S1, Ep4 | 2019: It’s Go Time

Amy Westervelt [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.

Mary Heglar [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.

Amy Westervelt [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.

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

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

Mary Heglar [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.

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

Mary Heglar [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.

Amy Westervelt [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.

Mary Heglar [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.

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

Amy Westervelt [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.

Mary Heglar [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.

Mary Heglar [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.

[00:04:18] Yeah, yeah.

[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.

[00:05:15] So if that's so wild. 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.

[00:13:58] Huh.

[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.

[00:17:21] Fuck all y'all.

[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.

[00:21:53] Yeah.

[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.

[00:22:08] So intertwined. Yeah.

[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.

[00:30:07] And she goes on to sort of explain like what the hell happened and why this process has been just such a failure. But it's like it's it's a great overview of, like, you know, these 25 meetings and why they failed and also of like, you know, the context in which they've been happening and and all of that stuff.

[00:30:28] So, yeah, I wonder. Yeah, I wonder if we're even going to have them anymore in the future, to be quite honest, just because I mean I just see such a waste of time and money. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. The emissions to have them are clearly not worth it. Right.

[00:30:43] Because everybody gets to fly their fly their big conferences which like have a big footprint and like there's also always really big protests outside them. So like the country that host them has to do a bunch of like prep and security work and whatever to prevent any kind of, you know, violence and whatnot.

[00:31:04] So yeah, I mean it feels like the Olympics to me in that way where it's sort of like maybe we don't need to. Yeah, it's so.

[00:31:15] And and the big is going back to the Paris agreement. As the biggest achievement, I guess, of any cop. Yeah, there is some news about that this year, too, from the Trump administration, right?

[00:31:30] Yeah. So, you know, Trump promised to pull out of the Paris Accord in his campaign. Then he announced that he was pulling out like, you know, shortly after his inauguration. But it was actually just sort of like a lot of show, because officially a country can't formally even begin to withdraw until three years after the agreement went into effect. So for the United States, that was November 4th, 2019, which is why I bet they really know that.

[00:32:04] So that. Well, yeah. Happy birthday officially out now. Oh, yeah.

[00:32:12] But even still, the United States isn't quite out yet. It takes another year from the withdrawal notice, which was given in November 4th, 2019, to become official.

[00:32:23] So actually, the U.S. won't formally pull out of Paris until one day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which is really easy cause. But like depending on who's elected, they could just say, like, actually, just kidding.

[00:32:38] We're not true. They see here's the thing.

[00:32:43] I and I actually like I remember when Trump was elected and we had, you know, the Paris agreement was barely a year old at that point.

[00:32:52] And I remember hearing a lot of folks say, like, well, he actually can't pull out of the Paris agreement because of like all this all these hoops that you just described. And, you know, the way they were talking about that was like this was just some mastermind move by by President Obama and and by the U.N. It's like actually, I think it exposes the weaknesses of the Paris agreement, actually, quite.

[00:33:13] Let's not bind the not fucking binding. It's just like a big ass international pinkie square. It doesn't mean anything. It means that you can stay in it and not do a motherfucking thing. And just like put it on your resume. Like saying proficient in Microsoft Word, it doesn't mean anything. So I just lay it.

[00:33:36] That's not evidence of playing the long game. That's evidence of playing the weak game.

[00:33:41] Yep. So is ISIS. I don't know. I know. I know. It's it's depressing. It is super. It may be no more cops in the future. I don't know. Maybe something better. It could be a video call. Yeah. Can we do a zoom calls just like that? Yeah. The just as like a little side note, the Montreal Protocol is actually something that people point to a lot as an example of actually successful global action on climate and environment problem. And that was the ozone issue where, you know, we phased out basically all of these these chemicals that were contributing to the ozone problem. The big difference there, of course, is like those chemicals weren't the center of like the energy infrastructure. Yeah, it's a lot more niche. Yeah, exactly. But it is an example of a time when like many countries came together and dealt with an industrial problem that was creating a global environmental issue. So, you know, a tiny silver lining. Yes.

[00:34:52] So it's so tiny. You might miss it. All right.

[00:35:07] And we can't talk about 2018 without talking about the many, many, many disasters that year, which honestly is a sentence you can say about any year in recent memory to tell the truth. I know last episode we talked a lot about the language around disasters and how natural doesn't really fit, but also doesn't not fit. So for the purposes of this show, we're just going to call this segment not just natural disasters. Actually, after our last show, we had a really interesting exchange about this sort of nomenclature on Twitter with Samantha montejano, who is really smart disaster expert.

[00:35:42] And it seems that the jury is still out on the perfect term, like we still don't have it. So just know that as we discuss these events, we understand them all to be intensified and influenced by climate change. Yes, we know that forest fires happened before, but nothing like this. Yes, we know the hurricanes happened before, but Dorian was quite literally off the track. So just keep that in mind as we go through this. So, yeah. First there was I'm just gonna go through like a list of some of the disasters of this year. It's not comprehensive. In March, we had Typhoon Day, which killed more than 900 people in in Africa, mostly in Mozambique in June 2013.

[00:36:22] There is a major heat wave in India with at least 90 people dead. There was in July 2019, there are these heatwaves that killed more than 160 people. That's a lot. In August, there's Typhoon Keam. I hope I'm seeing that right. Killed 172 people in China. One of the most arresting disasters of this year was Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.

[00:36:45] Some of the survivors stories from Dorien were just so incredibly harrowing.

[00:36:51] You know, you had people who were like, you know, scrambling from building to building and literally swimming from rooftop to rooftop to try to find something. They even kind of felt like shelter. There's a guy on Twitter called Josh Moverman who like chases cyclones, which, you know, kind of sounds kind of crazy.

[00:37:08] He was there for Dorian and he was really shook up from what he experienced. There,.

[00:37:14] And this is the guy who, like, goes to hurricanes on purpose. He's on a ray ray. Right. Like if you're freaking him out, this is really serious.

[00:37:23] And the other thing about the Bahamas versus Puerto Rico is like we absolutely did not help Puerto Rico. The way that we should have is criminal is unforgivable, the way that Puerto Rico was left to suffer after Maria.

[00:37:35] But it's also true that Maria did get more help than the Bahamas because it is part of the United States. And that is really sad. Yeah.

[00:37:47] It says the U.N. estimates 76000 people were left homeless after the hurricane and in the Bahamas, that's crazy.

[00:37:56] There were not a lot of structures left standing after Dawran. And I was looking for like some personal essays of like firsthand experiences during Dorian to read an excerpt on a show. It is actually quite hard to find. And I think that that speaks to the very serious trauma.

[00:38:16] Well and the displacement of people. I mean, I like how are you gonna handle it? They're not going to be writing an essay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. The other big disaster in 2019, of course, is still ongoing, and that is the Australian brushfire season, which is just continuing to be horrific. I mean, all the reports keep saying that it's just going to get worse.

[00:38:40] It is going on right now, going on right now.

[00:38:43] And they're just predicting more and more, you know, hot temperatures, what dry winds, all the things that make fires worse. So as we're taping in, you know, January 2020, so far, 10 people have died. And in the worst affected state, New South Wales, fires have burned more than 3 million hectares, which is 7.4 million acres, destroyed more than 800 houses.

[00:39:11] So to put that in perspective, in the 2018 California wildfire season, which is the one that, you know, brought us the camp fire, which burned down the town of Paradise and all that, 1.8 million hectares burned. So about twice as much as the worst California wildfire season.

[00:39:28] And I mean, I'm sure it's gotten worse since then because, you know, these these stats are updated daily with more and more acres burning and people injured and all of that. It's horrific. Like every single picture that comes out of there with these like hazy pink skies. And, you know, so many people being evacuated and people, you know, camping out on the beach or on the docks so that they can jump in the water if the fire comes toward them.

[00:39:56] I mean, it's it's people were like hiding out in lakes, like know with their babies. I mean, it's it's really it is the. Of of actual nightmares. And yeah.

[00:40:09] And it's also coming on the heels of the Amazon fires, which went from August to October of 2019.

[00:40:18] So you you might have seen this video of a young girl being threatened by police for protesting in Australia, like the fires, you know, have been going on for months. People are starting to get more and more pissed off, especially at the fact that their prime minister, who is a total climate denier, left the country and went on vacation in Hawaii during all of this, which I will never stop fucking nerve. Like that's the most cowardly shit in the world.

[00:40:50] Oh, my God, yes.

[00:40:52] So that kicked off a lot of protests at his house. Basically, the the policeman is like right in the face of this very young girl. And her children are terrified. Yes, she's 13 and like and she just looks terrified, you know, and like this big cop is like really getting in her face. And he's telling her if she doesn't leave, he will remove her and her dad by force. And she starts to cry and he's going like, do you understand me, Izzy? And she's like, okay, you okay? We'll leave. And her dad is like, yeah, yeah, we'll leave, believe. And so this video went viral and made a lot of people in Australia and beyond kind of be like, what are we doing? Look at what we're doing to the kids, blah, blah, blah. But what I loved was that a couple days after this video, like this girl is he ends up writing an op ed in The Guardian where she's just like totally like guns blazing. Fuck you guys.

[00:41:46] Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, it was really amazing. So I'm going to read a little from that.

[00:41:56] Many people have asked me what motivated me to drag my dad on a one hour bus trip to Kirribilli House on one of the hottest days of summer. My answer, our politicians denial and the inaction of our government and our prime minister there, denial has gone on for far too long. I am tired, tired of the lies and misdirection. I'm tired of watching my future, my friends and my family's future. All of our futures burned before our very eyes. How dare Scott Morrison race off to Hawaii during Australia's time of crisis?

