 Good afternoon and welcome to the Rouser College of Natural Resources fall 2021 Horace M. Albright lecture in conservation. I'm David Ackerly Dean of the Rouser College I'm joined by my colleague Geeta Anand Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Elizabeth Colbert It's our pleasure to have the chance to speak with our special guest this afternoon Elizabeth is a science writer and Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Sixth Extinction and her most recent book which we'll be discussing is under a white sky the nature of the future Before we get started. I'd like to share a bit of background on these lectures The Horace Albright lecture series at Rouser College has been going strong for over 50 years The lectures are a tribute to the achievements of Horace Albright Born in Bishop, California in 1890 a graduate of UC Berkeley in 1912 second director of the National Park Service and a recipient of the presidential medal of freedom bestowed by Jimmy Carter We're honored to have the opportunity to use the Horace Albright endowed lecture series for the public good Fostering a dialogue on the critical issues facing our society The Albright lecture series has brought to Berkeley a who's who the world's most thought-provoking and innovative leaders in conservation and public service The lecture you are about to hear actually more of a discussion aligns perfectly with the spirit and traditions of this series We will be taking live questions in the comment section of YouTube live Where you are currently viewing this talk and a full recording will be live on our website shortly after we end today Now let me introduce our distinguished guest Elizabeth Colbert has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1999 She has written dozens of pieces for the magazine including profiles of senator Hillary Clinton Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former former mayor Rudolph Giuliani Her series on global warming the climate of man appeared in the New Yorker in the spring of 2005 and Won the American Association the Advancement of Sciences magazine award In September 2010 Elizabeth received the prestigious Heinz Award which recognizes individuals who are addressing global change Caused by the impact of human activities and natural processes on the environment She also won a national magazine award in the reviews and criticism category for her work in the New Yorker The Sierra Club's David Brower Award and the Walter Sullivan Award for excellence in science journalism from the American Geophysical Union In March 2021. She was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and these are just a few of her many awards and accomplishments Prior to joining the staff of the New Yorker, Elizabeth was a political reporter for the New York Times She traveled from Alaska to Greenland and visited top scientists to get to the heart of the debate over global warming Her book the sixth extension extinction and unnatural history a book about mass Extinctions that weaves intellectual and natural history with reporting in the field began as an article in the New Yorker the six extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category Is number one on the Guardians list of the hundred best nonfiction books and was also named as one of Slate's best nonfiction books of the past 25 years Her new book is under a white sky the nature of the future Elizabeth welcome to Berkeley, and I'm only sorry that we're not here together in person for this event Yeah, likewise. I would love to be in Berkeley now And I know you're maybe a little failure where you are. I believe exactly So under under a white sky is a wonderful book and a fascinating peek into the world of scientists engineers and resource managers around the world If we look at the book overall the theme is how our Interventions in nature often pursued with lofty goals or in the name of economic development have led to unexpected Consequences which then require even more extreme interventions You start with the example of electrifying the Chicago River after it was redirected to flow away from rather than into Lake Michigan In an ongoing effort to prevent the invasion of Asian carp into the great place So my question is was there one story that was the light bulb moment, you know Wow, we're doing one crazy thing to fix the problems caused by the last crazy thing We did when you saw that these examples are part of one story about how we relate with nature And that led you to pull them together into into this book Well, I won't say there was you know the aha moment exactly, but I can say that the Story that really propelled me down this path Was is the story that's actually at the very center of the book, I guess and it was a visit I paid to Oahu in back in 2016 And I went to visit a project that had Been dubbed the super coral project and the basically the idea behind the super coral project was You know pretty straightforward reefs are in terrible trouble. I'm sure all of our listeners right now know that already They're largely in there in trouble for all sorts of reasons, but a biggie is climate change they really don't like it when when water temperatures get above a certain, you know range and We're seeing that more and more these these coral bleaching events where the water temperatures rise beyond their tolerance and they Basically eject their Symbionts and and starved to death and we'll go into the you know, sort of biology of that although I'm happy to have people on so the there was a very charismatic scientist at the Hawaii Marine Biology lab there named Ruth Gates who had come up with this idea Well, we can't just in a sort of let reefs die We have to do something and that's something she came up with she called assisted evolution We were going to sort of Direct the evolution of coral so that they we could sort of get ahead of this problem nudge them along and you know The idea sounded crazy and it may in fact be crazy And but she was a very charismatic person a very forceful person and tragically died pretty young a few years after I met her and She said to me In various different ways and I quarter in the books in various different ways saying You know, the future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural We are going to be intervening in these systems more and more and While I didn't necessarily agree with everything she said and well the project may not ever really Get you know anywhere serious Those ideas were really planted, you know, what are we going to do with this world that we have remade? Are we going to continue to remaking to re you know the next level of remaking it? What are we going to do next and I? Started to sort of see that pattern