The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - 7 Boundaries of Climate Concern | Frankly #16

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

In the midst of the COP27 in Egypt and one of the warmest Wisconsin Novembers on record, this week's Frankly is a reflection on the boundaries with which humans use to think about the threat of climate change. The past 26 Climate Conferences have attempted to use the same framing to solve an issue that is both systemic in nature and larger than any one nation or economy. How can we begin to solve such an existential challenge without understanding the scope of the problem and who it will affect most? How do YOU think about climate and the future? For Show Notes visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/16-7-boundaries-of-climate-concern To Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwwKV3Izm5A  

Greetings. It is Election Day Eve, and I'm wearing camouflage, not because of the election, but because of this coat is the best windbreaker. It is 63 degrees here in northern Wisconsin in the middle of November. So I went for a bike ride, and I had these reflections, which will be this week's frankly, I would like to talk about the COP 27 in Egypt, which I expect will fail like the prior 26 convenings of parties, at least insofar as reducing emissions and mitigating the default climate trajectory. And I'll explain why in a moment. Last month, I did a frankly on the seven stages of climate awareness, which basically was stage one. There is an environment. Stage two, climate is part of the environment. Stage three, the climate changes, and that's due to

CO2. Stage four is that fossil fuels are the biggest driver of climate. Stage five is that energy is vital to human civilization. Stage six is that we're part of the world. We're part of the of a system, economy, growth, debt, climate, all that fits together. And stage seven is that we're not going to be able to directly solve for climate. Climate is a symptom of a much larger problem, and therefore we have to look two or three steps ahead. In thinking about that, I realize there are other categories with which we view the issue of climate from different perspectives. One of them, which I'm going to talk about today, is what we care about. And then in the not too distant future, I will also talk about various climate scenarios

and also various interventions as individuals or as society. But first of all, what's going on in COP 27 in Egypt, the reason that it's failing is because we're trying to optimize three things. We're trying to optimize climate change and emissions. We're trying to optimize economic growth and the market system. And we're trying to optimize equity or inequality, both within countries and between countries. So if we're ever going to solve any of these things, we have to understand how it is that humans care about climate change. So here is, again, from my perspective, this is no.

academic empirical study, but there are seven stages of what we care about. Number one, obviously, is we care about ourself. I went on a bike ride today of 63 degrees in November. How is climate going to affect me in north-central Wisconsin? Is it going to cause me to have heat problems or wet bulb issues, well, I mean, I have air conditioning. And for me personally, in my vocation, I am probably more likely to be killed by speaking about climate than I am about actual climate change. But as biological organisms, we first care about ourself. The second stage is our future self. And our future self is really almost an illusion emotionally. We can envision. We can envision in 20 years

when I'm in my mid-70s what it might be like but emotionally I don't really think about that. I think about the things in the near term this weekend or next month and frankly when I'm in my mid-70s I'm going to worry about my lower back

and my arthritis and my knee and being able to afford other things I'm personally not really thinking about mid-2040s what the climate's going to be like though I probably should. I'm cognitively imagining it, but I'm emotionally not.

The third stage beyond self and future self is our friends and family. And I don't have any children. I have cultural children, the 270 students that were my former students. I have a lot of young people in my extended cousins, et cetera. And so that's the next stage of what humans care about. for biological reasons. We care about our kin. The fourth level is the region where I live and the people in my region, Minnesota and Wisconsin, actually don't look so bad in the intermediate term climate models in the middle of the distribution. So I think about what will this place look like.

