November 28, 2017 • 22 mins
The impact of climate change on the things we buy is already noticeable, but it’s bound to get worse. In future decades, the food we eat, beverages we drink and clothes we wear may all be altered by the warming planet. In the second of two episodes about climate change, Jenny and Lindsey dig into the future impact of global warming on shoppers. They talk with Andrea Illy, Chief Executive Officer of IllyCaffe; Dr. Peter Howard, economics director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University's School of Law; and Cecilia Strömblad Brännsten, a sustainability business expert at H&M.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Climate change is hard to grasp. It's such a big concept,
and it may impact the world on such a broad
scale that it can be hard to digest what it
means for people on a personal level. It's a danger
that's constantly growing, but at a pace that makes it
sort of easy to ignore. That is, until you're hit
by a natural disaster like the ones we talked about
(00:29):
last episode. Soon, it's likely that we're all going to
feel the impact of climate change in our day to
day lives, from what we eat, to where we live
to the insurance premiums we pay. Climate change will not
be a silent danger for much longer. I'm Lindsay Rupp
(00:54):
and I'm Jenny Kaplan. This week we're looking ahead at
what that's going to look like. We're talking about how
the changing climate will impact the products we consume and
the things we spend money on every day. I think
(01:14):
it's important again to point to the science behind climate
change before we dig further into how it will affect
our lives. The US government recently released a report stating
that it is extremely likely that human activities are the
dominant cause for global warming. NPR reported that the six
hundred plus page Climate Science Special Report is part of
(01:37):
the most comprehensive study of the climate ever done by
the US. The Trump administration has made contradictory statements in response.
The report points out that the Earth is getting hotter
at a faster rate, sea levels are rising more quickly,
rain is getting more intense and frequent, and there's a
growing risk of wildfires. So what does that mean for
(01:58):
us for consumers? Here's Dr Peter Howard, the economics director
at the Institute for Policy Integrity at n y U
School of Law. Generally, an economists and scientists often think
of as sort of like a A good baseline of
thinking is around a three degree increase of temperature two
(02:19):
to three degrees. Three degrees is about what we expect
the amount of warming from doubling of C O two
in the atmosphere relative to pre industrial periods. Now, that's
kind of an abstract idea, so like three degrees, but
you know what what we should think of that is
that's some sort of moderate temperature increase getting to medium.
(02:41):
But we should always remember that when we're talking about
this and setting a baseline, that if we do not
mitigate emissions, that temperature will continue and increase something to
like four or five degrees by we don't do anything,
maybe less if we start actually meeting our pledges um,
and even farther after that, you know, even higher temperature
(03:01):
increases after this century UM. And just to give your
perspective for divive grees is sort of the difference between
now and the last ice age in temperature. So it's
a very large potential increase. And that still understates the
risks that we're talking about, because there could be there's
a lot of UM risk associated with these different with
the climate, but as well as the economy. So we
(03:23):
have a lot of risk because we're leaving what we
know to an area of really we have not seen
in human history, and as a consequence, UM, there could
be actually very dire catastrophic change. And you can think
of this as like somewhat like we're playing Russian Roulette
with the planet. Whereas even if we missed the bullet,
(03:44):
it's still bad. But if we there is a there's
a chance, it's not guaranteed that we could really end
up over an economic cliff, as inhabitants of the planet
gambling away its future is going to come to bite us.
Um the most common we would think about is lost
(04:04):
property or infrastructure due to flooding and sea level rise,
and that will uh inundate areas. And as we have
storms and we have a higher sea level, right that
will actually make floods worse from storms such as the
hurricanes that recently hit Houston, um in Puerto Rico. Similarly,
you would expect along those lines that insurance costs prices
(04:26):
will go up for businesses and consumers because for two reasons.
