The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Happens To The Fight Against Climate Change Now? - Encore

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

An encore of a lot of things changed in our world on the night Trump won the US Presidency. What about climate change?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's time for your holiday edition encore episode of The Bridge. On this Christmas day, we're going to talk climate change from our November 19th broadcast. And hello there, Peter Vancebridge here. Your Tuesday episode of The Bridge coming right up. We haven't talked about climate change in any detail in, well, in a little while. And so we wanted to today. What's happening on the climate change front? There have been changes in governments around the world and especially about to change things in the United States.

What impact is that going to have on the fight against climate change? And one of our most popular guests, Professor Catherine Hayhoe from the Texas Tech University. She's Canadian, born in Canada, received her initial training as an atmospheric scientist in Canada, but has moved on and is considered one of the planet's experts on this issue of climate change. Takes part in lots of different conferences. Was just in one in Mexico in the last week or so.

She'll be with us in a couple of minutes. I want to talk about a story that struck me in the last couple of days. I don't know about you, but when I'm on a long flight over water, like across the Atlantic or across the Pacific, you know, I don't think there's been a... I've taken many of those flights over the years because of work, right? Mostly because of work. Also because now I've split time between North America and Europe, and different things that I do, and the writing that I do, and the books I write, and the

talks I give. Anyway, I don't think there's been a single time where out over the Atlantic or out over the Pacific, there's a point at which I go, hmm, we're a long way from land. What if something goes wrong? What are we going to do? I mean, how far can this plane glide? Well, as it turns out, planes can glide quite a distance. But still, that's a pretty big stretch of water.

So I think about that, and, you know, I know, hey, listen, there's at least two engines on this plane. If one has a problem, there's still one more, and they can fly pretty well on one engine. So I think about that. And it's remarkable because when you look at those flight guide websites that show you the planes in the air at any one time, at any one place in the world.

There are a lot of planes up there. And there are especially a lot of planes that fly across the oceans. And I don't know about you, but I don't hear about problems. I don't hear about planes suddenly, you know, trying to figure out a way to land in the middle of the Atlantic. But here I was last week, checking out one of the, you know I love airplane stories. And so I, you know, I'm, what's the word,

subscribed to or follow certain websites that tell airplane stories all the time. So I was on one of these websites the other day, and there was a story about SAS, Scandinavian Airline System. And SAS is the flag carrier airline of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, all three countries. They're involved in SAS. And it's regarded as a very good airline. Well, there's a story about an SAS flight, an Airbus 330, a relatively new aircraft.

It was delivered to SAS in 2015, powered by two of those giant Rolls-Royce engines. Well, it was on a flight from the Scandinavian countries heading to, I think, New York. So what happened? You look at a map, and flying from Oslo or Copenhagen or Stockholm, you fly across a huge stretch of the Atlantic, North Atlantic. It flies over Greenland, and then it dips down, right? It goes down over Newfoundland and parts of northeastern Canada. It was actually Stockholm to Miami. That was the flight, not Stockholm to New York.

Anyway, turbulence hits just east of Greenland over the Atlantic. Didn't last a long time. It was also a very short time. However, the turbulence knocked out one of the engines. Now, I hadn't heard of that kind of thing happening before, but nevertheless, that's what happened here. So suddenly they're flying on one engine. No one on board had been hurt by the turbulence. It, you know, ruffled a few feathers, but nobody had been hurt. 254 passengers on board. None of the passengers, none of the crew reported any serious injuries.

So on this website, it shows you everything. It shows you what happens to the engines when one gets knocked out. They were flying at about, I think, 36,000 feet when this happened. So the pilots reacted immediately. They know, you know, here's what you do when you lose an engine. And in their case, they, you know, descended. They ensured all the switches were off on that engine. When everything was settled down and they were flying safely on one engine,

they began their move back towards their 36,000 feet level. And they restarted the engine. So they were back on two engines. However, this is what I found most interesting about this story, other than the coolness and the calmness of the air crew in dealing with the situation. So the backup, they're now flying over Greenland. They're at 36,000 feet.

