KQED Newsroom I Interview with Climate Scientist Jonathan Foley

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - John, nice to have you here. [00:00:01] John: - Thanks for having me here today. [00:00:02] Speaker 1: - What is your reaction to President Trump's move rolling back essentially federal mandates fighting climate change? [00:00:09] John: - Well, they're just downright bizarre because the science is clear that we're causing climate change and that's very bad for the US economy and our interest around the world. But also these measures aren't gonna bring back cold jobs. Those jobs are gone. They've been replaced by automation and machines. So these orders are not gonna benefit the environment, certainly, and they're not gonna be creating any real jobs. So I don't know what they're for. [00:00:30] Speaker 1: - And the president also referred to something as clean coal. Is there such a thing as clean coal? [00:00:34] John: - No, there really isn't. There's never been demonstrated a clean coal technology that can completely remove all the pollution of burning coal. This is just something that the industry makes up as sort of a fantasy to continue to burn coal, but it's never happened. And in fact, the funding to even create that has routinely been cut by federal appropriators at a department of energy. So that's just a fiction. [00:00:54] Speaker 1: - So speaking about this and taking a look closer at California, what impact do you think it will have in this state? [00:01:01] John: - Well, California doesn't burn coal for its electricity sources. So this is gonna have very little effect on our particular situation here. And of course, California has its own regulations about climate change. It's almost as if we're a separate country when it comes to those kinds of policies. [00:01:13] Speaker 1: - Well, we have a law already that requires California to essentially generate half of its electricity from clean sources by 2030. [00:01:22] John: - Well, that's right, and that won't change. So I don't think anything in California specifically is gonna change in terms of this particular legislation. But what's happening is really dangerous nationally. We are still part of the United States and other states which were going in the right direction may slide backward. But what's even more disturbing is proposed budget cuts out of Trump's proposed budget to completely eliminate whole programs around renewable energy. For example, the ARPA-E program of the Department of Energy would be eliminated. [00:01:49] Speaker 1: - Severe cuts to the EPA. [00:01:50] John: - Oh, yeah, and that's in the environmental protection area as well as in energy and even at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which just measures the temperature of the world and weather patterns. So here we are eliminating research and things like solar panels that create jobs, especially in California, eliminating environmental protection staff and eliminating even the people who kind of track our storms and keep us safe from terrible weather events. This is just an unprecedented war on the environment, but also in science itself. [00:02:21] Speaker 1: - And you call it a war on science in your blog, in Scientific American. Can you expand on that? And is this the worst that you've seen it in all your years as a scientist? [00:02:31] John: - Oh, absolutely, this is the worst. Science has always had a funny place in the American political landscape, but generally speaking, it's had bipartisan support. People of any political persuasion knew that the facts at the end of the day mattered, that doing research on healthcare, what's going on in the environment, on new materials, on new engineering systems, was ultimately good for us. [00:02:54] Speaker 1: - And even from a Washington standpoint, it has been bipartisan, right? There have been Republican presidents who were considered to be very good on the environment, even Richard Nixon, for example. [00:03:04] John: - Well, some people would say Nixon was one of the best environmental presidents. The EPA was founded under Richard Nixon. So was the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Laws, we have today, were all founded in the early 70s under President Nixon. And George Bush I, even, was a very good president when it came to basic science and the environment. [00:03:23] Speaker 1: - So then what do you think is the motivation now behind the war on science, as you put it? [00:03:27] John: - Well, I think the motivation is, if you can't win the war on policy and on facts, you attack the science itself. It's very, very clear today that burning coal, doing things in the fossil fuel industry are not in the American interest long-term. They're not good for the environment, they're not good for health, and things like solar and renewables are getting cheaper and creating more jobs. So I think this is basically an industry kind of fighting a losing battle, just trying to win a few more years. And in order to kind of get that message across, they can't win the war on facts, so they're trying to attack the scientists themselves and muzzle them so they can't speak out, eliminating their funding and intimidating them. This is something that's even worse than the proposed funding cuts, is putting a muzzle on federal scientists, telling them you can't use the words climate change if you work for the Department of Energy. [00:04:17] Speaker 1: - We've seen climate scientists harassed in the past. For example, one of the most famous cases happened about seven years ago, Michael Mann, the Penn State University researcher, he received a white envelope containing, an envelope containing white powder. It turned out to not be anthrax, but rather cornstarch. But still, it created quite a scare. Are you worried at all that we will now see a return to those days where we see lots of threats and harassment directed as scientists? [00:04:42] John: - It happens every day, actually. And yeah, I think it's gonna get worse. And it seems to have gotten worse in the last few years, but especially in the last few months. This is dangerous. I mean, just think about it. Scientists are like regular folks, just like you and me. They get up in the morning. They take their kids to school. They worry about paying their mortgage. And many of them are working for us. They're public servants. They're trying to keep us safe. They're trying to advance our technologies and make medical breakthroughs and so on. And yet at the end of the day, some of them are now being told by their president and members of Congress that they're liars and cheats and frauds. And on top of that, many of them get death threats or rape threats in social media on a daily basis. [00:05:23] Speaker 1: - Have you yourself gotten threats? [00:05:24] John: - Yeah, yeah. Almost everybody I know. Not lately, not very often. I run a museum now, but I'll probably get some after today, who knows. But yeah, that happens all the time. But Michael Mann, for example, was testifying in the House Science Committee the other day. He got a whole bunch of hate mail on social media. Almost every scientist I know who works in these issues has to put up with that. And, you know, that's crazy. They're just regular folks who are trying to work for all Americans. They don't deserve that kind of treatment. No one does. [00:05:50] Speaker 1: - How does the war on science, as you put it, affect people's everyday lives? [00:05:55] John: - Well, it's gonna affect everything. It's gonna affect our health. It's gonna affect our safety. It's gonna affect the kinds of jobs we'll have in this country and how competitive we are abroad. And make no mistake about this, the kind of funding and positions being cut and the muzzling of scientists in federal agencies, people are going to die because of this. We're gonna have people dying from water pollution. We're gonna see more storms without good tracking. We're gonna see environmental toxins. We're gonna see things that are very, very dangerous that really should be the job of the government to protect us from and no longer will be the case. This is dangerous and it affects every American. [00:06:30] Speaker 1: - You're now in a position and many other scientists where they feel like they need to take a stronger, more vocal stand. They're planning to take part in next month's, in April's March for Science. And you're encouraging other scientists as well to become more political. Not everyone agrees with that stand though. There are a fair number of scientists who believe that they should stick to science and not politicize any of this. What is your response to them? [00:06:54] John: - Well, they're just wrong. I mean, politics with a lowercase p, if you will, is just, if you go back to the Greek word, politics means the affairs of the city. It just means how do we govern ourselves? How do we talk about things? How do we solve our problems? So science has to be part of political discourse. It has to be part of what we talk about on a daily basis. Just how do we solve our problems together since so many of these issues touch on science and technology. Now politics with a capital P, if you will, like running elections and partisan politics, that science should have no connection to at all. I agree with that, but we should be connected to everyday conversations, whether they're in our town halls, our halls of Congress, or in courts. And science must be part of that because science is so central to so many of those issues. And if scientists aren't in the room, who is? You know, we're the only profession in the world that seems reluctant to even talk to our fellow citizens about the things we know about. And that's just crazy. [00:07:51] Speaker 1: - And how do you plan to win over people's hearts and minds? [00:07:54] John: - I think scientists need to get out of their ivory towers, first of all, and just become, you know, really part of the community because we are. We're going grocery shopping and taking our kids to soccer like everybody else. But for some reason, scientists somehow keep themselves a little bit separate from the rest of the world, and we shouldn't do that. So I'd encourage folks to get out and really talk about what we know and who we are. [00:08:14] Speaker 1: - All right. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences. Thank you for being here. [00:08:19] John: - Thanks for having me.