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for listening to another season of reversing climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate Change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon today, I have
with me Eric, hold house meteorologist climate
correspondent at the correspondent and author of the
future Earth. A radical vision for what's
possible in the age of warming. Eric, thank you for being here.
Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, my pleasure. What inspired you to do this?
Take on climate change because it does seem in some ways, it
really illustrates the stakes of climate change, but there's also
quite a lot of optimism built in here.
R2. It seems like you got me on both
sides. That's great, that's great.
You're the target audience then right, train triangulated right
in the middle no this book has a long backstory.
It originally started about five years ago as a letter to my
oldest kid before he was even born and I started it not even
knowing at all. What was going to happen by the
time I finished and then it's harder to have a baby than I
expected and so that book projects got sort of derailed
and put on the back burner and then I rebooted the book project
as a Choose Your Own Adventure book which is sort of like here
are the possible Futures and I sort of had an active plan of
having sort of two-thirds of the scenarios being disasters
because I figured like, you know, that's about the Is that
we have or I, that's what I thought at the moment.
And that was probably roughly early 2018.
I have they gotten better or since then, but it's gotten
better. It's gotten a lot better, I
think. Yeah.
And it and it showed in my writing to, as I was going
through the year 2018 writing, that started to have the green
New Deal come into prominence and the school strikes in the
ipcc report and then I started thinking like my good sir.
Mario's are already kind of way, farther along than I expected.
Then to be like you know I had some things sketched out for the
late 2030s that were happening just nine months.
After I started this project and then my editor came back to me
and said how about let's scrap that entire idea and focus on
the good scenario, you know, the scenario where we do what we
need to do. So I mentally rejected the idea
of Oops and and then sort of rewrote the book.
The third time with an idea of this is what has to happen.
There's really no choice left for sort of a middle path that
it's now or never and we need to act that way.
And that urgency, I think came out in the final version.
One of the things I think is strongest is definitely the
visions that you're painting of the future and what kinds of
changes might come about as a result.
Result of climate change and most of them do seem to be
really positive. And you, so, you see this as a
moment, we associate this with strongly with Naomi Klein but
you see climate change is a chance to sort of right the ship
as it were and fix many of the problems that have been
permanently baked into the countries foundations, or the
world economic structure. This is sort of the last chance
or that might exist to fix these things.
Is that broadly how you see this crisis?
I don't think it's the last chance at all.
I think there are always chances continuously.
I think every day actually is a continuous stream of choices
that we're making and I think that we can create our own
chances. So maybe that's the most
optimistic part of the whole book is that it doesn't have to
wait that we don't have to find some perfect moment that the
Stars aligned just so happens this year in 2020.
There's a lot of change happening and it seems suddenly
Not that far-fetched to imagine transformation on the scale that
the ipcc sort of recommends is necessary.
I think that having a picture of what we're fighting for and not
necessarily what we're fighting against changes the Dynamics of
the climate movement and that sort of the main intervention
that I want to make with spoke and you're right.
That a lot has changed this year.
There are positions that related to the prison and police
abolition. Were once friends of mine who
were pretty deep on the left reading, Angela Davis, and
people like that, I have suddenly became come mainstream
policy positions for a lot of people or nearly mainstream.
I don't know if you see it in the same way that climate has
had this to where the influence of Sunrise, movement and
gratitude Berg. Those positions are seemingly
more and more mainstream if they're not already.
So it does seem like quite a lot of changes happening fast and I
doubt we've seen the end of it. Yeah, I definitely agree.
I see the numbers coming out. Out of places like data for
Progress who who's kind of sole reason for existing is to put
numbers on these issues. In a way that other polling
firms. Don't asking questions about
detailed policy of the green New Deal, how does that pull
nationally? It's kind of shocking to see how
quickly those ideas have also become mainstream like 100%
renewable energy which was really kind of laughed at Just a
couple of years ago in the climate movement, the idea of
the wedge issue now is, is do you count nuclear power as
renewable energy or not? It's not really a question of
this is never going to be politically possible, so why do
we even talk about it? It's become how quickly can we
make it happen, you know, is it possible to have 100% renewable
u.s. electrical Grid in 10 years?
