Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2021

The Current Transcript for October 19, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

They were teachers of the infantry school, no matter how terrified you are, lieutenant, you must never look terrified. I've gotten away with that many, many times in the course of my career by being scared to death. But now let's go. Let's keep going.

MATT GALLOWAY: Colin Powell was one of the most influential Americans who never became president. He was the country's first black secretary of state, the architect of decades of American national security policy. A Republican who endorsed Obama and criticised Trump. And he led the United States to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence. In 30 minutes, a look back at a career that, for better or worse, shaped this world and a legacy that many, especially in Iraq, are still living with. Also this morning, how COVID is straining an already decimated health care system in Syria. Plus, how do you feel about the ocean?

SOUNDCLIP

I am a dive master. I am a kayak guide. I love bringing people to the ocean. Of course, that's not always possible. So my team and I have been trying to create ways to bring the ocean to you.

MG: As world leaders get set to discuss the climate crisis, why scientists are betting on virtual reality to make you feel more connected to the state of our seas. The role of ocean empathy in an hour. We start, though, in Haiti, where a terrible situation just seems to be getting worse. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Nobody is safe from kidnappings in Haiti, says reporter

Guests: Gessika Thomas, Robert Fatton Jr.

MG: It has been three days since the abduction of a group of missionaries in Haiti, the organisation Christian Aid Ministries, says that 17 of its members, including one Canadian, were kidnapped outside of Port au Prince. Joe Hurston is the founder of a different aid group, Air Mobile Ministries. He's been working in Haiti for more than 40 years, and he says kidnapping is a constant threat.

SOUNDCLIP

In one year alone, we were attacked nine times. You're constantly vigilantly aware that you can be ambushed and kidnapped at any moment, so as you're driving, you're looking for certain things that will indicate a potential attack.

MG: Haiti has one of the highest per capita rates of kidnapping in the world. Yesterday, some Haitians joined a general strike to protest the rising gang violence in that country. GessiKa Thomas is a freelance reporter in Port au Prince, Haiti. Jessica, good morning.

GESSIKA THOMAS: Good morning.

MG: What is the atmosphere in Port au Prince like right now?

GESSIKA THOMAS: So today we wake up, and it's uncertain because there was a general strike that has been called yesterday by the transporters. And what happened is that a group of them yesterday in the afternoon stated that the strike was was over. And the part a part of them are saying that it's not over. So this morning there is that ambience of uncertainty because people don't really know what to do, either to continue of the strike or to go on with it about the insecurity and kidnapping.

MG: How tense is the situation when you mentioned the insecurity and the kidnapping? I mean, do people feel can you feel that in the streets right now?

GESSIKA THOMAS: It is tense because over to the last two or three years, what happened is that the kidnapping has been growing and the state is powerless. And it's a situation where during the last two months since the president has the I. OK, during the last two or three months, it has been growing back. It constantly. Before you would have certain areas where you know, OK, you just don't go there. But now nobody is safe. It can happen anywhere and it can happen to anybody.

MG: Nobody is safe. No, I was going to say who's usually targeted, but that would suggest that anybody could be targeted

GESSIKA THOMAS: before you would have businessmen, people who are well known who has money, well loaded, who could be targeted or politicians, stuff like that. But now it's totally different because you have the gangs. They feel more powerful now the day it's about money, really, because most of the times when they kidnap the people, they don't kill them, they release them. They would hold them until a month. They would keep on asking money. The purpose really is to monetise the value of the person for their family wishes, which is heartless because when someone is trying to monetise how the attachment with your family, the attachment with your friends and relatives, they putting money on that they're putting a value in money on that.

MG: You had a friend who was kidnapped.

GESSIKA THOMAS: Yes, I have, I had a friend. It was really, really difficult. Is been kidnapped in his house. They went in, get him in his house. It was allegedly, they said it was a gang of Maori or because it was in the territory of the gang of [unintelligible]. He spent nearly a month captive and his family paid twice. They paid a first ransom and they called him on the Saturday to say that they were going to release them and they never did. The family thought he was deadlone. The next Wednesday, they called again and they ask more money, saying that the money wasn't enough for them to share. The family has to go, family and friends has to put together in order to help them pay. That friend is still living here in Haiti because sometimes they don't have the choice they cannot leave. They don't have the means because there is that economy called death. After you finish to pay that kind of money, you would sell house cars and where you have that economical death after this kind of situations, most of the times.

MG: How do you think what he went through changed him as a human being?

GESSIKA THOMAS: Well, he was really affected. And what happened when you get through this kind of experience it, it changes you in a way that it makes you see life differently. You see you either goes where you feel that nothing has any value anymore, you just living or you just know that you can die any time or you just said, OK, I went through that and I'm sure that I'm going to go more powerful. I'm going to grow. My personality is going to be stronger.

MG: But as you said, most people who go through this, they can't afford to leave the country.

GESSIKA THOMAS: No, they can't, because you have that economy called death, and not everybody can seek asylum somewhere else. Because when you have so much investment in a country where you can grow, because one thing that you need to know is that not every Hatian wants to leave the country. You use force to.

MG: Well, and you mentioned that the gangs and the kidnappers are becoming even more bold now. What does that look like on the streets? I mean, how does that unfold in terms of people's daily lives?

GESSIKA THOMAS: What happened is that the gangs, they are more powerful. As I said, as you said, I mentioned the again in terms of munitions, weapons and territory. What they do now with focus is the centre of Haiti, literally the centre of businesses and everything. So what they are doing now, they are blocking progress in every area that you know you can leave focus they, control this. For example, the cuts are mostly they control the area that goes to [unintelligible], which can take you to the border, to the Dominican Republic. And you have in the downtown where all most of the business were before to 2010. And now what they do. You have Petionville, which is literally the economical hut of what focus now because all the business has moved up to Petionville. Now what they do, they trying to get to pitch off the pitch of it was backed in a safe place where nothing would happen. If you are in Petionville, you know you safe. But now they trying to get to that place and the government doesn't do anything really because I did feel powerless or they don't know what to do.

MG: You know, what does that mean for people's daily lives when they go out? Are they going out with protection or are they going out in specific routes, although, as you said, the gangs are everywhere. So when you step out the door, what does that mean?

GESSIKA THOMAS: When you step out the door that means you don't know if you're going to come back because you might not be attacked by a gang directly but if you are in an area there is a fight, so you might be a victim of that. And is that when you stepping out of your house, you don't have the choice, you know, you have to go out. It's either not working, not going out, not going to [unintelligible] we don't have. Because one thing that you need to know in Haiti is a cash. It is based on a cash economy, where you have to go and any everything that you do is mostly cash. You have to pay. So you have to go yourself, do all the transactions that you need to do. So every time you stepping out is when you're getting back home, it's thanks Lord, not because you don't know what may happen. This is the fear that every Haitian are living everyday now.

MG: Are you worried about your and are you worried for your own safety with our lines breaking up a little bit? So I want to make sure that I get this through. But are you worried about your own safety?

GESSIKA THOMAS: Yes, I am, because some people what they do, they get security guards, which is generate more cost than for her business will have the means. But yes, I am like everybody else. But this is where you living is a risk.

MG: Stay safe, and I'm really glad to speak with you, GessiKa, thank you very much.

GESSIKA THOMAS: Thank you. Take care.

MG: Take care of yourself. GessiKa Thomas is a freelance reporter, she was in Port au Prince, Haiti. Robert Fatton Jr. is one of many Haitians around the world watching his country fall further into violence. He's the Julia Cooper professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. He's written a number of books about Haiti. Robert Fatton Jr. Good morning to you.

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MG: What is it like for you to listen to Jessica Thomas describe? What life is like in Haiti, where she said you step out the door and you don't know whether you're going to return?

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Well, it's quite depressing because the situation is indeed deteriorated to such an extent that the gangs are taken over virtually half of Port au Prince, and she indicated they are moving, you know, into other territories and the government is completely powerless in the face of the situation. I mean, one of the key examples, for instance, of the incapacity of the government to control the gangs is what happened last weekend when the prime minister and the chief of police, [unintelligible] wanted to celebrate the founding of the country, so they wanted to go to the monument in [unintelligible], and they were literally prevented from getting there by one of the gangs, led by Jimmy Cherizier, who is also known as Barbecue to the prime minister and the chief of police couldn't do it. A few hours afterwards, that very Barbecue went to the monument and you celebrated the founders of [unintelligible]. So you have an example whereby legitimate or semi legitimate military is incapable of doing things that are absolutely normal in any other circumstances and the gangs that are taking over.

MG: Help me understand that, why is it that the government and the police are powerless?

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Well, the police is really disintegrating, it is quite incompetent, it lacks the resources now. Many of the police officers are actually defected to the gangs. I mean, the most celebrated one is Jemmy Cherizier, the fellow who goes by the name of Barbecue. He was a police officer. And many of the police officers have joined some of the gangs. So we have a problem with the police. It is not very competent. It lacks the means if, like the resources and the government itself is very weak in so far as we as a government that is for all practical purposes, the de facto government, the prime minister, Ariel Henry, was, as you know, nominated that by the assassinated president Jovonel Moise. And initially it was not recognised by the international community. And suddenly the international community have a tweet indicating that Ariel Henry wactually be the prime minister. And that's the way he ultimately became the prime minister. So we have to look at the situation in terms of the international connections as well as the domestic political situation. And if you look at the domestic political situation, the Haitian political class is so far unable to reach some sort of compromise to lead to new elections or the possibility of a new constitution, et cetera.

MG: How would you compare this to previous periods of unrest in Haiti?

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Well, we've had, I mean, when in 2004, for instance, when Aristide was compelled to exit, we had a complete vacuum of power where some paramilitary groups, that were opposed to ousted, came from the Dominican Republic and ultimately forced him into exile.And then the international community intervened. Immediately after the fall of Aristide in 2004, French and American troops on the ground in Haiti and then the UN came in and that was the Minustah operation, which lasted for 13 years and was able to re-establish some semblance of order once it exited. And that's about three years ago. Well, the situation deteriorated very quickly. So in other words, the international operation, the peacekeeping forces were unable to really establish some sort of institutionalised order and the Haitian political class is deeply divided.

MG: Does this does this feel worse than then?

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Well, the situation with the gangs have reached a point where the very survival of the state is at stake. It is really something very troubling when you see the gangs who have actually federated into a criminal network. There is a federation of gangs is known as G9 et Famillle. In other words, the G9 and Family and thosea are the top gangs in the West. And they're extending their control. They're extending their control from essentially the areas where you had slums into further up into the Old West. And they're also expanding in the provincial areas. So we are really extremely dangerous situation, where legitimate authority has lost its capacity to impose any order, and everyone has lost confidence in the government's capacity to do so.

MG: Well, as you've said, I mean, there has been a history of international intervention in Haiti, and it's gone poorly, to put it bluntly, I mean, but is that what something like this would take, whether it's foreign intervention or the United Nations or another body coming in to try to to stabilise the situation? That, I mean, sounds like anarchy to a lot of people.

ROBERT FATTON JR.: We are not yet quite in anarchy, but we are moving in that direction. Most Haitians of some kind of real reluctance to accept another foreign intervention. On the other hand, if the Haitian political class cannot get its act together, I'm afraid that this is going to happen, whether Haitians like it or not. So we've heard a lot from different countries in the area about the necessity of sending in some sort of international contingent into Haiti to re-establish order. I mean, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Panama, Costa Rica, I've talked about it, but clearly this is not going to happen unless you know that the United States ultimately decides what to do in Haiti. Nothing really happens in Haiti without some sort of significant involvement on the part of the United States.

MG: But as you mentioned, there is there's great reluctance amongst Haitians to see something like that unfold.

ROBERT FATTON JR.: And I think there's also a reluctance on the part of the international community. I'm not quite sure that the United States, under Biden, is really willing to send troops. They might send assistance, technical assistance. But beyond that, I don't see it. On the other hand, if things deteriorate and if the Haitian political class cannot truly get its act together, the situation is deteriorating and may in fact lead to some sort of international intervention again.

MG: You have great affection for Haiti. And so just in the last few minutes that we have, I mean, what is it like for you personally to watch this unfold?

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Well, it's extremely hard because anyone who's been to Haiti, it's a beautiful country, an amazing culture. But the political situation has been really in crisis for the past 40 years, and it looks like we are unable to resolve some of the fundamental differences amongst Haitians. And until that is done, the country really has lost its sovereignty. The situation in terms of the economy and in particular poverty deteriorated to an amazing degree. It really hurts when you look at your country literally falling apart and coming under the rule of criminal gangs. So the situation from afar looks desperate. On the other hand, Haitians in Haiti are really suffering the most, and it is heartbreaking to see this situation becoming so critical. One can only hope that the people in charge in Haiti will ultimately decide to put their differences away and determine their own future if they don't do that. I'm afraid that the future of Haiti will again be in the hands of foreign forces.

MG: It's very difficult to find hope in the situation that you're describing and that Gessika is describing Robert Fatton Jr. It's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

ROBERT FATTON JR.: Thank you very much.

MG: Robert Fatton Jr. is the Julia Cooper professor of government and foreign affairs at. The University of Virginia, he's written a number of books about Haiti as well. You're CBC News is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

Colin Powell dedicated his extraordinary life to public service because he never stopped believing in America. And we believe in America. In no small part because it helped produce someone like Colin Powell.

MG: Tributes are pouring in for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who died of complications from COVID 19 this week, but his legacy is much more complicated than that. In six minutes, we'll talk about his lasting influence on American foreign policy and the influence of America around the world. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Legacy of Colin Powell, first Black U.S. secretary of state; Syrians face soaring COVID-19 cases

Guests: Karen DeYoung, Francisco Y Villar

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come when we talk about feeling empathy, we usually mean for other people. But that feeling of warmth, compassion and understanding could be the key to saving our oceans. In about 30 minutes, I'll speak with scientists about fostering ocean empathy. But first, the foreign policy landscape. Colin Powell leaves behind.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Well, as we've been hearing, Colin Powell died yesterday from complications of COVID 19. He was a military man and a trailblazer who shaped American foreign policy through two wars. He was the first black secretary of state, the first black chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His decorated military career in Vietnam earned him position, serving four different U.S. presidents. But this will forever also be part of his legacy.

SOUNDCLIP

What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behaviour. The facts and Iraqis behaviour, Iraq's behaviour demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort, no effort to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behaviour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

MG: That was then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003, making the case for war against Iraq. The attack was launched a month later. Nearly a quarter of a million Iraqis and more than 4000 Americans died in that conflict. And as we now know, Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction as Powell publicly claimed. Karen DeYoung is the author of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell. She's also the senior national security correspondent for The Washington Post. Karen, good morning.

KAREN DEYOUNG: Good morning.

MG: For many people around the world, that was a presentation before the United Nations about Iraq that in many ways defined who Colin Powell was. Did he really believe what he was saying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead up to that war?

KAREN DEYOUNG: I think certainly at the time, he said it. Yes, he believed it, as did many other people in the government. It was only later, not too long later, several months later that it started to unravel now. There were a lot of people at the time who also did not believe it. Certainly people, some people in the intelligence community who knew that some of the evidence was not as strong as as it was being portrayed, but Powell felt like he had done due diligence. He laboured over the his remarks. He went to the CIA personally and sat there for days and examined every piece of evidence again. It only became apparent later that some of that was not true. A large part of it was not true and that the U.S. intelligence community and certainly the White House had in some ways willed it to be true and ignored stuff that would have called it into question

MG: willed it to be true. I mean, how did how did he get his facts so wrong?

KAREN DEYOUNG: Again, I have to say it was the sort of conventional wisdom of the administration. Those people who wanted it to be true said, Yes, this is what it is, and we can't afford to not do something about it. And I think the Powell. Certainly was aware that he was being used, he was by far the most popular member of the administration, and they wanted to send him to the United Nations in something that was really broadcast all around the world and and have him say here is the evidence. And then people say, as many people did say after his talk, if Colin Powell says it's true, it must be true.

MG: Is that how he felt in the years following that he'd been used by the administration?

KAREN DEYOUNG: Yes, certain people in the administration, I think he blamed Vice President Cheney. He blamed George Tenet, the head of the CIA, people who worked for Cheney. It was funny. He didn't directly blame Bush president. I think he focussed a lot of his unhappiness on the vice president.

MG: What do you make of the fact that he did express some regret? That's uncommon and he's one of the very few members of that administration to say in the wake of it, we got it wrong. I got it wrong.

KAREN DEYOUNG: Well, you know, there's a conversation that I that I quote in the book where not too long after he gave his speech, in the months following they sent and yet another inspector of the Americans sent an inspector there to to look. And after months of looking, he said, You know, I didn't find anything. There's nothing there. And and I remember talking to Powell about this, and he said that Condoleezza Rice, who had taken his place as secretary of state, called him up and said, You know, don't say that. How can you say that he had made some reference to it in an interview? And he said, Look, if the guy you sent that we sent there to find something says, there's nothing there. How can I get up and say there's something there now? I have to say it was wrong. We made a mistake and he took full responsibility for it. I mean that, you know, that's the kind of guy he was, and he knew. In fact, he used to say that this will be in the first paragraph of my obituary. And he was right.

MG: Did he ever doubt the necessity of war? I mean, he was involved in the planning and the execution of the first Persian Gulf War. He spent time in Vietnam. Did he was war always something that he was confident in? Or did he doubt the need for it?

KAREN DEYOUNG: Oh, I think he always he always doubted the need for it. He served two tours in Vietnam, and I think like many people who served in Vietnam, he came to believe that a war in which you are not sure of the mission in which you don't know how you're going to get out of it and a war that that the American people don't even understand, let alone support, is not a war that you should be in. And I think when it came to the to the first Gulf War in 1990-91, once he was convinced that the cause was something that the United States wanted to wanted to throw troops into, his belief was that look, you do overkill. You send as as many troops as you need to be absolutely certain you you're going to prevail. You have a very clear idea of what the mission is. And when it will be over. And you ensure that you have both political and public support for weight and understanding of what you're doing. Otherwise you don't belong there. And I think he felt that that was certainly the case in in Afghanistan after 9/11, but did not feel that it was the case with Iraq. Not only that, the mission was unclear and the cause was unclear, but that the amount of troops that they ultimately decided to commit to it was completely inadequate to the task they set for themselves. And then there were many other things after after the occupation began that he felt were just this done horribly wrong. You know, it was the Pentagon that was in charge of managing Iraq in the early days after the invasion, and the State Department was pretty much sidelined. And he was resentful of the fact that that after the Pentagon felt that it wasn't going well, they wanted to turn it over to the State Department.

MG: Why didn't he enter politics? There were many, many people who thought that he could have been the first black president of the United States. Why didn't he run?

KAREN DEYOUNG: You know, I think that he was not particularly fond of politicians and didn't like to think of himself as a politician. This was in, you know, the closest he came was in 1995, 1996. You know, the question was should he run against Bill Clinton, who was running for a second term, was pretty popular. The Republicans felt at the time they didn't have much of a chance. Powell was one of, if not the most popular and most admired person in the country. He didn't have a political party up to that point, although he'd mostly worked for Republican administrations in the Defence Department. But he decided he registered as a Republican. He gathered a team around him and started looking at how much money he'd have to have, how much support he'd need. I think several things one, the right wing of the party of the Republican Party that was in the ascendance at the time and obviously continued after that, but didn't like him very much. He was pro-choice. He was pro affirmative action. They were against that. And there was some thinking that these people who actually in many states ran the primary process and would have to support him would not. And also, the idea of going around and asking people for money didn't sit right with him. And a lot of people said he didn't have the kind of fire in the belly that you have to have. And I think all of that is true. I think he probably would have been a pretty good president. But again, this was at a time when he was really out of step with the current at that time, Republican Party. He's a you know what they would call an Eisenhower Republican, a Rockefeller Republican. I think, as he said earlier this year after the insurrection at the at the US Capitol, he's not a Republican at all anymore.

MG: We know that. I mean, he had been undergoing treatment for blood cancer and for Parkinson's as well. But we're still involved and still speaking out about issues. You mentioned the insurrection. He spoke on MSNBC on the 7th of January, the day after that insurrection. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

Once again, we see President Trump doing things that are absolutely outrageous criminal, claiming that he is going to be the president United States when he knows he isn't. But most shocking of it all was that we had to deal with this. And you had a Congress that was not dealing with it. And so every time I think about President Trump, I also think about the Congress that did not do its job. It did not do its job. It just went along with him.

MG: What did Colin Powell think of Donald Trump?

KAREN DEYOUNG: Oh, not much at all. No, he supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election as he had supported Barack Obama before that. But I think he was one of the few people who still identified at that time, at least as a Republican who came out, who would come out repeatedly and say, this is wrong. Why is the party putting up with this? The nation shouldn't put up with this. He used the word lie when a lot of people wouldn't use that word. So I think that that he was very upright guy and had a very sort of strict moral code. Not that he was not wily and clever and witty. And I mean, he was all of that. But but I think that at the end of the day, he felt like somebody had to call this out.

MG: And is that how you think he would want to be remembered today?

KAREN DEYOUNG: Yeah, I think he would want to be remembered, number one, as a soldier. I think that he was very proud, very proud black man. But I think that he, to him, it wasn't, you know, he was the first black this or the first black that he wanted to be known as the the good chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. In his heart, I think he wants to be remembered as as a soldier. When he left the State Department after George Bush's first term. Normally a former secretary of state, you get to go around and be called Mr. Secretary for the rest of your life. People didn't call him Mr. Secretary. They went back to call him what they'd called him before that, which is General. And so I think that's how he would want to be remembered.

MG: Karen DeYoung, good to speak with you about this. I really appreciate this. Thank you very much.

KAREN DEYOUNG: You're welcome. Bye, bye.

MG: Bye. Karen DeYoung is the senior national security correspondent for The Washington Post and the author of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell.

[Music]

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, my name is Matt Galloway. After a decade of brutal civil war in Syria, over half the population has been displaced or killed, and the situation has been called the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. And now Syria is struggling to cope with a global pandemic. COVID cases in Syria have been ramping up for the past month, and the virus is now wreaking havoc on an already devastated health care system. Francisco Otero Y Villar is the head of mission for MSF in northwest Syria. He is in Jordan. Francisco, hello.

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Hello, good afternoon, how are you?

MG: Well, how would you describe the COVID situation in northwest Syria right now?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Well, now the situation is not very good, that is the most severe wave of the COVID. It is now north of Syria. We consider the level four in the community transmission, which is the worst corresponding to an uncontrolled outbreak with high peaks of of daily cases. We went up to 1500 cases per day. Now we are around 1000 cases. This is a day in the in September, for example, the total number of cases doubled. We were in August in around 39000, and just in one month we went up to seven. 73000 thousand cases.

MG: Who's being most affected right now by this? This is the second wave of COVID in Syria. So who is being affected the most?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: As you mentioned, we are we are in a situation of 10 years of war. You have a big number of population still living in very precarious conditions in camps in towns, with families sharing this in the same camps where the prevention measures are very, very difficult to implement. So now we see that the big number of people affected, of course, the people living in these camps is a very high rate of contamination that goes to 50 percent of positivity rate unrelated to the testing.

MG: What sort of health care system is there in Syria after a decade of civil war?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Yes, 10 years of war, you have a lot of health structures that have been destructed by and by the war intentionally, some of them, so limiting the access to to health care to most of these displaced population around for one, possibly three million people still be displaced in the area. Not only the facilities and access to medical care is, but also the number of of health workers are limited because some of them do have to flee the country. Of course, some of them were arrested. Others were killed in the in the attack. So the access to medical care was already complicated just before the pandemic. But now, even worse now because some of the health workers of the most affected. I mean, when you have health workers affected, of course, sometimes you have to close some health facilities themselves or some departments in the health facilities complicate complicating even more the response.

MG: So tell me more about that. I mean, with a system that's just hanging on by its fingernails and then the second wave of a pandemic arrives, is the system able to provide any relief to those who are suffering through COVID?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Yeah, it's going to becoming more and more and more complicated because as I said before, already the capacity of access to healthcare was limited, and now even more because you have an increase of number of patients. Of course, patients that have not having the pathologies, the normal things that you find in the area. Plus on top of that, you have thousands and thousands of people affected by by the COVID that are looking for medical medical care. Also in these instructors, sometimes, you know, supplies of their oxygen is a big problem now in the in the in the north. You know, there are not enough oxygen plants to produce oxygen to treat all the older patients, for example, in our facilities, at the facilities that the Doctors Without Borders are supporting. And in the North, we see that they are in full capacity now. Most of the patients, those that can say 100 percent of the patients are in need of oxygen. So you have a lot of people waiting the possibility to enter one of these structures to get access to medical care and oxygen therapy.

MG: What does that mean for people who I mean, this is a respiratory disease, so if people can't get oxygen, what does that mean for them?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Yeah, sometimes they will unfortunately die. And we see even in our facilities, people waiting for ICU beds because, you know, if you have the level of oxygen therapy, but he's got the disease become severe and more severe, then you have to transfer those patients to facilities with the capacity of ICU and the ventilators and also the access to ventilators and ICU beds is very, very much limited. There are not enough ventilators, not enough ICU beds. And we see even in our structures, people dying, unfortunately, because we cannot transfer them to these very specialised structures.

MG: We know that vaccines prevent some transmission, but also the most serious cases and hospitalisation of COVID 19, and this is happening around the world. What's the vaccination situation, particularly in the northern areas of Syria? How many people there have been vaccinated?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Well, the COVAX at the beginning provided more or less of the vaccines to cover 20 percent of the population of. They're not what we see now. It's only three percent of the population.

MG: Three percent.

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Three percent, yes, have been vaccinated. The priority was to vaccinate the health workers and the frontline workers, around those 17000-20000 people. And then the second priority were the people elderly and also with non-communicable disease. But even with all this, we see that the level of the vaccination remains remains very low. Of course, there is a lot of hesitancy amongst the people caused by rumour and by false information. So they are they are agitating, but also the the slow vaccine rollout is over. The calls for that sort of call, of course, the international organisations the WHO to to increase the possibility of the vaccine for the novel because if we if we want to fight the spread of the disease. Of course, you need to have a big amount of people vaccinated, and especially in these circumstances where you have, as mentioned before, still millions of people living in very precarious situations in camps, in overcrowded camps where access to water sanitation is not there, of course, the virus will spread more easily. And in particularly what we see now is that more or less 90 percent of the cases are a delta strain, so that the strain that is very much contagious.

MG: So are there targeted vaccination campaigns within those camps? Is that what you're looking for the international community to do is to direct its energy to those areas where there are people in precarious living conditions where the virus could spread?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Yes, exactly not to increase, but to speed up the vaccination campaigns to ensure that most of the people living in these conditions are vaccinated as soon as possible, that they get the two doses. A lot of people, they got one dose. Still, many need to receive the second dose, but this is something that needs to be consolidated by the international community by COVAX by WHO.

MG: Is your sense, just in the last couple of minutes that we have, that the world is paying attention to this. I mean, there is in some areas, COVID fatigue setting in and pandemic fatigue setting in. Perhaps that's in areas where the vaccination campaign is going well, but is your sense that the world is paying attention to what's happening in Syria?

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Well, I think not enough after 10 years of war, people they get a little bit tired of this active conflict. But that's why we say now in this particular amendment, 10 years of war, where besides the needs are related to the COVID and the situation of these office populations is very is very worrying. People are very worried. You know, it's very sad news coming from people that they tell you, you know, I have survived 10 years of war and now I may die out of the COVID. It's very, very difficult to listen to this, to these states by a statement, by some of these people. And that's why we call the international community to speed up their response to put in place all the necessary actions and to support the number of facilities to attend to the COVID cases to ensure that oxygen is available for everybody, the prevention measures and the material for the health workers there, the PPE, the protection material are there not to make sure that we can decrease the number of people that may die out of it.

MG: Francisco, I'm grateful to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

FRANSISCO OTERO Y VILLAR: Thank you very much for your interest. I wish you a very, very good day. And you,

MG: Francisco Otero Y Villar is the head of mission for MSF in northwest Syria. He was in Amman, Jordan, this morning. Your regional update is next, and then a team of scientists is trying to recreate the silent, weightless, awe inspiring experience of being submerged in the ocean. For those of us at home, all in the name of conservation, we'll talk about fostering ocean empathy in 90 seconds. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Under the CGI? Scientists use virtual reality to get people to care more about oceans

Guests: Jessica Blythe, Erika Woolsey, Lasse Gustavsson

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Next month, world leaders will be meeting in Glasgow for the COP26 Climate Conference and as we have heard, the stakes could not be higher. So before, during and after that meeting, we're going to be looking at what those stakes actually are. On The Current, you will hear stories about the science of climate change, about people who are coping with it now and the people who are working on solutions. My next guests today are amongst those finding solutions, and they're focussed on the planet's oceans. Oceans have been a climate change workhorse for decades already. They absorb massive amounts of carbon emissions and keep this planet liveable. And yet, keeping the oceans healthy is often a sidebar when it comes to world leaders priority lists. Jessica Blythe is trying to make sure our seas are not out of sight and out of mind. She's an assistant professor at the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. She has just published a paper that looked into how to create empathy for our oceans. Jessica, good morning.

JESSICA BLYTHE: Good morning.

MG: Why did you want to look at how to make people feel more empathy for oceans and aquatic life?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Well, one, I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing with these converging crises. You know, the climate crisis, which you're referring to, but social crises and biodiversity loss, is that people can become disillusioned and we can sort of stop caring and withdraw. So scientists, I think, have rightly argued that figuring out how to foster empathy for the planet, but also for each other, is one of the most important things we can do.

MG: What is it about oceans in particular that you think people have difficulty because in the midst of a climate emergency, there is a real sense. We saw this this summer with fires, raging temperatures, you know, hitting 50 degrees in some parts of British Columbia that things are happening. But what is it about the oceans that people find difficulty connecting with?

JESSICA BLYTHE: I think there's a couple of things. Those of us who are not lucky enough to live on the coast, they are very much, as you said, out of sight and out of mind. But I think there's also these big narratives as well that either the oceans might be too big to damage, but those of us who realize that the oceans are under threat, we can sometimes feel discouraged that the oceans are maybe too big to fix. So I think there's multiple reasons why oceans sometimes get pushed to the back of our priority list.

MG: It is easy to be overwhelmed by it, isn't it? I mean, whether you're talking about the oceans or the entire problem, the issue of climate change.

JESSICA BLYTHE: Yeah, that's right. I'm so fortunate to be a researcher who teaches and my students feel climate anxiety so heavily, and I really, you know, that resonates with me to the challenges we are facing are massive.

MG: So tell me about this experiment that you ran. What were you testing?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Yeah, absolutely. So I was really fortunate to be working with Colette Wabnitz from UBC and solutions on what the high seas might look like in the year 2050. So future scenarios for the high seas. And at the same time, I was working with Gary Pickering at Brock University, who is a psychologist who works on how to inspire pro-environmental behaviour a virtual reality lab. So we wondered what if we combined future scenarios for the high seas with VR? And specifically, could we make people care more about this really remote, kind of magical, but elusive place.

MG: Or VR virtual reality? What were you using? I mean, how did you plug VR into the scenarios?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Yeah, absolutely. So we were so fortunate to work with a company of Brock alumni, who is called Expert VR. And they created, based on a written narrative, these worlds that you put on a VR headset. And you would be standing on the deck of a ship and you could look around, and you were standing essentially on the high seas. And you could see fishing vessels, you could hear the sounds, and then you would transition to an underwater scenario, where underwater. You can look up at the surface and see the sun coming through. There were fish swimming around you, big sail fish and, you know, really inspiring marine life and sort of feel that environment, which most of us, you know, 99 per cent of us will never actually be able to visit it.

MG: Did feel real?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Yes, absolutely. When we were developing the scenarios and I would go over to test it, I would ask the VR team if I could just stay, because I loved being underwater so much as it was. So it really and I'm a scuba diver and it evokes that feeling just the same way it did to me when I was underwater in real life.

MG: So you run this experiment? I mean, what did you find?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Well, We found that it worked. We tested people before and after, asked them questions about how much they cared and were concerned about the oceans. And after they were immersed in those scenarios, their scores were much higher, significantly higher on empathy across all of the scenarios that we tried. I should say that we tried both a good news, sort of optimistic scenario, and a pessimistic scenario. And we found both those actually increased empathy as well.

MG: What was the pessimistic scenario? What do you mean?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Pessimistic scenario is based on these what they're called shared socioeconomic pathways They're essentially plausible potential futures, depending on the decisions we make and in the pessimistic ones, global negotiations have broken down. Countries are not co-operating on governance of the high seas. We have not taken any action for climate. So you know, we see conflicts between nations, we see marine biodiversity plummeting. You know, so it's sort of the worst-case scenario based on what could happen if we follow business as usual.

MG: Were you surprised that this worked, that you were able to connect people to the oceans in a way that was not possible without something like virtual reality?

JESSICA BLYTHE: Yeah, absolutely surprised and just thrilled, to be honest. We tested this primarily with undergraduate students at Brock University, many of whom who have grown up in central Canada and haven't experienced the ocean, and even just the anecdotal things which people told us when they took off the headset were things like, 'It was incredible. I felt like I was there. It was a really magical experience.' And so we were thrilled to hear that, but also to find the results that it did actually shift and increase empathy.

MG: Do we know whether that empathy then translates into action?

JESSICA BLYTHE: That's the most important question. So we did ask intent for action, so "After the experience, do you have more intention to perhaps get involved with the marine conservation organisation or to take climate action in your life?" And those metrics did increase. The trick, then is trying to understand and hopefully it's the start of the next phase of research. There's intent for action actually translate into behavioural change. So that's something we hope to continue to to do research on.

MG: What else do you want to study when it comes to virtual reality?

JESSICA BLYTHE: There's so much it's sort of endless in terms of what we can continue to learn, so one of the first things I'm hoping to do is take this research on the road. This was done just before COVID and I was hoping that we could test it with actual policymakers. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that over the next few months to see if people who are deciding about the future of the high seas right now, if they experience those scenarios, does it shift their empathy and does that have any impact on how we decide to govern the high seas. So that's one. There's all kinds of other other research questions we'd like to ask, and hopefully we continue to collaborate. Think to keep pushing this forward.

MG: The hashtag in your Twitter bio says 'ocean optimism' just very briefly. I mean, do you feel optimistic, given what you said at the very beginning about how overwhelming not just climate change, but the state of our oceans can be?

JESSICA BLYTHE: I, for better or for worse, I'm an eternal optimist, so I genuinely feel it, and one of the reasons I feel this sort of shift happening is that there are so many people who care about the environment and who are trying to take action at all scales. And one of the things that I constantly say with my students is it doesn't matter if a handful of environmental action perfectly, it matters if millions of us are taking small steps together, and that really creates a change. And I feel that in the work that we do and with the students I interact with.

MG: You've made me want to go diving. I appreciate talking to you. Thank you very much.

JESSICA BLYTHE: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

MG: Jessica Blythe is with the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

= On the ocean granted that kind of magical feeling that the land cannot really offer you. If we take it in a romantic way, the ocean is, it's going to remain my first love. When you see the beauty and magic of the oceans closely, how could you not want to protect it?

MG: That's from a film called Immerse, it takes viewers on a virtual dive on the coral reefs off the Pacific island of Palau. Another attempt to try to create empathy for the ocean. This film was produced by a U.S. based non-profit called the hydrous. Dr. Eric Woolsey is a marine biologist who's the organisation's chief scientist and CEO. She's also a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Erika, good morning to you.

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Good morning.

MG: You have been a marine biologist for many years now. We've been talking about developing ocean empathy. When did you start to develop empathy for life in the ocean?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: I started feeling connected to the ocean as a child because I grew up on the coast, I grew up tide pooling and looking with fascination and all of the life under the waves. And as I grew up, I got deeper and I started following my curiosities into the ocean. I became scuba certified with my family and I never looked back.

MG: How do you describe the emotions that you feel when you're diving and you're looking at reefs that might be in great shape or reefs that are suffering?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Being immersed underwater to me is a very peaceful thing because you focus on your breath and you can see your breath. And after years of being a diver and being part of my job, it's very easy, it feels is the closest I'll ever get, I think, to flying. And when I'm looking at a coral reef, I because I'm a coral scientist, I can be very fixated on a small metre by metre area of the reef and see all of the processes and all of the interesting life just happening in front of me. And while I do love the charismatic megafauna, I'm usually the one who misses the shark or the whale.

MG: How are you going about trying to make people feel more empathetic? I mean, we've been hearing about some of the different strategies through VR. What else? What are you doing?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: So with my non-profit The Hydrous, our goal is to translate the science in our ocean into public understanding and action. And we are a endorsed programme by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which started this year and goes through to 2030. And our goal with that programme, which we're calling the decade of ocean empathy, is to combine the scientific data with the human connexion. So we believe that the combination of evidence and empathy is extremely powerful.

MG: Why is empathy the vehicle for action, do you think?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Well, there's definitely something that's limiting us because we have so much knowledge about what's going on in the ocean and what we need to do to protect these valuable resources and these incredible ecosystems. And it just isn't happening at the in the at the scale and the pace that we need to account for the rapid challenges that we're that we're seeing. And so I believe that that limiting factor is caring and it's very hard, as you were saying with Jessica, it's out of sight, out of mind. How can we care about something we never see or experience?

MG: It's interesting. I was speaking with the climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, not so long ago, and she was talking about how facts are incredibly important. But it's about human connexion in many ways. If you're going to talk to somebody about climate change and there may be a sceptic that it's the human connexion that you can create with somebody that's going to convince them that the facts are the facts. Do you worry that that? I mean, we know so much. We know that this is happening, but you need some extra tool to try and move people. Does that concern you?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Oh, absolutely. And I just have to say, Professor Hayhoe is a amazing scientist and I really admire her, and that messaging is so important because people can be resistant to facts and they can feel hurtful or they can feel overwhelming. But it's that human connexion, and it's that storytelling that really captures people's imaginations and captures hearts and minds, which is what we need to protect our ocean.

MG: You have this initiative called the decade of Ocean Empathy at the end of that decade. What would you hope to have achieved?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: I hope that by the end of the decade of ocean empathy and the decade of ocean science in 2030 is we have over 30 percent of the ocean protected. I hope that we're on course to maintain less than one and a half degree average global temperature rise. And most of all, I hope that people can experience the ocean in many ways, whether it's in real life or through emerging technologies.

MG: What would you say to the world leaders who are about to gather in Glasgow at the cop meetings about why they, not just why they should care, but why they should translate that care into real action?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: I would say that you can't talk about climate change without talking about our ocean, and you can't achieve all 16 Sustainable Development Goals without first achieving sustainable development goal 14, which is life underwater.

MG: That if you don't take that step and make a mark there, then none of the other goals will come to pass?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Absolutely. You cannot have a thriving human communities without a healthy ocean.

MG: Jessica talked about how she's an eternal optimist. Knowing what you know and doing the work that you do, are you as optimistic as she is?

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Absolutely. I think hearing the stories of people like Dr. Blythe and others. Looking into how we can promote that optimism and say, Hey, we know what to do. I know it's overwhelming. I know it can be very psychologically distant these issues of climate change and the threats to our ocean. But there are small things we all can do every day to be ocean heroes. And to me, a lot of my optimism comes from the young people I work with, and I've had the great privilege of teaching and bringing virtual dives into classrooms and the reaction and the questions and the stories I hear after having these experiences remind me of actually taking people into the ocean for real, in my previous work as a dive master.

MG: Okay, so we're out of time, but you just said something really interesting, so I have to steal time from our next guest. You said there are small things you can do to be an ocean hero. Give me very quickly one of those small things.

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Well, one of the small things is to connect to the ocean and each other. Talk more about it. Find your nearest ocean community and join it.

MG: Easier said than done for those of us who are in the central Canada or in the central part of North America, but it's there and waiting for us.

ERIKA WOOLSEY: You can also download the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch app to ensure that you support sustainable seafood. Actually, that's another small thing.

MG: Erica, thank you very much. It's great to talk to you.

ERIKA WOOLSEY: Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Erika Woolsey is the CEO and chief scientist at the hydrous and a National Geographic explorer. All eyes, as I mentioned, will now be on the decisions made by world leaders next month at the COP26 Climate Change Summit. Lasse Gustavsson is the president and CEO of Ocean Wise Ocean Conservation Organisation based in British Columbia. Good morning to you.

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Good morning. Nice. Nice to be on the show.

MG: Great to have you here. How much do you come up against? This is out of sight, out of mind thing. It's it's hard to make people care about something compared to other parts of the natural world that they might see more immediately if they aren't lucky enough to be on an ocean.

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: So I was very inspired by your previous guest, the person. In the 40 years I've been working on ocean conservation, the biggest challenge is out of sight, out of mind. People don't have a relation to the ocean. They might have a relation to the beach, they might have a relation to the fish that they eat and they might be a diver so you can go down to five metres. But the ocean is so much deeper and so much more vast than we probably know more about outer space than we know about the ocean. So out of sight, out of mind. This a genuine problem. So when this new technologies with virtual reality, etc. comes into classrooms, that's really, really great news.

MG: I said at the very beginning of this conversation that oceans are like workhorses when it comes to climate change. They're not just affected by climate change, but they help guard against it. Can you explain how?

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Yeah. So you don't live on the coastline like?

MG: Sadly, No.

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Too bad. You still need to care about the ocean. I give you a, for instance, the ocean regulate our global climate, the immediate temperature. They drive the weather, they determine the rainfall, droughts and floods. Two, most people don't know that the ocean produced most of our oxygen. Every second breath of ocean that you take and everybody else is taking is produced by algae in the ocean. So somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of all the oxygen production on Earth comes from the ocean. Three, the oceans provide the main source of protein for hundreds and millions of people every day. If we could rebuild fish stocks, we could possibly feed a billion people every day with a healthy meal of fish or seafood. And four, as you mentioned already, ocean and coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrass and salt marshes is the planet's biggest carbon sink. The oceans capture and hold carbon for us, so if that doesn't convince you, we have more work to do. But these are really important issues that the oceans do for us, the services that the ocean do for us, and we haven't paid attention.

MG: The carbon sink thing is fascinating because they're absorbing. Oceans are absorbing less carbon than they used to be able to absorb, right?

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Yeah, so one of the more exciting news that we are working on now in ocean wise is is what we call deforestation, because what what binds carbon is growing plants in the ocean, whether that's micro-organisms and algae or in the case of British Columbia, kelp, which are big forests of big leaf algae, is the fastest growing plant on the planet and can grow up to 30 centimetres a day and it binds carbon. So we are in the very early stages of of doing marine reforestation, if you like. So we recover and restore kelp forests with plant new kelp, both in British Columbia. And we have a project in South America, in Chile with an indigenous group where we where we restore and help for them, as well as an additional support for the oceans. Just as we keep taking biodiversity out of the ocean, we take plants and animals out to the oceans. We need to replenish.

MG: Taking those plants and animals out as part of the blue economy and that economy, I mean, you know, is a huge part of many people's livelihoods. Is it sustainable or is it are we thinking about it in a different way now in terms of sustainability, do you think?

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: The blue economy is a fantastic concept, and both in Europe and in North America, there's a lot of things going on. Some of the blue economy is very sustainable or could be very sustainable like that. We know how to fish. We don't practise what our knowledge, but we could fish sustainably and we would have, as I said, we would have food for maybe a billion people a day. There are other economies, tourism, etc. And then there are unsustainable blue economy like deep sea mining. But the fact that we're now thinking about the ocean as something valuable, I think is generally good.

MG: There's this phrase that gets used. I mean, you talk about mining when you talk about the resource sector's more traditional resource sectors, oil and gas production. The phrase that gets used in climate circles is a just transition away from those sectors that you leave some of the resources in the ground and you figure out ways that those who rely on that resource extraction for livelihoods have other ways to make a living. Do we need to start thinking about that when it comes to the unsustainable parts of the blue economy?

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Absolutely. So I'm new to Canada. I've only been here for a couple of years, but when I was in Europe, I commissioned a study to see how much fish could we possibly have in European waters. And I'll cut this story short for it. In less than 10 years, you could grow fish stocks. You could catch 60 percent more fish than we do today in European waters sustainably. Obviously, that is a way to create job opportunities as well. So, there's a lot of things that we can do better that would not be in conflict with the prosperity or the economy. I would argue the in the other direction, actually carbon based economies now are stranded assets or will soon be stranded assets. Science is clear we cannot take any more carbon out of the crust of the Earth. If we are ambitious and want to meet the climate targets and we've been slow walking into the climate disaster that we are now now are experiencing, what made me optimistic is and it's a bit cynical, maybe. But forest fires in North America and floods in Europe means that rich and powerful countries are now experiencing climate change on a day to day basis. And that's why I'm optimistic about Glasgow because we've thought about climate change as something that happens in the poor parts of the world and there's very little in the African countries can do about emissions because they don't have any. So when Canada, the US, China, Russia, Europe is now experiencing climate change, there is a momentum building in these countries where the leaders will have support the pressure to take the action that we need them to take.

MG: And you're optimistic.=, Just briefly, you are optimistic about what could be achieved at this meeting next month.

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: So. Yes, I am, because exactly because of those reasons, and I think the outcome of COP26 should really include a clear encouragement for countries to include ocean based climate action. Because oceans has been left out of this discussion and it's slowly coming up to the surface of my pond, it's on the agenda for Glasgow. And that's great. And there are many opportunities for countries to to upgrade their national targets so your listeners may not know. But every country needs to commit to set the percentage of emissions reduction, and those targets needs to be more aggressive. There needs to be more action, and what we can do now is protect and restore the the blue, the blue carbon or the blue economy. We can green the shipping industry, we can decarbonise fishing. So there's a lot of thing a country can do that is currently not helping.

MG: The optimism is powerful and we will leave it there. You're also very good at ocean puns, which I would not know if, of course, you work here running ocean wise. So getting deeper and coming to the surface, no surprise there are lots of. Good to speak with you, thank you very much.

LASSE GUSTAVSSON: Thank you. Thank you very much.

MG: Lasse Gusyavsson is the president and CEO of Ocean Wise and Ocean Conservation Organisation based in British Columbia. As we mentioned, world leaders will be in Glasgow next month for a climate conference could determine the future of this planet and on the current, were covering everything from the impacts climate change is already having to the big and little solutions that are on the table. Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at one of the ways the construction industry is trying to cut one of its carbon emissions sources. This is a high tech twist on a very old building material wood. We visited architect Carol Philips at the future home of the Tall Wood Research Institute at George Brown College, now under construction on the Toronto waterfront.

SOUNDCLIP

We're just beginning. We're just beginning what is close to a three year journey to to build this building. So exciting for us, not only any research that happens through George Brown College, but just the research through building this building in itself is really advancing our understanding of fabrication, reduce waste, managed forests is really going to be enhanced by the building of buildings like these.

MG: The building is called the Arbour. It's built from what's known as mass timber. What exactly is that? Advocates and industry call it a greener alternative to concrete and steel? Some environmentalists are not so sure. You will hear that full story tomorrow right here on The Current. That is The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's q. Jamie Foxx, Oscar winning actor, star of films like Ray and Django Unchained, will be speaking with guest host Talia Schlanger in a few minutes. He has a new memoir out. It's called Act like you got some sense. Perhaps the message for all of us. Jamie Fox coming up just a few moments on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

Tuesday 19 October, 2021 Full Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode