 Let's make Hawaii sustainable. This is Think Tech. We care a lot about that. I'm Jay Fidel. And we have two other people here in the studio that care gobs about that. They have dedicated their lives. David Vogel and T.A.C.E Vogel, T.A.C.E Lopez Vogel. Yes. Don't forget that. T.A.C.E. And together they are VOLO Foundation. Get it? VOLO Foundation, which is, you know, since we met David, what, two, three years ago, Foundation has increased by huge dimensions. We're so happy to have you here. You are great participants in our programming and your supporter of our programming, your VOLO Foundation. Yes. Thank you so much. So say hi. Thank you for having us on the show, Jay. Yeah, thank you. And it's an honor for us to be here in your home. It's an honor to have you. So tell us about VOLO Foundation now as it stands, because you guys have grown, you know, enormously in the past two, three years. You have told me 38 programs, or 30 programs, I'm sorry, 38 next week. Yes. And the pays were growing, yes. Can you talk about it? Well, it's great to collaborate with so many other programs. We've focused our strategy over the last year to focus on public awareness and really focusing a lot on the state of Florida where we live. Florida is probably the most vulnerable state to climate change. We get witness sea level rise and increasing hurricanes. So we really want to increase the awareness there so that the public, the general public knows that we need to change our policies to fix the problem. That's what we want to do to raise public awareness. This is a major issue. I was telling you before the show that we have regular interviews with the journalism faculty at UH Manoa, and they agree that climate change is the single most important issue of our time. Everything else is secondary to that. You guys totally recognize that. So I guess the question is, you know, why, why do you care so much about this? You care a lot about this. You put a lot of time and effort into this. Why? Because I have six kids, and they are my life, and they are the force, the driving force behind everything I do, and we have to reserve a future for the kids. That is my main reason. This takes me to the Juliana case, which was on 60 minutes only a couple days ago. Amazing. Which was really, really striking case, Juliana versus the United States. It was filed before the Trump administration, but it seems to have greater relevance now in the Trump administration. It was filed in 2015 with the Obama administration, and that tells you that this is not a partisan issue. It's not red or blue. It started in 2015 as a group of kids suing the United States government, and what they want is the court to block the government to keep working with the fossil fuel because this is creating climate change, which is affecting their lives, their liberty, and their future. So it is amazing of all the major things that are in the federal courts. This is a more, I would say, is the most life-changing issue. If they win, the government will have to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and they will have to reduce emissions in unbelievable numbers. So it is, at the beginning nobody even thought it was going to go forward. They tried to dismiss the case twice, and they couldn't. So it finally passed, and it's going to trial, but the Trump administration now has tried five times to appeal that they have amazing amount of evidence, and they say, if we go to trial, there's no one stopping them. Yeah, in 60 minutes, there was a shot of the evidence, and there were binders that were like eight inches deep, a room full of these binders. So you understand that. You went to MIT, by the way. You sound like a lawyer. I'm an attorney. That's why you sound like a lawyer. I love those cases. And this is an issue that requires lawyers, but it also requires computer guys, numbers guys, David, and that's where you come from. You are MIT data, computer science, and you understand about those binders that are eight inches thick. What's important, I show that the evidence is driven by data. It's not just my opinion or her opinion. The data shows, I mean, therapeutically, that humans are causing global warming, and that's causing severe economic impact. So I mean, your organization of all foundations is really directed at getting the data and presenting the data to people who make policy, people who can affect change. Did I say that right? Completely. I'm amazed. Yeah, we want to be different from others because we are data-driven, and that, I think, is what makes us unique in what we do. It's not about an opinion. It's not somebody's said. I mean, there is a saying, without data, you're just someone with an opinion. And we want to have the data behind everything we say, everything we expect people to believe is because it's science-proven. And Dave is an amazing data predictive modeler. So he is a renowned person on this. So I think they'll believe someone like him. Yeah, so it's not just presenting to policymakers, it's presenting to voters. Because voters- We need that. In order for policymakers to change their policies, voters need to understand, too, that that's an important policy. Because we're all about a strong economy. I mean, Democrats and Republicans believe we want a stronger economy. It's the number one issue. When they rank climate change number 10 on the list, what we're trying to show is the climate changing is the most harmful thing to the economy that there is. We sit here and we save maybe two cents a kilowatt hour by getting natural gas instead of solar energy. Meanwhile, that carbon in the atmosphere is charging 12 cents a kilowatt hour in damages that makes no economic sense. And it's just driving a thing in denial about that. It's just driving our economy further downward. Especially in Florida, I think politicians have failed the public. And we are one out of the 13 only states that haven't even set goals on energy, on renewables. I mean, Hawaii is amazing. Hawaii set their standards way back when. But Florida, Florida should be a pioneer. We should be driving, especially in solar energy. And we're not. So we need politicians that really don't fail the public, the voters. But the voters have to speak up. Well, I mean, it's sort of ridiculous. I mean, the essential point is that