The Young Turks - The Young Turks - November 3, 2020

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

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You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Hey, everyone. You're tuned into staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. Today, we're going to talk about something that is mildly controversial, and I don't even know if it works or it doesn't work, but it seems to be an interesting concept that will probably need to withstand a great deal more academic and scientific rigor. The idea of climate restoration, the idea that we can take the carbon back out of the atmosphere. year. A lot of, I think, climate campaigners don't like to talk about this idea because it assumes that we have dominion and control over the entire planet, that we can put carbon into the atmosphere,

and we can take it back out again. And that that sort of could lead to some rather dangerous assumptions when it comes to geoengineering and so forth. However, I do believe that my guest, Rick Parnell, of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, has good intentions and he's talking about the idea that we should be taking the carbon back out of the atmosphere, that we should be trying to reverse some of the effects of climate change, although it's not clear exactly if we can get the glaciers to refreeze or if we can get the weather patterns to change back or we can have less heat in the oceans in the summertime.

It does seem, though, that creating some sense of, I would think about this as sort of gardening for the planet, right? When you go out there and you go out into nature, nature is actually not left best alone, in my view. Nature and man are co-creators. Nature and people have a symbiotic relationship where when we go out into the landscape and we cultivate plants that are beneficial to us and beneficial to other species, we are part of nature. We are not separate from nature, right? A lot of people think nature should be left alone and human beings should have nothing to do with it. Well, in this case, it's kind of too late for that.

We have invasive species everywhere. We have co-mingling of so many different ecosystems and biospheres on the planet. We do need to have some sense of, well, how do we best manage what we're doing, best manage our partnership with the planet, human beings, and all the other biodiversity that's out there. We have to create space for biodiversity. So why wouldn't we create a sense of management of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Why wouldn't we manage greenhouse gas emissions and get them fine-tuned to such a point that we are essentially restoring the Holocene, restoring the carbon dioxide count in the atmosphere that we know gave rise to the birth of civilization, 10,000 years of climactic stability? So it's a really fascinating question as to whether or not we should not just stop climate emissions,

but do things to turn the dial backwards to say, all right, well, we're going to make sure that we're not at 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that we are below 350, as is the goal, and that that may in fact do some things to cool the planet back down and undo some of the damage that we have done with our climate, with our climate. change emissions. I don't know the answer to this, but I think it's an extraordinarily provocative question, and one that I think real scientific minds need to bring their intellect to bear, and we have to figure out if, in fact, we are adding all the CO to the atmosphere, what happens if we try to take it out again? And what are the safe ways of doing that? Where are the safe ways of building into our economies and into our approach to the planet,

a balance? So this is really a challenge. an interesting topic. I do grill my subject, Rick Parnell, my interview subject today, a little bit, because I do want to make sure that this isn't something that we're going into blindly with some sort of Pollyannish view. Oh, well, we could just take the carbon backs out. So tune in. I think this is going to be an instructive and interesting episode. Stay with us, Rick Parnell, the Foundation for Climate Restoration. It's a great pleasure and honor to have Rick Parnell, who is the CEO of the Climate Restoration Foundation. Am I getting that correct?

Right. The Foundation for Climate Restoration. Foundation for Climate Restoration. This is the outlandish idea that we can repair the damage done, which is not something people are talking about. People are talking about stopping the destruction as it flows and stopping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but not a lot of people talking about restoration.

So this is fascinating. And I really want to know how this works as it pertainting. to the Green New Deal. So first of all, just give us the basic introduction to some of these concepts, if you will, Rick. Sure. Yeah. So I was in the, you know, I call it the climate wars for almost 20 years. I was at the United Nations Foundation. And I just say climate wars because we were, you know, always debating and pushing on, is it going to be one and a half degrees, two degrees, how bad can it get? We've got to make sure it's not as bad as it could be. Wait, what if we could actually get to a place where we could restore the climate to pre-industrial? Now, you know, I've

have people that will say to me, oh, but you can't bring back the species that that are extinct? Well, no question about that. But the idea of restoring the climate to pre-industrial simply put means trying to return our carbon to less than 300 parts per million. Humanity has survived and thrived for thousands of years at 270, 300. And at 415 and racing upwards, why wouldn't we go for the full restoration? How? How? Throw. I mean, I don't think anybody's going to challenge you on whether or not we should do that because I think obviously, well, maybe some people would, some people who work for, you know, Russian and American oil companies might, but tell us, tell us why. Yeah, no, how. Tell us how do we start. Well, that sounds amazing.

