 history is here to help. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Hawaii. And that's your handsome young man is Peter Hoffenberg. We're all here to help. Answer is usually not an adjective. Thank you. Obviously, your glasses need cleaning. But thank you very much. It's always good to be here to chat. And we're going to talk about climate change and other disasters and how they affect history. This is really important because we have so many things now that are either disasters or potential disasters, including bad storms, floods, droughts, famine, what have you, that all these things affect the line of history. So Peter, I mean, you're an historian at UH, you've been bending your life on history. You must have sort of a general thought about this if you connect the dots from history to history, from point of inflection to point of inflection, a lot of those points of inflection will be disastrous. I'm thinking of the black plague in the 14th century. That changed everything. And that was one of the kind of disasters, the inflection points that we need to appreciate if we're going to appreciate European history. I would say world history as well. You're absolutely right. It's something I do actually lecture on and study. So I'm more than happy to discuss it with you, to field any questions. Just as an introductory way with my students, we look at something like the pandemic or a natural, which is somewhat natural and has social implications. And I ask them to think about a couple of issues that catastrophes raise and also how we think about catastrophes in history. So I'm more than happy. You can shoot the questions at me or I can introduce the way I discuss with students, whatever's best for you. Yeah, I want to let you know in advance that some of these questions are really hard, very unfair questions. Those are the only ones I enjoy. Me too. When I'm asking someone else, of course, of course. Anyhow, let's go ahead with the questions and I'll tell you a major thing. A major thing like climate change. And it's biblical in the sense that humanity is being tested and humanity is failing the test as we watch. I mean, we can see Florida, for example, all the sad stories and all the houses broken and people losing their property and their pet dog, whatever it is. And their lives. Their lives. That's as well. Yes. Yeah. I mean, horrible change in circumstances. All negative. Okay. And when you multiply that by virtually millions, okay, you must conclude as an historian or as a sociologist that there's an inflection point there. There's a doctor connect and it's it's leading downward. But here's my question. Can you can you play it out for me? Can you tell me how that expression of climate change and other expressions of climate change and there are many more. And it's just a, you know, wildfires, floods, droughts, lack of food, extinctions of animals and plants, starvation of populations, resulting violence, famines, disease, of course, all that. It all comes from climate change. And my unfair question to you, how does this affect history? When you knit all these things together and you make a kind of, you know, a progress chart. What is the process and where does it take us? Okay, that is a tough question. And it'll take a couple of weeks. But let me try to give some helpful answers, I hope, and then we can continue. We look at a crisis like this as a historian. So I'm not an environmental scientist. I'm not a food scientist. But if I, when I and my students look at a crisis like climate change and the catastrophic waves in which climate change has unfolded, we can ask some of the same questions. We're not, we're not sure if this is the end of all ends, if it is actually apocalyptic. But we can ask, ask questions which we ask of the other catastrophes that you mentioned. So for example, does a catastrophe not only create new problems, but reveal some of the existing structural problems? And I think the answer is yes, right? So we can see that again, catastrophes disproportionately hurt poor and vulnerable people who are poor and vulnerable in society. So some scholars, there's an, including a philosopher argues that a catastrophe, as Ronka said, is a darkness that allows us to see. So a catastrophe, if society takes advantage of it, right, catastrophes actually expose existing problems. And even though you're too young to remember this, the Great Depression is a good example of this. Where the Great Depression, some argued, right, needed a few tweaks here and there, and others argued and exposed the rot of capitalism. So that's one historical point of view that we can say, and the pandemic is that case, right? Pandemic again hit people most vulnerable who are already, right, most vulnerable. So that'd be one response where it's headed. Secondly, is that as a historian, we always look at language. How do people describe things? And your biblical reference is very helpful. Because in the West, we often think in apocalyptic terms. But in apocalyptic terms, for example, in Christianity, right, the end of days, will then create the afterlife and perfection. So we always have to wrestle a little bit, right, with the religious understanding. Is this the, you know, the book of Acts, and then the time of the return of the Messiah? Certainly, some people argue, right, catastrophes are signs that were headed towards a kind of perfection. Let