October 26, 2023 • 35 mins
Scientists say climate change is accelerating, but their voices are getting drowned out. Might using the drier while doing laundry be counterintuitive, or helpful, in slowing climate change. We also dig into the effectiveness of traffic cameras and Gen Z's relationship with live sports. Lara Williams, David Fickling, Justin Fox, and Adam Minter join. Amy Morris hosts.
Transcript:
00:01Speaker 1
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. On this week's show, we'll look at what's better for the planet running the dryer or using a clothesline. The answer might surprise you. Plus, since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic deaths in the US have risen sharply. What will it take to get those numbers back down? And finally, if Taylor Swift can't bring gen Z to the NFL, who can? But we begin with the heat. The global temperature continues to rise and scientists are beside themselves. Officials from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say this past July was the hottest month for the Earth on record. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson certainly is self evident that the Earth is heating up. And what we find is that July of this year the temperatures are the hottest ever on record, and last month was the hottest September on record by far. This past June the warmest June ever recorded. Yeah, we're seeing the trend. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams, who covers climate change, and scientists are using some pretty unscientific language to describe the temperatures that they're seeing. If your column is any indication, Laura, what have you heard? Yeah, so we've had dobsmackingly bananas. We've had astounding, staggering and nerving, bewildering, flabber dusting, dusting, distrioting, dobsmacking. Scientists have been really, really surprised by the kind of the level of heat that we saw in September compared to previous records. It is a bit alarming that they seem so surprised by this because they've been calling attention to climate change and climate change issues and the effects for years. Why did this catch them so off guard? Yeah, it's just because it's half a degree celsius higher than the previous record in twenty twenty, and so when we see these records getting broken, they're not usually broken by that margin. And so it is a kind of market in Greece, and it looks like it could be. Some are saying an acceleration in the rate of global woman which would be worry. Yeah, I wondered was this an outlier, was just this is a one time thing. Is there's something that caused it specifically, or are we seeing an acceleration. It's going to just get hotter and hotter and hotter in the next few years. So that's something that scientists are debating. So there are two camps of scientists. The first camp and I spoke to sociologists and he'd kind of terms these guys accelerationists, and they are concerned that this is an acceleration. Basically, what we've seen, particularly this year, is there are these sulfur dioxide emissions which are comes from like crew like cruise ships and you know, ships like taking all our stuff across the oceans, and they've cleaned up their act and so we're seeing way fewer aerosols being emitted into the atmosphere. So that's a good t
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. On this week's show,
we'll look at what's better for the planet running the
dryer or using a clothesline. The answer might surprise you. Plus,
since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic deaths in the
US have risen sharply. What will it take to get
those numbers back down? And finally, if Taylor Swift can't
(00:36):
bring gen Z to the NFL, who can? But we
begin with the heat. The global temperature continues to rise
and scientists are beside themselves. Officials from NASA and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say this past July was
the hottest month for the Earth on record. NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Certainly is self evident that the Earth is heating up.
And what we find is that July of this year
the temperatures are the hottest ever on record.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And last month was the hottest September on record by far.
This past June the warmest June ever recorded. Yeah, we're
seeing the trend. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams,
who covers climate change, and scientists are using some pretty
unscientific language to describe the temperatures that they're seeing. If
your column is any indication, Laura, what have you heard?
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, so we've had dobsmackingly bananas. We've had astounding, staggering
and nerving, bewildering, flabber dusting, dusting, distrioting, dobsmacking. Scientists have
been really, really surprised by the kind of the level
of heat that we saw in September compared to previous records.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It is a bit alarming that they seem so surprised
by this because they've been calling attention to climate change
and climate change issues and the effects for years. Why
did this catch them so off guard?
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, it's just because it's half a degree celsius higher
than the previous record in twenty twenty, and so when
we see these records getting broken, they're not usually broken
by that margin. And so it is a kind of
market in Greece, and it looks like it could be.
Some are saying an acceleration in the rate of global
(02:30):
woman which would be worry.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I wondered was this an outlier, was just this
is a one time thing. Is there's something that caused
it specifically, or are we seeing an acceleration. It's going
to just get hotter and hotter and hotter in the
next few years.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
So that's something that scientists are debating. So there are
two camps of scientists. The first camp and I spoke
to sociologists and he'd kind of terms these guys accelerationists,
and they are concerned that this is an acceleration. Basically,
(03:08):
what we've seen, particularly this year, is there are these
sulfur dioxide emissions which are comes from like crew like
cruise ships and you know, ships like taking all our
stuff across the oceans, and they've cleaned up their act
and so we're seeing way fewer aerosols being emitted into
(03:31):
the atmosphere. So that's a good thing for our health.
But those aerosols have historically served to mass human induced
climate change because they reflect the Sun's heats back into space,
and so the fewer thing fewer of those that we have,
the more solar radiation reaches the earth surface. The scientists
(03:51):
that think that we've seen an acceleration point to that
trend of you know, sulfur emissions going down, and point
to the trend of you know, these these huge temperature
records that we've seen over the past few months and
say that it could be an acceleration.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Now, I would argue that.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
The other team of scientists, the observationists, are right in
that this is just you know, it's a few data points,
and there's there's lots of things that could be making this.
You know, this the Earth a lot warmer right now,
a lot of temporary things. So of the September that
(04:34):
we've just seen was one point seventy five degrees celsius
warmer than pre industrial temperatures.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Now that's very scary. Number.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
One point two degrees celsius of that we know is
down to US burning fossil fuels. The remaining zero point
five degrees celsius or so is due to with a
combination of different factors, and so it could be aerosols,
but it should also be the fact that we are
in an l Nino cason, which is a naturally occurring
climate pattern that warms global temperatures. It should also be that,
(05:05):
you know, there was this huge underwater volcano which held
an immense plume of water vapor, which is a greenhouse
gas into the atmosphere last year, and that would be
enough to temporarily elevate global temperatures for a few years.
It would be partly aerosols, and it should partly be
the fact that we'll see we've got we've had reduced
(05:26):
ice at the poles this year. So the more dark
sea that's exposed, the more heat that's absorbed by the water.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh, there's a lot there.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But no matter which side they're on, whether they believe
that this is an acceleration or they believe this is
just par for the course, the observationists, if you will,
is there a new sense of urgency?
