How to Have a Rational Conversation About Climate Change at Thanksgiving — Juan Enriquez — TEDxMIT

[00:00:00] Speaker ?: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven [00:00:11] Speaker 1: Climate change is all about science, and we've been talking all about science because it is TEDxMIT, and we all know that the laws of thermodynamics apply to everybody, and that you take heat and you do work and you get emissions and all this stuff, and this is an option. What else do we know? Well, we know that there's almost no scientific ambiguity on this subject. So the bottom line on this stuff is 97% of scientists say climate change is real, and it's leading to abrupt, unpredictable, potentially irreversible effects. And as you're looking at this, every day you don't act increases the costs and rises the risks. So we know that, right? And so as you watch these glaciers melt - these are pictures I took over at Greenland - the question is, if the science is so darned clear, why aren't we acting? If the consequences are so serious, why aren't we doing something about it? And I'm here to tell you, it's all due to Thanksgiving. So when you think about Thanksgiving, you think about these complicated conversations at the table, and there's somebody there who's a Democrat, and there's somebody there who's a Republican, somebody's from the North, and somebody's from the South, and somebody thinks climate change is real, and somebody thinks it's not, and you don't want to fight. So how do you have a rational conversation around the Thanksgiving table on a complicated, technical, scientific subject that people disagree on? Well, let me give you a little bit of advice. So as you're looking about this, just as a public service, let me give you seven different ways of beginning to address the topic of climate change over Thanksgiving, or over Hanukkah, or over Kwanzaa, or over Christmas, or whenever you have your family together, or other such creatures. So, instead of saying, "What do you think about climate change?" Start with a sentence like, "Hey, the weather has never been weirder." And that will get everybody at the table talking. Right? And it'll open up a conversation in a non-confrontational way. And once you have their attention on that, then you can say, "Oh, yeah, and by the way, a whole bunch of people are dying from this stuff because these heat waves are actually killing people." And if you happen to be in the Midwest, you can say, "You know, what we saw last year doesn't quite look as we saw it this year. There seems to be just a touch of flooding here." And you don't have to have complicated equations about water flow or dumping from this, that, or the other. You start with a very simple sentence, which everybody's going to agree with. Proposition number two. The ever popular potty training conversation at Thanksgiving. So, you train your kids to go to the potty and you train them to clean it up. And eventually, you reach a point where you say, "You dump it, you clean it. I'm not going to do your diapers anymore." Right? Fair enough. So, why is this applicable to climate change? Because you wouldn't be happy if somebody dumped this stuff outside your house, which is what happened to this photographer. And you'd be less happy if you went and cleaned it up with the neighborhood and then somebody dumped it again. So, if you're not happy if somebody comes and dumps that in your house, why are you happy that people are putting 37 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere? Because that stuff's dumping on your yard, and that stuff's dumping on your parents' yard, and that stuff's dumping into your kids' lungs. And why is that tolerable when you would go crazy if somebody came and just dumped their garbage can into your garden? As long as there's no price to carbon, there's no cost to dumping. It just increases stuff. So, does it make any sense whatsoever to not price carbon dumping? Topic number three, especially the adults love to tell the youth, you've got to budget carefully, right? If you don't budget carefully, it's really easy to spend too much, and then your credit goes nuts, and you end up with these big debts and everything else. Very popular conversation around Thanksgiving and other holidays. What happens if you don't price and you don't budget carbon? Just like your credit cards, you overspend. And that's exactly what's happening. So, as you're looking at these structures, having no budget, having no price, well, you end up obese. It just happens to be on carbon. Point number four, fair is fair. Okay. I'd love to have a beachfront home. How would it work out if I had to pay for somebody else's beachfront home and could never use them? Well, guess what? All of you are doing exactly that. Because these homes are exposed to more increasing climate change problems, and because more of them are being wiped out by fires, or wind storms, or floods, or waves, or hurricanes, the private insurance industry has basically said, "Hey, I'm washing my hands. I'm not playing this game. It makes no sense for me to take the risk on rebuilding that house." So, guess what? The government stepped into this, and they're saying, "Because you can't get private insurance, because the risk is too high, I'll insure you through FEMA." And you know what happens when they insure it through FEMA? They're using your tax dollars to pay for that beach house, which you will never use. Can you explain to me how that's fair? You do get instances where it's not somebody's fancy beach house that gets taken out. It's a whole section of a city. And here, you've got to be more careful, right? Because these folks need help, and they deserve help. But there's a follow-up question, which is a really important question, which is how many times? Because in Canada, when something like this happens, they give you the value of the house, and they tell you, "Go rebuild your house anywhere you want." But if you rebuild it in the same place, and you happen to have another 100-year flood in five years, we're not paying for the second time. So measure the risk very carefully of where you're going to take and rebuild your house. Your choice. But if you do it in the same place, and it floods, we're not on the hook anymore as taxpayers. This is relevant to small states like Florida. Because when you look at Florida, there happens to be a little bit of water on there. And the average rise in Florida is six feet. So when you look at infrastructure like that of the Florida Keys, you're maintaining a whole lot of really expensive infrastructure in terms of sewage, power, roads, in an area that's increasingly underwater and having to be rebuilt time and again. There are towns in Florida that flooded 82 days so far in 2019. Not because of hurricanes, but because of tides. This is starting to look like Venice. It is indefensible because this is a porous soil. So you build a wall. It comes up from underneath. Are you going to go out and pay 400 billion dollars to rebuild this real estate time and again so somebody can have an oceanfront home? Because it's your tax dollars that are going to be at work here. Point number five. The ever-popular pottery barn rule. There's a big store of pottery barn. They used to place these signs all over the place. You break it, you buy it. Or you break it, you own it. It turns out that a lot of these emitters that we're talking about don't just have consequences on climate and on CO2. They have huge consequences on health. Are we going to charge the medical costs in the same way as we started charging tobacco companies' medical costs? In the same way as vaping companies are now being held accountable. At what point do we, taxpayers, quit paying for this stuff and place the costs where we should place them? Point number six for Thanksgiving conversation. The ever-popular and cheerful, we're all going to die. Which, by the way, is a great festival in Australia where you discuss death on the beach. Highly recommend it. So as you're thinking about death, yeah, we're all going to die, but how early and how? And the stuff we're talking about means that you can potentially die on a fire that comes down the hills of California and drives you into the sea. Or it happens in Greece and killed a lot of people. Or it happens with mudslides. Or it happens with tornadoes. Or it happens with hurricanes. So we are changing this equation of how we're going to die by our actions. And it is a non-trivial change in terms of the amount of people that are being hurt by this. This is not a Democrat issue. This is not just the guy who created the National Park Service, Roosevelt, for his grandchildren. I think most decent people really want to leave this place better than they found it. And there are people on all sides of the political spectrum, including this guy, who, in the midst of the Civil War, took the time to protect Yosemite and the Sequoia Groves and a whole series of other things, because this stuff was so important to him. And we have to support those political leaders on all sides of the spectrum who are willing to do something serious about climate change. Number seven, environmentalists have a lock on what we should do. Some of them are very sensible. But others think, let's just move into a drafty cabin in the woods, unheated, and wear scratchy socks and underwear. That is not a good proposition for a Thanksgiving table. Because most people at Thanksgiving would say, "Nope, I want to sit and watch the football game or Netflix after Thanksgiving." So, yes, there is an element of conservation. We do have to conserve. But point number seven is Matt Damon actually turned out to be right. We really are going to have to apply a lot of science to this. And that's why it's so important to support the folks who are not just studying the problem, but the folks who are actually trying to do something about this problem. The folks who are trying to get the price of alternatives down quickly to the point where they cross coal, where they cross oil, where they cross gas, and where it becomes economically feasible to substitute this stuff on a large scale through distributed grids, through a whole series of other things. This is where we have to focus. And as you're thinking about this, it's really important for a whole series of people, including folks in Congress, to understand that the laws they pass are human laws. And human laws are different across societies, across political parties, across congressional periods. People can choose to obey or disobey those laws. Those laws can change. But the laws we're talking about are physical laws. Everything and everywhere obeys. Belief has absolutely nothing to do with it. And these laws are immutable. And that is a completely different legal system. The sea level is already up 6.5 inches since this Thanksgiving in 1940. And that's just the appetizer. As sea levels go up, this is what a 5-meter elevation or 10-meter elevation in sea level does to Florida. Normal days. The second law of thermodynamics is nothing to screw around with. Once you break the equilibrium and you begin to cause entropy, it becomes irreversible. This is not a law you can repeal. It's on the other part of legal structures. Entropy turns out to be really bad juju. So as you're thinking about inducing entropy. To re-quote again Professor Broker, who was quoted in the beginning of this, really, really bad idea to poke the climate beast. If you put the system into disequilibrium, it doesn't go back for a long time. What do we know? We know that climate changes - climate changes often. It has changed. All the geological evidence is there. It is changing. All the science evidence is there. It's really time we get better at talking to one another. We quit polarizing and politicizing this issue. We start taking it seriously on all parts of the political spectrum and find a common ground around these tables, regardless of what side of the political circus you're on, or the ideological circus or age. So, in closing, help me find and spread more common talking points. I gave you seven. Let's come up with more. Let's come up with ways of discussing climate change in ways that don't immediately polarize the conversation as we start doing this. And let's start building an overwhelming consensus that we have to act. Well, Daniella Roos and I have been talking about this, and we'd love to issue a small challenge. How about we put out a billion-dollar prize for lowering the temperature of the planet by one degree centigrade? Because if you go out there and you say, well, I made solar panels more efficient, or I did this, or I did that, you know what? It's not bending the curve. And the bottom line on this is, either we lower this temperature, or we're toast. And it's time to get to work on some real results and building a consensus around those results. Thank you very much. [00:14:34] Speaker ?: Thank you.