me stop you there and reflect on the points you just made. In reverse order, if you think about the apocalyptic analysis, I think it's a lazy way out. It's a lazy way out. It's not making the analysis we need to make about where all these dots and threads are going. We have to be smarter than that. And if you're a planner, call you an historic planner, a planner who evaluates and plans history. You can't just say it's an apocalypse. You can't do that. You have to get real. You have to tell us where these threads are taking us and how life is going to be different for the survivors. Because not everybody survives a disaster. And I think that's one element I would throw into the pot. The other element I would say, you know, when you talk about, to use Trump's turn, draining the swamp, you know, when you'll have a disaster and you remove, you know, things that maybe weren't clear, and now you see, lo and behold, all around you, other issues that are problematic, what it does is it teaches you, it teaches you, you cannot see the world in these simple terms. If I ask you my question a little while ago, you know, how is climate change affecting, you know, the future of humanity or history? That is really a trick question. I'm sorry I didn't announce it as a trick question. I understood it to be a trick question. Because all these threads are all connected. And the real challenge is to look at the other threads that are revealed by climate change and related disasters and connect those other threads too. Because they're, you know, they're all worked together. I shouldn't say all, not all, and that's also a challenge to find out which essential ones to work together. Essential ones, but some don't. And so you have to make a choice about which is essential and which is not. And so history is a combination of threads, very complicated. And if you did a Microsoft chart on it, you know, it would be as big as all humanity that chart, because there are so many factors and things that are under the, under the surface, you know, after you drain the swamp, so to speak, that, you know, it would take you a lifetime just to figure out the connections. I don't know if historians do that. Do they do that? And should they do that? Well, historians as far as we'll say catastrophes in the past, not, we're a little wary of suggesting where this could go. I really trust the environmental scientists much more than myself. But to answer your question, yes, scholars do. And there's some very helpful books. Simon Winchester has a book about Krakatoa. And the explosion of Krakatoa is, I think, a good healthy example of what you're talking about, how Krakatoa affected really much of the world, including it probably provoked jihadist rebellions as far away as the Sudan. So that was a good example of how in the 19th century Krakatoa, El Nino is a book by Mike Davis, an author who lives on the big island and a journalist who traces El Nino as a climate catastrophe. So I think you're absolutely right. Most historians try to do that. The difficulty we have is some of us are wary, right, of venturing into areas we don't really know very much about. So when you look at the Black Death, you really have to start with the medical history. You have to understand how it was brought, how it affected people. So historians are interested in its impact on the labor market and food, but we often have to call upon our medical or health scholars. Like Robert Littner who teaches here is an expert on the plague in Athens. That required him to do some medical research. I think the answer is it's done. It's done best though when a historian says, I don't know everything. Let me call upon some of the experts. Okay, but if I walked around UH Manoa, I would find a lot of the academics say I'm into multidisciplinary studies. I gather data on a multitude of disciplines and issues across the board. And although I may be in one school focusing on this subject of that, this science of that, I also wrap around other schools focusing maybe not so scientific and sociology would have you, more history. And I'm thinking the future of academia must include a multidisciplinary person who is yes, an historian, but also a scientist who will not say, I'm sorry, I can't talk about that because that's for somebody else. He will say, I can talk about that because I wrap around all of these things and I'm willing to give you the comprehensive. That is being done. Right now there's a whole school of study on what's called the Anthropocene, the geological era of humanity, basically. And the Anthropocene, excuse me, is really a study of climate change. And that includes political scientists, environmental scientists, historians, etc. I'm not sure if there's an individual I could point to, but certainly the scholarship is there. The difficulty, as you know, is the public perception of that scholarship. We still have a political debate in the face of these crises. We still have a political debate about whether or not there is something called climate change, which humanity is affecting, or folks who argue that this kind of climate change we've seen before. So we've seen extinctions. This was a lot of magical, non-scientific thought going out there. But scholars are doing what you mentioned. I can't tell you a single person, but there are study groups. And even here on campus, we have people studying the Anthropocene who talk to each other. So I think the work is being done. Historians are a little wary about we have enough trouble with the past. We're a little wary of projecting the future. But don't we ultimately need that in order to examine the very larger issues? I would like to see an article or a book about where exactly is climate change taking us. Because it doesn't, you know, you can't have the disaster scenario, and I mean disaster, I mean the apocalypse scenario without examining how the different threads are connected. By the way, I want to go back to your reference to Krakatoa. In my notes here, I actually included Krakatoa, and I included Vesuvius too, you know, as a big disaster. But let's take Krakatoa, let's take the Jihad that you mentioned. How have historians connected up? Krakatoa is a big eruption, big, big, big eruption, what, 200 years ago maybe? And Jihad, how can you make that connection? This is a really good case study. So the thesis is that Krakatoa, first of all, was not a local event. So we have to understand that Vesuvius was primarily a local event. Krakatoa, like a storm and crisis in the early 18th century, affected much of the globe. So the argument is that as it affected much of the globe, as we're seeing today, it did at least two things. One, if you had a kind of apocalyptic vision of the world, which is not reserved for Christianity, it was a sign of some divine intervention. And disasters have always at least with somebody been seen as the hand of God, whatever their God is. And secondly, it had real on the ground impact, particularly as far as food, the ability of colonial officers to control colonial societies. So the argument is essentially that the biology and the climatology affected harvests, directly affected social relations. And one of the responses, this historian argues, is jihadism, in particularly the horn of Africa, the rise, the Mahdi, and some of the jihadists that some of the current jihadists refer back to. So they don't all go back to the caliphs of Muhammad. Some of them refer to late 19th, early 20th century, where there's a significant amount of jihadism in North Africa and in the Sudan. So it's just one example. Clouds filled with food-killing chemicals travel, not just, of course, Indonesia, which was devastated, but travel around the world. So the argument for today would be the impact of heat. The warming of the earth doesn't just affect Norway. It affects Pakistan. It affects California. And most particularly, and I don't mean this in a banal way, because it's the most essential, right? It affects food production. And you add climate change to war in Ukraine, and you really do have a significant food crisis right now, both man and nature made, well, man-made through climate, but directly man-made through war. That's so interesting. You talk about war, so you're not only talking about people who don't have enough food. You're not only talking about starving, or the disease that comes from not having enough food. Those are actual factual things that follow on our little chart. But you're also talking about psychology and sociology, which when you throw it in the mix and you start making your analysis on the basis of how these things or the threat of these things affect our state of mind, and I say our state of mind, I mean, seven billion, eight billion states of mind, and that affects history by itself. Even if you subtract the reality of lack of food or disease, if people are afraid of these things, if they're afraid of continuing their lives in a straight line and they redirect their lives in fear of something, that affects history too. And that's very, very, very subjective. Absolutely. I mean, two points which you know, but just to remind you, and we're dealing with that with climate migration now. Even if it's not directly affecting people, they fear. I mean, the atolls will disappear in the Pacific. The sense is that those are now inevitably disappearing. You're absolutely right. Secondly, to help address your question, we add another field to our study, which is psychology. And the Freudian analysis of trauma helps us understand this as well. Not just the trauma itself, but the fear of trauma and how one responds to that. How one responds to a fear of catastrophe to take preventive measures or sometimes acceptance. Sometimes the reverse of resiliency is an acceptance of what's going to happen. And we see that I think also kind of inertia. Either it's inevitable, or it'll happen down the road. And again, the Great Depression is a really good example, because as you know, among the consequences of Great Depression are insurance policies for our banking accounts. So the idea was that the Great Depression was caused by this mania on money, people losing money, people grabbing money. So we go from the explanation of the trauma directly to a solution at least at that time. So if climate change is caused by coal burning, we should do something about coal burning. That's the kind of question, though, that depends upon how you define and explain what's actually happening. If you're willing to say, yes, it's coal, then rationally, you should address coal. But you can see that also rationally, if you don't think it's coal, then you're not going to address coal. So the cause of the catastrophe is crucial. By ensuring banking, we're following more of a kind of Milton Friedman S view that the banks were the problem in the Great Depression, not capitalism itself, as other people said. But you're building the notion of irrationality. The arson of Serbia is shot, and as a result, we have a world war. What's rational about that? And so just as a rational fear of the disaster, or something really negative that might hurt us, can create a change in history, so can an irrational reaction. And there's no way to anticipate that. No, there's no way to anticipate it, but it's where economists working on theories of expectation and psychologists working on trauma and fear, as you ask for a multidisciplinary, we bring those in as well. But again, yes, I mean, you're also faced with another field that's growing, which is this field of contagion studies. And Facebook is a good example, right, the kind of contagion that spreads. And a recent study I read last week, it spread in ways that people actually believe things that they know are wrong. They will believe those. And they'll act on this. So we're getting really good at that. Yeah, I mean, we're venturing into an area where neuroscience probably would help, which is well beyond my pay scale. But how, I mean, let's be honest, I mean, how the brain actually works. And we have made incredible advances, but we haven't yet figured out the power of that irrational component in the brain to seemingly, right? I mean, the brain, I guess, I mean, the brain tells us that our irrationality is rational. I mean, it's a Freudian problem, right? It's a rationalization of the irrational. So you and I think it's a rational and our brains think it's irrational. But of course, if you ask somebody else, very importantly, right, it is within their worldview, it makes sense to them. And climate change, I think what you started with is a great example, why some people either won't believe it's happened, or think we can't do anything about it, or seeing the potential end don't think the sacrifices are worth it. And I think you've seen in the United States, it takes bold measures like California in 20 years will not have internal combustion cars. That's the answer. That's kind of an FTR. I mean, it's an FTR, you know, bank holiday answer. But look, this is a crucial problem. A democratically elected leader, democratically elected leader, right? Representing the majority of the people says, so look, this, this is a problem which government has to intervene. And I think you'll, you'll probably see the country split between, right? Blue states that'll do something like that. And red states, I mean, the senators in Florida who are happy to criticize helping New Jersey, but want money to come to Florida. I don't, I don't see major changes, you know, in the government in Florida, which is absolutely necessary. Two thoughts. One is it seems to me that if we put human knowledge into AI, which is still in its infancy, we can probably figure out the probabilities and maybe even get good probabilities on what's going to happen, even though it's irrational. Oh, I think we already know. I mean, the models already, the solid models already tell us where we're going. I don't think there's any data. You see that in the angst of the younger generation, which is much more attuned to it than we are. I mean, I think that helps explain. I mean, that plus the pandemic, boom, I mean, you took a generation and as NPR said the other day, you know, interviewed somebody. I mean, why bother working? You know, why bother doing much when literally, for some of the world, the world is ending. Yeah, I mean, for some people, and that may not be, but that may not be irrational. The rational kick has to come in that we still have to have faith that we can apply our knowledge to address the problem. But look, in our society, we even disagree about experts and knowledge, right? We can't even, we can't have a national consensus that a scientist is correct on this. We can't even have that. But we have to get rational. And we do have the technology to be rational. And there could be a little black box, six inches by six inches on top of a mountain in somewhere in the Rockies, and it could make policy decisions for us. Well, ironically, ironically, within the government, the one body which is doing something about this is actually the military. The military is planning for climate change. I don't, I don't like, you know, me and militarism. But if we look at some at an institution that's actually thinking ahead, it's the Pentagon. And if you look at the Pentagon budget and their weaponry, which is nothing I'm celebrating, but just talking about a rational actor, they know their goal, right, is to win a war. And they know that the climate change is going to affect how wars are fought. So they're ahead, you know, they're thinking ahead, ironically. Ironically, because they can also be wrong. But they can be wrong. They can also cause disastrous result. Oh, absolutely. I'm not holding it up. I'm holding it up, not the Pentagon, baby, good guy, but I'm holding it up that it is possible for a government institution. And if it's possible for the government, it's also possible for the private sector to do the models you suggested. Assume the goals are still the same. Assume and see what changes we need to make in light of rising waters. You and I both know that starvation is going to force migration, which is going to force conflicts. I mean, part of the Syrian civil war is based on food prices, part of it. I mean, Sri Lanka has no fuel and these are all connected. They're not just economic issues. They're economic reflections. But also there's a ying and yang because the economics then also push the climate change, there's a ying and yang. I mean, economics, climate change, climate change, economics. It's all chicken and yang. Okay. So would you agree with me that disasters, whether they're fast or slow, have the greatest effect on history? Have the greatest effects. That is a hard question. The greatest effect. Can we say they have had significant effect that we cannot think or write about history without epic catastrophes? Is that an acceptable answer? Well, if I have a Krakatoa or some kind of really huge disaster, a climate change disaster, a pandemic disaster, that is really going to change the direction of the dots. It does. More than just getting up in the morning and going to work. No, I agree. I mean, the difficulty for professional historians like myself is the foundation of that argument is things changed and things changed in a way which they would not have if the disaster had not occurred. Right? That's kind of a logic. Okay. So historians while recognizing that are a little wary because we're not sure whether or not, for example, those consequences would have happened anyhow. So there would have been jihadism. Now, the historian responds to your question by saying catastrophes, extremely important, historical connections important. They affect how perhaps something occurs. They may explain, for example, why jihadism occurred exactly at that moment and exactly that place. Right. But that's different than saying, well, the body would not have risen without Krakatoa. Does that make sense? I mean, you're a lawyer, so you can see one factor among many factors. And if we sat here and read a lot of books, we would figure out what other factors were in play for the jihad movement. But also whether jihad would have occurred, you know, with the absence of Krakatoa, sure. So I think the affirmative answer is yes, absolutely. And more and more historians are writing in light of catastrophe and trauma and recovery more and more. And so if you look at more titles, more sources, bibliographies, etc., absolutely right. They completely agree with you. There's always been a big cottage industry about the plague and the black death. That's always been, that's built in. I think more and more, even Timothy Snyder wrote one of his books about Hitler in the Holocaust, it really went in a climate change argument. He argued basically Laban's wrong, but I was in response. Laban's wrong, sure. Right. And so Tim Snyder is taking a traditional topic, right, Nazis and the Shoah, and he's giving it also an interpretation. So I think people are right on board with what you're saying. We're just not, we're a little wary of, you know, the old Latin phrase, if it follows, I don't remember it. It's in, it's in law as well. You know, if something happened, if A and B happened, that doesn't mean that A caused B, right? It's a Latin phrase. Okay. It's in the West Wing. So historians are always a little wary. We say yes, Krakatoa. Yes, Jihad. More than contingent. But the historians who are most troubled by this are generally historians who have, and again, I don't say this in a majority way, they have kind of a grand view, right? So Marxist historians have a particularly grand view and Krakatoa, you know, is secondary to class struggle. Other people have a view that the nation will always rise. So sure, Krakatoa affected nationalism. So some of it depends upon what kind of history. If you want to have a lesson in history, or one common story, then you're probably a little more reluctant to look at this. Well, we care, we care about negative events, because they lead to other negative events. I'm being kind of an armchair historian here. Sure. Sure. So if I have a disaster, I can make the assumption that starvation in sub-Saharan Africa is going to result in people trying to get to a better place, and maybe crossing over the Mediterranean into Europe. And that leads to a resistance, political resistance in Europe. All these things are connected. And so if you take one bad event, one natural disaster, then you know, you can say, well, there's a fair chance this is going to result in war, in violence, in contention, in attempts to take territory, whatever it is, and killing other people who don't die by the disaster themselves. And so the question is, if I have my little black box on the top of the Colorado divide over there, examine all these things with this really powerful AI, and I try to identify how the disaster event leads to the war event, would there be, you know, would there be a connection there? And could I figure out how to ameliorate the disaster event, listen to this one, so as to avoid the war? I think it is a wonderful idea, and something that some of us do think about historically, and it gets back to, again, you as a lawyer, right? It gets back to what's the prime cause. So today our discussion prime cause is climate change, absolutely, right? Control climate change, build properly, don't build in areas which are vulnerable, provide food support. All of those I think we can agree on. What gets into play, of course, is also national integrity, political stability within a country. I mean, I