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The Current Transcript for March 14, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE 1: My administration will seek not only the American energy independence that we've been looking for so long, but American energy dominance. We will be dominant.

[Sound: Applause]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It is now the biggest producer of hydrocarbons in the world larger than Russia than the Saudis. In fact exports of U.S. oil have risen to roughly two million barrels a day more than many OPEC nations. But even as the Trump administration pledges to move the U.S. beyond energy self-sufficiency to energy dominance others see the potential for it to run out of steam if it alienates its NAFTA energy partners and as China pivots to alternate energy investments worth trillions. We're looking at the new politics of petroleum in an hour. Also today…

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VOICE 1: In a remote region of northern Benin, West Africa, Bipete prepares for his initiation ritual, Clans will gather from 50 miles around to see if he is braver than his opponent in a violent whipping match.

AMT: For 130 years National Geographic magazine concentrated its reporting and considerable photographic skills on what it called the Exotic and what it now admits was instead blatantly racist. From its depiction of people on the African continent as unclothed and unaware to its omission of black Americans at home. Now its critics say that even with its mea culpa and new efforts the magazine still gets it wrong. That's in half an hour. But we're starting with the story of neighbourhood that gives new meaning to the crisis in housing. In a world where so many dream of a home they can't afford these are homes no one seems to want.

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VOICE 1: Look down on the end. There's another one down there, the brown one, that one's empty. This other here is vacant. What you're looking at, you're witnessing, is a community just crumbling — I mean look, houses are literally falling down.

AMT: I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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In Cape Breton, some homes are worth so little that people just walk away from them

Guest: Mary-Catherine McIntosh

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VOICE 1: The city of Vancouver could be cracking down on absentee house owners. Some critics see the vacant homes as a blight on neighbourhoods. Others a contributing factor to sky high real estate prices.

VOICE 2: Many assume empty condos or houses are owned by foreign investors who are fuelling out of reach prices.

VOICE 3: Assessed last July at $6.2 million dollars but the lights aren't on.

VOICE 4: There's something like five empty houses on my street. It's mind boggling. It makes no sense.

AMT: We certainly hear a lot and talk a lot about a housing crisis in this country, especially in the heated, urban markets of Vancouver and Toronto. But we're starting today by shining a light on a very different housing crisis in Cape Breton.

[Sound: Water]

AMT: The shorelines here may hold breathtaking views of the Atlantic — views that draw in tourists every year from all over the world. But in communities up and down the coast, there are hundreds of boarded up and empty houses. And the number of vacant and crumbling houses is only growing to the point that there are now nearly as many empty homes in Cape Breton, as in Vancouver — although for very different reasons. CBC producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh is here to bring us that story. Hi Mary-Catherine.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Hello.

AMT: There are nearly as many empty houses in Cape Breton as in Vancouver?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah pretty near. It's estimated there are between 600 and 800 empty abandoned houses in the Cape Breton Regional which covers a huge chunk of the eastern part of the island and its biggest towns. And in Vancouver the city is struggling to nail down just how many houses are empty. But estimates there range from 900 to a few 1,000.

AMT: Well we've seen the pictures in Vancouver of homes boarded up or overgrown next to beautiful multi-million dollar homes. What's it look like in Cape Breton?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: In certain neighbourhoods in towns like Glace Bay and Sydney Mines there are streets with a lot of abandoned homes. And I'm told that boarding up the windows of those homes is what municipal crews spend a big chunk of their time doing. And unlike the empty houses of Vancouver, in Cape Breton they are heartbreaking in your face symbol of economic and population decline and that's what I saw on my walk with John White through the streets of Glace Bay — a former coal mining town. John is a trades teacher at the local high school.

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[Sound: Footsteps]

VOICE 1: There's one right here. I see one over here... One right there. Look at this one. There's a couple further up on this street alone. They're saying a 100; that there is at least a 100 vacant homes in Glace Bay alone but that's just an estimate based on complaints that they're getting because if you look at this house here on the other side you're going to complain about this place being like that. You're going to complain about that. It's actually heartbreaking for me because this is my territory. This is where I grew up. I grew up hanging around on the streets. Hanging around this yard here with the… Hanging around with all of the guys; Jason here. Jason Doyle in this neighbourhood. The only word I can come up with to describe it is it's heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking. Look at this house; like they're sending money on that. You got siding on that side there. You get satellite on it. They are trying their best to keep the place up but the money you invest in it doesn't do anything when you got a place like that boarded up next to you. That's one of the problems you have, right? So I mean how do you put siding on a house like that, come out and enjoy your step in the summer and sit down and relax and the house next door is boarded up with plywood on the windows. Look down on the end. There's another one down there, the brown one, that one's empty. This other here is vacant. What you're looking at, you're witnessing, is a community just crumbling — I mean look, houses are literally falling down. So I guess I don't know five or ten years’ time this will be all vacant land I guess. I mean how many more years can these houses stand up like this?

AMT: So Mary-Catherine why is the population declining so much on Cape Breton?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: A huge chunk of the island was for many years an industrial area with coal mining and steel production. At one point, 40 per cent of the coal mined in Canada was from Cape Breton. Those industries have pretty much died. So a lot of people have had to leave for work. In the last 20 years, the region's population has dropped by nearly 20 per cent.

AMT: John White's a teacher… he must see the impact of that in the schools as well I guess?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: For sure. He told me that when he asks a new class of students how many have a parent working out west - as many as half will raise a hand. And those are the families still living in Glace Bay. Also Cape Breton's population is old. Nearly a quarter of the people there are seniors. And the houses are also old and expensive to keep up. So this all creates a big real estate problem: many of these houses are worth less than cars.

AMT: How much do they go for?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well in certain pockets of the island some homes are selling for less than $10,000. Those are the cheapest ones obviously and they need a lot of work. But 40 per cent of the houses sold last year in the region went for less than $100,000.

AMT: And this is an island that's still a popular tourist destination?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Absolutely. It's hard to imagine that in one of the most beautiful places in the country that this is the case. On the island there are three of the world's top golf courses. And the Cabot Trail is considered to be one of the most spectacular places to drive or hike in the country. But if people can’t find work even if they want to stay, they have to leave.