One is you have these higher damages that you're expected
to face. But there's another problem, which is that baselines
are actually gonna change and then we're gonna have more variability,
so will be harder for insurance companies to sort of
predict what the expected damages that they will get that
(04:48):
they have to make some profit on. So it might
really affect the insurance industry quite a bit. Um along
those simile lines, I mentioned that there's some evidence that
particularly jobs out side where we're out in the climate,
you know, we're outside doing farm work for instance, that
that will have lost productivity because we're outside and affected
(05:11):
by temperatures, and we might actually just have reduced labor supply.
As people are like I don't want to work in
very hot temperatures or just can't. Similarly, there's a lot
of predictions about lost human life as well as morbidity,
so injuries from um heat and other diseases that aren't committed,
and that would increase medical costs, So we should see
(05:33):
some sort of increase in medical expenditure related to climate change.
Um fisheries as well will be negatively affected, so seafood
costs would likely increase, and this is factoring into already
existing pressures. So fisheries are obviously there's over fishing problems,
so climate change will have an effect on that. And
(05:55):
then the most commonly talked about probably is agriculture. People
think about agriculture. Agri cultures really complicated because it's a
tradable good, so that can offset some of the impacts
in one region versus another as well as there are
some positive effects of c O two in the atmosphere
called CEO two fertilization, which will increase yields. So there's
(06:15):
an ongoing debate in the short room will there be
benefits or costs, but there's pretty certain in the medium
run to long run, so three degrees, you know that
two to three degree range by mid century, UM four
five degrees by end of century, there will be negative
effects um. In that case, we would see increased food
(06:36):
prices like we did in the two thousand seven two
thousand food price spikes, where there is a lot of
unrest around that. So they're going to be climate sensitive sectors.
So what that means is it's sectors that are directly
impacted by climate change. So that would be things like
agricultural production, grocery shopping. These days, feel is pretty removed
(07:01):
from the land. I mean, you can get pretty much
anything at any time, regardless of the season. If I
want an avocado in New York City in January, no problem. Still,
the food we eat and drinks we drink are agricultural products.
They're very much impacted by climate change in the US
and all over the world. Climate change is a global
(07:22):
effect effects US globally. So interestingly enough, even impacts outside
the United States, particularly due to connections in the production
chain and through human migration, can actually impacts in other
regions that can actually affect the United States. Some increase
in temperature might be beneficial, but then there's other effects,
(07:42):
which is hotter temperatures. You could have extreme drought, and
we can see that those would be negative for agricultural
crops um. So right now there's probably a low level
of agricultural impacts in the United States. However, I would
note that in developing countries, where they're more dependent on
rain fed agriculture and may not have access to markets UM,
(08:04):
that could be a more extreme problem because they might
not have access to global food markets the same way
that the US consumer does, and those impacts in other
countries can impact the U S consumers through higher prices.
If we haven't scared scarcity, some food and beverage suppliers
(08:30):
are already thinking about how this is going to hurt
supply chains all over the world. Andrea Illi, chief executive
officer of Ellie Cafe, has been very vocal about the
throat up climate change to his company's coffee supply in California.
There is something within the last three years there has
(08:52):
been from zero to sixteen six new coffee plantation in
southern California. Wow, this is one consequence of climate change,
because you know it would be more and more not
only uh, let's say better, but necessary to move to
higher latitudes to produce coffee. So California, besides Hawaii, which
(09:17):
is already you know a state producing a coffee in
the United States. You know that would now California, and
in the future would be probably Florida, and all the
south of the United States will be becoming producing a
couple producing coffee is interesting after China. China was not
a producing country, now it is, and and so on.
(09:39):
Climate change is already impacting coffee agriculture, UH in two ways.
First quality is impacted and then productivity is impacted. It's
already happening now since decades, and it's the biggest threat
because temperature is increasing and the effects on agriculture are exponential.