Speaker 6 (05:49):
Now?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Well, I think that.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
There's always a sense of urgency, and.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
I you know, whether it's an acceleration or not, the
overwhelming trend is that the Earth is just in warmer
and that we are still not doing enough to combat
that warming. And so if it weights people up and
is a reminder that we actually need to, you know,
(06:19):
take some severe action to stop this trend, then I
guess that, yeah, there could be a call for.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
A renewed sense of urgency.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The urgency was needed all along, but yeah, I suppose
that this would be a weight of call.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
We are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams about
the quote gob smackingly Banana's heat, as scientists describe it,
and as it's listed in your column on the Bloomberg terminal. Laura,
it was a great read, very interesting to see how
they are using terms that you might you might hear
among the laypersons such as myself, you don't usually expect
(06:57):
to hear from people who study this for a loving
What do they believe this could mean for the coming
winter months. Are we going to see a milder than
usual winter or because it's an extreme, where we going
to see a colder winter.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
That's a good question, and I guess we'll find out
when the data comes out, But I think for now,
October is looking to be warmer than average. And I
would say that with you know the fact that we're
in an El Nino that tends to make things warmer.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
It actually tends to make parts of.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
The world, So I think Europe might be might be
CNA holder slightly tolder winter if their only pattern holds true.
But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if we saw a
warmer than average October and November.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So there may be some disagreement about what these temperature
trends are telling us right now among signs, but they
do agree on one thing, and that there's an issue
with political will. There isn't enough of it. Where does
that stand?
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Yeah, so you know, I would say that the fissure
between science and political will is huge. We need to
be deterbinizing with farmer urgency. So according to the website
the Climate Actioning Tractor, which takes stock of all of
the promises and policies of countries around the world, and
(08:28):
then not a single country in the world is taking
action that's compatible with limiting warm into one point five
degree celsius above pre industrial temperatures. The UK has rolled
backs and that zero tardets. Germany's approved bringing toll fired
power plants back in line over the winter. US oil
production is running at an all time high. It's not
really how you'd expect country is reacting to climate crisis
(08:53):
to be acting.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is that in part because of the geopolitical climate that
we are dealing with right now, what's going on in
uk and now what's going on in the Middle East,
and what it's going to mean for heating fuel being
shipped out to those areas.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Yeah, I think, I think definitely the geobilistal you know,
environment is not helping. And we've also got a you know,
really high inflation, which is you know, stretching people's wallets,
and whether we like it or not, we have to
admit that, you know, sometimes net zero action is going
to cost people more in the in the short term.
(09:28):
In the long term, you'd hope that it would, you know,
eventually bills should come down. We rolled out renewables enough,
but certainly in the short term we're feeling in our wallets.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Have they been able to get any traction with this,
to get the attention of those lawmakers and those leaders
who would be able to take the lead on this,
or are they being shouted down, if you will, or
drowned out by what is going on in the rest
of the world and the really urgent need in the
rest of the world for things like heating fuel because
of what's happening in Ukraine and Israel.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
For sure, I think that at the moment, it definitely
feels like, you know, the scientists are being drowned out
just because of the urgency of these other prices. It
will be really interesting to see at COP twenty eight
in Dubai in December, what kind of happens there, you know,
whether we're able to kind of come around the table
and re you know, set our sights on more ambitious
(10:27):
climate action there and kind of you know, center ourselves
around that, or whether indeed, you know, the under end
conflicts kind of again makes it another kind of non event, all.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Right, and we're going to watch it with you. Thank
you so much, Laura for bringing us up to speed
on this.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Larah Williams a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She covers climate change
and coming up, we're going to continue this climate change conversation.
We'll talk about what's better for the earth. Using a
clothesline to dry your clothes or just run the dryer
might surprise you. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com.
The iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Okay, what's
better for the planet running your clothes dryer or hanging
your clothes on a line outside? It might depend. We
welcome Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling, who covers energy and commodities. David,
thank you for taking the time with us. Your column
starts with this intriguing thought when running the dryer maybe
(11:49):
actually be better for the planet. And this is all
about solar power changing how grids operate bring us up
to speed.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
Yeah, sure, well, I mean this literally was a dilemma
that confronted me a few weeks ago on a Saturday
afternoon when I'd just done a load of laundry and
it was a lovely day for putting laundry out on
the line. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny spring day.
I'm in Sydney, of course, so it's spring here at
the moment. But then I am someone who regularly writes
(12:19):
about energy, and so a thought occurred to me, which is,
if the weather is so good for the sun drying
clothes on the line. It's probably also very good for
powering solar panels, and Australia is one of the most
heavily solar rooftop solar dense places in the world. You know,
(12:43):
per capital, we have more solar panels than any other country.
And so of course what this means is, in the
same weather conditions, you're actually going to have a surge
of solar generation hitting the grid, which is possibly going
to be too much for the grid. I had a
look at the website of the grid operator and it
turned out that at that point the price of electricity
(13:04):
wholesale in the market was about minus seventy Australian dollars
about minus fifty US dollars per per meguar tower. So
it was a negative price there was. You know, normally,
obviously you have to pay for electricity, but this was
the opposite because there was so much solar hit hitting
the grid at this point that they were essentially the
(13:28):
market was prepared to pay people like me. Of course,
I was not actually going to get any money from
this because of the way bills are structured, but it
was prepared to pay users to take the electricity off
their hands. So this completely changes the calculus of it,
because if you want to have strong grids, and if
you want to have also a you know, a financially
(13:51):
viable renewables sector paying into the grid, you actually you
want to be running the dryer at the middle the
middle of the day. You don't want to be putting
the stuff on the line because you actually want these
imbalances in the grid to sort themselves out.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So the balance of power then in the most hyper
local energy infrastructure within your own home hyper local, that's
got to be a challenge because you have to pay
attention to that. You have to pay attention to how
much is hitting the grid.
Speaker 7 (14:20):
I mean, I should say hardly anyone is paying attention
to this, and there's several reasons for that. I've actually
I used to have pounds on my roof at my
current place. I only moved in about nine months ago,
so I don't actually have that at the moment, So
it doesn't make any difference to my electricity costs. I
pay the same tariff regardless of the time of day.
(14:42):
That makes no difference at all. In addition, in almost
every market that the wholesale price of electricity does not
reflect the retail price of electricity, and the only extent
to which it does is actually something that in a
lot of markets is very anachronistic. I can get a
I can get a an electricity tariff whereby it cost
(15:03):
me less to run appliances at night. I get a
cheap off peak tariff at night, and I'll get a
on peak tariff, particularly you know, at the peak in
the evening, it'll be the highest. Now, it's probably right
that it's highest in the evening, but actually night is
not really a time when you want to be making
it cheaper to get electricity, because in places like Australia
(15:26):
and other places. You know, California is actually the first
market that really saw this, and we've seen it in
Germany and other places as well. It's the middle of
the day when the sun is shining most brightly and
all those cellar panels are just pumping out electricity. That's
actually the time when you really need to fix some
of these imbalances that are happening in the grid.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
We are talking to Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about
how to manage power from the solar grid and how
sometimes running the clothes dryer could be good for the planet. Okay,
So David, would it be the up to the consumer
to adjust that imbalance that you were describing, or is
this just one of the growing pains that we're finding
(16:07):
as more places are converting to more renewable sources of energy.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
Is this this part of it, it's not going to
be really for the consumer to sort of out. It's
a hard thing for the consumers. Sort of the easiest
way you can you can fix it as a consumer,
but this will only apply to fairly affluent consumers. Certainly
people in Australia and California and Germany would apply. Is
of course, to attach a solar to a battery to
(16:32):
your solar system. The time the toughest time, well, the
two to toughest times for grids at the moment, or
of course, the middle of the day, which we were
talking about, and the evening the sun goes down. Everyone
gets home, they switch on appliances, air conditioning, televisions, you know,
or manner of things, and of course the solar that
(16:52):
was there in the middle of the day is no
longer there within your own home home solars, you know,
home system. If you attach a battery to it you
can be charging it in the middle of the day
and discharging it in the evening, and that that potentially
works quite well. But across the you know, across grids
as a whole, things much more ambitious need to be
(17:14):
done than that, and it's and it's a significant problem.