[00:42:29] What we need is a prime minister who acknowledges that this isn't another normal fire season and that the cause of this is climate change.

[00:42:37] Lives and homes have been taken while Morrison lives on a tropical beach with his head in the sand.

[00:42:44] She's 13, folks. She's 30. Yes. Also, just a little addition here that Australians are now calling Scott Morrison's skomal for it. So we have Skomal and Bojo, Joe the fucking clowns. They are clowns.

[00:43:03] It is a claim is like the fucking clown car of climate goons.

[00:43:08] It really is. The California wildfire season has seemed like relatively tame in comparison.

[00:43:16] We haven't even really heard much about it. But even still, it is. You know, it's it's seemed like California got off easy this year and more than 7000 firefighters actually close to eight thousand fires. It has cost 163 million dollars in suppression. Five people have died. Twenty two people have been non fatally injured. So, you know, it's not nothing. But compared to the absolute catastrophe in Australia and in the Amazon, you know, it's it's seemed like California got off easy this year.

[00:44:01] OK. Time to get into the themes and trends from 2019. This is the part of the show where we look at some general shifts in the climate conversation in terms of what types of media were being used and some new topics that were introduced in 2019. We saw a lot of really important shifts. Yes. So we're going to start by talking about how climate media in general has just like massively expanded.

[00:44:28] Yeah, we kind of found out the hard way when we were doing the research for this show. They're like, oh, shit. It ain't just a couple of articles you like.

[00:44:37] You got your newsletters, your podcasts, your TV show. I mean, it's flares lit every Arie's.

[00:44:43] Yeah, there's a lot a lot, a lot of lotto. And then of course, we had the climate townhalls happening too, in lieu of a climate debate which the DNC refused to hold.

[00:44:54] Yeah, but there was a major push for that. Right. I was amazed, gentlemen, even to see how much energy there was behind having a climate debate.

[00:45:03] And yet, even though they decided not to have it, the networks decided to have a climate townhall.

[00:45:08] And there was also an environmental justice townhall. So, yeah, I know.

[00:45:13] Which is huge. I mean, that is really huge.

[00:45:14] And I have to say, the stark contrast between 10 candidates being able to speak relatively eloquently and in detail about man versus like no one even being asked a single question about it at 60, you know, is like, wow. I mean, at least we've we've got that going.

[00:45:36] I don't know. Yeah. To me, it really exposes the journalistic negligence for not pushing this issue sooner.

[00:45:43] Yeah, the the networks and the media really should have led the public to this issue as opposed to the public leading the media to it. Right.

[00:45:52] Because I feel like, yeah, a really, really long time the media savaged man has told, you know, the public, well, you don't want to hear about this, so we're not going to tell you about this.

[00:46:02] And so in the last couple of years, the public has been like, no, bitch, we really want to hear about this. And why are you not talking about it? Exactly.

[00:46:11] Exactly. People really want to get their voices out there. People really want to talk about this issue. And they're talking about a in a new and different types of ways.

[00:46:21] I think that that's driven a lot of people to like if I want to tell this in a more personal way, I want to tell this in a more like revolutionary sort of way.

[00:46:29] I've got a self publish it and I've got to get on medium and I've got to like find some other way to not have to go through the bureaucracy of the media establishment to get my voice out there.

[00:46:41] I mean, I actually think that's been the genesis of some of the newsletters, too. I know actually it's been the genesis of a lot of podcasts, too, that are there are all these things cropping up to sort of bridge that gap as mainstream media sort of grapples with, you know, how do we cover this now that we're not doing false equivalence? I see a lot of like remnants of that stuff, to be honest of like, you know, editors thinking that just likes telling the truth is biased, which is really it's interesting. So I'm I'm glad that there are all these other ways that people can write about climate without any deal with that. And yeah.

[00:47:19] And experiment with different storytelling devices and different tones and different like, you know, just approaches to the subject that's really important and really, really glad to see more people self-publishing.

[00:47:31] And I think that that is influencing the bigger media establishment. Actually, I think that like seeing the success of these self-published pieces and realizing like, oh, that would have been successful. So I should have, you know, maybe I should look at how I do things.

[00:47:46] Another big theme of 2019 is the climate conversation really got democratized and I saw this show up in it in a million different places. So like the movement has gotten really big. Right.

[00:47:58] With climate has emerged as one of if not the top issue for Democratic voters, which is a huge, huge shift even suggest 2016. Like what we're just talking about.

[00:48:11] And that means that the conversation has left the academy, it has left the ivory towers. It has trickled out of the big green groups like you don't have to be in a particular le club to be part of this conversation.

[00:48:26] And what I'm noticing a lot in every media, I'm right, like I see it a lot on, you know, this mythical place called climate Twitter.

[00:48:33] I also see it just like in real life of like all of these experts and the old guard chasing after this new crowd of people and trying to police their language and trying to police how they understand this subject and trying to police there like how they see the problem. Right.

[00:48:49] And I again, I just think you got to let go, honey. You got to let go. Right. Like all these years you've been saying you want more people to get involved in this conversation and want more people to care about it.

[00:49:00] But. Now that they care about it, you want them to care about it exactly the way that you care about you want them to see it, exactly the way that you see it and talk about it exactly the way that you see it.

[00:49:13] This is so mind boggling. Right. Like, it's kind of hilarious to me that, like, people didn't realize that. Like, yes, bringing in more people and more different types of people would mean that you can't control the conversation in this very narrow way anymore. And also, P.S., like that messaging framework has clearly not worked. So. Exactly. Yes. Part of that is because of, you know, intervention from the fossil fuel industry and various other things and whatever. But like part of it, you know, the movement has to kind of look at itself to, you know. Right. In the same way that, like, Russia could only fuck with the U.S. elections by exploiting existing weaknesses. Like it was not hard for the fossil fuel industry to find and exploit weaknesses in the climate movement. Right.

[00:50:02] So one of the biggest examples I saw of this was during the Amazon fires. And like that wasn't one of the stories that caught international attention. And everybody was, you know, really freaked out about it. And like up in arms about it. And then I started to see all of these climate scientists, like sort of try to chime in and be like, now let's not get carried away.

[00:50:23] We don't know if this is going to trigger a tipping point. We don't know if this, you know, a point of no return where there's no science to support that lava bob line. It's like, who cares?

[00:50:34] Do you think they actually know what a tipping point means? You know, Amy, like most people, don't know what a tipping point actually means, but they know that this is bad. They know the Amazon should not be on fucking fire like this. So let them freak out. Why? Why? Why wouldn't people finally freak out about this? Why would people finally take it seriously? Would you tell them to calm down? What? How how are you supposed to be calm about the end of the goddamn world? Yeah, it's supposed to be most measured about the apocalypse here.

[00:51:08] I know. I know.

[00:51:09] And especially when something that is as like much of a landmark as the Amazon and and something that like people it's like, okay, look, people understand that the Amazon is environmentally important. Like, let's just let them go with that.

[00:51:23] You know, like what actually what is the danger of them? Thinking gets worse than it is. I do not know. I like to somebody please explain that to me. Like I do know we might act too much. So there's no danger in thinking is worse than it is unless that leads you to nihilism. But that wasn't what was happening with the Amazon fire.

[00:51:50] Another way I see this like democratization showing up is like I see a lot of folks who can't really see the movement beyond the big green group, little green group divide.

[00:52:02] And we are we're beyond that. I'm really sorry to break it to you, but we are really beyond that dichotomy in that framework. And the more that we, like dig into this, like I see this a lot where there's like a big event and people are talking about like the friction between the big green groups and the little green groups or even, you know, among the big green groups or among the little green groups.

[00:52:23] And folks are like the new people to the movement. Like a fuck are you talking about? I don't care. I want to stop climate change.

[00:52:31] I don't give a shit about Charles Friction. And like, you, like, show up to these events.

[00:52:35] And like, I can't tell if you're working at an organization or you're part of a gang because like you want to fight so and so because they got beef with your organization from 20 years ago before any of you all were fucking born or even in the workforce.

[00:52:52] Like I'm I'm so sorry. Like, there's definitely been shitty things that have happened between, you know, different organizations.

[00:52:59] But I don't think that that is our major talking point anymore. And I don't. It is sort of it reinforces this idea that in order to be part of this movement, in order to be valid, to have a voice that you have to work at a certain place, you have to have a certain t shirt and that's bullshit. And we have to let that go. And like, I don't give a shit if you work at CBS. I don't care if you work at the Sierra Club and give a fuck if you work at an RTC, if you want a livable planet. You're welcome in this movie. You're welcome to speak.

[00:53:39] So, yeah, another theme from 2009 team was that the environmental movement, the climate movement got called to the mat, honest racism and a really profound way in a really like a way that I think is like irreversible.

[00:53:56] I think as a conversation, we absolutely need it to have what it's been like just so, so overdue.

[00:54:04] And by overdue. I don't mean that people hadn't tried to have this conversation before. People. Absolutely. I think in the end, this is the root of a lot of the friction between big green groups and little green groups, to be quite honest, because people of color have been relegated to, you know, the E.J. table. Right. Right.

[00:54:23] Let the big white men go do the climate negotiations and then y'all can deal with the backlash because what we decide is definitely gonna create some problems for y'all.

