The numbers are revealing, in that they show the Trump administration is perfectly capable of finding money when the goal is destruction. But when it comes to protecting Americans from fossil-fueled extreme weather, suddenly we’re told the cupboard is bare.

The Trump administration recently released a proposed budget that would cut NOAA by 26 percent. This proposed $1.6 billion cut—equivalent to about 1.3 days of the war in Iran—would eliminate NOAA climate, weather, and ocean research labs, zero out grants that help improve rainfall and flood prediction, and cut the Integrated Ocean Observing System—our national system for monitoring what is happening in the ocean, where hurricanes strengthen, and where coastal flooding begins. And this comes on top of DOGE-driven layoffs last year that eliminated roughly 880 NOAA jobs, including staff at the National Weather Service.

The stupidity of this is almost difficult to overstate. Because Trump is not proposing to gut NOAA during some calm, stable weather period. He’s doing it at the very moment forecasters are warning that a potentially dangerous El Niño may be on the way.In today's episode, we talk to Craig McLean, the former acting chief scientist of NOAA, who spent more than 40 years at the agency. McLean recently wrote that the NOAA budget request “is not streamlining. It’s sabotage.” McLean knows what it looks like when politics corrupts weather science. You might recall, McLean was the NOAA official at the center of “Sharpiegate,” the infamous Trump-era scandal in which the president falsely claimed Hurricane Dorian was threatening Alabama, then displayed a forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a Sharpie to make him look right. McLean pushed back after NOAA leadership rebuked its own forecasters for correcting the president, calling for an investigation into whether the agency’s scientific integrity policy had been violated. McLean was then relieved of his position.

In our interview, McLean speaks about what these cuts would actually do, why NOAA research matters far beyond “the weather,” what Sharpiegate revealed about scientific integrity under Trump, and why attacking climate science is so dangerous at the exact moment Americans need it most.

In our full, subscribers-only interview with Mike Meno, the communications director for the Center for Climate Integrity, we discuss the ins and outs of Big Oil's push for legal immunity, both in and outside the court.

In related recent news…

* Now may actually be a good time to start shifting away from plastic. The American Prospect reports:

Petrochemical prices are spiking to four-year highs as the key ingredients, known as feedstocks, cannot get out of the Persian Gulf. Roughly $20 billion to $25 billion worth of petrochemical products moves through the strait annually, and about 40 percent of exports of polyethylene, used mostly in packaging and containers, came from the Middle East last year. Polyethylene prices are up 37 percent since February, and polypropylene prices are up 38 percent.

* Oregon passed a law to shift more of the costs of plastic onto producers. But producers are fighting back. Central Oregon Daily reports:

The future of Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act is up in the air after a federal judge said portions of the law may be illegal, and can’t be enforced without full argument. On Feb. 6, Judge Michael Simon issued his initial order in the lawsuit that aimed to overturn the law meant to reform Oregon’s recycling system.

* Millions of pre-term births and thousands of infant deaths linked to phthalates: From NYU Langone:

Exposure to a chemical commonly used to make plastic more flexible may have contributed to about 1.97 million preterm births in 2018 alone, or more than 8 percent of the world’s total, a new analysis of population surveys shows. The chemical was also linked to the deaths of 74,000 newborns, the researchers further estimate…. According to the new work, [phthalate] exposure may have contributed to 1.2 million years lived with disability, a measure of all the years that people have lived or will live with illnesses, injuries, and other health issues caused by being born prematurely.

* New study shows changing your personal care products actually does make a difference. From U.S. Right to Know:

The findings, published in the May issue of Environment International, indicate that switching from conventional personal care products to nontoxic alternatives can rapidly and significantly reduce exposure to harmful chemicals. Even a few changes in only a few days can lower body levels of substances linked to hormone disruption, cancer, developmental problems, and reproductive toxicity, the study shows.

What it actually does is give the fossil fuel industry a permanent shield against lawsuits and state laws that seek to hold the industry financially accountable for climate change, and for misleading the public about the catastrophic health, economic and environmental consequences of using their products.

In this episode, I break down what this bill actually does, how it would shut down climate lawsuits across the country, and why the fossil fuel industry is pushing for blanket legal immunity right now. I also walk through the legal arguments their lawyers are using to try to kill these cases—and why those arguments only work if people don’t actually read the lawsuits.

Read more and support my work at http://heated.world, or search HEATED in Substack.

Yes, he argues, climate change, air pollution, and liquid waste from fracking are crucially important issues. But across Texas and Oklahoma, he says fracking companies have been spreading their potentially radioactive, PFAS-filled solid waste on farmland and near communities, largely without scrutiny, for decades.

Saul told me he sees this as a modern-day Silent Spring: a slow-moving, mostly invisible contamination story hiding in plain sight, one that will only become undeniable once until the damage is already done.

In his latest reporting for The Barbed Wire, that story comes into focus through a whistleblower named Lee Oldham. For years, Lee spread drilling waste across fields in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—waste he didn’t know was radioactive. Over time, he began to suspect something was wrong. Eventually, Lee says, his teeth began to loosen, and his jaw began to break down.

It’s a shocking claim that Saul cannot definitively prove was a result of Lee’s exposure to fracking waste. But what he can prove is that, on the very site where Lee once spread that fracking waste, developers built an elementary school where children attend class today. He says the soil has never been comprehensively tested.

In our conversation, Saul walks me through how this happens—how millions of tons of drilling waste can be legally classified as “non-hazardous,” spread across land in rapidly developing areas, buried without record, and effectively lost to history. We also talk about what we know, what we don’t, and what it would take to hold anyone accountable if those sites turn out to be unsafe.

Finally, we talk about why this might be one of the few climate-adjacent issues that could unite people across political lines.You can listen to our interview at the top of this newsletter or on any podcast app, watch it on Youtube, or read an edited version on Substack.

Setting aside the horrors of the war itself—more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed, along with more than a dozen U.S. servicemembers—the spike in gas prices is doing something climate advocates have been trying to do for decades: making people seriously consider electric vehicles.

Search traffic for electric vehicles was up 20 percent the week following the initial attack on Iran, according to Bloomberg News, with search interest doubling for Tesla Model-Y and Chevrolet Equinox cars. By mid-March, nearly one in four car shoppers were researching electric vehicles, according to Edmunds, a car shopping research platform. That’s the highest level of EV interest recorded so far this year.It's not hard to see why. At $4/gallon, the math on switching to an EV starts to look pretty compelling: The average American would spend nearly $2,000 a year on gas, compared to as little as $540 to charge an EV. And it’s never been cheaper to own an EV, especially as the used car market is now flooded with pre-owned zero-emissions vehicles. But interest and action are two very different things. Despite the surge in searches, new EV sales are actually down nearly 27 percent compared to this time last year—a hangover from the Trump administration's decision to repeal federal EV tax credits last fall. One analyst told the Boston Globe that gas would need to climb above $5 a gallon, and stay there, before most drivers seriously pull the trigger. And there's another reason people aren't making the switch, one that's harder to fix with policy: persistent misinformation.

That's the issue we're tackling on this week's podcast. First, we debunk a couple of the most popular and persistent myths about electric vehicles—including one that half of all Americans currently believe. (ICYMI: feel free to revisit our two-part guide to EV misinformation, published back in 2024, for even more debunking).Then, we sit down with Dr. Christian Bretter, an environmental psychologist from the University of Queensland in Australia, who doesn't just study what people believe about EVs—he studies why they believe it, and what can actually be done to change their minds. The answer, it turns out, has less to do with facts and more to do with how you deliver them. Emily learned something about her own communication style that she did not love hearing. Listen, watch, or read the transcript below to find out what it was.

The HEATED podcast is a new endeavor, and it only exists because of our community. If you have the means, becoming a paid subscriber ensures we can continue this work.

* By using the phrase “lower carbon.” It sounds so nice doesn’t it! But “lower” carbon is not “low” carbon. It’s also not “no” carbon. And it’s definitely not “net zero.” It just means “lower than before.” How much lower than before? And are they really doing it? Who cares! Stop asking so many questions!

* By using the phrase “carbon intensity.” Oil companies often talk about lowering their “carbon intensity.” But that doesn’t mean they’re lowering their overall carbon emissions. An oil company can lower the carbon intensity of a barrel of oil, while still increasing its overall carbon footprint because it’s drilling more oil than ever before. And for the most part, that’s precisely what’s happening. This is a fancy marketing term designed to mislead.

* By playing up the benefits for local communities. Ads often feature "regular" people—workers, families, neighbors—to make oil companies seem like pillars of their communities. What these ads quietly leave out: the fishing communities, cancer alley residents, and others harmed by the very offshore drilling and refinery operations being celebrated. This form of lying is called “paltering,” the practice of “using statements that are technically true, but also leave out critical information in order to mislead people.”

* By using guilt. One ad we watched reminded us that offshore oil workers are out there on the platform every single day, including holidays, keeping your lights on while you sit at home. The implicit message: how dare you criticize us? It's emotional manipulation dressed up as a human interest story, designed to make us feel personally indebted to the oil industry rather than asking hard questions about it.

* By tying oil to “new” technology like AI. This is the newest trick in the playbook, and it’s an attempt to position old, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure as new, clean, cutting-edge innovation. But the pitch doesn't hold up. We don’t need fossil fuels to power AI. And renewables are already cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable than the fossil-fuel-derived alternatives the industry keeps proposing.

And more! We’ll also be releasing some fun bonus content tomorrow. Make sure you’re a paid subscriber to get it!

After our interview with Tom Steyer, Tracy and I decided to take a few minutes to record our immediate reactions. Here’s that tape!

HEATED's previous coverage of billionaires:

* Bill Gates is no friend to the climate. November 2019

* Why I’m skeptical of Jeff Bezos’s $10 billion climate pledge. February 2020

* Bezos breaks his climate pledge. September 2020

* The stealth climate villains of 2020 (all billionaires). December 2020

* Climate billionaires are our modern-day Columbuses. October 2021, repub October 2023

* The climate case against Elon Musk. November 2022

* Elon Musk’s climate censorship. April 2023

* Surprise! Billionaires aren’t solving climate change. November 2023

* Nobel Prize-winning economist calls for climate tax on billionaires. April 2024

* Behind the billionaire climate tax. April 2024

* Elon Musk’s PAC is powered by coal. November 2024

* You already know Elon Musk. You need to know Harold Hamm. February 2025

* The Senate is about to destroy clean energy to give tax cuts to billionaires. June 2025

Meet our powerhouse new producer in episode one.

Last night, JD Vance pushed the button while thousands of Americans were suffering from one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. At the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s running mate cast doubt on the “idea” that heat-trapping pollution heats the atmosphere, calling it “weird science” that he would only accept “for the sake of argument.”

“One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions—this idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change,” he said. “Let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true.” 

Vance went on to criticize the Democratic Party’s climate policies, claiming they wouldn’t solve the hypothetical problem of climate change that Vance continually refused to acknowledge, even when pressed again by the moderator. The only environmental problems Vance would acknowledge? "Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water," he said. Fantastic. 

Meanwhile, in actual reality, climate scientists were sounding the alarm about the impact of fossil fuel development on extreme weather events like Hurricane Helene. They said current warm ocean temperatures, which rapidly turned Helene into a massive Category 4 hurricane, were made 300 times more likely by climate change. They also estimated that climate change caused 50 percent more rainfall in Georgia and the Carolinas—a shocking number given the unprecedented 40 trillion gallons of rain. 

Only a few days ago, Trump told supporters at a rally that climate change is “one of the greatest scams of all time.” Vance did not take this direct route of denial, likely because it would have seemed insensitive in the face of such destruction from Helene. He’s trying to seem like the adult in the room.

But Vance’s comments were the same old Trumpian climate denial, albeit a far more cowardly form. On a national stage, amid unprecedented extreme destruction, Vance was too afraid to tell Americans what he actually believes: That we should stay stuck in this Groundhog Day forever, and allow the window for action to run out of time.  

Many news outlets claim to be “independent.” HEATED actually is. We take no ad money, billionaire money, or foundation money—only reader subscriptions. Help climate journalism say principled and join today!

What else happened in last night’s debate?

* The moderators thankfully executed a climate fact-check. “The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the Earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate,” said CBS’s Norah O’Donnell after Vance’s comments. But it’s easy to be prepared with a climate basic fact-check when you’ve been stuck reliving the same, settled debate for decades.

