[00:00:22] Welcome to Hot Take podcast, where we talk about how to talk about the art of storytelling in the age of the climate crisis, because it ain't easy. I'm Amy Westervelt.

[00:00:32] And I'm Mary Annaise Heglar. This episode is part three of our Frump era review where we take a look back at the year in climate coverage. We've already done 2016, 2017 and 2018. And this time we're doing 2019.

[00:00:47] I have to say, I'm actually really glad this is our last year in review episode for a while because oh my God, it's so much material. Man, in the first episode,  2016/2017, we had to really hunt and peck for climate stories.. But  2019 was a deluge.

[00:01:04] We know we've had topainfully strip out stories that we wanted to include.

[00:01:10] Yeah, it's tough. Oh yeah, it really was.

[00:01:15] So just as a reminder to our listeners to think of this episode as a collection of snippets from the year, we are very aware that there's a lot of great climate writing that we just simply couldn't get it.

[00:01:26] Totally. Yeah. And after this episode, we're going current for the rest of 2020.

[00:01:30] That means we'll be coming to you roughly every two weeks to discuss the climate conversation. Except not in January. We're only gonna be doing one episode that month  toward the end of the month because Amy has some really exciting news.

[00:01:47] It's true, I do! And if you want to know what it is, you have to listen all the way to the end of this show.

[00:01:54] Trust me, it's gonna be worth it. All right. We've got a lot to get through this episode. And if you want to follow along, all the articles are linked in our show notes and on our Twitter at Real Hot Take, which you should follow if you're not.

[00:02:07] And without further ado, let's get this show started. All right.

[00:02:19] OK, let's get started with the major climate events of the year, because there were just so many all over the globe from the protest, the elections to COP and even major changes within the fossil fuel industry.

[00:02:31] Yeah, it was a really big year. This was the year that the climate strikes really took off on March 15th, for example, the Ides of March, which, you know, I'm amazed I didn't see more signs about the eyes. Beware the Ides of March.

[00:02:46] Ides, tides, come on, people these puns themselves.

[00:02:50] You know, it's mostly eighth-graders. I don't know if they're like really into like, you know, Julius Caesar. But on that day, there were 1.6 million students all over 120 countries on strike. It's amazing.

[00:03:08] I don't know how many people there were in New York by. No, I had I live in New York and I had never seen a protest that big. It was so crowded that as soon as I got off the subway downtown, I had no cell phone signal. And the only other time I've experienced that at a demonstration was at the women's march, the very first women's march. I've never experienced that at any climate related demonstration ever. And I've been to it. Wow. Right. I mean, to the people's climate march down in D.C. a couple of years ago. That was not the case at all.

[00:03:42] Then there were also the Black Friday protests were really big. And then also there were strikes every single Friday, every single Friday.

[00:03:51] And there was these were just like a couple of the big ones. These are not even all of the big ones. So, yeah, this the student movement was huge this year. There was also major protest at Google and Amazon and Microsoft from the workers there.

[00:04:04] And then there were a couple that weren't necessarily climate, but they weren't not climate, because nothing's is not climate. Puerto Rico overthrew its governor and that had at least something to do with Hurricane Maria.

[00:04:20] They were cracking jokes about the dead bodies that accumulated during and shudder of broken Maria at the understaffed morgue. Shut the fuck up. No. And this also with this financial officer, guy joked. Now, don't we have some cadavers to feed our crows and my crew, my crows. He was referring to the critics of the administration. He said, don't we have some cadavers to feed our crows? Clearly, they need attention.

[00:04:51] So like these guys, we're just being really callous about, like, you know, people they're supposed to represent who died in a terrible disaster. And like, you know. Yeah. On top of. Yes. Also some pretty leg virulent misogyny. And so. Yeah.

[00:05:21] There was also, you know, the protest there still ongoing in Chile. And the protests in Hong Kong, which are also still going.

[00:05:32] And there's the coup in Bolivia.

