Factually! with Adam Conover - The Latest Science on Climate Change with Sarah Burch

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

The IPCC Report is one of the biggest, most important scientific projects ever undertaken by humankind, bringing together thousands of scientists from around the world to collect and evaluate our most up-to-date knowledge on climate change. Today on the show, Adam speaks with one of the lead authors of that report, Sarah Burch. Sarah explains where we are, where we’re headed, and what we can do to stop it, straight from the horse’s mouth; and she shares why she is optimistic about humanity’s future. You can follow her work at @SarahLynnBurch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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for this episode, we are going to do part two of our two-episode miniseries on climate change. Last week, we talked with Eugene Linden about the inaction that has largely defined the last 40 years of humans and our climate. And it was, I hate to say it, a little bit bleak. Look, my goal here is not to make you too depressed about the state of the planet to get out of bed. Climate doomism, that new hip trend where people throw up their hands and scream, I give up, thinking it's too late to prevent the apocalypse, is wrong. And it's something I do not want to promote because, in fact, the opposite is true. There are actions, millions of them that governments and people in any organization can take that

can and are making a difference. We are not powerless. In fact, we are maximally powerful because every single thing that we do helps create a better future that is less hot and stinky for our kids and their kids and their kids and their kids and their kids. And you can see this definitively in the recent report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. This report tells us in stark terms that we are not yet doing enough, This report tells us in stark terms that we are not yet doing enough, quickly enough to stop or slow climate change.

Carbon emissions from the major sources like factories, cities, farms and vehicles have actually increased in the last decade. But the report also offers startling reasons for hope. For the first time, we're actually seeing emissions from some countries, including the U.S., I just learned, going down. Not just because of the pandemic or some other cataclysm, but because we have actually made efforts to reduce our emissions. And that means that through our effort,

we have already avoided an even worse scenario than the one that we are currently on. We have made things a little bit better than they could have been otherwise. And that is a success that we can build on, even though it's not nearly big enough yet. We're starting later than we should have, and we are moving more slowly than we need to. But we have legitimately embarked on the path out of the deep shit. We're not buried in it. It's just up to our armpits, and we are slowly starting to move towards the exit. And that is a good thing.

Now, these IPCC reports are some of the most important scientific documents that humanity puts together. They're the product of thousands of scientists from around the world working together to evaluate the state of climate science, what we are doing to the planet and what countries are doing in response to it and what might happen as a result. This is science on the most massive scale for the future of mankind. And it is incredibly cool. It's the height of human collaboration and achievement. And guess what? We are very lucky to have on the show today somebody who worked on the most recent IPCC report. So today we are going to get the lowdown

on one of the most consequential scientific projects in human history direct from the horse's mouth. I could not be more excited. Her name is Sarah Birch. She's one of the lead authors on the recent IPCC report, and she's a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where she is the executive director of the Interdisciplinary Center on

Climate Change. Please welcome Sarah Birch. Sarah Birch, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to have you because you're one of the lead authors on the new IPCC report about climate change, the UN big report they do periodically. I'd love to hear from you just what is the IPCC and how does one become involved in it? And what do you do? Because I hear this acronym in the news all the time. I've never before had the pleasure of speaking with anybody who actually is doing the work. So I'd love to hear about it. Right. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And I think you're right that it's a pretty vague entity for a lot of folks who are interested in and listening to the climate change conversation.

So essentially what happens is, you know, you may have heard, you know, every year or so there are these big international negotiations around climate change where countries come in and they make big splashy commitments. You know how much we're going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or what sort of strategies we're going to use. That's a political process. So that's, you know, that's a highly charged political set of negotiations. Into that process is brought science to inform that debate and to inform those targets. So there's a parallel process that runs alongside those political negotiations where each country, each member of the United Nations can nominate scientists to participate in what is pretty remarkably, in my view, you know, the largest kind of scientific collaboration of its kind, where hundreds of nominated scientists meet up over a period of three to four years

and essentially try and get the lay of the land of all types of science and social science being carried out around climate change to understand what we know, what we don't know, you know, what's changed over the last few years, so that there's that voice of evidence and voice of science, you know, feeding into the political process. So that's kind of the rough mandate of the IPCC, which is to be that scientific voice. And I mean, that sounds like a really inspiring process. It kind of contrasts with what I normally think of as, you know, you spoke about the political process, and that's not quite as inspiring a process. There's a lot of, you know, compromises.

There's a lot of too little being done. There's a lot of, you know, concerns that we wish weren't, you know, things that we had to concern ourselves with. You know, it's a very complex process. But those same political actors are nominating scientists who are coming together and really doing the real work, in your view. Why do you think that process is so productive when, you know, I mean, so much of the work of international diplomacy is too slow or unable to address the issues that urgently need to be addressed? Well, it's a fundamentally different process, right? So, you know, the IPCC scientists are recognizing that there's an explosion of research being done on climate

change over the last, you know, 10 or 20 years. We need to know where the emissions are coming from. Are they going down? Are they going up? What does this mean for sea level rise, for droughts, for heat waves? You know, what can be done to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions and who's doing it? So, you know, this process, so I'm part of the third working group. The IPCC is divided up into three chunks, essentially. There's a whole group of scientists who work on the fundamental science of the issue. So, you know, what's changing and by how much and that kind of thing. Then there's a group of folks who work on the impacts. That's the sea level rise stuff, agriculture, heat waves, drought, etc.

And then there's my chunk, which is focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, essentially. So how to get at the root causes, not the consequences, but the we reviewed over 18,000 scientific articles. And the drafts that we produce, which go through multiple rounds of review by other experts and government folks and everybody, we had to respond line by line to over 60,000 review comments. So, you know, for those of you who are familiar with science, you might submit a paper to a journal, you'll get like, I don't know, 12 comments and you reply to them and you change your paper and then it gets published. This is 60,000 comments. So it's enormously onerous. Wow. But so this is, this is like the final stage of the scientific process in a way, in that there have been researchers all over the world doing research on every different aspect of climate change, measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, measuring the impact of climate change in their particular region,

looking at different species, everything you could possibly do. They're publishing in all different places. And then the IPCC is getting together hundreds, thousands of scientists. How many total do you know? I don't know the total number, but I expect it's around 1,000 for this assessment cycle, about 200 to 300 per working group. So you're getting up to 1,000 scientists reviewing all of this published literature and then digesting it into sort of the consensus summary of here's what we know is going on, and then peer reviewing each other's work, basically reviewing each other's conclusions, responding to all those reviews, just putting it through the process until you can finally say, all right, this is what the scientific community has produced

in terms of our knowledge of climate change. Did I get it mostly right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, it's a level of rigor that is pretty unusual. It's pretty rare and remarkable. It's also a level of collaboration that I think is quite beautiful, honestly. It's, you know, it's scientists from all different disciplines. I mean, my chapter had a couple dozen scientists on it. We are from, you know, we are economists. We're political scientists. We're political scientists.

