West Virginia is still not ready to embrace climate change

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

[MUSIC: Miles Davis “Milestones” on Milestone, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.]

CURWOOD: Each Earth Day marks an important milestone for Living on Earth. In April of 1991 Living on Earth started broadcasting weekly on public radio, and we’ve been hitting the airwaves ever since. Biologist and Woods Hole Research Center founder George Woodwell helped inspire me to start this show when he told me that global warming from burning fossil fuels and forests would likely melt the Arctic. He explained that as the permafrost released its CO2 and methane, those added greenhouse gases would cause more warming and melt the arctic even more, which would add yet more carbon to the atmosphere. At some point these self-reinforcing reactions, this feedback loop, would be beyond human control.

CURWOOD: As a journalist it seemed to me that if what George described was allowed to get out of hand, little else would matter much for society. So I decided that climate change and so many other environmental stories needed reporting, and here we are. Now, many things have changed since 1991 and science has made some amazing advances. The human genome was sequenced, and gene therapy began. The Hubble telescope gave us fantastic views of deep space. Technology gave us the world wide web, which made e-commerce, Google and Facebook possible, and the invention of the smart phone put the world in our pocket. And in politics and society, South Africa ended apartheid and freed Mandela and the US elected its first president of direct African descent, Barack Obama.

But the numbers show we are still failing to preserve the climate. Over the last 30 years human-caused emissions have increased by 60 percent. Today the atmosphere holds the equivalent of about 500 parts per million of CO2. That is not good news. We began the industrial age in 1760 with concentrations of CO2 at about half those levels and we are now living through the hottest decade in modern human history.

As a result we are seeing record breaking heat waves and wildfires from California to Siberia, floods, rising sea levels and shrinking Arctic sea ice. Not to mention, record-breaking Atlantic hurricane seasons, searing droughts and massive tornado clusters. And all this climate disruption is a result of just a single degree centigrade rise in average earth surface temperatures since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

But our broadcast today is not simply a look back or lament. We are also looking ahead, to shine a light on some possibilities to head off climate disruption before civilization as we know it becomes untenable. We will consider the possibilities of economics, politics, applied science and technology to address climate disruption, though so far they have fallen short.

So, we will look to see what they may be missing. And since we humans have caused the climate emergency, we’ll also consider how we can think differently about our place on this planet. For some clues we’ll look to some ancient wisdoms and contemporary anthropology.

[MUSIC: Brian Rolland’s “Along the Amazon” on Dreams of Brazil, On The Full Moon Productions]

CURWOOD: Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but there are two striking trends that run parallel to the alarming rise in global warming gases. One is the astonishing growth of economic wealth, and in recent years that increase in wealth in the US has been confined to the very richest. In fact, most families in the US have seen little or no gain, with many losing economic power, as many young adults today can’t afford to buy homes like the ones they grew up in.

The other trend is the loss of confidence in government action at the national and local levels and the failure of international rules governing climate change emissions to go beyond the honor system. The concentration of economic and political power related to those trends has historically thrived on the extraction and burning of fossil resources. Climate policy critics including Van Jones, Kristina Karlsson and Bill McKibben say that has to change, if we are to halt our present march toward climate Armageddon.

Kristina Karlsson is a program manager for the climate and economic transformation team at the Roosevelt Institute.

JONES: The first industrial revolution hurt the people and the planet, too. And, the next industrial revolution has to help the people and the planet.
KARLSSON: Meaningfully addressing climate requires an economic transformation in basically all corners of our economy.
MCKIBBEN: I think we’re reaching a turning point. I think that the political power of the fossil fuel industry has begun to wane after a century or two of waxing. And our job is to accelerate that to push hard for really rapid, rapid change.

CURWOOD: But right now despite pledges and promises from businesses and governments the nascent momentum for rapid change has been put on ice with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The resulting spike in oil and natural gas prices now has the Biden Administration saying drill baby, drill.

ORESKES: The war should be a reminder to us of how many good reasons there are to act on climate besides just the climate system itself. Europe is essentially hostage to Russian gas. And this is one of those things that breaks my heart.

CURWOOD: Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.

ORESKES: Because if we had started the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. If we started that process back in 88, when the IPCC was first gathered, or in 1990, when they first issued their report, or 1992, when the world’s nations signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, we could have made that transition by now 30 years is a long time in the history of technology. It’s enough time to build solar farms and wind farms, and improve your electricity grid. We could have fixed this problem.

Instead now we’re essentially hostage to the fossil fuel industry. So at this very moment of crisis, when we absolutely need to stop using fossil fuels. We’re in a situation where the Europeans are saying, well, well, we can’t live without fossil fuels. So this is really a kind of, it’s kind of a tragedy of historic proportions. I do think historians will be writing about this for years to come.

