The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Encore Presentation - Climate Change -- Let's Talk About It

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on March 27th. Professor Katharine Hayhoe is a Canadian atmospheric scientist living in Texas who is one of North America's leading a...cademics talking about climate change.  She's calm. reasonable but still passionate that we aren't doing enough. She's our guest today.  Plus a new answer on the old question of why do journalists only cover bad news -- you're the answer!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. This is your Encore Wednesday edition of The Bridge. We go back more than a year to March of 2023 when Catherine Hayhoe was our guest. Professor Catherine Hayhoe is a Canadian atmospheric scientist living in Texas and is one of North America's leading academics talking about climate change. She's calm, reasonable, but still passionate about what she does. So, why don't we listen to this? Enjoy. And hello there. Welcome to another new week.
Starting point is 00:00:47 Here we are, heading towards April. We'll be in April by the end of the week. We're going to talk about climate change today. Last week that new report came down, it was pretty pessimistic. Final warning was the kind of headline coming out of that new report from the UN. I was frustrated by it all and sort of threw up my hands and said, I'm tired of talking about this. I'm a believer on climate change. I've been for 20 years.
Starting point is 00:01:20 And I don't have room for denialism on it. But I was frustrated. I've talked about it. I've done documentaries on it. I've written articles on it. I've done lots of different things on it, and that report just said to me, let's talk about something else.
Starting point is 00:01:41 Well, you didn't like that idea. You said, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to talk about it. And you wanted me to find somebody new to talk to about it. So that's what I've done. And in a couple of minutes time, I will bring that person on board and have a good little conversation. But I want to talk about something else. In a way, it's kind of related, just as an opener for today, something to provoke some thought. I can tell you when I travel a country, either physically or virtually,
Starting point is 00:02:18 one of the most common questions I get in the talks that I give is, why is the news so negative? Why is negative news always news? Why are the bad things always the news stories? And that's a pretty common question, and a lot of journalists get that. And there's kind of two common answers. There's the one where you say, listen, most news is bad news. That's why it's news. You know, things go wrong. Our world has changed.
Starting point is 00:03:02 That's news. And the other point of view is we don't just cover negative news. We don't just cover bad news. Sure, there's good news as well. We do good news. It's usually lower in the program, in a newscast or in the back pages of a paper. But sometimes it's the story. It's the main story. You know, Canada wins at something. You know, those stories happen too. But listen, let's be real. Most news is bad news because it is news.
Starting point is 00:03:40 It's what's different. It's what's changed about the day. Well, the other thing is, is that what people actually want to hear? In spite of what is happening when I travel the country and the questions I get, do people actually want to be driven by negative news? Well, there's a new study out by the Nieman Lab. Now, Nieman is a big word in journalism. They are associated with Harvard University in Massachusetts, and Nieman studies journalism and studies journalists.
Starting point is 00:04:27 And journalists take courses with the Neiman School at Harvard. Well, they've got a great website, and I encourage you to look, if you're interested in the story, to look for the full details on it. But you can reach the Neiman Lab. That's N-I-E-M-A-N. Lab.org. And travel through that site and you'll find this story headlined, Negative words in news headlines generate more clicks.
Starting point is 00:05:04 But sad words are more effective than angry or scary ones. Okay, see where this is going? This is calling shifting the blame. It's not the journalist's fault. It's that this is what you want. Anyways, a couple of interesting points in this before I get to the main part. It starts off with a couple of sentences like this.
Starting point is 00:05:32 Maybe it's because journalists are naturally drawn to aberrations, and those tend to be more bad than good. After all, a flight landing safely isn't a story, but one crashing into the ocean sure is. That's the old argument, right? There are lots of planes taking off and landing every day, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands around the world. Just look at one of those apps.
Starting point is 00:05:59 Planes Live is a good one. It'll show you all the planes in the air at any one time around the world. And you can zero in on individual planes, find out what they are. So when you're looking up in the sky, you see a plane go over and you wonder where that's going, you can find it. Easy. Anyway, there are thousands of planes in the sky, and 99.9999% of them take off and land without a vent.