Maybe it seems a lot more possible than it was 18 months
ago. That's for sure.
So I do think that if you pull the general public, that may not
have a technical understanding of what that would require it
pulls, probably even better than it would among climate experts,
which means that the climate movement is constantly being
pushed and shifted from sort of democracy.
From what people think is necessary to do this work the
right way. I see the that sort of maps with
how I understand it too. Would you allow me to read your
own words back to you? Sure.
Okay.
Maybe this will help us frame this next part of the
discussion, you wrote success on climate change, where it can
exist will look like democracy to build a sustainable and just
world for the next Century. Everyone will have to
participate especially those who have been excluded from the
political process for far too long.
And inclusive Society is a just society in which we all listen.
One another with genuine care where to start.
I am not that sort of like a key nugget that I think helps
understand the entire book. But thank you Steve.
Yeah. So it isn't just about climate
change. You have a bunch of other quotes
in there about how if we could just magically remove excess,
CO2 from the atmosphere and get down to an appropriate parts per
million. That's still wouldn't be good
enough and we wouldn't have, I don't know.
What do you mean is the right way to say it?
Because there's an intensive and bad way to say it.
But if you could solve climate change without addressing any of
the Racial injustices or inequality.
Should we even consider that as a possibility or do you need to
address them all at the same time?
Yeah. No.
This is a great again speaking from June 2020.
This is sort of the question that suddenly on everyone's
Minds is is how far deep does the climate movement go at its
core, is this a movement for equality and justice?
I think that case is being made pretty clearly and forcefully.
Now in ways that may not have Gotten the attention.
It deserved even just four weeks ago.
So, yeah, I think that the starting point from this book is
that kind of an open question to the reader of what is the world
that you're trying to create like what is the point of what
we're doing here in like a civilizational scale?
Like is it to provide a good life for everyone within
planetary boundaries? I mean I think that's kind of
what I would answer that question.
Too often, I think the climate movement gets caught in the goal
is to reduce emissions or the goal is to advocate for a
renewable energy. I think those are just sort of
like tertiary goals. Climate change itself, is a
symptom of a broader structural unjust society that I don't
think climate change would have happened, if we would have
really lived out the values that are in, And like, for example,
in the US, declaration of independence because unalienable
rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And we haven't really acted that way as a country that all ever.
And I'm just sort of wondering like what would have happened if
we did, and we still can pretty much any day, we can change
that. So and I know that those roots
run super deep and we're talking about hundreds.
And hundreds of years of History here.
But that doesn't mean just because that's the way we did
things in the past, doesn't mean it has to be the way we do it in
the future. And I think that having climate
change be seen as a symptom of the problem rather than the
problem itself. I think lends itself to a whole
list of solutions that are not, maybe immediately thought of as
climate Solutions, universal access to housing and food.
Water and public services focused on care or rather than
on upholding certain rules that were put in place to serve small
groups of people without sized amount of power.
I don't know. I feel like we wrestle with
details that I think if we just all took one big step back would
sort of drift away. I think that we really agree on
a lot. More than we think we do and
that thinking of climate as a justice issue primarily makes it
a lot easier to align with other Justice movements in a lot
easier to think about what it is.
We're actually trying to do what I say in the book is that the
issue is really with this and the the concept of ownership
because if you if you go back in, this is Kind of A New
Concept. It's only two or three hundred
years old the idea of private property and what ownership
means. I think that before the
Industrial Revolution that we were working a lot more with a
general common understanding of community ownership and
community property. I am definitely not an economist
or a lawyer or well-versed on what happens over the last 300
years to change that That but I know that if you change the
prevailing mindset of civilization which of course
easy to do that, we are all sort of here on a finite Planet
together and only through caring for each other and caring for
our home. Will we be able to survive?
Which is kind of the situation we're in right now after two or
three hundred years of extractive?
And of wealth into a few people's hands.
We're at the point now where it's clear to see.