Congresswoman Kathy Castor visits the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

CURWOOD: Now, tell me first, what’s the status of your committee? Initially, it was set up by the the House leadership, by Nancy Pelosi, as a Select Committee, which means it doesn’t go on forever. And you were supposed to have a report by about this time of year; but of course, things have changed, huh?
CASTOR: Yes, unfortunately, we’re dealing with a life and death situation, the COVID-19 pandemic. Our Select Committee on the Climate Crisis framework for congressional climate action was actually due out last week, so we were bringing it in for a landing. But if anything has given me hope, when it comes to climate, it’s this massive mobilization across the planet to tackle this pandemic, this coronavirus, and that gives me hope that we will be able to attack the other, more slow-moving crisis, that’s the climate crisis.

CURWOOD: At this point, though, the nation is in the midst of this crisis, this pandemic crisis. Why is it is a good time to be thinking about climate change policy?
The $2 trillion stimulus package known as the CARES Act includes up to $16 billion to replenish the nation’s depleted stockpile of ventilators, medicines, and personal protective equipment, or PPE, shown here as members of the Florida National Guard assist hospital staff.
CASTOR: You know, I was born and raised in the State of Florida and it reminds me of a hurricane, and when a hurricane sweeps through and it destroys your community, it destroys your home, you build back on a stronger foundation. And that’s what we, we have to do going forward. The climate crisis is a public health crisis and our climate action plan that was going to be released last week, and will be released down the road, had some very strong recommendations for public health policy and how to keep our families safe and healthy, and then it spanned this entire spectrum. And I think folks will be very interested and focused on those solutions down the road. But first and foremost, it’s about helping our neighbors right now and those frontline heroes in hospitals and making sure we get the the personal protective equipment to deal with the here and now.

CURWOOD: What about support and the deadline extension for the clean energy tax credits, or aviation carbon limits that Democrats had sought in exchange for bailing out the airline industry? I mean, that didn’t make it into this most recent package that was passed.
CASTOR: No, but we’re gonna press to have it included in future packages. And a lot of those provisions related to aviation, yes, we could have done better. And they, in fact, a lot of the airline companies were in agreement on better aviation fuels and decarbonizing our airports. So I’m, I’m confident we’ll get there. But the first priority: making sure that those workers and all of those folks that work at airports get the lifeline that they need to make it through the stay at home orders.

CURWOOD: Now in terms of jobs and green energy jobs, both the solar folks and the wind folks are saying without the tax credits, they’re gonna be in trouble. What do you think Democrats are going to do about that?
CASTOR: Well, we’ve pressed hard, along with a lot of the Democratic senators to have those provisions included. I think if the Republicans and the administration had pressed forward on a bailout for oil and gas companies, or for refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, then the clean energy tax credits would have traveled along with them. So we have an opportunity now to start from a clean slate, and to make the case on building that strong foundation for how we want the economy to work in the future. It has to be more sustainable. We’ve got to be smarter with our public dollar investments, and that means in clean energy, in more resilient communities.

CURWOOD: So give us a preview, if you’re comfortable with that, of what’s going to be in this major report from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. What are the main goal posts in your report, do you think?
CASTOR: I’m not going to get into too many details on it because we are, this gives us an opportunity to polish it. But clearly we’re charting a course for a clean energy future, one that provides an emphasis on what climate means for the health of your kids and your grandkids. I’m excited about the agriculture section, because going into this, I didn’t anticipate that the agriculture community and our food producers would be so engaged. But you know, the climate’s hurting them, desperately. Their, they can’t grow the same crops, their livestock is suffering. There are torrential floods that are flooding out their crop lands. So they want to be part of the solution. That means sequestering carbon, that means assistance from USDA and all those great agriculture extension offices, our universities. They want to figure out how they can grow their crops to be more sustainable, how they cover their crops to make them more productive. So I’m excited about that piece. I’m excited about our investment in science and research. I was able to travel to a number of clean energy labs, like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, with the committee in a bipartisan way, and saw the, you know, you get a peek of what the future will be with how we build our buildings with solar, not just solar panels, but solar products that will go alongside buildings of the future. There are innovators that understand that our building materials have to change, that’s going to be a source of jobs of the future. Those are a few things I’d, I’d highlight, but, but stay tuned. We’re eager to get it out. But the health of the nation comes first. And that’s what we’re focused on now.