[00:05:35] Other big protests, which is also still ongoing, was in Hawaii around Monica. And this is actually a protest that's been kind of going on and off since 2014, which I don't know if people totally realize, like it got way more attention this time than it has in previous iterations.

[00:05:55] So, yeah, no one noticed bugs. Yeah. Yeah. So I was actually on the big island when the first protests over this telescope happened.

[00:06:05] That was in 2014 and then again in 2015. And I was back there again in July 2019 for this one. So it's been going on a long time. Like the the gist of it is that there are already several massive telescopes on Monaca monarchies, a sacred mountain for native Hawaiians. It's also an ecologically sensitive area. And those like it's no coincidence that those two things go hand in hand. Like, that's generally why things are sacred in indigenous cultures. It's not just like an arbitrary thing.

[00:06:41] You know, it's not like you can move either. Like you just move your sacred site so we can have it's. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:06:48] Exactly. And so and like the the protesters have always been incredibly pragmatic about it. Like there's been this kind of ongoing attempt to paint them as being sort of like, you know, people who are anti-science or this idea of it's like, oh, it's like, you know, Hawaiian mythology versus science. And it's like, no, like they have said, look, we're not saying. You need to remove all the telescopes that are already there. We're just saying like there's no need to cause more damage to the mountain. And one of the main things like actually the guy who kind of organized these protests initially is a guy named Lana Kaela Manguel. And he like like I spent some time with him. And he was explaining to me that, like, he's like, you know, that telescope that they want to build, the whole purpose of it is to look for other habitable planets.

[00:07:45] And he's like, we have not taken responsibility for this planet. Why the fuck should we, like, destroy a sacred site to look for another planet when, like, we have failed to, like, take responsibility for how we use this one? And I was like, good point, man.

[00:08:02] Like, OK. So they're trying to paint the the indigenous folks as being like anti-science and some kind of like, fantastical.

[00:08:12] Meanwhile, you're out here looking for a new planet to live on.

[00:08:14] Yes. Yes. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The whole cosmology of how indigenous Hawaiians view the land and the resources and whatever is that. Everything is connected. And so even the way that they would historically divide up land to give. You know, this land to this person or that land to that person or whatever was always in what they call apush, which are like these pie slices that include mountain flatlands and coast. So that like you have to worry about the impact. What you're doing up the mountain has down at the coast, you know, which is like brilliant deals, land super logical and like not at all how, you know, the mainland divides. So anyway, I'm I'm kind of like, actually and this is something that Lynn Akeela was saying to. He's like, you know, actually, Hawaiians have a very good understanding of science and biology and ecosystems and what you guys call mythology. You know, it was just like our early science. It was our stories for understanding the ecosystems around us and how to take care of them.

[00:09:23] I mean, what if they understand Earth's site? They've understood Earth sciences for so many millennia that, you know, it's not exactly knowledge is not data.

[00:09:33] Is intuition at this exact. Well, the way that generations write, like that's what you call generational knowledge.

[00:09:41] Yes. Yes. And for Hawaiians, it goes even deeper than that, where they consider themselves geni logically attached to nature.

[00:09:51] That makes so much sense. Yeah. Should any human being be attached exactly like nature? Isn't this thing that's separate from us? Right. Like, you know, of course we're part of the environment. So. Right. Man versus nature is an oxymoron. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So. So, you know, I would encourage people to like look for Hawaiian voices on this because they're definitely there was actually quite a bit of coverage of the protests. And I noticed like a lot of parachute journalism where people come in for like a week or a weekend and then peace out and like, you know. Hmm. This excerpt that I'm going to read is from a story that ran in Indian Country today shortly after the protest started.

[00:10:33] It's by a Leha Chavez and Alea is Pueblo, not Hawaiian. But she interviewed some of my favorite sources, hummus, including Loubna Chela and a climate scientist named Katie Kamilla. Maila, who I thought like just covered this stuff really well on Twitter and is continuing to do so.

[00:10:53] So if you want to follow her, she's at K T.S.A. bhm. So Katy BAMN but as Katie E-A bhm on Twitter, also the headline of this story is amazing.

