Money Matters 293-The Heat Will Kill You First W/Jeff Goodell

Jeff Goodell: Money Matters Podcast Interview

July 11, 2023 . 10:22 AM . ID: 225872693

Transcript

00:00 - 00:03
[speaker unknown]
This conference will now be recorded.

00:04 - 00:05
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Good, morning everybody.

00:05 - 00:07
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
You're listening to Money, Matters.

00:07 - 00:12
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I'm Chris Hensley, we have a fantastic show lined up for you today.

00:12 - 00:15
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Our guest is Jeff Good Ol'.

00:15 - 00:22
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
He is the author of The New Book, The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a scorch Planet.

00:22 - 00:24
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Jeff thank you so much for joining us this morning.

00:25 - 00:26
jeff
Happy to be here.

00:27 - 00:32
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And are usually I'll do a little quick monolog here so I wanted to share your bio with listeners.

00:32 - 00:32
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Jeff.

00:33 - 00:34
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Good.

00:34 - 00:45
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
All is a renowned author and journalist known for his extensive work on climate change and environmental issues, his latest book is The heat will kill you first life and death on a scorched Planet.

00:45 - 00:55
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
He has been covering climate change for over two decades at Rolling Stone, and has appeared on various media platforms, discussing climate and energy issues, Jeff, welcome.

00:55 - 01:16
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Once again, I do want to share with listeners, we have kind of a theme going here, it wasn't on purpose, but last week, we actually did a show on, on home generators, and it was called Surviving the Storm, so we're here in Houston and we had, there was a generator group that's national ones, kinda setup for winter storms, and that kind of thing.

01:16 - 01:18
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And being in Texas, the power grid, going out and stuff.

01:18 - 01:25
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So, this seems to go really well with that, And then I was looking for, Well, what can I do to kind of make it timely?

01:25 - 01:28
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And, usually, I'll look for, like, a story or something like that.

01:28 - 01:31
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
All I had to do was check the weather this week.

01:32 - 01:44
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So I pulled up Fie X, and there's an excessive heat warning in Phoenix today, They're expecting degrees of 112 degrees through Wednesday, so I thought that was a good way to start it.

01:44 - 01:49
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
But Jeff, tell me a little bit why you wrote this book, what inspired you to write this book?

01:50 - 01:52
jeff
Well, first of all, thanks for having me.

01:52 - 01:56
jeff
It's great to be here to talk with you You funny that you mentioned Phoenix, just now.

01:57 - 02:01
jeff
The forecast I just saw, went up to actually 117 this week.

02:02 - 02:02
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Whole.

02:03 - 02:10
jeff
Record breaking, and I bring that up because it was actually a visit to Phoenix about four years ago.

02:11 - 02:23
jeff
That inspired this book, I was there for, to do some reporting on a different story, and it was 115 degree day, and I had to walk about 12 blocks downtown.

02:24 - 02:34
jeff
As many people may know, you know, Cities are, are even hotter than this sort of general air temperature, because the asphalt and concrete radiate the heat.

02:34 - 02:40
jeff
So, I don't know how hard it was exactly where I was when I was walking, but I had to walk by 12 blocks downtown.

02:40 - 02:45
jeff
And, I felt myself getting dizzy and like my, I felt my heart pounding and I thought, Oh, my god, what is happening to me?

02:46 - 02:53
jeff
And, I realized that, that kind of moment, you know, the, the power of heat to affect our bodies and our health.

02:53 - 02:57
jeff
And, you know, I had been writing about climate change.

02:57 - 03:05
jeff
I've been right about climate change for a couple of decades, but I had never really thought about how dangerous he is, and.

03:07 - 03:12
jeff
Experience in Phoenix made me think differently about it, and it made me think, Oh my God, I don't.

03:12 - 03:15
jeff
You know, we all bat around this phrase, global warming.

03:15 - 03:22
jeff
And it sounds like this sort of gentle thing about, you know, better beach weather, and, in fact, heat is a very, very dangerous.

03:24 - 03:29
jeff
A very dangerous thing, and so I set out to kind of explore that in this book.

03:30 - 03:39
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And when we say that you've written on climate change in the past, I mean, we left out the, the, you know, the introductions by Al Gore.

03:39 - 03:41
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And Naomi Klein.