[00:54:33] You can deal with that E.J. table. Yes. Which is like incredibly shitty. Right. But yeah, it it's like it all got called out in this big overarching way in 2019.

[00:54:46] I feel that's really true. I mean, it felt like a dam breaking moment, like just. Yeah, there were so many stories and they were coming from every corner too, which I think is a really important thing because there has been like you said, there's been like, okay, like you can you can see over here in the E.J. corner and you can talk about, you know, specific things like water pipes and heating insulation and, you know, just like things like that. But this is it was like there were so many stories and they were from so many different sides of the issue that it was impossible to ignore. And like, it was so overdue. I mean, like this. This conversation has been happening for decades about racism in the movement in much the same way that like it's been happening about racism and in the feminist movement for as long, you know. Yeah, like. And I do feel like this was like the year that we really had this reckoning. And it was like, so do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, we kicked off the year with this this groundbreaking study, right? Yeah. Yeah. This really I mean like fascinating and groundbreaking, groundbreaking report that found that actually the Native American genocide had kicked off climate change hope in some ways that this large scale D population resulted in vast tracts of agricultural land being left untended, allowing the land to become overgrown with trees and other new vegetation. The regrowth soaked up enough CO2 from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet, with the average temperature dropping by 0.1 five degrees Celsius in the late 15 100s and early sixteen hundreds. This was a study by scientists at University College in London, and it was just like it was like, oh yeah. The like, of course, of course.

[00:56:42] There were multiple impacts from colonization.

[00:56:48] You write about human beings like part of an ecosystem. You can't just like go off killing thousands of people and like don't shit work like shit just keeps going the way it's supposed to go. That's not how ecosystems work. It doesn't make any fucking sense to me that people don't know that. I know. I just I feel like that study got sent around and like written about and talked about a law in an a very useful and productive way. And I and I also was like, yes, great. Can we continue to talk more about indigenous issues and climate change, please, which did really start to happen this year? In a way it had I I have not seen in previous years. So that was yeah, that was good to see.

[00:57:30] It got folded into the mainstream narrative because clearly indigenous folks have always been at the forefront of the fight for climate and they've always as far as I I know I've never seen it talked about, you know, in indigenous circles, which like obviously I'm not indigenous, I'm not in all the circles, but I've never heard an indigenous narrative about climate change that isn't interconnected to everything else.

[00:57:59] And the idea of separating it out from what I can tell sounds like just a incredibly stupid was racist to me.

[00:58:05] Like it doesn't make sense to me to separate it out from anything else. It just seems like innate that durr is connected to everything, right? Like everything comes from it. Therefore, it's connected to everything.

[00:58:15] And I also notice that's the real racists roots of both the climate crisis and the climate and environmental movements was really just called out very explicitly. There was a great story in vice. from Julian Brave Noice Kat about, you know, the racist roots of the climate movement. I think there was a line in there like the environment's a. Its roots are closer to that of a safari trophy hunt than they are to hold a legal justice movement, which is like totally true lutely.

[00:58:49] Good point of clarity. Actually, we should we should clarify right now you're not white. Right. My I mean, I'm I'm mixed race. My dad is Mexican. My mom's white. And my dad has this whole like very complicated past where, like, he didn't find out that the guy who he thought was his dad wasn't really his dad until much later in his life. And there's like there's like a lot of like weird identity shit in my head best. Also like that's why my last name is. WESTERVELT Anyway. Yeah. So that's like a that's like a whole thing to where people will assume that I'm white. You know, I'm very white passing. My name's Amy WESTERVELT. It's not like I read as super Latina or anything, but that does often give me a window into racism that I think people would otherwise keep quiet for me.

[00:59:37] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:38] I remember you were saying to me once, like, you can tell how racist someone is by like how likely they are to suspect that you're not white.

[00:59:46] Like, yeah, more like there's been times where I've been in parts of Texas where kind of white Southern Belle type ladies will just start speaking like a really terrible Spanish to me.

[00:59:59] Can you understand what they're trying to say? Oh, my God. They're like, hold up or five or blah, blah, blah.

[01:00:05] I'm like, okay. Good grief. No. Oh, yeah. And I mean. Yeah.

[01:00:12] I also like in case you don't know or can't tell from my voice. I'm black. Very visible like this.

[01:00:21] That's true. Carry on my training. Yes.

[01:00:26] I had a really interesting conversation with a black woman friend of mine about this like maybe a year or so ago where we were talking about this. And she was like, well, you know, you also have to like think about how the privilege of being someone who passes as like whatever people kind of attribute to you, because she's like, you know, when I walk into a room, there's no no one's confuse like I'm a dark and black woman.

[01:00:49] Well, when I talk in the interviews, people are confused. People are confused because Mariana is Hagler.

[01:00:55] You definitely think you're getting like a schoolmarm from, you know, like a white lady schoolmarm.

[01:01:02] And then I walk in the door like I really like. They're like, oh, right. Hey, guys, thanks.

[01:01:11] But anyway, yeah.

[01:01:13] So I feel like in 2019, this myth that people of color don't care about the climate just died a very overdue death. And I you know, I think it started to become clear this is not true and it never has been true that people of color don't care about climate change or don't care about the environment. Well, actually, it's true is that we don't care for environmentalists. Right. That's a very different story.

[01:01:38] And this year, I like I'm not going to be relegated to any specific table. I'm not going to be relegated to any side lines. Like we don't only want to be part of this movement. We want to be leaders. And we want to be recognized for the leadership that we have shown for generations. And we want it recognized that we didn't create this fucking mess. And y'all need to quit with this we shit.

[01:01:58] So, yeah, I you know, there is Julian's piece was Shaw we already mentioned I noticed this a lot with the genze activist of talking about like the racist roots of the climate crisis as well as the racist roots of the environmental movement.

[01:02:12] Yeah. Was also a piece in The New York Times by Heather makes here Tony that I really loved. It was called Black Women are leaders in the Climate Movement. And I just wanted to read a little bit of that because she really talks about this stereotype thing.

[01:02:25] It was so good in that piece. Yeah, it really was.

[01:02:31] Despite stereo's hypes of a lack of interest in environmental issues among African-Americans, black women, particularly southern black women, are no strangers to environmental activism. Many of us live in communities with polluted air and water, work in industries from housekeeping to hairdressing, where we are surrounded by toxic chemicals and have limited food options that are often impacted by pesticides. Environmentalism, in other words, is a black issue.

[01:02:59] Rarely do we see or hear black voices as part of national conversations about policy solutions. The green economy or clean energy. We're relegated to providing a comment on environmental justice issues like the water crisis in Flint, or where the faces and photos with candidates need to show they're inclusive when talking about climate solutions.

[01:03:26] So yeah, she opens this piece talking about watching MSNBC where they've got like three black women or three black people talking about the climate crisis.

[01:03:38] And then, you know, the one white lady up there goes like, unfortunately, this just isn't an issue for for most black people, is just such a niche issue.

[01:03:46] And she's sitting at home watching it with bated breath like, well, fuck, we're in the room of this panel.

[01:03:53] So like this stereotype, like even as it's very clearly like shown on this panel that people of color care about this issue. You're still being told like you don't care about the issue, which is like it's such a weird gaslighting thing of like the media telling you you don't care about the thing that you care about.

[01:04:14] It's gross. So kind of like following along in that same vein. Tara House.gov in lit. Hubb wrote a really great piece about what she called what listening means in a time of climate crisis. And this is another good example of a great piece from an indigenous person about the way that indigenous people have consistently been erased from the climate discussion as well, which honestly, like there's this whole extra lens really gross where like we don't actually include you in any real way, but we want you to be like our tokens of relationship to nature. It's just I don't know, like I know I've seen so many environmentalists be like really into. Kind of like Native American culture in some weird way, but not actually include indigenous people.

[01:05:03] They want them through. Yeah. They want him to be a mascot.

[01:05:06] That total mascot. Yes, totally. Fuck that. It is really fucked up. Yeah. So Tara is great.

[01:05:12] She writes all kinds of good things and is well worth a follow on Twitter too. Here's an excerpt from from this piece. A nameless indigenous matriarch speaks of connection and stewardship while a crowd wipes away momentary romantic tears and post her speech on social media with a link to the latest round of climate statistics. Her words rivet your heart. But there is no readily consumable solution. There, to put her words into practice would first necessitate giving her words credence and substantive consideration in the mind of the listener. The statistics hold the answers we need, or so we are taught. We live in an era in which the planet is literally burning around us. The glaciers are rapidly melting and Mother Nature is slamming us with disaster after disaster. How logical is it, then, to employ the same models that got us here to now win in this fight for our lives? It seems more than a disservice and outright destructive that the stories and solutions of those on the foremost lines of the greatest threat facing humanity are either absent altogether or told by someone else. Authenticity is one component. Efficacy is another. The voices are there if we listen. Our mothers forgotten voice, our shared survival. Wait in the wings.

[01:06:37] Oh, she's so poetic. She is true, too. Like I hate. I mean, you and I have talked about this.

[01:06:42] I feel like in almost every episode of this consistent thing of like thinking that the same thinking that got us into this mess will get us out of it is just so ridiculous.

[01:06:53] And we'll keep saying it because it's fucking ridiculous. It hasn't gone away yet. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:07:00] So I highly recommend reading this whole piece because I love that she frings it around listening because what came across very clearly to me is not that like we haven't talked about this before. It's not that indigenous people are new to talking about this issue is that you're new to listening to us and it's cred.

