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not be suitable for all investors. Prior

1:00

to investing in any fund, carefully consider

1:02

the investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses,

1:05

and important information contained in

1:07

a fund's prospectus. In

1:10

general, I try not to look away

1:12

from the problems in the world. I

1:14

mean, I've built a whole show that

1:16

really forces me to think about them.

1:21

Climate change, that's a

1:24

rough one. I think for most of

1:26

us, not just for me. It's

1:28

big and intimidating and I don't know what

1:30

I'm supposed to do about it. What

1:33

I even could do about it. The

1:38

whole thing makes me pessimistic about where we're

1:40

heading. And as a parent,

1:42

that's just not a place I want to be.

1:46

So I distract myself. I try

1:48

to avoid that dread. Every

1:50

now and again though, something comes along. A

1:54

book, a movie, an essay that

1:56

shakes me out of my stupor and forces me to

1:58

think about something I love. I don't really

2:00

want to think about, but absolutely should

2:03

think about. And when it does,

2:05

I feel genuine relief. I'm

2:13

Sean Elling and this is The Grey

2:15

Area. Today's

2:21

guest is the writer Steven Markley. He's

2:24

the author of a recent novel called The Dayloot

2:26

and it is one of those works that shook

2:28

me out of a stupor. It's

2:31

epic in scope, coming in at roughly

2:33

900 pages, and

2:36

it's ambitious in its treatment of

2:38

the entire climate problem. It's

2:42

not exactly dystopian, and it's not

2:44

one of those spectacular day after

2:47

tomorrow style disaster stories. Instead,

2:49

it's a realistic look at the

2:51

political and cultural consequences of living

2:54

on a warming planet, told

2:56

through the eyes of many different characters

2:59

who confront the problems and experience the

3:01

fallout in very different ways. And

3:06

I'm excited to have Steven on the show today to talk

3:09

about his book and why he wrote it, my

3:11

dread, what I should do with it, and

3:14

what he predicts is going to happen to us all. Steven

3:23

Markley, welcome to the show. Thank you for

3:25

having me. Man, this is a

3:28

beast of a book. Is that the

3:30

first question every hack interviewer asks? How long

3:32

did it take to write? Why is it

3:34

so long? I enjoy

3:36

hack interviewers, so it's

3:39

one of the top three. And how long did it actually take

3:41

to write? I actually really want to know that. I

3:43

was working on it sort of on and off as I

3:45

worked on other projects. I wrote the first

3:47

chapter in 2010 and turned

3:49

in the last draft in 2022. It

3:52

is 12 years of living with it, more or less

3:55

all the time. 12 years

3:57

and today time is eternity. So that must have been

3:59

a long time. a lot to keep up with. Well,

4:01

you know, good stuff takes a while, I guess.

4:04

Good writing takes time. But this story

4:07

covers something like a 40-year window, and

4:09

it starts around 2013. Why

4:12

frame the story that way? Why

4:14

start in the near past and

4:16

end in the near future? My

4:18

conception of the book was always

4:20

that it had to begin in

4:22

our recent recognizable past and then

4:24

elide the present moment, elide the

4:26

moment of its publication, and pick

4:28

up in the immediate near future

4:30

and extrapolate from there into where

4:32

we're headed. And to

4:34

me, this technique creates this

4:36

very vivid, realistic sensation of living

4:38

through the climate crisis. You're both

4:41

having memories that you recognize appear

4:43

in the book, and our present-day

4:45

cast of characters is blending into

4:47

the characters of the future. And

4:50

I think that creates a really addictive

4:52

sensation to the way the world operates

4:54

in the book, to the world building.

4:57

You're a writer, you're not a scientist

5:00

or an activist, but

5:02

I don't think you write a

5:04

book like this unless you really

5:07

feel compelled to do

5:09

it. Did you really feel like you

5:11

had to write this? Well,

5:13

it's not like the climate crisis is

5:15

like the 37th on my

5:17

list of interests. I'd certainly view

5:19

it as, and I think most people should,

5:21

the defining event, the defining

5:24

situation of our lifetimes, and not just

5:26

our lifetimes, but our children's, our grandchildren's,

5:29

and on and on. To me, it was

5:31

like, how can I not write about this? This

5:33

is the most important and compelling thing that will

5:35

happen in my lifetime. And from there, it was

5:37

just a matter of figuring out how to narrativize

5:40

it, how to bring it

5:42

into story rather than into

5:44

a polemic or a didactic

5:46

instruction manual. How do you

5:48

balance your own political commitments

5:51

with your fidelity

5:53

to the story you're telling, or is

5:55

there even attention there at all? I

5:57

think there is attention, making sure that... every

6:00

character had their own perspective and their

6:02

own take on what had to be

6:05

done, including extremism in some regards. What

6:07

that does is it makes

6:10

me as the author have to go into the

6:12

headspace of those characters and discover

6:14

them as I would discover anyone else, and

6:16

really sort of stress test my own beliefs.

6:19

I guess there's been a fair

6:21

amount of climate fiction in recent

6:23

years, probably not enough. But what

6:25

always grabs my attention

6:27

is anything that explores the

6:30

social and political consequences of

6:32

climate change, how a

6:34

steadily warming planet is going to

6:37

torpedo our human systems. And there is

6:39

a lot of that in this book.

