[on-hold music] It's Quinn. Maybe you're like me, and sometimes you just spiral out, not just because everything is a lot all of the time, but because some part of you actually wants to do something about it. But, I mean, holy shit, where to start, right? Great news. We built an app for that. It's called What Can I Do? Even better news, it's free and it's fast. It takes just three clicks to start unfucking the world. Visit whatcanido.earth to get started for free.
[on-hold music] Picture a city that beats brutal heat waves with cool tree-lined streets, that slashes household energy bills and cuts carbon pollution by as much as eighty percent without waiting for these miracle technologies. That future-positive vision is already taking shape in fast-growing places like Ahmedabad, India, where community-designed cooling plans and demand-side innovations are proving that climate action can double as a public health and equity upgrade.
It's co-benefits. You've heard it a thousand times. We're gonna talk about them more today. What can you do to help your own city deliver cleaner air, lower costs, and a safer climate? Every week, thousands of people ask us the most important question in the world, "What can I do?" So every week, I turn around and ask someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about the very same question.
Across climate change and global health and AI and Alzheimer's research, I find out why they're doing the work they're doing and what we, you and I, can do to support it, to emulate it, to join their work, to fund it, to find our own way to the front lines of the future. I'm your host, Quinn Emmett, and my guest today is Dr. Minal Patak, Associate Professor at Ahmedabad University and a former senior scientist with the IPCC who helped craft the landmark Sixth Assessment Report.
And we'll explore how people-centered, data-smart solutions can transform just about any city into a climate-resilient, well-being powerhouse, how you can start pushing your own neighborhood, your own spheres of influence down that path today. For questions or feedback, as always, please email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com. [on-hold music] Minal, thank you so much for being with us today.
I really appreciate it. Again, I put my children on the school bus ten minutes ago, so I apologize if I'm a little frazzled here. I don't know if you have children, but for me, there's always a buffer between when I send them off for the day and when I'm able to actually think clearly again for a minute. My daughter is eighteen, and she just came home for a summer break. You'll be surprised at how ch- how things change- Yeah. [chuckles] In a few years. I don't know how old your kids are.
Yeah, mine are ten, eleven, and twelve. They think they're eighteen, but they're not yet. Yeah. So did she come back a different person? What's the story? I think she's a good kid. I miss when she was younger, but I feel that I like my space now. When you grow older, you want your time, so- Yeah. Not missing that part. Yeah, uh, it's funny. We're definitely in that moment.
Our kids are getting older. It seems like they're on almost like, I was telling a friend today, escape velocity, you know, where you wake up every day and you're like, "What? Did you get bigger overnight?" And things change, and they want their privacy and this. Yeah. And so my wife and I- Yeah... are very sort of, you know, in that moment where we're, like, desperate for them to have conversations with us.
And I'm sure that'll be, but I've also heard that you also get to the point, like you said, where you're kinda like, "No, it's good for them to leave now," [chuckles] and you can have some space. I mean, at least I have no problems. It's been good. Well, listen, welcome to the show. I really appreciate your time today. I know it's evening for you, so I don't wanna waste too much of it.
Minal, we usually ask a, a two-part question to kinda get us started, and you gotta kinda listen carefully 'cause it sounds like the same question, but it's not. So the first part is, why do you, Minal, have to do this job? So of everyone in the world, why you? And the second part is, why do you have to do this work? So of all the ways that you, Minal, could answer the call, everything you could have done, could do with your life, why do you have to do this work? Does that make sense?
I think the first part, if you allow me, I can go into a little bit of history. So I have an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, and then I was thinking about a master's in biochemistry, and this environmental science advertisement popped up, and I told my friend, "Let's give it a shot." I got in the program, and I came back home and told my father, "I'm doing environmental science. It sounds interesting." And my dad said, "That's career suicide.
People advise there's no jobs in environment in India, and nobody takes that up as a career." I went on to do my PhD, and there weren't that many jobs back then, and I just kept doing my thing just out of passion and out of interest. And I was really, you know, diving deeper and deeper from core environmental science issues to issues of energy security access, and then climate, which is so sexy now, but it wasn't then.
And I don't mean it in a bad way. I think it's just a lot of people think it's a very important job, but we've been doing it for a while. And I think as a woman from the Global South, I do bring a, a much-needed voice to the global stage because I'm also part of the IPCC, and therefore I think I, I do add value, and I am suited for the job. That's probably answering your first question. And the second question is just passion.
You know, so like you said, you grew up, and you got a biochemistry degree, and you're gonna get a master's in biochemistry, and your, you know, your dad said there's no jobs in this and that.I mean, biochemistry, you know, like anything, you can break it down and do... You could have done 50 different things with it. Why this particular work? Well, I would say this just happened organically. I don't think this was so planned.
So unfortunately, I don't have a great answer to your question. But that's great, though. Yeah. It happened that I really was driven, and it happened that there were few options in Ahmedabad. I went to this university where this professor was working on IPCC. Mm-hmm. And I applied there, and I got in, and that was the turning point for me. Mm. So that's how it happened.
It was not necessarily planned that I would work on climate change. But if there was... I mean, I could have been, yes, a journalist or maybe a school teacher. Mm-hmm. But then within this job, I do a few different jobs. I'm also a university professor, so I teach sustainability. And then I work with the IPCC, which is almost another job, because- Wow... it's an international UN body, and we are influencing global policy. So I think now I'm not leaving.
So [laughs] That's not your question, really, but I think there's just need for so many people, especially in underrepresented regions, to work in these areas, to bring more voices, more knowledge on the global stage, but also in terms of action. And therefore, here I am, sticking to what I'm doing. I love that.