if climate change will destroy the economy, and if you don't have an economy, well, what's the purpose? It's really a terrible result. We can talk about the overarching effects later. But let's talk about the data you've accumulated. Because you had certain data when last we met. You've been updating that data. You've achieved it from many sources. We have some slides where you can give people a general idea, a summary of the data you've collected. Why don't we go through those slides now? Yeah, we'd be happy to. So what's this? So this slide presents just very simply what carbon dioxide does for us. You've got the Earth and the Moon roughly the same distance from the sun. 92 million miles, only 200,000 miles apart, and a difference in 62 degrees average temperature. And the whole reason is that it's been known for 200 years that the whole reason that we're 60 degrees warmer than the moon is 2 trillion tons of carbon dioxide. So that's been one on fact amongst scientists, physicists for many years. What we've added as humans using fossil fuel, burning fossil fuels is an additional 1 trillion tons. So that doesn't really take a rocket scientist to understand that 2 trillion tons makes a difference of 60 degrees and an additional 1 trillion tons is going to be significant. And that's going to cause another 6 degrees of warming of which we've already seen 2 degrees of that. And humankind is at the root of this. And it's so easy to prove that because you can take that 1 trillion tons and you just look at the energy reports as I manage a hedge fund. We look at oil inventory numbers and we go through 35 billion barrels of oil a year. I mean, simply multiply that by 200 the weight of a barrel of oil. And you can easily over the several decades show that every molecule that 1 trillion tons is attributed to fossil fuel emissions. It's really just, it's like arithmetic, no complicated physics there. Some people, I mean this is really important. Some people think that the humanity is too small, that its effect on the planet is too small to actually affect these changes. But they're wrong. Humanity has a huge effect on the planet and is having a huge effect on the planet. I will increase that effect if we don't do anything about the planet. What would you add to David's remarks? I would say that Greta Thumber, the Swedish activist, she was one person sitting in front of the parliament for days and days just asking for action on climate change. And this girl in one year, she started attracting the media. And in one year she has mobilized over a million and a half kids to do the school strike every Friday for action on climate. So if one girl can do this, tell me about the population of the earth. We are causing climate change and we have the tools to reverse it. And we have the tools to stop it. We just have to act. Like she says, one of her, I think the most amazing thing of her said is like when your house is on fire, you don't talk about it. You don't sit down and talk about it. You act and our house is on fire. We should act now. We have the IPCC report giving us 12 years. We have all the governments of every country they have to act. Stop talking. Absolutely. Let's go to the next slide. As it unfolds, so to speak. And this is something we derived ourselves from Volo Foundation. It's actually very consistent with the IPCC report and what the physicists say, but using basic actually high school level physics and chemistry equations. You can show that we've experienced two degrees of warming. It actually fits the model of warming if you actually model out the carbon dioxide per year. What are the years on that chart? And it actually goes from the beginning of the curve is basically the late 19th century industrial revolution when we started burning fossil fuels. And because we keep increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, it accelerates the change in temperature. So the blue dots are the actuals. And the line is the projection of our model. And you see we've got another 15 years until the next one degree of warming. And the slope of the chart, the upswing of the chart, logarithmic. And it's exponential, actually. And it's only exponential because we keep increasing the CO2. It would be more linear if the CO2 were constant. Every man, woman, and child has to know this. Yes. OK, let's go to the next one. And this is specific to hurricane data. I've been from Florida just looking at hurricane damages alone. When we talk about a few degrees, it seems like a small thing. When you actually look at the relationship, that top left graph is the relationship between temperature of the water and hurricane frequency. So hurricane season, that's actually defined as between May and November because that's when the water is over 80 degrees. Wait a minute. We're in June. That's between May and November. That's right. So we are in hurricane season. We've got water just hitting 80 degrees. September is typically the warmest water. And we see the 84 degree water. And that's why we get the biggest hurricanes. So a couple of degrees is the difference between a category 1 and a category 4 storm. Is that exacerbated in the El Nino year? Yes. El Nino will cause natural fluctuations. But the warming will, in any condition, accelerate the likelihood. I explain it to people that don't understand the data, like when you have fever, at two degrees in your body makes you feel miserable. You bet. So people think, oh, well, one, two degrees is not so much. What happened when you go from 97 to 100? You have fever. You have to go to the hospital. That is the effect. You guys are studying all the effects. I mean, it has an effect on all of this planet and all of the life on this planet. Everything, it happens. And all the things that people, when you ask people that are going to vote, what are their major subjects that they want their candidates to talk about? They talk about immigration. They talk about terrorism. They talk about economy. Everything, absolutely everything, is caused by climate change. Because people are going to have to mobilize. They're going to have to, some islands are, as we speak, sinking, Jakarta, Maldives. So those people are going to have to move, and it's going to cause immigration in other countries. Yeah. It's causing immigration