An hour with NPR science reporter Richard Harris

if you've been following national public media's coverage of the oil spill in the gulf of mexico one of the voices you've heard is npr's science reporter richard harris i'm kay mcintyre and today on k pr percent award winning science correspondent richard harris who joined npr in nineteen eighty six reading on subjects as diverse as h it aids the tobacco industry space aliens avian flu and genetically engineered crops periscope on climate change at the land institute prairie festival in saliva kansas september twenty six two thousand nine today's keep your presence was originally broadcast on december thirteenth two thousand nine just prior to the united nations summit on climate change in copenhagen hazard of a gloomy title for the taco remember precisely what was dr we do i think i said i think with as a result of climate change the answer is well it's always a minute but that i did once had a couple minutes' just remove recapping a little

bit about where about the climate change science as we know that we've been putting a huge map of an accident the atmosphere a couple of numbers didn't mind with this 350 on the wall is that we're three ninety right now we started out at two at will for agricultural it took off so we're already above where we need to be and that's if you if you subscribe to the free fifty game which is has a lot of scientific basis behind it so it's intimidating to think that were going out actually in exactly the wrong direction and that at our next summer reading club so so it's it's a daunting situation to be in with the plants are heated up by two degrees centigrade or fahrenheit that's likely to go up are substantially more if business as usual continues and that business as usual is very much continuing right now could be three to six degrees centigrade which is what my nine just come back from cancer a few minutes nobody fahrenheit but that it's set it's very substantial temperature

increases by twelve mentioned it's the average temperature doesn't matter as much as you can have much much more he in some parts of the plan the others thing is that sea level rise could go up anywhere from two feet two six feet depending upon whose numbers are looking at in the next century with business as usual and i think that in some ways temperature changes that nothing but let's also bear in mind that the things like rainfall patterns change are dramatically and i do but the drought that we're seeing in the southwestern united states is potentially a permanent new condition for the southwest is not just a drought i think that's the wrong word because of its gonna stay that way forever and so it's sort of the new climate conditions are possibly for the southwest for consider the odd tibetan plateau where there's huge amount of water locked up in the ice that is that provides water for them for a very large momentum asia are there some projections

nobody really knows but the projections suggested that that ice on the tibetan plateau could be largely gone in a couple of decades here for decades and the world's water can come from for the yellow river and the other rivers that flow down from both from the tibetan plateau the greenland ice sheet is melting a little bit about around the edges not a very alarming pace right now it's less than i think some like a millimeter years contributing to global sea level rise but it's not in a stable condition and nobody knows if it will just keep being polite and renee i mean as it is unfolding very slowly and not thinking as two unhappy or if you could have a fairly dramatic collapse of the greenland ice sheet in which case sea levels could rise by aquatic and out so so so global warming is not a great word i think that the term climate disruption i think of it as a as a really nice one anonymous see if i can start adding that to the lexicon as i think it is a much more descriptive word in climate change or global warming

that it's it's it's is broader and more accurate so thank you for for using that phrase today i thought that was great persuasive so what we need to do what you know and i think one thing i consider we need to do is think about the fact that we have a fundamental problem of timing here which is that the planet is changing at a certain rate and it's does a particular care how quickly or how skilled we react politics and human attitudes change at a very slow rate planet is actually change and pretty quickly in a matter of decades the eu summit is worse case scenarios suggested we could be on a very different looking planet and in that length of time and it's very hard to change human institutions in there length of time let's remember that we're talking about years carbon dioxide as a result of burning fossil fuels that's essentially the metabolism of the global economy we wrote the world runs on global are not on greenhouse gases that are fossil fuels

produce greenhouse gases so we're talking about changing the whole metabolic structure of the global economy not not been modest gordon nothing to do with and that's how how much do have to change our crippling i think the the understanding as we probably need to reduce our emissions by more than eighty percent by the middle of the century which is sounds pretty for wei but actually worked into the first decade already so that's forty years from now we have to reduce our emissions by at least forty eighty percent and that doesn't get us anywhere near the three fifty by the way china would need to reduce its emissions by a similar amount and in fact local oh really needs to reduce its emissions by eighty percent united states can be as contagious about twenty five percent of the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere if somebody had that could disrupt the switch and say okay tomorrow in isis to be a completely green economy we were no more fossil fuels will remain no

more carbon dioxide we cannot solve global warming all that so it's it's it's that big a thing and it's good that means that it's not just thinking about our own behaviors but is thinking about how to get the entire world change because we're at war the war we in china together about half of the missions but that it's you know it's the it's a huge huge issue and the salami i'll put this in the context of somebody who's traveled around the world a little bit and seen poor people in many poor countries there are something like two billion people in poverty around the world and that they are all aspiring to a better life and so the question is how'd we undergo this transition and think about the need to have those people also have you know wives that are more reliable food supplies of a reliable water supplies are reliable sanitation and and and bring up their standard of living because we're obviously live a lot better than most people on earth today and it's