That was destructive for many, many people in many places.
So in the book, I have this conversation with Samantha Earl,
who's a philosopher talking about liminal space and
specifically about the idea of ownership.
So thinking of liminal space as this.
Transitory time, you know that the future will be very
different from the present, you know, that you will be making a
fundamental transition. But you don't know exactly what
it's going to look or feel like or what you will be or what will
exist at the end when you're done with that transition.
All, you know, is that the transition is going to happen.
So, we are in that space right now.
As a civilization really I think for the first time in a
conscious way, we are all Connected and all understand
that climate change has put a time limit on this transition.
In that climate change itself, has physically connected us in a
way that Collective decision-making hasn't really
before on a global scale, but in the book.
So I just summarize this idea of ownership.
I'm just going to read a little bit.
With ownership comes control, with control, comes hierarchies
of power. Those who own more can
marginalize and take advantage of those who, unless the concept
of ownership is connected to all of our social struggles,
misogyny racism, colonialism and the corruption of modern
democracy. And of course the concept of
ownership has directly resulted in the climate emergency which
is really a crisis over consumption by those who are
ready control. Most of the world's Resources
with dire consequences for those who owned almost nothing.
Is to a world built on ownership may feel unfathomable right now,
but it's what we all need to strive for if we're going to
survive the century. So with that, I mean that when
we are in this sort of Uncharted Territory, as planet now is the
time to sort of go to the root of the problem and imagine
completely orthogonal. Completely Divergent ideas that
don't recreate the problem that we have spent the last 300 years
trying to fix. And that's what I really mean.
That's what I'm trying to take a first stab at with the whole
book is what could the future look like in a world where we
challenge that sort of formational issue of.
Climate change exists in the first place, huh, ownership?
It's an interesting Locus to pin this on.
There's multiple levels to think about it, on which the first one
is just kind of obvious is institutional, which is what
sorts of property rights and property rules might exist is
something more like common pool resources like Elinor Ostrom is
this something like old peasant rotational writes something from
various indigenous Traditions but But broader than just, the
institutional point is one about the ontological phenomenological
experience of your human relationship with objects and I
suppose it would change how we viewed the world and things that
we quote unquote own if we didn't see them as being owned
but us is merely being stewards of them or guarding them for our
descendants or for the World At Large.
You're saying that it's almost more like a spiritual change is
that Yeah yeah exactly. You know I'm getting close to
it. Yeah.
You I think you got it.
And again hopefully I'm very transparent about this.
In the book is that I don't know the first thing about, what
should come next. I think that the job that this
book does is just identifying the problem, and actually
doesn't even I'm clearly not the first person to talk or think
about this this way, I'm trying to sort of assemble A group of
voices that are hopefully, a little a little bit coherent in
the way that I put it together about, what kinds of things
should. We be working for in the climate
movement, and what kinds of things can happen?
When we do that work together, when we try to imagine a world
that is still this world. But different?
Yeah, well in your Twitter bio you lost yourself.
As an Eco socialists. I'm at imagine there's some
relation between the ideas that you're talking about here and
the vision of Eco Socialism or are they diverging somehow?
No, I think that's true. And again, I have a conversation
with credit une Berg and with Kate raworth in this book,
talking about what kind of system economic or political
system could come next door or might come next, if we get
through. This sort of 10-year Green New
Deal, transition moment and that opens us up to an opportunity to
sort of put in place, a totally different governing ethics.
Then, what would that look like? I honestly don't know and that
was Greta's answer to me is that it just hasn't been invented
yet. Like, we're doing it all for the
first time in this context. Clearly like we've never had a
year. 20 before. So we don't really have anything
to base this on and I think, yeah, thinking about it, more of
a sort of philosophical or spiritual problem.
I think is closer to what it actually is.
We're sort of trying to strive to figure out what we're going
to be right now and that is a very much open question.
But yeah. In Kate, raworth also sort of
pushed back on the idea of Socialism or capitalism or any
label saying that. That why bring that baggage with
you if you're making this sort of transitional bleep to a new
type of world, then why bring those labels with you?