[01:07:19] That's very true because it's not even because. Yeah. And that that really is that's like the ticket to really moving it past kind of tokenism, because you often see a native person invited to speak at a climate event. What you don't often see is their actual framework and solutions being applied. Right.

[01:07:40] It's like it's like a formality when they're invited to speak.

[01:07:44] Guess it's really sick.

[01:07:46] So, yeah, I mean, I'm really glad that she wrote this piece in and put this narrative out there in such a poetic way. She's a really great writer.

[01:07:54] I'm in line with this. You know, being called out on deification. So as the student movement really took off this year in the student movement.

[01:08:03] You know, genze is one of is the most diverse generation in America. Yeah. And they are their movement is really inspiration.

[01:08:12] I think that their movement having such great diversity is really what killed this myth that people of color don't care about the climate crisis.

[01:08:21] But the media has not really told their story in a great way because they've glommed on to Gretta in a way that I think is really problematic, both for the larger movements and for Grétar herself.

[01:08:35] So and I talked about this a lot, too. I mean, like she's she's like one of the people that has said this the most is. Yeah. Heard. Yeah.

[01:08:43] Yeah. It's creepy, honestly.

[01:08:46] First of all, I want to talk about why I think has calm cool for Gretta herself, because there is nothing about Gretta Thornburg that says attention hog to me. Like it is very clear to me that Grétar herself does not enjoy the spotlight is very clear to me that she feels like this is the price I have to pay to deal with climate change. And she's willing to do pretty much anything to deal with climate change.

[01:09:10] So she deals with it. But setting her up as the savior is way too much pressure to put on any one person.

[01:09:17] And it's not fair.

[01:09:19] And it sets her up for failure and it sets her up for just like all the psychological stress that comes with that. And it sort of makes it creates this illusion that someone else has it. And that's that's really problematic. And usually when someone set up as a savior is so that someone else can crucify them. And so all this whole name comes to Gretta, like I've been retweeted by Gretta.

[01:09:43] It is not fine. You get troll like crazy. And so, like, imagine what she's dealing with on her own. Right. Like with the platform that she has.

[01:09:50] We talked a little bit about how Gretta herself has tried to model how to be a good ally. And, you know, hats off to her for that. It just really should not be all on her shoulders. And I worry about her own well-being in the midst of that. And at the same time, I'm worried about the erasure of all of these activists of color who have been doing this for before.

[01:10:13] Gretta, like zero hours before Gretta did her school strike. And there are plenty of others.

[01:10:19] Mythically, some punk Kumar wrote this really great story in The New Republic about climate activists going back generations at the U.N. climate conference because this is not new at all like Gretta.

[01:10:32] I'm really glad that she's being heard, but she should be heard as part of a chorus and not as a solo singer necessarily. Like she really is truly remarkable.

[01:10:42] But you know what I mean? Yeah, I totally. Well, another great way that Gretta has, you know, modeled how to be a good ally is when she testified before Congress, she invited two activists of color to be up on stage with her.

[01:10:57] And when she's been speaking at when I saw her speak at the U.N., I actually did not see her speak at the U.N. because she you know, she was on this panel and her first introduction was like, I'm not going to speak because I have a speaking slot tomorrow and I'm gonna see my time to my fellow panelists who do not have that platform. Right.

[01:11:15] So she has really done a great job of seeding her platform to others who wouldn't otherwise have it. But the media feticide, Jason, of her is, I think, really dangerous.

[01:11:29] Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the people who was.

[01:11:35] Early to this problem with Fetishizing and DFI in Gretta was Rebecca Solnit, and she wrote this great piece in Lit Hub again where she talks about this bigger problem of this hero fetish. It's called When the Hero Is the Problem.

[01:11:54] Our largest problems won't be solved by heroes. They'll be solved if they are by movements, coalition, civil society. The climate movement, for example, has been, first of all, a mass effort. I was thinking about all this when I was thinking about Sweden's Grétar Thornburg, a truly remarkable young woman, someone who has catalyzed climate action across the world. But the focus on her may obscure the many remarkable young people before her who have stood up and passionately spoken about climate change. Her words mattered because we responded and we responded in part because the media elevated her as they had not elevated her predecessors.

[01:12:37] Yeah. So I really love that Rebecca called this out like pretty early. I think this pieces from like April like the middle of the year. And I feel like the larger conversation has since kind of corrected itself. I've seen a lot of people who were like I saw them pretty fetishizing and glomming on that.

[01:12:57] Gretta Over the summer, I have started to expand their vision to see the rest of the movement as equally valid to her.

[01:13:05] So I'm really glad to see that happen. Another piece I just want to mention is Nyla Burton did a great piece on VOX where she interviewed a lot of the youth activists of Color and Know talked about their stories and why it's important to bring them into the larger conversation.

[01:13:22] So I'm glad to see more journalists taking on that story and seeing more outlets publish about it.

[01:13:45] OK. Another big thing that happened in twenty nineteen was a big shift in the language used to talk about climate change. So The Guardian changed its preferred term from climate change to climate breakdown or climate emergency.

[01:14:02] And then climate emergency was named Oxford Dictionary's Word of the year, which is like a deal, right? Yeah, I think I feel like that's that's a big deal. Climates. Yeah, I think so, too. Climate strike was named word of the year by Colin's dictionary. Also a pretty big deal. So definitely like there's this whole thing.

[01:14:22] And the reason I mean, on top of the fact that that's just generally like, you know, evidence that this is becoming a top of mind topic for people. I think the other big reason that that's important is that, of course, for decades the fossil fuel industry has controlled the language that we use to describe climate change. So, yeah, you know, the term global warming was first used and actually it was an industry slash Republican messaging guy. Luntz, who came up with climate change as sort of like a more neutral term that seemed, you know, more natural.

[01:15:07] The fact that this finally changed to something that is actually more accurate and a little more urgent. Is this a big deal? It's good.

[01:15:18] Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm really thrilled to see that.

[01:15:22] And I think it's had a big influence on the larger coverage of it. I've seen a lot more journalists get more urgent with the way that they're they're writing about it. It feels like the gloves are off.

[01:15:37] You have to be neutral on it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing is like that's how important languages and fossil fuel guys knew that. That's why they messed with it in the first place. So like so the fact that the you know, we've kind of taken it back is a big, big step forward.

[01:15:55] Mm hmm.

[01:15:56] And I think a big evidence of this is the way that the climate community has covered or the climate writing community, rather, has covered these big scientific reports. I saw a huge shift in the way that these things were written about this year.

[01:16:15] Toto, in in May, the U.N. released this big biodiversity report that just in a nutshell revealed that we're pretty much fucking up.

[01:16:26] It's really important. And I hear a lot of environmental advocates stress this fossil fuels, climate change is not the only way that we're wreaking havoc on the world like we're also the biodiversity crisis in which we're just like killing off animals all willy nilly is just really dangerous for us.

[01:16:44] Biodiversity is not a nice to have for the sake of humanity. Like we need animals to live because we're part of any ecosystem. Come on. All of these things connect to each other.

[01:16:55] So there was a just for a headline of the year. Eric Levitt published this piece in New York magazine.

[01:17:02] And this headline is A Work of art.

[01:17:07] The headline is Humanity is about to kill 1 million species in a globe spanning murder suicide.

[01:17:14] People that talk about a flock of report that's a headline for the fucking ages.

[01:17:22] Whoever came up with this headline, whether it's Eric or some other editor at New York magazine, I hope you got a cupcake or a latte or whatever makes you happy that day because there's a bucket, a beautiful line, a murder-suicide, a lot like it is.

[01:17:38] Researchers warn about biodiversity loss.

[01:17:45] So, yeah, I don't think you would've seen a headline like that.

[01:17:49] Just even last year or a couple of years ago, because, you know, you've kind of felt like you had to be measured. And when you talked about scientific reports and now it's like no fucking weed, um, broke the emergency glass. It's go time.

[01:18:03] So in kind of a similar vein, the IPCC, the IPCC came out with some like really just a frickin stream of depressing reports.

[01:18:13] It didn't actually end.

[01:18:17] And I think that the fact that the the IPCC so the International Panel on Climate Change, no Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a global consortium of climate scientists who come together to look at all of the available data on climate change and write assessments. They do major assessments every four years and then they they do interim reports on specific areas.

[01:18:49] So like in this case, they did one on the impacts on land usage that came out in August.

[01:18:59] They had a much more inclusive committee writing process that allowed for more input from developing countries, which had a lot to say. But also, I think the fact that the IPCC has just have taken the gloves off, you know, like they've always been incredibly conservative and formal and whatever, but like have really started to be like, guys, wake up, we've got to do something. And that has also given. Yeah, you know, journalists and policymakers and activists and everybody else license to kind of be like, okay, like let's be more real about this. So on this land report, Robinson Meyer at the Atlantic took this like extremely wonky report and turned it into just total poetry in a piece. Yeah, this land is the only land there is. It was awesome.

[01:19:49] Yeah, it lives in some ways. This is the most unavoidably political document that the IPCC has ever published. Its report last year on the dangers of global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Called for an unprecedented transformation in the globe's energy system. It demanded a rapid switch to carbon free energy systems. But talking about the energy system is, in this context, relatively easy. No one's ever gone to war over electric cars or renewable portfolio standards. But land is different. It is home and the possibility of home. The relationship between people and land is the most treasured and unresolved idea in global politics. Chemically speaking, of course, we are mostly water, but everything we love about ourselves is solid and therefore made of land. These 52 million grid squares cannot only service our needs. They are all the land period. They must also hold the vast, lovely, unknowable thing that we call nature. Every shady spot, every mountain stream, every sand dune. The IPCC authors call this somewhat dryly biodiversity and ecosystem services. Every grain of rice and cobalt mine, every sidewalk square and platypus has to be somewhere on that 52 million.