AMT: Which leaves their houses empty… what kind of houses are we talking about here?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Many of them are so-called company houses and they're now very old. They were houses originally built by the coal and steel companies for their workers. A lot of the houses that are boarded up are actually one side of a company house duplex where a family still lives in the other side.

AMT: What does that look like?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Picture a duplex with a line down the centre. One side painted, well-loved with a wreath on the door and the other side boarded up. And it's actually quite common that half the company house gets demolished while a family still lives on the other side.

AMT: But how does that work? They'll demolish one half the house and leave the other half still standing? How does that even happen?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It’s actually quite common. It's very difficult. They'll literally cut the house in half and convert an inside wall into an outside, weather proofed wall, which costs thousands. What's even worse than having your house cut in half is living in a duplex where the other side is either boarded up, even roofless as I saw in some cases.

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[Sound: Footsteps]

VOICE 1: In my son's room because the neighbours have no roof I have water constantly coming into one area of my son's room. Every time the snow melts, every time the rain falls, there's going to be water.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: That's the situation at Kimmy Losier's. She lives in one half a company house just across a ball diamond from where I was walking with John White. Kimmy was living in New Hamburg, Ontario and bought the house off the internet site-unseen for $11,000 12 years ago.

AMT: Sounds like a good deal?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah it's across the street from the ocean. So for most of the time that she's lived there she was pretty proud of her real estate find. But in January, she heard her neighbours moving and to her horror she knew that her home was about to become yet another of those places — line down the centre — one side boarded up. When I visited her and her young son all of her stuff was piled high in the dining room because the pipes had burst in her neighbour’s place and her side was so badly flooded it was nearly destroyed.

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[Sound: Footsteps]

VOICE 1: So when the water came through — you can come upstairs here. It came through the floor and the ceiling along this bathroom. It went through all the floors. It went down all the walls. It was hard to see because once it came through the walls the water started coming down the stairwell. But I'm lucky I've had friends. My friend's husband has pitched in and he's basically done all the work with the help of his friends and without them I don't know where we'd be because I could not tackle this alone.

VOICE 2: There are people everywhere in this neighbourhood living in half of houses. What do you think when you're driving through and seeing everyone in similar situations having to deal with this?

VOICE 1: Actually since its happened to me and people have seen my story go public and so there's been people I walk into the grocery store and women are giving me hugs. They're like we know what you're going through. I'm so glad you're strong enough to go public because I couldn't do it like because someone's got to know that it's not the homeowners who are living on the side and doing their best to take care of it. Someone's got to be responsible for those other halves and where are these people? How come they're not standing up? Like if you own a home and you don't want to live there, deal with it. And you can actually see the wood on that back roof and that all came off of their top roof there. The place is slowly falling apart. I think it's awful. I think it's an eyesore. And the sad part is that I have to live on the other half of it. When I come home I don't look at it. I don't acknowledge that it's there because if I do it's going to take me down and I have to get up every day for work. I got to take care of my kid. I've got to get him off to school. We've got to live our life. I can't. If I just let it keep on eating at me and eating at me. I'm going to end up just being just as bad as that house and I'll start falling apart too. So as of now I just fix my side and I just wait.

AMT: It’s got to take a lot out of her to not even look at the other half of her house because of the trouble on the other side. By the way, our listeners can see pictures of some of the houses we're talking about on our website: cbc.ca/thecurrent. So this home next to her is abandoned — the house wasn't sold to anyone?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah, and that's actually really common. Many of the homeowners who abandon their homes are behind on their taxes and some owe more than their places are worth. But even if the homeowner abandons their property, the municipality takes control of it and tries to sell it. Those sales can take years to go through and some don’t even sell in the end.

AMT: So what is the municipality doing in the meantime?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: They're trying to take down as many houses as they can.

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VOICE 1: So we're here at 137 Legato Street. This is one of our buildings that's due for demolition. Pretty rough shape.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I met with Paul Burt who's in charge of demolitions and he told me his crew now issues more demolition permits than building permits.

AMT: More permits for demolitions…

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And just to give you some perspective in Toronto there were about 50 times more building permits issued than permits for demos last year.

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VOICE 1: Within a three block radius of this address we have a couple more that are also on that same demo list.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And just I met Paul on a busy street in the town of Sydney Mines in front of a spray painted, sagging house that's about to come down.

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VOICE 1: Everything's frozen up today so we've got to be very careful. When I see all of these I get a little discouraged. You know I love Cape Breton. I'm from Cape Breton. There's lot of good things going on here but you know these ugly and vacant buildings here are a real blight on our neighbourhoods. We seem to have more properties than we have money these days so. That's the situation we find ourselves in here. You know it's just the state of the economy, right?

VOICE 2: You must see a lot of gross stuff when you're demolishing them?

VOICE 1: Yes I mean there's a lot of stuff in there. You know people generally when they leave they take what they need and they leave the rest. We've gone in there and found food still in the cupboards, food in the fridge... yeah lots of food. You know cans that have been so old that they've basically imploded in the cupboards and rotten food and garbage in the cans you know even dishes still left in the sink with food on them they do. They're quite disgusting in there. So we don't spend much time in them only to make sure that there is nobody in them when we board them up and nobody in them when we knock them down. Other than that we don't recommend or don't allow anybody into them after the state.

AMT: How do they choose which ones they tear down?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: They only take down the worst of the worst. Paul Burt only has a small budget to take down about 30 houses a year. And one councillor I spoke with told me that he really wants the houses in his area on that demo list. So it's a competitive list.

AMT: There must be families who need affordable places to live? Is there no one trying to connect abandoned houses with families who need them?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah, there are some examples of that happening. But it takes a lot of time and money. Tom Urbaniak is involved in a lot of these community projects and he personally bought half a company house in Glace Bay and restored it and turned it into a habitat for humanity house. But beyond providing low income housing there's another reason he'd like to see these houses preserved: their historical value.