So I don't know. Maybe it doesn't even need a
label but maybe I should take that out.
Twitter bio, I don't know. I think that in the Twitter bio
at least it's mostly like a provocation that I think that to
get people to ask me the exact question that you asked me.
Oh man, I fell for it, huh? Yeah.
I think that what needs to happen is an ecologically
focused world. Going back again to sort of the
core of who we are like we are animals and we live on a planet
with other animals and plants and other living things and
that's really what it is. You know, I don't know, like
everything that we should do should extend from that as the
fundamental truth that we're all sort of part of an ecosystem.
We are a part of an ecosystem and our politics and our
economics, should all be sort of drawn out of that truth.
I guess that's what I mean by Eco socialism is that we will
not be able to survive if we're sort of in a competitive focused
economic system on a finite planet and that at the same
time, I Still, You Know, believe in those aspirational.
Words of the Declaration of Independence that we are all
entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that that
is possible with the resources that we have on the planet in a
way that it doesn't destroy the planet at the same time.
I mean, that's a belief system that's like a, you know, again,
we're talking about spirituality like that's like bordering on
sort of like a religious belief for me.
Maybe, I don't know because otherwise if It wasn't true.
Then I don't really know what to do.
I don't have a direction for my life.
If it's not possible for us all to live, or to enjoy the world.
And if it's not possible for us to respect all the other
millions of species that we're here with at the same time, then
I'm not sure what we're doing for enough at this.
I respect that you're willing to say that you don't know things
which that that has gone out of fashion.
Of things that I don't know. Yeah.
Myself included.
I also, I really like that point, I can't write worth Meg's
that those words, capitalism. And socialism do have a lot of
baggage, and even myself, sometimes I can end up feeling
defensive or triggered. If it's framed in the wrong
kinds of way, because there are things about capitalism that I
do, like, I like cooperation. So I think you're trying to make
like a, like a kropotkin. Mutual Aid.
Cooperation is a stronger predictor for evolutionary
history than competition. Yeah, that's that's a point
worthy of being made. Made.
But there's also things I like about competition to there's
things. I like about certain types of
property rights that I want to be preserved.
I like I like markets to but there's also really interesting
work that Kate does. And then also radical markets by
Glenn while on Eric Posner. I really like to which is there
thinking about how do you use markets in ways such that they
equilibrate in driving towards egalitarians outcomes?
And I'm like oh this is creative this sort of breaks the right
left thinking on markets and a really really cool.
A and it preserves what I like about markets to sew but you
always wonder about things like that.
Does that does that mean everyone agrees and converges on
it? Or does everyone find something
that they hate about it and reject it could be either but in
any case though I think not talking at the level of
capitalism or socialism is good because the details matter right
there are good and bad versions. Probably a both of those
actually I don't know if you agree with that or not but
depends on what we mean. Yeah, and I think I would just
go even more fundamental and say like, what is the world that
needs to exist and then just do it.
Like, I don't know, I don't know that.
It's worth really even comparing different systems.
I guess in that way, it is, sort of like a market-based system in
a way where it's just like, you try a bunch of things and keep
doing what works and don't do, what doesn't work.
I guess that is kind of what a market is.
Yeah, like that's the type of competition maybe.
But then there's other types of competition where I think we
could both be like, yeah, this probably isn't in Humanity's
best interest to compete over this, right?
Yeah. And that's where I think there's
should be and it is sort of like a baseline governing document
for human civilization, which is like the universal Declaration
on human rights or something like that.
I think there are opportunities to redo those documents that
include more voices other than Just sort of like the Europeans
that wrote them, but I think that there are very basic
things, that, that people can agree on, and then the goal of
broader Human Society should be to cooperate with each other to
make communities able to carry those out at the local scale as
best as we can, and it's going to look super different in
different places with different embedded.
And geographies and people and traditions.
And so yeah, what I mean, what Kate raworth is really also a
big fan of distributed production.
So she's talking about, you know, democratizing everything,
basically, saying that decision, making production design of
systems, all of that should be sort of able to be
self-determined even like a house.
All to community level scale that there are things that we
can sort of share in common like blueprints for 3D printed parts
and then like, let people do what they need to do with that
and I love that information, sort of just like libraries or
is it a library? Is a great invention in that
it's a community resource. But any individual can use it at
any time. I don't know, we have If we have
a seed Library here, where you can check out seeds, plant them
in your garden and then like redeposit the seeds the next
year when you harvest them. So, I don't know.
I think that they'll be opportunity for that kind of
stuff and all that is, of course, lower carbon than having
the sort of hyper globalization that we have right now.
I mean, because you can see how hyperglobalisation breaks down
when you have a pandemic or when you have a shock to the system.
Anyway and then the people who are left out during those
breakdowns are the people who are marginalized in the society.
So even here in Minneapolis, use have seen over the last three or
four weeks, a huge outpouring of the, these ideas and groups
focused on Mutual Aid people, caring for Neighbors, caring for
each other. The same thing happened in
Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
I feel like that is a little bit more of a model.
For sort of Effective Government in a period of escalating chaos
and shocks. Like we're going to have for the
next 30 to 50 years and probably longer climate disasters that
keep getting worse. No matter what we do.
Even if we stopped all emissions today there is a roughly 50
year, equilibrium period where temperatures are not going to
start going back down for about 50 years or so.
Because of the physical sequestering of carbon in the
ocean that takes that long for the ocean to turn over to sort
of update itself. And so that is part of what I
have running in my head this entire, throughout this entire
book, is that things are going to keep getting worse, even
though they're getting better at the same time.
So you sort of have to have the Long View by definition.
Because the work that you're doing today is not going to
Potentially lead to better real outcomes for a long time.
In the meantime, the next few decades is going to look like
all of us in crisis mode, caring, for each other.
That's just sort of my take. Yeah, well, there's certainly is
a lot there, I like that. And I like often.
When we have conservatives on the podcast to one of the
convergent things that we all land on is sort of the scale.
Of these relationships is too big right now and some ways.
One of the most radical things you can do is actually know your
neighbors and take care of them. And I think I think that's just
sort of a universal Grand. I live in Seattle and so even
yesterday, I was walking down the hall and someone
deliberately looked away. It's like, I know you, man, I
know you're not. He's Dragon trouble looking like
a little Synod, the mark of the human-like.
Give me a little nod. No, but I'm in the process of
moving right now. I'm really trying to get the
note being Neighborly and actually doing that.
And one of the criticisms of the left from the left that I've
always really liked is from Dorothy Day, who says something
akin to. The welfare state has meant that
we have outsourced, our Christian duty to take care of
our neighbors to the sort of impersonal distant entity and
really like your duty is to do that yourself as a work of
Mercy, as she might say it. And so I like your focus on care
work, I think. And I think that's it's both
good for the person receiving it and the person giving it.
And I think we would live in a happier healthier place of
people did that, right? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I was also thinking this is getting a little bit off
topic. Maybe I do maybe not, you should
just go for it. I think Stu, you know, my last
five years. Like I said, in the intro, has
been mostly defined by me, becoming a dad.
And so I've been understand and I had both of my kids are boys.
So I've been Trying to think about what it means to be a man,
raising two, boys in this world. And I think that honestly care
work, and sort of understanding the complexity of your
relationship to the world, is how everything you do.
Impacts, everyone else is such an essential part of masculinity
in this world that the book is set in, you know, the next 30
years. If we do it right, it's going to
Men feeling comfortable and secure in the fact that they can
care for each other and love each other.
In a sort of, like Society building kind of way, like, if
you want to call it, toxic masculinity or any any number of
different labels for it. But I think that is such a huge
part of what this whole struggle is, is feeling entitled and
feeling, Like, you are somehow above doing all of that work
that everyone else has to do. But for some reason, you've
purchased that right for yourself to not have to care
about that kind of stuff. I feel like grow when I was
growing up in a small town in Kansas and like playing on the
football team. That was definitely sorry.