6:41

Do you think people generally fail to

6:43

appreciate this side of the problem? Yes,

6:45

absolutely. And I think one of the

6:48

major disservices a lot of

6:50

apocalyptic fiction does for

6:53

this issue is to render it as the

6:55

asteroid coming

6:57

at the planet, the all is lost

6:59

kind of mentality. But really

7:01

what we're looking at is just

7:04

an ongoing sort of horror

7:07

show, a continuation and

7:09

degradation of not just our climate,

7:11

but also our politics, our culture,

7:14

our sort of ability to relate to each other. It's

7:17

frightening because it goes to the heart of what

7:19

we as a human community have been doing since

7:21

we first stood up right. And I think that

7:24

was what I was trying to illustrate in the

7:26

book. This is

7:28

not just about polar bears. This

7:30

is about everything we've built, everyone

7:32

we love, and everything we ever

7:34

will love. It goes so much

7:37

deeper than those apocalyptic scenarios can

7:39

even demonstrate. Yeah, I mean,

7:41

this is not a day

7:44

after tomorrow style disaster

7:46

story. Sorry, but isn't it funny that that

7:48

is so the example that comes up when

7:50

people talk about climate fiction? It's the first

7:52

thing that comes to my mind. Exactly, me

7:54

too. And it's like that movie was so

7:56

evocative in its failure. It sort of rendered

7:58

the climate crisis through this. incredibly

8:01

insipid lens. Even though

8:03

I recently was reading about

8:07

the actual circulation of the oceans that in that

8:09

movie produces that effect is breaking down and it

8:11

is kind of frightening. It's still, I don't think

8:14

demonstrates for people what the stakes of this are.

8:16

And in fact, makes it look silly. And

8:18

I feel like a lot of climate fiction

8:21

makes the situation look kind of silly. Your

8:23

book scares me much more than a movie

8:26

like Day After Tomorrow does. Well, thank you. You're

8:29

welcome. The real culprit in

8:31

this story are these natural feedback

8:34

loops that are happening in very

8:36

boring ways and like everything in

8:39

nature, they're just totally indifferent to

8:41

human life and suffering. Like

8:43

the book starts with this intro to this

8:46

guy named Tony who's the scientist.

8:49

He notices something quietly terrifying going

8:51

on with deposits of methane on

8:53

the ocean floor. Is

8:55

that actually happening right now in the

8:58

real world? Yeah, well, so methane hydrates

9:00

are absolutely a real thing. They're deposits

9:02

of methane trapped by temperature

9:05

and pressure and these lattice like structures

9:07

of ice. They litter the

9:09

world's oceans, they're everywhere. And if they

9:11

start to melt, you know,

9:13

there's a lot of evidence that that would be to

9:16

run away heating of the planet that we would

9:18

have no chance of controlling and that would essentially

9:20

make the surface of the world too hot to

9:22

sustain life. So it is really terrifying, but that

9:24

is just one of a number

9:27

of these feedback loops. Scientists

9:29

are doing a heroic job of trying to

9:32

research where these eventualities might lead. It's all

9:34

guesswork. If you really wanna know anything about

9:36

this, you know, go ask a fucking dinosaur.

9:39

It's like nobody alive today knows, right? And

9:41

so for me, it was

9:43

sort of like starting the book off with

9:46

like, here's the minutia of why this matters.

9:48

Here is the potential demon

9:50

we could let loose that

9:52

we could never put back in the box. And there

9:54

are a number of these things that are out there

9:57

that we're only beginning to understand. I

9:59

think- somewhere in the middle of the book, there's a

10:02

character who says something like, you know, it's

10:04

wild how quickly you wake up and you're

10:07

in a bad movie from the future. You

10:09

know, like that's so horrifying

10:11

to me because it kind of captures

10:13

the reality that for

10:15

lots of reasons, we're just probably

10:18

going to go ahead and keep on

10:21

sleepwalking into this nightmare until we absolutely

10:23

positively have to confront it, which by

10:25

then is too late to really

10:27

do anything about it. I,

10:30

you know, though, I think that we are closer

10:32

to two kinds of tipping points, right? The

10:34

first is the climatic tipping

10:36

point and the human tipping point, at which point

10:39

the damage from the climate crisis becomes

10:41

irreversible and begins to crack apart

10:43

our economic, political and social

10:45

systems, right? So that's what we're trying

10:47

to avoid. But the second tipping point

10:49

really is the economics of energy, clean

10:52

and renewable energy is coming along faster

10:54

now than I ever thought would be

10:56

possible when I started this book 10 years

10:58

ago, even faster than I thought was

11:00

possible, maybe five years ago. And

11:02

so, you know, we kind of at

11:04

this moment in time are sitting on this

11:07

nice edge, you know, people call it global

11:09

warming alarmism, or I've heard that term before.

11:11

But I think if you understand even

11:14

the basic science, there's not really a way to

11:16

be alarmed enough. Right now we are

11:19

in the fight of our lives to shave

11:22

off the worst possible outcomes of

11:25

the crisis, which is basically like, you know, the

11:28

planet becomes uninhabitable, right? Like that's what we're

11:30

fighting for now. And no

11:32

matter what we've done so much damage, we've

11:34

released so many emissions, that we

11:37

are going to be going through this period

11:39

of disruption to our weather, to our economy,

11:41

that really will exist for the rest of

11:43

probably the time you and I are alive.

11:46

We are past the point of no return in that

11:48

sense. And so now we have to figure

11:50

out, first of all, how to stop it, eventually how

11:52

to reverse it, and what we're going

11:54

to do in the meantime in terms of adapting

11:56

to a wild new world. But

11:58

we still have the opportunity to do that. And

12:01

in fact, in some ways can catch up

12:03

and get back on pace to keeping the

12:05

world somewhere between 1.5 to

12:07

2 degrees centigrade rise over pre-industrial

12:10

temperatures, right? And that is

12:12

like what all of us should be working for with

12:14

like every fiber of our beam. It's

12:16

hard to overstate just how much every tenth

12:19

of a degree matters in terms of the

12:21

chaos we're going to unleash. And

12:24

this is, by the way, exactly what I talk about and sounds

12:26

like on a bubble date. So it's like I'm

12:28

such a blast to be around. Probably

12:31

the most depressing single anecdote I've

12:34

maybe ever encountered. And it was in

12:36

David Wallace Wales' book, The Uninhabitable Earth.

12:38

And it's something like, and

12:41

you'll know if this is right, I think since like 1991

12:43

or 1992,

12:45

we've actually pumped more CO2 emissions

12:47

into the atmosphere than all of

12:50

human history before that, which

12:52

is like, it is just an

12:54

absolutely devastating fact to absorb. Yeah,

12:57

well, and it's interesting because I think his line

12:59

is that most of the damage done in the

13:02

climate has been done since Seinfeld debuted. And

13:05

so again, this is really the story of the

13:08

lifetime of the people listening to this show. Like

13:11

any millennial out there has lived through

13:13

the failure of our politics

13:16

and our economic elites to grapple with

13:18

this issue. I will also

13:20

say that all of that damage was done

13:22

because of concerted effort by the fossil fuel

13:24

lobby to prevent action on this. You

13:28

know, it's 1988 that James Hansen first sat

13:30

before Congress and sort of said, holy shit,

13:32

this is a problem. And

13:34

our politics began to move in the direction

13:36

of doing something about it. And then that

13:38

concerted effort from the fossil fuel lobby forestalled

13:40

it. So this is all not

13:43

an accident. It has been engineered by

13:45

people who want to continue to profit

13:47

from the status quo on their way

13:49

to driving our planet to

13:51

the brink of destruction. And

13:54

that's another Bumblebee special that I pull out. It's

13:59

just getting happier now. even by this show's

14:01

standards. And boy, we get into the muck. Let's

14:03

talk a little bit about the book,

14:05

because it's a great

14:07

book. Thank you. You make a choice to

14:10

tell this story through the

14:12

eyes of very different people.

14:14

Why was that important for you to

14:16

do that? To let the reader experience

14:18

this, to view this through so many

14:20

different lenses. Yeah,

14:23

well, I mean, I always viewed it as sort

14:25

of this ensemble. You know, I

14:27

wanted to see this crisis metastasized

14:29

into the future through the eyes

14:31

of a variety of people, including

14:34

a character or two who does

14:36

not believe it's happening. It

14:38

was important to me to find characters

14:41

that would each have a different perspective

14:43

on it. And through those perspectives, create

14:46

the human being and who's gonna carry us

14:48

through in a storytelling way. And

14:50

so that creates a little feedback loop between the

14:52

reader and the character where they're

14:54

trying to understand this crisis through their eyes

14:57

and get their perspective and feel their opinions

14:59

about things. There's a scene where

15:01

Tony, the scientist, he

15:03

is on a plane and

15:05

there's some rough turbulence and the person next

15:08

to him is scared. And he

15:10

just very matter of factly

15:12

says, oh yeah, yada, yada, yada.

15:14

Climate change is altering the jet

15:16

stream in ways that are going

15:19

to cause more and more turbulence. And then he's

15:21

like, yeah, eventually one of these things is just

15:23

gonna fall out of the sky. And I'm like,

15:25

shit, really? Is that a

15:27

thing that's gonna happen? Well, that's all

15:30

about character, right? It's like this guy

15:32

Tony is somebody who

15:34

really sees the climate crisis everywhere. And

15:36

so just, you have him on a plane

15:38

as an author, you're kind

15:40

of wondering what's going on. And then you're

15:42

like, yeah, there's probably a shutter right now.

15:44

And he's sitting by this woman and he's

15:46

just gonna say the least helpful thing to

15:48

her he possibly can. And that's

15:51

sort of the joy of writing a character is

15:53

that when you know them well enough, you can kind of

15:55

let go of the controls and let them just do what

15:58

they're gonna do. As the... storyteller

16:00

what's that imaginative exercise like

16:02

trying to get in the

16:04

heads of these characters who

16:06

are. Different from you

16:09

and doing it with real empathy

16:11

it's a testament. To

16:13

you listening to these different

16:15

characters and finding them all authentic and

16:17

persuasive in their own ways

16:19

for me this is the way that

16:22

i process. The world around

16:24

me and part of that

16:26

processing is trying to get

16:28

inside the head of a make believe person

16:30

who nevertheless feels real to me

16:33

and try to dig around and see what

16:35

makes them take and then express that through

16:37

their story. And so it's

16:39

it's this imaginative leap it's this active

16:41

empathy the author george thonders put this

16:44

so incredibly well so i'm just i'm

16:46

tripping him right now. What i'm

16:48

writing i am like so empathetic and

16:50

interested and my heart is enormous for the world

16:52

and all the people in it and what they're

16:55

going through. Add all of that and then as

16:57

soon as i get away from my writing my

16:59

book i back to being the same petty pathetic

17:01

person that i always am and walk around that.

17:04

But the fact that we have different people

17:06

here grappling with this problem

17:09

very differently. It

17:11

makes me wonder who you think are the

17:13

people doing the most actual good here the

17:16

scientist the political activist the

17:18

ego terrorist. You

17:21

know within the context of my book i

17:23

think there's a pretty clear arrow pointing to

17:25

who is the driving force behind.

17:28

Making change and i'm referring

17:31

to cable so she remains an

17:33

incredibly imperfect person and character and

17:35

make all kind of decisions that

17:37

we would question. Speaking of kate she's

17:39

kind of the part of the book

17:42

if the book has a heart she's

17:44

the. Leader

17:46

of this climate

17:49

activist organization and

17:51

she's a very charismatic person who becomes

17:53

really the face of the

17:56

movement. And

17:58

there's actually a speech he. gives

18:00

early on in the book that

18:02

really sets up the stakes quite

18:04

well. And I think it'd be

18:06

great if you could read an excerpt of that, if

18:08

you don't mind. For sure. We

18:11

have a precious handful of years left to act

18:13

and I promise you this. If you do not join

18:15

this movement now, you will wake up 10, 15,

18:18

20 years from now and feel sick that you

18:20

didn't do everything you could during the sliver of

18:22

time when we still had a chance, when

18:25

we hadn't yet followed over the brink. So

18:28

what does that mean? First of all,

18:30

forget about your carbon footprint. Carbon footprint

18:32

is a PR term invented by an oil

18:34

company. I want you to remember two words.

18:37

They knew. They are

18:39

the carbon majors, the 100 companies responsible for

18:42

over 70% of emissions since

18:44

the 8th. Their own scientists knew

18:46

what would happen. They knew if they

18:48

kept burning their reserves, they would threaten the future of

18:50

the human race. They knew and they

18:52

built their oil rigs to account for higher sea

18:55

levels and more intense storms. They

18:57

knew and they told us to focus on

18:59

our consumer behavior while they locked us all

19:01

into structures of hyperconsumption. They

19:03

knew and they waged a propaganda war of

19:05

denial and delay. They knew and they're still

19:07

doing it. There is no other

19:09

way to put it. They are committing the

19:11

greatest atrocity in human history and they knew.

19:14

They knew and they told us to worry

19:16

about our fucking carbon footprints. Thank

19:18

you for reading that. And

19:20

I have to say, just listening to

19:22

it, it does kind of make me want to grab

19:25

a pitchfork and break something. Yeah.

19:27

Which I guess is the whole point. Absolutely.

19:29

And you know, like if our politics and the

19:31

media reporting on those politics were in any way

19:33

sane, I feel like this

19:35

would be the central story of every

19:38

election, of everything happening right now. It

19:40

is so wild. It is so outrageous.

19:42

It just boggles the mind,

19:44

right? It certainly makes me want

19:46

to run out with my

19:48

pitchfork as well. It has had for many years.

19:51

But I think in terms of throwing paint

19:53

and doing other sort of direct actions, we

19:56

have to remember that just because you

19:58

want to do something doesn't mean that that

20:00

something is effective. We have an incredible

20:02

challenge in front of us, right? And

20:04

the tactical decisions made in pursuit of

20:06

that matter enormously. I truly

20:08

believe that the movement should be attempting to

20:11

grow the tent as wide as possible. That

20:14

particularly on the political left and on any part

20:16

of the political spectrum, it has

20:19

this innate tendency to become self-referential, to

20:22

make the clubhouse smaller and smaller, to

20:25

sort of go for purity over

20:28

actually effectiveness. I

20:31

really believe that right now the climate movement

20:33

should be attempting to bring as many people

20:35

into the tent as possible, even if we

20:37

disagree with many of those people on many

20:39

other subjects. It's too important. Yeah,

20:42

well, look, I'll hurl myself on that grenade

20:44

with you if that makes you feel any

20:46

better. It sure does. One

20:48

of the more interesting subplots

20:50

for me in the book is actually

20:53

something you're getting at here and

20:55

it's just, you have this internal

20:57

conflict going on within Kate Circle and Kate

20:59

is sort of like the leader of this

21:01

group and within that group, you have this

21:03

kind of older, grizzled

21:05

white guy Politico type and you

21:07

have the younger, more progressive activist

21:09

type and they're duking it out

21:11

over how best to

21:14

achieve the political goals that they

21:16

share. And one of them wants

21:18

to compromise, and for the sake

21:20

of meaningful political success

21:22

and the other thinks that's

21:25

a fool's errand and a betrayal and you

21:27

can kind of see both sides of it

21:29

when they're making their cases. Do you fall

21:31

neatly on either side of that? In that

21:34

instance, I'm trying to narrativize the political fights

21:37

that are going to have to happen. I

21:39

think I come at it from the most

21:41

pragmatic perspective possible, which

21:43

is will this help us lower emissions as

21:46

rapidly as possible and we should look for

21:48

the most effective policies to do that. Obviously

21:50

there are a trillion trade-offs, climate

21:53

politics are so convoluted and

21:55

complicated and you kind of have to

21:57

be studying it all the time. to

22:00

understand even a fraction of it. And so

22:02

I get that like for people who are

22:04

busy, it's really difficult to sort of take

22:06

this all in. But my

22:09

overwhelming conviction is that

22:11

the thing that matters the most is peaking

22:13

emissions this decade and bringing them to zero

22:15

as quickly as possible. And that

22:17

should be our overwhelming focus. When

22:27

we get back from the break, Stephen tells

22:29

us what it means to be optimistic and

22:31

pessimistic in the face of a warming planet.

22:34

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Box Creative. This is

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checklist. The

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climate issue is something I don't want to

26:40

say I just stop thinking about, but there's

26:43

a kind of cognitive dissonance,

26:45

I guess, where the

26:47

problem is so overwhelming and I feel so

26:49

impotent in the face of it that I

26:52

just almost just kind of do

26:54

forget about it for the sake of my own well

26:57

being so that I can get out of bed in the morning

26:59

and feed my son. But

27:02

that is also sort of the problem. The

27:05

bearing your head in the sand is maybe

27:07

psychologically beneficial in the short term, but if

27:09

enough of us do it for long enough,

27:11

it's kind of suicidal. Absolutely. And I think

27:13

this is always a life-wide debate in climate

27:16

circles is like, should we scare people as

27:18

much as we need to? Because then they

27:20

despair and they stick their heads in the

27:22

sand. And my conviction is also that you

27:24

can't lie to people about how bad this is. That

27:27

doesn't make sense. It

27:29

is scary. It is terrifying. And

27:31

at the same time, again, I

27:33

can't stress this enough. We have every technology

27:36

we need right now to solve 60 to 80%

27:38

of the problem very rapidly. We

27:42

are deploying solar wind, other renewable

27:44

energy quickly now. The

27:46

world saw renewable energy growth

27:49

in 2023 that seemed impossible

27:51

even five years ago. And it's

27:54

only going to accelerate. So we have that part

27:56

of the problem solved. The technologies that will bring

27:58

us the rest of the way. going

28:00

to be ready for primetime by the 2030s. And

28:03

so really, the only thing standing between us

28:05

and reversing it is the

28:07

political and social and cultural will to push

28:09

forward as quickly as we need to. And

28:12

so just when you're looking at your

28:14

life, you're thinking about, you know, your

28:16

voting, your political decisions through that lens

28:18

of like, what is this person going

28:20

to do about it? What is this

28:22

city council member going to do about

28:24

electrifying government buildings and schools, making sure

28:26

enough EV chargers are available? What are

28:28

they going to do about banning gas

28:31

and new construction? All these little

28:33

things that will accrue to what

28:35

we need to do, which is, you know, electrify

28:37

everything and crush demand for fossil fuels. You

28:40

have a mock Vanity Fair profile

28:42

of Kate, right? And she's sort of

28:44

talking about the strategic

28:47

need to transcend basically every

28:49

other contentious political issue from

28:51

trans rights to abortion or

28:53

whatever in order to prioritize

28:56

climate. And I get

28:58

it, but also at the same time, it's like, yeah,

29:00

but there have to be red lines, right? There have

29:02

to be things that aren't negotiable. But I also get

29:04

the perspective of someone who says, look, if

29:07

the planet isn't habitable, then

29:10

literally nothing else matters. It's

29:12

hard to argue with that. Yeah, I

29:14

mean, well, and Kate is a character

29:16

who is sort of the embodiment of

29:18

this is the wall, I need to charge through

29:21

the wall. How do I get there? And again,

29:23

it's a credit to you that almost whoever's talking

29:25

that I can find something persuasive in what they're

29:27

saying, I can see it the way they see

29:29

it, which either means you're

29:31

doing your job as a writer, or

29:33

I'm just hopelessly unprincipled and persuadable. But

29:35

I don't know, I'll go with the

29:37

former. It could be both. Maybe

29:41

it's both. But it does speak to how agonizing,

29:43

you know, some of these questions are. I

29:46

think there are a lot of different ways to be

29:48

a climate activist. But I think one of

29:50

the central tensions

29:52

is over this question of violence

29:55

as a justifiable means to the

29:57

end goal here, the end goal being. you

30:00

know, making the planet habitable. I

30:03

thought a little bit about this. I mean,

30:05

I even had Andreas Malm on the show,

30:07

the author of How to Blow Up a

30:09

Pipeline. Sure, read it, yeah. And, you know,

30:12

I still don't

30:14

know what to think. I mean,

30:16

I'm not a pacifist. I do

30:18

think violence is sometimes regrettable and

30:20

necessary. But like you, I

30:22

think in the case of climate activism, it

30:25

does more harm than good. Do

30:27

you feel strongly about that one way or the other? Look,

30:30

let me put it this way. When I started this

30:32

book and was much younger, and

30:34

I think less versed on what

30:36

we would have to do to get out of this, I

30:39

was way more sympathetic to that idea. But over the

30:41

course of the book, I had to actually do my

30:43

homework, right? And I had to study social

30:46

movements across history that have

30:48

failed and that have succeeded. And

30:51

I've had to look at the pure math of

30:53

how we're going to get out of this enormous

30:55

fucking problem. And when you start to look

30:57

at all that, it's hard to see

30:59

how we can bomb our way to installing

31:02

heat pumps in people's homes, right? A

31:05

lot of what the movement has been trying to do is

31:07

to attack the supply side. But

31:10

as long as we're all driving around, flying on

31:12

planes, and the most pain

31:14

is inflicted on the poorest people when

31:16

oil and gas prices go through the

31:18

roof, as we saw when Russia invaded

31:20

Ukraine, it's really hard

31:23

to beat this problem from the supply

31:25

side, from blowing up pipelines, from destroying

31:27

infrastructure. So even if you believe in

31:29

your heart of hearts that's necessary, it's

31:32

just difficult to see how that will actually

31:34

work on a scale necessary. And

31:36

then you look at the other hand, which is attacking

31:39

the problem from the demand side, deploying

31:41

UV infrastructure, heat pumps,

31:43

solar panels, wind, all the boring

31:45

shit that we hear

31:48

all about all the time, that is actually

31:50

how you begin to attack the problem. And

31:52

also sap the political power of

31:55

the fossil fuel industry, which is really the

31:57

most important thing, blowing up their

31:59

pipelines. would not actually stop their power whatsoever.

32:02

In fact, it would probably give them license

32:04

to recruit people to their side, let's

32:06

say, which is sort of how things begin to play

32:08

out in the book. Is there

32:10

a group or a

32:12

political movement anywhere that seems to you

32:14

to be a kind of model of

32:16

how to do this? Yeah,

32:19

look, this is going to be an incredibly

32:21

boring answer, but it's the Biden administration. And

32:26

I want to pause just for a second and

32:28

say... Oh, here comes the qualifiers. In the 2020

32:31

primary, Joe Biden was not my first, second,

32:33

third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh choice for

32:35

the nomination. I was kind of horrified when

32:37

he won it. And

32:40

I'm just so overjoyed to

32:42

have been proven for

32:44

the most part entirely wrong about that. And I

32:47

think this goes to just

32:49

the frustrating nature of our information

32:51

ecology, that the Inflation Reduction

32:53

Act is not recognized as the enormous fucking

32:55

deal that it actually is. This is the

32:57

most important piece of climate legislation passed in

32:59

the history of the world, and it's not

33:02

even close. It's a bigger deal than the

33:04

Paris Climate Accord. And if

33:06

it's given a chance to play out over

33:08

the next decade, it is going to lead

33:10

to enormous structural changes in our energy system

33:12

and our economy. I'm being a

33:14

little glib here because it's not just Joe

33:17

Biden. It's all the activists. It's Bernie Sanders.

33:19

It's Jay Inslee in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez. It's all

33:21

of these people who have been furiously

33:24

saying this is the biggest problem

33:26

we have ever faced. So when

33:28

we look at what is changing

33:30

things, it always goes back to

33:32

this push of democracy, forcing our

33:34

political leaders to account. And

33:36

that's what we have to continue to do. You

33:38

mentioned it there, and you mentioned earlier the media and

33:40

the fake news articles in the book were amusing for

33:42

me, partly because it speaks to how they

33:45

kind of paint by number quality of a lot

33:47

of journalism. But is there

33:49

an implicit critique of the media

33:51

in the book, really the way climate is

33:53

covered, the way it's prioritized or not? You

33:55

know, it's really hard to talk about the

33:57

media as one overarching... Yeah, I know.

34:00

I try not to do it. I know, I

34:02

fall into it all the time as well. But

34:04

you know, you sort of have right wing media,

34:06

which is its own entirely separate propaganda machine at

34:08

heart at work all the time. There's

34:11

whatever is left of mainstream

34:13

journalism, which is attempting to

34:15

fact check and be responsible. And

34:18

even then, the focus of a lot

34:20

of outlets on climate is inappropriately sparse,

34:22

let's say. And then you

34:24

have the way most people get information, which

34:27

is surveillance capitalism, the instruments of meta

34:29

and Google and Twitter that are basically

34:32

just widespread ways of disseminating bullshit

34:34

and making people believe things that aren't

34:36

true. So yes. Am

34:40

I the cheeriest guest? I bet Andreus

34:42

Malmö is way more fun than me.

34:44

Usually I'm the one out-pe-son-ism-ing the guest,

34:46

but you're giving me a run for

34:48

my money. Here, I love it. You know, I love a

34:51

soapbox. I love a soapbox. There's

34:54

violence in this book, and there should

34:56

be, because we're potentially headed for a

34:58

world where there is less conversation and

35:00

more violence because of the

35:02

urgency and the disruption and the chaos. I

35:04

mean, is that something you really wanted to

35:07

hammer home? Yeah, I mean, in my

35:09

view, the violence in the book serves

35:12

as a lens into the violence of the climate

35:14

crisis, into the violence of what's happening. And

35:16

that in order to make people feel the

35:18

urgency, you need to understand the potential

35:21

for what's coming. It is really already here.

35:24

That to me was the way the book wasn't going

35:26

to flinch. I was not in the

35:28

mood to write something placid about this. I wanted to write a

35:31

hurtling freight train. There

35:33

is this kind of tragic fact

35:35

about human beings. Our

35:38

adrenal glands are too big. Our prefrontal cortex

35:40

is too small. And when things

35:42

go bad, fear takes over. And

35:45

that usually does not lead to happy places. When

35:47

you work on climate, you hear a lot of

35:49

the same cliches from people, and they begin to

35:51

really add up and make you insane. But one

35:53

of them is, eventually there's going to be something

35:56

terrible enough that we'll have to do something. Some

35:58

weather events, some cataphism. And

36:00

I'm like, what are you talking about? No, there's

36:02

not. Like that's not, first of all,

36:04

the denialism is not going anywhere. We have to

36:07

deal with it as it is. And second of

36:09

all, what a

36:11

cataclysm does to people is make them

36:14

afraid and insular and cause them

36:16

to, you know, focus on the other as

36:18

the source of their discontent. No,

36:20

we should be trying to forestall these catapisms

36:22

as best we can and not hoping for

36:25

one to change people's minds. This

36:27

is the eternal advantage

36:30

that fascists and authoritarians

36:33

will always have. That when things

36:35

are uncertain or hard, it

36:38

will always be easier to move people through fear

36:40

than it will be to inspire them through

36:43

hope. It's dark, but I

36:46

really believe it's true. And that's not something

36:48

that helps me sleep at night. I'll put

36:50

it that way. Trust me, I don't sleep

36:52

all night either. But

36:55

I also think that

36:57

when looking at a problem of that

36:59

magnitude and this magnitude, and I believe

37:01

the climate crisis and the rise of

37:03

very frightening politics are deeply

37:06

intertwined. But when looking at the

37:08

problem, it does no good to

37:10

panic about it. It does it no good to, even though

37:12

I do, it does no good to

37:14

despair about it, even though I do. We

37:16

have to look at the base of the

37:18

pyramid. What are the blocks of this that

37:20

we could begin knocking out so we can crumble the whole thing?

37:23

And when you look at those components, and this

37:25

was the joy of writing the end of this

37:27

book, was that I began to interview and talk

37:29

to all the people who are

37:31

working furiously on these components. You begin to

37:34

get a sense of what the future could

37:36

look like. In

37:38

writing this book, I can see the keyhole

37:40

that we can squeeze through to get

37:43

to the other side of this and

37:45

have a more just equitable and

37:47

prosperous world in the process. Now,

37:49

it remains just a keyhole, but

37:51

it's open nonetheless. You

37:54

clearly did a lot of research for this book.

37:56

And if nothing else, scanned a

37:58

lot of the science of the literature,

38:00

did actually educating yourself in that

38:02

way change how you

38:05

thought about the problem? Did it change

38:07

your perspective in any significant way? Did

38:09

it change the story you were

38:11

telling? Yes, yes, and yes. You

38:13

know, honestly, I think it changed my entire outlook

38:16

on my life and what I wanted

38:18

to do with it. Holy shit, that's

38:20

big. Yeah, I mean, I just think at every step

38:22

of the way, when this was just a kernel of

38:24

an idea in my head to

38:27

actually beginning to write it to,

38:29

you know, the process of bringing it

38:31

to publication, like it's all been, you

38:34

know, such a journey. There were points of writing

38:36

this book when I was just suffocated

38:38

with despair, because, you know, if

38:41

you educate yourself well enough on

38:43

the problem, and you can see the full

38:45

extent of it and see the full scope of it, it

38:48

is really frightening. And on top of that,

38:50

I was writing this book and continuously having

38:53

to change the terrifying things in the book,

38:55

because the terrifying things were happening in the

38:57

real world too quickly. Literally, I would write

38:59

a temperature record into the book that

39:01

didn't seem like it would be achievable, and then it would have

39:04

been achieved in the real world, right? And that happened with the

39:07

political situation with with all kinds of warning

39:09

signs that continue to keep me up at

39:11

night. But yeah, the whole events, continually

39:14

outpacing models thing is not

39:16

super duper encouraging. Oh,

39:18

my God, the example that I

39:20

always think about is that Pacific Northwest

39:22

Heat Dome from 2021. This heat descended

39:25

in the Pacific Northwest, that

39:27

like incinerated whole towns in Canada.

39:30

And this study that said, not only

39:32

should this could this not have been

39:34

possible without climate change, but it shouldn't

39:36

be possible with climate change. So,

39:39

you know, we're seeing events outpaced what the

39:42

models tell us is possible. And I think

39:44

that is a super frightening thing. After

39:51

one more short break, Stephen talks about

39:53

how we can still change course on

39:55

the climate front. Stay with us. The

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41:47

I never really was a salad guy. That's

41:49

just not who I am. But Noom worked

41:51

for me. Get

41:54

your personalized plan today at noom.com.

41:56

Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In

41:59

four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to

42:01

lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results

42:03

may vary. What

42:14

is the importance of saying, as I have heard

42:16

you say, that this is

42:18

not something happening to us.

42:20

It is something being done to

42:23

us. Yeah, well, I mean, a

42:26

common refrain that fossil fuel companies

42:28

must really enjoy is when a

42:30

bunch of affluent coastal liberals go

42:32

around telling each other what heptode bags they

42:35

should be using. It's this idea

42:37

that we are all doing it, that

42:39

we are not born into structures, into

42:42

economic and political systems that have us

42:44

living like this. Those are all choices

42:46

that have been made for us. And

42:49

the fossil fuel industry knew as

42:51

early as the 50s, but they really,

42:53

really knew in the 70s. They had

42:56

studies, they had ex-soned commissioned their own

42:58

studies, they understood completely what was going

43:00

to happen if they kept burning fossil

43:02

fuels. Then they waged a

43:04

propaganda war of denial of delay, as

43:06

Kate said, in order to forestall

43:08

any action on the problem. And beginning in the

43:10

90s, when Seinfeld came on the air, that

43:14

problem grew exponentially. And

43:16

now we're in this dire political moment.

43:18

And these motherfuckers are still doing it,

43:20

right? Like they're still going around the

43:22

country trying to fund

43:24

these little propaganda groups in every town,

43:26

in every rural community, all over the

43:29

place, to forestall solar and wind farms,

43:31

to keep renewable energy from coming online.

43:33

So people will continue to burn fossil

43:35

fuels, and we will continue to push

43:37

the planet to the break. This

43:40

is not in any way a problem

43:42

we've made. It's been done to us

43:44

by an industry that is

43:47

beyond criminal. Yeah, I don't

43:49

use a word like

43:51

evil very often. Sure.

43:53

And I agree with that. But I think it

43:55

applies here. These are genuinely evil

43:57

people who have done just unimaginable. Well,

44:01

thanks to this book, very imaginable harm, actually.

44:04

Very highly imaginable harm. People

44:07

are compelled to behavior by the incentives around

44:09

them. That's right. And that's something

44:11

we have to understand is that nobody's

44:13

going to change their mind about this. We

44:16

have to change the incentives. That

44:18

is like an overwhelming reality that like, this

44:20

is not about convincing people. It's not about

44:22

convincing the Republican Party to see the light.

44:24

It's about changing their incentives, how they get

44:27

elected, who finances their campaigns, and on and

44:29

on. Like, we have to look at the

44:31

base of the pyramid in order to destroy

44:34

the pyramid. These are crude,

44:36

silly categories in lots of ways, but I

44:38

guess part of me just cannot help but

44:40

ask if you are hopeful or resigned at

44:43

this point. Because the book itself actually lands

44:45

on a precipice of sorts, and that's, I

44:47

assume, very intentional. Yeah, I

44:49

mean, I remain firmly clinging

44:52

to my precipice. I

44:54

go through these moments of, you

44:56

know, that very familiar darkness where

44:59

it really seems like the worst

45:01

of all worlds is on the way. And

45:03

that, I think, is unfortunately sort of the

45:05

default mode when facing something like this is

45:08

to only be able to see that part.

45:11

But again, I look around and now since the books

45:13

come out, people have introduced themselves to me who

45:15

are working on every single component

45:18

of the crisis, who are dedicating

45:20

their lives to it, whether they're, you know, engineers,

45:23

activists, policymakers, writers, thinkers,

45:26

whatever part of life they're in,

45:29

they're doing something about it, even if that's

45:31

just sort of spreading the word about what's

45:33

possible. And I just think

45:35

that's how everybody has to face thinking

45:38

about this crisis is what is the small

45:40

area of my life that I control? What

45:42

can I do? How can

45:44

I be helpful thinking about furthering

45:47

the solutions to the problem, approaching

45:49

things with optimism of

45:51

the will is vital.

46:00

neurological miracles that will just save us

46:02

from ourselves. Not at all. I don't think

46:04

that is something we should concern ourselves with.

46:06

I mean if it happens great, but you

46:08

know I also am becoming more familiar with

46:11

the potentials for wind and

46:13

solar and battery storage. The potential

46:15

for storing energy in our vehicles

46:18

overnight to suddenly relax stress on

46:20

the grid of geothermal energy. There

46:22

are so many different solutions

46:24

out there. I was just listening to a

46:26

podcast on enhanced rock weathering,

46:29

which is basically a way of sucking carbon

46:31

out of the atmosphere on a gigaton scale.

46:34

Like if we keep working at this, we are

46:36

going to find solutions that right now look like

46:38

science fiction or feel like science fiction, but

46:41

will become a reality of our economy quickly.

46:44

And so I don't think we need to look for the Deus

46:47

Ex Machina. We need to do the work and

46:49

introduce the things we already know will work.

46:51

Like if we had a hundred years, fossil

46:54

fuels would be over because all this technology coming

46:56

down the pike is going to be better. It's

46:58

going to be cleaner, cheaper, better. However, we don't

47:00

have a hundred years. You know,

47:02

we probably have 30 we hope. And

47:05

so it's just the speed and the scale

47:07

that we need to deploy this stuff is

47:10

the difficult part. If I squint hard

47:12

enough and listening to you in this

47:14

conversation, it feels like

47:17

you have a very Sisyphean outlook

47:19

that the meaning is in the work here, right?

47:21

The meaning is in the struggle and we

47:23

don't really know what the outcome is going to

47:25

be here. And on a long enough timeline,

47:27

we're all dead anyway. All there is to do

47:30

is just the fucking work. You

47:33

put it better than I could have. But

47:35

like for somebody who writes fucking 500 and

47:37

900 page novels, it's like I don't

47:39

have a choice but thinking about it as the work. Like look

47:41

at it like this. If 50 years from

47:44

now we have used this period

47:46

in history to turn the corner on the

47:48

climate crisis and you and I and everybody

47:50

listening to this was a part of that.

47:53

That is an incredible way to spend one's life.

47:56

Looking at this as an opportunity to

47:59

do something moment. to do something truly

48:01

important, I think can sort

48:03

of give us the energy to keep doing

48:05

the work. But I think what

48:07

the book also is committed to, and I was

48:09

committed to, was that we

48:11

don't actually know what's going to get us out of

48:14

this, and we are going to make a number of

48:16

mistakes. We're going to go down

48:18

dead end roads. We're going to fuck

48:20

up. But none of

48:22

that is a reason to stop or to give up. I

48:25

think that overwhelmingly is what is

48:27

the heart of the book. It's the

48:29

perseverance in the face of the impossible

48:31

that drives these characters. Well,

48:34

like I was saying earlier, I struggle

48:36

to really feel emotionally the

48:39

stakes of where we are right now.

48:41

It is just too overwhelming.

48:43

And there's a quote from Kate's boyfriend, Matthew,

48:45

in that mock Vanity Fair profile. I mean,

48:47

he says, I get why sometimes even smart

48:50

people can't look directly at it. The implications

48:52

are just so profound and frightening. But

48:55

that is the value of art and

48:57

fiction and storytelling. Exactly. It

48:59

helps you feel the emotional stakes in a way

49:01

that science and data and white papers cannot.

49:04

And that is a real contribution. Well,

49:07

thank you. And I really appreciate that.

49:09

This is a monumental book and very much

49:12

worth reading. And

49:15

I sincerely recommend it to the audience.

49:18

And once again, it is called the, is it

49:20

Deluge? Deluge? How do you say

49:22

it? I have always said

49:24

the Deluge, but then I hear people pronounce

49:26

it Deluge. I think it's very differently like

49:29

Deluge or Deluge. And I'm always

49:31

worried that I mispronouncing the title of my own book, but

49:33

I think it's okay either

49:35

way. Once again, the book is called

49:37

the Deluge. Steven Markley, thank you

49:40

for coming into that. Thank you for

49:42

having me. Yeah. This

49:58

episode was produced by John. edited

50:01

by Jorge Just, engineered

50:03

by Patrick Boyd, and

50:05

Alex Overington wrote our theme music. As

50:09

always, you know, I want to hear from you, especially

50:11

in this episode, which was a little deep, a little

50:13

heavy, but also a little fun,

50:15

I hope. Drop us a line

50:18

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