The Future of Climate Change with Dr. Leah Stokes
In this episode, Don and Dr. Leah Stokes discuss the state of the climate today, possible climate scenarios for the future, the technologies most important to combating climate change, and what we need to do to protect our planet. Dr. Stokes also outlines the impact of new federal leadership in the United States and the role of international collaboration in preserving the climate.
Season Four of 12 Geniuses is dedicated to exploring the future and how life is sure to change over the next decade. This episode explores the trends that are reshaping the way we combat climate change and the ways in which we can all contribute to stopping global warming.
Dr. Leah Stokes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Dr. Stokes is also the author of Short Circuiting Policy, and co-hosts the podcast “A Matter of Degrees.”
Don MacPherson: Hello, this is Don MacPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. I have the incredible job of interviewing geniuses from around the world about the trends shaping the way we live and work today. We hear about the future of climate change with Dr. Leah Stokes. Dr. Stokes is an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
She is the author of the book Short Circuiting Policy and the cohost of the podcast, A Matter of Degrees. Dr. Stokes gives us a very sobering look at this existential threat to humanity. She talks about why leaders around the world need to prioritize climate action or risk more severe fires and tropical storms, rising heat, and devastating droughts.
This episode of 12 Geniuses is brought to you by the think2perform Research Institute, an organization committed to advancing moral, purposeful, and emotionally intelligent leadership.
Dr. Stokes, welcome to 12 Geniuses.
Dr. Leah Stokes: Oh, thanks so much for having me on.
Don MacPherson: [00:01:08] Tell us who you are and what you do.
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:01:11] Sure. I'm Leah Stokes and I'm an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I work on climate and energy policy and politics.
Don MacPherson: [00:01:21] And what is the state of the climate right now?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:01:24] Pretty bad I'd say. We've already warmed the planet by one degree Celsius and our governments in the United States and around the world, aren't doing nearly enough to limit warming.
You know, all these countries got together. Whether that was in Copenhagen or in Paris five years ago. And they agreed to things like trying to limit warming to two degrees Celsius. But right now the world is on track for something like three degrees Celsius, warming. So we're nowhere near where we need to be to limit warming and people can already see that one degree Celsius doesn't exactly feel safe if you live in parts of California that are burning down or parts of the Gulf Coast that are constantly being hit by hurricanes, or you were experiencing endless heat waves all across this country. Climate change is happening now, and the impacts are pretty devastating for a lot of people.
Don MacPherson: [00:02:21] When you say the climate has warmed by one degree Celsius and we're on track to warm to three degrees Celsius — what timeframe are you talking about? From when to when did we warm the one degree and from when to when will we warm the three degrees?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:02:36] When we talk about warming, what we're talking about is sort of in the pre-industrial period. So humans they've been around for thousands and thousands of years, and we've lived as a species in one climate. And that climate was about a degree centigrade, less than it is today. And so what happened was in the 1800s, humans started to dig up massive amounts of carbon, namely fossil fuels from underground and burn that stuff for heating and transportation and then electricity — lots of different things. And so as we burned more and more fossil fuels, we started to take carbon up from underground where it's stored and put it into our air, our oceans and our land and all that new carbon that's actively cycling that's moving around the air, the oceans and the land that is warming up our planet.
So that's what we're talking about when we talk about the warming that's already happening. It's to do with fossil fuels and really the industrialization of our world when it comes to the warming that we're talking about, that could happen. What happens is that countries through this big negotiating process that I made reference to it's called the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or the UNFCCC.
It's basically this process that's been happening since the early 1990s, where countries all around the world get together and discuss how we're going to stop burning fossil fuels and limit climate change. And at the Paris agreement five years ago, the countries said, we are going to try to limit warming to two degrees Celsius.
And what they did is they gave these sort of pledges — they're called nationally determined contributions — and they're basically every country writes down in a detailed way, what they're going to do to try to make a contribution to live at that global warming. And we can then add up all those pledges and run them through a model, an estimate.
If we do all the things that countries are claiming they're going to do, how much warming are we going to end up with by let's say 2100 by the end of this century? And we are not pledging to do enough to limit that warming to the two degrees Celsius that all these countries say they want to do. So basically our commitments and our pledges are not in line with that big target that we've agreed to.
And that's really across the board. It's not just countries. It's also electric utilities that are making these pledges and not backing it up with actions. It's corporations making pledges and not backing them up. It's even states and cities. So there's this real bad habit that we have kind of like, I guess, a new year's resolution of saying we're going to do one thing when it comes to climate action and really not following that through with concrete investments and changes in the way that our economies operate.
Don MacPherson: [00:05:42] To summarize, from about the 1850s to 2020 end of 2020, which is when we're recording this, the earth has warmed one degree Celsius and we are trying to limit two additional degrees between now and the end of the century? Is that accurate?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:06:04] No, it's not additional degrees. When we say two degrees, we're counting that one that we've already done, and we're saying we can warm one degree more. So, you know, there's not a lot of room for error. And of course, we've already baked in even more warming, right? Because the warming is kind of like a slower-moving variable. As we dig up that carbon from underground, we put it in the air and the oceans. The warming kind of slowly catches up. And so we've already baked in a bunch of warming. And so what we're trying to do is not warm by another degree. And right now we're on track to warm by several more degrees than we already have.
Don MacPherson: [00:06:44] When you look out 10 years from now, what are a few plausible global climate scenarios? So the ideal, the current track and the abysmal. What would you say those three tracks are?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:06:59] Well, the ideal is that we actually take this crisis seriously and we use this next decade that's coming up as a huge mobilization opportunity. This big scientific body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the IPCC, it's a big scientific group of people all over the world. They get together, they write the summary reports based on science, and they wrote a summary report in 2018, which was about, you know, what do we need to do to limit warming to one and a half degrees Celsius?
So, not two degrees, but actually even less warming than countries have pledged to under the Paris agreement. And you know, what they said is that in order to do that, we have to cut emissions by about half in this decade by 2030. So that rapport ended up galvanizing a lot of activism globally.
A lot of people read it. A lot of policymakers, a lot of young people, a lot of environmental groups. And it started to be, "we have 12 years" because it was back in 2018. And so there's been this real movement towards asking not what are we going to do by 2050 or by the end of the century, but what are we going to do now? What are we going to do in the next 10 years? And that's really important because just like if any of us make commitments or goals, we shouldn't say, "what am I going to do in 20 years?" We probably should say, "what am I going to do tomorrow?" Or, "what am I going to do next month?"
And so that first decade of action is critical and we've had pledges, like for example, President Joe Biden, saying that he wants to have a carbon-free electricity sector by the year 2035. That would be truly transformative. I mean, cleaning up our electricity system would allow us to clean up a lot of other sectors.
And so when I think about the optimistic path forward, I think about a huge push in the coming 10 years to get more clean electricity, to get more clean transportation through things like electric vehicles to clean up our building sector or by electrifying our homes rather than using dirty fossil gas for cooking and heating. That is a very optimistic pathway forward.
In terms of the more middle approach, we're seeing that play out right now. In Congress, there have been efforts for the last two years really, to pass an energy bill. We haven't had one in many years now. And there have just been announcements that Lisa Murkowski, who is the chair of a key committee in the Senate has put together a deal to increase some support for clean energy, help phase out these things called HFCs, which are super-potent greenhouse gas warming pollutants, and invest in things like nuclear and carbon capture and sequestration. Some environmental groups are upset about that because they say it's not deep enough, fast enough, it's not enough for wind and solar. And those things are true, but it's probably better than nothing.
And then the really depressing path is what we've just lived through in the last four years. You know, in many countries around the world right now. There's been a rise in authoritarianism and sort of these charismatic leaders who are pitting people against one another and a real sort of attack on democracy.
A lot of these same leaders don't prioritize climate action because oftentimes they are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry is sort of supporting them and propping them up. And so I think a real dark path is where we see a democracy eroded. And we continue to have very high emissions. These scenarios that I've laid out... interestingly, scientists through these big processes that I've been talking about like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they have actually been putting forward these exact same kinds of scenarios.
They draw pictures of the world cooperating and getting a lot done. And they also drew us a myriad of the world kind of descending into authoritarianism and lack of climate action. And things like the rise of climate refugees could be a way that we see a sort of resurgence in racism and xenophobia in the coming decades. Not acting on climate change is a bad thing, not just of course for a livable planet, but also potentially for eroding our democracy and equality.
Don MacPherson: [00:11:32] I'm glad you brought up some of the other byproducts of climate change: fires, really strong, severe storms and more storms here in the United States. But immigration will be affected globally. Starvation, civil war and unrest are outcomes from a warming climate as well. Is that correct?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:11:57] Yes, absolutely. We've already been able through the latest science, attribute things like fires, specific fires, to climate change. Specific hurricanes, heat waves, a lot of the bad weather that we've been experiencing is climate change.
Don MacPherson: [00:12:14] And rising sea levels as well will threaten many coastal cities. Could you talk about what that might look like in 20 years or 50 years from now? If climate change goes unabated and we don't address some of these issues?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:12:29] Yeah, there's a fantastic book. I read earlier this year called Rising: Notes from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush. I think it was a finalist for the Pulitzer and she did all this fantastic reporting on what sea level rise is already looking like in this country. So things like hurricane Sandy which killed people in Staten Island made lots of people lose their homes, had huge economic impacts, but also sea level rise down in Louisiana, which is displacing indigenous communities and all kinds of low-income Americans.
We don't always have to think about the future to think about climate impacts. Many of them are happening now. In fact, in California and Oregon and Washington this summer, an area the size of New Jersey burned. And people in San Francisco woke up to these crazy orange skies for days on end.
So the sad thing really is that climate change is happening now. And people are experiencing its effects. It's just that the news media does a very bad job connecting those impacts to climate change. There is amazing reporting from Media Matters, this media watchdog group, which shows that if you have a hundred segments on wildfires on the West coast let's say, just 5% will even mention the term "climate change." And so people are living through these disasters that are 100% being fueled, according to science, by climate change.
Don MacPherson: [00:14:11] How will the Biden-Harris White House administration likely impact progress toward combating climate change?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:14:20] Beginning in the summer, Joe Biden started to talk about the four crises. These are economic crises and of course COVID, which are top of mind for so many people, but also the crisis of racial injustice in this country and the climate crisis. And he started to say that these were four crises. They're linked in many ways and that we have to address all of them. When it came to the general election, Joe Biden talked about climate change all the time. In fact, the campaign ran ads in key swing states like Arizona and Michigan that were particularly about climate change. They were just ads. About climate change in those States. And then when the transition started the transition website listed those four crises as the four top priorities.
So I think you've just seen that climate change is not a second-tier issue for President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. It really is top of mind, and we're starting to see the way that they are mainstreaming climate change in their appointments, whether that's in the White House or UN agencies.
So I finally think we're going to have an administration that doesn't say, "look, we got to deal with these other problems first and climate change, that's for 10 years down the line or 20 years down the line." I think that they're going to make it a really, really top priority.
Don MacPherson: [00:15:46] I think this is the greatest economic opportunity that we have ever seen. Bigger than even the technology revolution that we've lived through over the last 20 years. What do you think is the hang-up there? Because if we did invest in solar and wind and all of these renewable energies and started to address some of the issues, there's a great economic opportunity there.
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:16:16] It's interesting because on the one hand, when you think about how much we have to do and how little time we have to do it, it can feel paralyzing and very overwhelming, but you can turn that exact fact on its head and you can say, "wow, we have so much to do. And so little time to do it, which means we're going to need everybody in society to work on it." Kind of like a war effort.
That means that everybody who wants a job can be employed and that there's going to be enough work to go around. So I think you're right, that this is a huge economic opportunity. And when it comes to things like clean energy, what we know is that wind and solar are already cheaper today than things like coal energy.
But what we have to remember is not just that this is a big opportunity for the entire country, but it's also a big loss for a bunch of wealthy, powerful people. Namely those electric utilities and fossil fuel companies you mentioned who own a lot of money and have been planning to make even more money by continuing to dig up fossil fuels for as long as possible.
So when it comes to our politics, it's not just what will be the best for the most amount of people. Because if that's how we were thinking, we would already be working on climate change decades ago. It's really about the fact that a small set of people, fossil fuel executives, electric utility executives, have an enormous amount of power in our political system and they're using that power to delay action and imperil the health and wellbeing of all Americans, and really mess up our economy.
Take, for example, this fact: right now all across this country, there are coal plants that are open, which you could shut down tomorrow and replace with a new wind energy plant and save people money on their electric bills.
"Huh? That's strange if something's cheaper, why aren't we doing it?" Well, even though it would save everyday Americans money, it would not help out that electric utility executive that I've talked about, who put an enormous amount of money into those coal plants and has debt on those coal plants. And if they were forced to shut those coal plants down, they would lose money.
So oftentimes we make decisions in society, particularly around things like air pollution and climate change, which benefit specific corporations while harming the rest of the economy and the rest of Americans' health. And we really need to have a system where that doesn't happen as much, where the voices of a few people are not drowning out the voices of millions.
Don MacPherson: [00:18:57] I've heard you talk about on your podcast — which is called A Matter of Degrees — I've heard you talk about the Green New Deal. Which has proposed legislation. Could you describe what it is and where it is in the process of becoming approved?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:19:13] Yeah. So the Green New Deal was an idea that really got onto the agenda when the newly elected representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez did a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office with a pretty new organization called the sunrise movement. And they said we want a green, new deal. And when she was sworn into office and became a representative in 2019, she, along with Senator Ed Markey, proposed a resolution in Congress.
Now a resolution is not like a normal piece of legislation. It's more like a framework or a conversation starter. And so what the Green New Deal was really about was trying to change the conversation and set the agenda and say that the climate crisis is a huge crisis. But it's also alongside other crises, like racial injustice, income inequality in this country.
And so what we need to do is tackle the climate crisis while we tackle other problems at the same time. And I think actually that was a really smart intervention because it is true, for example, that overwhelmingly Black, Brown and indigenous Americans are facing the costs of our fossil fuel system.
There's so much research that shows that we put fossil fuels in the backyards of people of color. And we really put the harms on those communities. Well, most of the benefits of the fossil fuel system are flowing to whiter and wealthier Americans. And so racial justice and income inequality is not really... you can't really separate it in some ways from the climate crisis.
And so that Green New Deal resolution was about really changing the conversation. And in that way, I think it was a huge success. Because what we saw was that during the democratic primary, when all these people were running for president, the Green New Deal really became a new way to talk about climate change.
And we saw for the first time a race to the top where all these candidates were really competing against each other for who could have the biggest boldest climate plan. And had we not had that Green New Deal, I don't think that is the kind of conversation we would have had. And the end of that primary was, of course, Joe Biden becoming the candidate for the Democrats and he at the end adopted the boldest climate platform for any presidential candidate in American history.
He said that he wants to have 100% clean electricity by 2035, which is absolutely transformative as a target. He said that he wants to spend $2 trillion during his first term on the climate, which again, is a huge number. Keep in mind that we spend about $4 trillion. That's the normal federal budget. So 2 trillion over four years is a lot of money. And he also said that he wanted 40% of those investments to be going to frontline communities. So, for example, communities of color that have been on the front lines of fossil fuel infrastructure for so many decades.
We wouldn't have had commitments like that if it wasn't for the Green New Deal and the way that it's really transformed how we think about climate policy.
Don MacPherson: [00:22:38] What are the most important technologies to battling climate change?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:22:43] Batteries are really important. We've made so much progress in reducing the cost of wind and solar. But of course, wind is not blowing all the time, the sun is not shining all the time. And so we need to have storage for the times of day that we don't have as much wind and sun. And so batteries actually have been following pretty dramatically because they're used in everything from computers to electric vehicles and they're being used more and more at the grid scale, meaning as part of our electricity system.
I think the federal government doing a big push or like a BatteryShot initiative, sort of like the SunShot initiative could make a huge difference in terms of decarbonization. Another technology that we need to make a lot of progress on is not just the technology, it's the implementation of it, which is transmission.
When we use more and more wind and solar, it has to come from different regions of the country. And also if we spread out our wind and solar resources, then maybe if the wind isn't blowing over in one area, it's blowing in another one. And so if we can connect those two areas, we can still supply energy.
So transmission, according to lots of modeling for quite a few years now, is a key ingredient in the decarbonization of our electricity sector. And there again, the federal government is going to be very critical in order to streamline transmission planning because a lot of people have been trying to build transmission for many years.
If people are interested in that, you can read this great book by Russell Gold called Superpower, which documents Michael Skelly's effort to build a transmission line and which doesn't work, unfortunately, despite his great heroic efforts.
And we really need the federal government to be backing these efforts up and to say, this is a priority, we're going to move it forward. States need to cooperate. This is something that we have to do. So batteries and transmission, and then finally it is true that we have the solutions we need to get to 90% clean electricity and what the latest modeling from the Goldman School and grid lab and energy innovation show, is that we could actually get to 90% clean energy by 2035 and save people money on their electricity bills.
People can go to 2035 report.com to read that fantastic work. So, it's eminently doable, it's even cheaper, but that last 10% is a little harder. And for that, we're going to need some new breakthrough technologies. And that's why it's really important that we have research and development funds being spent in our federal government to figure out, what are we going to do when the wind isn't blowing for weeks on end and it's December so the sun, isn't very bright.
How are we going to make sure that we have enough electricity for those times? So we can make so much progress because we're only at 40% clean right now and we can get to 90%, but we are going to need the federal government to invest in newer technologies to figure out that last 10%.
Don MacPherson: [00:25:54] We're at 40% now, where were we in 2000?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:26:00] So the sad thing is that back in 2000, we were only at about, let's say 28% clean electricity. So we've made 12% over the last two decades, which is not enough. The average — and I've run these numbers a lot. I made a little video called the Narwhal Curve, if you just Googled Narwhal Curve, you'll find it — which shows all this data and the annual growth rates. And basically, the average annual growth for renewables is about 0.7 percentage points. So less than 1% growth a year. And that is obviously not fast enough because we're for trying to get to a hundred percent and we're not trying to do it by the year 2200. We need to move faster than half a percent a year.
Now, the very best years, which were back in 2017, for example, and actually 2020 is looking to be the very best year. We saw growth rates, more like 1.2 percentage points of the grid. So, if we were at 40, then the next year we'd be at like 41.2, you know, then the year after that, we'd be like 42.4.
So that's better. But that's still not fast enough. So we need to be moving something like 3x or 4x faster than we've been moving in the past. However, even that estimate is too small because we don't really need 100% clean electricity. We need like 200% clean electricity. What on earth do I mean by that? I mean that the size of the electricity grid has to grow. Why? Because right now, we are fueling a bunch of our economy with fossil fuels. Those things are like liquids, oil. You take your car, you go to the gas station, you put oil in it.
If you have an electric vehicle like I do, you don't go to the gas station. You plug the electric vehicle into the grid. And you use electricity. Well, that means we're going to need more electricity, right? As we have more cars drawing from the grid, rather than using oil, as we have more homes that don't use fossil gas for cooking or heating, and they instead use induction, stoves and electric heat pumps, you know, we're going to need more overall electricity because we're displacing things like fossil gas and oil with clean electricity. So the size of the electricity system probably needs to at least double based on the latest research.
Don MacPherson: [00:28:36] You're giving me a little bit of anxiety right now (laughter)
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:28:39] But remember, jobs, jobs, jobs! Think about all the work!
Don MacPherson: [00:28:43] Yes. And high paying jobs or decent-paying jobs. One thing of note, you talked about batteries and transmission and clean energy. One thing you did not mention is carbon capture. Why is that omitted in terms of the most important technologies?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:29:03] Well, when I alluded that last 10%, there's a bunch of things that can go in that bucket. It can be advanced nuclear, it can be carbon capture and sequestration, it could be hydrogen. So we don't really know what that last 10% is. Under the Obama administration, I believe $5 billion was spent — under the first energy secretary, Secretary Chu to spend a lot of money to try to do demonstration projects for carbon capture and sequestration and overall not very much came out of that effort.
There was one plant operating in Texas, which I think this year has stopped operating because it's not economically viable. You know, a bunch of different companies tried it out. They couldn't make the numbers work, it was too expensive compared to something like wind and solar plus batteries. So I think there's kind of perennial hope, particularly in certain regions that have a lot of coal or gas too, that somehow CCS will work.
And it's possible that if you were to do a new build, where you basically site a project, right above some formation where you can pump the waste carbon back underground into what we call like a geological storage, like a reservoir, maybe the math would work out in that case. But so far we've actually put a fair amount of money into this and it hasn't really come to fruition yet. Now we should distinguish between these technologies which are making electricity, like CCS or nuclear, from something called negative emissions technologies, or things like direct air capture.
That's a fairly different technology, which involves harvesting carbon. It could be from a waste stream like a fossil fuel plant, that would be carbon capture and sequestration. But with direct air capture, what you're doing is you're capturing carbon directly from the air. And then you could theoretically use that carbon either to make a synthetic fuel -- so make a hydrocarbon -- or store it underground. That's a different kind of approach to thinking about, can we suck carbon out of the air and either make hydrocarbons, in which case we wouldn't have to continue to extract hydrocarbons like fossil fuels, or put it back underground.
The issue is the scale. In order to get enough carbon out of the air, we'd need to have the same amount of infrastructure that we have today for oil and gas, but for direct air capture. And that scale is insanely massive. So, you know, a lot of people are concerned that if you put too much hope on the direct air capture, that it might be used as an excuse to continue fossil fuel extraction because you know, it's going to be really hard to scale up to the scale necessary.
Now, my view is that I think we have to stop burning fossil fuels, full stop, as soon as possible. However, we've already put dangerous levels of carbon into the atmosphere. We're up to like 415 parts per million on the worst day. And that is outside the range that any humans have lived in before. And we don't know... we're kind of in uncharted territory here when it comes to our climate.
So my view is that we should try to suck out as much legacy emissions from fossil fuels, we've already burned. Whether that's through direct air capture or even in some cases storing carbon in soils, which is another thing you can do.
Don MacPherson: [00:32:43] That's what I wanted to ask you about is reforestation and regenerative agriculture. What role they play in the short-term, which I would say is between now and 2030, and longer-term to 2050 or 2100.
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:32:59] I think that people tend to overstate the amount of benefit it can provide. The most optimistic scenarios are that if we were to do like regenerative agriculture on every square foot that we could imagine it would be like offsetting or equivalent to 10% of annual, US emissions.
So that's good, but it's not going to solve the problem full-hog and I think the other thing that people don't understand is that fossil fuels up from deep underground, right? Like oil and coal and gas. They're way underground. We're talking like hundreds of feet underground, sometimes more and we're taking that carbon that's in geological storage. It's not actively moving around and our air and our water and our land. We're bringing it up and we're putting it in the air and the water and the land. So if all we do is put it back in the land, that's like putting it in the icing rather than down in the cake, see I mean?
And so what can happen if you just put it in the icing is that it can leave that place pretty easily. Let's say there's a fire, which is more and more likely under climate change, well suddenly that carbon leaves the soil and goes back to the air. What if somebody buys your property and then they tilled the land? Well, suddenly that carbon goes back into the air. So this is it. Long-term storage. I was just writing a piece and I said, it's kind of like putting money in a shoebox underneath your bed, rather than putting it in a vault at a bank.
You're way more likely to lose that money underneath your bed than you are in the vault. And so, yes, it's great. I fully support it. I even do it myself, but I think we shouldn't over-hype it. And we can't lose sight of the most important climate solution, which is stopping burning fossil fuels.
Don MacPherson: [00:34:56] We've talked mainly about what's happening in the United States, but climate change is a global phenomenon, a global issue that needs to be solved. And so if we do our part here in the United States, it doesn't guarantee that we are going to solve this problem. How are the other countries doing?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:35:19] I never really accept that framing, which is a very... unconventional of me, I suppose. I think when you take technology seriously like we've been talking about here. You see that if one country acts, it spills over into what other countries do. So for example, look at what Germany did in the 90s and 2000s. They did a big push for solar energy. They passed this policy called a Feed-In tariff and built enormous amounts of solar at a time when solar was really, really expensive — way more than it costs today. And what they did, as a result, is they lowered the price of solar through that learning curve and countries all around the world benefited from that.
You can read the work of Greg Nemett. He's written a book about that. About how solar got cheap. And so that then went over to China who got really good at mass manufacturing, and then they lowered the cost even more. So I think I don't buy that the United States is an island that if we were to magically clean up all our carbon emissions, that nobody else would do anything. Yeah, they would! You know, if they were cheap, clean solutions and we were able to either sell or share those technologies with other countries, they would adopt them. Why wouldn't they?
Don MacPherson: [00:36:41] I think you've answered this last question based on your enthusiasm, but I will ask it anyway. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of climate change?
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:36:51] I like to say that my natural resting state is very excited. That's just how I was cooked I suppose. I'm just an enthusiastic person. And the more you learn about climate change, the more it freaks you out for sure. And I think a lot of people hold themselves back from really understanding the issue because they're just terrified about what they'll learn.
But I think the other thing you learn, the more you learn about climate change, that it's a very solvable problem. We don't have to run our society on fossil fuels. That's really a choice. It's not destiny. I would encourage people who feel freaked out to of course join a local organization and get involved politically because ultimately this is about government policy and change.
And I always say that because I believe that is very much true, but even in your own life, if you're feeling inspired, you can do things. So some of the gardening things that I talked about where I'm doing these like small scale soil carbon farming, or my electric vehicle, or right now I'm working on electrifying my home, getting rid of gas — which by the way, is super bad for your health and your kids' health too.
You do not want to be burning gas in your house on your cooking stove, that's actually terrible. I'm getting rid of gas and putting in an induction stove and an electric heat pump. And just this morning I was realizing like, oh yeah, I totally did like these energy-efficient windows years ago — which I love they're these things called Indo window inserts, which allow you to put a little window insert to kind of give you a double pane glass. And I compost and I say water and blahbity blah.
Those are things that you can do in your daily life. Which can, I think help people, but of course, the bigger game is going to be government action. And I think for people who are worried, let's keep that fight up. Let's make sure that climate change remains at the top of the agenda. Particularly if you're listening to this and you have a representative who's maybe not acting on climate, write to them, call them, tell them that climate change is really important to you because you'd be surprised. These offices don't hear from that many people and your voice can really make a difference.
So I think nihilism is not the path forward. It's really about action. It's kind of the best of times and the worst of times all at once. And so get involved if you're freaked out because that's the best salve to terror.
Don MacPherson: [00:39:22] Dr. Stokes, we'll put your contact information, including your podcast in the show page notes. Thank you for what you do and thank you for being here.
Dr. Leah Stokes: [00:39:31] Oh, that's too kind. Really appreciate it. Great to be on your show.
Don MacPherson: [00:39:37] Thank you for listening to 12 Geniuses and thank you to our sponsor, the Think2Perform Research Institute. Our next episode will explore the future of artificial intelligence. Our guest is Mike Kanaan, the author of T minus AI. That episode will be released on February 23rd, 2021.
Thank you to our producer, Devon McGrath, and our research and historical consultant, Brian Bierbaum. If you love this podcast, please let us know by subscribing and leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.
Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a genius.
[END]