Felt like what is just like? This is how you're taught, how
to be a man is that you're tough and like you don't Have to care
for each other. That you can do it yourself.
And when you get into such a hyper individualized way and
realize that you aren't able to do it yourself but yet you have
not developed any skills, how to ask for help or how to admit,
you're wrong or how to reach out, and genuinely, check in on
your friends, be there for each other.
Like, that's the work that needs to be done right now.
And I think If men did that work more, that it would all kind of
work out. Maybe that's like to
essentializing the problem too much, but I think that's a huge
part of what the hurdle is right now, is that is that we need to
sort of think about what our responsibility is to each other
and then just go and do it. Don't wait for someone else to
teach you how like learn on your own and do it.
Everyone's capable of doing that.
Yeah, that's a good point. I find, even when I speak with
people, that I might not agree with on everything, I think
there's something about social media that exacerbates this, a
hundredfold, but if there are people that, you know, from
around your neighborhood, where that you see around and they
have up a persistent, even if you thought that they were
upset, for no reason telling someone that they're upset for
no reason doesn't seem to solve that problem ever, not really?
Yeah, for anyone who has Rocket with humans for a long period of
time, you should should know this one.
Although I seemingly have to relearn it every so often part
of it is just like getting good at listening and knowing how to
even like interact on that level.
I don't really connect that to my thinking on climate change
but I think part of what you're saying is that some of this non
listening kind of aggressive, toxic masculine attributes are
linked. Perhaps to your views on
ownership and how it sort of like a dominance mentality, is
that Fair to say, yeah, but I think in my experience, the
dominance comes primarily out of fear where you are, afraid to do
things that are uncomfortable. And so you just choose not to,
and then it snowballs and then it gets out of hand.
And then you end up with 300 years of like, colonialism and
slavery. I don't know.
It's also, yeah, I mean, to be more explicitly climate-related.
It is pervasive throughout the environment.
Metal movement, this kind of idea of we know what's better
for you than you do. Like solar panels aren't super
important if they're connected to a system that is sort of
perpetuating a consumption based culture.
What is that called? Is that jevons Paradox?
Where increases in efficiency actually end up creating more
total consumption and the end. Yeah, so like like lighting is a
perfect example. Oh, we're Total Electric use
electricity. Use on lighting has actually
increased, because you have things, like cities, installing
LED lights everywhere, where maybe they, they didn't
previously have the budget to do that.
Now that the cost of lighting has decreased by 90% or more,
same thing is probably happening with batteries right now.
I mean, this is General is like the push to Electrify.
Everything is going. Create hyper-consumption of all
of these Technologies. If we don't have it attached to
a system of Ethics that prevents that from happening.
Yeah, I don't want to get into the Michael Moore movie.
Let's all I had a feeling he said something that caught my
ear for that, but we don't ya where-where's.
Like the point of that movie to me, was I say, I don't want to
get into it and then I start talking about it.
The point of and you ignore it and keep going.
Yeah, the idea was that the in renewable energy industry is
actually worse than the fossil fuel industry because you
require Mining and consumption to create solar panels like you
have to be so pure that you have to exist as like a pure energy
being to have no footprint and the world like which it clearly
doesn't happen. So there's that, there's a risk
of getting into that like a logical trap, but there are also
the opposite could happen where we focus as a society on
reducing actively reducing inequality, like repairing.
The harms of the last few hundred years in a world where
we have a wealth tax and distribute that income to
improve standards of living for the 20-ish percent of the world.
Who Still doesn't have the still don't have access to
electricity. We could do that very easily and
sort of at the same time, reduce total emissions potentially.
So we just repurpose the emissions that we currently have
away from things, like luxury, air travel in business class for
the weekend to things like guaranteeing universal access to
housing and food and water and Even internet and libraries and
health care and all of those things that have become
Necessities to having a good life.
I think it's possible to redistribute that and not have a
net change in our missions. And also in the process of doing
that transition, we would have a world that was explicitly
focused on making things better for the vast majority of people.