[01:21:16] I'm like jealous that someone can write about that report in particular with that much verve.

[01:21:22] Kudos to you, Rob. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did an amazing job with this. I mean, I.

[01:21:32] I was not expecting this when I opened up an article that was like seven major takeaways from the IPCC report.

[01:21:42] And then it was like riveting. So, yeah, I just think that this shows real growth on on the part of the climate writing community. And I'm really encouraged by it. And we want to see more and more of this type of interpretation in 2020.

[01:22:23] Now it's time for the segment of the show that we've been calling our foundational pieces, and what we mean by that is that these are the pieces of climate writing that really stood out to us as pushing the envelope or changing the conversation in a really fundamental way, game changers, if you will.

[01:22:40] So we're going to start off with a piece that came out relatively recently. It's called Under the Weather, which like great fuckin headline. I don't know if if Ashley Sanders or Ash Sanders, the writer, came up with that headline or not, but it's frickin great.

[01:22:54] I was like, man, that's a good name. Why am I thought of that before? Oh, I know. And it is like really the most comprehensive piece we've seen on climate. Grief. Yeah. It's not like this article. It's not a journal article. It's not just reporting. It's not just a personal essay. It's kind of a combination of both. And it came out in The Believer. I actually happened to know Ash, because we're working together on another show and was on a reporting trip with her when she was working on this piece. And so we had a long car ride and she was talking about all things climate and and like eco anxiety and climate, grief and all this stuff while she was working on this piece. So I was super excited to see it come out. And it's just it's really, really, really great. I love I love how she does this thing of like weaving together, you know, personal essay and reporting. So you've got moments like this one that I'm going to read that are super, super personal.

[01:23:55] So she says, I knew what I wanted. I wanted a world that would last through the century. I wanted a world where my existence didn't mean the end for others. But barring that, I really wanted just one thing to grieve, to say this is unbearable and to have people to try to bear it with like I unity feel that, you know.

[01:24:19] Yeah, yeah, exactly. But then she mixes it with these really great, very well-reported but also well-written explanations of all this stuff and like how people are trying to process it like this. As a philosopher, Albrecht determined to identify and name this condition.

[01:24:37] The word he came up with was Soula Stoljar, a portmanteau word of the Latin Solus, which means abandonment and loneliness and nostalgia. Nostalgia has not always had the warm and fuzzy connotations it does now when it was first used in the 17th century. It described a diagnosable illness that afflicted people who were far from home but could not return. Soldiers were particularly susceptible, as were people forced into migration by conflict, colonization and slavery. The cure, it was thought, was simply to return home and be sued by familiarity. Otherwise, the sufferers distress would continue, even to the point of death to Albrecht. If nostalgia was a sickness caused by the displacement brought about by 17th century globalization, Solar Soldier was its 21st century counterpart.

[01:25:30] That is like it's fascinating. Like the whole thing. Like the research of what some of these philosophers and psychologists are doing to better understand and address climate grief is really interesting. Ashes personal journey is really interesting. It's just like it's a great piece and I think leg. Yeah. Like I said is like is is probably the best and most comprehensive piece on climate greif that I've seen. And climate grief is such a big topic, an issue right now. It really is. And this piece is really long, but it doesn't feel totally moot. Yeah. Yeah. It really moves. Yeah.

[01:26:11] I am trying not to be jealous that you're working with her on another show, but out process.

[01:26:15] It's not a climate show. Actually, it's not even a climate show. It's about like a fundamentalist religious cult. So I mean, a different world, which actually has a lot to do with climate change. I have to say, like, I'm very intrigued by how these people deal with the idea that the world is always about to end. Like they've constantly like this one guy that we doctor was like, oh, yeah. People here have really bad credit because like every five years we think the world is going to end. So people just like go wild and buy shit.

[01:26:51] It's like that's so different from how like climate refills, you know?

[01:26:58] Well, I feel like a lot of folks, you know, do that with the doomsday preppers like it. And, you know, they think nuclear war is gonna happen. So they like spend all this money to stock their bunkers and, you know, like Y2K and all of that.

[01:27:11] Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Which is actually a great Segway into our next frontier.

[01:27:15] Know exactly what it's exactly what I was going to say. This is so. Another.

[01:27:22] I'm quite on record as this being one of my favorite pieces of the year. This is from Hayes Brown. It was in the outline and so was the end. Times are here and I'm at Target and this is just like a really beautiful articulation of what it feels like to be alive right now.

[01:27:38] And to like, you know, how important it feels in the face of climate change, how how just like heartbreaking the normalcy of it all is. But at the same time, like nothing is ever going to be normal again. He's. He opens up talking about like all of these doomsday cults and like how people have been so sure that the world is ending before.

[01:28:00] But now, like, you know, there's like mad evidence. So I'm just to like, go ahead and read this very long excerpt because it was really hard to pick.

[01:28:15] We have a preponderance of evidence at this point, and yet the very existence of anthropogenic climate change is still considered something to debate.

[01:28:24] Meanwhile, you mean the other New Yorker shuffling through the target around me, your neighbors, wherever you're reading this, are somehow not stockpiling non-perishables and fleeing the coasts in search of high ground ahead of the looming end like you'd expect in a proper in times. Instead, we're just trying to get through the next day or week as we suffer through the early throes of our collective demise, hoping that we might be wrong about the whole thing. Climate scientists have a body of evidence that no other civil has ever produced. And yet its fall, it's still falling on deaf ears and in the United States and in growing numbers abroad. Powerful people have used a small fraction of their resources to stifle that message further. They deliver sermons of their own, telling the gathered throngs that the prophets are liars and the stars are being read wrong. And Cassandra is a woman and a fool.

[01:29:15] It's a scheme, a plot, a drive to take away your rights and their taxes and profits. The political will to avert Ragnarok just isn't there. Even without her efforts, the Church of Climate Change is weakened, his is clear, and his followers, once you're convinced the earth is rapidly heating and there's only a little time left to stop it. Then you're in. You believe your poll on the road from Damascus ready to spread the word and call out the sinners who dare doubt the newest testaments. But what kind of devotees secretly hopes that their principles of faith are wrong? What true believer wishes deep down inside that things will actually be fine in the end. So let's just go back to not worrying about it and enjoying things exactly as they are now. Here's hoping we're predicting what we're predicting doesn't come true. After all, isn't exactly a religion likely to retain members, let alone gain apostles? Maybe it's the whole rebirth thing that this particular looming doomsday is missing. There's no better place awaiting us in the gospel, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Our struggle and suffering and the seven SEALs opening make an appearance in the revelation. That could be why it's so difficult to convert true zealots from the casual climate believer, let alone the entirely unconvinced. What's the point of an apocalypse without a rapture? The IPCC should consider adding one shifting focus to the new utopia that could arise if only if we repent from our simple waves.

[01:30:48] I mean, I so agree with this. Like I do feel like one of the biggest narratives missing from the climate landscape is the lake. Next? What next? And also like that, it's not it doesn't have to all be bad and all be sacrifice and all be like, you know what I mean? That like actually consuming less. Doesn't hurt that much. You know, the community is quite nice.

[01:31:21] So part of the reason I picked this piece as foundational is because I think what something we saw a lot of in 2019 or or we're starting to see a lot of is people from outside the ranks of the traditional climate movement are talking about climate more and haze is not traditional climate writer.

[01:31:45] I think this might be one of his first pieces he's ever written about climate change. And, you know, we saw that also with you know, there was this piece in in The New Yorker from Jonathan Franzen that talked about climate where he you know, it is hard to read that and not think that his main message is basically we're screwed. So screw it. Which, you know, really had the climate community up in arms, like people were very upset about this piece. And Hayes and his piece doesn't advocate for any particular action.

[01:32:18] And I actually have a lot of people react to. I saw a lot of people reacting to this piece being like he's basically saying to give up and like, actually, he's not saying to do anything because he doesn't know what to do.

[01:32:30] And we have to get out of this idea that everyone who writes about climate has to have a solution that they're advocating for, because we're at this point now where everyone is thinking about this, everyone is gonna be talking about this. And everyone is not a climate advocate. Everyone is not going to have solutions. That doesn't mean they don't get to talk about it.

[01:32:51] So we've got to like start making space for those sorts of voices. But even in that, I think there's a lot to be learned from this, from how an outsider sees climate change and how an outsider sees the climate movement, because I really do think there's something to this idea of like what is the point of an apocalypse without a rapture? Right. Like what is right? It is hard to get excited. About something that even the people who are into it. Hope is not true.

[01:33:18] I know. Well, that's the thing that I love. I'd like I really love this piece, too. And actually, especially because I happened to be working on this project about this religious group that has a doomsday component to it. And and had been thinking a lot about like, why is it that these people who believe the world is ending have some amount of like acceptance of. And like actually see it as not not an end like transition. And all the climate people I know, you know, are like we need to really gird our loins for, you know, like I just I feel like it's like, okay, well, if the options are apocalypse or a really shitty future in which we do act on climate, like neither of those is a you know what I mean? It's like, well, no wonder we're stuck in inaction. Cause like and there's nothing appealing there.