They've got both engines working. However, they are concerned about what damage may have caused to that one engine that shot down. So what's the decision you make? What do you do? You can't land in Greenland. They can't handle that aircraft. The A330 or A, yeah, A330. They can't handle it. So do you go to St. John's or Halifax or New York? Because you need to check the plane out.

The answer is no to all of those. And the answer is no because they don't, that airline, SAS, doesn't have the facilities at any of those airports to deal with a situation like this. They don't have the mechanics. They don't have the extra parts. They don't have this, that, and the other thing. And it would mean stranding not only the plane,

but all the passengers and everything else. So what do you do? You're sort of halfway to your destination. You've got all these other big airports along the way that you could actually land at, but you can't fix your plane. They turned around. They went back. They flew back, in this case, I think, to Copenhagen, Denmark.

So they spent over 10 hours in the air. They basically didn't get anywhere, except they got back to safety and to an airline that had the necessary facilities and staff to handle the situation. Anyway, you're probably going, ho-hum, Peter, that's really interesting, but why do I need to know all that? Well, you don't need to know. But I just thought it was fascinating. I thought it was fascinating how quickly and calmly they handled the emergency,

and then they're confronted with this next dilemma, which is where do we go to fix this or to make sure that it isn't a serious situation? Where do they go? They went home. They went back. They went back across that ocean that they just covered. Anyway, I thought that was pretty interesting.

Climate change. Let's get to our main story for this week. Once again, I've told you about Catherine Hayhoe. I know many of you already follow her newsletter and find it fabulous. It's easy to find. Just, you know, Google her name. Catherine with an A-R-K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E. Hayhoe, spelled just the way it sounds, H-A-Y-H-O-E.

Find out all about her and how to subscribe to her newsletter and where to watch her videos. But first of all, you want to listen to her. So we'll take a quick break. When we come back, an uninterrupted conversation with Professor Catherine Hayhoe that is right after this Professor one of the reasons people love reading your newsletters and listening to your interviews that you give is that you're always hopeful. There's always kind of this streak of optimism in you.

You always look for what is potentially good about, you know, a very difficult situation in terms of climate change. And I'm wondering whether it's been hard to maintain those kind of streams of yours over these last two weeks since the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. How difficult has that been? Yes, well, the key is really in what you said, that I look for information on the solutions that are already being implemented or could be implemented soon. And it's not easy. And these days, I mean, I feel like I'm training for the Olympics. That's how hard it is to get yourself up in the morning and to go look for information on what's happening that is still going to make a difference in the world.

Now, I always pair 50-50. I always share how bad it is and how it's affecting the people and places and things we love because we need to understand why climate change matters. So that's half of what I talk about. But we also need to understand what we're going to do about it. Otherwise, we're going to have a world full of worried people and we won't be acting. Well, in terms of the big picture fight against climate change, is it more difficult now as a result of the last two weeks than it was before? Yes, there is no question that it is more difficult. Right now, it's difficult not to be frustrated and discouraged and dismayed when you see the appointments that are being made by

the upcoming president and by the statements that those appointees have made about clean energy, about climate change, about adaptation and resilience. They're moving in the opposite direction from where we need to go right now. So of course, climate action happens at every level. It happens at the level of the individual, of the household, of the school, or the business, or the organization, and definitely the city, the province, or the state. But the federal government plays a big role. And to know for the next four years that everyone who is advocating for and implementing climate solutions, including clean energy, they're going to be facing a very

strong headwind. The reason I asked the question the way I ask it is because there had been a sense even before this election, that governments in different parts of the world, including governments who had seemed to be on track on the fight against climate change, were kind of backing off in terms of the resistance they were feeling from the general public in the post-COVID days and the focus over the price of everything from eggs to what have you, that the cost of living had changed the equation in terms of the way governments think. And so I guess that's why I was asking, how different is it now than it was even a couple of weeks ago?