CURWOOD: So which of the climate policies that you’ve studied have proven to be the most controversial, or politically difficult as you’ve been working on your report?
CASTOR: Fortunately, there has been a lot of bipartisan ground that we’ve covered. But it’s still, the kicker still is the carbon pollution reduction that comes from fossil fuels. You know, there are a lot of members of Congress who are tied to the fossil fuel industry. And what will be interesting now is the oil and gas companies are under tremendous pressure because they were overextended financially, and their workers are out of work. Do, do a lot of the members there look for a new and stronger foundation in manufacturing in the clean energy economy? And those are the kind of bridges we’re going to attempt to build in the future.

CURWOOD: It’s very likely that what we’re living in right now is the greatest economic dislocation of our lifetimes. And the unemployment rolls are just exploding along with this virus. What does your Select Committee on the Climate Crisis have to offer in terms of policies that would create green jobs that would help us in the inevitable recovery that we’re gonna have to stage?
CASTOR: Well, just like the coronavirus, the climate crisis is an unprecedented threat to our public health and safety. But in the end, hopefully it’s an opportunity, to create those long-lasting, clean energy jobs for a more sustainable future for our kids and our grandkids. And I think these jobs run the gamut, yes, of course in clean energy and solar power and wind energy; but also weatherizing our buildings, the way we construct buildings and how we retrofit them, and smart grids, and smart meters. Those will be important jobs. Very important jobs in modernizing the grid across America, connecting the clean energy sources to a modern grid that will serve our businesses and serve our communities. I think the sky’s the limit and, and I know folks are feeling very anxious about this pandemic and, and I hear it from the folks I represent. But the, the coronavirus public health emergency has shown that we can mobilize the planet, we can attack these enormous problems and health emergencies. And I think this ultimately will give us hope and ambition to tackle the climate crisis. And you know, in the end, we don’t really have a choice. We must do this. And we can do this.

CURWOOD: Congresswoman Kathy Castor is Chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and represents the 14th District of the State of Florida. Thank you so much, Congresswoman.

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See also: Science Denial and the Pandemic, Living on Earth, April 3, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic appears well-managed in countries like China and South Korea that moved swiftly, with the science as their guide. Countries that initially downplayed the threat, such as Italy and the United States, have seen spiking death rates as healthcare systems are overwhelmed. Harvard History of Science Professor Naomi Oreskes joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss why some governments fail to follow the science when responding to major crises like pandemics and climate change, and how acceptance of science makes governments better able to prepare and cope with these global disasters. (15:15)

SPECIAL REPORT of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, October 8, 2018

CURWOOD: Steve Curwood, the host of LOE on Public Radio International (PRI)

At the beginning of December UN negotiators will move to advance the Paris Climate Agreement in a meeting that was hastily shifted to Madrid, Spain in the face of civil unrest in its originally planned site, Santiago, Chile. Earlier this month President Trump officially set in motion the withdrawal of the United States from the accord, though it won’t take effect until the day after the 2020 US presidential elections. And though every other nation is still in the Paris agreement, less than a handful have made pledges that would have a chance of keeping the planet from catastrophically overheating. Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, is here to explain. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Alden!

MEYER: Good to be with you again, Steve.

CURWOOD: In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Its dire warnings drew the world’s attention.

Alden, I keep hearing that the Paris process is far behind what’s needed. What exactly are the numbers at this point, what have nations committed to and what’s the gap for what many would say is necessary?

MEYER: Well, basically, you’ll recall that leaders set a goal of keeping the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels well below two degrees Celsius, that’s 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit for those keeping score at home, and trying to get as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. Analyses vary a little bit, but they tend to say that we’re on track for around three degrees Celsius or more. That may not seem like a huge difference, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last year on 1.5 degrees show that there’s a huge difference even between 1.5 and two degrees Celsius. Every 10th of a degree matters.

And to get on track to stay below two degrees analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme and others show that we would need to basically triple the level of ambition of commitments that countries have made under Paris. To have a chance of getting anywhere close to limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, we would need to quintuple, in other words increase by five fold, the level of ambition in Paris. So what’s needed here is not incremental changes around the margins. It’s really a wholesale transformation, getting on the path to cutting emissions nearly in half by 2030 globally, and to net zero emissions no later than 2050. It basically involves remaking almost every sector of the modern economy.

CURWOOD: And, of course, the process, the UN negotiation process continues; the Conference of the Parties, the UN umbrella for the Paris accord, on December 2, the annual meeting of that starts in Madrid, what needs to be done at that session?

MEYER: Well, there’s a few issues on the formal negotiating table that have to be resolved. The one unfinished piece of business from the last climate summit in Poland last fall was completing the part of the Paris Agreement calling for collaborative approaches to emission reductions: emissions trading, cooperation between developed and developing countries. It’s the so-called Article Six of the Paris Agreement. It’s both a very political issue and very technical, and you put those two factors together, it makes it difficult for countries to resolve their differences.