Can we? Because when I started, you know, I was approached. I retired from the UN Foundation. I was approached by the founder of the foundation. It was very, very early days just getting up and getting started. And when he said, let's restore the climate. I said, well, hey, what? wait, wait, I've been in this a long time. You can't restore the climate. It's actually. So how do you restore it? You do it by carbon removal. That's the most simple part of the equation. But carbon removal through things like building materials.

So you've probably heard there's five, six, seven different companies globally that have come online in the last couple of years that are literally taking carbon, turning it into synthetic limestone to make cement, make concrete. So that's one. I haven't heard of that. You haven't heard of that. I have not heard of that. Tell me more about that. Sure. So,

taking synthetic carbon. Yeah, there's a, there's a process. Okay. There's five or six different companies that have slightly different processes, but what it does is it takes carbon. Some take it straight out of power stacks. They're developing direct air capture. Uh-huh.

That's that to be scaled over time. But you take the carbon and you turn it into synthetic limestone. It's a chemical process that then you put into the concrete and you put it into buildings. The difference in cost is somewhere between 1 and 2% from traditional concrete. Now imagine... So it's like a taincy bit more expensive.

Teency, taincy, taincy, taincy, and it won't be, you know, two or three years now, it'll be the same. Right. So the idea there, not the idea, the fact there is that you replace the limestone and then you're going to build buildings anyway. It's already a trillion-dollar industry annually. It doubles in growth every 10, 15.

years. So this is not something you've got to wait for government funding on subsidies. The technology is already there. It just has to be scaled. So more people do about it. That's our job. It's making sure more people know that there's solutions there. You know, little-known fact, 2%. If you restored 2% of the world's oceans with something like kelp, if you had kelp farms, and 2% of the world's oceans, you would remove all of the legacy carbon that's in the atmosphere. One thing I want to make sure I say, Josh, but what happens if you do kelp and it changes the biosphere and it changes the ecodynamics and all that kind of stuff. Like isn't that dangerous to start sort of tinkering?

Yeah. First, let me just say, every single solution either has been tested or has to be tested. No question. So first and foremost, you know, the bad name of geoengineering. We have been geoengineering the planet for more than 250 years. That's how we got to where we are today. So let's look at geoengineering solutions that we test. you know, our good partner, Sir David King at Cambridge University, he's setting up testing

centers around the world to look at these kinds of solutions. So yes, absolutely, we have to test them. There are already kelp farms. You know, kelp grows two feet a day. There's already kelp farms in, and I'm actually, I have to agree with you. I'm not one of those people who thinks nature is best well left alone, right? We have invasive species marauding the countryside right now that have to be cultivated and garden. And there is a mythology that suggests that, like, you know, there was the state of nature at one point in time, and human beings were hunter-gatherers, and a lot of that science is sort of falling apart right now. And people are saying, no, actually, the indigenous people who lived on this continent were farmers.

And they very much managed the environment and very much managed everything that was on the planet. And so why would you not do that if you were going to do it wisely? I think the question is always like, well, are you going to do it in a way that's not so wise? Right. It's right. Because we do, every once in a while, introduce, you know, species that then become harmful to everything else. You know, that does happen as well. Unintended consequences. Yeah, no, no, I agree. But that's, again, you know, look at the leaps and bow of science over the last 30 years. And so if you put these kind of guardrails around it, we should be doing this kind of testing. We should be looking at some kind of solution. But I think it's important, Joshua. One thing I want to make sure that I say. Well, you just, I interrupted you and you sort of glazed over the kelp, but I want to know more about the kelp. Tell me more about the kelp. First, I have to say, you're tuned into staying home, you're a revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. We'll be right back.

