October 17, 2023 • 38 mins
In this episode of Eco Speaks CLE, we speak with New York Times bestselling author and climate journalist Jeff Goodell. Jeff has covered climate change for over two decades at Rolling Stone and is the author of seven books, including his latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death On A Scorched Planet. This is an engaging, thoughtful, and human book filled with stories that help us all understand how we can help address this moment.
What would you do if your casual seven-mile hike turned into a fatal encounter with extreme heat? That is one chilling tale we discuss as we dive into the dire realities of our rapidly warming world. Join us to understand the Goldilocks Zone, how heat is the driver behind many natural disasters, how our bodies react to heat, and the health risks we face even in cooler regions like Northeast Ohio. Stay with us and hear what it will take to address the drive change, the economic costs, legal actions against oil companies, the power of young voters, and how an encounter with a polar bear reminds us that we are all in this together.
Guest:
Author and Climate Journalist Jeff Goodell
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death On A Scorched Planet
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the
EcoCurious explore the uniqueand thriving environmental
community here in Northeast Ohio.
My name is Diane Bicke and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together we bring you inspiringstories from local
sustainability leaders andinvite you to connect, learn and
live with our community andplanet in mind.
(00:25):
Hello, friends, we have a veryspecial guest today from Austin,
Texas, New York Times bestselling author and climate
journalist, Jeff Goodell.
Jeff has covered climate changefor more than two decades at
Rolling Stone and otherpublications.
You may have seen him talkingabout climate and energy issues
on NPR and other major newsnetworks and he is the author of
(00:47):
seven books, including his newbook the Heat Will Kill you
First Life and Death on aScorched Planet.
I have listened to this book,I've read the book and recently
had the privilege of hearingJeff in person speak about his
book at the Hudson Library.
A few weeks ago I went withGreg, my husband, my daughter
and we all agreed it would bereally cool no pun intended to
(01:10):
invite Jeff to join us onEcoSpeak CLE so we could also
speak with you.
So, as he was signing my book,I asked him and he said yes.
First disclaimer I want to letyou know that this book is not
just another depressing bookabout climate change.
Filled with charts and graphs.
It is a little scary at times,but it is a thoughtful and human
(01:32):
book.
Jeff maintains that he is not adoomer and he is weirdly
optimistic, but we all need tohave our eyes wide open to
address this moment.
So welcome Jeff.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Thank you for having me.
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So summer in Austin what was that like?
I think you were traveling abit for your book tour, but what
did that feel like?
You faced one of the hottestsummers on record in Texas.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, I mean you know many of us faced one of the
hottest summers on record.
I think it was the hottestsummer globally on record, in
sort of in human history and itfelt to me like Austin was the
center of it all.
There was a strange feeling fortwo reasons.
One is that I had spent threeyears writing about heat and
(02:24):
thinking about heat, but then tobe here and kind of experience
it so relentlessly, it gave menew understanding of the sort of
some of the subtleties of whatit means to live in a place
where it doesn't get below 100degrees for like 50 days in a
row.
And also it was a strangefeeling because I had written a
(02:47):
book about heat.
I was, the book was out, I wasdoing podcasts and interviews
and talking to people like we'redoing now.
But it kind of felt like I wasliving in my own Stephen King
novel because I had written thisthing and then it kind of
happened this past summer.
So that was a sort of oddfeeling.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
And so you were just stuck inside, the shades drawn
and your air conditioning wentout at one point, and you
realized that you're reallyvulnerable to power outages,
which we all are.
So when did the title come toyou?
Just sort of in the middle ofthose days, or?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
No, the title came to me like a year ago Books are.
One of the difficulties ofdoing a book like this is the
need to be done more or lessdown a year in advance, and so
you never know what the world'sgoing to look like when your
book comes out.
And if you're writing a novelabout 19th century romance or
(03:50):
something, it doesn't matter.
But if you're writing acontemporary contemporary events
, whether it's politics orbusiness or, in my case, climate
change you never know what thatworld's going to look like when
the book comes out.
So that's always a little bitscary in the book writing
business.
The title came to me a yearearlier when my publisher and I
(04:13):
were going back and forth aboutwhat we should call this book
and there was some debate aboutthis title because it's very
blunt, very scary in some levels, and there was certainly people
at my publishing house whowanted it to be named something
(04:36):
more less kind of threateninglike heat or just something like
that.
But I really wanted it to bemore confrontational, not
because I wanted it to be morescary although that's OK,
because I think we should bescared.
As you said, I'm not a doomer,but I do think we need to be
alarmed about what's happeningin our world.
But I also really wanted thisbook to be engaging in a
(05:01):
personal way.
I wanted it to be about you andyour relationship with the
weather and with the climate andwith heat, and I think too much
writing about climate changeand too much talk about climate
change is all about kind offuture scenarios and future
generations and people far away,and I really wanted it to have
(05:22):
this feeling of this ishappening to me and you now, and
the book, or the title, I think, suggests that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And in your talk you talked how important it is for
all of us to understand heat andthe risks of heat, and that's
one of the most important thingswe should be doing right now.
You open your book with a storythat kind of brings that
message home how we're not we'reall not immune from this.
It's the story of the Garrishfamily, and would you mind
(05:57):
telling us that story?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Sure, and this is a story that I read in the media.
It was the headlines when itwas happening in the summer of
2021.
And immediately intrigued meand I explored it more and came
to sort of tell the story asfully as I could in the opening
chapter of the book.
And it's about the Garrishfamily who?
(06:19):
Richard Garrish was 43 yearsold.
His wife, ellen Chong, was 37.
They had a one and a half yearold child.
He was a software engineer inSilicon Valley.
She was doing various kinds ofconsulting and other business
related things, and they gottired of living in the go-go
(06:40):
world of Silicon Valley andmoved to the Sierra Nevada
foothills and they were startinga new life there, working
remotely as many people didduring the pandemic
no-transcript.
We really wanted to be closer tonature and more in tune with
the sort of natural world aroundthem, and one day they decided
(07:02):
to go for a seven mile hike, andit was a July day.
It was forecast to be about 104degrees that day, which was hot
.
Of course, they thought ofthemselves as experienced hikers
than they were.
They, richard Garrish, had aconversation with his brother
who was a kind of outward boundleader in Scotland who was very
(07:25):
familiar with sort of outdoorrisks and survival techniques
and said to his brother it'sgoing to be very hot tomorrow,
you need to be careful, maybeyou should reschedule.
Richard said no, I understand,we're going to be fine, we're
going to leave early, we haveplenty of water.
And they started out on theseven mile hike.
They left early in the morningat seven o'clock and they had
water with them.
(07:46):
They had their dog with them.
They had their one and a halfyear old daughter with them.
Richard was carrying her in abackpack.
They hiked about four miles downto the Merced River, which is a
lovely river that runs out ofYosemite Valley there, and then
they had to hike up about athree mile switchback, two and a
half mile switchback ofsouthern facing exposure, and it
(08:09):
was around noon, so the heat ofthe day, unfortunately, when
they started this hike and noone knows exactly what
transpired.
But that night their family andfriends realized that they
hadn't come home.
They had people were makingcalls and they didn't hear from
(08:30):
them and called the Sheriff'sDepartment.
