Climate change has mobilized an enormous global constituency based on the threat of millions dying by the end of the century. But the latest air pollution research shows that it is killing 10 million people a year *today*. Why aren't we mobilizing against it? I talk with journalist David Wallace-Wells about big numbers & normalization.
Not well-monitored - and often just ignored - are agricultural chemicals in the air. Not only from spray drift during applications, but also from other processes like volatilization. Even ag chemical content in rainfall or drinking water is seldom monitored. Industrial agricultural is often given a "pass" as we all use food (and increasingly fuel) from agricultural mining of the soil. For those of us paying attention that live in the agricultural midwest, this is something that is hard to ignore. BUT, and as you cover well in this podcast, it is normalized when you live with it every day.
The build-up and build-out of "green", like wind, solar and a modern power grid, is still going to take a lot of mining and manufacturing (rare earth minerals, steel, aluminum, concrete/cement, copper, plastics, silicates, etc.) which is going to require fossil fuel use as well as mining in environmentally sensitive areas -- for example sea floors. Maintaining green infrastructure over the long term is going to require some of these same expenditures, even if we get much better at recycling. Even a 'silver bullet' requires someone to do the mining, smelting, and manufacturing.
Moving in the right direction has a real cost, even if it is clearly the better option.
"Polycrisis" was a new one for me, but a good one! The interrelationship and to some extent synergy among all of these crises is not hard to find. As Wallace-Wells points out, he is an urban being, and he tends NOT to think as much about nature, wildlife, etc. but rather human suffering. That said, the greater 'We" of all life in the Earth's biosphere is fully connected and related. We ignore and dismiss the ongoing non-human losses at our own peril.
Finally got to finish this -- great interview. I was a bit disheartened at the end by Wallace-Wells's criticism of people not protesting after Roe was overturned. Living in a heavily conservative county in a slightly conservative state (Montana), I see the lack of mass action as directly related to Dem leadership's failure to at least *say* they'll fight for people's rights and lives. Every activist I know is burned out, yes, yet they would still mobilize if they thought leadership would fight for them. BUT also, I don't know if this is the same in other places, but in my state much of the focus and energy is on a very important upcoming state Supreme Court election and also on the state legislature because the right to privacy is in the Montana constitution but Republicans only need two more legislative seats to rewrite the constitution.
Anyway, enjoyed the talk about air pollution. So much damage there, like kids who live in high-traffic areas having up to 20% lower lung capacity, and I think the effects on fetal health is horribly under-discussed.
I was surprised by this episode in that neither you nor DW-W mentioned James Hanson, et al.’s recent suit against the US government/EPA to address both climate change and air pollution under TSCA, as a novel strategy, as discussed in the June 16 episode of the Drilled podcast. I haven’t heard that discussed elsewhere and would be very interested to learn more about whatever potential that may have to effectively address both problems. Are either of you looking into that?
"Like, we are... the world is mobilizing against climate change, obviously not to the degree anybody wants or that is sufficient but there is immense social upheaval and mobilization and political mobilization against a possible future danger that is not as deadly as ones we are living through right now which are not causing anything like the same mobilization. How do we explain that? What story do we tell ourselves about that and what should climate people be telling themselves about it?"
There are many ways I look at this, one being that air pollution and climate change are part of the same thing, that solving climate change also goes a long way to solving air pollution, and that climate change is likely to be neglected in favor of acute threats like toxicity of the environment we live in-- thus, it's good strategic choice to solve for climate and do both. I see that as beneficial in electrifying transportation, in replacing coal plants with renewable electric generation, on the likely assumption our culture will continue demanding a comparable lifestyle and quality of life. But there's something else -- the idea that time doesn't stop in 50 years or 75 years. Climate is with us for a thousand years or more while air pollution, to me, is short-term and complementary-- not to be ignored but solving for air pollution won't solve the climate problem. For me, putting effort to climate kills two birds with one stone of effort (I hate that outdated idiom but it's all I can think of to make the point right now).
In another way I also see climate change as linked to widespread extinction in a way that I don't see in the short term threat to mostly human habitat from air pollution, and so climate embodies a broader concern for the community of life on Earth that is not ours to kill, and in practical terms, that human well-being depends on anyway. Air pollution shouldn't be neglected of course -- it is important and must be solved. But narrowly focusing on impacts to people in cities from polluted air will not address the bigger picture of what humans are doing on Earth, that Andrew Revkin's NY Times piece illustrated a decade ago in "Scientists Propose a New Architecture for Sustainable Development" - which I see as an organizing kernel of thought that broadened into Stockholm Resilience Centre's "Nine planetary boundaries" and subsequently, doughnut economics-- an idea that what humans are doing is bigger, broader and longer-term, that what we are doing as a global animal needs to be conceived of and solved broadly, long-term, with the well-being of our only home in mind. For me, as a dad who wants to protect things I love-- including my kids and the diversity of life in this marvelous place, going big is more sensible than going small, short term and ignoring the complexity of the greater world we thrived on.
In another way, climate change is so big there's always something to say about it. With climate change, "pull a string and it's connected to every thing," including polluted air. Solve climate and the solutions have the appropriately scope.
One of my favorite books about climate change, though it doesn't even mention the problem, was 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' both in capturing the essence of the threat and how it is solved. That book gets at the human normalization too, retrospective of great societal impacts. The ideas in that book illustrate a way of looking at the way most humans think that lead to idiotic disaster, but also, well-targeted, can produce enormous, potentially healthy and permanent changes.
And there's another way of thinking about climate vs air pollution that's related to the black swan, even more nebulous but I think it just the same... it seems to me that downplaying climate as a threat comes from an analytical thought process that's falsely confident and not appropriately humble in looking at the world as it really is, and life as it really is as it flows past each of us separately-- and a tendency to suppress the grand ideas of precious and sacred things. That analytic arrogance comes from how the human brain functions, preferring focus and short term rather than broad, complex and connected and living, more known in your bones than words can express. But there it is.
There's another line of thought but I got to go to work., and all that said, air pollution is an important topic to enact laws to help reduce. Time spent laying down the law is time better spent than marching in the street. The trick seems to be how to do that, in my humble opinion.
Not well-monitored - and often just ignored - are agricultural chemicals in the air. Not only from spray drift during applications, but also from other processes like volatilization. Even ag chemical content in rainfall or drinking water is seldom monitored. Industrial agricultural is often given a "pass" as we all use food (and increasingly fuel) from agricultural mining of the soil. For those of us paying attention that live in the agricultural midwest, this is something that is hard to ignore. BUT, and as you cover well in this podcast, it is normalized when you live with it every day.
The build-up and build-out of "green", like wind, solar and a modern power grid, is still going to take a lot of mining and manufacturing (rare earth minerals, steel, aluminum, concrete/cement, copper, plastics, silicates, etc.) which is going to require fossil fuel use as well as mining in environmentally sensitive areas -- for example sea floors. Maintaining green infrastructure over the long term is going to require some of these same expenditures, even if we get much better at recycling. Even a 'silver bullet' requires someone to do the mining, smelting, and manufacturing.
Moving in the right direction has a real cost, even if it is clearly the better option.
"Polycrisis" was a new one for me, but a good one! The interrelationship and to some extent synergy among all of these crises is not hard to find. As Wallace-Wells points out, he is an urban being, and he tends NOT to think as much about nature, wildlife, etc. but rather human suffering. That said, the greater 'We" of all life in the Earth's biosphere is fully connected and related. We ignore and dismiss the ongoing non-human losses at our own peril.
As a Mid-westerner, I fully agree with Paul A. Brewer’s comments below.
Can we get links for the studies referred to in these articles? Would love the Harvard 8.7 million deaths annually and around 350k in the US
Finally got to finish this -- great interview. I was a bit disheartened at the end by Wallace-Wells's criticism of people not protesting after Roe was overturned. Living in a heavily conservative county in a slightly conservative state (Montana), I see the lack of mass action as directly related to Dem leadership's failure to at least *say* they'll fight for people's rights and lives. Every activist I know is burned out, yes, yet they would still mobilize if they thought leadership would fight for them. BUT also, I don't know if this is the same in other places, but in my state much of the focus and energy is on a very important upcoming state Supreme Court election and also on the state legislature because the right to privacy is in the Montana constitution but Republicans only need two more legislative seats to rewrite the constitution.
Anyway, enjoyed the talk about air pollution. So much damage there, like kids who live in high-traffic areas having up to 20% lower lung capacity, and I think the effects on fetal health is horribly under-discussed.
I was surprised by this episode in that neither you nor DW-W mentioned James Hanson, et al.’s recent suit against the US government/EPA to address both climate change and air pollution under TSCA, as a novel strategy, as discussed in the June 16 episode of the Drilled podcast. I haven’t heard that discussed elsewhere and would be very interested to learn more about whatever potential that may have to effectively address both problems. Are either of you looking into that?
"Like, we are... the world is mobilizing against climate change, obviously not to the degree anybody wants or that is sufficient but there is immense social upheaval and mobilization and political mobilization against a possible future danger that is not as deadly as ones we are living through right now which are not causing anything like the same mobilization. How do we explain that? What story do we tell ourselves about that and what should climate people be telling themselves about it?"
There are many ways I look at this, one being that air pollution and climate change are part of the same thing, that solving climate change also goes a long way to solving air pollution, and that climate change is likely to be neglected in favor of acute threats like toxicity of the environment we live in-- thus, it's good strategic choice to solve for climate and do both. I see that as beneficial in electrifying transportation, in replacing coal plants with renewable electric generation, on the likely assumption our culture will continue demanding a comparable lifestyle and quality of life. But there's something else -- the idea that time doesn't stop in 50 years or 75 years. Climate is with us for a thousand years or more while air pollution, to me, is short-term and complementary-- not to be ignored but solving for air pollution won't solve the climate problem. For me, putting effort to climate kills two birds with one stone of effort (I hate that outdated idiom but it's all I can think of to make the point right now).
In another way I also see climate change as linked to widespread extinction in a way that I don't see in the short term threat to mostly human habitat from air pollution, and so climate embodies a broader concern for the community of life on Earth that is not ours to kill, and in practical terms, that human well-being depends on anyway. Air pollution shouldn't be neglected of course -- it is important and must be solved. But narrowly focusing on impacts to people in cities from polluted air will not address the bigger picture of what humans are doing on Earth, that Andrew Revkin's NY Times piece illustrated a decade ago in "Scientists Propose a New Architecture for Sustainable Development" - which I see as an organizing kernel of thought that broadened into Stockholm Resilience Centre's "Nine planetary boundaries" and subsequently, doughnut economics-- an idea that what humans are doing is bigger, broader and longer-term, that what we are doing as a global animal needs to be conceived of and solved broadly, long-term, with the well-being of our only home in mind. For me, as a dad who wants to protect things I love-- including my kids and the diversity of life in this marvelous place, going big is more sensible than going small, short term and ignoring the complexity of the greater world we thrived on.
In another way, climate change is so big there's always something to say about it. With climate change, "pull a string and it's connected to every thing," including polluted air. Solve climate and the solutions have the appropriately scope.
One of my favorite books about climate change, though it doesn't even mention the problem, was 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' both in capturing the essence of the threat and how it is solved. That book gets at the human normalization too, retrospective of great societal impacts. The ideas in that book illustrate a way of looking at the way most humans think that lead to idiotic disaster, but also, well-targeted, can produce enormous, potentially healthy and permanent changes.
And there's another way of thinking about climate vs air pollution that's related to the black swan, even more nebulous but I think it just the same... it seems to me that downplaying climate as a threat comes from an analytical thought process that's falsely confident and not appropriately humble in looking at the world as it really is, and life as it really is as it flows past each of us separately-- and a tendency to suppress the grand ideas of precious and sacred things. That analytic arrogance comes from how the human brain functions, preferring focus and short term rather than broad, complex and connected and living, more known in your bones than words can express. But there it is.
There's another line of thought but I got to go to work., and all that said, air pollution is an important topic to enact laws to help reduce. Time spent laying down the law is time better spent than marching in the street. The trick seems to be how to do that, in my humble opinion.