everywhere the solution to the problem of having messed around with these systems is to impose another order of manipulation because we can't Undo what we've already done, you know, we or in many cases. It's extremely difficult if not impossible to simply Roll back the clock. That's just not happening. So we don't have that many good options And that's really what the book is about Well, that's a perfect segue because I wanted to jump right to the last section of the book the book So the title under a white sky refers to the possible effects of geoengineering So one of the crazy ideas to battle the ongoing and unfolded impacts of climate change is Trying to reflect sunlight back to space and one mechanism through in terms of geoengineering is injecting sulfur dioxide or perhaps perhaps One of your interviewees mentioned crushed diamond dust. That was a new one that I hadn't Hadn't read about So depending who you ask this is either a deeply irresponsible Act to think about manipulating how much sunlight comes down to earth or it's something that we have to take very seriously As each year passes and we failed our curtail emissions And now we've seen or not seen the outcome of yet another cop that is coming gone So after you met and interviewed the experts in this field You write in the book that you were left at best ambivalent But I wonder if you could reflect more on what you learned and what you've taken away and what is where you think this If you had a crystal ball where this where this may rather this phase of part in the future Well, you know Geoengineering it turns out to be and this is something I do do talk about in the book a Kind of strangely old ideas like as soon as people and when I say people I really do mean scientists realize that climate change was a problem and that was quite a long time ago already back in the 60s really The first report to Lyndon Johnson on climate change They didn't say their initial the reaction wasn't well Let's stop burning fossil fuels because apparently they thought that was not going to happen and it turns out they were prescient They jumped immediately To some form of geoengineering if you look in this 1965 it's kind of a landmark report. It's up online. You can find a PDF of it Because it was the first report on climate change really first high-level report on climate change And you'll see a panel of people who discuss it and anyone in the field knows these are really distinguished people They went right to well, maybe we can create some kind of reflective Balls or something that we're gonna they'll dump in the ocean and they actually did a cost Calculation of what that would cost and that would reflect sunlight back to earth So how you know it's supposed to reflecting it off the top of the stratosphere to record off the oceans but same idea and That is really striking. I think I mean we so this idea just keeps Bubbling along as it were it hasn't gotten very far in terms of research The first sort of really rigorous test not of the technology, but simply of the machines that you might use to measure the effects of what you're doing was scheduled for this past summer in Northern Sweden and it was canceled because there was so much opposition to it. So the science has actually Not progressed very far beyond computer, you know modeling It's so controversial and and maybe that's good. I don't know but I will say I guarantee I Can pretty much guarantee you that the talk the chatter Is going to continue to bubble up and get stronger and stronger and they're going there was just a national academies report Just a few months ago recommending a hundred million dollar research effort And that hasn't been financed but you're going to keep Hearing things like that. You're going to find the UN taking it up. You're going to find higher and higher level Organizations taking it up. It's a tremendous challenge, you know, not just technically but the governance of it We can't govern our carbon emissions. How do we govern? You know, how we're trying to try to counteract that given all the many potential side effects. So It's it's a terribly terribly difficult issue But I think we're going to be hearing more and more about it because as you say We continue not to do what we know we should be doing to ameliorate you know mitigate climate change So we're we're going to be forced more and more to consider some pretty, you know, the sort of Hail Mary ideas Well, actually it's interesting. I don't I wasn't aware that the early idea was reflective surface of the ocean Because of course that doesn't create a white sky to begin with An adult that doesn't create the issues Yeah, as a plant biologist, of course the very first thought is if we diminish sunlight, what are the impacts on agriculture? That's only one of the many many potential effects before getting to the governance and the politics And you may know that there are places where black bulls black balls not white balls are being placed on reservoirs To reduce evaporate evaporative loss I know I just don't know that But of course the black if they are I guess they wouldn't have to be black balls to Reduce evaporation because that's absorbing heat Just some kind of surface to prevent Well, I I'm going to put I'm going to pose this question back to you as a plant biologist because um I was told by the geoengineering guys, you know, we're we're not talking about we're just talking about you know Let's say one percent of all sunlight Which you know is a lot of sunlight But but I was told that plants actually like indirect light And it would not have a major agricultural effect. So that's that's plausible and I shouldn't I I shouldn't pretend to be the expert on it No, it's it's a humongous question. Obviously, obviously, you know I mean the thing about geoengineering the thing about reflecting sunlight The thing one thing is you keep pouring co2 up there You need to put more and more Self-reduced or diamonds or whatever you're doing you need to reflect more and more sunlight to counteract those effects So, you know, anyone who talks about geoengineering with any Sense of you know responsibility and most, you know, these are pretty serious scientists who are talking about it now Talks about it in conjunction with cutting emissions. You can't have uncontrolled You know emissions growth and geoengineering that way. I think we can all agree lies madness The question of whether it buys you some time Because of these locked in impacts that we're already, you know seeing and going to see more and more of that's really More of the sort of question on the table Well, I think that and that mirrors so many discussions that there's no one solution And there's probably not no one solution that even