082623 Dr. Tekola discusses Climate Change and Sustainability (Part 2)

sustainability and to combat climate change. And so she and I are going to be having some more conversations, particularly with respect to kind of what's at stake and really what we can do about that. So if this is something that interests you, please stick around. If this is something that doesn't interest you, please get out of the way, because it seems like we've got a whole lot of work to do. But first and foremost, we are going to discuss be A be A becoming a better Ally Baba.

Today's Babba sponsored by Unknown Union, the fashion how situated at the intersection of meaning, innovation and culture. More info check Unknown Union dot com. All right, I'm going to be reading from CNN, But first I gotta ask you a question. Did you know that human and pet hair can be used to clean up oil spills? I know that this isn't a decidedly black thing, but since this is what we're talking about and there's ways to help black people, our hair curls up and we can definitely

donate here, but everybody can donate. Basically, a hairstylist got the idea of using hair to soak up oil after seeing how oil stuck to the fur of wildlife, and turns out it works all right, I read from CNN. In nineteen eighty nine, Alabama based hairstylist Philip McRory had designed a prototype device used to that used hair to soak up oil, which was tested by NASA and bound

to function well. Together, San Francisco based nonprofit Matter of Trust and McRory developed booms and mats made from human and animal hair. Every Day, salons, pet groomers and individuals send hair cuttings to Matter of Trusts San Francisco warehouse. The packages are checked for contaminants such as debris, dirt, or lice. Then the hair is separated, spread over a frame and run through a custom built belting machine to make the mats used to soak up the oil spills.

It takes five hundred grams of hair to create a two foot square, one inch thick mat which can collect up to one point five gallons.

let's talk about sustainability, doctor Tacola. Now, when we were talking before the show, you know, you said you sent me a text and you says, hey, we.

huge national security, huge economic implications. But more importantly, I would say, you know, like the risings of the tides, which you know, the ocean will continue to rise as the glaciers continue to melt, which means that the coasts will not be safe. Florida's underwater parts of California or underwater and New York. And when we're looking at this, these are the most populated places in the world is

the coast. And so if the coast go underwater, we're talking about mass evacuation mass and you know who gets left behind, poor people, and that oftentimes means our communities, and so not not to mention you know, like how are we going to grow food? Where are we going to get water? Here in Arizona, Arizona, Nevada, and southwest California. So we all get water. Specifically Vegas, Phoenix and La

get a huge component. And Phoenix is forty percent of our water from Lake Mead, which is the water from the Colorada River behind Hoover Dam. Lake Mead is we're about to run out. I was just there a few weeks ago, and I saw the impact. And ye know, I was just there ten years ago, and to look at the difference in ten years, you shouldn't be able to see that.

for you to know that this is not an exaggeration. Yeah, not making this up.

that aren't directly in front of our face. So you know, if it's a slow boiling like they say in a frog with frogs, right, you put a frog in a boiling pot, they're gonna jump out, but you turn up the heat slowly and you can willingly cook them. And that's literally what's happening to us in this world. So one of the things is that the IPCC, which is

the International Panel on Climate Change. These are the best scientists from around the world that put out reports every year, and they have in twenty nineteen they said that twenty thirty is our tipping point and if we do not peak carbon emissions by twenty thirty, that will be the point of no return. So we only have seven years left really to evert the most uh evert this crisis as we know it, and if we don't by twenty thirty, then we really have to start looking at how do

we survive the apocalypse. But we're already starting to feel that, like I said, like the Southwest water future is is not guaranteed. And what we're seeing is that instead of you know, you would think like meat drying up would be enough, if you know, the Southwest running out of water would be enough for behavioral change, and what we're

seeing is not that. For example, we're in Tier two shortage of water, which is the federal government is telling the Southwest they have to come up with plans to reduce their water and recently when they had until like this spring to come up with plans, and Nevada and Arizona we're teamed up and we're like, we have a plan, tell California to cut all the water. California was like wait, wait, wait, hold up, you know, like that's not fair. So we're

not actually being solution oriented, We're not being conducive. You know. We have people like Christian Cinema of that be like I don't like that California gets more water than Arizona and it's like this isn't that's beside the point. Okay, well, let's not debate who gets more. Let's actually talk about how do we change our behavior so that we avert this crisis of the Southwest, you know, having to evacuate right now.

You mentioned the bread basket and how there are fiscal implications and potential food and securities if you know, we don't combat this issue right now right so now we're talking about people's money, and money typically makes people that makes their ears proc up right, or if we're talking about food security, you know, those are things that people might worry about because it doesn't matter how much money you have. If you can't eat you can't eat them dollars,

trust me. Yeah, So I want us to hold that in one part of our minds. The other part of our minds, I want us to imagine you don't really have to imagine because it's a real thing. But in the same state you mentioned Kirsten Cinema, in the state of Arizona, where there is a water shortage and a water crisis, let's be honest, let's call it what it is, they're actively building a water park. You're read about this, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you can see how the intersection of corporate interests and sustainability that the alarming kind of intersection typically falls on deaf ears when it comes to politics, because politicians require money to remain in office, and then the money comes with favors and strings attached and so forth, and then we the people end up paying the price for it.

And again we've talked a bit about poor people, you know, bearing the brunt of this, but the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of people that live in the Southwest, in Vegas, in southern California, and in Arizona. And for a second, let me just mention this for people that think that just because California is on the ocean, that they're going to be fine, it doesn't work that way.

our planet, in the future for our babies. It's funny, before the show, you were, you know, you saw my son, you know, in the studio, and you know that I definitely want a world for him to grow up in and have his own children, and so I'd imagine that most people feel the same way.

it's like, how can you be so arrogant? But as you could see, it's also and this is part of my research and why I connected decolonization and climate change, because it's this type of colonial thinking of this man over nature, of this domination over nature, just like dominating over people of color, and it's this belief that oh, we can just solve it, And so what we hear from a lot of the Republican legislature, from a lot of people is like, oh, we got the ocean, we

can just desalinize. Well, the problem with desalinization is it's credibly expensive. Right now, we're paying sense per gallon. When you look at desalinization, we're going to be spending dollars per gallon. And some people, the rich might be able to afford that, but what happens to people who can no longer afford water? Because that was the plan desalinization, not to mention that a lot of these plants break.

