A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

I call adaptation The greatest story never told. I honestly believe adapting to climate change over the next 100, 200, 300 years will be the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. And I’m talking about wars and stuff too, people, the stuff that’s coming, and the movement of people and all that. It’s a really big deal. There’s a lot of great storytelling there, and we just aren’t investing in it.

If I went out and talked to 100 people just down the street in the mall and I asked them, What do you think climate adaptation is, maybe two would be able to give me a somewhat informed answer. There’s so little awareness of this incredibly big issue, and so I think it’s just time is ripe for storytelling, and there’s a lot of experimentation out there, but we’re still not seeing it at scale.

You’re listening to A Climate Change this is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got a great guest on the program, Doug Parsons. Doug is an adaptation expert. He’s also a podcast host of America adapts, the climate change podcast. He’s been doing that since 2016 he was North American policy director at the Society for conservation biology for a while. And welcome to the program, Doug.

Hey, Matt. It’s a treat to come on a podcast. It’s nice to be on the other side once in a while, but thanks for having me on.

Well, it’s great to have you. I was listening to your 200th episode, which you were interviewing a bunch of people from the Department of Defense, and I was curious as to, you know, what has shifted since you you did that interview, because there’s a new administration, and are those people still working at the Department of Defense on adaption, or are they they have new jobs?

Well, yeah, so I’ve done three episodes with the Department of Defense, but obviously under the previous administration, and so I don’t think I’ll be doing one with the current administration. Some of those people in that episode were political appointees, so they just leave anyway, just like January 20, they resign. But it’s my understanding, I was able to have a conversation recently with a national security expert.

I asked, what’s going on on bases, because I think if you were listening that episode, a lot of it focused on installations and how they’re prepping for the impacts of climate change. And it sounds like a lot of that’s still going on. They might just be changing the language, which I know is ridiculous, but I think a lot of that is just because they have to, you know, keep these areas protected. They have to be prepared.

And so I think a lot of that’s still going on. But the reality is, like, it is a bit of a witch hunt. When you even have words like climate change, they’ve had to kind of take even those words out, even if they’re doing the exact same thing. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I think a lot of stuff is still happening, but it’s just an unnecessary step back that is it you shouldn’t be doing. You know, we have to be preparing for this, and the military should be preparing for it. So I think that’s what’s going on right now.

Well, it is kind of an amazing sandbox to test some of these ideas out in, because it is such a enormous organization. It’s practically as big as Walmart. So, you know, the US military. But I was kind of just thinking about it. I like going back to history, like Winston Churchill, one of the big things he did as Secretary of the Navy before World War One was he changed all the ships of the British Navy from coal power to oil powered. And that was a big change, which kind of led to the Navy being more effective. I think that that’s probably similar to what could happen for the US. Changing fuel sources could actually lead to a more effective fighting force in in a lot of ways.

Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunities, I think, for improvement. Another episode I did with the Department of Defense, it was focused on this, you know, Pacific Islands. And so we actually have quite a few bases there, and they’re very concerned about sea level rise. Some of these bases, like the Marshall Islands, these are two three feet above sea level. And so these are facilities that are likely going to be gone.

And so planning for these things, just doing these things in advance, where you have a little bit of time, this just makes sense. There’s this issue of military readiness, and this is all about military readiness, and I think that’s good example of Churchill making that switch. These things might seem like big tasks to do, but the Department of Defense has the resources. Like you said, it’s as big as Walmart, fifth biggest economy in the world, if you just look at its budget.

So of all the groups out there, there’s a lot of groups out there doing adaptation, but this is one that actually has some deep pockets, and so we could do a lot of learning from that. And again, it’s we’re going to be taking, you know, probably a pause on on that the DoD being a leader in the space, but just there’s huge opportunities there, and they will eventually come back in a big way, and because they’ll have to, climate change isn’t going any.

Were, what are some of the things that you saw them doing that was cutting edge or certain or effective during the time that you were interviewing them?

Well, what was the it was interesting. They invited a lot of folks to they, it was in Hawaii where they had this conference, and so the DoD was hosting some folks, and they actually were doing, you wouldn’t know it, but the Department of Defense actually does a lot of cultural resource work, because they’re working with all sorts of countries, and so they have a lot of, I guess, engaging other countries. And so at this conference, they were inviting people to come in, and these were, like, private companies and such, and they had new technology to think about, you know, extreme heat and, you know, solar and all that.

And there was the energy side of it, but a lot of it was the adaptation side of it, too. And, you know, someone created this, like covering that, you know, would you could put around yourself that cools you down. And the applications for cars, applications for just, you know, human, civilian, not human with civilian use, which is amazing. And so the DOD does a lot of research, and I’ve worked, you know, another conference where they do science research. And I don’t think the public has any clue of all the things that the Department of Defense funds. And these are, like, private groups, you know, nonprofit groups.

And obviously things are going to change when you have new administrations, but some innovative work’s happening out there, and they have the pockets to fund this. It’s like, well, we see this stuff come to fruition. Will we see it? Maybe. But a lot of that is just trial and error right now. And that’s the point I like to make on my podcast, is this adaptation is still a relatively new concept. I mean, I’m an old timer. I’ve been doing this since the early aughts, and you’ve only really been hearing it in a big way in the last 510, years.

So it’s an emerging area, and there’s going to be a lot of trial and error. And if anyone says they have adaptation figured out, then they’re that, no, not, not yet, but we’re in that trial and error stage. And I think the DoD is a great example of like, Let’s experiment. Let’s see what we need out there as the climate changes.

Yeah, yeah. I think that clearly, having an organization with the pockets to fund some of this stuff is necessary, like blue sky ideas, the average organization, or smaller organizations, just can’t fund that kind of research. And so clearly, you know the Department of Defense is large enough to fund it and also to practice it in scale in all kinds of unusual environments, as you said, from the Marshall Islands to the Arctic, in Alaska and down to the deserts and All of these places they have the real time opportunities to test everything well.

And another area, and again, we’re hearing this in the news is like groups like NOAA and some of these federal agencies that provide weather data, some of these things are being shut down. And then, you know, people in agricultural sector use that information, and so it, some of it has been put back up, because I think they realized it. I don’t think people realize the Department of Defense the amount of weather data that they create, and a lot of it is off limits.