We're geographers. We're from all different social science and scientific backgrounds trying to literally speak different languages because the working language of the IPCC is English. But, of course, folks speak all different languages that come to the table. But also trying to speak different scientific languages with each other and understand what uncertainty means in my field versus your field. Anyway, it's a very complex and really fruitful process. But the main goal is to draw together that enormous body of work that's happening all around the globe and then provide really helpful, insightful, concise syntheses and analysis of that science so that ultimately we make better decisions politically.

Yeah, that is an incredibly inspiring process. And it's one of those things that it makes me just a little bit more optimistic just hearing you talk about it, to know that you folks are working on this problem. But let's get down to brass tacks. What exactly did the IPCC find? I mean, I'm sure there's so much more than you can summarize in just a few minutes, but for you, what were the takeaways? Yeah, so for me, this report is one that illustrates some pretty stark realities and stark contradictions, which is why I find it kind of fascinating. So, on the one hand, the grimmest and most powerful message, I think, from

this latest report is that we've seen over the last decade the highest greenhouse gas emissions globally that we've ever seen in human history so we keep on talking about it we have lots of policies there's lots going on but the one thing that matters to the climate which is how many greenhouse gases we're putting into it those are going up still that's not good because that target that we've set for ourselves of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees, which would avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change, but of course not all of the impacts of climate change, without really fast, immediate greenhouse gas reductions, you know, all around the globe, in all regions, in all sectors, that target is becoming less and less likely. It will be beyond reach. So, that's a pretty stark message. However, in my mind, it's kind of fascinating because that collides with a totally different picture, which is that for the first time also, we have real evidence of some countries making progress. So it's not just talk. It's not just ideas or, you know, hopeful crossing fingers for some widget to be developed.

Real solutions are being implemented that have illustrated greenhouse gas reductions that are in line with that two-degree world or 1.5-degree world that we want. So, you know, there's solutions like we've never seen before. There's real implementation like we've never seen before of solutions. But overall, if you look around the globe, it's just not enough yet. But we had never seen in the past sustained reductions like that, like purposeful reductions. That's a brand new thing in the past sustained reductions like that, like purposeful reductions, that that's a brand new thing in the data? Over the last 10 years. So yeah, these are reductions that can't be attributed to some kind of, I hesitate to call it blip, but some kind of unusual event like the 2008-2009 economic crisis, of course, greenhouse gas emissions or COVID. You know, these are things

that ratchet down our emissions in painful and very sudden ways. The reductions that we're seeing here, or that we're really interested in, at least, are ones that have been sustained over a period of 10 years or more. So we know for sure that the trajectory is going down. It's not like noise in the system. Got it. Okay, well, let's, let's talk about first, before we dive into that piece, the, the first part that you were talking about, about the, you know, the, the drastic reductions we would now need to make to hit the 1.5 centigrade goal. Is that right? That's right. So what it, just tell me, first of all, that goal, that benchmark that I've heard a lot about, what is the importance of 1.5 degrees Celsius?

And, you know, what is the, you know, how important of a goal is this? Is this like, you know, hey, I'd love to get all my work done by that day, right? If I get everything done by 6 p.m., then I can relax and watch a movie. Or is it like, hey, your paper is due at 9 a.m. And if you don't get it in on time, you know, you're flunking the class. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure.

Yeah. It's an incredibly important target. And it's also an incredibly, I'll get some flack for this, an incredibly unimportant target. So this is why it's important. It motivates action. All targets do this, right? They create like a yardstick

or a way to be kept accountable. Are we on track towards some goal that we've set for ourselves, or are we completely out of whack? And so that forces us to monitor our progress to see, you know, where the greenhouse gases are coming from and where they should be reduced and this sort of thing. And it does have real implications for the stability of the climate, of the impacts on nature and on humans. Even at 1.5 degrees, as we know today, we're already experiencing the impacts of climate change. We're already seeing more extreme events and more extremely hot days and drought and flooding and this kind of thing. Those impacts are already happening. Species extinctions are already happening.

And those will get worse. However, let's say that we exceed 1.5 degrees of warming. We still wake up the next day. There are real costs associated with any level of warming in terms of human lives and nature. But 1.6 degrees of warming is better than 1.7 degrees of warming. And 1.7 degrees of warming is better than 1.8. Every inch in the right direction that we move means lives are saved, means livelihoods are saved, means that species are preserved. So those are real things. And I don't want us to, the reason why I think that the 1.5 degree

or two degree target isn't everything is because I worry that it's easy to say that target is out of reach, I give up. And it creates ap and fear and and a sense of being overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge. And I don't think that's that's where we should be. It's really interesting how much the goals that are being set by the international community. Did the IPCC, by the way, come up with the one point five degree goal or is this did this sort of come from the larger conversation around climate change? That's a really good question. There's a complicated answer, but it is a combined scientific and political effort. You know, no, you can imagine no scientist would come up with something so round and beautiful, right? The reality would be something much more complicated and difficult to parse. So it's a combined

scientific and political effort to commit to a target like that. But in the press release, I mean, the 1.5 Celsius degree target is in the first paragraph of the IPCC's press release. It's very much talking about it. And it's interesting how this goal interacts with people's emotions, that it's, it's scientific, but as you say, it's also political and it's, you know, it has the potential to spur action, but also to dispirit people because, you know, we, we hear, I've been hearing for the last, you know, 10 years, hey, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, and then a little bit more of, well, 1.5 is going to be tough. We're, we're maybe going to shoot past 1.5, but if we can keep it under two, if we can keep it

under two, if we can keep it under two. And I'm thinking what happens in 10 years when it's, well, we might go over two, but hey, if as long as we keep it under 2.5, you know, now that's, that's on the one hand, that process is very important because 2.5 is much worse than two. Two is worse than 1.5. Three is worse than 2.5 is much worse than two, two is worse than 1.5, three is worse than 2.5. And, you know, one of the things we want to instill in people is, is the, the, the lower, the better, right. And we always have the opportunity to keep a lower rise by doing

things today that'll result in a, in a lower amount of warming tomorrow. But on the other hand, it does set up for people, hey, there's a goal that we're all pushing for. Ah, we missed it. And, you know, a lot of people's first reaction to that is like, well, we failed, you know? That's right. People will not, you know, the whole thing of when people say it's too late and we all go, no, no, it's not too late. Well, it's a natural reaction to being told that we're going to shoot past a goal you've been hearing about for a decade. Yeah. No, I think you're right, honestly. And it actually came about in the reverse way that two degrees of warming was the first sort of target that was set out there as the threshold for dangerous anthropogenic change.

