[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks about with money podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Gabe Ashton. [SPEAKER_02]: And this week we have Zach Williams, who works in public health and we get into everything that crosses over with climate change and environmental justice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, refugee resettlement, fracking, [SPEAKER_02]: LGBTQ youth who might need to survive during a heat wave if they are unhoused, just everything that we talk about on this show and everything that progressives are working on and towards. [SPEAKER_02]: has to do with climate change in some way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We get into my personal fear, which is Trump disbanding or defunding or de incentivizing organizations like the National Weather Service, the CDC, even the FAA, which we don't really talk about in this, but is something that I worry about a lot in terms of the ability to not fly into a hurricane.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also talked about what sort of weather conditions and issues are going to finally wake us up to the fact that this is a rich versus poor issue and not a red versus blue issue. [SPEAKER_02]: So please enjoy my conversation with Zach Williams. [SPEAKER_02]: He is incredibly articulate and incredibly smart.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of my favorite interviews in terms of explaining everything and concisely putting together thoughts in my head that have just been like, [SPEAKER_02]: We're all going to burn and turn into a Mad Max future.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you heard, I spent a couple weeks ago some time in nature and it was really beautiful and I cannot stress enough how important that is for your mental health and I know it sounds like beating a drum that you guys have heard forever, but it was really really good to see some greenery. [SPEAKER_02]: So please enjoy.
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of lights about a cheatman is there They call you when they got you to believe in Them and finger held With their foreheads in an hell show Trapped in a cover on a sales scale Let's fight back in I've seen talks about class in the past Across the disaster Blocked to ashes Not spanked to box It's a thousand natural shocks A bad but money podcast
[SPEAKER_02]: With me today, we have Zach Williams, who was a highly esteemed guest that was recommended by one of our editors, Diane. [SPEAKER_02]: So can you tell my audience who you are and what you do? [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited to talk to you. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: My name is Zach Williams. [SPEAKER_01]: I see him pronouns.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am currently the Associate Director of Environment and Health at Physicians for Social Responsibility in the National Office. [SPEAKER_01]: but I have a background in climate and health youth education. [SPEAKER_01]: I have a background in LGBTQ youth social services, international emergency response and refugee services, healthcare project management.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the co-author of a book chapter a case for nature, the public health co-benefits of nature-based solutions with cat heartwell in the book Health and Climate Change on Ravilling the Connections, which was just published. [SPEAKER_01]: last year in November. [SPEAKER_01]: And I am so so excited to chat with you all today about climate change, health, capitalism, fascism, what we're going through right now. [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that you said all of that because it shows that there is a intersectionality between all these issues that it isn't just climate change. [SPEAKER_02]: It's everything connected. [SPEAKER_02]: It's refugees, [SPEAKER_02]: It's medical, can you explain your current position and and what all of that has to do with the medical field? [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: So before I get into that, just to disclaimer, all of these thoughts are just my own.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are not representative of any organization. [SPEAKER_01]: I currently work for or have worked for in the past, but what I do at work right now for physicians for social responsibility is primarily [SPEAKER_01]: So I work with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, licensed medical licensed mental health social workers, and I train them up on essentially climate change education.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our membership are often often physicians, but any health professional who care about the environment and care about climate change and want to do something. [SPEAKER_01]: And our angle is to bring the health professional voice and the health voice to these environmental and climate change mainly policy fights because the elevator pitch I always give is no one listens to the tree hugger but you'll listen to your doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you should listen to the tree out there please, but often people don't. [SPEAKER_01]: So, physicians and health professionals in general are a trusted messenger. [SPEAKER_01]: They have some credibility in society and especially in policy fights. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, a city council person might be eyes glazed over listening to a bunch of constituents, but someone arrives in a way called, yes, I've been there, I've been to city council and they don't give a shit anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: But someone walks in with a white coat and starts talking about how the emissions from the, you know, gas turbine that was just putting the AI data center is giving people asthma, spewing out pollution, making climate change worse. [SPEAKER_01]: They'll set up a little bit and now listen to that because, you know, they see a white coat and they're like, oh, a doctor, they know what they're talking about. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's mainly our gig.
[SPEAKER_01]: We engage health professionals to be physician advocates, essentially, and health professional advocates, getting them outside of the clinical space or with their patients and clients and into city council meetings, testifying to the EPA, submitting comments to proposed rules at the federal level. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the work we do at national is at the federal level.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm currently have both hands on Mount Everest and I'm trying to push, but we also have chapters all around the country where physicians also engage in local and state policy as well. [SPEAKER_01]: We also do some work in communications. [SPEAKER_01]: So instead our big thing right now is pointing the finger at who is to blame for all of these problems. [SPEAKER_01]: So the message isn't just.