reasonable people in news you're in west africa for parts of the world say you know i when i don't have to worry about you know my children nine that's reasonable thing to say it's a habit we have week we can't really have this discussion on global warming without putting it in that broader context plus the reality is we've also may need to think about a comedy at another three billion people on earth that's the population protection for for the next four decades or so and that's a tough thing to do i mean i have you know advantage we can to slow the rate of that a little bit but that's another thing we can forget about when we're looking at the issue of climate change and of course will maintain our quality of life and in the process of doing the south to pakistan don't know i think it set so you can see that i mean they had to cut it it was started as a hard problem is even harder problem when you put it in the broader context of what what else is happening on the planet and that

and we know what to do we have some ideas about what to do we know that we waste a great deal of energy and we could use it more efficiently week and that would let us do we keep doing that without without affecting our lifestyles we can to conserve some energy if that to the extent people are willing to drive less travel less into tick and to change lifestyles i think that's at the topical come back to because i think that's that's a lot to expect i think from a lot of people we know that we can switch the kinds of energy that we rely on we don't have to use fossil fuels renewable energy is obviously out there and a very very small percentage of what provides our energy right now they can grow i wanted to grow at that kind of explosive rage you would need to to to bring things under control before a lot more car accidents in the atmosphere and that there's one of the questions about how what what the limits of that are i almost mentioned that france has set

a conservative pro capital late we need a lot less carbon dioxide than we do and that's because eighty percent of their electricity comes from nuclear power and nuclear has obviously a very close ally people who are to put it mildly not fans of it in this country but it has worked for france in it has provided low carbon energy for france and that can work there's another possibility of capturing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it turned out to be very expensive maybe more expensive than just putting in global supplies not heading toward a carbon dioxide but that's another thing that's rattling around i think the easiest one to talk about this in a way and the most politically unpopular says you really need to do is make dirty energy more expensive so that they're sick so people move to cleaner energy and i think that politicians are loath to look at the problem that landscape and then and when that comes up very big the question is how high

that haven't had to do that without telling people that you're actually doing that and i'll get back to that in a minute to sell any how so how low calorie how well prepared are if you're innocent me just give you a few facts and figures that that make me a look less than optimistic about this i think the good news is that when you do public opinion polls people know more about climate change now than they ever have they they're much more willing to say this is a real problem that the id and that and acknowledge its existence but there's a weird paradox here which is the more people know and the more they know about sort of what's involved in doing something about it the less willing people are apps and it you know now just not necessarily power in this circumstance the every year the few organization does uphold looks at a bunch of things in january about about public attitudes toward staff and the surgeon general like others they asked people to name what they considered to

be the most one of the biggest and most important issues facing the world they have good people twenty issues to rank and not surprisingly the economy was number one was here global warming was number twenty out of twenty in the us only about thirty percent of the public would put it as a major concern compare that to sixty percent who said energy was a major concern and i think their concern about energy was not that it was too cheap but that was too expensive so i think the data that people know what's there and i think we feel this is a problem maybe there's just too big to do if i go to think about something else as we've heard that's true for george wein well has been thinking about this is the late nineteen fifties and a and it's become a more and more real and palpable issue and it's not a new thing but i think that

people just you know still alive then i think in the end that when i started covering this in the nineteen eighties cheap now scientists are saying yeah this is real this is gonna be a big problem you know thirty or forty or fifty years from now and whatever and that but it was so abstract the idea was so obstreperous would change of all i mean intellectually they knew was a big deal but they couldn't think about what to do next and so they have been studying it or other things to move on to other issues but issues when you have voting issue and a problem that some big how do you actually not just turn away from and say well i'll think about something else or about getting fuel my car i'll think about my bridge club or whatever it is it's it's tough so anyhow with that as a little bit of a background let me and when he look when the us would've changed your slightly and talk about the three theories sort of approaches we can take the global warming if if if we are going to sort of say never mind to begin to think about that let us think

about what would we do i think there are or three major things to consider one thing is we can change the world the second thing is we can change washington dc what's happening in washington dc and the third thing is weakened change ourselves our own lifestyles and so on so when you just take a couple minutes and walk through some of these issues so you can sort of see the landscape as i see it has developed in the us in the years that i've been covering the story i think ultimately start to mention it to rio de janeiro was down in rio for the for the huge international climate conference not only on climate but on global environment and that that triggered president george herbert walker bush signed the framework convention on climate change which really put climate change on the international agenda really for the first time in a serious way and other folks at that meeting pledge that that they would make sure that