It’s top secret, but some of it is shared, and like you just use an example, at Arctic or Antarctic regions, that information that most scientists don’t get access to, there’s a huge opportunity once some of that information becomes available because they’re still doing it. And what we’re seeing now is sort of, I guess, the polarization of even weather information, which is really dumb, because we need this for hurricane planning and a lot of things like that. But there are these great resources, and there’s these redundancies in the system. So hopefully, as we start getting very serious about adaptation, we have these resources to kind of turn to.

Well, one of the things in the news recently was they’re talking about turning off two climate satellites that are gathering data up in, you know, the atmosphere. And that seems like crazy, like we have two working satellites, and you’re going to just stop getting the data from them. Like, who is that helping? Why?

How political you want to get? They’re really, I mean, this is what they’re encountering, like the whole notion of climate change, and responding to climate change, they use language like you’re just being woke by addressing climate change, which is just ridiculous. And so it makes it you just, how do you even respond to that. And so those two satellites, it’s a great example. You know, how hard is to build a satellite and then get it into space and for have it to do what it does?

I mean, it’s just a tremendous expense and effort and to just turn them off and not use that information, because, I mean, it’s insanity. Hopefully, some people behind the scenes, you know, even the DOD, or, I don’t know, the CIA that might have use for this kind of information behind the scenes will make they protect these things, but it truly is a witch hunt on anything like well, this is climate data that’s just going to give those folks, you know, ammunition to try to make their case around climate change, and it’s very hard to have.

Those kind of illogical conversations. But you’re right. Those are the things that are kind of happening right now, and it’s going to leave us kind of ill prepared to do it was just setting us back. Other countries have these, this kind of information, but it’s just going to set us back for no reason whatsoever.

Well, it’s like, shift some gears and say, hey, well, maybe we’re not going to have too many wins in this current administration on the climate front, or the adaptation front, what order the wins that are available for states and localities and where people can can do something, and I think that’s one of the focuses we want to have in the podcast, is do something today. What are what are things that people can do today to move the needle, even in a small way, just to say, feel like, Hey, we’re engaged.

All right, that’s a lot to unpack there. And so there’s actually, the federal government actually hasn’t completely given up. You hear that FEMA is in the news, and they want to abolish FEMA, but there’s actually some legislation, you know, bipartisan legislation, that will maybe perform some of these things will make actually, some resources available, but they’re talking about flooding, and there’s this been, like, a really long effort. There’s the National Flood Insurance Program, which is just this illogical program that kind of encourages people to live in the flood zone, and they’ve been trying to reform in that.

There’s some really good groups that are trying to get Congress to reform that, and I think there’s bipartisan interest in doing that. And so what’s the relation to adaptations? Obviously, you’re living in the flood zone. If we’re gonna have more rain events, more flooding, let’s create policies that discourage people from living there, and then let’s have policies to help people get out of there if they’re living there now. And so that’s somewhat encouraging news, even on the federal level, but it’s those things are really hard to move but at the state level, there’s a ton happening. At the city level, a ton is happening again.

It’s been politicized, but that being said, you know, like California, we could always look to California. They have a much more integrated approach to it. You know, you could have cities doing adaptation plans like, well, that’s great. What are you gonna do with that? But California’s actually passed, I think it’s related to, I think just then they raised tax revenue, and they were the first state in a real big way, like directing that toward adaptation projects. So much attention, as you probably are aware, goes to mitigation and the energy side, which I do want to make a comment about that. But finally, some states are directing. New York has got a plan that they’re helping direct.

A lot of is just retrofitting, and some of this is just really kind of boring, mundane stuff, but that’s what we’re going to have to do as we are preparing for all this, this roller coaster we’re about to go on with climate change. And so a lot of that’s happening now. It’s very encouraging, and the private sector is stepping up in a bigger way. They still have a long ways to go, but I my history. I started doing adaptation in Australia in 2003 and it was the only the like ag sector and the natural resource and the conservation sector that was doing adaptation for like, 1015, years before everyone else out there in society is like, wait a sec. This is going to impact us, too. To impact us too.

And so through my podcast, I get to talk to a lot of interesting folks, experts, scientists, that are doing these things, and a lot is happening out there. I think the biggest problem is that there’s not enough awareness in the public. They have no clue what’s coming. And I don’t mean that a doom and gloom way. The fact that we can do adaptation right now is exciting. It’s, it’s, that’s why I feel I’m on the lucky side, the mitigation energy. Those are bigger tasks. You got to get the whole world involved. And let me just say we have to, there’s, there’s this kind of friction, and it doesn’t happen as much as it used to.

But when you talk about adaptation or resilience, people on the energy side, they get all mad. Well, you’re giving up on carbon emissions, and anyone in the adaptation space is like, Are you out of your mind? You still have to do that. If you don’t get the mitigation side under control, then we won’t be able to adapt to the changes that are coming. It’s a window now that we can, but if you don’t get that, so please do your job. But I’m not trying to distract the government from, like, dealing with energy, but we have to adapt.

You hear about wildfire in the news today. You hear about sea level rise, hurricanes that are getting, you know, stronger because of climate change. We have to adapt today, but please keep working on the energy and carbon side of things. I think that’s that’s a kind of a misconception that’s out there that the adaptation folks are just saying, Yeah, you can ignore that. No, you can’t ignore that. It’ll get too hard.

So yeah, I think that’s a great point. And there’s a continuum of like, how, how poorly we do on mitigation. Putting less carbon into the atmosphere will make our adaptation needs even greater. So like we need to do both. So if we do an absolutely terrible job of reducing our carbon output, then our chances of kind of getting adaptation right are going to be even more expensive. It probably it’d be an interesting question to you, and maybe you can’t answer because it’s really hard to kind. To figure out exactly how bad it could be, but the adaptation costs would be 10 times higher if we screw up the mitigation side of it.

Well, yes, and I don’t follow that closely, but you know the climate scientists, they have like, Okay, if we rise one degree Celsius, these things are going to happen two degrees. And so they do actually have a map of that, and I think they go up to, like, 5678, degrees. All right, under this scenario where we don’t reduce emissions, we’re going to see a six degree rise, Celsius. That would be catastrophic. You know, right now, they’re shooting for 1.5 degrees, and we’re going to shoot past that.

But they’re, they’re, what they do is they speculate what it’s going to mean for water resources, what’s going to mean for melting of the ice sheets? And so there is some science, like attribution science, that will tell you, like, Okay, if we our temperatures rise this amount, and then, like, at six degrees, it’s just, like a free for all. It’s just the earth will really be in a bad spot, and human societies will have a lot of trouble adjusting right now. If we’re more proactive, it’s, it’s still going to be, like I said, a roller coaster, but it’s, it’s more manageable now. And like you said, it’s a lot cheaper.

