 Aloha from 21 degrees north and 2,550 miles west of Los Angeles. I am Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland. Three days ago I had the honor of attending a gathering of educators, legislators, researchers, NGOs, activists, and the media at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, which is located on Moku'olui, also known as Coconut Island. Ted Bolen was the primary instigator, and Dr. Ruth Gates, who is the primary investigator of research relating to coral reefs and climate change, was our gracious host. Dr. Gates is the director of HIMB. Also in attendance was Anthony Alto, documentary filmmaker and chairman of Sierra Club's Oahu Group. Currently, Anthony is working on a feature-length documentary film on climate change. They are both with us here today, and they are both Brits. Wow! Thank you for joining me on Think Tech. I think this is the first time I've had two UK folks on my show at the same time. Very auspicious. Well, it should have happened sooner, but maybe this time you'll learn how to pronounce aluminium correctly. Okay, what? Aluminium. Okay. Apparently, American scientists say it that way, so they must be right. Thank you both for coming downtown to participate this afternoon on Think Tech. Tuesday's meeting was really a lot of fun. You have arguably the best office in the state at least. You nailed it. It's fantastic to work on Coconut Island. It's an amazing facility that's owned and operated by the University of Hawaii, an organized research unit, where some of the most cutting-edge research in coastal marine biology happens. It's fabulous. Anthony, you have one of the most fun jobs I can imagine. Yeah, I'm here under false pretence. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a researcher, I'm not a politician. I was invited. You are media. Media, yeah. Well, I guess wearing the two hats. The Sierra Club was invited because obviously Sierra Club wants to be, is engaged in fact on this issue. In fact, the Sierra Club of Hawaii provided the first national chair of the first national Sierra Club committee that looked at the issue of Ries de Rene and he was at the meeting. And then the current national Sierra Club marine team is led also by a member of the Oahu Group, the Sierra Club Oahu Group, Doug Fetely. So you had, as far as Sierra Club is concerned, heavy hitters not just at a local level but at a national level. I'm there, I think more because I'm making this film about climate change. Yeah. Well, let's hear a little bit about that. I don't think Ruth has heard about this. Before the scientists? Yeah. All right. You're in charge. So tell us about the film because we all know what she does. Well, so the film, funnily enough, a colleague of Ruth's, Chip Fletcher, who is, as most people all know, and most people who watch this program know is Mr. Sea Level Rise, I think. He's the part guy who has done the most to put it on the map. He came up with a blue line to indicate to people where Sea Level Rise is going to affect different parts of the state. And Chip is desperate. He did a lot to help us with our campaign to get the city charter amended so we could create an office of climate change, sustainability, and resilience. And we met at one of those meetings and he thought, you know, the message still isn't getting out to people just how bad climate change is. Can you make some public service announcements? And I said, sure, it's, you know, it's right up my alley. I went and asked the Hawaii Community Foundation. They gave me a small sea grant to start the process. And then looking at it, you know, most PSAs on TV are 15 seconds. If you're lucky, you get a few 30-second ones. It's a blue moon when you get a full one minute. And so to try to explain the complexity of everything that's happening in Hawaii in PSAs, it was just extremely daunting. And that's when we decided to make it a documentary. And when you think about it, there is no other place in the nation, maybe in the world, that is affected on more levels, multiple levels than Hawaii. There are places where it may be that on one issue there's another place where it's being affected more. There's places where sea level rise, the rise in temperatures is happening faster at the poles than it is closer to the equator. But you look at sea level rise, you look at changes in rainfall patterns which threaten our drinking water, which in turn then threaten drought, which affect the little food that we grow here ourselves, the fact that we're likely to be in the path of more frequent and stronger hurricanes, the fact that we're the extinction species, the species extinction capital of the world, more endangered species in Hawaii than anywhere else in the world. You start adding all of these things up and then you go and talk to ordinary folks. And a lot of them still don't get it. It's happening now. This is not something that's going to happen to their kids or their grandkids. It's happening now. And of course, one core piece of that is the coral reef piece and that's why I was at this meeting because as Ruth can explain, a lot better than me, the coral reefs are the rainforests of the oceans. Yes, I love that phrase. It's really beautiful. Why don't you explain it? I mean, it's a beautiful analogy because really, rainforests, they are the place where you find hundreds of millions of species that occupy the spaces that are created by these complex arrays of trees that assemble in communities. And in the rainforest, you find medicines that treat disease. In the rainforest, they protect other land masses by breaking wind energy coming along to land. There's all kinds of things that rainforests do. The coral reefs do exactly the same things. The corals themselves create structures that are home to, arguably, 25% of all marine species in the ocean at one point or another in their life. That's an astonishing figure for a structure that occupies, arguably, about 1% of the ocean landscape. So they're critically important as homes for others. Many of that are things that we find on our plates and that we eat. Some Pacific islands get 70% of their protein from the coral reef. And that's because of the structure. OK, so right here in Hawaii, if we were taking the temperature of the health of our reefs, where would you put it on a scale? We're not in good shape. And actually, we are not in good shape anywhere in the world. Let's be really blunt about what's happening on coral reefs. People say they're the canary in the coal mine for climate change. That is, canaries were put down when the air quality tanked, the canary died. Well, what's happening right now is the air quality, which is reflecting greenhouse gases and huge emissions of greenhouse gases, is driving warming that is pushing the environment outside of the thermal range of corals. And the downside is that we've lost already 50% of the world's coral reefs to major warming in the ocean and our first devastating. We have a picture of you diving that maybe you can talk about. So 50% worldwide, do you know what it is for Hawaii or have we done in that study? It's very variable over space. And this is a very difficult thing because as scientists, we can't study every place. So we come up with estimates. In some places, the coral reef is doing quite well. In other places, we maybe have lost 80% of our coral reefs. In Waikiki, we've probably lost everything because we've got such a lot of impact, not only from warming, but in Waikiki and in other places where you find a lot of people, those climate change impacts are being basically compounded by things that we do locally that are reflecting our activities on land that diminish the coral reef. And so development, the water quality, in that image, you could see the water quality was very cloudy. Well, in that image, there's a white coral, that's a bleached coral. That means that coral is suffering from higher than normal temperatures that have made it unwell. That white reflects really unhealthy corals. And you know, in the background there, you see the water quality. It's cloudy. That's because there was a rain event. And there was all this suspended material in the water that was from land that was washed down during the rain event onto the reef. And with that rain comes particulate matter, sediments. And with those sediments come pollutants that are trapped by the particles. So it's a perfect storm for the coral reef that lives next to a place where people live. So in that room where we were gathered, there's a picture of us. Shout out to Senator Willis Barrow for taking some pictures. There we were. We were trying to find a language to communicate about this. And one of the interesting discussions that kept coming up was the one about the new bill with regard to the sunscreens. And I was watching Ruth's face. And there was a lot of energy around it. But then when it came down to the science side, it was like, well, do we want to talk about sunscreen really a lot? Or not. It takes a lot of energy to change legislation. Maybe we should put that energy somewhere else. But on the other hand, there are other ways to think about this. So. Who are you asking the question of? Why don't we start out with Ruth, because I just. So I mean, I think that as a scientist, we have to be very objective about the array of stressors that are affecting reefs, things that are really diminishing the reef. And there's no doubt that temperature associated with climate warming is the biggest threat. So the discussion of what comes next? Is it acidification? Is it sediments that are actually being suspended and burrowing? Carl's? Is it sunscreen, chemicals? Is it, you know, I don't know, birth control pills that are being flushed down the toilet? Are they really who I find thing you mentioned? Caffeine? Or caffeine. Is it all? Or just people walking on it. Or people walking on it, which is next? And what's happened with the sunscreen debate is there is some science that supports the fact that the sunscreen chemicals are poisoning early and young coral polyps. And so they're called zombie reefs. The reality is that that is probably nowhere near as big a threat as some of the other things that are on the reef today. But what's happened with the sunscreen debate, which is so excellent, is that people can relate to it. They understand their relationship to sunscreen. And they understand that their choices are affecting the health of the coral. And so now we have traction to not only discuss sunscreen, but also discuss the other stressors that are affecting coral. So in my mind, it's all good. It's all good. Plus, there's another thing that you said the other day at the meeting that struck me immediately, which is that we are coral. We are. A lot of people don't understand that coral is a living, breathing entity and organism. And you were pointing out how genetically we're very deeply connected. And you made the point that if that oxybenzone sunscreen is bad for the coral, then there's a fairly good chance that it's bad for us, too. And so there have got we one of the one of the reasons I'm making the film is that some of this scientific knowledge that we're acquiring still seems a little distant from people's lives. They don't understand how it's impacting them today. So even though, as Ruth explained, oxybenzone may not be the number one stressor. It may not be our number one issue. It's an issue that the public understands. Therefore, it's a relatively easy political victory. And in that sense, in terms of trying to educate the public, engage the public, bring them in, those sorts of little victories can be important to be able to have a headline saying Hawaii becomes the first state in the nation to ban sunscreens that may be damaging to coral reefs, I think is important. It energizes people, gets them engaged. And so this is an area where, as we know, science has not been very good in the past nationwide in making its case, which is why we're able to have this terribly anti-science administration in Washington DC at the moment. And so we have to do a better job of trying to explain to people how the science impacts them immediately. And so I'm prescanning this lady. She's going to help me with the film. Yay. Yes. I'm delighted to be able to do that. This is maybe a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. In