Starting point is 00:06:27 Anyway, the story goes on. Maybe it's because reporters see themselves as watchdogs, tasked with identifying malfeasance, corruption, discrimination, and other social problems that need fixing. A government program working well isn't as exciting as a mayor taking money under the table. Heck, maybe it's because the world is just inherently a dark and depressing place, a theory that past decade or so seems to endorse.
Starting point is 00:06:59 Anyway, this study actually gets to the numbers. And I'm not going to read it all, obviously, because it's quite detailed, but I've pointed you in the direction if you want to. But here's what it kind of concludes. Add a negative word to your headline, words like harm, heartbroken, ugly, troubling, angry, and you get 2.3% more clicks on average. Okay? People clicking into your story.
Starting point is 00:07:33 Adding a positive word, like benefit, laughed, pretty, favorite, kind, does the opposite and keeps people from clicking. You buy into that? I think it's probably true. I'm sure it's true. Listen, they've got the data. They studied all kinds of stories, thousands of stories, and that's what they found.
Starting point is 00:08:06 So there's a new answer for me to go beyond just the, hey, bad news is news, or we also cover good news. So now I also, as I said, I can shift the blame a little bit. This is what you want. Say what you will, but you're attracted to those stories that have some kind of negative pitch to them. Okay. We're going to talk. We're going to talk climate change for a bit. I'm trying to understand kind of where we are, what we can do. Lots of you sent in all kinds of ideas on how to pursue this.
Starting point is 00:09:01 I'm looking for a general conversation, kind of a starter. I'm toying with the idea of doing some kind of regular thing every once in a while. I find it frustrating because progress is so slow. And that's inherent in an issue like this. It does take time, clearly. We're talking decades, if not centuries, to get us to this position. And it's going to take us decades, if not centuries, to get us to this position. And it's going to take us decades and perhaps much longer
Starting point is 00:09:31 to get us out of this position. So I was looking for that kind of general discussion, first of all. And we're going to have it. But first of all, let's take a quick break and come back on climate change. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. We're launching a new week of The Bridge this week
Starting point is 00:10:14 and are really happy to have you with us. Okay, so the topic, climate change. The reason we're talking about it today is just last week there was a big UN-sponsored report, one of a regular series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And it was, well, it was depressing. You know, it had this kind of, it's your final warning. You better do something. You better do it now or we're all cooked, literally.
Starting point is 00:10:54 Which after many, I think this was the seventh report over the last few years. After six of them that had been heading us, you know, telling us, hey, we've got to do something, and here are the targets, and let's apply them. Well, clearly, this report says we haven't. And it may be too late. So I thought, okay, I've got to find somebody who can talk about this, who's recognized around the world in the kind of climate community
Starting point is 00:11:29 as somebody who's reasonable, somebody who's thoughtful, somebody who isn't deep in the negative side of all this, that still has some optimism. And so I talked to a number of people. I came up with a name. And I had the world at my, you know, my beckon and call. I could call anybody. Doesn't mean they do it, but I could call anybody. But this is the person I was pointed towards. Her name is Catherine Hayhoe. She's a professor at Texas Tech University in, that's right, Texas.
Starting point is 00:12:13 She's a Canadian. She was educated first at the University of Toronto, but then went on to other universities and courses in the United States. She's recognized literally around the world. She's often talked to by, well, everybody, including the so-called power elite, about her thoughts on where we are and what needs to be done. She also has a successful newsletter.
Starting point is 00:12:49 She appears on everything from Jimmy Kimmel to The Bridge. So she's working her way up. You know, she went from Kimmel to The Bridge. Anyway, I reached out to her the other day, and she immediately said, you know, absolutely, love to do it. Watched you when I was a kid, you know that line? It always makes one feel old, but one feel grateful for the opportunity.
