbon budget for two degrees Celsius, which means that we actually have to like strand some that infrastructure, strand some of those assets, because the total carbon budget has to include like agriculture right and wildfires and other things. So people, so to me, you can say yes climate change is bad, yes I believe in climate change until the cows come home.

But if you are denying that fact, you are a climate denier. I mean, just think about being an alcoholic. Right. You're drinking a lot of booze. Your liver is about to croak and your doctor says to you, you're an alcoholic, you have to stop drinking. And you say, okay, yeah, I'm an alcoholic, but I'm not going to stop drinking.

Like we all know that that person is still in denial. If you say climate change is real, I want to help stop it, but I'm going to ignore the fact that we already have too many fossil fuels to halt global heating at a relatively safe level. I'm sorry. You are a climate denier.

[00:27:21] Amy Westervelt: I want to talk about the innovation chapter in more detail because we've been doing this series too on like on CDR and carbon capture and we'll eventually get to like hydrogen and biofuels and all that stuff too.

[00:27:36] Genevieve Guenther: the force fall solutions.

[00:27:37] Amy Westervelt: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it is like, um, I find it interesting how the industry and then like people who are kind of carrying water for them do really. mess with the building blocks of information in this way of like because I feel like there's been um there has been like this real focus on on disinformation, which I almost see as like The end result of all of this stuff, right?

You know, it's like yeah, like that's what we end up with but like that gets built by very strategic investments in particular types of research or white papers from thought leaders or whatever it is, you know, it's like it gets built in that way. So, um, I'm curious how you honed in on CDR and, um, CCS as like the things that you wanted to focus on in that chapter.

[00:28:31] Genevieve Guenther: Yeah. I really, didn't set out to focus on those two technologies in particular, at all. I was just like, why are people talking about innovation in this way? Why are people talking about innovation as a independent climate solution? What does this word mean? That's so vague. And usually when you drill down, this was often in sort of, you know, climate journalism or, um, even just political journalism or business journalism. and you would drill down and it would be about these that would either capture or remove emissions. And then I started to see Exxon Mobil and other oil and gas companies use the word innovation in their advertising and on their websites and whatever, and then drilling down into that. I was like, Oh, for them, innovation also means carbon capture.

And, yeah, to some degree, also carbon dioxide removal. I was like, wow, this word is actually code in climate discourse for CCS and CDR. And it's interesting because I don't think it is anymore because I think that oil and gas companies were really Greenwashing themselves with very thick paint right after the IPCC report on 1.5 in 2018 and the rise of the global climate movement, blah, blah, blah, blah. They all came out with net zero, um, targets. They, you know, and they

[00:29:56] Amy Westervelt: and now they no longer feel the need

[00:29:58] Genevieve Guenther: exactly. Exactly. So, um, a exon

[00:30:02] Amy Westervelt: but partly because of all of this rhetoric that

[00:30:05] Genevieve Guenther: happened.

[00:30:05] Amy Westervelt: point

[00:30:05] Genevieve Guenther: Thank you, exactly.

[00:30:06] Amy Westervelt: We can... it's fine because we can decarbonize oil and gas

[00:30:10] Genevieve Guenther: Exactly. Thank you. That's exactly the point. So what happened was around this question of innovation, oil and gas companies started to claim that they were going to turn themselves into carbon management companies. they were going to be able to either capture the emissions of their products, or they going be able decarbonize their products, decarbonize oil by removing the emissions, carbon from the atmosphere after their products have been used and combusted.

So, you know, usually I don't start with the research. Usually I start with the rhetoric. But I started this chapter with the research into how challenging it's going to be. Well, first, the historical account of the fact that most, I mean, if not all carbon capture projects, which is, you know, the technology that captures emissions at the source, most, if not all carbon capture products, to date have failed.

[00:31:18] Amy Westervelt: Yes.

[00:31:19] Genevieve Guenther: They have captured nothing.

[00:31:21] Amy Westervelt: Many on like a very large scale

[00:31:23] Genevieve Guenther: a very large scale. They have captured nothing close to their targets. And very often they've had to build an additional fossil fuel plant to power the technology, which if you do a full life cycle assessment, they're actually carbon additive and not carbon neutral. neutral.

[00:31:41] Amy Westervelt: That's right. There's really good research from Mark Jacobson on that in particular.

[00:31:47] Genevieve Guenther: So insofar as you use methane gas as a kind of, you know, firm generation instead of batteries or something else, you might want to slap CCS on that, but it would be very challenging to do it in a way that would actually be carbon neutral and it would be much, much more expensive, even potentially than building out a system of redundancy and lots of storage. or a nuclear or something else. So, and even if the economics pencil out better for CCS, CCS just doesn't work. So that's really what you need to come back to.

