WTF COP26
In this episode, Marc and Sarah discuss the latest Conference of the Parties and whether the outcomes from that meeting matched our expectations, and, real talk, what we expect to happen next. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, on the 10th day of COP26.
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[00:00:29] Sarah: I'm trying out using my phone as a webcam because it's better in low light. So there might be, I dunno, a delay. How do I look? Am I in sync with my words?
[00:00:39] Marc: There's a little bit of a delay. Yeah. And you got this cool icon on your leg.
[00:00:45] Sarah: That's the app I'm using. Cause I didn't pay for it.
Anyway, we are gathered here today to record another episode of the, we are climate designers podcast, the raising hell edition or series. This is about the eighth, I think, episode in this series. So we've got quite a collection recorded. We just released the second one today on our podcast. So if you'd rather listen slash watch while we are doing these live, instead of waiting for them to come out on the podcast, you can follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/climatedesigners.
And following us there should give you a notification when we go live and you can hop on and watch right there. If anyone is watching us live, please say hi in the chat. Let us know. It would be great to hear from you, let us know if you had any questions, be part of the show. That's the whole point.
Today, we decided that we wanted to find out what the heck is going on with cop 26, neither Marc, nor I have been following the proceedings very closely. So we decided that we're just going to get ourselves caught up, live on stream and figure out what the heck is going on and discuss it. So it's new to us if it's new to you too, great, follow along!
For those that don't know, cop 26 is conference of the parties. I believe the 26 is how many meetings they have and they meet once a year. Is that right? So they've been doing this for 26 years.
[00:02:35] Marc: Maybe we should meet and other throughout the year as well.
[00:02:41] Sarah: Pretty sure it's an annual thing.
And this is the 26th year. And just thinking about that is just mind blowing in and of itself. We'll get into this. I am sure. But in actually in the second episode, which I mentioned that I did publish today, I was listening to it today or yesterday. And I remember that I had mentioned in that second episode my hopes and dreams, like my wildest hopes and dreams for cop 26, what could possibly come out of it.
And it doesn't sound like it's going that way. They still have two more days of. Conferencing. Oh yeah. I was going to say more about what it is. It's, the conference of the parties. So it's United nations, all of the countries in the United nations. It's what came, it's what brought forth the Paris agreement.
So I believe it's all of the countries involved in the Paris agreement. And it's basically delegates negotiators who get together every year to discuss what the heck they're going to do about climate. And that's why I'm. So my mind is so boggled by thinking that it's the 26th year, but when you dive into the history of all of the conference of the parties it's a long kind of exhausting series of negotiations between the countries about forming agreements and treaties and all this stuff.
Leading up to the Paris agreement. There were agreements that were going to go into place before the Paris agreement. And then usually it was the United States actually that pulled out. And then if the United States wasn't in a bunch of other big polluting countries would then pull out and the whole thing would fall apart.
So it's really been kind of a shit show for many years. And most of that has been the United States as well.
Including Donald Trump, pulling out of the Paris agreement and then bite and putting the us back in. And it's just, it's a humongous mess. It's a big mess. But I think most of us had high hopes that this time would be different because we don't have Trump in office anymore. We have fight in who put us into the Paris agreement again and has made some pretty big claims about intentions to do something about climate.
And yeah, in the second episode I had said my biggest, most wildest far-reaching dreams would be for all of these countries to come together and make an agreement. About like a whole new economy that doesn't rely on growth because the global economy right now relies on 3% growth. We've talked about this before, which means the entire world has to produce and therefore pollute more 3% more every year, which means even if we transform our entire energy system to non-fossil fuel, renewable electricity energy, and get rid of fossil fuels completely the amount of minerals and water and just deforestation to even create that much renewable infrastructure.
We have to do all of that again in about 30 or 40 years. And then again, in 30 or 40 years after that, like that 3% growth requires growth and energy growth in mining growth in deforestation growth in like a whole lot of destructive stuff. Okay. What we really need to do is for those countries to come together and renegotiate, that everybody knows everybody money.
At this point, the 3% growth goes towards paying back those debts. When the economy is not growing, we go into a recession and debts, don't get paid and new jobs are not created and people get unemployed and it's just bad news. And that is all by design. So what we need is a different system that aims to reach a steady state.
So we can just get off of fossil fuels, meet our needs and not grow anymore, not polluted anymore. Live within the bounds that this planet is physics require of us. Anyway, that was my big hopes and dreams. So that didn't, that doesn't look like it's going to happen. So where should we start?
Mark? You've read some stuff. I've read some stuff. We're going to read some stuff online and get ourselves caught up and up to speed with what the heck is going on.
[00:07:14] Marc: Yeah. I have no idea where to start. We could just break down exactly what you just shared in the last few minutes, and that could be the whole podcast right there.
[00:07:21] Sarah: Have you checked out any bad articles or videos or anything like that?
[00:07:25] Marc: Yeah, I've been trying to get a diverse set of sources on my feed and a variety of platforms. Social, obviously there's a lot of great Instagram accounts. I follow a ton of climate newsletters. For better or worse.