And so, I think we would sort of break that addiction to Over
consumption in the process. Anyway, now, I'm just sort of
like, throwing ideas out. No, it's fine.
It's totally, totally welcome. Yeah, I'm gonna ignore the
Michael more stuff and Skip ahead to the other side.
Yeah, the the points about consumption, I think are
interesting and I think there, maybe this link is less strong
that I think it is, but you talked about maybe having a
four-day work week and a basic income and I most the time when
I buy stuff off of Amazon, assuming it's not stuff that I
could like make myself a Make make a book that I want to read
besides stuff like that. I like doing stuff myself.
I do a lot of crafting and increasingly more crafting and
gardening and trying to like buy less stuff.
And I found my enjoyment is actually increased.
I don't feel deprived that I don't get instantaneous
satisfaction. I like becoming better at things
and you don't become better at things by buying things off of
Amazon. You have to do that by going out
in your garage and whittling something or using a lathe,
that's how you sew. I don't know.
I think I kind of associate that a little bit with care work,
even though maybe it's self-care or just learning makes you feel
good, but I wish it was more common.
Yeah, yeah. And of course, there's a lot of
privilege baked into being able to have time to do all that
stuff. Like, I have a garden and I
spend, you know, maybe a half an hour to an hour a day, not even
actually yeah, it doesn't actually take that much time,
but I know that it also doesn't fulfill all of my food
requirements. Or any right now, actually,
because I haven't Harvest anything of it off of it yet.
So yeah, there are things that we've become dependent on in the
world that we have and the Frank honest truth is that's going to
have to change a little bit and that's I think the reality that
the environmental movement shies away from when we're talking
about and especially it seems to be like a hot-button issue on
flying where almost everyone gets to Pensive when you talk
about flying myself included, even like several years ago, I
decided that I would never fly again like on spur-of-the-moment
decision. And then I took a job based in
Amsterdam and so I have had to fly a few times since I made
that decision and I get very defensive even in my internal
monologue about it. When I talk about like, well, I
wouldn't be able to do the work if I didn't take this flight, I
don't know. I think that again, The last
three months of the pandemic ho has proven to us that we can
live radically different lives. They've been forced on us so
suddenly that they've become really damaging for a lot of
people who didn't have time to prepare for it, but it is
possible to have a radically different way of doing things
like air travel is not really a necessity.
I don't think I mean obviously that a lot of people will
disagree with me on that, but the fact that we have families
Spread all throughout the world now makes it functional
necessity. If you want to have a
relationship with them in person so there I think there will be a
transition time. Yea like I said like 50 to 200
year period of transition time where we are sort of not only
are we zero-carbon but we are rebuilding.
The whole purpose of our society in the zero-carbon context like
it's easy to reduce emissions. Zero even but it's hard to sort
of have entire world. That makes it stay that way
where everyone has a good life, I think.
Yeah, I think you're probably right about air travel and you
give appropriate caveats for it before.
The covid happened. I would have to travel maybe
once a month, maybe twice. For for work travel.
I am happy that I no longer have to do that.
I used to think that I enjoyed getting to see See various
cities from around the country and around the world for work.
Now, I'm happy to just stay in my little Nook, actually.
Find travel very jarring in an airplane, so I would like to
return it airships. I want Zeppelin's and I want
transoceanic liners. I think, I think they should
have a return. And maybe if we had more time
and weren't, I know, so many people are, you can't miss a day
or a couple days of work or it's really perilous.
Maybe in the future, people are better taken care of and could
afford The time off to travel more slowly.
Also I love bike trips. I like traveling by bike a lot
too and I wish I was more people had enough leisure time or
availability to do so because there's a pride in that and I
don't think flying really does it for you.
Mmm. Yeah.
This is one of the things that happened when I was in Amsterdam
last year. Is that, you know, they have the
most, they have the densest bike trail Network in the world and I
just, you know, like woke up in my hotel.
I'll rented a bike out front of the hotel and biked to the ocean
and back that day. Like and I think only maybe
three or four times today actually Cross Road in this
sense that you Crossroads all the time in the US.
Like there is no real concept of a independent National Bike
Network here where it doesn't interface with the roads at all,
where there are just like random bike only.
Lee Trails carving through people's fields in the middle of
the country and that's the bike Road.
It's used primarily as a bike road and it has over passes
over. The highways just, as any other
Road system, would you just don't even have to interact with
cars if you don't want to, which is just so weird to me that you
could travel halfway across the country without ever having
really touch to car based infrastructure.
That's possible, I could exist right now.
Like that could exist in the US and fifty years, or even in 10
years or even like in three years if we will actually wanted
it to there are some of it already.
It's not on all the way across the country uniformly that I
just saw an article the other day at various states have it.
There's also the Canal Trail that goes from like DC, pretty
far west. I think they'll like Ohio or
something but there's a whole bunch of intersecting ones.
Yeah. But I wish I wish it was like
that because maybe more people would do it.
If so, So or maybe it would just be nerds like us.
He like getting on bikes, I don't know.
Yeah I don't know. I mean I really think like I
mean you go to the Netherlands and they're people of literally
every age and ability that are in bikes and there are caveats
to the system for people with disabilities that need
assistance. And there is, I don't know if I
feel like it was just sort of like a conscious Choice, the
country made about 50 years ago to shift to like bike, Focused
infrastructure. And you know, if you had
electric assist bike, there isn't really anything stopping
you from using that as your primary mode of transportation
permanently in that kind of a world that where the hills don't
even really matter anymore that point.
Yeah, I do think, you know, there are many things I like
about having a car and I like the freedom and individualism of
being able to just go somewhere on my own and not look at any
schools. Schedule or to have anyone's
permission. I just go but also I think it's
bad that every city is essentially built for cars and
to not have a car, means you're stuck on public transit which
often doesn't even go, where you need it to go Etc.
And if anything is just like a giant waste of physical space
like 30 to 40 percent of cities. Surface area is car
infrastructure, something like that so you can build you can
put a lot more. Houses and shops and parks, and
all that kind of stuff in there without all of that wasted
space. And also here in St.
Paul to connect everything. Again, there is a neighborhood
called the Rondo neighborhood, which is historically black
neighborhood made that way partially, because of racist
housing policy 100 years ago, but then it was cut in half by
building Interstate 94 that they Surly excavated a line right
through the middle of the neighborhood.
Cut out a canyon built the highway in the canyon and now
the neighborhood does doesn't exist anymore in any real way
that it did before in that same pattern sort of happened, all
across the country where there were, there were people and
neighborhoods that were considered Expendable for
infrastructure designed to use, you know, fossil fuels and and
quote stimulate the economy, you know, in the 50s You know, cars
were probably one of the main economic engines of the country,
you know, auto manufacturing. So you had the government
helping that industry along by literally destroying people's
neighborhoods. Yeah, I remember reading about
Jane Jacobs, fighting with Robert Moses in New York.
Yeah. Same thing happening.
Yeah, I don't know that we're better off for having the
highways going through that, you can still tear him out.
Out. I mean like it's there's nothing
stopping us from tearing out the interstate highway system and
replacing it, with something better.
Yeah, if you want to go from Seattle to Spokane, you better
get on your bike because that's that's the future Eco socialists
want, right? Just kidding.
I had to review a little bit. No, I people people should do
that. It's pretty fun.
Well, we just start wrapping it up.
The fun as this has been are Where can people buy your book
and working? They follow you personally.
Yeah, I do. Most of the Social Media stuff
on Twitter are called house. And I write primarily entirely
for the correspondent now, which is the correspondent.com.
And the book is available everywhere.
I've been trying to direct people to Bookshop dot org,
which is a network of independent bookstores, local
bookstores. So you can buy it through there
and it will be filled by your local bookstore.
I think, in theory, that's how it's supposed to work.
Cool links are in the show notes for all of that, thanks for
being here. Yeah, no problem.
Thank you so much for having me. Wow, it's a lot of fun.
If you like the show, please write interview US on.
ITunes up a podcast or Stitcher, tell your friends, and thank you
so much for listening.