Transcripts
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Joe Laviska:Hey, threshold, it's Joe Laviska. I am up Beaver
Joe Laviska:Creek in Montana on a little city trip with a few friends.
Joe Laviska:This experience is what I would be really sad to lose because of
Joe Laviska:climate change.
Amy Martin:Welcome to threshold. I'm Amy Martin. As we
Amy Martin:were putting this season together, we asked you, our
Amy Martin:listeners, to think out loud with us about loss and climate
Amy Martin:change. What you're worried about losing, what you might
Amy Martin:already be grieving, and we're going to share some of your
Amy Martin:responses in this episode. This is what our pal Joe Laviska sent
Amy Martin:us.
Joe Laviska:As we progress through climate change, we're
Joe Laviska:just seeing less and less snow falling and it's being replaced
Joe Laviska:by rain. And so one day, there may be a time when a place like
Joe Laviska:this no longer gets continuously covered in winter snow, and I
Joe Laviska:wouldn't be able to ski on top of the creek, as we're doing
Joe Laviska:now, and that would make me really sad. So that's just one
Joe Laviska:thing about climate change that I'd be sad to lose.
Amy Martin:This season of Threshold is about the small
Amy Martin:window of time we have left before we hit 1.5 degrees
Amy Martin:Celsius of warming over pre industrial levels. So, our time,
Amy Martin:right now. What we are doing and not doing. After spending three
Amy Martin:episodes getting oriented to this problem, figuring out where
Amy Martin:the 1.5 number came from, and what the atmosphere actually is.
Amy Martin:I'm eager to start investigating how we can get ourselves out of
Amy Martin:this mess. What we should do first and how to do it, and
Amy Martin:we're gonna get there in future episodes. But before we can move
Amy Martin:fully into problem solving mode, I think we have to grapple with
Amy Martin:a big, obvious and really difficult question, what happens
Amy Martin:if we fail? What will the consequences be if we hit 1.5
Amy Martin:and keep on warming the world to two degrees or more? We have to
Amy Martin:ask this, because that's what we're on track for now: 2.7
Amy Martin:degrees Celsius over pre industrial levels by the end of
Amy Martin:this century. That amount of warming in that amount of time
Amy Martin:would be a catastrophe. But what kind of catastrophe exactly,
Amy Martin:what kind of future are we heading into if we don't act
Amy Martin:decisively on climate in the next few years? These are not
Amy Martin:fun questions, I know. They make me anxious and angry and sad. So
Amy Martin:many people all around the world are feeling deep worry and grief
Amy Martin:about what we're doing to the climate. But as hard as it is to
Amy Martin:face these feelings, I think there's power in bringing them
Amy Martin:out into the open where they can be seen and shared and possibly
Amy Martin:transformed into useful action. And as we make space to process
Amy Martin:some feelings, we're also going to arm ourselves with some facts
Amy Martin:with the help of three different experts, because it's not enough
Amy Martin:to say that the climate crisis is bad or that carbon emissions
Amy Martin:are harmful. We need to get much clearer about the specifics. Who
Amy Martin:and what is at risk here? What are the real stakes of failing
Amy Martin:to meet the 1.5 goal? We have to examine that possible future,
Amy Martin:because it might be the one we're choosing, and I think we
Amy Martin:owe it to ourselves and future generations and every other
Amy Martin:living thing on this planet to confront what that means.
Bruno Rodriguez:I don't want to live in a society in which the
Bruno Rodriguez:climate crisis is solved, but injustices are permanent.
Christiane Frohlich:Most people who are really affected by
Christiane Frohlich:climate change don't have the resources to migrate.
Christiane Frohlich:Dr. Adelle Thomas: To keep kicking the ball further and
Christiane Frohlich:further down the road, it's going to get harder and harder
Christiane Frohlich:to deal with.
Sherri Goodman:What we've called these tipping points and
Sherri Goodman:extremes are not that far away. In fact, the future is closer
Sherri Goodman:than we think, and we are unprepared.
Shamim:Sandhill cranes. I'd really miss sandhill cranes.
Shamim:There isn't a fall or spring that goes by that I don't stop
Shamim:what I'm doing when they come over. And this year's migration
Shamim:was really late and it makes me wonder what's to come.
Julia:The first thing that pops into my head, I think, are
Julia:seasons like distinct seasons, and specifically spring, which
Julia:really seems to be vanishing, and if spring disappeared
Julia:entirely, obviously, that would have huge ramifications for what
Julia:that would mean for plants and animals and us and our Earth.
Julia:But I also would just miss the experience of spring, the
Julia:temperatures, the feeling of the air, the type of sun, the
Julia:breeze. Yeah, spring.
Amy Martin:The number of things at stake in the climate crisis
Amy Martin:do not fit inside one episode. It's hard to even fit them
Amy Martin:inside my mind. The list of plants and animals at risk of
Amy Martin:extinction is long enough to break the hardest of hearts,
Amy Martin:polar bears, of course, but also corals, koalas, Adélie penguins,
Amy Martin:leatherback sea turtles, Bengal tigers, mountain gorillas,
Claude:Tadpoles, they used to be so many, and now are very
Claude:monarch butterflies and so much more.
Claude:few. So I grieve the loss of tadpoles and of nature, but in
Claude:the grieving, which is a form of love, there's also energy and
Claude:connection with other living beings, in order for us to be
Claude:aware of what we don't want to lose.
Deneen Weiske:It would hurt to lose a lot to a changing
Deneen Weiske:climate, but the thing I immediately think of is the rich
Deneen Weiske:and beautiful boreal forest that surrounds my home. There's
Deneen Weiske:nothing quite like the clean smell of conifers throughout the
Deneen Weiske:different seasons. Softness of the trails covered by fallen
Deneen Weiske:pine needles. It's the forest of fairy tales. I spend hours in it
Deneen Weiske:year round. It's already suffering massive impacts from
Deneen Weiske:the changing climate, and this far south, it simply will not be
Deneen Weiske:able to survive, and it will be heartbreaking to bear witness to
Deneen Weiske:its loss.