[00:32:26] Amy Westervelt: And. The technology has been around for a really long time. Like exactly. It's it doesn't mean it's impossible that it will improve at some point, whatever. But yeah, there are a lot of plans being made with the assumption that CCS will somehow magically start to work better than it ever has.

[00:32:47] Genevieve Guenther: You know what's so interesting? So the rhetoric And I'll get to CDR in a minute. But the rhetoric about CCS from oil and gas companies and from advocates um, trade advocates, is that CCS is a proven technology, right? That's what they say. Because it's been around for so long, right? And it's a proven technology. They've been using it for decades. This is great. And so now, The EPA has come up with a new regulation saying that by a certain date fossil fuel power plants need to have CCS

[00:33:20] Amy Westervelt: And then in their public comments, they're all like, but it doesn't work. You can't hold us to this. It's

[00:33:25] Genevieve Guenther: So the climate guy at the Cato Institute requested a review copy of my book because he said he wanted to write a review about it. I don't know if he's actually going to write a

[00:33:33] Amy Westervelt: a review about it.

[00:33:34] Genevieve Guenther: and then he tried to like chase me down on Twitter to ask me about this EPA regulation. He's like, how, what do you think about the EPA? You know, requiring this if it's not a proven technology, you know, do you think the EPA is being dishonest? And I was like, dude, talk to your industry. They have been saying that

[00:33:55] Amy Westervelt: the public comments exactly exxon api they all were like this is Asking too much

[00:34:04] Genevieve Guenther: but this is after literally decades of saying it was a proven technology. And then ironically, they've also been lobbying on the Hill for, um, tax breaks to help them get CCS in place and working economical. And it's not clear to me why you need tax breaks for innovation if you already have a proven technology.

But anyway, so this is one boondoggle people use to justify keeping fossil energy in the mix. And then the other boondoggle is carbon dioxide removal. So just to say up front yeah in order to create a net zero economy, we are going to need some form of carbon dioxide removal so that, you know, we do not add to the stock of carbon in the atmosphere, because things like agriculture emits carbon and wildfires will emit carbon. And so on. So you need some form carbon dioxide removal

[00:35:02] Amy Westervelt: And there are legitimately hard to abate sectors that, might need this because there isn't a ready alternative. Power generation is not one of them.

[00:35:15] Genevieve Guenther: Right!

[00:35:15] Amy Westervelt: That's the, that's the thing I'm just like, yeah, but we have an alternative. We have alternatives for that.

[00:35:20] Genevieve Guenther: that are cheaper and more effective. But fossil fuel interests are claiming that we can use these technologies to continue to expand fossil fuel production. But as Jennifer Granholm once said, "in a way that's clean". The National Academies modeled how much solar we would need to remove one million tons. of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with the technology called direct air capture. And I want everyone to keep in mind who's listening to this, that one million tons of carbon 15 minutes of our annual emissions.

[00:36:01] Amy Westervelt: Right.

[00:36:02] Genevieve Guenther: a quarter of an hour of a whole year of emissions. And just to do that, we would need to site solar panels on like around 1, 200 football fields worth of land.

[00:36:15] Amy Westervelt: Wow.

[00:36:17] Genevieve Guenther: And we would also, at least in their model, need to build another methane gas plant to power thermal energy that the process needs to capture carbon from the atmosphere. So, you know, that's a lot of land. We have it. We have enormous amounts of agricultural land that could be repurposed. But the point is, it's not a simple, easy solution to just say, Oh, we're just going to remove these emissions with CDR. Furthermore, it's extremely expensive to do this. Like basically you're trying to put back together something like a bowl that's already been broken.

And it's very time consuming and it's very labor intensive. So, you know, I quoted a, um, review essay in the chapter that said, Most of the sort of lower estimates for how much this is going to cost comes from industry or from startup advocates,

And

the scientists who are not connected to those

interests

interests propose that it's going to be kind of unlikely to get this down to, um,

Or down below around 500 a ton.

Like right now I think it's about 750 a ton, but they think a realistic goal for price would be about 500 a ton. Now,

if

you wanted to move, remove like 10 um, which is only a quarter of our annual emissions, right? That's, that's just an enormous amount of money.

