Climate One

By Climate One from The Commonwealth ClubNews Science Social Sciences News Commentary Earth Sciences

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Climate One episodes

July 05, 2019 Climate Winners and Losers
Do you live somewhere that might actually benefit from climate change? Rising temperatures and seas will produce losers and winners. Some parts of the world will see more moderate weather and economic gains, while others are already seeing sagging property prices and economic losses.
“Many people think oh it’s just the temperature, but actually temperature affects everything,” says Solomon Hsiang of UC Berkeley. Hsiang co-authored a 2017 paper in the journal Science that outlines the impacts of a warmer world on human health and migration, violent crime, food production and wealth distribution.
The study shows that hot days are associated with increased violence as well as with reduced incomes. Hsiang and his colleagues have followed actual U.S. counties over time and found that if the diurnal average is above 85 Fahrenheit, people earn roughly $20 less per year.
So who does come out ahead?
“We do spend a lot of resources trying to cope with the cold,” Hsiang notes. “There are many parts of the world where if you get a little bit warmer…you actually can take those resources that you were spending on shoveling your driveway or paying someone to plow it, and you can invest those in something much more productive.”
But would any of these benefits inevitably offset by the social costs?
“Risk in a changing climate is not just about the climate – that human side of the picture is unbelievably important,” says Katherine Mach, formerly with Stanford University and now at university of Miami. “The huge inequities among countries of the world and the way that impacts that are happening in terms of impacts for food security or water insecurity…will mean
different things when you're in a low income country” without state support to keep the economy moving.
Guests:
Solomon Hsiang, Chancellor's Associate Professor of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Katherine Mach, Senior Research Scientist, Stanford University

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50 min
June 28, 2019 David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth
At what point does Planet Earth become inhospitable to life – let alone a flourishing human civilization?
In his new book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells explores how climate change will impact not just the planet, but human lives – including how a five degree increase in temperatures would make parts of the planet unsurvivable.
“The more I learned about the science the deeper I got into it… the more scared I was,” he admits, “and from where I sat as a journalist the importance of telling that story so that other people have the same reaction have the same response.
Paradoxically, though he has only been writing about it for a few years, Wallace-Wells has found climate change to invigorate him as a storyteller. “It's an epic saga,” he says. “It's the kind of thing that we only used to see in mythology and theology. We really do have the fate of the world and the species in our hands.”
Another climate communicator, Katherine Hayhow from Texas Tech University, recognizes the need for storytellers like Wallace-Wells to translate the work of scientists like her.
“We’re not missing the apocalyptic vision of the future, I think we've got that in spades,” she says. “What David’s book does is it takes what we've been saying in scientific assessments for years and even decades, and it rephrases in a way that’s hopefully more accessible for people to understand how bad this could be.”
That said, Hayhoe also recognizes a need for other writers and creative artists to tell climate stories that move us beyond doom-and-gloom. “We scientists are terrible at positive visions of the future, all we’re good at is diagnosing the problem in greater and greater detail,” she laments. “We need others to help us see what that future looks like. Because when you look at something that’s better than what we have today, you can’t hold people back from moving in that direction.”
Guests:
David Wallace-Wells, Deputy Editor, New York Magazine; Author, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Katharine Hayhoe, Professor and Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on May 6, 2019

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53 min
June 20, 2019 Can a Circular Economy Salvage the Climate?
Produce, consume, discard; we all know the routine. Raw materials are extracted, produced into goods, and used – sometimes only once – before turning into waste. And maybe we think that recycling that Starbucks cup or Smartwater bottle is the best we can do for the planet. But that’s the wrong way to think about it, says John Lanier of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.
“Recycling is not the answer or the solution to advancing the circular economy,” Lanier asserts. It's an answer, but actually one of the weakest ones. It’s what we should do as a last result before we throw something in a landfill.”
Like his grandfather Ray Anderson, a pioneer in corporate sustainability, Lanier advocates for a mindset in which products are designed and manufactured with a focus on permanence, rather than disposability.
“In this vision for the future we become owners of things…not consumers of them,” Lanier explains. “That’s a big and radical shift.”
Rethinking our manufacturing methods and energy resources is another key element, says Beth Rattner of the Biomimicry Institute. “When we start talking about pulling carbon out of the air, taking it from source emitters, pulling methane off of farms and creating new kinds of stuff, new kinds of plastic…that’s the recycling story we should be telling.”
Finding ways to imitate nature’s most efficient methods, such as structural color, is an exciting new development in product design.
“Imagine if everything we made was functionally indistinguishable from nature,” Rattner says. “That's the goal.
“Because when you walk into a forest, that whole forest is working toward a single common good, which is the protection of the forest; that is its survival strategy.”
And as more and more corporations and consumers embrace the concept of a “circular economy,” it may turn out to be ours as well.
Guests

