 So Josh, I thought I'd pitch a slow one over the center of the plate for you to start with. So in terms of energy use, is COVID-19 giving us a bit of a respite from CO2 emissions and even climate warming? It's actually not as slow of a pitch as you might imagine. It's a little bit complicated. I think what we're seeing pretty clearly is that those types of energy use that are associated with being at home are increasing. So home heating bills and in the summertime, home air conditioning, those things, those types of energy use are probably rising. But we're really seeing a lot of as a dip in emissions from transportation, particularly airline transportation, but also other forms of transportation seem to have at least in March and April taken a dip. And that gets complicated because a lot of people, particularly in the developed world are no longer taking public transportation as regularly for sort of mid-length commutes. So I guess the answer is yes and no. There's less happening in the economy to produce greenhouse gases, but there are certain activities that have ramped up, and particularly those associated with being at home. Yeah. So what are the consequences of this, I guess, change in energy mix? Do we know? Well, so I guess we don't know per se. There are people who are working on modeling this. I think we saw in the spring a pretty significant overall dip in greenhouse gases in the short term. I don't think that is necessarily going to persist or has persisted. There's a lot of momentum and renewable energy as the price of oil is down, which I think is taking some people by surprise because conventional wisdom would say when oil is down, you build oil infrastructure, take advantage of the low prices. And so a number of regulators and renewable energy companies have realized is when oil companies are down, you kick them. And kicking them when they're down means they can't fight back on regulation as readily, and you have opportunities in the market to roll out new renewable technologies. Currently, renewables are going absolutely gangbusters. If you look at, for example, some of the big solar ETFs, those exchange-traded funds that are tracking the commodity prices of things like solar panels, they've doubled since, some of them have doubled since August. So I think the real question is this disruption in the market has created some opportunities for changes in the fuel mix, and it's as much a market response as it is a response to the pandemic itself. And I'm wondering about the fate of mass transit, though. I mean mass transit ridership is down dramatically. I'm wondering whether some of them are going to survive this. It's a good question and I don't know the answer to that question with any kind of certainty. I think a number of mass transit systems are supported by, for example, municipal bonds and other type of county bonds. And they're not necessarily supported in the short term just by ridership fares. Those are supposed to keep them afloat in the long term, but it's possible that some cities and counties and even states can help public transportation systems, whether that's storm. I don't think that's going to happen everywhere. I think there's some serious issues and I think ultimately those places that have invested in more flexible public transportation bus systems, for example, are going to have a better time responding to this than those that have built fixed infrastructure like light rail that they can't change. I see. I think you're going to see, again, there may be a shake up in the way people are thinking about public transportation in the same way there's a shake up that people are thinking about the fuel mix. One of the things I wanted to explore in this is, is the way in which climate change and in COVID-19 are banging against each other or exacerbating each other. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, there's a couple of different ways I think that these two things interact and the biggest one for me is that climate change has continued to put stress on all kinds of social systems and exacerbate inequalities within societies, both in the developed world and in the developing world. That overlaps with the way that COVID also affects marginalized and minoritized communities disproportionately to the larger population. So not only do you have challenges from climate change like increased, take it very simple, like increased air conditioning bills in the summer in places where that's tough to afford. You also have the same people are being affected by greater healthcare costs and greater risks to COVID at the same time. So what's happening I think is that the same structures that make climate change disproportionately bad for the poor and marginalized make COVID disproportionately bad for the poor and the marginalized. So I think that's the biggest kind of overlap here is that both of these things magnify inequality and then magnify it. What are the kinds of in quite you mentioned air conditioning, but I'm just wanting, there's probably a whole host of other things that I'm unaware of. Some of them are very kind of local and spatial. So for example, there's pretty good research in places like for example Portland where where I teach that shows there is less less foliage available to mitigate what's called the heat island effect, which is a sort of second tier part of climate change where when it gets hotter. As fuck it's hotter and buildings get hotter and cities get hotter. That's mitigated in part by planting trees and other plants. You can see pretty clearly that there is less green space in minority neighborhoods and less green space in poor neighborhoods in Portland and there are in wealthy white neighborhoods. There are just specific tangible examples where climate change is exacerbating an issue that already exists, because those, those same green spaces are associated with property values in those cities, the cities like Portland. I mean, there's really good work being done actually a Portland State University about the way that these contemporary climate inequalities arise from historical redlining policies where minority communities are denied. And but any COVID makes this worse. It just affects the same people so it's not so much that it makes property values bad or exactly basically green space problem. It is that the same people who are living in the neighborhoods who whose property values are not increasing and who have a number of other sort of structural impediments also get hit harder by cover and have fewer resources to deal with it. I guess we were you're sort of already answering the question but I mean, are these economic, are these sort of democratic disasters affecting all equally and I guess not. The answers no I mean I think that initially everybody thought. There's a lot of people who are really hopeful, not that this pandemic was going to be what it is but but that because the pandemic looked so democratic that maybe this would reveal to people. The gross inequalities in the health care system and I think pretty quickly that that was given the line people they under realized that getting good care, good testing, and now that the next thing is going to be the vaccines is it is indicated by factors like race and class. And in this country also ethnicity. Maybe it's not a completely different subject but the polarization of science as as as COVID made that worse. And I think that this is one of the overlaps of COVID and climate change that I'm not seeing a ton of in the press and that that I really think is important. So, in some ways, climate change is like the original, not the original there've been scientific controversies before this and they've been polarized but climate change polarized science, like almost no other issue in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And even as early as the late 1980s you had to essentially corporate interests Exxon and others. And there's, I think, not many rescues in particular as documented the ways that they worked to so doubt in the public's eye of the findings of science that's been enormously successful. And by the early 2000s I think the sort of climate denier or climate skeptic movement is on the forefront of polarizing science but also polarizing our political response to different types of information. All of that was exacerbated I think by the rise of social media where people can live in their, their echo chambers but the stage was really set by the time you got to 2019. There were vastly different interpretations of scientific information and political politically motivated challenges to, to expert science and there's been many issues that have fallen in this kind of category of behavior but climate change and climate denial. This is the way that's run down party lines in the past 10 to 12 years, really laid a framework for the response to COVID that ended up I think being really destructive. So what's the effect of this polarization. I don't know whether polarization is a better word or politicization but whatever you choose. I mean, so I guess they're not necessarily the same thing I would shy away from politicization because I don't think there is a science that's a political I think that's always. There's always some, there's always some reason that scientists are studying the things they do. They understand there's going to be these impacts I don't think scientists are naive actors in society. They think they're not themselves from politics in their scientific conclusions but I think they're also smart enough to see that there are always political implications the polarization of science is a different story, wherein a political leaning can now in the United States allow or enable you to discount a whole line of research and a whole line of evidence in a way that I don't think has been the case. Prior to the 21st century in the United States and that that polarization. I mean, where that goes. I don't know. But where we are now it's a sort of choose your own adventure of scientific information where, you know, if the implications of scientific research don't support your political position. You just get to discount that scientific research and that seems really destructive to me. Is this about kind of anti intellectualism or elitism. How does that play. So it is and that's that's a longer story I think I think there's baked into the polarization science a distrust of expertise and honestly I think that has played into this in some really, some really kind of nefarious ways in so far as there's a certain amount of elitism, and there's also been a failure I think, not just on the left but in the scientific community more broadly to to acknowledge some of the past mistakes or missteps, even as the scientific community continues to ask the public to trust them. I think about, for example, you know, rolling out the vaccine currently I don't think there's for the record I don't think there's evidence that this vaccine or vaccines in general are harmful. But I think there's a presumption in the way that the way that vaccine producers and also scientists who are promoting the vaccine present. In western medicine that Western medicine has never screwed up in the past and in fact, there's a lot of I mean, you can go back to the 50s and fluid amide, which, which you might remember and it's in the village old song. But but there's been many more instances where for example the FDA approved something and then asked to retract or these are not infallible institutions and I think there's a sense in which the presentation of infallibility. It really is can be pretty damaging, even though I don't think the institutions themselves are the ones to blame for predominantly for the kind of anti-vax movement that's growing up. You know, one of the key points I got from your book behind the curve was that science has done kind of a poor job of communicating what they found and the urgency of what they found to the general public. Is that fair. Yes and no I mean I think, you know, my book tracks climate change advocacy from the 1950s to really the early 2000s. And in that period, in the main I would say that that is true. I think there are two things I would like to two points I'd like to make. First, simply the dynamics of this has changed the scientific community has become emboldened to make stronger claims about climate change as the evidence has gotten stronger but also as they've recognized the extent to which their voice is a political voice. So I think the last five to 10 years scientists have been much more, much more aggressive about that, which I think is important. The second thing is that within the period that I'm talking about even up to the present. There's a problem where scientists are held to the standard of political neutrality and, and they're, they're supposed to be a certain way. And that circumscribes just how they can talk about some of these political issues or how they've been willing to talk about these political issues. So, in short, advocacy for for action on climate change has in the past. And there's a problem of advocacy for more and better science with the presumed the presumption that more and better science if you show it to the policymakers is going to create change. And that's where they've they've kind of fallen out on the job is that for years and years this was the model and it, it hadn't worked for a long time. That dynamic has also changed a fair amount in recent years and you can see it in the way that scientists are working with members of Congress and putting some of that scientific neutrality behind them to try to frame their science in terms of real tangible policies and bills. So if you look at the Green New Deal, for example, there's this whole whole just raft of scientists who are on board and helping write that legislation. That's the kind of thing that you didn't necessarily see even 20 years ago. Yeah, I'm wondering whether basically scientific training makes some scientists sort of hesitant to go beyond the precise data they've collected. I mean, when I did the research for the book this I kept running into this a minute have you get a reviewer for example like when in 1970s is this guy named Steve Schneider was pretty controversial as a scientist he published a book called the Genesis strategy warning about climate change and the the reviewers the peer reviewers of this book had major concerns that Schneider was overstepping his training and his and his bounds as a scientist. There's a deep discomfort within the scientific community about exactly this overstepping the boundaries of your training and sacrificing that authority of political neutrality. And some of that still exists I mean you see that you see some hesitation from for example graduate students to engage with these sorts of things when their careers are still still young and possibly in jeopardy. So you're right this is part of the kind of structural problem of having scientists on the frontline of climate change politics but they have to be because they understand it the best. And how did this change over the years, because it seems like what you're saying is it has changed a bit. At a certain point, enough scientists realized that they were going to get pilloried either way. And that, you know, at the end of the day, even their scientific publications like so they essentially unintentionally created a blueprint for corporations and other interests who don't want there to be regulation surrounding climate change. And the blueprint is okay well we don't have to fight a political battle what we can do is just go question all the information in the science we can go after the scientists where they live because they're not coming into our realm. And so the scientists like, for example Michael man at the University of England they would publish their work and then they'd have, you know, scientists from, you know, Exxon or wherever. Coming in and just publicly lambasting them. And at that point it's like well why am I trying to pretend neutrality in the first place, why don't I, you know, fight back and I think that's the last 10 years you've seen a lot of scientists who are much more from the beginning I mean from their early graduate career much more engaged with the political discourse as a motivator for what they're doing. Well this sort of ties back into at least in my mind, kind of the anti-elitism we were talking about earlier and I wanted, you know, as a historian, how did, where did America get this what to me seems like a fairly fervent strain of anti-intellectualism. Where does this come from? It's not just a fervent strain, it's a really long standing strain of American anti-intellectualism. And in part it almost come, not almost, it part it comes out of the kind of frontier mentality that in many ways defined America's perception of itself pretty early in the nation's history. But it gets flamed by, inflamed by populism at various points, but also by some of the mistakes of elites themselves. I mean I think of for example the progressive movement, which is an early 20th century movement built significantly around rationalization and bureaucratization of services in the United States. I mean in many ways there's a lot of great things that the progressives did. These are the early progressives. At the same time, some of their work is like tied up in eugenics and some really unsavory things and some assumptions about, I guess the hubris of knowing how the world works and deciding for other people that that's what you know. I think there's ingrained in American history a tension