Not to mention in states like Arizona, we don't have a coast, and they're talking about we're just gonna make a deal with Mexico, Like we don't have the greatest relationship with Mexico. Have you actually talked to them. You can't bank our future on these, you know, political negotiations that haven't even been started. So it is scary. But

I also want to talk about the other side. You know, one of the things that I've heard criticism of climate activism is that, you know, they say Martin Luther King had a dream, but climate activists only described the nightmare, the nightmare of the future, right, and so we also have to look at the bright side, the possibility of opportunity. Not only Klein has a book called this Changes Everything,

and really climate change does change everything. But instead of looking at it like, oh, what are we going to do? This is so terrible, we can look at an opportunity. This is an opportunity. Address existing inequities, address redlining, address all of these issues our communities already had if we really look at the opportunity. And so there's two important bills that actually passed, the Inflation Reduction Act and the

Jobs and Infrastructure Bill. Both of these unlocked billions of dollars that go into one green jobs, which on average, green jobs pay more than oil jobs. They're healthier, they don't have as much toxic exposure, and then they also oftentimes are union jobs that don't require a college degree. And so these are this can actually have a material

benefit to our communities. And when you look at oil versus renewable energy, since we have to build the infrastructure renewable energy that make three to four jobs per every one job in the oil industry. So when we talk about the jobs versus environment, false dichotomy. Well, if we want to play that game, renewable energy creates more jobs. And so with these two bills, they really unlock all sorts of possibilities. Now, in particular, another important thing is

Biden had passed what's called Justice forty. It's an executive order which says that forty percent of these environmental and similar social bills have to forty percent of that funding has to go to communities of color. And so when we look at the Inflation Reduction Act, that's three hundred and seventy billion dollars, This is bigger than the New Deal, and forty percent of that has to go to our communities.

So when we look at the decades of disinvestment, the Inflation Reduction Act, if we seize the opportunity, if we hold government accountable, if we get our cities to apply for this funding, if we get our communities to apply for this funding, we could really transform our cities, you know, and it will be an opportunity to change these historical inequities.

And so I also think that we should talk about the possibilities if we address if we have what they call it just transition, where we make sure no one's left behind, it can actually put communities of color on a better outlook in the future.

far away problem for most people. But because you've seen it, and because you know what can be done and what happens if we don't, I'd love to get your advice for the every man and every woman or every person. I should say that, like what they what we can do in our in our immediate lives, but beyond recycling and you know whatever. So first, before we get there, I do want to share something that I got from Vox. Okay, so box dot com record heat normal, it's hot, hot hot,

all right. That's from Laura Ingram on our Fox News show. After all, we're in the middle of a season called summer. Now. The thing is, she was being facetious, you know, just she was like, oh, everybody's complained about it's hot at summer, right, she's not understanding or she's trying to make light of the fact that it is a record breaking July, the

hottest July on record. Anyway, The fact checks suggest that more than three thousand temperature records were shattered in the US for the month of July alone, something scientists say would be virtually impossible without human caused climate.

climate policy is actually bad for the environment. When Representative Bruce Westerman, who was a Republican from Arkansas, first proposed the Trillion Trees Act in twenty twenty, environmentalists said the bill would significantly increase logging across America's federal forests, convert millions of acres into industrial treat plantations, increase global carbon emissions,

increased wildfire risk, and harm wildlife and watersheds. The idea was a wolf in sheep's clothing effectively giving loggers more allowances as long as they planted seedlings, which are decades away from delivering climate burning. But the GOP has come to champion this idea as their climate plan. So it's important to know that there are people who may even pretend to care about this issue, and they may put something together that sounds good. Trillion trees, if that's what

you name it. It sounds great, A trillion more trees. Hey, we're good, right, But when you peel back a couple of layers, you know, as I mentioned, it's really just expanding logging. And they do want to plant more trees, but it's just not realistic because the benefit of those trees. We're going to sink a lot further before we get the benefits of those and right now we need to be climbing out of the ditch. We sink any further that we may hit that point of no return that

you mentioned. So we got a couple of minutes left. I do want to ask you, what again, what is it that sort of the every person can do with the information that we've discussed on today's show.

make climate the number one issue. We need to make sure that our politicians realize that if they're going to be an ostrich with their head in the sand, if they're going to be the emperor has no clothes and talk about like, oh, climate change doesn't exist. Meanwhile, communities in Alaska are already having to be relocated because they're melting, you know, So you can't really deny that, and if you do again, like you have to, you can't be seen as a political politically feasible. And so we have

to make that reality right. We need to strengthen our democracy by ensuring that communities, that politicians know that this is one of our core issues. And then you know, there's other things that you can do in terms of like ensuring you know, like ensuring that we hold corporations accountable, and there's a lot of different ways that we can do that. There's a lot of different organizations, whether like the Sunrise Movement or other groups like Extinction Rebellion. We

really need to hold these corporations accountable. And actually, on September seventeenth, which is during Climate Week in New York, there's gonna be a huge mass protest. I'll be there. If you're in New York. You should. You should be there if you're in the area. And we're really trying to again hold our politicians responsible. Let corporations know no more.

But it's really important for us to be aware. So increase our awareness and then also make sure that we're holding our governing and corporations accountable.