So we didn't want warming to exceed two degrees. And then in the Paris Agreement, there was language around, you know, well below two degrees or 1.5 degrees. That's sort of when that floated to the surface. And I think that those are crucial. And, you know, we have to really keep in mind that these do, these aren't just arbitrary numbers. They do have real links to devastating impacts for societies, for communities, and for nature. But you're right that when we dwell only on those targets, we run the risk of accepting the fact that this is decarbonization, weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels that are embedded in our way of life

in a thousand ways, in our homes, in our vehicles, in the things we eat, in the things we buy, in our economy, in our vehicles, in the things we eat, in the things we buy, in our economy through and through, getting those fossil fuels out of our system is such an enormous, complicated, and slow task that is the project of decades, inevitably. Even if we're wildly successful, it will take decades. So, this isn't an overnight thing. And I think we have to be in it for the long haul, whatever it takes to sustain us over the decades that it will take

to do this. I think we need to seek that out and nurture that. Well, let's talk more about, let's talk more about, first of all, what we are doing instead of doing the things we need to be doing. And by the way, I know that you worked on a specific part of this report. So please, if I ask you something where you're like, this is not what I particularly, my forte, please feel free to say so. But, you know, you said we need to be extracting, you know, fossil fuels instead of out of the ground, out of our society, right?

We need to be decarbonizing. And overall, globally, we're not doing that because as you say, we have seen the highest emissions over the past 10 years than we have at any prior point. So we are still on the upslope. Perhaps we have peaked now. We're going to hope that we've peaked, but we have not yet started going down. So, you know, I would have to say as an American, I'm constantly subjected to, you know, advertisements about, hey, buy this green product, you know, do this or that.

I walk into an office building. It says this is the greenest office building ever made. Right. I see all of this, this sort of like optical stuff about how we need to green the country. But it appears that we are not doing so because the numbers are not, in fact, going down in the U.S. They are actually. Oh, they are, actually. Okay, great. Thank you. Please correct me. Please correct me. No, no.

Because the United States, despite rhetoric to the contrary, has been weaning itself off coal and onto natural gas, unfortunately, in many cases, which then locks you into still a higher carbon pathway. Emissions in the United States have gone down. Canada, no. Really? Yes. Canada is not doing well on reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. And this is for a number of interesting and important reasons. But,

you know, the UK, France, Japan, and others are those countries that are showing those sustained reductions in greenhouse gases. And there's a couple of really important places to look for those big reductions. And I want to come around to a really important point about whether it's up to you and I as individuals to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or whether or not this is a collective challenge, because I think that's kind of the crux of the issue. But nonetheless, we know that emissions are coming from our transportation system, from our vehicles, the cars that you and I drive or public transit or whatever. We know they're coming from how transportation system, from our vehicles, the cars that you and I drive or public transit or whatever. We know they're coming from how we heat and electrify our homes.

So are we burning coal to produce electricity to turn the lights on? Or are we using hydro power or wind or solar or whatever? Are we heating our homes from natural gas or heating oil and such or something else? So it's built into our buildings and all the materials, of course, that that building is built with. So that's a really, the industrial side is a really important source of emissions. Of course, greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and from our oil and gas sector, et cetera. So they're coming from all different places. And we would need major cuts in every single sector in every region around the globe to reach our goals. Some sectors are easier to tackle than others.

So some still have some technical challenges to work out that need to be scaled up and experimented with, like industrial processes and the manufacture of chemicals and such. Others are farther along. industrial processes and the manufacture of chemicals and such. Others are farther along, like, of course, you know, EVs have exploded, electric vehicles have exploded in their popularity over the last couple of years because we've gotten these batteries that have such a longer range. And so now there's less range anxiety, as they call it, you know, in getting an EV. So, however, you know, using an electric vehicle is only helpful to the climate if the electricity that's powering it is not produced from fossil fuels, so coal and such. If that's coming from a clean source, that's generally, you know, a really good move in that direction. So the solutions already exist. is such an important but kind of murky insight in my mind,

which is that climate change has never really been a technical problem. We've had the technological solutions to many of them, not all of them, but many of the technological solutions. We've had four decades. But the social and political side is so much tougher to shift and so much more complicated. And that's where we find ourselves now. We're confronted by that reality. We have the solutions in all of these sectors.

So what's going on? Well, even the technological solutions that you mentioned, such as improved batteries, the improved efficiency and cost of renewables, like solar panels is so often cited, you know, this like crash in the cost of solar panels. It's incredible, but it's because of sustained investment that started a few decades ago, could have started decades before that, but did not. I mean, certainly there was probably some basic science that needed to be done, but we make social choices about which pieces of science to invest in, what exactly to research. There's a reason that nuclear power was invented around the same time that we were engaged in a couple of world wars. So we as a society do make these choices.

So, you know, we as a society do make these choices. Yeah. And I mean, how do you confront that as a scientist when you look at, you know, these numbers that say, you know, we must do X by such and such a date in order to keep the number below such and such a number. And you know that you are saying that to social and political actors, but more importantly, systems, political systems that don't really have the ability to just look at the numbers and say, okay, let's do it, right? I mean, wish to God that everyone at the UN could read the report and say, okay, let's do it, right? I mean, wish to God that everyone at the UN could read the report and say, all right, this is a recipe. These are instructions. Let's just do it, right? Let's sign some bills. But unfortunately, we know that human social systems don't work that way. And so how do you confront that as a scientist? Well, there's a lot of interesting social science on exactly this issue that humans don't change behavior that way. They don't just get the data and then

rationally make a different decision. Unfortunately, there's not a straight line from A to B. So even at the individual level, that assumption, and this is honestly, you know, something that scientists should kind of reflect on in terms of how they communicate these issues. Because, you know, kind of reflect on in terms of how they communicate these issues. Because, you know, I know a lot of really, really well-meaning scientists who are just absolutely pulling out their hair in frustration. We're saying like, listen, look at the data, look at the data, there's this evidence. But that is actually not how people make decisions. You know, we're very social creatures. We make decisions based on really deeply held worldviews. And by that, I mean, how do we think nature actually responds to humans being in it? Is it this is one of the key findings that I think is really fascinating and kind of another, not a contradiction, but a tension in this report, which is that, you know, part of the report focuses on how important individual choices are, that individual choices are responsible for an enormous portion of our greenhouse gas emissions. Individual choices are responsible for an enormous portion of our greenhouse gas emissions.