You're tuned into staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. My guest is Rick Parnell. Rick, we're talking about restoring the climate. We're talking about kelp. Let's talk about kelp. Tell me more about it. Well, this sounds like the most scintillating late night interview ever. Kelp, we're going to talk about kelp. No, seriously. Not a kelp. If it'll save the planet, I'll talk about kelp. I just, I will. That's what's going to happen today. Okay, I can tell you this much about kelp.

It grows two feet a day. Two feet a day? Two feet a day. But, you know, when a tree dies and it falls down in the woods, let's just say out of all complete natural, it dies and it falls down in the wood, it decays and it releases carbon in the atmosphere. Kelp dies and other ocean plants die, they go to the bottom and they sequester the carbon. So that's another piece of it. Kelp is also a food material for humans. It's a food material for feedstock.

You can eat kelp? I don't eat kelp every day, but I have had kelp. What's your recommended daily allowance? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I have to say, this is the world of COVID. My dog is going nuts right now, but, you know, we'll just talk about. Your dog is crying out for more kelp alpo. But let me say, one thing that I did want to stress earlier is that the thing that the thing,

that really, really got me so engaged in climate restoration is that mitigation adaptation, critically important, have to do it, going to do it, we're going to get to net zero. We have to. But what people don't understand is that when we get there, 95% of the two centuries of carbon, still there. So we still have the temperatures. We still have the storms. We still have the fires because we've got all this legacy carbon to get out. It's still up there. But we can do it. We can do it through these natural and technical. But how do you get it from up there into the concrete? Or does it just happen? It just happens.

It's just part of the natural cycle. Yeah, there's two layers of carbon, some that is in the upper atmosphere. And over time, it eventually gets out into space. But the carbon that's in the lower atmosphere, you can get it out. So we're actually contributing carbon dioxide into space? Yeah, but again. Are people worried about space warming? I just wanted asking for a friend.

No, I'm sorry, I'm kidding. Let's keep going, though, because this is actually, it's so amazing. You think you know the terrain. You think you know what you're talking about when you're talking about climate change. You think you're talking about solar panels and wind turbines and all of the things that are a part of the Green New Deal, especially one of them is justice, right? But we don't talk about restoring the habitat, restoring the earth. So let's keep going. Yeah.

So kelp in a small area would take that much carbon out of the atmosphere. How much of the area? 2% of the oceans. If you restored the health of 2% of the oceans with things like kelp, then you could sequester all the excesses. carbon. Now, we're not going to do that. Two percent has got to be a lot, though, right? It's a lot, right? So we're not going to do two percent of the oceans, and we're not going to do 100 percent of the concrete industry. We're going to do a little bit of the concrete industry. We're going to do some of the kelp in the oceans. We're all going to buy the shoes

that have carbon negative souls, which is very popular now. Wait a minute, carbon negative souls. That sounds also like a, that's like a 90s band, right? I was really into them, carbon-negative souls. I love their hit. I'm sustainable, aren't you? No, wait, listen, what does that mean, wait, hold on, just on. What is the carbon-negative soul?

Albert's shoes has a process. And can I be saved? They remove the carbon, and they put it in the sole of the shoe. There's a carbon-negative, in Brooklyn, there's a carbon-negative vodka that's being made right now. There's carbon-negative jewelry. I mean, there are solutions for how to... So hipster vodka is going to save the world.

Oh, absolutely. Don't you think? Don't you think? I'm down. I'm ready. I am so ready. Wait. So what does that mean carbon negative vodka?

How does that work? I don't know. I just know that it's out there. It just means it like when they make the vodka, it uses more carbon. No, there's a process that it's a process for getting the carbon out as they make it. I'm just giving you examples. This sounds like one of those 70s infomercial where it's like don't smoke pot. It kills your brain cells.