If you could tell a young woman growing up in a city in India or in the more rural areas, would you have a different answer for them than your dad did for you about what jobs are available for this work now? Do you feel like you've seen that there's more available, or are you still fighting for space? I would definitely not give them this answer.
I would tell them not to limit themselves or think that their ability is limited because they come from a certain background, or that they cannot pursue a certain topic or a certain kind of job because of their gender or their background. So that's the first part of my answer. And the second part is, in many ways, environment is not a financially rewarding career, so by the time you make it, you are relatively late.
I mean, you could take, like, more lucrative jobs, like in management or with the private sector- Sure... which definitely pay more than academia- [laughs]... and research. But I think it's just far more rewarding to follow your passion than just follow the money, because it's just a side benefit. We're going to talk about co-benefits, I guess. I think- Sure...
money's co-benefit that comes along, but it's really the satisfaction of being able to change the world. And it's not just about climate. It could be space, it could be physics, it could be engineering. Mm. And all over the world, there are fewer women doing these things, and I feel quite strongly about this. So I would, in fact, not just give them a different answer.
I would push them if I got the opportunity to say, "Think beyond what you think you could do." I love that perspective. Well, to be the, the microphone or the messenger, and we know that the messenger is just as important, if not more important, than the message these days especially, to be able to stand in front of young women and say, "Not only can you, yes, do this, but in so many different ways," like you said, from commercial to academia to research, to whatever it might be.
Don't let the money drive you. But again, like you said, if you do the right work, it can be a co-benefit, right, along with everything else. But hopefully it's not what's moving along.
That's kind of what got us to this place in a lot of ways. So I wanna start, again, just focus for a moment more on sort of your personal spark here. 'Cause for all of the global stakes of climate change, which is obviously a thousand different pieces under the same umbrella that are all interwoven, I like to use the examples of you got co-benefits on one hand and threat multipliers on the other, right?
And for all of its accompanying impact areas, we always tell folks, you know, when they come to us and say, "I, I read that the jet stream is slowing down. What do I do?" And we go, "Well, there's not a lot you can do about that." But for a lot of folks, the easiest way to understand it is, you know, climate change really is the heat on your back in your city. It's the water you drink.
It's all of those things. It's the shade you have or don't have. And you've been in Ahmedabad for a long time. Was there a moment when the city's growth took off, and the heat pushed you to really say, "I wanna really look at these urban climate solutions and co-benefits involved in that"? Was there some journey of yours on the city where you really sort of realized how all the pieces could come together?
I wouldn't say there was one moment, but my former job was with the planning school, and I was in the Department of Planning. And people were still talking about air and water, but I just felt like climate was really an important issue to bring to the table. Mm-hmm. And then I just did one talk on climate change, and it was very well-received.
And we suddenly were flooded with these undergraduate student projects who, you know, a lot of ideas- Mm... to work on climate and urban climate issues in particular. And then we started digging deeper, and we realized that, you know, how the form of the city is changing, and there's so much more work to be done, because there was really no research at the city level.
I'm talking about a decade ago, right? We were talking about low carbon plans back then, and at that time, it was really a novel idea that now you have- Sure... all these thousands of urban plans. So I would say a decade ago it happened to me, but I've started feeling very strongly since the last four or five years, when the summers have just really been horrible.
And so I'm speaking about someone who has been in this city for over two and a half decades now. I'm now telling my husband that this is not a city we would like to retire in- Yeah... and we should buy a home somewhere, because the city is becoming unlivable, and every summer is worse than the last. And this year, today, this is peak summer. Mid-May is just the worst of summer.
And somebody was saying, "Well, the temperature's not that bad." And it would be, I think, 42 degrees Celsius instead of 46 maybe. But now we are seeing this interesting or new phenomena, which is humidity with heat, and it's really terrible. And you know, I live in a city where so many people work in the informal sector, so you have construction workers, and you have-... vegetable vendors, and they're all out in the street.
It's not like an air-conditioned house like I have. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I, I feel very strongly about it as time is going and there's global inaction. So my own work focuses on, yes, urban action, but also individual action. Can we go back for just a moment?
So the meat of that speech that launched a thousand ships of students coming to you with climate ideas, you know, again, if it was a decade or so ago, and like you said, there weren't many plans, like, what do you feel like was the real spark for them in what you talked about? Hello, hello, Malcolm Gladwell here. On this season of Revisionist History, we're going where no podcast has ever gone before. In combination with my three-year-old, we defend the show that everyone else hates.
I'm talking, of course, about Paw Patrol. There's some things that really piss me off when it comes to Paw Patrol. It's pretty simple. It sucks. My son watches Paw Patrol. I hate it. Everyone hates it, except for me. Plus, we investigate everything from why American sirens are so unbearably loud, to the impact of face blindness on social connection, to the secret behind Thomas's English muffins' perfect nooks and crannies.
And also, we go after Joe Rogan. Are you ready, Joe? I'm coming for you. You won't wanna miss it. Listen to Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts. You probably have to ask them. Yeah. But I think for them, it was just this exciting idea about, oh, hey, climate's going to happen in the future- Mm-hmm... and it's going to happen soon, and we don't know anything about it.
We prepared, and is our city even looking at it? And- Mm-hmm... I don't now remember the content of the talk, but I do think that for them, it was more like a new area for environmental research rather than climate change per se. And I remember a controversial thing that one of my colleagues said in the planning school that, "Oh, climate is not happening in my lifetime-" Mm-hmm "... so I don't need to worry about it."
And that was the view shared by colleagues within the Environmental Planning Department. And, you know, it's happening in his lifetime. Is that colleague, were they your age, older, younger? Just a little bit older. I think maybe- Sure... yeah, five years older or something. Right. But yeah, it's happened in their lifetime, and climate change happened much sooner than what we thought. Yeah.