John Lanier, co-author, Mid-Course Correction Revisited: The Story and Legacy of a Radical Industrialist and his Quest for Authentic Change (Chelsea Green, 2019)

Beth Rattner, executive director, Biomimicry Institute

Peter Templeton, president and CEO, Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Institute

Mike Sangiacomo, president and CEO, Recology
Related Links:

Ray C. Anderson Foundation

Biomimicry Institute

Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute

Recology

Nathaniel Stookey's Junkestra: A Symphony of Garbage | The Kennedy Center (Youtube)

The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (Paul Hawken)
This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on May 7, 2019

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51 min
June 14, 2019 Jay Inslee: The Climate Candidate
As the 2020 presidential election approaches, Greg Dalton will be sitting down with some of the candidates to talk about their plans for a clean energy supply, a greener economy, and their specific strategies for addressing the climate crisis as President of the United States. Keep your eyes out for those episodes on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee is a notable departure from other Democratic presidential hopefuls who regularly mention, but rarely prioritize climate change. Yet in a recent poll of public policy priorities, Americans ranked climate change next to last. Could a climate-focused candidate nudge the Democratic platform toward bolder action – let alone become the Climate President?
“I've now passed some of the most meaningful climate legislation in American history,” says Governor Inslee. “I’m very confident that I have a unique ability to lead this nation [and] I favor and I appreciate anybody following my leadership.”
Inslee pulls no punches in touting his environmental accomplishments as governor as a model for national climate action. “The kind of thing that we’ve done in Washington State that I believe is a template for success in Washington [DC],” he says, “so we ought to believe that we can have 100% clean electricity that ought to be something that we can tell Americans that they can have because I have told Washingtonians they can achieve that goal.”
The governor is also unequivocal about why he is running for President as the climate candidate.
“I just decided that I wanted on my deathbed to be able to look at my grandchildren and tell them I did every single thing I could to prevent climate change from destroying their future and that includes running for president of the United States.”
Guest:
Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington
This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on May 2, 2019.

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53 min
June 07, 2019 Mindful Travel in the Age of Climate Change
Guests:
Jennifer Palmer, Founder, Women for Wildlife
James Sano, Vice President for Travel, Tourism and Conservation, World Wildlife Fund
Norbu Tenzing, Vice President, American Himalayan Foundation
We’ve all heard that hopping on a plane is one of the worst things we can do for the climate. So how do we justify the environmental costs of world travel? Seeing the effects of global warming for yourself could be one argument for getting on that flight. For James Sano of the World Wildlife Fund, things got real on a trip to Antarctica.
“I was expecting lots of crevasses and big chunks of ice,” Sano recalls. “But then I suddenly found myself with my skis on a beach. And in the ensuing hundred or so years, the glacier had receded significantly so that there was no ice fall.”
Jennifer Palmer of Women for Wildlife has traveled the world spreading awareness about global warming. She believes that helping to connect those who are being hit hardest by it makes the carbon cost worthwhile.
“There is a piece of me that sits on a plane and says I’m contributing to this,” Palmer admits. “[But] when you think about it in the grand context of the people that I'm helping have the experiences, and they’re becoming ambassadors for these places. They're coming back and they’re telling stories and they’re creating videos and they’re having dialogues. And they’re creating change.”
One memorable experience for Palmer was sharing the film “Chasing Ice” with a community of Bajau people in Indonesia.
“We actually screened the film in the middle of the ocean on their settlement on stilts,” she remembers. “We tied up bed sheets…and they were literally hanging out on boats.”
“To see the looks on their faces as they learned about what is a glacier and how that’s connected to the issues that they’re going on and seeing…to make that connection and to be able to have a dialogue with that community was very special and heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.”
Jim Sano had some travel advice for those who want to lighten their carbon travel footprint. Take fewer, long trips if you can, he suggests. Avoid flying first class. And consider your routing: “Many people don't know that a great majority of your carbon footprint is associated with takeoffs and landings,” he reminded the audience. “So while your airfare may be less if you do a one stop, if you take a direct flight, your footprint would be far less.”
Norbu Tenzing, whose father was one of the first people to reach the top of Mt. Everest in the company of Sir Edmund Hillary, welcomes travelers, trekkers and tourists to his beloved Himalayas,“.unequivocally, the highest and most beautiful mountains in the world.” But, he adds, it’s vital to travel responsibly.
“You go to places like Nepal, Tibet or the Himalayas where we have massive problem with global warming,” he says, “it's important to go over there and see firsthand what the issues are, and to come back and try and do something about it.”
Whether we’re scaling Mount Everest or diving with sea turtles in the Galapagos Islands, it’s important to tread lightly – and respectfully – on every corner of our planet. And ideally, use the experience to make the world a better place
This program was recorded live at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on March 19, 2018.

