0:00

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

0:02

And somewhere in the world right now, you're

0:04

probably trying to beat the summer heat or

0:07

bracing for it. And if it feels

0:09

more miserable than ever before, that's

0:11

because it is. The Earth is getting

0:13

hotter, and turning up the A.C. to

0:15

solve it, or hoping it will pass, is

0:18

wishful thinking, says writer Jeff Goodell.

0:20

In his new book, The Heat Will Kill You First,

0:23

Jeff Goodell wants us to look at heat not

0:25

as a minor inconvenience, but as an active

0:28

force that can kill us even before

0:30

we understand our lives are at risk. And

0:32

no bones about it, says Goodell, extreme

0:35

heat is almost entirely caused by our

0:37

use of fossil fuels, from our transportation,

0:40

heating, and manufacturing, and it's warming

0:42

the Earth in ways that none of us will be able

0:44

to escape. Jeff Goodell is a contributing

0:47

editor at Rolling Stone, and has covered

0:49

climate change for more than a decade. He's

0:52

a New York Times bestselling author of seven books,

0:54

including The Water Will Come, Rising

0:57

Seas, Sinking Cities, and

0:59

The Remaking of the Civilized World.

1:01

His latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First, Life

1:04

and Death on a Scorched Planet, is out now.

1:07

Jeff Goodell, welcome back to Fresh Air. Hi,

1:09

thank you for having me. I

1:12

think the best way for us to get into

1:14

this topic might be for you to

1:16

read the first opening lines of

1:18

your book. Can I have you read it?

1:21

Sure, I'd be happy to. When

1:23

the heat comes, it's invisible. It

1:26

doesn't bend tree branches or blow

1:28

hair across your face to let you know it's arrived.

1:31

The ground doesn't shake. It just

1:33

surrounds you and works on you in ways that

1:35

you can't anticipate or control. You

1:38

sweat. Your heart races. You're

1:41

thirsty. Your vision blurs.

1:44

The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed

1:47

at you. Plants look

1:49

like they're crying. Birds

1:51

vanish from the sky and take refuge in

1:53

deep shade. Cars

1:56

are untouchable. Colors fade.

2:00

smells burned. You can

2:02

imagine fire even before you see

2:04

it. Hmm. What

2:07

a descriptive way to illustrate

2:09

how the heat impacts us.

2:12

You've got a problem though with the terms

2:15

global warming and climate change to

2:18

describe why we are experiencing

2:20

heat of this magnitude because you think they

2:22

don't really encapsulate what is happening.

2:25

What would be a better term for what we are experiencing

2:27

right now? Well,

2:30

you know, I think that the language

2:32

to capture what we're experiencing

2:35

is very difficult. That

2:38

is what kind of the book is about in

2:40

some ways. You know, climate

2:42

crisis is something that

2:45

I think comes close to capturing,

2:47

you know, the sort of larger scale

2:49

of things. But I don't know

2:51

what the phrase

2:54

is. You know, the problem

2:56

with the phrase global warming is

2:58

that it sounds like better beach

3:00

weather. It's like, okay, who's

3:03

really against it being a little bit warmer

3:05

and like, okay, so I can spend more

3:08

time at the lake. You know, it's like it doesn't

3:10

capture the scope

3:12

and scale of what we're dealing with.

3:15

What you write in this book is,

3:18

it's frightening. It's frightening to read. I mean,

3:20

it definitely takes the step up from global

3:23

warming. At the same time,

3:26

for billions of years, the earth has experienced

3:29

things like volcanic eruptions and meteor

3:31

strikes that brought about these wild

3:33

temperature swings. So what makes right now different?

3:36

What makes right now different

3:39

is that we're living through

3:41

this. During earth's

3:43

past, the temperature of the earth has, you're

3:46

right, swung crazily and much

3:48

hotter, much colder. You

3:50

know, there has been moments in earth's history when

3:52

it was completely covered with ice and

3:55

moments in earth history when there were palm

3:57

trees growing in what's now the Arctic. But

4:00

the issue is that, you

4:03

know, we humans in all living things

4:05

are invested in this sort of climate,

4:08

this temperate climate that we are

4:10

living in now. It's what we've evolved

4:13

to deal with. And our bodies in

4:15

all living things around us are, you

4:18

know, like these machines that are exquisitely

4:21

kind of tuned to this

4:23

temperature range. And as we begin

4:25

to push out of that temperature range, as we

4:28

begin to get these

4:29

extreme heat events and as we heat

4:32

up the planet, it has big problems

4:34

for the sort of mechanisms of life.

4:38

The first place we go to in the

4:40

book is the Pacific Northwest. It's

4:43

one of the more temperate places in the United States.

4:46

But I think it was 2021 when

4:48

almost a thousand people died over the course

4:50

of a week because of the extreme heat. What

4:53

does that tragedy tell us about how

4:55

heat waves are becoming, as you put it, more

4:58

democratic, a condition that the wealthy

5:00

and privileged, as you say, won't be able to escape?