The other major issue on the table is what’s known as loss and damage, which is the unavoidable impacts now of climate change on vulnerable countries around the world. After they’ve done everything they can to reduce their emissions, everything they can to build in resilience measures to their economy, there are still going to be sudden impacts such as typhoons and hurricanes and floods and what’s called slow-onset impacts such as sea level rise, desertification, drought, etc. They need help dealing with that. And the deal in Paris was to set up a program to help countries cope with those now unavoidable impacts. The missing piece so far has been any substantially ramped up finance and capacity-building support for those countries, that will be the issue debated in Madrid, whether there should be an effort to look at innovative sources of finance above and beyond the famous $100 billion pledge the developed countries made a decade ago in Copenhagen for developing country action.

Those are the two big negotiating issues. There’s some other ones on the table. But looming over it all is this gap that we talked about earlier between the commitments that countries have made under Paris to constrain their emissions, and what’s needed to meet the science-based temperature limitation targets. And that will be permeating the conversation; there will be a number of high level ministerial meetings, not just the usual environment ministers that come together at these things, but the Chileans are also convening meetings of science ministers, energy ministers, finance ministers, agriculture ministers, because this is going to take everyone in every sector of the economy pulling together. And they want to stimulate a race to the top and in terms of increasing ambition.

So that’ll be the sort of subtext of this meeting. And all of this is laying the groundwork for the climate summit next November, just after the US elections that the United Kingdom will be hosting in Glasgow, Scotland, which is the real deadline under Paris for countries to say, Is this your final answer? What you put forward five years ago in Paris and in terms of your level of ambition, or can you do more? That’s the real political deadline for countries to decide what to do on the ambition front. So in a sense, this COP in Madrid will just be sort of setting the table for that much deeper, more intense conversation over the course of 2020.

CURWOOD: So to what extent is the upcoming meeting providing a reality check to the world about the amount of money that is going to be required to make the kind of transformations that will, you know, keep the planet from becoming relatively uninhabitable?

MEYER: Well, that’s definitely part of the conversation. And as you know, huge sums of money are involved here, not only the public sector money, such as the hundred billion dollar commitment that was made, starting in 2020 per year from developed to developing countries, but the much larger trillions of dollars of investment per year that are being made in the private sector.

And there’s a whole movement called Shifting the Trillions, which says we have to redirect the money that’s now going into fossil fuel investments and coal and oil and natural gas infrastructure around the world, redirect that into efficiency, into renewable energy, into nature-based solutions like agriculture and wetlands and forest solutions if we’re going to have any hope of getting ahead of this curve.

The good news, of course, is that it’s much less costly to do that, than to sit by idly and watch climate impacts mount. I think it’s coming home to people that the cost of climate inaction is really the threat to well-being and global prosperity, not the cost of climate action.

CURWOOD: And remind us, Alden, of the We’re Still In movement in the United States that the governors, leaders of cities, and a number of companies have come together to come to the international meeting to say that, despite the reluctance of the White House to engage, that there are many other jurisdictions in the US that are.

MEYER: Well, this is a movement that was launched in the wake of the elections in 2016, actually had its origins in the Marrakech Climate Summit, which took place during the US elections. And as you said, a number of governors, mayors, business leaders, university presidents, investment leaders and others have come together to say to the world that President Trump does not equal America when it comes to climate change. That there are substantial elements of the US political system, US economy, that are committed to Paris, committed to do our share of reducing emissions.

With the election of a number of new governors last November, there are now, I believe, 25 or 26 states in the US climate Alliance, which is the state-based component of We Are Still In. And collectively the states and cities that are in the We Are Still In movement represent about two thirds of the American economy and the American population. So this is a big coalition of folks; they will have a presence in Madrid, there will be a US Climate Action Center, which will feature side events and press briefings, and exhibitions and talks by these leaders from around the United States, trying to show the rest of the world that despite what President Trump is doing, formally starting the withdrawal process from Paris, that most Americans and most sub-national leaders remain committed.

And of course they have the public behind their back, because all the public opinion polling shows a very substantial majority, not just of all Americans, but of Republicans as well support the US staying in Paris, support us being a leader on climate. So in a sense, they’re just trying to demonstrate that President Trump is an aberration.

CURWOOD: Alden Meyer is Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks so much, Alden.

MEYER: I enjoyed being with you, Steve.

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The climate crisis is now our priority

Former Secretary of State John Kerry is the author of a new bestselling book, called Every Day Is Extra. At its heart is a message of urgency about the need to address the climate crisis. Yet Kerry remains optimistic about the ability of the United States’ democratic system to tackle the most pressing global issues of today. In a conversation with Host Steve Curwood, Kerry discusses his longtime love of the ocean and concerns about ocean health, and says that what America needs now is for citizens to get out and campaign for politicians willing to move the country in the right direction.