And we were writing all these papers about future business as usual scenarios, and now suddenly the future is the present, and it's just escaping. So you just- Mm-hmm... wonder, I just think that I should be doing this and nothing else, and more people should be doing this. Sure. No, I, I mean, you are right.
If you look at these long-term projections for global heating, they're pretty on track. And people go, "Oh, they were wrong. This, we've had some cold days or hot summers, and they weren't right." The, the projections are pretty spot on within margin for error. What's different is, you know, we didn't believe that those could be the projections 10 years ago, and even five years ago.
And now we're realizing, oh, oh, not only are they correct, but maybe a little sooner. And like you said, in the Global South, especially in cities, but also in rural areas. I mean, we see this in Central America and South America, and I know in parts of Northern India too, in the rural areas with subsistence farmers, like, it's a nightmare.
They will tell you it's happening in their lifetime. And it's not just the direct impacts, right? It's the indirect impacts. It's what's happening to the economy, like agriculture in particular. You know- Yeah... what's, what's going to happen to agriculture in the next five years? I think the deniers are not going to make a very good case in this present time. Yeah. Yeah.
We had climate skeptics and deniers, but now I don't think they can have a voice. It, it's a little harder [laughs] to have a leg to stand on there anymore. So again, because they can feel that impact, and if they live in the most air-conditioned home, everyone around them still can too. And it's a little bit of the, what is the metaphor? The emperor has no clothes, right? It's a little harder when everyone around you goes, "No, it is changing, and I can feel it today." You know?
So you started to work quite globally with the IPCC, and you've spent quite a bit of time there, and obviously here, you know, we just fired everyone involved on our side. But pushing that to the side for a moment, what was it like when you first encountered sort of these global projections and any mitigation plans and scenarios with, like you were saying, the on-the-ground reality in Indian cities like yours?
Where were the gaps? Where were the disconnects where you were going, "This is great, but this is happening," or, "This is a plan, but this would never work in my city," or, "This is an idea I have for my city, an urban climate solution that might be more applicable, transferable," as we like to say, "to, to more cities throughout the world"? Yeah. Does that make sense?
Like, where were the differences? Yeah. I mean, I saw a huge disconnect between what we know about global climate change, what we know about the solutions, and the speed at which the solutions are being implemented. Mm-hmm. So I think the gap is not now any longer what the solutions are. Mm-hmm.
I think this has already been laid out in the last IPCC report, but in numerous reports, even your national assessment in the US, et cetera. And so that to me is the biggest gap, the speed, but also the scale. So you can think that, okay, electric buses are probably a good idea because they can reduce air pollution, and they're a good mitigation strategy in the long term. But why are we just putting five buses or 10 buses or 15 buses in a city when it needs 120 or 200 buses, right? Sure.
So we, we keep celebrating pilots, and I'm not just talking about Indian cities, I'm talking now also global cities, right? Mm-hmm. That our pledges have not met the scale at which you need to pledge, particularly for countries in the Global North.
But also in my city, I do this work in the IPCC, I see these future scenarios of heat, et cetera, growing emissions, and then I drive, and I seeThe city expanding, spilling over, more buildings on the peripheries, spreading out, all private car dependent, following the American way of life.
Oh, everything we did. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's to me the biggest disconnect, that our cities are adding concrete at a rate you cannot imagine. And it's a growing population, so you do need some of that. But we know the ways to do it. We know that the way we did it, and we benefited from and, you know, ruined everything with, is not the way to do it.
We know what doesn't work and what doesn't really scale and to use the space well, and what does. And there's so many wonderful examples of places that know how to do it right. But again, to me, like you're saying, the, the gap is in the speed and the scale because it seems like when a city like mine or any mid-sized city, e- e- especially in the Global North, I feel like, because again, we made so much of this problem, that when they trial,
like you said, three electric school buses out of 100, that doesn't feel like business as usual to them. That feels like they're making a big leap, right? That's right. This pilot. When in fact- Yeah... we're well beyond that, right? We are far from. Yeah. Right. We need to go much, much further- Right... and much faster, so. Right.
And I don't know if that's the inertia of doing the same thing for 50 years, which is just replace them with gas, replace them with gas, that they feel like they're making this paradigm shift, right, by putting a foot in the door when, in fact, what's required is, like you said, an accompanying comprehensive velocity that's very different.
And so psychologically, I understand why humans have a hard time with that, why budgets that have been based on the same fundamentals for so long, and like you said, you know, versions of suburban privatized sprawl are the same. That's why so many cities are so similar. But it doesn't work anymore, right? No. No. And the other way to look at it is that you put three electric buses, but you're still investing in diesel and gas. Yeah.
And I don't want to bring President Trump in, but the drill, baby, drill is suicide globally, right? I don't know if you want to go into politics, but you take one step forward, and you take several steps back. Yeah. That's not how we are going to advance climate action. Yeah. So you're bringing electricity, clean electricity, and then you are having all these data centers and artificial intelligence that's eating up all the renewable energy that- Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it's crazy. Something like...
And I'm gonna mangle this, but something like 80% of the US' new data centers that are AI-based are going in my state, in Virginia, and there's no requirement, 'cause our current governor is a moron, that they be run on clean energy. There's no one fighting for that, as many good people, because we've got so many other fires to put out as well because it's happened so quickly. Talk about velocity. But it's crazy.
The water, the power required, it's unreal. And by the way, we can bring politics, uh, US, Canadian, Indian, wherever you want, we can do this. We can talk about Brazil. Those matter, right? We don't get away from that because we focus a lot on trying to be as effective as we can. Mm-hmm.