You know, we're seeing things like here in Australia, for instance,
there is a very big pumped pumped hydro project being
built at the moment, which essentially what happens is when
there is too much electricity in the middle of the day,
a load of water is pumped uphill to a lake
high up on a mountain just sort of southwest of Sydney,
(17:37):
and then during the evening, when all that electricity is needed,
then the water goes down through turbines like a standard
hydroectionri dam and it will do this day after day.
And there are lots of places, I think in California
the same thing applies. There are lots of places where
pump hydro is being used. And of course batteries as
well for dispatchable power will be you know, utility scale
(17:59):
batteries will be more active. But I think one of
the problems that we're facing over the coming years. Is
that the speed with which households are installing are installing
solar power is faster than the sort of utility scale
storage solutions can catch up. And dispatchable power, of course,
dispatchable power, by which I mean you can switch on
(18:19):
and off, you know, with the flick of a switch,
which of course is not the case with any renewable power,
also not really the case with is not the case
with nuclear either. With dispatchable power, you know, most of
it is fossil fossil fired, and that's a real problem
because of course we want to get rid of fossil
fossil fire electricity right now.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And so it sounds like the two big things that
need to be resolved would be managing the storage issue,
the battery, making sure that those can be not only
a portable but easy to acquire and quickly charged. And
the infrastructure as a whole.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
I mean one other solution, of course, which is again
a lot of this depends on having the right market
settings in place, and regulators I think in many ways
have been somewhat slow to catch up on some of
these things because it is all changing so very fast.
But of course one thing to bear in mind is
is we're seeing surging cells of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles
(19:23):
another thing that should be sucking up power in the
middle of the day and potentially could be used to
discharge electricity in the evening, but at the moment in
most markets there is very little regulation that would allow
people to do that, you know, so instead we're seeing
things like in South Australia, one of the states in
Australia which has a particularly high volume of solar. Basically,
(19:45):
the grid operator can switch off rooftop solar panels when
there is too much of it, which is something that's
possibly necessary to stop to stop stress on the grid.
But ideally you want to find ways to use it.
You don't want to be reducing the amount of zero
carbon power that you're producing. You want to be using
it more productively. So we're seeing a lot of these
(20:08):
teething pains at the moment.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
David, this is just fascinating. Thank you for taking the
time with us today.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
No, it's lovely to talk.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickleing covers energy and commodities. Don't
forget We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or
your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may you Morris Now. Since
the beginning of the pandemic, traffic depths in the US
have risen sharply, and during the high ight of the
pandemic shutdown, speeding related accidents actually increased. At the time,
Pamela Fisher of the Governor's Highway Safety Association explained, why.
Speaker 8 (21:10):
Fewer cars on the road, you should have fewer crashes.
But the behaviors that were happening out there. People were
seeing open highway, open roadways, local roads as well, not
just on highways, and they were driving at really crazy
speeds and engaging in other unsafe behaviors.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, it hasn't improved much since then. Preliminary numbers from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate forty six
twenty people died in accidents involving motor vehicles in twenty
twenty two. That's down just a bit from twenty twenty one,
but still eighteen percent more than in twenty nineteen. Let's
look at what's happening. Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox covers
(21:47):
Business and joins me, Now, Justin, you have voluminous amounts
of data and some really nifty helpful charts to kind
of guide us as to why all of this is happening.
And you were even able to use this information to
a limit. They some of the candidates for what is
causing this? But what is the problem?
Speaker 6 (22:05):
Well, yeah, I mean when you bring this up that
traffic fatalities are up in the US, and there's been
a big jump since twenty nineteen, but they'd already started
rising around I don't know, twenty fifteen or so. And
a lot of times people will bring up smartphones or
just the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
But if you.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
Compare the US to other rich countries, I made a
chart of the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the UK.
None of the rest of them have had this stall
in the improvement in traffic fatalities like the US has.
There In all those countries, they've kept going down. In
the US, they stopped going down about a decade ago,
(22:46):
and they've really gone up significantly over the past few years. So, okay,
what's different about the US from these places? And one
thing that's been brought up is we have these gigantic
pickup trucks and SUVs that are you know, really safe
if you're in them and get it in a crash, but
not so great for people in the other cars, and
(23:08):
especially for pedestrians. I think there's some really big issues
with the really high bumper pickups and SUVs being extreme
pedestrian risk because they just you can't see what you're
doing as well. So there's some research on that and
the thought that maybe some percentage of the increase ten
percent something like that is caused by the bigger trucks,
(23:31):
and so that lame leaves Okay, well, what happened in
the US since twenty nineteen that didn't happen in other places.
And obviously it was this sort of national conflict rethinking
argument about the role of the police, you know, especially
in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Although obviously this
discussion been going on for longer, you can sort of
(23:54):
date it really coming to the fore to you know,
Ferguson back in which I think was the end of
two thousand and fourteen, and it if you look, you know,
there aren't great national statistics on police stops for traffic violations.
There's you know, there's a ole that the Bureau of
(24:16):
Justice Statistics does and they're definitely down a little bit.
But if you look at specific cities, it's pretty I mean,
San Francisco is the champion in the San Francisco Chronicle
was the first to report this a few weeks ago
that traffic stops are down ninety four percent in San
Francisco over the last eight years. But you find and
(24:39):
Seattle is almost that much. You find a lot of
other cities where they're down pretty significantly too.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Now you ascribe some of this, at least to that
sort of conflict between police and society what happened with
the killing of George Floyd during the height of the pandemic.
But could speed cameras, red light cameras, those types of
traffic cameras also be a factor. Where you have an
electronic eye versus a human eye keeping tabs on how
(25:06):
we are on the highway.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
Right, those are much more common in most of these
other countries that have had big, continued declines in traffic fatalities.
We have some in the US, not many speed cameras
outside a few big cities, a lot of red light cameras,
but actually fewer than there were a decade ago. And
that's something that there's been a lot of research done
(25:29):
on over the years that especially the speed cameras seem
to have a really pretty dramatic effect on reducing traffic fatalities.