Don't drink Brooklyn vodka, you will become a carbon negative soul. There you go. But no, but those kinds of- I want that on a T-shirt. Think about this. I've only given you two or three, big markets and then some small ones. But there's 650 companies right now that are out there that are in the carbon removal solutions business, some small, some big summer climate, carbon engineering, summer

climb works. But just imagine, you know, I've had colleagues say to me, you know, climate restoration is where wind and solar was 15 years ago, where everybody said, oh, it'll never be competitive with the price of oil. Yeah. Look at where we are. Oh, no, I know. And you, and, but I guess what my question is, is for, can this help heal frontline communities? Can this help heal? Because I've, I've looked into this quite a bit because, like, oil spills are some of the most devastating events, and they're incredibly difficult to clean up, because what you're usually doing is you're taking one group of toxic chemicals and putting it on top of another group of toxic chemicals, right, like they did in the

Gulf of Mexico with the dispersants that were toxic like crazy and they spread that onto the oil and they increased the toxic level or up in Alaska when they're using soap. Like you don't want soap in your ecosystem. Soap is a surfactant. Soap can kill bio, microorganisms. Soap is, you know, so what is about the restorative aspects of this? We looked at biomimicry and mushrooms and all these things that could actually suck up the oil but not do the damage. As some of the there as well? Yeah, I mean, beginnings of. And again, this is one of the big things that we need is funding for research.

We need the IPCC to call on, we need governments to call on the IPCC to do a full report on what it would mean to restore the climate. What are the different solutions? What are the testing that needs to be done? What are the policies that need to change? So, but your foundation is doing some of that work, right? We're doing a lot of the recommendations. What would they be?

Yeah, so I would love to see one of our colleagues that break through. energy. We were talking about this the other day. I'd love to see, you know, we spent so much money on health. Again, we have been doing bioengineering for decades. We have NIH as a $42, $47 billion annual budget, but we don't put anywhere near that into energy research or climate research in the U.S. Imagine if we took that kind of research seriously. That's just a, that's a small piece of it. But, you know, one of our partners at Google had investments, as he has said to me, why would anybody invest. They got out of the oil and gas industry five years ago, not because they're the first to say, not because they'd like to say for the better, you know, a man, but because it's a

terrible investment. So I think you're starting to see. It's also a terrible industry. So what, but what about this, though? What about the truth that if you all of a sudden make it totally fine to just dump huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, that the oil and gas industry are going to be like, yay, let's continue to do it when there's so many other things wrong with the business model of fracking and burning and combustion and everything else, right? Because it's a global health catastrophe. It kills five to seven million people a year. Could this be used, this idea as sort of carte blanche for the oil industry to just keep polluting? No, we're not going to let that happen. That's not going to happen because I think that especially the youth are not going to stand for that.

I mean, we're already transitioning to renewables. That's going to happen. Extraction is going to die. It's just going to take time. And the more that we can grow the industries that can allow us to move more rapidly, that to me is the solution. Right. But I mean, so, but wouldn't you think that some of the oil industry would sort of like be sponsoring this kind of thing? There's always going to be a bad apple and the bunch. No question. And so we just have- A lot of apples, if you're talking about Exxon, Shell, and Chevron, I mean, to be honest, that's a few orchards. That's a, that's a whole, you know, a lot. I'll admit to that, but I will say that, you know, when I was working in climate 15, 20 years ago, the idea that anybody could even think that you could see the beginning

of the end of the oil companies, it was, everyone was in that camp of like, well, that's never going to happen. So let's think about an alternative plan. Now it's going to happen. Now you can see it. You can see it on the horizon. I've heard something about this Million Oyster Project where they're using oysters along the Bay in New York City.

And those oysters are creating, you can't eat them because the water is so incredibly polluted. But the Millian Oyster Project is a Gulf or it's a restoration project that will help, I don't know, I guess make Brooklyn and New York's coastline less susceptible to storm search. Is that in the same arena as this thing? That's not one of the solutions that we have taken a whole lot of look at. But yes, I've read about it. But yeah, there's all kinds of these different solutions out there. Well, tell us more about some other ones. We've talked about kelp. We've talked about limestone and concrete. What are some of the other things? So there's, as I said, there's probably six, 650, there are solutions that do everything from

650 different kinds of ways to do this. Yes, different companies that are working on ways to do this, not 650 different solutions, 600 different companies that are working on various solutions. I have been approached by everything from how to remove methane from the cow, 80% from the cow, to the milk cow with a natural solution. I have seen, I mean, I can't tell you. you that the number of things. Just to explain to people, cows belch when they eat industrial feed. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan,

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For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. They belts an enormous amount of methane. That methane is very toxic and very bad for the atmosphere.