* Walz acknowledged that climate change is real. Don’t you love the bare minimum? The Minnesota governor said that many people know climate change is dangerous, regardless of party affiliation. “These are not folks that are Green New Deal folks,” he said. “They are farmers that have seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back-to-back.” Walz went on to say that “Reducing our impact is absolutely critical,” and touted the job-creating aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act.

* Walz also touted the Biden administration’s expansion of fossil fuels. The Minnesota governor also doubled down on Harris’ appeal to moderate voters by promoting the Biden administration’s expansion of fossil fuels, while failing to acknowledge the role fossil fuels play in causing the climate crisis—much less the fact that experts say we need to phase them out. Under Biden, Walz noted, the U.S. is now producing more oil and gas than any country in the world; and Biden approved a record number of oil and gas leases compared to Trump. And Walz added, the U.S. is also producing more clean energy under the Biden administration, which is also true.

* Vance said that the U.S. has the cleanest economy in the world. (It doesn’t.) The U.S. emits more carbon dioxide per capita than any other country in the world, including China, and is the second-largest emitter overall (but the largest historic emitter). We also don’t have the cleanest economy, which is measured by comparing carbon emissions to GDP. According to that measurement, the U.S. emitted 0.26 kilograms per dollar of GDP in 2022, putting the country squarely in the middle of the road.

* Vance also said that Trump cares about the cleanest air and water. (He doesn’t). Vance said that both he and Trump want “the environment to be cleaner and safer.” During his term in office, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections, including rules governing clean air and water.

* Walz called out Trump’s proposed $1 billion deal with oil executives. Right at the end of his time, the governor pointed out that Trump met with oil executives and offered to repeal all of the Biden’s Administration’s climate policies if they donated $1 billion to his campaign. “We could be smarter than that,” said Walz. It was perhaps the understatement of the night.

Further reading:

* Trump will attend two fundraisers in oil-rich Texas today. The Guardian, October 1, 2024.

First, he will hold an invite-only lunch in the Permian Basin, the world’s most productive oilfield. Later, he’ll reportedly hold a Houston cocktail party co-hosted by Jeff Hildebrand, who runs Hilcorp Oil and has been a major donor to Trump since 2017.

Last week, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, also attended two fundraisers thrown by oil industry executives in Dallas and Fort Worth, before being forced to cancel two Georgia fundraisers due to the hurricane.

* JD Vance is one of the top recipients of oil and gas money. Now he’s shilling for their interests. Ohio Capital Journal, September 5, 2023.

J.D. Vance, the wealthy venture capitalist who moved back to Ohio to become a U.S. Senator as a reborn MAGA zealot, owes his deep-pocketed benefactors big time. Chief among them are the titans peddling fossil fuel. Vance was among the top 20 of all recipients of oil and gas donations in the 2022 campaign.

* Ohio reaps benefits from climate law JD Vance repeatedly attacks. New York Times, October 1, 2024.

Despite Vance’s critiques, residents in his state — including in the senator’s hometown, Middletown, Ohio — have been big beneficiaries of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Many local leaders and residents say they do not want to see the new investments, which are already starting to revitalize the local economy, disappear. 

Since the bill’s passage in mid-2022, companies have announced more than $7 billion in clean energy investments in Ohio, according to an analysis from E2, an environmental nonprofit organization. Only six other states have surpassed that amount, according to the analysis.

Catch of the Day: Did you guys miss Fish? He’s been out getting pizza. But he’s back now.

Want to see your furry (or non-furry!) friend in HEATED? Send a picture and some words to catchoftheday@heated.world.

In our full interview with Stacey Abrams, we dive deeper into her personal and professional experience with climate change; details of the electrification incentives in the IRA; the potential challenges with ensuring equity in electrification; and her views on the role of fossil fuels in a net zero future. We also discuss how Abrams’s love of sci-fi influences her imagination of the future.

That full interview—both transcript and audio—is available to paid subscribers only. If you’re a free subscriber, the first part of our interview is available for you via audio at the top, and transcript at the bottom.

Our article today investigates how decision-makers at major banks have conflicts of interest on climate, and what that means for the projects they back—like Line 3 in Northern Minnesota. It is also running in The Guardian.

At the top of today’s e-mail, you’ll also find a behind-the-scenes, podcast-style audio interview about this story. It starts with a discussion between Emily and I, and then ends with an interview with Giniw Collective founder Tara Houska, who’s been leading direct actions against the Line 3 pipeline.

I hope you enjoy this collaboration! Let me know what you think in the comments, and please consider supporting this 100 percent reader-funded, independent journalism with a subscription if you can.

By Emily Holden for Floodlight and Emily Atkin for Heated

U.S. banks are pledging to help fight the climate crisis alongside the Biden administration, but their boards are dominated by people with climate-related conflicts of interest, and they continue to invest deeply in fossil fuel projects.

Three out of every four board members at seven major US banks (77%) have current or past ties to 'climate-conflicted' companies or organizations—from oil and gas corporations to trade groups that lobby against reducing climate pollution, according to a first-of-its-kind review by climate influence analysts for the blog DeSmog.

One of the controversial projects those board members have chosen to back is the new Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline, currently under construction in northern Minnesota. If completed, the project would allow Canadian oil giant Enbridge to double the amount of high-polluting tar sands oil it currently transports through the region to 760,000 barrels per day.

Environmental groups estimate the new Line 3 would add 50 new coal plants’ worth of carbon emissions to the atmosphere every year for the next three to five decades. They say it is incompatible with the Biden administration’s climate and environmental goals, and they argue the project never should have been approved. They add that the Trump administration didn’t independently review the risks of building a tar sands pipeline underneath the headwaters of the Mississippi River, which flows all the way to the US Gulf Coast.

Neither Biden nor the banks funding Line 3 have acknowledged these concerns, and time is running out to halt construction. So in recent weeks, Indigenous water protectors in Minnesota have resorted to physically chaining themselves to Enbridge equipment, while activists across the country have been chaining themselves to the doors of the banks who finance the pipeline.

“There’s been a lot of complacency. People have been pursuing comfortable routes of advocacy,” said Tara Houska, whose group Giniw Collective has led several direct actions against Line 3. “I don’t think we’re going to get the answers we need comfortably.”

The financing behind Line 3

Enbridge has seven active loans relevant to Line 3, totaling $11.5bn, according to the Rainforest Action Network. In addition, banks have underwritten bonds to Enbridge totaling $5bn since the autumn of 2019, the group said.

From the U.S., Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have made the project possible with billions of dollars in loans, although it’s impossible to tally precisely how much they have financed for the pipeline specifically. Another five large Canadian banks are also financing Enbridge, according to Ran.

Out of these nine North American banks backing Enbridge, six have recently published net-zero climate goals, pledging to align their investments with the international Paris climate agreement.

“The banks are gorging on doughnuts and then eating an apple afterwards,” said Richard Brooks, the Toronto-based climate finance director for Stand.earth. “We certainly can’t rely on banks or the private sector to lead us into climate safety and lead us toward emissions reductions. We need policy, we need regulation. We need government to act.”

DeSmog found Canadian banks have the highest percentage of directors with climate-conflicted ties: 82%. That figure was significant in the UK and elsewhere in Europe as well, at 78% and 61%, respectively.

The struggle to get banks to defund Line 3

In February, the group Stop the Money Pipeline began a campaign to demand that banks withdraw their financial support of Line 3.

But despite numerous direct actions across the country, the effort has not been nearly as successful as previous climate campaigns targeted at banks, like the campaign to end funding for drilling in the Arctic national wildlife refuge.

The progressive Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar pointed to previous environmental victories and said activists must keep fighting. “We were able to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline because activists collectively organized in large numbers to oppose it—we must use that same energy to stop this pipeline from causing irreversible damage,” she said.

Juli Kellner, an Enbridge spokesperson, argued Line 3 was a safety-driven project because it was replacing an older pipeline. She said it had received all its permits after a thorough review process.

“Shutting down existing pipelines does not erase demand. It merely forces the transport of essential energy by less efficient means such as ship, truck, and most notably rail,” Kellner said. “It is Enbridge’s responsibility to transport the energy people rely on daily by pipelines - the safest, most efficient means of transporting energy. It is also our responsibility to do what we can to address climate change. That is why we’ve set a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 and laid a credible path to achieving it, including tying compensation of our executives to our performance in this area.”

The most climate-conflicted banks: JPMorgan, Wells Fargo

Much of the U.S. economy is built on fossil fuels, and people with enough experience to be appointed to bank boards are likely to have some connection to climate-conflicted organizations. But the DeSmog analysts said the heavy representation of industry on boards shows a “lack of creativity” in recruitment and is probably why bank policies aren’t more environmentally progressive.

“Some of these banks have pledges, but it’s about ensuring that they see them through. We’re simply asking the question of: ‘With this person on the board, what’s the likelihood of them seeing them through?’” said Mat Hope, editor of DeSmog UK.

“When it comes to the consumer holding their bank card, we want to put the information out there that lets them know that these are the directors of the boards of the banks they’re banking with.”

DeSmog reviewed the careers of board directors and flagged any connections with high-polluting sectors, including fossil energy, agribusiness, steelmaking and mining. The group also relied on indexes that measure polluting companies, such as the Climate Action 100 list, which includes companies like Nestlé – which has contributed to deforestation. And they reviewed links to trade groups, lobbying firms and thinktanks that have opposed climate action.

JPMorgan Chase tops the list for directors with climate conflicts. All of its 10 directors have current or past ties to companies or organizations contributing to the climate crisis. Wells Fargo comes in second, with 12 out of 13 directors.

Most of the seven banks declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Wells Fargo noted its net-zero commitment and its plans to disclose near-term climate targets, as well as its taskforce on climate-related financial disclosures.

All seven of the banks have potential climate conflicts among at least half the directors on their boards.

For example, Theodore Craver, a director at Wells Fargo, is also on the board of Duke Energy, a power company that owns significant coal and gas generation. Duke has vowed to reach net-zero carbon pollution by 2050, but environmental advocates have argued the company’s plan still includes a large amount of gas. Craver is also the retired CEO of Edison International, another energy company.

Michael Neal, who is on the board at JPMorgan Chase, was vice chairman of General Electric Company until his retirement in 2013.

Those kinds of connections could be significant obstacles to the Biden administration’s hopes that banks will commit to climate-friendly finance, activists warn.

Biden administration remains silent on Line 3 and banking conflicts

John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, wants banks to commit to more near-term goals, according to Politico. But the White House has also met with environmental and watchdog groups who want the administration to be more aggressive with banks.

The White House did not respond to requests to comment for this story.

Collin Rees, a campaigner for Oil Change International, said advocates have consistently heard there is a desire within the White House to move forward on climate finance regulation, to require banks to have capital requirements and pass stress tests, for example.

“That’s the way we would like to see it approached,” Rees said. “To talk about how we are regulating Wall Street. And to also talk about the fact that they are not only potential sources of clean energy investment, which is good, but also still driving the climate crisis.”

Last week, 145 organizations wrote Kerry a letter urging him to help end “the flow of private finance from Wall Street to the industries driving climate change around the world – fossil fuels and forest-risk commodities”. They asked Kerry to “recognize that Wall Street is not yet an ally”.

“As long as US firms continue to pour more money into the drivers of climate change, they are actively undermining President Biden’s climate goals,” they said.

In Alida, Minnesota, Jami Gaither, a resident, pointed to a wide trench in the ground that will hold the Line 3 pipeline as the real-world effect of what banks are supporting.

“This is obviously not just for one pipeline,” she said. “How much longer can we keep up this charade, this idea that we can keep going on developing fossil fuels? We’re building a f*****g tar sands pipeline at the end of the world.”

Disclosure: DeSmog, the group that conducted the bank analysis, is supported by the Sunrise Project, which is also a contributor to Floodlight. Read more about Floodlight’s editorial independence policies here.

Catch of the Day:

Fish wants you to make sure to get some sun today. And drink water (not pictured).

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This is the last episode of our limited-run mini series on COVID-19 and climate change! Next week, HEATED’s publishing schedule will return back to normal. Free subscribers will get at least one email a week, and paid subscribers will get four—every morning, Monday through Thursday. I’ll make all essential COVID-19 reporting free, too.

Hope you all enjoyed the series as much I enjoyed making it. Unlike the newsletter, the podcast was a team production. So if you’ve enjoyed it, and you’d like to support the four-person band behind it, consider making a donation at our GoFundme page.

Enjoy the chat with Ali!

Emily Atkin: Thank you for doing this. Thank you for taking some time out of your day for climate change.

Ali Velshi: We should be doing it every day. So thank you for continuing to force the issue on us. I mean that in a good way, because what we tend to do in this world is jump from crisis to crisis. and it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is the one crisis that looms in the background all the time, and gets shoved out by other crises.

EA: I mean, that's my whole life. Literally the only thing I do is just poke people and tell them to pay attention to climate change.

AV: And this situation [with COVID-19] is interesting, right? It's the urgency. It's the unknown outcome. It's the suddenness. Suddenly, you're healthy, then you're not. Suddenly you know people who have died. So it's just this compressed timeline that we know nothing about that is scaring us. And with climate we just don't experience it the same way.

EA: Yeah. There's plausible deniability with climate change. You can have a loved one die from the effects of climate change and still be able to convince yourself that it wasn't that. Whereas with coronavirus, there's no denying that’s what it is.

But I want to start by having you tell listeners a little bit about your personal journey into climate reporting. We aren't seeing a lot of broadcast reporter interest in climate change. I see your interest growing. Can you just tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming someone who's interested in climate change?

AV: I have a history of being a reporter who explains complicated things to people. It came from economics but it morphed into other things. And like a lot of reporters, I read and I understood climate change from the perspective of someone who reads. I certainly always thought I was on the right side of it.

But probably five years ago, it became about the fact that this isn't going to inevitably solve itself. The idea that right-minded people all sort of probably shared my view, but our regulations are not built to actually acknowledge it, and our media is not built to actually acknowledge it. And so I started becoming more involved in understanding it.

But it was difficult. I can explain to you why the Dow dropped a thousand points today. How do I explain to you two degrees compared to pre-industrial times in a hundred years? How do I make that understandable to people on TV? Because we have a way of doing things, and they don't lend themselves to large conceptual discussion.

But then what started to happen is two things. One is the movement started to get bigger, and started to bring new people into it. It became kids teaching their parents that, “Okay, this isn't gonna change unless we're all involved in it.” And the second thing is we started to associate it with things that were urgent, that did lend themselves to television—like hurricanes, like wildfires, like flooding.

And what I found was that every time I made that connection on TV, I would get people really angry at me. They'd say, this isn't the time to talk about climate. And I started to wonder: Why not? This is the only time I have your attention. And the two things are actually connected. There's real science as to the way hurricanes form now and how they develop and why temperature makes them more intense.

Then people like you trying to force the discussion. There were books out there that spoke to me in my language. There were candidates who started to make this an actual priority. There were people who started to build policy around it. There were articles written that didn't feel the same. And it all came together and caused me to understand that this is my job. Being on the right side of the issue is fine. But the job is actually using your platform to express to people why something is important, and what role they might play in it, whether it's a policy role or whether it's an individual behavior role, and even what the competing interests are within those roles.

EA: One of the things I've seen you do is have an increased focused on the powerful forces that have driven climate denial in our society. And I see that as an opportunity for broadcast and cable news in particular to make climate change more interesting to people—to tell the story in the language of corruption, as opposed to the language of science. Is that part of your evolution? And is that indeed an easier story to tell on broadcast?

AV: It's part of my evolution in that it’s part of my evolution as a journalist. Again, probably five or six years ago, I realized that having people on TV to give you their PR-honed pitches about their business or their company is not serving my viewers interest.

I would go to award ceremonies in New York for broadcasters around the world. These were people who were under threat from their governments. They would wear bulletproof vests to just do their job. And I was thinking, yeah, I don't really do a lot of that. Like I book people through their PR agencies, and they come on my show and they tell me about stuff. We call ourselves journalists, but these people speak truth to power to the extent that they endanger their lives every single day.

Maybe I’m not endangering my life every day, but maybe I can actually start to say, “what can I give my viewers?” As a business journalist, most of your interviews are CEOs or marketing people. So you are just constantly being barraged by their hard sell. They spend millions of dollars being trained to deliver information, and you act as a conduit for that to your audience. And I sort of said, “This can't be what this is about.”

So why not hit this disinformation part of things hard? Particularly in business journalism and economic journalism, in which lot of this climate denial is rooted. We don't do enough of a job of telling people whom we interview, holding them to the fire, because we want them to come back and interview with us again.

Maybe it's my age, and how long I've been in this, but I've decided I don't need the access anymore. I don't need you to give me your interview anymore. I'm a journalist. I've actually got resources, and I've got ways in which to get to the bottom of the story. and that's how I'll do it. And if I never get a fancy interview again, or the CEO of an oil company, or a politician who wants to talk about this, that's fine. Because they've got lots of airtime. You can always hear from them.

A coal company or an oil company or anyone involved with those industries—there's no time you won't get their message. You may not know that you're getting it all the time, but you're getting it. And we have to work hard to bring the other message into mainstream media.

EA: Have you seen a change at all in how receptive people are at MSNBC to telling climate change stories on the air?

AV: So we have a climate unit now, which we never had before. It probably corresponded with around the time that we did that presidential forum that you were at in Washington at Georgetown. So it was in the fall. And climate now doesn't seem like some weird left turn to a different discussion. We now have it as part of all policy discussions, or at least most. And that helps a great deal.

You've probably seen in the last couple of weeks in mainstream media, pictures of smog that isn’t there in places where it normally is. Now, I don't think most people think, “wow, coronavirus is the solution to climate change.” But boy, that's pretty good TV. And it says, we can solve these problems. We want to solve this without it being about coronavirus—but this does mean there is proof, right? That if you stop running your engines as much, and you stop burning fossil fuels as much, some good may come of it. So let that be instructive to us.

EA: It's true, but I also see some of these stories about how coronavirus is cleaning our air as a smokescreen. Not to put it so literally, but a smokescreen to what is actually happening during the pandemic, which is that we're seeing all these regulatory rollbacks on climate at the state, local and federal level—and we're not actually seeing that much coverage on it from broadcast news.

[Note: In the unedited version of this interview for paid subscribers only, Velshi noted that he and Chris Hayes have covered the rollbacks—which is true! See here, here, and here.]

AV: Network news has a smaller footprint. Far more viewers, but far less time to cover stories. And these things are definitely harder to get on network news. So I think that criticism is A) valid, and B) probably valid regardless because that's how these things slip through, right? That's what happens when we're all busy watching something else.

There are a lot of fronts on which [loosening regulations] can make sense [during a pandemic], but that can become a slippery slope. We may allow business owners with a slightly lower-than-acceptable credit score to get a loan during this time, because if they can stay open, they can pay 10 of their employees and that's money that's not going to be used for unemployment. There's a place where we might allow some like regulatory slippage.

But we have to come to terms with the fact that from a climate perspective, we’ve had decades of regulatory slippage. So we can't do that, because the regulatory stuff when it comes to climate change is the absolute lowest hanging fruit. That's the easiest stuff that we can do to get better. Even if we do all the right regulatory stuff, we still may not get to where we need to get. So we need behavioral change, we need scientific development, we need media change. But the regulatory stuff's easy. So my attitude is let's not break that.

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EA: We have this one crisis, coronavirus, that's threatening to kill millions of people. And by loosening regulations to deal with that, we're worsening another crisis that threatens to kill more people. So in my mind, as a journalist, climate change becomes more newsworthy right now than it was before.

Do you consider climate change more newsworthy or less newsworthy than usual right now?

AV: I'm going to give you a very different answer to that. And that is because I'm a economic and financial journalist. And the one thing that I have been frustrated by for 25 years is that stupid Dow.

The economy is such a complicated thing, and it affects people in ways that are much more sophisticated than whether the Dow was up or down 500 points. But because we have a chart, a board, a scoreboard, basically we talk about the Dow and economic numbers which come out all the time. And some are really important. But there's one that we report on all the time: The unemployment number once a month. And people get very attached to this moving number and then they get obsessed with it.

Now the good and the bad about coronavirus is that there's always a chart. If you look on TV, you know how many people have it worldwide, and how many people have died. Unfortunately, it's the way we tell stories, and there's some real science to the idea that people gravitate toward colors and numbers before they gravitate toward words. And so we see these numbers, and as a result we fixate on them.

We can't, in fairness, do the same thing for climate. Because the things that will kill you from climate are making some other underlying that you've got worse. Unlike Colonel coronavirus, but we don't have some scoreboard over a shorter period of time. Which again, cable news is all scoreboard over a short period of time.

So one of the things I find most informative and helpful on climate, is not just the great journalism and an in-depth work that goes on, but the interactive stuff that shows people, “what will happen if you do this,” and “what will happen if you don't do this?” What are the actual effects? That's what we haven't been able to do clearly. In other words, is there a way I can have climate coverage that I can drop in no matter what else is going on in the world and make that connection?

If we had a climate scoreboard—are things better or worse as a result of something that's going on right now—that would be great. But we don't think that way. It's not in our DNA enough in mainstream media to automatically say, what's the effect on climate? In the same way that I can look at anything in economics, I can look at any event and say, this is going to be bad for this company or good for that company. I can't do that yet with climate.

EA: It's even hard for me at this point. I felt like I was really confident about how to make most stories really easily into a climate change story. And now with coronavirus, it's easy to see the parallels—but you don't yet have widespread public acceptance that you should be talking about this.

Plus, there's a large, well-coordinated campaign to get people like me to just stop talking about climate change right now, that it’s insensitive. That’s coming straight from the president—and it's really hard to counter that narrative if you're just, like, an independent newsletter writer. It’s also hard if you're sad. And I feel like everyone who cares about climate change has a level of empathy where they're all just very sad right now.

AV: Yeah. So this actually goes full circle to a question you asked a while ago. It may be easier to point out to people why certain politicians are taking that stance. Because that might be the thing that triggers the outrage, right? The person who still can't figure out anything about “parts per million” or “degrees centigrade” might still be able to figure out corruption or influence. Anybody who lived through all those years when they told us smoking was okay, they will start to understand that this is just a machine, and that machine is designed to roll over people like Emily Atkin. I mean that's what it's designed to do, right? It's mostly designed to run over people like you. And if it runs over me too in the process, that will be good.

But if we can silence the voices that dig deep, then we win this battle. And that does resonate with my viewers. So where they may not understand science, or where they may not make all the connections, it definitely does resonate with them that someone is up to no good.

But again, it leads you to this whole problem where you probably thought smarter people than you are in charge of this; that they'll do the right thing. And now you are clear on the fact that that's just not true. They—whoever you think “they” are—are not going to fix this, coronavirus. And they—whoever you think “they: are—are not going to fix climate change.

So the takeaway for a human consumer of media today is, no one will save you. There is no one coming to save you.

This is work for adults. You actually have to figure out what the right things are. We are in a world in which there is no time now for us to look for the leaders who are going to save us. So we have to look elsewhere. The evidence is there, it's available. You could subscribe to your newsletter. There are lots of books you can read. You helped me when I was preparing for that presidential forum to say, who should I be talking to? What should I be reading? What should I know? What questions should I ask? That is the work of all of us now. Me as a journalist, yes. But it's all of our work.

EA: I feel like one of the other really important things is just recognizing the importance of basic science literacy. Science isn't a subject that we all need to know about, but it is something that we need our leaders to have a certain respect for.

I spoke with the director of Harvard's C-Change Institute for the podcast, and he was talking about how washing your hands isn’t going to prevent the next pandemic. What's going to prevent the next pandemic is addressing biodiversity loss and the causes, which include climate change. And I'm being told this direct, scientific connection to the question that we’re all asking, which is, “how do we prevent this from happening again?” And he's just saying climate change. And I'm thinking, “why don't I see this anywhere?”

AV: We’re not even there yet. We're having weird arguments that don't even settle how not to spread coronavirus from one person to the next. We're having arguments about the cure being worse than the cause, and opening up on a certain date, which was supposed to be Easter Sunday.

I'm on your side on this one, but you're asking a lot. You're asking for people who are not going to have fifth grade science conversations to be having PhD science conversations. I'm with you, as we're thinking about how we're going to vote, whether it's gonna be mail in voting and term limits and campaign spending. I wish there were some kind of a thing about the scientific literacy that should play a role in our governance or at least the running of our government agencies.