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52 min
May 31, 2019 If You Won't, We Will: Youth Action on Climate
Although many climate conversations talk about impacts on future generations, all too often those younger generations are not at the table or in the room. So how are young people taking charge of their climate future? For Isha Clarke, a high school student and activist from Oakland, California, by speaking truth to the senior U.S. Senator from her state.
“I think that truth is respectful and that you can speak truth in a way that is compassionate and authentic,” says Clarke, who recently gained fame for a viral video in which she confronts Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein over the Green New Deal.
“I think the conversation now isn’t really about Senator Feinstein anymore,” Clarke says as she reflects on that experience and the ensuing coverage, “it's really about politicians in general and power holders in general, who aren’t and haven't been taking the necessary steps to reverse this climate crisis.
Feeling a similar frustration at her elders’ failure to act more urgently, 14-year old Sarah Goody organized a climate strike in San Francisco.
“Why study for a future that’s not gonna exist?” says Sarah in response to passers-by who question why she’s sitting on a sidewalk rather than in a classroom, “I need to be here now and fighting now for my future.”
Sitting alone outside iconic buildings can be a lonely endeavor, so other slightly-less young activists have found their climate calling by getting involved in more organized movements.
“I see [it] as a civic duty to be involve to be socially engaged in whatever way I can,” says Morrisa Zuckerman, Bay Area chapter coordinator for the Sunrise Movement, the grassroots organization behind the Green New Deal. She and her colleagues have been pressing lawmakers and candidates to make climate action a top priority – and it’s working.
“This Democratic presidential primary is talking about climate change in a way that I don't think any of us necessarily expected,” enthuses Ben Wessel, Youth Vote Director at NextGen America, the environmental advocacy organization founded by billionaire activist Tom Steyer.
Wessel has been impressed by the diversity of motivations that have recently been drawing young people to climate politics. “This is one intersectional movement that has to address our racial injustices our climate injustices and our economic injustices,” Wessel says, “I actually think the Democratic primary electorate is recognizing that more than ever before.”
Elections have consequences; but without more fundamental changes, shifting political winds can erase hard-fought carbon reductions. That’s why for Julia Olson, Executive Director of Our Children's Trust, the most effective climate solution lies in judicial rather than legislative action.
Olson is chief legal counsel for plaintiffs in Juliana versus United States, the lawsuit brought by 21 young people accusing the federal government of violating their fundamental rights under the Fifth Amendment to life, liberty and property by knowingly promoting and subsidizing an energy system that damages climate.
“What we hope to do through our case in lifting up the voice of youth in the Judiciary,” Olson explains, “is to secure the binding constitutional mandate that forces the people in the presidency and in the legislature to actually adopt laws and policies that comply with its constitutional obligation.”
Guests:
Isha Clarke, Student Activist
Sarah Goody, Student Activist
Julia Olson, Executive Director at Our Children's Trust; Chief Legal Counsel for plaintiffs in Juliana v. U.S.
Ben Wessel, Director, NextGen Rising
Morissa Zuckerman, Bay Area Chapter Coordinator, Sunrise Movement

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53 min
May 31, 2019 David Gergen on Climate Politics and Public Opinion
“This is turning out exactly the way scientists predicted, with one exception: it’s happening faster than they thought,” says political analyst David Gergen, who served in four presidential administrations. “The question is what can we do rapidly that would alleviate this and be fair to all.”
“There’s a lot of signs that voters, you know, they may not completely agree with the Green New Deal,” says Marianne Lavelle, a reporter with InsideClimate News, “but they’re not very happy with having politicians who are just not paying attention to climate and just not doing anything.”
Ultimately it is Republican voters who are pushing their legislators to act, since many of them, especially in western states, find their views on energy and conservation at odds with the current administration’s environmental policies.“The vast majority of western voters say we need to make sure that we protect [public lands] for all Americans,” notes Lori Weigel, a GOP pollster. “It shouldn't be something where economic value or resource extraction is taking priority over the uses that we’re most familiar with."
Guests:
David Gergen, Professor of Public Service and Founding Director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School
Marianne Lavelle, Reporter, InsideClimate News
Lori Weigel, Partner, Public Opinion Strategies

