is skipping the annual white house correspondents dinner again this year and will hold a campaign rally instead in green bay, wisconsin. watch live coverage of the rally saturday on c-span at 8:00 p.m. eastern. and following the rally, watch live coverage of the white house correspondent's dinner with featured speaker ron turnout. thee will speak with one of cofounder of earth day. dennis hayes is here. me. host: next, we speak to one of the cofounders of earth day, denis hayes. but here is the. first cofounder, senator gaylord nelson on the eve of the first birthday 49 years ago. >> the battle to restore a proper relationship between man and his environment, between man and other living creatures will ,equire a long,, sustained political, moral and ethical financial commitment are beyond any commitment ever made by any society in the history of man. are we able? yes.

are we willing, that is the unanswered question. host: denis hayes. every answer that last question? guest: i think beyond any doubt, greta., there was a true transition in the public consciousness with regard to the environment in 1970. things that were unthinkable in 1969 became unstoppable. in the. week of the first trip, there were one million participants. after that we press the clean air act, the endangers the shoes act, great mammals protection act -- endangered species act. we began to change the way that america does business. host: what sparked this movement? remind viewers what happened in 1969? guest: there were a number of things that began to create this take consciousness that there was something going wrong with the direction of the country, that there was a disconnect between the growth of gross

domestic product and what was giving people satisfaction. carson'swith rachel writing the seventh -- spring.nt the oil spill showing that even the most is these communities could not escape pollution. a series of several thermal implosions that created pollution so bad in american cities that kids could not go outside for recess. the air in pittsburgh, gary, indiana, los angeles, was like the air in new delhi or mexico city today. the cuyahoga river caught on fire. . the bald eagle was an endangered species. all those things, each of them independent threads, but what earth day did was to weave that altogether into the concept of environmentalism, and turn it into the fabric that today has become an important part of american life. host: how did you get involved? who wasaylord nelson,

perhaps the first permanent person to recognize there was something witty to happen, thought that he would launch it with a college teacher-in. i was at that point a graduate student at harvard, but i hadn't heard anything about this. he got a 15 minute courtesy interview with the senator in washington and offered to coordinate harvard. turned out there was no one coordinating harvard, cambridge, massachusetts, but this would be an important thing to do. so i went back with a charter to austin. a few days later, his chief of staff asked me if i would come down and organize the united states. [laughter] then, we took it off of college campuses, went to other communities. host: i want to show our viewers the senators earth day speech in 1970, a little bit of it, he

talks about his goals for environmentalism. >> i don't think there is any other issue viewed in its broadest stance, which is as critical to mankind as the issue of the quality of the environment in which we live. ecology, thatord is a big science, not a narrow one, it is a big concept. and it is concerned with all the ramifications of all the relationships, of all living creatures to each other and their environment. it is concerned with the total ecosystem, not just how we dispose of tin cans, bottles, in our garbage. it is concerned with the habitat of marine creatures, animals, birds and men. our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and beauty while about the worst environments in america in the

ghettos, in the appalachians, .nd elsewherep our goal is to have an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures. host: when you think about it where we are today, how much has been accomplished? guest: you have to think about it at different levels. in terms of this nation, while there is an enormous amount left to be done, particularly in the disadvantaged communities he was talking about at the end of his statement, we have made spectacular progress. the air in our cities is clean, we can actually eat the fish we catch in our streams and go swimming with them -- assuming in them. globally, the big issues of proven to be quite retractable. when there is something that isuires enforcement and international, it bumps into sovereignty. even the international criminal court has difficulty getting the

united states and other countries to make themselves subject to it. we had a spectacular success on banning chlorofluorocarbons and we are starting now to heal the ozone, but the big issue for 2020, climate, is one that things have just persistently worse. for 250 years, every year we have produced more carbon dioxide than the year before. last year was the highest ever. tragically, the scientific consensus about the impact of man on climate change, the rate of carbon dioxide production has increased. there has been more co2 from human activities into the atmosphere since james henson back in 1988 made his famous comments to congress, than in the previous 65 years of human existence. host: what are the most short-term thus what is a short-term solution? what needs to happen now?

how did humans need to change? guest: we need to not abandon the paris climate accords for one thing, as the president was a to, because it sends a terrible message to the rest of the world. 's second, we need to moving every aspect of our society towards something that is not adding to the problem. the shorthand version of that is we have to electrify everything. and electrify our automobiles, our trucks, our buildings, our industry and you move that aggressively towards renewable energy resources. the good news is that it it is beginning to happen spontaneously because prices have been falling and others have been charging faster and lasting longer and getting you more mileage. moment, we are still heavily subsidizing the fossil industry. the president of this country wants to revive the 19th century energy source and send it moving into the 21st century, and we have to overcome but. host: what are you referring to? guest: i am talking about the

president's fixation with the coal industry. clearly, there needs to be a transition for the people working in that industry, but we need to leave coal, oil, and gas on the ground. we need to start moving in that direction as quickly as possible. few people understand, there are no more phd's in west virginia than there are coal miners, this is not a big difficult lift for us, but it is a lift we have to make. host: what about nuclear power? guest: there is a division of opinion within the environmental community on nuclear power. i think there is something close to a consensus that we should not be building more light water reactors in their current design. the real debate is how swiftly we shut down those that are here. if you give the nuclear fuel cycle or promoted in other countries, you are necessarily, with the current generation of reactors, also encouraging weapons proliferation. there is nothing iran is doing that is not essential to a cycle. fuel

so if you are going to go nuclear, you need a different approach on that topic. ma, in stockton, california. caller: i have a comment. it is basically, they are destroying the earth right now and if you take the viewpoint of looking at earth from maybe say the least station, the earth is like the best of space station, it looks like a fishbowl -- if you look at the earth from the space station, it looks like a fishbowl. went backgoogle and as far as 1900 and i looked at the north pole and the south and there was a huge ice mass on both of them. but now if you look at it today, you can hardly find any ice. the polar bears are going extinct, and we have to take

care of this planet, because she is our mother. she feeds us, she gives us water to drink, we grow our food, yet there is one undeniable fact, and that is that if the earth dies, we die, because this is our life source. people need to get really serious about what is going on because things are moving fast and it is time for us to change. host: let me ask the cofounder of earth day, mr. hayes, do you agree with her, things are moving fast? guest: we are clearly in a position where we are approaching some talking points. that really frightening thing, which the scientists today clearly don't know when this will take place, what they call positive feedback loops, where certain things happen, then they continue to get worse on their own. she was talking about melting ice and snow in key parts of the world, the polar regions and the

glaciers. when that happens, the sun hits the ground, he set up faster, causes the snow to melt faster. and then we have frozen methane gas inside ice crystals. the sun melts this desk, it escapes and evaporates. those things continue in a way that we can control, and we have avoid the tipping points where suddenly the earth is plunging rapidly into a direction we can't withstand and can't do anything about. host: iran is next in sync them in time, california. good morning to you, ron. caller: good morning and thank you for taking the phone call. thank you for being on the cutting edge of what we need to get fixed in the planetp i think what happens is people get lost in the jargon. they say oh, at one point, five degrees centigrade increase will kill people.

know, here is what is killing people. in 1970, when they took the photos from space, of the beautiful blue planet, there were 2.5 billion people on this planet. today, there are 7.7 billion people on this planet. you certainly can tell, the only way that normal human beings that are just citizens of the united states can understand this or grasp of this is by getting on any freeway or driving on any highway in this country and seeing how much traffic is on there and how many more people are here. and that is just in our country. but throughout the world if you go to, mumbai or china and you can't see across the street because of the smog, you get a better grip on climate change. please address the population boom and tell us what we can do as a planet to sustain us. ,he last question i have is

what is the ultimate number of population this planet can sustain? host: before you answer, we have a headline for our viewers from march -- co2 emissions are growing faster in india than in the u.s. or china. guest: that is a whole series of difficult questions but they rotate around population. the human population has more , if tripled in my lifetime there is an effect of living around in round planet, you cannot grow forever. with regard to most species, there is a state of equilibrium where the population will continue at that level because it is held and controlled by starvation, held in control by predators. humans have overcome a series of blows things and we have continued to grow. we would rather not have a population held in check by

disease, predators and starvation. we are a thinking animal and we should be it would you think our way through this. it turns out that what is by far the most important leverage is women. if you can provide women with a higher degree of personal control over their lives, and over their reproductive lives, give them education, give them and a sense power of personal satisfaction in something other than having children, then suddenly you see birthrates begin to stabilize and even decline in several countries. in fact, in the united states, we would be declining today, but for immigration. this will not be an easy one, because you put don't have birthrates, people have babies. even those of us concerned about birthrates like a babies but i hope we are. smart enough to recognize that they are really the same thing. host: william in ohio.

caller: i disagree with his whole theory about global warming. global warming is a hoax purported by the liberals to take our tax money and/or rights. the paris accords did nothing but bankrupt this country. i just -- the united nations proved that global warming is a hoax. host: let's get a reaction. i respect you, william, and hope that as we continue to gripped iowas that tragically, twice in the month of march, more than 10 events last year in the united states that were extended area events with more than $1 billion of property damage, where we are now leaving the flood season and moving into the forest fire season and after that, the

hurricane season, we will recognize that this is no longer normalp this is a broad consensus within the scientific community. -- this is something that there is a broad census on the scientific community on. host: debbie in beaverton, oregon, your comment or question. --ler: my comment is that ok, years ago i was told that the main cause of global warming now, itpopulation, and is like businesses want more products.buy their so we are going to go to every country and we're going to build all these industries, and the industries are what is causing this global warming. and now, we have the trade agreement and stuff where things here, i mean, i don't

get a product that is not made in china and in age, i don't get packing that isn't -- in it, i don't get packing the is it made of styrofoam or plastic. our countries need to set laws and say no. you can't send that stuff here. host: ok, let us talk about that. guest: i think you are making a good point. we have exported a bunch of our pollution to other parts of the world and of though we have cleaned up america, we have done andy setting factories up importing from factories around the country's are making things sometimes in a more polluting fashion. one of the answers is to just say no. you can find out what the environmental footprint is of just about anything you buy. if this is important to you, and i hope it will be important to everyone, you buy the stuff that has the smallest environmental footprint, and by far, the smallest climate footprint.

host: what are companies like amazon and other big companies, online businesses shipping massive amounts of products around the world? what role or responsibility do believe they have? guest: that is a really good question. they have a responsibility, i think, if they want to have a future for their children, to be paying attention to this, and most of them are. however, a number of big ones have made formidable commitment. google, ikea, they have all committed to relatively rapid timetables to being 100% powered by renewable energy resources. these as is -- this is a small draft right now. but i do want to say, the technology and pricing is all increasingly aligning with a sustainable climate future. for most parts of the world right now, it is cheaper to have wind, solar or battery storage than it is to have conventional energy resources. not just to produce woke energy,

energy, but for other energy demands. host: what is happening on a smaller, local level in states and municipalities when it comes to how houses are built. what is a regulation you are seeing? fact, nations have been somewhat disappointing, at least most have in their approach. the units of government that are closer to the public sentiment, cities and even states, have been more aggressive here and internationally. there are 200 states that not i think it is close to 2 billion people, 1.8 billion people around the world that have set up, timetables that includes california, timetables to move to 100% renewable futures. that includes the state of california, to be there before 2050. is a set of timetables year

after year, to know whether you're making progress and not.er you are in washington, d.c., you have one of the most aggressive programs in the world passed last december by the city council. washington, d.c. claims it will be, and has a program to be 100% clean energy by 2032. that is an incredibly aggressive timetable. host: and what about buildings, and what is happening in our country, for homes, commercial buildings, this is work you are doing with the bullet center, what is it? what are you advocating for? asking me about the bullet center is like asking me about my grandchild, i can go on ,orever, but the quick version it has been characterized by world architecture magazine as the greenest commercial building on the planet. it is a six story that uses half as much energy as the leed

building. it produces a surplus of electricity each year. this is six stories in seattle, the cloudiest city in the contiguous united states, a good example of what can be done. what is important is that it costs no more than a traditional commercial building and has been operating in the black since the date opens its -- opened its doors. it is a most comfortable and rest list building in seattle. host: what happens there in the building? guest: we have commercial nos, the we have so wireless speaker developer and other companies. it is folks that are often kind of energy dense, who use a lot of computational power, that they buy the most efficient equipment for their needs. it is a building that was getting most of what it has achieved through good design.

is not a lot of really heavy computer-controlled technology. 50 years ago, if i showed you a picture of a building in phoenix, in anchorage, and in atlanta you would know immediately where each of those located. was today, mostly rebuild the same building everyplace and use a ton of electricity to dehumidifier atlanta, took cool phoenix, to warm anchorage. thousands of buildings around the world, and it has to become soon, tens of millions of buildings, is designed to protect them microenvironment they are in, to take advantage of natural conditions. host: is that what the bullet foundation does? guest: yes, we are focused upon what we call the emerald corridor, the northwest of the united states. basically portland, seattle, vancouver and the cities in to try to turn them

into models of sustainable urban development. we talk about in college it -- , weogy, and urban ecology try to build cities that function upon our ecological principles. specifics,are the what do they look like? [laughter] regularhey look like buildings except portland, vancouver and now increasingly, seattle have a really good public transportation system. seattle has the largest bus ridership per capita. we are trying to migrate into performance-based energy codes. you can do whatever you want to you can only use this much energy for your trait increase -- energy per year to increase creativity. they come up with rentable

space. you can have an extra story if you make it this much greener and that much more efficient. these are building incentives and this incentives to cause our cities to function the way they could if they were a douglas for forest. host: what is an leed certification? guest: it comes out of an organization located here in washington called the u.s. supreme building council. 's leadership and energy -- is leadership and energy in development, is a think what it stands for. if you are a developer, there is a scoreboard of 100 points. if you get a certain point number, you are leed and the higher you go, you can get up to leed platinum. again, the bullit center uses half as much energy as a leed platinum building. host: and the top states for

illinois, massachusetts, washington, new york and texas. if you want to learn more about the len:, you can go to the we go to jean.org in maryland. jean, welcome to the conversation. caller: thank you for your efforts, sir. both china and india have enormous amount of coal reserves make to to use them to generate electricity. there will be a substantial problem. a team headed by george -- in normal laureate -- a normal california, has a method of turning the carbon dioxide generated by such coal-fired electric plants into methanol for our cars and trucks. is not proposing --

a team in mit's proposing a there is agine, version being used in china ,ight now, for cars and trucks eliminating diesel and gasoline. somebody, allow m.i.t. and southern california to at least them a straight -- at least them a straight that can helphanol alleviate concerns with coal-fired power plants and car emissions? guest: this is a strategy i was actually enthusiastic about in the 1970's when i headed the federal government's solar .nergy research institute , which included by her energy at that time, we are it in you about global warming, but we had a long time ahead of us to start making congress, and this was a

good transitional fuel. the problem with the particular technologies described, carbon dioxide out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and is,g that form methanol, one, it gives that much more momentum to the coal industry moving forward, it typically grabs less than half of the co2, so half of it is still going up there. the half that it. methanol.ends up in so what you do is you get a bounce, twice as much energy for that part of the commission, but you are still putting emissions out. it would be a step in the right direction if we had begun it 40 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago. today, however, we need to begin to produce less carbon dioxide total on the planet not slow down the rate of increase,, but produce less total on the planet right away.

put outrt that the ipc last year saying that the 12 years, that is for the temperature of the earth not to increase by more than 1.5 integrated. to do that, they say we need to diminish our carbon dioxide emissions by 50% in the next 12 years. to achieve that requires much more dramatic changes then what he is talking about. the technology, i agree, is ready and ripe. host: what type of dramatic changes? guest: they are sort of what i was talking about before, and electrify everything and get your electricity from renewable energy resources. this is why it is such a controversial topic. if you are leaving the coal, the oil, and the gas on the ground, then the companies that have 90% of their net worth tied up in those assets become stranded assets, and the company ends up in enormous financial difficulty, so they fight like

crazy. and as we have seen in this country, so dramatically, campaigns that are misleading would be the polite way to say it. basically lying through their teeth about climate change. that is why some of your callers believe this thing is a fraud and conspiracy, is because the oil industry spent more than 10 years, just like the cigarette industry ahead of it, with this campaign of misinformation. host: from springfield, virginia, you are next. caller: good morning. i am a grandmother, 65, and was part of the generation that helped to bring about earth day, but i don't believe global warming is the number one threat to the planet. .t still is nuclear it is for that reason i am concerned about what you said about national sovereignty because one of the reasons i support mr. trump is because his sane attitude toward the

russians. it is regrettable that the democrats would not accept the results of the last election, because our system of government is so amenable to climate change, because it can change and is adaptable. i think people ought to do something -- people who want to do something about global warming should become a vegetarian myself. i have been one for 40 years. i am a reader of james hypothesis and i think this is a generational issue. the number one thing we have to nuclear.ut better active today than radioactive tomorrow. host: a couple of things for you to respond to. guest: i am hopeful you can persuade your president to adopt some of your values. i suspect it is a relatively small fraction of the trump supporters who subscribed to the hypothesis.

more power to you and your personal behavior. i certainly agree that the nuclear threat hasn't gone away. i grew up in a time when we hid underneath our desks to protect ourselves from a wholesale nuclear exchange between the united states and the soviet union. there have been a number of relatively close accidents. ts eliot said, there is no question whether we are going to whimper, abang or a bank is still a possibility and i agree with your caller that we cannot lose sight of that. upset that some people feel there has to be a choice. i think we can wrestle with several issues simultaneously. the problem of nuclear weapons and that nuclear proliferation, i think, still needs to be high on the agenda. host: do we need to eat less meat to solve climate change? guest: one of the strange things is that as people become

wealthier, and this is not happening in developing countries around the world, most notably in china, they tend to produce and each more meat. it is not just raising more animals, it is feeding them on and feedlots to fatten them up. so you are having an agricultural practice producing the number two corn, which is for a cow very much like halloween candy is for a child. it produces fat cows, just like halloween candy does, we produce obese kids. is the kind of me to that is terrible for our health and our planet. i think the planet could survive if everybody had an occasional hamburger. like one of your callers, i prefer to move in a vegetarian tradition. but some amount of meat consumption, sure, you can handle that. to which we are choosing the worst form of meat and having it become a dietary

staple has been in a loosely destructive. thomas jefferson used to say that meat should be used as a garnish. he was largely a vegetarian. that is sort of my idea, meet and fish as a garnish is attractive and very happy for you. host: and what is happening to fish across the globe? -- as anere is environmentalist, it is really sad because the questions you ask tend to produce break answer after blake answer. millions of people around the planet use ocean fish as their principal protein within their diet and those fisheries are being overfished. and as a result, some stocks are collapse.to you can manage global fisheries in a way that is sustainable in the long run, and again, it is an area where international cooperation becomes essential. if every sovereign country can go to the ocean and catch just

as much as it wants, you have a traditional problem. it causes a collapse of the fishery. we need to do sustainable fishing. host: what about the amount of plastics in a water sources and what impact is that having? guest: the amount of plastic floating out to see is stunning. these kinds of projections are misleading but nonetheless, powerful. if you continue to look at the amount of mastech's that went into the ocean -- plastics that went into the ocean come and projected that to 2050, it would be greater than the weight of -- fish less marine mammals mammals.ne it is eaten and turns into these microparticles that are absorbed into the food chain. when the fish is faced by human beings, we give them ourselves, some of them containing things

that are hormone disruptors. it has got to stop. we have begun to make progress here in the united states, but plastics have been spreading into developing countries rapidly. as kathleen rogers mention of the beginning of the program, a huge problem with india's rivers is they have these plastics and are carrying them into the sea. host: how have the recycling contributed to this problem, or of melissaere of, polities, when china has said, we are not taking these plastics ,nymore -- of municipalities when china has said that we should not taking these plastics anymore? guest: i don't think we can fault china too much for saying we cannot take your garbage in perpetuity, particularly because much of contaminated. and they were thinking that they would recycle it and instead they had to bury it in landfills.

one thing that comes with combining all your recyclables in single containers, if your glass breaks, then your glass shards that can't be supported and magnetics and other means from the rest of the recyclables, contaminate the whole thing. so the whole stash ends up in a landfill. when i was young, a guy was elected mayor of los angeles on a platform beside, elect me mayor and you will not have to support your garbage anymore into recyclables. that was before the first earth day. i hope we are now sufficiently away from that that we will put our aluminum here, our paper here, our plastics year in other place, and will have a responsibility to do that, and the government will make it easy to do it and costly for us not to do it. host: bill in sherwood, oregon, your next. caller: thank you very much. what you have been speaking

about is such a huge subject, it is amazing. the first thing i wanted to say is nuclear energy is a dead-end road. you can get rid of the waste. the waste can kill for 25,000 dead-end.is a the other thing is methane. all the fracking wells across america, tens of thousands of wells are releasing this gas. this gas is 26 times more global warming than co2. worse.bad, methane is and the methane we are releasing is actually triggering all this bad weather we are having across america. this is obvious to me, i don't know why it is not obvious to others. perhaps they are using religion or politics, is set of facts. host: let us hear from kerry in springfield, florida. : no, it is harry.

[laughter] host: sorry. go ahead. caller: these topics are just all over the place, it is mind-boggling. most of these scientists are making a lot of money agreeing with each other. ok. my biggest fear is running out of fossil fuels. there is a finite amount of fossil fuels in the earth, they are very efficient. we are very efficient in the united states at cleaning them up. being in florida, i know people who have solar collectors on their roofs for electricity. it doesn't work quite to the efficiency that they talk about. i have solar collectors to heat my pool with water, but when we coal and oil, we

are in big, big trouble. the one mills -- the wind meals, they are called eagle shredders. there are very efficient out in seattle, but that is one of the most expensive places to live in the united states. host: ok. let us have mr. hayes take that up. guest: harry, i think it majority of my best friends are scientists and i don't know a single one of them who went into it for the money. scientists are not about getting rich, they are about pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge. it is of the most noble professions one can embark on in the hope that america starts producing more scientists than it is. if you happen to be stupid farm. to -- it went

in the united states, it would be illegal, then birds would be flying through them and it would be bad, but we have very strict laws that make that impossible to do in the united states, and increasingly it is becoming commonplace elsewhere in the world. there is no energy source that can't have negative effects if you do it stupidly, but there is it enormous amount of fossil fool still on the ground -- fossil fuel still on the ground. if it were all to be pulled out and burned, we would be in the same climate that it was in before my logical sources -- that it was in before biological sources turned it into a fossil fuels. that was the period in which dinosaurs roamed the earth and we had swamps in the north pole. it is something we cannot let happen. the final thing is with regard to the efficiencies of solar collectors, there is no dispute on their efficiency on solar panels. they will tell you when you buy

be,hat the efficiency will today it is typically between 18%-20 2%. of all thethat 22% sunlight the falls on it is converted into electricity. i believe in the future, we will be getting increasing efficiencies. what we have done in the last 10 years is seen the price drop precipitously. these technologies are beginning to spread rapidly. host: to remain in wisconsin. caller: thank you for c-span. sir, it is a pleasure to hear your voice today. guest: thank you. caller: and i am coming at this from a very ignorant perspective . just bear with me, and i am really sorry for asking the question so bluntly, but i am extremely ignorant and i don't understand. theeems to me that

conclusions of the late 60's had this dramatic influence. is that correct. host: i am not sure i understand your question about the heart and influence. caller: i appreciate your honesty. there is a gentleman named gilbert harding who wrote an article in the late 1960's on environmental ethics, and it seems to have a major immediate influence within culture, immediately. host: jeremy, i will leave it there. mr. hayes. guest: his name was garrett harding in the university of california santa barbara. i don't think the impact was quite as far-reaching as you say. he published it in a publication of the american association of sciences, not a huge popular readership, but it certainly had

some influence upon folks in the scientific community. a sociologist recently won in the nobel prize in economics for ofutting some of the aspects the article. is possible to conduct a very reasonable discourse on climate change without being pro-or anti-garrett harding, who i will say was a great friend of mine and a person i respected very greatly. host: they go to kevin in el paso, texas. caller: hi. this is my comment on green energy, it is not green at all. first of all, it takes fossil batteries andcar windmills, and solar panels. solar panels have 13 toxic elements in them, if all this green energy that we have that isclaiming it is green, it

not, because there are several dumps here in texas that have poundg but these 5000 that a reason windmills in them and solar panels that aren't used anymore, that are just sitting there and are not reviewed or rebuilt or refurbished in any way. what do went is, really mean by green energy? question off the air. thanks. guest:. guest: i know nothing about the dump you are referring to in texas. however, it is possible to do anything wrong. most of what is in the current generation of batteries, looking at iron batteries and various -- recyclable.s, is i have difficulty understanding why anybody would throw away into a toxic landfill when it

has a great market value. solar panels have a variety of compounds in them. some of them are themselves effective compounds and some are conductors. the nature of the panel itself, it can be recycled. they have life expectancies of 40-50 years, not because of the materials in the panel but the encapsulation over the top but tends to get cloudy or scratched it, too,, and can be recycled. everything in the wind turbine can be recycled. but was you have burned coal, that is gone forever and the carbon is collected in the atmosphere. host: robert in virginia. caller: mr. hayes, i have a great admiration for your job, i really do because it is probably one of the hardest, harder than the president's.

my question for you is, with all the technology and all the scientists that would have in telling us how global warming affects our climate, why can we turn that same technology to build something that actually reclaims high amounts of carbon in our atmosphere and put it to use? guest: well, we can and have. some of it is natural. in our forests and in our agricultural lands there are ways to mobility away from industrial forestry into sustainable forestry, and from industrial agriculture to agriculture that builds up the amount of carbon in the soil. and there are a lot of those things going on, it is turning increasingly to make economic sense. in addition, i think what you are talking about our mechanical contraptions that would be taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and fixing it, in a form that is relatively stable

carbonate.m there are machines that do that, at least half a dozen companies are making them. it tends to make a huge amount -- it takes a huge amount of energy to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and even more to put it into something that would remain stable in perpetuity. vastly easier to keep it out of the atmosphere to begin with. but at some point, because we have to have less of their than we have right now, and because we're not going to turn around on a dime and will continue putting carbon into the atmosphere for several years in the future, i suspect that if we are moving rapidly enough in that direction, some of that technology will catch fire. and as i said, there are at least a couple dozen startups around the world, some of which are getting funding from major financial institutions, energy companies, bill gates personally has invested in a couple of them . host: when this show concludes, we will bring our audience over

to the national press club, where you will be talking about the 50th anniversary of earth day next year and the vote for the earth effort. tell us what that is about? some: people, at least large number of people tend to vote on the basis of one or three key issues, issues that a degree ofe intensity in public conscience. there will be people who vote on , ontion, on immigration health care and don't care about anything else, they may care about something else, but they will vote on that. i know of only one politician, a republican congressman, who was a believer in climate change who was defeated because he has the right position on it. i don't know of anybody who is defeated because they have the it.t position on in 1970, we went after a dozen congressmen and defended seven out of 12 -- defeated seven out

of 12 of them. the impact of that on political consciousness was enormous. we had made the environment including issue for enough elections.ilt the vote the earth is trying to do that. internationally, there are 60 elections going on around the world in the next two years. we want to mix climate movement towards a sustainable future in climate terms of voting issue for enough people that it really resonant. host: our viewers can learn more about it. we went -- we will have it at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. mark in wisconsin. caller: yeah. i have a question, how many miles do you have a year. class, and first what type of gas engines do you have a new property? thank you very much. guest: you have put your thumb on my greatest personal mark, i fly probably as much as 8-10,000

, and it a typical year is a sin. i have no way around it except my job demands it. i do not fly first-class, i fly steerage in most cases because i run a non-for profit and we don't do first-class. the engines on my property, i assume you're talking about my automobile, i have a chevy volt. i put solar panels on my house and that puts something up on the screen of your computer where you see how much electricity are consuming and how much you are producing, besides the needs of the house. we find ourselves driving the house against the solar panels and reducing this and reducing that. so all of our lives are now led lights. we have more and more daylight controlling things. i haven't used the close dryers since we bought the solar

panels. we hang up our clothes on clotheslines during the summer and clothes racks during the winter. so it turns out we have a surplus. percent of my house is in electricity andand 100% of ms electricity. the whole thing is largely paying for itself within the first five years. we will be producing a surplus two years from now and we will have some return on investment. host: >> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, timothy kamala and politico's zach common discuss campaign 2020 and where candidates stand on environmental issues. then, the former assistant secretary of state for european and eurasian affairs talks about the mueller report findings on

russian interference in the 2016 election. be sure to watch, live at 7:00 eastern on tuesday morning. join the discussion. president trump is skipping the annual white house correspondents dinner again this year and will hold a campaign rally instead in green bay, wisconsin. watch live coverage of the rally saturday on c-span at 8:00 p.m. eastern. following the rally, watch live coverage of the white house correspondents dinner featured speaker, ron chernow. ,> environmentalist denis hayes national coordinator of earth day in 1970, talks about next year's 50th anniversary. the national press club hosted the event.