is more than half of you know Actually solving the problem without bringing everything to bear and each each small contribution adds up if we're going to pull this off So I want to I want to turn to it kind of now flip this all on its head So, you know, you give other examples, which are again these You have the example of in the Mississippi River Delta creating a a diversion to deliver sediment where the diversion alone I think you said is would be the seventh largest river in the world just the scale of that's of course a scale of an enormous ecosystem I'm curious though as you met scientists and engineers and the resource managers Did you ever come across a story where someone where someone gave you the opposite example of an intervention that was So small and so subtle and yet so effective you know kind of the the other end of the scale of Where we once we know how the system works We just find that just the the small nudge can actually make a real difference and it may not be a global It's not global climate necessarily, but any other examples Wow, that's that's a really good question. Um I mean, I was looking sort, you know, I guess I guess you find what you seek. Um, and I was looking for Examples where things sort of ramified And they tended to ramify You know in in ways that people hadn't thought of I mean there are all sorts of Of examples, I guess and I'm sure you need to know this better than I worry, you know sort of imported some You know parasitic wasp or something like that to try to control something which um You know, I think some of those have been fairly successful, you know, I think People might say even in those cases that seem to be fairly successful that they have sort of Off target effects that we may not be watching for and I think that is sort of Maybe one of the themes of the book too is that you know Just as I said, you you sort of only find what you look for, you know, you only you only That's true when we monitor these unbelievably complicated systems, we only See what we go looking for if you're not measuring something you're not seeing it and I will just give an example of Some entomologists. I know who are looking to see whether some of these wasps that have been Imported by the USDA very often when we get an imported insect, you know, we then import some of its predators Whether they're having these off target Impacts whether they they are egg parasites parasitizing the eggs of in, you know Indigenous insects and no one's even looking at that. So if you don't look for it, you don't know You know, you're and you're used to the language off target I think highlights us there's so many analogies to how we think about medicine and disease and treatment In in particular that we can come up with spectacular drugs But they have side effects and then there are the drugs which treat side effects And in some ways that struck me as the entire analogy for your book and actually It is written medicine So maybe we can come back to think more about those analogies between medicine and The environment and more and more we see the language of health being used healthy sodas healthy forests Which has in some ways a very clear connotation. It's certainly health is a desirable property But it's actually much less clear among the academic community about what you know, how would you go to a forest and measure Health and and put numbers on that and make that an operational sort of research capacity Now the other the other topic I want to turn to which is um You know really rightly receiving so much more attention Is you know, we started with we started right from 1965. How can we stop climate change from happening? Immediately moved on and more and more to thinking about the problems of adaptation You know some it's kind of change is happening. We need to address it but now And not just now many people have thought for many years, but really Paying attention to how much the benefits of burning fossil fuels have accrued to the wealthy either wealthy nations or wealthy sectors within nations And so many of the costs are falling on marginalized populations and frontline communities And and i'm curious again as you with all the people you've met and all your travels Where where did you see those? The that thinking coming in as people are thinking about solutions. What are the In what way are the solutions that are being thought about for climate change? Really paying attention to addressing impacts on those marginalized communities but also how some of the solutions themselves bring equity issues and And may perpetuate some of those problems. So where is that figured into the reporting you've done? Well, you know, I will say that that's a whole you know book in and of itself which You know, some people people have written and more books will be written. So it's a huge huge topic um, I think that You know indirectly it comes into under white sky and you know For better or worse, I suppose you could say and we we saw this in Glasgow once again where the equity issue I mean, there's There are so many equity issues as you point out the impacts and also as you say As we move forward to you know, try to solve this problem. Who's back? Is it going to be solved? on and When you know the developing countries came to Glasgow, you know, India saying well, yeah, okay, we'll be carbon neutral in 2070 That was a big concession for india already um, but their basic point is Why should we you know, we didn't get the benefits of this first, you know, a round of you know, wrecking the planet Why should we be the ones now? To take the costs and no one has Shown the path toward industrialization toward economic growth without fossil fuels If someone were to do that if some nation were to do that if the us were to do that Maybe we'd be having a very different conversation, but one of the reasons that I think that both carbon dioxide removal, which is you know, a big part of the book and geoengineering are going to get more and more and you're certainly seeing this with carbon dioxide removal getting more and more attention Is because there is a built-in, you know, not just because Everyone is just admitting too much, which is you know, clearly clearly true, but there's also a built-in equity component. You cannot ask Developing countries not to develop the way we did. It's just not They're not going to buy it and it's it's obviously has carries with it tremendous Issues of equity So you have to leave a certain amount of room as it were a certain amount of budget Which we as a developed world have already used up, but you really need to leave that for the developing world And when you put all those numbers together It's really really hard to come up with a pathway