AMT: Right, because coal mining is so important to the history of Cape Breton.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Exactly. A few years ago, the National Trust for Canada put the company houses in Nova Scotia on its list of most endangered places in the country. Historians have said that too much focus has been put on preserving prominent fancy houses and buildings and not enough on places like company houses which tell an important story — the working class.

AMT: And that history of the working class is a pretty gritty…

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And that shows in the houses. Many company houses weren't built well. They were drafty and leaky and many were too small for the families that were crammed inside. And historians say that tell us a lot about how the workers were treated. Not that well.

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[Sound: Footsteps]

VOICE 1: There was a house here. But the lots had vacant for many years…

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And Tom Urbaniak is very passionate about keeping that history and that story alive. I met him on the property of a former steel company house in Whitney Pier which he and others turned into a little park with a monument in the centre paying tribute to the neighbourhood's history.

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VOICE 1: Across the rail track would have been the Sidney steel plant, especially the blast furnace looking directly ahead. And the section of Whitney Pier in which we're standing is called Colonia which is Polish and Ukrainian for settlement or colony. The buildings here are among the original industrial Whitney Pier houses. Where we can we should be looking very seriously reusing these homes. There's no place in the world quite like where we're standing. Colonia is unique. Whitney Pier is unique. If we lose this entirely we could just be the geography of nowhere just like any other North American suburb. The quality of place of Cape Breton is not just the beautiful beaches and vistas and Highlands. It is these one of a kind urban neighbourhoods and people behind them who are still in spite of everything coming up with new ideas and keeping this going.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Tom is not fighting for all company houses to be saved because many of them are beyond repair. But he is warning once they're gone, they're gone. And one of the things he's pushing to change is something I mentioned earlier: how long it takes for a place to be sold in a tax sale. A house can be vacant for years and rot and crumble. And by that time, it's harder to sell them and rescue them.

AMT: But if you're going to save houses, you need people who can afford to buy them and fix them up and move there. Too bad they couldn't somehow get the people who can't afford to buy a house in Vancouver to move to Cape Breton.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah that's what a lot of people in Cape Breton are thinking about. About a year and a half ago a woman who runs a country market called the Farmer's Daughter posted an ad on Facebook because she was so desperate for workers. And she made this pitch: if you come and work in her country market and it works out and you end up staying, she'd be willing to give you some of her rural land. And the response was crazy. Last we checked, she'd received 300 000 responses from all over the world. So a lot of people on the island have been really excited about that. It was sort of like a lightning bolt of a reminder that they have something that a lot of people want: an affordable life in a beautiful, friendly place. So picking up on that a local economic development agency hired people to answer all of the messages that they get to try to woo them to not just muse about a move on social media but to actually do it.

AMT: I guess more people would mean more demand for houses and they've got those.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Yeah maybe some of those people could buy and save some of those historic company houses.

AMT: Such a contrast depending on where you live. I would imagine there are people who would really like to have one of those houses in Cape Breton listening right now. Mary-Catherine, thank you.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: You're welcome.

AMT: Mary-Catherine McIntosh is a producer in Halifax. To see photos of some of the houses we've just been talking about head to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent that's where you can send us an email about anything you hear on the show. Just click on the contact link. You can tweet us @thecurrentcbc or search us on Facebook. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast, and on your radio app.

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How National Geographic upheld colonialist, 'primitive' view of Africa and Asia

Guests: John Edwin Mason, Victor Ray

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the risks of using energy for power. The United States is approaching its long-sought goal of energy independence. And President Trump says there's a new goal on the horizon: energy dominance. What it all means for America and its relationships with Russia, Canada, and the rest of the world, in about half an hour from now. But first, a magazine, wracked...

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AMT: National Geographic may be known for exploring the globe. But for its latest issue, the magazine explored its own archives. And that led to an editorial this month that begins: "For Decades, Our Coverage was Racist." A journey through years’ worth of those yellow-bordered magazines, found that in both photographs and articles, National Geographic consistently stereotyped people who were not white. It used racial slurs and reinforced ideas about white superiority. And it often simply ignored the realities of race and racism. Not anymore, says the current editor-in-chief, Susan Goldberg. The April issue is entirely devoted to an examination of present-day race and racism. The cover features a photo of bi-racial twins, one of whom has much darker skin than the other. Here's what the twin sisters had to say about it in an interview with National Geographic.com.

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VOICE 1: My name is Marcia and I'm 11-years-old.

VOICE 2: My name is Millie and I'm 11-years-old. When they see us together they don't believe that we're twins, they don't believe us like they're like, “Oh really I never noticed that, I thought you were just friends.”

VOICE 1: Because we're a different colour.

VOICE 2: Racism is where somebody judges you by your colour and not like by your actual self.

AMT: In a moment, we'll hear from a sociologist who has concerns about how the magazine is continuing to cover questions of race. But first, my next guest is the historian who was commissioned by National Geographic to delve into the magazine's past, and sift through its archives. John Edwin Mason is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. He joins us from Charlottesville. Good morning.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Good morning. I'm very happy to be here with you.

AMT: Well nice to have you with us. What did National Geographic say to you when they approached you about getting involved in this project?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: It was a very open ended assignment and as an historian I really appreciated that. They wanted somebody who had some expertise in Africa and they wanted somebody who also was familiar with photography and the history of photography. And I do both. I teach the history of photography and African history here at the University of Virginia. And the assignment was to simply look through past issues of National Geographic and come to some conclusions about the way that it portrayed people of colour around the world and also in the United States.

AMT: What were you expecting to find when you began?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Well I had some help. There have been some good books written about National Geographic that have looked at these questions and so some of what I found did not surprise me that people of colour tended to be portrayed as backwards, as primitive, as lacking in technology, and modern things, and as kind of stuck in the past living much as their ancestor might have lived 200 or even 500 years ago. When it comes to the United States African-Americans tended to be portrayed as menial labourers or as domestic servants and almost as nothing else. What did surprise me was looking at the post-World War II period which as you all know was the period of colonization in Africa and Asia and I saw very little of the anti-colonial sentiment, the nationalist struggle, represented or pictured in National Geographic. So there was almost a continuation of that backward and primitive view of Africa and Asia even as these continents and these new nations are emerging. So that absence was quite striking.

