Podcast: Climate Change: A Growth Industry? with David Wallace-Wells

Transcript

Listen: Bike to work. Go vegan. Stop washing your hair. It's not going to move the needle on climate change. There is, however, some reason for hope. Ian gets real about life after global warming and then sits down with David Wallace-Wells, a man who's come up with a roadmap to deal with climate change.

TRANSCRIPT: Climate Change: A Growth Industry? with David Wallace-Wells

David Wallace-Wells:

It's a strange feature of liberal climate thinking that there is a kind of enthusiasm for the authoritarianism of Xi Jinping, because he faces fewer obstacles than an American president does in making action.

Ian Bremmer:

What a Faustian bargain.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast, an audio version of what you can find on public television where I analyze global topics, sit down with big guests, and make use of small puppets.

Ian Bremmer:

This week I sit down with New York Magazine writer David Wallace-Wells, whose new book explores how climate change will alter the way humans live on earth or not. Spoiler alert, not. Let's get to it.

Speaker 3:

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Ian Bremmer:

David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, good to be with you.

David Wallace-Wells:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

I'm not sure I should say good to be with you. I mean, you say you're an optimist, but this book is a challenging read, right? A lot more urgency and a lot more disturbance about where we are heading than certainly anything mainstream I've seen in the past couple of years. Why are you an optimist?

David Wallace-Wells:

To me, it's a matter of perspective. So if you look at the world today, you look at the window outside the way that life is going on and you define that as your baseline, I think there's no way to be scientifically responsible and optimistic, because the world is certainly going to get hotter, and as it gets hotter, it's going to get more dangerous, it's going to get less healthy, there are going to be damages and suffering beyond what anyone today would consider conscionable.

David Wallace-Wells:

But if you define your baseline as four degrees of warming, which is where we're scheduled to get by the end of the century if we don't change course, then I think there's quite a lot that can be done to avert a lot of those outcomes, a lot of those impacts, and I think we will do that.

David Wallace-Wells:

So, just to give you a sense of where we'd end up if we don't change course at four degrees. It's estimated that we could have $600 trillion in global climate damages, that's twice as much wealth as exists in the world today. We would have hundreds of millions of climate refugees, there'd be parts of the world that could be hit by six climate-driven natural disasters at once. We could have twice as much war, because there's a relationship between temperature and conflict, and all across the board every aspect of life would be impacted almost in all cases negatively.

David Wallace-Wells:

I don't think we'll get all the way there, but I also think that something like two degrees, which the UN calls the threshold of catastrophe and many island nations of the world called genocide-

Ian Bremmer:

It's basically baked in at this point.

David Wallace-Wells:

I think it's about our best case scenario, yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Two degrees you think is possible?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, I mean, there's a matter of technically possible, there's also a matter of what's politically feasible.

Ian Bremmer:

Right.

David Wallace-Wells:

I think if there was a global dictator who could command the world's economies and turn them on a dime, but given the politics that we do have and the economies that we do have, I think that two degrees is just about our best case scenario right now.

Ian Bremmer:

Now when we talk about why we're here right now, how we've gotten to this point where the damage that's going to be done to the planet in the most optimistic scenario is considerably worse than what any normal citizen would think is okay. You also point out very clearly the reason we're here is mostly not what individual human beings are doing. It's not the behavior that you or I or other wealthy people in the world, it's more about industry, it's more about infrastructure. Talk about that.

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, yeah, I think we have a few misconceptions about how we got here. One is that this is a really long story that started in the industrial revolution. This is actually a kind of more important misapprehension for me. Half of all of the emissions that we've put into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels have come in the last 30 years. That's since Al Gore published this first book on warming, it's since the UN established its IPCC, and that means that collectively we've done more damage to the climate knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance.

David Wallace-Wells:

It also means that it is you and I in a collective sense, the world as it has existed over the last 30 years that has brought us from a stable climate to the brink of catastrophe, but it's absolutely true that the contributions of individuals are totally trivial. Some individuals make an outsized impact. Air travel is an especially problematic feature. One round trip ticket in the US is the equivalent about eight months of driving.

Ian Bremmer:

Yet, that's not what is driving. I say this, because so many people that talk about climate change-

David Wallace-Wells:

They want people to focus on-

Ian Bremmer:

Act as if individuals, if we could just reduce our carbon footprint, that's going to be what makes the difference, and that's clearly from your book not what's going to make the difference.

David Wallace-Wells:

The crisis is just way too big to solve with individual choice and action. It's all encompassing, overwhelming.

Ian Bremmer:

But it's mostly industry, right?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, I think I would say just generally policy, which governs industry, agriculture, it governs transportation, it governs diet. There's basically no aspect of modern life that is untouched by climate change, and because the scale is so big, I think it can really only be addressed through policy and politics. But industry is, I think, about 30% or 40% of the global carbon footprint, energy is another 30%, agriculture is also about 30%, 40%.

David Wallace-Wells:

It's not one sector for me, it's that the message that we've been given that we can make a difference by eating less meat or traveling less as individuals. To me, that's a total red herring, because the contribution of any individual, even any mass of individuals is trivial compared to what policy can achieve. So for instance, we've heard a lot recently about beef, the carbon problem with beef. It's true, cattle produce a lot of methane through burps, mostly burps, some farts, but they produce a lot of methane. Methane's a really powerful greenhouse gas.

David Wallace-Wells:

If I were a better environmentalist, I would probably eat a couple less hamburgers every year, but there are also small scale studies that show that you could reduce the methane output of cows by as much as 95% or 99% by just feeding them a little bit of seaweed. So if there was a policy put into place that made all cattle farmers fold in say 5% of their cattle's beef diet would be seaweed, we could eliminate the carbon footprint of beef entirely.

David Wallace-Wells:

That is to me, a much straighter, more profound, more dramatic impact than trying to rally the world's liberals around a vegan diet, especially because trying to rally a lot of people around veganism is going to turn a lot of people off. Because the story is so big, because the threat is so big, I think we need as many people as possible on board, as many people as possible focused on climate change. If we tell them they need to meet an extremely demanding scenario to even count as climate responsible, I think a lot of people are going to turn away from that.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, again, it has less to do with whether you turn people off as just the science, right? I mean, if no matter what individuals do, that's not moving the needle, and that's-

David Wallace-Wells:

I would say more than science, it's math. Another big part of the story that I think many Americans misunderstand is that the US is only 15% of global emissions, and on a per capita basis, we play a bigger role, and historically we played a bigger role, which-

Ian Bremmer:

But today, it's China.

David Wallace-Wells:

China is already about twice as big as the US, and that doesn't even count all of the infrastructure they're building in Africa and Asia as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. If concrete were a country, it would be the world's third biggest emitter, and China is today pouring as much concrete every three years as the US poured in the entire 20th century.

David Wallace-Wells:

So I think to a profound extent, the future climate of the planet will be determined principally by China, secondarily by India and a bit by Sub-Saharan Africa and how those countries develop.

Ian Bremmer:

I hear you're talking about nearly one and a half billion people, India and China, a billion people, Africa, I mean, massively more than the United States and Europe put together, and they're developing, they're going to want to develop. As someone who has now spent all this time getting inside the rolling catastrophe that is and will be climate change, how do you balance that against four billion plus people that aspire to have an improved lifestyle? Indeed, billions of people that have improved their lifestyles, because concrete is a country, because their governments have been able to give them the kind of development and growth that we have achieved in the West?

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah, I think the story over the last 25, 30 years has been really striking that there have been these incredible gains in wellbeing, material wellbeing, many fewer people in poverty, much less infant mortality, much higher educational attainments in the developing world. That's a great story, it's exciting story, but it's largely a story of industrialization, and so it does have this huge carbon cost.

David Wallace-Wells:

Going forward, I think the terms of that trade-off will be a bit different. Already in much of the world, green energy is cheaper than dirty energy. I think in short order, it will be the case everywhere in the world, and that means someone who's living in global poverty in India might have a responsible path of development that is just as enriching and provides just as much prosperity and just a short a trip to global middle classness, as 10 years ago, you would've had to take a fossil fuel driven path to-

Ian Bremmer:

The overwhelming majority of electricity today in China is coming from coal and they've invested in India, right? They've invested in that infrastructure. I mean, the cost that would be born on a much less wealthy government and less wealthy people to make that change is hard to conceive of in today's environment.

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah, although both of those countries have made massive investments in renewables as well.

Ian Bremmer:

Yes, but as you say in your book, it hasn't actually changed the percentage of the renewables that are being used in those countries, it's just basically keeping up with a much larger demand base.

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Right?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, my hope is that going forward, that the thinking in those countries changes as dramatically as we're seeing a change in the UK, in the EU, and in the US over the last few years. That may be a little naive of me, but my hope is that especially Xi Jinping will honor the rhetorical commitments that he's made over the last few years. I think he's seen an opportunity in the era of Donald Trump to play the role of moral leader on climate and has made significant investments in green energy, but yeah, there's still these-

Ian Bremmer:

No, but let me push you on this, because again, you're an important voice in this topic. I mean, you've said that most of the carbon emissions in the world have come in the last 30 years since Al Gore wrote his first defined book on this is going to be a big global problem.

Ian Bremmer:

The Chinese are very well aware of exactly the nature of the problem and the science is not open to question on that, and yet the policies that we see from China today have been a massive increase in real carbon emissions, because their demands, especially the demands of a country that is vastly less wealthy than the United States is first I need political stability, and therefore I need to ensure that my people have growth, economic growth.

Ian Bremmer:

So I mean, as much as I absolutely agree with you that we are seeing a big change in popular awareness about the severity and the immediacy of the problem, it's hard to imagine on the basis of everything that you and I have seen and experienced from Chinese and Indian governance, and again, you say policy is the issue, we need to change policy. They're speaking pretty loudly with their policies, are they not?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, I would say that certainly the Chinese picture on climate is more encouraging than it was in 2015 and 2012, so they have made progress there. There's still a huge long ways to go, but I'm hopeful on that front, in part because the economic conventional wisdom of this sort of basic dilemma has really changed over the last couple of years.

David Wallace-Wells:

Five years ago, 10 years ago, almost every economist you spoke to would say that while the humanitarian cost of climate change might be significant, it didn't really add up in dollars and cents to all that much, and that it would be costly to act on climate, first in the sense of making massive upfront investments. Secondly, I think more importantly, in the sense of foregoing some economic growth. So for instance, we'd have to burn less coal, we'd have to close down coal plants before they were of retirable age.

David Wallace-Wells:

That conventional wisdom has actually really changed over the last couple of years, and now I think it's fair to say that most economists believe that faster action on climate would have payoffs even in the relatively short-term.

Ian Bremmer:

Who are, in your view-

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

If we actually take real action quickly, who gets hurt?

David Wallace-Wells:

I think that there are obviously business sectors, the existing energy companies that may suffer. There are maybe some short-term costs in terms of the infrastructure projects that are expensive and impose a burden on public budgets, but I have a perspective that this all in a relatively short order will pay off in ways that the public will really appreciate.

Ian Bremmer:

But do you see those interests ... I mean, when you talk about, for example, the anti-smoking lobby, you had strong interest spending a lot of money doing everything possible to prevent that agenda from being moved publicly. Do you see that happening?

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah, I mean, the fossil fuel business has been, I think, absolutely atrocious in this way, especially along the cigarette model with their disinformation and denial. A lot of really great early climate science from the '60s and '70s was actually funded by these companies, but then suppressed, and that's been really bad. But when I look globally, denial is not really an issue elsewhere in the world like it is in the US.

David Wallace-Wells:

There's a little bit of it in the UK, but basically nowhere else, and nowhere else in the world are people behaving any better when it comes to carbon as in the US. So that makes me think that these forces may be overrated as determinants of our complacency, and that in general the complacency of our voters may be the bigger problem, that we don't want to prioritize action for a variety of reasons having to do with misunderstanding or underestimating the threat, perhaps overestimating the cost that it would impose on our lives, and a number of others, including just the psychological biases and reflexes we have that make us not want to consider really scary outcomes so we don't take them seriously.

David Wallace-Wells:

I think those are bigger factors than say the oil business and the way that it has conquered the Republican Party in the US. As atrocious as I find the oil business and their behavior on this, and as regrettable as I find their purchase on the Republican Party to be, I still don't think those are ultimately determinative, because again, when you look around the world, those are not forces present in other countries' politics, and yet nobody's doing better than the US is. I think there's something kind of deeper than the force of entrenched interests and I think even deeper than the force of capitalism.

Ian Bremmer:

So as we look over not the next 50 years, but over the next five years, what's the thing that is feasible, that if it happens, you say to yourself, you know what? I think my more optimistic trajectory, we might just meet it?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, I think the most important and easiest thing that can be done is to end subsidies for fossil fuels. There are estimates for how much of that is being going on globally that run as high as $5 trillion a year. Just to give you a sense of how much that is, there is technology now that you can use to suck carbon out of the atmosphere at a cost of $100 a ton.

David Wallace-Wells:

It has not been tested at scale, there are many, many complications about implementing it, but you could neutralize the entire carbon footprint of the global economy, which means we would continue acting exactly as we have been without adding any more carbon to the atmosphere at a cost of $3 trillion a year. So by some estimate, we're subsidizing fossil fuels more than what would be needed to completely neutralize the entire carbon footprint of this economy.

Ian Bremmer:

When you say subsidizing fossil fuels, you mean for example what?

David Wallace-Wells:

Well, I mean, there are all around the world many different forms. I mean, it's complicated to get-

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, avoiding, for example, treating them as public goods in terms of the damage they do to climate. I mean, with carbon taxes, these sorts of things.

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah. Yeah, but I think you can also spend that money on research and development. There's, I think, a lot of reasonable thinking that in fact this is the most effective path that American policy could take, because anything that is developed in the US can be used elsewhere around the world.

David Wallace-Wells:

This is one of the reasons that solar and wind power have gotten so much cheaper around the world is because of investments that were made in the stimulus package under Obama that really kickstarted a lot of development out of that area.I think there's much more R&D to do to continue making those technologies cheaper, but also to start developing what are called negative emissions technology, which are some of these approaches that can take carbon out of the atmosphere.

Ian Bremmer:

Take carbon out of the atmosphere.

David Wallace-Wells:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth. His next book, We're All Going to Die. Very good to be with you. [inaudible 00:17:57]

David Wallace-Wells:

Thanks so much.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here next week same place, same time, unless you're watching on social media, in which case it's wherever you happen to be. Don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out at gzermedia.com.

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