That is both equitable and meets these goals and I have to be honest yet to see that You know, well, that's um like so many of the so much The answers are usually fairly sobering As much as all of us I think are holding on to our optimism because if we give up that we give up, you know The passion to to do this work and and and on that note before I turn to Gita I want to ask there are many students listening today and I'm sure I know you've spoken on other campuses when when you hear from students and they ask for your perspective on how to orient their careers and their own work Um, what what do you offer as from the from the your perspective and everything you've learned? Well, the one thing I would would say to to young people who who are starting out and thinking about what to do with their lives and facing, you know, a really A lot of daunting in dark news is um It's there are great opportunities to spend your life doing really meaningful work to try to deal with these problems. You know, there's the that sort of You know curse me may you live in in interesting times and and we live in interesting times and um, I think that there are so There's so much work to be done from, you know, the re-engineering of all these systems from adapt adaptation and energy in in in just about any field Education any field you can name there are ways to I think Really make make a difference or or or make a major contribution. So I I guess I urge Young people to think about, you know, where your talents are and where your passions are obviously but How could you? um In this massive amount of work that needs to be done There's definitely full employment out there for anyone, you know Who wants to be interested in the clean who's interested in the clean energy future? I I feel pretty confident about that. I'm sure you've heard Scientists and others say to you that that they would be very happy to be out of a job If this was all solved and these things weren't happening, but right now that does not seem to be The case and on that note, I mean you've demonstrated With your own career your words at your serve, you know The work you've done as a journalist and the impact it has and in part bringing to light the the work of scientists and many of our colleagues and then Tying it together in the stories you tell and on that note. We are joined today By Gita Anand, dean of the Berkeley School of Journalism Gita is also a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a book author She's reported and written most recently from the New York Times at Wall Street Journal and reported for 10 years from her home country of India Pete and I have a real shared belief and we're beginning to work together on this that Just as journalists must become proficient in science if they want to report on it and to craft a narrative scientists Can also benefit from a deeper understanding of journalism to enhance their ability to tell the story of their work And not just to engage with journalists, but but to think more about their own Storytelling and I'm going to pass the virtual zoom mic to Gita to continue this conversation And talk about the the craft of writing behind your work and the intersection of science and journalism in today's media environment So Gita I'm so glad we can be here together Thanks so much David, I'm delighted to be here and it's wonderful to be in conversation with you, Elizabeth And I'm excited to talk about The craft of storytelling and the craft of writing because certainly we all know that We live in apocalyptic times and The big challenge for all of us and for scientists is how are we going to convey The challenges and the dangers that we face To the general public I thought about that as a journalist in India, you know every year 50 or 100 people would die of heat stroke and How do you prevent that from being a brief in the newspaper every year? How do you tell that story with impact and your work shows? I mean just as an Most incredible example of how to do that So I want to talk to you a little about how you do that So let's just talk about the story structure or and in your case the book structure So your book makes an argument in You know a really subtle deep Rich way with story after story after story tell us how you figured out how to structure Your book and why you structured it that way Maybe you can talk a little about how you structured what the structure is and then how why it's that way Yes, sure, and I want to say thank you for saying I'm not sure all that came through to everyone So I really I'm very I'm thrilled to hear you say that that there is an argument building through the book. Anyway, um So the book begins The way I see the structure, you know And I know that sounds odd that people could see it differently from the author But I certainly think that you could I wanted to begin It begins with a very concrete story a story something that is happening We we reverse the flow of the Chicago River, you know back in the 20 early 20th century and now in the 21st century A section of the river has been electrified to you know Counteract the effects of it that original intervention and that was very Pretty easy to understand, you know I I think I said in the book first your reverse river then your electrified you can say it as simply as that and It as I said it had already happened. It's not very high tech. It's sort of Pretty easily comprehended and then the book sort of Takes you along this kind of path. I hope where things become more and more Both speculative and kind of Um alarming How's that? So, you know, you might say well, that's okay. And then we go to a An example of a fake habitat that's been Constructed for you know a fish a very rare fish and you might say You know, so that's another intervention to counteract our previous intervention That might say oh that well, of course, that's okay And then you kind of get led along until at the end we are talking about Reengineering the stratosphere to counteract the effects of climate change and It's sort of a this structure is is is really a slippery slope, you know, where Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay? And there's no answer to these questions, you know And that to be frank was the real challenge of writing the book that there's sort of an argument without being an answer That's so interesting, but when I the journey you took me on Made me Through the structure of your book Understand in a deeper way than I ever had why we're considering these um crazy crazy Alternatives and then made me realize that these crazy alternatives may actually be necessary um And that way I thought it was just incredibly effective um, so talking about writing um, you know as scientists and um Everyone do we you know, I've written about science and medicine And the challenge is always if you're a scientist or a doctor or writing about it How do you write about complex things? and make them Sort of understandable to people um, so I want you to just To the yeah, how do you draw people in? so that they can understand The relevance of these things to the larger context of the world and how Interesting and strange they are and how to make the connections to them So i'm going to read from your book just one way I thought you did it well and then ask you just to talk about What techniques you employ in your writing to do this? So this is in the chapter about the interventions to save the pupfish and um You're talking about all these huge interventions, you know a dummy Pawns set up to experiment uh to on how to save them and at times to move them there And then you say later. I did a calculation Altogether the pupfish at devil's hole weighed in at about 100 grams This is slightly less than the weight of a mcdonald's filet of fish sandwich Okay, what talk about why as a writer does something like that and what our listeners can learn You know what they can take from that to apply to their writing Well, um, I'm glad you liked that moment. Um, I I think I mean that is sort of a A little bit of a Well, I mean on the one hand, you know, that's just implying, you know, to be honest a Classic, you know as as you know classic journalistic trick Um this way something, you know, it's it's well, what is that in your life? You know, you know it's I think one of the ways in which science and Um, you know, and we were talking about this earlier before we sort of came on on on the air as it were You know that scientists and journalists really diverges is is is numeracy, you know in the general population You know what I mean the crazy thing when you think about it is for example, you know, all scientific, you know 1 1.5 degrees c that doesn't even mean anything in a country where we You know dealing to Fahrenheit, you know, so everything that The the units are wrong, you know and the numbers that that people feel very intuitively, you know a gigaton I mean who knows what a gigaton is, you know, and so um, I think that you know bringing it to In that in this case to something very small, you know that all of these fish that they are spending millions of dollars on and You know untold man hours to save Collectively have the weight of a McDonald's flat fish. That is just as I say using this This old journalistic trick of of relating a number to to a quantity that people Can relate to, you know, now that was kind of deflationary, you know, that was bringing it down um Bringing it up can be more difficult as you know because once you start dealing with You know really big numbers that famous quote whatever a billion here a billion there pretty soon you're talking about real money, you know The numbers are just so big and so vast the quantities when quantities are really vast How would I Illustrated gigaton of carbon, you know, there's nothing there's nothing that's a gigaton except a gigaton. So That gets really More difficult. It's just beyond the realm of sort of individual experience You're so right and I'm going to jump to a different um portion of the book where you did it in the opposite way helping us understand just how much levels of carbon have risen And I want you to just talk about sort of the various Um strategies a writer employs to get across the impact of change So i'm going to read just a little bit. This is page 147, but this is how I saw you brilliantly um Explaining what's happened with carbon and sort of addressing The challenge you talked about of how do you express like gigantic numbers again and have them be relevant and in this case I don't think there's a McDonald's burger or any type of mountain that could fully Quantify this but this is how you did it and it's a through a combination. It seems of history and Storytelling so you start this page saying what is When exactly people began altering the atmosphere is a matter of debate According to one theory the process got underway eight or nine thousand years ago before the dawn of recorded history Then further down on this page you say according to a second more widely held view the switchover Only really started in the late 18th century after the scottish scottish engineer james watt designed a new kind of steam engine And then further down you say um in 1776 the first year watt Mark marketed his invention humans emitted 15 million tons of carbon dioxide By 1800 that figure had risen to 30 million tons. So that's 15 million to 30 million tons Um, and then you go further down now that the figure is close to 40 billion tons annually So again people wouldn't be able to cross back. So then you say So much have we altered the atmosphere that one out of every three molecules of carbon dioxide Loose in the air today was put there by people So can you talk about what you did there and what you were trying to do in the context of The challenge all of us have of how to have impact in our writing and storytelling Yeah, that that's a that's a really, you know, good question. I it's a it's a figure that i've you know Spent a lot of time grappling with um once again, you know, scientists deal in parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere and it's it's a trivial part of the you know, carbon dioxide is is Is a trace gas. I know that everyone here knows that already. It's you know, we're at whatever I had to have didn't check today 417 parts per million and so if you present that to a sort of um General audience like well, who care, you know, who cares what's the big deal? You know, and if you say well, it was 280, you know, and it's up to 420 It just doesn't have a lot of uh impact. I don't think so, um You have to try to um As you say bring bring home the scale of the change to people And even saying well, we've increased carbon dioxide By, you know, almost 50 at this point didn't seem that interesting to me So I tried to flip it around, you know, to to one out of everything molecules of carbon dioxide now that um You know does that really affect people differently I I think maybe a little bit and I wish I could explain why but but I don't think I can but it sort of gets back to I think that most of us and and one of the good things is About not being a scientist. I don't have much of a science education. I am not um Particularly scientific. I took physics my first semester in college and very nearly flunked out. So I um Don't I I am my reader, you know, and whatever so I use myself as a guide I think and What what makes an impact on me I hope and this is always an act of faith when