Like it's, it's. 5 trillion or something like that, so we're not gonna use this. To decarbonize the fossil fuel system. We are going to use this at the margins To capture what I call in the book these essential emissions And so the message must be not that we need CDR or CDR or can decarbonize oil But that we need to phase out fossil fuels, but the reason that this

propaganda from the fossil fuel

[00:38:22] Amy Westervelt: and then use CDR for whatever is left. That's like, that's

[00:38:25] Genevieve Guenther: Well that's the other issue. Oh my god Oh, my God, that's the other issue is that one thing we would also want to do if we could is achieve negative emissions where we start drawing carbon dioxide or carbon out of the atmosphere so that, you know, hopefully we could maybe start to reverse some of the warming that we've

[00:38:43] Amy Westervelt: Right. So, you know, you're never going to be able to do that if you don't decarbonize first. And that's exactly the piece that I feel like, um, I really appreciate like David Ho and, um, Jane

[00:38:55] Genevieve Guenther: Flagel

[00:38:56] Amy Westervelt: Flegal, yes

[00:38:57] Genevieve Guenther: zeke Hausfather, all are researchers in CDR space.

[00:39:00] Amy Westervelt: They're all researchers in CDR. They're all positive about CDR and its potential usefulness in addressing some of this stuff and all, every single one of them says It's not going to do anything if we don't decarbonize first, that it is the equivalent of like continuing to fill a bucket of holes with water to Not decarbonize first.

It's very very and yet the supposed like You know smart guys in the room continue to repeat this idea that like, Oh, it's going to be fine

[00:39:38] Genevieve Guenther: But it's because they don't know anything. They haven't actually read the scientific research.

They're taking their cues from so called think tanks like the Breakthrough Institute, who are not actually facing reality and coming up with plans that can get us to where we need to go.

[00:39:58] Amy Westervelt: That's the piece that I find troublesome about breakthrough because yeah, I'm not like de facto opposed to, technology or even market based solutions to this stuff. But if the proposed solution is so obviously flawed and or if you're, you're misrepresenting what it can do,

right, You know, then that's not what you're doing, right? You know, that's the piece that I'm just like, it's not that you promote nuclear or you're optimistic about CDR. It's that you're overstating the solution and understating the problem.

[00:40:39] Genevieve Guenther: So in my chapter on innovation, you know, again, these ideas don't take root. Unless they're being repeated by both sides, right? It's not just sort of disinformation that's is mockable. This is disinformation that's circulating and creating a kind of bipartisan centrist consensus that upholds the status quo. And, you know, even Democrats--a majority of Democrats want America to pursue an all of the above energy

[00:41:13] Amy Westervelt: Yes.

[00:41:13] Genevieve Guenther: Because, I think they don't know that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to halt climate change, because the majority of Democrats who want the U. S. to pursue an all of the above energy strategy is the same majority That says they want the United States to achieve net zero by 2050, like 69 percent of Americans more broadly, which means that, like, you know, practically 100 percent of Democrats support net zero by 2050, but don't understand that actually we cannot do both.

[00:41:48] Amy Westervelt: Right. I think the other thing that I was thinking about reading your book too, that I was like, Oh, this is an important thing for people to clock is that I think a pretty significant number of Democrats and even climate people have been convinced by some of this stuff that's out there that it's not actually possible to get off of fossil fuels.

And that's the piece that I think is so dangerous.

[00:42:14] Genevieve Guenther: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:42:16] Amy Westervelt: hear people kind of like reiterate this stuff

[00:42:18] Genevieve Guenther: Yeah, yeah. Firm generation,

[00:42:20] Amy Westervelt: Firm generation. Firm generation

[00:42:21] Genevieve Guenther: or something nonsensical like that.

[00:42:23] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Or about it as like, uh, securing the base, like base load energy to deal with intermittency and all that stuff. Right. , but even if you accept that, we need some amount of gas to continue to do that.

We don't need an increase in the amount of gas that's being generated to do that. You know, it's like we can do that easily with what we have and still have access. The U. S. is the number one exporter of natural gas now. Like, we are not generating this stuff just to support the expansion of renewables.

And, and we know from like, internal documents from all these companies that they very explicitly were like, in order to keep people thinking of gas as a clean fuel, we need to tie it to renewables.

[00:43:15] Genevieve Guenther: We need more research into academic research funded by BP who make Yes. Um, that makes that precise argument.

[00:43:24] Amy Westervelt: Exactly! Yeah! It's BP, it's BP that like laid out that whole strategy.

[00:43:29] Genevieve Guenther: I mean, people are ignoring all the actions that these companies are taking through their trade associations, in particular, to to block the passage of climate policy, to shape public belief that we need fossil fuels and that climate change policy is dangerous to living things and themselves. Like, it just totally ignores how these people, these companies are bad actors in this space, right? Why would they embrace the energy transition that they're fighting with every resource

I mean, the myopia, you have to look at the whole, especially for something like climate change, which is this sort of like, extremely systemic, broad. Issue, ,

[00:44:15] Amy Westervelt: I want to ask you about something that I saw recently and it made me think of this innovation chapter because there were actually, and of the, the stuff you talk about with uncertainty and early climate denial too, because there's this, there is a carbon capture pipeline project in the Midwest.