[01:34:16] So, yeah, I don't know. I liked that. Like he kind of put voice to that in a way that was compelling and and also just like a pleasure to read to the parent.

[01:34:26] Yeah, it was really beautiful.

[01:34:39] OK. So another PSA I wanted to talk about was this op ed in The Guardian and its title is Deli's Toxic.

[01:34:49] Politicians must be held to account for this deadly pollution. So I don't know how many folks saw this story about.

[01:34:57] Well, I don't know. I felt like it was pretty unavoidable that the air pollution in Delhi this year reached really apocalyptic levels. Like I saw folks there was like an oxygen bar where, like, you could pay a certain amount and then you could like inhale clean air, like it was like it was a hookah bar or something like it. It's almost dystopian shit I've ever seen in my life.

[01:35:21] This woman, Aruna Chandrasekhar, I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. Apologies if I didn't. She wrote this beautiful op ed in The Guardian and just want to read a little bit from it.

[01:35:34] Fly out of Delhi and you can see it. A band of gray smog so thick it blots out the sun. Tune in carefully and you'll hear it too. A subtle symphony of snorts, coughs and wheezing. To the untrained nose, Delhi's air is a potent bouquet. High notes of charred biomass mingle with sulfur as remnants of Diwali, bonfires with base notes of subsidised diesel, burned plastic and coal. I moved there in early 2017 to me, a relative outsider from southeast India who spent her 20s trying to draw attention to the injustices of India's coal belt. Did Delhi smelt like a bit like justice? It was only fair that the city's most powerful and privileged breathed a fraction of what they extracted from communities who relied on land and forests. I hope that this toxic air would walk down the same quarters where environmental safeguards have been rapidly undermined by the Modi government. I was wrong. Jet setting politicians almost never shared the same airspace. They kept they keep office windows closed with air purifiers on barely a year of bloodshot eyes and blocked sinuses later.

[01:36:42] I left Delhi conscious of the privilege to be able to do so for my wisest councilors. The city's auto rickshaw drivers who didn't wear mask and chain smoking environmentalist's. Leaving for good was not an option.

[01:36:59] Some. Yeah, I talked to her koruna a little bit about this piece and she, you know, was saying that she originally it was just gonna be like a data dump, like your usual op ed from an environmentalist, which is like just the stats. Just the facts. And you know, she was like, actually, I think I need to put some emotion in here. I think I need to put some imagery in here. And I I think that's just like such a notable shift, you know, and I think it it shows how the broader conversation is is changing. And we're realizing that like the you need to make people feel it. You need to make me like you need to make me feel like I'm breathing this air.

[01:37:41] So, yeah, I thought she did a really, really beautiful job here and I hope to see more of that in 2020. And so I'm gonna put you on the spot for my next foundational piece.

[01:37:53] And I know we already talked about this on our first episode, but I think that your essay, The Case for Climate Rage was really foundational for 2019. I'm sorry, Amy.

[01:38:05] I think that this Amy, this essay really changed the conversation and validating anger in a way that like it just it it can't be undone.

[01:38:18] After this essay, I started to see a lot more people embrace their anger and weaponise their anger in the face of climate change in a way that I I hadn't seen before, actually.

[01:38:29] And this essay, the research for it was the first time that we had ever spoke. Actually, you write me about it cause.

[01:38:37] That's right. It's about an hour later. I'm working on this piece of bubble blog. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I got that. We had that conversation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:47] Well I hope you like helped people feel like they could be more angry cause. Yes. I think it's a useful emotion. Yeah.

[01:38:55] Like I started to see and I'm sure, you know, I think the conversation was moving in this direction too.

[01:39:00] But I think that Europe is like really like close the book on whether or not anger was a valid emotion. And I you know, I saw other pieces really dig into this I K Aronoff piece on Climate ssat Boys and Emily Atkin's newsletter, Reheat.

[01:39:16] It is written with all sorts of anger and it's been really effective, has really resonated with people. So they've got a long ass X-ART. Buckle up.

[01:39:31] So you start off with these quotes from from different interviewees. When I started learning more about climate change and wisk. Humming I started running. You know, side be ready when the apocalypse comes. I barely know your kids and I feel like I would jump in front of a bus to stop this shit. I want to see those fossil fuel fuckers burn. I didn't create this problem and I didn't benefit from it. That's you with your ACA, your green lawn and your freeway that cuts through my neighborhood. I'm trying to make sure my husband gets home safe every night and my children are whole. But that doesn't make the problem go away. These are the sorts of things I hear from women and especially from women of color, women who are deeply knowledgeable not only about the science and the history of climate change, but also about how these things intersect with systemic racial and gender inequality. Women who are having emotional responses to what they're seen today, arguments for civility, for forgiveness for we're all in this together, for preservation of the status quo with just a few tweaks won't keep us all from going over the cliff and climate change. Many of these elite white men might be experiencing their very first brush with imposed change with a force beyond their control, upending their lives that might make them particularly ill equipped to even envision what's next, let alone lead us there. The story of climate change, both his history and his future needs to be told by people who are already experiencing injustice and disempowerment. People who are justifiably angry at the way the system works.

[01:41:04] And some of those stories are beginning to be told.

[01:41:09] So take a bath. Oh, that's a beautiful. And I'm just kidding.

[01:41:15] You is beautiful. I think, you know, you really just broke ground with this essay.

[01:41:22] And I I saw a big welcoming response to it on social media and even outside of people reference this essay a lot. In fact, when we were asking on Twitter for people to send us their favorite pieces from 2019, so many people sent this one.

[01:41:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I didn't see that, too.

[01:41:45] I honestly like I was really expecting at least like a mixed reaction and like probably a negative one. And I was very pleasantly surprised that it was mostly people were like, thank you. You know, like, yeah, that's what I've been saying, because I think actually a lot of people and especially women, were being policed for being angry.

[01:42:05] And they were saying, yeah, I know. Like, yeah, you have to be positive. Like, actually, I think being angry at people committing genocide is pretty fucking positive, to be quite honest.

[01:42:15] Exactly. Exactly.

[01:42:17] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm also gonna put you on the spot because I like I regretted after our intro episode that we didn't get to talk about your after the storm essay. And I actually think this is a perfect place to talk about it because I thought it was super foundational in that it used sort of the climate lens of today to look back at what was clearly a climate disaster of the past. And I think that like that you open sort of a gateway to people doing that more. And I hope we see more of it in the year ahead, because I do think that kind of the further out we get from these disasters, the more people are able to sort of, you know, use the knowledge that they're gaining to understand things that happened in the past and to process things and whatever. But I also think that, like, you know, we're just like we may be, you know, in the same way that people kind of understand trauma in pieces and bits as they process it. I think that's happening with a lot of climate disasters. So. So, yeah, I think we're gonna see more of this sort of re understanding of past events through the climate lens. And I think that your piece as has a lot to do with that. Oh, OK. So this is a long excerpt, but I just I think it's it's so great. And this is the part that like especially gave me chills. So I want to read it.

[01:43:45] Okay. It's so good. It's so that.

[01:43:57] OK. This showed up in Guatemala. Again, it's called after the storm. Because Katrina's aftermath was so horrific, we forget how utterly strange she was as a storm. We forget that she made landfall in Florida before sweeping back out to sea to gather more strength for the Gulf Coast. We forget that by the time she made landfall, she had weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 3. But what Katrina sacrificed in strength, she more than made up for in size. At the time, she was the largest hurricane ever to hit the United States, affecting millions of people over approximately 90000 square miles. And now was just in the short term just before the electricity went out for what would be a week. We saw on the television that Katrina was covering the entire state of Mississippi right down to the delta. We forget the tornado outbreak she spawned as she traveled overland, 57 tornadoes over the space of eight states from central Mississippi to Pennsylvania with 18 tornadoes across Georgia in a single day. She far exceeded the state's previous Dealy tornado record of two. The other thing often forgotten, but which I can never forget, was that Katrina descended the day after the 50th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till. If you are black, and especially if you grew up in the South. The name Emmett Till brought immediate, arresting, gruesome images to mind. The names sink to the bottom of your stomach like a bag of rocks or like the cotton gin fan that weighed down has barely pubescent body to make it surrender to the heart to the Tallahatchie River. The anniversary was the biggest news story in Mississippi before the storm. How far did we come? Or had we stood still? What comes next? There, in my three generational home of black southerners. I couldn't I couldn't not think about the anniversary. Even then, even with the storm overhead, I remember the meteorologists explaining how hurricanes start off the coast of Africa and gather strength as they crossed the Atlantic. Following almost exactly the route of slave ships, I wondered if Katrina was really a 14 year old boy named Emmett.

[01:46:17] Oh, God, it's so good thing, girl.

[01:46:22] I get like it's one of your more personal pieces, right? Because it has. Oh, it's definitely warmer in our family. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[01:46:29] And I don't think I could have done this without a really skillful editor. So shout out to the folks at at Guernica who really helped me push this baby through.

[01:46:38] I felt like it was important to tell the story because it you know, Mississippi really gets overshadowed when we talk about Katrina because what happened in New Orleans was so incredibly horrific. But a lot of what happened in New Orleans, quite honestly, was human error, like almost completely and totally. And what happened in Mississippi was really the the ground zero of the storm. Like I remember waking up that morning and hearing that the storm had shifted away from New Orleans and was heading straight to Mississippi. I mean, they're close together. So it's not like that big of a shift.