5:04

Well, one of the most surprising things about

5:06

the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific

5:09

Northwest is that no one expected

5:11

it. You know, every time I

5:13

talk about climate change or, you know,

5:15

have give a book talk or something, everyone

5:18

always asks me, where should I move? You know, where do I

5:20

go to, you know, where is safe? And

5:23

of course, there is no safe place.

5:25

There's nowhere that you're immune to what's going

5:27

on in our planet, but there are better and worse places.

5:29

And, you know, the Pacific Northwest

5:32

always seemed like a place. There's lots of water. There's

5:34

lots of, you know, forests. There's

5:37

a relatively cool climate. No

5:39

climate models were suggesting

5:41

that this was a place that was vulnerable to

5:44

extreme heat. And

5:46

yet it happened. And you know,

5:48

in British Columbia, the damages hit 121

5:51

degrees Fahrenheit. A

5:54

town virtually spontaneously

5:57

combusted and burned to the ground.

5:59

You know, this was about as likely as snow in the Sahara.

6:03

And so what this shows us is that,

6:07

first of all, the atmosphere,

6:09

our climate is changing in ways

6:11

that we don't quite understand. And

6:14

we know that we're moving into a new

6:16

kind of climate world, but

6:18

we don't know exactly what the parameters

6:21

of that are. And one of the scary

6:23

things that's happening right now, not just with

6:25

heat, but heat is the clearest expression

6:28

of it, is that

6:29

the climate's reaction

6:32

to the amount of CO2 we've put in the atmosphere

6:35

is more dramatic and behaving

6:37

in ways that is surprising even

6:39

the most sort of educated and smartest

6:42

climate scientists.

6:43

What are the surprises that they're

6:45

encountering about the way that it's moving through?

6:49

Well, for one thing, I mean, we have these extreme

6:51

heat events that are going

6:54

beyond the boundaries of what anyone

6:56

anticipated. And one of the questions that

6:58

I explore in the book is, given just the

7:00

amount of CO2 that

7:03

is in the atmosphere now, just like where we are

7:05

today, how hot can

7:08

it get? I mean, I live in Austin, Texas.

7:12

We've had heat indexes of 120 degrees

7:15

here in Texas in the last couple of weeks. Could

7:18

it get to 130? I mean,

7:20

no one can say for sure

7:22

about that. We don't know, scientists

7:24

don't know even how hot

7:26

it can get right now. Never mind

7:29

if we continue burning fossil fuels and add

7:31

more CO2 to the atmosphere. But

7:33

there's other things. In my book,

7:35

I traveled to Antarctica to look at what

7:39

even small changes in temperature, the

7:42

implications. And the

7:46

West Antarctic ice sheet is incredibly vulnerable

7:48

in

7:49

ways that scientists did not understand even 10

7:51

years ago, to just a temperature

7:53

change of like one degree in the Southern Ocean.

7:56

And the West Antarctic ice

7:58

sheet is beginning to disintegrate.

7:59

And this was something that

8:02

no one considered 10 years ago. Antarctica

8:05

was seen as this sort of one

8:07

stable, cool block of ice that was sort

8:10

of, you know, the warming of

8:12

the planet hadn't yet penetrated. And

8:15

the wildfires that we'd seen

8:17

in Alberta in the last few weeks, you know, far

8:20

bigger and more explosive and

8:22

hotter than things we'd seen before. So

8:25

all these kinds of things are alarming.

8:28

And you know,

8:29

it's

8:32

evidence that we don't really,

8:34

even all the science that's

8:36

been done and all the incredible

8:39

research that has been done, we don't

8:41

really know what we're heading into

8:43

and how chaotic this can get.

8:46

I want to talk with you a little later about Antarctica

8:49

because there are huge ramifications for

8:51

what we're seeing there and you had a chance to see

8:54

it firsthand. You make a point

8:56

to say though, how we talk about the heat

8:59

is distorted because we think of it as a

9:01

temperature scale, as a,

9:03

maybe as a gradual linear incremental

9:06

thing. We think of a hot day

9:08

or a hot week as just a fluke and things will

9:10

turn back to normal. This

9:12

is distorted thinking in light of what

9:14

you're just saying here that we have no

9:16

roadmap for what we're experiencing in this

9:18

moment.

9:20

Yeah, we have, I think

9:22

a lot of people have this idea that, you

9:24

know, yes, we are warming

9:27

up

9:29

the planet, but we're, you know, clean energy

9:32

is booming. We're

9:34

going to get this under control. We're going to

9:36

reduce fossil fuel emissions and

9:39

everything's going to go back to normal and to

9:42

be the way it was. That

9:44

is a profound misunderstanding

9:47

of the moment that we're in. We're

9:50

heading into a completely different

9:52

climate regime, a different atmospheric

9:55

pattern. The physics of what's happening

9:57

in the atmosphere are very complex. And

10:00

we know, you know, with as

10:02

much certainty as we understand gravity,

10:04

that when we burn fossil fuels and put CO2

10:06

into the atmosphere, it heats things up. But

10:09

how fast that happens, what the

10:11

actual kind of cascading

10:14

effects of that will be are

10:16

still very, very unclear. And

10:19

so

10:20

the big idea here is

10:22

that we are not going back

10:24

to where we were no matter what we do. We're

10:27

going into a different world and

10:29

we need to grasp that idea.

