The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Wild Fires – Ukraine Offensive

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus.   On this week’s edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Janice and Rudyard start the show with a discussion of the wildfires choking the North East of the continent with smoke and dangerous levels of air pollution. Is this a sneak peek into what awaits North America in a world of runaway climate change? How do we respond to the climate threat when humanity is being pressed with crises right and left, from pandemics to inflation to AI to the largest land war in Europe since WWII? On the back half of the show, exclusively for Munk donors, the conversation focuses on the Ukraine offensive, which started in earnest this week. What can we discern from its opening flints and forays? How is Russia likely to respond? When will we start to see the outlines of how this war will end, and is the likely endgame a frozen conflict or a more meaningful and lasting peace? This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk listeners. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. Welcome to this, our regular Friday Focus podcast, as we are each and every Friday joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director amongst School of Global Affairs and internationally renowned scholar and author. And I got to say, Janice, one zero for you on our ongoing monetary policy nerd fest.

You called the interest rate hike. I didn't think it was going to happen this week. Surprised markets. You should be a bond trader. What are you doing on the Friday Focus podcast? You should be down at Royal Bank on the bond desk making some big money for a change. You know, Redyard, I got this one right, and we made a bet for our monk listeners to call. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten it wrong, and that's why I'm safely at the University of Toronto.

With my savings in a bank, as we say. Full legal disclosure, do not follow the show for financial advice. Correct. But look, Janice, I'm, you know, the jesting tone needs to stop because this was a serious week, a week where once again, we can talk about this if you want, the kind of future flash before our eyes. And it's not the future of AI arriving sooner than we think or God knows, the future of land wars in Europe that. we thought we're gone from our history after World War II. This was a flash view of the future of a much hotter world and the climate costs, the cost to our health, to our cities,

to a shared sense of, I don't know, Janice, hope about what the future could and should be. I come out of this week with a bleak feelings, Janice. It's hard to put it. it all together, but I feel like something has shifted in the discourse as a result of these wildfires and the just incredible imagery, everything. What a week. I agree, Roger, look, this came out of eastern Canada, you know, northeastern Canada, the last place you would think would be ahead of the curve really. On the climate destruction, we saw those pictures in New York and now in Washington, the orange

the orange sky, the smoke. It reminded me of the road, this bleak dystopian novel. You know, a father and a son walking away from the destruction. And that's really what you saw as people evacuated their homes in the west,

in the east of this country. And we are having a fire season that is exceeding all predictions. So something is really changing at a pace that none of us expected. Now look, the bizarre thing is, these parts of the country are supposed to get wetter

in the climate change models. They got drier this year for a whole bunch of reasons. And we're on the cusp of El Nino, which 30 or 40 years ago, Canadians welcomed with open arms because it meant milder winters.

But it means we are, and that can last a couple of years. That means we are in front of a a current, a warm Pacific Ocean that is going to create even hotter temperatures than normal. So I, you know, I couldn't agree with you more, Rudyard. We are facing a climate emergency, frankly, that we're not equipped to deal with. This is no longer arguable. It's not theory.

It's in front of our eyes and it's in our lungs, everyone who lived, I had a bad, week this week because I have asthma and as soon as I went out I could feel it. That's mild compared to what happened if you lived in New York. Yeah, you know, I had headaches this week and it's some ways it's a it's a bit sad that for climate to become real to us as a threat, it has to become incredibly subjective that we just constantly struggle with the tragedy, the constant. which is going on all the time, which are massive coal plants in China and India that are pumping out, you know, gigatons of emissions while we buy their goods to afford lifestyles that we couldn't otherwise afford if they weren't manufacturing those goods in China and India on our behalf. But I guess I just want to go back a little bit because it's something we've talked about on this show in the last few episodes and I've been thinking about it's this idea of both acceleration and maybe the word of this. week conflagration you have these trends that are seemingly moving faster and faster that are

coming together and that are amplifying themselves and i felt this week on climate i mean just those just that eerie sense of walking down the street and the masks were back yeah and they're back not because of a pathogen like covid they're back because of particulates in the air but they're back it's this sense, Janice, of like a trap with the walls closing in. And if it's not climate, it's going to be AI or it's Vladimir Putin and his nuclear arsenal. You know, it goes on and on and on. And I just, I don't know again, is this subjective on my part? Am I reading too much news to turn off all my screens and devices?