AMT: So nothing about the urbanization of African nations?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: You almost never saw Africans dressed in Western clothes, Africans in cities, Africans with even modest technology like bicycles. It was almost always Africans in the countryside. Africans identified with nature. Africans often wearing few clothes at all. There was a real distinction that National Geographic was implicitly drawing between the modern western world and the backward world of people of colour.

AMT: It didn't stop with Africa either when did you find in Australia in coverage?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Well things that were very, very similar to Africa and I have to say that since the editorial was published I received a number of emails from Australia and these are Aboriginal people who are writing in to sort of take me to task for not focusing in on the way that Aboriginal people were depicted and they were depicted as very, very backwards and very, very mired in the past. It was almost as if we could look at the very early stages of human development when we looked at Aboriginal people. National Geographic circulated internationally as I'm sure you're aware and so people in Australia and people in Africa and people throughout Asia were well aware of how they were being pictured in the pages of the magazine.

AMT: In fact there's a headline from a 1916 story: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.” That was the headline.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Yeah. Yeah. It's shocking to look at that in 2018 but we remember that America was a deeply racist nation in those days and African-Americans and Native Americans were second-class citizens at best. They had few of the constitutional rights that were supposedly guaranteed them. Racial hierarchy was enforced by both official violence and mob violence. Passive upward mobility were blocked. I mean it was a terrible time in American history. And the magazine was reflecting the larger culture.

AMT: And how did the internal culture of the magazine affect that?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Well the magazine was comfortable with the status quo. There's no question about that. The men who controlled National Geographic until the 1970s when things began to change were very much a part of the American elite — the American upper crust. And they saw the world from that sort of top down vantage point. And there was no questioning of white supremacy. There was no questioning of the racial hierarchy. There was no questioning of the assumption that the Western world ruled the globe by right because it was simply the best and that it's only duty was to slowly uplift the world of colour Asia-Africa, Latin-America, to the solely bring them into the light of civilization. That was the mindset. That was the mindset that I think at the magazine went unchallenged until well after World War II.

AMT: How are African-Americans portrayed?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Until the very end of the 1960s African-Americans tended to be portrayed simply as characters in the background. They were seen as menial labourers; sometimes in the field, sometimes in factories or they were seen as domestic servants. They were seen as maids and they were seen as butlers and cooks. That was almost the only way that you saw African-Americans in the pages of the magazine as I say until the late 60s early 70s when things began to change and that was also reflected even in the advertising. You'd have advertisements for say Pullman Railroad Cars that would show a picture of the famous Pullman porters who are always African-American carrying the luggage or making the bed for the white travellers.

AMT: You saw this in its coverage of South Africa as well. The South African white population existed sort of without black South Africans.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: Well with black South Africans as sort of the local exotic colour. But I have to emphasize that National Geographic was not an outlier in American culture that most white Americans identified with white South Africans and this includes by the way foreign policy makers and military and intelligence which cooperated with the apartheid regime in South Africa almost to the very end. So when white Americans looked at South Africans they saw white South Africans with whom they identified. They lived a similar lifestyle. Many of them speak English. All of them speak English as a first or second language. And they saw black South Africans in much the same way that they saw black Americans as somebody else; as they rather than us. So what was so striking to me was in the early 1960s the National Geographic published an article on South Africa soon after the Sharpeville massacre. That was a massacre where South African police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of black South Africans — opened fire without provocation ended up killing 67 people. And even though the official report said that most were shot as they ran away. Well that massacre stunned the world but it did not shape the reporting of National Geographic which produces about a year and a half later a photo essay that can only be called a “travelogue” to South Africa; seeing the nation entirely through the eyes of white South Africans. And as I said portraying black South Africans sort of as local colour.

AMT: It's a fascinating reminder of what was there and what is still there in many ways. John Edwin Mason, thank you for your time today.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: It's my pleasure. Thank you very much.

AMT: John Edwin Mason is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. He was in Charlottesville, Virginia. His work is featured in the Editor's Letter for National Geographic's April issue, The Race Issue. And you can find links to that on our webpage, cbc.ca/thecurrent. My next guest studies race and ethnicity for a living and he's had a look at National Geographic's new issue devoted to race. Victor Ray is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where we've reached him. Hello.

VICTOR RAY: Hey how are you doing? I'm also really happy to be with you this morning.

AMT: It's good to have you with us and I want to hear your thoughts on the current issue in a moment. But first what do you think of how the magazine is acknowledging decades of what it says is racist coverage.

VICTOR RAY: So I think that is a really positive development overall. I think that as Dr. Mason pointed out it is a deeply problematic history at National Geographic. It's largely been a sort of pop cultural imperialist magazine. And so I'm happy and I'm happy to see them trying to address and face that history head on.

AMT: What kind of impact do you think it can have on readers and the wider public conversation around race?

VICTOR RAY: What kind of impact can it have on readers and the wider conversation about race? Well I think because National Geographic has an international readership I think that it can really shape the way we think about racial difference. And I think in many ways it has. And I think what Dr. Mason was pointing out and in the past that's been largely problematic sort of supporting white supremacy not just in the U.S., but globally. And so I think again that it's important for institutions like National Geographic and I think a number of other legacy publications to look at that history and look how they're representing race and try and alleviate some of the harm that their past coverage may have caused.

AMT: Well let's talk about the cover story in the new issue devoted to race starting with the photo of the two girls we heard in the introduction to this story who look different from one another. What went through your mind when you saw that photo?

VICTOR RAY: Well so what went through my mind when I saw that photo immediately was like, 'oh these young women looked like my brother and I'. I am a light skinned mixed-race person. My brother is darker skinned. And you know we grew up knowing our racial identity or identifying as either black or mixed race. And I was a bit worried about the way that those young women were objectified on the cover, right? Given the history of race in the U.S. and that sort of spectacle that it makes out of something that is really if not necessarily common widely acknowledged at least within the African-American community that we come in all shades — people of colour come in all shades.

