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Nick Mott:Welcome to Threshold. I'm Nick Mott Amy's turning the
Nick Mott:reins over to me for this episode. Last time, Jim Williams
Nick Mott:talked about six major things we need to do by 2030 to keep
Nick Mott:global heating below 1.5 degrees Celsius, one of them is
Nick Mott:decarbonizing buildings, everything from big, fancy
Nick Mott:skyscrapers to single family homes. And I've been thinking a
Nick Mott:lot about this particular pathway to fighting climate
Nick Mott:change because of something that happened last year. It was the
Nick Mott:balmy first day of summer in southwest Montana, in a town
Nick Mott:called Livingston, population about 8000. My partner, Leah,
Nick Mott:and I were seated in a very fancy office room full of
Nick Mott:leather bound books. A stranger was guiding us through signing a
Nick Mott:slew of documents that would change our lives forever.
Nick Mott:Real Estate Lady: We're going to start off with the settlement
Nick Mott:statement.
Nick Mott:We were buying our first home. Leah and I were
Nick Mott:excited. We both loved our house and the town, but I was also
Nick Mott:feeling the weight of this new stage in life.
Nick Mott:Real Estate Lady: And then we can just get you to sign into
Nick Mott:that one, please.
Nick Mott:By the end of the signing, some of the documents
Nick Mott:started to sound straight up absurd.
Nick Mott:Real Estate Lady: This is our agreement to be agreeable.
Nick Mott:This one's agreeing to agree?
Nick Mott:Real Estate Lady: Agreeing to agree. Here are your copies.
Leah Stokes:Oh, wow, thank you.
Leah Stokes:Congratulations.
Nick Mott:We're homeowners now?
Nick Mott:We were and we had a fat packet of papers to prove it. With that
Nick Mott:packet of papers, we weren't just responsible for the house.
Nick Mott:Suddenly, we were also accountable for all the stuff
Nick Mott:that comes with homeownership, property taxes, mowing the lawn,
Nick Mott:and also a huge chunk of carbon emissions. The U.S. as a whole
Nick Mott:sent nearly 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the
Nick Mott:atmosphere last year. That's a number so enormous is hard to
Nick Mott:conceptualize. If you piled up all the people and mammals and
Nick Mott:lizards and fish, all the animals alive on this planet,
Nick Mott:and weighed them on some kind of massive planetary scale, they
Nick Mott:would still weigh less than the amount of carbon we belched up
Nick Mott:into the atmosphere last year alone. About a fifth of that 6
Nick Mott:billion tons of carbon came from our homes, as in, how we heat
Nick Mott:them up, cool them down and keep the lights on. My own little
Nick Mott:house, though, is a grain of sand in that huge pile, but I am
Nick Mott:now directly responsible for that grain of sand. So for this
Nick Mott:story, I'm focusing on that sand grain. I'm zooming in on myself,
Nick Mott:my home, because eventually we'll all confront the climate
Nick Mott:crisis, and the place where we'll most personally feel its
Nick Mott:effects and grapple with how to respond is at home with our
Nick Mott:loved ones, where we let our messy, imperfect selves show. I
Nick Mott:can't decarbonize the entire economy on my own, but can I at
Nick Mott:least decarbonize my home? I'm gonna take you with me as I try
Nick Mott:to answer that question in this episode. Along the way, I'm also
Nick Mott:going to grapple with something that everyone who cares about
Nick Mott:climate asks themselves at some point, how much does what I do
Nick Mott:in my own small home, in my own small life, even matter?
Chris Dorsey:The impact of your home on human health is huge.
John Mandyck:What we're talking about is replacing steam boilers
John Mandyck:and radiators in buildings with more advanced heat pumps. It's
John Mandyck:costly, it's disruptive, but we have to figure this out.
John Mandyck:Dr. Harini Nagendra: I don't think we should be naive about
John Mandyck:sustainability optimism. That's why, for me, it's a journey.
Leah Stokes:Nobody can unilaterally live in a low
Leah Stokes:carbon society. You can't do it by yourself.
Nick Mott:Let me introduce you to our home. Livingston's about
Nick Mott:an hour north of Yellowstone National Park, perched just
Nick Mott:outside the rugged abzorka mountains. Behind our creaky
Nick Mott:gate lies a creamy yellow one story house with red trim, built
Nick Mott:about a century ago. Somebody who's seeing it for the first
Nick Mott:time might call it quaint, which I think might be code for old,
Nick Mott:but in kind of a cute way. We love the house, and it's very
Nick Mott:livable, but look anywhere and you can find something that
Nick Mott:needs taken care of. The gutters leak. The furnace makes it sound
Nick Mott:like a low flying airplane overhead when it turns on, and
Nick Mott:just esthetically, nearly every room could use a serious
Nick Mott:makeover. But Leah and I were interested in making changes
Nick Mott:with climate and emissions in mind, which is why I invited
Nick Mott:Chris Dorsey over to look at the place.
Nick Mott:Hey there, Chris.
Chris Dorsey:I'm Chris Dorsey.
Nick Mott:Hey, nice to meet you.
Nick Mott:Chris is the head of Montana State University's
Nick Mott:Weatherization Training Center, and he says that training center
Nick Mott:is kind of like-
Chris Dorsey:high school shop class for grownups. You know,
Chris Dorsey:central to our mission is to give them skills they need in
Chris Dorsey:order to move us a little bit closer to sustainable housing
Chris Dorsey:for all.
Nick Mott:Weatherization means preparing a house for anything
Nick Mott:nature throws at it. Rain, wind, heat, cold and weatherizing also
Nick Mott:keeps your appliances from running on overdrive, cutting
Nick Mott:down on both utility bills and emissions. Chris and I sit down
Nick Mott:at the dining room table and I put them to the test.