However, if you don't have other options, like let's say you want to get out of your car and you want to ride a bike or you want to walk to work or you want to take public transit. Then the question becomes, how far is it to your job? Do you have to, to be able to afford a home, do you have to live a 45 minute commute or an hour and a half long commute from your job? That is the case in many cities, right? So you couldn't possibly walk that. So you don't have a choice in that case. If you wanted to get on your bike, is it safe? Is there cycling infrastructure? You know, can you not take your life into your own hands every time you hop on a bike? Do you have public transit even available that's convenient and accessible and reliable? Those aren't choices you make as an individual. Those are choices that

elected officials, decision makers, make on our behalf. So the collective decisions collide with our capacity as individuals to choose lower carbon behaviors. So I am strongly in favor, and I think the evidence from this report supports me, in focusing our attention on those collective decisions. We need buildings to be built to more efficient standards, which means building codes need to change. We need our cities to be more compact and complete so that you can walk to get groceries and walk to work and walk to play. That is, you know, urban planning and zoning. Like these collective decisions unleash your potential as an individual to make the choices that would be aligned with a two or 1.5 degree world. Yeah. You actually hit upon the metaphor I use most often to describe this exact problem of,

you know, collective solutions rather than individual ones, because the metaphor that I use is of traffic that like, you know, everyone hates traffic, but there's no individual solution to it. You know, I can't say to the average person, well, just drive a little bit differently, drive a different route, go a different way, or, you know, hey, take the train if there isn't one. No, we literally need to get together and build a tunnel under the earth and put trains running through it in order to solve that problem. And the same is true of climate change when we're literally talking about transportation emissions. But there are, America, you know, such a individualistic country. We're not the only one. And we're told that the solution to every problem is one that we can do ourselves. And it's simply not, simply not true. And, and there are things that we can do,

but the whole lion's share of the problem needs to be solved collectively. And that's like a story we need to keep telling over and over again, because we're not used to it. It's an underdeveloped muscle for us. I think it is, but I, you know, I think my goal is not to disempower individuals from making choices that, that align with their values and that help us along this path at all. I think that those actions, individual, you know, moving away from eating quite so much meat and getting out of your car and this kind of thing, consuming less, whatever, insulating your home, all those things are super important. Of course, they directly impact greenhouse gas emissions. They also help you live in line with your values, which is a comforting and soothing thing. But not only that, they communicate very directly to those who make decisions on our behalf that this is a priority

for us, that we are essentially permitting leaders to lead. We're saying, you know, put this on your agenda or I will not give you your job back. Right. Like this is something that matters to me, make decisions on my behalf that align with that. Yeah. But we have to like, we need to be doing both things at once, right? Like we have had, as you, as you say, here in the United States, there has been a modest explosion in interest in electric vehicles, solar panels, things like that. Certainly compared to where it was 10 years ago, obviously. But, and I said this in our previous podcast, that it looks to me when I look at the auto

industry, it looks like, okay, all the automakers, they want to get on the bandwagon with electric cars. They want to offer electric cars. They know it's politically good for them and maybe they can make some money too to offer electric cars. They're not particularly interested in moving everybody onto electric cars. They know it's politically good for them and maybe they can make some money, too, to offer electric cars. They're not particularly interested in moving everybody onto electric cars. You know, they want to keep selling the 20 mile a gallon, you know, SUVs. And, you know, we can if we really do our outreach in every, you know, copy of The New Yorker and CNN piece, we can move every, you know, rich person who cares about the environment to buy a Tesla. Right. And that's still not going to be enough. And what we need to do is massively incentivize people to move to electric cars by, you know, building charging stations on a mass scale, which we're starting to do. But also just like cutting people checks to buy electric cars, you know, just like making, we just got to make electric cars cheap.

I mean, we did Cash for Clunkers in 2008, right? And just like gave people money to trade in their old cars to bail out the auto industry. Surely we can do something similar to, you know, bail out the planet. And that's just like one small thing that we should be doing.

And seeing us not do that in the face of, you know, sky-high gas prices is like, okay, this is exactly the type of, this is the opportunity here that we seem to not be taking like we should. Agreed. Yeah, agreed. There are a lot of tools. So you're right. There's a need for, and historically there has been a need for innovation among the car manufacturers, right? Like you have to have people putting those EV models onto the market, those zero emissions vehicles on the market so that people have a choice. But then there's absolutely a rule for government here. And this is, you know, I realized that this is less popular in the United States than it is. It's a modest popularity here

in Canada, but much more popular in Europe. You know, carbon pricing is one really important disincentive. It's a tool to say, listen, you need to understand what the consequences are of you individually using these fossil fuels to power your car, to heat your home. And so, you know, up to now, you've not been paying anywhere close to the true costs associated with using those fuels. And no carbon tax I've ever seen actually still accounts for the true costs of combusting fossil fuels, but it starts to send a really important signal. So pricing carbon is one way to help incentivize a shift and then giving incentives, as you say, to buy those EVs or to get rid of, you know, to move away from cars where it's possible, where public transit

infrastructure has been invested in in such a way that you actually have a choice to use some other way of getting around, even better is moving towards that mass transit, because that leads to all kinds of other benefits. We tend to have better public health when we use active or public transit, because we're not just sitting in a car all day. Our cities can be more compact when we're not allowed to sort of sprawl out all over and drive a car, you know, such fast distances. So there's so many co-benefits, you know, those added intentional or unintentional benefits that we get when we wean ourselves off carbon in a real way.

Yeah. All right. Well, we have to take a really quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you more about the overall science of of the, you know, of carbon emissions today and what the report says. But we'll be right back with more Sarah Birch. I don't know anything. including the United States, which you corrected me on. So I was pleased to hear that. But at the same time, we're seeing global emissions rise, correct? Or they're certainly larger than they were in the past. So being that we're finally starting to see things turn in some nations, what is driving the overall global rise? What trends? Is it just population growth, economic expansion, and that we aren't building these new systems or what? Right. So there are major increases in

greenhouse gas emissions from countries that we might call economies in transition. So large countries with large populations. But I want to come back to that because population is not the main driver of greenhouse gas emissions. It's consumption of the few, the wealthy, that I think should be the real target of our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So, increasing greenhouse gas emissions from extremely populous countries like China, of course, and India, acknowledging that in many cases, those greenhouse gas emissions are required to lift people out of poverty, right? So there has to be some greenhouse gas emissions related to that, certainly. And then in countries like Canada, where we have a thriving oil and gas sector, and that has been the foundation of our economy for so long.