Sheriff's Department sent out asearch party and they found the
entire family, including the dogand the daughter, dead on the
trail about halfway up thissteep switchback and at first
they thought it was theSheriff's Department, thought it
was maybe a family suicide, ormaybe they had drank something
(08:54):
in the river that had somebacteria or something like that
that had killed them, or theyhad stumbled over an abandoned
mine that was that were carbonmonoxide was leaking or
something like that.
But after a few weeks ofinvestigation it became very
clear that what happened is thatthey all died of heat stroke.
(09:17):
And this is the story I tell inthe opening chapter of the book
, and it was really important tome to tell the story to really
underscore this idea that we'reall vulnerable, that even kind
of youngish people in good shape, who you know on some level
understand the risks of extremeheat, can still be killed and be
(09:41):
killed very quickly, and insome ways it's the embodiment of
the title of the book that wetalked about a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
The heat will kill you first.
Yeah, so funny how our mindswent.
I think you know many of uswill remember hearing that story
reported on the news and ourmind goes to everything but the
heat.
You know we think there wasfoul play or whatever involved
In your book.
I thought it was reallyimportant because you talk about
the Goldilocks zone and ithelps us understand how fragile
(10:14):
and what a fragile place we allare.
Would you mind talking aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, the Goldilocks zone is a really important idea
that I borrowed from planetaryscientists who look for life on
other planets.
You know, when they're lookingfor life on other planets, the
best indicator they believe forthat is the presence of liquid
water.
And so they look for planetsthat, if it's too cold, of
(10:41):
course, the liquid water is iceand you have, you know, balls of
ice, like Pluto or somethinglike that.
Or if it's too hot, you haveplaces where the water is all
vaporized and there's nopresence of water, like, say,
venus, when they're looking for,so they're looking for the
presence of liquid water, andthat is, they believe, the
temperature zone in which lifecan exist.
(11:02):
And I borrowed this term frommy book because it's really
important to grasp when youthink about the risk of heat,
this notion that we humans, andbasically all of life that we
recognize around us, has evolvedin a certain sort of zone of
heat and we are really good atdealing with heat within this
(11:26):
certain range that we've evolvedin.
But as our planet heats up andas these extreme events get more
and more extreme, we're movingout of that Goldilocks zone.
And as we move out of thisGoldilocks zone, our bodies have
a much more difficult timedealing with it.
The risks, not just to us butto all living things, increase
(11:49):
exponentially, and it's a reallyimportant concept to grasp when
we think about not just therisk of extreme heat but the
dangers of climate change ingeneral.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So when we talk about the Goldilocks zone, I thought
that part of the book washelpful in helping talk to other
people about climate changebeing able to say you know,
we've all evolved within thiscertain range and evolution
doesn't happen fast.
We can't quickly adapt to beingout of that zone.
(12:24):
Many things in your book helpedme kind of think through my
conversations with people andhow to best address climate
deniers and such, and I thinkhelping explain how things will
happen to someone individuallygets people's attention.
Can you talk a minute about howheat does kill?
(12:47):
I read that more people diefrom heat stroke right now
already than any other naturaldisaster and it's an equal
opportunity killer.
What happens when a body goesthrough heat stroke?
You started to feel some ofthose effects yourself when you
were hiking, I think, inNicaragua.
Can you explain what that feltlike?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, so like 10 years ago so long before I began
this book and what happened?
To be on vacation in Nicaraguaand went for a hike up a volcano
conditions not so differentthan what actually killed the
Garrosh family, one of thereasons I was so drawn to that
story I started to hike up asteep volcano and I had what I
(13:33):
thought was plenty of water withme and I was with some other
people and we started hiking andI started sweating and I
started getting a little dizzy,but I didn't really think
anything about it.
It wasn't that hot, it wasmaybe 85 degrees, but it was
very humid.
So that changed the dynamicsomewhat, but I started to get
(13:55):
dizzy.
I started to feel in my heartreally pounding in my chest and
at a certain point my body juststarted to sweat it's not enough
to say I was sweating Just likewater started pouring out of my
body.
It was just this strange,surreal feeling of my, and I
know now that my body wasdesperately trying to cool off
(14:18):
and I started to get a littlebit hallucinogenic and losing my
balance, and the people I waswith fortunately recognized what
was happening to me andinsisted that we stop and I just
sit there and cool down until Iregained my body temperature,
lowered a little bit, and ittook about an hour and a half of
(14:40):
rest in a shady spot for myselfto come back, my body
temperature to get back tonormal, and it was very
frightening, but I didn't really, and I understood then that it
was about heat.
But I didn't.
That was not the genesis of thebook at all.
But when I started writingabout heat then for this book, I
(15:01):
reflected back on that and Irealized that I was experiencing
the beginnings of heat stroke.
And so what happens when we'reexposed to extreme heat for any
period, whether it's becauseyou're locked in a hot car, or
whether it's because you're on ahigh kind of volcano and
Nicaragua, or whether you'reworking on a rooftop In Ohio on
(15:24):
a really hot day, you know thewe, our bodies, have one
mechanism to cool off, and thatis sweat.
And that's how we do it.
And what happens is our bodytemperature begins to rise.
Is you know, these sweat glandsspray water onto our skin and
as that water evaporates byevapotranspiration, it carries
(15:47):
the heat away.
And so, in order to help makethis more efficient, our heart
starts pounding and pushing ourblood out Towards our skin to be
at this sort of coolingperimeter, and so one of the
initial things that you feelwhen you are exposed to extreme
heat is your heart startspounding harder and harder and
faster and faster and it pullsblood away from your brain and
(16:10):
some of your internal organs inorder to get it out around your
skin, which is one of thereasons you feel lightheaded and
, in some cases, evenhallucinogenic, because the
brain, the blood, is actuallybeing pulled away from your
brain, and this is one of thereasons why people who have any
kind of heart or circulatoryproblems are much higher risk.
(16:31):
Of heat exposure Is because itputs so much strain on your
heart, because basically, that'sthe only mechanism our bodies
have, and so, as it gets hotterand hotter, our heart starts
pounding faster and faster andfaster, trying desperately to
get as much blood as possibleout to the periphery of our body
, so where it can be cooled off.
(16:53):
And if it works, as it did inthe case with me and Nicaragua,
I was able to get into the shade, stop exercising and generating
my heat.
My body was able to get regaincontrol.
But if it, if it can't regaincontrol, either because you
continue exercising and ignoringthis, or because the heat is so
extreme that you can't get outof it, then you get into real
(17:14):
serious trouble.
You know heart failure.
But then at a certain point,around 105 degrees body
temperature which is not reallythat you know, it's only six
degrees or so from a normal bodytemperature Really terrible
things start happening, like youknow.
The membranes of your cellsbegin to melt or denature as it
(17:35):
gets hotter and hotter and yourbody literally begins to sort of
melt from the inside and youstart hemorrhaging inside and
all kinds of terrible thingshappen and death inevitably
follows.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yikes, that's, that's pretty scary, it's, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's a really you know writing about the details
of extreme heat and what it doesto your body.
It does feel for me as a writer, kind of just horrific going
into the details of it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, well, you know, here in Cleveland we're not
accustomed to heat.
We had just two days over 90degrees on, like Texas and the
rest of the world.