Nick Mott:It's like, you know, pulling up to my house in this neighborhood
Nick Mott:here as an example, like, what do you notice about what
Nick Mott:probably has to get done here, just knowing, looking at it,
Nick Mott:seeing probably how old it is, and the shape is in and all
Nick Mott:that, like, what do you suspect would be the biggest bang for
Nick Mott:the buck, or the stuff that needs to get done here?
Chris Dorsey:Okay, well, let's take that as an on the spot case
Chris Dorsey:study. You have already in this home, the first and best
Chris Dorsey:indicator of a low imprint home life, which is size. The place
Chris Dorsey:is not big. I'm looking to my left, and there's a wall 18 feet
Chris Dorsey:away. I'm looking my right, there's a wall three feet away.
Chris Dorsey:I think the front and the back is only one room away in each
Chris Dorsey:direction.
Nick Mott:So he says, My place is small, which is a compliment,
Nick Mott:I guess?
Chris Dorsey:So there's no amount of money you can spend on
Chris Dorsey:photovoltaic panels and smart home controls and expensive
Chris Dorsey:construction, and build a 5000 square foot, $2 million home and
Chris Dorsey:call it efficient. It does not exist. They're mutually
Chris Dorsey:exclusive terms. So in terms of impact per person, the best
Chris Dorsey:thing you can do is build yourself or find and buy or
Chris Dorsey:remodel a modest, a small, a simple home.
Nick Mott:The science backs this up. Studies show the more
Nick Mott:floor space you have as in, the bigger your house, the more
Nick Mott:energy it tends to use. So we've got one thing going for us. Our
Nick Mott:house is small, but Chris had a lot of ideas for things we could
Nick Mott:do to lower emissions from our home. When we bought the place,
Nick Mott:I was excited about giving the kitchen a big makeover, new
Nick Mott:countertops, cabinets, the works, but Chris said it's
Nick Mott:what's behind the ugly cabinets I wanted to get rid of that
Nick Mott:could make all the difference, the spots we don't normally go
Nick Mott:or pay any attention to, as in, the insulation, the stuff that
Nick Mott:keeps hot air in in the winter and traps cool air in in the
Nick Mott:summer. Some of these fixes can be relatively small investments
Nick Mott:that go a long way towards making your house more efficient
Nick Mott:and set the stage for bigger upgrades down the road, things
Nick Mott:like crawling around in the attic to spray foam into gaps
Nick Mott:that could leak air from the main house below, or blasting
Nick Mott:more insulation into the attic or more insulation on the walls.
Chris Dorsey:Nobody sits around at a cocktail party and brags
Chris Dorsey:about their insulation. It's kind of a non issue. It's a
Chris Dorsey:piece of hidden infrastructure, right? But it's that hidden
Chris Dorsey:stuff which really is most critical in how homes tend to
Chris Dorsey:operate.
Nick Mott:He said there's sort of two categories of changes we
Nick Mott:could be talking about, tweaking what we already have so it uses
Nick Mott:less energy, or investing in new stuff like fancy, efficient
Nick Mott:appliances, even things like solar panels. So in simple
Nick Mott:terms, make what we have use less carbon or buy new stuff
Nick Mott:that uses less carbon or both. He said those changes can make a
Nick Mott:real difference in quality of life, too. Studies over the last
Nick Mott:three decades or so suggest Americans spend on average, 90%
Nick Mott:of their lives indoors.
Chris Dorsey:You know, when you first hear those numbers, it
Chris Dorsey:sounds crazy until you actually sort of calculate where you
Chris Dorsey:spent last week, and I bet a lot of it was probably right here.
Nick Mott:And since we spend that much time inside-
Chris Dorsey:The impact of your home on human health is huge.
Nick Mott:In fact, one recent study said the air in many homes
Nick Mott:is so toxic it would be illegal under federal law if it were
Nick Mott:outside, but there's no legislation like the Clean Air
Nick Mott:Act that applies inside your home. And for indoor air
Nick Mott:quality, natural gas, which often powers furnaces and
Nick Mott:stoves, is a particular source of trouble. Gas stoves,
Nick Mott:especially, can create air quality comparable to secondhand
Nick Mott:smoke. Kids are most at risk, and studies show a correlation
Nick Mott:between cooking with gas stoves and asthma, the same pollutants
Nick Mott:can make people more vulnerable to viruses like the coronavirus
Nick Mott:and have higher rates of respiratory illness and
Nick Mott:cardiovascular disease. Luckily, at our home, we've got an old
Nick Mott:electric stove. It's not necessarily all that efficient,
Nick Mott:but it is one step above natural gas. That doesn't necessarily
Nick Mott:mean we're off the hook in terms of indoor air quality, though.
Chris Dorsey:Among the hidden hazards would be the discussion
Chris Dorsey:about, you know, basements and crawl spaces. What the heck is
Chris Dorsey:down there? And do you really want to breathe that air? Do you
Chris Dorsey:really want to be a part of that biological community which is in
Chris Dorsey:your basement or crawl space? So I think you and I are going to
Chris Dorsey:go to your basement and take a look and address some of these
Chris Dorsey:issues. There's a lot of options out there.
Nick Mott:Yeah, let's do that. You wanna do that now?
Chris Dorsey:Let's do it. Let's do it.
Nick Mott:Chris opens our stellar door, and we walk down
Nick Mott:the steps. We enter a small, dark room with ceilings just low
Nick Mott:enough to need a hunch over.
Chris Dorsey:I think the entire cross space was 18 inches high
Chris Dorsey:for the first 40 years of its life. So somebody had the guts
Chris Dorsey:to dig this thing out.
Nick Mott:I crawled around down there a handful of times, but
Nick Mott:immediately Chris can read details of the house I'd never
Nick Mott:before noticed.