[01:47:13] And I on the one hand, there's fewer people in Mississippi. So that kind of makes you feel like a sense of relief. And the other thing to understand about New Orleans is that she's New Orleans is not just important to New Orleans.

[01:47:26] New Orleans is not just important to Louisiana. She is important to the whole region. She's the jewel of the entire region. So we have a very Mississippians have a very strong affection for. For New Orleans.

[01:47:39] So it's not like if it hit New Orleans and not us, like nobody feels any sort of relief that. So, like, it was really tragic.

[01:47:47] So like, I remember turning the news back on and feeling like, you know, both a sense of you felt really lucky, but then you see how everybody else is suffering in your immediate that lucky ness is immediately replaced with guilt.

[01:48:04] Yeah.

[01:48:04] And yeah, yeah.

[01:48:06] I think about this in terms of, you know, what we were saying earlier about not being able to find any first person essays about Dorian because it's just too fresh. I do hope that we start to see more people write about these disasters of yore in these retrospective kind of ways.

[01:48:23] After you've had a chance to process it and digest it.

[01:48:26] So yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

[01:48:30] I'm very flattered you picked it here. It's so good.

[01:48:34] It's.

[01:48:48] 2019 was also kind of the year that we started to hear from a lot more people in the disabled community about climate, which I'm really happy about. You and I both have disabled people in our families. You know, your mom and my brother. And we've experienced, you know, firsthand this like extra layer of worry and planning that go into thinking about us, particularly disasters and like evacuating. If you're disabled. Yeah. No, it's really serious. And the thing about that also is that the baby boomer generation is aging into disability.

[01:49:29] And that's a really big ask generation for a lot of us. We ega we're all going to have to start worrying about our parents as we face all of these disasters.

[01:49:39] And I think about how paradise. was a retirement community and how well can you evacuate when you can barely walk, you know, so it's you might think like, oh, I'm not disabled and therefore I don't have to worry about that. But you do. You do have to worry about them. And also, like, even if you're like anyone can become disabled, like an injury. Anything can happen.

[01:50:05] Also, don't be a dick like exactly where I was going.

[01:50:10] That's where it's going. You do have to care about other people. What the fuck is wrong with you?

[01:50:17] I love anyway. So, yeah, totally. Totally. Okay. So I'm going to read from this piece by Imani barberin in Forbes. It's called Climate Darwinism Makes Disabled People Expendable and it is searing and great. It is.

[01:50:38] While people with disabilities are familiar with casual embolism deaths caused by the PG&E shut off, put the effects of disability ignorance into focus.

[01:50:49] On October 12th, 12 minutes into the PG&E power shut off. A man who used oxygen died after the middle of the night. Power loss amidst murky details from the company left him no time to prepare. In post online, commenters blamed the man for his death and asserted that he should have anticipated and bought a generator. It takes a certain level of callousness to tell disabled people a group that makes 66 cents to the nondisabled dollar and who are allowed to be paid well beneath minimum wage to spend 5000 to 10000 dollars to avoid death.

[01:51:33] Yes, thank you. So this piece is so good and yeah, really nails a lot of things that that I think, you know, to be fair. I think, of course, like if you haven't had to think about it because of yourself or someone in your family, like there are things that that just might be like kind of new and they don't occur to you. Yeah. You know, but but I highly recommend that people read this piece to educate themselves. Yeah, that's great.

[01:52:02] Yeah. And if you're on Twitter, follow her and listen to the disabled community when they talk about climate. Like I have learned so much from disabled. Disability advocates over the past year. And I'm always very excited to to hear from them in 2019.

[01:52:18] There were two really awful events.

[01:52:21] There was this shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in March, and there was a shooting in El Paso in August, and both were motivated by eco fascists ideas.

[01:52:32] And when I say eco fascism, what it means is basically this idea, the white supremacist version of environmentalism basically less hoard our resources for us.

[01:52:46] So you can see Brexit as an I as as a spin off of of eco fascism. You can see the border wall is a spin off of eco fascism like that is a climate plan keeping refugees out because those refugees are coming here because their homes have been destroyed largely, but not entirely by climate change pretty soon, possibly entirely. So turning them away is a vestige of eco fascism.

[01:53:16] And I know that you've been part of this conversation for like a really long time.

[01:53:20] So you've probably seen this conversation evolve over the years, right?

[01:53:24] Yeah.

[01:53:25] But like, I definitely I definitely think there's just kind of a more virulent version of it now. And it's definitely this thing of like, you know, the second like extreme right wingers actually accept climate change. It will be it will morph almost. Immediately into ego fascism. Like it is, right? The one, yeah. It's like the one thing that's appealing to those on the on the extreme right about acting on climate is that it's a very handy cover for anti-immigration policy. Exactly.

[01:54:00] So yeah. Yeah, they want it anyway. So in the immediate aftermath of those shootings, there was a lot of debate about whether or not we talk about eco fascism head on. And there is a school of thought that if we talk about it, then more people will do it. And so here's the deal. Eco fascism is not new. Eco fascism is about as old as the actual environmental movement. Right. Like if we think about how, you know, people often point to the the institution of national parks in the United States as like this great movement of environmentalism. Actually, what it was, was stealing land from Native Americans and making it this national land that they were no longer able to go to.

[01:54:45] That is eco fascism. Stealing people's land is eco fascism and preserving it for white folks. That is eco fascism. Right?

[01:54:51] Link is part of why I don't feel comfortable hiking a lot of the time because each hill in each trail is named after an act of genocide. Like what the fuck?

[01:55:00] You know it is really fucking shitty. So anyway, there was all this debate about like do we talk about it?

[01:55:08] Do we shine light on it? Like do we give it legitimacy like people are dead? Who gives a shit about legitimacy? People are dead. People are going to keep dying. And like, you can't just like, you know, la la lie it out of existence.

[01:55:22] So in December, Jennifer right at Harper's Bazaar wrote a really great piece called The Eco Fascists Are Coming, which I want to read a little bit from the fact that immigrants do not destroy our society and that indeed they are actually essential to certain industries isn't terribly important to anyone with this mentality. Nor is the fact that immigrants commit no more crimes than U.S. citizens for the regrettable people who regard foreigners as a shit eating horde. Any casualty of climate change is not a sad consequence of a lifeboat mentality.

[01:55:57] It is a perk when people like Miller, Steven Miller talk about how America should be for native born Americans. To his mind, white people do remember that you can subdivide tribes almost indefinitely. Eventually you're unwilling to help anyone outside your village then, or your family, and then finally yourself.

[01:56:25] It's just going to provide more fuel to the fire of like, you know, we've got to keep the country for quote unquote, real Americans at the hold.

[01:56:35] The whole thing of him like describing white people as Native Americans. This is what it is.

[01:56:42] Yeah. For say.

[01:56:45] For fuck's sakes.

[01:56:55] Finally, it's time for our last segment, our stand out pieces. This is where Mary and I highlight our personal favorites for the year. There's no rules, no rubric. We just pick something that's stuck out and stuck with us. And this section is kind of exciting for us anyway and hopefully for you.

[01:57:16] Oh, yeah. You know, we have like we have different approaches ourselves.

[01:57:20] I'm a journalist. Mary's a creative writer. So it's always exciting for us to see what the other person picked. Yes. So my pick this time is a piece called Heaven or Highwater by Sarah Miller. It was in popular. And I have to admit right out the gate that Sarah is a good friend of mine. And she's also. But she's also like one of these. You know, I feel like she's a writer, that I'm always just like, how did you do that? I feel like about your work often to where I'm just like, man, that is amazing.

[01:57:58] Hi. Well, I feel the same way about you, Amy. Trust me.

[01:58:02] Well, this like the things with with Sarah that she she manages to do this thing that I I find like completely impossible, which is to approach writing about climate with humor and satire, which is is like incredibly, incredibly hard to pull off. And she somehow manages that and she really does it in this piece. It's hilarious. Like I actually L-O-L to myself, just like rereading this excerpt because I like the goodwill that you just said. L.o.l.

[01:58:37] I know. OK.

[01:58:39] So having her highwater, Sarah Miller, this is unpopular.

[01:58:46] Lying is not my favorite. But when it's called for, the only thing to do is jump in with both feet. So when the first agent, tall, fair, polite, bordering on stern, possibly Swiss, possibly Swedish, asked, do you live in Miami now? Do you know what kind of place you're looking to buy? I said, I live in San Francisco and my husband is in tech. I gave a coy twist to the wedding ring. I'd put on in my hotel room. We're looking for a place to hang out when it gets really rainy. L-O-L. And then to retire to RFL Mayo. He either believe me or did not give a shit. The decor was beige and white or stainless steel, except for the books on the nightstand, which were jewel toned. One of them was written by someone I dislike. I walked around the apartment as if I already owned it, as if within my lifetime the lobby beneath us would not be decorated with kelp. We ran a boot again on the balcony. He gestured at the unusual rainy day for this time of year. Late March. Usually at night you will be looking at the best spectacle of a sunset here, he said. He was framed by Biscayne Bay and made me think of expensive butter sitting on a blue ceramic dish. I had an odd over the view quite genuinely, because if you don't think about the fact that it's filled with thousands of pounds of post hot pallotta used to veejay poops, Biscayne Bay is breathtaking.