[00:11:06] It says Kanaka Malli. That's the term that native Hawaiians used to refer to themselves. Don't mistake our aloha for weakness.

[00:11:15] I love it. I know. I was like, yes, I like it.

[00:11:23] Protesters are following a sacred mandate called Coppo Aloha and committing to nonviolence. They ask people to, quote, keep good energy by refraining from being too loud or belligerent. Other guidelines include no drugs and alcohol at the site. Amongst other things, we are genea logically connected to this mountain, says Lonna Chela among Manguel, 32. We four we refer to the Mouna as a Peko, which is a focal point of spiritual power. The telescope is proposed to be nearly 18 stories high and will cost 1.4 billion dollars. It will sit next to thirteen other astronomical observatories atop the mountain if successfully constructed the comm.

[00:12:08] I know that's the thing. It's like there's already 13. The conflict.

[00:12:14] Yeah, the conflict on monarchial is not about Hawaiians versus science. Native climate scientists Katie Kamilla, Urmila said it's about the state breaking their own laws, protocols and commitments. So I should say here too, that the reason that there are so many these observatories is a top Monaca is that it's one of the clearest places in the world to view stars because there's no light pollution.

[00:12:43] It's a really special. It's very interesting, too, because it it has kind of dovetailed with the Hawaiian independence movement in some ways where, you know, there's there's a little there's an interesting thing in Hawaii where like some people want Hawaii to be its own independent country again. And there's an interesting kind of debate about whether they should be recognized as a tribe or seek independence entirely. And a lot of and there's actually really heated arguments between people on both sides of that of that divide. But the monarchy is stuff. Puerto Rico. Exactly. Yeah. Very similar. Yeah. But the monarchy is stuff like very much kind of kicked off more discussions around that because it's like, see, this is why we need to have our own control over our land. And you're seeing that, of course, on like various other indigenous lands, too. It's the same kind of thing that we're seeing across the country.

[00:13:43] So, yeah, anyway. Yeah, that's really interesting. There are also a couple of really big elections in 2019. Most recently there was the election in the UK where were born.

[00:13:59] Affectionately disaffection really known as Boto one prime minister in the UK. Yeah, that sucked.

[00:14:06] That's not what it. That's why that sucks Amy. Because I don't think I've got the words.

[00:14:11] I mean he you know, he was one of the main Brexiteers. He has done a lot of shady stuff.

[00:14:19] Like he's suppressed a report about possible Russian involvement in Brexit until after the election, which just seemed like super, super shady. He has given lip service to climate stuff, but never actually done anything. So there's not not very high hopes that he'll be like the guy that makes climate policy happen. You get a strangely anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant anti-migrant, which I think also kind of does relate to some of the climate induced migration patterns that we've been seeing over the past several years. Global leadership that consists of Morrison in Australia, Trump in the U.S., Bojo in the UK, both NRO angered.

[00:15:01] None of that is good for climate, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The other big election was in Canada where that was starting to look a little bit dicey about whether Justin Trudeau was going to win. And look, I am not a fan of Justin Trudeau. This is honestly one of the first times I've ever actually said his name. Right.

[00:15:21] And because I feel like he gives a lot of lip service to climate and then doesn't deliver on it. I mean, like, he really lost me when he was like, what country in the world we have this much oil and not dig it up us fucking same one just in a fucking sane one, not one that does not want to commit genocide.

[00:15:42] How about that? That's that's the fucking country. Except your country was built on genocide. But OK. Totally.

[00:15:49] I feel like he gets a pass ferral frank from a lot of Americans for like just being not as bad as Trump.

[00:15:56] You know, like you like has like a socially progressive and leg, you know, whatever.

[00:16:02] And I'm just like, yep, his policy is fucking suck. And also, like, I think Americans kind of like to believe that that like Canada's not as racist and like not as shitty.