Chris Dorsey:This house was built in two or three separate
Chris Dorsey:pieces. They took the former foundation, cut it out, put some
Chris Dorsey:bearing walls underneath it in order to push out the house and
Chris Dorsey:make it six feet wider on that side. So there's a lot of
Chris Dorsey:history down here.
Nick Mott:Fascinating.
Chris Dorsey:Yeah.
Nick Mott:It's a history that shows how the house has changed
Nick Mott:over time, a one room shack built to house a railroad worker
Nick Mott:to what it is today. Chris turns his attention to what looks like
Nick Mott:an ancient, oversized filing cabinet in the corner of our
Nick Mott:crawlspace, our furnace, about half of homes are heated with
Nick Mott:natural gas in the U.S, mine included, keeping houses warm is
Nick Mott:far and away the largest source of emissions from homes. And in
Nick Mott:our case,
Chris Dorsey:I don't know how many generations of spiders have
Chris Dorsey:lived and died in this thing. How often do you change your
Chris Dorsey:furnace filters?
Nick Mott:We can't find our furnace filter.
Chris Dorsey:That's a trick question. Then, yeah, let's look
Chris Dorsey:for your furnace filter.
Nick Mott:We couldn't find it because the whole device had
Nick Mott:been seriously jerry rigged to fit our house. There wasn't even
Nick Mott:a slot like in a normal furnace where a filter belongs. Our
Nick Mott:whole house had been kind of built that way a little bit over
Nick Mott:time, making do with what already existed. But Chris
Nick Mott:wasn't deterred by that.
Chris Dorsey:I'm gonna pop this cover off and take a look. That
Chris Dorsey:there's a sound for radio.
Nick Mott:It's just what I was thinking.
Chris Dorsey:There's your furnace filter right there.
Leah:Oh, yeah, not too hard.
Chris Dorsey:Yeah. No. It's laid down and it is completely,
Chris Dorsey:perfectly, utterly useless. So what this means is that every
Chris Dorsey:bit of dirt and crud that gets sucked into the return grills in
Chris Dorsey:your house comes down here and gets heated and harmlessly just
Chris Dorsey:pump back upstairs for you to breathe and rebreathe.
Nick Mott:So wonderful.
Nick Mott:The furnace was installed in the 1960s so a new machine would be
Nick Mott:orders of magnitude more efficient. Chris also notices
Nick Mott:our water heater, it's electric rather than gas, which is a good
Nick Mott:thing, but also-
Chris Dorsey:It's hilariously oversized. I'm gonna guess that
Chris Dorsey:the last contractor that was here decided to upsell the owner
Chris Dorsey:of the house and sell him the biggest water heater he could,
Chris Dorsey:or maybe it's all he had on his truck that day.
Nick Mott:He said, according to the label, that water heater
Nick Mott:alone probably burns up close to half our annual energy use. And
Nick Mott:it doesn't seem like there's all that much we can do about that
Nick Mott:particular inefficiency. The water heater is pretty new, so
Nick Mott:it seems like there's no way to justify changing it out. It's
Nick Mott:one of many things we're just kind of stuck with. Chris left
Nick Mott:us with a much better sense of what we could do to start
Nick Mott:decarbonizing, but figuring out how and when to make those
Nick Mott:changes and in what order was up to us. I wanted to put our
Nick Mott:little place in the bigger picture nationally and see if
Nick Mott:that could help isolate one or two things we might begin with.
Nick Mott:So I called Leah Stokes, professor of political science
Nick Mott:at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Yes, there are
Nick Mott:two leahs in this episode. One is my partner, and the other is
Nick Mott:a professor. And in addition to her academic work this, Leah
Nick Mott:also hosts a podcast, advises a climate action nonprofit-
Leah Stokes:And I don't know, I probably do 15 other things, but
Leah Stokes:those are the main ones.
Nick Mott:Leah was quick to answer how homes can fit in with
Nick Mott:the kind of massive national transition we need to avoid the
Nick Mott:worst impacts of climate change.
Leah Stokes:So when we think about the carbon emissions all
Leah Stokes:across our economy, right? It can feel really complicated.
Leah Stokes:There's all these sectors like agriculture and oil and gas and
Leah Stokes:buildings and transportation and electricity, and it's like, wow.
Leah Stokes:Carbon pollution is everywhere.
Nick Mott:Carbon pollution is everywhere. It's in what we eat,
Nick Mott:how we get around, where we sleep, nearly every decision we
Nick Mott:make. That's why we have to think at the systems level to
Nick Mott:decarbonize everything. And Leah says the systems change we need
Nick Mott:can be boiled down to two things:
Leah Stokes:Clean electricity, plus electrification.
Nick Mott:You heard about this in our last episode. In Leah's
Nick Mott:eyes, electrification meaning converting all the stuff that
Nick Mott:runs purely on natural gas and other fossil fuels into electric
Nick Mott:is a major part of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
Nick Mott:In terms of houses, she means converting almost everything in
Nick Mott:our homes to run on electricity, especially the big draws like
Nick Mott:furnaces and hot water heaters. Right now, the grid we plug all
Nick Mott:that stuff into is pretty dirty. It varies based on where you're
Nick Mott:at in the country, but nationally, our grid is about
Nick Mott:60% fossil fuels. So she says, at the same time that we're
Nick Mott:electrifying everything we can, we need to be quickly increasing
Nick Mott:the amount of renewable energy on our electric grid, and if we
Nick Mott:make all the changes we need, she says:
Leah Stokes:It turns out that between clean electricity and
Leah Stokes:electrification, we can cut carbon pollution by probably 75%
Leah Stokes:economy wide. So this is a huge pathway to solving the climate
Leah Stokes:problem. It gets us three quarters of the way there.
Nick Mott:That 75% reduction is by 2050 compared to 2005 levels,
Nick Mott:according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Nick Mott:That same report says that electrification alone could
Nick Mott:reduce emissions by about 40% homes are just one small segment
Nick Mott:of everything that needs to be electrified, but studies show
Nick Mott:that home electrification can make or break our climate goals
Nick Mott:overall, as in, without electrifying the places we eat
Nick Mott:and sleep, we may not be able to keep warming below 1.5 degrees.
Nick Mott:Leah's actually working on electrifying her own home right
Nick Mott:now, and she told me that spurred her to ask all kinds of
Nick Mott:questions about what she should replace and when she should do
Nick Mott:it.
Leah Stokes:You know, I was curious like, is it more
Leah Stokes:efficient? Is it better from a climate perspective, if I'm
Leah Stokes:pulling electricity from the grid, which includes fossil gas
Leah Stokes:versus burning fossil gas in my home,
Nick Mott:I get this concern, like, should I be converting
Nick Mott:everything to electric now, even when the grid's still so dirty?
Nick Mott:When we have such a long way to go? Here's what Leah said.
Leah Stokes:Turns out, based on research from the Rocky Mountain
Leah Stokes:Institute, that it makes sense to switch to electric appliances
Leah Stokes:pretty much everywhere at this point in time.
Nick Mott:That research shows that converting everything in
Nick Mott:homes to run on electricity substantially reduces carbon
Nick Mott:emissions, even if those homes are connected to grids powered
Nick Mott:by fossil fuels, and in most cases, electrification leads to
Nick Mott:lower utility bills too. Leah mentioned a couple all electric
Nick Mott:technologies that can be key here to replace their gas
counterparts:induction stoves, which use electricity and
counterparts:magnetism to get your food cooking and heat pumps, which
counterparts:are kind of like air conditioners that also run in
counterparts:reverse, extracting heat from outside, condensing it and
counterparts:bringing it inside.
counterparts:It's interesting to me to hear that you're, you know, trying to
counterparts:electrify your own home when you're like, thinking about it,
counterparts:do you wait till the end of life to replace stuff? Like, what do
counterparts:you replace first? How? I'm also personally grappling with this,
counterparts:like we just bought a house and we, it's very old. Where do you
counterparts:start?
Leah Stokes:Well, rewiring America, which is this great
Leah Stokes:organization that does a lot of thinking on this. They say you
Leah Stokes:definitely want to do it at end of life.
Nick Mott:So when stuff's about to go out on its own, no point
Nick Mott:in getting rid of a brand new furnace or car just because you
Nick Mott:want new stuff. But when your old items run its course, she
Nick Mott:says, replace it with electric when you can. I immediately
Nick Mott:thought of my own aging home and appliances. Our spider filled
Nick Mott:furnace was more than 50 years old.
Leah Stokes:New efficient electric does definitely save
Leah Stokes:you money. So if you're in that kind of situation, it's a no
Leah Stokes:brainer. You want to switch to electric appliances. Do not put
Leah Stokes:in new gas every time I watch a home-reno television show, which
Leah Stokes:I do a fair amount, it kind of like a mental break. And they
Leah Stokes:put in a new gas stove. I'm just like, Oh my God, and they put
Leah Stokes:like 20 burners in. I'm like, dude, man. Like, no. Why? It's
Leah Stokes:truly tragic.
Nick Mott:It's tragic because at least here in America, there
Nick Mott:seems to be a kind of love affair with gas in the kitchen,
Nick Mott:and that love affair has been carefully engineered.
Video Guy:In a survey conducted of professional chefs, most
Video Guy:selected gas as their choice for superior cooking, and for many
Video Guy:good reasons, natural gas cooking provides even deep,
Video Guy:precise temperature control and instant on and off capability
Video Guy:with just the turn of a dial.
Nick Mott:This promotional video wasn't made by a cooking
Nick Mott:show. It was created by a utilities provider in Kentucky,
Nick Mott:West Virginia and Pennsylvania that wants to sell its customers
Nick Mott:more gas. Natural Gas providers have worked aggressively with
Nick Mott:state legislatures to block legislation that would provide
Nick Mott:cleaner electric based building codes, and have waged war on
Nick Mott:local electrification initiatives all over the
Nick Mott:country. That sort of lobbying is a real barrier to getting us
Nick Mott:where we need to be. One study suggests that we need to replace
Nick Mott:80 million appliances in 50 million households over the next
Nick Mott:10 years. So I thought, my house, with its ancient, ratty,
Nick Mott:ready to fail appliances, is also sort of an opportunity. I'm
Nick Mott:gonna have to change things out anyway, and as I do, I can try
Nick Mott:to decarbonize and electrify every step of the way, but
Nick Mott:making those changes, it turned out, was much easier in theory
Nick Mott:than in practice.
Nick Mott:So I'm down in the crawlspace. The leaves are changing color.
Nick Mott:It's fall. It's getting cooler outside, and we're soon going to
Nick Mott:have to be using our furnace, but we haven't figured out what
Nick Mott:we're going to do with it yet, because it's so damn expensive.
Nick Mott:I figured a solid intermediate step to making a big decision
Nick Mott:about our furnace was MacGyvering in a new clean
Nick Mott:furnace filter, since the old one was laying there, useless
Nick Mott:and covered in, as Chris Dorsey put it, spiders and gradoo.
Nick Mott:Since our furnace been installed in such a weird way, putting in
Nick Mott:a new filter meant getting down on my hands and knees, shoving
Nick Mott:my head into the belly of the gas powered beast, folding the
Nick Mott:filter ever so carefully and violently, shoving it up roughly
Nick Mott:to where it belongs. It was not going great. This half a century
Nick Mott:old furnace had become the center of our home improvement
Nick Mott:woes. We had a slew of contractors look at it, and each
Nick Mott:told us more or less the same thing as functional. But it's
Nick Mott:old. It could go out tomorrow, or it could limp along for
Nick Mott:another decade. We could either wait for it to break, which
Nick Mott:could leave us shivering midwinter, or we could be a
Nick Mott:little forward looking and replace the thing. It's more
Nick Mott:than five decades old. Its useful life is over. And if we
Nick Mott:did replace it, I was all about the idea of electrifying the
Nick Mott:furnace was our only draw of natural gas in the house, and I
Nick Mott:wanted to replace it with an electric heat pump like Leah
Nick Mott:Stokes suggested, heat pumps can dramatically reduce emissions
Nick Mott:from homes. And in addition to heating your house in the
Nick Mott:winter, they can cool it in the summer. For a long time, heat
Nick Mott:pumps made the most sense in moderate climate, since they
Nick Mott:couldn't keep up with extreme cold, but nowadays they can run
Nick Mott:efficiently in subzero temps. Heat pumps are already pretty
Nick Mott:common all over Scandinavia, which is a pretty cold place in
Nick Mott:the winter. They're absolutely possible in Montana, but there's
Nick Mott:a gap between the possibility and the education and skills
Nick Mott:required to get them installed. When we told our local
Nick Mott:contractors we wanted a heat pump, they looked at us like we
Nick Mott:were a little nuts. This is Montana, they told us, it gets
Nick Mott:cold here. They can probably do it, they said, but it's gonna
Nick Mott:cost us a lot. They bid us numbers about twice as high as
Nick Mott:the cost of replacing our furnace with a brand new gas
Nick Mott:powered device.
Nick Mott:There was no obvious way forward, and it was more than
Nick Mott:just that furnace. Since our house is so old and strapped
Nick Mott:together, we realized just about every task would be as
Nick Mott:frustrating as this, one tiny furnace filter. One contractor
Nick Mott:put it bluntly, the way he sees it, anything we do is pretty
Nick Mott:much just polishing a turd. The thing is, we love our turd. It's
Nick Mott:a turd with a ton of potential. So I'm still gonna polish away
Nick Mott:like down in the crawl space with the furnace filter.
Nick Mott:Boom, you have a filter sort of covering you that's clean.
Nick Mott:Staring in our furnace. I knew we still had to answer. What are
Nick Mott:we going to do with this thing in the long run? I felt a little
Nick Mott:like Ned Stark in Game of Thrones. I knew Winter is
Nick Mott:coming, so we got to figure this out soon.
Nick Mott:This winter stuff is like, super freaking me out, because it's
Nick Mott:getting colder, and we need to figure it out. So it's really,
Nick Mott:really getting to me right now, but got that furnace filter to
Nick Mott:work, kind of. To small victories. Woo!
Nick Mott:And I also felt adrift. I felt alone in this quest to make my
Nick Mott:house a little more climate friendly. Weatherization expert
Nick Mott:Chris Dorsey said, Montana has woefully few incentives and
Nick Mott:helpful programs to assist folks like me with making the changes
Nick Mott:they need. So I was curious, what if I lived somewhere else,
Nick Mott:say, a place totally unlike rural Montana, would the ways I
Nick Mott:approach decarbonizing my home look different there? That's
Nick Mott:after the break.
Erika Janik:Hey everybody, this is Erika Janik, Threshold's
Erika Janik:Managing Editor. Did you know that we have a Threshold
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Nick Mott:Welcome back to Threshold. I'm Nick Mott. I've
Nick Mott:been telling you about my house in rural Montana and the
Nick Mott:frustrations of trying to decarbonize as much as I can, I
Nick Mott:wanted to find someone else who'd actually done some of the
Nick Mott:work I was thinking about in a totally different part of the
Nick Mott:country, and see what I can learn from them about fixing up
Nick Mott:my own place. And that led me to Patrick and Simone Nicholas.
Nick Mott:They live on Long Island in New York, just past where the
Nick Mott:skyscrapers of the city give way to the suburbs.
Patrick Nicolas:So first time in New York?
Nick Mott:It is actually my first time in New York, yeah.
Patrick Nicolas:I hope New Yorkers have made a good
Patrick Nicolas:impression on you.
Nick Mott:So far, it really has been a great, great couple of
Nick Mott:days.
Nick Mott:They wanted to make sure that impression stuck. When I got
Nick Mott:there, they just gotten back from the grocery store, they
Nick Mott:laid out a smorgasbord of sweets to snack on while we chatted in
Nick Mott:their dining room. While I stuffed myself with cookies,
Nick Mott:they told me about their home. They have a beautiful, single
Nick Mott:family, split level home that's about 50 years old. They moved
Nick Mott:in about 18 years ago. Changes were in the works since day one.
Simone Nicolas:We started with, you know, trying to get the
Simone Nicolas:house better insulated. We changed the window so level by
Simone Nicolas:level, we did things to improve the house so that we can reduce
Simone Nicolas:our usage of oil during the winter.
Nick Mott:Yes, oil. There's no natural gas available in their
Nick Mott:area, so the heat for their house is powered by fuel oil,
Nick Mott:which is distilled from petroleum. That used to be
Nick Mott:pretty common all across the country. These days, fuel oil
Nick Mott:heated houses are somewhat common in the northeast, but
Nick Mott:they make up only a few percentage points of the housing
Nick Mott:stock overall.
Patrick Nicolas:When we first got here, they were doing that.
Patrick Nicolas:It was always a shocker, because they would fill up the tank,
Patrick Nicolas:and, you know, they're charging you per gallon, and the tank
Patrick Nicolas:would be like, you know, like 275 gallons. And. The time you
Patrick Nicolas:finish it, you owe them like, you know, five, $600 for the
Patrick Nicolas:month. You know, I mean, one time the bills at least $800 in
Patrick Nicolas:one month. I guess, like anything, you got to learn how
Patrick Nicolas:to figure it out.
Nick Mott:That was Patrick's style. He's a problem solver. So
Nick Mott:when their oil tank sprung a leak a couple years ago, he and
Nick Mott:Simone took it as an opportunity to find new options to heat
Nick Mott:their house. Patrick's into tech stuff. He read some news
Nick Mott:articles about heat pumps and a company he found inspiring
Nick Mott:called Block power.
Patrick Nicolas:To me, it was kind of like a play on black
Patrick Nicolas:power. It sounded like black power, but block power.
Nick Mott:They were able to offer some creative financing to
Nick Mott:make a heat pump more affordable for the Nicholas's Patrick,
Nick Mott:who's so into tech, was psyched, but Simone, not so much.
Simone Nicolas:I was not on board because I prefer more
Simone Nicolas:traditional methods.
Nick Mott:You know, your standard furnace situation to
Nick Mott:her heat pumps sounded untested and risky, but eventually Simone
Nick Mott:caved. She figured, why not take a leap of faith? The two went
Nick Mott:for it. I told them about my own misadventures figuring this out
Nick Mott:from my place in Montana. They said they could relate. The heat
Nick Mott:pump thing seemed new for their contractors, too. It took some
Nick Mott:time to get them on board and get the systems all figured out,
Nick Mott:but when I visited, the work was done. Their house was heated and
Nick Mott:cooled by heat pumps. They took me on a tour to show me the
Nick Mott:equipment. The heat pumps are big boxes outside their house
Nick Mott:connected to relatively small white boxes inside that breathe
Nick Mott:out hot air in the winter and cool air in the summer. Some
Nick Mott:heat pumps take heat from the ground, but those are a little
Nick Mott:more expensive. These are air source heat pumps. It sounds
Nick Mott:kind of bonkers to me, but even on the coldest winter days, air
Nick Mott:has a certain amount of heat contained in it. This technology
Nick Mott:works by using refrigerant to absorb that warmth from the
Nick Mott:outside air, condensing it and moving that heat inside. The
Nick Mott:Nicolas's took me into their crawl space to see the hidden
Nick Mott:part of their system.
Patrick Nicolas:As you can see, the heat pump, the...
Nick Mott:Oh yeah, there's the things.
Patrick Nicolas:...pipes for the heat pump, the running
Patrick Nicolas:coming through this wall here. We got one going this the one
Patrick Nicolas:that we saw in the basement. And this goes out the other side of
Patrick Nicolas:the wall.
Nick Mott:instead of going through ducts which heat and
Nick Mott:cool my house and probably yours too. The heat pump system at the
Nick Mott:Nicolas's is connected by tiny pipes that snake through their
Nick Mott:crawl space, pushing the refrigerant that transfers to
Nick Mott:heat or cool air to and fro.
Patrick Nicolas:That's pretty much it.
Nick Mott:Cool. I'm super nerdy about this stuff right now, so
Nick Mott:it's very cool to see.
Nick Mott:But even though they put in a heat pump, their house is by no
Nick Mott:means totally carbon free. They still rely on New York City's
Nick Mott:grid, which is exceptionally dirty. I was kind of amazed to
Nick Mott:learn that New York state actually has two grids: upstate
Nick Mott:is nearly 90% carbon free, but there's currently no way to
Nick Mott:transmit all that clean energy to the city. So there where the
Nick Mott:Nicolases live. The grid is about 85% fossil fuels. The
Nick Mott:Nicolases are thinking about where their energy comes from.
Nick Mott:They're contemplating getting solar panels down the road, but
Nick Mott:they do still have oil as a backup. They told me, though
Nick Mott:they're comfortable living with that imperfection.
Simone Nicolas:And it's just, you know, I think important for
Simone Nicolas:me to do whatever little I can to help contribute. And if
Simone Nicolas:everybody feels that way, then hopefully we can delay the
Simone Nicolas:flooding or the, you know, the ice caps melting and, you know,
Simone Nicolas:so that we don't have to all move to higher ground.
Nick Mott:For Patrick, the decision to go down the heat
Nick Mott:pump road wasn't initially all that much about the climate. It
Nick Mott:was a financial decision. He said he was happy to make these
Nick Mott:kinds of investments in his house, but if natural gas had
Nick Mott:been available in their area, their decision might have been
Nick Mott:different. And when Patrick reflects on his own journey to
Nick Mott:make the change to a heat pump and what might help others swap
Nick Mott:out appliances in their own homes too, he says two things
Nick Mott:are critical, making the technology affordable and having
Nick Mott:information about how this technology works in order for
Nick Mott:heat pumps to become any sort of a new normal in homes across the
Nick Mott:country, he said government and groups like utility providers
Nick Mott:need to step up to make this transition easier.
Patrick Nicolas:So I think the system has to help as well. It
Patrick Nicolas:has to be more accessible. That has to be the direction that
Patrick Nicolas:we're going in.
Nick Mott:Spending time with the Nicolases, I realized, even
Nick Mott:if we were both to create the decarbonized energy efficient
Nick Mott:homes of our dreams, solar arrays, gleaming in the sun,
Nick Mott:heat pumps, breathing comfortable air into our
Nick Mott:insulated, weatherized homes, we're just two families with a
Nick Mott:very small impact. But while I was in New York, I spent a lot
Nick Mott:of time walking around the city, doing the tourist things, just
Nick Mott:taking the place in. I wandered around Times Square. I got
Nick Mott:mildly lost on the subway. I took the ferry to Wall Street,
Nick Mott:and nearly the whole time I was looking up. One thing that
Nick Mott:struck me was the sheer scale of this place.
Nick Mott:It feels like I'm in a canyon here, but the walls are made of
Nick Mott:buildings and not like rock and cliffs and natural stuff like a
Nick Mott:regular canyon.
Nick Mott:I felt a sort of awe or wonder at what humans are capable of
Nick Mott:creating. Any one house, mine, the Nicolas's, seemed so small
Nick Mott:compared to everything around me. If you want to tackle
Nick Mott:climate change in single family homes, you, by definition, have
Nick Mott:to address it singly, one by one. But tens of millions of
Nick Mott:people live in multi family residences. In fact-
John Mandyck:60% of the of the space of the floor area is
John Mandyck:residential. We have very large multi family residential
John Mandyck:buildings in New York that's actually the large multi family
John Mandyck:buildings that are the majority of our space.
Nick Mott:That's John Mandyke. He's CEO of an organization
Nick Mott:called Urban Green Council. They focus on decarbonizing buildings
Nick Mott:in New York City. The city has about eight times as many people
Nick Mott:as the whole state of Montana because it's so big and dense
Nick Mott:and so many New Yorkers rely on public transportation, burning
Nick Mott:fossil fuels for heat and hot water is the city's largest
Nick Mott:source of greenhouse gas emissions, and John's
Nick Mott:organization helped shape a law that's an attempt to turn a one
Nick Mott:by one approach to greening buildings on its head. It's
Nick Mott:called Local Law 97.
John Mandyck:We try to use scale for our advantage in New
John Mandyck:York.
Nick Mott:Local Law 97 is the centerpiece of a suite of bills
Nick Mott:all passed by New York's City Council in 2019, tackling
Nick Mott:climate change in the city. It places a carbon cap, or limit on
Nick Mott:the amount of carbon a building can emit on buildings over
Nick Mott:25,000 square feet, so only the biggest buildings in the city.
Nick Mott:That cap starts in 2024 and gets stricter over time. If buildings
Nick Mott:go over that cap, if they emit too much carbon, they're hit
Nick Mott:with huge fines. So those fines are meant to force building
Nick Mott:owners to do the work it takes to make their buildings more
Nick Mott:efficient and sustainable.
John Mandyck:What we're talking about is replacing steam boilers
John Mandyck:and radiators in buildings with more advanced heat pumps. We
John Mandyck:have to do it. It's complicated in the sense that it's costly,
John Mandyck:it's disruptive, but we have to figure this out.
Nick Mott:The logic goes, fixing up the buildings is
Nick Mott:cheaper than shelling out the cash to cover those fines. With
Nick Mott:Local Law 97 in effect, if you're living in any of those
Nick Mott:giant buildings, whether you own your own apartment or you're a
Nick Mott:renter, those big sources of carbon could just go away. It
Nick Mott:doesn't matter if you believe in climate change. It doesn't
Nick Mott:matter if you want cheaper utility bills. You don't have to
Nick Mott:find a friendly contractor who wants to help you polish your
Nick Mott:turd of a house and put in a heat pump. If you're one person
Nick Mott:living in one of those big buildings, this stuff will just
Nick Mott:happen because the owners of those buildings are mandated to
Nick Mott:do the work and because of the size of the city, the sheer
Nick Mott:amount of floor space getting heated and cooled and lit up in
Nick Mott:those big buildings, John says that if Local Law 97 goes
Nick Mott:according to plan over the next few decades-
John Mandyck:The law will deliver the largest carbon
John Mandyck:reduction of any city in the world.
Nick Mott:I flew back to Montana and started settling
Nick Mott:into my own place. The weather was cooling down, and the
Nick Mott:antique furnace started kicking on. I was feeling guilt about
Nick Mott:that flight and about a bunch of other stuff too. I drive way too
Nick Mott:much. I get plastic bags at the grocery store when I forget
Nick Mott:totes. Sometimes I eat meat from factory farms and fruit and
Nick Mott:veggies trucked in from halfway around the world. But also, I
Nick Mott:try to do my part. We have a garden. Most of the meat we eat
Nick Mott:at home is hunted by Leah, or, on occasion, fish by me. I only
Nick Mott:shower once or twice a week. But to be honest, that's really more
Nick Mott:about me being me, and not about conserving energy or anything.
Nick Mott:Point is, I was still wondering, what's my role in bringing about
Nick Mott:meaningful climate action? Just about everyone I talked with for
Nick Mott:this story had something to say about this, like Leah Stokes,
Nick Mott:political science professor at UC Santa Barbara.
Leah Stokes:Like I take plastic takeout. I still feel shitty
Leah Stokes:about it, sometimes.
Nick Mott:She was able to contextualize just how one
Nick Mott:person's actions might fit in with the bigger picture in a way
Nick Mott:I found really helpful.
Leah Stokes:You know, I know that that decision in that
Leah Stokes:moment is way less impactful than my decision to work on
Leah Stokes:federal climate policy like 24/7, for six months straight.
Leah Stokes:And so, you know, we just have to forgive ourselves for being
Leah Stokes:imperfect beings and notice that these litmus tasks of perfection
Leah Stokes:that none of us will ever pass, are ways of splitting the
Leah Stokes:movement, are ways of reducing our power, and we have to reject
Leah Stokes:that framing.
Nick Mott:Leah says, the daily decisions we make, the options
Nick Mott:available to us, are shaped by bigger forces, namely, in large
Nick Mott:part, by the economic system we're in, and the industries and
Nick Mott:interests that system caters to. And the individual can only do
Nick Mott:so much within that system.
Leah Stokes:Nobody can unilaterally live in a low
Leah Stokes:carbon society. You can't do it by yourself.
Nick Mott:To get where we need to go. We need systems change,
Nick Mott:and some people and companies are very much opposed to that.
Nick Mott:In particular, oil companies. Those companies have spent
Nick Mott:billions lobbying against climate action. But another
Nick Mott:tactic of theirs is less overt. They've pushed to shift the
Nick Mott:blame for climate change towards our individual daily habits. As
Nick Mott:an example of that, Leah said to look at the company BP, which
Nick Mott:created the idea of a carbon footprint. You've probably heard
Nick Mott:of this. I remember calculating mine, which was super high back
Nick Mott:in high school. That's a figure that points to how much carbon
Nick Mott:you as an individual emit in your daily life. Let me be
Nick Mott:clear, there is value in looking at emissions in this small
Nick Mott:personal scale, but focusing on your individual footprint
Nick Mott:suggests that only individuals and not government or policy or
Nick Mott:industry, are responsible for getting us out of the climate
Nick Mott:crisis. And that shift away from the structure and towards the
Nick Mott:individual, it matters. If it's just us, as in individuals, that
Nick Mott:got us here, then it's not up to industry or government to get us
Nick Mott:out. It's up to hundreds of millions of single human beings
Nick Mott:and their daily choices. This, Leah says, is the wrong way to
Nick Mott:conceptualize climate action.
Leah Stokes:If we buy into the message that there's nothing we
Leah Stokes:can do, that it's all about our individual behavior change, that
Leah Stokes:we're small, atomistic people who just live by ourselves, and
Leah Stokes:then it's all about the individual, then we can't make
Leah Stokes:the biggest impact possible, and we can't fight the systems of
Leah Stokes:oppression.
Nick Mott:American society and culture celebrate the individual
Nick Mott:over the collective. And what I hear from Leah is that pushing
Nick Mott:back against climate change requires challenging those
Nick Mott:ideas. Finding a future requires finding it together. Leah
Nick Mott:suggests one clear way forward:
Leah Stokes:You want to actually look for structural
Leah Stokes:change, even on the individual level.
Nick Mott:She says, focus on just a small number of really
Nick Mott:important decisions, decisions that make a huge impact. And
Leah Stokes:Something like swapping out appliances in your
Leah Stokes:home is a structural change, even though it's an individual
Leah Stokes:change.
Nick Mott:She said, take changing out an old furnace with
Nick Mott:a heat pump as an example. You do that once and all your
Nick Mott:heating needs are electrified for decades. If you sell the
Nick Mott:house, those decisions live on for the next homeowner too.
Leah Stokes:Taking these, one time bigger changes that live
Leah Stokes:beyond you. Those are really important actions.
Nick Mott:Part of the answer Leah says is yes, take
Nick Mott:individual actions where you can but don't stop there. Look
Nick Mott:bigger to your neighborhood, your city, your state. Connect
Nick Mott:with others. Don't just focus on yourself. The tension between
Nick Mott:individual action and deep systemic change doesn't have to
Nick Mott:be either or. It doesn't have to be a tension at all. It can be
Nick Mott:both/and. The deeper question is, how do individual actions
Nick Mott:have the highest impact in the bigger context?
Leah Stokes:We have to think of ourselves as more powerful, that
Leah Stokes:we have to believe we can change institutions and policies and
Leah Stokes:structures in society, whether that's at the local city council
Leah Stokes:or at the Congress, and if we believe in that power, if we
Leah Stokes:work with others through organizations, through
Leah Stokes:collective movements, we can be more powerful. The more we can
Leah Stokes:work together with others, the bigger changes we can get, the
Leah Stokes:more structural change that we can get. And climate change is
Leah Stokes:ultimately a structural problem.
Nick Mott:So to return to my little place in Montana, when we
Nick Mott:bought this house and I started digging into how to decarbonize,
Nick Mott:or at least reduce my impact here, the information I was able
Nick Mott:to unearth seemed overwhelming. I didn't know where to start,
Nick Mott:and I felt lost at sea, alone. As I'm finishing up this
Nick Mott:episode, winter's almost over, and we've still only made some
Nick Mott:really small upgrades, some new windows, sealing up the attic.
Nick Mott:We have a quote on a heat pump that might work, but it's a lot
Nick Mott:of money, and we're hesitating to take the plunge. So that old,
Nick Mott:inefficient natural gas furnace is blasting this very moment.
Nick Mott:I've since gotten some good advice, but it's hard to know
Nick Mott:what to do and when. I'm still overwhelmed and there are lots
Nick Mott:of things I haven't even broached yet, like solar and
Nick Mott:energy storage. But I've also been talking with people all
Nick Mott:over the country about this stuff, experts and contractors
Nick Mott:and also regular folks, friends, coworkers, outright strangers,
Nick Mott:people caught up in the same confusion and indecision that I
Nick Mott:am, but people dedicated to figuring it out. I can't say my
Nick Mott:house is a lot more efficient or that I'm personally a lot less
Nick Mott:frustrated, but I do feel a lot less alone.
Nick Mott:Next time on Threshold, reporter Shola Lawal visits two
Nick Mott:communities in Nigeria that are dealing with climate change in
Nick Mott:very different ways.
Shola Lawal:It's raining like crazy today in Lagos and
Shola Lawal:everywhere is flooded.
Nick Mott:This episode of Threshold was produced and
Nick Mott:reported by me, Nick Mott with help from Amy Martin and Erika
Nick Mott:Janik. The music is by Todd Sickafoose. The rest of the
Nick Mott:Threshold team is Caysi Simpson, Deneen Weiske, Eva Kalea, Sam
Nick Mott:Moore, and Shola Lawal. Our intern is Emery Veilleux. Thanks
Nick Mott:to Sarah Sneath, Sally Deng, Maggy Contreras, Hana Carey, Dan
Nick Mott:Carreno, Luca Borghese, Julia Barry, Kara Cromwell, Katie
Nick Mott:deFusco, Caroline Kurtz and Gabby Piamonte. Special thanks
Nick Mott:to Donnel Baird, Elizabeth Yeampierre, Katherine Janda,
Nick Mott:Joanne Huang, Shamim Graff and Rebekah Morris.