Starting point is 00:13:21 So enough of a setup. Let's get to Professor Catherine Hayhoe and our discussion that's generated, first of all, out of last week's report. So here we go. Professor Catherine Hayhoe. How surprised were you? I guess you probably weren't surprised. You must have known what was coming when the latest IPCC And I wasn't surprised, but I definitely noticed the tone of the report because it reflected how all of us have been feeling the last few years. We feel like we've just been tapping the microphone asking, is it on? Because no one has been listening to the warnings that we have been issuing for over 30 years. So when you say no one's listening, you're talking about every year, you're the kind of generic everyone, whether it's governments or individuals. Is that what you're saying? Well, that is changing. The way that we feel is not necessarily reflected
Starting point is 00:14:35 in public opinion. So it turns out that the majority of people in Canada and the United States and most other countries in the world are indeed worried about climate change, but they also feel helpless and hopeless and don't know what to do in a world where our continued dependence on fossil fuels means our carbon emissions just continue to grow, thanks to the choices of folks who have the ability to make that decision and the fact that we have so many things competing for our attention that even though most of us are worried about climate change, we're also worried about so many other things that just isn't getting the traction it needs to make the changes that we have to today. So how do we make it sound more immediate? Because what we do with these
Starting point is 00:15:19 various reports that come out is it's saying, you know, if we haven't fixed this by 2030 or by 2050 or by the end of the century, you know, all hell's going to break loose. How do we make that sound more immediate? Because that seems to be part of the problem, right? Generation after generation sort of says, well, you know, it's, I'm really worried about this and I don't want to hand this to my grandchildren, but quite frankly, it's not going to impact me that much. Exactly. And what you're describing is something known as psychological distance. And we humans are very prone to psychological distance in many different areas.
Starting point is 00:15:56 We don't eat what we should. We don't say what we're told to. We don't stand up and walk around every 30 minutes like we know that we should. And with climate change, every aspect of psychological distance comes into play. Polling shows that we view it as a future issue, not a present issue. We view it as something that affects people who live over there, not people who live here. We view it as an abstract issue, global average temperature, rather than what's happening where I live. And we don't even view it as a relevant issue. We think it's something that David Suzuki cares about and David Suzuki is going to fix with some help from Greta and maybe Al Gore, but it's not my issue. So how do we talk about it? We have
Starting point is 00:16:34 to talk about it now. We have to talk about it here and we have to talk about it in a way that's relevant to people. So that's a lot of what I do. I study climate change where we live. If I live in Toronto or if I live in Dallas like I do now or in Vancouver or Halifax or Yellowknife, what has already happened where I live? How is climate change making the heat waves or the wildfires or the heavy rainfall events that I have lived through worse? And what is something tangible that I can do with my family, with my school, with my place of work, with my city, with my church? What's something tangible I could do to make a difference? That's how we start to catalyze change.
Starting point is 00:17:17 But how do you convince people? I mean, we've all seen the awful kind of natural disasters that have happened on our continent just in the last couple of years, whether it's forest fires or, or tornadoes or storms or flooding, or you name it, there's been lots of it. But how do you convince people that, Hey, this is because, you know, you're putting gas in your car, whatever they, you know, the fossil fuel equivalent is of the,
Starting point is 00:17:45 your, your own particular lifestyle. How do you convince them of that when they say, well, you know, there've always been floods. The way to convince people is to start with what they say. So whenever I talk about extreme events, I always start by saying, of course, we've always had floods, waves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters. You know, there was Hurricane Hazel that hit Toronto in the 1950s. We've always had these events before, but today they're getting worse. And climate change is making them worse.