[SPEAKER_01]: Climate change causes wildfires, which are destroying homes, causing injury and giving everyone lung disease, its exon is causing climate change, which is causing wildfires, which is causing your kids to have asthma. [SPEAKER_01]: There is someone who is actively making money and benefiting from the destruction of the planet, and our role is to get physicians and health professionals engaged in [SPEAKER_02]: that's so incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been thinking a lot about the ways in which different people with different expertise can contribute to fighting fascism and in my case perhaps a bit of anarchy and you know I was just listening to a podcast where they were talking about, you know, we don't just need activists, we need lawyers, we need doctors, we need priests, we need people to come in with their expertise
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you're right about, you know, obviously you're right about someone in a white coat showing up. [SPEAKER_02]: So what are some examples of specifics, like you said, Exxon mobile that you are having success with these doctors showing up and making some sort of dent in. [SPEAKER_01]: sure. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll give a huge shout out to our Washington state chapter up in the Pacific Northwest.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did that exact tactic, you know, bring a bunch of white coats to city council zoning meetings who wants to go to a building zoning meeting or construction zoning meeting. [SPEAKER_01]: But there was [SPEAKER_01]: without getting too much in the weeds, essentially a proposal that started at the city level in three cities in Washington.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe it was Seattle, Tacoma, and Shoreline, where all new construction of buildings, like high density residential load density, commercial buildings, there was a proposal on the table that all new construction by a certain year, which I won't say, because I can't remember the exact year, will be all electric. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of my coming from my public health lens and ounce of prevention prevents a ton of treatment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you just make sure that there isn't a gas connection to that building, then that building will not have fossil fuel emissions from stoves, boilers, air conditioners, all of that. [SPEAKER_01]: There was, it started in those three cities, and it went to the state level, and our Washington chapter did a lot of good work, bringing physician and health professional advocates to those fights.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's set in Washington State that, again, I'm sorry, I can't remember the specific year, so I'm not going to lie to y'all. [SPEAKER_01]: But by a specific year, I want to say 2031. [SPEAKER_01]: all new construction of high density residential and commercial buildings must be all electric. [SPEAKER_01]: So that is an example from the building electrification space, which is essentially getting gas out of homes and getting fossil fuels out of homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: to not only prevent climate change, you know, CO2 emissions, but also from the health lens, you know, think of all of the disgusting nasty stuff that comes out of a gas fire power plant to generate electricity, it's the same nasty stuff when you fry an egg and turn on your gas stove in the morning, because methane-combusting is methane-combusting. [SPEAKER_01]: It's still going to create nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gas household appliances have been shown to leak benzene and B-tex, which is benzene toiling ethylbenzene and xylene, not going to quiz you at the end of this about those names, but B-tex is components of second hand smoke. [SPEAKER_01]: So having a gas appliance in your home is like having a really shitty roommate who changed smokes 24-7. [SPEAKER_01]: So that was an example where a very hyper-specific [SPEAKER_01]: step in the climate change fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Washington didn't ban extraction. [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't ban the use of fossil fuels, but it's a step to get gas out of the way in which we live out of our homes. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a very specific example. [SPEAKER_01]: Other states have done that as well. [SPEAKER_01]: New York has done that and there's a couple other fights. [SPEAKER_01]: done a first-in-the-nation phase out of the sale of gas household appliances.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every two years, I think starting in 2027, you know, they're not going to sell. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the order, but the appliances are gas water heaters, gas stoves, gas furnaces, any appliance in your home that you just gas, there's going to be a slow phase out of that. [SPEAKER_01]: So eventually, the only option will be electric appliances. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I say all of that, there is a lot of opposition to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of fights about this, and it's not just like, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: dark money funded, you know, people going to these council meetings, but it's just regular people who are like, I don't want to cook on electric stove. [SPEAKER_01]: I love cooking on gas, you know, and so it's there's a communications campaign for general education apart from just like fighting the fossil fuel industry as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's changing hearts and minds about how we cook, how we live. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a very specific [SPEAKER_02]: you mentioned having two hands on Everest and pushing. [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like it's having three hands on Everest, it's pushing because it sets individuals, it's federal, it's state level, it's tough because there's all this chatter about, oh, well, individual responsibility doesn't really matter. [SPEAKER_02]: You were cycling doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going up against the [SPEAKER_02]: it's going up against deep ocean fracking and things like that. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you see that? [SPEAKER_02]: How do you balance, you know, I mean, it's a huge win in the Pacific Northwest and in SF, but how do you balance, okay, we need to do these larger fights with, [SPEAKER_02]: even in those victories like getting people to understand, is there like a tier system?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you brought that up because the individual responsibility fight has been part of this for a while now, like since recycling became a thing in the 80s. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is kind of a [SPEAKER_01]: are not going to prevent climate change.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you could be, there's a really, I have to count the zeros on my fingers real quick, but when I was educating high schoolers about climate change and we brought in a lot of these great speakers and lectures from Harvard and Columbia, there was a researcher there that told the kids, you know, if you did everything right,
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were, if you only had electric appliances, if you bite to everywhere you went to and from work everywhere you go didn't have a car, no fossil fuel use you recycled you had compostable everything no single use whatever you would make a zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent change [SPEAKER_01]: in global climate change. [SPEAKER_01]: And people hear that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, all right, well, I'm just going to throw my hands up in the air. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what am I doing? [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just me, you know, I can't do this on my own. [SPEAKER_01]: And it does seem like such an insurmountable challenge.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're going up against [SPEAKER_01]: oligarchs and people that have more money than God and they have vested interests in making sure that they can continue to extract fossil fuels from the earth, transport them, and then sell them or use them to make more products. [SPEAKER_01]: To that, I say, the divine right of kings was always seen as an insurmountable challenge and look what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: We now have nation states and we don't have, well, for the most part, we don't have kings anymore. [SPEAKER_01]: So I would say that if you're sitting there and thinking, like, gosh, what can I do? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not doing enough. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, I went to the bodega and I have a plastic bag and I'm now going to kill a sea turtle. [SPEAKER_01]: I would say, don't beat yourself up, you know, again, it's not just you. [SPEAKER_01]: Try your best.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you try your best to do good things for the environment, that is absolutely okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Included in trying your best is trying to get the people in your circle, your loved ones, your friends, your family. [SPEAKER_01]: to also do good things for the environment, that helps because it needs to be both a top down and a bottom up strategy where we do need federal policy change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're the way we're doing it right now, like Greenland's going to fall into the seat y'all. [SPEAKER_01]: but we can't, Laura is going to fall into the sea. [SPEAKER_01]: That's true. [SPEAKER_01]: Miami's thinking, you know, um, but we, it can't just be that. [SPEAKER_01]: There also needs to be a groundswell from the bottom. [SPEAKER_01]: And we're seeing that there was the March for Science.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was, I think, young people are particularly attuned and aware that their future is being sold off for profit. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so if you don't recycle every aluminum can that you have, if you use paper towels like damage on isn't being deforested, you know, like it's okay, but on top of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: be engaged, you know, attend those city council meetings that make you want to call your eyes out for three hours, but make your voice heard, bring your friends, make a day out of it. [SPEAKER_01]: If you start to get engaged, other people were starting to get engaged, and that's where I kind of see the tension between, oh, what can I do? [SPEAKER_01]: It's insurmountable, do [SPEAKER_01]: doesn't even need to be federal.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to change what your city does, what your county does, what your state does, you need to be an advocate, and you need to get involved then, you know, and the other only option is, um, [SPEAKER_01]: What's that line, you know, climate change is watching a series of disasters through your phone until it's in your backyard, you know, that's the other that's the only other option. [SPEAKER_01]: Sicken your head in the sand and going, la la la la, it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll ignore it until we have, you know, the heat wave that is, you know, changes the world. [SPEAKER_01]: We have the super storm that breaks Florida off and floats in the Atlantic, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so if you have this like climate anxiety and this, I don't know what to do, what can I do? [SPEAKER_01]: Get involved at the policy level, you know, join an environmental justice organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, again, I'll say that line, environmentalism without justice is gardening. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you, if you're feeling some type of way about it, make sure you get engaged and I almost guarantee you that there is somebody else who already made an organization around you who's fighting this fight and they need help. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I'll say get involved. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the big thing is that somebody has put this together so go join it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to be overwhelmed by that. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to start your own organization. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to form a 501c3. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to do all of that. [SPEAKER_01]: Someone already did. [SPEAKER_01]: Someone already did. [SPEAKER_01]: Go help them. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, so you mentioned some other areas that you've worked in and have those all been something that has dovetailed with climate change, like the other places you've worked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to like give you my bio and read you my story of my life, but for a long time, I wanted to be a physician. [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to be a psychiatrist focusing on LGBTQ youth. [SPEAKER_01]: And that was my thing from 15 on. [SPEAKER_01]: all of my schooling, my undergrad, I was pre-med, I took the mcat, that was what I wanted to do. [SPEAKER_01]: But on top of that, I was raised by a mother who was a very much like God made dirt, dirt, don't hurt kind of person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I grew up in the woods. [SPEAKER_01]: I will not in the woods planting in the woods. [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up, you know, bugs are cool, get your hands dirty, look at the beauty of mother nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I always had an appreciation for the environment and the world, [SPEAKER_01]: And when I kind of switched from the medical space to what am I going to do now, that's when I went to the International Emergency Response Refugees Services where I volunteered and Greece for two months literally like. [SPEAKER_01]: helping people off the boat as they arrived in Lesvos, food, water, shelter and emergency blankets, all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of burst my bubble, you know, I thought I had a pretty worldly view, but I had never seen human tragedy up close and personal like that, you know, from my little tricetate New York bubble. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I kind of started thinking, [SPEAKER_01]: This is only gonna get worse. [SPEAKER_01]: I know about climate change and the refugees that are coming largely, they were from Afghanistan, but this is going to keep happening everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I shouldn't say, keep happening, it is happening right now. [SPEAKER_01]: Folks in largely Central America, a lot of the crops are failing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are a substitute in farmer or you make your money and put food on your table and support your family through agricultural practices and your farm is failing and oh look, the land of opportunity is 1,000 miles north, you're going to do anything you can to make sure your kids are fed and you're going to travel up to the land of opportunity. [SPEAKER_01]: And that is only going to increase.
[SPEAKER_01]: The majority of people who will experience the absolute worst effects of climate change are live right now in the equatorial regions of the earth. [SPEAKER_01]: So Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, India, the Pacific Island nations. [SPEAKER_01]: They are not the ones that are contributing the most to greenhouse gas emissions. [SPEAKER_01]: That's the global north. [SPEAKER_01]: but who's going to experience the worst of climate change?
[SPEAKER_01]: The people who didn't have a lot to deal with it. [SPEAKER_01]: And they are also the ones who are probably going to have to flee their homelands due to increased climate disasters. [SPEAKER_01]: So my refugee work really sparked that first of all, my shift from medicine to public health, instead of taking money from poor sick people, let me give money to poor sick people. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's what I'm going to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: through my grad schooling in public health, I found a bunch of like-minded people, including my co-author of that chapter, shout out to Cat Heartwell, where we all realized that the largest public health threat of the 21st century is climate change.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's kind of how I got to where I am now, but certainly even the LGBTQ youth social services that I've done, it's also a part of climate justice where people don't think about LGBTQ people in climate change, those feel like two very distinct pots of ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like I'm pretty sure the choir here, but I feel like folks know that a large majority of homeless youth are LGBTQ a lot of them are trans and when extreme heat events happen, who are the ones who get impacted the most. [SPEAKER_01]: people experiencing homelessness, and a lot of those are transcipling, especially in the youth homeless sector.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of these things do intersect with each other, and there was always a through line in my work of trying to make the world a better place. [SPEAKER_01]: And in my mind, the thing that keeps me up at night and puts a fire under my ass to actually get up and do work every day is climate change. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's how my kind of previous experience has led to, where I am now. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was really beautifully put.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I went back and I was doing some research for an article that was like about my hometown childhood. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a whole thing. [SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, so I grew up in Florida. [SPEAKER_02]: I went back and I found the handbook like welcome handbook for my elementary school from when I was [SPEAKER_02]: in it there's like a whole chapter that is basically DEI and it was not controversial in anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember you mentioned like you know recycling coming in the 80s. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember growing up with like Captain Planet and recycling was a huge thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And now all of a sudden it became going into the the 2010s or even the early 2000s all of a sudden it became like a partisan issue. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't understand like can you explain what the fuck that is and why that happened and I know that I'm being very US centric.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I do think, and I, you know, I am sad to be right about this, that it is the global North that is causing a lot of this, maybe American individualism or our innate inability to give a fuck about other people. [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, why, what, what is wrong with us? [SPEAKER_01]: I, I yearn for the 90s globalism that was happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I picture, I imagine my elementary school and they were billboard billboards, uh, bulletin boards of like, here's the world and like, here are all these different countries. [SPEAKER_01]: I remember in fifth grade there was like, uh, uh, like a cultural exchange, people got assigned a country and then like you got to like, [SPEAKER_01]: Learn about it and tell everyone about it and, you know, we were very open in, you know, the world is bigger than just us granted.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in New York so that might have been a blue state kind of deal. [SPEAKER_02]: But no, I was in Florida. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think what happened transitioning from the like. [SPEAKER_01]: happy, go lucky, 90s, we all of the planet, all of that, where we are now is a couple things. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go through a laundry list of them. [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, is the rise of fracking.
[SPEAKER_01]: We figured out how to very efficiently destroy the Earth's crust with highly pressurized water and [SPEAKER_01]: And as we've seen, literally since the mid-1800s when oil was black gold that whoever has energy dominance is the global superpower, think about the 70s when the oil crisis happened and everyone was thrown into a fury because the oil producing countries were controlling the price of oil and how much oil was getting out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we found a some form of energy independence where we found there was a lot of methane gas under the United States those fake boundaries on a map that we've created and that's when we have kind of shifted towards. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the environment's all swelling good polar bears. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but look at this insanely cheap fossil fuel that we can distribute everywhere and not only distribute everywhere in the United States, we can package it and sell it.
[SPEAKER_01]: to where everyone across the world. [SPEAKER_01]: So the rise of fracking happened. [SPEAKER_01]: The very cheap gas is very cheap, and it's also because a lot of the fracking, a lot of the methane gas infrastructure is government subsidized, which is why it makes it so cheap. [SPEAKER_01]: Next, the great recession in 2008, kind of like washed away the loveliness of the economic boom of the 90s, and everyone was just concerned about putting food on their table now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, people were losing homes, people were struggling to pay rent, no one had a job, and that's when it kind of got to, all right, we need to [SPEAKER_01]: pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, that horrible phrase, and increase the economic power of the United States. [SPEAKER_01]: How do you do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Energy dominance, you know, and protecting federal lands, which are beautiful and wonderful in carbon sinks and the glory and splendour of Mother Earth, they don't make any money by just sitting there. [SPEAKER_01]: and people needed to make money. [SPEAKER_01]: So sell off of federal lands for fracking sites, sell off of state lands for fracking sites, the discovery of how we could extract oil from the deep ocean, extract methane gas from the deep ocean.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of these technological improvements through the end of the 20th into the 21st century really made us focus on [SPEAKER_01]: power we going to power our country, it's going to be through this. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're at the global level.
[SPEAKER_01]: There have been talks about doing something about climate change for a while, but since the 90s with the Kyoto Protocol through the UN, which then evolved into the Paris Agreement, which during the Obama era, you know, we were [SPEAKER_01]: There was a veil of we were gonna do something, but there was still a lot of fracking going on during the Obama era.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then also on top of this, not to put my little, you know, pacifist hat on, we invaded the entirety of the Middle East, particularly for the control of their oil. [SPEAKER_01]: What's the narrative that needs to happen to make sure that Americans are fine with that? [SPEAKER_01]: One, all of those people are terrorists, two, we're bringing them democracy and freedom, and three, this is going to be good for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great narrative to convince Americans that this is good, but you're actually doing it to make sure that you have control over the oil in the Middle East and how are you going to power and fuel all of that military technology oil and gas look at that so there were many global events and national events that happened that caused us to kind of like turn our eyes away from.
[SPEAKER_01]: The polligators are dying, the ice caps are melting, the ozone hole, all of that to hyper American individualism, we got to protect our own, and we got to make sure we're good. [SPEAKER_01]: And now we're here, where we are today, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's the Imperial Boomerang in a sense. [SPEAKER_02]: It's, oh, we're going to go and extract all of this oil and gas from the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then now we're going to go and extract it from our own national parks. [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I've taken to researching individual Republican senators or Congress people just to be like, what are they doing, randomly? [SPEAKER_02]: And there's this woman named Cynthia Lumis out of Wyoming. [SPEAKER_02]: And she seems obsessed with making sure that the Grizzly Bear comes off the endangered species list. [SPEAKER_02]: She's proposed like so much legislation about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was trying to, she was saying, [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's a, it's a waste of being on the list of the bears have recovered, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I was looking into like why she obsessed with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of to create the precedent that you could take anything off any animal off the the endangered species list thus opening the door for hunting or using certain animals until they're basically gone and there's, you know, different nefarious purposes for that. [SPEAKER_02]: or just not even thinking ahead to them being gone, but just needing them for certain things. [SPEAKER_02]: And once the animals are gone, this is my own conjecture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once the animals are gone, you can take that land, or they're not protected, so you can take that land. [SPEAKER_02]: And cleared out, it maybe it was a national park, maybe it was protected in some way. [SPEAKER_02]: And all of a sudden, it's not for people to visit and look at and hike, it's for, like you said, fracking or, you know, using the resources there in a way that I guess will cause all of us to die. [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, basically, I mean, Trump disbanding the national weather service, uh, you know, or not causing, um, not allowing it to have funding or unionized. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I think is the thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It feels overwhelming to look at how everything is connected. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I do think sometimes you start to sound. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been so gas lit, pun intended. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, where you start to sound like a Cassandra or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, in talking about the partisanness of it all, one of the most insidious things that's happened is the making fun of people who are concerned about this. [SPEAKER_02]: Like you said, I'm top the tree huggers. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, what's the marketing or communication strategy for other than this show where people are also on my level?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a great question and it's something that we're struggling with right now in the climate and health space because we're trying to figure out what narrative works what narrative. [SPEAKER_01]: puts a fire under people's butts and gets them out of their house and engaged. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's different for different regions. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna be very United States specific here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really based on where you are because if you're in deep blue Massachusetts, [SPEAKER_01]: is it the health message? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it like look out for your kids? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it the environmental message? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it climate change just real and we're all going to die? [SPEAKER_01]: Is it the anti-billionaire anti-corporation? [SPEAKER_01]: Exxon is making money off of our like selling off of our future?
[SPEAKER_01]: But in deep red places where we've learned and we've practiced where you can have progressive [SPEAKER_01]: values and talk about progressive policies in conservative speak. [SPEAKER_01]: Because the moment you say climate change, the moment you say the environment, eyes blaze over, ear shut, [SPEAKER_01]: damn liberal, you know, you just won't win.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you try and use the same message in New York City as you do in somewhere in rural Oklahoma or North Texas, it's just not gonna be the same. [SPEAKER_01]: So the messages have to change to probably primarily an economic one. [SPEAKER_01]: This is where the messaging gets a little tricky because gases so cheap that if you say stop using that and use electricity, their utility bills [SPEAKER_01]: and who wants to pay more in utilities to pay conned more money to power your home.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could also frame it as a freedom of choice kind of deal to get, again, conservative speak, where a lot of these places, especially after what we in the space called gas stovegate, where in January of 2023 Tucker Carlson found out that consumer safety product commission to federal agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, there was talk about maybe there's going to be a federal ban on the sale of gas stoves because all my after study after study after study has come out that there is really intense indoor air pollution that comes out when you use a gas stove. [SPEAKER_01]: And the CPSC was going to look at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after that, and then once everyone got into a tizzy, where Joe Biden's going to come in your home in a ski mask in the middle of the night, ripped your gas stove out of the wall, a lot of people got a little like, well, no, it's my freedom. [SPEAKER_01]: I get to choose what I want. [SPEAKER_01]: On the flip side of that, a lot of these places have introduced gas-only ordinances.
[SPEAKER_01]: a ban on bands so there can be no, you know, you can't tell us what to do kind of thing. [SPEAKER_01]: And so to get against that, you can say, well, hey, the government is telling you what to do. [SPEAKER_01]: They're telling you, if you want to buy an electric appliance, they're telling you you can't do that. [SPEAKER_01]: You have to have a gas connection in your home, the government says, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is the kind of progressive policy with conservative speak idea where [SPEAKER_01]: you need to use different narratives for different people. [SPEAKER_01]: It is hard because we need everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a, let's engage the faith community only, let's engage the health community only, let's engage the environmental community only.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone needs to get on the same page so that there's enough grounds well from the bottom that it is, [SPEAKER_01]: politically inconceivable if someone wants to win reelection, that they would be pro fossil fuels. [SPEAKER_01]: But that takes a very big narrative change and also getting to like a labor component of this as well. [SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of places in the United States and elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are oil producing countries all around the world. [SPEAKER_01]: There is a very large part of, [SPEAKER_01]: elected constituencies that work for the fossil fuel industry. [SPEAKER_01]: Think of the oil rigs in like West Texas or, you know, fracking rigs throughout the Rockies, people make their money and support their family and put food on the table through working for these companies. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just going to say that right now, it's not their fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not the fault of the oil rig worker for climate change. [SPEAKER_01]: It is the fault of the billionaire who owns the company, who installed the oil rig. [SPEAKER_01]: That is who it fault. [SPEAKER_01]: So I just really want to make that clear because again, big tent and we need everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: A great advocate in a red state would be someone who's like a formal fossil fuel worker who saw the light of day and said, oh God, I can't do this anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: to my colleagues and my union brothers and sisters and siblings, that this is something that needs to change. [SPEAKER_01]: But on top of that, to make sure that their lives aren't destroyed when we get rid of fossil fuel infrastructure, there needs to be what is called a just transition, where it's not just we immediately turn off the hose and then people lose their power, people lose their jobs, no one has any money or ways to power their homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: or any other thing that uses fossil fuels for fuel, there needs to be a job training program preferably through the United States federal government to train fossil fuel workers to become solar panel technicians, to become wind energy technicians. [SPEAKER_01]: to become the people that go do their door and see if you want solar panels and salt on your home, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm essentially just laying out what the Green New Deal says, but that is where we need to go to make sure that these people that make their living off of the fossil fuel industry aren't left holding the bag without anything. [SPEAKER_01]: While, [SPEAKER_01]: lower income people and then oh goody the coastal elites get to enjoy their green utopia where we'll left holding the back and that's not what we want to happen, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Who are some of the players other than Exxon mobile, who are some of the, and also I want to say that it along those lines, it's that same thing of it's not red versus blue, it's rich versus poor every time every time every time every time and I'm going to tell you, there's no red team and blue team, they're all on the same side, it turns in terms of elected, they're all on the same side and they're working for whoever can give them a campaign donation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I'm not going to sit here and love and support the Democratic Party, because there are just as many Democrats that are caltowing to fossil fuel industries that are, as there are Republicans, there's probably more Republicans.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, even in California, right now, they're going through a big fight, environmental groups in California are going through a big fight right now with their own governor, a Democratic governor, because he is giving [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he's giving territory, you know, he's giving space to fossil fuel companies. [SPEAKER_01]: He's reducing the power of the California Environmental Quality Act.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a, what will be probably in January when the legislative starts again, a fight for make polluters pay, which is a big policy fight all across the country right now, which essentially elevator pitch of that is,
[SPEAKER_01]: polluters so people who produce a lot of greenhouse gases will pay into a fund to then make good climate resilient infrastructure or remediation projects or you know if you're causing the problem you're going to help pay for it essentially and of course that has problems everywhere to talk about the players we then need to talk about the life cycle of fossil fuels because it's not just one part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is extraction, which is getting the substance out of the earth destroying mother earth, there's transport. [SPEAKER_01]: So once the fossil fuel is out, how are you going to get it from rural Texas to San Antonio, which involves that's the pipeline fight, all of these pipelines that are popping up. [SPEAKER_01]: That's the transport part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's also, well, two things, end use, which could be, you know, turning on your gas stove to fry an egg, or it could be that gas goes to a major industrial facility to like help create steel, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so any player along that, an extraction company, [SPEAKER_01]: Texico, any of these big fossil fuel players, and then anyone who has invested insurance in pipeline transport, there's a bunch of zombie pipelines in New York state that might get re-opt again. [SPEAKER_01]: There's fights about a pipeline in Arizona because there's a pipeline maybe coming from Mexico.
[SPEAKER_01]: to bring gas and oil and use for, for normal people who aren't in industrial manufacturing facilities, that's like your utility company, that's national grid, that's PG&E in California, that's PGM, which is like this huge utility company for Ohio, Pennsylvania, you know, kind of rust belt area into Chicago a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, you know, city specific, Philadelphia gas works, for example, anywhere along the life cycle, there's going to be someone that is making money off of either the extraction, transport, or use of fossil fuels. [SPEAKER_01]: And, [SPEAKER_01]: Currently, there is an administration that is very amenable to giving handouts to those people because the heads of those companies are buddies with our current president and a probably donated millions of dollars to our current president.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are now getting the rollback or their, you know, payback from donating all that money where there is now a very beneficial policy space at the national level. [SPEAKER_01]: for the promotion and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do want to talk, I know you talked about players, but talking about expansion, I want to just go off on this tangent for a minute, the whole big fight about pipelines, and the whole big fight about expanding fossil fuel infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't just that like that pipeline is going to leak and it's going to bleed into sacred waters in northern Minnesota and standing rock, for example, it's not just that I got news coverage, it's that that is Extending the lifeline of [SPEAKER_01]: the fossil fuel industry. [SPEAKER_01]: That is making sure that they live long enough their company keeps going on because they have just built new infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we prevented the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, which is highly subsidized by the government, which makes it cheap to do, if all of a sudden those subsidies were taken away, it becomes an economic [SPEAKER_01]: discussion of, is it for my bottom line for my company's revenue?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it worth it to spend all of those hundreds of millions of dollars to expand that pipeline or do we use that hundreds of millions of dollars to change our business model to include more renewable energy into it? [SPEAKER_01]: That is the deal with fossil fuel expansion and why these pipelines are so bad. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just explosion risk, leak risk, environmental degradation. [SPEAKER_01]: It means that the fossil fuel industry is extending its life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now again, I just said that changing our business model to include more renewables. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want shell to become shell solar. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't want, I don't want energy dominance via renewable energy, where we're all still bootstraped and tied to all energy oligarchs, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: So the flip side of that is what can we do to increase decentralized energy production?
[SPEAKER_01]: what can we do to make sure that there is community solar that there is either a huge solar panel field that powers an entire community or individual solar panels on homes that can share their energy if there is a surplus on one home, it can go to another home that doesn't have a surplus. [SPEAKER_01]: There are also things called networked geothermal, which is mainly for heat.
[SPEAKER_01]: where a single block or like a small neighborhood would share the heat between their own homes so that if one home doesn't need to be heated, then that heat that would have gone to that home can go to another home. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, bills go down, we share more energy, but that goes against everything that American hyper-individualism stands for.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the the cultural fight that we're having right now is how do you get particularly Americans to care about their neighbor or to be willing to share a little bit, you know, so that's my that's my tangent. [SPEAKER_01]: Our fossil fuels called fossil fuels because they're being extracted from their fossil fuels are called fossil fuels because mainly I'll talk about oil. [SPEAKER_01]: Oil is [SPEAKER_01]: millions of years old decayed plant material.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to call it dinosaur juice because it's funny, but it's not dinosaur juice. [SPEAKER_01]: It's dinosaur plant juice. [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's why they're called fossil fuels. [SPEAKER_01]: These are substances. [SPEAKER_01]: It is the carbon that was in once living material millions of years ago on Earth that is now converted into another kind of carbon that we can extract and use for fuel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so my question, it seems that the government is doing outward, like surface level. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we're going to give subsidies for electric cars, you know, we're going to do that kind of thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And then behind everything, they're just like destroying the right. [SPEAKER_01]: So true, so true, bestie. [SPEAKER_01]: So. [SPEAKER_01]: Also this about the the electric car stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't say one good thing, but like a good thing the Biden administration did was the inflation reduction act the IRA if you've ever heard of that the IRA is the nation's biggest piece of climate legislation that has ever been passed. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of, like, giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, but it included in their tax breaks and tax not tax breaks tax credits for buying an electric vehicle tax credits for buying an electric stove direct point of sale discounts for electric appliances there are a bunch of other things to like hydrogen we won't get into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that is a Biden era climate policy, not perfect because if you're a regular Joe, [SPEAKER_01]: who has $8,000 to buy a new electric stove and you wait until tax season to get a tax credit for it, again, not perfect. [SPEAKER_01]: But that's a Biden era policy. [SPEAKER_01]: The Trump administration, which, if any listener here is like thinking about electrifying their home, do it quickly because those credits are going away at the end of the year.
[SPEAKER_01]: December 31st, 2025 is when a lot of them stop. [SPEAKER_01]: and that is because the Trump administration is trying their best to remove all good climate policy, especially from the Biden administration so we can be like, look what I did, look how great. [SPEAKER_01]: So that is the story between the like government doing good things. [SPEAKER_01]: Biden tried to do a good thing. [SPEAKER_01]: and now Trump is reversing a lot of it, which is where the whole lake.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the same on the same side of that coin, during the Biden administration, yes, there was the IRA, which isn't perfect. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll say, I'll keep saying that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the flip side, he was trying to increase [SPEAKER_01]: Long story short, liquified natural gas is how we like transport methane gas across large distances, like how you put it on a ship to send to Europe, and it's a big money maker, you can make a lot of money off of an LNG, liquified natural gas export facility, so he was still trying to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of like, hey, shiny keys, jingle, look over here while I'm also trying to build pipelines and get liquefied natural gas out. [SPEAKER_01]: Why? [SPEAKER_01]: Because America still wants to be energy dominant. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Russia is a big fossil fuel producer. [SPEAKER_01]: The Middle East is still a big fossil fuel producer.
[SPEAKER_01]: How China's GDP is about to overtake us [SPEAKER_01]: God forbid, the United States is not the world's global superpower economically, and so a president may have to think about things like, I have a base and a constituency that cares about climate change, but I got to make sure the United States remains energy dominant, you know, why who cares?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're asking me, I wish, you know, I won't get on my soapbox, but like this, this now comes into a conversation about capitalism where there is a finite amount of resources on this earth and we are living under an economic model that assumes that infinite growth is possible. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that is not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are currently living right now, where at the expense of the majority of the population on earth, a select group of people can continue making that imaginary line go up. [SPEAKER_01]: to make sure that they have more money than God. [SPEAKER_01]: That's the who cares part of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Who cares? [SPEAKER_01]: The people that are making more money than God. [SPEAKER_01]: Us, I don't care if China overtakes us in GDP.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care if the United States is the most energy dominant nation. [SPEAKER_01]: That means nothing for me, my family, and my loved ones, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: What matters is the fact that in [SPEAKER_01]: X amount of years as climate scientists could be 10, it could be 20, it could be 30, that all of the coastal regions where I live, I live in New York City, will be uninhabitable because sea level rises happening, it's already happening in Pacific Island nations, it just came out that the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, which is a small Pacific Island nation has made an agreement with the Australian government.
[SPEAKER_01]: that they are going to move their entire population from Tubalu to Australia through a formal immigration process with Australia because their nation is sinking. [SPEAKER_01]: And Altalya, Pacific Islanders on a small Pacific Island nation are not the ones that are causing sea levels to rise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where we get into a different economic model [SPEAKER_01]: their needs to be care and love for the earth and one another at the center of that, not how can I continue to make more money and hoard more resources. [SPEAKER_02]: Then over population, then everybody slammed into one little area, then there's like even less resources. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and then it becomes a, this is my plot of land with fresh water on it, not yours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here is my gun to protect my fresh water because listen for the. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to get doomism, but like the greatest hurdle that we're going to overcome is the water wars in the 21st century when fresh, potable water starts to become not as accessible for a lot of people, and famously humans cannot live for more than three days without water.
[SPEAKER_01]: that is this is where like the rubber starts to meet the road of now we're talking again none of these thoughts are any of the or the same as any of the organizations that I work for but there is more than enough resources on this planet for everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: Yep. [SPEAKER_01]: The the whole like uh global depopulation we need to reduce the amount of people on earth all of that there's too many people that's alike.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to share the resources on this Earth and there are select few individuals that are hoarding the right to and the actual resources of the things we need to survive. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll close with this. [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to ask about we are talking about the uninhabitable nature of certain areas, the wildfires in California, the floods in Texas, my homestay to Florida sinking, which might not be so bad. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just kidding the Florida jokes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, there are good people out live there. [SPEAKER_02]: So how is the the Trump administration affecting all of that and. [SPEAKER_02]: what do you see as, I mean, you mentioned like fighting over plots of land, but what do you see as something that will get people to be like, this is in my backyard or this is because they don't see it as connected. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, they don't see it as connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the hurricane that just hit Asheville this year, instead of people saying like, oh my god, that was a climate disaster. [SPEAKER_01]: People said the Democrats have a weather machine that are sending intense weather to [SPEAKER_01]: swing areas like that, the tin foil hat is coming out.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in terms of what the Trump administration is doing, all again, give you a laundry list, the primary fight right now or the biggest bad thing that the Trump administration is doing at this current moment is repealing the end-dangerment [SPEAKER_01]: It is a policy through the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. [SPEAKER_01]: That says, greenhouse gases are indeed bad for health.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a danger to greenhouse gases because they contribute to climate change, which will make the livelihood and our job of protecting Americans harder because climate change will make everyone's lives worse. [SPEAKER_01]: That was a delstery. [SPEAKER_01]: I do telling you, I started the brainworms, but that's the biggest bad thing. [SPEAKER_01]: I would say right now. [SPEAKER_01]: There's also no more funding for offshore wind, no more funding for solar projects.
[SPEAKER_01]: like redoing the national forest service so that forest can be open up and no more environmental oversight. [SPEAKER_01]: The make polluters pay, which are also called super fun sometimes. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of lawsuits happening right now to like get rid of those. [SPEAKER_01]: But the main thing is that the Trump administration is trying to make the EPA no longer say that greenhouse gases are bad for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and in terms of the like unenhabitable lands and like what he's doing for that is repealing the engagement finding means that the EPA doesn't have to do anything about climate change, which means that they will no longer have air quality regulations for power plants. [SPEAKER_01]: They will no longer have, um, water protections for fracking wastewater. [SPEAKER_01]: are no longer priorities for the EPA. [SPEAKER_01]: And that means that climate change is going to get worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means we're going to see more extreme heat events, more intense extreme weather events, hurricanes, floods, all of that intense periods of rain. [SPEAKER_01]: And we're also going to see the increase in range in infectious diseases like malaria and Zika and dengue, which are typically tropical diseases.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, the mosquitoes that are vectors for these diseases, typically can only exist on the equator, but as the world heats up and Florida, all of a sudden has the same climate as Central America, those mosquitoes can now live in Florida and then all of a sudden there's an outbreak of malaria in Florida.
[SPEAKER_01]: say the same for also cell texas, the Gulf states, as that moves up, those diseases are going to become more and more prevalent, just at a time when the CDC is also just crumbling under our care junior. [SPEAKER_01]: What I think will be the thing that like gets people to understand what's happening is probably going to be heat and I'll tell you why. [SPEAKER_01]: Heat kills.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have heat exhaustion, you need to get to a pool area with pool, water, rehydrate yourself, pool your body temperature down. [SPEAKER_01]: You are at intense intense risk of heat stroke and heart attacks, essentially, when heat exhaustion becomes too much. [SPEAKER_01]: who are the people that work outside during the summer?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are low-income folks who work in construction, who work in park maintenance, who work in landscaping, who sell food on the side of the road, who are homeless folks, as the heat events get more and more and more. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, as we can see, the summer was hot as fuck. [SPEAKER_01]: That is going to become the normal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And June, July and August average temperatures are going to probably go around 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a large majority of the, if you put like a line in the United States, the southern half of that mean while the northern regions are going to become more like our great planes regions where all the sudden it's not intense winter anymore, the Midwest winter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be prime farming fields, so what I really think is going to happen, and I'll say this, I don't think it's going to happen in the United States, because the United States has somewhat enough good enough infrastructure to take care of people that that happens to. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's going to happen in either Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, or India, where there is going to be a heat wave that kills millions of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is probably going to be the thing that makes everyone go, oh my God, we need to do something about this. [SPEAKER_01]: It could take place in the United States. [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine the heat, the heat dome that was over the Pacific Northwest a couple of years ago that like killed all of that wildlife and like Seattle was like 103 degrees for like five days or something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: That could happen in Arizona. [SPEAKER_01]: That could happen in New York.
[SPEAKER_01]: That could happen in the Mid-Atlantic States. [SPEAKER_01]: And until something like that happens where a lot, this is so morbid, but a lot of Americans are injured or died because of it. [SPEAKER_01]: that is what is going to drive us to do something about it. [SPEAKER_01]: However, we need to learn from our history.
[SPEAKER_01]: If Hurricane Katrina is any indication of how the government will respond to something like that, [SPEAKER_01]: that's when the ground swell of the people need to come together and make sure that's something happens. [SPEAKER_01]: I will say if this conversation is giving everyone like climate anxiety and climate doom, I'm going to recommend everyone a book right now that is one of if not my favorite [SPEAKER_01]: It ends with an upswing. [SPEAKER_01]: We do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We beat climate change. [SPEAKER_01]: We reach drawdown, which means that CO2 levels instead of constantly going up CO2 levels finally go down. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a book that is going to actually end with a happy ending. [SPEAKER_01]: Just let everyone know. [SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Ministry for the [SPEAKER_01]: The great Indian heat wave of 2025 happens and more people than we're killed in World War II are killed in India in a weak long span because of a heat wave.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is what sets the world off on creating the ministry for the future. [SPEAKER_01]: A UNHNC that is dedicated to making sure the Earth is [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when the world kind of starts getting on the same page. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you need something where you can read it and you're like, oh my god, we're going through that right now. [SPEAKER_01]: And then it ends with us winning. [SPEAKER_01]: It ends with us actually having a little bit of a planet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have a little bit of climbing anxiety, highly recommend that book. [SPEAKER_01]: That's really good. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being here, Zach. [SPEAKER_02]: I super appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, I learned so much. [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, thank you so much for having me. [SPEAKER_01]: It's been an honor to be on this. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll leave everyone with a final.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not your fault, get involved, and go touch some grass. [SPEAKER_01]: Go let another breath a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: A thousand natural shocks a bad with money podcast is a production of noted bisexual, produced by Melissa D. Montz and Diamond M. print productions, edited by Diane Kang, post-production sound by Coca Lorenz, and music by Zach Sherwin as sung by Sam Barbarra. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, love you, bye!