[00:16:13] Oh my god, yeah, we love ya. But I'm like new. It's still pretty bad, though. Pretty bad. Yeah. I also I think he gets. Pass because he's. You know, people think he's handsome. But we need to just go ahead and Aciego ourselves that he looks like a slightly. He's Ted Cruz with a better cheekbone. He's like Ted Cruz's slightly better looking brother. Yes, you're right. Totally. He's like a little bit taller. Maybe in a better shape. You know, like he's not that attractive. Can we call him Justin Crusoe? Yes. Yes, we can call him that. Oh, my fucking God. I can't believe I didn't think of that before. That's his name. That is his name right now. Okay. Bye. All things being equal, though.

[00:16:59] He was better than his opponent by a mile. Yeah. For the climate. For the country. For. For everything else. Even though homeboy did blackface.

[00:17:09] How do we get to this point where the dude with the blackface is the one I'm rooting for? Like everybody putting me in this position. I'm rooting for the tar sands champion who wears a black face.

[00:17:24] Anyway, I I I do still have hope that he's going to use his second term to be a better climate champion to act like he has some fucking sense to get all the shoe polish out of his house and office space like homeboy.

[00:17:39] This is a second chance you have to fucking redeem yourself, ok? Yeah. So yeah. That's where I'm at with that. Yeah. Okay.

[00:17:46] So that is actually a good segway into talking about some of the changes at the oil and gas industry went through in 2009, which was one of the first shifts that we've seen in quite a while.

[00:18:01] Of of its major capital investments slightly away from refining or fracking and not as their ads would have you believe, into algae, biofuels or carbon capture her, but into making plastic just recently. And in 2019, they started to really shift more of their investments into not just the petrochemicals market, which they've always been in. That's like supplying petroleum based chemicals to plastic manufacturers and various other manufacturers that use those chemicals, but also actually into building factories that make plastic themselves. And they're doing this in two ways. One is what are called crude to plastic factories. So where they're taking like actual petroleum and turning it into plastic. And the other is what they call ethylene cracker facilities. So these are setup generally next to or very close by. Fracking well pads because ethylene ism is emitted from fracking sites and they can capture that and basically take it through a whole process that turns it into a key component of plastic. And so because they're doing it because they're using like part of the emissions from fracking to do this or whatever, they're totally trying to spin that plastic in particular as like a green material, which is like just ridiculous because on top of the fact that, you know, it still creates plastic, which is like an inherently unsustainable. Also, these facilities emit just an enormous amount of CO2. You know, if just the factories that have been permitted so far in the U.S. are allowed to move forward, that will totally negate the emissions gains we've made on coal in the last five years, which is fucking criminal. It makes me so angry. And it like really infuriates me that like that this is what they're actually doing. And that like I'm just I'm not seeing that much about it. Like, I'm seeing some really good coverage of it, but I'm not seeing a lot of awareness of the issue in even like very knowledgeable environmental circles. The absolute last thing we need is for fossil fuel companies to be investing in yet a new way to generate more emissions.

[00:20:21] You know, it seems unnecessary to me, right, like it is. It doesn't make sense. It's like, why do we have to be on this deathwish with you?

[00:20:30] The only reason for it is to deliver profits to fossil fuel companies. That is the only reason for it. It absolutely makes no sense at all.

[00:20:39] And like it like you are going to die, too. Right. So where the fuck are you going to spend this money? And on what? Who's going to be alive to sell it to you? It's like, what the fuck is the point of all of his money?

[00:20:51] It is crazy. It's crazy. So anyway, there's a journalist named Jim Bugger's who's been a champion reporter on coal for ever, like he's been at it for, you know, decades. And he wrote a really great piece about this for InsideClimate News, where he talks about plastic being like the new coal in Appalachia.

[00:21:11] Honestly, I want to just like read this entire piece to every like, really freakin important. And I just feel I'm just like, how are people not seeing this ad?