other words, if I was concerned about the legislation, well, if it only says the oxybenzene and then you change to another chemical that has a two-letter difference but is essentially as bad but doesn't come under that legislation, then where are we? And all that logistical stuff with creating public policy. So maybe the actual public policy wording itself isn't super important, just the overall intent, because the real benefit is going to be in the change behaviors. Yes. I mean, that's exactly what we're trying to do. Barbara Richmond always makes the statement that we're not managing coral reefs. We're managing people to protect coral reefs. And that is a really profound thing to get on board with. It's people's behaviors that need to change. It's not coral reefs behaviors that we need to change. And so when we're talking about the sunscreen, from the policy perspective, we're better to go with a chemical class, right? Instead of talking about a specific chemical compound, we should go for a class of chemicals. And we should think strategically about what the build is in policy to get rid of all of those chemicals in sunscreens that are not good. But really, this point that I think Anthony makes, that corals are our common ancestors. And we use them as models to understand human health. These chemicals are really not good. And so the best thing we can do for ourselves is to put on a long-sleeve shirt and a hat. Oh, yes. And it's so easy. And it's so cheap. It is. We're going to take a one-minute break and come back and dive right back into that. Thank you. Living in this crazy world, a fusion. Nothing is making sense. The solution. How to make a product. And keeping our community safe. Every day, we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our every day. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when something doesn't seem quite right, that it's time to pay attention. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your every day. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Yeah, it's a blueprint. It is a blueprint now for how to move forward on every level. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. Today I have Anthony Alto and Ruth Gates with me. And we were all together at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at Moku Oloi Coconut Island this past Tuesday. And there we were with there were three legislators. I don't know how many scientists. Sierra Club very well represented. So you are, Anthony, you are now struggling very, very particularly with this. How do you choose what message and how to put, contextualize that message as you're going through this process of making a short PSA about climate change? How do you do that? Don't get me. The PSA is actually, I'm hoping I'm going to grow out of the film. I've been thinking about them. Somehow we've got to come up with a unifying message that works across all of them because we're going to be talking about hurricanes and sea level rise and food and rain and all kinds of disparate things. So we've got to find a unifying message in that. The way that I want to contextualize the piece about the reef and the coral is there's a new film that came out recently called Chasing Coral, which in some ways is very good, although as a filmmaker, a lot of the film was taken up with how difficult it was to make the film, which I thought was interesting because what it was actually what it was saying, the message it was saying is the public at large doesn't feel have an intimate relationship with reefs because it's actually very difficult to bring a coral reef into somebody's living room. It's difficult to film a thing. It's difficult to film the changes it's going through. And so the film showed that quite well. But really, to me, the whole heart of the film was in the last 10 minutes where they were finally able to put up the time lapses of healthy coral and then the same coral after bleaching. And this thing that is just truly astonishingly beautiful becomes ugly. And you can see people watching this footage for the first time, they're wiping tears from their eyes. Somehow or other, I want to get some of that emotion into the film. I want people to understand that we have a very visceral connection. Literally, we eat of the reef. We have a very visceral connection to the reef. I want to try and bring that home. And as for the business about the legislation, it's Gerald Ford could or he couldn't do it. We can chew gum and walk at the same time. We could do a little bill about the Oxybenzone and banning that and get that as the kind of victory that will grab headlines because it's so simple. And we can also do a comprehensive bill to do something about these events that are bringing so much dirt into the coral, off the mainland, off the islands, off the land. There's putting so much stress on the coral. And we're going to do it in language that people are familiar with. It can't be overly scientific, which is a good thing about having another Brit because you may have noticed Brints tend to speak their minds, you know what I mean? Speak their minds. And now I've been trying to work in the aluminium, but I haven't come up with anything. You know what I just like to pick up on one thing that Anthony said, and that is that we can do many things simultaneously. Not only can we, we have to. Because we had a warming event last year that has knocked out 20% of the world's reefs in a single year. In a single year. And the predictions are that those kinds of event will become much more frequent as we move forward as the ocean is warming. So we don't have time to do a sort of, well, we've got one small bill passed. We need to get another bill passed. We have got to do everything in our power right now to advance all agendas simultaneously to protect reefs. It is urgent. And it really picks up on a point that Anthony made right at the beginning, that we are in it now. We're not planning for it, we're in it. And I think you told this story about going grocery shopping one day. This was very interesting. And it really speaks to the communication of issues. I was in the supermarket and somebody came up behind me who I knew and said, Ruth, why are people pouring bleach on the reef? And really it made me step back and go, wow, we've made such a mess of communicating what coral bleaching is. Coral bleaching is a stress response that tells us that the coral is imminently on its way to dying. It isn't because we've poured bleach on it. But for me, it really was a, let's throw down the gauntlet now to communicate this issue much more clearly in many more venues, tuned to many different audiences. Because it's not about communicating at once. For me, it's about communicating at hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways to hundreds of different audiences. And obviously tuning to audience. I want to commend you also on the Gates Lab, the website that you have up now. I think it's GatesLab.com. It's Gates Coral Lab. Gates Coral Lab.com. You are doing a lot of things that are actually sort of superhero-ish. And so you're a great person to have on a show about climate change because it doesn't have to be all downer. Absolutely. I mean, you know, the thing is, something like climate change, it is a challenge that can be solved. We know how to solve it on the planetary scale. We know that we need to reduce greenhouse gases. And we know there are many things that we can do to change our behaviors that will get us moving down that road fast. And we know in our own place how to solve some of the problems that are implicit in our place. That is, the big sediments that are coming because the rainwater is being channeled into race ways of concrete that funnel everything straight onto the reef. We know that there are alternative ways of doing that. And we can discuss that and we can get together. And I think what was so great about the group that got together on Tuesdays, people come with totally different perspectives and skills. And so what we really achieve is planning with many different skill sets that are complementary but not overlapping. And so what you were able to achieve with that planning is something so much bigger than any one set of communities like the scientists alone could do. And so I was thrilled by it. I think Hawaii should be the place where corals are central. The survival of corals is central to the tourist economy. We should make them the centerpiece for extraordinary action by many different stakeholder groups. And I think we're poised to do that. And I'm very excited to see these things moving forward. So if we can get that message that what we do in our backyards, what we do with the streams as far as these rain events cause huge downpours that last for days and then we have the waters, the wastewater that go out and cover everything. So that is really somehow we have to get that image together with the coral message. It's like cleaning up our stormwater system. And it's just a process of what Ruth was talking about, constant engagement on every different level. I mean, it's great that Hawaii is leading the world in research on how to find ways to assist corals to survive these events, to allow, to help encourage the ones that are best able to adapt to higher temperatures. So there's a chance that we can find a way to help them live on. I mean, that's very high level research. It's the kind of thing that Hawaii needs to be boosting the reputation of its universities because we need the university to be a driver of different types of economic jobs because we're not going to be able to rely on tourism in two generations because of sea level rise. I'm sorry, what did you say? Would you repeat that again? On one level, you've got that high level stuff and on the bottom level, we need a campaign to tell people to stop using more pesticides in their backyards because that's the primary source of the pesticides that's ending up in Aniesha waters. It's not the big farmers. It's not the GMO people, you know, as much as you might like to hate them. It's not them. It's us in our backyards. You can do both. You're educating at a global level, going to global conferences and getting Nobel Prizes, I hope, and what have you at one level. On the other level, it's just you and me doing whatever we do in the backyard. And we need to communicate on all of those different levels at the same time. And so one of the things I'm most excited about with my film is that we're going to do smaller segments. We're going to edit smaller segments of the film and write lesson plans to give to schools so that they can take those, so they can do a segment on sea level rise. They'll have whatever they like, five, 10-minute video on it, and then a lesson plan to go along with it so that we can start getting to the next cohort of leaders, the high schoolers of today. We want to get them when they're young and get them working on this, right? So is that tailored toward Hawaii at all? You've shared with me the title, the excellent. It's just, yeah, it's called Aupulpinikia, which means trouble times, which is what we're in. Yeah, and it's based on Hawaii, because the other thing is Hawaii, because we're affected by so many of these different issues simultaneously, even though most people aren't aware of that, gives us the opportunity, and I would argue, the obligation, to become a model to the world. We are a microcosm of the world, and we should become a model to the world of how we can respond on all of these different levels. I couldn't agree with you more. I'm so glad to see that the Malama Honua folks were in the room too, and I sort of see this as, OK, they've shown us how to be the model, and now we get to translate that from navigating a canoe to navigating a planet. Well, navigating an island. I mean, what Malama Honua did is it took Hawaii to the world, it sort of took us out of ourselves. Now what we need to do is avoid inside, and I've often heard the phrase that we know more about outer space than we do about our own oceans, and so that, again, reinforces the need to be doing the kind of research that you're doing. Absolutely. Well, thank you both for coming downtown and braving Friday, Chack, to have, to continue the conversation, and Godspeed to you both. Thank you. It was fun. Thank you. It was great. Thank you.