Here is the Transcript of the Interview

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood for October 7, 2018
John Kerry is looking confidently into the future, even as he reflects back on a life in public service, which ranges from being the face of Vietnam Veterans Against the War to a Democratic nominee for President and Secretary of State. Secretary Kerry writes about challenges facing the world, focusing on climate change in the final chapter of his 600-page memoir titled Every Day Is Extra. And even in the face of President Trump’s opposition to climate action, John Kerry remains optimistic. He spent his youthful summers in and on the waters of Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, which gave him a lifetime attachment to the sea. Over the decades he’s played key roles in legislation and international negotiations on climate change, acid rain, and ocean health. Secretary Kerry, welcome to Living on Earth!

KERRY: Happy to be here. Thank you.

CURWOOD: So, if there’s one thing from your book “Every Day is Extra,” it is your love of the ocean why does the ocean call to you in such a strong way?

KERRY: Well, I’m a son of Massachusetts I think it calls to all of us, sons and daughters. We are blessed to be people of the sea here in the state of Massachusetts and we love Cape Cod, we love the islands, and I learned as a kid. I was raised around Buzzards Bay and I used to just clam and fish and play in the water, learn how to sail, do all these wonderful things. But I learned about under the water, and I then was a big Phillip Cousteau fan and used to tune in. My mother was in the enormous conservationist and environmentalist, and I grew up with a sense of responsibility understanding that the ocean is fragile. It’s not impervious to the things we humans do to it.

CURWOOD: And as I recall from your book, in your fortunate childhood, you were on one of the Elizabeth islands, you were on Naushon.

KERRY: Yeah.

CURWOOD: And then you come out of Woods Hole and you can see it on your way to Martha’s Vineyard if you like. It’s a great place to have your toes in the sand as a kid.

KERRY: Yeah, it’s a gift beyond description, and it was wonderful to be able to be there, but I think that everywhere on our Cape, people would get to experience the beauty of our sand dunes, of our low tides, of the enormous beaches, the remarkable vision that President Kennedy had to keep great Cape Cod seashore national monument. So, we’re very lucky people and our history goes way back. Obviously, I mean everybody during the era of 1700s, 1800s, early 1600s came here on a boat, and we have always had a tie in our history to the sea. In our merchant efforts, the China trade…

CURWOOD: The cod on top of the statehouse.

KERRY: The cod, whaling. And you know we don’t have cod now. I mean, this ought to be a message to everybody. It’s Cape Cod but there are no cod…or very very few and precious few, and it’s a tragedy if we don’t start paying attention to how we manage these kinds of things. We could see an economic impact on our state.

CURWOOD: So, what do we need to do today to take care of our oceans?

KERRY: I think there are three primary challenges: number one climate change, which is caused by greenhouse gases which fall in the ocean and acidify the ocean which has a negative impact on the growth of clams, crustaceans, shells and bleaches out spawning grounds and coral reefs and so forth around the world. We don’t know all the impacts. We know it has an impact. We don’t know the rate of impact. We don’t know where you could have a precipitous catastrophic impact, and so that’s why we owe it particular respect and concern.

The second great impact is pollution, general pollution. People build. They build near the ocean. There’s what we call non-source point pollution. You have runoff, you have gasoline runoff from stations, you have oil runoff, you have pesticide runoff, you have high nitrate runoff which affects the level of oxygen in the water, and therefore the fish and plants and fauna in the ocean, and we have 500 dead zones around the world in the oceans today, dead zones, nothing grows because of what has happened with this overload. And also, pollution generally, effects the fish, you have plastic getting into marine mammals into birds. I’ve seen film of sharks and or porpoises and or whales dragging nets around and dragging plastic around. It’s crazy.

And then finally, we have overfishing. We have too much money chasing too few fish and that’s one of the reasons that we don’t have cod anymore here. Eight of the top fisheries of the world are now overfished, out of the sort of 18 or so fisheries, principal ones, and the others are at or near max. So, with 450 million Chinese who have come out of poverty into the middle class who now have discovered blue tuna and sushi, with 400 million Indians likewise and people around the world gaining in income and therefore appetite, we have a huge challenge, and already about 12 percent protein that people get in the world comes from fish, so there’s a huge demand for fish as a food stock and increasingly we’re going to see pressure on that. So, those are the biggies, but the pollution is just stunning. I mean, if we continue at the rate we’re going, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean in 20, 30 years.