Well, the terrible irony is that two of the primary drivers for the increase in the cost of living over the last few years have been, number one, our dependence on fossil fuels, and number two, the impacts of climate change. And so it's like, you know, you go to the emergency room with an issue and they address what's on the surface so everything looks okay. But if you don't address what's underneath, you're never going to fix the problem. In fact, it's going to get worse. And so that's the situation we find ourselves in today. And it's an even larger concern because if you're actively trying to move the giant boulder of clean energy and climate action, which is already rolling down the hill at the global level, if you're actively trying to move it backwards, every additional day, month, and year it's delayed carries with it a very real cost,

a financial cost, and a human cost in terms of the additional suffering that will occur. Well, if the ball was rolling down the hill to the extent it was, and I tend to think it kind of speeded up on that role even before this election. Yes. What, you know, what can you hope for? Where can you remain optimistic at this point? Well, this is what I practice. And like I said, when I say practice, I mean I get up in the morning and I hunt this down. And then every week I share it in my talking climate newsletter.

Last week, though, was tough. Last week, I didn't know how I was going to write good news and not so good news and what people can do. So I turned to Christiana Figueres, who is the Costa Rican diplomat, who is the architect of the Paris Agreement. And I asked her to write my good news, not so good news and what you can do, because she has faced down so many presidents, prime ministers, ministers, CEOs, other leaders year after year. And finally, she got the Paris Agreement, the biggest climate treaty in the world. So she wrote my newsletter last week, and she did have good news. And she

basically said what I had been thinking, but she's been around a lot longer than I have and seen a lot more. She said, this giant boulder is already rolling down the hill because the cost of clean energy now is the cheapest electricity humans have ever known. In the US alone, storage for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing doubled over the last year alone. It's likely to double by next year again. When we look at the number of people who are concerned about this issue, when we look at the efficiency of clean energy, it's much more efficient. You know, 60% of fossil fuels are just wasted in waste heat and transportation. So there's no question that history is on our side. And honestly, Peter, if this were the 1980s or even the 1990s,

I'd be like, you know what? Four more years, we're headed in the right direction, we're going to get there anyways. But the problem is, is it's not the 1980s. It's 2024. And we are already seeing the impacts of climate change in our wildfire season we had last year, in the hurricanes to hit Florida and the Carolinas this year, in the massive flooding they saw in Valencia, Spain. We're seeing the impacts, and we know that every additional ton of carbon we produce carries with it a real cost. And so that's why it's so concerning what we're seeing today, because we're actually moving in the opposite direction in many cases, from the direction required for a better future for all of us, no matter where we fall on the political spectrum.

You know, no matter where you live in this world these days, the evidence of weather events, climate change, has never been more obvious. You know, you listed off some of the things we've witnessed in the last year, and they've been at, you know, a tremendous cost. And it is affecting everybody, whether it's in, you know, in the way they live, in the destruction of their homes, you know, increased insurance rates, you name it. The list keeps going.

So the evidence is there, but the impact of that evidence seems to be less now than it was. And I guess that's the puzzle. It's certainly the puzzle for me, but it must be the puzzle for you as to what you do about it. Well, you're exactly right, Peter. In fact, polls in Canada have shown that people are less concerned about climate change now than they were four years ago. And I have a hypothesis for what's happening. I haven't seen proof yet, but it didn't actually surprise me that much. Because a lot of the news on climate change is sort of, I think of as in our

heads. So all the worry and the information about what's happening to ocean currents and polar bears and wild weather. But we still often lag behind in connecting it to our hearts, the people we love, the places we love, the things we love right here and now. And the biggest gap we have is between our heart and our hands. Most people are worried about climate change and hardly anyone is activated. And the worse it gets, the more crippling our lack of efficacy, which is just the simple idea of if I do something, do I think it will make a difference? And I'm like, well, how am I supposed to stop the wildfire season in Canada? How am I supposed to stop the hurricane from destroying people's homes? And so the less efficacy we have, our defense mechanisms kick in. And our defense mechanisms as humans tend towards if there's nothing we can do about

it, we're going to just dissociate from it. And that, I believe, is what we're seeing. I believe that we are seeing dissociation because of the critical and growing gap between why it matters and what we feel like we can do about it. So what can we do? I think showing people what they can do to make a difference, how they can get involved in acting. I think that is more critical than ever for the hope that we need to power us to keep fighting for that better future. I want to get to that in a minute and get some new ideas from you on how the ordinary person can take part in that. But I want

to ask you, first of all, whether or not you're disappointed in governments that have shown a desire to fight climate change in the past, but see, they'll never admit it, but they seem to be running away from it now, that there are other things on their agenda, and that they're backing off in some areas. Here in Canada, and you know the situation in Canada well. You know, the federal government, the liberal government that has made a thing about climate change since 2015 when they were elected,

you know, they kind of backed off. They, you know, they killed their carbon tax on home heating oil as one thing, which was clearly a political gambit for them. But, you know, they're not alone. You're seeing other governments in different parts of the world doing that. I mean, are you disappointed? Well, you must be disappointed. But, like, what do you do?

How do you address that? Do you deal with governments in some form to suggest to them that they've got to continue the fight? It is definitely disappointing because you feel like a physician who has, and not just one physician, but we're talking thousands of physicians all around the world who have diagnosed a critical issue that's affecting every single person. And we're like, here is the solution. And people are like, no. And you're like, but here's what's going to happen if we don't do this. And here's all the good things that will happen if we do do this. And they're still like, not my priority today. I don't think it's unique or exclusive to governments. I have seen it among many people who care passionately about climate change, the idea that climate change and climate action is a separate bucket. So I have, and we all have, and organizations and companies and governments all have limited time and limited money.

And so they often think, well, here's the bucket about getting reelected, or here's the bucket about immigration, and here's the bucket about employment, and here's the bucket about housing. And then, oh, we have this bucket of climate change at the end, but we just don't really have much left by the time we get to the end of the row. Climate change is not a separate bucket. It is the hole in every other bucket. It is the hole in housing, food, the economy, health, and of course, nature that surrounds us. It is the hole in every bucket. We can't fill any bucket if we don't patch the climate hole. So that's something that I see that's sort of endemic across human perspectives. And it's not helped by the fact that, and this is more true of companies,

I think, than governments. A lot of companies who really got out front on trying to do the right thing and you gotta, you know, they're doing something that's never really been done before. Unfortunately, the companies who said they were doing the right thing and were not just greenwashing

and then the companies who were trying to do the right thing, but who were learning as they went. Now we have a tendency because the more worried we get, the more we want to point fingers at people to conflate those two. And so a lot of companies who are really trying to do the right thing are now backing way off their climate action because they're worried that they're getting sued or they're not getting any benefit from it. And so we're actually pushing, our worry and our concern is actually pushing people in the wrong direction right now. And it's just, it's heartbreaking.

It's just the way you put it is pretty depressing, you know, because there doesn't seem to be an upside anywhere given the current situation. I mean, you got companies that you believe actually were sincere about trying to do something. Yes. Are now saying, eh, you know, I don't think so anymore. It doesn't work for us now. We don't need to do this. And in some cases, it isn't even the company, it's their lawyers. In some cases, it's definitely not the person who is doing that within the company.

It might be sort of the higher ups. But in some cases, the whole company is there and they're just saying, no, you just can't say that you're doing anything these days. And it's just terrible because when have humans ever been perfect? I mean, throughout history, when has anybody ever done anything perfectly? The whole experience of science is trying something and then learning from where it didn't work, because that's where we learn the most, and then doing it again better, and then learning from where it didn't work, and then doing it again better. And that's really the history of human

endeavor. And so we're caught in this terrible trap because I think it all goes back to that idea of more people globally are worried. And the people who are very worried are increasing in number. But when we're worried, our head is fully engaged and increasingly our heart too. But we don't know what to do. The easiest thing to do is to point fingers and blame other people. I even have people blaming me. Yeah, well, it is your fault. I mean, Professor, really, when you come down to it. Definitely. Let me throw this at you. And it's kind of the way this has played out politically in the last couple of years. Certainly here in Canada, where the opposition party has quite brilliantly, in some respects, has moved the climate issue into a tax issue.