Yet you know, I think there's afeeling here that you know we
think we're going to be okay inthe midst of climate change,
that you know we live here withour great lake and our cooler
(18:30):
climate and that'll make us safefrom, you know, some of the
worst effects of climate change.
Yet heat is.
You know, we still had a monthlong drought in May.
We still had tornadoes andtorrential rains come through in
August.
But some will just say it'sjust the weather, you know.
And how is that thinking wrong?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That thing is wrong because you know yes, it's true,
of course that the weather hasalways been changing.
I mean, that's obviously true,and there's been times in the
past on Earth, in Earth history,when there were alligators in
the Arctic.
You know where the Arctic is,now palm trees growing where
Antarctica is.
I mean, there's no questionthat there's been extreme
(19:14):
changes in the Earth's climateover time, but those climate
changes have all been driven bynatural processes, mostly
volcanic reactions, that havebelched CO2 into the atmosphere
and change the temperatures ofthe Earth's climate.
What's happening now is verydifferent.
(19:35):
We are belching CO2 into theatmosphere ourselves by burning
fossil fuels and by loading upthe atmosphere with fossil fuels
very quickly, much faster thanvolcanoes did in times in the
past.
We are changing the climatemuch more quickly than it's ever
changed before, and that wouldbe fine, except for the fact
(20:00):
that, as we talked about earlier, we have all evolved to deal
with a certain range oftemperatures, and so we are
pushing our climate system tomove much more quickly than it
ever has in the past.
And we meaning humans and otherliving forms and also, by the
way, everything that we've built, like railroad tracks, bridges,
(20:22):
all kinds of things even youriPhone will give you an alert
when it's too hot are notadapted to these radical changes
.
And it's true that Ohio isactually there are certainly
better and worse places in theworld than I'm talking to you
from one of the worst places.
I'm in the belly of the beast.
The belly of the beast, as yousaid.
Yeah, totally, here in Texaswe're dealing with droughts,
(20:45):
we're dealing with extreme heat.
We have a whole coastline onthe Gulf that is extremely at
risk of sea level rise.
We have lots of problemsmigration problems, crop
failures here that make usreally vulnerable.
But when people ask me three orfour years ago, where should I
move, everybody wants to knowwhere they should move to get to
(21:09):
reduce the risk.
One of the places, first of all, I would say that there's
nowhere that you can go thatyou're going to be protected
from the risks of climate change.
I mean, just look at thewildfires in Canada and the sort
of northern boreal forestswhere, up until recently, a lot
of people thought that was avery cool place to be.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, and then those all caught fire this summer.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, and look at what happened in the Pacific
Northwest in 2021.
I mean, you mentioned in Ohioyou've had a couple of hot days
and it's a relatively mildsummer climate.
So too was the PacificNorthwest.
Nobody thought that BritishColumbia, for example, could
(21:54):
have days when they had 121degrees, and we had towns in
British Columbia that got so hotthey more or less spontaneously
combusted and burned to theground.
Portland 115, 116 degree days.
We had 1,000 deaths over afour-day period in the Pacific
(22:14):
Northwest.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, those were crazy stories you tell about
Paris and Seattle area andChicago even.
I think we just didn't reallyhear a lot about that on the
news other than just quicklittle reference.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
But there were a lot of people that died.
Yeah, so no one's immune to it.
You can make the argument, assome people do, that here I am
in Texas and it's really hot.
It's been really hot all summer.
But a lot of people in Texassay, well, we're prepared for it
and we know how to deal withheat, and to some degree that's
true.
Obviously it's been hot inTexas for a long time.
(22:54):
But we're getting to theseextreme levels where people are
not prepared for it and peoplewho are outside the bubble of
air conditioning or even takingshort walks and things like that
are really at risk.
In Ohio there is not this sortof heat awareness that there is
in Texas, and that increases therisk because people don't
(23:16):
understand what the signs ofheat exhaustion, heat stroke,
when hot weather comes, what todo, how to handle it.
It's the inverse of whathappens here in Texas.
When I first moved here fouryears ago, we had an ice storm
that lasted four or five daysand I had come from upstate New
(23:38):
York, where I drove an ice stormall the time and really knew
what to do with ice storms.
When we had an ice storm herein Texas, people freaked out.
They had no idea what to do.
Their cars were crashing allover the place, water tanks were
bursting.
I mean, people had no idea howto handle it.
(23:58):
And similarly, in places thatare not used to heat, when it
comes it's, in a way,exponentially more dangerous
because people don't understandhow to deal with the risks.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Well, yeah, we make fun of people here because they
can't drive in the snow, butwe're equally dumb about heat.
So I'm sure that's part of alot of the climate planning
that's happening here inNortheast Ohio with our climate
action plans and such.
But heat is a driver for, asyou maintain, droughts behind
(24:35):
Dengue appearing in Florida,rise of malaria because animals
are on the move and plants.
So it's kind of a stark picture.
But I'd like you to talk alittle bit about besides heat.
Heat is going to drive changeand it could be an engine for
positive change.
It will have to be.
What else will acceleratechange?
(24:56):
Are there lawsuits against oilcompanies?
Is just going to drive change?
The economic cost of all thesenatural disasters going to help
drive change?
Young voters, will they drivechange?
What's your take on all that?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I think all those things are driving change.
I think that there's no onesingle thing.
I think that people aregradually becoming more and more
aware of the reality of what'shappening.
I think that extreme eventslike these summers the summer
(25:34):
we've just been having, where wehad the hottest summer globally
on record, and we had all ofthese extreme heat events all
over the world we're making itvery, very clear that this is
not some sort of invention ofliberal tree huggers, but this
is an actual, physical fact ofwhat's happening to our world.
(25:55):
I think that's driving change.
I think the economics are reallyimportant.
Here in Texas, the fossil fuelcapital of the country, we also
are the leaders in wind andsolar energy, because there's a
lot of money to be made in windand solar right now, because
fossil fuels are becoming moreand more expensive.
(26:17):
By far the cheapest way togenerate electricity virtually
everywhere in the world now isthrough renewable power.
That is dominating the growthin green jobs related to all
kinds of clean energy, from newkinds of rewiring of the grid to
(26:40):
electric vehicles, to all kindsof progressive thinking about
how to deal with and adapt tothese changes.
That is where the economicgrowth is going.
The economic growth is notgoing.
No one's building more coalplants.
We're not going to build morecoal plants.
If your economic model is builtaround building more coal
plants, you're going to be introuble.
(27:04):
It's this inevitability of thisenergy shift.
Just as we shifted from whaleoil to petroleum, this shift
away from fossil fuels to cleanenergy is happening.
That's a huge driver, I think,politically, you have a younger
generation that understands allof this.
The lawsuit in Montana whereyou had 12 young people suing
(27:30):
the state of Montana for anarticle in their constitution
that required a habitableclimate, basically a habitable
environment One of the decisionsfrom the judge to bring it to
trial is really important.
We're going to see more andmore of this drive for
accountability from youngerpeople, from others who have
(27:53):
been injured and harmed by theseclimate impacts.
I think that's going to drive alot of change too.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I wish that story had gotten more pressed than it did
, at least from here.
There was something elsehappening in the news that day.
I can't remember, but thatcourt case didn't get a lot of
press here.