And so whatever the you know, the cross adaptation versus mitigation, the more you mitigate, let the you know, the less you’re gonna have to adapt. And that that’s what we need to be doing right now and again with my podcast, and maybe we’ll get into the idea of communication storytelling, but there’s so little awareness, the public has no clue what’s coming. And I think if they understood, and again, that’s not doom and gloom, it’s more about just being urgent, being responsible, they would probably hold our politicians much more accountable if they understood that sort of the how adapting is going to be a big challenge for us.

Well, let’s talk about water and adaptation there and living out here in California, it’s something that pretty much everybody has some experience in dealing with droughts and wildfires that result from from that. You know, we’ve taken a lot of measures in California to save water and to recharge the groundwater and all that stuff, but we’re still not where we need to be. How do you see, you know, say, California on that trajectory of adapting effectively to the water crisis. And what are maybe some big needs that will have to or big projects that would need to be taken in order to really fully adapt? And what are people not seeing that is should be done.

Well, I don’t know if you knew. I’m actually in Tucson, Arizona, and so I’m out west too, and we have our water issues, and I think the Colorado River just looms large in both our lives and Tucson. Actually, I came here about eight, nine years ago, and I’m from the East, first time I’ve lived in the West, and I knew about Western water laws. But when you’re here, you realize how ridiculous they are. They just, they’re, you know, you first got per serve. You can buy these in the east. It’s not like that at all. And it’s just more logical. And like, okay, of course, you can’t take all the water upstream, and so they just, there’s this very complicated thing.

And I discovered that I’m like, oh, where I’m in Arizona. I moved in an area with water scarcity, and Tucson has been actually very proactive, and it sounds like, you know, California too, you know, burying the water into the aquifer. And they’ve, they’ve really done well, Phoenix, not so well. I mean, they’re getting there, they’re getting better, and I think they’re limiting some of the development, but all of this comes down, and I’m going to get, hopefully answer your question.

And so I feel strongly about this too, is that Phoenix has been very irresponsible, but when it comes to the Colorado River and water use, you always, every six months, the New York Times will do an article of Southwest can’t keep growing like it’s growing and it’s just agriculture is a huge problem in Arizona, and even, you know, in California, and you know You have pecan trees, you have cotton growing in the desert. There are plenty of places back east where they can grow these things, but they do it here because they get access to that water, and they overwhelmingly are the largest users. So to me, an adaptation strategy would be to create water uses that are more sustainable and that actually water for cities is doesn’t use nearly as much as agriculture. And I just think, you know, the media actually tiptoes around that.

There’s always this sort of like, okay. La, yes, they’re using a lot, and you should be very efficient with it, but AG, is the tough conversation we need to have. And it’s not about just growing food. There are other places where you can grow food, and in Arizona, we grow pistachios in the desert, and they’re using so much water, I think Phoenix could grow indefinitely, which I don’t want to happen. I don’t like Phoenix and but I think it’s complex, and so when it comes to adaptation, part of it is making those tough decisions on water policy laws. But I think there are some technological solutions I just write. Really interesting article on how the desalinization technology is getting much better.

You hear about a lot of it in the Middle East, and they’re just using oil for their energy, but that’s not going to be efficient. But now there’s much more efficient ways to do it. And I think when they scale that up, I think Southern California, you know, you’ve got the ocean there, and there are, of course, problems with that, but I don’t think people are going to leave California in mass. If water really becomes hard to get, they will find ways to get it. But there’s trade offs to that too. And so yeah, maybe there’ll be some big projects. But I think technology there’s always it’s it’s water is like the new oil, and if it’s profitable to find ways to get it there. They’re going to do it.

And I, I’m talking about California a lot on my podcast. I think people who live in California, there might be lamentations of some of the things there, but you guys, my goodness, you lead on so much when it comes to adaptation. I have a lot of listeners there, and they are doing some really cool work. I’m I was recruited to moderate this, like four part series that the some of the universities are doing on, like climate migration and mobility. And I mean, California just has so many experts working on these issues. And so I’m somewhat encouraged that California will be sort of a role model for especially with the federal government stepping back like, that’s how it was during, you know, back in the bush W Porter, George W Bush years like California took the lead on a lot of issues, and I think we’re gonna go back to that.

Well, you know, I think you’re probably right on that front. And I do see a lot of encouraging signs and amazing people working on it, which is great, you you raise a lot of questions there. One of the things that I like to talk about is that there are just a bunch of farmers down by the border in of Mexico and California that are in in California, and they get more water than all of Arizona and like Utah from the Colorado River, just this small set of farmers, and they’re growing alfalfa and things that don’t, you know, probably shouldn’t be grown in the desert. So, like, it would just be easier to buy them all out than to and do a lot of the things that we’re doing. And it seems like, why don’t we just do that instead of some of the other craziness?

Well, I’m a bit of you kind of have to be a political junkie. And I always like, who has political power? What are, you know, strong interest groups in certain areas. And I look in Arizona and we have that. We had this big story that kind of it, it just because it got so much attention, and like, the Saudi Arabians were growing alfalfa in the Arizona desert. And, you know, because they bought it and they had access to the land and all that, and they were able to shut that down, it’s like, my goodness, we’re producing alfalfa that’s getting sent to Saudi Arabia. And of course, they need it. But like, No, you’re not going to do this in Arizona.

So that got a lot of attention, but I don’t get no matter. I mean, as part of the like GDP and part of the economics of the State, Agriculture still isn’t that huge in California, it’s pretty big. But there’s a few blocks in, you know, Silicon Valley that have more GDP, and then all of the Ag combined, and I don’t understand why they’re still so powerful. They don’t represent a huge, like voting block anymore. You know, farmers represent just a tiny bit. I mean, if you’re in Iowa, that’s a different story. But Arizona, Phoenix, Tucson, everybody lives in the city, in the farm. I don’t get how they can be so powerful, but I think they’re out west.

There’s such strong momentum to these water laws that they’re hard to break. Like, you know, you just it’s really difficult. Like I always thought, okay, California, just take control, seize it, do eminent domain. This is, you know, the people getting water is more important than, like you just said, alfalfa farms getting it, and for some reason, they don’t do it well. So I don’t understand the nuances of the political sway of these groups. But California, you know, not just that alfalfa. I mean, you guys do grow a lot of crops there.