I try to read some of them. I can. I know you and I earlier talked about the New York times comment forward had to an update on this latest deal that happened just earlier today. Wednesday, I guess us
[00:07:52] Sarah: time. Yeah. And we're recording this Wednesday, November 10th.
[00:07:56] Marc: Yeah. So a few hours old that piece of news came in and I'm trying to find my notes.
[00:08:02] Sarah: Yeah. Let's dive into it to guess just to educate ourselves and I don't know anyone else. Cause I like as a designer, my whole life. We're usually pretty busy with the work that we're doing. In general design is pretty demanding of your focus and attention, and you kinda have to focus and attend to the projects that you're working on.
And so it's hard to also pay attention to the things that are going on in the news. Like some of the, be more hardcore environmental activists do. So I imagine that a lot of the people who might be watching or listening to this are in the same boat as you and me and mark were like, we're interested in this stuff, but it's just like the amount of time and attention that we have to put towards it is very limited.
So it's hard to keep up.
[00:08:54] Marc: Yeah. I'm so behind on my climate stuff this last semester, last few months.
[00:09:01] Sarah: Yeah. Do you want to start with the New York times? Yeah.
[00:09:04] Marc: Yeah, no. I want to go back to this deal that was released earlier today. It's basically a draft and not a deal, a draft that urges countries to revisit and strengthen in the next year.
Their plans for cutting planet warming, greenhouse gas emissions, the draft also urges nations to quote, accelerate the phasing out of coal and to stop subsidizing oil and gas. That's huge. If that actually does happen,
[00:09:30] Sarah: that's
[00:09:30] Marc: pretty good keyword if it actually does.
[00:09:34] Sarah: So where are you reading this
[00:09:35] Marc: from a New York times article that we mentioned earlier and it just refreshed, just I lost my
[00:09:41] Sarah: place.
I love it. When that happens. So what I have on my screen from the New York times is I guess I'll just share my screen here so that we can show some visuals while we're talking.
Okay. We headline says what happened at cop 26 on Wednesday, China and USA say they'll enhance climate ambition. And just the wording of that, like who comes up with these things "enhance." And I love that it's in quotes. What does that mean?
[00:10:10] Marc: Do you remember? One of the first video means years ago the enhance video.
That's what
it feels like, every time. I see that word, I think about going back to that main video of all the different clips and movies and TV shows of let's enhance that.
[00:10:24] Sarah: Can we enhance that? And it zooms in on this really blurry pixelated piece of camera footage, and then you just I don't know, click a button or something in the artificial intelligence, makes it to super cool, clear through their movie magic,
[00:10:38] Marc: it's like a nod to that, let's enhance the climate ambition, but that's how
[00:10:43] Sarah: I read it.
It's like a joke, right? Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Enhanced climate ambition. And then the second word there, that's a joke is ambition. Is it just me or I read ambition as not action, like aims, like wishes
[00:11:00] Marc: goals.
[00:11:01] Sarah: Okay. Anyway the countries vow to do more, to cut greenhouse gases in a, an agreement that commits Beijing to addressing its methane emissions. Here's what you need to know. China and the U S say, they'll do more to cut emissions this decade, the working draft calls for a faster end to coal and tells countries to stop subsidizing oil and gas.
That's the part that I do,
[00:11:24] Marc: Yeah. That's, like I said, if it, that actually goes through, that'll be huge.
[00:11:28] Sarah: And then there's something about sticking points. I don't really know what that means. Six big automakers and dozens of countries agree to phase out gas card sales. So that's actually pretty huge too.
I clicked on one of those and it said some of them, I think I do have this open some of the car makers were saying, they're going to phase out gas car sales as early as 2025 or 2030. So that's really soon. Which means you won't be able to buy a gas car, at least from that car maker. And then it said something like the US was not involved.
So any US car makers did not I don't know, like pulled out of that deal
[00:12:04] Marc: or something and. Transportation secretary mayor, Pete, his response was more or less. We're going to focus on our own problems
[00:12:12] Sarah: here at home.
[00:12:13] Marc: That fuck dude, it's such a political. Yeah. It's such a political line. It's
[00:12:18] Sarah: like this one wants to focus on saving lives rather than saving the planet.
What do you think we're doing
[00:12:24] Marc: exactly?
[00:12:26] Sarah: Where do you think that these lives
[00:12:27] Marc: live? And again, our climate crisis, the changing climate knows no borders.
[00:12:34] Sarah: I think that these people do not understand what it is that we're actually dealing
[00:12:39] Marc: with. I think they understand. I think that there's they have interests in other places.
They have people, behind the scenes, urging them, pushing them towards certain, goals or ambitions or policy.
[00:12:53] Sarah: Those things are true. And if you put something in terms of focus on saving lives, rather than saving the planet as if they are mutually exclusive. Sure. Yeah. I don't think you understand the situation.