10:31

Yeah, this is an important point to make

10:33

because you're saying that we'll never

10:36

go back to the cooler temperatures

10:38

or the temperature scale that we're used to. Like

10:41

even if in this moment

10:42

we made huge changes,

10:45

we would then always be at this temperature

10:47

scale.

10:48

Well, we're going to be

10:51

in a new climate world for

10:53

as long as we can, as anyone can imagine.

10:56

Another point that's connected to this that's really important

10:59

to understand is that the reason

11:02

that

11:03

the planet is heating up is because we're putting

11:05

CO2 into the atmosphere. And CO2 is

11:08

not like smog,

11:11

like air pollution that we think of. I

11:13

grew up in California. I remember

11:15

the smog in California. I couldn't see the mountains

11:18

five miles away from where I lived. And

11:21

then catalytic converters were put on cars,

11:24

scrubbers were put on power plants, and the air got

11:26

cleaned up and was all great. It was much better. And

11:29

our air in many places in America is much cleaner

11:31

than it used to be. That's not

11:33

what's going to happen with CO2. It

11:36

is essentially permanent when we put it up there.

11:39

And it's really important to grasp this

11:42

notion that every

11:44

molecule of CO2, every ton

11:46

of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere warms

11:49

the planet. And the warming will not stop

11:52

until we stop emitting

11:55

CO2 and burning fossil fuels. And

11:57

that's not going to happen for even

11:59

in the most oftenest places. and areas for, you

12:01

know, quite a long time.

12:03

So we are on a warming

12:05

planet. And even if we stop CO2, we

12:08

are stuck with that warming planet for

12:10

a very long time.

12:12

You mentioned how temperatures are

12:14

rising in Austin.

12:17

There are a few misconceptions about what the

12:19

heat does to our bodies. We think of

12:22

being in great shape or young are

12:24

kind of mechanisms that protect

12:26

us and that drinking lots of water will safeguard

12:29

us. You know these are fallacies

12:31

from your own personal experience. Can you tell

12:34

us the story of when you climbed a volcano? I

12:36

think it was in Nicaragua. And what happened?

12:39

Yeah, this was about,

12:42

you know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago. I

12:46

was on a trip to Nicaragua. And

12:50

I had been writing about climate change.

12:52

I knew about climate change. I, you

12:55

know, was that was that

12:57

was my job. But I'd never really thought

12:59

about heat or what it impacts were on

13:02

my body. And the idea that I might be at

13:05

risk was completely, you know,

13:07

far-fetched. Something had never occurred

13:09

to me. I started climbing this

13:11

volcano. And it was, you

13:14

know, a very hot

13:16

humid day. But I was in good shape, you

13:18

know. I run. I

13:20

was really fit. And, you

13:24

know, an hour and a half into this climb, I

13:28

started,

13:29

my heart started pounding. And all

13:31

of a sudden, you know, sweat

13:34

started pouring off my body. And

13:37

I

13:38

got like, I was like, what

13:40

is happening to me? I didn't understand. And

13:43

I kept walking a little bit. And then I started

13:45

feeling dizzy. And finally, the guide

13:47

who was with me said, you know, you need to sit

13:49

down and we need to rest and

13:52

everything. But, you know, it was

13:54

really a scary experience because I felt

13:56

like my body was out of control. My

13:58

heart was pounding so fast. fast and

14:00

I couldn't slow it down and I couldn't stop sweating

14:03

and I felt like I was going to lose consciousness. And,

14:05

you know, I only realize

14:07

now in retrospect that I was

14:10

on the verge of a heat stroke. And, you

14:12

know, it's an example of how

14:15

ignorant many

14:18

people are, including myself, about the

14:20

risks of heat. And, you know,

14:23

I was lucky, I was in good

14:25

shape. But, you know, those

14:27

are the kind of conditions where people can die.

14:29

You tell this heartbreaking cautionary

14:32

tale of a family that lived

14:34

in the Sierra Nevada foothills of

14:36

California, Jonathan, Guresh,

14:39

Ellen Chung and their toddler.

14:41

What happened to them? Well,

14:45

they were, you know, Jonathan

14:47

and his wife, Ellen, and their one-year-old

14:50

daughter, you know, he

14:52

had worked in Silicon Valley and they

14:54

wanted to get out of the

14:56

Bay Area. And

14:59

they were lucky enough to be able to buy a house

15:02

not far from Yosemite

15:04

Valley in the sort of foothills of the Sierras. And

15:08

had recently moved there and were

15:11

exploring the, you

15:14

know, region around where they lived and had been

15:16

taking various two or three mile hikes, just

15:18

exploring, you know,

15:20

this wonderful new landscape they lived in. And

15:23

one day they decided to take this slightly

15:25

longer hike, seven or eight miles down to the

15:28

Merced River, which was not far from

15:30

their house, and explore.

15:33

They were looking for swimming holes. And Jonathan,

15:37

the father, you

15:40

know, he had been warned by his brother

15:42

who was very experienced in outdoor

15:45

activities that it was hot. And he should be careful

15:48

on the hike. And Jonathan said, yes, I know,

15:50

I know, don't worry, we're going to start early. So

15:52

they started early and they hiked down into this canyon.

15:55

They started like 7.30 in the morning. They got

15:57

down there

15:58

and they were fine and they were sending.

15:59

you know, taking

16:02

pictures and selfies and things like everybody does.

16:04

And then around 11 o'clock

16:07

they started hiking out and they had about a

16:09

two and a half mile hike up

16:11

this steep

16:13

switchback trail that

16:15

was, had been

16:18

burned by a forest fire two

16:21

years earlier, so there was no shade. And

16:24

they started up this trail and no one

16:26

knows exactly what happened,

16:29

but about a mile up they

16:32

began to suffer

16:35

from what later was determined,

16:37

you know, from the heat. And sort

16:40

of long story short, the next day

16:44

rescuers found the entire family,

16:46

the dog, the one year old child,

16:49

the husband

16:51

and wife dead on the trail.

16:55

You know, Jeff, anyone who has lived in a place

16:58

with lots of concrete buildings and roads

17:00

knows this, but a hot city

17:03

as you write is different than a hot jungle

17:05

or desert. And to illustrate this,

17:07

you take us to Southern India where people's

17:10

entire existence involves

17:12

finding ways to beat the heat. It

17:14

sounds like a cruel and unforgiving

17:18

existence.

17:20

Can you talk a little bit about how much

17:22

architecture and city planning contributes

17:24

to the brutality of

17:26

extreme heat?

17:28

Yeah, sure. That's a really important

17:30

point. You know,

17:32

there's this phenomenon called urban

17:35

heat islands, which is basically

17:37

what cities are. I think

17:40

most people who have been in cities

17:42

on hot days kind of intuitively

17:44

understand this. You know, you walk

17:46

down a black asphalt street

17:49

and you have concrete and steel

17:52

and glass buildings around you. These

17:55

things are all absorbing

17:57

and sort of amplifying the heat and radiating

17:59

it. it back at you. And

18:03

this is a very profound effect

18:05

that makes cities

18:07

particularly dangerous places

18:09

to be during heatwaves

18:12

and is an

18:16

artifact of how

18:18

we've built cities.

18:20

I've built cities without

18:23

considering this at all. The idea

18:26

of climate has never been

18:28

considered and how we plan a city.

18:32

Some cities have more or less parks than others

18:35

and that's certainly helpful,

18:37

green spaces. But

18:39

that was never built with heat in mind. And

18:42

so what's happening is that cities are becoming

18:44

more and more dangerous places to be

18:48

during extreme heat events

18:50

and also the place where

18:52

a lot

18:53

of solutions and ideas about how to try

18:55

to remake cities are being played out.

18:58

Our guest today is Jeff Goodell, author

19:01

of the new book, The Heat Will Kill You First,

19:03

Life and Death on a Scorched Earth. I'm

19:05

Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air.

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20:33

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and

20:36

today I'm talking with Jeff Giddell, author

20:38

of the new book The Heat Will Kill You First,

20:41

Life and Death on a Scorched Earth.

20:44

Let's talk a little bit more about

20:46

how our use of fossil fuels is

20:49

driving up the Earth's temperature.

20:51

You have a few examples that quantify

20:53

the impact of CO2s,

20:57

which kind of is hard to do, but you give a few examples

20:59

in layman's terms. One is comparing

21:01

the absorption of heat in the ocean to

21:04

that of atomic bombs.

21:06

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that's really

21:09

difficult to grasp about what's

21:11

happening and what we're doing is,

21:14

you know, the scale

21:18

of the sort of

21:21

warmth that we're adding to the atmosphere.

21:24

People talk about parts per million of CO2

21:26

in the atmosphere changing, and it sounds like inconsequential,

21:29

a tiny bit. People, you know,

21:33

the climate targets are,

21:35

you know, keep warming

21:38

below 1.5 degrees Celsius. That

21:42

seems like

21:43

an insignificant number. And so

21:45

it makes it very difficult

21:47

for most people to grasp why

21:49

this is so urgent and why people like me

21:53

are talking about this as

21:55

such a sort of serious matter. And,

21:58

you know, one example of that

21:59

is if you try to quantify

22:02

how much heat

22:05

that is absorbed by the

22:07

oceans every day just from

22:09

our warming planet, it's the equivalent of three

22:12

nuclear bombs every second.