that that the countries agreed that they would take steps to avoid a dangerous answer the genital can cause interference with the climate in that was a that was it a major statement about recognition globally the global warming was something that couldn't just mentioned just issues to be dealt with actually dealing with a turn out to be really hard i was nineteen eighty two it took five years for them to negotiate the first treaty that that had any at any one way of dealing with other was the kyoto protocol negotiating trip to japan in nineteen ninety seven and that it promised it was based on the whole were a couple of major tenets one of which was that you would set up timetables for dealing with climate change gases how much you'd what over what period of time you reduce your carbon dioxide and also targets how much of parts and timetables targets for reducing sea or two and timetable for when you're going to do it and everyone seems to

talk about you know how much they were planning to reduce their their gases and that in that period and in a drip certain period of time which apps to be we're in the middle of it right now is it's an average between two thousand ad in two thousand twelve become countries have promised to reduce the gases by that period of time when the us agreed to that but the reality was it was with a negotiator with something that would absolutely not fly in washington the us senate had made it pretty clear that if china doesn't play as hard as we play we what we don't want to have anything to do with the kyoto protocol elmore went to kyoto and negotiated something anyway and brought it back and i kind of just wither on the vine we often now i think people often just to readers two in a drug forces killing kyoto protocol in the us his participation in the nba reality i think it's fair to say that the clinton administration brought back something that they could never sell to that to the congress and that any treaty needs to be ratified by sixty

seven votes of the us senate so think about old people you know and in the us senate and think about what it takes to get them to agree sixty seven of them or more to agree on anything and that's that's that's it or to talk and as you mentioned it's a month har higher threshold and many of the european countries have for dealing with this and i don't think i mentioned that china and india got off without any obligations under this treaty except to accept very general language about that but there's actually no note that they had no actual responsibilities under that and i think one of the major surprises was how rapidly china's emissions than group since nineteen ninety seven depending on whose numbers jews it was a just a couple years ago that china's emissions actually outstripped hours they were building couple power coal fired power plants a week in china and endless and their emissions just went through the roof on either the economy

is growing at ten percent per year in their economy is very heavily based on coal they so interesting so so things went completely her grow much much faster than anyone expected india is still contending fairly modest weight compared to the us and china but the expectation is the next couple of decades india also become a major emitter of greenhouse gases so and so the real question in some ways of the failure of cheddar was twofold one of which was that the us really did and didn't have any realistic way of participating in it with it without the us senate ratified a treaty and the other was that both you know the developing world was let off with with language that said we would be common but differentiated responsibilities which sounds ok accept the responsibilities for the developing world are not to be a way to modest self flattery people have been trying to figure out how to

how to reduce that and i was in bali about two years ago but because people rustle kyoto protocols commission and we need you to do something new and up and so this is set down in bali to try to get things moving with it the treaty that was a procedural essentially and that that's possibly negotiate in copenhagen later this year i think things a lot completely bleak for that hang half the are about two hundred pages that the draft text is about two hundred pages long but diplomats do when they have when they're working on a treaty is the people who work so i'm in charge of marshaling of everyone through this process that put out a draft language and that's if you object to part the language just let us know brackett square brackets around those those terms and so on and that and sort out those details later so so the curtain the last time i saw that that the working document was two hundred pages long and essentially

every sentence have brackets around so it is essential lee almost no agreement on anything on the on the copenhagen treaty so the question is now what to do and i was up at the united nations on tuesday of this week for which the world where president obama got up and said we believe global warming is really serious issue and by golly we're going to take it we're going to do something about it and then that was about as far as he went in terms of promising what can happen in copenhagen and that the president of china also got up and said acknowledged quite significantly that his country would recognize that climate change is a serious concern and he talked about the conduct internal domestic measures that china would take to to deal with that which included instead of actually reducing emissions slowing the rate of growth in emissions as china's economy he hopes will continue a rather rapidly and he wants it he wants the missions to grow more slowly than the economy which is quite doable we've been doing that in this

country for a number of years and says he's trying to that's part of the new chinese five year plan to do that to two major replanting forests in china which is good for the environment and also a good way to sequester some carbon but it still falls far short of of slowing emission rates even if we get even if we even of the world initial rate stop and plateau to where we are in the amount of carbon that's an answer would continue to be rather rapidly because we're were emitting so much right now so that's why those the numbers i mentioned at the beginning needing to reduce emissions by more than eighty percent are necessary just to stabilize the atmosphere does to prevent carbon oxygen building up more and more so cell companies to be interesting and that people are already starting to or maybe even believe that we started to think about plan b because it seems as though there's not a lot of room for agreement there there are maybe a couple of architectural mechanisms people can put in place to to