already here in the United States. Immigration into Europe. In fact, the migration from South America. Over here. Because they don't have the extended climate they had before. Reculture has been affected. So they don't have anything to eat. The coastal zones have been, because of the sea level rise, the fishery, everything is affected by it. Even terrorism, the Syria war, was named by the UNESCO, I think, was named by a water war. It was caused by a natural effect. So those are the things that people have to understand that everything is driven. So you could draw a line from climate change to a lot of trouble in the world. Absolutely. And the more climate change you have, the more trouble. I'm getting a headache. Can we take a short break? Come back and re-address these issues as David Vogel and Tase Lopez Vogel, right here from Vogel Foundation. Aloha, I'm Stan Osterman, a host here on Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness here on the island. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you go to ThinkTechHawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Mahalo. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music in Hawaii, Anna, all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Okay, if you didn't guess it before, we're talking about new numbers in climate change with David and Tase, and they are the principles of Bolo Foundation. We are happy to have them here. So we have more slides. We're talking about data because you guys are driven by data. And indeed, data is fact. It's not an alternate fact. It's real fact, my definition. Okay, let's look at some of the other slides. Okay, the important graph here is on the right. It's showing who's paying for all the damages of the increasing hurricanes. So we got, I got on the show two years ago and... You've had three shows with us. That's correct. I predicted the bigger record hurricanes are coming. And now we've had two years of record-breaking hurricanes. Strongest storm ever to hit the panhandle last year and our liners had devastating damage. This graph shows who's paying for it. And the insurance companies have gotten smarter. They're probably the only... They've sort of stopped insuring, you know, providing... We'll find a way not to pay for it. And so when you look at this graph here, look the taxpayers have gotten from 30% up to now 50% of the costs that we want to come up with these aid packages. I mean, it's come out of everybody's wallet. So we talked about the economy being affected, maybe saving a few cents to go with natural gas, but we're paying now $50 billion packages to fix these basically what we call man-made hurricanes. Yeah, and that will affect disposable income and thus the economy. Yeah, absolutely. What's the next one? And this illustrates how the sort of risk that fossil fuel companies incur because in other industries where they've withheld the truth about the effects, you see they end up with hundreds of billions in lawsuits. We saw that with the tobacco industry. They've had the lung cancer effects for years. Eventually it came right back on them, same with the asbestos industry. And so that just illustrates the risk that comes with this kind of sort of fooling the public. It takes me back to the whole discussion of messy, because where we are now, which is not great. I mean, looking ahead, it's not optimistic. And where we're going to get here, depending on what year you pick, it's going to be messy. We're going to suffer. The economy is going to dry up in many places. What was the remark was the United States would become a third world country, but the whole world would become a third world country. Or fourth. Do they have fourth world countries? That's true. You know, it strikes me, though, that from what you were saying a minute ago, David, that we're going to have disruption. Disruption in our society, in our relations, people-to-people relations. And a lawyer would be able to see that the courts would be clogged or dysfunctional because the courts will not be able to handle all the disputes that arise out of the losses and damages that come from climate change. What will we do? What will we do? We have to start acting. Like I said before, we have to start asking, first of all, putting a price on carbon. I think that is essential. We have the solutions page in our website, VoloFoundation.org. VoloFoundation.org, yeah. I think carbon price is inevitable. Dave knows about carbon price and how it will affect. And we need to start acting. It's not actually that complicated from a policy standpoint. I mean, we all pay, you know, maximum per month for the garbage man to pick up our garbage. We don't just throw the garbage into the street or in the neighbor's yard. That would be insane. That's what we're doing with carbon. If you put a price on it, then that will actually cause the basic economics to clean up. Once we put the real price and see how expensive it is, then we move toward cleaner economy. Well, I think it's going to change the economy. It is changing the economy. It may be sometimes imperceptible in a given issue. But over time, that's the problem. We have to connect the dots. That's why I appreciate you're updating your numbers. Because the dots say two years ago, say one thing, the dots now say another thing. And we have to see the trends so that we can figure out how things are changing. And that should be pretty scary. Why don't you go on more slides? Well, this graph shows very interesting is that the actual damages in the recent decade, the damages done by fossil fuel emissions actually exceeds the entire income of the fossil fuel industry. So they're basically got a free ride causing making excellent revenues but doing more than those revenues and damages. It's crazy. Yeah. Next? And this is showing the lawsuits that are starting to build against the fossil fuel industries. So it started a few years ago with a couple cities. Now we've got New York City, Baltimore, Rhode Island joining the fight. So it's really mounting as people are understanding the real truth of what fossil fuel companies have been doing. Yeah. I asked you before we started, you know, the data that you're collecting and verifying and demonstrating and teaching people through the media and otherwise. I heard your NPR. Oh, well, thank