And that means on the one hand we don't categorically endorse any particular person, party, et cetera, et cetera, but we will call out good policies and good actors, and we will call out the bad ones who are standing in the way because we're not gonna get anything done, right? You can be an idealist all you want, but w- we have to get shit done, right? In terms of hierarchy, you start with individual action, then you go to community action, your city, national. Yes.
But now it seems almost like picking a leader or calling out your leader or holding them accountable is really a big important part of the solution. It's very, very important. And if climate is not an election issue, something is wrong somewhere, right? Yep. Yep. And in India, now I'm going to call out India, because I don't know why climate is not an issue when so many people are dying of heat, are experiencing floods and all kinds of climate impacts.
I almost think that our major political parties are not even touching on the issue sometimes in sub-national elections. Oh, yeah. Here too. It's incredible that it's, like in the past six months it's gone to like 10th on our list [laughs] you know? [gentle music] I'm gonna tell you a little story here. When the iPhone first came out 2007, one of the first apps I tried to convince a coworker to help me develop was what I was calling and people were calling a read it later app.
And that's 'cause we worked all day at ESPN, and we used to print up all the old ESPN Page 2 columns we loved, and then we would go and hide and read them on the company toilet. "Wouldn't it have been great, though," is what I said, "if we could just do that on our new touchscreen phones instead of printing them up?" Anyways, 150 years later, I have tried every read it later app.
All of them migrating my archives over and over. But a couple years ago, I found Reader from the creators of Readwise and never looked back. It's so good. It's so fast. It's so smart. It works in my browser to save articles and read them and highlight them. It works on my phone and my iPad. I put it on my phone on my home screen instead of social media stuff. It's great. Reader can save it all.
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[gentle music]And you go, but you have to understand, it is both being driven by and affecting the other top nine issues you care about. And if not, it will. For instance, in the US, you know, such a huge, huge systemic problem that is coming very quickly is the residential and commercial insurance problem with mortgages and renting and all that stuff, and then the- Yes... reinsurance markets. It is a 10-alarm fire that no one wants to talk about.
And you go, but you're worried about property prices and the cost of living and all this stuff, and that's before the disaster even ha- I mean, it's... Yeah. You do have to, and we really do believe in that, so yeah, 100%, it's a big part of it. You can obviously focus on it too much, but it matters. I wanna talk a little bit about, you've got this new framework. I don't know if you pronounce the acronym GISE at all, but you talk about goals, interventions, stakeholders, enablers.
Let's try to put that in a real example, and we can use your city's heat action plan, if that's okay. T- talk to me about how those pieces really click together, 'cause I love frameworks like these, especially when you can really put them into action. So talk to me about it. Now, the Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan is one successful case study that the city, and I think at some level nationally also, we are proud of, because it was the first of its kind to look at heat and its solutions.
And what I like about this, and I'm jumping from G to S first, which is the stakeholders, what I like is that it was a bunch of stakeholders, including the NRDC based in the US, but also a public health institution in Ahmedabad, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. And, and all of these actors came together to work out a common, I would say, plan, but it was quite iterative. They had many consultations. Mm-hmm.
And they came up with this plan, which I think was later replicated to 50 cities and states in India. And then in South Asia, it's become, like, quite a model plan. Fifty, 5-0? 5-0. Yes, 5-0. That's awesome. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. And so almost all major states now have heat action plan, and this is supported by city level heat action plans, and now they're getting bolder and better.
So in terms of intervention, and I'll come to the next steps, but the good part about the plan is it's based on an early warning system, and how the plan envisages that in case of an extreme heat event, there will be an, a public alert issued to the entire population of the city to try especially to reach out to the vulnerable, so people living in informal settlements, working outdoors, informing them that today is a red alert day, try to minimize your exposure.
And a bunch of awareness pamphlets, brochures, and communication materials were released as part of the heat action plan. And what we know from looking at that plan and its implementation over, I think now quite some time, five years maybe, is that it has reduced heat-related mortality in Ahmedabad- Mm-hmm...
which is, I think, a big success. It has reduced morbidity. There is greater awareness about heat and what to do. And so I would say that this GISE... And the enablers, of course, is that, that it was enabled. I mean, there was a political will to do something about it. There was funding, there was organizational support, and that to me is a big part of the solution, the enablers.
In fact, it should have come first in our framing. But anyway, so the goal was, yes, of course, to develop a heat plan, but then it was a collaborative effort, and that's why it succeeded. So it was also linked to an emergency response service in terms of ambulances and et cetera, what number you can call when it's very hot, et cetera. Now let me come a little bit to the critique of the plan- Please...
if I may. Yeah. Is that we have now stopped there, and I think an effective heat action plan has to be systemic, and we should have now been able to integrate this with the city's plan. So it stops at the prevention alert based warning. But what you need is, how are our buildings being constructed? What is the material we are using to build the city? Is it integrated within the urban plan? Well, it's not. And so I think we need to now move beyond. So it's successful, yes.
We've managed to set up a system that tells people it's going to be hot, but then how are we going to look at the city in the long term and protect people? Which really requires bringing in a whole new set of stakeholders, right? And raising ambition. Raising ambition is key, right? In, in all kinds of plans. I mean, where do you stop?
And we're talking about the gender issue, but really in, even in climate it applies, right? Why are we limiting it to one success? Let's go beyond. And that's applicable everywhere. Again, like, the inertia of business as usual, a- again, to use a poor phrase, like, really does have to go out the window.
And I understand psychologically and sociologically how that's difficult to throw out, but at the same time, again, like your colleague, it's very hard to look around and not go, "Well, we have to do this better." You know, when we talk about in the US when someone buys a car, they tend to hold onto it for an average of 12 years, and it's the same thing with, you know, a furnace or a heat pump, whatever it might be.