create the kind of bureaucracies the united nations puts together two to enact a tree that comes together there are maybe some issues on forestry that could be dealt with a little bit of their their sort of things you can be doing around the edges but in retrospect giving nations of the world just two years between bali in copenhagen to come up with a fantastic new treaty was i was really not enough time for the problem of this gets back to the issue of you know what's be disappointed changing what speeders politics move out or does human endeavor move that end and so let me digress for a second and talk about this for funny debate i hear between the scientists on the one hand in the end the end the diplomats on the other who will basically look at the world from stu such different time scales and in the end the scientists rightly say well gee we cannot afford to have the bigger the atmosphere and you know accumulated so much more carbon dioxide we have to do something

incredibly rapidly hears the pace at which we have to move from the standpoint of the planet and that the diplomats say ok well that's not the way human endeavors work and we are looking at a very different time scales so sort of you make it you know so they say that so we can take on these bees scientifically proven promises and not be able to meet them or we can take on promises that that alarmed the scientists because they are so they're so modest that they're not to have a huge effect on the planet and there and we might be able to meet those so diplomatically do you promise you can deliver or do you promise something that's not enough so that's kind of where they are now some anyway stay tuned i think i think there will have to be some some some really dramatic reconsideration so what is can get accomplished and in copenhagen the worst outcome would be for them to keep going in and saying we're going to have a new treaty by december eighteenth when a big indeed of that is an uncomfortable way without one and i think that at this point seems extremely unlikely to happen to a replacement

after kyoto so that so the question is how to how come away without having a complete disaster there i think is as a very serious issue that people are arguing with so there's the others to change the world and part of my point of changing the world changing washington and changing yourself and in nevada washington closer to home you're on you may be aware of of a fairly dramatic and has been somewhat historic vote in june when the waxman markey bill passed congress it so it is in some ways with the first the most serious effort on the part of the us congress to try to address climate change and people it depended on you talked to i think a lot of environmental so far you know i had the answer well as its it's good because it's better than we've ever had before in other say well it's bad because it really probably will deliver what it promises it seems very unlikely to one one index it is to think about the bill is about two thousand pages

long or actually probably more than that by now but by the time was trying to put it on but we think about why would a bill have to be that long and the answer is partly it's because there still are many many many details in it and those details are put in there to afford to buy votes essentially they was not a broad consensus about what to do in a way and so but waxman and marty went around and they swept into the two congressmen saw what you want what you need to to vote for this bill and then that would get added insurance on so you be the result is that there are special favors there are loopholes there are lots of the statehouse are lots of things in the waxman markey bill including making it look as though energy prices will rise very much cause for rising energy prices and a fact that may be true but there's that their survey out this is a double blind because of energy prices don't rise and people will switch to cleaner forms of energy

and so so then it has big potential has very little effect in fact the environmental protection agency looked at it and said yes this is actually and then in the next by twenty twenty it's actually not going to have much of an effect on energy prices rather than they look also at home what would be for stimulating renewable energy like wind and solar and it turns out that business as usual without them are people would actually have more impact would actually generate more wind and solar energy in the marquis dildos so so it has teams do you know and instead of actually pushing for the development of these clean energy sources that created a lot of loopholes a lot of ways for people to satisfy the letter of the bill without actually pushing us towards this transformation to a new economy based on on clean energy technologies so we'll see where that goes the senate actually is the city's its version of this bill next week

well i'm quite interested to see what how different that will be and of course it's highly unlikely that the bill thats interviews next week will there are no reason was what ultimately gets voted upon doesn't go through the same process matt waxman markey bill one on which is the more traditional in the votes to pass it all sorts of little new things will be added to ignore certain deals will be cut and i think it you know the very initial hill probably won't look a lot like the final bill ideally the context of this is partly that the senate is quite concerned now about creating a brand new one hundred billion dollar markets for captive for for low carb and riveted zinser of the new financial markets which cap and trade bill which has in there and house basically create vast new markets for treating heart carbin not only just be able to trade and although these fancy economic derivatives and and in various other sorts of financial

mechanisms that i think people are here are a little bit shy about now having experienced less than pleasant effects of watching these exotic markets that nobody really understands sort of go to ft about a year ago it was it was not a very pleasant time and i think the senate is saying we really need to do cap and trade to do this or do we can you do cap and trade without creating this should've asked me ooh market for carbon and that i think that's i think that's a part of the debate think seriously that i think that and has that's potentially a game changer here i think the other thing of course is the result of that of financial collapse has left people a lot more shaky about about spending a lot of money about about doing things that might have a deleterious effect on the economy people are you for or understandably stepping back being cautious trying to think through what they really want to do how much they want our country and our economy i guess the other thing i'll

mention it and that i think we're just starting to see it we read that the death penalty people here yeah baby out the depth of people may be still waiting for their bust but i think more so i think there's a really sobering lesson in that which is that you can be a really easy way to push the debate forward in washington is just make something up and a fairly large percentage of people believe you and it is much easier to talk about death panels than it is to talk about you know or will the intricacies of health care policy well the same is true of climate change it's much easier just to say that climate change is it's just a liberal plot doesn't really exist and that is to actually engage people on the honest on the on the substance of you know how do you transform the global economy and in fact we're starting to see those commercials coming up in washington dc it funny is that the scientific consensus grows stronger and stronger and that yet there's