[00:13:08] Marc: Yeah. Again, that's a, we can talk about that next time we jump on.
[00:13:12] Sarah: Yeah. I am just like making funny faces. I don't even know if my camera's up to speed yet. I'm just like looking at that, like.
[00:13:19] Marc: yeah. So I think the two big things that you and I pulled out of that bulleted list, that summary Yeah. So the draft thing about phasing out coal and to stop subsidizing or like that, I think that's a huge push now again, whether or not that actually happens who goes first who's going to lead that part of the draft that is still yet to be determined.
[00:13:41] Sarah: We both see the challenge of climate change as an essential and a severe one as two major powers in the world, China and the United States. We need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change. I like that too. Because I remember it, not that long ago, during the Trump administration, particularly there was a lot of delay ism or denialism of not doing any climate action.
If China's not going to do it, or vice versa. And so now it's like China and the United States are coming both coming forward together and saying, it's our responsibility to do this, blah, blah, blah, which is a completely different tone, note that they've been singing than before. So that's, I think that's a good, that's a good thing, right?
Like it's
[00:14:32] Marc: progress. Yeah. You can't do much without China.
[00:14:35] Sarah: Yeah. And to be fair, China has done a lot in the last, I don't know, even like 10 years as far as cutting back on coal, I believe. Yeah. And a lot of that is because the pollution, the air pollution, the air quality in some of the big cities where a lot of production is happening is, visibly and you can feel, you can smell it, you can see it, you can feel it.
So they have that felt experience and motivation to cut back on all that air pollution.
[00:15:07] Marc: So some other things that this article pulled out that happened today. Yesterday on Tuesday, speaking of yesterday the UN researchers released a report, same article Sarah. So I'm just still sticking with us. They released a report that found that under country's current pledges to reduce emissions, the earth is on track to warm by 2.5 degrees Celsius, 4.5 Fahrenheit.
So if we just stick with what we're doing now, because every country thinks they're doing the best, we hear this all the time. Like we're doing all, we can, all the other people that are the naysayers, they're like we just can't switch over to renewables tomorrow. Like we need to, the status quo.
If every country just sticks to the status quo, we are in big trouble. So it coming from the UN it wasn't new news, but it was like them saying, Hey, y'all seriously real talk. So I thought that was really interesting that report. It might have all this, but it's also one of those no shit.
[00:16:06] Sarah: Yeah. The,
I guess what I'm asking in my head about is the tangible actions that come from these things. So I'm looking at things like the document will be used as a template to strike a deal. Okay. Still a lack of firm deadlines and enforcement mechanisms. Is it all just empty words? It's really frustrating.
[00:16:30] Marc: Yeah. And it's two weeks, right? The last day is November 12th. You can do a lot in two weeks, I'm sorry, but you could do a lot in two weeks. And if by day 10, right now they have frameworks, they have a template, they have whatever it is that you just shared out. Like really, and I know this is big heady, complicated stuff, but maybe the, maybe cops should be 30 days into a whole month or just lock everyone in a, not let them out,
[00:17:01] Sarah: yeah. The original Bretton woods, the agreement where the countries and it wasn't all the countries, it was just like basically the UK and the United States and maybe a couple of other European countries where they decided that they were going to focus on an economy that grows 3% to repay each other for their debts from recovering, from world war II, basically.
That was all hammered out in 10.
[00:17:25] Marc: So if it took 10 days to create a system that more or less has destroyed the planet or is destroying the planet, we can spend 10 days cleaning up at least 10 days,
[00:17:39] Sarah: yeah,
[00:17:40] Marc: I want to pause you right there. I'm seeing your screen. I have this pulled up myself. Tensions have flared over what sorts of financial aid richer countries should give poorer ones to deal with the rising damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms.
And while there is broad agreement that most nations aren't cutting their greenhouse gas emissions quickly, there's far less consensus about how to get deeper reductions. It's that the first sentence there really stood out for me. And I was talking to Rachel about this not to get too hippy dippy for those who don't know, I live in San Francisco.
Sometimes peace, love and happiness comes out in me and I'm all about it, but so cute, zooming out. I really do feel like as much as we're talking about cutting emissions, renewable energy, all that, climate stuff at the same time, I really do believe that we need to have a conversation around just being more kind and loving to one another, because all of this is going to take massive collaboration.
There's going to be a lot of sacrifice. We have to really understand how humans work. And so with that, we need to really work on ourselves and our relationships with one another. So when I read that tensions flared over was it's like, all these countries have representative from every country, the rich ones, and the poor ones are in a room.
And I can only imagine kind of their body language and just, if we had some fun with this, vision, you have the poor countries, trying to beg them, please give us, some help, please, do your part in. And the more richer countries are just like, nah, bro, we're good.
Like how fucked up is that? If you see someone on the street that is in need of help, in a dire situation and their life depends on it, you're going to help them. And so I feel like I'm not trying to do a broad stroke of that. We don't care for one another and we don't share love with people and all that hippy-dippy stuff.