What would you say to thehangers on who just want to
still hang on to fossil fuelsout of either ignorance or greed
(28:21):
or political persuasion?
What would you say to them?
How do we talk to those peopleto get them out of their echo
chamber?
Is there a way?
What would you say to thosepeople you've heard about?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
It's really hard because, as I've learned, living
here in Texas, the fossil fuelcapital of the world, where I
spend a lot of time when I livein the northeast I didn't spend
that much time actually withpeople who are culturally and
economically deeply invested inthe fossil fuel world, but here
in Texas I do and I don't.
(28:55):
First of all, I don't thinkthat there's any kind of magic
words that we can say that'sgoing to change Everybody.
I think that everyone has theirown reasons.
Sometimes it's political,sometimes it's economic.
They're invested, you know theyhave a, you know they've
(29:15):
invested their retirement in,largely in, you know, exxonmobil
, say, and they want thedividends and they want the
money and they don't want to seethat kind of being taken away.
You know, unfortunately, a lotof debate about the transition
to clean energy and climatechange has become enmeshed in
the culture wars that we'reseeing in America.
Right that, you know it's.
(29:37):
There's been a strong push tokind of debase the legitimacy of
science in America.
Recently we see that in theanti-vax movement, the rise of
the anti-vax movement, which has, you know, really tried to cut
(29:59):
the ground out from underneath alot of the best scientists and
the best kind of scientificthinking about what to do, about
how to deal with COVID.
That's a you know, that's atroubling sign when you think
about extending that to theclimate movement.
You know, and I also think thatthere's a certain percentage of
(30:21):
the population that will neverbe convinced that this is urgent
real and that this is the bestthing to do.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
You need to move on without them, right?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Right, and so that's okay.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah.
You know, Well, I know we'rerunning short of time, so I know
you've traveled literally tothe ends of the earth to write
this book.
You've been to Antarctica.
There's a great chapter aboutyour trip to Antarctica.
You end with your trip to theCanadian Arctic and an encounter
(30:54):
with a polar bear, and I wouldwonder if you could just close
by telling that story a littlebit and what she taught you.
What did not being eaten by apolar bear teach you briefly?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, that's not something that I ever thought
that I would have to think about, about what not being eaten by
a polar bear would teach me, butin fact I did.
It is the last chapter of thebook and readers can read the
full story.
But a few years ago not becauseI was trying to do research
(31:28):
particularly on this book, I wasdoing other kinds of research I
went to Baffin Island in theCanadian Arctic, which is kind
of across the Greenland Sea fromGreenland and it has one of the
highest population of polarbears in the world and we knew
(31:49):
that we were going to be seeinga lot of bears.
We took a 350-milecross-country ski trip across
Baffin Island, me and two otherscientists, and we basically
pulled 100-pound sled each of usbehind us.
We were on skis the entire time.
We didn't see another humanbeing for seven weeks.
(32:12):
We saw a lot of polar bears andwe were out there and we
realized how vulnerable wereally were.
A lot of people who do thesekinds of trips in these places
bring dogs, because the dogs arevery good at barking when a
bear comes near, which isparticularly important at night
(32:32):
when you're sleeping out on theice and you're laying out there
like hot dogs on the ice, andone of the things that makes
polar bears so scary is thatthey're the only bear that is
actually predatory, that willactually track you down and hunt
you.
Grisly bears won't do that.
Grisly bears are dangerous, butthey're dangerous if you are on
(32:54):
a hiking trail and come arounda corner and surprise them, or
you come across them with theircubs or something, but they
won't actually hunt you down.
Polar bears will hunt you downand we got out there and about
halfway into our trip werealized there were a lot of
bears around us and a lot ofthese bears were hungry because
the sea ice that they used tohunt seals had melted
(33:19):
particularly much that year andthey were not able to get as
much food as they wanted, sothey were looking for fresh meat
.
Basically, and it was a very,very alarming experience to be
out in the middle of the ice onBabban Island and realize that
we would wake up in the morningand see these big bear prints of
(33:41):
10 or 15 feet from our tent andrealize how vulnerable we were.
But we finally made it throughall of this and we got to our
last campsite where we had useda satellite phone to call some
Inuits to come with some of thebills to get us over this one
ridge back to a village where wecould get a small plane to fly
(34:05):
out.
And we had rendezvous there.
And we got there.
We were exhausted, we were outof food and we realized it was
sort of a seal slaughterhousezone.
There was blood all over theice, there was seal parts of
seals everywhere, polar beartracks everywhere, and this was
where we were supposed torendezvous with the Inuits and
we were too tired and tooexhausted to move on from that
(34:26):
point.
So we basically skied a couplehundred yards away from this
area and camped.
It was a very terrifying night,knowing that there were bears
all around us, but we survived.
Obviously we woke up that night.
That morning it was a blue skyand then Inuits were supposed to
come at around noon to pick usup At about 10 o'clock.
(34:51):
We went back into our tent in10 o'clock in the morning, after
wandering around outside for awhile, to have a final
ceremonial kind of cup of teaaround our little camp stove.
We had a cup of tea and whilewe were having the cup of tea
there, whenever we camp we wouldput what we call a bear wire up
around the tent, which is likejust a little thin piece of
(35:13):
copper wire that was connectedto a battery.
If that piece of copper wirebroke, we knew something was
approaching the tent.
A little tiny alarm would gooff and we would have 30 second
alert to whatever was coming.
But anyway, we were sittingthere having our tea and the
alarm went off and I thought itwas just wind, because often the
(35:35):
wind would knock the bear wiredown and it would break and the
alarm would go off.
We had just been out there afew minutes ago.
I hadn't seen anything.
I unzipped the tent, stood up toget out and see what was going
on and there was a female polarbear charging the tent right
when I ended up there and Istood up and she stopped and she
was like literally 15, 10, 15feet from the tent, fully intent
(36:01):
on coming in and getting us,and she stopped and was as
surprised to see me as I was tosee her and she stood up on her
back legs and we had this sortof eye to eye contact for, you
know, it seemed like fiveminutes, but it was actually
probably 30 seconds where, youknow, she looked at me and had
(36:26):
to make a decision about whethershe was going to eat me or not
and she easily could have.
I was standing right there andshe had two cubs with her at her
feet and clearly very hungry,but for whatever reasons, she
made some grunting sounds anddropped down and essentially
(36:49):
walked away.
And for me it was such apowerful moment because not only
because, of course, she decidednot to eat me, but I really
realized how much we're all inthis together.
You know that she was trying tosurvive.
The climate change was impactingher life in a very powerful way
(37:11):
.
She had cubs to feed.
She couldn't get the you knowthe seals that she needed for
her meals, so she was exploringother options and for me it
really underscored that this isnot just about what's happening
to you and me, or to people inOhio versus people in Texas,
where I live, or in India orChina.
(37:34):
It's about everything that'salive on this planet and that,
as we continue to burn fossilfuels and heat things up and
change things, we're puttingeverything kind of at risk, and
we're doing this and we're allin this together, and that, to
me, was somehow profoundlydisturbing and also, though,
(37:56):
profoundly hopeful and moving.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, well, I think she wanted you to write this
book, so that's why she didn'teat you.
So I'm glad you're safe and Ivery much appreciate you writing
this book.
You will have a few hundredmore book sales, I think,
because of this podcast.