[02:00:16] I asked how the flooding was. There are pump stations everywhere and the roads were raised, he said. So all that's been fixed. Fixed? I said, wow, amazing. I asked how the hurricanes were. He said that because the hurricanes came from the tropics, from the south, and this was the west side of Miami Beach, they were not that bad in this neighborhood. Oh, Ray, I said, as if that made any sense. I asked him if he'd like to hear. I love it, he said. It is one of the most thriving cities in the country. It's growing rapidly. He pointed to a row of buildings in a neighborhood called Edgewater that were all just three years old. That skyline was all built in the last three years. Wow, I said just in the last three years. They're not worried about sea level rise. It's definitely something the city is trying to combat. They are fighting it by raising everything. But so far, it hasn't been an issue. I couldn't wait to steal this line. Slightly altered. I'm afraid of dying. Sure. But so far, it hasn't been an issue.

[02:01:23] This this piece in general is so funny because she felt like she went. I remember when she was going to do this. This story, she's like. I mean, I had this idea like, you know, I'm going to go to Miami and I'm going to tour all these really expensive, like pricey real estate places and ask them about sea level rise, because, like, they're totally trying to act like it's not a fish. She's like, yeah, but like, how is the like how is the Miami real estate market not been hit by climate change yet? You know, deniers. The hell. Bravo. Totally. Yeah. So it's hilarious. Like there's many there's a few rounds of like her pretending to be someone and like meeting a real estate agent who's like, no, it's not a bribe.

[02:02:08] It's like how they just tell these bald faced lies.

[02:02:12] I know.

[02:02:13] Well, like in a lot of cases, I think they probably believe the you know, like it's like, oh, yeah, you like. The city has pumps and, you know, the roads have been raised. So we're ready. And like, you know, I yeah. Sometimes they want to believe. So it's hard to tell the difference between denial and delusion.

[02:02:30] And but I just love the way that she tells the story and develops out these characters.

[02:02:37] I love how could maybe she.

[02:02:43] Do you a new iPhone?

[02:02:45] Love it. OK. So what's your pick?

[02:02:47] My favorite is an essay by Emily Johnston. It is called Loving a Vanishing World.

[02:02:54] And I gotta say, it was a really hard to pick this year. I am sure you had the same experience where it was just. Yes. It was like a smorgasbord of amazing climate writing this year.

[02:03:07] Oh, really great. I mean, I. Yeah.

[02:03:08] Like, I just I like to just to pause for a moment and say like like I'm m so excited that there is this much great writing on climate happening now. And I know it sounds weird because like I'm not excited that climate change. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. No, not excited that there's a need for it or anything now. But I do feel like there's been a lot of. I mean, to me the fact that there's this much good writing means that humans are actually like processing this shit guy like that tends to lead to action. So that's why I'm excited by it.

[02:03:45] Yeah. So if there is a silver lining, it is the fact that we are getting better at having this conversation.

[02:03:50] But it really fucking sucks that we have to have it.

[02:03:52] Yes, but since we do less, get better at it. So anyway, this essay by Emily Johnson gave me such a plethora of of amazing feelings as I was reading it. Like going back to read it again in preparation for the Shaw is just transported back there like she just takes you on this journey of the highest mountain tops and the lowest valleys and back to the mountain top again. It's just so beautiful. So I'm just gonna jump in.

[02:04:25] So I want to ask you the same question I asked myself every time I'm entranced by the beauty of this world. What does it mean to love this place? What does it mean to love anyone or anything in a world whose vanishing is accelerating, perhaps beyond our capacity to say the things that we love most? Knowledge is responsibility, isn't it? If we let this world die, if we let it be slaughtered by the shockingly small number of villains who have lied to us for decades, then we become complicit because we are the only ones with the leverage to help it live again. Those who come after us will have far less ability to do so as we have far less ability than our parents would have. Had they known the truth to the degree that we do. For better or worse, we are the ones at the intersection of knowledge and agency. So how do we best use that leverage and how do we find the heart to keep going when the realities of loss overwhelm us? And I want to make a difficult point, but one that I think is also clarifying. We cannot expect to feel hopeful, at least not very often, and having any particular hope is likely to end in heartbreak. We have entered already in some places into an era of chaos and great pain. If we asked the universe to make us feel optimistic about that somehow, even as others suffer far more than we do, we are asking for an illusion. But our gift and our task is far more powerful than Sunnie feelings because we still have the chance to make the space for hope to act in such a way that hope might exist for others who come after us. Do you want to be among those who let the fossil fuel industry kill the world? Or do you want to be among those who did everything in their power to save what could be safe? We can join. We can rejoin the web of life. We do not have to be as destroyer. But our last best chance is now. And countless tasks lie ahead of us.

[02:06:26] No. So only she just does that whole Saturday is so. It is.

[02:06:32] And she does this masterclass of breaking down the whole narrative of how. Yes, not useful. She also is a call to action. It is also a call to process and, you know, acknowledge your climate grief. It also destroys this idea that we did this. Like she's very clear that this is not all of our fault. She also attacks this idea that this is generational negligence necessarily.

[02:07:02] Yes. Yes. But I like. But then she also does the thing like like kind of like Bina and cut her arm and does in her book of like, you know, like begood incest or like Mugabes for hope for the next generation. Exactly. I love. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:07:21] So, I mean, I cry tears of joy. I cried tears of sadness. I cried tears of action or activation as I was reading this essay.

[02:07:33] And so if there is like a new person to the climate conversation, this would be one of the first essays I recommend reading.

[02:07:41] It really is just such a beautiful work of art, and I'm just I. It's something I would go back to on some of my dark days to come back out into the light. Yeah.

[02:08:19] Oh. What year? Wow. I know. I feel like 2019. 2013 was the year that the climate movement really found his voice. And this year, 2019, it got information.

[02:08:33] I know, I know. We had some really important conversations and made some serious, long overdue changes to the narrative, which is great to see. A lot of those conversations are ongoing, which is why I'm excited to do our 2020 bi weekly episodes Air Neetu.

[02:08:50] We won't have to like research a whole last year to do it. And speaking of our 2020 episodes, Amy, why aren't we going biweekly until February? Are you ready to share your news?

[02:09:06] Yes, I am. So I am. The third season of Drilled is coming out January 21st, and on the same day we're launching a big climate accountability reporting project. So we're going to have a Web site called Drilled News.com that will have several different verticals with a few different reporters tackling various things around what we call climate accountability. So this idea of looking at all of the things that have stopped action on climate and just getting an understanding of how those things happened and, you know, where was There, corporate influence aware? Was there some wrongheaded thinking about how to talk about this stuff, all of that. We will also be sponsoring Emily Atkin's newsletter, heated and mnay, which is cool, and the climate liability news newsletter, which will be a weekly roundup on all of the climate liability cases out there. So that's exciting. Yeah. And we'll have, you know, more probably some more podcasts launching, too. And just all kinds of stuff. We're gonna be syndicating content to other Web sites and national outlets, too. So that's exciting. And it's a lot of work. So that's why you got to deal with all that stuff and then jump back on hot take. Oh, my God, that is a lie.

[02:10:38] And I'm both like, really, really proud of you and a little bit worried about you. We're gonna have to make sure we don't burn you out. And I know that's good. Yeah. It's definitely worth the wait. So in the meantime, make sure that you're following us on Twitter.

[02:10:55] You can find us at real Hatake and you can find me at at Mary Hechler and Amy is at at Amy WESTERVELT.

[02:11:04] Right. And all the articles we've discussed are up on our Twitter and in our show notes and in our 20/20 episodes. We'll also be taking climate storytelling questions from listeners. You can email those to hot takes at Critical Frequency dot org that's hot takes plur.. We've already gotten a few in, which is green. We're early. Yeah. Yeah. Really excited. Yeah. Please send us your your questions. We'd love to hear about any climate storytelling dilemmas that you're dealing with. An emphasis here on storytelling.

[02:11:33] We are not pretending to be policy experts over here. So don't ask us like you know what carbon capture and storage is best cause girl, I don't know.

[02:11:46] Yeah. That's right.

[02:11:48] Also, a reminder that if you like the show, please leave us a review or a reading in i-Tunes. It helps us reach new listeners. And in our case, it's especially important because the climate denier trolls are targeting us now. So so we're getting a lot of like L-O-L climate change. Yeah. And they're really trying to make it. Yeah. And then like an actually that can be quite harmful to the show because when your readings go down, then all of a sudden you become less findable in. Yeah. Apple podcast app. Yo. Anyway, we appreciate your help with that. Yeah. And this must be data vu for you because the same thing kind of happened with Drilled, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. I had to like put a call out for people to like, you know, weigh in if they liked it and you talk to the Apple moderators and all that kind of stuff. So yeah. It's just kind of a pain. Yeah.

[02:12:47] Yeah, yeah.

[02:12:48] So leave us good reviews and if you dont like the show, just like write that show on the back of a receipt and like nobody says it will take constructive feedback by email.

[02:12:59] Okay. Send that next week.

[02:13:02] All right. That's enough right now. We'll talk to ya in a couple of weeks. Yay! Talk to you soon. Bye.

[02:13:42] Hatake is written and produced by Mary Ann Hagler and me, Amy WESTERVELT, it's distributed by the Critical Frequency Podcast Network. Our theme song is New Frontier by Flashing Light. You can find us on Apple podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. Email us at Hot Takes at Critical Frequency dot org. That's hot takes plur. with your questions about climate storytelling or articles you'd like to see discussed on the show. Thanks for listening.