Okay? And nobody wants to pay taxes, higher taxes, but they've described it in Acts, the tax, the slogan the Conservatives use. But it's worked.'s there's no question that that's had a real impact um and and the government as i said earlier is kind of scrambling trying to figure out how to deal with it once they realize that the opposition tactics have worked um the irony i guess and this is where it doesn't seem to be connecting on any level,

is that eventually the climate issue is going to be an economic issue. That people are going to be paying more for the way they live. You know, whether it's in, as we mentioned earlier, you know, higher insurance rates for, you know, because of wildfires or because of floods or what have you. That hasn't seemed to take hold. They're still seeing it as the other issue, the tax issue. You're totally right, Peter, except for the fact that we are already paying more. So insurance rates have already increased thanks to climate change. And in fact, there's some places, especially in the Southern US, where you can't even get insurance

on your home, or even in some places, your car, which is crazy when you think about it. The price of food, the price of items that come from parts in the world that have been disrupted by extreme weather, those prices have already increased, but nobody knows about it. So I don't know if you're familiar with George Lakoff. He's a cognitive linguist who's written a lot of very interesting books. And one of the most interesting books I read by him is a super short little book called Don't Even Think About an Elephant. Have you read that book at all? No, I haven't. Okay. So let me give you my takeaway. My takeaway is that he said people of liberal persuasion, and he wasn't speaking about Canadians or Americans, he was just talking about people.

People of liberal persuasion tend to feel that the truth is self-evident, that you just do the right thing and everybody will be like, oh, of course that's the right thing. I support it. But he said people of conservative persuasion understand the importance of communication. And so when the price on carbon first went on in Canada, which I would hasten to add that pretty much every economist in the world agrees that a price on carbon is the best way to stimulate climate action. And in fact, two economists won the Nobel Memorial Prize about eight years ago or six years ago for this. So when it went on, I asked myself, where are the TTC bus shelter posters of Jim and Sarita in Sudbury and the rebate they got from the carbon price? Where is all the information on how lower and even middle income homes are benefiting? My father has a PhD in

science education. He was the science coordinator for the Toronto Board of Ed. And when he got his carbon tax rebate, he couldn't even figure out where it came from or what it was. I mean, do you remember in the States when there was that whole COVID stimulus? And then President Trump insisted that his name be on the checks people received. That was, sadly, a genius move because everybody knew they got a check from the government. So there has just been this massive lack of communication that the conservatives, being conservative and of a conservative mindset and appreciating the importance of communication, have fully taken advantage of, even though if you just looked at the numbers on paper, it would make sense to anybody from a logical perspective that we need to continue not only having but upping the carbon tax because middle and lower income families actually benefit in addition to protecting our future and our children, which is why most of us care about climate change.

You're right about the communication strategy of the government on this one. It has been a total failure from the get-go. And it's interesting, in the pre-COVID days, and even during COVID, there was significant support for the government's action against climate change, and even for the carbon tax. And then it just disappeared as soon as the Conservatives found their communication strategy. Very effective one. You know, earlier talked about, OK, the time now is not to wait for governments. The time now is for us as individuals, you know, to do something, to do our part.

So what are you suggesting that's new in terms of that? Well, I am completely sold out on the importance of having just starting the conversations about the heart and the hands, why this matters to the people and places and things I love, and what's something that I can do to make a difference. The power of actually taking personal action, even if it's something small and insignificant seemingly, but then multiplying that and make it contagious by doing it with other people or by talking about what you're doing with other people. And then taking the conversation to where you work. Because every single business or organization, if they're doing anything, it started with a single conversation. And typically,

that conversation was not the CEO or not the president. Typically, it was someone else saying, why don't we do this? So let me just give you some examples. Because like I said, I collect these examples every week. At the University of Barcelona, the students felt that everybody, every student, 14,000 students needed to be learning about how climate change affects us and what each of them, whether artists or business people or law students or in the social or physical sciences, they all needed to know what they could do. So they petitioned and advocated and had sit-ins with the school until the University of Barcelona agreed to make climate education mandatory for all 14,000 students. The state of New Jersey made climate education mandatory from K through 12 two years ago.