Starting point is 00:18:19 It's supersizing them like a baseball player on steroids. And often at this point today, I would stop and ask people, what have you noticed? How long have you lived in the place you've lived? Oh, not that long. Well, where did you live before? So what have you noticed in that place? How have things changed? And today, almost everyone has a story about how they have seen things changing. So what's the best story you've heard on that particular front? or a woman's club here in Texas, I typically ask them, what's your weather story? And I hear stories of dust storms so dark that you couldn't even see two feet in front of your face, or hurricanes so severe that people were sitting on their roofs, or droughts so terrible that they
Starting point is 00:19:18 had to sell off their entire herd of cattle. And even though people have lived through this in the past, when I ask, do you feel like things are changing? Are they getting weirder? People often say, yes, that's exactly what's happening. There's something different today. And that opens the door to talk about what's happening here and now, not over there, and talking about what we can do in terms of building resilience, as well as reducing our impact on the actual problem. Well, talk to me about what we can do as individuals. You know, I remember when you were on Jimmy Kimmel was a year or two years ago, and you said, talk about it. So that's been happening.
Starting point is 00:19:58 And you just gave us an indication of how people talk about it when you speak with them. But beyond talking about it, what do we do? So this is something that I had to ask myself, because when I started to speak to people about climate change who were interested and curious, and when I started to explain how it's affecting us here and now, then the next obvious question was, well, what should I do about it? So I thought, well, you know, obviously I've changed my light bulbs. You can too. I drive a plug-in car. You could consider that too. But I crunched the numbers and I realized that our individual choices aren't enough because so much of this power is in the hands of corporations. You know, 90 corporations are responsible for 70% of our cumulative carbon emissions since the dawn of the industrial era.
Starting point is 00:20:48 This past year, all the major oil and gas companies from Aramco to BP to Shell made record profits. Fossil fuel subsidies increased from $11 million per minute in 2021 to $16 million per minute in 2022. And so our deciding even to put solar panels on our roof and to drive a plug-in car and to eat more plants, that is not going to fix the problem. So then I thought, well, is there any way we can? And I started to look back in history and I realized our society has changed. It's changed in some very significant ways.
Starting point is 00:21:23 When you look at what ended slavery how women got the vote civil rights in the U.S. the end of apartheid in South Africa it was never because the wealthy influential people the presidents or prime ministers or CEOs just woke up one morning and decided that things had to be different. It was because very ordinary people did something very powerful. And that is that they painted a vision of a better future. And they called for the action we need to achieve that future. And I'm convinced that we can do that again today. And that does truly begin with the conversation, not just about how bad it is or why it matters, but about what we together collectively can do. Okay. I've got a, I've got a couple of questions on that. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but at the same time, I'm hearing you recite numbers that, that haven't changed, right?
Starting point is 00:22:16 Even though people are speaking the way you're saying they need to speak and, you know, to demand change. They aren't though. I don't think they are. You don't think they are? No. In fact, going further into the public opinion information, most people are worried about climate change, but polling they've done in the United States shows that most people are silent on the issue. They're worried, but they don't know what to do. And if we don't know what to do, why would you want to talk about something that just depresses you out of your mind? So nobody's talking about it. And when the media talks about it, the media is talking about the big global goals, which are abstract rather than concrete. They're talking about the polar bears
Starting point is 00:23:00 over there. They're talking about the floods over there in that other place. And they're not talking about what we can do to fix it. The vast majority of media coverage is all about the doom filled stories that make people worried and people are worried mission accomplished. But there's not nearly as much connecting what I think of as our head to our heart, how it matters to me here and now. And there's almost nothing connecting our heart to our hands talking about, hey, these people over there, they're already doing this. Maybe we could do this, too. What about that school or that business? They're already doing that.