CURWOOD: Now, of course, you’ve had a storied career most recently as a diplomat. In your background, I think you spent some time in France and Switzerland as a kid, your dad was a diplomat. But when it comes to the ocean you’ve had some special concerns, and I just want to quickly ask you about two. One there’s something called the Law of the Sea Treaty. It was something that the United States and folks from Massachuetts just like Elliot Richardson worked on years ago which we’ve never ratified. And now there’s talk of having some sort of a high seas treaty that would govern…what is half of the world that is not in any jurisdiction.

KERRY: Correct, it’s called the high seas, and the high seas do not belong to any particular nation, but they get egregiously overfished by renegade fishers, pirate fisherman, and years ago Senator Ted Stevens and I went to the United Nations to try to ban the driftnet fishing. We succeeded, it was banned, but today you have pirate fishermen, renegade fishermen, who go out with a draft net and a drift net is literally thousands of miles of monofilament netting that they drop behind the boat, drag along. It kind of strip mines the ocean and as much as two-thirds of the catch, certainly 50 percent, is called waste catch. They just throw it overboard. So, it’s changing the ecology of the ocean by…imagine the vision of you see a strip mine on coal or the land, you see it just ravaging everything around it. This is what a driftnet will do and then sometimes it breaks off and it becomes what we call the ghost net because it just fishes on its own. When it’s weighted down with carcasses, it sinks to the bottom and scavengers clean it off, and it rises to the top again until it gets tangled in a whale or tangled in the propellers of some boat. It’s a scourge and we have no enforcement on those high seas or very little enforcement, I should say, occasionally someone’s military ship goes through it and you can check on who’s who and what’s happening and you can certainly mark what ships are there fishing.

CURWOOD: So, we’re overfishing. Talk to me about the climate and your concerns about climate change.

KERRY: We face a massive challenge of dealing with climate refugees. The prime minister of the Fiji Islands, I just met with him the other day at an event in California where he pointed out that there are literally taking refugees from other islands, and they themselves are now planning how to move, where can they go to be safe. They are going to lose their nation state which is these islands. Increased fires, increased floods, more moisture in the air because of the warming of the ocean, more intensity in the storms because of that moisture we’re seeing it in the hurricanes. We’ve seen last year just three hurricanes – Harvey, Irma and Maria – cost the taxpayer $265 billion dollars, one third of the Defense Department budget for a year. Think of that. Three storms and it’s going to get worse, so people who sit there and say well we can’t afford to do something or we can’t it’s crazy, it is far more expensive to do nothing or to do very little than to actually step up and try to deal with the problem of climate change. And why? Because the answer to the problem of climate change is energy. Energy policy. We have the solutions. Solar today is less expensive than coal, but people are still using coal. We shouldn’t be. We can’t be using coal because it’s the dirtiest fuel there is, and we’ve got to move off of coal on to the alternative renewables. They’re there, and we need the leadership that does it and regrettably this president and his administration and not only not dealing with climate but they’re lifting the restrictions we have on air quality because of automobiles. They’re lifting the restrictions we had on coal dust going into water, into rivers and lakes. They’re putting it back. God knows, I don’t know who the constituency is for this, but that’s what they’re doing. Well…you do know the constituents. It’s coal companies and it’s big corporations and so forth, and we have to fight back against it.

CURWOOD: Your book, which you call “Every Day is Extra” could almost be about the climate itself, that every day we wait to deal with it.

KERRY: Well, it is about the climate. The last chapter of my book, which I’m very partial to, it’s the wrap up chapter, is called protecting the planet, and I deal with my efforts to get the Paris agreement passed. I mean, I went to China, brought the Chinese into the agreement with us because I watched the failure in Copenhagen four years earlier where it fell apart because China was leading the less developed countries in a different direction. China and the United States were able to lead the world to make an agreement, that’s what we have to get back to. Instead of bashing China every day with new sanctions – now there are problems with China’s management of the market – I’m not ignoring that but I think there’s a better way to deal with it than the current administration.

CURWOOD: So, let’s drill down on that. I believe over the years I’ve seen you just about every of the major climate conferences. What inspired you to think that you could find a way to cut a deal with the Chinese? Because between us and the Chinese, what, it’s 40, almost 50 percent of the world’s emissions…

KERRY: Well, sort of just shy of 50. It’s about 45 percent.

CURWOOD: Yeah, so what inspired you to think that there would be a way that you could get them to join us?

KERRY: Because I believe in logic. I believe in common sense, and I believe in the power of persuasion, and I believed that it was in China’s interest. I mean it’s hard to get countries to do things that they never perceive are in their interest, but I thought it was in their interest because I had spent enough time working with lower level Chinese bureaucrats on the subject of climate. I knew what they were thinking and I knew they were hearing from their own constituencies. I mean China is a one-party system, it’s authoritarian, yes, but it’s not immune to citizen opinion, and it’s quite amazing really the way, in fact, it filters up through the mayors and the governors and into the ether of their politics. So, I was hearing from people that Chinese were increasingly upset with the quality of their water. They’re upset with the quality of their air. We were posting the daily air quality on the embassy in Beijing, and people were tuning in like crazy to our embassy to find out what the air quality was, and the Chinese didn’t love it, but we did it. It had an impact, so they wanted to take care of their people. It’s that simple. They really knew, but they did it because politically it’s survival. They knew it was important to their ability to be able to meet the people’s interests, which is basic politics. We haven’t been doing that in America by the way. People’s interests are not being met in our own country, and that’s why our democracy is in trouble. That’s a whole different diversion will go there in this instance.

CURWOOD: Well, but do go there.

KERRY: It has to do with whether we get things done on the environment, whether we hold people accountable to what’s happening now. The fact is that I believe people, individuals and kids here at UMass or at any college in this country are the key to being able to hold politicians accountable. And you can’t do it sitting on your butt pretending somebody else is going to do it or it does not involve you. Everybody has to be involved in this. We have to go out and organize and make a difference. So, why do I say this with such conviction? I’ll tell you why. Because we did it in 1970. In 1970, Rachel Carson had inspired many of us with the Silent Spring”. We had the Woburn waste dump with toxic waste sites, we had a river, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio would light on fire literally, and people said I don’t want to live next to this, I don’t want to get cancer from the water I drink, I don’t want to get emphysema or heart disease from the air quality.

So, we brought 20 million Americans out of their homes on one single day, Earth Day April 22, 1970, and we translated that into a political movement. We targeted the 12 worst votes in the United States Congress House of Representatives. Seven of the 12 lost their seats in the ’72 election. And guess what? Boom, we had the Clean Air Act passed, the Safe Drinking Water, the Marine Mammal Protection, the Coastal Zone Management. The EPA was created and Richard Nixon signed it into law. Why? Because it was a voting issue. That’s what we have to do today folks. There’s no mystery to how we reclaim the direction and future of our country. It’s by going out and working in our democracy, make it work. Last time in 2016 when Trump was elected, 54.2 percent of eligible voters came out to vote, 54.2. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it was 62.3 percent. That’s the difference. The story of what we have today is not the people who did vote. It’s people who didn’t vote, and so I’m just saying to you we can change this but we have to do it now because the clock is ticking.

CURWOOD: John Kerry is a former Secretary of State, Candidate for President, a five-term United States Senator for Massachusetts, and his new book is called Every Day is Extra. We’ll have the rest of our conversation with Secretary Kerry next week, and you can find the full interview on our website, loe.org.

Fires ravaged parts of Southern California in December 2017, unusually late for fire season

HOST: Steve Curwood, Public Radio International, Living on Earth.

DATE: January 12, 2018, WEB-SITE: www.loe.org

CURWOOD: From PRI, and the Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – tells us America suffered a record amount of damage in 2017 from natural disasters, with a tab of more than 306 billion dollars. And to put that 306 billion in perspective, consider that it’s more than the interest on the US national debt, and twice the federal budget for health, Medicare, and education. Extreme weather hit almost every state this year: wildfires out west, Hurricanes Irma, Maria and Harvey in the South, and disasters that got less press coverage but still cost of over a billion dollars — events like the Minnesota hailstorm and drought in the mid-west. Here to discuss these steep costs and how they relate to climate disruptions is Kendra Pierre-Louis from the New York Times Climate Desk. Welcome to Living on Earth Kendra!

PIERRE-LOUIS: Thanks, Steve. I’m so glad to be here.

CURWOOD: So, 2017 was only the third hottest year on record in the US, but at 306 billion dollars, disaster damage broke all records.
PIERRE-LOUIS: When you go back to 1980 when they first started keeping records, there were only 3 natural disasters that topped a billion dollars. This year it was 16. The only other year where there are 16 events that topped a billion dollars was in 2011. So what we’re seeing is it’s not just that we’re having severe weather events, we’re having more of them.

CURWOOD: So, $306 billion dollars. Just how unprecedented is this figure record-wise compared to previous years?
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yes, it’s record-breaking. The next closest disaster year was in 2005, and that was the year of Hurricane Katrina and that was $91 billion dollars less.

CURWOOD: Now, of course, we’re not saying that climate caused all of this, but climate amplifies these disasters.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Right. We can definitely say that climate change amplified these disasters, and that we can see especially when it comes to, like, the western fires or the hurricanes that happen this year, we can definitely see the fingerprints of climate change. Researchers found that when it came to Hurricane Harvey that 38 percent of the rain can be attributed to climate change. That means in some places where as much as 50 percent of the rain fell, almost 20 of those inches you can blame on climate change.