Amy Martin:Part of what's hard about grasping the potential
Amy Martin:losses here is that they're happening at lots of different
Amy Martin:scales, all at the same time. There are these huge planetary
Amy Martin:changes, forests converting into savannas, oceans turning acidic,
Amy Martin:the ancient dance between pollinators and the pollinated
Amy Martin:falling out of rhythm. But we experience them in small,
Amy Martin:personal ways, right outside our own back doors.
Alexis:I would be really sad to lose the Eastern hemlock. It's
Alexis:my favorite species of tree, and is one of the pillars of our
Alexis:Northeastern forests. They're just such powerful trees, and I
Alexis:really can't imagine a forest without them.
Amy Martin:Each of us is holding a small shard of the
Amy Martin:mirror that shows us what we're losing and what we see in that
Amy Martin:mirror is very different depending on who we are and
Amy Martin:where we live. But no matter what our individual contexts
Amy Martin:are, humans all over the planet share basic needs for water,
Amy Martin:food and security, and the more we knock the climate out of
Amy Martin:kilter, the more we undermine our capacity to meet those needs
Amy Martin:and live together in relative harmony. That's what we're going
Amy Martin:to focus on here. What climate chaos could do to our human
Amy Martin:societies.
Sherri Goodman:You don't have to have 100% certainty that X is
Sherri Goodman:going to happen at Y time to know that it's a threat.
Amy Martin:Sherri Goodman works in the growing field of climate
security:the many ways that the climate crisis makes the world
security:more dangerous for people. She's based in the US, and she's been
security:working at the intersection of environment and security for
security:decades. In the 1990s she became the first person at the U.S.
security:Department of Defense to be named Chief environment, safety
security:and health officer, and she's currently the Secretary General
security:of the International Military Council on climate and security.
Sherri Goodman:Which is a group of generals, admirals and
Sherri Goodman:national security professionals in 35 countries around the world
Sherri Goodman:dedicated to elevating attention to climate change and its
Sherri Goodman:security impacts.
Amy Martin:So let's ground this conversation with two key data
Amy Martin:points. First, as I said a few minutes ago, we're currently on
Amy Martin:track to hit 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this
Amy Martin:century, almost double the 1.5 goal. That number comes from the
Amy Martin:climate action tracker, an international consortium of
Amy Martin:climate research organizations, and it's based on current, real
Amy Martin:world emissions and policies, not what countries are saying
Amy Martin:they hope to achieve, but what they're actually doing. That
Amy Martin:means that number could change a lot if we take different
Amy Martin:actions. So it's not set in stone, but it is bad news. Data
Amy Martin:point number two is a reminder of something I said in our first
Amy Martin:episode this season. Global warming is like turning the knob
Amy Martin:on a stove, not flipping a light switch. So if we hit 1.6 degrees
Amy Martin:Celsius over pre industrial levels. It's not like we
Amy Martin:suddenly wake up inside Dante's Inferno, but we do take one more
Amy Martin:step toward it, and as we pass each notch on the climate dial,
Amy Martin:we make our world less safe.
Sherri Goodman:As General Sullivan, former Army Chief of
Sherri Goodman:Staff, said, You know, we can't wait for 100% certainty. If we
Sherri Goodman:do, we know something bad is going to happen on the
Sherri Goodman:battlefield. So military leaders are accustomed to operating and
Sherri Goodman:making decisions based on incomplete information.
Amy Martin:And she says understanding the climate crisis
Amy Martin:as a security threat can help leaders make smarter choices.
Sherri Goodman:You know, in the Cold War, we spent billions of
Sherri Goodman:dollars of American GDP to deter a Soviet nuclear attack, a bolt
Sherri Goodman:out of the blue nuclear attack. Now we didn't know that it was
Sherri Goodman:going to happen, and thankfully, it didn't. But you know, we were
Sherri Goodman:willing to invest much of America's treasure, both in
Sherri Goodman:money and people, to defend and deter against that threat,
Sherri Goodman:because we conceived it as a low probability but very high
Sherri Goodman:consequence threat, low probability but high consequence
Sherri Goodman:in the climate era. Now we have a threat that is arguably high
Sherri Goodman:probability and high consequence now, and that's why you see
Sherri Goodman:today, militaries around the world investing heavily in
Sherri Goodman:climate resilience and adaptation and also in
Sherri Goodman:mitigation.
Amy Martin:That is such a fascinating frame for this. And
Amy Martin:I'm curious, as someone who has kind of been there throughout
Amy Martin:that evolution, was it? Was it hard work at first, to get
Amy Martin:military leaders to take your work or your concerns seriously
Amy Martin:on this front? Or did you find that to be a pretty easy
Amy Martin:conversation to have of like, climate change is a national
Amy Martin:security thing, and we need to be looking at it through that
Amy Martin:lens.
Sherri Goodman:Oh, no, it was. It was definitely hard work. I
Sherri Goodman:mean, it was definitely hard work. Climate change was not the
Sherri Goodman:wolf closest to the sled. That's a commonly used turn of phrase.
Sherri Goodman:Well, I have so many problems I have to worry about. The ones
Sherri Goodman:I'm going to really focus on is what's in my inbox today and
Sherri Goodman:maybe for the next year or so. That's the wolf closest to the
Sherri Goodman:sled.
Amy Martin:But Sherri was persistent. She was convinced
Amy Martin:that military leaders needed to start thinking about the
Amy Martin:implications of climate change, and slowly they began to agree.
Sherri Goodman:So there was some skepticism that, Oh, okay.
Sherri Goodman:Well, if environmentalists care about it, then people who don't
Sherri Goodman:identify as tree huggers can't. And we were very clear. And in
Sherri Goodman:fact, many of our generals said, I'm not a tree hugger, and I'm
Sherri Goodman:not doing this for that reason. I'm doing it because I believe
Sherri Goodman:in evidence, and I'm relying on the evidence. And now,
Sherri Goodman:increasingly, we know that climate change is that wolf
Sherri Goodman:closest to the sled. In fact, it's right on the sled right now
Sherri Goodman:when we see the devastating effects of extreme weather
Sherri Goodman:events around the world occurring virtually every day.