Or is there something genuinely happening these last few years of, of, I don't know. I hate to say it, but a feeling of like a movement towards some kind of meta-crisis. Well, what you described, Rudyard, was actually given a name by Adam Too's, who's an economist. And Adam called this polycrisis, which describes exactly what you're talking about. What makes this period of time feel so stressful for everybody is there are several crises across the spheres, the financial system. We're all aware, artificial intelligence war of a kind that we haven't seen in Europe, frankly, almost certainly for 75 years. And there's

change in the environment. They're all converging at the same time. And that would make it tough anyway because our elected leaders only have so much bandwidth, frankly, to manage these kinds of things, but what makes us even tougher, they feed into each other. So, you know, look at what happened in Ukraine this week with a dam that did more environmental damage to southern Ukraine on both sides of the Neapro River flooded, massive flooding. And to illustrate what you just said, in concrete terms, the flooding as a river, as the them over flooded the banks, floating down were landmines. Right? So refugees fleeing the flooding, not only had to worry about toxic water and all the things that they normally would worry about,

but there were landlines that had started to move as the water spilled over the banks. That's an example of a poly crisis where one amplifies the other. And I think Adam got that right. This is the period that we're living in. Okay. Okay. Well, let's, let's, and then let's say Donald Trump's indicted this week. So the poly crisis, you know, it has had, let's face it, you know, political, democratic consequences.

We're dealing with Chinese election interference ongoing in Canada. I mean, this, when we say poly, like, it truly is, Janus. Again, I use that word. I can flagration of environmental, technological, economic. political and social factors coming together. So the $64 trillion question is, well, what the heck do you do? Do you pick one of these? Do you prioritize them?

Do you try to manage them? Because if we, let's say select climate, you know, there was the Paris Accords of a decade ago. Canada was a signatory. We've made all kinds of bold. statements about net zero emissions, about greening our car fleet, but our missions as a measurement of megatons on an absolute or per capita basis have not gone down. No.

We are nowhere close to our climate objectives. And even if we were close, which we're not, and we haven't made any demonstrable progress since Paris in reducing overall GHG emissions. We still have India and China belching out, you know, gigatons of carbon to, you know, create consumer economies of their own. So I'm saying if we're failing the test on carbon and climate, I mean, is it just time to acknowledge that these other tests are going to be equally difficult for us? And that's putting it charitably.

No, I think, you know, that kind of pessimism is understandable, but it's not a road that we can afford to take. I think you would acknowledge. But there is a sense of being overwhelmed. And it's interesting. I hear it from our, from leaders as well. They're overwhelmed at times by the magnitude of the problems they have to deal with. So what can we do about any of this?

First of all, you do have to prioritize. And climate really matters. It's huge because as we see, if that goes wrong, it will swamp everything else. That's quite implications for the way we treat countries like India and China, right? They're kind of all out decouple from China. I just put China in a corner and block it off and keep it there. That can't be a strategy if you're giving priority climate change. So we have to recognize these tradeoffs.

Let me make another comment that I'm sure we're going to hear back from it. You can't prioritize human rights at the expense of everything else because they're bad actors here that are critical to improving and getting us at least part way down the road of where we need to go on climate change. So you know what drives me not some days is a kind of almost juvenile conversation where leaders are not willing to level with the public and say these are tough issues. We can't have it all. We can't be virtuous. We can't engage in this endless virtue signaling because these are tough times.

We have to make some. I agree with you, Janice, but isn't the problem in somebody's bigger than that, though, It's that we don't want to personally internalize the costs of what real action would require. So China, India, a great example. We could join Europe and others and impose some kind of green tariff on goods manufactured in China because they are manufactured in a very carbon intensive and frankly dirty way. Yeah. But we don't do that because we like a, you know, fast fashion.

We like, you know, cheap and cheerful Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese goods to flood our stores from Walmart to Dolorama to, you name it. We've been effectively created a lifestyle for us, which is a reality only on the basis that we tolerate actors, bad actors in the case of the environment, like China. because we're not willing to really do anything about it, Jans. We're not really willing to make any kind of substantial change to our lifestyle. And that's what I see. I see the masks on the street. I see adaptation, not mitigation. And that worries me because I think as a species, that's always where we've gone.

I mean, we are the product of evolution. We are the reflection of adaptation. Adaptation is wired into us. Yeah. And I think the future looks grim. Maybe it's not McCarty, Cormick McCarthy is the road, but might be some kind of version of Blade Runner, which also had those weird Mars-like skies over New York with. Let me tell you, virtual reality glasses ain't going to solve this problem for us.

So, you know, one of the reasons it's so difficult, Roger, to get people to make sacrifices. And you started off this, you know, this episode, is because it's a tragedy of the comments. It's not enough if one individual does it, one group does it, one country does it. You've got to build a big enough coalition that includes the biggest actors in order to really make meaningful progress. And you don't see that happening, you give up.

But when does that change? What do we know? It changes when people go through a week like this. when Canada is exporting this problem to the biggest country in our neighborhood, the United States, people are waking up saying, oh my God, I don't feel good this week because of this. One of the difficulties that we've had with climate change far off down the road, it's not me. Maybe it's my grandchildren, but it's not me. And people don't make sacrifices until they feel it and they see it and they experience it.

that's also human nature. Well, we're at the edge here now. We're beginning to see it, feel it, experience it. You know, the kids can't go out in playgrounds because they were going to inhale particulate, as you said, that could damage their lungs. It's at those moments that people actually begin to get serious. China's cleaned up the pollution in its cities.

It is still a huge emitter. But if you go to Beijing today, I first went to Beijing, it was a massive, great. You never saw the sign. And Janice, we did the same things in the 70s with the EPA, and it was a fantastic accomplice. It's a sign of modernization. I get it. But total GHG emissions look like a hockey stick. Okay.

And it's because India and China primarily are building dozens upon dozens of new coal fire power plants. They have very dirty coal in that part of the world. And they are going to consumerize their economies come hell or high water. We need, as you said, we need tariffs on dirty products. We need to get tougher. We need to say, you know what? We've tried cooperation. It's not working.

We are going to do things that will be possibly painful of us that could affect our lifestyles. Can't have a lifestyle if you don't have a climate. It doesn't work out so well. It doesn't matter how good the toys are if you can't breathe while you're playing with them. That's really what it comes down to. So all those products that you talked about, which are products of convenience, frankly, these are not products that weren't importing and benefit people who can.

afford more, I mean, most of it is not, right? And we're just going to have to impose carbon tax. Now, look at the Premier of Alberta, by the way, who this week came out and said, this is arson. This has nothing to do with the climate, right? Her province is on fire, frankly. She's asked for federal help, and she says, this is arson. Now, what do you do with that?

Yeah. Yeah. And again, all this. Alberta voters just gave her a majority. How long can you give, can you continue to elect climate deniers when you're having trouble with you? Does she think there's arson in Nova Scotia and there's arson in Quebec? Or even if there is arson. The reason that the arson is catastrophic this year is because, duh, the feedstock, the forests are dry.

they are vulnerable to man-made or fire caused by nature, i.e. lightning. So come on, people. Let's walk and chew gum at the same time. Okay, Janice. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. Quick thought. I know you want it.

We should take a break. But, you know, one of the things that did happen today is a discussion finally in this country of a disaster management agency, right? So at least pull the people in one room that know how. to manage multiple crises. We can do better, Rudyard, and this is not raw type science. Yeah. After the break, Monk donors, let's dig into what looks like the opening of the Ukraine

counteroffensive in this ongoing war. What are we seeing? What might we look for to understand how this counteroffensive is going to go in the weeks and months to come? We'll have that conversation for you right after. this short break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program,

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