(38:19):
So thank you so much for yourtime and keep up the good fight.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Great, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
You can find our full catalogof episodes on Spotify, Apple
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New episodes are available thefirst and third Tuesday of each
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Please follow EcoSpeak CLE onFacebook and Instagram and
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(38:48):
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us at hello at ecospeaksclecom.
Stay tuned for more importantand inspiring stories to come.
You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the
EcoCurious explore the uniqueand thriving environmental
community here in Northeast Ohio.
My name is Diane Bicke and myproducer is Greg Rotuno.
Together we bring you inspiringstories from local
sustainability leaders andinvite you to connect, learn and
live with our community andplanet in mind.
(00:25):
Hello, friends, we have a veryspecial guest today from Austin,
Texas, New York Times bestselling author and climate
journalist, Jeff Goodell.
Jeff has covered climate changefor more than two decades at
Rolling Stone and otherpublications.
You may have seen him talkingabout climate and energy issues
on NPR and other major newsnetworks and he is the author of
(00:47):
seven books, including his newbook the Heat Will Kill you
First Life and Death on aScorched Planet.
I have listened to this book,I've read the book and recently
had the privilege of hearingJeff in person speak about his
book at the Hudson Library.
A few weeks ago I went withGreg, my husband, my daughter
and we all agreed it would bereally cool no pun intended to
(01:10):
invite Jeff to join us onEcoSpeak CLE so we could also
speak with you.
So, as he was signing my book,I asked him and he said yes.
First disclaimer I want to letyou know that this book is not
just another depressing bookabout climate change.
Filled with charts and graphs.
It is a little scary at times,but it is a thoughtful and human
(01:32):
book.
Jeff maintains that he is not adoomer and he is weirdly
optimistic, but we all need tohave our eyes wide open to
address this moment.
So welcome Jeff.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Thank you for having me.
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So summer in Austin what was that like?
I think you were traveling abit for your book tour, but what
did that feel like?
You faced one of the hottestsummers on record in Texas.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, I mean you know many of us faced one of the
hottest summers on record.
I think it was the hottestsummer globally on record, in
sort of in human history and itfelt to me like Austin was the
center of it all.
There was a strange feeling fortwo reasons.
One is that I had spent threeyears writing about heat and
(02:24):
thinking about heat, but then tobe here and kind of experience
it so relentlessly, it gave menew understanding of the sort of
some of the subtleties of whatit means to live in a place
where it doesn't get below 100degrees for like 50 days in a
row.
And also it was a strangefeeling because I had written a
(02:47):
book about heat.
I was, the book was out, I wasdoing podcasts and interviews
and talking to people like we'redoing now.
But it kind of felt like I wasliving in my own Stephen King
novel because I had written thisthing and then it kind of
happened this past summer.
So that was a sort of oddfeeling.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
And so you were just stuck inside, the shades drawn
and your air conditioning wentout at one point, and you
realized that you're reallyvulnerable to power outages,
which we all are.
So when did the title come toyou?
Just sort of in the middle ofthose days, or?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
No, the title came to me like a year ago Books are.
One of the difficulties ofdoing a book like this is the
need to be done more or lessdown a year in advance, and so
you never know what the world'sgoing to look like when your
book comes out.
And if you're writing a novelabout 19th century romance or
(03:50):
something, it doesn't matter.
But if you're writing acontemporary contemporary events
, whether it's politics orbusiness or, in my case, climate
change you never know what thatworld's going to look like when
the book comes out.
So that's always a little bitscary in the book writing
business.
The title came to me a yearearlier when my publisher and I
(04:13):
were going back and forth aboutwhat we should call this book
and there was some debate aboutthis title because it's very
blunt, very scary in some levels, and there was certainly people
at my publishing house whowanted it to be named something
(04:36):
more less kind of threateninglike heat or just something like
that.
But I really wanted it to bemore confrontational, not
because I wanted it to be morescary although that's OK,
because I think we should bescared.
As you said, I'm not a doomer,but I do think we need to be
alarmed about what's happeningin our world.
But I also really wanted thisbook to be engaging in a
(05:01):
personal way.
I wanted it to be about you andyour relationship with the
weather and with the climate andwith heat, and I think too much
writing about climate changeand too much talk about climate
change is all about kind offuture scenarios and future
generations and people far away,and I really wanted it to have
(05:22):
this feeling of this ishappening to me and you now, and
the book, or the title, I think, suggests that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And in your talk you talked how important it is for
all of us to understand heat andthe risks of heat, and that's
one of the most important thingswe should be doing right now.
You open your book with a storythat kind of brings that
message home how we're not we'reall not immune from this.
It's the story of the Garrishfamily, and would you mind
(05:57):
telling us that story?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Sure, and this is a story that I read in the media.
It was the headlines when itwas happening in the summer of
2021.
And immediately intrigued meand I explored it more and came
to sort of tell the story asfully as I could in the opening
chapter of the book.
And it's about the Garrishfamily who?
(06:19):
Richard Garrish was 43 yearsold.
His wife, ellen Chong, was 37.
They had a one and a half yearold child.
He was a software engineer inSilicon Valley.
She was doing various kinds ofconsulting and other business
related things, and they gottired of living in the go-go
(06:40):
world of Silicon Valley andmoved to the Sierra Nevada
foothills and they were startinga new life there, working
remotely as many people didduring the pandemic
no-transcript.
We really wanted to be closer tonature and more in tune with
the sort of natural world aroundthem, and one day they decided
(07:02):
to go for a seven mile hike, andit was a July day.
It was forecast to be about 104degrees that day, which was hot
.
Of course, they thought ofthemselves as experienced hikers
than they were.
They, richard Garrish, had aconversation with his brother
who was a kind of outward boundleader in Scotland who was very
(07:25):
familiar with sort of outdoorrisks and survival techniques
and said to his brother it'sgoing to be very hot tomorrow,
you need to be careful, maybeyou should reschedule.
Richard said no, I understand,we're going to be fine, we're
going to leave early, we haveplenty of water.
And they started out on theseven mile hike.
They left early in the morningat seven o'clock and they had
water with them.
(07:46):
They had their dog with them.
They had their one and a halfyear old daughter with them.
Richard was carrying her in abackpack.
They hiked about four miles downto the Merced River, which is a
lovely river that runs out ofYosemite Valley there, and then
they had to hike up about athree mile switchback, two and a
half mile switchback ofsouthern facing exposure, and it
(08:09):
was around noon, so the heat ofthe day, unfortunately, when
they started this hike and noone knows exactly what
transpired.
But that night their family andfriends realized that they
hadn't come home.
They had people were makingcalls and they didn't hear from
(08:30):
them and called the Sheriff'sDepartment.
Sheriff's Department sent out asearch party and they found the
entire family, including the dogand the daughter, dead on the
trail about halfway up thissteep switchback and at first
they thought it was theSheriff's Department, thought it
was maybe a family suicide, ormaybe they had drank something
(08:54):
in the river that had somebacteria or something like that
that had killed them, or theyhad stumbled over an abandoned
mine that was that were carbonmonoxide was leaking or
something like that.
But after a few weeks ofinvestigation it became very
clear that what happened is thatthey all died of heat stroke.