I mean, just, my goodness, like vegetables and all that that would be hard to replace, and so you got to be a bit more thoughtful. But they’ve talked about, if we open Cuba, the amount of vegetables and agriculture that could be produced, there would just be a huge I mean, there’s things can be moved around and grown and such. And it’s just, I think it’s momentum that keeps a lot of progress from happening, right?

You know, the good news there is that in an instant, we could just stop the water flow to those farms and lose nothing in terms of crops that we could survive very easily without that little chunk of, you know, area in southern California producing crops and and it would provide a tremendous amount of water for people to to drink. So that’s, that’s good, and that we have kind of an ace in the hole that we could always play and say, Okay, enough is enough.

You farmers will pay you off, and you’ll get a fair. Return, you’ll become all billionaires, but you know, you’re going to stop getting all the water kind of let’s take a little bit of a turn and tell us what are the main projects that you think are most important in the adaptation space, and what’s happening on those fronts?

Well, bigger projects, and this is, again, some of the mundaneness, but a lot of money, you know, there was the big infrastructure Act, a lot of money that’s still going to go out there. And so when you start talking about building bridges and roads and all those sort of big infrastructure projects, they’re starting to think about climate change and sea level rise. And so for the longest time, adaptation planning was all. That’s all it was. Was planning. It’s like, All right, great. You’ve got an adaptation plan. What does that mean?

Are you spending any dollars and, you know, are you going all the recommendations that come out of that process? Is anything happening? And finally, we started to see some money, you know, come out. That’s like, what does actual adaptation on the ground look like? And foundations are, they’re innovators, and they’re leading. Like, you look at some of the projects that they’re funding, they might be really microscale projects, but like I said before, we’re in this trial and error phase, and so, like, oh, wait, we like, there’s a lot of interest in nature based approaches to adaptation, which, of course, I support.

It’s like, All right, do build a concrete wall, or maybe we restore mangrove forest when it comes to, you know, coastal Florida, and obviously mangroves are the way to go, because it have so many additional benefits. And I was going to bring this up earlier, but there’s something called maladaptation. So let’s say, All right, well, sea level rise. We’re gonna have three feet of sea level rise. Let’s put a 10 foot wall there. Well, okay, that’s adaptation to that sea level rise. But what happens to the water against that wall?

Well, it has to go somewhere, and it eventually might affect other parts of the coast. And so maladaptation is just like, you know, you’re doing some adaptation work, but it actually has these negative effects. And so, yeah, the nature based approaches are trying to factor that in. You know, nature based approaches don’t always, you know, scale up in ways that you know, if you’re the Army Corps of Engineers and you’re doing levees and all that, it’s not necessarily as easy to, let’s say, restore a forest to serve as a buffer to flooding like on the Mississippi. That would be ideal. Sometimes you have to do these big engineering projects. But I think there’s a lot of learning going on, and there’s a lot of thoughtful people that are thinking about these things.

Now, how can we do this better? But my concern is, over the next 510, 15 years, if climate change impacts really get out of hand in a way that’s like, you know? I mean, a hurricane is probably a great example. Something getting out of hand is that you have no control over the hurricane. I grew up in Florida. I’m a Floridian hurricane. Hurricane. Hurricane, it’s just like, all right, you just have to be prepared. You have housing codes and all that, but just not much you have control over. But other areas, it’s not as extreme, but it could get more extreme. Wildfires could get more extreme, flooding could get more extreme. And so we have a window here to be really thoughtful about some of these approaches.

But you know, if, after certain while, then they probably are going to try to have engineering solutions to everything New York City. Everybody remembers Hurricane Sandy. That was just catastrophic for New Jersey and New York. And so they’re going to be doing a lot of engineering. There’s even talk of putting a big wall out in the harbor there. And there’s all sorts of problems associated with that. So right right now there’s just such a mix of people doing it, and the federal government was trying to get there. There in the last couple of years of the Biden administration, they had a national resilience framework where they’re trying to create some overall national structure to these things.

It was a pretty weak plan, and it left a lot of things out, but at least it was an attempt. Most countries, I think there’s only two or three have a national adaptation plan. And this is, you know, for developing countries, this is actually kind of required, but that is sort of this overriding way of thinking about how we’re going to adapt to climate change. And it’s really just a useful exercise. United States sort of created one the last few days of Biden administration.

They filed it with this, you know, the State Department filed it with the UN so it’s technically there, but, you know, the Trump folks immediately came and says, Okay, well, we’re not going to do that, but the goal was to file it so it’s there, but we’re not adhering to it in any way. That might sound like a bureaucratic exercise to do such thing, but you’d be surprised. There’s just so much happening here and there to have sort of an overall structure has value. It’s just you’re being more strategic in it, and we need a lot more of that.

Well, one of the things that you bring up is Florida. And I just read an article about some Republicans saying, hey, one of the reasons they won, have won Florida in last few elections, was that Republicans were going green and and pulling in some environmental voters into their ranks. And to me, it sounded like a bit of a fantasy in that clearly nationally, the Republican Party has been pretty anti environment over the last. To administrations. So is this just kind of are they doing things locally that are drawing voters in, or is it just a mirage? What this person is talking about in Florida?

It’s not gonna like this answer. It’s a combination of both. And I’ve grew up in Florida. I lived there when I was adult for a while, and I actually worked for the state government when Charlie Crist was governor. And I was there when the changeover to, oh, he’s a senator. Now, Rick Scott and I was doing, I was like, first climate change coordinator the state had ever seen. And so I kind of created the position from scratch, working for the agency. And so we were doing all these great things, and overnight, Rick Scott shut it down.

You couldn’t even mention climate change. Rick DeSantis is sort of in that same vein. But they can’t help because all the cities are like, well, we’ve got a plan for extreme storm events. We got a plan, you know, for sea level rise. And you just, there’s this. The only silver lining in like, climate change being bad, it’s like, it’s not going away. It’s only getting worse, and we’re seeing that, and you have to react in some way. And so Florida, they banned the use of climate change. But adaptation actually has kind of survived. They haven’t really put too much thought into it. So, oh, we’re trying to make this community more resilient. That’s okay. And so there’s some sea level rise planning going on in Florida, and to Florida’s credit, and this goes back to the 80s and 90s, they have an incredible conservation land buying plan.