University of California, San Diego and the Claremont Colleges are doing it as well. And that's just a school example. There's great organizations called Climate Voice and H.E.R.D., H-U-R-D, not H-E, H-U-R-D, that are all for employees who want to get together and learn what other people are doing in other companies and help their company take action too. There's a lot of organizations, obviously, in the nature space, like the one I work for, Nature United, called the Nature Conservancy in the U.S., that's all about working with farmers, working with landowners, working with local governments to help manage our land in a changing climate. There's all kinds of people all over. And so every week, in addition to sharing the good news and the not so good news,

I also share something we can do. Every single week, I share something we can do, not just by ourselves, but something we can do together. Because if we realize this giant boulder is not only rolling down the hill, it's already got millions of hands on it. And if I had mine, if I use my voice to invite others to add theirs, it's going to go faster no matter what the government does. And in fact, sometimes governments are the ones racing down the hill after the boulder trying to catch up with all the people pushing it so fast. Last question, and it's to do with, in some degree, to the kind of people you've just been talking about. What we witnessed in the U.S. election, or at least we think we have

as we look at the exit polls and more data on that, was that there was an abandonment of, I hate to say the left, but the more progressive side by younger people because of their concerns about their economic future and whether they'd ever own a house, et cetera, et cetera. That is such an important element of the of the fight on climate change that age group plus older people who are worried about leaving to their children and grandchildren a world that they're not proud of what are you seeing in in your, whether it's your, the newsletter,

your TED talks, your classes at Texas Tech, wherever you're teaching and talking, are you seeing an issue about younger people in terms of their abandonment of this concern? Yes, I am seeing, first of all, escalating levels of worry among younger people. And I'm also seeing escalating levels of helplessness, of feeling like there's nothing I can do or anyone can do to make a difference. And so I am personally so inspired by young climate activists. We have a number of them in Canada, and there's a number in the U.S. and around the world who are some of the strongest voices. They shouldn't be.

All of us should be the strongest voices calling for continuing to fight for that better future. And two years ago, an organization that I partnered with called Potential Energy Coalition, which is a group of Madison Avenue advertising and marketing execs who realized that they should be using all of their skills and abilities to help people understand why climate change matters. I worked with them to help found Science Moms, which is a group of mothers who are scientists who care about climate change. And two years ago, Potential Energy surveyed 70, they surveyed enough countries to represent

about 70% of the world's population. And they asked them, why do you care about, first of all, do you care about climate action? And the vast majority in every country said yes. And then they said, what motivates you? And they asked a bunch of different questions like clean energy, jobs, health, the inequity of the fossil fuel industry, the concern for the safety of your home. And what they found was that around the world, every single country, the same answer rose the top, in most cases by a factor of 12 over any other answer. The number one answer people want climate action is love, especially love for the next generation. Because if we're not fighting for them,

what are we fighting for? So if we're a human being who loves anyone, anything, any place on this planet, it means we're the perfect person to keep fighting for that better world powered by love. You know, one of the things you often say about the best way to fight climate change is to talk about it. And so it's great to once again have you on the program to talk about it. It's always exciting and not depressing in the sense that fear of what may be coming and not doing anything about it, because you give us avenues and thoughts and paths where we can do something about it and inspire others to join us in that fight. So listen, thanks so much for talking with us.

It's always great to talk to you. Thank you, Peter. This has been a great conversation. And a great conversation. It was with professor Hayhoe at Texas tech university in Texas. Where else would Texas tech be? As I said, we've had her on the program before. You seem to like her and admire her approach to this issue, which isn't kind of like wild-eyed.

It's very focused, and it's understanding and it involves all of us kind of, you know, looking at ways we can do things ourselves as well as being straightforward and understanding of the situation on a worldwide basis. So there you go. I know some of you have strong feelings about climate change on all sides of this issue, and I invite you to think about those positions and your own approaches. Hope you enjoyed that. Our encore episode from November 19th on this Christmas day. Bye for now.