So what we can observe already now, which is the
(10:01):
number of quality problems or kind of cutting off the
any effort of to increase production in producing countries due
to adverse climatic conditions. This is only the beginning. We
need to adapt immediately because from now to two thousand
and fifty only health health of the currently suitable land
(10:26):
will still be suitable. So we will need by adapting
to change the economical practices first as the very first initiative.
Second initiative, we will need to boost the amount of
different cultivars, so plants, type of plants that can be cultivated.
(10:48):
There is an extremely poor biodiversity in the coffee let's
say genomics or let's say the genetic diversity. We need
to boost that in order to like Columbia did, develop
new cultivars which are not only better in quality and
more productive, but resistant to the effects of climate change.
(11:09):
And the third initiative, we will need to migrate plantations
to new areas of production, including California, Florida, and or
in the producing countries to higher latitudes. This needs to
be made now because thirty years is nothing in coffee agriculture.
As a matter of fact, thirty years is the average
(11:30):
life of one coffee plant. And in order for a
new coffee plan to be fully productive, you need four
years because you know you cannot stop producing and then
wait for four years, So you have to make a
rolling renewal of the plantation. So it will take twenty
years in order to read you to to replace all
the plants in one coffee plantation. So it's a long
(11:52):
process and this process requires enormous resources in terms of knowledge,
in term of infrastructure for investments, and in term of people.
So There are plenty of projects undergoing, but I'm not
sure about how strong in term of critical mass, in
(12:14):
term of funding, in term of time to market, and
even in term of coordination. These products and these projects
are agricultural disasters won't just impact food, They'll also hit
the clothes we wear. Cotton, for example, is a vital
input for textiles and the retail industry. Again, it's easy
(12:35):
to forget what actually goes into the clothes we buy
in stores. The cotton two is in danger from climate change.
That's on top of the fact that the fashion industry
is already using up the resource at a rate that
may leave us without enough cotton defeat demand. We reached
out to Cecilia Strom Blood Branston, a sustainability business expert
at H and M who works on the circular economy
(12:57):
and sustainable materials. I think it takes an then wish
that we need to change the way that fashion is
made and enjoyed. It that we cannot really continue to
produce and use textiles and materials in the same way,
but we need to do couple our growth and the
growth of the industry as such, from the use of
(13:21):
finite virgion materials. So we really see that we need
this systemic change in the in the fashion industry and
that's something that we will feel that if we don't
make this change, we will not be successful in the future.
So this is really our main driving force, and of
course that will be in that we will make investments
(13:45):
short term, but long term that would really be the
only will to stay successful. I think long term, which
is that if we continue to use the resources that
we do in the same way as we do today,
they will not be enough costom For example, there will
not build enough oil based palisti because there will be
a too hot competition in terms of of resources with
(14:10):
increased population and they increased demand. So we really said
that we need to move away from from the way
that the fashion is made and enjoy it today, and
we need to move away from the use of finite
virgin riskourcestem and replace those with recycled where possibles. We
also said if we want to prioritize recycled materials wherever
we can and complement that with materials that has been
(14:33):
sustained resourced. H and M is pluged that ad of
its materials will be recycled or sustainably sourced by right
Now products come from those sources. The fast Fashion Giant
is just one example of corporations taking action against the
environmental risk Spacey on the horizon. Companies eye Cover are
(14:57):
making similar moves. Coca Cola, Psico and a v MBEV,
for example, take sustainability initiatives really seriously, because without water,
there wouldn't be any coke. Businesses are working on this
because they see it's vital to the survival of industry.
But when it comes down to it, it's hard for
publicly traded companies to balance out short term losses with
(15:19):
longer term gains. That's often where the government comes in.
The Government's helped out in this respect before. In the
nineteen thirties, the Great Planes suffered from a major drought
plus over farming that reduced the protection for the fertile
top soil. It turned the whole region into a giant
dust bowl. Franklin Roosevelt made it a mission to end
(15:42):
the man made ecological disaster. According to a story written
by Carson Vaughan for The Weather Channel, the U. S.