And it's I mean, I knew I've written about them
before and I got lots of emails from people and
I got them again now that just Americans hate this idea,
and I think the one way to think about it
is we also a lot of these other countries are
(25:51):
kind of a little more reasonable about their speed limits,
like Germany or something. You can drive really fast on
the autobot in Germany. You just if you drive faster
and you're allowed, you are likely to get in trouble.
And I think the UK has been really the toughest
on this and has had a really amazing decline in
traffic fatalities. So yeah, it's like, Okay, we've dramatically cut
(26:14):
back on the kind of traffic enforcement that we mostly
do in the US, and at the same time, we're
still really reluctant to embrace this other way of doing
that has been pretty effective in other countries. It is,
I mean, I will and I haven't checked if Kevin
Newsom has signed it yet, but California has legislation that
the Assembly and the Senate passed that would at least
(26:37):
allow San Francisco and a few other cities to start
experimenting with speed cameras, and I mean there aren't like
New York has tons of both, and I think in
general they have been shown to be pretty effective in
making the city a lot safer than it used to be,
although again New York has had a pretty big drop,
you know, not like ninety percent, it's more like twenty
or forty or something in enforcement and an increase in
(26:59):
fatal accidents.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox
about these sharp rise in traffic related deaths and what
can be done about it. I want to get back
to the speed camera, the red light camera situation, because
you said something about how people just really aren't getting
behind it. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I
would cover local news local traffic issues, local neighborhood issues
(27:23):
in the Washington, DC area, If you are a driver
a motorist, no, you are not crazy one hundred percent
in love with those of the traffic cameras. But if
you were in a neighborhood, you know, take that driver
out of the car and put him in his living
room with the kids who are outside playing in the yard.
You want those traffic cameras in your neighborhood. I've talked
(27:44):
to many people who are actually lobbying, petitioning to get
a traffic camera in their neighborhood to slow people down.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Right, And that's like one reason why we have lots
in New York City, because drivers are in the minority
here and the people who are worried about getting hit
by drivers are in the majority exactly. But that's just
a really hard equation in a lot of the country.
And I mean, I do think there's some history of
the speed cameras being used by you know, small towns
(28:12):
in Texas to nab people without adequate warning. And because
Texas is one of the states that the legislatures outright
banned them. I think there are nine states that have
banned speed cameras and eight red light cameras, and then
most states just don't have any law permitting them and
therefore don't really have any But then they're like Maryland
has tons.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
I just think American motorists and I get it because
so many people are so dependent on their cars to
do everything in their lives. But American motorists are the
most entitled people in the world. Like when they're thinking
in car thought, sometimes when they get out of the
car and realize, oh, I live in a neighborhood with
that cars drive through, then they can change that. But
just the knee jerk reaction from people, you know, I
(28:56):
don't think the enforcement should be unreasonable, in the speed
limit should be reasonable, but yeah, why not have automated
enforcement rather? Because it has been shown pretty clearly. There
was a really interesting, very recent study done using data
from lyft and lift drivers in Florida where they could,
(29:17):
because of lift's location data, tell exactly how fast the
cars were going. They knew who all the drivers were,
and black drivers were significantly who were driving the exact
same speed as white drivers were significantly more likely to
be pulled over. And yeah, with speed cameras, you don't
have that. It's really it sort of Police jobs are
(29:39):
the kinds of jobs that are hard to hire people
for right now. I mean, across the economy, there's this
big shortage of young people. I mean, there's lots of
them doing it, but the demand, there's this big demand
and supply mismatch of especially young people coming into non
college degree requiring and police is one of them. And
(30:02):
so there's this sort of overall issue. And I just
think in a lot of cities people feel like, yeah,
do I really want to be a cop? In San Francisco,
it doesn't. They pay pretty well, but it doesn't seem
like a high status job, and all the police cars
are thirty years old, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Justin it is a great column. I recommend everybody check
it out. Thank you so much for taking the time
with us.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I n Amy Morris, it's.
Speaker 8 (30:31):
The problem makes me.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Actually, Taylor Swift isn't the problem for the NFL at all,
but she might not be enough either because for the
most part, gen Z couldn't care less about traditional sports.
I want to talk about this now with Bloomberg opinion
columnist Adam Mentor, he covers the Business of sports, and
he joins us, Now, Adam, what will it take besides
(30:53):
Taylor Swift for the NFL to win over gen Z?
Speaker 9 (30:57):
They've spent years worrying about this, and one of the
things they're finding is that no matter what they do, overall,
the interests of gen Z in their product and in
other pro sports traditional sports products is declining. So they're
looking and Taylor Swift, they hoped, would provide that a
little bit of and temporarily she has, but once she's gone,
(31:19):
they're looking for some way to fill that vacuum.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
So there was a little bit of a boost, but
that didn't last. Where does this indifference come from?
Speaker 9 (31:26):
You know, if you grew up like I did, you
sort of had your sports fandom passed on generationally. You
watched the football game on Sunday with Grandpa or you
watch it with dad, and then you went to school
and everybody was talking about what they watched on Sunday
with grandpa or dad or mom or whoever it was,
and maybe that was inspiration to go and join the
(31:47):
high school or elementary school football team. That's breaking down
because everybody has their own screen at home now, and
so you aren't getting what people who study this called
generational fandom. It's not being passed on any more. People
either have to find it on their own, they have
to find their own way of embracing football, baseball, hockey,
whatever it is, or they're just going to find other
(32:08):
ways to entertain themselves. And increasingly that's the case. And
it's a reason for panic for the NFL, the NHL,
and all the major sports leagues.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
So does this also impact say, the NCAA and those
leagues as well.
Speaker 9 (32:20):
Yes, and no. I mean yes in the sense that sure,
you know you're gonna learn to watch Alabama with your
parents who was an alum. But even so, you still
have your own screen that you can sit on the
couch and watch esports on. And we're finding that esports
are incredibly popular for gen z, you know, roughly aged
(32:41):
twenty six and younger. You know, then it used to
be that way. If you're sitting on the couch and
there's one TV in the house and it's tuned to
the Alabama game, you're watching the Alabama game, not somebody
playing you know, League of Legends, you know, with somebody
else in Hong Kong.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Is there a cultural or even economic impact that comes
from the indifference.
Speaker 9 (33:01):
Right now, we're seeing, you know, huge media rights deals.
For example, for the NFL. You know, the NFL is
has just started this year a multi billion dollar deal.
Amazon is paying a billion dollars a year to show
Thursday Night NFL games. That deal is going to last
for years. But you know gen Z is starting to
(33:22):
age into its prime earning years. And you know the companies,
the Googles, the ABC's, the espns, the ESPN, ABC are
the same. You know, as they start projecting out what
these media rights deals are going to be worth in
five or ten years, they're going to look at these
demographics and say, hey, wait a second. You know gen
Z isn't as interested in this stuff as the millennials
(33:42):
were or gen X was, and thus we're not going
to pay as much. So it is a long term
risk to their business models.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I was going to ask, how do you win over
the next generation, But it sounds like they don't really know.
