Thank you for being here and its amazing for me to be with david wallacewells who is one of our. His book the unknown earth is a must read. I was just telling him my daughters in high school and i only read on her own, which is wild for me. But shes recommend they get to everybody. Its a great way to understand, dan, the challenges of climate in our time ill say a few things the were going to go back and forth in a sense of of conversation but by saying just moments ago while we were here, the white house announced that john podesta is going to be taking over for john kerry was doing for the last three years as a socalled climate czar, podesta has been a key figure on policy with. Barack obama. But more than that, probably is almost done more for public lands, wilderness you know, National Forest than anybody. Hes been working the new america foundation. Hes a troubleshooter. We know he ran Hillary Hillary clintons campaign. But well see how elevates climate in. A president ial election cycle. One of the problems with it is where i teach at rice university, the environmental history all students care deeply about climate and i always worry come fall, whatever there are, it gets dropped. Its like a big issue. But then, well, theres a war, theres a gasoline prices, economy, and it never sometimes is able to stay in to the forefront of policy. So i was going to ask you, i mean, what how did you get started focusing on Environmental Issues . Well, let me start by actually picking up on Something Else you said about the state of climate in our politics. I think that in this cycle it may be to the benefit of climate campaigners that, we are not likely to so focused on Climate Change. And that in this election with the ira bidens big climate bill behind us there isnt legislative action sort of on the agenda Going Forward and. I think when people in that bill passed and certainly in the lead up to it and as talked about Climate Policy over the decade between the time that obamas cap and trade bill failed and this one passed. You heard a lot of that any democratic led to make Real Progress on climate was going to produce a backlash that was going to be really political danger politically dangerous the party and remarkably in the aftermath of the ira which is you know compared to everything the us has ever done on Climate Change and decarbonization, and it just towers above all those efforts. Remarkably, theres been very little backlash. There was almost mention of it in the midterms, even though it passed just a few months before the midterms, it doesnt seem to be a top shelf issue right now for republicans in criticizing bidens legacy, even though it was probably itll end up being something close to 1,000,000,000,000 bill that really will the American Energy sector in the space of a decade and i think you know theres certainly reasons to hope that more can be done particularly on the on the sort of Agency Action side as opposed to the big, big budget legislation side. But, you know, on some level, kind of happy to see that the climate politics are quiet at the moment rather than flaring up to a boiling point, which is, i think, something a lot of people feared. Well, the counter side of that would be how bad biden in the polls right now, and particularly among young people. And they feel betrayed. Theyre not reading infrastructure and feeling the climate when. Then suddenly they start opening alaska public lands. And youre having the big fossil fuel president to. And i think a lot of voters are looking for consistency on climate. Theyve been hidden, obfuscated bounced around a little in here. Biden, who incidentally had the first climate legislation version, you know, the first bill and has this incredible climate record president. I mean, much better than anybody since we can Start Recording it. Im not to showcase it. And that becomes a running politics, maybe even negatively showcase it because, you know, hes also in charge of the highest levels of oil and gas oil and Gas Production in american history. That may actually be something he talks about more on the campaign. Right. His climate record. And then what happens to those young environmentalists. Will they show up and they have options, by and large, whenever we call on i never like these terms much, but for simple, say, generation z, College Students or zoomers or whatever, ive been teaching history since in 1989, and ive never seen a group of young College Students more downcast about an upcoming election in 2024. Theyre feeling theyre worried about age of of biden and trump, but theyre feeling just apathetic about things. And how do we get young that care about climate, really feeling that they can make make a difference and in and part of it when i wrote on the 1960s in sound Spring Revolution is the idea of david brower of the sierra club is to say is you got to have fun saving the planet on the sixties there was a sense of fun when earth day kicked in it was fun you were starting to log win, win, win. And when you feel youve won something which they did with the big infrastructure bill but where you get more active and so it all build after Rachel Carson spoke silent spring. In 1962, you didnt get the birth of Environmental Defense fund in 67 and sue the. You know, songs like mercy me, the ecology and pete seeger, saving the hudson and Supreme CourtJustice William douglass, stopping dams and stopping it at the grand canyon. It started being fun and building a kind of momentum. And if the option was day as well, were probably better off dont have fun. Just keep it quiet. Shush i dont know how you create a kind of cognizant energy to keep fight without to just lowering morale and lowering voter id in young environmental voter turnout. Yeah, i think thats a real risk. I think its a risk across the board with biden. I think that know young voters are disappointed and i think they also dont really know has been achieved. I mean, i dont have the poll numbers off the top of my head but its Something Like 70 of americans havent even heard of the inflation reduction act, which is the big ticket climate bill. And its probably even higher among young voters. So, you know, i think that especially those who worry about climate should know that a major climate bill and on how you want to count the infrastructure bill in the chips act maybe even three major climate bills were passed under under biden and they dont that is on some level a problem. Well see how it all plays out. But, you know, my own view which tells the story of my biography a little bit as well, is that its not just about fun. I mean, i came to the subject, frankly, out of fear i was a general interest journalist, a magazine journalist. I was an editor mostly at new york magazine, interested in the near future, interested in science, and just started to see coming out of the academic research, a lot of really, really worrying, truly kind of alarming projection for where the world would be with warming the century and the deeper read into that material and the more that i spoke to scientists who are doing it all kind of pieced together to me and made me realize in a way that i never before that this was not like just one issue among many that you can compartmental over here. It really did govern or at least hover over everything that we were doing on the planet because everything that we do on the planet is, you know, takes under climate conditions. And the changes are happening so quickly there basically is no historical analog for them. Theyre happening, you know, half of all the damage weve done has been done in the last 25 years, a quarter of all the to the planets climate future been done since barack since joe biden was elected Vice President in 2008. I mean, this is its quite rapid destruction that were doing. And were just starting to see the real of that arriving in real time. The last few years. But were seeing enough know that many things that we took for granted about the nature and shape of the planet and the human lives that would be lived. It are being shaken up by these transformations. And when i started that in prospect a few years ago, i found it really destabilizing. I was somebody who was born in 1982, grew up in the nineties. I dont remember a time before i knew about Climate Change, but i thought of it as, you know, a problem that would be solved by a global system that was evolving towards ever Greater Solutions to the problems that had bedeviled humanity for many, many decades or millennia. And i just thought, you know, were probably not going to solve this, but were going to make progress in a predictable, reliable way along with the progress that were likely to make on poverty, inequality and all the rest of it. And the more that i started reading about some of the science for five, seven, eight years ago now, the more those basic expectations for the future, i dont want to say i totally threw them out, but i started to really question them and wonder how much, how much we could assume that progress would be made on climate and all these other issues. And i wrote a big article and then i wrote my book from a place of some hope about that. I thought if there were people me out there who could be activated, then presumably we could some levers a bit harder and change our politics and push them in the direction of Climate Action. But i also look back on several decades of political agitation about, Climate Change and didnt see much concrete for hope because it seemed basically like people talked about it occasionally were a little burps and flare ups of concern, but then they disappeared and the meaningful large big ticket action items climate activists were really looking for never really, never really happened. And emissions kept growing. Global temperatures kept rising, and i wonder just how much i knew was a political problem. I knew as a social problem, but i wonder just how much we could really achieve. There. And i wrote the book. It came out in 2019, but i finished it in the of 2018 and it was just at a moment of incredible Global Climate awakening represented kind of embodied by us by greg attenberg, who in the space of a few months from that summer, she started protesting outside Swedish Parliament that summer, 2018. Through that spring, the spring of 2019 went from being literally a friendless swedish teenager to the global of a entire Climate Movement inspired, you know, millions of climate strikers all around the world to follow her lead and protest in their own countries even though many of them were underage in non democracy some of them queer minorities you know people who were the you could imagine from halls of political power. She inspired millions of them to come out into the we saw Extinction Rebellion in the uk sunrise here in the us the election of aoc to talk about the Green New Deal. All of this was actually powered to some significant by fear and it wasnt the only way that all these people were talking about it and those that stripe, that corner of the Climate Movement isnt the full Climate Movement. But i think to the extent that we have an Global Youth Movement around climate, its not because Climate Action has been fun over the last five years. Its young people are