It's 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide is as a warming agent. So stopping cows from belching as much, of course, grass-fed beef doesn't belch nearly as much. Right, right. So some of it's the industrial feed. But you're saying that there are companies trying to come up with, like ant acid for cows. Bessie's Tums. Something like that, yes.

But let me come back to, because you asked a question that I want to make sure I get back to, what is the job of the foundation? The job of the foundation is to tie all these together. So we just had our forum, our second annual forum, and we brought together national governments.

And so during our forum, Kenya has put a resolution forward at the UN on climate restoration and carbon removal. We brought together in the investment community. We brought together the solution, some of which we've talked about. We brought together local governments. So last year, the first local government, Santa Clara County, Silicon Valley, naturally, was the first government in the world to call for climate restoration,

which means their planning, their procurement, their municipal buildings can now move towards climate restoration permanence. And now we're talking to cities around the world about joining that. So at that point, sorry, I don't mean to cut you off there. At that point when it starts to actually engage, do the glaciers start to freeze again? Hold on. Let me say, you're tuned in to staying home. Your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. We'll be right back.

You're tuned in to staying home. Your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. We're talking about climate restoration with Rick Parnell, who is the leader of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Rick. So if you start getting this stuff going, like really going, right? Like you get all these 600 companies and it starting to have an impact. planting the kelp and the limestone cement and everything and you bring the carbon back down does that start to refreeze the arctic does that start to re-tropic areas that are you know you're

you know what effect does that have on ecosystem that we are all dependent on that we're worried about collapsing okay again josh i'm not the scientist so don't quote me necessarily on the science but the the if you get back down to 300 parts per million and you lower the global warming numbers, then some of these things start to happen. What we'd love to see, I'd love to see NASA take on a modeling project that would say, what would it look like in 2050, 2040, 2030, if we start to implement some of these different solutions. How many, you know, now we have record number of storms.

Would the number of storms go down? We need to model that. Nobody's modeling it right now. What would it look like for these kinds of solutions? Right. What's the difference between this and people who, I often, think that the real difference between rural Americans and urban Americans are how much they talk about chem trails. Like if you go out in rural America and if you're in rural America,

you know what I'm talking about. You go out, you see the trail across the sky. So it's like, yep, it's chem trails. It's nitrous oxide. It's aluminum dioxide. It's tinfoil helmet's raining from the sky. And they love to talk about this. And know what in urban America talks about this because who looks up? What's the difference between talking about that kind of geoengineering, Right, the evil kind and what you're talking about now. Yeah, I mean, if you take, so let's just talk about airplanes. You know, carbon engineering is producing carbon recycling. It's not restoration, but it's recycling for fuels.

So taking carbon out of the atmosphere, turning into jet fuel. If you think about it in terms of that, again, it's part of the blended mix that we're going to have to do. So as you see the jets fly over and you see the trails, you're going to see those hopefully over, time because I think the airline industry is going to be a while before we see so. What I'm talking about is something that's been debunked, right? Chemtrails are not real. Oh, yeah. I mean, sorry. I was getting a little bit more technical. Yeah, I know it's been, it's been debunked. But I mean, there's also some of these in our own philosophy of the foundation is that there are some people's minds that you just can't change. There's some people that are in

that. They want to believe the conspiracy theory. And, you know, you just have to move on from that. Right. But I guess what I'm trying to say, though is the reason why people are upset about chemtrails is because they think that people are geoengineering the planet and that gets them uncomfortable. So what's what essentially is like the difference between doing that because like it sounds to me like you're sending into a lot of different processes into motion. And when you have multiple experiments happening on multiple levels in multiple ways, that's when I started getting nervous. You know what I mean? Like when all of a sudden you have five different

different controls like you have cement and then you have kelp and then you have other kinds of things about taking carbon after like carbon sequestration and so forth you know what I mean that sounds like a rather massive global experiment again not that we're not doing that now not that but again with guardrails with testing we're not talking about just going off willy-nilly and doing things but you know what I would say to you and your audience what's the alternative for us to get to 2050 and beyond and to have said to our children and grandchildren, sorry, we forgot to remove the legacy carbon that we put up there for two centuries. We got close, but we didn't quite finish the job.