And we also have this kind of curse, much like the U.S. does in some cases, but we have this curse of vast spaces, right? So all of our cities are quite sprawling and they're not these densely designed cities that you might see in other parts of the world. So those are where we're seeing greenhouse gas emissions going up because of consumption, because of industry. However, we are seeing greenhouse gas emissions sort of decoupling from economic growth. So that means we're needing fewer greenhouse gases to produce every additional dollar of wealth in our economy, which is, again, an early good sign. But when your economy grows or your population grows excessively or, you know,

really quickly, then it swallows up those gains. And that's what we're seeing globally. a developing country and you're like, hey, I got people starving in my country. I have people who can't make a living. I have people living in poverty. I'm trying to improve the lives of people I live around. And if that means those folks using a few more combustion engines, like how do you expect me to not take that deal when you took it all of you in North America, in Europe, you know, you all took that deal. How do you expect me in my country to not do it? In the same way that, you know, we all make choices like that. You know, when I flew to a family member's funeral, right? And I felt like, oh my God, I'm burning fossil fuels to fly to my family member's funeral. But who could say I shouldn't do

this, right? This is very important to me. And we all make choices like that every day. And one of the biggest ones, again, is how you just improve people's lot in life, how you reduce child mortality, how you reduce starvation, how you increase people's standard of living. So if you're able to, in a future world, do that without having to burn so many fossil fuels, if you can hold on a second, we can improve people's standards of living, but with a much lower increase in carbon emissions, that would be, that's like one of the main ingredients we would need to solve this problem, right? 100%. And this is one of the deep ironies, right? So climate change is at its core a justice issue, right? That you're correct, that there are hundreds of millions of people who are surviving in, you know, under the

worst possible conditions. And so, you know, these countries come to the global stage and they say, this is wildly unfair. We didn't cause this problem. It hasn't been our greenhouse gas emissions that have gotten us here. It's yours, wealthy, industrialized West. So why on earth should we pay? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, and we are suffering the consequences. So how, why shouldn't we be able to heat and electrify our homes? Why shouldn't we be able to feed our people? Why shouldn't we have this quality of life that you have been enjoying for the last several decades? And the answer to that, in my view, this is, I mean, this is a very nuanced discussion, I think, but is absolutely, of course, there is, we are required through any reasonable ethical or moral lens to be a part of

the process of people being able to feed themselves and take care of their families and live happy, productive lives. However, the great irony is that climate change itself is impacting those poorest and most vulnerable people the most. So, you know, if emissions from wherever, from any country on the planet are allowed to gallop out of control, it is also those people who are most vulnerable and poorest and most exposed who will suffer. So, yes, the holy grail here is to enable that leapfrogging, right? That the ability to electrify homes and provide power and provide, you know, stable, abundant, nutritious sources of food and education and this kind of thing, but in a clean, sustainable, low carbon way so that we aren't collectively, you know, doomed. Yeah. So when this IPCC report comes out, or I mean, it just has come

out, one comes out periodically, how often do they, do you produce them? They come out every four or five years or so. And so what is the result of this report coming out? Like, are there other agencies, other bodies that are sort of snapping to attention and saying, okay, something is going to change as a result of this data? Yeah. So this is tricky. Mapping the impact of the IPCC report is a really interesting thing. And I tend to see it as having all sorts of subtle ripple effects that we can't possibly measure or identify. into those negotiations, as I mentioned. So as we're moving along internationally towards implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change, which is what came, you know, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And we meet every year. The last one was in Glasgow, the last conference of the parties to this United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So that last set of negotiations, the IPCC science is continually brought in to inform those targets that each country is set. But then that only has impact

when those countries, the heads of state, the negotiators, the decision makers present at those negotiations go home and build it into domestic law and policy. So this is how, you know, the international process is an important moment to collectively agree on our ambition and the urgency to talk about issues like we just discussed, like the justice and equity, who pays, who suffers, you know, how does this actually play out in practice? But then, you know, our political leaders have to come home and make it real in the countries that they lead. So, you know, whenever I get disheartened about the absolutely off-the-charts amount of work that goes into the IPCC reports and how, you know, there's often criticisms that it has no effect or that it's not, you know, doing much. how there's often criticisms that it has no effect or that it's not doing much. I go home and I work with real municipalities who are setting their climate change action plans. They're declaring climate emergencies.

They're building sustainability action plans. And what do they use as their justification? They use the IPCC reports over and over and over. Usually the summary for policymakers, that shortened document, the really pissy one that kind of captures all the key findings. But this is the thing they hold up and say, listen, you know, the world's scientists have said that this is real, this is important, and there are solutions. Now let's be a part of that. So I think that's really powerful. Yeah, this is the gold standard that everyone can operate off of. And everyone can point to the same set of numbers around the world, translate it into every language, I assume, or into hopefully a very large number of languages and can use that to guide decision making. That's right. And they couldn't possibly do it themselves, right? You know, a town of 4,500 people in the Rockies or whatever can't go and do all of the, you know, not even the synthesis of the science to say much, you know, to say anything

of the science underlying it, right? So, they have this resource and the detail. And increasingly, you know, because this report shows that evidence of sustained greenhouse gas reductions in some countries, it's also showing this roadmap that is real in real places. And, you know, it's making a very compelling case that we don't need to reinvent the wheel, that you don't need to take too many risks. It's already been done. Just, you know, see how it's been done elsewhere and do it yourself. We are on, we are starting to embark on the path. Is that what you feel this report shows? I think so. I don't think we're moving fast enough. I think that, you know, all of those disclaimers and asterisks,

I wouldn't be, you know, a careful thinker if I didn't inject those. But absolutely, I think that, you know, we can see the evidence of, you know, as you referenced, the plummeting cost of renewables is so exciting. The fact that solar's come down by 85%, wind by 55%, lithium-ion batteries by 85%. I mean, that's bonkers. That's, you know, way better than anyone would have anticipated 15 or 20 years ago. And it means that these are real competitive technologies that can take the place of, you know, of greenhouse gas emitting technologies we have today. We're seeing zero carbon buildings in all climates. You know, it's not a myth. It's not sci-fi. These can really be done.

We're seeing carbon prices. We're seeing all kinds of stuff. Just such an incredibly rich menu of options. That's incredible. But I want to return to something that you said a moment ago, and this is what I was trying to remember to ask you about. You said that a big part of the problem is the consumption of the wealthy. And that strikes me as, well, as you say, that's not a technology problem. That's a power problem because the wealthy, let me tell you, they love to consume and they also have something else disproportionately in addition to loving to consume and eat bonbons and, you know, fly in private jets, they also happen to have a lot of power and a lot of ability to ignore the reports of, you know, UN bodies or, you know, those sorts of things. And so I'd love you to talk a little bit more about why you feel that that's a

big part of the story. And, you know, in addition to better batteries and et cetera, what can we do to solve that piece of it? Yeah. Well, you know, listen, there's two slices of wealthy that we need to be clear we're talking about here. So if you're talking about the global wealthy, like the wealthiest 10% globally, quite likely you and I are among them, right? So the middle to upper income folks in wealthier countries like Canada, the US, UK, France, etc., are very much in that category of those who quite likely overconsume and over-emit. It's our pleasure travel. It's our consumption of goods and services. It's our single family detached homes and vehicles and all that. It's our single-family detached homes and vehicles and all of that. And we do have power as well. So, yes, we are part of the problem.