But we are very, very, very far from that. And I never used to think that was a bad thing, because I used to think government by the people is about people making the right choices and finding the experts who can inform them on whatever topic they need to be informed on. What I didn't realize is what happens when you actually get ignorant, right?

We talk about developing herd immunity to a disease. We're developing herd ignorance. It's spreading at such a rate, and all you have to do is go on Twitter and type in “Corona virus hoax” or “lie,” and you will see the rate at which the media has bounced around on this thing and not told the right story. And unfortunately too many of our people get their information from either cable news or social media.

EA: Are you telling people to not watch your platform??

AV: No, I want people to watch my platform. I don't think you should only watch my platform. And I don't think anybody should take anything I say 100 percent. I think if I saw something interesting on the new, and you think I'm telling you the truth, then you need to look that up and you need to have sources that you would go to because anybody who thinks I know what I'm talking about is misinformed. I try to know what I'm doing. But this is harder than what guys like me should understand. So all I can do is point my viewer in the right direction, that this study was done by so-and-so. This article was written by so and so and you'll hear me say that on TV.

I often say it, and I've said it about you, that people should follow you on social media because you need to curate your own life so that your life is not in danger. And unfortunately, this explosion of social media in the last 10 years has created a world in which your life is actually endangered because you've curated bad information.

I just saw a quote from financial times saying that coronavirus is going to put a pause on anything climate related and in the policy discussions, climate's probably not going to be mentioned for the next six to 12 months.

EA: Has there been any story that you've done that’s climate-related during the coronavirus crisis that you've found has particularly resonated with your audience members?

AV: It's analogies rather than stories, right? It's how people tell the story. So Jake Ward, who is our tech reporter, is really great. He sort of explains it like, an inch of water can sink a battleship. You wouldn’t think it can, but it can. And that's what climate is. It's the inch of water. It's not the tsunami.

One of the points that you make a lot is that we should all be doing lots of good things by the earth. This is a multi-front battle. But without dealing with the fossil fuel part of it, you can do all the other right things and you still won't get there, and I think that's the really hard one for people to understand because the fossil fuel companies have done a really good job. I'm really amazed by them actually, and somewhat impressed, at their ability to convey the message that they're on the same side as the rest of us are. They too think that there should be a carbon tax. They too think that we should tax fossil fuels at a higher rate. But they've worked it all out in a way that still will not fundamentally change the way we consume. And that I don't know that my viewers like the idea that they're being fooled. But they certainly deserve to know that they're being tricked.

If you don't fix the coal and the oil and the natural gas, it's not going to stop the end of the world. It will not stop us from heating up. This starts and ends with us taking this very seriously, just like we are thinking we should do about coronavirus.

So the takeaway might be that when space becomes more available for this conversation, we can start to convey to people: “You know how bad that was? That thing we just went through? That's what climate change is going to do. Times 10. It’s just not going to look as obvious to you as that one. Just look.”

EA: The one thing that I've been thinking about a lot is summer. It’s coming. That means hurricanes and wildfires and flooding. I can't imagine how this will play out if we're still in a situation like we're in right now.

You were an extreme weather reporter for a long time. So I'm wondering if you're thinking about the upcoming hurricane season and climate change and coronavirus coverage, and how you're thinking about approaching that as a journalist when it comes along.

AV: That's a good question. I've actually talked to my bosses about this, because you know the estimates for hurricane season have come out and once again they are estimated to be more severe.

We also know that climate and coronavirus affect the poor more than they affect the wealthy. That’s why this doesn’t get fixed. When rich people's houses get burned down or destroyed by hurricanes or flooded, stuff happens. Things change, code changes, buildings are put on stilts, plumbing is checked, all sorts of things happen. But because this happens to poor people as much as it does, it doesn't actually influence thought.

I think that does come down to inequity. If you have money, you can mitigate these things for longer than if you don't have money. And that part of the conversation is here, and has not been squeezed out by coronavirus. It's actually been underscored by coronavirus, that poor people who live in dense populations who don't have choices, don't get to stay home. They will die at a higher rate and they don't seek healthcare. That story is another way to tell the story of climate.

So if it happens, we're going to have to cover it this year, and I will be at the front end of that, but we have to start to remember the through line to all of these stories is still inequity.

EA: What are you learning about these stories from covering both? Has coronavirus influenced how you think about climate change at all, or has climate change influenced how you think about coronavirus at all as a story?

AV: Both stories have influenced me, but maybe coronavirus will influence my climate reporting more, in that we know, in the end, there are rights and wrongs. This coronavirus story has shown us that this wasn't inevitable. This didn't have to happen the way it happened. And we continue to hear from the administration that they did the right thing from day one. But we know they didn't do the right thing. And so it becomes very easy to call a spade a spade.

And coronavirus has made that very easy and that instinct, I think it needs to stay with us for climate. We've all gotten there. You were there before. Some of us were, but many of us have gotten to the point where, let's just be honest about what this conversation is.

This was not inevitable. It's not that nobody knew that climate change was a bad thing or that it was happening or that burning fossil fuels was going to be the case. Let's just be honest about it. Now let's call out those who weren't honest and let's hold those to account and let's support those who will hold them to account.

If coronavirus had never hit America, it would never have been a mainstream story. But it became our story. So you can call it the Wuhan virus if you want, or the China virus. But it is our story now. That's the same thing with climate. It is our story. It's not a fringe movement. You can discount the people who are the messengers of it all you want, but the fact is it's here and it's all around you.

Coronavirus allowed us to say to our viewers after every press briefing, that's just not true. You were just misled. And their bad actions have led to these outcomes. If we treated climate the same way, imagine if we were on a regular basis able to say that's not true. That's misleading. And that information has led to these outcomes. So it might give us a purity of thought around climate that I'd like to try and apply once we get a bit of an opportunity to do so.

EA: I like that optimism and I liked that you came on here and shared it with us. Thanks for doing climate reporting on television. It's really cool to see and thanks for coming on this podcast and talking about it. I appreciate your insights.

AV: Well, you have made a lot of us better and smarter and keep doing it and thank you for all you doing. We'll get this right eventually.

OK, that’s all for today—thanks for reading (and/or listening) to HEATED!

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But before we get into that, I want to talk real quick about what’s happening to the oil industry.

I keep hearing these January and February quotes from CNBC financial analyst Jim Cramer in my head as I watch it all happen:

“I’m done with fossil fuels ... They’re just done ...”

“My job is to help you try to make money. And the honest truth is I don’t think I can help you make money in the oil and gas stocks anymore.”

I’m sure the investors who followed Cramer’s advice back then are glad they did now.

Cramer, of course, expected oil’s downfall would come at a much slower pace. He also thought it’d be because investors would increasingly reject fossil fuel companies because of their role in driving catastrophic climate change.

I don’t think anyone expected it to happen like this.

Because of coronavirus, “The global oil industry is experiencing a shock like no other in its history,” International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. People aren’t going anywhere, or doing anything—so there isn’t a huge demand for oil. Prices are therefore dropping to historically low levels. Twenty dollars a barrels! Look at these charts from the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider. Look at them!

No one knows when life will go back to normal again—if it ever does (yikes). So the oil industry has no idea when demand will go back to normal again. That’s why over the weekend, oil-producing nations led by the U.S., Russia, and Saudi Arabia agreed to a historic 10 percent cut in oil production, to hopefully have demand meet supply again, and raise oil prices enough where oil companies can make money.

This all obviously has implications for climate change. Do I know how significant they’ll be? Do I know what this drop in price, demand, and production will mean in the long-term for the oil industry or for the climate crisis? That’s a hard nope, and a hard nope—but I’ll at least attempt to answer those questions in tomorrow’s newsletter. I’ve already put out a few feelers, but if you know of any experts who could speak to these questions, shoot me an email. I’m at emily@heated.world.

For now, I’m just going to list a few things that cost more than a barrel of oil right now.

* An 18-pack of 2-ply toilet paper.

* A 30-rack of Bud Light Lime.

* Two 24-packs of Klondike bars.

* An original, unopened copy of Now That’s What I Call Music Volume One on compact disc.

* Delivery avocado toast.

* The bobblehead of former New York Governor David Paterson I bought off e-Bay for my friend Andrew Beam for his wedding. (Beam doesn’t read the newsletter so he’ll never see this. Eat dirt Beam!)

Anyway, here’s my interview with Mary Heglar, condensed for clarity. And stay tuned for Mary’s suggested reading list at the very end.

If you enjoy the interview, consider making a donation to support the team behind the podcast. There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism, and the content you care about.

EA: In your work, you think a lot about framing the issue of climate justice—presenting it in a way that will make people pay attention, that will grab people. You understand the power of presentation to move people.

I love what you wrote once for Inverse. “I want to coax and cajole the English language with all of its inadequacies—all its flaws, all the blood at its mouth—into the liberating language that we desperately need. I don't want a fact-finding mission. I want a truth telling movement.”

How do we make a truth-telling movement right now about climate change?

MH: I think we were very close before corona hit. But then, corona took over, and there started to be this narrative within climate circles of, “Now's not the right time.”

I see the climate movement running into this same wall quite frequently. It's really shown up with the way the climate movement tries to interact with communities of color. Instead of connecting climate to the issues that communities of color already care about, they will either not say anything about [those issues] at all, or they'll try to trump it and be like, “oh, you're worried about police violence? Well, climate change is much bigger.” They’ll eithergo way too far with it or go way too far back with it.

I'm seeing the exact same thing with corona. People are either not connecting corona to climate change, or they're when they talk about corona and climate, they're like, “oh, well, climate change is much, much worse.”

But instead of going to either one of those extremes, you could just connect them. Because climate and corona are going to play out on one another's backyards. Now is the time to make those connections. It's not the time to shut up. And it's also not a time to hush down the corona conversation either. They both need to happen in tandem with one another because the crises are going to interact. There they are interacting already.

EA: Yeah, we see it everywhere. Even with the just the fact that [coronavirus] is disproportionately already affecting black communities. And with hurricane season starting. These are compounded threats.

MH: Right. We don't have to look to the future. One of my good friends lives in Indiana, and she's not sure if it was a tornado, but they had a pretty powerful storm last night. Now she's quarantined with no power. Normally, during circumstances like that, you would take your neighbor in or your relatives in. But now you've got a socially isolate.

The natural response to extreme weather events is to be compassionate and to be kind to one another. As much as like New York gets a bad rap for not being a very kind city, I've been here through a few disasters and people are actually quite compassionate at those times. But now we're in a position where we literally have to walk away from each other. So now what happens if a Sandy rips through here when we're all in quarantine and all afraid of each other?

I shudder to think about how we're going to treat each other, because I firmly believe that empathy is the biggest muscle that we need to face the climate crisis. If we can't have empathy, I don't know what our odds of survival as a species are.

EA: I relate to that, because I balance between wanting to have empathy for people, and being really pissed off at everybody all time. You've written on both the need to be really angry, and the need to have empathy. In a piece you wrote last year, you said, “Given the sheer enormity of the crisis, it's it's okay to be depressed. But please don't stay there for too long. We need you.”

But at the same time, if it was hard to get people to act on climate change before, it’s way harder now. People are not only retreating into their homes, they're retreating into themselves.

MH: Both my empathy and my anger are both part of what I consider my core emotion at my response to climate change, which, believe it or not, is love. And I know that sounds fuddy-duddy or whatever, but it's real.

The reason I am able to like write about regular people with so much empathy is because I love them. I love them deeply. And then the people I hate, I really, really f*****g hate them. And I hate them because they've jeopardized the things that I love.

I also think that it just helps people to understand that's the way they feel is OK. Once you can say, “I understand why you're in pain, and I'm in pain, too,” it disarms them. Because usually when people are disengaged, that is because of some sort of defensiveness or some sort of feeling that they're not good enough. But if you can say to them, “I understand why you feel the way you feel, and I feel the same way,” then that can sort of break that barrier down. And now they're sort of ready to at least start thinking about acting.

That's why when I started writing, I decided to do it from a personal perspective and do it always in first person. The other reason I decided to this is because I'm not a real journalist, and I don't want to like have to argue with somebody about the facts of my piece. You can't tell me that I don't feel the way I feel.

EA: Going back to that quote that you wrote for Inverse: “I don't want a fact finding mission. I want a truth telling movement” for climate change. What was on your mind when you wrote that?

MH: Because I think for just way too long, the climate movement has just tried to communicate in very black and white terms. And I just don't think that's useful when you're trying to save something as blue and green and colorful as this beautiful planet.

I think truth about climate change includes the facts. But it also includes feelings. It includes passion and it’s visceral. This is powerful. On our side, we only have facts. On the other side, they only have feelings and lies. So I think we would be much more powerful if we had feelings and facts up against feelings and lies.

EA: I say this a lot in journalism talks when I'm talking about how I think journalists should cover climate change. I always say that the principles of the Society for Professional Journalists stay to “seek truth and report it.” They don't say seek facts and report them. The fact about climate change is that millions of people are going to die if we don't act. But the truth is so much more than that. It means so much trauma to our economy, to our ecosystems, to our society, the way we live our lives. That can only be described through the language of feelings. It’s the same way with coronavirus.

MH: Right. You have to humanize the facts. You have to contextualize the facts. My thing about corona and climate is that it seems like corona is worse than climate in the sense that it’s on such an accelerated timescale. It got so drastic, so fast. And climate is worse in the sense that it's for all intents and purposes, in our lifetimes, permanent.

But also with corona, we've never seen anything like this. We didn't know how to prepare for it. We had no warning. We don't really have the solutions. But we have a plan with climate. We have the solutions that don't include massive amounts of everybody going on house arrest.

EA: Yeah, that's the crazy part. We could actually live our regular lives while we’re solving climate change.

MH: We totally could. We could improve them!

EA: I always say that we have to embrace the nature of sacrifice in order to solve the climate crisis. But the sacrifices that we would have to make as individuals are so much less uncomfortable than this is. Like, meat would become probably more expensive to procure. It might be harder to own a car in an urban area. I think your taxes would probably go up. There's unavoidable temporary sacrifice in solving climate change. But what's the alternative? The alternative is that climate change forces you to make a sacrifice that you can't control, and no idea what it's gonna look like for you. And right now we're living through what it feels like to not be able to control the sacrifice you have to give.

MH: Right. And it should be a lesson to everyone that you kinda want to get ahead of s**t like this. You don't want to let a existential threat just roll up on you. Nip that s**t in the bud.

EA: Do you think that coronavirus has gotten us closer or further away from being able to tell the truth about climate change to one another right now?

MH: It kind of feels like a stumbling block, but one that we still have the room to get over. It's just sort of going to require the climate movement to stop falling for the okie doke.

There's just been this constant chorus of, “now's not the time to talk about climate change.” Until very, very recently, it was considered poor form to talk about climate. But climate change doesn't give a s**t about your feelings. Climate change is happening whether you talk about it or not. So you'd shut up at your own peril.

This idea that environmentalists are somehow being opportunistic by including climate change in the corona conversation—I want us to understand that as a very, very, very old trick. It's been used against black people forever, in the civil rights movement and before that, when they would try to pass anti-lynching measures or try to get rid of slavery.

But there is nothing self-interested about wanting to survive. That's not selfish. But the climate community kind of falls for that s**t a lot. And there's just nothing self-interested about it. There's nothing insensitive about it. They're bullying you, and you should be able to see that.

For a community of people made up of so many nerds, we don't seem to see when somebody is grabbing our hands and making us punch ourselves in the face.

EA: That brought me back to high school. At the same time, though, you're talking about the need to survive. How do you tell people to fight for their survival in the long term—especially black and brown people who are fighting for their lives at every second, being disproportionately ravaged by coronavirus—when the short term is so precarious?

MH: Well, I think first for black and brown people, it's not even the long term. It’s the immediate term. All the reasons we're more vulnerable to corona are all the same reasons we're more vulnerable to climate change. So I think the best way is to connect it is to talk about the things they're already concerned about. That's what worked for me, once I started to see climate change as part of this tapestry, and as the outgrowth of all the things that my ancestors and forebears had already been fighting against.

I think the biggest place where the climate community has fucked up with the narrative has been in not naming the bad guy. We've done a very bad job up until maybe the last two years of saying “We know who did this. We have their names, we have their addresses. Let's go get them.” We've sort of let the oil and gas industry punk us into thinking we dug our own graves. We've been put in this impossible position of being complicit in the crime because I'm probably burning fossil fuels right now.

I don't know how much of the energy mix in New York is wind or solar, but whatever it is, that's against my will. I was born in a hospital that ran on fossil fuels. I had nothing to do with it. But I will not be complicit in the cover up for this crime. I'm not going to cover up the tracks of my own f*****g murderer.

EA: And then have your murderer blame you for getting hurt because you were born in their arms.

MH: Exactly. They're committing genocide and convincing everybody else that it’s suicide. We can't let them get away with that narrative. We can't let them get away with that lie.

EA: I'm really interested to ask you about framing on really difficult issues for both coronavirus and climate change, because that is what you think about. We're at this point where we just had Bernie Sanders drop out of the presidential. So our choices for November that are gonna be Trump or Biden. I've see people who are interested in climate change say, “I'm going to opt out, because there's no difference between the two.” But the presidential election is where we need climate leadership to be a top qualifying criteria. How do you convey something like that?

MH: I think was very brave of you to talk about that publicly yesterday. I would give people a minute. I think a lot of people are really deeply in their feelings right now, and I think understandably so. Because if you're anything like me, you kind of cycle through the progressive candidates, getting excited after one candidate after another.

My journey in the primary was going from being really excited about Julian Castro to being really excited about Elizabeth Warren to being really excited about Bernie Sanders and now being deflated. So it's been an emotional roller coaster. So I'd give people a beat. And I do think most people will sort of come around.

Biden is remarkably uninspiring. And I think it is on Biden to fix that. I'm going to vote for the man. OK, I'm gonna vote for him. There is a big difference between Joe Biden and a literal eco fascists and a cabinet of Nazis. But Joe Biden, I believe, has got to do a lot of work to earn the climate community's trust. It wouldn't kill the man to work with the Inslee team to strengthen his climate plan. There is room for him to do better here. But then at the exact same time, I'm hearing people say that now is not the time to criticize Biden's climate record. That we gotta wait till after the election to do that. And to that I say, “No, the f**k it ain't.” If I'm going to support a candidate, I'm not going to do it blindly. I didn't support Bernie blindly. I didn't support any of those candidates blindly. I called them on their s**t. And I will do the same to Joe Biden.

The way that I see it in my head is that Donald Trump is an eco-fascist and he has to get out of the White House. Because he does have a climate plan. Make no mistake about it. And it is not pretty. It is very similar to what his plan for corona was like. “OK, let’s just let a million people die.” F**k him.

EA: A lot of people are looking for some kind of outlet right now. I know that you see writing as an outlet for you. I've read pieces where you've said it makes you feel better to put your emotions to paper. Is that still the case for you during coronavirus, in isolation? And do you have any advice for people who are looking to use this time to dig in on some kind of creative project?

MH: Yeah, it's definitely, absolutely still the case. I wrote a piece on corona grief being basically the new climate grief. And before I wrote it, I was not feeling great. I was like, really just not in the greatest place with this whole thing. And it didn't even occur to me to write something until the editor reached out to me. I was just sort of like wallowing and, you know, not doing well.

And then like, I sat with the idea of writing something for a day or two, because initially I was like, “Are you crazy? I can barely get out of bed.” And then it occurred to me that writing is what helped me deal with climate. So maybe it help with corona. And after I wrote it, I felt a million times better.

So I think creative outlets can be extremely helpful to me. But also, don't be too hard on yourself. Maybe your creative outlet isn't something that's necessarily “productive.” Maybe if you're used to being a musician, you don't have the inspiration to make music right now. But maybe you f**k with a coloring book or a puzzle or something else. I think a lot of people are beating themselves up for not being productive. But now is not the time to see your outlet as productivity. I think it's more the time to see it as healing.

There's also nothing wrong with just like watching Netflix forever. There's nothing wrong with like not being able to focus and staring into space and struggling to read a book. We're all kind of in survival mode. If you're not able to channel yourself well enough to be creative, that's OK too. I haven't been doing as much writing as I would like to be doing. I've been doing way too much scrolling of the Twitter machine.

EA: What's really pissing you off right now? It could be anything. Corona-related, climate-related, whatever.

MH: Honestly, thinking back to the build up to impeachment and hearing folks from the Democratic Party being like, “he's not worth it to impeach, we'll impeach him at the ballot box.” First of all, I felt like that was pretty craven at the time because there were children in cages, and they can't wait for years.

But now we're in the middle of a f*****g pandemic with the person with the least amount of ability to deal with it and anything that looks like compassion. So I keep thinking about leadership in the Democratic Party being like, “he's not worth it to impeach right now, and we'll just wait it out.” So I'm retroactively pissed.

EA: I think what's pissing me off the most right now is that this is happening because politicians ignored scientists. I'm just so pissed off that we devalue science so much as a society right now. Coronavirus didn't have to be this bad. We know it's because of how it's played out in New Zealand—as soon as the government was made aware of the implications by scientists, they put the country in full lockdown. And it's working. And we ignored scientists at every turn. Just as we've ignored scientists about climate change at every turn.

MH: We didn't. They did.

EA: Ugh you’re right! F**k them. But it feels good to be angry. And when “anger is good” is the end of the podcast, then it's been a successful podcast. So thank you for coming on.

Mary’s recommended reading list

Mary sent over a few pieces by her and others to get us through the rest of the week. Here are some articles by her:

* “My manifesto from last summer that lays down my beef with the climate conversation and how I want to change it.”

* “As angry as I am about the climate crisis, that anger is, believe it or not, fueled by love, as outlined here.”

* “The thing about climate grief is that you can never get to the final stage of acceptance, because that’s the kiss of death. So you cycle in and out of all the other phases. Me? I like to stay in anger.”

* “Nothing makes me angrier than the willful obtuseness of the crowd who thinks that climate action and climate justice can be divorced.”

And here are some articles by others:

* “The seminal essay on climate anger by the one and only Amy Westervelt.”

* “My Personal Hero, James Baldwin, wrote this letter to Angela Davis and it includes one of my favorite quotes to apply to the climate crisis (and general crisis) of today: ‘Well. Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can.’”

* “When I need a kick in the pants, when I want to give up, I revisit this piece by Ijeoma Oluo.”

* “My favorite Arundhati Roy piece is from 1998 and about nuclear war, but at its heart it’s about what happens when a small band of cruel fools have too much power and we all suffer for it.”

OK, that’s all for today—thanks for reading (and/or listening) to HEATED!

If you liked today’s issue/episode, please feel free to forward it to a friend. If you are a paid subscriber and would like to post a comment, click the “view comments” button below:

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My favorite quote from Dr. Bernstein comes at the very end: “The healthcare community doesn't wait weeks to tell you that, if you don't want to have a heart attack again, you need to stop smoking, change your diet, and the other factors that contribute to heart disease. We're in that moment now.”

If you enjoy the interview, consider making a donation to support the team behind the podcast. There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism, and the content you care about.

Photo credit: Dr. Bernstein’s twitter, @DrAriBernstein

Emily Atkin: Dr. Bernstein, thank you so much for taking some time to come on to the HEATED podcast.

Aaron Bernstein: Thanks for having me.

EA: A few months ago, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard hosted this training workshop for journalists on covering climate change, to help us help each other tell the story of climate change better. You were there, and you made this really compelling case for why we as journalists should be focused on the health impacts of climate change over everything. Could you make that case for our listeners?

AB: Sure. It's an easy one to make. We know that climate is a politicized issue in this country, which is a problem because it has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with reality. And so our charge is to figure out how to make it non-political.

So how do you do that? The evidence I've seen is by talking about climate change as a health problem. And not just as a health problem, but also as a health solution.

Even more so, the message is best communicated through healthcare providers, and that's based on research that has been done across the country looking at a whole suite of folks who could be the messenger on climate and health. The evidence is clear that primary care providers, doctors, and nurses are the most effective communicators.

So I think that's a key part of moving forward on climate. Bringing it down to size, making it personal, making it about health, and making it clear that when we do things, they benefit our health right now. Burning less fossil fuels means less air pollution. It that people are going to lead healthier lives, we're going to have less children showing up in emergency rooms with asthma attacks, we're going to have less adults going to emergency rooms and getting hospitalized with heart and lung problems and a whole suite of other outcomes.

EA: Is there a similar case to be made right now in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic?

AB: I've been working in the hospital off and on in the middle of this, and I'll be going back a week or so now. And one of the first children I cared for, we had to dress ourselves as if we were martians to go see. And you can rest assured that children are generally apprehensive of physicians, and dressing like a martian doesn't help.

As I was with that family and child, trying to form a bond through a layer of yellow gown, green mask and face shield, I realized pretty quickly that if we really want to talk about preventing this—because every time I'm with the family, the parents always want to know, “what could I have done to prevent this”—we have to talk about climate change. Of course hand washing is important. Social distancing is important. But that's actually not going to prevent this from happening again. What's going to prevent this from happening again is tackling climate change, is addressing the causes of biodiversity loss.

Many of us have a hard time grappling with the reality that we're losing life on Earth at a pace that hasn't happened since an asteroid struck 65 million years ago and wiped out half of life on earth. But that loss of life is really a major problem when it comes to these diseases. So if you really care about not having this happen again, we've got to come to grips with the changing climate, and with the loss of life on Earth—of which climate change, by the way, is a major factor.

EA: It reminds me of the testimony that you gave to Congress last year on the health impacts of climate change to children. I'll read very briefly from your testimony.

You said: “I've cared for children with asthma whose lungs have been so damaged by contaminated air they were scarcely able to breathe. I've sat with parents whose children had Lyme disease as they worried about whether their child's half paralyzed face would ever get better. I've cared for children who no longer had a will to live, having survived floods that once washed away their homes and their peace of mind. And I've held in my own arms, infants whose brains were deformed by Zika virus whose prospects of living a healthy life vanished before they were even born. What ties all these experiences together is our reliance on fossil fuels, which when extracted from the earth and burned damage our children's health, through climate change, and through the air and water pollution that they produce.”

How does the COVID-19 crisis compare with those personal experiences?

AB: Well, I think the difference is that we see COVID as a virus, and we put it in a group of experiences that we're all familiar with. People get the flu every year; they get stomach bugs; we get infections. It fits within a framework that people have already in their mind.

The challenge we face with climate is we don't have in our minds a direct connection with all those diseases you talked about. And so that's my job. I need to talk about how burning fossil fuels is, in fact, causing these problems. I need to make clear that, if you want to address these problems, we've got to do something about that. That's an uphill lift. And it’s an uphill lift because it's not within the day to day experience of anybody.

The other reality which we have to confront is that there are very powerful, wealthy individuals and corporations in this country around the world that extract and process fossil fuels, who would rather not change what they do—or more frankly, to accelerate the change we need. And so I think there are real differences. And that really, in my mind, makes it even more important for those who are in medicine and in public health, to talk about climate change despite the obstacles that may be in the way.

EA: How would you as a pediatrician, as an educator, talk to an average person about the link between climate change and coronavirus?

AB: As a pediatrician, one of the first things you learn is that you have to meet people where they're at. If somebody's been smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for years, and you start off by telling them smoking is really going to be bad for your health, you're not going to get very far if their mind is not in a place to recognize the reality that smoking is going to kill them.

And so I have seen huge amounts of blowback from making assertions about climate change, and why dealing with climate change is important for preventing the next pandemic and potentially making less pandemic more severe.

So if I were talking to one of them, I would start by saying, “What do you think caused this virus to emerge?”—trying to get at where their understanding is.

I think one of the challenges we face in this era is that science and scientific understanding is increasingly seen as another belief system. And I don't know that frankly, that's so different than any other point in human history. One might reasonably argue that more people in the world today understand that science is a method of discovering truth than perhaps at any point in human history. I think the difference is that for those who don't want to see science in any sort of fair way, there are any number of places they can go on social media or the internet to validate their worldview. And that's a huge challenge for those of us in public health. It's a huge challenge for those of us in medicine, when we're dealing with Dr. Google, or dealing with somebody who's being funded by a vested interest to confuse the public about an issue. So I think it's really important to get at where people are starting from in their position and understanding on climate change, and or where this pandemic came from.

EA: Speaking of bad actors, I wanted to ask you about this talking point I saw spreading yesterday on conservative Twitter. There's this idea that warm weather kills off viruses, that if we just had a little more global warming right now, we’d be fine.

Is that even true? It's my understanding that scientists are still trying to figure out whether this particular coronavirus would behave like that when it comes to warmer weather.

AB: You know, we don't know whether warmer weather is going to matter or not. There's certainly evidence from other viruses, like influenza. And there's reason to believe that that may be true with COVID. But the truth is, we don't know.

You wouldn't go to see a dermatologist if you had a heart problem. And you wouldn't talk to a politician if you needed to figure out how to wire your house or internet. We, as human beings, are enormously vulnerable to people in prominent positions making pronouncements regardless of their actual understanding of what they're talking about. And so it's challenging in the realm of climate change.

You know, it turns out that there are precious few folks in the public health or the medical world who have spent much time really studying climate change and health. And I think those folks are sitting within a cultural world that is really antagonizing and threatening to other parts of the country. And we're the elitist snobs who are in our ivory towers, and just don't share the values that other people have, people who are just as smart as we are. So we have the ability now, if for any number of reasons, if you don't see climate change the problem, you can find folks or very prominent places to endorse that worldview. Regardless of how well-qualified they may be.

A BRIEF INTERRUPTION: I want to tell you about a podcast called Living on Earth, which features interviews with experts on the most important climate and environment stories.

This week, Terry Tempest Williams on finding courage in the face of ecological grief:

We're going to be facing some very hard things in the future and I, I hope that we have a consciousness that can rise to this moment. That's the question I have. How do we find the strength to not look away?

That's Living on Earth. Listen on your local public radio station or wherever you get your podcasts.

EA: I want to go back to the idea that climate change is linked to coronavirus. Talk a little bit about the degree that climate change is connected to infectious diseases.

AB: Probably the clearest examples now are not the ones that many people think about. People tend to think about mosquito-borne diseases things like malaria or Zika. And there's certainly evidence that climate change and may already and certainly going forward will change where these diseases can be

But the evidence is actually clearest on diseases that come into people through water, so-called waterborne diseases. And a good example of that is bacteria that live in the oceans called embryos. People usually hear about embryos as cholera. But there are others, one of which some years ago showed up in Alaska and oysters and got a bunch of people on a cruise ship sick. And those bacteria should be surviving in Mexican waters.

So research has shown that as the oceans have warmed, these bacteria are able to thrive in further northern latitudes, in the vector-borne disease realm, the clearest signal among the clear signals is Lyme disease. We see the ticks the transmit Lyme disease, able to live further north, including in Canada where they've never been. And we have reason to expect that their ranges may continue to shift.

In the case of vector-borne diseases—where the vector is a a mosquito or a tick—it's important to realize that it may get too warm for these vectors. So evidence suggests that malaria, which historically has been very problematic in western Equatorial Africa, may not do as well as climate change because it's going to be too hot. At the same time in East Africa, where there's mountains, evidence suggests that Malaria is moving up mountainsides already and that that may continue.

Cities are at the cusp of these emerging infections. And so that's a real risk with infections and climate change.

If I can make one more point, and perhaps the most important with climate change and infectious disease, is that we really are staring into a crystal ball when it comes to climate and infectious diseases. As I alluded to with things like malaria, it is possible that the amount of disease that we could see might go down, even overall, even if it spreads into new areas. The same could be true for Lyme disease. It's possible we could engineer our way out of the water-borne disease problems.

But the reality is that, given the uncertainty around the future of climate and infectious diseases, and what we see already, it's probably not going to be good. We can't really afford to wait until it becomes absolutely clear that climate change is a disaster to act.

The virus that we're experiencing right now also has connections to climate change, just in basically the idea that it's a respiratory infection. It's something that gives you problems breathing. And air pollution, which comes largely from fossil-fuel emitting sources that also drive climate change—that's a key factor that worsens any viruses impact on human health.

EA: I imagine you have to be seeing some parallels between air pollution and COVID-19 now, right?

AB: No one has done a study looking at air pollution and its effects on COVID incidence or its spread. [NOTE: They hadn’t when we conducted this interview. A study is out now, though, showing air pollution worsens the virus.] However, we have research done on SARS, which is is also a coronavirus. And that suggests that people who were breathing the most polluted air versus those who are breathing, the less polluted air might be twice as likely to die from disease incidences in China.

More broadly, we have much more research showing that air pollution is a major risk for getting pneumonia, which can be caused by bacteria and viruses and causing deaths from that. So if that same air pollution is fueling the spread of COVID, that research would suggest that it is.

But one among many reasons that air pollution is a major public health problem that frankly, should be addressed. And the evidence from United States couldn’t be clearer. The Clean Air Act resulted in dramatic improvements in air quality.Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved, and millions of hospital admissions and all kinds of health problems were averted. And the economy grew probably faster than it would have otherwise. In fact, GDP grew 260 plus percent in the past several decades, while the cleaner act cleaned up all these pollutants.

There's also research that's been done showing that air pollution makes people dumb. In the moment, we don't think as well and can slow productivity can make people miss work. It's a huge drag on economic activity. The reality is that air pollution has been a drag on economic growth, and the solutions to address it are enormously cost effective in fact, The US case was about a 30 to one return on investment.

EA: Something I want to just get back to briefly is what you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, which was that you were recently in the hospital in a space martian suit, treating children. Are you actively seeing COVID-19 patients? What does your job look like right now?

AB: So I can't talk about my clinical work directly. I'm enormously protective of families I treat. But I can tell you that our healthcare system—and this includes in pediatrics—is being stressed in ways that amplify its pre-existing conditions.

We have a healthcare system that is essentially now designed to harvest what it can out of elective, high-margin conditions. They pay for all the other care that people need on a regular basis. So one might take pause at the reality that in medicine, pediatrics is generally viewed as a money-loser, that it's hard to make ends meet working in pediatrics and hospitals in the United States, because reimbursements are relatively poor compared to adults.

Why is that? Why do we value our children less? And so what we're seeing with COVID is we're making decisions to shift hospital care to adults, which is absolutely what we need to do based on what we know. But then we have we've already seen stories in the Boston Globe and elsewhere about how people are being laid off in healthcare, how salaries are being cut, particularly how pediatric institutions are being harvested because children are being told don't go to the hospital because we don't want you to get sick. And of course, childrens’ beds are being taken. You know, hospitals often have pediatric floors and adult floors.

My hope is in the process of recovering from this we may find ways to address that, that results in greater resiliency and healthcare to when there are circumstances like this. And that also frankly does more to keep people healthy. You know, the people coming to the hospital with COVID, the people getting sickest, are people who have existing medical problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a large share of those are preventable.

EA: Do you think that anyone with any power to make these changes is listening to you on the connection between climate change and public health and infectious diseases and coronavirus?

AB: The concern I have is not as much whether I'm being listened to or not. I'm a pediatrician, I'm well used to people not listening to me.

The question is, what's the right thing to do? And I think it's very clear for me that the right thing to do is to be clear that we have a crisis in front of us. There are lots of things we do in this moment to deal with the crisis, which is exactly what the public health science community is telling us about social distancing, and washing your hands and all the things that we're being asked to do. And that's what people really are looking for in a crisis. They're looking for concrete actions that can be done to protect ourselves.

And so I have really no expectation that any human being I run into who's facing the prospect of someone they know getting very sick with COVID to be focused on anything other than these immediate solutions to the challenges we face. But that does not mean we shouldn't or can't talk about reality, which is that no one wants to go through this again. That’s a point on which I think everyone would agree. And if you don't want to go through this again—handwashing, social distancing is not going to do that.

The healthcare community doesn't wait weeks to tell you that, if you don't want to have a heart attack again, you need to stop smoking, change your diet, and the other factors that contribute to heart disease. We're in that moment now.

I'm not expecting that everyone in the country is going to get on board with the notion that climate action is just critical. I think what we need to do is take the vast majority of people in the country who are worried about this, and give them reason to find hope. What can we do to get people from sitting around worrying about it and giving them things to do that are helpful? That's exactly the same issue we have with climate. The good news is that a lot of stuff we can do on climate is also good stuff to do to prevent the spread of diseases like COVID and prevent future emergence of diseases.

EA: I think we can leave it at that. That's a good note to end on. Thanks, Dr. Bernstein for taking some time out of your very busy schedule.

AB: Thanks for having me. Take care.

OK, that’s all for today—thanks for reading (and/or listening) to HEATED!

If you liked today’s issue/episode, please feel free to forward it to a friend. If you are a paid subscriber and would like to post a comment, click the “view comments” button below:

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The above audio file contains my raw, unedited interview with Climate Justice Alliance policy coordinator Anthony Rogers-Wright. Do not listen to it if you do not like cursing. Actually maybe don’t listen to the episode in general if you don’t like cursing. There is… quite a bit of cursing.We’re only cursing, though, because s**t is fucked up! (Sorry). Climate change and coronavirus are both massive injustices—and that’s no a coincidence. Every societal problem is an injustice when the systems holding society together are unjust. COVID-19 demands that the most privileged in society reflect on how to change these systems. If we don’t, black and brown and indigenous and poor people will continue to die at a disproportionate rate.

Also, cursing makes talking about terrible things more fun. As I think I’ve shown many times, getting angry feels way better than being sad.

I think today’s podcast, edited or unedited, will do the former more than the latter. Hope you enjoy.

ONE MORE THING: Like the HEATED newsletter, the HEATED podcast is 100 percent listener supported. But unlike the newsletter, it’s not just me producing the podcast. A team of four makes it possible. I couldn’t do it without them.

So, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please consider supporting the team through our GoFundme page. It’s the only way we get paid for this work.

See you tomorrow!

Today’s interview is extremely timely, coinciding with the release of troubling racial data about COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Just like climate change, coronavirus is disproportionately harming the most vulnerable in society. It’s imperative that the most privileged in society understand that, and put in the work to understand how they can fix it.

Today’s interview was conducted with that goal in mind. If you enjoy it, consider supporting the team behind it. We’re not getting paid for this work otherwise.

This is HEATED, a podcast where we’re showing how the COVID and climate crisis stories are actually the same story. I’m Emily Atkin.

If you’re finding us here on our third episode, make sure you also check out episodes one and two. In episode one, the legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben explains how and why to be a climate activist during a pandemic. And in episode 2, journalist Kate Aronoff explains how Congress is and isn’t addressing climate change while dealing with the virus. 

Today, we’re talking with environmental justice advocate and organizer Anthony Rogers-Wright. Anthony and I have gone through a lot together; he’s been a source of mine since at least 2014. As you’ll hear, Anthony cuts through the jargon and the niceties. He’s intense, and this is a conversation that wouldn’t show up in the mainstream climate or health press.

Anthony is the policy coordinator for the Climate Justice Alliance, a huge network of communities on the front lines of climate change. Indigenous communities, urban black communities, rural low-income communities—the people Anthony works with all share one thing in common: They are all disproportionately harmed by the effects of climate change and pollution.

And now, these communities are being disproportionately harmed by COVID-19, too.

I wanna make clear that Anthony is speaking only for himself, not the Alliance, today. But his work advocating for environmental justice communities is why he’s here. As an environmental justice activist, Anthony is here advocating for the idea that all people, regardless of race, class, or social status, have the equal right to live in a healthy environment and a safe climate. 

But that’s much more an aspiration than a reality right now. The reality that we have to face right now is that we will not be equal in our suffering when it comes to climate change. And we will not all be equal in our suffering when it comes to coronavirus, either.

Black people, in particular, are on the front lines of both crises. In Chicago, 70 percent of the people who have died from COVID-19 are black, even though black people make up less than 30 percent of the population. In Michigan, 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths are among black people, even though they’re only 14 percent of the population. In Milwaukee county, Wisconsin, black people make up 26 percent of the population -- but 80 percent of coronavirus deaths. 

Meanwhile, scientists on Tuesday found that coronavirus patients are more likely to die if they live in areas with high air pollution. And Black Americans are 75 percent more likely than white people to live near oil and gas facilities. These facilities`spew air pollutants that trigger not only lung problems, but a whole host of other health problems that worsen COVID-19. All this from the pollution we create to heat our homes.

Clearly, COVID-19 and the climate crisis are connected issues. But so are COVID-19 and climate justice: an issue the environmental movement as a whole really needs to do better on. I brought Anthony on today to help us reflect on that. What he says can either make you feel guilty, or it can make you feel motivated. It can make you defensive, or it can make you reflective. You can be sad for yourself, or you can use this moment to act on behalf of populations more vulnerable than you are. The choice is yours. 

Enjoy the chat.

EA: Anthony. Welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you on

ARW: Thank you so much, Emily, love talking to you. It's been years and you're not just one of my favorite climate journalists, but one of my favorite people. So thanks for having me.

EA: Aw thanks, Anthony. I understand that you are coming to us today at a particularly raw moment. Would you mind just explaining that?

ARW: The network that I'm a part of Climate Justice Alliance—and obviously as you stated earlier, speaking for myself here—people that our member organizations are affiliated with, some who I knew personally and some who I knew vicariously, we lost about 10 people over the last three or four days. These are folks who are in areas that were already in crisis before COVID-19 impacted them even more. Places like Mississippi, where people were being turned away for testing and treatment because of their lack of having health care access.

And then yesterday, I got the news that one of my mentors, Sabina, after a very valiant fight with pancreatic cancer for two years, succumbed to a combination of the two.

So s**t has gotten very, very real. This isn't just news stories for us anymore. Those of us who represent frontline communities, environmental justice communities—many of our elders are feeling the impacts of COVID-19. Some have taken off work. Many are self quarantined. And I myself tomorrow, I'm going to get tested as well for COVID-19. So it's a very real moment. It's a heavy moment.

But at the same time, it sounds kind of paradoxical, but I think that it's also a moment for massive opportunity. And I'm really hoping that we can seize this moment as a climate community and as a left movement as well. Because what COVID-19 has really done is put a magnifying glass on everything that wasn't working already. Our economic infrastructure. Our healthcare infrastructure. Our racial justice infrastructure, or lack thereof. The prison systems. Everything is being exposed at once for how inadequate and anemic that it is. And so maybe that represents a silver lining and an opportunity in a paradoxical way.

EA: I'm so sorry. And I'm blown away by that number: 10 people in your network alone, in the Climate Justice Alliance network alone. And I feel like it just, like you said, puts this magnifying glass on what we mean when we say vulnerable communities. It's not just to climate change, it's coronavirus, too.

ARW: Good point. When we think about the climate shock events that really have gotten us speaking about the quintessential threat of climate change, right, we're talking Katrina, obviously, we're talking Maria we're talking Sandy, which, you know, really impacted our home state of New York. We're talking to Harvey, but even you know, ahead of those storms, Right, there were so many things that were already going wrong. And those storms exacerbated the issues that vulnerable populations were already going through.

We know for instance, that even to this day in places in New York City, like Staten Island, there are still public housing units that are connected to diesel gas generators, because the electricity hasn't fully been restored. This is years after Sandy.

One of my mentors, what she said to me was that COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for the climate apocalypse. And it's up to us to do everything to make sure that that show never actually gets produced, and never sees its first day, its opening day. And I would have to agree with her. She's absolutely right. Because as you just said, communities like that were already in crisis are now close to apocalypse. We're talking about indigenous communities, people indigenous to Turtle Island, where this virus could wipe them out. I mean, that's not hyperbolic, at all. We have context, like with smallpox. And when you talk about the lack of infrastructure and investment in these indigenous communities, who are also many times rural communities who don't have the health care infrastructure that is no different from the lack of health care infrastructure. In places like my original homeland, Sierra Leone, I was talking to my dad the other day, and he straight up said, He's like, son, you know, you thought Ebola was bad. This continent is about to lose millions of people.

EA: And I feel like I hear so much every day on the news, from corporations, from doctors, from big media personalities. And I'm just not finding that many people who are speaking up for the most endangered, most marginalized in society. And you come to us working at Climate Justice Alliance, working with frontline communities across the country. Who exactly are we talking about when we're talking about vulnerable populations to both COVID and climate?

ARW: That's a really great question. We're talking about communities that have been rendered into sacrifice zones since FDR’s New Deal. Whether it's redlining, and the selection of certain communities that were selected for the placement of toxic facilities, refineries, mountaintop removal. So we're not just even talking about black, brown, and indigenous people. We're also talking about poor white folks from Appalachia, from West Virginia, who also happen to be the folk where Bill Clinton's welfare reform really, really impacted them with work requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and things like that.

So we're talking about people who the government has basically stated, in no uncertain terms, that your life is not worth as much as someone who either lives in a coastal city or someone who is wealthy. That we are going to poison your water, we are going to prevent you from having access to clean water.

We're talking about Flint. We're talking about Detroit, where there's f*****g water shutoffs. Like in Michigan right now, water is shut off. Or places like the Ponca here in Omaha, or the Omaha Nation where they don't have access to clean water because of years and years of neglect, and years and years and years of austerity for the sake of allowing—as Senator Sanders likes to say all the time—a few wealthy people to suck everything that they could and leave the scraps.

We're talking about people who have been deemed appropriate to be sacrificed so that mainly wealthy and affluent white people can get their energy, cool their homes, heat their homes, drive big cars, and treat the land however they want to.

So this is really just where we are seeing that climate change is barely about emissions and pipelines and fossil fuel infrastructure. It's really about the root causes of white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization. That is all coming to a head right now.

What I also like to say, Emily, is That COVID-19 is exposing the ineffectiveness of everything, including the left and the progressive movement. It's kind of like what I said on a call with some amazing labor leaders, Marty Smith from NMU, Sarah Nelson, who I think is maybe a key component of the future of the United States of America, and maybe the world, and hearing these stories about flight attendants exposed, frontline health care workers exposed. My reaction was, “Welcome to the covenant. How y'all are feeling today is how frontline communities feel every f*****g day. So welcome to the covenant. Let's get to work. Together.”

EA: It makes me think of how many people in this country don't have access to tests, aren't getting tested, or don't think that what is potentially happening to them is COVID—especially in communities where perhaps you live next to a coal-fired power plant and you have asthma problems already, you already have respiratory problems, things like that.

ARW: So, I want to lift up one of our climate justice lines, most brilliant people, they incredible sister named Sylvia Chi who's the policy director for the Asia Pacific Environmental Network. On a call, Sylvia broke it down. And she said that we're talking about, oh, “Be careful of the immunocompromised. That’s who we have to center right now.” And we were mainly characterizing older people as being immunocompromised. But Silvia said, look—in communities like Richmond, California, where there's massive exposure to refineries, and to toxic air: Those people are also immunocompromised. Of all ages, of all ages, because of respiratory disease. Because of asthma.

You got places where people like Michelle Martinez from Michigan Environmental Justice Council, and Teresa Landrum from the same organization, fighting in Michigan's most polluted zip code, the 48217—Teresa's telling you there are children being born, babies being born, with asthma right away. So as soon as they are born, they are immunocompromised.

Frontline communities. Houston, New York, the Bronx. Everywhere. Detroit, Richmond, California. Kettleman City. Cancer f*****g alley, Louisiana, where we're seeing COVID-19 really starting to, for lack of a better phrase, take off.

These people are in, what W.E.B. Dubois would say, double jeopardy. Because they live in frontline communities. They are black, brown, and indigenous. And COVID-19. So I would add to the Dubois’s theory and say they're in triple Jeopardy right now.

And by the way, there is no indication that this is going to be handled ahead of hurricane season, which is longer and more powerful now. So it's precarious. It's really, really precarious right now. There's so many threats that are coming at people at once.

EA: That in itself is outrageous enough to me. But there is an economic argument to be made there. Not only are we losing people we didn't have to lose. We are exacerbating our healthcare system, our hospital system, our doctors are overworked, because people are dying. People are experiencing these symptoms of COVID-19, and either can't differentiate between them or they've been exacerbated. And so when I hear people say that these two things aren't connected—when we're the EPA is relaxing air pollution enforcement mechanisms during COVID-19—it's like, do you not understand the connection? How do people not understand the connection between these two things?

ARW: What we've done on the left too much is that we've focused on the symptoms of this crisis and not the root causes.

The phrase that's in the lexicon right now, of course, is Green New Deal. And for me, what I would say is that we will never have a Green New Deal until we deal with white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization. We will never have Medicare For All until we deal with white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization. All of these social safety nets, all of these incredible plans that are being promoted by some great thinkers, people who I respect, people who you've already interviewed on this podcast who I love and look up to. But I don't see them asking the questions that really need to be asked. Like, can this be done as long as there is a system of white supremacy?

The big sickness is white supremacy, patriarchy and colonization. That is the sickness that we have to find a cure to. And then we can have solution multipliers like Green New Deal, like Medicare For All, like free college tuition. Because right now, the attitude of just like, “why would I help a neighborhood of people who I hate and that and I don't have to live in?” So we can't expect the average person who isn't in our echo chambers to see the axiomatic nexus between COVID-19 and this intersectional climate crisis.

EA: How are you saying specifically white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonization play out in your work during the Coronavirus crisis? Because you're working with grassroots organizations, you're working with marginalized communities. During Coronavirus, specifically, how are you seeing these play out?

ARW: Look at where the new COVID epicenters are starting to be created. New York City, even with gentrification, is a big population center for black brown people and people who are non white. Louisiana, which in my opinion is the state that houses possibly the most important cultural city in the United States of America in New Orleans, starting to really, really take off there and get out of control. Detroit, Michigan. There's a democratic governor in Michigan, who allowed for water utilities to be shut off. This definitely impacted disproportionately black and brown people who were already having issues with being able to pay their bills, put food on the table.

So, what I'm seeing is that some of the people that we lost were turned away because they didn't have access to health care. And even if they did have access to health care, we already know that there's a racialization in how people are treated, and how they are diagnosed.

So I'm the way I'm seeing it play out is the same way that I've always seen it play out. Which is that until this issue starts disproportionately impacting white people, it's not going to be taken fully seriously. So this is again why I say this is such an important time for a massive period of introspection.

Even when we say things like Green New Deal, it includes New Deal! New Deal has been referred to by Ira Katznelson, an amazing author, as “when affirmative action was white.” And by Eduardo Porter, he referred it as “welfare for white people.” The New Deal! And to see some thought leaders just say like, yeah, the New Deal was racist and exclusionary, but it still serves as a great foundation of what we can build off of! Like, really? F**k you! You’re a white person getting to say that. You benefited from the New Deal. You were able to create generational wealth, where the New Deal also at the same time created sacrifice zones through redlining, and prevented black people from enjoying generational wealth. Which is why today, the average household median wealth for a black family is $17,000 versus $175,000 for an average white family. So even with things like that, I'm seeing the white supremacy. Because white supremacy right can be exercised both consciously and unconsciously.

EA: I want to talk too about policy. We’re talking about the Green New Deal a lot. And obviously we're not doing anything Green New Deal-esque in our relief packages to address Coronavirus. And I talked about that a little bit in my interview with Kate Aronoff, about the failure of imagination in Washington to address big problems.

But I'm wondering, if we had a political system where there was no failure of imagination, and we were able to address multiple crises together, what would we see come out of Washington right now?

ARW: I think first and foremost, a massive transformation of our agricultural and food production system—which is climate policy, by the way.

Here in Nebraska, about three years ago, I started an organization with my good friend, Graham Christensen, who's a sixth generation farmer. I met Graham through a program that I was in called the Young Climate Leaders Network. And when Graham started talking to me about regenerative agriculture, and how it is a solutions multiplier—we're talking about regenerating the soil. We're talking about getting soil back to doing what it's supposed to do, which is sequestering greenhouse gas emissions. I remember my first reaction to him was like, “Why the f**k aren’t we talking about this more? Are you are you kidding me? You're telling me that this can happen?”

And some of the farms that we've regenerated, we've heard from the wives of farmers saying, he's drinking less, he's hitting me less. He's being less abusive. He's happier. He's spending more time with his family.

So it would look like things that not only put money in our pocket, but improved our quality of life. I would hope that our government, to Kate's point—and Kate is obviously a brilliant writer and brilliant thinker herself—is that our government thinks too quantitatively and not enough qualitatively. And that's where there's that vacuum of imagination. And that's capitalism, right? It's just all about the money and the short term, quarterly profits and bottom lines. But we're not thinking qualitatively.

It would be thinking about the fact that education in South Korea is considered a matter of national security. They want everyone in their country to be educated, because in their minds, if their populace is not as educated as possible, it puts them at risk. That's just incredible thinking right there.

EA: We’ve talked a lot about whiteness in the environmental movement over many years, you and I. And this is a well-documented problem in the environmental movement is that it's just been so disproportionately white-led, especially in the large green groups. And I've often asked you to explain to my probably generally white audience why that is a problem, and why in order to solve climate change, we need that to not be the case. And I'm wondering if you can do that again, but in this specific moment. If you are seeing it at all, how are you seeing disproportionate whiteness in the environmental movement hinder or harm our response to Coronavirus?

ARW: This is great. So I have a chapter in my book that's coming out. Well, it was supposed to come out in September but it might be delayed now. And it's called “Whiter than Green New Deal.” You know, and from an essay that I wrote and got yelled at about by the way, back in the university. See, this is why I should have listened to you, even though I didn't know you yet, and gone to a public school. Because these private schools, they don't like it when you take on whiteness—they'll threaten to take away your f*****g scholarship.

But from a piece that I wrote called Whiter than Green: I think that what has happened is that we've got to also look at, who were the founders of some of these organizations? I mean, Theodore Roosevelt. A white supremecist founded the Sierra Club. And people who got off, literally got off, on hunting and killing Native American people. And so you don't just get rid of that mentality to just because you make Aaron Mair the board president.

You do that though, by producing new leaders. And this is where I want to lift up Charlene Carruthers, the incredible, brilliant co-founder of the Black Youth Project 100. And she says in her amazing book, Unapologetic, that one of the agreements that we have to make is develop and build up new leaders and spokespeople.

So now, Sierra Club has amazing beautiful brothers like Ben Beachy, who will totally acknowledge and have no problem with being like, “Yes, my organization has been a problem in bringing people together.”

So the environmental community, and as well as the funders funding these movements, have a choice to make. Do you want to continue to foster a culture of competition? Or do you want to bring people together by fostering a culture of cooperation in how you fund and who you're funding?

So if you're funding Sierra Club, but you're not funding PUSH Buffalo; if you're funding League of Conservation Voters, but you're not funding Collette Pichon Battle and the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, who enacted the first regional Green New Deal effort in the country; if you're funding NRDC, but you're not funding Bineshi Albert, and Tom Goldtooth, and Tara Houska, and all these other amazing indigenous leaders who are showing us the way—who are basically just saying things like, “Hey, we've been doing this s**t for centuries, if you want to win, we're here whenever you want to listen to us”—and not just parade those people around when you need them to be the pipeline, that's when we will actually become a movement, instead of just a community.

EA: It sounds like to that it might be good for coalition building within the environmental movement—because we've talked about this disconnect before between the big white-led environmental national groups, and a lot of the grassroots climate justice environmental groups—a good way to coalition build might just be simply to push for more data and more information from these communities for the coronavirus outbreak.

ARW: Yeah, you really do want to kind of make sure that you have the data of people who are being impacted first and worst by it.

Here's the thing with pandemics. It doesn't work like gentrification. You can't just push some people out and then consider yourself safe. It's the same thing with climate change. You can for a while just be like “Oh, it's just those poor black and brown people. Oh, it's just those indigenous people.” Sorry, eventually it's gonna hit you. It's gonna hit you harder, because it's only getting stronger and more powerful.

I love what Bill McKibben said, when the brother had a cold in 2016, fighting to just get sane climate policy included the Democratic party platform. And he was like, “This is physics!” And Bill doesn't curse, so I'm just going to pretend that I'm Bill: “This is physics, and physics doesn't give a f**k about red states and blue states, or black or brown people, it's just gonna hit you!” And that's how I would have said it if I was Bill, but he's absolutely right.

EA: What is the one thing that you want to make sure people are doing in their lives today that could help disproportionately affected communities?

I want to talk specifically about that b******t memo that EPA sent out. Here’s one thing that people listening to this can do right now. Call your governor and call your attorney general, and tell them to f*****g ignore it.

Read the memo. It says “authorized states and tribes may take a different approach under their own authorities.” Hmm. Seems like like y’all have just, in effect, triggered the 10th amendment. So write to your governor and your attorney general, and either tell them to ignore it, or to get gangster. So maybe now they can impose all kinds of things that they might consider crazy, but we would consider pretty safe. Tell your governor that say that, hey: EPA has basically told me we can take a different approach. Tribes can take a different approach. So let's educate our people. Tribes can essentially say, “Well, if you can regulate this right now, maybe you need to turn that pipeline off that's going through our sovereign territory.” And maybe certain governors and attorneys general can say, “You simply cannot just say that a farm that has a bunch of animals that were supposed to be shipped is now a CAFO, but we're not going to regulate it as a CAFO.” No. You can just say no. So that's one thing.

EA: Is that true? I’m gonna have to look at that.

ARW: I'm gonna send it to you my friend. Yes, sis. This is verbatim, sister. This is the thing that is so dumb about Trump and Wheeler's EPA. Here's a quote: “This memorandum does not alter any provisions of any statute or regulations that contain legally binding requirements. And it is not itself a regulation.” Ignore that s**t. Ignore that s**t, people. Because they basically said it's not a regulation. And if EPA tries to sue a governor or a tribe, awesome. Imagine the headlines. I mean, you’ll write the piece Emily. EPA Sues Tribe For Protecting Its People. Great. Try us. F**k around and find out.

EA: I mean, that’s the headline that maybe I would write, but I don't know about other places.

So, it just seems to me like the basic point that people should understand when talking about climate change and coronavirus and vulnerable communities is that the communities that are disproportionately affected by both crises are the same communities—and they're the communities that we tend to ignore the most. They're not the affluent white people. You have been affected by that personally. We talked about that right at the beginning. They're not the stories that we hear most often of the people who were losing.

Could you tell us about someone who you've lost recently? Who is a member of one of these communities? Just to humanize it a little bit?

AFW: Yes, absolutely. I sat on a board with her as a matter of fact—Sabina. I won’t say her last name just because I don't know if I have clearance for that. But Sabina, who, frontline community in Los Angeles.

Sabina was just all power. She was a warrior poet. And what she would say to me was, “You better make sure that my life wasn't in vain.” Like, cry. Sabina would say some s**t like, “I'll give you two hours to cry, and then get your ass back to work. Because there's people who are still alive that are depending on what you and Climate Justice Alliance and all of our members do.”

But I do feel that every black and brown and frontline person that has been lost—I take it personally. I take it very, very personally.

There's a brother out in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, who is now the Lieutenant Governor. When he was the mayor of his city, which was decimated by the 2008 collapse, and there was a lot of crime and a lot of people died—he would tattoo the name of every single person that died while he was mayor of that city on his arm. I'm tattooing the names of those people who we lost into my heart and into my mind, because that's what's gonna pull me through this.

Whatever is the results of my COVID-19 test tomorrow, I know that I have access to health care. I have that privilege. I have the privilege of working from home. There's a great sister Rachel, who I'm working with now. And she's like saying every day, every week as this continues, it's going to stop being three or four degrees of separation of people who we know that died. It's going to be four degrees, three degrees, two degrees. And then we're going to know somebody personally.

Let's not wait for it to get to that point. Let's act now, and get our s**t together, and tell this f*****g government to get its s**t together.

If this isn't gonna cause us to act now, then I don't even want to be a part of the left anymore. I don’t. I don't want to be considered a progressive.

EA: Are you experiencing symptoms? Why are you getting a COVID-19 test?

ARW: Just kind the fluish-type symptoms, the sore throat, even losing a little bit of balance. But just you feel it in your heart. We all know our bodies better than anyone. We better go take care of that.

I can still smell stuff. Paula told me I used too much garlic just last night. So that's good. And I agree—I did it on purpose. But yeah, and definitely not feeling 100% maybe some people refer to them as mild symptoms. But most importantly, I need to know so that I just quarantine the f**k out of myself and make sure that I don't put anybody at risk.

EA: Well, I hope the best for you. And if you do have it, I hope it doesn't affect you. And then you're back to your normal stuff. You seem pretty normal right now.

ARW: Yeah, we'll get through this. I appreciate you so much Emily, everything that you do. everything that you write. You're a very, very big important part of variable of this environmental justice, climate justice equation. So thank you.

EA: Thanks, Anthony.

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