So there’s, actually, if you look at Florida, you know, the Everglades, and there’s just a lot of parks, and that’s really important. So you have, you know, Florida’s gotten very Republican, but they still like their beaches, they still like their green areas. And so I think a lot of Republicans there, but like, on the big issues, yeah, the Republicans aren’t, aren’t doing the things that are making it easier, but they are the biggest issues. They are doing nothing to really discourage development, like, you go to Miami and just like, and they’re never going to admit that, and probably a lot of Democrats won’t want to admit that too.

But you just can’t have people moving into Florida, like just even some of the modest projections now are three, four or five feet of sea level rise. And what people don’t understand is like, well, they’ll just build a sea wall around Miami, and it’s just and they are pumping water. Now they’ll have bigger and bigger pumping projects, but the land underneath Florida is limestone, and so you build a wall, it’s just going to go under, and then it’s going to go around. And so I talk about Florida a lot of my podcasts.

And again, I don’t try to get too doom and gloom, but it’s just like, I’m sorry, guys, this notion of, I mean, the term managed retreat, it’s like, all right, can I have to think about leaving this area. They are still encouraging people to move to Florida, because they tie up, like their tax base, and they tie up, you know, just growth with more people, and they have to decouple that, and no one’s prepared to have that tough conversation yet, so.

Well, I guess there’s a couple of questions arise on that front. One is insurance, and to me, I think insurance may be one of the big drivers in waking people up to the challenges of climate change, because, you know, there are actuaries doing the hard analysis and essentially as to cost of adaptation and the cost of hurricanes and so on and so forth, and they’re saying, hey, we need more money.

And that is hitting people hard in their pocketbooks to say, hey, this stuff is real and it’s going to be expensive. The The other thing is, are we, when are we looking at three to four feet of sea level rise? You know, I just read something recently that the sea level rise since 19, since about 100 years ago, is about a foot. So are we looking at a century, two centuries, how, you know, what’s the projection on that?

I think the most recent projections are, like three or four feet by, you know, within the end of the century. But the problem with that, like, you that number, you just quoted, like a foot. And so, like, what you see is this is how what they’re seeing now is, you see these gradual increases in sea level, right? They’re like this. But then you go back 40 years, it’s like that. And if you go back 30 years, it’s like that. And so every year it starts to accelerate. It’s still not in huge volumes, but that in itself, is one of the hardest things to communicate. Like you tell someone, well, by 2100 this is going to happen. People are mentally going to check out.

I mean, a responsible society would plan for that. And the Europeans, the Dutch, because they’re on the water, they have like a one in 10,000 year flood, like sea wall. I mean, they’re planning for the future. But we, it’s hard to explain, because you I see people instantly, even when you say 2050 by 2050 we’re gonna have this many more hurricanes. That means nothing to most people, and that’s been a challenge within communication circles. How do we resonate today with folks? And you know, you hate to say it, but like you point to, you know, the Palisades fire and of California and all the wildfire that’s happening right now. This is you. Your future too. And just, I’m glad you brought up insurance.

I’m increasingly covering it on the pot. I just had a huge insurance episode of like 10 guests. I had some insurance companies on I had just some, you know, policy experts and just talking about it. And I had actually a small insurance company CEO, come on and talk about what they’re doing in Florida. It was chance for him to share, but it’s like they’re arranging, you know, chair on the deck of the Titanic. It’s like, oh, okay, well, we got this insurance, but they keep going out of business.

They have a state insurance fund that was never supposed to be really used much, and it’s increasingly just used because no insurance company in the right mind will want to be in Florida, like all the big ones have left, and I find myself on my podcast, like, being very sympathetic to the giant insurance I can’t believe I’m, you know, kind of shilling for them, but I’m like, Well, why should they have to ensure and the California is a big issue too.

You guys still allow a lot of growth in the fire zones, wildfire zones. And, like, why should any insurance company have to do it? And they’re kind of bullied by the state because insurance is regulated at the state level. They’re kind of bull UL you have to provide this much coverage if you want access to these markets. And I think the insurance companies there are going to be the leading driver of, like, some serious like adaptation planning, just merely because it’s a profit driven enterprise. And I’m not trying to make them out to be angels, and the responsible ones, that they’re still encouraging a lot of, like bad behavior.

But look to the insurance markets to see how states are kind of responding and doing their own adaptation planning. Because, yeah, in Florida, I’ve, you know, families don’t fly. My son goes to college in Florida, and that it’s, it’s only gonna get more expensive. And that the notion, like, again, three, four or five feet of sea level rise, it’ll be gradual. It’s not gonna be like, okay, 20, 104 feet, it’ll be gradual, and storm events will be worse. And it’s just, you’re gonna see this entropy along the coast. Like, well, this area, we can’t really, you know, pump out and all that. And so I think it’s the economics of the region are gonna slowly just deteriorate. It won’t be like that.

So, yeah, well, I hear that it’s, it’s quite hard to get insurance in someplace in Florida, and we’ve seen the building collapses and stuff like that, and and, of course, it’s harder to get insurance in California in certain areas because of the fires. So in part, that’s like sending the right signal to people to wake up. And I think that’s why I’m encouraged, not because I want everybody, including myself, to pay more insurance. No, but I do want people to wake up.

And that is, you know, sometimes hitting people in the pocketbook is, is the hardest hit and the biggest wake up call to humans. So, hey, if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes to save humanity. Is insurance premiums. Wait, you know, going through the roof, well, then I’ll take it, because we need it. I’ll ask you one other question, maybe you can hit both of you at same time.

Is in California, we’ve got these wildfires, and Trump has consistently kind of hammered Newsom for not cutting up down enough trees or managing the forest well enough. I kind of feel like maybe there’s a grain of truth in that, though the climate change problems and the heat are probably much more at cause than than forest management. But curious to get your thoughts on on that as well.

Yeah, that just goes back to some old horrible practices, like when they cut the forest down, when they replanted, they just right next to one these forests are thicker than they ever would have been if they were natural forests. And so there is some truth that, okay, then a fire comes through, it has just a lot more fuel than it normally would have, because, you know, fires is the natural part of the system there. But when you have instead of three trees in a given area, you have 15, it’s going to explode.

And so the problem with Trump’s approach is like he’d just be happy enough for let the lumber companies come down and just cut it all whereas the thoughtful approach would be like, All right, thinning, and they do thinning in different parts of the country and some of the national forests, and that’s, it’s a more thoughtful, way more ecologically sound. There’s, there’s a rational approach to do forest management, and I but if one side of it, it’s just like, you need to cut the forest down, that that’s not someone that’s not someone that’s being thoughtful about the dynamics of that forest too, and they, you know, when you just kind of clear cut things too, it’s horrible for runoff creates its own problems in that way.

And so, yeah, you’re absolutely right. There’s a kernel of truth to like, there’s just too much fuel in a lot of those forests, but there’s very thoughtful ways to address that, and some places are trying to do that,

I guess, you know, I look at it when I drive through the forested areas in California, think this is a gargantuan job. I mean, this is this would take 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of workers to. Manage the the forest areas that we have in California, it’s just a ginormous area.

Well, yes, and yeah. I mean, you’d be surprised how. I mean, if I don’t think people realize when they drive around the United States, New England, all that all these forested areas like, there’s only 5% of like, virgin forest left the United States. And so even though we have so much tree cover, all that has, you know, those were trees that were cut down. And so we have a really effective way to to impact large landscapes like that.

So I think we could manage it. And there’s actually a role for wildfire, even in these over run forests, you know, there’s controlled burns, and you have to be very careful with that. And so that would be an easy like using less, you know, people to actually manage larger areas. But again, not just you need thoughtful. You need the right scientists behind it, the right seasons and all that. And so, yeah, I think we can actually manage more land than you realize. It’s just, it just takes some resources and just being thoughtful about it.

Yeah, it’s not like it’s beyond our control, but it does require some serious, you know, allocation of resources, and we could do it and it’s worth doing. I’m not saying that that it’s not worth doing. It’s just that I don’t see it really getting done at scale of probably what we need to given the risks that we’re facing. Yeah, and

I think some environmental groups, and that’s my background, conservation groups, are just guilty of, like, all right, no cutting anywhere. And says, like, you know, some forests need to be managed because that force you think is a natural for is not a natural forest. It’s not, in fact, it’s going to be better for a lot of the wildlife, if you manage it in a different way. So, yeah, there’s opportunities there.

Well, let’s, let’s shift over to the role of public engagement storytelling in adaptation, and how storytelling can increase community engagement, analyze climate adaptation efforts. You know, what are your thoughts on that to move from gloom and dune to empowering stories that inspire action and bring people together for long term resilience?

Well, in a very loose way, I’m kind of on the like I said earlier on the I think on the better side, the adaptation story is a much more positive one. There’s things that we could do today, actual concrete actions. Because when you say, reduce your carbon footprint, and that’s going to have an impact over the next five, people just lose interest in it, whereas here, oh, well, we need to, you know, get rid of this dam to restore this forest that’ll help with flood control. Those are really concrete things that you can do today.

And so the storytelling is there. It’s ripe. It’s just unfocused. And where are you based? Though, in California. Where are you? I’m in Venice. Venice Beach. Okay, so, but you’re in the Las Angeles. So I’ve been increasingly saying this. I’ve been kind of obsessed with storytelling, and what happens in the environmental space and conservation space and a lot of science grants is that you’ll get a big grant, and then they’re supposed to, like, how are you going to communicate the results of what you just did here? This was important work, and a lot of times it’s this tag on 5% of the total budget.

Okay, you got to go communicate and, you know, demonstrate some value to this. And most of the people involved with it don’t even have any communication skills, no communication background. They might create a white paper with that. And so I’m my podcast. Like to think I’m a storyteller, but I’m sort of encouraging you, you look at Hollywood just there in your backyard and talk about storytellers, right? They’ve been storytelling for a long time, and when they make a movie, they might spend $100 million on a movie, right?

Maybe one of these big, dumb Marvel movies, and they’ll spend $100 million and I go see those with my children, and but then what happens? They spend $100 million marketing it and promoting it, because if they’re going to really make money back on that, they got to create some awareness out there. And sometimes those movies still crater. They fail, but they still spend a lot of money marketing. And that’s what I’m arguing like when it comes into the adaptation space, and a lot of these stories, it is barely just a throwaway amount that they’re like, they’re not investing in the sort of awareness that we need to do.

I do this presentation when I go to conferences and stuff like, I call adaptation The greatest story never told. I mean, I honestly believe adapting to climate change over the next 100 200 300 years will be the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. And I’m talking about wars and stuff too, people, the stuff that’s coming, and the movement of people and all that. It’s a really big deal. There’s a lot of great storytelling there, and we just aren’t investing in it. We President Biden, you know, one of my criticisms, because I knew a lot of people, a lot of listeners in the federal government, listen my podcast.

They never created a National Communication adaptation plan. You need that, again, that sort of broader strategic approach. And no one’s doing that. The foundations aren’t really doing that. The public. If I went out and talked to 100 people, just in the street, in the mall, and I. Asked them, What do you think climate adaptation is? Maybe two would be able to give me a somewhat informed answer. There’s so little awareness of this incredibly big issue, and so I think it’s just time is ripe for storytelling, and there’s a lot of experimentation out there, but we’re still not seeing it at scale.

And so that’s not necessarily good news, but at the same time, I also encourage people in adaptation and be it not just in the storytelling, but we’re such early days in this that you can come into this field and actually have an influence. You can do something innovative and new. How often can you say that about a field like these more mature fields of architecture and all that these things have been around forever? Adaptation is just a baby, and you can come in and actually do something and influence the space in a really big way. I think that’s very exciting.

And I, you know, I have a lot of young people that listen, you know, college age, and they reach out and they say, Oh, I’m looking at getting a job in adaptation, and it The sky is the limit. You don’t know what this looming issue of climate change. I think that’s very exciting. And I think again, there’s some more stories to tell there. Threading them all together is a challenge. And then back to that issue of like, okay, some of these things are going to happen by 2100 that is really a tough nut to crack to kind of create that awareness and urgency based on using language.

And scientists are horrible communicators. You know, they’re just terrible, and they’re just doing their job, though, you know that I’m not. It’s you can’t expect to be good communicators. And that’s part of the problem. Is that like, oh, well, if the scientist has communicated better, and I kind of like to flip that around, it’s like, Well, okay, that communicator, why don’t you just teach him or her to be a rocket scientist too? It’s like, No, you don’t. It doesn’t work that way. That’s a real skill set, and it’s a real skill set to be a good communicator, and I think we need to just invest more and take it a lot more seriously.