a there's a you know some people out there some strategies he figured the best way to do this is just to tell people that because of there's a scientific uncertainty is not really real and counting on getting up to the people to believe that was supposed to what the scientific community is saying that i think i could really out that could have a significant effect on the two eighth and we all know that there are a few members of congress who are not exactly sure whether that one of the lead scientists are now and i think that we will see i think that's another thing to watch played out in washington so that's in it in any event i think it's highly unlikely that that would be voted upon and reconciled with the house version by copenhagen which was the original hope i think maybe people knew really early on early on that it wouldn't happen but part of that private lessons learned from china was that you shouldn't negotiate something without talking

to the congressman for the senate to bringing it back and then have in the senate said that we have no interest in me and we'll never get sixty seven votes but you in fact it might get ninety five votes against itself so the strategy of the new administration strategy was well let's see what the senate is likely to do is willing to do domestic legislation that that takes sixty votes and that'll give us some sort of guidance of what we might of what would be reasonable to get sixty seven votes for and that and so the hope the hope was to have domestic energy and climate legislation done in advance of copenhagen so by the time the us goes to copenhagen the negotiators can make promises that they have some hope of being able to fulfill ones they bring that the trip back to washington so that's unfortunately not going to happen that there's talk about well as the climate legislation even going to happen in near twenty ten people so worried about the next election cycles and so on and how far away from what you have to be to vote on something that could end of recent presidents leno or home heating oil or whatever so

i would say that's in a big state of flux right now and up in and maybe guinea pig to hear our to resolve so anyhow since the world's changing washington have a changing ourselves how much how much in our own behaviors make a difference between do this from the bottom up instead of the top down and them and i've been interested in this on a personal basis as well as a professional basis and that and this is a i asked am i decided to restore it was my editor's it'll be fun to do a story about my own house bring in somebody who knows how to make homes more energy efficient and walk through my house just the sort of scope it out and figure out you know what i could do to my house made it more energy efficient so i did this idea middle of the little store uninsured adults could find and there she walked through the house needs of our you know you could but the tv all called strep a new and that and then it's not

enough energy and oculus you you know turn it on its cousin hip it draws fans in the phantom electricity and we went down to the basement and there's a thirty year old freezer down in the basement and there she said but that's just eating a huge amount of electricity if you buy a new freezer former boxer pay for itself in probably three or four years and did the math and we all looked like about three or four years without pay for itself so i didn't want to get a bunch of things like this idea i just that last fall building storm and this is a hundred year old house with all the windows were crickets or have just gotten by storm and as opposed to be fun full project to build storm windows so i borrowed or an idea i actually korean that built the frames than one out by bob heil of blasting one backed by a couple more pieces of glass member of the first pieces of glass that but ultimately build storm windows and a place the freezer i tried to get the kids to turn off the lights when they were that when they were barren got it got a meter and stuck around on my electric outlets alike and measure the water consumption

figaro was what was eating up my electricity grid like an inch i replace the freezer in and just they made events through a number of tricks on my house i would've been charting my electric bills and actually the last couple years i've my water consumption has gone down twenty five percent which is pretty good and in the end you'd be able to pay for itself if i don't actually have to pay myself back for my labor on a building the storm windows so i feel pretty good about that until i start to think about well what was amazing in terms of emissions that twenty five percent and i'm sorry to report that just falling out here to come talk to is pretty much blown that a bull market by carbon savings volatile for at least a year probably two or three years maybe more than that so it so it kind of homes all over all consumer buildings consume about forty percent of the energy in a responsible for about forty percent of global warming climate change funes out in the us and it's still not that make a big

it's going to take more than what i was able to do just sort of on an ad hoc basis and i mean my first the first of my experiment was to do stuff that would completely not change my lifestyle will accept forcing me to come along on off switches occasionally but i'm still have the freezer in the basement i still no heated and cooled home to the center because i always happens on so so that's that's that's efficiency as opposed to conservation so what about conservation what could i do to change my lifestyle to come down farther and when one possibility is i could stop eating meat at animal they sent reporters are somewhat globally responsible for about twenty percent of carbon emissions we think about how much of deforestation in particular is driven by iran by the desire to plant crops to feed animals for four families agriculture we think about the other nothing that that cao cao produce and so on