They haven't figured that part out yet.
Speaker 9 (33:55):
Yeah, I mean that's the thing they're struggling. One of
the things that you hear the league say in the
network say, well, we have to meet the fans where
the fans are. Well, you know, that used to be
at the one television in the living or more or
at the stadium. It's not so easy now Now you
have to meet them on TikTok. You know, you have
to meet them on other social media sites. That gets harder.
(34:16):
Who's going to create the content that attracts them?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
You know.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
One of the things that the NFL is doing is
they're starting to hire influencers, gen z influencers, people who
are popular, you know, on these social media service.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
Is it working?
Speaker 9 (34:29):
You know, I don't think anybody can say yet. You know,
you're not going to see, certainly a Taylor Swift tight
bump from a well known influencer on TikTok, you know,
reflected in this week's TV ratings, but maybe long term
you will.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Mentor covers the business of sports
and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We're
produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find all of
these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as
a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Stay with us Today's top stories and global business headlines.
Just ahead, I may me Morris. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. On this week's show,
we'll look at what's better for the planet running the
dryer or using a clothesline. The answer might surprise you. Plus,
since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic deaths in the
US have risen sharply. What will it take to get
those numbers back down? And finally, if Taylor Swift can't
(00:36):
bring gen Z to the NFL, who can? But we
begin with the heat. The global temperature continues to rise
and scientists are beside themselves. Officials from NASA and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say this past July was
the hottest month for the Earth on record. NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Certainly is self evident that the Earth is heating up.
And what we find is that July of this year
the temperatures are the hottest ever on record.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And last month was the hottest September on record by far.
This past June the warmest June ever recorded. Yeah, we're
seeing the trend. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams,
who covers climate change, and scientists are using some pretty
unscientific language to describe the temperatures that they're seeing. If
your column is any indication, Laura, what have you heard?
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, so we've had dobsmackingly bananas. We've had astounding, staggering
and nerving, bewildering, flabber dusting, dusting, distrioting, dobsmacking. Scientists have
been really, really surprised by the kind of the level
of heat that we saw in September compared to previous records.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It is a bit alarming that they seem so surprised
by this because they've been calling attention to climate change
and climate change issues and the effects for years. Why
did this catch them so off guard?
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, it's just because it's half a degree celsius higher
than the previous record in twenty twenty, and so when
we see these records getting broken, they're not usually broken
by that margin. And so it is a kind of
market in Greece, and it looks like it could be.
Some are saying an acceleration in the rate of global
(02:30):
woman which would be worry.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, I wondered was this an outlier, was just this
is a one time thing. Is there's something that caused
it specifically, or are we seeing an acceleration. It's going
to just get hotter and hotter and hotter in the
next few years.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
So that's something that scientists are debating. So there are
two camps of scientists. The first camp and I spoke
to sociologists and he'd kind of terms these guys accelerationists,
and they are concerned that this is an acceleration. Basically,
(03:08):
what we've seen, particularly this year, is there are these
sulfur dioxide emissions which are comes from like crew like
cruise ships and you know, ships like taking all our
stuff across the oceans, and they've cleaned up their act
and so we're seeing way fewer aerosols being emitted into
(03:31):
the atmosphere. So that's a good thing for our health.
But those aerosols have historically served to mass human induced
climate change because they reflect the Sun's heats back into space,
and so the fewer thing fewer of those that we have,
the more solar radiation reaches the earth surface. The scientists
(03:51):
that think that we've seen an acceleration point to that
trend of you know, sulfur emissions going down, and point
to the trend of you know, these these huge temperature
records that we've seen over the past few months and
say that it could be an acceleration.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Now, I would argue that.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
The other team of scientists, the observationists, are right in
that this is just you know, it's a few data points,
and there's there's lots of things that could be making this.
You know, this the Earth a lot warmer right now,
a lot of temporary things. So of the September that
(04:34):
we've just seen was one point seventy five degrees celsius
warmer than pre industrial temperatures.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Now that's very scary. Number.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
One point two degrees celsius of that we know is
down to US burning fossil fuels. The remaining zero point
five degrees celsius or so is due to with a
combination of different factors, and so it could be aerosols,
but it should also be the fact that we are
in an l Nino cason, which is a naturally occurring
climate pattern that warms global temperatures. It should also be that,
(05:05):
you know, there was this huge underwater volcano which held
an immense plume of water vapor, which is a greenhouse
gas into the atmosphere last year, and that would be
enough to temporarily elevate global temperatures for a few years.
It would be partly aerosols, and it should partly be
the fact that we'll see we've got we've had reduced
(05:26):
ice at the poles this year. So the more dark
sea that's exposed, the more heat that's absorbed by the water.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh, there's a lot there.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But no matter which side they're on, whether they believe
that this is an acceleration or they believe this is
just par for the course, the observationists, if you will,
is there a new sense of urgency?
Speaker 6 (05:49):
Now?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Well, I think that.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
There's always a sense of urgency, and.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
I you know, whether it's an acceleration or not, the
overwhelming trend is that the Earth is just in warmer
and that we are still not doing enough to combat
that warming. And so if it weights people up and
is a reminder that we actually need to, you know,
(06:19):
take some severe action to stop this trend, then I
guess that, yeah, there could be a call for.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
A renewed sense of urgency.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The urgency was needed all along, but yeah, I suppose
that this would be a weight of call.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
We are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams about
the quote gob smackingly Banana's heat, as scientists describe it,
and as it's listed in your column on the Bloomberg terminal. Laura,
it was a great read, very interesting to see how
they are using terms that you might you might hear
among the laypersons such as myself, you don't usually expect
(06:57):
to hear from people who study this for a loving
What do they believe this could mean for the coming
winter months. Are we going to see a milder than
usual winter or because it's an extreme, where we going
to see a colder winter.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
That's a good question, and I guess we'll find out
when the data comes out, But I think for now,
October is looking to be warmer than average. And I
would say that with you know the fact that we're
in an El Nino that tends to make things warmer.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
It actually tends to make parts of.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
The world, So I think Europe might be might be
CNA holder slightly tolder winter if their only pattern holds true.
But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if we saw a
warmer than average October and November.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So there may be some disagreement about what these temperature
trends are telling us right now among signs, but they
do agree on one thing, and that there's an issue
with political will. There isn't enough of it. Where does
that stand?
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Yeah, so you know, I would say that the fissure
between science and political will is huge. We need to
be deterbinizing with farmer urgency. So according to the website
the Climate Actioning Tractor, which takes stock of all of
the promises and policies of countries around the world, and
(08:28):
then not a single country in the world is taking
action that's compatible with limiting warm into one point five
degree celsius above pre industrial temperatures. The UK has rolled
backs and that zero tardets. Germany's approved bringing toll fired
power plants back in line over the winter. US oil
production is running at an all time high. It's not
really how you'd expect country is reacting to climate crisis
(08:53):
to be acting.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is that in part because of the geopolitical climate that
we are dealing with right now, what's going on in
uk and now what's going on in the Middle East,
and what it's going to mean for heating fuel being
shipped out to those areas.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Yeah, I think, I think definitely the geobilistal you know,
environment is not helping. And we've also got a you know,
really high inflation, which is you know, stretching people's wallets,
and whether we like it or not, we have to
admit that, you know, sometimes net zero action is going
to cost people more in the in the short term.
(09:28):
In the long term, you'd hope that it would, you know,
eventually bills should come down. We rolled out renewables enough,
but certainly in the short term we're feeling in our wallets.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Have they been able to get any traction with this,
to get the attention of those lawmakers and those leaders
who would be able to take the lead on this,
or are they being shouted down, if you will, or
drowned out by what is going on in the rest
of the world and the really urgent need in the
rest of the world for things like heating fuel because
of what's happening in Ukraine and Israel.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
For sure, I think that at the moment, it definitely
feels like, you know, the scientists are being drowned out
just because of the urgency of these other prices. It
will be really interesting to see at COP twenty eight
in Dubai in December, what kind of happens there, you know,
whether we're able to kind of come around the table
and re you know, set our sights on more ambitious
(10:27):
climate action there and kind of you know, center ourselves
around that, or whether indeed, you know, the under end
conflicts kind of again makes it another kind of non event, all.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Right, and we're going to watch it with you. Thank
you so much, Laura for bringing us up to speed
on this.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Larah Williams a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She covers climate change
and coming up, we're going to continue this climate change conversation.
We'll talk about what's better for the earth. Using a
clothesline to dry your clothes or just run the dryer
might surprise you. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com.
The iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Okay, what's
better for the planet running your clothes dryer or hanging
your clothes on a line outside? It might depend. We
welcome Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling, who covers energy and commodities. David,
thank you for taking the time with us. Your column
starts with this intriguing thought when running the dryer maybe
(11:49):
actually be better for the planet. And this is all
about solar power changing how grids operate bring us up
to speed.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
Yeah, sure, well, I mean this literally was a dilemma
that confronted me a few weeks ago on a Saturday
afternoon when I'd just done a load of laundry and
it was a lovely day for putting laundry out on
the line. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny spring day.
I'm in Sydney, of course, so it's spring here at
the moment. But then I am someone who regularly writes
(12:19):
about energy, and so a thought occurred to me, which is,
if the weather is so good for the sun drying
clothes on the line. It's probably also very good for
powering solar panels, and Australia is one of the most
heavily solar rooftop solar dense places in the world. You know,
(12:43):
per capital, we have more solar panels than any other country.
And so of course what this means is, in the
same weather conditions, you're actually going to have a surge
of solar generation hitting the grid, which is possibly going
to be too much for the grid. I had a
look at the website of the grid operator and it
turned out that at that point the price of electricity
(13:04):
wholesale in the market was about minus seventy Australian dollars
about minus fifty US dollars per per meguar tower. So
it was a negative price there was. You know, normally,
obviously you have to pay for electricity, but this was
the opposite because there was so much solar hit hitting
the grid at this point that they were essentially the
(13:28):
market was prepared to pay people like me. Of course,
I was not actually going to get any money from
this because of the way bills are structured, but it
was prepared to pay users to take the electricity off
their hands. So this completely changes the calculus of it,
because if you want to have strong grids, and if
you want to have also a you know, a financially
(13:51):
viable renewables sector paying into the grid, you actually you
want to be running the dryer at the middle the
middle of the day. You don't want to be putting
the stuff on the line because you actually want these
imbalances in the grid to sort themselves out.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So the balance of power then in the most hyper
local energy infrastructure within your own home hyper local, that's
got to be a challenge because you have to pay
attention to that. You have to pay attention to how
much is hitting the grid.
Speaker 7 (14:20):
I mean, I should say hardly anyone is paying attention
to this, and there's several reasons for that. I've actually
I used to have pounds on my roof at my
current place. I only moved in about nine months ago,
so I don't actually have that at the moment, So
it doesn't make any difference to my electricity costs. I
pay the same tariff regardless of the time of day.
(14:42):
That makes no difference at all. In addition, in almost
every market that the wholesale price of electricity does not
reflect the retail price of electricity, and the only extent
to which it does is actually something that in a
lot of markets is very anachronistic. I can get a
I can get a an electricity tariff whereby it cost
(15:03):
me less to run appliances at night. I get a
cheap off peak tariff at night, and I'll get a
on peak tariff, particularly you know, at the peak in
the evening, it'll be the highest. Now, it's probably right
that it's highest in the evening, but actually night is
not really a time when you want to be making
it cheaper to get electricity, because in places like Australia
(15:26):
and other places. You know, California is actually the first
market that really saw this, and we've seen it in
Germany and other places as well. It's the middle of
the day when the sun is shining most brightly and
all those cellar panels are just pumping out electricity. That's
actually the time when you really need to fix some
of these imbalances that are happening in the grid.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
We are talking to Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about
how to manage power from the solar grid and how
sometimes running the clothes dryer could be good for the planet. Okay,
So David, would it be the up to the consumer
to adjust that imbalance that you were describing, or is
this just one of the growing pains that we're finding
(16:07):
as more places are converting to more renewable sources of energy.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
Is this this part of it, it's not going to
be really for the consumer to sort of out. It's
a hard thing for the consumers. Sort of the easiest
way you can you can fix it as a consumer,
but this will only apply to fairly affluent consumers. Certainly
people in Australia and California and Germany would apply. Is
of course, to attach a solar to a battery to
(16:32):
your solar system. The time the toughest time, well, the
two to toughest times for grids at the moment, or
of course, the middle of the day, which we were
talking about, and the evening the sun goes down. Everyone
gets home, they switch on appliances, air conditioning, televisions, you know,
or manner of things, and of course the solar that
(16:52):
was there in the middle of the day is no
longer there within your own home home solars, you know,
home system. If you attach a battery to it you
can be charging it in the middle of the day
and discharging it in the evening, and that that potentially
works quite well. But across the you know, across grids
as a whole, things much more ambitious need to be
(17:14):
done than that, and it's and it's a significant problem.
You know, we're seeing things like here in Australia, for instance,
there is a very big pumped pumped hydro project being
built at the moment, which essentially what happens is when
there is too much electricity in the middle of the day,
a load of water is pumped uphill to a lake
high up on a mountain just sort of southwest of Sydney,
(17:37):
and then during the evening, when all that electricity is needed,
then the water goes down through turbines like a standard
hydroectionri dam and it will do this day after day.
And there are lots of places, I think in California
the same thing applies. There are lots of places where
pump hydro is being used. And of course batteries as
well for dispatchable power will be you know, utility scale
(17:59):
batteries will be more active. But I think one of
the problems that we're facing over the coming years. Is
that the speed with which households are installing are installing
solar power is faster than the sort of utility scale
storage solutions can catch up. And dispatchable power, of course,
dispatchable power, by which I mean you can switch on
(18:19):
and off, you know, with the flick of a switch,
which of course is not the case with any renewable power,
also not really the case with is not the case
with nuclear either. With dispatchable power, you know, most of
it is fossil fossil fired, and that's a real problem
because of course we want to get rid of fossil
fossil fire electricity right now.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And so it sounds like the two big things that
need to be resolved would be managing the storage issue,
the battery, making sure that those can be not only
a portable but easy to acquire and quickly charged. And
the infrastructure as a whole.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
I mean one other solution, of course, which is again
a lot of this depends on having the right market
settings in place, and regulators I think in many ways
have been somewhat slow to catch up on some of
these things because it is all changing so very fast.
But of course one thing to bear in mind is
is we're seeing surging cells of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles
(19:23):
another thing that should be sucking up power in the
middle of the day and potentially could be used to
discharge electricity in the evening, but at the moment in
most markets there is very little regulation that would allow
people to do that, you know, so instead we're seeing
things like in South Australia, one of the states in
Australia which has a particularly high volume of solar. Basically,
(19:45):
the grid operator can switch off rooftop solar panels when
there is too much of it, which is something that's
possibly necessary to stop to stop stress on the grid.
But ideally you want to find ways to use it.
You don't want to be reducing the amount of zero
carbon power that you're producing. You want to be using
it more productively. So we're seeing a lot of these
(20:08):
teething pains at the moment.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
David, this is just fascinating. Thank you for taking the
time with us today.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
No, it's lovely to talk.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickleing covers energy and commodities. Don't
forget We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or
your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may you Morris Now. Since
the beginning of the pandemic, traffic depths in the US
have risen sharply, and during the high ight of the
pandemic shutdown, speeding related accidents actually increased. At the time,
Pamela Fisher of the Governor's Highway Safety Association explained, why.
Speaker 8 (21:10):
Fewer cars on the road, you should have fewer crashes.
But the behaviors that were happening out there. People were
seeing open highway, open roadways, local roads as well, not
just on highways, and they were driving at really crazy
speeds and engaging in other unsafe behaviors.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, it hasn't improved much since then. Preliminary numbers from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate forty six
twenty people died in accidents involving motor vehicles in twenty
twenty two. That's down just a bit from twenty twenty one,
but still eighteen percent more than in twenty nineteen. Let's
look at what's happening. Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox covers
(21:47):
Business and joins me, Now, Justin, you have voluminous amounts
of data and some really nifty helpful charts to kind
of guide us as to why all of this is happening.
And you were even able to use this information to
a limit. They some of the candidates for what is
causing this? But what is the problem?
Speaker 6 (22:05):
Well, yeah, I mean when you bring this up that
traffic fatalities are up in the US, and there's been
a big jump since twenty nineteen, but they'd already started
rising around I don't know, twenty fifteen or so. And
a lot of times people will bring up smartphones or
just the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
But if you.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
Compare the US to other rich countries, I made a
chart of the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the UK.
None of the rest of them have had this stall
in the improvement in traffic fatalities like the US has.
There In all those countries, they've kept going down. In
the US, they stopped going down about a decade ago,
(22:46):
and they've really gone up significantly over the past few years. So, okay,
what's different about the US from these places? And one
thing that's been brought up is we have these gigantic
pickup trucks and SUVs that are you know, really safe
if you're in them and get it in a crash, but
not so great for people in the other cars, and
(23:08):
especially for pedestrians. I think there's some really big issues
with the really high bumper pickups and SUVs being extreme
pedestrian risk because they just you can't see what you're
doing as well. So there's some research on that and
the thought that maybe some percentage of the increase ten
percent something like that is caused by the bigger trucks,
(23:31):
and so that lame leaves Okay, well, what happened in
the US since twenty nineteen that didn't happen in other places.
And obviously it was this sort of national conflict rethinking
argument about the role of the police, you know, especially
in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Although obviously this
discussion been going on for longer, you can sort of
(23:54):
date it really coming to the fore to you know,
Ferguson back in which I think was the end of
two thousand and fourteen, and it if you look, you know,
there aren't great national statistics on police stops for traffic violations.
There's you know, there's a ole that the Bureau of
(24:16):
Justice Statistics does and they're definitely down a little bit.
But if you look at specific cities, it's pretty I mean,
San Francisco is the champion in the San Francisco Chronicle
was the first to report this a few weeks ago
that traffic stops are down ninety four percent in San
Francisco over the last eight years. But you find and
(24:39):
Seattle is almost that much. You find a lot of
other cities where they're down pretty significantly too.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Now you ascribe some of this, at least to that
sort of conflict between police and society what happened with
the killing of George Floyd during the height of the pandemic.
But could speed cameras, red light cameras, those types of
traffic cameras also be a factor. Where you have an
electronic eye versus a human eye keeping tabs on how
(25:06):
we are on the highway.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
Right, those are much more common in most of these
other countries that have had big, continued declines in traffic fatalities.
We have some in the US, not many speed cameras
outside a few big cities, a lot of red light cameras,
but actually fewer than there were a decade ago. And
that's something that there's been a lot of research done
(25:29):
on over the years that especially the speed cameras seem
to have a really pretty dramatic effect on reducing traffic fatalities.
And it's I mean, I knew I've written about them
before and I got lots of emails from people and
I got them again now that just Americans hate this idea,
and I think the one way to think about it
is we also a lot of these other countries are
(25:51):
kind of a little more reasonable about their speed limits,
like Germany or something. You can drive really fast on
the autobot in Germany. You just if you drive faster
and you're allowed, you are likely to get in trouble.
And I think the UK has been really the toughest
on this and has had a really amazing decline in
traffic fatalities. So yeah, it's like, Okay, we've dramatically cut
(26:14):
back on the kind of traffic enforcement that we mostly
do in the US, and at the same time, we're
still really reluctant to embrace this other way of doing
that has been pretty effective in other countries. It is,
I mean, I will and I haven't checked if Kevin
Newsom has signed it yet, but California has legislation that
the Assembly and the Senate passed that would at least
(26:37):
allow San Francisco and a few other cities to start
experimenting with speed cameras, and I mean there aren't like
New York has tons of both, and I think in
general they have been shown to be pretty effective in
making the city a lot safer than it used to be,
although again New York has had a pretty big drop,
you know, not like ninety percent, it's more like twenty
or forty or something in enforcement and an increase in
(26:59):
fatal accidents.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox
about these sharp rise in traffic related deaths and what
can be done about it. I want to get back
to the speed camera, the red light camera situation, because
you said something about how people just really aren't getting
behind it. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I
would cover local news local traffic issues, local neighborhood issues
(27:23):
in the Washington, DC area, If you are a driver
a motorist, no, you are not crazy one hundred percent
in love with those of the traffic cameras. But if
you were in a neighborhood, you know, take that driver
out of the car and put him in his living
room with the kids who are outside playing in the yard.