22:14

I mean,

22:15

it's hard to bend your mind around that,

22:17

but it's true. And it

22:20

goes to a really complicated

22:22

and important point about this whole

22:24

conversation, which is

22:27

how difficult it is to

22:29

get our minds around not

22:32

just the climate crisis more broadly,

22:35

but even just the impacts of heat and what

22:37

that means and how much, how

22:41

big and how powerful this

22:43

system is that we're messing with.

22:46

You know, right now, many of us are

22:48

sitting in air conditioned rooms or we're

22:51

in our car listening to this conversation with

22:53

the air conditioning on. Air

22:55

conditioning, you make a point to say,

22:57

is distinctly an American

22:59

invention, but it is not a cooling technology

23:01

at all. It is a tool for heat redistribution.

23:05

It's a vicious cycle. Can you explain that?

23:08

Yeah, I mean, air conditioning,

23:10

you know, changed the world. Air conditioning was

23:13

a really, really important

23:16

innovation. It happened. It was created

23:19

here in America. Some

23:22

people have argued that it was as

23:24

important in the change of our

23:26

culture as the personal computer

23:32

or something like that. I mean, you think about it,

23:34

Florida, Texas, where I am right now, all

23:37

of these places would not be the kinds

23:39

of boom towns that they are if there

23:41

was not air conditioning. I mean, obviously people lived

23:43

in Florida and in Texas

23:46

and other hot places before, but not the

23:48

way that they do now. So air

23:51

conditioning is really important

23:53

and really significant. But

23:55

you know, first of all, air conditioning is not a

23:58

magical technology. It doesn't make heat.

23:59

disappear, what AC does is

24:02

redistribute it. It takes it out of one

24:04

place and puts it in another place. I

24:06

think a lot of people kind of intuitively

24:08

understand this if they think about it. You know, you've

24:11

probably walked by an air conditioner

24:13

on the outside of a building, maybe in a city, in a window

24:16

unit, and you feel the

24:18

heat coming out of the air conditioning unit.

24:20

And the air conditioning unit is taking

24:23

the

24:24

hot air from inside of the

24:26

building and dumping

24:28

and pulling it out and dumping it outdoors,

24:31

you know, into the street, into the world

24:33

around it. And so when you have

24:36

tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands

24:38

or millions of those in a city all

24:41

sucking the heat out of one place and blowing

24:43

it out into the city, you're

24:46

redistributing the heat and making that

24:48

city a hotter place, which is one of the

24:51

reasons why cities

24:53

are these have this sort of urban heat island

24:55

effect that I talked about earlier.

24:57

Is renewable energy like

25:00

solar panels and wind energy a realistic

25:02

way to combat this?

25:04

Are we there yet to make that a realistic

25:06

way?

25:08

Well, you know, in a

25:10

certain way, there are different questions.

25:14

Certainly one of the things that's really interesting

25:16

that has happened during this Texas heat wave

25:19

is that, you know, there was a lot of concern

25:21

in the last couple of weeks as

25:23

temperatures have spiked,

25:25

that the grid would go down. And if

25:28

it did, as I just mentioned, that would

25:30

be kind of catastrophic.

25:33

Because there's a lot of extra load on

25:35

the grid during a heat wave, everybody's turning

25:38

up their air conditioners. And so

25:40

it really strains the system. But

25:44

in fact, the grid held up really

25:46

well here in Texas. And the reason it held

25:48

up really well in Texas was because

25:50

of all the solar

25:52

energy that has gone on to the grid

25:54

here. You know, Texas is the fossil fuel capital

25:56

of the world. But the kind of dirty secret

25:58

is that it's also the renewable energy.

25:59

renewable energy capital of the United States. And

26:02

we've put out a tremendous amount of

26:04

solar power and wind power

26:07

onto the grid here. And that is essentially

26:09

what saved the grid during this

26:13

heat spike in the last

26:15

couple of weeks. And it's a really important

26:17

case study that really shows how

26:20

important it is to shift away

26:23

from fossil fuel energy and how, you

26:25

know, everyone has always talked about solar and

26:28

wind and renewable power. It's not reliable

26:29

and all that. Well, in fact, we've just proven

26:32

that it's more reliable. And

26:34

in these times of

26:36

extreme heat and stress,

26:38

they're more reliable than traditional

26:41

fossil fuel energy. And

26:44

it's a really hopeful kind

26:47

of

26:48

textbook study of why we

26:51

need to shift away from generating power

26:53

with fossil fuels and move faster

26:56

towards renewable energy.

26:58

You've been

27:00

critical of the Biden administration steps

27:02

to fight climate change. Yes, you say

27:05

it's great that the administration most

27:07

recently set this goal to have 50% of the

27:10

cars on the road to be electric, but

27:13

almost in the same breath that approved the Canoko

27:16

Phillips Willow Project, which is this

27:18

massive oil drilling venture in Alaska

27:20

at the National Petroleum Reserve,

27:23

which is owned by the federal government. You

27:26

think this is hypocritical.

27:28

Yeah, I do think it's

27:31

I don't I don't know if I would use the word hypocritical.

