 Henderson, that's the magic word on think-tech here today, and we're talking about climate change. Beyond outrage, we have climate change everywhere, and we need to study it everywhere. We can study it, okay? And, Morgan Henderson, you'll see her in a minute. You will like her immediately. She's in Salt Lake City. She joins us by remote. Good morning or afternoon as the case may be, Morgan. Yeah, good morning, Jay. It's good to be here. Yeah, great. So, you are a public relations PR person, and you are speaking on behalf of KALON, which is an organization, I guess, into surfing, and that has issued a report on what places have done a good job in protecting surfing against the onslaught of climate change. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Why does surfers care about climate change? I mean, there's only a few of them, you know, I mean, of the population. They might be half a percent, really. Even in Hawaii, where we have a lot of surfing, why do they care about surfing? Yeah, surfers specifically. I mean, everyone's affected by climate change, but surfers, especially with climate change, it can cause sea level rise and the water temperatures, changes in wave patterns. So, it really affects their sport in some of the places that they enjoy surfing in may actually not even exist. As sea level rises and as the ocean temperature is warming, it does cause coastal erosion, meaning beaches will start disappearing, coastlines will start disappearing, and surfers may not be able to go to their favorite locations anymore and catch those big waves in the future. Okay, let's unpack that. The first part that comes to mind is the temperature itself. And, you know, I mean, you see, this doesn't happen too much in Hawaii, because it's warm here, but you see surfers all around the world wearing wetsuits. Presumably, that's not for sharks. That's for cold. They're afraid of getting cold. They don't want to be cold, and the wetsuit helps them stay warm. So, if the ocean temperature is going up in climate change and global warming, isn't that a good thing for surfers? They don't have to wear a wetsuit, right? I mean, that's what you might think. What's actually really bad for the ocean as a whole is with the rising temperatures, it changes the acidity of the ocean, meaning that coral bleaching and it disrupts those ecosystems in the ocean. And along with that, you know, but as coral reefs start getting bleached and as those plants are dying off, those things will be washing up to shore and again causing that coastal erosion. So, yeah, maybe the water's a little bit warmer, but for surfers, it means that if they have warm water, they're not going to be able to surf because there won't be those same waves anymore. And there won't be beaches for them to surf on. So, Le, yeah, okay, there's a lot of what you said. So, I take it that the configuration of the ocean changes with global warming. That is the undersea, the floor, the marine life, which ultimately is the floor. We can talk about coral. And that means that the wave formation is different. Am I right? That's correct, yeah. So, how is it different? I mean, you want a certain wave formation. You want big waves, I guess. Most surfers want, you know, surfers like me, we want little tiny waves, you know. But most surfers, serious surfers, want big waves. So, is this affecting the, you know, the, you know, the frequency of big waves? Yeah, yeah. So, actually, for some places, it means that the wave patterns change and their aren't as big of waves. And in the future, it might mean that those beaches that currently don't have a lot of big waves or a lot of waves at all might start having those big waves. But it's based on the floor, the sea level, the sea floor and, you know, the rocks, the debris and that kind of thing that are located underneath the water that will affect those wave patterns. So, as the levels rise, it means that it won't be running over those pieces of debris at the same level. So, all of these changes could mean that there are new surfing spots, but that a lot of our favorite ones that we currently have are going to disappear. Well, before we get into that, just one other thing I'd like to unpack with you. You said it affects acidification. Everybody knows that climate change affects, well, marine life, but in the process, acidification. Now, a surfer gets into water and he likes to have what we've always had, a certain level of salinity in the ocean. And it's a question of being used to that, but I guess it's also a question of acidification affecting him or her. Is it that if I give you a more acidified ocean content, that's going to affect me physically, my health, my state of mind, my ability to surf? Yeah, it doesn't affect it quite as heavily as marine life because obviously, we aren't living in the water and, you know, it might affect the pH balance and that kind of thing with your skin, but it's generally not as terrible for surfers unless they are ingesting the water, which can happen if you take a big spill, you're going to get water in your mouth. So that can definitely harm your body over a period of time, a long period of time. It's okay, back to the larger picture. So it would seem that Calon is, Calon, is it Calon? It's an organization of surfers and somebody, one surfer said to another surfer one day, he said, you know, we have climate change. It's ubiquitous. It's deadly in its own way. It's having effect on all these things in our planet, in our world, in our lives. It must be having an effect on surfing too. And the other guy who is in another continent somewhere, because, you know, surfing is global, says, you know, that's funny that you said that because I am having the same experience here. So surfer A talks to surfer B, continents away, and they both agree that climate change is affecting this surfing. And then they talk to other people. And before you know it, you have a geometric expansion of the conversation, all about surfers saying, wait a minute, something is happening. So what happened? I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but there definitely are organizations, specifically surfing organizations fighting against, you know, climate change and trying to preserve coastal ecosystems, you have the surf writer foundations, you have 1% for the planet, you have surf aid, all of which are organizations made up of surfers and people who are trying to fight against that climate change to preserve our beaches and the ocean ecosystems. Are these surfing organizations made of competitive surfers, or competitive surfers and ordinary surfers, you know, the like the little waves, those surfers like me? Or is it all or some surfers? I mean, what is it focused around, Halon, and these surfing organizations you're talking about? So Kaylon surf specifically is actually a surfers out in Costa Rica who actually pairs with a lot of sustainable and eco-friendly brands. So for example, they do a lot of work with firewire surfboards and Outer Known and even Patagonia to, you know, help preserve the planet. So a firewire specifically is one of the relationships that Kaylon has. But along with that, Kaylon does promote, you know, the support of surf writer foundations and surf aid and 1% for the planet and all of those other surf organizations that are fighting against climate change. And those organizations specifically are made up of both professional surfers and just, you know, people who do it as a hobby, just anyone who loves the planet and who wants to help preserve their sport. What is based in Costa Rica? Yes, Kaylon is based in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a beautiful place. Costa Rica has certainly ocean and I know the American guys, including guys from Hawaii and women, go to South America, go to a place like Costa Rica because the surfing is both remote and beautiful and it's really good waves and they have special surfing holidays, including places like Costa Rica. Further, I told you before the show, it's my understanding there's a lot of Americans in Costa Rica and maybe there's an awful lot of surfers in Costa Rica. Am I right on those points? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of surfers are actually drawn to Costa Rica because of the temperatures all year round. You know, the climate is pretty much the same all year. You're looking at between 75 and 85 degrees all year long. The water stays fairly warm because of that and it's a little bit lesser known to tourists, just, you know, general tourists and so surfers get to go enjoy beaches that aren't as crowded, like if you were to go to California or if you were to go to Europe with popular beaches where there are hordes of people all the time, Costa Rica doesn't quite have that. Are there competitions there? I'm actually not sure specifically in Costa Rica. I think Hawaii is the big place for those competitions, but there are definitely lots of surfers, professional surfers that will go there on holidays to enjoy the waves and just enjoy being out in the sun. Well, these are the heavy, serious surfers in Costa Rica. They must have big waves there. Am I right? The waves and the ocean conditions are really ideal. In fact, maybe even better than Hawaii. Ooh, I'm sorry I said that. Maybe even better than Hawaii. Yeah, I don't know if I would say they're better than Hawaii necessarily, but what a lot of people like about the waves in Costa Rica is that they are, you know, their nice size, but they're also consistent. They don't really change because they don't have the same seasons that you would find in other parts of the world. So you've got those same waves all year long no matter when you want to go surfing. Okay, so these surfer people in Costa Rica dedicated to surfing, they get together and they realize that climate change may be affecting their surfing and the environment not only for them in Costa Rica, but wherever surfing can be found, which is many, many places. I'm sure you can tell me how many places that has caught up. You know, of course, Morgan, that surfing was invented here in the 19th century. You know about that, right? Yes, of course. I want to be clear about that. We discovered it right here. Anyway, so they decided that there was a connection and it has to be examined because we have to see all the implications of climate change. It affects the more you watch, the more you read the news, the more you realize that climate change affects everything. And I'm really happy that Vila surfers decided to take a look at this and see how it affects surfing. Okay, so that meant the commissioning of the Klon report. Can you tell me the circumstances under which the organization commissioned the report? Yeah, so basically Klon and the staff there, the CEO specifically was very interested in looking at climate change and he'd known that Costa Rica, as Klon is based in Costa Rica, was taking a lot of initiatives to fight against climate change and live more sustainably. So he was interested to see what other places were doing, specifically at these other surf countries. So that's, we decided to go round up the data and see what other surf popular surf locations were doing to fight against climate change, or if they were doing anything at all. So we were just kind of wanting to raise awareness about this and tell other people, especially those surfers or those countries who rely on surf tourism as a form of sustainability, of financial sustainability, to let all of them know the importance of this. It's a great industry, isn't it? I mean, it's proliferated over the past few years to pretty much everywhere. So okay, so you talked about two things I want to unpack that. One is collecting data and two is evaluating solutions as they exist or as they might exist. So what kind of data was compiled for this report, this Klon report? What information were the writers of the report seeking? Yeah, so we actually looked at information from the climate action tracker, which tracks the progress of each country in the world towards the Paris agreement, which if you aren't familiar with the Paris agreement, is basically a worldwide agreement that most countries have signed to comply with to reach a certain level of stability, I guess, against climate change. And then we also looked at the climate change performance index, which looks at factors like renewable energy, emissions, energy use, and the climate policies that each country has in place. And then to supplement that, we looked at statistics and data from the International Renewable Energy Agency, our world and data, and the World Bank Group, just to ensure we have all of the facts together. And we just looked at specific surf countries, the most popular ones that were mentioned by surfers and surf magazines to find which ones were the most popular locations and matched up the data with those to see which ones were doing the most and which ones were. Okay, what kind of data can you get about wave conditions? For example, height of the waves, force of the waves, can you get that data? Is that available? The other data that you mentioned, it sounds to me like you can get that. And it's really wonderful that we live in a world where you can get data from all over the world about such things about climate change. This is good. But what about wave formations and height and force? Can you get that? Or is that anecdotal? Wave conditions were a little bit more difficult and that wasn't something that we necessarily looked at. We looked more at the data of how much waste that country was producing or how much energy that country used and produced as a whole, how much of the country's energy production was from renewable resources versus non-renewable resources. Because those are the factors that are going to affect climate change and either speed up or slow down climate change in the future. So this report has information and compilation in it that goes beyond just evaluating it with a benefit of would-be surfers and surfer travelers and surfer tourists. This goes to a comparison of the conditions in each country that you looked at. Am I right? Yes, that's correct. That's really valuable. That goes beyond surfing. So this report would be interesting for somebody who wasn't necessarily deeply involved in surfing. So then we get to the question of how many countries did you cover? I mean, that must be quite a lot of information. There are almost 200 countries in the world. Query, which ones did you focus on? We focused on, like I said before, we found which were the most popular surf countries. We narrowed it down to the top 10 most popular surf countries and then dug deeper into the data on those. And so we came up with the top five surf countries fighting climate change and the bottom five that weren't doing much. So here's a summary of tabulation of what you've found. It's on the screen now, Morgan. Can you explain this to us? So the top five countries, as you can see, are Costa Rica, Morocco, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines. The bottom five were the United States, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, and Ireland. Specifically, this graph is looking at the United States. And for each of these, we have a moving graphic that will show the renewable energy, the waste, the energy use, and the emissions for each country. So as you can see with the United States, it has low renewable energy, only 15% renewable energy. And with the emissions and the energy use and the waste are all quite high. I mean, for energy use, it's 79,000 kilowatts, kilowatt hours per capita that were used. Waste, it was 942 kilograms, which if you convert that over to pounds is actually over 2000 pounds of waste per person in the United States during that one year. So the United States scores fairly high. Whereas when you look at the top five countries, they have generally a higher amount of renewable energy that is created there. So instead of being 15%, Costa Rica, for example, is at 98% renewable energy. The waste is generally lower, the energy and the emissions are lower for those top five countries. So they have a smaller impact on the climate change that's currently happening. But the impact isn't local, right? In other words, if you find, I'm making this up, if you find a given place had a really, you know, high percentage of renewables and a low amount of carbon emissions, that doesn't necessarily affect that place or surfing in that place. It's merely a good statement of the intention of that place. And dealing with climate change, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a rah-rah for that place. But it doesn't necessarily affect that place, because you heard it here, climate change is global. So that we're talking about contributing, making positive contributions to dealing with climate change, but that doesn't necessarily reflect in exactly what's happening right here at my doorstep, right? Yeah, that's correct. It is a, it's a worldwide thing. It's a global thing. And so it really is up to everyone to do their part. There are some specific things like, for example, if you were to go on to the report and look at Indonesia, they had very low emissions, low energy use, low waste, which all looks pretty good. But there's also an underlying statistic that almost 20% of their plastic waste ends up directly in the oceans in Indonesia. So that can definitely affect Indonesia specifically with the ocean life and with the beaches and with the sea tourism. Yeah, there was, there was a piece on, it was in 60 minutes recently about that, the plastic in the ocean. And it, you know, that you have very remote places that are beautiful places. But for one reason or another, the trash winds up in these places and it's really hard to look at it so ugly. And, you know, it fouls them and it fouls their tourism for sure. So let's go back to that chart for a minute, because I have some questions about that chart. So when you get the bottom five, and this is notable, United States is at the top of the bottom five. Does that mean it's at the bottom? You know, that it's the least, doing the least of the bottom five? Or is it doing the most of the bottom five in terms of dealing with climate change? No, it is, it is doing the least. And one of the big contributing factors to it being one of the worst countries, if not the worst on the list, or in the world is the fact that it withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. And there are definitely a lot of groups within the United States that are trying to do their part and trying to fight against climate change. You have lots of great organizations and different communities doing that. Hawaii specifically has groups that are, that are trying to fight against it because, you know, you guys have beautiful beaches and and it brings lots of people there and it's a beautiful place to be. But unfortunately, the United States just, there's, there are very few regulations throughout the nation and there's not a lot of national support for fighting against climate change. Yeah, that's really tragic, because, you know, we have been a leader. I mean, you're talking about a chart and a report that was made recently, right? When was the K-Lon chart issued? I mean, K-Lon report issued. When was this chart made? Yeah, this report was actually released the beginning of July, so it's only been out for about a month. Now, you may not know the answer, but if I went back, I rolled the clock back five years, would this chart be different? I guess it would. Would we have been better on this chart five years ago? I'm not exactly sure if the United States would have been that much better, because within the last five years, there have been a lot of climate initiatives throughout the world. But I mean, for example, Costa Rica, they didn't reach 98% renewable energy just overnight. I mean, they've been working on it for years, whereas the United States, when you're only at, you know, 15 or 16% renewable energy, clearly there's nothing being done and people aren't caring about it. So I don't think the United States necessarily would have changed its place. I don't know if a lot of these countries would have necessarily moved up on the list, but I definitely do think that those top five countries have done a lot in the last five years. So maybe they would have ranked higher. But yeah, yeah, yeah, we might have been better shaped five years ago, relatively speaking. So again, to the right hand side of the chart, you were saying? Oh, no, just yeah, in relative terms, maybe the United States would have ranged better, but I don't think that the specific numbers would have changed that much. To the right hand side of the chart, if we can look at it one more time, you have Costa Rica on the top. And, you know, that's interesting because the people who organized Kailan and the report and the chart are from Costa Rica. So I wonder if you can tell us what is Costa Rica doing right that it gets to be at the top of the chart? Yeah, so as I've mentioned earlier, Costa Rica has taken a lot of initiatives and part of the reason why we put together this report and focused on that on climate change is because Costa Rica does take a lot of pride in the work that they're doing to fight climate change. And so 98% renewable energy has been what they've run off of, and there actually has been 100 consecutive days where they've run off of 100% renewable energy. So they're not using a lot of renewable, which is fantastic. And they also have a low amount of waste versus the United States, who is producing almost twice as much as Costa Rica. Costa Rica is at around 500 kilograms of solid waste per capita, whereas the United States is at 940. So there's a huge difference with that. Or if you want to look at energy use, the United States is using 79,000 kilowatt hours of energy per person versus Costa Rica, where they're only using 11. So they just have taken a lot of initiatives to reduce their waste and their emissions and energy use. And for the energy that they do use, it's mostly renewable. Yeah, so I want to, you know, is it solar? Do they have solar facilities all around Costa Rica? Do they have large solar farms? Do they have storage, battery storage to hold the solar energy overnight? I mean, what exactly have they done to achieve this very high level of renewable energy? Are they using, you know, other sources of renewables? Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, solar is a big one, especially when you are in a country like Costa Rica, that although there is a little bit of rain, there's definitely a lot of shine and they can harness that solar power. But again, like you mentioned, there's wind energy or thermal that they're also able to use. Yeah, that's impressive. So what can the United States learn from Costa Rica? It's a wonderful question, isn't it? You know, we should be looking out there and seeing what the good guys do and seeing how the successful people are handling this and achieving those numbers and getting to the top of the chart. What can we learn from Costa Rica? If I made you president, a benign president, you know, and said, Morgan, you know, go to Costa Rica, take a look, come back, give me a report, tell me what we need to do. One legislation or in his case, executive orders, because that's the way it works for him. What should we do? I mean, I think that the biggest thing about Costa Rica is that they're very mindful of it. They think about it. They've been trained to think about it. They've, you know, the nation as a whole has pushed all of the people that live there to think about recycling and think about when they drive in the car, you know, instead of just driving yourself carpool to work or walk, do what you can to save that. But I really do think it comes down to being conscious and, you know, reduce, reuse, recycle. A lot of people, especially in the United States, don't think about it. We are so used to getting packages from Amazon or, you know, ordering them shipped and we use tons of packaging, tons of plastic and paper, and all of those resources that we, a lot of the time don't even try to recycle it. We just immediately throw it in. It's the most convenient. So definitely fighting climate change isn't going to be convenient. Recycling isn't always convenient. You know, throwing your shampoo bottle into the trash can in your bathroom is a lot easier than throwing it in the recycling bin, but you have to make those conscious decisions and those little extra efforts to fight against climate change. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. Well, you know, in the end, I want to go one step further on that same question. You know, you need to actually take action. And there's a lot of places where they do tons of talk. I can name places if you like, but they don't take action. And the question is, in Costa Rica, these initiatives, the law, are there sanctions if you fail? Are there sanctions against you if you emit carbon? What is the government doing about it? I mean, how does the government function on this issue? And the second part of that question is, it's sort of connected, is what's the political will? I mean, are the people in Costa Rica dedicated to addressing climate change? Or is it just the government or is it a combination? First of all, to answer the last part about with Costa Rica, I definitely think it's a combination of the two. It's the locals and the government both that are pushing for climate change. They rely a lot on tourism for their income. And they want people to come to a beautiful clean country versus, for example, somewhere like Indonesia that is still a very touristic location. But people don't want to go to beaches where there's trash everywhere, where there's plastic in the ocean. Nobody wants that. So with the United States, I definitely think that when the government is issuing policies and limiting maybe the kinds of energy that are being used, and what's really interesting actually is that the government itself doesn't necessarily push this, but a lot of power companies will push for people to get solar power, obviously, or renewable energy. And when people install solar power for their homes, they're able to receive tax breaks, or they're able to get a certain percentage of that money taken off of their taxes every year just for caring about the environment a little bit more. So I think in the United States specifically or any of these other countries where they ranked low on the list, they're going to implement things like that or make it more widely known that if you do install solar panels on your home, you'll be able to get a tax break. I think that'd be a lot more appealing to people in the long run. And everyone would benefit from it, all of the locals as well as the government. Now I see the core point for Costa Rica. They want to preserve the tourist industry. Surfing is a big part of the tourist industry. So this is their way of making the point of protecting the tourist industry in Costa Rica by addressing climate change everywhere, and especially in Costa Rica. This is relevant, of course, to Hawaii because even if people don't go surfing, they certainly go to the beach. The beach has trash. If the ocean is mucked up somehow or if we have sea level rise, which is likely here, that's a big problem for tourism. So this is why the surfers are interested because they're involved in an industry. Did I get that right? Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of communities, specifically in Costa Rica, but in other countries as well. You mentioned Hawaii. They do rely a lot on surfing and tourism as a whole. So when you do have those little surf shops or those tourist shops, that's all they have for their family's income. When climate change hits really hard and the beaches disappear and people aren't visiting those countries as much, it's going to be devastating for those communities as they won't be able to support themselves financially. That's really good thinking, good public thinking, good private thinking, good industrial thinking. So you've made or Kailan has made this report. And you know the problem with a report like this is it's static. It's at a certain point in time, say the month of July of 2019. So it's clear to me that if this report is really going to have legs, this report has to be made again and again on a periodic basis, you know, every six months, every year, whatever it is. So that, you know, you can see the sea, excuse the expression, you can see the sea changes. You can see the trends as they unfold. You can see if it's getting better or worse or staying the same. What's the plan, Morgan? Well, we've actually been looking at we it's not a for sure thing, but we have been looking at doing one specifically for the United States that would look at each state and the actions it's taking against climate change to further raise awareness in the United States, which it was ranked as one of the worst countries. So maybe we'll get a report like that out in the near future to help further raise awareness in the United States. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. That is Morgan Henderson. And she's the representative of Calon, who has created this report on surfing around the world. Show us a few things about how it's doing as against climate change. Thank you so much, Morgan. Thank you. Aloha.