That's just not the human way. Right. That it is looking at the earth as a cultivatable landscape on a much grander scale. Is that right? Yeah, I haven't quite heard of it put that way. but I think that humanity, when you put solutions in front of them, I'm a firm believer that I think we've done a really great job of waking people up to the broader community, you included, waking people up to the problem of climate change.

Okay. Great. Again, there's a little sliver, I would say, that somewhere, you know, that they're never going to believe, and that's fine. We can't waste our energy on that. But we've woken people up. Now we have people, I think, so awake that they're a little bit paralyzed. So now let's look at, okay, there are solutions.

That's true. You can demand your local government. Look at climate restoration solutions. You can use your vote. You can, you know, as we like to say, whether you're in the pews, if you're at school, you're at work, wherever you are, local government doesn't matter. You should be asking for climate restoration. What has been the reaction from some of the more mainstream climate people movement or

whatever. Have you talked to Bill McKibbin? Have you talked to 350? Have you talked to Greenpeace? What is the reaction of this? Because they are so hyper-focused, and I would say also so obsessed with and enraged at and angry at the oil companies, right? That that is, that has, and as am I, right? That is almost like a hard thing to let go off. Yeah. You know, when you're talking about like this as a completely other angle, right? What has been the reception to these ideas? It's been, it's been a little bit mixed as you would expect. We've had reactions from part of the climate community of, we have a plan, let's stay with a plan, it's mitigation adaptation, we're going to fight for one and a half degrees. Then we've had others that, you know, we'll have a conversation and maybe this has been sort of the classic.

You have a conversation with someone, whether it's a scientist, it's someone in the UN leadership system or whatever. and you have a conversation and roughly 25 minutes in, they're like, wait. So you want people to focus on this third leg, not instead of, third leg of the stool, climate restoration in order to get the legacy carbon out. Yeah. Oh, well, I'm all for that. I totally support that. Once they get it, this is not an either-or.

This is a must-do. It's an answer. I see. I see. Because you're worried that even if we turn it all around right now and implement the Green New Deal, That carbon is still up there. What does that carbon? What does it do if you don't get rid of it?

It stays 95% of the carbon will still be there. And it will still keep, it will still keep the global warming. It will still keep the heat shield. And we will still have the temperatures that we have. We will still have the ice melting. We'll still have the storms. We're not going to have it go back down. Right.

Until we get the carbon out as well as we can't. You know, it's like one of the videos that we have really simple and people love it. Bathtub. The Earth is sitting in a bathtub, half full of water. it's been bathing just fine for, you know, thousands of years. Here comes humanity over two centuries, turns on the faucet, the tub is overflowing. Okay, mitigation adaptation. We figure out how to live in the bathtub, we turn the faucet off.

But it's still full of water. So all we're saying is we need to pull the plug and just bring the water down. Right, right, I see. But so what about people who say, well, it will do that naturally if you stop flooding new carbon into the atmosphere? What have people? Some of it will. In how many years? a thousand years

hundreds of years pushing a thousand years so this is so fascinating to me because like what yeah I mean I'm grilling you because I've obviously like the idea of tinkering on mass

with the global climate is something I generally reserve to the extremists who work for oil companies right those are generally the evil scientists who are like let's add huge amounts of let's change the geocomposition of the atmosphere that's a great idea You know, and very few other people.

That would not be me. Sorry, no. Well, but you, in a way, though, yes, because we're saying we're going to, so why is that different? It's different because it's the missing piece. I think it is more damage to say, let's do nothing that it is to let's test and try and, again, put policies and guardrails around these different solutions, test them out, see what works, see what doesn't work. very small scale. And then what should be scaled from there? So what's the process from here on out to getting these things tested and starting to be implemented in your view?