so on so that's a lifestyle change i was you know listen to the talk of before my mind now thinking well gee do you know does that does that that without lifestyle change be good for american farmers are not good for american farmers baby baby maybe i'd feel better but maybe other people wouldn't feel so that if i stopped eating meat got all my friends and neighbors to stop eating meat entirely about automobiles driving lastest this is an interesting experience for me i had been slimming down on my automobile use and i decided i would take a walk to neighboring town to pick up a piece of art that i had had framed as opposed to driving a car there to pick it up and it was must have to walk up was really nice and i realized you know it's sure to twenty five minutes we're going to walk up there but i wish i had twenty five minutes to reflect and to think about my life and to enjoy the day and do things like that but on the other hand it's you know it it's all it's a different way of thinking about how

we spend our time because obviously if i drove my parliament five minutes and i got about maybe another tore down for the day and plus when i got to the framing shop it started to rain and so it was actually an interesting exercise and getting to support did successfully so so that's another thing i've touched on on this this funny cycle about about raising the price of energy you can if you really if you raise the price of energy you can actually doesn't mean that people have to pay more if you raise the price of energy and people that to do their houses for what i just did to mind they're there and they're they've been broken even now that the price has gone up and using less so they're in their electric bills a sense of too it's something you can do that but to what extent can you convince people oh don't worry about the fact that we're you know we're going from twelve cents a kilowatt hour to sixteen cents a kilowatt hour for electricity you could make up the difference just by you know changing our light bulbs or not to mention whipple to change that too but that's actually very sad easiest thing to do in public also police or hazily significance in terms

of my electric bill as far as i could tell how much are people really weren't willing to to sit still for that and the best example of efficiency is california which has managed for the past several decades to keep our consumption has on a per capita basis steady which is pretty amazing when you think of how many ex boxer's must be that had been purchased in california and all these other things that they that have not filled all of our ports around all around the country california has managed to keep its per capita emissions flat through well for one thing to hire a trip prices there are probably some of which a lot of these are significant part some people say it's well that had the effect of driving out some industries is a lot of electricity left california so so that was a way of creating a benefit that it wasn't necessarily that they could benefit a look at the numbers on that didn't seem to be a very significant effect but i think of it that could be there the other thing though is

recap it means perversely lived in oakland's population has grown very substantially the way the new national park which has grown so even though on a per capita basis colloquy some point in fact the state's consuming more energy than ever because they're more people are so the climate doesn't care about things per capita they wanna know what the total emissions aren't in california is total emissions are going up so you know those are oh wonderful things to aspire to and i think you know in a group of people like you hear i'm imagining many people are willing to take the sort of measures but i also think that the broader society convincing a broad cross section of of the american public to do something like that is it's an extremely tall order but i think that that's something you need to think about those and it ended up that it's been circling up entire solution but it's an important piece the cheapest thing to do is always to conserve or and to and to make more efficient use of energy but it's not gonna happen and get the whole job done so by now i mean you know

these are thinking about certain uses for the standard stories that i've been telling about climate change falling international talks what is going on capitol hill thinking about what i can do in my own at the beginning earlier this year i started thinking well is this are these all of our options are there other any is or any other ways or anything else we can do is really the way that we can get out of this business is sort of you know at this point if you ask the question are we do nothing the answer is yes very good does it so on so i sent a look at scythe and the broader issues of work of which came with what are the other ways libya the possibilities will start with a serious one first geo engineering and this is a there's actually a simple and cheap ways to cool the planet you could take a small fleet of seven forty sevens fill them with sulfur particles by them up into the stratosphere spray sulfur particles into the stratosphere and and we don't end up and more beholden to the temperature of the planet will or will will drop when alaska's mount pinatubo erupted volcano injected a bunch of stuff and it's transferred we saw really dramatic

temperature production put mirrors in space you could take shifts and steam them across the oceans and increase the mammoth klaus was caught depending upon the clubs a lot of clubs reflect sunlight soap sequel planet by doing things like this is rock out of whack those schemes as of a couple of years ago and but the interesting thing that happened last year really is that it's a serious scientists are starting to think maybe these you know i think maybe these are things we actually have to think about and not wrestling because we think there's a great idea to do but because they are so doable that it's entirely possible somebody could do them i mean somebody with a wealth of bill gates could easily by a fleet of planes and go fly around in the stratosphere and spray sulfur particles and cool off but when i mean it's not inexpensive incredibly expensive thing you could do and of itself and so the question is who's going to do it from it could somebody do it and then maybe we need to know about it at this even if we don't want to do it ourselves but we need to know about it and they do we need this if there is a

catastrophe that we know or have a high probability of thinking about that maybe somebody actually would want to do this and with of course the kinds of consequences are pretty much unknowable before you tried the experiment was on a global scale so people say well maybe we can start a tiny scale before you know just to get a hint of what it would be like i mean that they're scary ideas but these are ideas that both of us national academy of sciences held a meeting about earlier this year the royal society in in the uk also had a meeting to think about you know what we do what we do it i think some of the more interesting questions are whose hand is on the thermostat is essentially have a thermostat you decide ok comet particles to put up and that determines how much you turn down the temperature of the planet i think that actually has a potential for huge geopolitical conflict because they're certainly nations in the world that are up that's when money little bit warmer than it is right now or not might not take kindly to having just turned on the planet's temperature so i think that