think Syria is a really interesting case for us to think about. We spent a lot of time on the Ukraine, but that's because we've ignored Syria. And Syria is a pretty good example of what you're talking about. Everything combined. Food crisis, tyranny, lack of democracy, forced immigration, immigration of people of color who are non-accepted, immigration non-Christians who are not accepted. I think it's apropos exactly of what you're talking about. The one additional point would be it's a civil war. So Syria is not interested in spending, but Russia used Syria as a testing ground. What the Russians have tried to do in the Ukraine, almost all that they practiced in Syria before. So I think you're absolutely right. If we have that AI, and again, this is nothing profound, we're really, we're talking about food. I mean, the bottom line is we're talking about food, food prices, the quality of food, the accessibility of food. And I'm more than happy to come back and talk about famine, which is something I work on. I'll just give you one comment from Sen, former Nobel laureate. He says, a famine is not enough food. A famine is not getting food. It's a very different issue. And so he claims his famines are not possible in true democracies. I'll leave you with that. I'm happy to pick up. I'm happy to pick up on that. We need to cover that. But before you go. But that gets back to a place like Syria or the Sudan, where it's probably true that climate has affected the amount of the harvest. That's clearly true in salinization, clearly. But the other element is that the food that is there is again, not going, not getting to the poorest people, not getting to people. It's going to change the cities before Sudan splits. Islamic Sudan in the north did not provide food for the Animas south. So there are lots of different ways to keep. And Assad would not provide any food to Aleppo or places like that. Another kind of slavery. Let me go to one other thing, which has been in the paper. Last question, really. So we have had this really incredible storm through Florida. And it destroyed a lot of communities, some more than others, but a lot of them totally destroyed. That was an article in The Times yesterday, I think. It was an essay or an opinion piece. And the question it raised was, should we rebuild these communities or move and find other places that are safer and less vulnerable to climate change? And does history indicate our experience? I mean, this is history is here to help, right? Does our experience with history make this clear enough that we can't rebuild all these cities and towns that have been wiped out only to have them wiped out again? Don't we learn from history? Isn't history here to help? Why don't we find another way? I'm laughing because I'm afraid, in this case, history is not here to help. And historically, people have continued to rebuild where places are most vulnerable. I highly recommend if people have a chance to read Mike Davis' book about LA and Malibu. Malibu is a good example, how many fires, how many floods, how many earthquakes can occur so people stop building in Malibu. So you raise a wonderful point. What I see happening, unfortunately, is unless people have the ability to move, which includes, as you say, the psychology, that I'm willing to move, I see one or two things happen. I see people who can't afford building what are still vulnerable homes. And I read and heard yesterday about a community in Florida which fully survived because it was planned ahead of time. But that cost money, right? The homes are on the average about 250,000, which really for a lot of Floridians is not possible. It required the use of engineering and science. So I know we're running out of time, but for example, when there's a flood in the community, the water goes down the road and not into people's homes. There are ponds around the homes. So floodwaters. So I give you two possibilities from history. One is we learn and even if we build where we are, we build better. That's a possibility. Unfortunately, most of history suggests most people cannot move and most people rebuild. How many floods will New Orleans experience? Some people just can't move, not even for the psychological reasons. And that may be where the president has said the federal government will help Florida and helping Florida might need helping people move. And there's some thought that people, some if they can, they will move. And that some of the northern states better be prepared. They better be prepared for housing and mental health, et cetera. So I think you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, history can only help a little bit. And I do recommend if folks are interested, Mike Davis's work on Malibu because it's a microcosm. Top 0.2% of the world microcosm. But it is essentially the same problem. I'm going to rebuild exactly where the fire caused by climate change destroyed my previous home. I'm not going to move a bit. And I don't think that's reserved just for the wealth. Thank you, Peter. What a great time. Of course, my pleasure. All right. I'm an Offenberg history professor at UH Manoa. I talk to you here about how history can help and we touched on a number of things where it can help. Well, maybe not. And there's more that comes out of this discussion. Thank you so much, Peter. Of course. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.