Amy Martin:Extreme weather events are getting a lot of
Amy Martin:attention for a lot of good reasons. Let's look at the year
Amy Martin:2021 alone. There were deadly cyclones in Fiji, Indonesia and
Amy Martin:East Timor, massive dust storms in China. At the end of June,
Amy Martin:the most extreme heat wave ever recorded hit the northwestern US
Amy Martin:and Western Canada. Temperatures reached 49.6 degrees Celsius, or
Amy Martin:121 degrees Fahrenheit, shattering records and killing
Amy Martin:hundreds of people. That led into the warmest month ever
Amy Martin:recorded on our planet, and soon fires were raging in Siberia,
Amy Martin:the Western United States, Greece, Italy and Turkey.
Amy Martin:Flooding in Europe and China killed hundreds of people and
Amy Martin:caused billions of dollars of damage. And the year ended with
Amy Martin:a deadly typhoon in the Philippines and a posse of
Amy Martin:tornadoes that ripped across the southern and central United
Amy Martin:States. This isn't even a comprehensive tally, and we're
Amy Martin:at 1.2 degrees of warming.
Sherri Goodman:What you realize is that what we've called these
Sherri Goodman:tipping points and extremes are not that far away. In fact, the
Sherri Goodman:future, I would say the future is closer than we think. It's
Sherri Goodman:much closer than we think, and we are unprepared.
Amy Martin:Of course, not every weather disaster has a link to
Amy Martin:climate change, but our tinkering with the climate is
Amy Martin:making extreme weather events more likely and more severe.
Amy Martin:These kinds of catastrophes are hard to deal with, even if
Amy Martin:everything else is more or less normal. But it's not. The
Amy Martin:hurricanes and flash floods, increasingly making headlines
Amy Martin:around the world are playing out against a backdrop of slower,
Amy Martin:less dramatic changes that might be harder to detect, but are no
Amy Martin:less important. Our carbon emissions are changing long term
Amy Martin:rainfall patterns, wind and ocean currents, rates of snow
Amy Martin:melt, and as one of our listeners said earlier, the
Amy Martin:length and timing and nature of the seasons in different
Amy Martin:locations. And all of those things affect one of the core
Amy Martin:essentials of human life: food. With each additional degree of
Amy Martin:warming, we make it harder for ourselves to produce enough
Amy Martin:food. Climate change is already impacting farmers in the United
Amy Martin:States, south Asia, sub-saharan Africa and other parts of the
Amy Martin:world as well.
Sherri Goodman:Parts of Latin America are drying out, and the
Sherri Goodman:coffee crop is no longer robust. The agricultural regions have
Sherri Goodman:become less productive.
Amy Martin:Food shortages have all kinds of effects beyond
Amy Martin:hungry bellies. Prices go up, economies get disrupted,
Amy Martin:families are sometimes forced to abandon their lands. Weak spots
Amy Martin:in the social fabric and government systems begin to
Amy Martin:fracture and fray, and in the worst climate scenarios, the
Amy Martin:world would face massive famines.
Sherri Goodman:Some areas might become more agriculturally
Sherri Goodman:productive, like northern regions in Canada and Russia,
Sherri Goodman:but a lot of areas become much less agriculturally productive
Sherri Goodman:over the next several decades because of drought, extreme
Sherri Goodman:weather events, changes in the regular precipitation and
Sherri Goodman:monsoon cycles, for example, across much of Asia.
Amy Martin:And then there's water. Let's just ignore sea
Amy Martin:level rise for a minute and focus on fresh water.
Caysi Simpson:I will really, really miss clean, free water. I
Caysi Simpson:don't want the reality of the world to end up being a place
Caysi Simpson:where water is something that we fight and we die over. Pretty
Caysi Simpson:heavy, but this is definitely something that keeps me up at
Amy Martin:One region of huge concern is Central Asia, where
Amy Martin:night.
Amy Martin:the Himalayas and other mountain ranges hold massive amounts of
Amy Martin:snow and ice, which helps to provide fresh water for one and
Amy Martin:a half billion people downstream in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India,
Amy Martin:China, and a handful of other countries. Even if we manage to
Amy Martin:keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, 1/3 of this ice
Amy Martin:could be lost by the end of this century. If we warm the world
Amy Martin:beyond 1.5 half, or even two thirds of Asia's glacier ice
Amy Martin:could be gone in 80 years. There's a similar scenario
Amy Martin:playing out in the Andes Mountains in South America. And
Amy Martin:these are far from the only regions where lack of fresh
Amy Martin:water is a growing issue.
Sherri Goodman:Across much of northern Africa and the Sahel,
Sherri Goodman:the drought has become even more extreme again across many parts
Sherri Goodman:of the world now, floods, fires, drought, all exacerbated by
Sherri Goodman:climate change beyond the natural cycles.
Amy Martin:Anyone living in the western US or Western Canada,
Amy Martin:knows that wealthier countries are not exempt from devastating
Amy Martin:droughts and fires. Several of our listeners spoke to this.
Eva:Something that I've already been sad to lose with climate
Eva:change is summer is without wildfire smoke and. And being
Eva:able to feel like I can spend time outside and be able to walk
Eva:my dog without worrying about health impacts for him, and
Eva:being worried that there's particulate pollution leaking
Eva:into my house through the windows. And just generally,
Eva:being able to feel like the air isn't this toxic thing that is
Eva:turning my lungs into a time bomb for cancer.
Unknown:I'm worried and sad about losing the experience of
Unknown:hiking a big mountain and getting to the peak for a view
Unknown:where you feel like you can just see forever. Last summer, I had
Unknown:that experience of going for a hike and kind of being ready to
Unknown:take in a great view and just feeling kind of sad because you
Unknown:could just see all this brown crap in the air blocking the
Unknown:view.
