being published this week. >> politico reporter wesley morgan described american military operations in afghanistan in the hardest place. and in the disordered cosmos, a physicist reflects on her experience as a black woman in the field. columnist john archibald looks at the role of white preachers in the south in shaking the gates of hell. donald trump's confrontation with china in chaos under heaven, and in hospital, brian alexander explores the struggles of small town the hospitals. find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2.

and now on booktv, we're live with best selling author and new yorker staff writer elizabeth colbert who over the next two hours will speak about her various books. >> host: so author elizabeth kolbert, how does somebody who studied literature at yale become a pulitzer prize science writer? >> guest: well, there's, it's a long and winding road. i spent a number of years covering politics. my first really journalistic job, job in journalism, was at "the new york times," and i was pretty quickly dispatched toal ban to cover state politics -- to albany to cover state politics. when you're doing daily journalism, one thing follows

another. i spent many years covering basically state, local, national politics. and then i went to the new yorker, actually, in 1999, and my -- i was supposed to cover, revive a column about city hall. and i did do that. i wrote that column for a while. but i became increasingly interested in this question of climate change which at that time in the early 2000s was still a lot of the coverage was still wrapped up around this question, is this a big deal or not. and i very, very naively thought, well, i'm here at the new yorker, i have a lot of space, and i have the luxury of trying to answer that question once and for all, put it to bed once and for all. and i ended up writing a three-part series on climate

change that appeared in, i guess, 2005. and that set me on this road of sort of transforming myself from a political reporter to much more of a science reporter. but in all cases, i mean, i guess you could say from the study of literature to political reporting to science journalism, you know, a lot of the basic through lines are the same and a lot of the basic techniques, as it were, are the same. you're trying to take information that can be complicated, can be jargony and full of sort of information that insiders are very familiar with, and you're trying to bring it to a broader audience in a way that's interesting and engaging to them. so i don't think that there's anything particularly, you know, special about being a science reporter.

>> host: well, that three-part series in "the new yorker" became your second book, "field notes from a catastrophe." when did global warming -- when did global warming become climate change? is there a distinction in those terms? >> guest: well, there's actually a kind of a complicated political debate about that. there were some efforts to not use the term global warming and use the term climate change by people who were sort of trying to, in fact, downplay the issue. but then there were other people, scientists who embraced the term climate change because global warming doesn't always, you know, and everywhere produce warming at the same time. it can produce strange weather extremes and people have proposed it should be called global weirding. i think at this ponte, honestly, the -- point, honestly, to two

terms are used interchangeably, and i myself use them interchangeably. >> host: well, throughout your books and in your new yorker pieces, you use the word an drop city. what exactly is that? am i pronouncing it correctly? >> guest: well, i'm not sure there is a completely agreed-upon pronunciation. i've heard it pronounced an drop by, so you can choose tomato, tomato. but the word refers to this idea that humans are now rivaling, you know, the great forces of nature in terms of our impacts on the planet. so what has shaped life on earth and the geology of the earth over time, these forces of tectonics, and humans are now on par with a lot of those forces.

so, you know, just to give you one example, humans now move around as much earth as the major rivers of the world. so that's just one of numerous examples i could give you that show how we are sort of now on equal fooding with some of these geological -- footing with some of these great geological forces. and that work has really caught on, has caught on in the popular literature and in the scientific literature as well. but there is still, ultimately, the geological epoch that we live in is determined by geologists. and in that case, there's still a debate going on about whether we should formally rename this geological epoch. technically, we live in the holocene which is the period since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.

so the question is before geologists, should we formally rename this time period. >> host: in your newest week, elizabeth kolbert, "under a white sky," you quote albert einstein, and you say that he said we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. what's that referencing? >> guest: well, i have to unpack that a little bit. i don't quote albert einstein, i point out that it's written on the wall of this great model that's been made of the mississippi river to test out various potential solutions to tremendous land losses going on in southern louisiana. the fact of the matter is that it's probably incorrectly attributed to albert einstein. albert einstein probably never said it. but certainly the sentiment behind it, i believe, is, you know, new thinking for a new

era, new thinking, you know, you have to think differently. >> host: and when it comes to the mississippi river and the delta, which you visited, how does that, how does that apply? >> guest: well, the story of what's happening to the mississippi delta is, you know, a really fascinating one. it starts really when the french settled new orleans which is in this strategically incredibly important spot, you know, basically where the mississippi, right before the mississippi if hits the gulf of mexicoment and all of -- mexico. and all of the land in louisiana, all of the mississippi delta was formed when the mississippi would overflow its banks which it used to do all the time, and it was carrying a great deal of sediment from the great plains. and it would drop that sediment as it overflowed, and all of the

land in southern louisiana is this kind of soupy soil. and those soils require being replenished by the river or they sink. hence, new orleans is sinking very fast, it's one of the fastest sinking places on earth because we have preed vented the -- prevented the mississippi from flooding. quite successfully, basically we prevent the mississippi from flooding. so all of southern louisiana is sinking away, and this is, obviously, marley a problem in a a -- particularly a problem in a city like new orleans. this is actually true, that southern louisiana uses a football field's worth of land basically every 90 minutes. >> host: so that said, had we not engineered new orleans with dikes, etc., would louisiana continue to grow? >> guest: parts of it would be

growing, participants of it would be -- parts of it would be shrinking. what happens is the river overflows its banks, lays down this sort of bulge of land which is known as a delta lobe to geologists, and then the river has, in effect, impeded its own flow. the gradient becomes too steep for the river. the river decides, okay, let's find a faster route to the sea. and then it flips course. and that process is known as e vision. and geologists have are carefully reconstructed the history of the mississippi, and there have been, you know, at least half a dozen in the last few years. and in the natural course of events, those older lobes would be sinking away, and a newer lobe would be being created. now, what has happened a because of the way we have basically put

the mississippi in a straitjacket is that all the sediment that's in the mississippi gets shot out at the end of what's called the bird's foot which is this spit of land south, basically to the south of new orleans. >> host: so, elizabeth elizabet, you also visited a site up river a little bit where the actual flow of the river is controlled, correct? is that -- >> guest: yes. >> host: am i phrasing that correctly? >> guest: yes, this is old river control that you're referring to? >> host: yes. >> guest: uh-huh, yes. so old river control, this gets back to the idea that the mississippi would like to switch course. it's now at the point where, once again, in the natural court of event -- course of events is it would experience an evulsion, and it would start, and more and more water would be flowing down what's now called a distributary

of the mississippi. and it was recognized back in the, you know, early decades of the 20th century that more and more water was flowing down. so the army corps of engineers stepped in, built a huge series of control works. about, yeah, quite a ways north of new orleans, maybe 100 miles north even. maybe not quite that much. to basically freeze the river in place. but at that point, 30% of the water that went by old river control, 70% was going down the main branch. so that was every day, you know, that water flow is measured and adjusted accordingly to try to maintain that flow at 30/70.

that's -- >> host: that's quite an engineering feat, isn't it? >> guest: yes, it is. and very nearly it ran out of control in the '70s during a huge flooding event in the '70s. it had to be shored up and more controls added. but since then i think it has, you know, kept control of the mississippi. 70% of that water is still flowing past new orleans and down into the bird's foot. but, you know, how long that can go on is unclear. i mean, certainly it can be perpetuated for a while. but in the grand scheme of yeeology, i think -- gee ology, i think eventually it can't be maintained. >> host: you talk about this in your new book, would change the direction of the chicago river. >> guest: yeah. that's another great story. that's really where the book

begins. the chicago grew up somewhat later, roughly a century later than new orleans, on the banks of the chicago river. it's a small river but a key one to the city of chicago. and chicagoans just used it as a sewer, really as an open sewer. it was a repository for all of the is city's human waste, and -- as the great stockyards of chicago grew, it was also a repository for the animal waste. and it was said that the chicago river was so thick with phil that a chicken would -- filth that a chicken could walk across without ever getting her feet wet. and this was a problem not just because, you know, it was disgusting, obviously, but because the chicago river was running east into lake michigan. chicago draws its drinking water from lake michigan. so, you know, you can easily do

the math on that. there were constant outbreakses of waterborne disease. so around the turn of the 20th century, it was decided that something had to be done about this, and what this something turned out to be was an enormous construction project that reverse ared the flow of the chicago -- reversed the flow of the chicago river. so now if you go to chicago, the chicago river is not flowing east into lake michigan, it's flowing away from lake michigan and into the a tributary of the mississippi. >> host: is that a good thing? [laughter] >> guest: well, it's a good thing for, you know, chicago's drinking water. when this project was completed and finally opened, it was basically a canal that then connected the chicago river to the mississippi if watershed. there was a headline in "the new york times," and i'm not going to get it exactly right, but it ransoming like water in the

chicago river -- ran something like water in the chicago river resembled liquid again. you got the city's waste moving away from its drinking water. so it was on a public health, from a public health perspective, you know, a grand success. but what it did which people were not thinking about very much at the time was it connected these two great watersheds, two great drainage basins, the great lakes drainage basin and the mississippi drainage basin which previously had been separated. so if you were a fish or a crustacean or some aquatic organism, you could not have moved from the great lakes into the mississippi, and now you can. >> host: so, colbert, why are there electric -- elizabeth kolbert, why are there electric fences on the chicago river? >> guest: well, the electric barriers, as their called, were constructed precisely in order.

what happened was during the course of the 20th century so after this project was completed, both the great lakes and the mississippi became highly invaded water systems. so lots and lots of invasive species, some of which were introduced purposefully, lots of which were introduced inadvertently and in the ballast water of ships established themselves in these waterways and were wreaking havoc in different ways. and so about 20 years ago, i guess, the congress said to the army corps of engineers -- the army corps of engineers was involved in a lot of these projects -- we need to do something about this. we can't leapt all these invasive species go from one basin to the other. that's going to, you know, wreck both basins. so the army corps of engineers was assigned the task of figuring out some way to keep these organisms in their

respective waterways, and it looked at a whole list of possibilities. it thought of, you know, you could stack the water, you could use radiation, you could install giant filters, all sorts of ideas, you could use some kind of toxin, all sorts of ideas were explored and dropped in favor of this idea of pulsing a great deal of electricity through the water. and the hope here is that when a fish or another aquatic organism comes into this part of the river that's electrified, it will get a shock and decide to go back home, go back in the direction that it came from as opposed to crossing over these barriers. and i myself have taken a trip across the barriers, and there are huge billboard-like signs that warn you, keep your pets nearing keep your kids near, do not go in the water because there's a high danger of

electrocution. >> host: and this is all due to a variety of asian carp trying to get into the great lakes or potentially getting into the great lakes? >> well, honestly, the barriers were put up initially to try to keep a fish from moving from the great lakes into the mississippi. there's a fish called the round govy which is a very voracious consumer of other fishes' eggs. and that fish, by the time these barriers were completed, that fish had already crossed. so i think in the book it was a matter of, you know, closing the barn door after the fish was already out. and, but then it turned out that moving in the opposite direction were several species, we refer to asian carp, people tend to think they're one species, but they're actually several species, several species of asian carp that were moving through the mississippi water system.

and people really don't want the carp to get into the great lakes. so that, the barriers are really at this point, as you say, aimed at keeping these asian carp out of the great lakes. but that was, interestingly enough, not the original reason for their construction. >> host: so, elizabeth kolbert, first of all, how did asian carp end up in the midwest in the u.s., and what's their, what's the danger of them getting into the great lakes? >> guest: well, asian carp have a really interesting history in the u.s. they were introduced, various species at various times but all, you know, roughly around the same time in the mid '60s, early 1970s. and they were introduced because it was hoped that they would perform some form of what we call biocontrol. so one species is a very voracious herbivore, it eat

plants, and the hopes that that species, which is known as the grass carp, would eat aquatic weedsment a lot of these were -- weeds. a lot of these were also invasive species, then you wouldn't have to dump herbicides into the water. another species was introduced because it was hoped that it would eat basically take care of some of the nutrient loading that occurs when you have insufficient sewage treatment. so different species were introduced for different reasons. they weren't really introduced, they were put into, you know, research stations, but they very quickly got loose. they, you know, when they have baby fish, they're very tiny, they're called fingerlings. they got through whatever mesh was supposed to be keeping them in, and they were pretty quickly in these, you know, tributaries of the mississippi, and hen they started to move -- and then they started to move all through the water system. and what they do is they're, as

one of the army corps of engineers' staff members that i spoke to about it put it, they're very, very good invaders. they are very, very adaptable. they do very, very well in that watershed. they take over the water system, essentially, in some parts of the mississippi river system. at this point asian carp make up about three-quarters of the biomass. so they really sort of elbowed out native species of fish. and another habit that they have, one of these species which is known as silver carp, has this sort of unnerving habit of when it's startled or scared, it flings itself up out of the water. so your viewers can, you know, you can go online and find these extraordinary pictures of carp jumping quite high into the air. and identify seen this -- i've

seen this many times now, and it's sort of a beautiful, sort of a frightening sight. and people have been very grovesly injured -- greavesly injured by flying carp. i met a lot of fishermen who -- because one of the sounds they really don't like is the thrum of an outboard motor. so if you go boating on carp-infested stretches of water, your chance of getting hit in the face with a carp are pretty high, and people have had very serious injuries as a result. so that is another reason why people around the great lakes really don't want them in the great lakes. >> host: so, elizabeth kolbert, we've talked about the mississippi delta, we've talked about the chicago river, but we're talking about billions of dollars in economic damage or in infrastructure, aren't we? >> guest: you mean that it has been -- >> host: that has been invested? >> guest: to try to, to try to correct for these problems or prevent these problems or -- yeah, absolutely are.

well, billions of dollars were spent initially to, you know, connect the equivalent probably of billions of dollars were spent to connect the mississippi and the great lakes watershed, and now, you know, more billions of dollars will be spent to try to correct for the damage that was done when that, when the original billions were spent. >> host: so is there another solution out there? >> guest: well, i mean, are we still talking about the great lakes and the mississippi? >> host: you can talk about those or any others, yes. [laughter] >> guest: well, in the case of the great lakes and the mississippi, one proposal that's been made -- and, once again, this goes back to a study done by the army corps of engineers -- well, you know, what man has joined, man can pull asunder. so you could, in theory, separate the two basins again. that would also cost billions of dollars and be an enormous construction project. and that idea has essentially

been dropped because chicago has become is so dependent both for flood control and for, you know, its water treatment on the way things are right now and also navigation. you can now navigate that through, you know, from the great lakes. so for a lot of reasons, a lot of new infrastructure has grown around, up around this old infrastructure, and it's very, very hard to turn back the clock. >> host: so you and i are both on the east coast. you're up in williamstown, the massachusetts, we're here in d.c. why should we care about a pup fish in the no halve i have desert -- mojave desert? >> guest: well, the fish that you're alluding to is considered to be the rarest fish in the world. it's found only in one pool in a canyon, a very magical canyon in

the middle of the mojave. and it is a small, blue, lovely, rae beautiful fish, lovely iridescent blue fish. very low numbers. right now numbers are maybe several hundred fish exist in the world. and why should you care whether it survives? well, there are, you know, a lot of different ways to answer that question. one thing that's interesting about the devil's hole pup fish is it survives at very high temperatures. the water in this canyon, in the pool at the bottom of the devil's fall canyon is a constant 93 degrees fahrenheit. so that's very, very tuft for most organisms -- difficult for most organisms to live this. the devil's hole pup fish thrives in that. so i guess one answer i could give is we might have something

very interesting to learn from the devil's hole pup fish. but i think a more profound reason is, you know, every species is sort of, you could think of it as a library book. it's a, it's an answer to the question of how to live on planet earth, how to survive on planet earth. each species has come up with a somewhat different survival strategy that's encoded, you know, in its genome. and by killing off the devil's hole pup fish9 and the myriad, myriad, countless other species that are on the brink of extinction right now, we are basically -- we have burned through the library of life. and i don't think that's something that people want to do for ethical reasons or for practical reasons because much of what we ourselves depend on, you know, oured food supply, our

oxygen supply, these are all products of biological systems. so when you start unraveling, you know, the web of life, you don't know exactly what you're going to get. and the dangers are pretty high. >> host: well, from your book "under a white sky," you write: one way to make sense of the biodiversity crisis would simply be to accept it. the listly of life has, after all, been punctuated by extinction events both big and very, very big. >> guest: yes. [laughter] but i go on. i do go on in that passage and talk about why i don't think, why people don't want to do that, one of which -- part of the reason is, you know, because, as i mentioned, it simply is ethically unacceptable to a lot of people. and another reason is because it's a very scary prospect to think of unraveling the web of life are. we could just say, well, forget it, that's just what we're going

to do. i don't think most people would think that's wise. >> host: and just to be fair, i didn't mean to cut off that quote, but you do go on, and you write that: but for whatever reason, call it biofeel ya, call it care for god's creation, call it heart-stopping fear, people are reluctant to be the asteroid and so we've created another class of animal, and these are creatures we've pushed to the brink and then yanked back. the term of art for such creatures is conservation-reliant, but they might also be called the stockholm species. >> guest: yes, exactly. we tend, and part of this, to be honest, is our legal system, once a species is in really big trouble, if that species can get listed on the endangered species act, then one of the provisions, key provisions of the endangered species act is you have to have

a recovery plan for that species. so i should say that the devil's hole pup fish was one of the earliest listed species on the endangered species act. so it once again, by law, has to have a recovery plan. >> host: i want to go to a recent new yorker article that you wrote. this is from january. quote: the pandemic, which has brought down carbon emissions, has also illustrated how tough it is to make significant cuts. with much of the world under lockdown, global emissions were around 6% lower in 2020 than they were in 2019. though this drop was the largest on record, it was system still not enough -- it was still not enough to put the world on track to meet the 1.5 degrees celsius goals set out in the paris accord. >> guest: yeah. so, you know, covid has brought carbon emissions down pretty dramatically at the start of the

pandemic. emissions dropped very dramatically and then they have sort of startedded to tick up again. but what i was trying to, you know, explain in that piece was in order for us to reach some of these targets enshrined in the paris climate accord from 2015, there was a goal of making, you know, every effort to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees celsius which is, you know, almost 3 degrees fahrenheit, so pretty significant climate shift already. .. very soon within next few decades if you had a reasonable chance of hitting that goal. and 6% a year does not quite get you there. we are not expecting to see 6% a year were expected to see if and when this pandemic ends

were looking to see a big rebound. that can you and layman's term explain the danger of the planet warming? suspect the danger of the planet warming is a people are seeing it right now. we saw you know california burning this fall. that was human it was a disaster all californians would agree on that. many factors that wouldn't that terrible, terrible fire season but the fundamental one is california getting warmer, it is drying out that's increasing the odds of devastating forest fires. that is one danger in one part of the world. hurricane season the summer was quite devastating. it is unclear to little bit

unclear whether hurricane will lead to more hurricane but it seems like one of the things is going to do is rapidly intensifying hurricanes. see you go to bed one night in the hurricane is a category one storm per you wake up it's a category four storm. those are extremely dangerous storms because it's very hard to get people to get out of the way of the storms that intensify so fast. that is a one tremendous danger from climate change great sea levels are rising is a level of climate change without the product of two forces. one is that as the oceans warm and they are warming that's indisputable. warm water takes up more space. that's called the thermal expansion of water. that is pretty predictable. it's easy to predict how much the estimate how much more space the oceans are going to take up as they warm. it's also melting a good deal of ice off the major remaining

ice in the world greenland and antarctica. solver major cities, urine d.c. i'm quite a bit inland, boston, new york, miami are all now trying to figure out how they are going to deal with rising sea levels. how much reporting to and how much the sea levels rise that could be a manageable issue. or that could be catastrophic. the list of reasons people should be concerned about a warming climate, and porsche goes on and on. we could spend the next few hours talking about them, that the sampling. >> unfortunately scratch the service trend surface. we don't open up the phone lines and allow you to participate in this conversation (202)748-8200. for those of you in the east and central time zones (202)748-8201.

you live the mountain pacific time zones, other ways of reaching us in getting a question into ms. colbert to include text (202)748-8903. text carefully and if you would make sure to include your first and your city. (202)748-8903 is for text messages only. plus we have several social media sites you can make a comic, facebook, twitter, instagram booktv is our handle for those. and finally our e-mail address book tv at c-span.org. and we will get to those as quickly as we can. elizabeth kolbert is the author for books and editor of one the profit of love is her first book at 2004. in other tales of power and deceit. and then came the fieldnotes man, nature and climate change

and zero six. pulitzer prize winning the sixth extinction in 2014 and her most recent just out this year is under a white sky the nature of the future which we have been talking about a little bit today. i also want to bring in another topic before we are a little bit more on the climate change issue. here is senator james inhofe. he is a republican from oklahoma. he has been critical of efforts to control climate change. here's a little bit from him on the senate floor. >> one of those in virginia commissioned a to be done of the weather casters on tv. they came back that 63% of the weather casters that any global warming that occurs as

a result of natural variation and not human activities. so when i hear people, i am good friends on the other side that really believe this. i think sometimes you have to open it up and realize there is another side to the story. so when they say 97, 98 prep set of scientists agree it just isn't true. my good friend senator whitehouse, had an amendment for the moment was one sentence it says that global warming i'm sorry climate change is real. and it is not a hoax. well there's a rule against talking by your own books on the senate floor so i can't do that that hoax came from a totally different interpretation. hoax was the idea this is happening, climate change but it's due to man made gases in other words man is causing it. what a set of the senate floor today and said how arrogant is it for people to say that man

can do something about changing climate. and elizabeth kolbert that was some 2015. back i'll be frank and say i think it's really dangerous to even rebroadcast that. i don't think it is a good idea. i think that is basically like spewing a lot of these theories about queuing on. people can believe we've learned in recent years just about anything. and if james inhofe wants to believe the world is going to natural causes heat that's his right as an american. but it's simply not true. i will give you a very basic reason why the climate is warming. carbon dioxide which is a byproduct of any combustion about fossil fuels.

it's also a breathe out all the time thrown forms of combustion as it were. as a greenhouse gas. traps heat to the surface of the planet for this is been understood since the 1850s. we had no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it's pretty easy to calculate the temperature of the planet. on the planet would be frozen. we are here because the composition of the atmosphere. we have a lot we own two greenhouse gases in the end. the more them you put up there the warmer it is going to get. it's as simple as that. >> host: is is a case for climate change is 90% man-made, 80%? one how to present? submit one 100%. this is somewhat complicated issue. there are also other things we are doing other were putting up that have a cooling impact.

but i think once again the scientific consensus would be one 100%. back let's show video of one more senator. this is senator sheldon whitehouse a democrat from rhode island from this year. spinning this long run began in the dark days of 2012. after speaker pelosi had passed a serious climate bill, and the senate had refused to take up anything, when speaker pelosi passed that bill in 2009 over on the house side, we had here in the senate filibuster proof democrat majority. this was climate change.

we just, we just walked away. i was told then that was because the obama white house told leader read to pull the plug. but after the obamacare wars the white house was tired of conflict, did not want another big battle. was not going to take on any bites that wasn't sure it could win. and then years went by. it wished you could scarcely get a democratic administration to put the words climate and change into the same paragraph. and which we must idiotically about whether to call it climate change or global warming. in which the bully pulpit the

great presidential megaphones in the hands of one of our great presidents, stood mute. suspect elizabeth kolbert that's a topic that senator whitehouse is talked about quite a bit on the senate floor. >> yes senator whitehouse gave a weekly speech has he said starting in 2012 on the floor of the senate. he had a battered sign i believe it said time to wake up. it was his own form of protest. and he finally retired is a is getting pretty beat up. just a few weeks ago when joe biden president biden signed a bunch of executive orders indicating that he took climate change very seriously so i think we are opening up, i hope in this country a new chapter in the way that we

talk about and discuss and debate and hope we deal with climate change. but, to say that a great deal of work remains to be done is the understatement of the century. >> in in fact, just trying to convey the problem, is it your view that it's almost impossible to get it back, you know what i'm trying to say the genie back in the bottle in a sense? >> the genie of carbon emissions or the genie of a change climate? >> yes. the latter. what were not good in the climate back. the unfortunate fact and the reason why climate change, why climate scientists have been raising the alarm for decades now, is because co2 is not a

pollutant like another pollutants for example will be decided we wanted to try to reduce smog in american cities and white mandated catalytic converters on cars. skies cleared up relatively quickly. co2 by contrast to put it up into the area really hangs around for quite a long time, for all intents purposes forever. continues to warming influence. very, very involved this is something that i do discuss and under white sky. it's very, very difficult this only a few ideas out there. skip part of that in the past. but will make talk about getting admissions down a year ago that importantly does not

mean were going to get rid of this problem. just means are going to stop making the problem worse but spiritless from our viewers but let's begin with glenn and friedland, michigan per year on with author elizabeth coulter. >> thank you all very much. ms. kolbert one thing, i hope, the terms you might have addresses before only been watching about a half hour again. anyway, global warming and climate change, why did that change if global warming is the problem? and i agree it is. why call it climate change i think that confuses a lot of people. climate is changing.

>> one i think we've got your point let's hear from us kolbert. >> guest: that gets back to, we do talk about that little bit at the top of the hour. and senator whitehouse mentioned in that clip with us over what to call it. some of that debate does have a political providence were some people saw climate change sounded more benign than global warming. those are people who really did not i think the term climate change also as i discussed gain currency among scientists because the effect of global warming are not always warming. they can be temperature extremes. it's a better term but i think

at this point that you could use either one and everyone would know what you were referring to. >> debit in wisconsin text into you, elizabeth kolbert something we talked a little bit but maybe a further explanation, could you explain the republican congressmen are so reluctant to believe and offer republican solution for climate change? >> that is such a good question. i wish i did have an answer. the answer that's often given is follow the money, look at where people's campaign contributions come from. and you will learn a lot. i think there's a lot to be said for that. also increasingly in this country which are oil or coal producing states. in states with they don't get any income from fossil fuel extraction. i live in massachusetts. there is no one in

massachusetts making a living off of fossil fuel may be easier for politicians to taste strong stand no one's political opinion comes increasingly unattainable. it also drew thing about it. very interesting state to wachovia florida as everyone knows a swing states, not a fossil fuel producing states. could be hit very hard by climate change prismatic sheldon whitehouse indicated democrats of not move forward with this as well. you wrote in the new yorker of april of 2020 that environmental problems that have a merchant's 1970 have simply gone unaddressed. congress has not pastor even really come close to passing a

single peace of legislation aimed at addressing climate change. >> guests. the bill that was alluded to in the clip we saw, was a bill called a cap and trade bill. one of the ways that people have proposed trying to reduce emissions is similar technique to reduce very effective what you do is you give your major basically in allotment. this is what you can and admit parenthesis a limit. if you have more than that you have to buy the credit. so you have to create a market mechanism for reducing emissions. and then you can ratchet down those limits over time. that would be a way it is

hoped bring down admissions. that bill passed a cabin trade bill passed the house in 2009. a senator whitehouse out never really came before the senate that fight was never really fought. i'm part presumably i think he is correct. the obama administration just did not want the fight at that time. as a bloodied from the obamacare fight chris bigelow to from john in salt lake city john you're on with author elizabeth kolbert. >> caller: thanks for taking my call elizabeth pritt i'm curious if you believe that you can control the earth plate tectonics? a source of co2, heat and a major contributor of glaciers in antarctica and greenland

melting? >> guest: i do not believe that humans can control that, to one geological force that is beyond our control. the way that plate tectonics contributes to a climate and where's the major driver of climate before we got involved in burning fossil fuel is through volcanism. for humans decided to burn fossil fuels of look at the output of the volcanoes versus the output of our cars and airplanes and factories, volcanoes put out about 1% of the co2 that we now put out through our activities. so even though we don't control plate tectonic we still control the climate. we don't control the climate i

should say that but we are responsible for climate change. >> bryan in michigan go ahead and book tv. >> caller: hi, thanks. the paris climate change and all this stuff, as everyone equal in this? weatherby india, china, so forth. that's a big stumbling blocks i hear that a lot of times. i'll be blunt with you, i have no use for communist groceries. i've been up close and personal throughout the decades with them. so i have no use for them. but, china's part of everything. is everything dollar amount equal across the board for that major polluters on this with no exceptions? what elizabeth kolbert? >> guest: the paris accord is a complicated document.

everyone brought to the table in paris what they were going to do. that one was forced to do anything, i think i described it as a potluck supper. they came with a contribution that you felt your country could make. now what is important to understand about the background and really the background of climate change, this gets back to the fact that co2 emissions hang around for a long time. what we are interested in what we apportion responsibility for climate changes who put the most co2 up there in aggregate. in the u.s. is the major contributor to the additional co2 is in the atmosphere right now. we are about four or 5% of the worlds population. we put out about 30% of the

co2. that is really huge. and gives us in my view a lot of responsibility for trying to solve this problem. now the chinese now are the world biggest emitters on an annual basis for the still have not caught up with us on an egg your accurate basis. they also have a lot more people. so on a per capita basis, the u.s. has a tremendous responsibility. i don't think this any way to get around that. not our argument for why wish not have to do anything is everyone under the same thing? there are many, many countries. many countries in the world where the average person is responsible for a tiny, tiny fraction, less than 1% of the

co2 that we as the average american are responsible for. i don't think it's appropriate to be honest. it's certainly not geopolitically feasible to say everyone has to make the same contributions to solving this problem. because they did not make the same contribution to causing the problem. spent all right elizabeth colbert our cars one of the best answers? >> guest: there are a few major factors that enter into this conversation are responsible for the big part of our missions globally and transportation in the u.s. in fact transportation is number one. so even bigger than electricity generation. and electric cars are complicated paid their only as good as your electrical grid.

electric cars are more efficient than gasoline internal combustion engines. we did get an immediate benefit that way. in order to make the big difference read make an electrical grid is not producing a lot of co2. we kind of need to do both, we need to make a transition to electrical cars. also need to clean up her grid very dramatically. through another tax-free reminder for descendent attacks please include your first name and your city. could you cite countries ahead of the u.s. in reducing greenhouse gas emissions? >> guest: absolutely. most northern european countries, denmark, sweden, germany these are all countries that have invested a lot. doorway i just read recently something like half of a new car is being sold for example are electric vehicles.

so denmark troy don't know what the percentage of it is. those i think are the countries that get sort of the highest marks in terms of having both made significant effort and having succeeded to research and extension that effort. >> host: george's in pennsylvania, hi george. >> caller: hello thank you. i am looking at a new goal that says mobile production is expected to reach a new record of 780 million tons in 2021 according the forecast issued march 4 by the food and agriculture organization of the united nations. in addition, the fao said it's expecting a new and higher estimate for serial production attire than out turns reported

for west africa, for ricin india the second point i'd like to make is regarding einstein on this idea of consensus. a reporter went to einstein and said i know 100 scientists who do not agree with your theories. and einstein said, why 100? you just need one. in other words to have one who has verifiable scientific evidence. there is not one scientist who has in the verifiable scientific evidence that fossil fuel, co2 is caused any measurable warming, the level rise, icemelt, c1 george whited you cite the food production to begin your question #. >> guest: this has to do with the claim on existential

threats. stu and think is through tearing from elizabeth kolbert. >> guest: one of those claims is quite possibly true. i have not read the latest forecast for food production print we are very, very good agriculture. and it is quite possible, it seems to be not at all contradictory to see its increasing and see the clients changing in ways that could threaten free production print that does not seem to be mutually exclusive. as for the second point that no one has any evidence of this, this just gets back to, i have to say kind of a ridiculous argument at this point. people have tons and tons of evidence entire libraries of evidence. people don't want to believe it i'm afraid i can't make them believe it.

>> host: what is your cup with the title for your newest book under the white sky? >> guest: the title refers to this idea that we were talking about before. it's very difficult to do anything about climate change quickly because of the long life of co2 in the atmosphere. and one proposal for how you might do that is to produce a form of global cooling to counteract global warming. this is solar engineering and radiation management. the idea is you would spray some kind of compound sulfur dioxide team proposed diamond dust in the stratosphere. this would create a kind of

reflected haze that would bounce some light back to so qualify. the reason we know this is a viable possibility is because this is what volcanoes do major volcanic corruptions but sulfur dioxide up there that forms and droplets that reflect sunlight pretty and beautiful sunset you also get temporarily a dip in temperature global temperature. one of the possible side effects of geo- engineering it would change the appearance of the sky : : :

>> sings the multicellular life appeared. the first of these occurred quiet a long time ago. 449 years ago during a period that's called the organize period. the last one, number five, people are familiar with it. they did this in the dinosaurs. once again, there is a fairly broad by an asteroid impact.

2021 this is background extension rates. in the normal course of geological history knosp evolve. it's a slow process you should not be able to watch the species go extinct. we read about them going out. just the basic fact suggestions that something unusual is going on and that, what is unusual is us. we are, the major driver of exstricttion right now. >> is winning a pulitzer life

changing? >> i'd say yes. >> let's hear from more viewers. john from new jersey. hi, john. >> yes, actually global warming can turn on the dime if you take the famous explosion of 1850 in which there was a frost each month of the year. the global temperature dropped as astounding 2 degrees. when yellowstone blows we will have a nuclear winter for four or five years in which we might starve to death. that doesn't include a meteorite asteroid. we had close calls in terms of as astronomy. we are razor thin.

>> john, you seem to follow this closely, why is that? >> it's the fact that we don't view this problem and the totality. in fact, the asteroids and comets and the ones that come from the sun we can't track. >> that's john in new jersey. elizabeth. >> there is a long description of the impact of tempura. this is why we know these major eruptions have a serious cooling effect. absolutely, the caller is correct. i don't think we want to bet, you know, the future of humanity or other forms of life on a volcanic eruption. the other problem, we can't

predict, the other issue those are temporary impacts. they are significant and last for a few years as the haze we were talking about falls out-of-the strike that spear. >> why has zero population growth disappeared. >> that's another complicated question with a lot of politics behind, population control. there is coercive population control people find in the past. i don't know it's still going

on, i don't think so. people found it to be disturbing. population control is somewhat politically vexed issue. the fact of the matter from the prospective of these issues from a lot of parts of the world they are high consuming and they have low birthrates at this point. in fact, in many european countries in japan below replacement level birthrates. there are countries that have high birthrates significantly above replacement levels. they tend to be low consuming countries. the art collective is a function both of how many people there are and how much each of us is

consuming. we need to think about both of those sides. >> it was in the 60s the population explosion book came out. >> yes. >> we were worried about hunger and etc. >> yes, since then we had the green revolution that successfully fed many, many hundreds of millions of people. some of the most dyer predictions of population bomb didn't come true. we have tripped our population since that book was written. so, you know, population is a significant issue. >> anthony is in miller place new york. anthony, you are on with elizabeth colbert. >> thank you ms. colbert for fielding our questions and being patient. i'm onboard with protecting the

planet and saving the world. i feel that nuclear power and the thought it's good for us or can be contained. especially when you consider all of the actions. alongside for what's gone on in japan and chernobyl. it's like putting curtains on the titanic. i mean, they are re licensing these plants and put the waste to contain the pool and reload the reactors. there is no place to store the vast quantities of waste on the

shoreline a world over. the react tors are leaking and impossible to contain the by-products. >> i think we got the point. this is something elizabeth discusses in her book under the white sky. >> nuclear power is a tough one. we get roughly 20% of our electricity from nuclear power right now. it's declining. a lot of those plants, as anthony said, have been relicensed. so, you know, they are shutting down. the question becomes -- nuclear, right now, is a significant source of carbon, what we call low carbon electricity in the

u.s. the question of where we should be shutting down the rest of our plants and what to replace them with, it's a pretty live one right now in a way. there is also an argument about where we, you know, if our concern is getting rid of carbon emissions should we get rid of more plants. i wouldn't take it and stand on that right now. i share a lot of the concerns about nuclear waste. we don't have anywhere to put the nuclear waste. it's sitting in containment pools at the original facilities. even after, you know, 60 years we have not come up with 60 years to long-term waste. it needs to be stored forever. so, i agree, there are a lot of risks to nuclear power.

the fact of the matter, i mean, once again, it's a practical matter in this country, in the u.s. we are not building new nuclear plants because they are too expensive. there are the risk factors. no one is building new nuclear right now. >> greg in california. what's your position on natural gas? >> well, natural gas is, you know, now really a major source of fuel -- what is powering our electrical grid. i'm not sure of the percentage but it's quiet high. that's our major fuel for electricity these days. it burns cleaner than coal and emits less co2 per unit of

energy. it's referred to as our coal powered past and hopefully carbon free future. there are a lot of people who argue, pretty compellingly, that it should not be considered a bridge fuel, depending on how much of it we need to reduce our use of natural gas as quickly as possible. that's true from a climate prospective. natural gas produces less co2 per coal. another problem with natural gas is it's methane. methane is a powerful greenhouse gas so leakage from natural gas. it can be much of a burden for

the climate as coal. so, that's a serious consideration in my mind and why we should phase-out natural gas. >> elizabeth kolbert does charles darwin holdup? >> in my view? i'm not an evolution biologist they say pretty well. charles darwin got things pretty much nailed it. >> you write-in under white sky he was confounded by corral, what does that mean? >> well, he, at the time darwin was writing and saw corral reefs when he was a young man.

no one had a good explanation to get a corral reef. they are found, you know, in these extra orderly deep water. the reefs are built by these tiny animals and no one had a of how they built these extra ordinary structures. darwin, actually, was the person, in addition to his phenomenal theory of natural selection he was the first person to understand how corral reefs worked. >> there were several laugh out loud moments in your writing. this is one of them that made me laugh out loud. corral sex is a randomizerring

site. how did you witness that? >> so, corrals have a verity of different ways of reproducing one of the major reproduction moves is they release, they are hermaphrodite. they are squishy and have a mouth and tentacles. it's like a cup with a bunch of tentacles. these hermaphrodicic corrals they produce these beads with eggs and sperm. they release that in the water in a synchronized way. the beads float to the surface and break apart. that's how the egg and sperm

find each other in a slick that forms on the water. as they are rising through the water, you know, millions and millions of them. it looks like an upside-down snowstorm. it's a fantastic site. >> you visited the reef off australia. how would you describe it's condition. >> the great barrier reef is the largest in the world. it's the size of italy. it stretches for 1,500 miles off the east coast of australia. you know, it's hard to study in it's entirety. people have devised all sorts of ways to study it. it's been estimated over the last 30 years something like half of the corral on the great barrier reef has been lost.

>> you talk about bleaching. >> yes, so corral bleaching, what happens corrals are these tiny little gelatinous. they are tony any corrals. they build reefs inside their cells. they have even tin -- tinier plants. these are one cell laptops that make food through photo synthesis. they help them in return for the protection the corrals afford them. they donate the food to the corrals. that's a big source of energy to the corrals. this allows them to produce

reefs which is an energy intensive activity. what happens when water temperatures rise a few degrees, when you get a warm hot summer, this increasingly we get more and more of. the plants start to produce oxygen radicals, they are dangerous for the corrals. the corrals kick them out. they are basically depriving themselves of their own food source or one of their major food sources. the bleaching event is a warm spell, it doesn't last too long than they will sort of recruit new ones to survive. you get the bleaching events that are coming faster and faster and more extended in time they can be multiyear events

now. you are getting these corral die offs. the bleaching refers to the fact that if you have plants you give the corrals their color. if you see the white you see the calcium carbonate. when they expel those plants they turn white, they look like they are turning while and that's why it's called corral bleaching. >> before we leave, i'd like to acknowledge one of the people in your book and that was ruth gates. who was she? >> ruth gates was the head of a marine science lab in hawaii. she was a very dynamic woman from the u.k. i went to visit

her in 2016 and she was embarking on a project that was called the super corral project. the idea behind the super corral project is that, you know, we have these rising water temperatures. we will get more and more corral bleaching. what can we do, if we want corrals, you know, we are not getting the heat out-of-the oceans in any foreseeable time frame. if we want corrals to survive we'll have to tweak the corrals. we will have to do something to make them more heat tolerant. that involved, you know, trying to breed heartier corrals and breed out heartier symbionts. this was what was going on in

australia. ruth was in the middle of the project in 2018. >> next call from paul from idaho falls. >> i'd like to go back to nuclear, are you familiar with bill gates and -- >> paul, she's shaking her head yes, what is your view? >> what's my view? >> no, paul's. >> i'm much in favor we can't get rid of our power bases.

>> nuclear is very, you know, it has a lot of risk associated with it. we were told for a long time we'll get these safer modular react tors -- reactors. >> john from corpus christi, texas, hi, john. >> i'd like to know ability the corpus christi area becoming ground zero for manmade climate change. i'm a member of three environmental groups. they plan to bring in 15 new refineries and industrial

plants. it will environmentally destroy and economically destroy. it will turn this area into a disaster. they are deepening and widening the port to bring these massive tankers. we are the number one exporter of oil more then the houston ship channel. what's being done to focus on this area. >> john, before we go to the guest what groups do you belong to and what are you doing to oppose this? >> one grope the cape. costal alliance to protect the environment. also the sure rider foundation and the other is for the greater good. i'm trying to speak out constantly. as a boy, i saw the effects of

manmade global warming. i'm into landscaping and know a lot about tropical plants. we are able to grow stuff, with exception of the big freeze we had. those events are much less frequent. we are normally able to grow tropical stuff that you couldn't think about growing in brownsville, texas 150 years ago. that's how much the climate has changed. in 150 miles south of hear you can grow stuff that you wouldn't have thought about growing 30 years ago. >> i'm sorry, i can not speak to the specifics of corpus christi and what's going on. i just don't know enough about it. i would say that one of the things that has happened over the last few decades is the u.s. has once again become a major

oil producer, it's not out of conventional oil but unconventional oil. that didn't use to be. that, you know, is a big economic force, really, the idea of pouring a lot of money into any form of fossil fuel infrastructure is in my view kind of crazy. so, maybe, there is hope with an administration that some of these projects will be looked at again. i can't speak to the specifics, i'm sorry. >> this is a text from nick fortune. i read the sixth extiction.

can you speak on modern ag and wastewater runoff, etc. >> nitrous oxide is a gene house gas. any increase is having a climate effect. once again, i'm not enough of an expect to speak to that. i can say in terms of the effects of ag, it's a big contributor. it's not it's biggest transportation production. for a number of reasons, one reason is, you know, we clear a lot of land for ag. so, any time we cut down a forest and plant, you know, corn, soy, or whatever, the

carbon being taken up by the trees is released. deforestation for ag is a big climate problem. another reason that people advocate for reasons we eat less beef is one unfortunately fact that when cows digest they burp a lot of methane and gets back to the natural gas question. methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. cows are, unfortunately, eating a lot of those. when people say what can i do to reduce my own carbon impacts, one of the things you can do is reduce, you know, eat fewer

hamburgers. reduce your beef consumption. cattle farming is a greenhouse gas source. so, you know, i'd say on a hopeful note there are a lot of people works to reduce the impacts of ag through different verities of agricultural production. >> is this in a sense playing around the edges? >> well, you mean the impact on ag? >> no, we do these different things, in your view does something major have to occur? >> well, i don't think it's just, once again, it's not just my view. anyone that looked at the problem seriously would say, as we discussed, if you would like to stop making the problem

worse. since co2 has a lifetime in the atmosphere it's not good enough to reduce emissions because they compare it to a bathtub if you turndown the tap you are still feeling the tug just more slowly. we need to shutoff the tap only at that point we will each a new climate and equilibrium.

>> we just have a half hour left. our next caller. >> there is a study in the east coast showing the wetlands were soaking up more co2 from the atmosphere then the amazon rain rain forest. at one time there was an ancient redwood forest. there was one in alaska in the northern hemisphere that was threat bed by a private oil deal by the last administration. what are we doing to preserve and protect the wetlands and bring them back somehow in the northern hemisphere particularly. >> thank you, penn. >> that's a really good

question. we have lost a tremendous amount of wetlands in the u.s. we allowed them to be drained and developed and otherwise emptied. they are no longer wetlands. they are, you know, they no longer support wetlands education or species there are, i know, a lot of efforts to try to bring back, stop the loss of wetlands and to try to bring -- restore some wetlands that have been lost for a number of reasons. the wetlands are crucial habitat. they are, as the caller indicated important carbon sinks. they are also import tan for pollution control and water

pollution control, our nitrogen runoff that pourtion into the gulf of mention if williams had buffering wetlands that could be eliminated. once again i'm not an expect. >> you seem to spend a lot of time with frogs and bats, why? >> well, frogs and bats are both growths that have been hit really hard in recent decades by pathogens or diseases that were moved around the world by people.

>> frogs, the path again is known as b.d., it's a fungal pathogen that interferes with fogs that get b.d. suffer from a heart attack. many are barely clinging to existence. so, that's a really big problem they are considered the most endangered class on the planet, that should be a warning sign to us. that, as it happens right near where i live-in massachusetts back in 2007 a new pathogen, also a fungal pathogen that has since killed many millions of

bats and spread across the u.s. it's not in every state yet but most. that was probably a pathogen imported from europe. when you move things around the globe one driver sometimes very dangerous things happen. since we move them around the world it's a small percentage of them resulting in disaster. you get ongoing disaster. i can point to one across the street from me, we know how to the northeast and also the

midwest are very heavily ash these days. white and green ash. within the last 20 years, an introduced insect introduced from asia has been devastating the ash from the u.s. when we bring species together. one species might not have defenses against the other. they might have diseases, you know, the pandemic is a good example of this, any way you can get some really unfortunately impacts. the bat pathogen doesn't just impact one species of bat but a lot of species of bat. our bat populations have dropped. >> gorge is calling in from

cambridge, massachusetts, you are on with elizabeth kolbert. >> thank you cspan and elizabeth colbert for the work you have done. a few years ago a test called geo therapy was published and was suppose to be released at the paris climate talks. geotherapy is the idea of using existing ecological systems to repair the damage that our species has done. i'm interested in if you know about geotherapy or seen it book or looked at the conferences on all of the aspect that biodiversity has organized. >> george, do you work in the

field? >> i have looked at this for a long time since i live between harvard and mit i have attended public lectures there. i published a free look at what's happening in the boston area. unfortunately i thought the environmental organizes would be interesting in mining the material but they weren't. i stopped because people didn't seem interested. >> i have not heard of the word

geotherapy. i have heard of the idea of using natural lands like the wetlands. we can use that as a way to enhance carbon take-up from various ecosystems that could be a contributor. >> 202 is the area code. 748-8201. we have about 20 minutes left. we will also put-up the text number. if you send a text, text carefully, include your first name and city if you would. maybe not geotherapy but you talk about genetic engineering

under a white sky. how does that fit into the environmental issues we have been discussing? >> well, gene editing or genetic engineering has taken a dramatic step forward in the last decade or so owing to crispr that allowed scientist and amateurs to do gene editing much more cheaply and quickly than previously. one question that is, i think increasingly going to be in front of us is where we want to or find it acceptable to use gene editing to try to repair or

scientist working on the king toad. it's moved around the world and native to south and central america. they moved it around the world hoping it would help eat the insects that eat sugar kanthas a big cash crop. it's unlikely it's any good but leaked ecological havoc. they are highly toxic. it basically dropped dead. a lot of the wildlife has no native evolved for the toads.

these scientist were working on producing a less toxic toad. we'd like to point it out. there are a lot of questions to it becoming increasingly sealing. this is for organisms like that. they could not have the permits for these less toxic toads to lead. >> elizabeth kolbert, where it's visiting a native in the delta of mississippi or flying to australia and talking to people there in hawaii, you seem to have a knack forgetting in with people. do you approach them or the government when you want to talk

to the government people. how do you get these context. >> i think all journalist tend to operate this way. you find someone you would like to talk to. it used to be harder i'd like to say. you look online and in many cases, even if they are halfway around the world you get in touch with them. sometimes people have to go through various channels to try to get to them. oftentimes, you know, i'm dealing with scientists mainly and researchers. they are usually schedulers and if they feel like talking to you they will talk to you. it's not a verso fistcased methodology i go. >> when you go on a trip do you come back with notebooks full of

notes while you are out there. >> i come back with notebooks full of notes to my left and fortunately off-camera there are teetering notebooks. >> do you do your writing where you are seated right now? >> right now, speaking into the computer were i spent many an hour and i wrote all of those books we discussed. >> michael in dearfield, florida. >> thank you for your books. you talk about corrals and how i think what we are experiencing from climate change to there is a again side going on with covid-19 we are blind to it. it just occurred to me.

as far as inefficiency. like darwin said, we take in as competition leading to optimization. that's a falsehood. i don't want to get into politics but we base it on both sides. when we go to the think tank talk about your ability to talk to different parties. we need think tanks on both sides to stop thinking about tooth and claw optimizing. that's how you end up with blind fish. right now, we are phrasing again side of the 21st sentry. it deals with old people and things like that. it's unparallel and i hate to be

so frank. could you speak to that the far that evolution doesn't optimize and there is a connection to make explicit what it is. >> all right, michael, let's hear from our guest elizabeth. >> i'm not sure i feel capable of saying anything intelligent in response to that. many people have looked at the question of to what extent the ecosystem and participants in any food, web, and competition and what extent relationships of mutualism. those are interesting questions but i don't think i have any expertise to speak

intelligencely on once side or another. >> i'd like to ask you about something i found in the sixth extinction. that's guam. >> well, the snakes are an invasive species. they had no natural predators. these were brown tree snakes. they totally took over an ecosystem. they were just dripping from every tree. they reached an incredible abundance of dozens of snakes. i don't remember the figures. the native wildlife of guam that had evolved in the absence of such a predator was really

defenseless. birds were really hard hit by this invasion. they are still hard hit by it. once again, another case were people have tried to reduce the numbers of snakes. they discovered that aspirin, i don't know the chemistry of this. feeding them aspirin. they have tried all sorts of ways to attract the snacks and reduce their numbers. i'm not sure where that stands. several bird species were either extinct or found off of guam. >> i have a text. what is the value of a carbon tax? >> a carbon tax? >> yes, ma'am. >> the idea behind the carbon tax is you would make activities

that generate activities more expensive and technologies that don't generate carbon. solar panels, for example, would be less expensive in that way shifts the economy. it's either carbon free or lower omitting sources. that's the same principal behind, you know, putting a tax on cigarettes. you know, i think the theory is if you had an economy wide tax on carbon and it was enough it would shift the calculation for big emitters producing humanly

amounts of power. economist would argue the carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions. it would use the market forces to drive down emissions as opposed to imposing a bunch of regulations which is another way to go, absolutely. this means you might not take the lowest cost route to reduce emissions. >> in a new yorker piece you write about iceland and the fact that there is no coronavirus there. >> well, that was a trip i took in may. they had managed to successfully contain the coronavirus. they had a bad out break and

they managed to get it down to zero. i was interested in how. they opened up the country again to travelers from europe, i guess, they have had subsequent out breaks. they were a success story. i'm not sure were things stand now. it's been up-and-down since then. >> as someone that studies and follows the issue, is the fact that a bat spit in wuhan china a once in a lifetime experience or will we see this again. >> i'm not an epidemiologist and not something i have written extensively a lot. there are good books on the subject that predicted covid-19 in almost down to it's exact details and how it would play out because of the way that we

live. we live-in, you know, corvid-19 a disease, presumably, we are not sure where it originated or in what species. let's assume it came from a bat either it came directly, because humans went and you know, caught a bat somewhere and the virus jumped or, possibly it got into a domesticated animal and jumped. it's something we eat in close proximity too. because of the way we live-in close proximity in domesticated animals. it's in the wild. you travel around the world

easily. any time that jump is made, it's called a spillover event, there is a risk that if it's contagious it will not be an epidemic but a pandemic the, it will go global and that's what happened. i think the expect to use that word, i'm afraid, we will see this again. this is not the last pandemic. the factors are conducive to pandemics. >> john from port isabel, hi, john. >> thank you to elizabeth for being with us today. let's speak about another issue of cooks consequences. title effects, basically what most people have discussed the is potential for global climate

energization pouring more energy in the gulf stream and other microtitle effects. you are already seeing snowfalls and record temperatures throughout new england, atlantic, canada, and northern europe. i'll be brief but can you touch on those effects. >> not just europe and north america. what will happen to coastal areas, not just flooding but the impact on the total meteorological system. >> i think what you are prefer -- referring to is this idea or possibility, so, you know, a lot of global

circulation of energy is driven by currents that, you know, warm water which the gulf stream, you know goes up the northeastern coast of the u.s. it's responsible for keeping the u.k. at a climate. the water, the whole system is driven as a conveyer belt system driven by the fact that cold water off of greenland is constantly sinking. that's driving this system of circulation. a concern in the new york's time recently ran a beautiful animation of the process. one concern is that as more and more fresh water melts off of greenland we interfere with

this. it requires a dense cold salty water to keep it churning. some scientist would argue we are seeing because of the influx of fresh water off of greenland we are seeing a slowing of the current and some scientists say we don't have clear enough evidence of that yet. there is a fear that the circulation system could slow enough or shutdown you would wildly disrupt the climate pattern that has pertained throughout since the beginning of human civilization and that -- places like northern europe brings you back to global warming. those places would become colder, even though the world as

a whole is continuing to warm. >> all right, last call, joe from new york. elizabeth kolbert's hometown. you have 30 seconds. >> i rarely hear about the effects of the sun on planet earth. the temperatures go up and cycles up-and-down. ice ages happened long before people were on the earth, how do you account for those? >> well, there are a lot of good books on the ice ages. i commend to your attention. those are pretty strong contentious. it's caused by changes in the earth's orbit that are governed by a bunch of forces. basically, during some part of the cycle, you start to get

build-up of snow in the north. it reflects more sunlight and you get big feedback. that's related not to the output but where the sunlight is hitting the changes in the distribution of sunlight. obviously, these cycles have had huge impacts in the past it's a sobering thought these are tiny changes what we are doing is not a small change, it's a big change. we could get big changes out of that.

>> elizabeth kolbert that won the pulitzer prize for this book. her most recent book "under the white sky." she's been our guest for the past two hours. we appreciate your time. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you for joining us. book tv now continues. >> shop for elizabeth kolbert's books in the cspan shop. all of her books are available for purchase and every purchase supports book tv television for serious readers. visit cspanshop.org for elizabeth kolbert's books. >> you are watching cspan book tv. this is created by america's

cable television company. we are brought to you by these television companies. >> up next is book tv's monthly in-depth program with best selling author elizabeth kolbert. she's the author of field notes, the sixth extinct, and under the white sky. >> so, author elizabeth kolbert, how does some one that studies literature at yale become a prizewinningre writer? >> it's a long and winding road. i spent a number of years, covering politics. my first real journalistic job was at i the new york times. i was pretty quickly dispatched

to all of the need to cover state politics. when you do daily journalism one thing follows. . . interested in this question of climate change which at that time in the early 2000s was still a lot of the coverage was still wrapped up around the question, is this a big deal or not? and i very, very naively thought, well, i'm here at the new yorker and i have a lot of