you are sending a piece of writing out into the world Uh, we'll have an impact on on a general audience and and I'm sure to the scientific community You know, sometimes it's it's too dumb down or oversimplified but You know, that's sort of a hit I'm willing to take I guess To me it just um when you said that when I read that it just conveyed to me the degree of change we've created if now in the air One out of three carbon dioxide molecules was put there by humans like oh my god, it conveyed Just like the degree to which we have changed our world Yeah, and I thought I had to hear that It's very powerful in that way um I know we're at time to begin to take audience questions and I want to make sure that um our audience our listeners get a chance To ask questions and I'm sure some of them will be about writing and some about climate so over to you david to Take the lead in moderating our questions. Thank you you know Elizabeth you made such an interesting comment that the scientists have made it may be dumbed down I just want to offer as a scientist I want to offer a counterpoint first of all reading your book makes me so jealous Because here are these here all these scientists whose names I know I can't call them up and say can I spend three days in the field with you? Yeah I might meet them at a conference so It's on the one hand and I've we've spoken about this before um I'm always looking for how to convey these ideas You know very clearly and and it's not only because we're trying to speak to general audiences It's actually not that different than what we're trying to do in the classroom because we don't walk into an undergraduate classroom And read from the primary literature We're trying to speak in ways that you know capture people's attention and allow for q&a and I and there's some real parallels I think between the ways we're trying to to find that clarity. So I I would not ever I hope you never have to worry that So I I have two questions that I'm going to weave in a third one and and and actually it's you it's um Gita you just mentioned um the The invention of the steam engine in glasco I'm sure some people here have heard seen boris johnson was said at cop It was 250 years ago in glasco that james watt came up with the machine powered by steam Produced by burning coal and 250 years later. We brought you back to the place the dunes day machine was invented so Around the cop meeting in glasco, but the the two questions The first was Are these multilateral agreements like cop 26 enough to achieve what we need? um That's one version of the second That just came in is what do you think is the most constructive outcome from the cop meeting? But let me add a third which is what's the alternative? Are there you know, what and I don't say that in a rhetorical way, I mean absent multilateral agreements What are the other forces in the world that can drive us towards solutions that that may not depend? on that kind of international political process Well, these are wow. These are good questions. Um I mean the first question was was Did did cop 26 get us? What was the first question again, David? Is it enough to achieve what we need to That one's really easy So that one was easy. Okay. No, they are it is not enough um, and there are two But but that's a facile answer and but there are two parts of that one of which is you know The way that these that that the paris agreement was Structured and that glasgo is building on were these voluntary national. They're called n dc's nationally determined commitments Uh, they were done, you know, this voluntary approach was done for a few reasons one of which was that No binding targets were going to get through the u.s senate the u.s senate is never going to prove anything It has to be a two-thirds vote. So if 50 50 doesn't do it, uh, even To approve a treaty so they knew they were never going to get a treaty through the u.s senate so they had to have this kind of work around and these are so these are voluntary commitments and Um, even if we tally up all the voluntary commitments, you've probably read this, you know, we get to like two and a half degrees Let's say by 2100 You know assuming a certain trajectories and and those are big assumptions, you know between now and 2100 but But more to the point we don't have an enforcement negative. So everyone announces these targets I mean doe biden announced this target of Reducing u.s emissions in these 2005, which I should say is a year that was chosen because it was a peak of u.s emissions By 2030 well that You tell me how that's going to happen. I mean that's nine years from now. So we are nowhere near reaching that target and now that You know The whatever build back better or whatever the hell it's being called now that the big reconciliation bill has really been watered down I don't Know if anyone could point to a way that the u.s could actually meet its commitments But for 2030 so you can make the commitment, but are you gonna meet the commitment? So those are two the commitments are not enough and meeting them is very dubious in a lot of cases um the question of Whether you know cop has just a whole approaches just run its course I think it's a really important one and good one and you know 25 000 people or whatever flew to Glasgow For this meeting that you know Really may well not have been worth the carbon. You know that was burned for it So are there other approaches that is I I am not an expert here But I think that one approach that you are seeing people explore more and more You know are these notions of for example, you know carbon taxes and carbon tariffs, you know all are you going to sort of Have to dispense with this idea that we're getting a grand global agreement and actually just go with trade agreements And trying to clamp down on emissions in your own borders and then You know by sending out the signal through global trade I mean that that's really what what we need to do and that's this is really what Paris was about too Is that this virtuous cycle of We're going to convince everyone that we're going, you know To we're going to get off fossil fuels and that's going to build on itself and the money is going to follow that And that's how we're going to do this thing not by national commitments They never really thought we were going to get there by national commitments. It was creating this sort of vast Mentum that then all the capital in the world, which is really controlled, you know Mostly by private entities is going to follow that and that's really what we need to Mobilize under our current system, which I know many people feel is incapable of dealing with climate change And we're also going to find out whether that's true or not So another listener poise posed the question in a much more succinct way and the question is is it too late? Well, it's too late for some things, you know, absolutely. It's too late, you know for You know those coral reefs that are that are already dead. I don't think they're coming back So, you know, there's a lot of damage That's baked in and I I think we need to acknowledge that But, you know, it is not too late We have to hope. I mean once again, there's a lot of big uncertainties, you know with climate impacts Which have a very long time scale, you know, are we already melting the Greenland ice sheet, you know, very very hard to say But I think it's never too late. I mean, unfortunately, there's been a lot of talk You know of tipping points after which you sort of lose control of the systems those were You know, um Those are real. I don't want to say they're not real but much was made of them in a way to sort of mobilize global, you know action and the unfortunate sort of flip side of that Is people thinking well if those are already kicking in, you know, why bother but there's never A point I don't think and I think if you spoke to climate scientists I'm not a climate scientist But I think if you spoke to climate scientists that there's never a point where it's too late to avert something Great. So we have to operate on the hope that, you know, it is not too late to avert some of the Worst outcomes, you know, which I'm happy to talk about if you want, but you know, let's let's just take, you know Melting the Greenland ice sheet. We really don't know what the threshold is beyond which that becomes inevitable We have to hope that we can stay shy of that Well, and as a university that sits at about 26 feet or so above sea level, I'm not sure exactly what that would represent I don't You know, maybe it's the rare moment or maybe there are some people who are paid to actually think about what is it What does it actually mean to live in any coastal environment because With projections like those Antarctic ones, some of these simply don't have a future in the places where where we developed Right our current civilization So on that rather gloomy thought let me let me flip the question around a different way and again I'm going to draw on a question from the audience. So many scientists and many activists Will project very optimistic scenarios about how well certain solutions could work and the question is If those are over optimistic can that backfire? In our dialogue by and I'll paraphrase now from what was posed, you know Either by making people think that it's all going to be doable and easy or that one solution is enough and therefore Let's not worry, but others. So have do you feel like you've seen cases where you felt skeptical of the Solutions and the language around the solutions, which is different the language around the problem Oh, no, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's tremendous Momentum is that the right words for social momentum? I guess behind this idea of You know nature based solutions that you know, if we there was a paper printed it was published It was very influential paper, you know, we're going to plant a trillion trees and that's going to Offset our emissions and you know, it was it was wildly criticized in scientific circles It's just really virtually impossible to plant enough trees to offset 40 billion tons CO2 missions every year and Um, there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of talk about these sort of win-win solutions You plant trees, you know, you get the benefit of having forest and you get you draw down carbon and that's true that's true, but You know, it's not as true as people might like to think how's that? I mean, it's not that easy to you know, plant a billion trees a trenches keep them alive while the climate is changing um, but even so the the the carbon impact of that the drawing down of carbon impact is often You know wildly exaggerated and I think that so that's one example where I'm I don't want to say I'm skeptical, but if you just you know, really look hard at the numbers and once again I'm not the person to do it, but I have read those who have done it You find that that is um Not nearly as likely to work even if we were to do it as we thought and I'll just add another thing Where are you planting all these trees? You know some of the places where the authors of that paper suggested was sort of open land that we could plant trees was tundra You know, which you do not want replanting trees and because you change the reflectivity of the place and Um, so, you know, there are just so many issues here that get that get glossed over in this sort of win-win talk and I do find that worrisome Yeah, and I think you know reducing emissions and that's not one solution because there's many things necessary Is is the one we can all agree, you know So in terms of the impact on climate no downside to reducing emissions The challenge is of course the trade-offs and what it means economically and in terms of the international development of well-being But it is maybe the one solution on the technical side That is uh, yes So changing our topic Uh In what ways Do you and again from our audience in what ways do you think that anti racism and feminism and related areas of both study and dialogue in society? Can contribute to conservation issues and then also contributing to the climate change discussion Well, I I think really, um You know really crucial to this to this conversation and Uh, it's not given nearly enough Play in conversations about climate change in the u.s. Or we can't even sort of get you know half of the country to sort of Acknowledge that climate change is a problem But the issues Of global equity if we if we were to take equity issues seriously both Internally to you know to the u.s. And externally towards the rest of the world um The obligations that we would have to You know really dramatically Rethink how we are doing things and really honestly to rethink how we are living would be Very very high. I think they'd be you know, I think they're so high to be honest that it's very hard to get Uh to to break through uh on these issues because the you know, it's it's a little bit like um at the at cop There's talk of what's called loss and damages which is You know countries that are on the front lines of climate change coming to those countries that have caused the most climate change Like the u.s. Is saying really you owe us for that Uh for the losses where we are suffering and are going to suffer and the and the u.s. Always says we are not touching that you know, um, but I think that issues of You know, if you want to call them racial issues if you want to call them You know