(09:17):
And this is the story I tell inthe opening chapter of the book
, and it was really important tome to tell the story to really
underscore this idea that we'reall vulnerable, that even kind
of youngish people in good shape, who you know on some level
understand the risks of extremeheat, can still be killed and be
(09:41):
killed very quickly, and insome ways it's the embodiment of
the title of the book that wetalked about a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
The heat will kill you first.
Yeah, so funny how our mindswent.
I think you know many of uswill remember hearing that story
reported on the news and ourmind goes to everything but the
heat.
You know we think there wasfoul play or whatever involved
In your book.
I thought it was reallyimportant because you talk about
the Goldilocks zone and ithelps us understand how fragile
(10:14):
and what a fragile place we allare.
Would you mind talking aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, the Goldilocks zone is a really important idea
that I borrowed from planetaryscientists who look for life on
other planets.
You know, when they're lookingfor life on other planets, the
best indicator they believe forthat is the presence of liquid
water.
And so they look for planetsthat, if it's too cold, of
(10:41):
course, the liquid water is iceand you have, you know, balls of
ice, like Pluto or somethinglike that.
Or if it's too hot, you haveplaces where the water is all
vaporized and there's nopresence of water, like, say,
venus, when they're looking for,so they're looking for the
presence of liquid water, andthat is, they believe, the
temperature zone in which lifecan exist.
(11:02):
And I borrowed this term frommy book because it's really
important to grasp when youthink about the risk of heat,
this notion that we humans, andbasically all of life that we
recognize around us, has evolvedin a certain sort of zone of
heat and we are really good atdealing with heat within this
(11:26):
certain range that we've evolvedin.
But as our planet heats up andas these extreme events get more
and more extreme, we're movingout of that Goldilocks zone.
And as we move out of thisGoldilocks zone, our bodies have
a much more difficult timedealing with it.
The risks, not just to us butto all living things, increase
(11:49):
exponentially, and it's a reallyimportant concept to grasp when
we think about not just therisk of extreme heat but the
dangers of climate change ingeneral.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So when we talk about the Goldilocks zone, I thought
that part of the book washelpful in helping talk to other
people about climate changebeing able to say you know,
we've all evolved within thiscertain range and evolution
doesn't happen fast.
We can't quickly adapt to beingout of that zone.
(12:24):
Many things in your book helpedme kind of think through my
conversations with people andhow to best address climate
deniers and such, and I thinkhelping explain how things will
happen to someone individuallygets people's attention.
Can you talk a minute about howheat does kill?
(12:47):
I read that more people diefrom heat stroke right now
already than any other naturaldisaster and it's an equal
opportunity killer.
What happens when a body goesthrough heat stroke?
You started to feel some ofthose effects yourself when you
were hiking, I think, inNicaragua.
Can you explain what that feltlike?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, so like 10 years ago so long before I began
this book and what happened?
To be on vacation in Nicaraguaand went for a hike up a volcano
conditions not so differentthan what actually killed the
Garrosh family, one of thereasons I was so drawn to that
story I started to hike up asteep volcano and I had what I
(13:33):
thought was plenty of water withme and I was with some other
people and we started hiking andI started sweating and I
started getting a little dizzy,but I didn't really think
anything about it.
It wasn't that hot, it wasmaybe 85 degrees, but it was
very humid.
So that changed the dynamicsomewhat, but I started to get
(13:55):
dizzy.
I started to feel in my heartreally pounding in my chest and
at a certain point my body juststarted to sweat it's not enough
to say I was sweating Just likewater started pouring out of my
body.
It was just this strange,surreal feeling of my, and I
know now that my body wasdesperately trying to cool off
(14:18):
and I started to get a littlebit hallucinogenic and losing my
balance, and the people I waswith fortunately recognized what
was happening to me andinsisted that we stop and I just
sit there and cool down until Iregained my body temperature,
lowered a little bit, and ittook about an hour and a half of
(14:40):
rest in a shady spot for myselfto come back, my body
temperature to get back tonormal, and it was very
frightening, but I didn't really, and I understood then that it
was about heat.
But I didn't.
That was not the genesis of thebook at all.
But when I started writingabout heat then for this book, I
(15:01):
reflected back on that and Irealized that I was experiencing
the beginnings of heat stroke.
And so what happens when we'reexposed to extreme heat for any
period, whether it's becauseyou're locked in a hot car, or
whether it's because you're on ahigh kind of volcano and
Nicaragua, or whether you'reworking on a rooftop In Ohio on
(15:24):
a really hot day, you know thewe, our bodies, have one
mechanism to cool off, and thatis sweat.
And that's how we do it.
And what happens is our bodytemperature begins to rise.
Is you know, these sweat glandsspray water onto our skin and
as that water evaporates byevapotranspiration, it carries
(15:47):
the heat away.
And so, in order to help makethis more efficient, our heart
starts pounding and pushing ourblood out Towards our skin to be
at this sort of coolingperimeter, and so one of the
initial things that you feelwhen you are exposed to extreme
heat is your heart startspounding harder and harder and
faster and faster and it pullsblood away from your brain and
(16:10):
some of your internal organs inorder to get it out around your
skin, which is one of thereasons you feel lightheaded and
, in some cases, evenhallucinogenic, because the
brain, the blood, is actuallybeing pulled away from your
brain, and this is one of thereasons why people who have any
kind of heart or circulatoryproblems are much higher risk.
(16:31):
Of heat exposure Is because itputs so much strain on your
heart, because basically, that'sthe only mechanism our bodies
have, and so, as it gets hotterand hotter, our heart starts
pounding faster and faster andfaster, trying desperately to
get as much blood as possibleout to the periphery of our body
, so where it can be cooled off.
(16:53):
And if it works, as it did inthe case with me and Nicaragua,
I was able to get into the shade, stop exercising and generating
my heat.
My body was able to get regaincontrol.
But if it, if it can't regaincontrol, either because you
continue exercising and ignoringthis, or because the heat is so
extreme that you can't get outof it, then you get into real
(17:14):
serious trouble.
You know heart failure.
But then at a certain point,around 105 degrees body
temperature which is not reallythat you know, it's only six
degrees or so from a normal bodytemperature Really terrible
things start happening, like youknow.
The membranes of your cellsbegin to melt or denature as it
(17:35):
gets hotter and hotter and yourbody literally begins to sort of
melt from the inside and youstart hemorrhaging inside and
all kinds of terrible thingshappen and death inevitably
follows.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yikes, that's, that's pretty scary, it's, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's a really you know writing about the details
of extreme heat and what it doesto your body.
It does feel for me as a writer, kind of just horrific going
into the details of it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, well, you know, here in Cleveland we're not
accustomed to heat.
We had just two days over 90degrees on, like Texas and the
rest of the world.
Yet you know, I think there's afeeling here that you know we
think we're going to be okay inthe midst of climate change,
that you know we live here withour great lake and our cooler
(18:30):
climate and that'll make us safefrom, you know, some of the
worst effects of climate change.
Yet heat is.
You know, we still had a monthlong drought in May.
We still had tornadoes andtorrential rains come through in
August.
But some will just say it'sjust the weather, you know.
And how is that thinking wrong?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That thing is wrong because you know yes, it's true,
of course that the weather hasalways been changing.
I mean, that's obviously true,and there's been times in the
past on Earth, in Earth history,when there were alligators in
the Arctic.
You know where the Arctic is,now palm trees growing where
Antarctica is.
I mean, there's no questionthat there's been extreme
(19:14):
changes in the Earth's climateover time, but those climate
changes have all been driven bynatural processes, mostly
volcanic reactions, that havebelched CO2 into the atmosphere
and change the temperatures ofthe Earth's climate.
What's happening now is verydifferent.
(19:35):
We are belching CO2 into theatmosphere ourselves by burning
fossil fuels and by loading upthe atmosphere with fossil fuels
very quickly, much faster thanvolcanoes did in times in the
past.
We are changing the climatemuch more quickly than it's ever
changed before, and that wouldbe fine, except for the fact
(20:00):
that, as we talked about earlier, we have all evolved to deal
with a certain range oftemperatures, and so we are
pushing our climate system tomove much more quickly than it
ever has in the past.
And we meaning humans and otherliving forms and also, by the
way, everything that we've built, like railroad tracks, bridges,
(20:22):
all kinds of things even youriPhone will give you an alert
when it's too hot are notadapted to these radical changes
.
And it's true that Ohio isactually there are certainly
better and worse places in theworld than I'm talking to you
from one of the worst places.
I'm in the belly of the beast.
The belly of the beast, as yousaid.
Yeah, totally, here in Texaswe're dealing with droughts,
(20:45):
we're dealing with extreme heat.
We have a whole coastline onthe Gulf that is extremely at
risk of sea level rise.
We have lots of problemsmigration problems, crop
failures here that make usreally vulnerable.
But when people ask me three orfour years ago, where should I
move, everybody wants to knowwhere they should move to get to
(21:09):
reduce the risk.
One of the places, first of all, I would say that there's
nowhere that you can go thatyou're going to be protected
from the risks of climate change.
I mean, just look at thewildfires in Canada and the sort
of northern boreal forestswhere, up until recently, a lot
of people thought that was avery cool place to be.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, and then those all caught fire this summer.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, and look at what happened in the Pacific
Northwest in 2021.
I mean, you mentioned in Ohioyou've had a couple of hot days
and it's a relatively mildsummer climate.
So too was the PacificNorthwest.
Nobody thought that BritishColumbia, for example, could
(21:54):
have days when they had 121degrees, and we had towns in
British Columbia that got so hotthey more or less spontaneously
combusted and burned to theground.
Portland 115, 116 degree days.
We had 1,000 deaths over afour-day period in the Pacific
(22:14):
Northwest.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, those were crazy stories you tell about
Paris and Seattle area andChicago even.
I think we just didn't reallyhear a lot about that on the
news other than just quicklittle reference.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
But there were a lot of people that died.
Yeah, so no one's immune to it.
You can make the argument, assome people do, that here I am
in Texas and it's really hot.
It's been really hot all summer.
But a lot of people in Texassay, well, we're prepared for it
and we know how to deal withheat, and to some degree that's
true.
Obviously it's been hot inTexas for a long time.
(22:54):
But we're getting to theseextreme levels where people are
not prepared for it and peoplewho are outside the bubble of
air conditioning or even takingshort walks and things like that
are really at risk.
In Ohio there is not this sortof heat awareness that there is
in Texas, and that increases therisk because people don't
(23:16):
understand what the signs ofheat exhaustion, heat stroke,
when hot weather comes, what todo, how to handle it.
It's the inverse of whathappens here in Texas.
When I first moved here fouryears ago, we had an ice storm
that lasted four or five daysand I had come from upstate New
(23:38):
York, where I drove an ice stormall the time and really knew
what to do with ice storms.
When we had an ice storm herein Texas, people freaked out.
They had no idea what to do.
Their cars were crashing allover the place, water tanks were
bursting.
I mean, people had no idea howto handle it.
(23:58):
And similarly, in places thatare not used to heat, when it
comes it's, in a way,exponentially more dangerous
because people don't understandhow to deal with the risks.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Well, yeah, we make fun of people here because they
can't drive in the snow, butwe're equally dumb about heat.
So I'm sure that's part of alot of the climate planning
that's happening here inNortheast Ohio with our climate
action plans and such.
But heat is a driver for, asyou maintain, droughts behind
(24:35):
Dengue appearing in Florida,rise of malaria because animals
are on the move and plants.
So it's kind of a stark picture.
But I'd like you to talk alittle bit about besides heat.
Heat is going to drive changeand it could be an engine for
positive change.
It will have to be.
What else will acceleratechange?
(24:56):
Are there lawsuits against oilcompanies?
Is just going to drive change?
The economic cost of all thesenatural disasters going to help
drive change?
Young voters, will they drivechange?
What's your take on all that?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I think all those things are driving change.
I think that there's no onesingle thing.
I think that people aregradually becoming more and more
aware of the reality of what'shappening.
I think that extreme eventslike these summers the summer
(25:34):
we've just been having, where wehad the hottest summer globally
on record, and we had all ofthese extreme heat events all
over the world we're making itvery, very clear that this is
not some sort of invention ofliberal tree huggers, but this
is an actual, physical fact ofwhat's happening to our world.
(25:55):
I think that's driving change.
I think the economics are reallyimportant.
Here in Texas, the fossil fuelcapital of the country, we also
are the leaders in wind andsolar energy, because there's a
lot of money to be made in windand solar right now, because
fossil fuels are becoming moreand more expensive.
(26:17):
By far the cheapest way togenerate electricity virtually
everywhere in the world now isthrough renewable power.
That is dominating the growthin green jobs related to all
kinds of clean energy, from newkinds of rewiring of the grid to
(26:40):
electric vehicles, to all kindsof progressive thinking about
how to deal with and adapt tothese changes.
That is where the economicgrowth is going.
The economic growth is notgoing.
No one's building more coalplants.
We're not going to build morecoal plants.
If your economic model is builtaround building more coal
plants, you're going to be introuble.
(27:04):
It's this inevitability of thisenergy shift.
Just as we shifted from whaleoil to petroleum, this shift
away from fossil fuels to cleanenergy is happening.
That's a huge driver, I think,politically, you have a younger
generation that understands allof this.
The lawsuit in Montana whereyou had 12 young people suing
(27:30):
the state of Montana for anarticle in their constitution
that required a habitableclimate, basically a habitable
environment One of the decisionsfrom the judge to bring it to
trial is really important.
We're going to see more andmore of this drive for
accountability from youngerpeople, from others who have
(27:53):
been injured and harmed by theseclimate impacts.
I think that's going to drive alot of change too.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I wish that story had gotten more pressed than it did
, at least from here.
There was something elsehappening in the news that day.
I can't remember, but thatcourt case didn't get a lot of
press here.
What would you say to thehangers on who just want to
still hang on to fossil fuelsout of either ignorance or greed
(28:21):
or political persuasion?
What would you say to them?
How do we talk to those peopleto get them out of their echo
chamber?
Is there a way?
What would you say to thosepeople you've heard about?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
It's really hard because, as I've learned, living
here in Texas, the fossil fuelcapital of the world, where I
spend a lot of time when I livein the northeast I didn't spend
that much time actually withpeople who are culturally and
economically deeply invested inthe fossil fuel world, but here
in Texas I do and I don't.
(28:55):
First of all, I don't thinkthat there's any kind of magic
words that we can say that'sgoing to change Everybody.
I think that everyone has theirown reasons.
Sometimes it's political,sometimes it's economic.
They're invested, you know theyhave a, you know they've
(29:15):
invested their retirement in,largely in, you know, exxonmobil
, say, and they want thedividends and they want the
money and they don't want to seethat kind of being taken away.
You know, unfortunately, a lotof debate about the transition
to clean energy and climatechange has become enmeshed in
the culture wars that we'reseeing in America.
Right that, you know it's.
(29:37):
There's been a strong push tokind of debase the legitimacy of
science in America.
Recently we see that in theanti-vax movement, the rise of
the anti-vax movement, which has, you know, really tried to cut
(29:59):
the ground out from underneath alot of the best scientists and
the best kind of scientificthinking about what to do, about
how to deal with COVID.
That's a you know, that's atroubling sign when you think
about extending that to theclimate movement.
You know, and I also think thatthere's a certain percentage of
(30:21):
the population that will neverbe convinced that this is urgent
real and that this is the bestthing to do.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
You need to move on without them, right?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Right, and so that's okay.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah.
You know, Well, I know we'rerunning short of time, so I know
you've traveled literally tothe ends of the earth to write
this book.
You've been to Antarctica.
There's a great chapter aboutyour trip to Antarctica.
You end with your trip to theCanadian Arctic and an encounter
(30:54):
with a polar bear, and I wouldwonder if you could just close
by telling that story a littlebit and what she taught you.
What did not being eaten by apolar bear teach you briefly?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, that's not something that I ever thought
that I would have to think about, about what not being eaten by
a polar bear would teach me, butin fact I did.
It is the last chapter of thebook and readers can read the
full story.
But a few years ago not becauseI was trying to do research
(31:28):
particularly on this book, I wasdoing other kinds of research I
went to Baffin Island in theCanadian Arctic, which is kind
of across the Greenland Sea fromGreenland and it has one of the
highest population of polarbears in the world and we knew
(31:49):
that we were going to be seeinga lot of bears.
We took a 350-milecross-country ski trip across
Baffin Island, me and two otherscientists, and we basically
pulled 100-pound sled each of usbehind us.
We were on skis the entire time.
We didn't see another humanbeing for seven weeks.
(32:12):
We saw a lot of polar bears andwe were out there and we
realized how vulnerable wereally were.
A lot of people who do thesekinds of trips in these places
bring dogs, because the dogs arevery good at barking when a
bear comes near, which isparticularly important at night
(32:32):
when you're sleeping out on theice and you're laying out there
like hot dogs on the ice, andone of the things that makes
polar bears so scary is thatthey're the only bear that is
actually predatory, that willactually track you down and hunt
you.
Grisly bears won't do that.
Grisly bears are dangerous, butthey're dangerous if you are on
(32:54):
a hiking trail and come arounda corner and surprise them, or
you come across them with theircubs or something, but they
won't actually hunt you down.
Polar bears will hunt you downand we got out there and about
halfway into our trip werealized there were a lot of
bears around us and a lot ofthese bears were hungry because
the sea ice that they used tohunt seals had melted
(33:19):
particularly much that year andthey were not able to get as
much food as they wanted, sothey were looking for fresh meat
.
Basically, and it was a very,very alarming experience to be
out in the middle of the ice onBabban Island and realize that
we would wake up in the morningand see these big bear prints of
(33:41):
10 or 15 feet from our tent andrealize how vulnerable we were.
But we finally made it throughall of this and we got to our
last campsite where we had useda satellite phone to call some
Inuits to come with some of thebills to get us over this one
ridge back to a village where wecould get a small plane to fly
(34:05):
out.
And we had rendezvous there.
And we got there.
We were exhausted, we were outof food and we realized it was
sort of a seal slaughterhousezone.
There was blood all over theice, there was seal parts of
seals everywhere, polar beartracks everywhere, and this was
where we were supposed torendezvous with the Inuits and
we were too tired and tooexhausted to move on from that
(34:26):
point.
So we basically skied a couplehundred yards away from this
area and camped.
It was a very terrifying night,knowing that there were bears
all around us, but we survived.
Obviously we woke up that night.
That morning it was a blue skyand then Inuits were supposed to
come at around noon to pick usup At about 10 o'clock.
(34:51):
We went back into our tent in10 o'clock in the morning, after
wandering around outside for awhile, to have a final
ceremonial kind of cup of teaaround our little camp stove.
We had a cup of tea and whilewe were having the cup of tea
there, whenever we camp we wouldput what we call a bear wire up
around the tent, which is likejust a little thin piece of
(35:13):
copper wire that was connectedto a battery.
If that piece of copper wirebroke, we knew something was
approaching the tent.
A little tiny alarm would gooff and we would have 30 second
alert to whatever was coming.
But anyway, we were sittingthere having our tea and the
alarm went off and I thought itwas just wind, because often the
(35:35):
wind would knock the bear wiredown and it would break and the
alarm would go off.
We had just been out there afew minutes ago.
I hadn't seen anything.
I unzipped the tent, stood up toget out and see what was going
on and there was a female polarbear charging the tent right
when I ended up there and Istood up and she stopped and she
was like literally 15, 10, 15feet from the tent, fully intent
(36:01):
on coming in and getting us,and she stopped and was as
surprised to see me as I was tosee her and she stood up on her
back legs and we had this sortof eye to eye contact for, you
know, it seemed like fiveminutes, but it was actually
probably 30 seconds where, youknow, she looked at me and had
(36:26):
to make a decision about whethershe was going to eat me or not
and she easily could have.
I was standing right there andshe had two cubs with her at her
feet and clearly very hungry,but for whatever reasons, she
made some grunting sounds anddropped down and essentially
(36:49):
walked away.
And for me it was such apowerful moment because not only
because, of course, she decidednot to eat me, but I really
realized how much we're all inthis together.
You know that she was trying tosurvive.
The climate change was impactingher life in a very powerful way
(37:11):
.
She had cubs to feed.
She couldn't get the you knowthe seals that she needed for
her meals, so she was exploringother options and for me it
really underscored that this isnot just about what's happening
to you and me, or to people inOhio versus people in Texas,
where I live, or in India orChina.
(37:34):
It's about everything that'salive on this planet and that,
as we continue to burn fossilfuels and heat things up and
change things, we're puttingeverything kind of at risk, and
we're doing this and we're allin this together, and that, to
me, was somehow profoundlydisturbing and also, though,
(37:56):
profoundly hopeful and moving.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, well, I think she wanted you to write this
book, so that's why she didn'teat you.
So I'm glad you're safe and Ivery much appreciate you writing
this book.
You will have a few hundredmore book sales, I think,
because of this podcast.
(38:19):
So thank you so much for yourtime and keep up the good fight.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Great, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak
CLE.
You can find our full catalogof episodes on Spotify, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you getyour podcasts.
New episodes are available thefirst and third Tuesday of each
month.
Please follow EcoSpeak CLE onFacebook and Instagram and
become part of the conversation.
If you would like to send usfeedback and suggestions, or if
(38:48):
you'd like to become a sponsorof EcoSpeak CLE, you can email
us at hello at ecospeaksclecom.
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