[00:21:20] Oh, yeah. So I just. If there's like one, it's totally been my soapbox lately to like tell people about this, and I'm I'm genuinely surprised by how many people I know who are like very climate aware and don't know that this is happening. Well, there's a really good job of obscuring it. Yeah, they do. And I just I feel like, okay, you know what? Like, we have a very narrow window here where, like, this doesn't have to happen. This is a thing that we could stop. Yeah. And not have to like go back and undo.

[00:21:54] I know a lot of climate advocates who think that the plastic problem is like is horrible, but it is kind of a distraction from the bigger threat, which is climate change. It's actually like incredibly intertwined.

[00:22:11] So yeah there is also. Cop twenty five. Okay. And what cop is it stands for the United Nations Conference of the Parties. It is the biggest international climate conference. We call it COP 25 because it's the 25th. Such conference is held every year around November, December, and it's where all of these heads of state and diplomats from all over the world get together to decide how are we going to tackle climate change beyond depressing that that's been going on for 25 fucking years in what are where we are like staring down the barrel of a fiery death, OK?

[00:22:43] The most famous one was in 2015. It was held in Paris.

[00:22:47] And that is where we got the Paris agreement, which was this much vaunted multilateral agreement between pretty much every country on earth except two at the time now, except three because the United States pulled out.

[00:23:02] It was not ambitious enough. We all know that now. And I think pretty much everybody, when I ever remember the climate community knew that at the time. But it felt like a win because it was the first time these people had come to a table and decided to do anything and where it actually looked like they were going to do it. And it looked so promising because the United States was leading and the United States as the second biggest emitter today and by far the biggest emitter historically. That's critical.

[00:23:33] However, we we've lost that since then. So that makes the cops after 2015 all the more important.

[00:23:40] And it was a lot of like biting your nails and seeing what's going to happen.

[00:23:44] So COP 25 was originally set to be held in Brazil, but then wasnâ€t who is a climate goon, shall we say, was not have an encounter. So then it was moved to Chile.

[00:24:00] But as we were just talking about, the civil unrest in Chile meant that they couldn't host at There,. So eventually they moved it to Madrid. And for a second there was like, are we gonna have cop or not?

[00:24:11] Like we really didn't know. But they moved it to Madrid and Spain, which is, you know, the colonial father of Chile. So I kind of had, you know, a riveting and not meeting at the same time.

[00:24:23] And to put it mildly, it was a cluster fuck.

[00:24:27] Yeah, an absolute cluster fuck. I mean, it was really bad. I just I kept it.

[00:24:33] All I saw about Cop 25 as it was happening was like youth protesters taking to Twitter to talk about how they were being like chased out of places. I'm like generally abused by police. And I was like, what the fuck?

[00:24:48] Like Vidya, we're doing this like, yeah, are you kidding me? Yeah.

[00:24:52] And not just youth, but also especially indigenous leaders were being pushed out or not even allowed in.

[00:25:00] And like at one point, I remember like they they had some events and they weren't going to like allow the indigenous folks in the room. They weren't going to allow them to speak until Gretta umberg herself was like, no, you're going to let them speak.

[00:25:17] So like, you've got this Grétar, this remarkable young woman, but a teenager showing the U.N. how to be a good ally.

[00:25:28] All right. It's fucking pathetic. I mean, like it's just shout a Grado for doing that is really fucked up that that's on her shoulders. Yeah, it's insane.

[00:25:40] It's insane. So as our resident old climate lady, I have to add a note right now. I'm 41. Yes, exactly.

[00:25:50] Emina, just so so I mean, actually, one of the one of the first cops that generated the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which was actually far more ambitious than Paris and would have been binding, which none of the agreements that have that have been discussed at any of these things since have have been that's the wildest part.

[00:26:12] They're not binding. That was in 1997 and the U.S. basically. The U.S. initially was like all in on it, and then George W. Bush comes along. And before that, a massive and incredibly well-funded industry effort kicks in. And the U.S., after like agreeing to it, refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The extent to which this history just continues to repeat itself is quite frustrating. You know, like, you know, we had a lot of the same kind of story line around Kyoto where it's like the US was going to be a leader. Awareness was really high. Public opinion was very much behind actually acting on global warming. It looked like there was, you know, kind of the political will in place to really make something happen. And then the industry kicked into gear and just like buried it. And and you see the fucking exact story play out with Paris, you know, more than 20 years later. So it's. Yeah. It's just it's incredibly depressing to watch and.

[00:27:25] And and that's sort of the focus of this piece that we are going to read from from Katie letterer. It showed up and plus one. And it's honestly the only piece that ever seen written about this whole process that like was genuinely a pleasure to read.

[00:27:43] Like, I chuckled out, laughed, which is nothing I ever thought I would do, reading, reading about like this very wonky thing. So here is a little snippet from that.

[00:27:57] It's framework is based on the one that produced the Montreal Protocol. The agreement put together to address the growing hole in the ozone layer. But unlike the Montreal Protocol, which was ultimately successful, the results of the cop have been a bust. Why do those who convene an underrated keep promoting it as a platform for, quote, ambitious climate action? The cop has officially been talking since March 1995, when it met in Berlin for the first half of this month.

[00:28:25] It was talking for the 25th time in Madrid. What is the definition of insanity again?

[00:28:33] Famous cops have included Kyoto number three, which the U.S. refused to ratify. From which then President George W. Bush withdrew in 2001. Copenhagen number fifteen, which tanked when the U.S. and other large economies failed to hammer out a deal. And, of course, Paris, number 21, where in a show of audacious optimism, world leaders set the goal of keeping warming well below a 2 degrees Celsius threshold. The widely received baseline, this after 20 years of failed negotiations. At the time, there was reason to be hopeful about Paris. It helped that the U.S. president was then a person who accepted the reality of global warming. But it wasn't only about politics, red states versus blue or increase trust in climate scientists. It was also about advances in clean energy technologies. Renewable generation like wind and solar had in many regions reached price parity with fossil fuels, a development that seemed to promise a dramatic market tipping point. Bankers were eager to expand into new markets, ones that wouldn't contribute to the heating of the earth. The concept of, quote, stranded assets, fossil fuel assets that would be rendered nearly worthless by global action to fight climate change had been widely taken up. If politics and diplomacy had been unable to address climate change for over 20 years, then perhaps market disruption finally would. But as the markets for low carbon technology and energy efficiency have grown, fossil fuel interests have come over the top.

Transcription

2019 brought an explosion of climate coverage in a variety of forms, and from the broadest coalition of voices yet. The movement grappled with gatekeepers and finally looked honestly at its racist past. Good thing too, because with increasing disasters, growing eco-fascism, and a total absence of global political leadership on climate, we need all hands on deck. It's go time.

News Maven: Kanaka Maoli: Don't Mistake our Aloha for Weakness

Inside Climate News: Plastics—The New Coal in Appalachia? 

The Guardian I'm the 13-year-old Police Threatened to Arrest at the Kirribilli House Protest. This Is Why I Did It

The Guardian: European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth's climate 

Vice: The Environmental Movement Needs to Reckon with Its Racist History

Black Women Are Leaders in the Climate Movement

S1, Ep5 | Jan 2020: No Chill, with Meera Subramanian

S1, Ep4 | 2019: It’s Go Time

Hot Take is a holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. Hosted by real-life friends Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt—an essayist and a journalist— Hot Take offers a unique perspective on the issue of climate change. With a breath of fresh humanity and humor, conversation moves swiftly from cackling about the bad week an oil company had, to speaking seriously and passionately about the unequal distribution of climate impacts and our own experiences of climate grief. And then washing it down with a round of dad jokes! Every week, we’ll connect you with the latest climate news and with the journalists and storytellers trying to make sense of this complex issue to help you see the world through climate-colored glasses. We ended production on Hot Take at the end of 2022, but you can still access episodes here, or 

A holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it.

S1, Ep4 | 2019: It’s Go Time

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S1, Ep5 | Jan 2020: No Chill, with Meera Subramanian