This is what makes climate change a so-called wicked problem, that we are part of the problem and part of the solution at the same time. the small handful of those who have several private jets and multiple homes and yachts and this kind of thing are, of course, responsible for a wildly disproportionate, you know, share of greenhouse gas emissions. And I think there's real room for leadership there. I mean, you know, it's my, I guess my more positive or hopeful take on the role of the very wealthy is that I do think that there's more of a critical eye being cast now on those folks who are producing such enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than just sort of universally, you know, envying that lifestyle. There's more criticism being leveled at them. So there's a lot of, there's real opportunity for leadership there to illustrate what it might look like to live a wealthy, zero-carbon lifestyle. I don't know if there's room there.

That the, you know, we're not talking about just the Elon Musk's and the Jeff Bezos's of the world. We're talking about the, you know, upper echelon of human society that was built on rampant fossil fuel use and was built on, you know, colonialism, taking, you know, extracting resources from other countries. You know, that's the that's the world that I was born into. That's the world that I live in. It's the world that every most people that I know live in as well. And that is very difficult to unwind because, you know, it's hard to ask people to, you know, it's hard to say to people, hey, your way of life, right? Not you individually, but the way of life that you are a part of is like, you know, drastically a problem. And also those are the folks who, again, in the United States, the middle class of the United States, right, is what you said is in that top 10%. The middle class is the most powerful,

sacrosanct, you know, political body in the United States. Oh, the middle class, we have to support the middle class. We have to help the middle class. That's why, again, when you see the price of gas go up, right, and the middle class is having trouble driving their 15 mile a gallon SUVs, the, you know, 60 miles it takes them to get to their job because they wanted to live in a big single family home far away from the city center, that we end up subsidizing that lifestyle instead of trying to wean folks off of it because those folks have so much power. And that often strikes me as when you're looking at a government and saying, well, how do we get our government to do more? It's because of the interest of those

folks being put first. And that is, as you say, it is a wicked problem. And it does seem, OK, maybe we can shame Elon and Jeff enough to get them to, you know, fly commercial instead of private. But, you know, in terms of the rest of us, right? Including myself in that. Yeah, which is, again, it kind of brings us back to this really important theme, which is that, again, climate change is a values problem. It's a social and political problem more than a technical one. And our high-carbon lifestyles are rooted in these values of what,

and I say we, I don't mean to be universalist about this. There are many different sets of values that are at play even here in Canada. Of course, different communities value different things. But the set of values that I was raised and exposed, you know, to hold and that I've had to challenge, I guess, as time goes by, you know, we still do have a culture that's very focused around conspicuous consumption and around, you know, success being defined by that single family

detached home and that vehicle. And there's a lot of status associated with that. So, what I'm heartened by is that there is, you know, I think the seeds have been planted for a deeper questioning of, taking off my IPCC hat now, because there's some work, you know, in some of the IPCC chapters about cultures of consumption and values shifts and this kind of thing. But the attention was largely elsewhere. COVID restrictions, a lot of us, you know, I can hazard perhaps a guess that what we missed when we were sent home was people, you know, that we missed interactions with people we love and our communities and experiences, right, which are really powerful and influential, perhaps more so than the stuff, you know, the consumption of things. And so perhaps that gave us, gave us an opportunity to reflect on what might be. And when I say sustainable, I mean, sort of in the richest sense, what might be a more sustainable way of being. Yeah. Yeah. It's really a, maybe the, you know, rather than individually, there are individual changes that we can make, but the biggest individual change we can make is inside our own hearts.

I totally, I made myself cringe with that, but maybe, but I do kind of believe it. It's okay. You can be earnest. It's okay. Yeah. earnest it's okay yeah no listen i think um i think there's a really close relationship between our behaviors and our values so so when we shift away from you know you know out of our our internal combustion engine vehicle and toward you know onto our bike or into an ev or onto a train or whatever you know we're we're also sending a signal. We're also kind of shifting, shifting our cultural conversation around what it looks like, you know, and I could get stuck in gridlock, you know, in my vehicle, angry, white knuckled, you know, commuting for two hours. Or if I had the choice, I could get in a train and drink a coffee and read my newspaper. If I

don't even know if real print newspapers even still exist. But I could find one of those and read one. And my quality of life is improved in so many ways. And I'm sort of demonstrating that. So I think, you know, maybe we should just come back to the core point here, which is, and the IPCC backs this up, that if we want to make progress on a whole long list of things that matter and you know globally we call those the sustainable development goals like dealing with poverty you know wanting fresh water and and and clean air and sustainable communities if we want all of that stuff we have to tackle climate change to get there and furthermore as

we tackle climate change we get all this good stuff out of it. You know, when we move off coal, we don't have any more smog days. We have less asthma and respiratory illness. Like fewer people die when we move away from coal. If we get onto our bikes, we live longer, we're healthier. You know, like we can connect with people on the street more. There's just so much good that comes of really meaningfully dealing with climate change. Yeah. And people know that and they do feel it. Like the,

the, there's a, there's a deep well of desire for that inside people. You know, I had a, I, the other day posted a TikTok of my, my own, I know I'm really with it. I posted a TikTok of my own. I know I'm really with it. I posted a TikTok of why I personally quit driving and started taking public transportation in LA. And all the reasons were due to quality of life. It was because, you know, driving made me anxious and uncomfortable. I have bad eyesight. I have ADD. I think that made me feel like a danger on the road, honestly. But I also just didn't enjoy it. I felt stuck. And, you know, when I finally, honestly. But I also just didn't enjoy it. I felt stuck. And, you know, when I finally got fed up and I looked up to see if there was a bus that

went from my from my home to my office, I saw, oh, my gosh, there was. And I started taking it. And I took me a little bit longer to get to work, but I could read a magazine, you know, and and look at my neighborhood. And then when we moved, we moved to a spot that was more public transit accessible. And now that's what I almost exclusively get around L around LA. Of course, I do have to take the occasional ride share. But I was really surprised at the response to this. I got a million views around various social media platforms. And so many people said, wow, I relate to this. And then a lot

of people said, I wish that I had that in my area. I live in a rural area with no public transportation, or I live in a suburb with no public transportation, or the public transportation in my city is worse than yours. I mean, LA, it made me appreciate LA has people say LA has terrible public transportation, but as far as major cities go in the US, it's actually quite good. Like if you were to compare it to many, many other cities that have far worse. And so that was, you know, there's the odd person saying, well, I don't like, right. I prefer driving my car, but that was like the vast minority. Most people when, when they said why they don't ride, it was, I wish I could, but there's

something about my system that makes it not work yet. And to all those people, if they had a, you know, if they had a bus line going by their house or even a shared ride van, which is something that we have now in LA, which is a sort of an Uber competitor, except that it, you know, has, it will come to you, but it'll pick up multiple people in a trip. So it's greener than an Uber and operated by your public transit agency, that sort of thing. People would jump like a shot at that if we were to societally provide them the option to. And that's just comes back to your point of like, okay, individual choices matter, but giving people the ability to make the individual choice on a societal level, on an infrastructural level, is the harder lift and the more important lift.

It totally is. And I think, you know, for the sake of our poor transportation planners and engineers who do this for a living, we need to acknowledge that this transition also takes time. So, you know, I moved to, I live in the city of Waterloo now, which is about a half a million people. It's a medium-sized city close to the biggest city in Canada, Toronto. And I moved here about eight or nine years ago from Vancouver. Now, perhaps you feel this too. I tend not to use Vancouver as the comparator because in the Canadian context, it's kind of an outlier. It's an unusual place. It's not necessarily, you know, doesn't have a lot in common with many other places.

But nonetheless, you know, I moved from Vancouver, which has a fairly robust public transport system. I also had no children at the time, so I didn't own a vehicle. I didn't need a vehicle. And I got around using, you know, car to go at the time, a little smart car that I'd fob in and out of and just use occasionally when I wanted to drive. Otherwise, I'd take the train. the train. And, but then I moved to a medium, a very, very typical medium-sized Canadian city, which at the time did not have a light rail transit. It had buses and that kind of thing, but was just putting reasonably good public transit into play and also, you know, updating its cycling infrastructure. And, you know, you put that stuff in, you invest in that stuff, and it does take time for people to choose it, for people to know that it's an option that's available to them, that it could be better for them overall to use it.

So you don't necessarily see this immediate flood of people onto your bike lanes or onto your trains and transit. It takes time. And this is a shift in habit as much as it's a shift in the technology. Yeah. Well, okay, let's wrap this up with, you seem to have a very optimistic bent about all this stuff. And I'd love to know, are there any other trends that you saw in this data of the way that we are changing our society, our, you know, energy systems that, that you find encouraging that folks might know about? And are there any, you know, what are the policies that

if you could snap your finger and put in place, what are the easiest lifts that we could be doing to, you know, make, make progress here? Those are a bunch of big questions. And I want to get to the optimism question first. It's okay. It's okay. I'll take one at a time. We'll see if we can do this. So, yes, I'm often called an optimist. And this generates a bit of heat sometimes from those who are, you know, understandably very angry and scared about climate change and want to hold our leaders and companies and such to account, which I really respect. want to hold our leaders and companies and such to account, which I really respect. The reason I'm optimistic is because I don't see the alternative because I feel like the only thing that will doom us to failure is dooming ourselves to failure, is deciding that we've already, you know, the ship has sailed, we've missed it. So to me, it's just the only way to be. I also find it more energizing and helpful to focus on where I see solutions that are working and try and make them work elsewhere. So that's, and that's one thing that this report really demonstrates quite powerfully.

So the other main messages from it, you know, we've been talking a lot, you and I, about public transport in cities and cities play an enormous role. And, you know, it's hard to recall, but, you know, a decade or two ago in the international sort of arena, it was really country to country talking about what should be done and who's doing what. Cities have kind of come up from behind and said, you know, like, we have economies as large as some of these countries, and we are where all of this stuff plays out. You know, we are where the floods happen, the fires happen, the, you know, heat waves happen. We are where public transit gets implemented. We are where the floods happen, the fires happen, the, you know, heat waves happen. We are where public transit gets implemented. We are where buildings are built.

We are kind of where it all comes together. And there's so much potential. There are major emitters, cities, and they are enormously powerful on the solutions front. Except that, of course, they don't govern all of the sources of emissions. They don't have jurisdiction or power over everything. So, they have to be working in line with, you know, provincial or state authorities and federal governments, national governments as well. So, there's so much that's exciting on the city, you know, city side of things that we can take heart from, I think, and learn and implement where we are. And also, my understanding is the global population is becoming more and more urban as time goes on, right?

Like urbanization is one of the great demographic shifts of the last few decades. So being that cities are such an opportunity that cities can change their practices and also urban life, my understanding is, is much less carbon intensive than rural life. Like those are trends that really could help us in this fight. They could. It isn't inevitable. It isn't inevitable that we are lower carbon in cities,

but there's certainly a lot of potential there for that density to, you know, if those buildings are efficient and powered by, you know, renewables and this kind of thing, for them to make an enormous stride in the right direction. So, you know, I think on balance, as we look at this report and the reports that it's followed on, again, it just hammers home this message that we already have the vast majority of solutions needed, but the changes that we need to make have to be immediate. We can't suffer through another decade of increasing emissions. They have to level off in the next three or four years and then decline quite precipitously thereafter to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and the costs of doing that, the costs of ratcheting down emissions quickly, while not insignificant, are completely dwarfed by the cost of doing nothing, right? Like the costs of unbridled climate change are unthinkable. So in comparison, the costs of changing our infrastructure and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and making these undoubtedly challenging shifts are, you know, minimal by comparison, really.

Yeah. And I mean, the way I often like to frame it for myself is as an opportunity that, okay, we've got a whole lot that we need to do. We need to do it as quickly as possible. That means that every single thing that we do right now to move ourselves in the right direction makes a huge difference. Like, you know, from an individual level, from you saying, okay, let me look up where the bus route is, you know, and see if that works for me. Let me show up at a city council meeting and advocate for increased bus service, which, you know, I have done here in Los Angeles. People, you can do it in your own city. You probably have a, if you bus service, which, you know, I, I have done here in Los Angeles, people, you can do it in your own city. You probably have a, if you live in a city,

you probably have a metropolitan transit board meeting you can go to and say, Hey, please run the buses more often. And, you know, every single thing that we do on a governmental company, societal level makes a huge difference and is really worth it. Like any dollar that you spend today is going to be repaid to you, what, tenfold? Well, being a scientist, I can't actually say that. I'm a comedian, so I work in, you know, broad generalization. Broad generalization. It will absolutely pay back. Many times over. Many times over. And we're on the upswing here, right? I honestly do, you know, based on what I've seen of the data on renewables

and building efficiency and vehicles and all sorts of stuff, I do believe very strongly that the train has sort of left the station on this transition. I think we're coming to that escalation point where, you know, so much of this can take off. It's unclear whether it will be fast enough to avoid, you know, the worst impacts of climate change, but I think the seeds have certainly been planted. And so, if I were to say, you know, I totally agree with you, all of those individual actions matter. The most important one in my mind is voting. So anytime, anytime you have the option to vote at any level for someone who will make decisions on your behalf that incorporates climate change into that, that really authentically and legitimately pursues this enormous project of decarbonization, that is where you can have a really incredible impact on the path we follow. And people who do it authentically, like you have to, especially when you're talking about

local politicians, you have to take a look at the difference between what they say and what they actually do. But the folks who are actually increasing bus service rather than, you know, not doing it, rather than playing lip service, et cetera, if you can support those folks, it makes a massive difference. And yeah, I mean, I do come away optimistic because, you know, you can say that, well, will we avoid the worst impacts or not is a valid question. But we can also say we are finally making movement in the right direction. So some bad impacts have already been avoided, right? Some of the, like there is a worst case scenario that we have already avoided. And now there's a current worst case scenario that

we have the opportunity to avoid that as well if we continue making progress. And we can keep doing that forever. And we always have the opportunity today to make a better tomorrow. And we will be rewarded if we do. Every single thing that we do in that direction, we will be rewarded for. I agree. I totally agree. There are already climate change impacts that we have made changes that, you know, that will help us to avoid those impacts. I think that that's a really important way to view progress. That doesn't, though, preclude, you know, we do have to hold people to account. Those folks who are making decisions on our behalf, you know, are we moving as fast as we can?

Like, are you really listening and implementing the solutions that we already know are working? And, you know, carbon pricing is one of those. It's very effective, especially if it's high enough. And that takes a ton of political courage. I realize it's not, you know, it's not palatable in lots of places, but it's one, it's not a silver bullet. It's one important policy tool of many that can help us go in the right direction. So, it is important for all of us to look very carefully at the promises that are being made by decision makers and by leaders and the things that we are saying about our own

lifestyles and choices as well. and choices as well. And asking very, you know, penetrating questions about whether we're on track and how we can do better. I'll let you go in a second. I just want to ask you, it's a personal question, and I hope you don't mind, but like, you know, I often struggle with, am I doing enough, right? I'm in the top 10% or whatever percent you want to say I'm in, I'm probably in it, of the global population in terms of my carbon use based on where I live and my socioeconomic status. And I do my best, right? But I still, I mean, I fly around the world for a living, you know, like, ah, that makes it rough for me. Well, so then I donate money. Oh, am I donating enough? Am I cutting my own? You know, I try to be a part of the solution and it's so hard to evaluate. You just spent,

you know, you're spending your time actually doing the science on the gigantic intergovernmental, you know, panel of scientists to help us move the ball forward on the issue of our century, forward on the issue of our century, perhaps of our more than one century. Is that rewarding? Do you sleep better at night because you know you're doing all you can? I mean, what is that like for you to be really a part of the real work on this issue? Yeah, what a great question. So there's two kind of complicated sides to my answer. One is in my personal behavior and activities, I'm not doing anywhere near enough. I still know that I'm a reasonably high carbon emitter. me deal with that and that bring my behavior into line with my values. But I know there's work to be done there for sure. However, as we've said, you know, several times throughout this conversation, I do think that my individual actions are not the most important part of this equation. So, I feel very gratified and very fulfilled when I do this work on collective action change, because I think that's

where my energy needs to be applied. That's where it can best be directed. And so when I work with the Canadian federal government on, you know, I've been a part of the development of our national adaptation strategy, so how we protect communities from climate change impacts, you know, this work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Greenhouse Gas Reduction, that's the kind of work that I think actually has greater long-term potential than my own very small individual actions. So both matter to me, but I am very privileged to be able to do work that I think, at least in some very, very small way, tackles an issue that I think is so important.

Well, I can't thank you enough for doing that work and especially for coming on the show to talk to us about it and give it to us straight from the horse's mouth. Where can folks find if they want to read the most digestible summary of this report? I know there's summaries all over the place. Do you have a favorite place to go?

I would go straight to the actual horse's mouth. I've been trying not to neigh the whole time when you say this. So ipcc.ch is the actual Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website. And you will find the Working Group 3 part of that website, which is the one focused on greenhouse gas reduction. If you look at the full report, the first chunk, the first 30 pages

or so is the summary for policymakers. It's still a little, you know, a bit of a tough slog at times, but it condenses what is a 3,000-page report into 30 pages and 30 or 60 pages, and it's quite readable. So that's where you can go if you want to read the thing yourself. Amazing. And where can folks find you and follow more of your work as you do it in terms of as far as your work is public facing? Sure. Well, I'm easily Googleable and I'm at the University of Waterloo in Canada. I'm on Twitter at Sarah Lynn Birch. You can always tweet at me there. I'm not on TikTok. I just lurk on TikTok and watch the fancy dances. So not there, unfortunately.

Well, I don't know. Maybe start posting every once in a while and see what happens, you know, like the algorithm. You never know what it'll spread far and wide. And we certainly need to hear your message as widely as possible. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really can't thank you enough. Thanks so much for having me. It's been a great conversation. Well, thank you once again to Sarah Birch for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. If you did, please consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

And of course, I want to thank everyone who supports the show at the $15 a month level. That's Tyler Darach, Susan E. Fisher, Spencer Campbell, Samantha Crockett, Robin Madison, Rachel Nieto, Paul Mauck, Nicholas Morris, Miles Gillingsrood, Michelle Glittermum, Michael Warnicke, Mark Long, Kelly Casey, Julia Russell, Hillary Wolkin, Michael Warnicke, Mark Long, Kelly Casey, Julia Russell, Hillary Wolkin, M. Drill Bill, Cress Staley, Charles Anderson, Aurelio Jimenez, Antonio LB, Alan Liska, Allison Lipparato, and Adam Simon. If you want to join them once again, patreon.com slash adamconover. I want to thank our producer, Sam Roudman, our engineer, Ryan Connor, and our WK4R theme

song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC I'm recording this very our engineer, Ryan Connor, and our WK4, our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC I'm recording this very episode for you on. You can find me online at adamconover.net or at adamconover wherever you get your social media. If you want to send me a special email, send it to factually at adamconover.net. I always love to hear from you.

Until next week, we'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HateGum Podcast.