Emery:Something I'll be sad to lose with climate change are the
Emery:mountain forests here in New Mexico. These are places where
Emery:wildflowers bloom in mountain meadows in the summer and where
Emery:the peaks are covered in snow in the winter. And they're the
Emery:closest I feel to being at home in nature. But they're really
Emery:fragile, and if wildfire season continues to grow out of
Emery:control, or if the climate warms so much that these forests can't
Emery:survive, I'll lose this feeling of being at home in the wild
Emery:world.
Amy Martin:On the other side of the continent, in cities like
Amy Martin:Boston, New York and Miami, the problem is more likely to be too
Amy Martin:much water, and many parts of Europe are dealing with
Amy Martin:increased flooding too. But although it's important to
Amy Martin:understand how climate will impact each of our individual
Amy Martin:communities, I think maybe it's more important to recognize that
Amy Martin:the climate crisis is a global problem in a very globalized
Amy Martin:world, it brings an increased risk of pandemics, more
Amy Martin:disruptions to supply chains, things that happen in one place
Amy Martin:quickly ricochet out and affect us all.
Sherri Goodman:It's abundantly clear now that that climate
Sherri Goodman:considerations and climate commitments are mainstream in
Sherri Goodman:the foreign policy decision making of virtually every
Sherri Goodman:country now, whether you like it or not, and so it's become part
Sherri Goodman:of global geopolitics. And so it's going to be a continuing
Sherri Goodman:factor in relations between major powers, US, China, Russia,
Sherri Goodman:Iran, also between developed and developing countries. Every week
Sherri Goodman:now almost brings a new chapter in the permutations of the
Sherri Goodman:relationships and affects both how we address and combat
Sherri Goodman:climate change, but also relations between countries,
Sherri Goodman:from trade to finance to all the elements of security.
Amy Martin:So let's do some sorting of the potential threats
Amy Martin:here. Sometimes I hear people say climate change is going to
Amy Martin:destroy all life on Earth or wipe out humanity as a species.
Amy Martin:Both of those things are highly unlikely. Many beautiful,
Amy Martin:complex and utterly unique species will be lost forever,
Amy Martin:but life on this planet will persist, and our remarkably
Amy Martin:adaptable species is a long ways from self extinction. But there
Amy Martin:is an existential struggle going on here for human civilizations,
Amy Martin:we need some amount of predictability around core
Amy Martin:resources of food, water and habitable territory in order to
Amy Martin:build every other element of human society: healthcare,
Amy Martin:education, government, laws, art and culture, technology and
Amy Martin:trade. These are the things that are really at stake here,
Amy Martin:without some basic level of stability and balance in the
Amy Martin:climate, all of these things could start to crumble, and we
Amy Martin:may be reduced to a level of social chaos that's hard for us
Amy Martin:to actually imagine, possibly a state of constant war. That's
Amy Martin:why Sherri convened the first group of U.S. generals and
Amy Martin:admirals, to address the national security implications
Amy Martin:of climate change back in 2006.
Sherri Goodman:We did that because we could see that there
Sherri Goodman:were mounting threats to our security from climate change,
Sherri Goodman:which we characterized as a threat multiplier for
Sherri Goodman:instability in fragile regions of the world.
Amy Martin:Everything we've already talked about could help
Amy Martin:fuel conflict, extreme weather events, long term ecosystem
Amy Martin:changes, disruptions to our food and water systems. But that's
Amy Martin:not all. We're literally changing the map of the world,
Amy Martin:reducing the amount of land in coastal zones where hundreds of
Amy Martin:millions of people live, and possibly wiping out some island
Amy Martin:nations, as Adelle Thomas described in our first episode.
Amy Martin:As farmlands become deserts and tundras become bogs, we will
Amy Martin:radically change the number of people who can live in any given
Amy Martin:region. It's a scale and type and pace of change that our
Amy Martin:current national and international institutions are
Amy Martin:not designed for and are not prepared to handle. As we look
Amy Martin:at all these scary possibilities, it's important to
Amy Martin:keep in mind that conflicts are created by people, not carbon
Amy Martin:molecules. There's nothing that says we have to respond to the
Amy Martin:climate crisis with war, and some past claims of causal links
Amy Martin:between climate and conflict have later been shown to be
Amy Martin:overblown or just plain incorrect. We have agency here.
Amy Martin:People can, and often do, choose to cooperate, even in very hard
Amy Martin:times, but making the choice to collaborate might get more
Amy Martin:difficult as resources become more scarce. An overheated
Amy Martin:climate adds a lot of new stresses to our societies, and
Amy Martin:stress tends to bring out the worst in us.
Sherri Goodman:None of these issues exist, you know, in their
Sherri Goodman:own silos, there's a convergence now of climate and national
Sherri Goodman:security, and that's what I often talk about. The climate
Sherri Goodman:effects converge on the other security risks we face around
Sherri Goodman:the world.
Amy Martin:The elephant in the room here is inequality.
Amy Martin:Although climate change poses big risks to people everywhere,
Amy Martin:wealth buys some degree of protection, and one of the cruel
Amy Martin:ironies is that nations like the United States, the United
Amy Martin:Kingdom, Germany, have more wealth and protection in large
Amy Martin:part because of the activities that cause climate change. They
Amy Martin:industrialized early and became wealthy through the burning of
Amy Martin:fossil fuels at mass scale. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions
Amy Martin:of people in less developed countries who did almost nothing
Amy Martin:to create this problem live in extreme poverty with no safety
Amy Martin:net, no parachute cord to pull when climate disaster strikes.
Amy Martin:This is an increasing source of tension on the international
Amy Martin:stage. I saw it firsthand at the UN climate talks in Glasgow,
Amy Martin:Scotland. I wanted to get Sherri's take on this.
Amy Martin:I heard person after person, not just protesters, but people
Amy Martin:inside the blue zone in Glasgow, talking about inequality as a
Amy Martin:huge driving factor of, you know, what this problem is based
Amy Martin:on and why we're having a hard time solving it. How do you
Amy Martin:think about that in a security context?
Sherri Goodman:Well, in a security context, the goal is
Sherri Goodman:always peace and stability. So if you think the objective is
Sherri Goodman:peace and stability, then persistent, prolonged and
Sherri Goodman:massive inequality is disruptive to peace and stability.
Amy Martin:I'm out on the streets in Glasgow on the second
Amy Martin:day of massive protests held during the UN climate
Amy Martin:conference, every group that walks by seems to have a
Amy Martin:different slogan this group is shouting over and over, global
Amy Martin:warming is a war of the rich against the poor.
Amy Martin:I stand off to the side, watching them for a while. Some
Amy Martin:of them look a little surprised to be there, maybe a little
Amy Martin:unsure of themselves. Some look really angry, and all of them
Amy Martin:look very young. I wonder what the world will look like for
Amy Martin:them 20 or 30 years from now. Will they be telling their kids
Amy Martin:stories about how they helped to avert the worst? Will they still
Amy Martin:be passionately protesting this war, or will they be fighting in
Taliah:I don't know what our planet is going to be like in a
Taliah:it?
Taliah:few decades, and I don't know if I feel good about choosing to
Taliah:bring another human being into the world when I cannot say with
Taliah:any kind of certainty that they won't be born into a world
Taliah:that's full of supply issues or food shortages or inhospitable
Taliah:conditions. I'm sure some people out there would say, oh my gosh,
Taliah:you're being so dramatic. There's no reason to doubt that
Taliah:your future exists, you'll be fine, we'll be fine, and maybe I
Taliah:will be fine with all of the privilege that I have backing me
Taliah:up. But not everybody will be. And maybe I won't be, maybe you
Taliah:won't be. It's weird to think, and it's weird to press on as if
Taliah:nothing is massively wrong, when we don't know how wrong it can
Taliah:go.
Amy Martin:We'll have more after this short break.
Erika Janik:Hey everybody. This is Erika Janik Thresholds's
Erika Janik:managing editor, did you know that we have a Threshold
Erika Janik:newsletter? Our newsletter is a great way to stay connected to
Erika Janik:Threshold between seasons, find out what we're thinking about
Erika Janik:and what we're reading, listening to and watching. So
Erika Janik:subscribe to the Threshold newsletter today using the link
Erika Janik:in the show notes or on our website Thresholdpodcast.org.
Bruno Rodriguez:I believe that an ecological and climate
Bruno Rodriguez:transition will be completely inevitable. I believe that it
Bruno Rodriguez:will happen. But the main question that we need to ask
Bruno Rodriguez:ourselves is how and in which terms this transition will
Bruno Rodriguez:develop.
Amy Martin:Welcome back to Threshold. I'm Amy Martin, and
Amy Martin:this is Bruno Rodriguez, one of the founders and leaders of an
Amy Martin:organization called Youth for Climate Argentina, a branch of
Amy Martin:the global Fridays for future movement.
Bruno Rodriguez:I'm 21 years old, and I study political
Bruno Rodriguez:science at the University of Buenos Aires, my home city.
Amy Martin:I heard Bruno speak at an event hosted by The New
Amy Martin:York Times in conjunction with the UN climate conference in
Amy Martin:Glasgow, and I knew right away that I wanted to talk to him
Amy Martin:further about this intersection between the climate crisis and
Amy Martin:global inequality. We met online after the conference, and Bruno
Amy Martin:told me his pathway into these issues started when he was just
Amy Martin:14 years old. That's when he started working with people in
Amy Martin:some of the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires.
Amy Martin:Later, when he participated in his school's Model UN team, he
Amy Martin:started to make connections between these major
Amy Martin:international issues and what he was seeing on the ground in his
Amy Martin:city.
Bruno Rodriguez:I started to understand the interlink between
Bruno Rodriguez:the violation of human rights and vulnerable economic and
Bruno Rodriguez:social conditions and the effects of the climate crisis.
Amy Martin:In previous episodes, we've talked about how
Amy Martin:the climate crisis isn't being caused equally and how its
Amy Martin:impacts aren't landing equally either. That is already
Amy Martin:happening, but if we fail to limit temperature rise to 1.5
Amy Martin:degrees, it's almost certain that the gap between the haves
Amy Martin:and have nots will grow exponentially. And there's
Amy Martin:another layer here. Even the actions we take to solve climate
Amy Martin:change could make inequality worse if we're not careful.
Bruno Rodriguez:For example, let's change all the fleet of
Bruno Rodriguez:cars which are sustained by fossil fuels to electric cars.
Bruno Rodriguez:Okay, but how are you going to do that? Are you going to
Bruno Rodriguez:exploit the territories which have the most important natural
Bruno Rodriguez:resource to develop that process, which is the lithium
Bruno Rodriguez:triangle? Bolivia, Chile and Argentina?
Amy Martin:These three countries possess more than half
Amy Martin:of the lithium in the world, and demand for the metal is going
Amy Martin:through the roof- for electric cars, cell phones and everything
Amy Martin:else that uses a lithium battery. But the process of
Amy Martin:extracting lithium has a lot of environmental impacts. One
Amy Martin:common method requires a ton of energy, which adds to the
Amy Martin:climate problem. Another method requires huge amounts of water-
Amy Martin:around half a million gallons per one ton of lithium and the
Amy Martin:use of toxic chemicals that can contaminate local waterways.
Amy Martin:That's the method that's primarily being used in Latin
Amy Martin:America. And even if the environmental impacts could be
Amy Martin:minimized, there's the question of who benefits from mining and
Amy Martin:selling the lithium, because right now, foreign companies are
Amy Martin:doing the bulk of it in Bolivia and Argentina and local
Amy Martin:communities are dealing with water shortages and other
Amy Martin:problems while receiving few, if any benefits.
Bruno Rodriguez:And you're going to leave absolutely
Bruno Rodriguez:nothing to those communities in order to finance your energy
Bruno Rodriguez:transition process in the US and the European Union. Or is it
Bruno Rodriguez:going to be fair for all of us? Is it going to be a just
Bruno Rodriguez:transition into geopolitical terms?
Amy Martin:Bruno is by no means saying that we shouldn't do
Amy Martin:everything we can to transform our economy away from fossil
Amy Martin:fuels, but what he and thousands of other activists, especially
Amy Martin:young people, are demanding is that this energy transformation
Amy Martin:has to include a transformation of the underlying power dynamics
Amy Martin:too.
Bruno Rodriguez:It's a circular fight which interacts with
Bruno Rodriguez:social issues, economic issues, human rights issues,
Bruno Rodriguez:environmental issues as well.
Amy Martin:Simply put, he's saying fairness matters in the
Amy Martin:climate crisis. And I'd like to think that fairness matters
Amy Martin:because fairness matters, full stop. Countries and companies
Amy Martin:should put human rights front and center in their responses to
Amy Martin:the climate crisis because it's the right thing to do. But if
Amy Martin:that's not enough to convince everyone, there's also a very
Amy Martin:pragmatic reason. If this transition isn't fair, it won't
Amy Martin:work. People will rebel against it. For instance, a lithium mine
Amy Martin:in Tibet caused so much damage to local streams that people
Amy Martin:threw piles of dead fish into the streets of their village in
Amy Martin:protest. A so called green revolution that evokes that kind
Amy Martin:of response isn't green and isn't a revolution. It's just
Amy Martin:business as usual. It's the same old fashioned definition of
Amy Martin:progress that we've been using since the Industrial Revolution.
Amy Martin:Like we talked about in our last episode, that definition
Amy Martin:celebrates successes while ignoring the costs. And Bruno
Amy Martin:says, if we don't disrupt that way of thinking, then we are
Amy Martin:headed into a very dark time.
Bruno Rodriguez:Well, I think that the world which failed to
Bruno Rodriguez:deliver good climate action. It is a world of dystopia. It is
Bruno Rodriguez:indeed a world in which the present social injustices and
Bruno Rodriguez:the present economic gaps are deepened in a way that we cannot
Bruno Rodriguez:imagine.
Amy Martin:The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel
Amy Martin:on Climate Change confirm this. All the impacts we've already
Amy Martin:touched on, sea level rise, heat waves, the location and amount
Amy Martin:of land in which it's possible to produce food, fresh water,
Amy Martin:availability, all of these things could make the lives of
Amy Martin:the poorest people on the planet much worse, and drive hundreds
Amy Martin:of millions of additional people into poverty.
Bruno Rodriguez:And it will be also a crisis in which we are
Bruno Rodriguez:going to have, for example, new mass levels of refugees, which
Bruno Rodriguez:will create, like a sub crisis in the climate crisis. It will
Bruno Rodriguez:be the crisis of the climate refugees. And imagine what that
Bruno Rodriguez:would be in a world in which water is extremely compromised
Bruno Rodriguez:by the consequences of climate crisis. So personally, I think
Bruno Rodriguez:of this very deeply. Think that if we do not engage with
Bruno Rodriguez:solutions which are based on this international diagnosis of
Bruno Rodriguez:extreme geopolitical asymmetries between the global north and the
Bruno Rodriguez:south, even though we have a transition waging on from from
Bruno Rodriguez:now to the future, it will be impossible for us to live in a
Bruno Rodriguez:fair society, and I don't want to live in a society in which
Bruno Rodriguez:the climate crisis is solved but the injustices are permanent. So
Bruno Rodriguez:I think that is the main and the key problem that we need to look
Bruno Rodriguez:at.
Amy Martin:So I just have to take a minute in all of this
Amy Martin:heaviness to notice something pretty remarkable about the
Amy Martin:youth climate movements happening all around the world.
Amy Martin:They refuse to leave anyone out. They're just done with the whole
Amy Martin:mentality of sacrifice zones and expendable erasable people.
Amy Martin:Sure, it's a lot easier to speak those ideals than it is to put
Amy Martin:them into practice. But I don't think there's ever been a time
Amy Martin:when this many young people in countries all over the world
Amy Martin:were as conscious of the connections between their
Amy Martin:individual lives, the global human community and the health
Amy Martin:of the planet. Bruno and I actually spent most of our
Amy Martin:conversation talking about how to build a positive vision for
Amy Martin:the future, not contemplating dystopias. So you'll be hearing
Amy Martin:more from him this season. But I want to turn now to a topic that
Amy Martin:he mentioned a moment ago: how the climate crisis could force
Amy Martin:people to leave their homes or even their home countries,
Amy Martin:climate migration is on a lot of people's minds right now, both
Amy Martin:the fact of it and the fear of it.
Christiane Frohlich:I think the very, very first step when
Christiane Frohlich:talking about climate change and its consequences is an acute
Christiane Frohlich:awareness of how we. Talk about it and the impact of how we talk
Christiane Frohlich:about it.
Amy Martin:Christiana Frohlich is a research fellow with the
Amy Martin:German Institute for Global and Area Studies.
Christiane Frohlich:I'm based in Hamburg, and I'm a peace and
Christiane Frohlich:conflict researcher by training.
Amy Martin:And she says we have to start any discussion of
Amy Martin:climate migration with an understanding that there can be
Amy Martin:a big gap between our assumptions about migration and
Amy Martin:what the research actually shows. For instance, she says,
Amy Martin:the stereotypical picture of a war refugee is of a person in
Amy Martin:dire straits, destitute and homeless. But that's often not
Amy Martin:the case.
Unknown:Migration is such an expensive activity people who
Unknown:are well off, who have the means, that's when migration
Unknown:happens.
Amy Martin:It's not that people fleeing conflict don't have real
Amy Martin:and urgent needs to migrate. It's just that the people who
Amy Martin:are able to make that choice are probably not the very poorest
Amy Martin:people in the society. And Christiane says there's a
Amy Martin:growing body of research demonstrating that this trend
Amy Martin:holds when it comes to climate migration too.
Christiane Frohlich:Most people who are really affected by
Christiane Frohlich:climate change don't have the resources to migrate. They are
Christiane Frohlich:actually immobile. They have to stay where they are, and they
Christiane Frohlich:are much more affected by climate change, and there's a
Christiane Frohlich:much stronger necessity, actually, for them to leave than
Christiane Frohlich:for the ones who are leaving. So this focus on mobility has
Christiane Frohlich:really given us a blind spot, in a sense, because we lose sight
Christiane Frohlich:of all the people who should actually move, because life has
Christiane Frohlich:become so difficult due to climate change and its effects,
Christiane Frohlich:but they cannot move.
Amy Martin:Christiane says these misunderstandings about
Amy Martin:migration and migrants are often born out of very fear based
Amy Martin:narratives that people in developed countries in the
Amy Martin:Global North sometimes have toward people from the Global
Amy Martin:South.
Christiane Frohlich:It's like they only need this one other
Christiane Frohlich:thing that will drive them over the edge. I mean, that they
Christiane Frohlich:alone is so horrible, but that will drive them over the edge
Christiane Frohlich:and then everything will implode, and everybody will be
Christiane Frohlich:coming here. To be frank, I mean, that's often the picture
Christiane Frohlich:that this being drawn, isn't it?
Amy Martin:In reality, she says, most forced migrations
Amy Martin:happen within countries.
Christiane Frohlich:It's really the smallest part of people who
Christiane Frohlich:are being displaced are moving towards the global north. So the
Christiane Frohlich:data really doesn't give us any basis for this fear mongering.
Amy Martin:But of course, that doesn't stop authoritarian
Amy Martin:leaders around the world from using the picture of hordes of
Amy Martin:migrants invading the North to whip up anti immigrant sentiment
Amy Martin:and further their own agendas. And this may actually be one of
Amy Martin:the most worrisome aspects of climate migration, how just the
Amy Martin:thought of it makes people afraid, and how that fear can be
Amy Martin:manipulated.
Christiane Frohlich:I'm not trying to say we don't have to
Christiane Frohlich:do anything against climate change. On the contrary, what
Christiane Frohlich:I'm trying to say, I think, is, if we work on climate change,
Christiane Frohlich:especially as academics, but basically, in any capacity, we
Christiane Frohlich:need to think about how new findings can be instrumentalized
Christiane Frohlich:for different political goals that have nothing to do with
Christiane Frohlich:climate change, that have everything to do with winning
Christiane Frohlich:the next election and wanting to segregate or separate different
Christiane Frohlich:parts of the society, etc.
Amy Martin:But dictators and xenophobes aren't the only
Amy Martin:people who sometimes get migration stories wrong,
Amy Martin:Christiane says. As one example, she cites the controversy about
Amy Martin:the causes of the Syrian civil war, which began in March of
Amy Martin:2011. A few years after the conflict started, a study was
Amy Martin:published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Amy Martin:Sciences, a major US journal, which claimed that the extreme
Amy Martin:drought in the region in the previous decade was one of the
Amy Martin:causes of that war. But although the study said that the drought
Amy Martin:contributed to the conflict, the story soon got reduced down to
Amy Martin:the war in Syria was caused by climate change.
Christiane Frohlich:This idea was picking up speed, and it was
Christiane Frohlich:being picked up by all sorts of really high level politicians in
Christiane Frohlich:the EU and the United States, and the idea was, there was this
Christiane Frohlich:drought, there was internal displacement because of the
Christiane Frohlich:drought, and something that you could call agricultural
Christiane Frohlich:collapse, and that was what caused the war. However, nobody
Christiane Frohlich:had actually gone and talked to Syrian farmers to ask them, you
Christiane Frohlich:know, so there was this drought, what was it like? How were you
Christiane Frohlich:affected? Did you move because of it? Do you know people who
Christiane Frohlich:moved because of it? Did you demonstrate because of it? Is
Christiane Frohlich:this where you took to the streets, etc? All these
Christiane Frohlich:questions hadn't been asked, of my knowledge. And so I thought,
Christiane Frohlich:that's something that I can add. I can go there and talk to
Christiane Frohlich:people.
Amy Martin:So she did. She went to Jordan and spent time in
Amy Martin:refugee camps and cities.
Christiane Frohlich:And just, you know, approached people on
Christiane Frohlich:the street and asked them whether they were active in
Christiane Frohlich:agriculture and Syria before they came there, and whether
Christiane Frohlich:they were willing to talk to me about the drought,
Amy Martin:And what did you find when you talked to them?
Christiane Frohlich:Well, many things, but mainly what I found
Christiane Frohlich:was that, yes, there was a drought, and it affected mainly
Christiane Frohlich:the northeast of the country, and yes, there was internal
Christiane Frohlich:migration. But when the troubles started, troubles is very
Christiane Frohlich:euphemistic. When the violence started, the demonstrations
Christiane Frohlich:started. They actually went back home, they left. They weren't
Christiane Frohlich:the ones who orchestrated these kinds of demonstrations.
Amy Martin:Christiane says getting that story wrong has a
Amy Martin:lot of consequences. For one thing, it shifts the focus away
Amy Martin:from the real culprit in this case, that's the regime of
Amy Martin:Bashar al-Assad.
Christiane Frohlich:The walls had ears. Everybody knew this.
Christiane Frohlich:This is the single most often cited idiom that I've heard in
Christiane Frohlich:the interviews that I did, we are talking about highly
Christiane Frohlich:authoritarian, very repressive state, even before the violence
Christiane Frohlich:broke out.
Amy Martin:Christiane's findings were backed up by the
Amy Martin:work of other researchers too. We have links to more
Amy Martin:information about the causes of the war in Syria on our website
Amy Martin:if you're interested in learning more. But I want to zoom out
Amy Martin:from the debate about the role of climate in this particular
Amy Martin:conflict and think about what it has to teach us more generally.
Amy Martin:Why did that narrative take hold, and why has it been so
Amy Martin:important to you to try to get out the message that that
Amy Martin:actually wasn't how it played out.
Christiane Frohlich:I think the reason why it took hold was that
Christiane Frohlich:there was a possibility, it's thinkable, right, that this
Christiane Frohlich:happens. And if I'm being mean, I'll say it's a great headline.
Christiane Frohlich:It's attractive, in a sense, it's a story that can help you
Christiane Frohlich:raise awareness for something that we have been ignoring for
Christiane Frohlich:so long and that we really need to pay attention to. So I
Christiane Frohlich:understand that you are grateful for any kind of ammunition to
Christiane Frohlich:throw against that. But I can also see that these kinds of
Christiane Frohlich:stories, and this is not only for Syria, but also in the Horn
Christiane Frohlich:of Africa, for instance, where these stories have been have
Christiane Frohlich:been told that this has been used to wall off even further.
Amy Martin:Some people hear a story about climate driving a
Amy Martin:wave of migration and think, wow, we really need to solve
Amy Martin:climate change. And other people hear that same story and think:
Christiane Frohlich:We have to build walls to fend off all
Christiane Frohlich:these people who will come here because of climate change, and
Christiane Frohlich:that's why I'm in it. Because I can't, I can't, I can't sit and
Christiane Frohlich:watch the EU closing off further and further and further. Yeah,
Christiane Frohlich:that's why I'm in it.
Amy Martin:Climate migration will almost certainly be a
Amy Martin:growing issue in the years to come, but conflict over
Amy Martin:migration or any of the impacts of climate change is not
Amy Martin:inevitable. It has everything to do with what and who gets
Amy Martin:defined as a threat and how we define security.
Christiane Frohlich:You can think about security as national
Christiane Frohlich:security, as international security, as human security and
Christiane Frohlich:maybe as ecological security. And each time the question, what
Christiane Frohlich:is it that we want to secure is going to be answered so
Christiane Frohlich:differently. So if we want national security, we are trying
Christiane Frohlich:to safeguard a national territory, a national
Christiane Frohlich:population, national boundaries. And if we go to human security,
Christiane Frohlich:it's going to be we want to safeguard human life, regardless
Christiane Frohlich:of nationality, regardless of place. And if we go even further
Christiane Frohlich:to ecological security, we want to safeguard life on Earth, not
Christiane Frohlich:only humans, everybody. So the question is going to be answered
Christiane Frohlich:differently, and the tools that we choose are going to be so
Amy Martin:I think this might be one of the central Lessons of
Amy Martin:different.
Amy Martin:a climate crisis. There's no such thing as personal security
Amy Martin:or national security without ecological security, no amount
Amy Martin:of weaponry will make us safe. If we just sit back and let the
Amy Martin:climate fever rise, although wealth and power might delay the
Amy Martin:pain for a little while. Ultimately, we all suffer if we
Amy Martin:don't work together to protect our shared home.
Amy Martin:So last question, if there's one thing that you could change
Amy Martin:about the discourse around climate and migration, like if
Amy Martin:you could snap your fingers and tomorrow, something shifts. What
Amy Martin:would it be?
Christiane Frohlich:if I could switch the power of the global
Christiane Frohlich:north to the global south, even just for a little while, I think
Christiane Frohlich:it would change so much, then we could really start to work
Christiane Frohlich:against climate change together as the global challenge that it
Christiane Frohlich:is, if it was possible to switch these positions, yeah, I think
Christiane Frohlich:it would be awesome.
Amy Martin:What I hear Sherri, Bruno and Christiane saying is
Amy Martin:that none of us get to not think about this anymore. Whether
Amy Martin:you're a hawk or a dove, a Republican or a Democrat, an
Amy Martin:environmentalist, a capitalist, an anarchist, a religious
Amy Martin:fundamentalist, or someone who resists ISTS and isms of all
Amy Martin:kinds, your life is going to be affected by climate change. It
Amy Martin:already is, even if you're not aware of it. So we have a
Amy Martin:choice. We can keep trying to avoid reality and condemn future
Amy Martin:generations to an endless series of compounding crises, or we can
Amy Martin:take hold of the fact that it's still possible to dramatically
Amy Martin:reduce future suffering and decide to get to work. That's
Amy Martin:what we're going to do in our next episode.
Savresh:Hi. I'm Savresh from London, reporting for this
Savresh:season of threshold decided by the Park Foundation, the High
Savresh:Stakes Foundation, the Pleiades Foundation, NewsMatch, the
Savresh:Luanne Foundation, Montana Public Radio and listeners. This
Savresh:work depends on people who believe in it and choose to
Savresh:support it. People like you. Join our community at
Savresh:thresholdpodcast.org.
Amy Martin:This episode of Threshold was produced and
Amy Martin:reported by me, Amy Martin, with help from Nick Mott and Erika
Amy Martin:Janik. The beautiful music we're bringing you this season was
Amy Martin:composed by the one and only Todd Sickafoose. The rest of the
Amy Martin:Threshold team is Caysi Simpson, Deneen Weiske, Eva Kalea, Sam
Amy Martin:Moore, Shola Lawal and Talia Farnsworth. Our intern is Emery
Amy Martin:Veilleux. Thanks to Sarah Sneath, Sally Deng, Maggy
Amy Martin:Contreras, Hana Carey, Dan Carreno, Luca Borghese, Julia
Amy Martin:Barry, Kara Cromwell, Katie deFusco, Caroline Kurtz and
Amy Martin:Gabby Piamonte. Special, thanks to Judit Hollos. Big additional
Amy Martin:special, thanks to all of the listeners who responded to our
Amy Martin:call for reflections around climate grief. We actually had
Amy Martin:more responses than we were able to fit into this episode, so we
Amy Martin:made a special collection of additional listener voices,
Amy Martin:which is available at our website, thresholdpodcast.org,
Amy Martin:and maybe hearing how your fellow listeners are feeling
Amy Martin:makes you want To share something too. If so, we'd love
Amy Martin:to hear from you. Please call and leave us a voicemail on our
Amy Martin:threshold listener hotline. That number is 321-BISON-20. Or you
Amy Martin:can make a voice memo and email it to us at
Amy Martin:operations@thresholdpodcast.org. Again, the US based phone number
Amy Martin:is 321, B, I, S, O, N, 20, or you can make a voice memo and
Amy Martin:email it to us at operations@thresholdpodcast.org.
Amy Martin:And thanks again to everyone for sharing your thoughts and
Amy Martin:feelings with us.