I've gotten to know the ecology, the ecosystems, the animals, the rivers, the back, forests and stuff where I live, and I do think about what will be the climate impacts of that. So those are the kind of four stages that are common. But outside of that, which are things that we don't often emotionally think about is stage five, which is other people in other areas of the world. I did a beautiful podcast a few weeks ago with Ayan Mahmoud from Uganda. And she's talking about already the challenges that people are facing with higher wet bulb temperatures and lack of air conditioning. And my friends at TMP Mission Climate, Frank, get down now, have created a graph showing that

even in the coming decade, those areas in the world that we're going to have to go in a decarbonation, in a decarbonization pathway, we're going to have to rematerialize. And those minerals and materials are going to come from countries that are going to have a combination of higher wet bulb temperatures, more civic strife, and higher climate impacts. So these are things that we don't really think about. Plus, many of these countries aren't going to be able to afford air conditioning. And a wet bulb temperature is, there's a dry temperature, and then if you combine the humidity and both temperature and humidity are expected to increase in the various climate scenarios,

above, it used to be above 35 degrees Celsius was fatal for humans because our sweat would not be able to evaporate. They've now shown that that 35 degrees is actually lower. It's 31.5 degrees is the correct number. so in the not too distant future, hundreds of millions of people will live in regions where higher temperatures and humidity will be fatal unless they have air conditioning or shade or other things. So the fifth stage is caring about people outside of our immediate, biologically related, culturally, geographically related sphere. And this may be the first time in human history.

that there is a risk that we can think about that goes and extends way beyond our tribe. The sixth stage, you can guess where I'm going with this, is other species. And what is the wet bulb equivalent for dolphins and elephants and apes and lions and deer and exotic animals and insects and birds? And how will they move or adapt? Daniel Pauley and I did a podcast already ocean fish are moving northward because they're not getting the same amount of oxygen they were because the waters are warming. Very few people when they think about, oh, climate change is going to be this, think about other species. And the seventh

stage of what we care about is of course other generations of humans, of global ecosystems of other species. The climate models that are shown in the news all end in the year 2100. We have equilibrium climate sensitivity, but there's an earth system climate sensitivity, which is after all the feedbacks have run their course, what is the ultimate resting point of temperature? And that's well, well beyond the year 2100. And emotionally, things more than 10 years away have, effectively a zero value in our minds. So it's very difficult for us to think about or care about the deep future. So climate equity is one of the things that's being discussed in Egypt, is reparations and making people whole for the damages that 90% of the emissions in the

emissions in the world are from the top 10% of wealthy countries. And I think there's a certain logic to this that these other countries have not contributed to the problem, yet they're bearing the brunt of it. And I think this is all viewed from an economic standpoint right now. But if you consider our place in the carbon pulse, we're somewhere between the two stars on the graph. And on the upslope, we can talk about equality as giving others part of the wealth because they haven't grown as much. But I fear on the downside of the carbon pulse that the equity and the sharing is going to be life or death. It's not going to be an economic argument

because on the downslope of the carbon pulse, not only do we have 40 or 50 years of increasing temperatures ahead of us, even if we were to stop all fossil carbon burning today, but we're going to have less energy and more expensive energy with which to respond to the crisis, especially air conditioning. So it really makes me wonder if climate change is the first issue in human history where the equality issue becomes one of an existential issue. And what will be the impacts down the road in Africa, in South America, in poorer countries that have high heat and high humidity? And I don't think we have any plan for this. President Biden, four days ago said no more drilling. Yet two months ago, he's proud to show that we are drilling

in response to higher oil prices. I can imagine these high-level political officials going to a meeting on climate change and they hear how urgent and dire it is and they nod their heads. And then they go to another meeting about the economy and how we need lower oil prices. And they not their heads and say, we're going to do this. And then they go to another meeting and say, we need to have more equality. The wealth and income equality in our country, in our world is extreme. And this isn't fair. And they nod their heads. There is no plan on how to solve all these things together. So those of you that have followed my work know that our human system has a metabolism. And this metabolism is stronger than our politicians and our billionaires and

our philanthropists, and we're going to eventually run out of enough low-cost hydrocarbons to continue growth, and then everything changes. In order to really change that, yes, we have to understand how the climate system interacts with human systems. We are also going to have to change what we care about. We're going to have to extend the boundaries of our empathy and concern beyond my and my future self and even my genetic kin. I don't know how this is going to happen. I think about it all the time. And so this is not a prescription or an answer. I just wanted to reflect that we care about different things. And that is a piece of the puzzle. Thank you. I will talk to you next week.