i mean of the many forget the ecological concerns for second think about that you political concerns i think those could be quite momentous at any rate that's one other approach a way out that that i think the word and hearing a lot more about in the coming ayers i think a more intriguing or more comfortable thought is you know can we invent our way out and this thing this deep philosophical issue here because of course we've been hearing about how much you know invention is you know pushing us intervene to directions we don't necessarily want to be we know we find ourselves in places that we've invented ourselves into place into worlds of giant come on smugglers the stuff that they have an unintended consequence is that they make a second one other ways but the fundamental issue is if you could come up with old up energy source that that cost less than fossil fuels people would switch i mean you just let let the market take its course that you can if you can find something that's cheaper than

gasoline that doesn't put carbon tax and the atmosphere then you dont have to twist arms enough to make people concerned you don't have that you don't have to you make congress fight big battles over over their fights you don't have to convince china that it needs to actually start to bring down its missions the market will take care of itself so that it's applying this guy kind of idea that but there's a there's a group out in oakland calif for the breakthrough institute just a couple of guys who who started out as an informant was working on some campaigns along the california coast to came to realize you know this is going crazy week first very small amount of money the federal government could actually fund this kind of research into you know energy research development has been has actually been on the decline since really since the jimmy carter days and end maybe you know this police conduct of the way out and b n and strife and the

downside of this is the transition would probably take many many decades and us and the climate in the meantime wood wood suffer the consequences of additional carbon dioxide this gets back to that balancing act between you know how fast and human endeavor change and how fast as the climate change anyway but that's what they say you know let's let loose once was think about this guy that might be a way out and easy way out another variation of that is professor named dan sarewitz at arizona state university and ickes says basically if you put this into the public domain and you have to have to make a huge public fights about it is going to be really really difficult as political lot time and that and you may never get people to know to agree you want a shortcut that entire but they said let's not put this into the public domain let's do with it the way we dealt with that the ad the development of a computer chips computers essentially was something that was not without huge public debate about computer chips

people basically working tour tinkering away in the labs in the federal government realized wow this is kind of cool and that and it started out certainly in the department of defense for saint who figured wow if we could get computers you know mutual license on this could be really good for four form for their needs and in other parts of the government to get this you know this could be good so so very quietly without fanfare last the secret but they just they just agreed to buy one to two by whatever people could produce and that in the world of computers and the idea was was to scribble market was creepy institutions less let's create incentives beyond these market based incentives that are where you're tinkering with the price of things we don't want were about the price right now was just drive the technology forward as fast as we can while offering to pay people goodman of money for these things and and the whole history of silicon valley is actually deeply interconnected with the federal government desires to do this no one understood what about the defense department here were

talking more broadly about the federal government and the other analogy that dan sarewitz uses which is perhaps a more intractable analogy for the spirit i will i will mention it anyway is that is looking at the you know the agricultural revolution at the thoughts of a realization by the federal government that food was was taking your twenty percent of people's budgets and was an expensive thing and was not available in abundance and so the federal government quiet you know quietly created institutions like you know an agricultural research service and so on and not an expert on this but created institutions basically to drive forward the the agricultural revolution week but the point is that was another example of what's in the public standing up and saying you know we demand cheaper food but it was the government saying this is something that that society should have and so the government basically set up the institutions and low and all these officials

delivered so those are a couple of other ways of thinking about this end of the last one i should mention is that would be great if we could just reshaped our society have some sort of cultural awareness of a cultural reawakening to two to this and it may be instead of you know having people think differently about their place in the world are not only just taking a walk instead of driving a car but sort of we are just in the values of the american society i think i haven't really seen anyone who has you know who has a really deep deeply thought about how you could accomplish this i mean the closest i can come to him it's way way off is an advertising industry which knows how to change human behavior but usually it's by appealing to people's maybe not the most noble and thinks and then i think that's what this would require so we have the technologies thinking about it with the political people thinking about it i don't know if we have enough people on this planet thinking about the broader issue of is it possible

to have people we consider the way we live in concert with our planet and thoughts about a heart problem that's probably not a twenty year problem i think that's the fifty or hundred year problem if we're if we're lucky and adam adam action of a solvable but i would put in the category of things that are that don't require you know huge arm twisting and political fights and so on you know can you can use actually change the way human beings think about this that's that's a tough one but i imagine in part because us senate gave this talk over or a variation of this talk i was on a college campus and i can enter the talk before that west point and the professor's came out of it at the end of the talks don't you have anything in any good news you know you don't get these kids some hope you know and that and so thinking okay well that's a strike if it was a little gloomy side and the lead one way to think about it as well maybe maybe somebody would one of the students in the audience i should have suggested go out to figure out how new change the way people think about their place in the world to know that that's a

good project also is a result of that i sing out i wanted out of his pocket next time i'll think about what it has been which is the good news and actually there has been progress on a substantial progress on that since i started covering global warming in nineteen eighty i think the science has become much more focusing clear on this even though in theory people known for were for well over a century the carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere in low on the long run it was likely to out to two to have to lecture its effects on the climate i think it's really only been in the past decade that but the science of that and this has really become so clear that we have a sense of that money just grew up across that and a government panel on climate change in nineteen ninety five just as the united nations drawn together a bunch of scientists around the world saying what kind of consensus is there a scientific community that and a nineteen ninety five the ipcc said what the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate

which is pretty couch for language ban certain suggests those like everything to someone on here but that if you ask with a consensus of the scientific community that's not a strong awarding its income by two thousand seven the ipcc report there the conclusion was substantial strong record in most of the observer most of the observer increasing global average temperature since the mid twentieth century is very likely due to be observed increasing every project greenhouse gas concentrations so basically there were responsible for the worlds getting warmer and we are largely responsible for it so so the science has become clear i think that helps those of us who like to maybe our arguments on facts we have stronger facts to do it i think that that is probably one of the reasons why the leaders of the other industrialized world have agreed at least in principle to try to not allow the earth to get more than two degrees warmer than it was celebrated warmer than it was before the industrial revolution that's a night

a goal that's not backed up by action plans right now but it's it's great to have them on the record saying that that's a goal their sound as i mentioned the house for the first time pass to some survivors serious climate legislation that's you know that's a step forward even with all of its all those failings i think that it does suggest that there's some you know some real seriousness and in the congress the obama administration has talked about some very substantial new fuel efficiency standards and and they don't serve on a regulatory basis that made quite a number of steps of mr obama talks are quite a lot about a non thinks about this in infinite different terms which is how we create a green economy actually create new jobs here they're producing all these climate effects which isn't which isn't a shrewd way to look at this cause there are potentially jobs out there with new not developing these new energy forms and will pay more for the energy or so put people to work so

that's i think that is is a notable change in china is also has also made some substantial strides domestically they are not just putting their head in the sand that china actually house climate goals units in its latest five year plan which is there are there major planning document and they do take those plans quite seriously so on so i think that that china is concerned about their collisions concern a lot about a lot of things was not soli about climate but china does recognize the climate dishes are real and that they're also that they also know that their place in the international community matters that if china doesn't want to be the bad guys on one global climate change i'd say the good news is all the things i talk about you know each one of them individually is really hard and it's really starting to look at the reality is that they're not mutually exclusive so we can do a little bit here you know change some officers are off so from the bottom up individually makes

some changes get a little bit more action in congress a little bit more boring internationally and n and you don't have to serve you know you got to just choose one strategy in fact is not a good idea to just one strategy that but they sort of become an up and down that's good news for people who are thinking is my hope was just one of those things again and maybe you can make a dance i had a really interesting conversation yesterday with the guys here his breeding plants and i said you know that's taken you ten years you have almost nothing to show for his sermon on a new crop of events are you a little progress here and there and he just and he told me that it would be another ten years he thought before he might if he was lucky to be able to a producer mitch crop of some sort that would actually be planted and on and on small scale or whatever and i said as i said it must take notes with a special person to sort of look at the career look at once life that far out and say you know it might

be his entire year's forty years old been doing this is his thirteenth might be sixty before he before there's roles you know the marginal success for a few mike tyson what happens if you get to the end and and it turns out that it does or what if you were to bring the stories about you know that does take a circle a special person to sort of have the connotations but he also said i am here just i worry about the opposite which is what a run out of money before i before i can find out whether all work or not and that was i thought that was a really interesting way of looking at the world takes patience but he has the patients he just needs to make sure that he's got that sustenance to to move more so the final thought i will leave you with is also things look physically hard today but i also have to remember that was really hard to see the future and you know if you do it when nobody had any idea what how much the internet would change our lives and how different the world would see would seem and be and how more much more interconnected

we are now it just came from out of nowhere in his transformational and so at its it's possible that if that does not guarantee that there will be some miraculous advance that will dual pole but pull us away from the edge of the abyss here but on the other hand i think anybody who just takes the view from today and projects into the future is probably not necessarily pessimistic because our server not realistic we don't really know what the future's going to bring and we shouldn't give up because you just project ahead of things on the gloomy look you know we are there surprised that there and then let's be open to them on the point we all the scales in the end up and maybe maybe this story will have a pleasant surprise unhappy ending for national public radio find for finding

yourself at the land institute for a festival in salina kansas on september twenty six two thousand nine recording of this event by bryan thompson i'm kate mcintyre keep your prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas