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Episode 4: How will we fix climate change?

TAI: I remember learning for the first time about climate change. You know like how we’re releasing gases into the atmosphere. The gases are letting the sun's rays in, but not letting them out. So it's just going to get hot. We're essentially just cooking ourselves. And when I first heard this I kind of was just like, oh that seems bad. We are all going to die. Then I realized well it's fine because if we know what the problem is and we know that it's bad and it's causing impending doom, we must be doing everything we can to stop it, right? And then I grew up a bit. It kind of freaked me out again cause I really feel like businessmen and politicians and company CEOs, they're just too selfish. They're going to wait for the other guy to do it because they just want to save money and then you know nothing gets done. I just really don't think that we’re going to be able to fix it in time. We've already warmed the planet by about one degree and small island states in the South Pacific are already disappearing into the ocean. Storms are becoming more frequent. Tides are rising. Species are dying of all the heat. These days I'm just finding it really hard to have hope. Are we going to be able to fix climate change?

[THEME]

Tai asks why. I'm Tai and this is my podcast Tai asks why. There are great questions out there. That you just you want to get answered: Which one’s cooler -- zero or infinity? Should we trust our gut? What happens after we die? What is love? Why do we dream? And for the season finale, how are we going to fix climate change?

[THEME OUT]

TAI: Now when we were born, climate change was already kind of a big thing. And that's because our parents and just people of the previous generation, started building the factories and releasing these greenhouse gases into the air. Like does that kind of tick you off that they're kind of just like I’m just going to leave you this like dying planet. Does that annoy you at all?

KID 1: I think it kind of does.

TAI: These are my friends. I just wanted to ask them if they're also super terrified about climate change.

KID 2: It's I mean, it’s up to us for some reason to fix our planet and just fix what all of our ancestors have brought upon us.

TAI: OK. So yeah we're on the same page. It just feels like we're all just kind of like stuck on this sinking boat. It's just the planet's heating up with no way to stop it. Maybe we need to just like travel to Mars or something.

TONY: There are no planets in our solar system where a human being could just get off the ship and walk around and live. This is Tony Del Genio and I am a scientist for NASA.

TAI: NASA! Freaking NASA!

TONY: I do research on Earth's climate and how the earth's climate is changing because of the stuff that people are putting into the atmosphere and I do research on other planets in the solar system. I've been involved in a few NASA space missions to other planets.

TAI: Awesome

TONY: People on earth may decide to try to colonize Mars, but it's going to be a big challenge to do it because there are a lot of roadblocks to actually making it a place where people could live. Mars is an extremely cold planet, much colder than human beings can tolerate and its air is very thin. It's less than 1 percent, as thick as our atmosphere is and it's not made of nitrogen and oxygen, the things that we breathe, it's made mostly of carbon dioxide and so human beings couldn't breathe it. If you walked around without a spacesuit, you'd immediately die

TAI: Poop. It seems like impending doom. So I guess we're kind of stuck on earth. But you know Tony says it might actually not be the worst.

TONY: Global warming is not going to kill off everyone. It's going to make it harder to grow crops. It's going to create more heat waves. It's going to make it hard for people to live near the coast because of rising sea levels and so you have to find ways to adapt to climate change.

TAI: I had this idea since I was really little, like six, about my way to fix global warming and it's ridiculous. But like when I was 6, I was like I want to share this with NASA. They have to see my idea. It's basically like a giant AC unit, like the AC unit in my home. But it gets power off of collecting the heat in the atmosphere and then use that to create steam that turns things. We could create like a sustainable environment with just like a whole bunch of these massive AC units just littered around the globe because the hotter it got, the more power it would get and it would turn on faster and then it would stabilize and then the AC would slow down. And I know it's ridiculous. It was just this funny idea of wanting to talk to someone at NASA for for years.

TONY: Well the trick is you'd have to find a way to make these massive ACs without creating even more heat, right, because what an AC does is it takes heat out of one place, but pushes it someplace else.

TAI: Yeah, it just moves it around.

TONY: So that's always the problem with heat. You can move it, but it's hard to get rid of it entirely.

TAI: But just for good record, I was 6. But yeah like you know that is.

TONY: Well that's a pretty good idea for six.

TAI: Maybe we could like grab the coldness from space, so we can just be let’s send heat out. Let's just throw it out.