Yeah. So what we are doing at the Foundation for Climate Restoration is that we're trying to give everyone to march together for COP 26. So we're calling it the road to Glasgow. So working across all these different fields that I've talked about from local government, national governments, the UN system investors, youth, youth, youth, faith, all the different organizations working together over the next year. So by the time we get to COP 26, there is a full discussion and coming out of COP 26 next November in

Glasgow, there are policies, they're the IPCC. Everyone's engaged around, okay, this is the third pillar of climate action. What are we going to do? What are the policies? What are the testing? What is the research dollars? What are the things that we need to do over the next several years to ensure that we get this last third piece of the work done. And are there, so what's the road to getting to that? You know, I mean, are there people, are there engagement processes happening right now with the current environmental movement, with the NGOs, with the big greens?

How's that going? All the above. As I said, we just had our forum, our second annual forum during UN General Assembly Week and during Climate Week, NYC, very well attended. We had 850 people join us. We had 44 or five different speakers, and over the next year, we are working with Ted Countdown. We're working with Ted itself. We're working with the Vatican.

We're working with other faith leaders. We're working with the World Economic Forum. We're working all these different across sectors. You're going to see all kinds of convenings over the next several months. But what our job at the Foundation, our job is to go to where, they are. So if that means going to the World Economic Forum, where all that stuff happens, if it means going to convenings at Skull Forum and others, that's the path for us. It feels very much like an interesting way of thinking about utopia, right? A managed system

that is the Earth, a managed system where we encourage biodiversity, where we keep the carbon at a certain level where we try to make sure that we're behaving on the earth as we would maybe in a house or in your own, you know, in your living room. You turn the heat up, you turn the heat back down. You make sure that the vent from the stove doesn't, you know, flood into your bedroom, that this is a way of looking at operating on the planet that is actually kind of familiar to us, but does this preclude a degree of human control that we've never even thought of before you answer the question, I have to say,

you're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. My guess is Rick Parnell. We'll be right back. You're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. My guess is Rick Parnell. Does this preclude a level of human control

over the planet that we have thus far not had? Yeah, I don't know that it's a level of control. I think it's a level of responsibility. I think that if COVID has taught us anything, It's that we are one interconnected humanity. And so we have to work together on this. I think that collectively we can work to have some of these solutions and get us to a place where we can restore the climate.

How much do these things cost? Are they very expensive? Do we have any ballpark on any of that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, the ballparks range from over the next couple of decades from, you know, $50 billion annually to a trillion dollars. But they're not costs. Wait, wait, wait, $50 billion. dollars annually is extremely cheap you're talking about what is the scale of that yeah for one of

the solutions kelp can cost upwards of 50 billion dollars a year for that solution the as i said the um concrete industry is a trillion dollar industry but we're not talking about adding a trillion dollars of cost on we're talking about change the way that concrete is is used use a different kind of concrete and you're not you're not saying put a trillion dollars on top of you're just saying is a different way to work at. Let me give an example. San Francisco Airport. It's already been tested. They've already had a third-party review of architects, one of the wings that Southwest Airlines used to this carbon negative concrete. So if you've been to SFO and you've flown on Southwest, you're walking on this concrete. So it's already here. It's just about-

I can't believe you would think I would go to San Francisco. That's ridiculous. No, but first of all, listen, I just have to say thank you so much. This is an fascinating subject. And what you're saying, though, what I'm hearing, when I think about the Green New Deal is $17 trillion, that's cheap, what you're saying, cheaper. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But let me ask you this, and this is me just being, not just being devil's advocate,

but being a very important advocate for justice, for the idea of justice, because the idea of the Green New Deal, which we talk about on this show every day, is not about solar panels and technology and renewable energy and, you know, wind and all that. Fundamental to the concept of the Green New Deal is this idea of justice. Frontline justice, racial justice, justice, justice for communities, justice for Native Americans. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

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and have a, what's that? And natural, technological and natural, fine. But does this material approach have a philosophy of value system that is, uh, that is, uh, in a similar way to what the Green New Deal has in terms of what's focused on justice and focused on equality. At the end of the day, it's all about justice because you're talking about people living, the poorest of the people will end up with the ones that will have the greatest burden. People that are, look at Bangladesh, it will be underwater. Look at, you know, people that are living on the coastlines.

They'll be underwater if we don't do these kinds of solutions. So absolutely, this is about justice for all of humanity. Well, all right. Well, listen, I think that this is an extraordinarily fascinating conversation. I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Rick Parnell, good luck. How do people interact with what you're doing now? Go to F4CR.org, Foundation for Climate Restoration.org, and take the pledge.

If you take the pledge and sign up, then we will keep you updated on all the information, all the different convenings, the solutions that they come online, and on all the headlines. Absolutely. So please, F4CR.org. All right. Thank you so much, Rick Parne. It's been an extraordinary conversation. I'm sorry if I've seen like a little skeptical or I'm pushing you.

It's just because I feel like it's important to put these ideas through some sort of rigor, at least on this program. But thank you so much. And I really, really will continue to look at this because it's a fascinating thing that people are not talking about enough. Stay tuned. All right. Thanks, Rick. All right.

Take care. You're tuned in to staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. We'll be right back. And with that, let's move on to the joy of life and celebration that always is, Mr. Dogvappy. I'll just get on with it. I'm going to wear my sunglasses because I feel like it's cooler. That's cool. Yeah.

When you play the song, I'm going to help me too, man. Here we go. All right. for you to see that you're not different from me wake up brothers and sisters take my hand got to vote got to vote big everybody got to vote early everybody get it done fast because this can't last much longer it's the truth man we gotta wake up see the light Just can't afford to fight amongst each other over every little thing. Look at the big picture.

We'll get there. Just got to vote big. Everybody got to vote early. Everybody get it done fast because this can't last much longer. Oh, baby. How to get it done? I know we can get there. if all of us just care

enough to stay involved keep their feet to the fire protests call them write them and we got to vote big everybody gotta vote early everybody get it done fast because this can't last

much longer no baby it ain't gonna last Now I'm praying for that daying for that day, hey, freedom and equality is finally here but it won't happen until we vote big

everybody. We've got to vote early everybody. Get it done fast because this can't last much longer. Get it done because this can't last much longer. Get it done fast

because this can't last much longer. we'll have time to work out those little things. Get it done. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Another instant classic. I love it. I love it. Man, I love this because you're coming.

I know this is going to be a whole record. This is going to be Don Vappi's adjut-prop political songs. We're going to make like a whole thing. A whole adjutant pop. I try to wait until as long as I can because I want to make sure it's current. You're just coming up with them one after another. You must be inspired. I am, man.

I'm inspired to vote. I've been trying to talk to everybody to vote early. I mean, just as you said earlier, man, I mean, do you have any doubt now? I mean there's no doubt you can't hide behind well I'm not a racist his policies

no you cannot hide behind that no you can't he said it he said it on TV and he did not denounce him what we've always known he's got to go man he's got to go I love the song

I love all three of these songs they're like a song sweet And I think I want to say, you know, there's deeper undercurrents to this moment, you know. I feel like there are political threads that you could weave into tunes that have to do with the history of where we're at right now. Or maybe that feeling, the feelings of, because I think what's happening to Americans right now, apart from that tiny minority, that small 30% of those people who are white, ignorant, authoritarian republicans apart from those few people everybody else is suffering and we've been suffering for a long time there's a suffering in the air that's a good title for a song there's a suffering in the air that is happening because we feel this sense of injustice all the time because most people

in america don't want this guy and it's been the corrupt system that has put these people in power and in place yes sir well just trying to make the light shine more than just we all know about the darkness that's what we're doing here thank you don thank you we'll see you next week yes sir for the next song of the week you can use any of my suggestions but i know you're always going to come up with something brilliant all right don vappi thank you very much this is staying home your revolutionary guide listen everybody vote and vote with precision thank you we'll see you tomorrow Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.