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52 min
May 24, 2019 David Gergen on Climate Politics and Public Opinion
Former presidential advisor David Gergen on the Green New Deal, InsideClimate News reporter Marianne Lavelle on the latest climate action proposals, and Republican political strategist Lori Weigel on how conservation and conservatism can go hand-in-hand.
51 min
May 17, 2019 Republicans and a Democrat on Climate
This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on April 30, 2019.
During the 2016 presidential election, climate change barely surfaced as a campaign topic. This cycle it’s a different story.
“It’s gonna be the first election where it's a major issue,” predicts former congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). “I don't support it, but we can thank the Green New Deal for that.”
Democrats have rallied around the Green New Deal and its lofty promise of a clean energy future. How will it realize its ambitious goals? Still unclear. But there can be no doubt that the tide of climate change awareness is rising among the nation’s voters. And more and more, as their constituents feel the effects of global warming in their own districts, Republicans find that they ignore the topic at their peril.
“In every single community in this country, you are able to identify a few changes to the detriment of all as a consequence of a changing climate,” says Ryan Costello, former U.S. representative from Pennsylvania. Costello, a Republican, now manages Americans for Carbon Dividends, an advocacy group that is supported by oil companies and promotes a price on carbon emissions.
“If you’re along the coast, rising sea levels,” Costello continues. “If you're in the Midwest, the land that you can grow on has shrunk; your crop season has shrunk. If you're in Oregon and Northern California the wildfires -- and on and on and on.
“This is really where the conversation has to go now in the next few years to come -- what the cost of climate change truly is.”
In 2018, Curbelo proposed legislation that would impose a carbon tax, which garnered the support of many of his GOP colleagues. What inspired him to act on an unpopular cause? For the South Florida community that first sent him to congress in 2015, the issue has become very close to home.
“In my community, an area that is at about sea level and where most people live near the sea, the threat is real, it's imminent. We get tidal flooding; our drinking water supply is threatened by saltwater intrusion.
“So that's why I decided to get involved.”
Still, even some Democrats have found themselves caught between the threat of a destabilized climate and other, more immediate, concerns. Christine Pelosi of the Democratic National Committee says that, from her perspective, the conversation is more regional than partisan.
“It has a lot more to do with a couple of things,” she says. “One is the existential threat that climate change presents, and the other is the dialogue in which people from poorer communities - frontline communities, indigenous communities, mining communities, industrial communities - say, ‘well, it may be true that the ecology as we know it is going to change in a dozen years. But your change is gonna change my family's economy in two years.”
As 2020 looms, many Republicans still fear that voicing support of climate solutions could torpedo their chances for reelection. Curbelo, who co-founded the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in Congress, believes it’s time to put country ahead of career.
“If you are an elected leader of this country, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your constituents and to the country and to no one else,” Curbelo says. “So, yeah, perhaps leading on climate could make some Republicans vulnerable in a primary, perhaps negotiating with Republicans could make some Democrats vulnerable in a primary.

“Too bad -- that's what you signed up for, and we need you to do your job.”
Guests:

Ryan Costello, Former U.S. Representative (R-PA)

Christine Pelosi, Executive Committeewoman, Democratic National Committee

Carlos Curbelo, Former U.S. Representative (R-FL)
Related Links:

Climate Solutions Caucus

The Green New Deal

The Green Real Deal

Americans for Carbon Dividends

The Market Choice Act

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51 min
May 10, 2019 Sea Changes: Why Oceans Play a Bigger Role in Climate Change Than You Think
Global temperatures would be soaring even higher were it not for a powerful heat-trapping ally: oceans. From regulating the temperature of the planet to generating half of the oxygen we breathe, oceans are a vital part of sustaining life on Earth. Increasing their temperature as little as two degrees, however, has an opposite effect, threatening marine biodiversity and turbocharging dangerous hurricanes and typhoons. But there are bright prospects on the horizon for humans and oceans. Join us for a conversation exploring how oceans play a bigger role in climate than you may think.
Guests:
Sara Aminzadeh, Commissioner, California Coastal Commission
Ken Caldeira, Climate Scientist, Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University
Daniela Fernandez, Founder and CEO, Sustainable Ocean Alliance

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52 min

About Climate One

From the publisher's feed

We’re living through a climate emergency; addressing this crisis begins by talking about it. Co-Hosts Greg Dalton, Ariana Brocious and Kousha Navidar bring you empowering conversations that connect all aspects of the challenge — the scary and the exciting, the individual and the systemic. Join us.