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>> i'm an investment specialist focusing on the impact that environmental and social factors have on financial support for that, i'm an activist and as an activist, because of who we get to speak to today, bill is a big deal and hold your ears for this part. this makes me cringe but we've got to do this. bill's book will be discussing, you can purchase on the by the book, the and of nature his first book on

climate change ever, in 1989, he was in his 20s so fast forward a book or 16, but contribution to the new yorker and bill is now on climate change. it's really important, he's not just publishing about problems in the safety of his home in vermontan, he founded environmental grassroots organizations, 350.org and is committed his life, putting the words he reads and writes into action so beyond this professional powerhouse, he's a human dad, dog guide, sagittarius based on wikipedia, ashley, established scholar and husband. we are in really good hands for this conversation this morning. michael is a sharper understanding topic what we are

up against but also tell us who we are as a collective force. as we get into the discussion and ask questions come up, submit them on the ask the question box and we will have those at the end. i think we are ready to get going. >> a pleasure to get to be here with you, how the kind introduction and thank you for the work andtr your activism. >> you make it easy. i am so excited to talk not just about this book but what the book represents more broadly so we got to start from the beginning. it covers heavy topics, a certain level of bravery. we dedicate to a woman who passed away i believe two years before the book was published. you say about your friend, i have this written down hereay, a great many activists but none of

them have more morals than her. she spent her whole life engaged in her community and it was that sense that spoke through her. we all hear the echo as long as we are engaged in this. can you tell us about her and how her work is linked to the book? >> it's very kind of you to bring her up, she's someone i think about almost daily. when we started 360.org, it was the first global climate. now happily there's lots of other ones from the sunrise movement, extinction rebelling people following greta and so on and so forth. but when i started, we were just reaching out around the world trying to find people who wanted to take on this site which seemed 50 years ago fairly

hopeless. one of the places we immediately started discovering amazing allies, we are in the most vulnerable places on the earth, the small islands especially in the south pacific, it may well disappear before this country is out, marshall islands, places like that. she took it upon herself to be this organizer of so many of those island communities and they call themselves the pacific private warriors and in my head, i have a remarkable picture of her, she organized people on each of the islands to build

eight traditional work canoe and they took them to australia which was not that far away about part of the world and they would use them for a day to blockade the harbor at newcastle, the biggest in the world, more coal than any other place on the planet. as it burns, it raises the temperature of the planet, melting the ice caps and drowned the island nations. one of the great iconic images of the climate, people were in tiny canoes stopping the progress of the biggest warships in the world, she was remarkable. pacific climate warriors are still going strong and doing great work. >> you touched on a lot there i think we will get to eventually

but i love this idea that you bring up often falter, this is hard work and it can be daunting and fast by having community and friends you look up to do this work with is so important so i'm grateful for your dedication to heron. now that we have a sense of who the book was dedicated to, i'd like to ask you, rewind, it was published in april 2019. >> a world ago. [laughter] >> a few things have happened since then and we can definitely hit on that but even before that, i don't know when you started writing the book but i'm curious who you imagine treating it and you saw taking what

falter outlines and putting it into action and how it is different ornd not from your previous i think it'ss 16 books. >> well, i think most serious writers physically spend their lives writing one book, different chapters to it and this is personal work in many ways that goes back many years in my life, when i first started doing this in my 20s, i had no idea i would ever do anything more thann right. over the last 15 years, i've probably spent more time now, it

is hard to draw the line, falter brings the story up to date and a lot of ways but one thing reflected on in the last quarter is history of activism how it is a potent tool, dichroic technology really a lot less deal, if we need technology to allow us to make electricity te power of the sun, leaving technology to allow small and many to standwe up to the mighty and the few and people like gandhi and the selfridge's and a million others whose names we don't know as well it gave us

those in the 20th century and now we need to figure out quickly how to bring them to bear in the 21st. an awful lot is on the line. to really keepy going, we are facing exit financial crisis, the likes we haven't faced before the battle is not over is a lot of work to be done. >> i think in any other year it would be okay to talk about an x essential prices but there's no way around it. i think all are being asked to

contextualize their work under the umbrella that was 2020. experienced global w pandemic, long-overdue facial record me i mentioned earlier, climate change arching through this year end caps on date and put a lot of people at risk so it's here with us. perhaps more than in previous years but i'm curious if you could go back to another chapter in falter about this year, obviously a lotce was written on the wall so to speak but what about this year has changed about the content of this book. >> to confirm the understanding of people, working on these

issues for a long time, 2020 was a remarkably here, it was the hottest year ever recorded in human history so that's not what we will remember it for. there will soon be other years that pass it, 2020 was the year of the pandemic it should have taught us a few things and one iss physical reality is real, i spent 30 years of bearing degrees of success to convince people chemistry and physics are real they don't negotiate or compromise, have to follow their way the pandemic was a reminder biology works the same way. it didn't dor any good our president told us it would all

go away or whatever, the microbe was in charge and if he said stand 6 feet apart and wear a mask then stand 6 feet apart and wear a mask. it is the authority. one of the corollaries is when we are dealing with physical, sometimes speed is important factor, our systems are not geared for speed and probably one of the things historians will note when they write about the pandemic is that the u.s. and south korea had their first case of coronavirus on the same day in january of 2020 and he went right to work. everybody got a mask, started testing everybody and on and on, fewer people died in south korea over the course of the year then

we had died in the course of a day in this country. our president said it would go away by easter, not to worry, no big deal. in flattening the virus curve before things got completely out of control, the same substitute for february and march in the pandemic, substitute for the last 32 years in the crime story, despite warnings from scientists, we ignored it, pretended it would go away and we didn't have to deal with it. we didn't flatten the carbon curve so now we have to do an insane amount of work in a short period of time and that's what happens when you get behind the curve. but the most important thing that goes directly to the questions, the pandemic was a reminder that this really

matters. my time has largely been spent in the shadow, we've changed our politics in this country. the basic understanding was markets, the government was a problem, not a solution, the famous last line in all of his speeches was the ninth scariest words in the english language are the here is the government and i'm here to help. ha ha ha but it turns out the english language, behind your house caught on fire. these are not what you call on market forces for, you call on the fire department and the hospital and those are reflections of our ability to work together as human beings,

allow things to deal with these problems so i think that's only heightened by watching this play out over the spring, so much of the country. the most important thing george floyd, anybody said in 2020 was george floyd said i can't breathe. because the definition of being alive, you can't breathe because there is a a racist cop on your neck or you can't breathe, activists because there's a gas-fired power plant down the road and it's always the same road. african-americans have three

times the asthma rate of america, not because of physiology but the difference in geography. he can't breathegy because wildfires have gotten so terrible, the governor of new york state and california or oregon, washington, they urge you to go inside and stay inside and close your windows so the particulates don't make their way into your house and destroys your lungs, you can't read because it's fun to hot. a new all-time record for the highest temperature ever observed on this planet last summer in california, it reached 130 degrees fahrenheit. that's at the upper limit human body's ability to survive even for a few hours. computer modeling makes it clear that would cover wild swaths of the planet across the tropics by

the middle of the century in which we get climate control under control very fast so in the end, it's a stark reminder we live in a place where we are not the master, it has to be to figure out how to draw together effectively, how to deal with questions around dusters, not just a collection of individuals working society and civilization. >> i think that is well put. brought up two areas i want to hit on but after this last year, it's been brought more top of mind, working toward justice and urgency, i am often trying to

figure out how to hold those things at once in the same breath. i want to start with urgency because that's a little bit easier. recently you had a bit of a back-and-forth with another bill, bill gates, he has a slightly different view on the climate crisis there's a lot of shared knowledge there but obviously it's a nuanced approach for the psaki of today. your beliefs for lack of a better word, moderate they don't like climate change, they also might try something like the green new deal to be too aggressive, too radical. i wonder how you think about the role that neutrality, not of the

carbon kind but being on the sidelines, how does that play into addressing climate change and the shrinking of the board? >> that's a really good question. human beings and human institutions change best when they change slowly and gradual. it's less expensive, less traumatic, less divisive so the best way to deal with climate change is with a cultural and technological shift that allows us to not have to make big shifts. i brought solar panels on my roof and my brother-in-law comes over thanksgiving sees him and

puts him on and 30 years down the road, it's where we need to be. one of the things i have to keep myself from doing his thing to people if only he would listen to me years ago. this is what we are trying to say but we didn't listen, but also from industry, campaign of denial and misinformation that paralyze our political life, so now we have to change very, very fast because the basic dynamic here is not our usual political dynamic which is different groups of people arguing with each other and reaching a compromise. i think people should go for a

lower wage job, you think $7 an hour is fine, meet in the middle at 15 and come back a few years later, whatever. that's how compromise in our system works but our problem is the basic conflict here is between humans and physics since physics doesn't have compromise, it becomes our job. the scientists have now told us how fast we need to work. in 2018, climate change, the international group of scientists they lean on for this analysis greatest challenges, they've published their latest report it is has if we had until 2032, fundamentally transform

our systems which they defined as cutting emissions in half and if we did not meet that target by 2030, the prospects for meeting the targets we've set in paris five years ago are none so that is the deadline, literally a deadline. in the face of fat, like it or not, we have to move very fast. the good news is a lot of activists, the engineers have done theirir job over the last decade and they've dropped the price of solar and wind power, it's the cheapest are on earth and they are coming just as fast that means if we want to move fast, we really can't but it means being willing to grapple

with best of interest in the fossil fuel industry but those who want to keep the business model going longer, people like gates, sometimes they don't want to engage in the work that is standing up to power. if i were a multibillion-dollar, i probably wouldn't want to stand up to changed the power either. all of his advice of what we are going to do 30 or 40 years down the road, it's great. we will only need them if we do the work in the next ten years dramatically deploying the technology we have now, solar panels and wind turbines, so if you keep thisar alive, you can't

win the climate fight in the next ten years, it will take a lifetime until we're out of this but we could lose the climate fight in the next ten years. if we don't need do what we need to do, we go past some tipping points in past that, the prospect, nobody has a plan for re- freezing the arctic once its method f. the arctic may seemed like it's forever away but it's one of them biggest physical features on earth. we think the reason texas froze in february was because so much of the arctic has melted, it works in strange ways and allows the collapse of the vortex and intrusion, we are messing with

huge areas here, we move faster than all of this then politically comfortable but it's not up to us, it's up to physics so we best learn to deal with it. >> it's not up to us but it relies on us. i think i'm not alone in the feeling overwhelmed by the the problem sometimes. talk about your favorite line in the book, it hits on this tension between needing people to act and look squarely at the reality of the situation and

shutdown. the reference to the fossil fuel industry, no one can stop them in any way. insisting it's inevitable no matter what you do is if people don't want to be bothered tryig to stop it. i've heard it too often to take entirely seriously. knowing about global warming and covering up the knowledge, i was told all corporations lie or nothing ever happened to them anyway, thisin is no threat to , we don't yet precisely know how it will end because the power makes no sense.

this landed for me in a few different ways but the part i want to pull out is this idea of people in patterns and how it can be a self defense mechanism, a lot of us need to speak up and do our jobs and be with our families and do the things we need to. so breaking a pattern comes down to changing minds. i am wondering if in your 30 plus years doing this work, if your mind has been changed regarding climate change. if someone has reached you in a surprising way, what it looks like so we can maybe apply it compassionately to folks who really need, who really need to show up and not kind of resign. >> clearly there's a lot we've learned over time and usually

they result in being a little dashed, there is a time when natural gas would be a bridge to the future but it turned out it wasn't for a variety of scientific reasons, it was more problems than solutions. you have to recalibrate info further but sometimes theob surprises, i think a lot of us thought we were going to have to completely -- the thing that made it so difficult is that there may be no way of -- it was shutting down an awful lot of what humans did in order to deal with this because it seemed

solar and wind power were on the edge, not capable of taking up real slack in the system. the great human capacity for engineering asserted itself and people figured out how to build this in ways that were powerful sopo we now think we have access vast amounts of clean energy and the irony is in the economics of it to work itself out, eventually we will run out of solar and wind because it's free.

that's what the world can burn on but if it takes 75 euros to get there, it will be a broken world it runs on so our job now is to make the politics, make it happen faster than it otherwise would and that is a political challenge. the biggest singlehe change working on this is the understanding that we are going to have to engage in that. i began as a writer and i spent ten or 15 years just writing more books and b giving talks ad having symposiums and things because i assumed incorrectly we were in an argument what we oned

the science is clear, there wasn't another side pushing back in the scientific community, we want the argument, we are just losing the plate because it wasn't about, it's usually about money and power. the fossil fuel industry had so much money ander power but it didn't matter they were losing the argument, there was still in the fight. you had some sense of extraordinary power even a few years ago, the richest industry on the earth so i've ended up doing all this organizing because you would need some counter power in the fossil fuel

industry. it wasn't going to comemo from money, it would help with money but try activism is so interesting, it indicates time to time if you can assemble lots of human beings, sheer numbers and creativity and willingness to sacrifice and things, it adds up to political power in its own right so that's what people have been doing and i'll add, one shouldn't really have to do this, i'vel been to jail a dozen times now probably, it's absurd, why wouldbo anybody have to go o jail in order to make governments pay attention to signs? but that is the world we live in.

i'm sorry i didn't figure it out sooner. >> i think what you said about winning the argument but we haven't won the fight, it sounds similar, we got the question right but we haven't figured out how to turn it into a solution and i think one area, this is just my perspective, you've been at this much longer but one area where the climate movement has growth opportunities is around inclusivity and centering the voices of folks most impacted by climate change and things like a.i. and genetic engineering and folks who have done so much good work, it doesn't give the spotlight, i'm wondering from

your perspective, first if you would cosign that sentiment and if so, where do we need to do a better job being inclusive in which voices we need to do a better job at centering? >> i think you're right, i boys been told fundamentalism is something which white people did and you wouldn't beta in environmentalists and on and on and for me the other in standing shifted dramatically in our first big day of action in 2009350.org, we've been working with college students and we do this actioned that turned out because of skinner's luck probably, this big thing, we managed to coordinate 5200

demonstrations in 181 countries so cnn said it was the most widespread political action in p history, a first coming out party for the climate movement but we needed to upload pictures of events and that we can, one was in this, starting out again, in times square, we were flashing views pictures. ten or 20 minutes and sometimes from around the world. peru and one after another. it took about half an hour to realize white people were at the this and it was simply incorrect.

most of the people who were working with, poor, black, brown and asian because that's what most of the world is. more because the future bears down harder where you are and the iron law, the sooner and harder you get hit so i think it's entirely inappropriate for people at the absolute forefront of this work, vulnerable communities you've only been in this activism now in recent years, this particular shot out

to indigenous peoples around the world, a large percentage of the world population but in this case while about their rate. and i think it's standing around this emergency on this continent, it didn't surprise

me, it's been working for years from of the best activists around. the same is around the world. in just about ever it's important for companies and indigenous people where they were giving birth was planned but it turns out it's on topnd f carbons and there's a lot of practical power their people utilize. line three and minnesota now but

also a deeper sense, it's a powerful moment on the planet and the wisdom on the planet sinking up, from the sweat lodge on the satellite supercomputer instinct to me in the wisdom in the world. having more, is essentially one and we need to think more in detail. to me it's a powerful moment, traditions in this nuanced coincidingy so it's a pleasure o watch those moments when native communities and great scientists together on the same stage, is a powerful moment. >> you've done a really good job. we centering voices doing work for a long time and impacted by the work but haven't always received that service for doing it so i couldn't agree more

these folks are at the heart of this. >> i get to dohi this newsletter every week for the new yorker on the climate crisis, a free newsletter and the part i like is this interview section called passing the mike and i think i've managed to do it for couple of years, there are an extraordinary number of powerful interesting ones. there are a lot more interesting corners than in the past and that is useful. it's going to be a very close call but we do make it out.

if we do it, we managed to get it working, everybody working in the same direction. we haven't been very good about that as a society and it's one of the things that changes. solar power is useful but a broad people power as useful. >> i want to make sure we hit on that idea, specifically with your transition within the movement you've helpedpe create, it's an interesting model for a lot of leaders to think about cultivating the next generation of talent that have these ideas maybe older generations have but i want to close out this idea on inclusivity, i four block lack

of a better word was that after a while, understanding within this adjusted transition in the coal mines on the oil wells, they are being paid more competitively than the opportunities which we can be pointing fingers at what's happening but taking a step back and what seems to be more, i think it is definitely a way to say it but can you help us understand the tensions navigating it over the years? >> people through no fault of

their own growing up in these industries that are dangerous to the planet shouldn't bear the brunt, it's different from oral executives. they might end up in a jail cell at some time but that's not true, it's the opposite of people who have done honorable work over the years, now as we have to transition away from it, we have to figure out how to make their lives going forward. it's one ofth the things about e green new deal, large parts of thatat have made its way into io the infrastructure, they have to

because it's necessary, think about who holds the power here, people like senator manchin off west virginia who represents more coal miners than anybody else and he's in the position to make sure they can train to do something else or if not, they can retire dignity and that is it perfectly good goal to make, it's well within ourur economic ability to do it and it should be one of the first thing you should focus on. people like aoc joe biden focusing precisely on thehe iss. >> that is helpful. thank you. i see some questions coming in,

who will hitit on one or two ids here before we turn over to the folks at home and online who have interesting ideas and thoughts for you but a big part of this b book is about a.i. i have asked you questions about it because it is an overwhelming topic not as straightforward as climate change, climate change is pretty complex as well. out there to start when he was 18 or 19, how to act on climate change. even now at age 30, we've figured out how to act, what you bring up in your book about a.i.

>> i think in the same category climate change was years ago, we can see among the horizon potentially overwhelming threat and we have this conversation about them right now, one of the first things we can ensure is at least make sure the voices behind them are not so powerful they can't be checked which means taking on silicon valley which goes unchecked in recent years and forget and i, doing insane amounts of damage already, these algorithms, what you see in your facebook feed

and making it crazier every passing day. when you get concentrations of power that are too large in the hands of exxon or in the hands of marc zuckerberg's, it's a good idea to invest in that quickly before overwhelms the society's ability to cope and it's possible facebook has jumped past being able to be controlled but i'm glad to see finally people in power beginning to ask real and important questions. i think for i the moment it's important to talk about questions around a.i., reaching social consensus on this, let's

not take steps past this because they do represent enormous challenges and we do have the possibility of reordering what it means to be human. those are big enough questions that we should think first. thinking is i think that humans are theoretically good at. it sets us apart so it might be a good idea to do it once in a while. >> in that same section of the o book you talk about flow, we are talking thanks to a festival about reading and books and i'm wondering if you could tell us about and how it might activate in a way --

>> trying to write about this and one things we have come to understand is that human beings are at their best when they enter into absorption, they get lost in whatever it is they are doing, painting paintings, climbing difficult situations, whatever it is. losing track of time and your surroundings, entering mentally into this.

that's not something that happens with twitter, it is the opposite. you are forever looking every few seconds, getting dopamine or whatever comes in. it's that kind of absorption, that's why it's so unsatisfying and books will persist, our attention spans be so generated, even sitting around to read a book will seem too hard and when that happens, we will have lost something very important. >> we heard yesterday on a panel about listening, how shrinking our attention span is, i

couldn't agree more that it's an experience, we do access and read anyway you are right. last real question, we have a few minutes to hit on some questions coming in. you open theen book i love this opening. he opened by saying an author does not owe its reader hope. there's a great quote about hope without optimism differentiating between the two. the belief that there is still some worse, change as possible and i do feel that come through in your writing, not just in this book but most of your publications and your leadership. if it wasn't there, you probably wouldn't be so relentlessly advocating for it so i want to

hear from you, what does hope feel like? >> the best proof of my willingness, ability to be hopeful is the fact that i still get up every morning and walk, there wasn't reason to do it and i wouldn't do it. moderate complex or something. i would just sit on the porch and smoke cigars and drink whiskey and fat would be fine maybe i will reach an age where that's all i can do anyway but for the meantime, the fact that we watched the last ten or 15 years, this gives me enormous

hope that we are going to do something out of this. the physicall momentum of the systems are so large we are obviously not going to stop climate change, maybe we can still stop a p short from stoppg civilization but for me, all over the world, there are demonstrations all over except north korea, to me it reflects the people we are working with are places that have literally done nothing to cause the problem we are in. in that case, it does seem to be possible for those of us who live in the belly of the beast to get together to do what we can so that's where i am happy

to keep going. >> it is my deepest sorrow to share we are coming up on time so i'm goingne to give you one last lightning round question from the folks at home, one i don't have the answer to an event we will close out our time together.fo folks are curious in this country, i'm guessing the u.s. at this time, what would be the most significant legislation to address climate change that we should urge our government to take? >> it is crucial to get biden's infrastructure bill through congress. it's not going to solve the problem but it's going to do far more than any piece of legislation that's ever been passed in the last 30 years.

it's a start and completely moderate, sensible, straightforward way to address economic crisis we are in coming out of the pandemic. starting down the path of protecting against this next crisis is much larger even than the pandemic.. so make the phone call, make sure your senator is going to stand up for families and jobs in the future it shouldn't be too hard. >> thank you for moving us with an action, something to take away from this conversation and put into place.nd what i heard today is what i read in the book, the worst thing we can do is nothing. given how big we are up against our, nothing can feel better or at least easier to reach for so

my hope is that today what we leave this conversation with recognizing what we heard from bill, two things can be true at the same time. we are a beautiful and powerful species on a w beautiful and powerful planet and s together e got a shot at this so from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your work and thank you for being with us today. >> thank you for all you do and you are very good at this, this was a great pleasure this morning and i will look forward to the next time. ♪♪ >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring people and events that tell the american story. 2:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, ronald reagan presidential library museum marks its 30th anniversary.

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♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual piece. every static american history tv documents american stories and sundays, book tv brings the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. including cox. ♪♪ ♪♪ cox, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a publicic service. >> welcome to the latest series of manhattan's institute event. today up at the pleasure of hosting the event with steve. stephen is a scientist