AMT: What concerns do you have about the accompanying article which interviews the twin girls and their parents about their feelings around race and racism?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: So I had a number of concerns with the accompanying article. One of the main ones was sort of the definition of race and of racism that they gave in the article. I think that this reflects sort of a general unseriousness in the way that people typically think about race and racism. So they asked the girls if they knew how to deal with racism or if they had ever been exposed to any racism and the young women said, “No.” And I think this is one because they're 11-years-old and they think of racism as something that mean individuals do to other people because of the "colour of their skin." But as a sociologist we think that's a part of racism but we also think about racism in the ways that it's sort of in fact institutions or that it's bigger than the kinds of things that any one individual can do. So again to talk about myself here I'm very light skinned. I think that has eased my passage through life in America in a whole host of ways. But I also think that when we think about something like the wealth gap. So typically in the U.S. the average white family has ten times the wealth of the average black family or if we think about segregation African-Americans are deeply segregated in many parts of the country. And we think of the health effects related to that. As a child I was born in well for lack of a better term a "ghetto" in Pittsburgh called Braddock, P.a. And there is an elevated rate of many health problems. Things like asthma, right? And so I think about my own history and sort of this wealth gap that's meant that you know it's hard for me to do things like pay for college or have a down payment for a house or I think about being born in a place because of segregation and state policy that has elevated health concerns in the way that shaped my life with simple things like the ability to go outside and play as a child.

AMT: So in other words you're talking about the structural institutional aspects of race that weren't weren’t touched on there then.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: That weren't touched on there. And so when we ask someone have you ever experienced racism? In both those examples I just gave no one was mean to me. No individual did anything to me in a directly negative way, right? Based on my race or the colour of my skin. However the effects of state policy directed at African-Americans has had a profound effect on my life. And so when we think about what it means to be exposed to racism we need to think big. We need to think about interpersonal interactions but we also need to think big picture and how it shapes people's lives in invisible ways.

AMT: And so certainly in coverage even beyond the United States; in coverage of African nations… same issues. Different issue. Same problem. The structural side of it.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: The structural side of it. But you know as Dr. Mason was talking about the history of imperialism, right? The history of colonization and what that has done to really extract wealth and bring wealth to Western societies that the National Geographic actually seemed to support in the past. So that is sort of a manifestation of the structural racism that we can think about in a bigger way.

AMT: How would you rate the job of other mainstream media outlets in covering race and racism at this moment in time and in history then?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: So I think that this is mixed, right? So I think a number of publications are trying. I think the New York Times is trying occasionally to have better coverage. They just had this obituary project in which they talked about the way race shaped who they covered — whose lives and whose deaths they covered.

AMT: And whose they ignored. Yeah. Yeah.

JOHN EDWIN MASON: And whose they ignored. Yeah.

AMT: And I also think that however the New York Times has also recently been heavily criticized for glowing profiles of white nationalists like they are normalizing them in a way that makes them feel like just the person next door. But I also think when we think about this I think it's important to think about who's doing it well, right? So there are folks at the New York Times like Nikole Hannah-Jones who just does brilliant work on race. I think places like NPR's Code Switch whose Gene Demby; his Twitter profile is actually how I even learned about this National Geographic piece. I think they consistently do excellent coverage of racial issues grounded in strong empirical research with experts in the field. And I also think folks like Adam Serwer at the Atlantic are also doing great work around race. So I do think there are some mainstream outlets that do very good work. And if other mainstream outlets want to do better they can look to the places that are doing really, really well. I would add Colourlines also has been longstanding excellent outlet.

AMT: And what are the stakes right now for getting it right?

JOHN EDWIN MASON: I think the stakes are at least probably in my lifetime maybe more serious than they've been for a very long time. I think we have sort of a resurgence of nationalism and the far right white nationalism globally, right? And I think outlets like National Geographic and the New York Times, especially outlets with a worldwide audience really need to get this right because there are risks not just for people of colour but there are profound risks to getting it wrong.

AMT: Victor Ray, thank you for your time today.

VICTOR RAY: Thank you.

AMT: Victor Ray is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. And we reached him in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let us know what you think of this conversation and of what the magazine has done. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook or a site cbc.ca/thecurrent. I want to tell you about a story coming up tomorrow on The Current. It's about research happening at the University of Toronto that might just make mind reading possible. Researchers there have made breakthroughs in the ability to reconstruct images of what another person is seeing with their minds' eye. We sat in on an experiment for a better idea of what it's all about.

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[Sound: Door opening]

VOICE 1: We're going to do the experiment in here so follow me.

VOICE 2: Should I sit over here?

VOICE 1: Yes please. My name is Dan. I'm going to be your experimenter today. I want you to understand that you can terminate experiment at any time you choose. Do you understand?

VOICE 2: Yes I understand.

VOICE 1: We'll first measure your head just to know what's cap to fit.

[Sound: Measuring tape stretching]

VOICE 1: We need to inject gel in order to increase conductance so we can see clearly your brain activity. It's going to be a bit cold. How do you feel?

VOICE 2: I'm feeling good. There's a little bit of pressure. Seems a little cold but not unbearable.

VOICE 1: Ok so I'm connecting now electrons to your frontal part of your head cap. These electrons pick up activity from your eye movements. So right here you're looking at brain activity in real time. You can see a signal coming from these excipial electrons. So you're going to see a fast succession of faces. You'll have to spot a face of female gender. Every time you see a face you have to press the button… you understand?

VOICE 2: Yeah I understand.

VOICE 1: We'll start the experiment.

VOICE 1: OK Natasha thank you for participating in our experiment. You did well. Now we'll take the recordings of your brainwaves and we'll try to reconstruct the appearance of the images that you've been watching during this experiment.

VOICE 2: So you're going to be able to recreate what I was looking at?

VOICE 1: Well we'll try to reconstruct the visual appearance of faces as they are perceived by you.

AMT: Tune in tomorrow to see whether that experiment was a success and just how these University of Toronto researchers say they're able to "read our minds." AMT: Coming up in our next half hour, the former head of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, may be out as U.S. Secretary of State, but that doesn't mean that energy isn't top of mind in the Trump administration. In fact they've got their sights set on something beyond energy independence. The quest for "Energy Dominance" after the break. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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Fracking for freedom: How U.S. energy independence could change the global political landscape

Guests: Amy Jaffe, Richard Kauzlarich, Christopher Sands

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. It's been a long-sought goal, an obsession even, for American politicians and policy makers, for generations now; freeing their country from any dependence on foreign sources of energy. Part economic, and part symbolic, energy independence has been on the lips of every president since Richard Nixon.