TONY: Yeah, well you know there are a lot of people who have ideas about how to offset the heating that we're already causing. One of the problems with any idea for geoengineering is that the Earth is a pretty complicated place and something that you do in one place has an effect someplace else. We're not smart enough yet to think five steps ahead and understand what all of the unintended consequences of one idea or another might be. Still what most people would say is you're better off not putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the first place.

TAI: But like are you hopeful about the future?

TONY: I am hopeful about the future. You know we're not going to kill off all the life on Earth. All we have to do is sometime in the relatively near future, we just have to make decisions to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere and there's still time for us to do that. I believe that as people start to see in their own lives the evidence of climate change at some point we’ll reach a tipping point in public opinion where people will say you know what, we really do have to do something about this. You can't afford to be pessimistic. We can't believe that we're doomed. If we all feel that we're doomed then we've lost already I think especially if you're young, you are the most important people really because you're the ones that will be running the countries and the world. And you have to maintain optimism and not believe that we're doomed. You have to believe that the problems are serious, but you have to also believe that there are solutions to the problems. That it's just a matter of getting people to believe that it's time to start doing the right thing.

TAI: Well thank you so much. I can't believe I was actually able to get like a freakin NASA scientist. Kind of holding, I'm trying to hold back tears a little bit, but this has been my dream for like a really long time.

TONY: Well I can promise you that you know 10-20 years from now when you get out of school, if you're still interested in working for NASA, it's hard for me to believe that NASA would not be interested in having you work for us

TAI: Hold on a second. Give me a minute. I’m good. I’m good. Like I guess I’ll only really get to work there if there’s a planet. So I really need to like get my friends to hustle up.

Tony's right. It's up to my generation to do something about this mess. He actually gave me some hope. I haven't had hope about climate change for a while. So you know, if Mars is going to work out, we're going to have to make the carbon emissions, the evil gases low or just get them out of the atmosphere in the first place. I wonder what we can come up with

KID 1: big factories and stuff need to start closing because they keep releasing pollution into the atmosphere and heating up the world.

KID 2: If we keep going on how we are going now, I don't think it will fix very fast. It's more politics.

TAI: Yeah. Come on politics. All the adults and politicians hold power, but I found someone whose job is to make these politicians change.

CATHERINE: I'm Catherine Abreu. I’m the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada

TAI: Catherine’s organization brings everyone together to fight climate change and global warming and a big part of it is she tries to get the politicians to you know do stuff about it.

CATHERINE: You know we might go into government and say here are the options that make most sense for the part of Canada that you're working in and here are the tools that we think you have available to put these options in place.

TAI: Do they normally make laws about it?

CATHERINE: Yeah like definitely you hope that government is mostly acting in the best interest of the people. So if something's bad they make a law to correct it, but what else do you think people in government are trying to do?

TAI: Argue for the sake of arguing. That’s politicians right there. That’s probably, it’s kind of true though.

CATHERINE: Yeah. They want profile and they want that maybe because they want to make sure people vote for them again.

TAI: Yeah.

CATHERINE: So part of what we have to convince governments of is making those changes is going to be in their interest and the way we do that is by building a constituency of people that they pay attention to who are demanding that change.

TAI: But like do you ever lose hope?

CATHERINE: Yes. I lose hope because sometimes it feels like we're you know moving one step forward, two steps back. So in 2015, we signed this amazing accord. I was in Paris when that happened and it was really one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I cried and spent a lot of time hugging my colleagues. All the countries in the world have under that agreement said what they'll do about climate change. But if you add up all of the efforts that those countries have committed to under the Paris Agreement, it takes us to a world that's warmed by about 4 degrees Celsius and a world that's four degrees warmer is a world that we can't live in in the way that we're used to living on this planet. You know what do you do and how do you not feel some kind of discouragement when this incredible historic agreement doesn't still do enough to address the problem? You know of course it's impossible not to have those days where I feel really discouraged, but ultimately I have to just believe in the power of people to come together in times of crisis.

TAI: But like what do people like me, what can we do?

CATHERINE: I’m going to give you three categories of things that I think you could do.

TAI: Gets out my paper.

CATHERINE: Taking notes.

TAI: And then my writing pen.

CATHERINE: The first category is what you can do individually. Something that you can do on a really personal basis is to think about how you're using energy. So that is both electricity, but also how you get around in your day to day life. So that's category number one.

TAI: Yup. Like every day I have to turn the light in my brother's room off. The night light in my brother's room off and the AC. But I do it because I care about the environment.

CATHERINE: That's awesome. The second is what you're doing in your community. So people like me can often fall into what I call the fact trap, where we try to get other people to care about climate change by yelling facts at them. So the planet is warming. Humans are causing it. It's about fossil fuels. Stop burning fossil fuels. But we know that that isn't how people make decisions actually. People make decisions based on what they care about and what they care about, their values are informed by the people they trust, whether that's a teacher, someone at your local grocery store, just to let them know that this is an issue that's on your mind. that can make a really huge difference.

TAI: Okay I'm going to be honest. I don't really do that one as much

CATHERINE: Yeah. Sometimes all it takes is someone just saying I care about climate change. So that's category number two and then.

TAI: Yeah and then eventually the government members are going to be like money's nice, but I feel like we should probably do this before we all get kicked out of office.

CATHERINE: Nice. You’ve segue into category number three. Talk to your elected officials. You are never too young to talk to the people who are there to represent you. It's only if they hear from their constituents that this is an issue important to the people that they were elected to represent. That they will bring that to larger government and make sure that that government's doing what they need to do

TAI: And they’ll feel the need to take action on it. \

CATHERINE: Exactly.

TAI: Yeah, I don’t do that.

CATHERINE: It might be fun for you to try it out.

VOICEMAIL ROBOT: You have reached the voicemail of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister welcomes the views of Canadians on the issues that are important to them. Unfortunately it is not possible to put you in contact with an official at this time. However, you may wish to leave a message. Please be assured that we will give it our utmost attention.

TAI: Hello. My name is Tai. I'm 11-years-old and I want you to know that I care about climate change. Boom. I just talked to my government official. Voicemail, but still.

So as you could hear, I tried, but you know I'm not going to be able to do this myself. So I decided to bring Catherine's three steps back to my friends to see if we could all do them together.

TAI: Do you think you guys could utilize those three steps: home, community and government?

KID 1: I might be able to do home, but like community isn't so easy. In reality not a lot of people are going to listen to you.

TAI: But if we can spread awareness to everyone and everyone starts talking about it, as the government, they are required, by definition, to do stuff about that.

KID 2: Yeah, but how do we know they won't just put it off until like they'll be like, oh yeah we'll do it later. Oh yeah we'll do it later because that's what they've been doing lately.

TAI: But do you want to try?

KID 3: We’re just kids, so nobody would really listen to us that much.

TAI: I guess it's good that they're going to do that stuff at home, but you know it just kind of sucks that no one really thinks they can do 2 or 3. But like I guess that's part of the problem, you know. Not too many people care about it and the people who do are either too scared about it or don't think they have the power to do anything. So I guess I've got to go out there and rally the troops.

[TAI SINGS CLIMATE SONG]

TAI: We’re not going to melt or spontaneously combust.

CHOIR: Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully.

TAI: We can live in our fridges.

Cool.

TAI: Mildly interesting. We can minimize irreversible damage on our environment.

CHOIR: Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully.

ALL: We can all get us jobs at NASA.

TAI: Definitely.

CHOIR: Step one.

TAI: Talk to your family.

CHOIR: Step two.

TAI: Talk to your friends.

CHOIR: Step three.

TAI: Talk to your elected government official because they can make legislative change.

ALL: Because we care.

TAI: Thank you so much for listening. I'm Tai Poole. The show is produced by Veronica Simmonds and Yasmine Mathurin. Our digital producer is Olivia Pasquarelli. Today my guests were Tony Del Genio and Catherine Abreu. Thanks to Crystal Duhaime for the editorial assistance. The theme music is by the legendary Johnny Spence and also thanks to Johnny for helping me write and record the Climate Change song and a huge shout out to my family. Kian was a huge quintessential part of making this whole podcast. Also thanks to my mom and dad who gave me these opportunities and frankly, they made me. Thanks guys, I love you. If you start missing me or want to hear more of me and my friends talking about climate change, you should listen to Britt Wray's documentary on the CBC show, Ideas. She's discovering the links between climate change and people deciding whether or not they should have kids in the face of our uncertain future. I asked my friends about it and you can hear the conversation in the documentary. It's pretty awesome. I guess this is the end for now. Tai says bye.

TRANSCRIPT: Tai Asks Why - Season 1, EP 4

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