It's called the summit pipeline. Have you heard about this?

Yeah.

It goes across five Midwestern states and there's been a ton of pushback against it. Right.

[00:44:40] Genevieve Guenther: Right.

Right.

[00:44:41] Amy Westervelt: And it's created some kind of unusual bedfellows in the opposition because it's got like Sierra Club people and indigenous rights activists and like land and water defenders and then it's also got John Birch Society people who are just like they don't like it because they're using eminent domain to take land to build this pipeline. But there's this whole faction of people that are opposed to it because they are climate deniers and they're like You guys told us that this wasn't a problem, and now you want to take a bunch of people's land for a fix for this problem? And to me, I'm like, this is a really interesting rhetorical bind that the industry finds itself in now because they have been saying that it's not that big of a deal and we don't really need to do that much about it and it's all in hand.

But now they're trying to get like these billions and billions of dollars worth of tax credits for carbon capture and to like build these hydrogen hubs and there. All of these things are going to require infrastructure, which means there are going to be land use changes and all of this stuff, right?

And like,

[00:45:45] Genevieve Guenther: That is so interesting.

[00:45:47] Amy Westervelt: Yes, so I'm curious what you think about that, of what we can maybe expect to see them do to try to like, have both those things hold.

[00:45:56] Genevieve Guenther: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I see industry investments in carbon capture and carbon dioxide removal as line items in their PR budgets. And people are trying to create the carbon dioxide removal industry as a for profit industry, right?

But really it's it's it's a public utility in a way, I don't see what the profit structure would be here,

[00:46:21] Amy Westervelt: Geez, you know what it would be is, I mean, this is Would be using the carbon for enhanced oil production. Well,

[00:46:28] Genevieve Guenther: that's, but then it's not a climate solution. So if you're going to have like CDR as a climate solution, you're really only going to get that with the same politics that's going to get us the renewables transition, that's going to get us sort of less meat eating, that's actually going to be systemically transformative because nobody's going to pay for CDR, nobody's going to like get on board with CDR unless they're already on board with something Solving the climate crisis.

So I don't think oil and gas companies are too worried about that necessarily because I just think they're trying to sort of extract as much profit from our Children as they can

[00:47:07] Amy Westervelt: While they can

[00:47:08] Genevieve Guenther: while they can. But I do think that C. D. R. Advocates who are arguing That we can just use CDR to decarbonize fossil fuels, decarbonize oil, keep the system in place and not do anything disruptive, don't realize that actually building out a global CDR industry is a climate action, and it's going to take the kind of support that any kind of climate action is going to take.

So. You know,

[00:47:34] Amy Westervelt: these are big industrial facilities, too, which I feel like people forget about

[00:47:38] Genevieve Guenther: like seven stories tall with giant whirring fans. I mean, nobody wants that in their backyard. I'd rather have a solar panel.

[00:47:45] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah. Like, as it's funny because, you know, there's been some, um, community resistance to industrial scale renewables.

Some of which is very authentic to the community and I feel like this is this is a thing that like no for sure climate people didn't handle particularly well initially where it's like, yeah, like if you Move to a small town in you know, a rural County You're not It didn't it probably wasn't on your radar that you might end up living next to an

[00:48:18] Genevieve Guenther: exactly, exactly.

[00:48:20] Amy Westervelt: is actually a significant change in you know people's conception of where they live and all of that stuff and like They need to like be able to talk through that and not be accused of being like a climate whatever, right?

[00:48:32] Genevieve Guenther: Absolutely.

[00:48:33] Amy Westervelt: and like of course The energy transition needs to be equitable you know, it doesn't work if It costs people more money to use renewable energy or there are fewer jobs or any of that stuff, right? Like all of that I totally agree with, but like I, the thing that I find interesting is that, okay, so if you are in favor of CDR, where's that deep canvassing on CDR?

[00:49:01] Genevieve Guenther: Right. Well,

[00:49:02] Amy Westervelt: Cause it's gonna be the same issue.

[00:49:03] Genevieve Guenther: the same issue,

it's exactly the same

it's interesting because the most illuminating part of this climate week for me was going. To a panel on disinformation in the clean energy space, in which Timmons Roberts of Brown University and JL Halsman, the journalist at Heat Map, who's written deeply on this and a bunch of other incredibly expert and brilliant people were talking very knowledgeably about how disinformation, um, can be You know, intersects with these community engagement issues and other economic questions, et cetera, to create community resistance to these projects.

And then a few days later, I was on a panel with, leaders of industry trade groups, clean energy, Trade groups, and they were talking about their experience of being kind of confronted with disinformations like the lie that Building out wind turbines is killing whales Like this was being spread when there was literally no construction in the Atlantic at all of any turbines, right?

But by the time the industry actually came in people had already, you know, arrayed themselves against new wind projects because they thought old wind projects, which had never even been built, were killing whales. And they were just shocked by having to deal with this information pollution when they see themselves as investors who are going to create jobs and deliver value to rate payers through the grid, right?

So there's this sort of tension. Disconnect

[00:50:35] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[00:50:35] Genevieve Guenther: between researchers in the climate movement who know a lot about this issue and how to combat disinformation and then the industry who are business people and are only now beginning to realize that they are going to have to start doing this kind of community engagement.

They are going to have to start doing pre bunking. They have to put a line of for advertising in their project proposals because they actually have to go in there and sell these projects to the community because. the fossil fuel industry is there. They're there through private Facebook groups. They're there for, they find sort of vociferous, um, correct. And then they fund them, you know,

[00:51:18] Amy Westervelt: or they feed them more information, exactly, so it can get like, exactly, in a lot of these situations I feel like you end up with both things happening at the same time, where like you have some amount of like organic community level.

resistance that's then weaponized

[00:51:35] Genevieve Guenther: That's right.

[00:51:36] Amy Westervelt: who know how to weaponize

[00:51:37] Genevieve Guenther: in these community meetings, there isn't someone who's arguing for the project because the industry or the developer hasn't put someone into the community. And there's no one in the community who's actually playing that role. And, you know, they found that when community members do play that role, usually these projects go through.

like on Long Island. there were wind turbines that were built off montauk Point, and the cable for them was going to go under this very storied street in this little hamlet called Wayne Scott where like incredibly wealthy people have houses like the Lauders and you know, lots of other people. And so there was a, um, this woman, Bonnie Brady, who lives in montauk, who is just a vociferous, uh, Um, clean energy opponent and he was clearly being funded by industry. So she was out there on the front lines too. So she had industry funding, Bonnie Brady, and you had these very wealthy people arrayed against this projects cause they just didn't want this cable under the street,

But the rest of the community.

Was very, very vocally supportive of clean energy. There's actually a lot of climate change awareness on the east end of long island. And so there was a lot of, you know, conflict in the community meetings about the project, but ultimately the project went through and I find that incredibly inspiring, but it does mean that industry itself where the clean energy industry has to understand that they can't just be businessmen that they're and business women

[00:53:04] Amy Westervelt: And they can't assume.

[00:53:04] Genevieve Guenther: they're in a political battle.

[00:53:05] Amy Westervelt: Yeah. I think they had a lot of, like, pretty naive assumptions that they would be, like, welcomed with open arms. Yes. Because, like, everyone loves clean energy. You know? And it's like, um, no. That's, in fact, no. Or that, yeah, people would know that their energy bills are going to go down or whatever it is.

[00:53:23] Genevieve Guenther: don't know anything about anything.

[00:53:24] Amy Westervelt: And, the thing that they've heard the most is scary stuff. Exactly. Yeah. Their electricity is going to be intermittent. Um, that, you know, these industrial things might harm animals or land or soil or whatever. You know, like it's You

[00:53:40] Genevieve Guenther: that solar panels give off some sort of

[00:53:42] Amy Westervelt: Radiation. Radiation. Exactly. Yeah. Which, you know, again, is not to say, because I feel like is this weird way that this conversation gets polarized too. I, like, I'm fully aware of the many, many problems with rare earth mineral mining. I actually I had this like Very clearly illustrated when I was working on a story a couple years ago.

I was covering the Line three resistance in Minnesota Yeah And I was at like a resistance camp and all the people there were mostly indigenous people were packing up to go Fight the exact same fight at Thacker Pass in Nevada over a lithium mine, you know So to me, I think it is a very good example of like Having to really think through bigger structural changes so that the renewable energy does not become as extractive as the fossil fuel energy.

[00:54:36] Genevieve Guenther: And I think that this like community engagement and community building is an important part of that. absolutely essential. And I also think that clean energy developers should think about how to make their projects as beautiful as possible. I think that that's a completely legitimate concern.

[00:54:52] Amy Westervelt: Totally. You know? Yes. Because I have seen a very unfortunate kind of like, oh, these people need to like, get over it and just deal with it, which I find interesting because I'm like, this is the United States. We don't have a deep history of putting aside our personal,

[00:55:10] Genevieve Guenther: Exactly.

[00:55:12] Amy Westervelt: like, goals, well being, whatever, for the common good.

Ever. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:55:17] Genevieve Guenther: Except maybe in World War

[00:55:18] Amy Westervelt: It's not rewarded. Right. You know? But now all of a sudden you want people to just make this huge leap to, you know, I don't care about my neighborhood completely changing because it's for the greater good. That work needs to happen too.

I think actually that stuff is kind of a necessity, a necessity for, you know, for us. climate action in general, like the community building piece. I'm just like, people have got to start to think about the greater good, the common well

[00:55:49] Genevieve Guenther: It's interesting because, you know, we, we talked earlier about how there's little support phasing out fossil fuels yeah. Yeah But the same research that found that also found that if you talk to people about what and the people they love, the the places they love, what they care about. Um, and you juxtapose wanting to protect and wanting to cultivate these things that you love with pollution, which likes, then support actually does rise for fossil fuel phase out. And if I may just plug my book

[00:56:26] Amy Westervelt: please, yes.

[00:56:28] Genevieve Guenther: So I actually, um, had the messages cause so that the, the chapters are, are deep, um, investigations into fossil fuel propaganda, but they also each end with new messages that you can use in your own, you know, work about climate change or even just talking to your friends about climate change. And I had those messages poll tested by lake research

[00:56:52] Amy Westervelt: That's awesome

[00:56:53] Genevieve Guenther: and it You know, and the book is written for people who are already concerned about climate change It's not written for like, it's for people to talk to other people who are concerned about but who don't know or don't that we need to phase out fossil fuels among those people, Democrats and Republicans who are concerned about climate change, the messages in this book increase support for phasing out fossil fuels by up to 10 yeah. do shift the needle a little bit. And and that sort of, you know, shifting the I think is, basically you can ask of a book.

[00:57:28] Amy Westervelt: Totally. No, I love that. That it's like, it lays out the problem, but there are recommendations for , okay, how can we talk about this, especially cause you're right that I come across this all the time. People that genuinely are concerned, want there to be action and whatever. And then we'll immediately follow it up with like, but you know, we can't just like get off of fossil fuels, well, actually we can.

[00:57:56] Genevieve Guenther: We can. Um, I show in the second chapter of the book um on how the Rhetoric around the change. Yes benefit is fossil fuel to date that yes are going to be major investments into these transformations into new systems into modes of production and consumption. but on other side of this transformation, everybody is going to be wealthier and healthier because electricity bills will go down, our transportation bills will down, our heating bills will go down, and our health care costs Yep. Because you take the effects pollution of the American economy, if no other country decarbonizes. And the savings are something like, don't know, but since I have the book right in front of me, yes. I think can just double check it. Schindel, who's at Duke University, testified in front of Congress said that decarbonizing quickly enough to halt global heating at two degrees Celsius would, in the next 50 years prevent roughly 4. 5 million premature deaths, about 3. 5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits and approximately 300 million lost work days in the United states alone, even though us air quality is actually relatively good

[00:59:15] Amy Westervelt: Wow.

[00:59:15] Genevieve Guenther: and avoiding the sickness and death. amounts to healthcare and and labor savings of over seven hundred billion dollars per year seven hundred billion dollars per year an Amount of money that will pay for the majority of the transition to net zero. I mean, you know net not directly, of course but that's the thing. It's like, again, I feel like because of the way that cost has been Discussed and because of the way that these models have been built. There's this idea that it's just all trade off. No benefit and their benefits are Huge the trade off is the, for the industry and for the super wealthy people who are heavily invested in that industry and adjacent industries and whose life is basically, a festival of fossil fuel consumption, whether it's their yachts or their private jets or their, you know, going to the fashion collections four times a year and buying a whole new wardrobe four times a year or whatever it is.

Those are the people who are going to be facing some trade offs. But the rest of us are going to be healthier, wealthier, and guess what? We get to have a livable planet for our kids. So, you know, I don't know, to me that seems like a really good deal.

[01:00:31] Amy Westervelt: Let me ask you what I always ask people, which is like, what is the thing that you wish people would ask you about your book, that you haven't been able to talk about in interviews is there a question that you're like, man, I wish someone would ask me about this so I can talk about it.

[01:00:46] Genevieve Guenther: I mean, Weirdly, nobody asks me about China. Like I

[01:00:51] Amy Westervelt: actually wanted to ask you about that, but India too, like actually but then you get, it's hilarious to me how quickly we've gone from like, Oh, but India and China are the problem to China's taking over the solar industry.

[01:01:04] Genevieve Guenther: Well, I mean to, to they are take, they have

[01:01:06] Amy Westervelt: already taken it over. Yeah.

[01:01:08] Genevieve Guenther: I mean, they came back from the Copenhagen conference and in 2010 designated solar, . rare earth minerals, electric vehicles and environmental conservation as quote strategic emerging industries

[01:01:20] Amy Westervelt: And then just invested

[01:01:21] Genevieve Guenther: and had domestic content and deployment requirements on the subsidies. And you know, now they absolutely have cornered the markets for all of those technologies that we're we're going to need. But the thing that really blew my mind when I was researching this book that nobody talks

And even after the book came out, nobody can get their head around this is that China actually has the most comprehensive, detailed and actionable climate policy in place in the whole world. When I started researching the India and China chapter, I was really worried because I had totally bought that point, hook, line, and sinker. I was like, how? I know it can't be truthful because it's being spread by fossil fuel interests, but I don't know exactly how it's not true or whatever. And then I discovered that not only has the United States often played or invariably actually played the spoiler role in international climate negotiations, you know, know, China, in fact, once they pledged to peak their emissions at 2030 and zero them out by 2060, just put in this like all of government, all of society policy architecture that actually has real targets and a reward and punishment system in place for the bureaucracy to actually meet those targets.

So, you know know what I say? The message in that. is that if America doesn't get its proverbial tushie off the pot, we're going to have an authoritarian government dominating the economy of the post carbon society and essentially having, being in a position to set international governance norms. I mean, to Biden's credit, I think Biden recognized it, which was part of what wanted to do with ira, the inflation reduction act try to de-risk these supply chains and have american, uh, clean Clean energy manufactured domestically so that we wouldn't be in this position of being essentially like dependent on China.

[01:03:17] Amy Westervelt: No and actually it's funny because I talked to people in UK government shortly after the the IRA passed and they've they and The EU start did start to really freak out about oh shit now America is moved Yes now we're you know, and it did have that impact of like totally, you know Which in some ways, I'm like, well maybe that is the, you know, that is the market based mechanism at work.

Like, you know, they're competing whatever. I don't know.

[01:03:48] Genevieve Guenther: I like it. I think it's good. I would like people to compete. to achieve net zero first. You know, the US government has acted as the protector of corporate profits for decades now, you know, and I think we need to shift our priorities. because climate change is an existential threat.

[01:04:12] Amy Westervelt: Yeah.

[01:04:13] Genevieve Guenther: It's a timed test. test Later is too late. And, , we don't get a do-over at the end either. So I just, you

[01:04:23] Amy Westervelt: know, that's the piece I find really interesting about, about a lot of this rhetoric too, is that it does all make sense. really contribute to this idea that like, there's just sort of endless amounts of political compromise to be had, that's not actually how the atmosphere works. No,

[01:04:41] Genevieve Guenther: that's not how physics works. And that's not how time works either, you know. And I realized that political exigencies are real. The problem is, to my mind, that these political fights and the question of what we're going to compromise on and not compromise on, is taking place on an arena where we haven't agreed that we need to phase out fossil fuels, where we still think we can do both. So know. I just feel like yes to compromise, but like, you compromise on what field like there has to be kind of parameter around the debate feel like is still missing and to mind.

[01:05:21] Amy Westervelt: No, I, I totally agree. There really isn't another political issue that is similar to that. Like where actually there is a, an objective reality And real baked in consequences, no matter what, you know, it's like, of course there are consequences to policies, right?

Like, you know, the ongoing health care debate cost plenty of people money, time, health, lives. There are real consequences to that stuff. However, you can infinitely like iterate on those plans. Exactly. You know, and that's what we're trying to do. You just don't have that in this situation. No, later is too late. Yeah. And you know, I talk about this in the first chapter of the book a little bit too, that there really was this groundswell of alarm. Yeah. After that IPCC report and through the way Greta Thunberg amplified indigenous activists and the whole thing. And then this, this emerged. From the Breakthrough Yeah. That we had made much progress That now we have averted the worst-case scenario. I detailed the recent history of climate politics this rise alarm this narrative Filtering through the ecosystem that avoided case scenario and we can all exhale.

Yeah, and then I end the chapter with you know, talking about the latest science which shows that You In fact, it's turning out that the impacts of warming, how warming affects the climate system, is emerging, or the impacts are emerging, on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes. Yes. So, even if it seems like we're headed towards three degrees, Celsius of little under by It turns out that that warming is going to look a lot more like the four degrees we thought or five degrees we thought we had avoided that we had anticipated. Right. So actually we can't exhale at all.

And you see now climate deniers, like Ross Douthat, who's a loop warmer. I mean, Ross, there's no air between the position of the Breakthrough Institute and the position of Ross Douthat, and the position of someone like Matt Yglesias, who all say, yeah, climate change is real, but, you know, we can take time for markets to solve it.

We need to increase oil and gas production because Americans like that. And, um, Don't worry because we've avoided the worst case scenario. This is their take now, right? And um, it's so wrong, and it's so dangerous and I I realize that there are these, you know Waves to history and we've just been through like a global trauma with the covid19 pandemic and people have deep Crisis fatigue and we're still kind of recovering from that emotionally economically, etc But again, it's like Climate change is accelerating.

Yeah, it's here right now and you know No matter what else is going on. If you're being pushed off a cliff, you've got to find a way to stop yourself Or else you're going to go over. I really, really don't want us to go over, you know, I love my kid. Yeah. I love all of his little friends. Like I just don't want that to be what humans are on this planet.

It's interesting. Cause I feel like in a way that mismatch between, what scientists we're kind of warning about and then what they're finding. Now that it's like actually even slightly worse. I do feel like, at least for some scientists, that the discourse around alarmism, uncertainty, and all that stuff did put pressure on them to make more conservative projections.

[01:09:08] Genevieve Guenther: Totally. 100%. And I, it's like a really good example of like, the result of this stuff. Yeah. Totally. And so that's, you know, so in the first chapter where I talk about this tactic of accusing people of being alarmists, alarmists.

I talk about how there are actually lots of different positions within the climate movement and that the majority of them actually kind of reinforce or give a kind of legitimacy to the accusation that people who talk about danger are alarmists.

So you've got the lukewarmers like the Breakthrough Institute, the Matt Glacius's, et cetera, the Ross Douthats. everyone at the Wall Street Journal. And then you have the techno optimists,

optimists, someone like Hannah Ritchie, who is very aware of how much danger we're in, but feels that it's more effective to point to what's Um, hopeful. And to kind of create a sense of can-do optimism? And you know, not every message works for everybody, so there might be a role for that in the discourse. But yeah, she also kind of, at least in some of her writings around her book, not the end of the world, she also sort of bashes, people who exaggerate the dangers or seem a little bit emotionally unstable to kind of distance

Her climate discourse from them, but I feel like what an unintended consequence of that strategy Is to end up downplaying dangers in a that's ultimately unhelpful

So it's very complicated and then you've got the scientists as you just said Who are like? You know being so scrupulous because this is a tactic of the deniers to pounce on any little error or any little misspeaking and like the person to try to make them seem untrustworthy as the Breakthrough Institute just did with me.

Um, and they don't ever want to exaggerate because now they want to just say only what they can absolutely back up a hundred percent. And also like Science is supposed to be this dispassionate, objective endeavor. So they're just like, it's over determined for them to err on the side of least drama.

But then what ends up happening there is that they too in a way end up reinforcing the message that people who talk about the dangers of are just like either emotionally unstable or like trying to manipulate everyone into accepting socialism or whatever, you know? So, it's a very messy and complicated media ecosystem, but I just feel like there's no way to read the scientific research to trace what's already happening on our planet and not feel fear.

And I feel like, you know, fear was motivating for me. That's what got me into the climate movement. And I know a lot of people. Became active around climate change after they read David Wallace Wells's book the uninhabitable earth because it scared them. Yeah, so Fear can be motivating, you know, and also it's not even like A question of whether it's instrumentally positive or not.

It's like When people feel bad things you have to see that and validate that and acknowledge that Because part of what feeds into denial is just like feeling overwhelmed and alone. It's like You You know, I didn't fly for a while because I just felt like it just felt bad. But then at a certain point, like I was like the only one not flying, it felt like.

And you, yeah, nothing is worse than feeling like you're alone. You're out on like a crusade on your own. And so like, I'm not saying that people need to stop playing. I'm just saying that sometimes even just thinking about climate change or talking about it in your social circles will make you feel like you're alone or something.

Yeah. And like, you're not alone. Vast majorities of people in this country are concerned or alarmed about climate change, and they don't know that other people are, but like, yeah, people are, um, and it's, oh, it's, it's, and what I say ultimately in the end of this chapter on alarmism, it's not a symptom of emotional weakness to feel this fear.

It's a symptom of courage. It's a sign that you are brave enough to look at the science to see what it implies, to And then not to look away to stay with that and to kind of engage with it because you want to fight against these interests that are willing to trash our miracle of a planet just to make some more money for a few more years. It's courage and courage is a really important virtue and you should embrace it