Starting point is 00:23:30 What about our family? What about our city? Really understanding what we can do. Those conversations are not happening, although they're just starting to. I feel like this last year I have seen evidence they're starting, but we need them more and we need them everywhere. You know, a couple of my listeners have written to me suggesting that, you know, I should use my podcast for, you know, every week or every couple of weeks to do a sort of what can you do to affect change? And I think about that and I think, how long would that last? Like, how many things are there that we could talk about that can affect change on the kind
Starting point is 00:24:07 of scale that's going to be needed? I asked myself that question, too. And last April, I started a newsletter. I've never done that before, that has three sections. And of course, it's about climate change. The first section is good news. And I was worried I was going to run out of good news. The second section is not so good news because we do need to know what's happening. We can't hide our heads in the sand. And then the last section was what we as
Starting point is 00:24:34 individuals can do. And I can tell you, I have good news piled up so high, I'm thinking of doubling and tripling up on it. And in terms of what we can do, it's been every week since April, last April, and I haven't run out yet. That's impressive. You must have quite the global listening audience or reading audience to what it is you have to say. What do you say to those who think, you know, they believe, okay? They believe that we have a huge issue that has to be addressed and they're willing to do things. And yet they see their governments who talk a good game failing year after year to meet their targets, in some cases come anywhere near their targets. And they say, well, if they aren't doing it, why should I do it?
Starting point is 00:25:24 I'm just the small cog in the wheel. They're the big ones. So during the Trump years in the United States, as you know, he announced that he was going to be pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and he did so as soon as he could. Not that it mattered when he actually did it, because the government wasn't doing anything in the meantime. And during that time, a number of businesses, cities, states, tribal nations, universities got together and they said, we are still in on the Paris Agreement. And that included cities like Houston, which is the center of the oil and gas industry in the United States. And so they set their own goals administration, 60% of U.S. emissions were controlled by or people were responsible for, 60% of those emissions were on track to be reduced to the Paris goals. So it is not only what happens at the national level.
Starting point is 00:26:17 In fact, in my opinion, I think in many cases what happens at the national level is the last change. That change has to occur at every level. And how do we change a system? A system is the last change. That change has to occur at every level. And how do we change a system? A system is made of people. Speaking of that, you know, I don't know whether it's true. You'd know whether it's true, but let's talk about Alberta and Texas, right? Considered, you know, the big oil producing areas and surely they are, but they're also pretty big on, you know, alternative energy programs. Doesn't Texas have a huge wind farm area? Big on windmills? Oh, yes. Texas has double the wind and solar
Starting point is 00:26:53 energy of any other state, including California. They've been number one in wind production for well over a decade. They weren't even on the top 10 list for solar 10 years ago, and now they're going to overtake California, I think, during this year, probably sometime this summer. What's driving that? What's driving that? Is that people or is that state legislatures or legislators who feel they've got to do something?
Starting point is 00:27:18 No, it's not state legislators who want to address climate change who are driving wind in Texas. I can tell you that. So who is? But what it is, it's a combination of a couple of things. First of all, Texas has its own power grid, and it will build out to your installation rather than forcing a new wind or solar farm to build into the grid. So that was already set up long ago. And then you have a lot of entrepreneurs who realize that this situation was ideal for bringing solar and wind onto the grid in a state that has a lot of sun and a lot of wind all the time. So there are certainly people, and I know quite a few of these people, who are deliberately
Starting point is 00:27:55 investing in solar and wind because they know it's a clean energy source. There are also people who are investing in it because they know it's the energy of the future, and there's nothing wrong with that. But no, the state is going to be the last to change, in my opinion, in Texas. In Alberta, you know, there are huge wind farms in Alberta, too, especially in the kind of southwest area. And they dominate in some areas of energy production in Alberta, which, you know, most Canadians go, are you kidding? Really? But it is happening, or it has happened already. of energy production in Alberta, which most Canadians go, are you kidding, really? But it is happening, or it has happened already.
Starting point is 00:28:32 Talk to me about the corporations, because obviously you have a bee in your bonnet, as they say, about what corporations have been doing on this front, and yet at the same time, they push out, or at least some of them push out, communications that suggest they're coming around and in some cases they've come around quite a bit on this they understand what's at stake and they're trying to make change you buy that there are some corporations that are definitely doing that and why i mentioned companies is because much of the world runs today, our economy runs on money. And often government policies reflect what large corporations, not just in the energy sector, but in ag and manufacturing, what they lobby for.
Starting point is 00:29:15 That's just the reality of the world we live in. do see companies who are taking this issue very seriously, who are setting what's called science-based targets, which is a science-based analysis of their emissions and what they need to do to reduce them in order to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement. So it's not just companies like Patagonia, which famously gave their entire corporation to the planet. But companies like Netflix, companies like Unilever, I've talked to companies like, and certainly these companies have a long way to go in terms of water usage and things like that. But companies like Nestle, for example, are taking this very seriously. They're hiring sustainability people at all kinds of different organizations and companies to really recognize that there's no profit on a dead planet. That penny is starting to drop. And so the societal change we need is starting. And the reason it's starting is because people have
Starting point is 00:30:15 started to talk about not only why this matters, but what we can do about it. But we need those conversations to be happening everywhere. What about companies like, you know, Shell or Exxon or, you know, the big energy, the big oil and gas companies? Are you seeing any movement there? They have been talking and they have been acknowledging the problem, but they're doing things like, you know, Shell and BP made record profits this past year, but, and Exxon and Aramco too, but they're slashing their biofuel and green energy programs. They are changing their 2030 carbon emission goals to make them, they're slashing them in half. They're saying that this matters, but they're not actually taking the actions that would speak louder than words. And that is really the problem that we have.
Starting point is 00:31:07 And ultimately, change has to happen. It has to happen at every level. And I don't know how else it's going to change other than people putting that influence on the organizations that need to change. And that influence can be exerted in many ways. People who work for companies, people who hold shares in the companies, people who develop the policy for those companies, and even the general public. Things have changed before. And when we change ourselves, I feel like that's where often we just don't have a sense of efficacy. That's a
Starting point is 00:31:36 word I've run into a lot, a sense that I don't think that what I do can make a difference. And I don't think that what we do can make a difference. And so when we talk about what we can do, I found that the best way to talk about that is not to talk about what we could do in the future, but to talk about what somebody else is already doing. And in a relatable way, they're not like a major social media influencer with millions of followers. They're not the CEO of a huge major international corporation. They're just a person that we can relate to. And here's what they're doing. And if they're doing that, I could do that too. Here's one for you. I got a couple of letters last week after I talked about the frustrations of the IPCC report, where I admitted, you know, listen, I'm in Scotland right now as we talk
Starting point is 00:32:25 because one of the reasons I come here is I write my books. I feel, you know, it's kind of a remote area where I am, and it's just easier for me. Plus, I have a connection to the British Isles. I was born here. But I didn't swim here. You know, I got on a plane and came here. I assume that when you go home to, is it Holmes, BC?
Starting point is 00:32:51 Is that fair? No, Toronto. Toronto? Well, I assume if you go from Texas to Toronto, you're not walking, you're not driving, you're flying. Not hiking. So how do you feel about that yeah i mean because that is one of the criticisms we get right when we're talking about climate change and say well you're still
Starting point is 00:33:11 getting on a plane you're still you know burning oil and it's you know and what have you it's it's going into the atmosphere you're an atmosphere scientist how do you how do you respond to that when somebody says that to you? Well, about 15 years ago, I stepped on the carbon scales because I figured I was starting to tell people they should measure their carbon footprint, so I should too. And that was where I discovered that flying was the biggest part of my personal carbon footprint. And not flying to see family, but flying to scientific conferences, flying to events to talk about climate change. The irony was inescapable. So I decided back then, and this is long before COVID, that I was going to deliberately try to transition at least 80% of the events that I did to online events. And back then, you know, I figured out, okay, where do I find a microphone?
Starting point is 00:34:05 What programs do I use? Like this was not COVID times. This was long before. Zoom didn't even exist in those days. It was Skype and maybe a couple of other programs. And people didn't do virtual talks back in those days. And so when I would get an invitation to give a seminar at a university and I'd say, I'm sorry, I cannot fly to give a single hour long presentation. And could I give it virtually? There'd be a lot of head scratching and a few no's, but a lot of people would say, well, we've never done it before. We'll give it a try once with the idea like, you know, I'm sure it's just going to fall flat in its face and we're never going to do this again, but we can say that we tried. So, and I would explain why too. I would say, you know, as a
Starting point is 00:34:43 climate scientist, I cannot fly somewhere for a single hour. So I successfully started to do that. And I started to get great comments like, wow, I thought it was interacting with each other. And then when I do travel in person, I started to bundle. I did the math on how much carbon I would burn if I drove about one or two hours from where I lived in my little hatchback, which is, you know, a hybrid at that time. And I figured, okay, if I'm going to fly to Washington, DC, I need these many events to be the equivalent of just taking a day drive to go do that event. And bundling takes quite a lot of time. When I went to Alaska, it took about a year and a half to create the bundle to go to Alaska. And I ended up doing 29 events in six and a half days. But I'm telling you, every ounce of that carbon counted. And I even did the
Starting point is 00:35:46 math. If only eight people that I spoke to on that trip, and I spoke to hundreds of people, probably thousands, because I spoke at every major university, I spoke to city councils, community groups, if only eight people decided to personally cut their carbon emissions 10% as a result of hearing me, that would cover the carbon of my flight. So it isn't about living like a hermit if I want to change the world. I have to interact with people, but I want to make everything count. So even when I go see family, which I do, I make sure that I make the most of that. And I've become increasingly convinced, actually, in the last few years that for those of us who spend most of our time focusing on the
Starting point is 00:36:25 climate crisis, spending time with people we love in the places we love, doing the things that we love is absolutely essential because that's what we're fighting for. Last question. You've been extremely generous with your time and I really appreciate it. But here's the last question. And it's sort of pointing towards or hoping for some kind of hope or optimism out of this conversation. Tell me about a country or an area in the world that we could look at and say, you know, if we, if we did that, you know, if our governments or our city councils or, or what have you,
Starting point is 00:37:03 and we as individuals were like that, it would make a difference. Is there somewhere that you can look at and say that? Yes, absolutely. And you're sitting in one of those places. So Scotland is already and has been for a number of years almost entirely powered by clean energy in terms of its electricity. Costa Rica hit that goal before Scotland did. The country of Bhutan is actually carbon negative because they planted so many trees, they take
Starting point is 00:37:36 up more carbon than the citizens produce. We've seen changes already happening that make big metro areas easier for people to navigate on foot or on bicycle instead of on car. We've seen changes in regenerative agriculture where farmers can grow the food and the crops that we need while putting carbon back in the ground instead of producing it. When we look around, there is actually hope everywhere when we take the time to go find it, track it down, collect it and share it. When we look around, there is actually hope everywhere when we take the time to go find it, track it down, collect it, and share it. And when we realize the changes that are already happening in this world, the only question I have at this point is, what are we waiting for? Well, you know, I was frustrated last week, and I was frustrated up until the time we talked. I'm a
Starting point is 00:38:24 little less frustrated now, especially with that last answer. It gives us something to shoot for, so let's hope we can. Catherine Hale, it's really been great to talk to you. I appreciate your time, and take care. I'm sure we'll talk again. Thank you so much, Peter. So there you go. There was our promised conversation.
Starting point is 00:38:46 And I know for some of you it won't be enough. For others it'll be too much. But for me, it felt just right. It's a nice starter if we're going to do more on climate change in the weeks and months ahead. And that was this week's encore edition of the bridge. Catherine Hale, our guests from March of last year on the subject of climate change.
Starting point is 00:39:11 Hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you tomorrow for your turn. Remember your turn tomorrow is your favorite teacher. The one who had the most impact on your life. Plus the random renter as always on Thursdays. Bye for now. the most impact on your life. Plus, the Random Ranter, as always, on Thursdays. Bye for now.

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