Forest Service with other groups planted more than two d
and twenty million trees. The trees created wind barriers and
helped to keep the better soil from being displaced. But
like many infrastructure projects from around that time, the fix
(16:03):
is starting to wear thin. Many farmers have cut down
their wind breaks. Farming is a tough business, and many
of them are struggling to break even, let alone make
a profit. That makes cash earning crops much more appealing
than f DRS trees. Crops will likely make more money now,
but it could be a serious problem if climate change
(16:25):
expectations come to fruition. A study cited in the article
by researchers at NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University say
that without some kind of intervention, they expect to see
a mega drought. The scientists predict it will happen sometime
between twenty and they say at all last a generation.
(16:47):
Climate change has become a partisan issue, but if it
continues unchecked, it will impact the production and price of
many of the products we all count on as consumers,
and it may not be enough to look for technological
band aids after the fact. Right, The thing about agriculture
is plants take time to grow. Like really said, coffee,
(17:10):
plants have to mature for years before they can be
used for the cappuccinos you pick up at your local
coffee shop. So what can we do? Peter Howard gave
us his thoughts. I think the most important thing people
can do is call the representative to say, hey, look,
I support internalizing this price of carbon. I believe in
free markets and an efficient economy. And this is not socialism.
(17:33):
This is like actually taxing a cost that we're actually
giving away for free, um, and that's not efficient according
to economics and free market theory. That's the first thing
I would say, just you know, um, it's it's hard,
and I feel for consumers because I'm a consumer and
I find it challenging. I study this all day. It's
very difficult to figure out what's most carbon intensive. That
(17:56):
being said, there are clearly areas where you can improve
in your life, um to reduce your carbon footprints. So um,
obviously not driving as much is and airplane flights where
you don't have to fly as much is going to
reduce your carbon footprint. That being said, UM, we should
remember that there is a challenge, which is that we
(18:18):
live in a society that does not internalize the price
of carbon, and as a consequence, you know, we do fly,
and we are required to fly, so you should also
keep that in mind. You know that you can't. I
fly frequently and I try to do my best. I
don't want to I'm not a preacher out there. I'm
not trying to like tell people how to live their
life of me. I think you have to make your choices,
(18:39):
and it's the government's job actually to set the correct signals.
If the markets are working correctly and internalizing the correct
costs of climate change, you would have to do this.
You would make them on your own as a free citizen,
um internalizing the true cost and balancing what you think
the benefits are for yourself versus the costs. Since we
(18:59):
don't do that at your kind of the government sort
of allowing them to be false market signals where we
believe it's really cheap to use up lots of carbon
intensive goods. And the reason probably it's hard to always
think of carbon intensive goods is because we don't actually
ever see what goes into them. I can speak more
to agricultural goods because I have a background also in agriculture.
(19:22):
Just remember that every time you buy an agricultural good,
there is machinery evolved in producing that there is fertilizer,
there is UM. Then something has to transport to the store, right,
So there's an entire network system built up. Every good
that you buy in a store has some level of
(19:43):
carbon in it because you at minimum have to get
it there. So you know, it's very hard to internalize
that all in your mind. I mean, the obvious ones
are obviously the biggest biggest sources of energy are energy
use and transportation. So if you can minimize those two
(20:03):
things and be conscious of those two things you're going
to be doing, that's a good first start, I would say,
And that's where I would focus in those two areas.
You can also think of that with every good. Every good,
it's not just agriculture, not trying to beat up on
agriculture just when I know the most about but every
(20:26):
good has this issue, UM, and you might not be
you might be surprised by the inputs that go into
this stuff, UM, and how far away they go. We
have a global marketplace. UM, that's why we need a
price signal. We'll leave you with that. Thanks for listening
(20:57):
to this episode of Material World. For more, check us
out on Apple Podcasts, The Bloomberg Terminal or wherever you
listen to shows like this. For more of our regular coverage,
I'm on Twitter at Jenny m Kaplan and Lindsay's at
Elsie Rock. Material World is produced by Magnus Hendrickson and
(21:18):
Liz Smith. The head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesca Levie.