03:41 - 03:48
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So, you, this is a space where you worked in, but the heat part of it, I know what a timely thing for this heat wave in Texas that we're experiencing.

03:48 - 03:51
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Now, you, do you live in Austin, as well?

03:51 - 03:51
jeff
Yeah, I do.

03:51 - 03:52
jeff
I live in Austin.

03:52 - 03:56
jeff
I'm just here in Washington, for some, actually some book events.

03:57 - 03:58
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Fantastic.

03:59 - 04:09
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So, one of the questions I wanted to ask is: how does this rising reveal kinda the fault lines in government, politics, economy, and values, as you wrote the book?

04:10 - 04:11
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Tell us a little bit about that.

04:13 - 04:14
jeff
That's a really good question.

04:14 - 04:18
jeff
I mean, one of the powerful things about heat is, is the way it does.

04:18 - 04:31
jeff
Reveal these fault lines, You know, I think there's a common view of a lot of people, probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, that, he's not a big deal, because you know, we all have air conditioning And we're just going to turn up the air conditioning.

04:31 - 04:35
jeff
And you know, it's bar power bills.

04:35 - 04:38
jeff
There'll be a little bit more and all that, But you know, it'll be fine.

04:40 - 04:47
jeff
And I think one of the myths that I'm trying to explode in in this book is that we will not be fine.

04:48 - 05:03
jeff
First of all, we, you, and I, and many of the listeners may have air conditioning and be in air conditioning, in fact right now, but billions of people on this planet do not have air conditioning, and, and do not have access to air conditioning.

05:03 - 05:06
jeff
Or even kind of more heartbreakingly to me, cat.

05:07 - 05:08
jeff
They may have an air conditioner.

05:08 - 05:11
jeff
But, they can't afford to turn it on.

05:12 - 05:16
jeff
And, or, they can only afford to turn it on for an hour, or so, a day.

05:16 - 05:21
jeff
So, they're putting them, you know, they're constantly making kind of arbitrage between can I?

05:22 - 05:27
jeff
Spend money, do I spend money on food, or do I spend money on heat, you know, on cooling myself down?

05:28 - 05:34
jeff
And if they make the wrong calculation, they can die, right, Because of the, of the extreme heat in some of these places.

05:35 - 05:37
jeff
So, that's one important aspect.

05:37 - 05:39
jeff
Important, and other important aspect, there's two other points.

05:39 - 05:46
jeff
One is that we can't air conditioning, you know, heat effects, that are, it's not just about us and our bubble.

05:46 - 05:48
jeff
It affects the entire every living thing on the planet.

05:48 - 05:59
jeff
Has this sort of thermal zone, so for example, I did a lot of reporting in Texas on, in the Rio Grande Valley and other places on the impact on food crops.

06:00 - 06:11
jeff
And, you know, there's especially really important crops like corn are at in Texas are at the edge of their thermal limits and when it gets too hot, they die.

06:11 - 06:23
jeff
And, you know and if art summers as they are, get consistently hotter, corn will not grow in Texas anymore and other crops are facing the same things that you have.

06:23 - 06:27
jeff
This, you know, we're not going to air condition the wheat fields in cornfields.

06:27 - 06:28
jeff
Right?

06:28 - 06:34
jeff
I mean, so it has impacts on ARR food prices on our food productivity.

06:35 - 06:40
jeff
It has impacts on how diseases are spread because mosquitoes and other insects and other creatures.

06:40 - 06:54
jeff
You know, one of the things that happens as our world gets hotter as things move, and migrate, as they move and migrate, whether they're human beings, are mosquitoes, or birds, or whatever they are, they carry the microbes that they came from with them.

06:54 - 06:56
jeff
And they bring them into new places.

06:56 - 07:09
jeff
And this is one of the ways that new diseases are spread, but the last most important thing that goes to your opening thing about generators last week, is that yeah, you're good and air conditioning right now.

07:09 - 07:13
jeff
And you know, I was in Austin yesterday and was 104 when I left, and I don't know what it is right now.

07:13 - 07:18
jeff
But, you know, it's been hot for the last couple of weeks, really hot and no.

07:18 - 07:32
jeff
And all of us who live in Texas, remember the, the power outages a couple of years ago in the winter, You know, during these heat waves, there's enormous strain on the grid because everyone's cranking up their conditioning.

07:32 - 07:42
jeff
And so if we have a massive blackout, during one of these heat waves, or one of these extreme temperature days, a lot of people are going to die, and there's no question about that.

07:43 - 07:48
jeff
So this thing that we're all going to be OK because we have air conditioning.

07:48 - 07:54
jeff
It's just A, um, a terrible fallacy that we need to think more broadly about.

07:54 - 07:57
jeff
And, you know, it's, we're not OK.

07:59 - 08:01
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
That's a lot you shared with us.

08:01 - 08:08
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Just that idea that, you know, we're OK, because we have the air condition, and there are so many things that we're not.

08:08 - 08:08
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
You.

08:09 - 08:15
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Know, the idea of the, the food supply chain, if it gets hot enough, you mentioned corn here in Texas The diseases.

08:15 - 08:23
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that, because that's something you write about extensively in the book, and I didn't realize how that work.

08:23 - 08:33
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Can you elaborate just a little bit more on that, how the the heat could also play into future pandemics or disease and that sort of thing?

08:33 - 08:34
jeff
Sure.

08:34 - 08:40
jeff
So, one of the and this affects this is very much a Texas story.

08:40 - 08:53
jeff
I spent a lot of time actually in Houston going out with public health officials, trapping mosquitoes because mosquitoes are exquisitely sensitive to temperature range.

08:53 - 09:06
jeff
They are little creatures that are, as we all know, very mobile can move around very easily there, Not like a pine tree that is stuck in one place and can't easily get up and move to somewhere cooler, or warmer.

09:07 - 09:16
jeff
Mosquitoes can move very, very easily and and they carry a lot of different diseases, dengue, fever, Zika.

09:17 - 09:21
jeff
And just the last couple of weeks, we've seen a resurgence of malaria.

09:23 - 09:26
jeff
In the in the Southern United States, in Texas and Louisiana.

09:28 - 09:31
jeff
And that has been eradicated from the United States for decades.

09:32 - 09:39
jeff
You know, it's still malaria is still a huge problem in the world, 400,000 people or so die a year from malaria in Africa.

09:40 - 09:45
jeff
But in the US, it's pretty much unheard of you living in Houston, and I living, and also, I don't worry if I get bitten by a mosquito.

09:45 - 09:46
jeff
That's going to be carrying malaria.

09:48 - 10:01
jeff
But, now, it's coming back and, you know, the causes are complicated, but heat is a big factor, because as it gets a little bit warmer, the range of the kinds of mosquitoes that are carrying these diseases expands.

10:02 - 10:07
jeff
And so, you know, a perfect example of this is Mexico City.

10:07 - 10:19
jeff
Mexico City has a kind of cool ish Mediterranean climate that basically is to just a little bit, has always been a little bit too cool for any mosquitoes.

10:19 - 10:22
jeff
Anyone who's spent any time there, my wife is from Mexico City.

10:22 - 10:24
jeff
And so we spend a lot of time there.

10:24 - 10:26
jeff
And there's basically no mosquitoes there.

10:26 - 10:28
jeff
There has never been historically.

10:28 - 10:31
jeff
So there's none of these malaria, dengue, Zika, anything.

10:31 - 10:35
jeff
But it has gotten a couple of degrees warmer there because of the warming climate.

10:35 - 10:40
jeff
And now mosquitoes are beginning to move in and they're carrying these diseases.

10:40 - 10:50
jeff
So, suddenly, you have a city of 30 million people that is now vulnerable to these diseases that they have basically, you know, not thought about protections for, they don't have screens on their windows.

10:51 - 10:59
jeff
You know, they just, in the way that you and I who have lived in a place that has mosquitoes, we have some protections up from them.

10:59 - 11:07
jeff
A place like Mexico City, you have a lot of really vulnerable people, who are now all of a sudden, exposed to these diseases that are carried by these.

11:07 - 11:10
jeff
So, that's, you know, one classic example.

11:10 - 11:11
jeff
The other classic examples ticks.

11:12 - 11:14
jeff
Lyme disease, and the in the Pacific north-west.

11:14 - 11:15
jeff
Or the north-east.

11:15 - 11:31
jeff
You know, starting out down on Long Island, but now, moving all the way up into Vermont and Canada because it's getting warmer, and does anybody has ever been, anytime in the, in the north-east, you know, ticks are, you know, creatures And nobody wants around?

11:31 - 11:35
jeff
And, you know, they carry a lot of diseases, live is just one of them.

11:35 - 11:37
jeff
So, you, so, you have things like that that are migrating around.

11:37 - 11:41
jeff
And then you have birds that are carrying avian flu virus that are moving to new places.

11:41 - 11:43
jeff
There's just a lot as, as things move around.

11:44 - 11:47
jeff
They carry stuff and they bring it to new places.

11:47 - 11:55
jeff
And it's one of the unspoken, but most, I think, kind of dangerous aspects of these changing heat patterns.

11:57 - 12:07
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Know, that's a lot that I didn't even think about when it comes to the disease, that these, these, these things, like malaria, dengue fever, that we, you know, we haven't had to deal with kind of migrating around.

12:07 - 12:16
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
And just that when you mentioned Mexico City, the cities that aren't necessarily set up, they may not have the screens, they, they're not prepared for this.

12:16 - 12:22
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So, you know, these are things that people don't have in their mind, that as the, we see these heat waves really calm.

12:22 - 12:24
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
We need to be thinking about this stuff.

12:25 - 12:37
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I do want to ask you, I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions here, but kinda tell us about what life would look like in some of these major cities, like Chicago, Boston, Phoenix is one that came up, were here in Houston.

12:37 - 12:44
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
You're in Austin, it, when we start reaching these, these kind of, no emergency level of heat.

12:45 - 12:47
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Tell us a little bit about how those cities will look like?

12:49 - 12:55
jeff
Well, that's a great question, you know, I think we've seen hit hints of it in the last few weeks in Texas.

12:55 - 13:01
jeff
I've certainly seen it in Austin, know, we have temperature, we had temperatures in, in Austin.

13:01 - 13:04
jeff
You know, 110, 112.

13:04 - 13:14
jeff
I think that some parts of southern Texas hit a heat index, which is a combination of humidity and heat of 120 degrees.

13:14 - 13:29
jeff
In the last couple of weeks, We've had heat records broken all over, all over Texas, and, know, people say, Oh, Texas is always hot, and, you know, of course, it's always hot, you know, but we're seeing records being broken, and this heat staying around longer and longer.

13:29 - 13:36
jeff
And this, know, as we continue to burn fossil fuels and put CO two into the atmosphere, it is going to get hotter.

13:36 - 13:40
jeff
There's, that is a basic, scientific fact as real as gravity.

13:40 - 13:41
jeff
There's no issue.

13:41 - 13:43
jeff
No, there's no questioning that, right?

13:43 - 13:51
jeff
So, know, what we saw in the last couple of weeks, just, I saw in Austin, you know, people, you know, you don't do things in the middle of the day.

13:51 - 13:53
jeff
You don't go for a run on another day.

13:53 - 14:02
jeff
You, you don't, you go for a walk early in the morning you although cafes in Austin, everybody was sitting inside instead of sitting outside.

14:02 - 14:05
jeff
On Father's Day, I wanted to go for a hike with my kids.

14:05 - 14:10
jeff
But instead, you know, we went to a movie, because, you know, we didn't want to go outside.

14:10 - 14:13
jeff
So you become kind of imprisoned in these air conditioned spaces.

14:14 - 14:26
jeff
But, but, you know, as it gets hotter and hotter, even a few degrees hotter, if it were up to 125 or something, which, scientists cannot say, even at the levels of CO two.

14:26 - 14:28
jeff
We have now that can't happen.

14:28 - 14:29
jeff
It could happen.

14:29 - 14:48
jeff
No, you'll begin to see, you know, real, no visible impacts, in the sense of trees, dying plants, dying Many more people dying people who are, don't have access to air conditioning, who are, or, or can't afford it.

14:48 - 14:57
jeff
No heat is very predatory on vulnerable people and, and living things, but people, especially so, people who have heart conditions.

14:58 - 15:04
jeff
People who are have hypertension, people are various kinds of medications.

15:05 - 15:09
jeff
Older people, in general, people who are doing outdoor work.

15:09 - 15:23
jeff
You know, I mean, I talked to her in Houston, speaking of use And you know, I talked to them a city official while I was reporting my book who said, you know, as heat rises in Houston, we're going to have to shift construction, all construction to nighttime.

15:25 - 15:26
jeff
So, like, what does that mean?

15:26 - 15:34
jeff
How do you think about that, and what does how, does, how disruptive is that, and how disruptive to the economy of, of Houston or Texas?

15:34 - 15:39
jeff
Is it going to be when it gets too hot for outdoor work in the daytime during the summer?

15:39 - 15:52
jeff
So, summer becomes this time, when you can't do things outside, unless you're doing it at night, and, you know, you, we talk about sort of economic impacts of this, and that's huge.

15:52 - 16:06
jeff
I mean, if you begin to think about, Oh, we can't build buildings, you know, like we normally do or construction projects during, you know, three months of summer because it's too hot and if we're going to do it, we're going to have to do it at night.

16:06 - 16:11
jeff
That's incredible change in the sort of economic rhythms of our state.

16:13 - 16:16
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
That is everything that you just said.

16:16 - 16:23
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
They're 100% and especially for local listeners, Houston, I mean then the nighttime construction that all of the things.

16:23 - 16:27
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Even, you know, you mentioned, Father's Day changing your plans.

16:27 - 16:35
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I was up at 7 0 AM with the blower on the roof of my house getting pine needles off because I didn't want to be up in the, in the heat of the day.

16:35 - 16:35
jeff
Here.

16:35 - 16:37
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So, this is a, you know, a very real thing.

16:37 - 16:42
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I've got probably two more questions for you before we hit the end of the show here.

16:42 - 16:55
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
One, you don't have to answer this one if you don't want to, but, because we're in Texas, do you have any opinions as far as the Governor ERCOT and kind of how the Texas stuff plays into this specific to us.

16:57 - 16:57
jeff
Well, sure.

16:57 - 16:59
jeff
Two, to two points, I would make.

16:59 - 17:04
jeff
One is that we know these recent heatwave that we all live through.

17:05 - 17:17
jeff
The spike of temperatures in the last few weeks have really, you know, one of the fears, as I mentioned before, was that as the demand for power surges because everyone's turning up their air conditioning that we would have a power failure.

17:17 - 17:23
jeff
And you know, the and I talked about the risks and the problems and the dangers of that.

17:24 - 17:25
jeff
Well, we didn't.

17:25 - 17:26
jeff
And that's fantastic.

17:26 - 17:33
jeff
But one of the reasons we didn't was because we have so much solar power in, that has been installed in Texas.

17:33 - 17:44
jeff
You know, I think during the heat wave, as much as 25% of the grid was comeing, grid power was coming from solar, solar is much more reliable during these heat extremes, you know.

17:44 - 17:57
jeff
These heat extremes are really tough on traditional thermal plants that have no metal that expands and contracts and there's all kinds of issues with using, like a natural gas power plant during extreme heat that solar plants don't have.

17:58 - 18:02
jeff
Plus, so, so we had a more stable grid, and it was cheaper.

18:03 - 18:07
jeff
There, you we didn't have the price swings that we have with natural gas the.

18:08 - 18:10
jeff
So we the State Steve.

18:12 - 18:19
jeff
Ratepayers in the States a billions of dollars during this heat wave with a more stable grid because of the solar power on the grid.

18:19 - 18:34
jeff
And that's really, really a big deal, and it's a kind of test case for why we need to move more quickly to renewables, why they are a better deal, why, and Texas is the leader in that.

18:35 - 18:39
jeff
Texas is amazing in their deployment of solar and wind.

18:39 - 18:47
jeff
But it doesn't get talked about enough because, you know, that oil and gas, people sort of dominate the politics of the state in such a big way.

18:47 - 18:50
jeff
But I think this is going to be a real turning point in that.

18:50 - 18:51
jeff
And I think that.

18:53 - 19:05
jeff
This was a kind of proof positive that this movement is, you know, not only cheaper, not only better for cleaner air, but also more reliable.

19:05 - 19:06
jeff
So that's one point.

19:06 - 19:16
jeff
The other point that I would make politically, is that during the midst of all this, no, Governor Abbott signed legislation that prohibited local or local cities?

19:16 - 19:24
jeff
From instituting breaks for construction workers, for shade and water, right?

19:24 - 19:34
jeff
And, you know, the outrageousness of that, just from a sort of purely human point of view, is, yeah, to me, sort of mind boggling, you know.

19:34 - 19:39
jeff
And I don't know how this is justified or rationalized.

19:39 - 19:41
jeff
I mean, it's partly economic.

19:41 - 19:50
jeff
Like, we can't afford to, no, have workers taking breaks, you know, Because it raises the cost of projects, well, OK.

19:50 - 19:54
jeff
Then either, you have to start moving towards night time.

19:54 - 20:04
jeff
So it's cooler, or you're going to have a lot of workers die, and, you know, is that, OK, You know, that we have workers dying on construction projects.

20:04 - 20:10
jeff
We know, in the middle of the day, because The governor doesn't want to give them a 15 minute water and shade break?

20:10 - 20:19
jeff
No, so, it's bringing up a lot of, no, pretty, pretty tough, political questions.

20:20 - 20:21
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Well, thank you for sharing that.

20:21 - 20:24
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I'm shaking my head the whole time, Yes, because I'm in agreement.

20:24 - 20:31
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So I think we probably have one more time for one more question, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna kinda piggyback on when you know what you're sharing there.

20:31 - 20:44
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
We talked a little bit about, you know, the idea of this solar and wind, and, you know, I've, I've seen some articles that even bringing in these battery, the battery part, that, we've got a bigger bang for the battery.

20:46 - 20:50
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Backups that are these giant, you know, power stations, or whatever.

20:50 - 20:51
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So that's, that's interesting to me.

20:51 - 21:00
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
You know, we kind of started with the idea that we're talking about climate change here and it's OK to say that because, you know, we've spent the last five years.

21:00 - 21:05
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I'm just kinda like in a blur where, you know, it's intellectual shorthand.

21:05 - 21:12
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
If somebody doesn't accept the science I don't want to talk to because you know, it's, I'm not going to debate whether gravity is a real thing.

21:12 - 21:21
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Yes, We can have this theoretical study, but we've thought in the past, we weren't, you know, we didn't have to revisit stuff that we already know, so put that aside.

21:21 - 21:28
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Now we know, we're seeing some of this stuff rollout, and I'm an optimist, believe it or not, after having the show.

21:28 - 21:30
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
So I kinda like to end the show with that.

21:30 - 21:41
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Can you give us some reasons to be optimistic, some possible solutions, some things we probably need to be working towards if we're looking to solve this as a problem?

21:41 - 21:42
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Is that possible?

21:42 - 21:44
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Are we, are we all screwed?

21:44 - 21:45
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I'll just leave it with that.

21:46 - 21:47
jeff
Well, that's a good question, you know.

21:47 - 21:57
jeff
And, you know, one of the things I'm learning as I'm talking to more and more people as this book gets rolled out, is, you know, it always comes down to this sort of binary question.

21:57 - 21:59
jeff
And it's like, are we screwed or are we not know?

21:59 - 22:08
jeff
And in my view is, I've been writing about climate change and energy for 20 years and you know, a lot of people think, you know, why aren't you like an alcoholic living in your basement?

22:08 - 22:12
jeff
And like, you know, afraid to come out of the world because it's also depressing.

22:12 - 22:13
jeff
I don't find it depressing At all.

22:13 - 22:15
jeff
I find it incredibly inspiring.

22:15 - 22:31
jeff
You know, The reason that I write about this is because every time I go out to report a book and, or, or a magazine article, I make amazing people who are doing amazing things, innovative things, creative things, passionately connected.

22:31 - 22:42
jeff
I'm not talking about tree Hugger, Environmentalists', I'm talking about, like, saw the guys who were building the solar panels out in Texas, the guys who were building the batteries, You know, the Tesla, I'm not a huge fan of ...

22:42 - 22:43
jeff
Recently, but.

22:44 - 22:47
jeff
But, you know, that is an amazing story.

22:47 - 22:58
jeff
I mean, I really believe, you know, this climate crisis and these extreme heat waves and all this energy transition, can be used to build a better world.

22:58 - 23:02
jeff
I think that, you know, the way that we have our world built is not perfect.

23:02 - 23:08
jeff
You know, there's a, We have done a lot of dumb stuff, built things in a lot of dumb ways.

23:08 - 23:09
jeff
We can do better.

23:09 - 23:25
jeff
We can build better cars, have more reliable power, have cleaner air, Know, the problem is that we're deep into this and, you know, there's going to be suffering, and there's going to be loss, and there's going to be death, and we have to grasp the scale of what we confront.

23:25 - 23:29
jeff
This is not a broken ankle, that we can just fix with a couple of days and a split.

23:29 - 23:34
jeff
We need to think differently about our lives and we need to do it soon, and we can do it better.

23:35 - 23:37
jeff
And, you know, Texas is a great example.

23:37 - 23:45
jeff
Texas is like a leader in clean energy and a leader in this kind of transformation, but for political and cultural reasons.

23:45 - 23:47
jeff
It doesn't get talked about enough.

23:47 - 23:56
jeff
But if you look at it from like, moneymaking, economic point of view, Texas is like no booming into the future.

23:56 - 24:03
jeff
But it's also one of the places in the, in the country that is at most risk because of climate change.

24:03 - 24:07
jeff
Know, you have the Gulf Coast with sea level rise floods.

24:07 - 24:13
jeff
Increasingly strong storms know, the worst there's $30 billion being spent on this ...

24:13 - 24:16
jeff
To protect ustad, right, that they're building.

24:17 - 24:20
jeff
They're beginning going to be building very soon.

24:20 - 24:28
jeff
Because of the risks of storm surge, you know, Austin is constantly, there's a huge issue with water, you know, in Austin and other Texas cities, right?

24:30 - 24:32
jeff
And that's directly related to climate change.

24:32 - 24:36
jeff
I went to the Rio Grande Valley to, you know, talked to a bunch of farmers and everything.

24:36 - 24:40
jeff
And where the Rio Grande Valley meets the Gulf, it's basically nothing.

24:40 - 24:40
jeff
There's.

24:40 - 24:47
jeff
There is no mouth of the Rio Grande anymore for all intents and purposes because all the water has been sucked away, agriculture and development.

24:47 - 24:53
jeff
And then we have these extreme heat waves that Texas is very vulnerable to.

24:53 - 24:57
jeff
So, Texas is like in the bulls eye, right?

24:57 - 25:08
jeff
In a good way and in a more, like we better get this figured out because we're gonna suffer the impacts of it more than any other state in the, in the nation, I would say.

25:08 - 25:23
jeff
But we also have the money, the brains, the skills, the energy background, that can, that can, you lead the transformation, and with tremendous economic upside.

25:23 - 25:28
jeff
There's a lot of money to be made in this transformation, you know.

25:28 - 25:31
jeff
Some of the oil companies that are really starting to get that, also.

25:32 - 25:42
jeff
So I So I feel very optimistic, I, But but I also feel like, you know, it's, it's really important for me to try to shatter the binary of, are we doomed or are we not?

25:43 - 25:44
jeff
We're in big trouble.

25:45 - 25:46
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
We have a.

25:46 - 25:48
jeff
Lot to do, and there's going to be a lot of changes in our world.

25:48 - 25:52
jeff
But the sooner we embrace them and get on with it, the better off we're going to be.

25:54 - 25:54
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I love it.

25:54 - 26:02
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I love, what a great place to leave, the book, the heat will kill you first life and death on a scorched planet by Jeff God'll, Jeff.

26:02 - 26:04
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Thank you for sharing with us today.

26:04 - 26:06
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Is there anything?

26:06 - 26:09
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I know that this is available on Amazon, and did it.

26:09 - 26:11
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Did it release last week, or this week?

26:11 - 26:12
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
I knew it just came out today.

26:14 - 26:16
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Today, today is a.

26:18 - 26:18
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Great time.

26:18 - 26:20
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Well, absolutely.

26:20 - 26:21
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Thank you for spending time with us.

26:21 - 26:23
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Anything you'd like to leave with listening?

26:23 - 26:25
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Listeners, we're just a closing thought.

26:25 - 26:36
jeff
Now, just that, you know, the book is, know, I moved to Texas four years ago, and the book, a lot of the book is built around Texas, and it's, I love living here.

26:36 - 26:46
jeff
And I hope a lot of people who live in Texas will have a look at the book, because I think that I kind of think of it as a kind of survival guide to the 21st century.

26:46 - 26:52
jeff
And I think it's, it can save lives by understanding, you know, the impacts of heat.

26:53 - 27:01
jeff
It, you know it in more detail, because there's a lot of ignorance out there about how, including my own, about, about the impacts of heat, so I hope people will have a look at it.

27:03 - 27:04
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Thank you so much.

27:04 - 27:07
Christopher Hensley, RICP®
Have a good rest of the day, and Thank you again.

27:07 - 27:07
jeff
Ok?