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VOICE 1: At the end of this decade in 1980 the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need

VOICE 2: Even the United States, our country, is far more self-sufficient than most other industrial countries, has been put under serious pressure.

VOICE 3: In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six per cent a year and our nation’s economic and political independence is becoming increasingly vulnerable.

VOICE 4: But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy.

VOICE 5: There is no security for the United States in further dependence on foreign oil.

VOICE 6: I propose $6 billion in tax cut in research and development to encourage innovation renewable energy fuel efficient cars, energy efficient homes.

VOICE 7: And help us achieve a vital national goal and that is making America less dependent of foreign sources of energy.

VOICE 8: I’m running so that we can keep moving towards a future where we control our own energy.

VOICE 9: I'm proudly announcing six new initiatives to propel this new era of American energy dominance.

AMT: And now according to some, that day has finally arrived. Thanks to an explosion of oil and gas discovery and extraction in the U.S. over the last decade, the U.S. seems to have control of its own energy destiny. At February's Conservative Political Action Conference, U.S. Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, heralded the new reality.

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VOICE 1: We don't just export American LNG around the world, we export freedom. And you think about what that means around the world that people our allies and people we want to be our allies now know that because of American energy coming to their shores they are free from countries that would put those values that those countries have in jeopardy and because of American ingenuity, because of American energy independence because of an administration that truly believes in freedom and exporting freedom around the world, that I think is the extraordinary story of the second decade of 21st century.

AMT: So for Rick Perry and others, the surge of American oil and gas production gives the U.S. a powerful geopolitical lever. As you heard, President Trump is calling this an age of U.S. energy dominance. To look at what this means for America and for the world, I'm joined by Amy Jaffe. She is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, Council on Foreign Relations. She joins us from New York. Hello.

AMY JAFFE: Hello. Thanks for having me.

AMT: What's President Trump referring to when he talks about a new era of energy dominance?

AMY JAFFE: Well as the report began with the United States has been trying for decades to get to the point that it would be self-reliant. How are we going to measure that in the future probably is going to be on the basis of net exports. In other words the United States will probably always import some oil and refined products and natural gas from Canada and maybe we'll be exporting more and more crude oil and natural gas to a variety of locations. So what the president is referring to is the ability of American exports of energy to be a major factor in global energy pricing and in geopolitics. And I think frankly we're already seeing some evidence of that even though the United States is still a major oil exporter. But I might point out that it's a double edged program in the United States. It's not just that we're having a renaissance in our unconventional oil and gas here in the United States. It's also that the Congress passed strict corporate average efficiency standards for automobiles and so United States demands for petroleum for its transportation sector especially private passenger vehicles is expected to at least flatten if not decline in the coming years.

AMT: So how much energy is the U.S. producing compared to other major producers?

AMY JAFFE: Well you know it depends how you count it up. If you add in biofuels and what we call processing gains in other words the amount of oil you gain when you take a barrel of crude oil and turn it into gasoline and other products the United States is if not number one you know very close to being number one only because the production in Russia and Saudi Arabia has fluctuated a little bit. But by the end of the year no question the United States will be the largest world producer.

AMT: Over Saudi Arabia... Over Russia?

AMY JAFFE: Correct.

AMT: So how in the span of less than a decade have you gone from fretting about energy independence to being a dominant player?

AMY JAFFE: Well you know the American industry was very innovative. People talk about the digital revolution and they refer to telecommunications and social media. But actually many of those same technologies combined with evolutionary changes in drilling technology have allowed the United States to unleash the potential of oil and what we call source rocks. So in the United States that's mainly in the shale. So that's tiny particles of oil and gas that were trapped in something which to the naked eye looks like solid stone and using a controversial combination of methods including horizontal drilling and the fracturing of the rock with a liquid gel that has both water and sand. We have been able to increase production in the millions of barrels a day.

AMT: So you're talking about fracking the fact that fracking became so well used in places like North Dakota and even in Texas?

AMY JAFFE: Well I would say it's not only just well used; the methodology of fracking has been greatly improved over the last decade. And its use has allowed the United States to produce oil not just in Texas and North Dakota but in Pennsylvania, in Arkansas, in Oklahoma, in Colorado, and other states where we might have expected oil production to be declining so sharply we're actually seeing large increases.

AMT: OK so what do you make of Rick Perry's comment? Does it make sense to link American oil and gas production to freedom and liberation for its trading partners?

AMY JAFFE: Well I think that one could certainly argue that countries like Russia especially were using energy as a lever around Eastern Europe and by allowing the United States to replace even at the margin those barrels of natural gas and to some extent crude oil it means that the so called oil weapon or whether it was a natural gas weapon has really been neutralized.

AMT: You know we're talking about the supply side of the equation. What about climate change and the push for renewables? Is the United States filling the tanks at the exact moment the world starts to turn away from fossil fuels?

AMY JAFFE: Well you know that's going to be a very big challenge for the United States in the long run. China has made it its industrial policy to be the world's leader in renewable energy and advanced technology for automobiles and smartphones, rail, advanced nuclear. I mean China will invest trillions of dollars to be the dominant player in that space and to the extent that they control or lead how we progress on global climate accords whether that's in their policy where they're going to set a price on carbon inside China and maybe perhaps linked to other markets that have a price on carbon or whether it's by making product specifications to China's liking the United States could turn out to be a loser. And it's important for the United States in my opinion to remain in the Paris accord specifically to be on these policy committees and to consider the kinds of things that China will be doing in the future and really to have the United States dominate not just an oil and gas but in all these other products where the United States has a leading edge. You know the United States started ride sharing. We were big in batteries; Tesla of course is a very visible company. So the United States needs to make sure that its policies don't disadvantage itself in clean technology.

