0:02

Last year, I

0:03

signed into law in the United

0:06

States the largest investment ever anywhere

0:08

in the history of the world to combat

0:10

the climate crisis and help move

0:13

the global economy toward a clean energy future.

0:16

For the past dozen years or so, every time

0:18

the General Assembly meets inside

0:21

the United Nations, climate activists

0:23

hit Manhattan to protest outside.

0:28

They call it Climate Week, and

0:30

this has been a big one, with tens of

0:32

thousands of protesters demonstrating.

0:36

At Today Explained, after a summer of

0:38

extreme weather, we thought we'd acknowledge

0:41

Climate Week with a conversation. Not

0:43

with an activist, but with a scientist. One

0:46

who's been at the center of climate

0:48

science since before it was cool and

0:51

has some ideas on how we can keep the

0:53

planet from getting too hot.

1:01

Support for this show comes from Delta Airlines.

1:04

No one sees the world quite like an airline,

1:06

but the world seen below is changing, fast.

1:10

That's why Delta Airlines is committed to net zero

1:12

carbon emissions by 2050. It's

1:14

why Delta is getting rid of 4.9 million

1:17

pounds of single-use plastics annually,

1:20

and why they're accelerating their push to source

1:22

sustainable aviation fuel.

1:24

Because Delta knows a thing or two about getting

1:26

where it needs to be. And it's time

1:28

we all got going. Together.

1:30

Learn more at delta.com slash sustainability.

1:36

What do you think Today Explained

1:38

is? I

1:41

don't know.

1:44

I am Michael Mann, professor at the

1:46

University of Pennsylvania and author

1:49

of the forthcoming book Our Fragile

1:51

Moment. And some call you a climatologist,

1:53

yes? I call myself a climate

1:56

scientist. Climatologist sounds like

1:58

somebody who fixes your climate.

1:59

for you if you're having trouble with it. Great.

2:03

Do climate scientists keep track of

2:05

their greatest hits? Sure.

2:08

Yeah, why not? So what would you say is

2:10

yours, may I ask? Well, the

2:12

hockey stick curve is probably what I'm

2:15

most well known for. Fish and fish.

2:17

Fish and fish.

2:19

For people who hear that and think about Wayne

2:22

Gretzky, what is the hockey

2:24

stick curve? Yeah, it was actually published

2:26

by Wayne Gretzky first. And then, no, I'm

2:29

just kidding, of course. It was

2:31

an estimate that we published 25

2:33

years ago now of

2:35

how temperatures had varied over the

2:37

past 1,000 years. Because we have

2:40

widespread thermometer measurements that go back

2:42

about a century and a half that tell

2:44

us the planet has warmed up over that time

2:46

period, the better part of 2 degrees Fahrenheit

2:48

now. But what the instrumental

2:51

record, the short instrumental record doesn't tell

2:53

us is how unusual is that warming.

2:56

They can count back year

2:58

by year the same

2:59

way a forester reads tree rings.

3:02

And you can see each annual layer

3:05

from the melting and refreezing. So

3:07

they can go back in a lot of these mountain

3:09

glaciers 1,000 years. And

3:11

they constructed a thermometer of

3:13

the temperature. And the shape

3:16

resembles a hockey stick, because there's

3:18

the upturned blade, which is

3:20

the dramatic warming of the past century

3:22

and a half, which coincides, of course, with

3:24

the Industrial Revolution and the burning

3:27

of carbon and greenhouse gas pollution.

3:29

But that sort of blade emerges

3:32

from a fairly flat

3:34

proceeding nine centuries.

3:36

You might think of that as the handle of this

3:39

upturned hockey stick. And so it got a name.

3:42

And because it really conveyed just

3:44

how profound an impact we are having

3:46

on the climate today, it became sort

3:48

of an iconic graph in the climate

3:50

debate. And it led me

3:53

to the center of that fractious debate.

3:55

Researcher Michael Mann has been studying

3:57

history, specifically. climate

4:00

history all the way back to the Middle Ages.

4:03

And what he's announced today has added fuel

4:05

to the fire in the debate over how what

4:07

we burn may be affecting the environment.

4:10

We know that three years in this current decade,

4:13

1990, 1995, and 1997, were warmer than any other single year back

4:18

to at least AD 1400. Now,

4:21

a lot of people don't see

4:24

scientific papers in their day-to-day

4:26

lives. How did people get

4:28

exposed to your hockey stick

4:30

graph? How did it become your greatest hit?

4:32

At

4:35

the time that the hockey stick study was published,

4:38

by the mid 1990s, there were a number of studies

4:40

that really demonstrated quite definitively

4:42

that we were warming the planet, but they were fairly technical.

4:45

Whereas when we published the hockey stick

4:48

curve in 1998, it

4:51

told a very clear story, and

4:54

it was widely reproduced. It became

4:56

really a symbol in

4:58

the climate change debate because it told a simple

5:00

story. And so I think in the scientific

5:02

community, it was recognized as a landmark

5:05

achievement, if I say so myself, but

5:08

in the political realm, critics

5:10

of climate science, fossil

5:13

fuel interests, and those promoting an agenda

5:16

of climate inaction saw

5:18

the hockey stick as a threat because it did tell

5:20

a simple story. People advocating for cutting

5:22

hydrocarbon fuels have branded those

5:25

who dissent from your advocacy as

5:27

climate criminals. I

5:29

believe, Mr. Mann, that in the very near

5:32

future, it is people like you who misrepresent

5:34

science and climate that the public will

5:36

see as climate criminals. It was

5:38

easy to understand from looking at that

5:40

graph that we were having this profound impact

5:43

on the planet, and it was a virtual

5:46

constellation of think

5:48

tanks and front groups, most

5:50

of which were tied to fossil

5:53

fuel, companies, or conservative

5:56

donors, like the Koch brothers or

5:58

the Skate Foundation. In

6:00

many cases they attack for the science linking

6:03

tobacco products to lung cancer. So

6:05

far, what are the conclusions reached by your organization?

6:08

That there is need for much more research

6:11

over a

6:11

wide area, and in my opinion

6:14

to single out smoking as a causal agent

6:16

is on the evidence to date complete the unjust.

6:19

Well

6:20

thank you very much sir for your help. Well

6:22

thank you very much for letting me put our views forward.

6:24

You better have a cigarette before you go ahead. Thank you.

6:27

Any time the finding of science has

6:29

found itself on a collision course with powerful

6:32

vested interests, those vested interests have

6:34

often sought to discredit

6:36

the science. It

6:38

sounds like you're talking about climate denialism

6:41

here. Can you remind us about an

6:43

era in which it was easy to say,

6:46

ah, none of that's happening, none of this is real? Yeah,

6:48

you know, if you go back a couple

6:51

decades, as we sometimes say, the signal

6:53

was still emerging from the noise. Science

6:56

very clearly established that we were warming

6:58

the planet and changing the climate in various

7:00

ways. But in terms of public understanding,

7:03

the public wasn't really seeing it yet

7:06

in the form of the sorts of unprecedented

7:09

extreme weather events that we're now seeing,

7:12

and coastal inundation, and droughts,

7:14

and heat waves, and wildfires, and floods.

7:17

It wasn't yet that apparent. There

7:19

seems to be something going on alright, but whether

7:21

it's a natural cycle, I'm not

7:23

quite sure, I don't know whether the sums

7:26

add up. Half of me think it's happening

7:28

naturally anyway, which is

7:31

a pretty common view out there. And so

7:34

there was still a window of opportunity

7:37

for climate polluters and

7:40

those promoting their agenda. And so,

7:42

yeah, there was really an effort

7:45

to discredit the science, often

7:47

by discrediting the scientists, and I found

7:49

myself at the receiving end of personal attacks

7:52

that were intended to discredit

7:54

the hockey stick curve because it was perceived

7:57

as such a threat. What kind of attacks? received

8:00

a white powder in the mail. The FBI

8:03

had to come to my

8:05

office. There was police tape over

8:08

my office. They had to send out the sample

8:10

to the lab to have it tested. What was the white

8:12

powder? It turned out it was like

8:14

cornmeal or something. It was intended

8:17

to intimidate and scare me and demands

8:19

from conservative politicians that I'd be fired

8:22

from my job at the University of Pennsylvania.

8:25

Fox News, Wall Street Journal

8:27

vilifying me to their audiences

8:30

it was a full-throttle effort to

8:32

discredit me because

8:35

of the threat of the hockey stick curve

8:37

that I had published. Okay, 25 years later are you still

8:40

being bullied? Well, the battle has largely

8:43

moved on. We've really evolved mostly

8:46

past denialism because the impacts

8:48

of climate change are staring us in

8:50

the face. They've become so obvious we

8:52

can see them play out in real time. More

8:55

power outages from severe weather across

8:57

the south more than 150,000 customers

9:01

affected from Georgia to Texas.

9:03

Billions

9:03

are under severe weather warnings across

9:05

the nation from triple-digit heat in

9:07

the south to damaging storms in the Midwest.

9:09

Where tens of thousands are fleeing for their lives

9:12

from out-of-control fires, winds flaring

9:14

up as southern Europe bakes under a brutal

9:16

heat wave. Part

9:17

of the corner of the planet left untouched

9:20

by the impact of climate

9:21

change. And there is sort of a resurgence,

9:24

a superficial resurgence of denial

9:26

like on social media, Twitter

9:28

for example, but it's not real

9:31

in the sense that the actual

9:34

public survey work that's been done shows that

9:38

it remains a fairly small fraction

9:40

of the public, the American public, roughly 10%

9:44

who are climate dismissives. So

9:47

in reality, most people have

9:49

moved on. The vast majority of the

9:51

public get it. They understand because

9:53

they can see it. They can feel it. Have

10:00

you ever seen anything like this before? No,

10:02

no. I've never been afraid to die

10:05

for yesterday. I had that fear in

10:07

me. It's not like the fossil fuel

10:09

industry has given up. They're still doing everything

10:12

they can to prevent us from moving

10:14

on. But they've

10:17

largely moved away from denialism towards

10:19

these sort of softer denialist

10:22

tactics. What

10:25

do you call it? It's not climate denialism

10:27

anymore. What are we facing now? So

10:30

there are other D words. There's delay.

10:32

There's division. Get climate advocates

10:34

fighting with each other about whether

10:36

they're vegans or not, or whether

10:39

they drive a car or not. Get

10:41

climate advocates fighting with each other so

10:43

you divide and conquer the sort of

10:45

movement, division,

10:47

delay. Oh look, we can

10:50

fix the problem with geoengineering,

10:52

with carbon capture. Down the road, trust

10:54

us. We'll be able to fix it. So

10:57

let us continue to burn fossil fuels now.

11:00

We will fix it later. Delay. And that's

11:02

what they want. They want people disengaged on

11:04

the sidelines rather than on the

11:06

front lines. From

11:11

denial to division and

11:14

delay and disengagement, Michael

11:16

E. Mann has more D words for us

11:19

when we're back on Today Explained, one that

11:21

could even help us get out of the mess

11:23

we've made.

11:31

Support for this show comes from Delta Airlines.

11:34

No one sees the world quite like an airline, but

11:36

the world seen below is changing. Fast.

11:40

That's why Delta Airlines is committed to net zero

11:42

carbon emissions by 2050. It's

11:44

why they're partnering across the industry to create

11:46

the future of aviation and switching

11:48

ground vehicle after ground vehicle to electric.

11:52

It's why Delta is accelerating their push to

11:54

store sustainable aviation fuel. And

11:56

it's why they're also getting rid of 4.9 million pounds of single-use

11:58

plastics in the future. annually. That's

12:01

just what Delta's doing, but it'll take

12:03

more than just the 90,000 people at Delta.

12:06

It'll take everyone, at every airline,

12:09

and in every industry. Because

12:11

Delta knows a thing or two about getting where it needs

12:13

to be, and it's time we all got going.

12:16

Together. Learn more at Delta.com

12:19

slash sustainability.

12:24

What I can tell

12:26

you

12:27

is that climate change is real. We've

12:29

got to do something about it. Yeah, this one's called Autumn,

12:31

sir. I'm sorry? This one's called Autumn

12:34

right now, so yeah.

12:35

I'm sorry, I couldn't make out what you said, sir.

12:37

This climate change right now is called Autumn, yes.

12:40

Yeah, that's the seasons changing,

12:43

which respectively is not the same thing as the climate

12:45

changing.

12:48

They explained returns with Michael E. Mann,

12:50

no relation to Michael Mann, the

12:52

filmmaker Michael Mann made heat. Michael

12:55

E. Mann predicts it. Not my line,

12:57

that's Michael's. Most recently he told

12:59

us on this show, we've managed to shift

13:02

from climate denialism to some

13:04

other climate D words. Division.

13:06

Delay.

13:07

We're disengaged. Yeah, I mean, we see

13:09

these tactics literally playing out today,

13:12

and there's an article that

13:14

just recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal

13:17

detailing how Rex Tillerson, the former

13:20

CEO of ExxonMobil, who had

13:22

been sort of lauded as he was like

13:24

the next generation of Exxon leadership.

13:26

He was not a climate denier. He accepted

13:29

that climate change is real. I

13:31

came to my personal position over

13:33

about 20 years as an engineer

13:36

and a scientist, understanding

13:37

the evolution of the science. Came

13:40

to the conclusion a few years ago that the risk of

13:42

climate change does exist and

13:44

that the consequences of it could

13:46

be serious enough that action should be taken.

13:49

The type of action is, seems

13:52

to be where the largest areas of debate

13:54

exist in the public discourse. that

14:00

time to present this public face

14:02

of climate acceptance because it had already

14:04

become difficult

14:07

to deny it was happening. People understood it was

14:09

happening. It wasn't credible to deny it.

14:11

And so it was sort of,

14:14

yes, we accept the science, but the

14:16

D word here is downplaying. And

14:19

the article in the Wall Street Journal makes it very clear

14:21

based on internal documents that

14:24

show a different side of ExxonMobil and

14:26

Rex Tillerson, that they were actively

14:29

campaigning to downplay

14:31

the detrimental impacts of

14:33

the climate crisis while

14:35

playing up techno

14:38

fixes like geoengineering.

14:40

In fact, Rex Tillerson was

14:43

quoted saying that climate change is an engineering

14:45

problem. And it has engineering solutions.

14:47

And so I don't,

14:50

the fear factor that people want to throw out

14:52

there to say, we just have to stop this.

14:55

I do not accept. The idea

14:57

here is, look, we can continue to extract

15:00

and burn and sell and burn fossil

15:02

fuels because we have all these techno

15:04

fixes, other things that we can do to the climate

15:06

system, trying to offset the warming by shooting

15:09

particles into the stratosphere that reflects sunlight

15:11

or dumping iron into the ocean to

15:14

fertilize the algae that will take up the carbon dioxide,

15:16

take it out of the atmosphere, or massive

15:19

carbon capture will just suck the

15:22

CO2 back out of the atmosphere. That

15:24

can't be very hard, right? Well,

15:27

actually, no, it's really expensive and really difficult

15:29

to do. And so these very elaborate

15:32

schemes to try to somehow

15:35

put the genie back in the bottle rather

15:38

than the obvious solution, which is to

15:40

keep the genie in the bottle in the first place. By

15:42

which you mean what? Not extracting

15:45

and burning fossil carbon and

15:47

putting it into the atmosphere. And a lot

15:49

of that would have to be on the

15:51

individual because obviously if individuals

15:54

want to burn fossil fuels,

15:57

this is a country where they're

15:59

going to find someone willing

16:01

to help them do so. How much

16:04

of the climate delayism

16:06

is being pushed on the individual

16:08

at this moment? Yeah, it's a great point

16:10

and actually I would even classify that

16:13

with a different D word, what I call deflection.

16:15

Aha! Which is to say there's been

16:18

an effort by the same bad actors

16:20

to deflect the conversation away

16:22

from regulation and the needed

16:25

policies which will hurt their bottom line,

16:27

carbon pricing, cap

16:29

and trade, what have you, to redirect

16:32

the conversation against those systemic

16:35

changes and policies that will hurt them financially

16:38

and turn attention instead to individuals.

16:40

It's the same thing for example

16:44

that the beverage industry did

16:46

to try to prevent the passage of bottle bills.

16:49

They didn't want deposits on bottles and cans

16:52

even though that was a systemic policy

16:54

that would help clean up the

16:56

countryside and get

16:58

people to recycle. They didn't want that because it would

17:01

hurt their bottom line so instead they

17:03

ran a campaign to convince us and

17:05

there's the famous Crying Indian commercial

17:08

in the early 1970s, the tearful

17:10

Native Americans. Some people

17:12

have a deep, abiding respect

17:15

for the natural beauty that once this

17:17

country made.

17:20

Some people don't. Some

17:23

people start pollution. Some people

17:26

don't. It's all

17:28

on you because it was an effort,

17:30

you know, an underhanded effort by the

17:32

beverage industry to convince us that we didn't need regulation,

17:35

we didn't need bottle bills. That

17:37

same playbook is being used today by

17:39

carbon polluters. In the early 2000s,

17:43

the very first widely used

17:46

and publicized individual

17:48

carbon footprint calculator where you could

17:51

like calculate your carbon footprint and figure

17:53

out how to change your lifestyle to

17:55

make it smaller, that was created

17:58

and publicized by British Petroleum.

17:59

What size is your carbon

18:02

footprint? Ah, the carbon footprint,

18:04

that was enough. How much carbon

18:07

I produce? Is that it? You mean the

18:09

effect that my living

18:11

has on the Earth in terms of the products I consume?

18:14

British Petroleum wanted you

18:17

so focused on your individual

18:19

carbon footprint that you failed to note theirs.

18:22

That's why we need policies, because individuals can't

18:25

put a price on carbon themselves. They can't

18:28

block construction of new fossil fuel

18:30

infrastructure. These are all things that only

18:32

our politicians can do. And so that's

18:34

sort of where we are today, that deflection

18:36

remains one of the

18:39

key tactics. And a lot of good

18:41

people have fallen victim to it. A lot

18:43

of environmentalists will tell you, yeah, the solution

18:45

is just us decreasing our

18:48

carbon footprint. And you need to become a

18:50

vegan, and you can't have children, you shouldn't fly. Ironically,

18:53

that framing helps the fossil fuel

18:55

industry even more, because it

18:57

plays to this notion on the right

19:00

that climate action is about controlling

19:03

people's lifestyle. The climate

19:05

cult, they don't seem to care. They need

19:07

a doomsday scenario to achieve their radical

19:09

goals. For them, this isn't ultimately

19:12

about a cleaner planet. Their end

19:14

goal is more government control over your

19:16

life. But you're reminding me of one

19:19

of my favorite onion headlines from 2010, I

19:21

think, or something, which was, how

19:24

bad for the environment can throwing away

19:26

one plastic bottle be 30 million

19:28

people wonder? Obviously,

19:31

this isn't completely on the

19:33

individual. But if 300 million Americans

19:36

woke up tomorrow and said, I never want to

19:38

put gas in my car ever again,

19:40

that would change the

19:42

world. That's absolutely true.

19:45

One of the things that we understand,

19:47

though, is that people in general won't

19:49

make voluntary

19:51

decisions to change their

19:54

lifestyle in a way that

19:57

would appear to impact their

19:59

quality of life. Unless there's some

20:01

incentive and that's why you need a financial

20:03

incentive. It needs to be cheaper for

20:06

people to purchase energy

20:09

that's not warming the planet and

20:11

destroying the environment. Because right

20:13

now we've got our thumb on the wrong end of the scale.

20:16

And so you need that price signal. You

20:18

need policies that will collectively

20:21

move everybody in the right direction without

20:23

them having to actively think about it.

20:26

I want to ask you about another D

20:28

word that I think is related to the

20:31

lack of policies that are going to make enough

20:33

of a difference to save this

20:35

planet. And that of course is

20:37

doom.

20:41

Yes. Climate doomerism. Yeah.

20:43

You know and doomism has actually been

20:47

weaponized by bad actors to

20:49

convince even environmentalists that

20:51

hey it's too late. It's too late to do anything anyway.

20:54

So you might as well just give up trying to solve

20:56

the climate crisis. People

20:58

who are ostensible climate advocates

21:01

and environmentalists who

21:03

insist that it's too late and we just sort

21:05

of have to accept our fate. Why is

21:08

sea level rise coming and there's nothing

21:10

we can do to stop it? I can't

21:11

believe it. No. You

21:13

want to do it through life? What do you want to do with your life? year 2050.

21:17

Most of us should be underwater from global warming.

21:21

There are

21:23

events like mass extinction events

21:25

in the past that some of these doomists

21:29

will point to and say look you know what happened

21:31

to the dinosaurs. You know what happened

21:35

during the so called great dying 250 million

21:37

years ago when 90 percent

21:40

of all species died out because of a massive

21:43

release of carbon into the atmosphere through

21:45

an episode of massive volcanism.

21:49

Look you know that's happening today. There

21:52

are prominent actors in the climate space

21:54

who are literally making this

21:56

claim and they're doing so by misrepresenting.

22:00

what the record

22:02

of Earth history actually tells us

22:04

about those events. You know, we are

22:06

at a fragile moment. We're not yet past

22:09

the point of no return, but if we

22:11

don't take substantial action and

22:13

do so immediately, then

22:16

we are due for some of those

22:18

potential worst-case scenarios. So

22:20

it is still up to us. So

22:23

it sounds like you're not a doomer. I'm not.

22:26

If the science indicated that it was too

22:28

late for us to prevent the worst consequences

22:31

of climate change, I

22:33

would have to be truthful as a scientist about

22:35

that. Fortuitously, that's

22:37

not what the science does tell us. So

22:40

I can, you know, in

22:42

good faith, be out

22:45

there trying to explain that to people. Is

22:47

there a D word out there that we haven't talked

22:49

about? Not denialism, divisionism,

22:52

delays, doomism, deflection

22:54

that people can attach themselves

22:57

to in a moment where

23:00

critical decisions that are made could

23:03

really shift the outcome. Yes,

23:06

determinism. We have to be determined

23:09

now to take the actions

23:11

that are necessary while we still can.

23:16

Let's be clear. We should all, you know, do everything

23:18

we can within the constraints of our own lifestyles

23:21

to minimize our environmental impact and

23:23

to minimize our carbon footprint. But

23:26

the most important thing an individual can do is to

23:28

use their voice and their vote because

23:30

the policies that we need

23:32

in place to decarbonize our economy, to

23:35

lower carbon emissions by 50% over

23:37

the next decade, the only way we can

23:40

accomplish that is with policy. And

23:42

so we need to vote for politicians

23:45

who will do what's right by us and act on

23:47

climate rather than the politicians

23:49

who too often are simply acting as

23:51

rubber stamps for polluters.

24:00

Not so much climatologist. His

24:02

new book is our fragile

24:04

moment. Find it wherever you bind your books. Our

24:07

show today was produced by Avi Shai Artsy.

24:10

We were edited by Miranda Kennedy, mixed

24:12

by David Herman, and fact-checked

24:14

by Tien Nguyen. I'm Sean Rammus

24:16

from and this is Today Explained. If you weren't

24:18

quite satisfied with where we landed

24:20

today, if you want more climate action,

24:23

even more radical climate action, we've

24:25

got an episode for you next week

24:28

and a few in between that you should listen to as well.

24:51

Support for this show came from Delta Airlines.

24:54

No one sees the world quite like an airline.

24:57

But the world seen below is changing, fast.

25:00

That's why Delta Airlines is committed to net-zero

25:02

carbon emissions by 2050. It's

25:05

why Delta is getting rid of 4.9 million

25:07

pounds of single-use plastics annually,

25:10

and why they're accelerating their push to source

25:12

sustainable aviation fuel. Because

25:14

Delta knows a thing or two about getting where it

25:17

needs to be. And it's time we all got

25:19

going, together. Learn

25:21

more at delta.com slash sustainability.