between the kind of do it yourself, all figure it out, kind of frontier mentality that we laud in American culture, I think that's great. And then intellectual elitism where we have these really great thinkers with really great ideas who can remake the world, and those things often are kind of at odds with each other, particularly when governance is at stake. And is this, is this a urban rural thing is that a caste system I mean this split, what is it. That's, that's a good historical question because I think that split, it looks a little bit different every time. There's, there's often, I mean obviously there's a split in education, because that's where the anti-elitism comes from, or at least how it manifests but there have been pretty big urban rural splits and East West splits, where you had educated in the East, who end up in government and you have a large population that tends to distrust those elites over time I mean, there's, I think there's always a racial component to this, in part because the elites in the United States have for so long, then exclusively white and often exclusively male, because of the structural impediments for marginalized communities to enter the elite. That manifests in, in different ways usually at more local levels. I think, for example, of the way that farm workers in California in the 60s and 70s began to question elites at state health boards. And so, on their daily experiences with pesticides to make them rethink what they were doing with their pesticide regulations and part of that is this, it's a racialized difference between the elite educated class and the people who are actually experiencing these ills so the anti-elitism is not always so as, you know, we might like to caricature as the uneducated versus the educated there's often these sets of assumptions that go into expertise that they really need to be challenged. So it looks different in different historical periods, I think. Have we been here before, a deeply divided society in the midst of a existential crisis or two. Well, we did have a civil war. So that was a thing I think you know if you want to look at at messy, messy times in American history and deeply polarized times I think not just the civil war but in the 1870s and 1880s, particularly during during reconstruction, there's, there's a polarization there that it's also a great model for how not to move forward in from this moment in American history because reconciliation as dates came at the expense of the black community and African American rights so those are some incredibly polarized periods, you know the second half of the 19th century and yet I don't think we've been here before I don't think there's a moment quite like this. And I don't say that often or lightly that's as a historian I usually am, I pump the brakes on the, the kind of unique moment analysis in this case. I mean, given the events in Washington DC, in which the capital building was stormed that seems like grounds to say this is something now. Okay, how do you see this playing out. Well, that's a good question. My, my cynical historians hat with that hat on I suspect that we muddle through and whatever major changes happen change relatively slowly and behind the scenes. Well, there'll be big outward facing rhetoric of change that that sort of masks much smaller incremental changes. If we muddle through and there aren't significant, significant changes to the way that political discourse unfolds and the way that we respond to the pandemic. I suspect that the people most affected would be the people most affected negatively by almost everything in the US which are the poor, the racially minoritized and to an extent, women. So I think gender race and class are going to continue to define how this looks moving forward. I put my more hopeful hat on I think there's a real opportunity. As, as we deal with the pandemic to take advantage of some of the other things are happening that are happening, like for example, the realization among the financial community that there's a viable new energy mix that is that is around or or that investors in in, for example, pension funds and endowments really do care at the expense. of the bottom line of the fund about diversity and inclusion and environmental impact. I'm more hopeful I do see some some really positive things that that might come out of this in the short term like what's going to happen next week I had no idea. You mentioned the phrase muddle through is that is that good policy. It's. No, no, it's not it's it's just what we usually do. Are there policies you'd like to see. I mean, I think there's some low line fruit. One, one piece of low line fruit for for climate changes is signing back on to the Paris Accords. Another is to to commit to, if not the Green New Deal as a whole, at least elements of of the Green New Deal that began to couple reducing emissions with creating and repurposing jobs in the United States I think those are. Despite the resistance that we've seen those are pretty low lying options for especially given the makeup of the Senate and the White House going forward. I also think that healthcare reform is ripe at this point. I think everybody realizes from the pandemic that some things got to change and. And so I think continuing that process that's kind of been on hold for the past six years or so. Is another piece of low line fruit. So I think there are some good policies that are kind of floating out there. And those are the two that are two of them that I think. For this conversation are pretty promising. Well, this is really great. I'm really pleased that you made the time to talk to me about this because it's something I know I'm interested in and I think I think a lot of people haven't thought about the convergence of these two factors a lot. It's always good to talk to you, Kim. Okay. Thanks a lot, Josh.