AMT: Amy Jaffe before I let you go we really can't talk today about energy independence and geopolitics and not mention Rex Tillerson. What are your thoughts on the departure of the former oilman from the job as secretary of state?

AMY JAFFE: Well James Baker the former secretary of state used to say that the most important thing for secretaries of state is to be an alignment and have the president's ear. And so to the extent that the secretary of state Rex Tillerson and the president were not in alignment it made that position much more difficult. And I hope that as the United States moves forward that some of the thoughtful and calm statements that would come out of the State Department in terms of our public diplomacy will continue and that the State Department hopefully under new leadership might be able to be elevated in terms of allowing its expertise to be more at the front of U.S. foreign policy making.

AMT: Baker was an oilman too, wasn't he?

AMY JAFFE: I wouldn't say that Baker was an oilman. He was a lawyer. But hails from Texas and understood the industry and you know the oil industry has a big influence on geopolitical trends. And so it's always good to have the secretary of state understand the dynamic that comes from energy worldwide and how it influences geopolitical events.

AMT: We have to leave it there Amy Jaffe. Thanks for your time.

AMY JAFFE: Thank you very much.

AMT: Amy Jaffe is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, Council on Foreign Relations. My next guest has firsthand experience of the implications of energy geopolitics. Richard Kauzlarich is Co-Director of the Center for Energy Science and Policy at George Mason University. He is also a former U.S. Ambassador of Bosnia-Herzegovina and to Azerbaijan. He joins us from Washington. Hello.

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Good morning.

AMT: How does the energy come into play in geopolitics and diplomacy?

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Well I think Amy has kind of set the stage very, very nicely. For a long time a lot of our energy diplomacy was based on rhetoric and political influence with countries through which we wanted to help others build pipelines. Now the situation with both oil and gas allows us to put some content behind the rhetoric and to be able to show to our friends and allies particularly those in Eastern Europe that we can do something about their high degree of energy dependence particularly in the gas area with respect to Russia. So I think the real difference is now we have the words, we have the political commitment of this administration, and we have the resources that we can use on the ground to actually show that energy dominance has some content.

AMT: And tell me a little bit more of how this can play in with Russia.

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Well I think Russia has for a while seen the United States as a potential competitor. I mean I remember seeing a chart from a report that the Russian Academy of Sciences did which showed Russia in an energy war with the United States for markets particularly with respect to gas. Now as Amy pointed out the volumes exporting particularly to Europe are not that great but the psychological impact for the Baltic States, for Poland, and potentially for the Western Balkans of the United States being able to deliver natural gas are significant. But the real issue here is for both Europe and for the United States — let's just focus on those right now — is infrastructure. The potential demand is there, but are there the facilities both in the United States to export the LNG? And on the other the facilities to import the LNG, put it into domestic pipeline systems, and to be able to do that at a price that will compete with Russian pipeline gas.

AMT: It's interesting because you've got a lot of refineries that were geared up to handle Canadian crude, do you not?

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Yeah. On the oil side that's correct. And for a large extent they still do require that crude. I think there's kind of a myth that now that we have all this non-conventional oil in particular that we don't need to import any oil at all. But our refineries are set up so that Canadian crude, Mexican — even Venezuelan crude — are an important part to the mix. Quite frankly we just can't use all of that high quality oil coming out of both Texas and the Dakotas in our refinery system. I would rather not talk about U.S. energy dominance but North American energy dominance.

AMT: Well because we're in the middle of NAFTA talks right now, how does that fit into that?

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Yeah. I've been very vocal on this to the extent anyone listens that we ought to be introducing energy into the NAFTA framework. If we're going to modernize NAFTA you know energy has to play a role in that. I think both Canada and the U.S. has benefited by the liberalization that's taken place in the Mexican energy sector. It's really in our interest to see those gains maintained and one way of doing that is putting provisions into NAFTA that address investment in the energy sector as well as transportation.

AMT: Well I'll pick up on the implications for Canada with my next guest. But in the midst of all of this Rex Tillerson — the oilman — has left secretary of state. How do you think that plays in all of this?

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Well let me just focus my comments on the energy dominance area because Amy hinted at this as well; the fact that he does have an energy background he was probably the best person for the job to implement this policy of U.S. energy dominance and using it to help friends and allies around the world. He knew the energy sector. You know he had been in all of these countries. He dealt with Russia. You know it was kind of the perfect match in that respect. And so I'm not saying a new secretary of state won't be able to do it but it will take a learning curve. And sadly what happened during the Tillerson-era at the State Department is there's been a deprofessionalization of the Department of State so that experienced officers including those who had worked in the energy sector have left and we are not bringing in as many new officers to staff up from the bottom. So we've got a real problem. So there's a there's a good side and a bad side to the Tillerson-era. And I think we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

AMT: OK well Richard Kauzlarich thanks for your thoughts on all of this today.

RICHARD KAUZLARICH: Thank you.

AMT: Richard Kauzlarich is Co-Director of the Center for Energy Science and Policy at George Mason University. And a former U.S. Ambassador of Bosnia-Herzegovina and to Azerbaijan. It wasn't that long ago that Canada was being touted as a new energy superpower — though the shock of lower oil prices and the rise of American energy production seem to have dampened those dreams. To help us get a sense of what U.S. energy dominance might mean for Canada, I'm joined by Christopher Sands. He is Senior Research Professor and Director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Christopher Sands is also in Washington. Hello.

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: So is the U.S. stealing Canada's thunder in the energy world?

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Well I actually think the one of the interesting things about the energy dominance paradigm is how it changes the relationship between Canada and the U.S. When we were talking about energy independence it was almost an isolationist idea that we would be an island of self-sufficiency and there wasn't really a clear role for Canada except as a sort of backup supplier in that era. Canada obviously had a national energy program and had its own approach of trying to be an island. And that was really a reaction to the Arab oil embargoes and the shock that that put on both our economies. Then the U.S. shifted over the years to a kind of energy security paradigm where we wanted to make sure we were only buying from countries that liked us, that weren't threatening us with terrorism or nuclear annihilation. And Canada was very much an adjunct to U.S. security and we talked in those terms. What's interesting about the energy dominance is as a paradigm — even though it's a bit obnoxious kind of thing appeals to Americans dominance and all that — it's something in which Canada and the United States as Kauzlarich just said could really talk it in terms of North American energy dominance. Canadian oil is a bit heavier, closer to Mexican or Venezuelan oil for the most part; with the exception of the Newfoundland offshore oil and American oil tends to be lighter. So we both have product to sell to the world. What's interesting also to me is that Canada is having trouble building pipelines to get its oil to any other market than the U.S. This has been a problem for some time. And what you're starting to see discussed in the oil sector is that the route to global markets for Canada is American Tidewater whether that's LNG or on the oil side. That really means that together as safe reliable non-dictatorial countries we could be supplying friends and allies giving them an alternative to the kind of oil they might buy that has strings attached — whether it's Russian oil or Saudi oil or Iranian oil or anyone else's.

AMT: So given how much you've seen you watch things like trade talks, how comfortable do you think Canadian oil companies would be having American Tidewater as their outlet when you have a president who threatens tariffs in the middle of talks and things like that? What kind of control would that give the Americans over the Canadian ability to move its own oil?

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Well that's the tricky bit for sure and the U.S. has become more unpredictable during this administration and I think that's why again to echo Kauzlarich I think there's a real value in embedding our energy relationship in the NAFTA 2.0 that we're currently negotiating. There was some energy language in NAFTA one that was carried over from Canada U.S. free trade agreement but we didn't…

AMT: Not all Canadians liked that. That said something about that Canada had an obligation to fulfill U.S. energy demand no matter what.

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Right. I mean the idea was that you wouldn't threaten our supply because of a shortage at home. You'd continue to deliver. So we could rely on you. I think this is going to really come forward in the NAFTA negotiations. We heard after round seven in Mexico City that there was going to be NAFTA energy chapter. That was something we hadn't heard before. And I think that's very much of the Mexicans urging. But if we can lock that in I think that would be very positive. We've heard some interesting proposals that would affect Canada coming out of not so much the Trump administration but Congress. First there was the discussion of a border adjustment tax which might be applied to energy products. And we've also heard some proposals for an energy transit tax so that Canadian energy might have to pay an excise tax as it moves through pipelines. Moth those ideas would add cost to Canada, make Canadian energy less competitive, and I think it would really ruin to some extent the idea of an American Tidewater advantage, and we'd go back to talking about energy east or the Northern Gateway or some other pipeline to the sea for Alberta oil in particular

AMT: When the U.S. connects its energy exports to the concept of freedom and democracy, how does that compare to Canada as a way of promoting oil and gas exports to the world?

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Well you know we’re your braggy older brother down here. We do tend to think in those terms of our great mission of civilization in the world and it is a bit grandiose. I think the Canadian psyche is much more comfortable with being a friendly, reliable, decent sort that doesn't put up with human rights abuses; that doesn't say well we'll sell oil but you do what you want with it. I think Canada is going to be a choosy supplier and it will also have a certain value attachment. We've seen that from the Trudeau government in their talk about progressive trade. So you'll do it in your own way. I think the key is that Canadians and Americans are supportive of human rights abroad. We're supportive of other countries development in a way that perhaps some of the other suppliers around the world, I always think of Russia, but you could name a number of Middle East countries; even Venezuela with its Bolivarian Alliance with Nicaragua and Ecuador and Cuba have sent different messages. Everybody carries some values in this and I think politicians like to embrace energy as an extender of their own power and making themselves important. So of course attach a lot of rhetoric to it. But at the end of the day the thing that we have in common is that we are principled countries that want to do some good while also trying to do some business around the world.

AMT: Of course we're having this conversation about the promotion of fossil fuels when there is a real shift away from fossil fuels.

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: Well I think that's an interesting dimension as well. So particularly on the LNG side we know that natural gas can be a bridge fuel. And when you look at the enormous growth not only in China but in places like India and smaller markets like Malaysia natural gas can be the kind of fuel that helps them to develop while at the same time having a lower environmental impact because you're displacing coal and other fuels. I think that's really an important thing to recognize. We've struggled at the Paris accords to get China and India and other developing countries to give up some of their fossil fuel use or using some of the worst emitters because we want to save the planet. But they feel they're catching up on development. They don't want to be hamstrung and unable to get rich after we're sitting pretty already having developed ourselves often using coal and other fossil fuels. So this is a way of kind of bridging that conversation and saying with something like natural gas we can help you get where you need to go while at the same time making things better for all of us on the planet. And so now oil is a difference subject of course. But it's hard to match the energy density of oil. And as these countries get wealthier they probably won't be buying Tesla’s right away. They will be buying combustion engines that use gasoline and we need to help those economies to make that transition as well.

AMT: But that industry is on borrowed time.

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: It is. I'm thinking a little bit of some of the Canadian efforts though to try to bring Canadian natural gas to the Caribbean. And you've seen some of the smaller communities in Canada on the B.C. coast or in Newfoundland even as far north as the Arctic they're still using diesel generators. They're small communities. It's the only scalable source. But we've got to be able to do something to at least get them to something more environmentally friendly. And I think it's a challenge. But I think it's one we're up to.

AMT: Christopher Sands we have to leave it there. Thanks.

CHRISTOPHER SANDS: You're very welcome.

AMT: Christopher Sands is Senior Research Professor and Director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He joined us from Washington. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today, musician Jann Arden, joins Tom Power. Finally today — he brought us the stars. He has inspired millions of people around the world. Theoretical physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. A brilliant scientist who pushed the limits of science and those of his own body defying the restrictions that ALS imposed on him while he was still a student. We're going to leave you with some inspiring words from him. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: One of the great revelations of the Space Age has been the perspective it has given humanity on ourselves. When we see the earth from space, we see ourselves as a whole. We see the unity and not the divisions. It is such a simple image with a compelling message. One planet. One human race. We are here together and we need to live together with tolerance and respect. We must become Global Citizens. I have been enormously privileged through my work to be able to contribute to our understanding of the universe but it would be an empty universe indeed if it were not for the people I love and who love me.

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March 14, 2018 Episode Transcript

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