I'm just wondering, how do we bring that into these types of conversations with politicians, with corporations? At the end of the day, they're all humans too, right?
[00:19:37] Sarah: It's actually less hippy-dippy than all of that. Like the example that you said, if you see somebody on the street who's suffering and you're going to want to help them in that scenario.
I think implicit is that person is suffering. And that suffering is unrelated to you in any way. Like you don't know that person, you have no relationship with that person. They're a stranger. There, there are scenarios completely separate from yours, but just human to human peace, love happiness.
You want to reach out and help them because you're human, they're human. And you share that we have a common struggle and all that stuff. That's the peace, love and happiness angle. But the truth of the matter is in this situation, that person that you see on the street, who's suffering is your like employee.
And you have profited off of their hard work and misery and suffering for 50 years or something. And now they're at a point where they need a little bit of I don't know, they need a loan. They're coming to you for a loan to. Expand their whatever facilities or production capabilities or whatever it is to modernize their production because they're sitting there, with bare feet in the mud making, whatever it is that you, their employer has, mandated that they make.
So there's actually between these countries the richer countries and the poor ones. There is a relationship there. They're not in their own little bubbles and they act as if, oh, you're struggling. That's on you, bro. I'm good. I'm gonna keep holding onto the money that I've made because I did it better than you did.
And that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But no, the truth of the matter is. The countries that are poor, have been providing resources, minerals, a lot of these raw materials that have then been manufactured into goods and sold for a profit by the richer countries. Like this whole planet is connected and the economy is global.
And so they're not operating in a bubble. They're not poor because they just didn't manage to do their thing. The richer countries are richer because they got a head start on industrializing their economies, and then they Put a system together in like Bretton woods and further world bank stuff where the countries that were ahead of the industrialization game made the rules and they made the rules such that everything benefited them and not the poorer countries that still need to catch up.
And so it's seeing one of your employees who you've been profiting off of on the street struggling and asking you for an advance on their payday loan or whatever. And you're saying, no, that's on you, bro. But thanks for all the hard work.
So I don't think it's as hippy-dippy as you you make it, it's actually pretty
[00:22:56] Marc: nasty. I like that. Diving deeper into their relationship. It's that last part of that first sentence that really stood out it's the fact that they're going to be the ones being affected by the things that they're not for one didn't create and second that they are not prepared for.
And for me, that is just, again, I just go back to, we also need to have the same conversations around yeah. How do we work with one another. How do we put ourselves in situations that we can empathize more and we can start to develop Yeah, more connections with people that don't look like us so that we understand where they're coming from.
And we perhaps might be able to change how we view them and the rest of the world. And maybe if we get more people to snap out of this individualistic me, my tribe kind of thing. The faster we can really, address this stuff because those people could bring their specific professional skills to the conversation.
Like maybe some of the delay zone that's happening is because those people just don't know how to connect to the stuff on a more personal level. And then once they do, then perhaps they can join the team. Does that make sense? Like maybe we have to start personal first before we expect them to share their skills and talents.
And in this in this fight, Yeah,
[00:24:18] Sarah: I think there's also a bit of the Malthusian element in all
[00:24:23] Marc: of this
[00:24:24] Sarah: and all this. This is the part that we put in our becoming a climate designer course. And when, basically when I see an environmentalist or a piece of climate communication saying poorer communities are going to have to deal with harsher effects from climate change, when they had much less like responsibility for creating the problem in the first case and the environmentalist or the piece of climate communication saying this means, wow, isn't that fair?
In the spirit of fairness or. Our shared humanity and just like ethics and what's good and justice, we shouldn't allow that to happen. But when you look at it from a Malthusian theory, point of view, Malthus basically said, if you help the poor, you're just going to get more poor. And it's a moral failing.
He was a Christian, Reverend, this was in the 1890s or whatever. And good old Christianity teaches us that. I dunno, somehow this, wasn't originally Christianity, but somehow it got twisted into something like this, where if you're poor it's because you've sinned and this is your moral punishment for your failings as a Christian or whatever which is, it's just awful. But basically what that means is if you empathize with somebody with a Malthusian point of view and you listened to that statement of the poor will feel the effects of climate change more than the rich, it sounds like more judgment being rained down upon you by God for your sins.
And the the judgment of the rich is that they get to avoid some of those effects of climate change and everything is the way that it should be. And we don't need to change a thing. It is the exact opposite. Then how the environmentalist's or the climate communicators want people to take it. And so they hear that I think it's the same thing that happened during COVID.
Everybody was like, oh my God, let's, deal with COVID until statistics started coming out that lower income communities and people of color were dying from COVID at higher rates than white people and affluent communities. And it was like the next week we saw Karen out on the street protesting against lockdown in America and people going to church and not masking and saying, I am protected by Jesus's blood or whatever.
Like they literally thought they were immune because of. Religion or something because they were white. I just you have to try to empathize with this point of view, even though it's madness and realize that the communication that you're putting out there about oh, this is unjust. This is unfair is actually backfiring against certain people or in the minds of certain people.
[00:27:40] Marc: And I think it also shows otherism. Yeah, in it's full form.
[00:27:46] Sarah: That is absolutely other ism. And you know what? I still have some more research to do, but I saw something today that apparently the whole concept of race was invented by the Portuguese in the 14 hundreds to justify slavery. So like this stuff goes way back,
[00:28:03] Marc: re we've talked about this.
I don't want to get into it because it's a different topic, but there's a great documentary that I really need to rewatch. I saw this a few months ago and next time around, I'm going to sit and take notes. Exterminate all the brutes it's on HBO. I've told you to sign me, Sarah, just to get like a two week trial and just watch that.
And we can watch other things too, but highly recommend everyone who's watching and listening to. If you have HBO max, or if you don't ,sign up for the free trial, highly recommend it. It's a, it's an amazing four-part documentary. Where Raoul Peck an amazing documentary filmmaker decades experience his latest documentary before this was, I'm not your Negro, which rave reviews.
He basically goes on a quest to to go and seek out the root, the roots of racism on a global, at a global scale. I really do wish you all were able to yeah. See it and bring your thoughts and ideas to these these Twitch sessions. We'd love to hear them. I think we might be having some technical difficulties. Sarah, are you there?
[00:29:10] Sarah: I'm here. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Oh,
[00:29:14] Marc: okay. Your video is super slow. So I didn't know if you were trying to talk over me anyway. Yeah. So what were we talking about? Yeah the Portuguese comment that you made, Sarah, it's mentioned in that documentary and I think you're right.
So it was basically made up to yeah. Create the idea that we are superior towards another, group of people that don't look like us.
[00:29:37] Sarah: . One thing that I read that really struck me. I know that we're on a tangent right now, but bear with us because I think it's interesting. It was, talking about Columbus and he was an idiot, but he was what contracted by Spain, the king and queen of Spain to go and do his little thing.
And his little voyage. And he landed in, I think The Bahamas and basically claimed that for Spain. So The Bahamas were then claimed as a Spanish colony and then he grabbed a bunch of indigenous people that he encountered, brought them back to the king and queen of Spain as a gift, as potential slaves, basically.
And the queen of Spain clutched, her pearls or whatever, and said, these are Spanish citizens. This is disgusting. So since they had claimed The Bahamas as a colony of Spain, they no longer saw the people from that place as others. And so therefore could not be enslaved. It's just arbitrary, I don't know if the king and queen of Spain sign a deal with the king and queen of France or whatever.
And now The Bahamas are not a colony of Spain. And so then they could be enslaved. I dunno, it's just, it just feels very arbitrary to me and ridiculous. Like people are, people just shut up
[00:30:56] Marc: and very not to put this lightly. I know there's tons of history and unfortunately millions of people have died because of this idea, but it's also very made up.
Yeah, exactly. And this goes to show that everything in life has been invented at some point in time in some form or another. And so this idea was invented, but even Hey, we should write up a draft an agreement and we both should sign it saying that these people should be, it's so if they just have the thought to make it up and do that, then we can have other things that we can make up and counter that to to invite.
Yeah. I just, I go back to this often, everything in life is invented and if more and more people saw that and realize that I feel like it'll spark so many new thoughts and ideas and questions and visions of the future, because once people realize that everything that is around them, that laptop, the iPhone the idea of a job everything in life it's invented.
If that's the case, then let's start imagining what's possible. Let's invent new things that, as I mentioned, just counter the old stuff. Yeah. I don't know, again, living in San Francisco, man,
[00:32:09] Sarah: No, it's real. And I think it was Antoinette Carroll, who said everything that you see around you has been designed and that means that it can be redesigned.
Same idea. Yeah. I want to share another thing if I may, did you have something on
[00:32:23] Marc: that note though? No, I have a new topic that go ahead.
[00:32:27] Sarah: I also came across this article in rolling stone. And it starts out. It's mostly about Obama's speech. People were talking a little bit about Obama's speech and it's pretty hard hitting and pretty real talk.
So kudos to Jeff Goodell, whoever you are. I like what you did here. I see what you did here. And I like it. So if you go through this article, he's talking about president Obama arrived at the climate conference in Glasgow, like a spirit from another time he wore a black suit gray shirt, tie, as a crowd of star struck delegates, parted, like holy water around him.
They all remembered the happy days with the Paris climate agreement in 2015, when he was the President and Donald Trump was just an orange haired has been reality TV star (he's orange skinned, by the way, yellow haired anyway). And there was for a brief moment, hope that humankind would take dramatic action on the crisis that was threatening the future of civilization.
Seeing Obama walking up to the podium to give his speech was reminder of a better time, one delegate emailed me. So right here, there's he's setting up the dichotomy that I think. I don't know. I don't know if you're aware of, but I've been noticing where people who are like vote blue all the way and just like 100% Democrats.
Yes. Love Obama, right? And of course Republicans hate him. But. People who are even further left than that, which confuses centrists and Republicans, because they think that the Democrat party line is the left, but environmental activists and the most of them were pretty excited about Obama when he was very first elected.
And then he had the really difficult job of having to recover from the recession that he inherited and Chose Obamacare as his thing instead of climate. And, that was his legacy basically. He did take some good actions on climate, but he just didn't do what environmentalist were hoping for.
And he's a really good speaker. He does really good talk. But for most of us, the actions just weren't there and we became very disillusioned on Obama and really like I've even seen some activists go to the point of when Obama gets involved. It's the whole thing is ruined because he does such a good job of putting a shiny bow on things with his talk and his words that people stop being impassioned about action, because they think that it's been taken care of because he's just that good at speaking, but not actually doing things.
So anyway talks about the speech but the heart of his remarks were targeted at young climate activists. He urged them not to give up on politics. You don't have to like it, but you can't ignore it. He told them it was important to reach out to people who are skeptical about the urgency of the climate crisis. It will not be enough to simply mobilize the converted.
It will not be enough to preach to the choir. He acknowledged the generational divide between himself and young activists.
You were right to be frustrated folks in my generation have not done enough to deal with potential cataclysmic problem that you now stand to inherit. That's an understatement. I want you to stay angry. I want you to stay frustrated, blah, blah, blah. Gird yourself for a marathon, not a sprint.
[00:35:39] Marc: Okay. A lot of what you were highlighting, some of his quotes is very much pointing the finger at the crowd is telling them to do this or like this and this. And when in reality, what really needs to happen is that he turns around and walks into these big corporate conference rooms and actually makes the people that are doing the work, destroying the planet making them change their ways.
It's, that's a great example of someone who like what you said in, Obama. Sure. He sucked a lot less than a lot of other presidents, but he still had his at his shit. And it's just another example of politicians those. In and around and from DC, that just, it's all lip service, they deflect, they have the shiny object in their hand over there, so we can all look at it while on the other side of them, behind them.
The work is still being done.
[00:36:34] Sarah: Yeah. So I really liked this part. We're now in the post speech era of the climate crisis, where words don't matter to the people who matter.
You don't want to words anymore. I actually want you to do shit.
[00:36:48] Marc: Did you see Greta Thunberg'sspeech?
[00:36:52] Sarah: No, but he does go into that here as well. Do you have a link to it? Is it on video somewhere? We can show it.
So then he quotes some, activists about what they thought of his speech. I thought president Obama's speech was out of date, to be honest. This was the speech Obama should have given back at cop 15 in Copenhagen in 2009, a dozen years later. So back to what we were saying at the beginning, like seriously at 26 years of this shit it's too late to be vague about why we're failing.
Yeah.
[00:37:22] Marc: Yeah. I will say I'm interacting with a lot of millennials or no, not millennials. What are they? Zoomers zoom people. Gen Z gen Z. Hold on
[00:37:33] Sarah: yeah. So this activist executive director of the sunrise movement, listening to Obama speech, I was reminded of all the broken promises made by leaders in America concerning the climate crisis.
Young and marginalized communities have been betrayed again and again by leaders failing to meet the moment that we're in a climate crisis that is destroying our homes, communities, and futures. This is real like the material conditions that are happening are real. We don't need words to say that we're working on it.
We don't need anyone to tell us this is a marathon, not a sprint. We need real material conditions to change.
[00:38:09] Marc: Yeah. And I was just going to say, the. Young kids, they can smell bullshit a mile away. Yeah. They can call out people. They have no problem calling out people, they demand transparency.
They demand authenticity. They demand people be real and authentic. And if you're not man, they can, they're like a shark when they, get a scent of blood a mile away,
[00:38:32] Sarah: cause we've all been bullshitted for 20 years. I love this one just before Obama took the stage Dominca Lasota, a 19 year old Polish activists tweeted a picture of activists holding up signs that said, show us the money. Lasota wrote nice words about the climate crisis without action mean nothing. $100 billion for climate finance is still missing. Show us the money, not empty climate concern, so that persons 19, and they are very aware of what actually needs to be done.
They're making real legitimate demands. Yeah, it's it's a much different story than the save the planet activists of the seventies. You know what I mean?
[00:39:16] Marc: Very different. I do have that clip of Gretta pulled up. If you want to pause real quick and do that. Let's do it. I won't play the whole thing, but you'll get the gist
[00:39:26] Sarah: politically. Correct. Green act, bunny hugging or blah, blah, blah. Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah-blah-blah net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah.
net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah, net zero. Blah-blah-blah climate neutral. Blah-blah-blah
this is all we hear from our leaders. Words. That sound great, but so far has led to no action, our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words. Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they've now had 30 years of blah-blah-blah and where has that led us? But of course we can still turn this around.
It is entirely possible. It will take drastic annual emission cuts, unlike anything the world has ever seen. And as we don't have the technological solutions that alone can deliver anything close to that means we will have to change. We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible or not.
We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive hope is not a blah-blah-blah hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action and hope always comes from the people.
Wasn't that kind of Obama's message. When he first ran for election was, hope and that coming from the people. Yeah. Yeah. What happened
[00:40:55] Marc: to that guy? The person in the rolling stone article said, it sounded as if Obama should've made the speech back in 2009, so
one, one last thing I'll bring up before we close out another little tidbit from cop 26. I don't know if you've seen this Sarah more than 500 lobbyists from over 100 fossil fuel companies are in Glasgow.
Okay, your video's delayed. So I can't see if that was a sarcastic face or not. There are more obvious, there are more fossil fuel lobbyists at cup 26. Then there are delegates from Puerto Rico, Myanmar Haiti and the Philippines, Mozambique, The Bahamas, Bangladesh and Pakistan combined, and more than double the official indigenous consultancy that consultancy.
See that isn't that crazy? That is wild. And last time we chatted, last time we did this, we talked about trust.
[00:41:49] Sarah: Like it definitely shows who these negotiations are for. Yeah. Yeah.
A little bit more quoting from the rolling stone article. That's I think related to what you're talking about. To activists in the streets what's happening in the conference center is theater. Many are asking what it'll take for people in power to wake up Gretta set an SBH, but let's be clear.
They're already awake. They know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what priceless values they're sacrificing to maintain business. As usual timber pointed out that the fossil fuel industry delegation at the Glasgow conference was bigger than the delegation of any single nation she tweeted.
I don't know about you, but I sure am not comfortable with having some of the world's biggest villains influencing and dictating the fate of the world. And then it says other activists were even more cutting inside that conference of polluters. The climate criminals are hiding behind barbed wire and fences and lines of police.
We're not going to accept their suicide pact. So I find that really, yeah, cutting and really telling, it's supposed to be the conference of the parties where like everybody negotiates, who's a party to this thing, but it's now being known among the activists as the conference of polluters. It's a conference of climate criminals.
[00:43:21] Marc: Conference of the puppets.
[00:43:23] Sarah: Yeah. Their suicide pact. And most of them, the generational divide and the age divide is really obvious where most of the people who are inside cop 26 are in their sixties.
And most of the people outside marching are, like average age, 20 years old. Yeah.
[00:43:43] Marc: Yeah. They're going down in a blaze of glory, they're not going to be around to see the devastation. So they're getting. Yeah they're just gonna coast until their time is up and, just say, fuck it.
Sorry, fam. Yeah.
[00:43:57] Sarah: So I'm no longer hanging my hopes on anything really beneficial coming from cop 26.
[00:44:03] Marc: And I was talking to someone the other day about cop and, I've always said this and I've always had this train of thought even before the climate space, but I've never held my breath for anything coming out of DC or any other state Capitol, or I don't put all my eggs in that one basket.
And I think there's at least in the U S a very long track record. If you do the research that shows you why you should think the same, because. Politicians are in bed with corporations. And when it's in spaces like this, where they're literally affecting the atmosphere of our planet to while extracting resources, to put more profit into their bank accounts, and they know that they're doing that, it's just crazy.
And then they have the puppets who are elected, who should be working for us, but not really. They have those puppets pulling the levers and writing the policy and doing their little squiggly stuff around all these slimy other politicians to get their take on or to get theirs, they're just working for them.
And so I think we really need to, this goes back to my earlier comment. I think we really need to focus on, communities and more at the local level, not to say that our local, that bumper sticker back in the day, think global act local. Yup. Yeah. Like I remember when I saw that as a kid, as a teenager, I was like, huh, that's interesting.
And I never really got it until much later in life. And I was like I understood the power of that mindset of really having a worldview, doing what you can for the people around you, because if everyone thought that way and did that, then we can really talk about massive positive change.
And so I really do feel like we need to work on us as individuals. We need to start understanding one another and seeing people for who they really are outside of their skin, color, political beliefs, whatever. Like we really got to get on that level because that's how change actually happens. Like we talk about drafts and agreements and deals and policies, whatever, but people.
Human beings on the, or on the other end of that. And yeah, I don't know. I just, we need to focus on the world around us and if we can get more people to buy into that and show them their place in that future world, I think we really do have a shot. Of course we'd still need government too.
So that's the thing, like as much as I want to put energy and focus on us to, to inspire people to, March up the streets and bang their fists on the doors of these large corporations that are polluting the planet. We also still at the same time do in fact need governments to contribute in some way they don't have to do all of it.
And I don't think they should, but I really do think that we can't do this without them. So how do we do both? How do we do that while at the same, also at the same time really. Change the makeup of those people that would be attending COP that should actually be attending COP.
[00:47:04] Sarah: Yeah, I think, the way that I would answer that and it's a non-answer, but it's something along the lines of building.
Building not building back better, but like building better infrastructure wherever we are. And what I mean by that is maybe looking at our local community and I don't know, encouraging community gardening or growing food for each other, finding ways to distribute money or food or needs to your neighbors.
You know what I mean? Finding some way to start building some kind of infrastructure in your local community, because relying on the government to take care of us is just not where it's at anymore. And whether that's volunteering for food, not bombs or, even meals on wheels. I don't know something, but like looking out for each other and.
Building co-ops and building communities and designing systems where we have power as a group, as a community, instead of just staying with the status quo, like to me, it's just whatever you create, wherever you go to work, whatever you work for, make sure that it's building. Something that shifts the power from me and my family to us and our community.
[00:48:19] Marc: And I'm really glad that you've used that, the food example in that, I think, on a more practical level, look at just what we're experiencing with our global supply chain, look at what's going to happen when wildfires destroyed parts of the interstate or flooding or whatever.
We're really whether we like it or not, we really are going to need to do that just because, we can't rely on these, semi-trucks deliver our food, halfway or all the way across the country. Like we, we need to be at that local level because it's, shit's gonna hit the fan and we really do need to rely on each other.
If we were. To survive.
[00:48:54] Sarah: Yep. I think it's time to start moving into, we live in a failed state mode. And if you start, preparing for that now and getting ahead, When the shit hits the fan, as you say we have the things in place. We know where to go in case of emergency. If we need food or we need firewood to keep ourselves warm, or if we need to get out an emergency message or, think about all the stuff that the preppers, my God, I can't believe I'm saying this.
Like it has been saying for years and start doing some of that stuff, start stockpiling and stop relying on the government to take care of us because they just can't respond quickly enough to the crises that are going to start happening. And when they do start happening, the government will start enacting change, but it's just going to be too slow and it's not going to save us.
It's going to be reactionary instead of proactive. And so I think we all need to get proactive and start taking care of each other and start building things that work. And then when you build things that work, sometimes the government looks at that and says, oh, let's just use that and start putting money towards it.
[00:50:06] Marc: Sometimes that works. Yeah. It's it's learning how to be resilient while we learn to adapt, like it's cause we're going to have to adapt, even if everything at COP happens tomorrow, all the positive things that everyone hopes for, we're still decades out.
We're not going to see the effects of all the awesomeness for a good while. Yeah.
[00:50:28] Sarah: It's all so much just talk and urges. And I don't know vows, there's nothing like real in it.
[00:50:35] Marc: So adapting to what's to come, I think is going to be key, which is also not really part of this conversation. Yes, there's climate adaptation, books and organizations, videos, and articles and all that stuff.
I definitely read them, but it's looked down upon because of people don't want to admit that they're going to be walking into this mess. I think it's, of course we all want to hope for solving it, but again, that's going to take time. So there's that like limbo state, right?
There's that awkward period that we no doubt will enter and for, and we don't know how long and sooner we're in it. Yes.
[00:51:09] Sarah: Yes. Like I was like I said, at the beginning, I was hinting that declaration on what comes out of cop 26. Cause this is the moment where we need like really big action and I don't see that happen.
[00:51:20] Marc: Yeah. Everyone was saying that this is the time and this is the cop. If it's not this just not going
[00:51:25] Sarah: to happen, like it's going to be lagging behind, is what I don't think, I don't think literally nothing is going to happen, but it's not going to happen fast enough. So we need to look out for each other now.
Yeah. So I'm, mentally shifting into more of that adaptation mode, more of that build the better world on our own from the grassroots up mode, instead of demanding, like I think we still need to demand from the government, what we want from them. And we need to be very clear about what that is.
I'm still very annoyed at activists who just demand climate action. I would rather, they start putting together real action plans and say, do this and this. Or we demand this, and get very specific But yeah, I think we really need to focus on taking care of each other and taking care of our basic needs.
And trying to build systems mutual aid ways that we can make sure that the most, especially the most marginalized people, who are thought of as disposable by the people in power, we need to start looking out for them. So if you happen to be white, like me or white presenting, like Marc notice that is a place of privilege and use that privilege to stand up for and protect people who are marginalized and thought of as disposable by our politicians and who think that, their lives don't matter.
Like it's awful. And if they're not going to do it, somebody has to we have to take care of each other.
[00:53:00] Marc: Yeah, I really want to build a campfire right now and get some people together and sing kumbaya.
[00:53:07] Sarah: Ah, I think that's a note to leave it on. I don't know if it's a good note, but it's a note
[00:53:12] Marc: singing kumbaya. The younger listeners even know
[00:53:16] Sarah: what that mean because gen Z have kumbaya. Do they have a gen Z version of kumbaya? What's that? I
[00:53:21] Marc: don't even know. I love to know that
[00:53:23] Sarah: gen Z listeners, please let us know what does kumbaya mean to you.
If anything,
[00:53:28] Marc: I'll have to ask my students, what
is
[00:53:31] Sarah: the gen Z equivalent of kumbaya?
[00:53:34] Marc: Love it. Maybe that's our homework. Maybe we look it up
[00:53:38] Sarah: so much to learn so much. All right. Thanks for hanging out, Marc. This has been real as always. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.