If the shelf life is 10, 12 years, every time someone buys a gas car, you're locking that in for such a long time. Same thing especially with building a building, right? And what are we making of, and how are we building it, and how many people can fit into a footprint?
Look, I know people are just trying to do their jobs, and everyone's trying to pay [chuckles] in a world that's increasingly expensive, and their families and education and food, which is e- expensive, but at some point you have to be the brave one who goes, "We have to question all of these things." And, you know, as much as I love... I get asked to talk about, you know, sort of these newfangled tech ideas to help climate change and things like that, and some of them could be cool. That's fine.
But we actually have 90% of the answers and the information that we need really to rebuild our entire built environment. But like you said, we need so much more-Will, and then ambition among the stakeholders, who are more people than you think, to, like you said, meet and establish these goals and establish what interventions are required, and then who is responsible for them.
Who's gonna source out the better building materials, and who's gonna cost them out, and how many places can they apply to? And then go be ambitious with it, you know? And like you said, I mean, it's amazing. You can critique any plan, of course, especially the execution of it, right? But if something is even somewhat transferable to 50 different cities, it works. It's been proven.
And of course, there's stuff on the margins, and of course you can critique it, but come on. I think it's a great plan, and I think we just need many more plans that are actually implemented. And what I like about that plan was that not only that it was a good plan on paper, but it actually was implemented- Sure... and we have evidence that it has made a positive impact.
So I mean, that critique is only so it pushes my government. So I had this wonderful conversation with a woman who talks about and wrote a book. She writes about multi-solving, and so we really talked a lot about co-benefits. And again, the opposite of that. Mm-hmm. So I did a little challenge with her that we both really enjoyed, and I think you and I could do a version of that here, which is to take your framework, right? And that has been successful across the cities.
People come to us and they say, "What can I do?" Right? And it's always this Venn diagram, and a lot of people talk about a version of this, which is, what are you interested in? What are you good at? What do we need help with? And I'll give you 50 different things. We're trying to give people agency to say, "Hey, you have marketing skills, you have accounting skills, you're an architect," whatever it is, "You can contribute in some way."
So let's take the successes of your heat action plan and your framework and apply it to something like, let's talk about water in India, right? Water accessibility. What are ways we could, again, just kind of freewheeling here, to turn more normally passive residents into co-designers, you know, as the city grows and becomes more dense. Well, some areas are more dense and some areas are more spread out.
How do we apply that to something like water accessibility, which obviously becomes more difficult, but more important too, like you said, in mid-May when it's 42 to 46 degrees. So I mean, I will give a more general answer and then we may get to water as well. Yeah. Uh, I think, you know, people can sometimes come and tell me, "What can I do? You know, it's all the higher levels of government.
I just don't have enough power or influence." Mm-hmm. And that's not true at all, right? So there is agency with every individual about the choices we make. And so I think the first step for an individual is not to consume. And I know that sounds very controversial, especially in my context, but generally people don't want to make that choice that
do, do you really need that new house or that new shirt or new whatever, right? That's the first step. The next step is your immediate sphere of influence. That can be your immediate family, children, spouse, et cetera. Mm-hmm. So whether it's water or solid waste, it's like, I'm going to conserve water because water is a precious commodity.
Let's talk within the house about how we are going to change what waste we are disposing or how we are disposing it. Can we start composting? Can we get the kids involved, right? Yeah, we've tried that in the house, actually putting these captions on the fridge when my daughter was growing up. Mm-hmm. And sometimes, I mean, she's just generally a environmentally sensitive individual because of these, uh, passive fun quotes that we put around the house when she was growing up. Mm-hmm.
The next sphere of influence I think we have is within our organizations, whether we teach at a school, a university, small business, establishment, industry. And that is really significant because, like, for example, we have tried at Ahmedabad University to look at water conservation, so we have rainwater recharge, and we... This time when it rained, somebody said, "Oh, why is this not drying up soon? Are our recharge wells working?"
And so when you have a recharge well, you're automatically raising awareness of other individuals within the organization. So we have a small shuttle for shared transport. Mm-hmm. We're trying to reduce food waste in our cafeteria. So that's w- the next sphere of influence, your organization. If you're leading that organization, you have more influence. Mm-hmm.
And then finally it's at the larger level, right? That how do you influence beyond just an b- an individual action? And like I said, just call out. And we were working on this publication. It, it'll be out in a while, on luxury emissions. That's something that we really haven't looked at enough, in the sense we know it's happening. Mm-hmm.
But in this world where water is a scarce resource or where materials are rare, or where energy is also not accessible to so many people in the world, how do some people end up consuming, like, two orders of magnitude beyond the average? Once someone has explained to you w- what your spheres of influence are, no matter who you are or where you are and what you do and what your skills are or what you care about, it's very difficult to unsee them, right?
Yeah. It's very difficult to re- Yeah... around and be like, "I could impact kids. I could impact this team. I could impact my office." Like, you do. You can't get away with the excuse that I don't know what I do today. Yeah. Sure. I just will go on with my day because I don't know what else I can do. No, that's a ridiculous answer for somebody who's living in this world at this time. Yeah.
And this paper, because it was an academic paper, we were wondering, and so there's this literature around naming and shaming. We were not sure. I mean, you know, shaming has its own psychological consequences. Sure. Should you call out to a person on social media, and what impacts would it have? And maybe that's not a good idea. But then does that also mean that some celebrity gets to just fly around the world in their private jet every week, and should they not be held accountable? Sure.
And we're talking about, like, 20 billionaires in the world who control so much of wealth and investment. So as an individual also where you invest, everyone invests, right? They have small shareholding. Sometimes people don't think of investments as their way to influence, but every time you buy a product, you are making a choice about a company.
And I would say as an individual, people should understand what their choices mean. What are the implicationsWhat is the company's sort of goal or idea around the environment or sustainability? Do we understand what our choices imply in terms of resources or water or land footprint? So it can be a small thing like changing my diet, what I eat- Mm-hmm...
today, but also where I get my food from, how is it made, what am I going to do with the waste? So there's many things to do, and I would just say that let's not t- be very pessimistic. There are so many solutions, and there are solutions for everyone everywhere. There really are, and those extend to all those different co-benefits, you know?
So again, an example I love to use is the electric school buses version, which are expensive, and you have to build a charging infrastructure for them, and they're new, and you have to learn how to maintain them. I get all of that. However, there's basically one in every neighborhood in the United States just to start, right? So most of them are diesel. They're very loud, so electric school buses reduce noise pollution.
Electric school buses clean the air of that local community, right, immediately. And we know that there's a difference between emissions, which are usually carbon or methane. Carbon lasts a lot longer, is a lot less intense. Methane, very intense and shouldn't last quite as long. Again, we know how to deal with those.
And then there's your localized pollution, which I know so many Indian cities deal with, just like so many US cities used to and it sounds like we're going to again. And when you replace a source with a cleaner version, almost immediately you start to see the effects of that.
And so now you've got, because we, you know, understand that people in the school bus are affected just as much as people outside of it, you've got not only healthier students, you've got a healthier bus driver who can come- Mm-hmm... to work more, which means they can have a better standard of living, which means they don't have as many healthcare costs.
And it's the same for the children, whose parents now don't have to stay home to take care of sick kids, and their grades are better, et cetera, et cetera. The co-benefits are... You know, there's a long tail that you can argue with, but there's very irrefutable core co-benefits to a lot of things like this. And it's the same, like you said, with, and I know a lot of your IPCC work really worked on personal lifestyle choices and consumption.
I totally understand and empathize with people who feel like their choices are a drop in the ocean, but we are very social creatures, and we've proven that over and over. And, you know, movements only start in one way. We call it compound action here, right? It's actions over time and across people, and it really does add up. And often that is the place where you can start within those spheres of influence.
So yeah, let's talk about water for a sec, if you don't mind. I know I keep coming back to it, but again, I really feel like it is among the most ignored things. Everyone feels the heat, but in the US it's both more accessible than people could ever imagine if they stepped outside the US once.
It's cheaper than you could ever imagine, but also we're very eager to just turn people's water off if they haven't paid their bills once or whatever it might be, or argue about what to protect and this and that. So in a city like yours, like, where can someone start to have, again, starting with their most intimate sphere of influence, where can they start to make better choices about water and have more agency over how water is consumed and protected and enabled for more people?
Yeah, you're right about water. It's not something that people are thinking about as much as other issues, including in Indian cities. So the definition of water access for India is 135 liters per person per day. Okay. Which is not enough, obviously. A lot of our cities are now getting water sourced from the hinterland and further away because the water needs are increasing.
So within my sphere of influence, I would say water conservation at home, at least not waste water with long showers. Mm-hmm. Like, in India, you just cannot afford those. And somewhere I read that a Beatles song is four minutes, and if you manage to, [laughs] to fit in your shower within a Beatles song, then you're doing okay. Yeah. That's just a fun fact.
But I went to Surrey once for an IPCC meeting. This very fancy resort had all these bathtubs, and at the end of the meeting some people said, "Oh, I'm gonna go into a bath." And I just felt, don't you feel guilty about, you know, all the water in a bathtub? Should bathtubs be banned? I'm sure this is all sounding really ridiculous and, and very controversial. No.
It, one, it shouldn't be controversial. Everything should be on the table. And again, I understand why some people who don't understand water accessibility and affordability- Mm-hmm... and all that wouldn't- See-... know. But if you do know at all the issues that we're already facing in so many places- Mm-hmm... that would not be a crazy thought to you.
I mean, even choosing your bath fixtures that conserve water, in your house to save water. I mean, basically less water wastage is the first step. Sure. But I also think these are luxury consumption of water. I think one interesting thing that's happening, which are these, all these golf courses coming up, obviously looking at the West. And where in this arid desert region would you put a golf course? And- Mm-hmm...
which, you know, it's a benefit that very few people enjoy. And I think that, yeah, you should just not have lawns, and you should not have golf courses. And to me, lawns kill water access and availability. It became quite controversial thing that I said at some, a friend's place, and I said, like, "Why would you have a lawn? Just put a mini forest there." And they said, "Why would you not?"
And it's like, what would my little lawn do? But how much water and fertilizer- Mm-hmm... do lawns need? Mm-hmm. So I would say that my immediate response would be that let's get rid of the bathtubs and the lawns and all these water guzzling activities. Mm-hmm. But I think a lot of good things are also happening, that cities are now requiring new buildings to put up rainwater harvesting systems. Mm-hmm. So we are at a city scale trying to conserve.
But one thing that may be of interest to the listeners would be that the paved surfaces, that when you put concrete in cities, it lets the water run off, and so you're not doing well with the water you're receiving, right? So one of the ways is to de-concretize cities.An interesting initiative that I saw was called Rainproof Amsterdam.
They were this small organization that's encouraging citizens to sort of take the tiles out of their garden- Mm. -so that there's more soft surfaces- Mm. -that can contain water. But you also have now these porous tiles and bricks. And so- Yeah. -people who are building new houses should definitely look at some of these new solutions.
They're not necessarily tech, but they are architecture planning solutions that work from an individual house scale to a society and a neighborhood scale. So yeah. I think that's great. It's, again, it feels like you have the same drug I do, which is you can kinda do this all day, right? It's like improvisation. Give me a word, and I'll, I'll just go off on the tangent.
When I used to have a social life, my wife would say, you know, I'd be the fun one at the party because someone would mention something, and be like, "Oh, well, here's a... [laughs] You know, you can do this." Thank you. Very popular, and I can imagine why you're saying that you used to have a social life- Mm-hmm. -because then people who speak their mind are often not necessarily popular in conventional social circles.
But no, but climate is- Yeah. -just that kind of issue where you just can't, and I think it's just, I don't know how to make people more guilty about climate. I don't know if guilt or shame or what kind of emotion can help people to act. Mm-hmm. Is it like, you know, sometimes it's just a positive thing that I did, that I made this choice, and I feel good about it.
I took the bus instead of driving, and I- Sure. And today I released fewer, well, milligrams, grams of carbon dioxide, but also didn't contribute to air pollution. So yeah, but whatever works- Yeah. -for individuals, I think we should be able to. So I wanna again come back to your heat action plan. Versions of it in 50 different cities, which means there's definitely some core elements that you and these other places have identified are transferable, right?
I don't wanna say lowest common denominator, but pieces that work in a variety of places. 'Cause even if a city has the same population, the smallest differentiation in geography or freshwater access or ocean access or whatever it might be- Yeah. -arable land, whatever, can change things. But you're starting to really prove this out. So I wanna start with, we try to really encourage people to go to city council meetings and school board meetings. And- Yeah.
-in the US, we have these public utility commission meetings that only people who hate clean energy go to. What is, or have you identified with housing or air quality or heat or whatever, is there a single argument that you have found is most transferable that can get a mayor or a transportation chief
or a sustainability officer, if they exist, that can get them feeling like they have agency on that, that can get them on board with this plan when you're going to a new city? What do you find is, like, most influential? Is it the economics? I think definitely cost is an important factor. If it's the huge investment, there is always hesitation on where this will come from.
But I think sometimes just making a strong case for its implementation is, also works in the sense that if you can show that this does not require a lot of resources, not just financial, but technical capacity, that we will be able to implement this, you know? Mm-hmm. Cool roofs, for example. One of the elements of the heat action plan is cool roofs. Mm-hmm. Just paint the roofs white. Yeah.
And you know, it just reduces the temperature indoors, and people need less air conditioning, better thermal comfort, et cetera. And cool roofs is such a low cost.
You just need to build awareness among people who are building that housing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The informal settlements. So I think cost is one important factor. What else? I think co-benefits works. Mm. Sometimes for transport intervention, they do like to hear about reductions in air, because air pollution is a big issue, and it just resurfaces around October when, you know, pollution peaks in India when it's winter.
And so if you can show that this will potentially reduce so much air quality, air pollution emissions, then that's also makes a good case. Okay. I love that. I mean, again, you wanna go to these idealist, you want places, right, and argue, "This will be better for the world," is that it's... W- we know that's not gonna get it done. [laughs] Yeah. You know? No.
You really have to apply it in really the most pragmatic, practical way. So again, so now I'm mayor or a transportation chief or a council member, whatever. What are, again, for a, a city in, like I have here or where yours are, you know, let's say under a half a million people, what are three moves that I could take as someone like board of supervisors, whatever it might be, to start to really seed a GISE style climate project?
What are sort of the first three things that feel like should come to start getting one of these incorporated into our city? First of all, define a goal. So your goal is maybe, let's say, low emissions transport system or mobility. I don't even want to call it transport. You want a low emissions mobility, right? Okay. Yeah. You want... Because people want to move.
They don't care about all these other things that we're talking about. For most people, mobility is about going from one place to another. Mm-hmm. Like dropping your children to school or- Mm-hmm. -going to work or whatever. So you want to make sure everyone has mobility that's affordable.
So if that's your goal, okay, so you want to achieve this goal, but not at very high emissions, so you don't want everybody driving around in cars. So you wanna have mobility that's clean. Mm-hmm. That's your next step. So you've now defined your goal. Now you go find all your stakeholders. What do they see the plan look, right?
So not just, like, mayors and city officials and transport team, but get, like, somebody from community organizations. Mm. Get citizens. Make it open, right? Get university. I mean, one of the problems you're having is not enough interaction with academia. So the academic research is going in its own direction. Mm-hmm. And the [laughs] policy actions are going in another.
Not necessarily always the case, but more often than not, I would say, at least in my context. So you've got all these stakeholders on board now. You start outlining the plan. For a half a million city, I would not put in a fancy metro because it would just be too expensive. Sure. So, okay, so define what your options are.And for each of these options, work out what might be the best option that gives people the last mile connectivity.
Because what happens often in public transport system is that from your home to the bus stop, sometimes if the distance is larger, people will just not take it. Sure. No matter you put the best buses, people won't take it. So what's the option that gives you the highest mobility? What does it cost? And where will you get the funding from? But I would also that support a public transit network, I wouldn't call it transit, maybe bus systems.
For half a million, I think you can still keep the city compact with a good maybe electric bus service, maybe even minibuses. Mm-hmm. But also supported with bicycling and walking. And the last piece, which a lot of cities have not done, is to get people out of cars. So that's where we haven't been able to do much, right? I've been to like a city called Aalborg in Denmark, small city, and you have like really good buses.
You can walk and cycle almost everywhere, and yet you see so many cars on the road, and you wonder why are people driving? Because it's just cheap to drive, cheap to park. Land is available. Yep. So why are we not just hiking up parking charges, making them so steep that people just will get on the bus? Yep.
And you know, we run into so many of those issues here where we have so purposefully and comprehensively built towns and cities and counties for cars over the past 60, 70 years, that if we go, okay, like you said, "Hey, we built a bunch of electric trolleys, right?" Again, it doesn't have to be underground for a city under half a million people, much less smaller. People will still go, "Okay, but it's still cheap to drive and to park." Great.
You hike those prices up and people go, "Okay, but now it's too expensive for me to come downtown because, yes, you have these electric trolleys or whatever it might be, but they don't actually come anywhere near my house." Right? So you need more of them going further out to more places, but they also need to be reliable, right? They need to be frequent. The schedule needs to be predictable.
And I can see how to someone with very limited funding in a city, you know, that's based on income taxes or property taxes, whatever their budget is, and, uh, they're trying to do all the other stuff too, right? Run their, run their city. I understand how that feels overwhelming, and you go, "I'm sorry, we can't do it."
But when you really get into the co-benefits of all that, healthier people, cleaner air, fewer cars on the road, people being hit by cars, like all these different things, more people will move here because it's just an easier place to live. You really start to see where the win is. You really start to see the economics of it, right? But you need people.
Again, you need plans, which is why I love action plans that continue to prove themselves, at least the core elements of it. Because once they do in so many places, in a larger variety of places, it becomes really hard for someone in a particular city to go, "That wouldn't work here." And you go, "Oh, but it does. We've already shown that. You know, you are not special."
One of the things we are looking at in the, uh, forthcoming IPCC report, which will come out in 2027, is looking at solutions by type of cities and regions. So it's not like just, "Oh, this is a large city, only they did it." But no, it's happened in large, medium, and small cities across states, across economic levels, so it's a really strong case.
Electric vehicles and so many of these, you know, made it. Like, people are saying, um, BRT has worked in a lot of cities. Metro is working. So there is less hesitation in implementing some of these. I would say the more we do, the more we can, and then- Yeah... the more we will. Yeah, 100%. It becomes exciting. And again, you get to go to places. You know, it's like telling people if you are able to walk more.
It, look, it just works in a thousand different ways. Yeah. It applies to every part of your life. You sleep. Talk about co-benefits. You eat healthier, you sleep better, your heart works better, like all these different things. And I understand it's hard to get out of your chair if you're able to, but every time you do, it adds up, and it works for everybody.
Cities will meet this, it's hard to say 1.5 degree challenge at this point, but let's be ambitious. Cities will meet this challenge if most of them do what? If... What is really, I don't wanna say one thing, but if we're really talking at scale, and we know realistically there's only so much funding and so much ambition and so much
agency among stakeholders and interested parties, like, how do we feel like most cities are gonna be really working towards this if they're doing what? What's really gonna make a difference? Say integrated strategies, so combined solutions- Mm-hmm... not in silos, that deliver multiple objectives, so whether it's economic growth, so green jobs, clean air, good health.
So integrated in terms of sectors, integrated in terms of achieving multiple objectives, and I would say the last piece of this is compact urban form that's supported by walking, public transit, and clean energy. Yeah, the compact urban form to me is really a strong part. I meant it would save land, but also make cities more sustainable. So compact urban form, sustainable production and consumption, and clean energy.
That would be my top three. Again, we have all of the information. You know? We- We have all of the information. We really do. There's no excuse not to act. There, there really isn't. This is not a conversation about how do we decarbonize heavy steel and stuff like that, which by the way, we're making progress on. This is the stuff we really know how to do.
They're gonna affect the most people, the most ecosystems, the most- Yep... air, the most water. And especially when, like you said, co-benefits meant doing them in an integrated, purposeful way. It just cascades down the chain, right? And there's things that improve you wouldn't even think that would improve. And you look back and you go like, "How did we live like this? What?
This was such an inefficient way to do it." Think that a climate conversation can be pessimistic. There's just so much you can do. Aren't you charged enough? Aren't people who are listening to this charged enough to go and say, "Let me think about all the things that I could do, but I haven't done, and let me just start now"?It really is a better way of...
Forget that climate change is even happening, that global heating is even happening. These fundamental pieces- Yes... are a overall better, happier, healthier way to live. And I mean, you know, in the US, it's
whatever the number is, so many people are sick with so many different things that they don't have to be with. And it costs so much, and it's so hard, and it makes end of life so difficult. We don't have to do that. No. There are choices- No... and so much of them are corporate incentives and things like this, but we can actually do a better way, and wouldn't that feel good?
I mean, it's the argument we always use, that it's really not about climate. I mean, I now come back to Indian cities, that you build better buildings not for climate. You build better buildings because you are building these for the next 100 years. Yeah. And you don't want pe- well, y- to, to face this extreme heat. You make better cities so that people live a better quality of life.
There's less air pollution, and people can walk to where they are, they want to get to. You can serve it better with public transport. So you make sustainable cities not because of climate, but because it's good development, and often good development is a good climate solution. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Yeah. Fixed it. Done. We're done.
This has been so wonderful. You're a hero. Where can our listeners follow your work, website, online, whatever you're- Yeah. I'm on the Ahmedabad University website. I'm on LinkedIn. And it's not just about my work. Follow the science, and there's enough good stuff happening, so let's not behave like ostriches. Let's understand that we live in a planet, and that's in urgent need of care, and let's do our bit. I love it.
I love the, how much you've put your work into use to say, "Well, let's go do the thing. Let's go try it out. Let's make sure it works. Let's adapt it. Let's iterate. Let's make it work in more places." Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And yeah, we'll talk more soon. [outro jingle] That's it for this week's conversation.
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