You want those traffic cameras in your neighborhood. I've talked
(27:44):
to many people who are actually lobbying, petitioning to get
a traffic camera in their neighborhood to slow people down.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Right, And that's like one reason why we have lots
in New York City, because drivers are in the minority
here and the people who are worried about getting hit
by drivers are in the majority exactly. But that's just
a really hard equation in a lot of the country.
And I mean, I do think there's some history of
the speed cameras being used by you know, small towns
(28:12):
in Texas to nab people without adequate warning. And because
Texas is one of the states that the legislatures outright
banned them. I think there are nine states that have
banned speed cameras and eight red light cameras, and then
most states just don't have any law permitting them and
therefore don't really have any But then they're like Maryland
has tons.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
I just think American motorists and I get it because
so many people are so dependent on their cars to
do everything in their lives. But American motorists are the
most entitled people in the world. Like when they're thinking
in car thought, sometimes when they get out of the
car and realize, oh, I live in a neighborhood with
that cars drive through, then they can change that. But
just the knee jerk reaction from people, you know, I
(28:56):
don't think the enforcement should be unreasonable, in the speed
limit should be reasonable, but yeah, why not have automated
enforcement rather? Because it has been shown pretty clearly. There
was a really interesting, very recent study done using data
from lyft and lift drivers in Florida where they could,
(29:17):
because of lift's location data, tell exactly how fast the
cars were going. They knew who all the drivers were,
and black drivers were significantly who were driving the exact
same speed as white drivers were significantly more likely to
be pulled over. And yeah, with speed cameras, you don't
have that. It's really it sort of Police jobs are
(29:39):
the kinds of jobs that are hard to hire people
for right now. I mean, across the economy, there's this
big shortage of young people. I mean, there's lots of
them doing it, but the demand, there's this big demand
and supply mismatch of especially young people coming into non
college degree requiring and police is one of them. And
(30:02):
so there's this sort of overall issue. And I just
think in a lot of cities people feel like, yeah,
do I really want to be a cop? In San Francisco,
it doesn't. They pay pretty well, but it doesn't seem
like a high status job, and all the police cars
are thirty years old, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Justin it is a great column. I recommend everybody check
it out. Thank you so much for taking the time
with us.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I n Amy Morris, it's.
Speaker 8 (30:31):
The problem makes me.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Actually, Taylor Swift isn't the problem for the NFL at all,
but she might not be enough either because for the
most part, gen Z couldn't care less about traditional sports.
I want to talk about this now with Bloomberg opinion
columnist Adam Mentor, he covers the Business of sports, and
he joins us, Now, Adam, what will it take besides
(30:53):
Taylor Swift for the NFL to win over gen Z?
Speaker 9 (30:57):
They've spent years worrying about this, and one of the
things they're finding is that no matter what they do, overall,
the interests of gen Z in their product and in
other pro sports traditional sports products is declining. So they're
looking and Taylor Swift, they hoped, would provide that a
little bit of and temporarily she has, but once she's gone,
(31:19):
they're looking for some way to fill that vacuum.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
So there was a little bit of a boost, but
that didn't last. Where does this indifference come from?
Speaker 9 (31:26):
You know, if you grew up like I did, you
sort of had your sports fandom passed on generationally. You
watched the football game on Sunday with Grandpa or you
watch it with dad, and then you went to school
and everybody was talking about what they watched on Sunday
with grandpa or dad or mom or whoever it was,
and maybe that was inspiration to go and join the
(31:47):
high school or elementary school football team. That's breaking down
because everybody has their own screen at home now, and
so you aren't getting what people who study this called
generational fandom. It's not being passed on any more. People
either have to find it on their own, they have
to find their own way of embracing football, baseball, hockey,
whatever it is, or they're just going to find other
(32:08):
ways to entertain themselves. And increasingly that's the case. And
it's a reason for panic for the NFL, the NHL,
and all the major sports leagues.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
So does this also impact say, the NCAA and those
leagues as well.
Speaker 9 (32:20):
Yes, and no. I mean yes in the sense that sure,
you know you're gonna learn to watch Alabama with your
parents who was an alum. But even so, you still
have your own screen that you can sit on the
couch and watch esports on. And we're finding that esports
are incredibly popular for gen z, you know, roughly aged
(32:41):
twenty six and younger. You know, then it used to
be that way. If you're sitting on the couch and
there's one TV in the house and it's tuned to
the Alabama game, you're watching the Alabama game, not somebody
playing you know, League of Legends, you know, with somebody
else in Hong Kong.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Is there a cultural or even economic impact that comes
from the indifference.
Speaker 9 (33:01):
Right now, we're seeing, you know, huge media rights deals.
For example, for the NFL. You know, the NFL is
has just started this year a multi billion dollar deal.
Amazon is paying a billion dollars a year to show
Thursday Night NFL games. That deal is going to last
for years. But you know gen Z is starting to
(33:22):
age into its prime earning years. And you know the companies,
the Googles, the ABC's, the espns, the ESPN, ABC are
the same. You know, as they start projecting out what
these media rights deals are going to be worth in
five or ten years, they're going to look at these
demographics and say, hey, wait a second. You know gen
Z isn't as interested in this stuff as the millennials
(33:42):
were or gen X was, and thus we're not going
to pay as much. So it is a long term
risk to their business models.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I was going to ask, how do you win over
the next generation, But it sounds like they don't really know.
They haven't figured that part out yet.
Speaker 9 (33:55):
Yeah, I mean that's the thing they're struggling. One of
the things that you hear the league say in the
network say, well, we have to meet the fans where
the fans are. Well, you know, that used to be
at the one television in the living or more or
at the stadium. It's not so easy now Now you
have to meet them on TikTok. You know, you have
to meet them on other social media sites. That gets harder.
(34:16):
Who's going to create the content that attracts them?
Speaker 5 (34:19):
You know.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
One of the things that the NFL is doing is
they're starting to hire influencers, gen z influencers, people who
are popular, you know, on these social media service.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
Is it working?
Speaker 9 (34:29):
You know, I don't think anybody can say yet. You know,
you're not going to see, certainly a Taylor Swift tight
bump from a well known influencer on TikTok, you know,
reflected in this week's TV ratings, but maybe long term
you will.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Mentor covers the business of sports
and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We're
produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find all of
these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as
a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Stay with us Today's top stories and global business headlines.
Just ahead, I may me Morris. This is Bloomberg.
Host
Vonnie Quinn
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com