27:34

I think that I would say that it

27:36

is, you know,

27:38

not what I would hope for from

27:41

this administration. You know,

27:43

I think that the climate

27:45

crisis is urgent. I

27:48

think that it's something that needs to

27:50

be addressed fast. We

27:52

need to get off fossil fuels fast.

27:55

Here in Texas, it's a great example of

27:57

the economic upside of

27:59

moving.

27:59

away from fossil fuels. And

28:02

essentially the reason that we're not moving faster

28:04

than we're moving is because of politics,

28:06

because the fossil fuel industry has an enormous

28:09

lobbying power, and they have an enormous amount

28:11

of money in campaign

28:13

contributions and other things that have

28:15

slowed this transition down. And the

28:18

faster the transition is, the

28:21

more profitable the transition will

28:23

be for many people, and the more

28:25

lives will be saved, the

28:29

more of something that resembles

28:31

the kind of future that many people imagine will

28:34

be preserved. I mean, it's really

28:37

a critical fight.

28:41

And the Biden administration,

28:44

and I've not talked to President Biden about this personally,

28:47

but I know many of the people around him, they

28:49

all know this, and they're

28:52

very, very smart people, and they've done

28:54

a lot of good things. There's no question about that.

28:56

But politics always seems

28:59

to be getting in the way. And at

29:01

a certain moment, we have to cast

29:04

that aside and just jump over

29:06

the river and land on the other side and

29:09

say, we're not going to be drilling

29:12

for fossil fuels. We're not gonna be pulling

29:14

this stuff out of the ground anymore. We're not

29:16

building any more infrastructure. We

29:19

are going

29:22

boldly and as quickly as we can into

29:24

the future.

29:25

Right, because I mean, crude oil

29:27

production does produce the most fossil

29:29

fuels. So what happened in Alaska speaks to

29:31

this frustration that many people have about

29:34

all of this, because basically

29:36

it's like, what does it matter if we make individual

29:38

choices when big corporations can continue

29:42

business as usual?

29:44

Yeah, I mean, that's a

29:47

really important point, this question

29:49

of what do individual choices matter

29:52

versus the sort of larger politics and corporate

29:55

power that

29:59

the... the fossil fuel industry has. And

30:04

British Petroleum BP famously

30:06

came out with this campaign a decade

30:09

or so ago about what is

30:11

your carbon footprint? What have you done?

30:14

Are you recycling your plastic bottles? Are

30:17

you riding your bike to work instead of

30:19

driving? And all those things are

30:21

important. I mean, I'm not

30:24

kind of denigrating that. We all need to do

30:26

our part. We all need to change

30:28

our lives, think about

30:32

the carbon footprint of our lives. But

30:34

that is not going to solve the problem. We

30:37

need the bigger levers, which are

30:39

the larger political levers. We need to eliminate

30:43

the sort of political power that

30:46

has accumulated over a century of

30:49

the fossil fuel industry. We

30:53

need to end this notion that modern

30:55

life depends on

30:58

fossil fuels. It does not. We

31:01

know that. We have all the technology

31:03

we need. It's not

31:05

a question of we burn oil or

31:07

we go back to horses and

31:09

buggies. I mean, look at Tesla. I'm

31:12

not a huge fan of Elon Musk

31:14

for many reasons. But look at electric

31:16

cars. It's amazing, right? And anyone who's

31:19

ever driven in an electric car knows, they're

31:21

way better. They're way more fun. They don't break.

31:24

They're just fantastic. And

31:26

that's an example of how innovation

31:29

can drive this.

31:31

And not

31:33

just like do-gooder,

31:36

tree hugger, we're not burning

31:38

fossil fuel thing, but actually

31:41

building a better world and doing better, doing

31:44

it in a better way. And I think that is

31:46

incredibly hopeful.

31:48

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining

31:50

us, we're talking about the warming climate

31:52

with Jeff Goodell, author of the new book, The

31:55

Heat Will Kill You First, Life and

31:57

Death on a Scorched Planet. We'll continue

31:59

our conversation.

31:59

after a short break, this is fresh air.

32:03

You brought up earlier Antarctica,

32:06

it's the coldest place on earth.

32:08

And what is happening there is frightening.

32:10

In March of 2022, it got up to 70 degrees. Can

32:14

you put that temperature of 70 degrees

32:16

in Antarctica into perspective for us?

32:21

No, because it's so,

32:23

it's so, I mean,

32:25

it'd be like walking

32:28

out in LA one day and it's 170 degrees. I

32:32

mean, it's beyond

32:35

kind of comprehension what that means

32:37

in a place like Antarctica. But

32:39

the kind of more interesting lesson in

32:42

Antarctica is the

32:44

importance of ocean temperature. We

32:47

don't talk often about marine heat waves

32:50

and warming in the ocean. 90% of

32:52

the heat that is sort of trapped

32:55

on our planet goes into the ocean. The ocean is like this

32:57

giant heat sink that is absorbing all this

32:59

heat. And as it warms up, it has

33:01

enormous implications for coral reefs,

33:04

for where fish live. They

33:07

like land animals, unlike humans, migrate

33:09

to as the temperatures change. But

33:12

it also has enormous implications for

33:15

glaciers, especially

33:17

the big ice sheets that come down

33:19

and buttress into the ocean itself. I

33:23

went to Antarctica to look at enormous

33:26

glacier there called the Waits Glacier, which is often

33:28

described as the sort of cork in the whole, in the

33:31

wine bottle of the whole West

33:33

Antarctic ice sheet, which if it melted

33:36

would raise sea levels about 10

33:38

feet, which 10 feet of sea level

33:40

rise is catastrophic for

33:43

virtually every coastal city in

33:45

the world. And for

33:47

a long time, scientists thought there

33:49

was nothing going on there in Antarctica. They would

33:51

not see any, what's called surface melt.

33:54

In other words, the ice wasn't melting on the top like it does

33:56

in Greenland. In Greenland, you see these big pools of

33:58

melt. Greenland's melting like. a popsicle

34:00

on a sidewalk. Antarctica looked

34:03

fine from the satellites and everything. And it's

34:05

very remote, very difficult to get there. So they sort

34:08

of thought, okay, that's how it's okay.

34:10

And then scientists started to understand

34:13

that as the ocean changed temperature

34:15

by just one degree or so, where

34:18

the bottom of the glaciers meet the ocean,

34:21

that change in temperature allowed this

34:23

warming water to get underneath these

34:25

glaciers. And as it gets underneath

34:28

these glaciers, it starts to melt them

34:30

from below. And as it melts from below,

34:32

they begin to fracture. And the possibility

34:35

that they will kind of essentially fall

34:37

apart like a big tumble of ice

34:40

cubes and fall into the Southern Ocean

34:42

very quickly has arisen. And

34:45

that would rapidly escalate sea

34:47

level rise. That would have enormous

34:49

implications. And I went down there on a ship

34:52

with some scientists to look into this. And

34:55

the short version of it is we

34:57

found out that yes, this is happening.

34:59

The question is what the time scales are will

35:02

be and all that kind of thing. But this

35:04

temperature change of one degrees in

35:07

the ocean has destabilized Western

35:10

Antarctica. And that is a very

35:12

big deal.

35:13

Do you believe that

35:15

it's irresponsible to have children during

35:18

this time? We talk about population control

35:20

often when we talk about the environment.

35:23

Well, that's a question that comes up a lot.

35:25

And

35:27

I'm the father of three children. I think

35:31

that

35:33

the question of having a child is a very personal

35:36

one for anyone. So

35:38

I hesitate to make any

35:41

kind of judgments, certainly about

35:43

whether it's responsible or irresponsible.

35:46

But I can tell you how I feel about

35:49

it. I

35:51

think when I hear that, it makes

35:53

me very sad because to me,

35:56

children are the great hope of the world.

35:59

kids, I spend

36:02

a lot of time, we've obviously, I'm

36:04

sure they're, will tell you if they were here that they're

36:07

like tired of hearing about all

36:09

of this growing up with a father who writes about climate

36:12

change, I think is there, I think they're, they

36:14

would much prefer that I were a football coach or something.

36:17

But, but, you know,

36:20

I think kids are the hope of

36:22

the world. They're the ones who are going to change things.

36:24

They're the ones who have everything at stake. Look at Greta

36:27

Thunberg, how powerful she has been in activating

36:29

people

36:29

and in, you know, building

36:33

political awareness of what's going on.

36:36

You know, we need young

36:38

minds to solve this problem. Us

36:41

old folks are not going to be the ones who

36:43

do it, you know, we

36:45

need

36:46

people to do this. And,

36:48

you know, on the question

36:51

of overpopulation, you know, I

36:53

think that gets miss

36:57

gets contorted, right? I mean, the

37:00

problem is not too many people on the planet. The

37:02

problem is as far as climate change

37:04

goes, the problem is too many

37:06

rich people with

37:09

highly consumptive habits, you

37:11

know, the vast

37:14

majority of the carbon pollution comes

37:17

from the top 10%

37:20

of the

37:22

wealthiest population. And,

37:25

you know, the idea that, you know, poor

37:29

people in Bangladesh or wherever you want

37:32

to name are the problem. They're, you know,

37:36

their carbon consumption, their carbon

37:38

footprint is minuscule

37:41

compared to, you know, a wealthy,

37:45

you know, tech investor here in

37:49

Austin who flies around for

37:51

vacations and has a

37:53

giant house that, you

37:55

know, requires a, you know, battalion

37:58

of air conditioners. And, you know,

37:59

It's just,

38:00

it's not a problem of sheer number

38:03

of people. It's a problem of what those people

38:05

do and how they live.

38:08

Jeff Goodell, thank you so much for this conversation

38:10

and your book. Thank

38:12

you. Jeff Goodell

38:14

is the author of The Heat Will Kill You First,

38:17

Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. Coming

38:19

up, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews

38:22

Anne Hull's new memoir, This is

38:24

Fresh Air.

38:26

Anne Hull started out her journalism

38:28

career answering phones at the St.

38:30

Petersburg Times. She went on

38:32

to become a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at

38:34

the Washington Post. Hull's new

38:36

memoir, Through the Groves, is a

38:38

world and a time away from those public

38:41

accomplishments. Our book critic Maureen

38:43

Corrigan has

38:44

a review.

38:45

Florida is in the news a

38:47

lot these days, but the Florida

38:50

that journalist Anne Hull writes about

38:52

in Through the Groves is a place

38:55

accessed only by the compass

38:57

of memory. Hull grew

38:59

up in the rural interior of

39:01

central Florida during the 1960s and 70s. Her

39:06

earliest recollections are pre-Disney,

39:09

almost prehistoric in atmosphere.

39:12

Hull's father was a fruit buyer for

39:14

a juice processing company. Every

39:17

day he drove through miles and

39:19

miles of remote orange and

39:22

grapefruit groves armed with

39:24

a pistol and a rattlesnake bite

39:26

kit. Think Indiana Jones

39:29

searching for the perfect citrus instead

39:32

of the lost Ark. Here

39:34

are some of Hull's descriptions of riding

39:36

along with her dad when she was

39:39

six. The

39:41

CB radio antenna whipped in the

39:43

air like a nine-foot machete. Leaves

39:46

and busted twigs rained down on us

39:48

inside the car. Pesticide

39:51

dust exploded off the trees.

39:54

And oranges, big heavy

39:56

oranges, dropped through the windows

39:58

like bombs.

39:59

Looking out my father's windshield,

40:03

I was seeing things I would never see

40:05

again. Places that weren't even

40:07

on maps, where the sky disappeared

40:10

and the radio went dead. Whole

40:13

towns were entombed in Spanish

40:15

moss. Birds spread

40:17

their skeletal wings but never

40:19

flew off. When it seemed

40:22

we may not ever see daylight

40:24

again, the road deposited

40:26

us into blinding sunlight.

40:30

Hull, a wise child, soon

40:32

catches on that her father has a drinking

40:34

problem, and that her mother wants

40:36

her to ride shotgun with him, especially

40:39

on payday, so that he won't

40:41

succumb to the Friday afternoon

40:44

fever.

40:45

Eventually, her parents divorce,

40:48

Hull grows up, and she struggles

40:50

with her queer sexuality in

40:52

a culture of strawberry festival

40:54

queens and pink frosted

40:57

sororities.

40:58

At the time of that early

41:00

ride along with her father, Hull says,

41:03

Walt Disney had already taken

41:05

a plane ride over the vast

41:08

emptiness of Central Florida, looked

41:10

down and said, there.

41:12

Much

41:14

of that inland ocean of citrus

41:17

groves and primordial swamplands

41:20

was already destined to be plowed

41:22

under to make way for the kingdom

41:24

of the mouse.

41:26

With all due respect to Hull's

41:28

personal story, Through the Groves

41:31

is an evocative memoir, not

41:33

so much because of the freshness of

41:35

its plot, but because Hull

41:37

is such a discerning reporter

41:39

of her own past. She

41:42

fills page after page here

41:44

with the kind of small, charged,

41:46

and often wry details that

41:49

make a lost world come alive,

41:52

describing, for instance, a Florida

41:54

where astronauts were constantly

41:57

flying overhead, but where the citrus men were

41:59

flying overhead. hardly bothered to look

42:01

up.

42:02

The moon was a fad, citrus

42:04

was king, and it would last

42:07

forever.

42:08

Of course, other things besides

42:10

astronauts were in the air, such

42:13

as everyday racism. Hull

42:16

observes that when Dr. King was assassinated,

42:19

the newspaper in her hometown

42:21

of Sebring, Florida, put the

42:23

story at the bottom of the front page.

42:26

The headline that day announced

42:28

the crowning of a new Miss

42:30

Sebring.

42:32

And then there were literal airborne

42:34

poisons, the pesticides

42:36

that fostered the growth of those Garden

42:39

of Eden citrus groves.

42:41

Here's Hull's recollection of

42:44

seeing, without then understanding,

42:47

the human cost of that harvest.

42:50

At each stop, my father introduced

42:52

me to the growers, pesticide

42:54

men, and fertilizer brokers

42:57

who populated his territory. I

43:00

had never seen such a reptilian

43:04

assemblage of humanity. The

43:06

whites of the men's eyes were seared

43:09

bloody red by the sun. Cancer

43:12

ate away at their noses. They

43:14

hocked up wet green balls of slime

43:17

that came from years of breathing in pesticide

43:20

as they sprayed the groves. No

43:23

one used respirators back then.

43:26

When the chemicals made them nauseous and

43:28

dizzy, they took a break for

43:30

a while,

43:31

then got back to it.

43:33

Hull left the world of

43:35

her childhood to become a journalist,

43:38

one who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize

43:40

for her