The Tubes Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California’s history, destroyed parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake Counties in the Northern part of the state.

CURWOOD: Now, what kinds of natural disasters account for the largest portion of these costs?
PIERRE-LOUIS: Hurricanes account for the largest portion of these costs, but it was also the most costly fire year on record as well. And then when you start digging into the data it’s just the sheer number of incidences. When you go back to 1980 when they first started keeping records, there were only three natural disasters that topped a billion dollars. This year it was 16. The only other year where there were 16 events that topped a billion dollars was in 2011. So, what we’re saying is it’s not just that we’re having severe weather events. We’re having more of them.

CURWOOD: It seems that there are many disasters that cost a billion dollars or more that didn’t surface in the national consciousness in a big way this year, but nonetheless had a fairly staggering impact collectively. Talk to me about some of those.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Sure, you have the Missouri and Arkansas floods and severe weather. That was $1.7 billion dollars. You have hail storms and high winds in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee…that was $2.6 billion dollars. One of the ones that I think did not get a ton of attention was the drought, for example, in South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. And droughts are really tricky because there are so slow moving that we don’t notice them. But for the farmers who it impacted, a lot of them like cattle ranchers, it caused them a tremendous lot of financial loss.

CURWOOD: Talk to me a bit more about how climate change may have aggravated all this damage.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yes, so it was unusually warm across the country. NOAA came out with that release the same day they came out with the disaster data, and so it’s a threat multiplier. A really good example is the hurricanes. The oceans were warmer than usual, so that warm water fed the hurricanes. The wildfires out west, California was wetter in the winter and then it was really really dry, so all of that moisture created a ton of grass that grew really quickly, then the grass died off because it was so dry and then when the fire started it fed on all of that dry grass, and so that was all amplified by climate change.

A hailstorm in Minnesota racked up $2.4 billion in damage for the state.

CURWOOD: And how does 2017 figure on warming … on the warming record?
PIERRE-LOUIS: It’s the third warmest year in the United States on record. The global data isn’t out yet, but it should be out next week.

CURWOOD: So, things are really heating up.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yeah, the Earth has a fever.

CURWOOD: How are insurance companies dealing with this? How much of the damage are they paying for?
PIERRE-LOUIS: A lot. This was a very expensive insurance year. It was the most expensive disaster year on record for insurers according to Munich RE, one of the world’s largest reinsurers. They’re recently the insurers of insurance companies. A lot of it was fueled by the disasters in United States, but there was also significant flooding in Asia. Obviously, what they’re going to do is they’re going to start passing those costs on to people. So, if you’re living in places that are at high risk for flooding or high risk for fires, you’re going to end up seeing increased costs because that’s the only way that they’re doing it. The one exception is in Florida because a lot of Florida flooding insurance and hurricane insurance is backed by the federal government. So, actually taxpayers are on the hook for those costs, and so there’s going to be sort of a reckoning when it comes to Florida about how they handle the insurance.

CURWOOD: Beyond the bottom line, what kind of toll is this taking on people’s psychological well-being?
PIERRE-LOUIS: There was a study that basically suggested that when these kinds of disasters happens, it’s actually really psychologically traumatic because not only do you lose your home in many cases, but you also lose your social connections, you don’t have your neighbors, you don’t have this breadth of support system. How you’ll deal with it really depends on whether it’s the first time you’ve gone through this or if it’s multiple occurrences. But basically it’s really traumatic and that’s ignoring, for example, the death toll rate. Like, if you’ve lost a loved one in one of these disasters that’s obviously going to be even permeate even further.

CURWOOD: So, does it get worse the more times you go through it or do you become more resilient…you say, ‘Oh all right, here it is again.’
PIERRE-LOUIS: It seems like people get worse. The one researcher that I talked to that looked at the flooding in Lafayette, I believe in 2016, said that after the rains happened in Lafayette the children whenever it rained a little bit too hard, the children would freak out. They really thought they were going to lose their homes again, they thought the floods were coming back. They really didn’t know how to deal with it.

CURWOOD: Kendra, what’s the lesson that we should be taking from this?
PIERRE-LOUIS: The lesson is two-fold. The first is that we should be taking steps to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that we’re releasing into the atmosphere so we can stave off the worst effects of these natural hazards. The other thing is we need to go deep into planning for the future, which is to accept that these kinds of occurrences are more likely to happen. When you look at Harvey in particular, we have people who are moving into flood zones, moving into places that were designed to flood and so it’s hard to say that that’s natural, right? We need to think really through in terms of where we are putting our communities and how we’re planning our communities, so that we are more resilient when these kinds of weather events happen.

CURWOOD: Kendra Pierre-Louis is a Climate Desk reporter for The New York Times. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Thanks so much for having me.