transnational issues issues of I guess what I will just very broadly call global equity are Are huge and they if you take them to heart they mean You know that americans who I don't know what the latest figure as are we're burning on on average tonight 14 tons of carbon a year Have to really really radically Change the way we do business and and probably can't do all the things that we all like to do Uh, and that's a very very tough Tough message. How's that? So yes, it is So I'm a relating vote and I'm going to also invite gita to weigh in on this. Um The question is in the natural resource and environmental arena can science writing be value free and Gita I would also be interested to think about this in health reporting and health writing Um, or or how would or is even the way the question is framed? Perhaps not the way we're just thinking about that question of where values play into journalism Because I let um, I want to make sure elizabeth has space, but I can definitely say um Values affect how you frame a story. So I think um one thing that the The vigorous debate in the journalism community in recent years has brought to light is That the concept of objectivity was flawed It was based on, you know, sort of a white male perspective of Um, the it's it's the perspective of the person sitting in that seat That's not to say that everyone should That the world should now be a free for all in which we all just frame stories however we want to but it's that we Need to be thinking deeply about what the truth is what facts we've gathered And be cognizant that we're framing a story Based on our values So if we're um Trying to look at climate change, um and what the solutions are suppose you were doing a story such a story um Your so the solutions that you think about would just or the prism you view that question from would be where you stand And if you're sitting in the u.s. That would be very different from if you were sitting in mumbai And you were looking at what those solutions to climate change are so So I do think values um influence how you see a story how you frame a story how you tell a story But over to you elizabeth for your thoughts on that Well, I think this this sort of gets back to you know this this question. I mean The discourse of science and I know it's much much criticized and there are you know critiques of scientific discourse, but I I do think that The language of science represents in a An attempt to to bleed those values out of the discourse to just say, okay, this is what we did We ran this experiment anyone could run it right you could run it in mumbai you could run it in detroit You could run it, you know in in beijing and you would get the same results because we have constrained The problem right and it is reproducible um and That is That makes a bad story That is not uh what storytelling does and storytelling Brings a certain amount of heat To any issue that that is you know scientific writing just to use You know kind of cliched Terms, I guess is is very cold right trying to bleed out the the human emotion um And that is incredibly powerful science has been incredibly powerful. I mean everything You know we are sitting here on zoom. This is the power of scientific inquiry and storytelling which is Much more ancient than science brings some of that that human emotion back and whether That can be done value-free. I Basically agree with you. I don't think that we can frame a story With that implicitly bringing certain values with us now You know in american journalism Those values are unspoken often although increasingly they're overt and that's another interesting trend in american journalism You know that we are now in two camps and each camp reads its own Its own stories with their own frames and we all understand what the implicit frames are And we hate the other guys But I think it is I I agree that I think it's very hard to frame a story Without bringing to the table Certain values even even ones that are hard to to tease out Well, and I think I think there's two really important overlaps with science here One is that journalism and science have developed these very distinct methods of asserting Truth and I say that in it's not I hope not too positivist away But and and the amazing thing to me about journalism is that new york times has to be able to say by tomorrow morning That there's you know some fact checking and truth behind this whereas for scientists It can take years to cover the point of being able to put something out in public with that kind of claim So those that is I think a lot of room for a deeper discussion But the values side we have a very rigid set of rules about how to conduct an experiment For example, how to analyze data We do not have any rigid set of rules about what questions we should ask and which experiments we should do Or which studies are in science and which ones are varied in obscure journals So there's a lot of implicit values that I think scientists are often not reflecting on about why they're asking their questions Which questions are receiving more attention? And in which scientists Are getting the most recognition for their work and this comes back to the the both the gendered and race history of of the scientific discipline so the Heat I think this is where our continuing dialogue between journalism and science has has a lot to unpack There are more wonderful questions and I'm going to offer an apology to those that we didn't get to And before we wrap up Elizabeth any final words you want to offer to our Berkeley audience Well, I want to say thank you for a lot of really really thought-provoking questions And I also just do want to reiterate for the um What I hope are a lot of young people out there, you know, uh, as I said, you you live an interesting time so um Don't despair but, uh get moving You two final words I would agree with Elizabeth. Um Get moving and use whatever your skills are Whether they're scientific discovery or their storytelling or they're organizing Use whatever those are to have an impact on this world Elizabeth and Gita, this has been this has been a real pleasure enormous pleasure. And again, I'm really sorry We're not in person to continue this with what we would normally we would have a reception after the Albright lecture and Uh, and hopefully we're all back to that soon enough But also it makes us possible to bring in an audience from far and wide and and reduce our carbon footprint Which we are all Increasingly cognizant of it's been a wonderful conversation and from rouser college of natural resources Thank you all for being with us here. We hope you all have stay safe and healthy and a Have a enjoyable holiday season coming up. So thank you all very much