We'll be back in two weeks. Hello hello hello hello
(21:53):
hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello
hello hello
Climate change is hard to grasp. It's such a big concept,
and it may impact the world on such a broad
scale that it can be hard to digest what it
means for people on a personal level. It's a danger
that's constantly growing, but at a pace that makes it
sort of easy to ignore. That is, until you're hit
by a natural disaster like the ones we talked about
(00:29):
last episode. Soon, it's likely that we're all going to
feel the impact of climate change in our day to
day lives, from what we eat, to where we live
to the insurance premiums we pay. Climate change will not
be a silent danger for much longer. I'm Lindsay Rupp
(00:54):
and I'm Jenny Kaplan. This week we're looking ahead at
what that's going to look like. We're talking about how
the changing climate will impact the products we consume and
the things we spend money on every day. I think
(01:14):
it's important again to point to the science behind climate
change before we dig further into how it will affect
our lives. The US government recently released a report stating
that it is extremely likely that human activities are the
dominant cause for global warming. NPR reported that the six
hundred plus page Climate Science Special Report is part of
(01:37):
the most comprehensive study of the climate ever done by
the US. The Trump administration has made contradictory statements in response.
The report points out that the Earth is getting hotter
at a faster rate, sea levels are rising more quickly,
rain is getting more intense and frequent, and there's a
growing risk of wildfires. So what does that mean for
(01:58):
us for consumers? Here's Dr Peter Howard, the economics director
at the Institute for Policy Integrity at n y U
School of Law. Generally, an economists and scientists often think
of as sort of like a A good baseline of
thinking is around a three degree increase of temperature two
(02:19):
to three degrees. Three degrees is about what we expect
the amount of warming from doubling of C O two
in the atmosphere relative to pre industrial periods. Now, that's
kind of an abstract idea, so like three degrees, but
you know what what we should think of that is
that's some sort of moderate temperature increase getting to medium.
(02:41):
But we should always remember that when we're talking about
this and setting a baseline, that if we do not
mitigate emissions, that temperature will continue and increase something to
like four or five degrees by we don't do anything,
maybe less if we start actually meeting our pledges um,
and even farther after that, you know, even higher temperature
(03:01):
increases after this century UM. And just to give your
perspective for divive grees is sort of the difference between
now and the last ice age in temperature. So it's
a very large potential increase. And that still understates the
risks that we're talking about, because there could be there's
a lot of UM risk associated with these different with
the climate, but as well as the economy. So we
(03:23):
have a lot of risk because we're leaving what we
know to an area of really we have not seen
in human history, and as a consequence, UM, there could
be actually very dire catastrophic change. And you can think
of this as like somewhat like we're playing Russian Roulette
with the planet. Whereas even if we missed the bullet,
(03:44):
it's still bad. But if we there is a there's
a chance, it's not guaranteed that we could really end
up over an economic cliff, as inhabitants of the planet
gambling away its future is going to come to bite us.
Um the most common we would think about is lost
(04:04):
property or infrastructure due to flooding and sea level rise,
and that will uh inundate areas. And as we have
storms and we have a higher sea level, right that
will actually make floods worse from storms such as the
hurricanes that recently hit Houston, um in Puerto Rico. Similarly,
you would expect along those lines that insurance costs prices
(04:26):
will go up for businesses and consumers because for two reasons.
One is you have these higher damages that you're expected
to face. But there's another problem, which is that baselines
are actually gonna change and then we're gonna have more variability,
so will be harder for insurance companies to sort of
predict what the expected damages that they will get that
(04:48):
they have to make some profit on. So it might
really affect the insurance industry quite a bit. Um along
those simile lines, I mentioned that there's some evidence that
particularly jobs out side where we're out in the climate,
you know, we're outside doing farm work for instance, that
that will have lost productivity because we're outside and affected
(05:11):
by temperatures, and we might actually just have reduced labor supply.
As people are like I don't want to work in
very hot temperatures or just can't. Similarly, there's a lot
of predictions about lost human life as well as morbidity,
so injuries from um heat and other diseases that aren't committed,
and that would increase medical costs, So we should see
(05:33):
some sort of increase in medical expenditure related to climate change.
Um fisheries as well will be negatively affected, so seafood
costs would likely increase, and this is factoring into already
existing pressures. So fisheries are obviously there's over fishing problems,
so climate change will have an effect on that. And
(05:55):
then the most commonly talked about probably is agriculture. People
think about agriculture. Agri cultures really complicated because it's a
tradable good, so that can offset some of the impacts
in one region versus another as well as there are
some positive effects of c O two in the atmosphere
called CEO two fertilization, which will increase yields. So there's
(06:15):
an ongoing debate in the short room will there be
benefits or costs, but there's pretty certain in the medium
run to long run, so three degrees, you know that
two to three degree range by mid century, UM four
five degrees by end of century, there will be negative
effects um. In that case, we would see increased food
(06:36):
prices like we did in the two thousand seven two
thousand food price spikes, where there is a lot of
unrest around that. So they're going to be climate sensitive sectors.
So what that means is it's sectors that are directly
impacted by climate change. So that would be things like
agricultural production, grocery shopping. These days, feel is pretty removed
(07:01):
from the land. I mean, you can get pretty much
anything at any time, regardless of the season. If I
want an avocado in New York City in January, no problem. Still,
the food we eat and drinks we drink are agricultural products.
They're very much impacted by climate change in the US
and all over the world. Climate change is a global
(07:22):
effect effects US globally. So interestingly enough, even impacts outside
the United States, particularly due to connections in the production
chain and through human migration, can actually impacts in other
regions that can actually affect the United States. Some increase
in temperature might be beneficial, but then there's other effects,
(07:42):
which is hotter temperatures. You could have extreme drought, and
we can see that those would be negative for agricultural
crops um. So right now there's probably a low level
of agricultural impacts in the United States. However, I would
note that in developing countries, where they're more dependent on
rain fed agriculture and may not have access to markets UM,
(08:04):
that could be a more extreme problem because they might
not have access to global food markets the same way
that the US consumer does, and those impacts in other
countries can impact the U S consumers through higher prices.
If we haven't scared scarcity, some food and beverage suppliers
(08:30):
are already thinking about how this is going to hurt
supply chains all over the world. Andrea Illi, chief executive
officer of Ellie Cafe, has been very vocal about the
throat up climate change to his company's coffee supply in California.
There is something within the last three years there has
(08:52):
been from zero to sixteen six new coffee plantation in
southern California. Wow, this is one consequence of climate change,
because you know it would be more and more not
only uh, let's say better, but necessary to move to
higher latitudes to produce coffee. So California, besides Hawaii, which
(09:17):
is already you know a state producing a coffee in
the United States. You know that would now California, and
in the future would be probably Florida, and all the
south of the United States will be becoming producing a
couple producing coffee is interesting after China. China was not
a producing country, now it is, and and so on.
(09:39):
Climate change is already impacting coffee agriculture, UH in two ways.
First quality is impacted and then productivity is impacted. It's
already happening now since decades, and it's the biggest threat
because temperature is increasing and the effects on agriculture are exponential.
So what we can observe already now, which is the
(10:01):
number of quality problems or kind of cutting off the
any effort of to increase production in producing countries due
to adverse climatic conditions. This is only the beginning. We
need to adapt immediately because from now to two thousand
and fifty only health health of the currently suitable land
(10:26):
will still be suitable. So we will need by adapting
to change the economical practices first as the very first initiative.
Second initiative, we will need to boost the amount of
different cultivars, so plants, type of plants that can be cultivated.
(10:48):
There is an extremely poor biodiversity in the coffee let's
say genomics or let's say the genetic diversity. We need
to boost that in order to like Columbia did, develop
new cultivars which are not only better in quality and
more productive, but resistant to the effects of climate change.
(11:09):
And the third initiative, we will need to migrate plantations
to new areas of production, including California, Florida, and or
in the producing countries to higher latitudes. This needs to
be made now because thirty years is nothing in coffee agriculture.
As a matter of fact, thirty years is the average
(11:30):
life of one coffee plant. And in order for a
new coffee plan to be fully productive, you need four
years because you know you cannot stop producing and then
wait for four years, So you have to make a
rolling renewal of the plantation. So it will take twenty
years in order to read you to to replace all
the plants in one coffee plantation. So it's a long
(11:52):
process and this process requires enormous resources in terms of knowledge,
in term of infrastructure for investments, and in term of people.
So There are plenty of projects undergoing, but I'm not
sure about how strong in term of critical mass, in
(12:14):
term of funding, in term of time to market, and
even in term of coordination. These products and these projects
are agricultural disasters won't just impact food, They'll also hit
the clothes we wear. Cotton, for example, is a vital
input for textiles and the retail industry. Again, it's easy
(12:35):
to forget what actually goes into the clothes we buy
in stores. The cotton two is in danger from climate change.
That's on top of the fact that the fashion industry
is already using up the resource at a rate that
may leave us without enough cotton defeat demand. We reached
out to Cecilia Strom Blood Branston, a sustainability business expert
at H and M who works on the circular economy
(12:57):
and sustainable materials. I think it takes an then wish
that we need to change the way that fashion is
made and enjoyed. It that we cannot really continue to
produce and use textiles and materials in the same way,
but we need to do couple our growth and the
growth of the industry as such, from the use of
(13:21):
finite virgion materials. So we really see that we need
this systemic change in the in the fashion industry and
that's something that we will feel that if we don't
make this change, we will not be successful in the future.
So this is really our main driving force, and of
course that will be in that we will make investments
(13:45):
short term, but long term that would really be the
only will to stay successful. I think long term, which
is that if we continue to use the resources that
we do in the same way as we do today,
they will not be enough costom For example, there will
not build enough oil based palisti because there will be
a too hot competition in terms of of resources with
(14:10):
increased population and they increased demand. So we really said
that we need to move away from from the way
that the fashion is made and enjoy it today, and
we need to move away from the use of finite
virgin riskourcestem and replace those with recycled where possibles. We
also said if we want to prioritize recycled materials wherever
we can and complement that with materials that has been
(14:33):
sustained resourced. H and M is pluged that ad of
its materials will be recycled or sustainably sourced by right
Now products come from those sources. The fast Fashion Giant
is just one example of corporations taking action against the
environmental risk Spacey on the horizon. Companies eye Cover are
(14:57):
making similar moves. Coca Cola, Psico and a v MBEV,
for example, take sustainability initiatives really seriously, because without water,
there wouldn't be any coke. Businesses are working on this
because they see it's vital to the survival of industry.
But when it comes down to it, it's hard for
publicly traded companies to balance out short term losses with
(15:19):
longer term gains. That's often where the government comes in.
The Government's helped out in this respect before. In the
nineteen thirties, the Great Planes suffered from a major drought
plus over farming that reduced the protection for the fertile
top soil. It turned the whole region into a giant
dust bowl. Franklin Roosevelt made it a mission to end
(15:42):
the man made ecological disaster. According to a story written
by Carson Vaughan for The Weather Channel, the U. S.
Forest Service with other groups planted more than two d
and twenty million trees. The trees created wind barriers and
helped to keep the better soil from being displaced. But
like many infrastructure projects from around that time, the fix
(16:03):
is starting to wear thin. Many farmers have cut down
their wind breaks. Farming is a tough business, and many
of them are struggling to break even, let alone make
a profit. That makes cash earning crops much more appealing
than f DRS trees. Crops will likely make more money now,
but it could be a serious problem if climate change
(16:25):
expectations come to fruition. A study cited in the article
by researchers at NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University say
that without some kind of intervention, they expect to see
a mega drought. The scientists predict it will happen sometime
between twenty and they say at all last a generation.
(16:47):
Climate change has become a partisan issue, but if it
continues unchecked, it will impact the production and price of
many of the products we all count on as consumers,
and it may not be enough to look for technological
band aids after the fact. Right, The thing about agriculture
is plants take time to grow. Like really said, coffee,
(17:10):
plants have to mature for years before they can be
used for the cappuccinos you pick up at your local
coffee shop. So what can we do? Peter Howard gave
us his thoughts. I think the most important thing people
can do is call the representative to say, hey, look,
I support internalizing this price of carbon. I believe in
free markets and an efficient economy. And this is not socialism.
(17:33):
This is like actually taxing a cost that we're actually
giving away for free, um, and that's not efficient according
to economics and free market theory. That's the first thing
I would say, just you know, um, it's it's hard,
and I feel for consumers because I'm a consumer and
I find it challenging. I study this all day. It's
very difficult to figure out what's most carbon intensive. That
(17:56):
being said, there are clearly areas where you can improve
in your life, um to reduce your carbon footprints. So um,
obviously not driving as much is and airplane flights where
you don't have to fly as much is going to
reduce your carbon footprint. That being said, UM, we should
remember that there is a challenge, which is that we
(18:18):
live in a society that does not internalize the price
of carbon, and as a consequence, you know, we do fly,
and we are required to fly, so you should also
keep that in mind. You know that you can't. I
fly frequently and I try to do my best. I
don't want to I'm not a preacher out there. I'm
not trying to like tell people how to live their
life of me. I think you have to make your choices,
(18:39):
and it's the government's job actually to set the correct signals.
If the markets are working correctly and internalizing the correct
costs of climate change, you would have to do this.
You would make them on your own as a free citizen,
um internalizing the true cost and balancing what you think
the benefits are for yourself versus the costs. Since we
(18:59):
don't do that at your kind of the government sort
of allowing them to be false market signals where we
believe it's really cheap to use up lots of carbon
intensive goods. And the reason probably it's hard to always
think of carbon intensive goods is because we don't actually
ever see what goes into them. I can speak more
to agricultural goods because I have a background also in agriculture.
(19:22):
Just remember that every time you buy an agricultural good,
there is machinery evolved in producing that there is fertilizer,
there is UM. Then something has to transport to the store, right,
So there's an entire network system built up. Every good
that you buy in a store has some level of
(19:43):
carbon in it because you at minimum have to get
it there. So you know, it's very hard to internalize
that all in your mind. I mean, the obvious ones
are obviously the biggest biggest sources of energy are energy
use and transportation. So if you can minimize those two
(20:03):
things and be conscious of those two things you're going
to be doing, that's a good first start, I would say,
And that's where I would focus in those two areas.
You can also think of that with every good. Every good,
it's not just agriculture, not trying to beat up on
agriculture just when I know the most about but every
(20:26):
good has this issue, UM, and you might not be
you might be surprised by the inputs that go into
this stuff, UM, and how far away they go. We
have a global marketplace. UM, that's why we need a
price signal. We'll leave you with that. Thanks for listening
(20:57):
to this episode of Material World. For more, check us
out on Apple Podcasts, The Bloomberg Terminal or wherever you
listen to shows like this. For more of our regular coverage,
I'm on Twitter at Jenny m Kaplan and Lindsay's at
Elsie Rock. Material World is produced by Magnus Hendrickson and
(21:18):
Liz Smith. The head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesca Levie.
We'll be back in two weeks. Hello hello hello hello
(21:53):
hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello hello
hello hello
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