you. It was very nice. More than Mary, really. You know, all that data, where does that go? Does that go to finding out how bad it is? Is it go to finding out, you know, how much worse it's getting or it could get? Or is it go to identifying the kinds of things that we have to do to reverse this? Or is it all of the foregoing? I think it's all of the above. Yes, all of the above. And basically every number I've showed you in the slides is based on data. So none of it's my opinion. It's showing, I mean, it's a quantifying number of barrels. It equals so many tons of CO2. The connection between the warming, the way hurricanes thrive in warmer conditions. It's all data that I've showed. None of it is zero opinion. Data in air pollution, data in water pollution, data in hurricanes. We focus more on hurricanes in these slides because of Florida is the hurricanes are more impactful there. All connected. But it's all connected. And the quality of life that our kids and the future generations are going to have is not going to be compared to what we have right now. So that's what we want to preserve. The quality of life. Earth is going to keep here. It's going to evolve. Nature knows how to evolve. It's us and the people that are going to go through bigger temperature changes, immigration, like I said before. Disruption of all kinds. And we have to adapt. So adaptation and mitigation are things that our constituents have to ask their candidates because it's coming, it's here, and we have to attack. We are in it for sure. You had one more slide, David. Can we see that? OK. Really, we just wanted to present here how you convert a price tag of the damages to a price on a price per ton of carbon. So if you're going to price carbon, we basically just got to look at how the data shows how much damages have been done. We can see that the 1 trillion tons that we have put in the atmosphere is going to cause about $50 trillion in damages. That comes out to about $50 a ton, which is hard for people to comprehend. So what that comes out to per gallon of gas is 50 cents a gallon. And that may move people to, if that's priced in, move people to electric vehicles. You can see burning coal. It's $0.05 a kilowatt hour. So it's not cheap. But if that's priced in, then obviously you can see the renewables and nuclear in the lower right corner are not, there's no carbon damage. The transition to renewables is going to generate jobs. It's going to make the economy better. It has happened in other countries in Sweden and Germany and Canada. So we can do it. If they have done it, we can do it. We have to have a political will to do it. I mean, this administration, only a week ago, reversed the Obama energy policy from renewable to coal. We're back in coal. When these things are happening in the environment, it's remarkable to think that. So I want to ask you guys, the kids you're talking about, they have to be activated. All the people have to be activated. When they have these debates right now, they're going to have it what, tonight and tomorrow? Tonight and tomorrow in Miami. That has to be an issue. And it wasn't in one of the questions, the climate change, that they didn't want to debate climate change. But I know for a fact that they have people in front of the stations just asking and having billboards and all kind of movement and activism for them to go into climate change. It's so critical. And we must make people understand. And I hate to use the Charles Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Future kind of analogy. You remember Scrooge is taken into the future. And he has shown the future if he's not decent. And the future is very dire in the Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens. So what is the dire result? If there was somebody, say a politician, a public official, who didn't get it, what would you say to him or her about the future to show him that there's really no choice on this? Meanwhile, you've got sea level rising from melting ice. So eventually these coastal cities will go under water. I mean, the economy will just get worse and worse until we actually have the political will move away from fossil fuels. And then once we have that political will, then we can make the world better and better again. It's really critical. And the lives will depend on it. Like you said, we have to do it now. We can't wait. I'm going to say like Greta Thamber say, I don't talk to those people. It's a fact. It's like you telling me your heart is not pumping blood. It is. It's a fact. I'm not going to discuss it with you. Right. You can't argue about silly things like that. You just don't talk to those people. So what's the future for Volo Foundation? You guys are putting so much energy into this. And you're getting so much traction. You know, you have, like, taken off in the last couple of years, all these projects are everywhere. So question, what is the future for you? How do you see the future unfolding? You know, in terms of your own growth and extension and in terms of your effect on this issue in society? Right now, it's really presenting. It's analyzing and presenting the data that people understand. And that's policymakers, voters. It's generating that political will. And we'll keep sharing all our findings. We have climate correction to the 2000s It's on October 3, 2019. I was already in 2020, because it's every year. We have it at UCF. And we bring the most amazing speakers, scientists, to share, educate, and act and find solutions for climate change. A reaction from me, then. You guys are working together. You're together. It's a great community when you have a husband and wife together. Together. And then you're bringing other people into this community by the carload. So now the community is bigger. And the community includes kids, at least six. At least. Maybe more. No, six is enough. Don't try that at home. So it's great to see that. It's great to see that community developing. You are a center in this whole movement. And I want to thank you for doing it. Thank you on behalf of the eight, nine billion people in the world. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Follow us at volafoundation.org. Yeah. Thank you, Tess. Thank you. Thank you very, very extreme. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha.