>> hinojosa: he travels around the world, from antarctica to tanzania, from alaska to australia, to assess the impact of global warming and to promote conservation. environmentalist and lead scientist for the nature conservancy m. sanjayan. i'm maria hinijosa. this is one on one. sanjayan, you are the lead scientist for the nature conservancy. you are born in sri lanka, raised in sierra leone, you spend a lot of your time traveling around the world actually looking at the impact of global warming. >> right. >> hinojosa: so when you hear people say, in this country,

"well, i don't really feel it, it doesn't feel like a crisis," you say what? >> so the way i approach global warming is that i think of it as an insurance question. it's like if you were driving down the street and someone told you that your house was on fire, and then someone said, "oh, no, it's not really your house, it's the house next door, don't worry about it," what would you do? you'd probably turn around and go back. you have insurance not because you actually think your place is going to burn. you have insurance because, you know, if it happens, it's such a catastrophic problem that there's no real way out of it. so right now we're in this really important point where i feel like if there is a possiblity that this is going to happen it makes a lot of sense for us to take care of it now. and i think it's not just a possibility. most scientists would agree that it is a reality. the debate mostly is about how quickly it's going to happen and what we can do about it.

>> hinojosa: but the fact is that you still encounter, as a scientist, a lot of people who say that humans are actually the ones who are causing all of the problems. >> i do encounter them, although you'd be surprised at the fact that i don't encounter a lot of them. most people... >> hinojosa: where do you encounter them the most? are they in this country, are they in other parts of the world? >> it's not outside the us. outside the us, you know, i was... not very ago i was in the forest in indonesia. and to get there it's, you know, three plane rides and then, you know, ten hours in an... >> hinojosa: you and your plane rides. >> ...suv, exactly. that's true, good point. fair enough. >> hinojosa: you and your plane rides. >> we're not perfect. none of us are perfect, right? so... but, you know, you get in there, and then there's a local chief who's telling you that he has seen the climate change in his lifetime. so i'm hearing it. you know, i've seen it in the arctic, where local people are telling me that. for me, climate has moved out of just the realm of science now to personal narratives of people

who will tell you what's happening around their space. once you meet those folks, the doubts are erased. sort of the scientific, dispassionate sort of thing that i could take is gone away. >> hinojosa: so the most surprising thing, kind of the most shocking thing that you've seen, where it's just like, "oh, my god, i knew it was bad, but..." >> okay, so my most shocking story on this is that i went up to the arctic, and i... >> hinojosa: this was for the show on alaska. >> yeah, this was for a show on alaska called expedition alaska. it's about climate in alaska. but we met this guy, and i spent a lot of time with him. his name is archie. and archie is a legendary whale hunter. you know, they go out in kayaks and hand-throw whales... harpoons into big whales. he's 70-plus years old, and he's of the highest status rank in this nupiak eskimo village. very, very high status kind of

guy. and one day he was with me in one of his cabins, and he said, "i want to show you something." this never made it on the show, actually. you know, i followed him and he took me into an ice cellar. and an ice cellar is something that the eskimos cut out of the permafrost, which is frozen earth, in order to store their meat. and it's very, very hard to build. you've got to chip it out of solid ground, right? solid frozen ground. and inside, it's stacked with all the meat for his family, and his extended family. so whale, and walrus, and goose, and caribou and so on and so forth. and he said, "this has been in my family all my life." and this guy is 70-plus years old. >> hinojosa: oh, you mean, like, they build it once and it stays? >> exactly. it's like the frigidaire, the permanet frigidaire made out of ice. >> exactly. and... because it's hard to build these things, and it goes... you know, generation after generation will use the same cellar. and he said, "you know what? last year for the first time in my memory it thawed out, and i lost, you know, a third of my meat for the winter," which is a big deal for those guys.

>> hinojosa: of course. >> and he said, "guess what's happening now?" and he took me to the corner, and this was sort of in september, and sure enough there's a puddle of water dripping from the wall. and so we emerge out of this, and i was shaken by it. and i said, "what are you going to do?" and he pointed out, and outside his house he's got a ge refrigerator/freezer sitting there, waiting to be plugged in. >> hinojosa: oh, my god! >> and i thought, "yeah, you know, this old thing about we're going to sell," you know, "freezers to the eskimos is really coming true." so once you meet a guy like that who's showing you something that's happening in his life, and he's an old guy, so he knows the patterns of nature, it's hard to be dispassionate about it. you know that you are part of the problem, and thus you also have to be part of the solution. >> hinojosa: but of course, people are going to say, "well, god, that's dramatic, and it's happening in alaska." >> yeah. >> hinojosa: and so... >> what about here? >> hinojosa: and so what am i supposed to do? you know, they can write checks, and we'll go through a number of things. but what does that person do? >> get informed by it. >> hinojosa: but, you know,

there's almost a part... i'm sorry to interrupt you, but there's almost a part of people who say, "you know what? we have too much information. all the time we're hearing about the climate crisis." and it's almost as if people are saying, "it just feels like it's talked about all the time," and so then therefore the crisis nature of it... so when you say "get informed," it's like, "get informed how?" like, in what way are we supposed to be getting informed that's going to be different? >> hinojosa: you know, i think you have to personalize it. you have to make it real to your life. and i think one of the first things you can do is find out how much carbon you actually use. so you can do a carbon audit. it's not that hard to do. lots of web sites do it. our own web site, you know, at nature.org, which is the nature conservancy's web site, will help you do it. it's a quick thing you can do, it takes five minutes, and it'll give you a sense of how much carbon you're using. and it might surprise you where you're going to emit the most amount of carbon, what part of your lifestyle. it might not be your driving. it might be your house. it might be, you know, the kind of food you eat. and you can make small changes.

this is what i believe. i think we can knock our carbon emissions down by 20% right now, you and i, without changing anything major about our lifestyle. and you wouldn't notice the difference. >> hinojosa: so, for example? >> for example, you know, driving patterns, food you buy, how much you heat every room in your house, leaving things plugged in when you're not using it. you know, i just left for a big trip, and when i left my house i didn't just, you know, turn things off. i actually unplugged them. not your refrigerator kind of thing, but my television and vcrs and dvd players and things like that. >> hinojosa: your computers? >> my computers, exactly. because just even having them plugged in keeps them on standby, which means they're, you know, energy vampires, and they're draining a little bit of energy all the time. that's a really simple thing. eating just a little bit of less meat every day or every week can make a difference. it's healthier for you, but meat tends to be very heavy in terms of how much carbon goes in to produce... >> hinojosa: that's what my husband the vegetarian... he's like, "you know what?

you want to talk about being green? >> good karma. >> hinojosa: stop eating meat." and actually, i did. i stopped eating red meat, because... you know, just because i was tired of it. but... >> you'd be surprised. just go and look. do the carbon calculator yourself, and i bet you just that change probably has knocked you down by 20%, just that one change. >> hinojosa: okay. >> and i'm not even telling people not to eat meat. i'm just saying eat just a little bit less. it's probably healthy for you, because most western diets are hugely, you know, tilted in the wrong direction in terms of red meat. >> hinojosa: but we may be eating less meat, but does that mean that the industry itself is therefore... >> it... >> hinojosa: ...contracting, and then that's what's having the impact, right? >> right. so there is a chain. i mean, obviously, yes. absolutely. so if you buy less stuff, or, you know, fly less, or, you know, heat your house less, or eat less meat, it is going to have a downstream impact. but i actually think that over the long run it actually helps everyone. you know, i was in arizona a year or so ago, a couple years ago, and i watched in a ranching

community in douglas, arizona, which is not exactly the... >> hinojosa: it's on the border. >> on the border, and it's not exactly a place where conservation is the first word out of people's mouths. >> hinojosa: right. >> i watched a room of 50 cowboys... you know, this is with hats and cattle dogs sitting right next to them in cowhide jackets, complete dead silence in this room while a scientist was telling them about what was happening to their range land because of climate change. and the scientist was basically saying, "did you guys know that last year was the first year you didn't have frost on your land?" and every head in the room nodded. and he said, "you know that it means it's going to be a really bad fire season this year." every head nodded. those guys were frightened. they really were frightened. so, you know, they're losing their livelihood for a host of reasons, and i don't think that adjusting our diet by ten, 20 percent is ultimately going to make, you know, most ranchers just immediately go out of business. that isn't what i'm trying to push here. >> hinojosa: so how many people actually, sanjayan, have to go to nature.org and take the test

to figure out... i mean, in order for it to have a real impact. how do you measure these things? >> that's a really tricky question that you just asked, how you measure the impact of the work you do. i actually think every person should do it-- every single person on the planet. every single person certainly in the us who has an access to a web site should be able to do this and find out what their impact is and make small adjustments as they see fit. and then make bigger adjustments in terms of, you know, what you learn about, what kind of legislation you push for or ask for. that's what informed citizenry is. and think of it as an insurance policy. here's the deal-- if we are completely wrong on this, we've lost some money and we've lost some economic steam. but if we are right and climate change is happening as the most august body of scientists, like the national academy of scientists, is telling us, we don't have another planet to have a do-over again. and that's where it becomes really serious. you know, you don't really have

another chance at this. so you... you know, the cost of dealing with it today is about the equivalent of one latte a week from starbucks. if you wait 50 years from now... >> hinojosa: for everybody in the united states, or for everyone... >> yeah, every person in the western world. and it just gives you a sense of how much. it isn't a huge amount of money. it's significant, but it's not huge. you wait 20 years, you wait 30 years, the cost rises dramatically-- by an order of magnitude. so deal with the problem now when you can still actually deal with it, or deal with it later. either way it's going to happen. >> hinojosa: but still, it feels like for so many people, like... and so when someone who's quite... someone makes a statement that's considered quite controversial... we were talking about this. this is from bangladesh. and one of the top environmentalists of bangladesh, which is the country that's on the front lines of kind of receiving all of the impact of global warming-- floods, you know... >> sure.

>> hinojosa: and he says, "well, you know, what's going to have to happen is that the united states... i have a calculation, a mathmatical calculation, that the amount of land we lose because of global warming, the united states and china and india that are producing the carbon emissions that are causing this, you're going to have to take this number of bangladeshis, because they are environmental refugees." and then people are suddenly like, "wait a second. no, no, no, no, no." then it almost feels like, "wow, so we're going to have to actually see people who are environmental refugees?" then it begins to feel a little bit more real. or... >> absolutely right. so there's entire nations... and bangladesh is really on the forefront, you're right. but places like the maldives, which will just completely disappear... and those people have to go somewhere. and they're generally going to go to western countries. so there's going to be a huge change in patterns of how people move. but to be honest, you don't have to go that far. you know, miami is right in the path of this. a lot of coastal florida, a lot of boston, a lot of the eastern

seaboard, is really going to see the impact of rising sea levels. and those people are going to have to move back from there. and as people move back, then there's impact further and further away. so for me, you know, i look at climate change as being... you know, it's a unique problem. we're the only... you know, it's the only environmental problem where every single person is contributing to it. and because every single person is contributing to it-- you, me, and everyone else-- you can't just point to the bad guy. you can't say, "it's the loggers over there," or, "it's these people over there." we're all doing it. and so the only way to get a handle on it is for us all to then take collective action. it's really a unique problem. >> hinojosa: so when you think about communities that are in this country victims of a kind of environmental racism, for example, and you think about the fact that these are poor, predominantly of-color comunities that are being dumped on, and all kinds of reasons... for all kinds of reasons, what do you say about the fact that,

in the world in which you move, nature conservancy, these very high-powered kind of... not elite, but important conservation and nature institutions in our country, do these people... >> yeah. >> hinojosa: ...from these communities, predominantly of color, poor americans, do they have a voice? >> yeah, great question. so the environmental movement, for the most part, the western environmental movement i would say, over the last 50 years, has not done as good a job as it ought to in dealing with the poorest of the poor and the people who are going to be most impacted by, you know, global changes, and have the least ability to do something about it. i think that is definitely changing today, and i think that the reason it's changing is because i think that both these sides are understanding that they're just two sides of the same coin. you know, when conservationists

have looked at people, they've often seen people as the problem. we want to create a national park to keep people out. >> hinojosa: right. >> you know, we want to do this because people are the problem. i know what that thinking is all about, but people are also the solution. and it's not about... you're not protecting something from people, you're protecting it for people. we've spent so much time thinking about where we want to do conservation we haven't thought about why we want to actually do it. >> hinojosa: so is that a conversation, essentially, that within your own institution, nature conservancy... >> absolutely. it is a thriving conversation within our own organization, and frankly within all big conservation organizations right now. like, when you go... especially when you go outside the united states, where real poverty and hard poverty is hitting you. and do you just ignore the people and just focus on nature? and, you know, i make no apology, and my own background really forces me, you know, and inspires me to live in a place where there's big animals that can take my head off. i like that. >> hinojosa: you mean in missoula. >> in montana. >> hinojosa: in missoula, montana.

>> i love that about it, right? but not everyone is so stimulated by that. and for poor people living on the margins of nature, you know, they have real livelihoods and real needs. now, here's the good news-- what we find out is that for poor people, nature is frankly even more important than it is for the rich and well off. >> hinojosa: because? >> because if the river dries out, they don't have an alternate source for getting water. if the forest does not have trees anymore, they do not have an alternate source for heating their homes. you know, there are 149 million people in the pacific rim who feed on fish. that is their primary source of protein. if the fish go off from the reef, if there's a massive dieoff of coral, bleaching happens, and they lose their potency to have... you know, to produce fish, those people will starve. so what i have found is when i've traveled into rural areas, they're not calling it conservation. they don't use that word. but nature is incredibly important to the poor and downtrodden, because they have no chance of replacing.

they can't go to the store and buy a bottle of water. >> hinojosa: but i'm thinking about the piece that you did when you... a very personal piece that you did. was it also for discovery? this was when you went to sierra leone. >> i did that for the bbc and then animal planet, yeah. >> hinojosa: and then animal planet. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: and you were born in sri lanka, your parents both worked for the united nations, you're living in this little village... >> in west africa. >> hinojosa: in west africa, sierra leone. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: love it that when you were going to school with the kids in sierra leone they all looked at you and called you the white guy. >> yeah, sure. >> hinojosa: but you go back to see the impact that war has had on nature in sierra leone, and there's a moment where you have this conversation where you're with one of your friends, who has all the chimpanzees. >> oh, yes, yes. >> hinojosa: who's protecting the chimpanzees. all of these orphan chimpanzees, which was also kind of extraordinary. and you have this conversation like, "there's a lot of poor people who live right outside of

here, and we're talking about protecting the animals." >> yeah. right, that was a great moment, you know? and he's an old friend of mine. and his whole... his philosophy was there was a lot of organizations that were thinking about human needs, why not have one organization thinking about animal needs. i come at it from a little bit different perspective. you know, when people say to me, "look, how can i think about the forest or the tigers in india when there's, you know, millions of people who are starving?" i say that's true, but the tradeoff is not real. it's a false tradeoff. it's a false dichodomy that people are setting up for you. if you said to me, "poverty in india would disappear, but we'd have to get rid of the tigers," it might be a tradeoff that i might be willing to consider, and a lot of people would be willing to consider it. the truth of the matter is, if the last 2,000 tigers that are left in india today disappear, all you'd be left behind is poor people in india and no tigers. i've never, ever seen a situation where poverty has

disappeared or gone away through the loss of an environmental service. i haven't seen it. so people set that up and say, "well, if not for that national park, we'd all be rich." no, it doesn't really happen. if not for the national park, you'll still be poor, and you won't even have that option to exercise it in the future. >> hinojosa: so does that mean that as a conservationist, you... one of your focuses is actually alleviating poverty? >> right. so it's a slippery slope there, right? >> hinojosa: because some people might say, "wait a second, as a conservationist..." >> "i just gave you money for conservation. what are you doing doing work that, you know, care or oxfam or some other organization should do?" we have to keep our ball... our eyes on the mission. and the mission is to protect nature. but how we do it and why we do it can definitely change. so my whole philosophy has been, unless local people are willing to take a stake in that nature and say, "this is important to our livelihoods, it's a real issue for us, it ranks in the top five issues along with

health care and kids and security and so on and so forth," it won't ever be sustainable. and the minute the money dries out-- and the money will always dry out, the money coming from the us or from western world to protect these places-- it'll be an open... you know, it'll be open season again. so for me, it's all about trying to convince local people, showing them the link and making it explicit that if they manage their nature, their natural resources well, it will actually benefit them over the long run. now, there are some cases where you're down to the last. look, you've got, you know, 300 mountain gorillas, you've got to go in there and protect it, go in there and protect it. and there are some cases where you just have to give food aid, because there are refugees on the move, and you can't talk about, you know, nature and all that. you just have to give them food or medicine or whatever. but in a lot of cases, in maybe the majority of the cases, that link can be made and strengthened. >> hinojosa: but what about when you hear... when you see what's happened with the poor, which is, "you know what? i do have to take down that

tree, because i need to build the fire, because i need to... and i'm going to keep on cutting down the trees as fast as i possibly can." and then people are saying, "well, you see? that's the problem, is that you've got too many people, and people are using up the resources." and if they're poor and they're desperate, they're going to do what they have to do. >> right, so that's called the tragedy of the commons, which is that if there's a resource out there, and it's a collective resource, there's an accelerating chain where each individual is trying to maximize their gain, and it keeps happening. interestingly enough, a woman recently by the name of elinor ostrum won the nobel prize for work that essentially says not always, under circumstances, under certain conditions, people can manage a resource for the common good over a long period of time. the trick is, how do we strengthen those levers that allow them to do that? it isn't always the case that people will go down this accelerating path. if there's urgent need, you have to meet those urgent needs.

but once you get out of that absolute survival stage, you can think forward. look, you know, i've gone on a few trips to indonesia recently, because i think it's a fascinating and complicated country, even though my experience is mostly in africa. and i'll tell you something-- i was with a guy by the name of mohammad, and he works for the nature conservancy. and he was telling me how he goes to these villages, and instead of talking to them about marine protective areas-- you know, "set aside this area for fish"-- which he got nowhere with, he now talks about fish banks, banking for fish. he says, "look, this is really a savings account for you guys." and all of a sudden the villagers are turned on. they want to now collectively establish marine protected areas where fish are safe and breed, they can grow to big sizes and thus breed, and then the spillover is then harvested by communities. but just turning the words around and calling it a fish bank and giving people that connection has made the world of difference to him. >> hinojosa: so as we wrap up,

sanjayan, what do you want people to talk away from this? you know, you said get informed. >> sure. well, first of all, don't get depressed, right? it's still a fun world out there. you know, we have this thing that said, "look, at least try to outlive, you know, those guys." so go out there and enjoy the natural world. it's still a fascinating and amazing place. but definitely get informed. don't be sitting... don't sit this one out. don't sit this one out. you don't get a do-over. we are really the luckiest generation on the planet. you know, we... 50 years ago we didn't know what was going to happen. 50 years from now, it really would be too late. but we're in this narrow band-- why wouldn't you want to be born right now?-- where we can see the future and actually have time to do something about it. >> hinojosa: all right, but give us the list. give us... just because i want to leave our audience with a few concrete things. >> sure. >> hinojosa: get informed. >> join a conservation organization, whether it's the nature conservancy or a local organization in your backyard, that's fine. because that'll get you informed in your local community. >> hinojosa: okay. >> let your kids lead you. kids right now in school are a

little bit ahead of the parents, and they will tell you... you know, my niece is going around telling me when to turn off the lights, and she's sort of reverse engineering my family, who has been not as fast at adopting these things as i maybe would have liked myself. so that's great. so let them lead, you know? let them lead. have fun doing it, and give. give. you know, right now the environmental movement is so down the list of people's worries. move it up the list. it is as important as health care, security, and education. >> hinojosa: and can i ask you, sanjayan, what do you do in your own life? i mean, how do you kind of do this balance? because you're out there talking about conservancy... conserving everything possible, and yet... >> my mea culpa, the one thing that i'm not very good at, is i fly a lot. >> hinojosa: that's what i was going to say. >> now, i'm trying to do more teleconferencing, i'm trying to use... you know, cisco has this thing called telepresent. it's a great sort of system where you can really be in the same room, essentially, with people. but flying is my worst vice.

i drive a prius, i live in a pretty small, modest house, i'm thoughtful about how i heat it, i'm thoughtful about my energy use in terms of that. i watch what i eat. i'm a very careful consumer, particularly of fish. don't ever eat a big predator, is a good rule of thumb. don't eat something that's older than you is another good rule of thumb. so i try to make the changes in my own personal life as best as i can. >> hinojosa: all right. the one thing that you want all of us to do today? >> well, that's easy. look-- you know, just go check out the nature conservancy's web site. it's nature.org. it's an easy one. it will at least get you thinking and get a conversation going with people around you. i think that's fine. and take a walk today. go out there, take a walk today. i don't care what the weather is, just do it. >> hinojosa: okay, and we'll leave with don't get depressed-- we can do this. >> please don't get depressed. it'll never get you out of bed. >> hinojosa: thank you so much. >> sure, thank you, maria. >> hinojosa: good luck.

continue the conversation at wgbh.org/oneonone. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

- [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy and by klru's producer's circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas community. - i'm evan smith, he's an award winning novelist, short-story writer, and academic who's 26 works of fiction over an amazing four decades include, world's end, tortilla curtain, tooth and claw, wild child, the harder they come, and the road to wellville. his latest, the terranauts, has just been published. he's t. c. boyle, this is overheard. let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and, over time, took it on.