really angry and a little bit. And so when i think about the rhetorical tools that are used by climate advocates and climate campaigners, and i really do think of myself as a journalist here, not a not an activist. So im at a little bit from a distance, but it seems to me like the obvious answer is different messages appeal to different people at different times and we need a variety of different ways of talking about this challenge. We need that for a number of reasons, including that its a very complicated story. You cant actually just it one way. Its not just one. Its not just fear, but its also not just optimism. Its not just its not you know, it is very, very complicated. Runs in a bunch Different Directions all at once. And we need to of appreciate that the scale of that the complexity of that both in trying to perceive the of the story as its evolving. And it is evolving, which i hope we can talk about. And also in talking about the urgency of the problem, get people motivated because there are definitely people out there who want to think we can solve this 100 . And they just point disappointed and even angry if you tell them that Something Like a muddling through is more likely, there are people who are most turned on by Technological Advancements and, you know, and social change and really, really excited about the Positive Side of the ledger. But there are other people who are motivated by other to concern for other people elsewhere on the planet anger about global justice issues particularly it intersects with climate and know if you want to get a big tent and you really want to get like a whole green Industrial Revolution unfolding, which what we do want and to some degree what weve already achieved, i think that means talking a variety of ways to a variety of different sensitive to all of the of the complexity of the story. Yeah. Mindful that like, you know, you dont want to talk about the apocalypse if the apocalypse isnt actually happening but not that, that fear and, and gloom is also a motivating factor as i think the experience and the example of Rachel Carson shows to the i. So but whats the disconnect to me is why dont you want to be continuing momentum building on a 2024 campaign and you want it to be subterranean . I dont understand why you feel that. Well, im not im not saying that i dont want to have further momentum on climate. I do im saying that i think its that we have not seen the right wing backlash to major Climate Action that people expected for very long time. And i think there are a lot of reasons for that. Were not getting any republican senators signing on board. There used to be a whole host of republicans or none now. So its become a partizan issue in the us it depends on what history like how long back in time you want to go but certainly five years ago we wouldnt have gotten any republican senators. Seven years ago we wouldnt have gotten any republican senators. And at time, if there had been a major, you know, the of the obama presidency, there had been a major effort to do a climate bill. I do think that it would have produced a large scale culture war backlash. Yeah, which is not what were seeing today. And i think part of that is because the transfer of the countrys Energy System is already far enough along and especially far enough along. And a lot of red states that it just doesnt seem like a distant abstract issue which to stage a culture war fight over. And to the extent that were thinking of it as a lunch pail issue, the numbers are not you know, the numbers point you towards supporting Climate Action even youre a republican. When you say we youre youre putting on your the activists have when i say we sorry what you just said we said youre part of the activist group youve said when we you mean we the New York Times or do you mean who am i speaking . Yeah. Well, sound like you were part of the group or a movement. I generally am uncomfortable speaking on behalf of any movement. I when i have friends who activists and campaigners, but i dont myself feel aligned with them so much as watching them. I just mean an observer of american politics half a decade ago or ten years ago would have looked the scale of Climate Action that weve undertaken as country under joe biden and would have guessed that was going to produce a major backlash. And in fact when the original Green New Deal proposals out from aoc office you did see like a lot of it was big talking point on fox news it was like it was part of what what people talked about on the campaign trail in 2018 and to me thats just really dissipated and i and some level i wish that a fuller conversion had happened and we saw much republican support for Climate Action than weve seen to point but i think it counts as some amount of progress that their rhetorically laying down their and and letting the green transition at least as its in america Electricity Sector proceeded how do you feel about the vatican and particularly Pope Franciss on climate what role does he play, do you think, today in convincing people to think the earth or Earth Stewardship in a in a different way . Well i find his hes done a couple of large high. Encyclicals one a few years ago and, then one this year. I find his rhetoric and writing really moving and powerful. I find his example of concern humbling and inspiring. I dont know what the impact out in the world is, in part because hes been a divisive pope a lot of people have you are unhappy with what a political figure he is in that place. But personally, i his leadership and find vision of his vision of integrating spiritual concerns with Environme