That’s a, that’s a great point. And I have certainly had some amazing scientists on the on the show, and some of them I’ve coached a little bit and said, hey, you’ve got a great message, and you should probably hone that communication skill because, and I recall one of them really taking hard to and I appreciate now, that’s great. Yeah, you know of like, Hey, I recognize that it’s a weak spot, and I want to work on it. And it’s challenging because, hey, she’s brilliant scientist, and run rings around me, but she could use some help in communicating the story.

I mean, at a federal level, we saw in the last election, Kamala Harris in the debates and with Trump. She really, she really didn’t hit climate at all head on. She didn’t have a good story. She was afraid that it wasn’t poll, polling well, and part it was polling poorly because nobody’s communicating about it effectively. So of course, if, if you’re not out in front, if you’re not leading, then then somebody else will and telling a story that’s not the story you want to be telling.

I hate to take get any lessons from Donald Trump, but to his credit, and that’s why I think he succeeds with his voters that he does. It’s like when he says something you and most of the time you think he means it, even though most of the time it’s a lie. I mean, there’s such easy things to prove, but the way he says it, in the confidence, and that’s the problem with scientists and a lot of Democratic politicians, is that we do nuance right with qualify thing, and that’s how I want to be spoken to, too.

That’s because that’s, yeah, I get it, but vast majority of the public, they just want you being confident. So someone like, you know, President of Canada, should come out and say, climate change is happening. Of course it is, and we got to respond to it. None of this nuance. And even scientists need to get a bit more comfortable. Maybe they put their necks out. Okay, this might not be, well, there’s 65 No, just say five feet of sea level rise is our future.

And I mean, when you publish, they’ll correct you there, but when you’re talking to the public, just just be a little bit more confident with what you’re saying there, because that nuance that a lot of us like to hear, the public does it? They just want to sense that you’re confident what you’re saying. And that’s I guess, to Donald Trump. He’s very confident in those lies that he said. He just really believes them, and they believe him back because they don’t have the time or interest to really explore the issue.

So Right? It takes a lot of time to drill down into these things. I recall getting the IPCC report, and, you know, it’s like a foot thick or something, and thinking, how is the average voter going to know about this or to have drilled down into it in any meaningful way? It’s It’s dense, and it takes, like, years of study before you really maybe have any degree of mastery, and it covers so many different areas, you really need somebody to distill it for you and to communicate it in a really effective way and confident way.

I mean, just yeah, just confidence. And I had mentioned this by. Released his national resilience framework, like the year and a half before his admin was over. Listen to that. I mean, national resilience framework, could that just be more impenetrable? No one knows what the hell I mean, just like, who are the messaging people? I mean, when the next White House Administration, they need to hire some really top Hollywood people, national resilience, and it was a big deal among people like me. I mean, my background is policy. They’re all the policy wonks. Always all so excited.

I’m just like, I’m sorry. No one else under has any clue what this is. And even though it had these huge repercussions, resilience across the United States and rivers and cities and national it’s like, just horrible. I’ve been criticizing that on the podcast quite a bit. You know? I’m just like, who I’m trying to find out who actually came up with that name. I just want to be like, I want to get them on the show. What were you thinking? You know, so we’ll see.

So tell us about how you see the role of private sector in driving climate adaptation. Are there any examples of businesses kind of leading the charge on this one?

Well, we talked a bit about insurance, so I don’t need to go over that again. I think, like big pocketed folks, insurance will be leading when it comes to, like, driving some adaptation planning. But there’s actually, this is relatively new in the last two or three years, like, you know, they call it financial tech. And so there’s a lot of technology companies, startups that are coming into the space, which is very exciting for me.

I haven’t covered it that much in the podcast, because, you know, it just but, oh, I’ve got a new tool that will filter air more effectively. And they’re doing it because there’s gonna be a lot more wildfire in our futures, and there’s a sort of water filtration unit, and things that you just think are these mundane are actually being developed and being pitched by these companies in response to climate change. I think that’s very exciting. And a lot of startup money is looking for money, and I’m just pulling this number, but I’m trying to make a point like someone did a sort of adaptation, like lay of the land, and the sort of investment money that goes into mitigation projects, you know, solar, batteries and stuff.

I mean, it’s like 80, 90% of all that sort of investor money, adaptation, resilience was getting something like 5% that will change. And when that starts to change, we’re going to really see a lot more exciting things happening. And again, we are adapting to climate change right now. It’s not going away, so you’ll see more of it. But the private sector, and I think this is generational thing too, a lot of those folks in those companies are relatively young.

I have a conference in these it’s like 30, and they’ve already done the startup, and they’ve got these things going on with these projects and this technology that will help with climate change, and I think they have just been raised on climate change is out there, and they want to be part of the solution, which is kind of, I think we’re a lot of these problems that we have. We’re just dealing with the old guard that just kind of shrugging at the issue. And pretty soon we’re gonna have a like, so many people like, well, this is just standard. And, you know, in Europe, climate change is being addressed in a really good way, so I’m encouraged by that.

And on the financial and the tech side, a lot of things are happening. And there’s those guys are kind of communicating with each other, and there, there’s some conferences that are happening where these people are kind of coming together, because it adaptation was the longest time was just like the natural resource sector. So yeah, private sectors come in a big way, but we’re just scratching the surface. Even those people would say we need a lot more investment.

What about say things crisis in Africa, it could occur or are occurring in real time, that are climate related, that we are we have failed to adapt, and are maybe huge adaptation challenges that are likely to be faced in the coming years. What are the challenges? What are they looking at? I mean, like they talk about Northern Africa, if there’s a big drought, there, 400 million people could be kind of on the move, maybe going towards Europe, going to other places in Africa, causing huge amounts of disruption. Considering 400 million people could disrupt about, just about anything so well, no, I get you put there.

And people, Syria was at the in the news a lot. You know, it’s been a little while. I mean, they’ve just recently, because they finally got rid of the dictator there, but that there was a lot of movement of Syrians into Europe that created all sorts of disruptions. And a lot of people don’t realize that had to do with drought, access to water, and national security experts have attributed that to climate change. You’re seeing this sort of movement of people and disruption of the other societies based on climate change. That was just a test run of a lot of a lot of things that are happening there. They people are saying that large parts of the Middle East are going to be uninhabitable. Where are those people going to go?

And it’s going to those will take years, and they’ll take it’ll be but when they start moving, that’s going to create disruptions. And so yeah, planning ahead and the challenges of that. I mean, adaptation here just seems so quaint compared to maybe some of the struggles that they have over in Africa. I actually got to go to Africa a couple times go went to conferences. And I was like, I was coming from the airport at 1am in this van. I was sharing it with some a couple of the other conference participants of this woman from Mali Molly, and we were talking about, you know, what were some of the issues in her country? She’s like, well, last year, you know, something like, you know, 2 million people were a threat of, you know, lack of water, all that.

And I’m sitting there, 2 million people and they don’t have enough water. And these are the sort of the big issues that they’re dealing with was, well, you know, we might in the United States, we never have such an issue, you know, like if a storm kills 100 people, which is a tragedy, that’s a big deal there. They’re just dealing with much macro scale. And just wakes you up to the fact that if these places really become unstable, they’re going to start moving around. And it was, it’s probably been seven or eight years, but there’s a every two years, there’s a giant adaptation conference this year is going to be in New Zealand, and I want to go to that. And the one was in Cape Town Africa.

And like, up till maybe three or four months there was, it was in the news that was, Cape Town is going to run out of water. And so this big they were actually, I know some people the World Wildlife Fund, they almost didn’t go because of the lack of water. And I think ultimately they were able to do it. And so it’s just like this, real time. Real Time climate change impact, and, yeah, it’s just those countries are actually thinking about adaptation, and they’re working with a lot of international aid groups.

And that’s why our, you know, we just gutted USA ID, and they were doing a lot of climate adaptation programs with some of these countries that just really developing countries, and that’s gone Europe still does a lot, but having those larger conversations of like, how are you going to change agriculture? How are you going to, sort of, again, adapt your country to kind of survive these changes that are likely coming?

Yeah, it’s fascinating. Well, I guess there’ll be opportunities to, you know, work on these technologies, because people are going to be having these problems in real time, and so we’re going to have to solve for them. One bright spot that I saw was, you had mentioned Saudi Arabia earlier, and just the Middle East being potentially uninhabitable, and one of the things that they’re doing is they’re putting up a huge amount of solar there to power power their country, and, I guess, desalination, as well as all kinds of other things, which, as you had referenced, they had previously done with burning oil to create the energy to desalinate.

Now they’re going to do it through solar, which is obviously a better source. And the downside is they’re going to be able to sell that oil to somebody else. But so they’re doing it partly out of economic reasons, but they they kind of see the the writing on the wall, maybe better than we see it in the US. When I went to cop 28 Dubai, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia and all those countries were investing pretty heavily into the energy transition. So they seem to get it. I mean, they it’s it’s now a weird place that Saudi Arabia is now more environmentally proactive than the US government.

Yeah, it’s true. I was actually having this conversation early this morning with a friend, and I know I’m not the energy expert, but like, you look what China’s doing with EVs, and like they’re like the source of most solar panels around the world, they look at renewable energy is almost like oil in the ground, like they are becoming a strategic resource, and their ability to do that. So I’m very encouraged by that, and I think you’re going to see a major dip in oil demand just when the EV revolution truly takes off. And then it’s just like, and you’re gonna have oil companies saying, we’re not going to invest all this money into a diminishing returns. We haven’t quite hit that yet.

And then again, the tragedy, what’s happening United States is like, you know, Trump knocking on wind and solar, and that’s our future. It’s just we’re going to take a nice 510, year pause in it for absolutely no reason, but the all these other countries, Saudi Arabia, China, as you had mentioned, it’s just they see this as sort of, it’s a national security, strategic sort of asset that they’re doing. And I don’t think enough Americans appreciate renewable energy.

You have to look at it as like oil in the ground, you know, a source of economic returns and just strategic value. So I’m encouraged by that, but at the same time, not where, what country we’re in, we’re not we’re going to be left behind in that respect?

Yeah, it’s clearly myopic. And one of the things I’ve always said about Trump is he masters in myopic thinking. And he will talk about, hey, we want to drill all the for all this oil, because it’s a resource. But he doesn’t think. About? Well, the sun is a resource too, and we can get, we can get energy from the sun.

That’s cheaper than than getting gas from the ground. Well, we should use it. It just cost effective. But I think the eventually, the market’s going to win this, this battle, and it’s cheaper to get solar energy and wind energy. So it’s, it’s ultimately going to win. So that’s somewhat fueling my optimism.

We’re going to be having, you know, stuck with a lot more gas powered cars in the future. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is only going to be producing like EV cars, and it’s that is going to, I think, blow up in our faces in a really awful way. I think the price of gas kind of reverse will probably go through the roof, because a lot of oil, I’m talking 1020, 30 years from now, they’re not going to be drilling anymore, because they’ll see the rest of the world, and they will always have needs for some oil, but the US will just be stuck with these outdated vehicles if we don’t really make that transition to EV and so it’s just so many ways it’s going to blow up in our faces, because the rest of world is doing it. You know, they’re going to do it.

Yeah, I saw recently that one country has essentially banned the sale of from of gas powered cars and is only doing EVs. And because strategically, that makes sense for them, and I think that they’re ahead of the curve. And, you know, I kind of feel like, well, we’re eventually going to have to be going in that direction. It is us being this internal combustion engine Island is not going to work, and it’s, it’s doomed to failure, which is similar to most of Trump’s ideas.

I feel like I have a plug in hybrid. And so for like, you know, 31 miles, I get just EV power. And if we could just require every person of driving age to drive an electric vehicle for, you know, five miles, they’ll be convinced. They’ll be like, wait a sec, this pow, and just this, everything about it. I mean, most people who have them love them.

They’re obsessed with them, you know. And so it’s just, it’s, they act like it’s all, well, you’re gonna be forced, since it’s like, oh my gosh, once you get it, you’re never going to go back, you know? They they’re starting to, Ev, you know, big trucks, like tractor trailer trucks, and suddenly the truck drivers are like, Oh my god, I never want to go back to the diesel or whatever. It’s just so much better. And, yeah, it’s, it’s such a dumb kind of thing that we’re embracing so.

Well, hopefully, you know, people will get the message. And and there are greater sales of EVs year over year. And so I think people are are making the change, regardless of what is being said at the top of the food chain. But you know, Doug, great conversation. Great having you on the show. I appreciate all the work that you’re doing in this adaptation space. And I think it’s a really great point that you make, that it’s the greatest story never told, and and for communicators and young people to get into the space and be a part of of an important area, which obviously we’re all going to need over the coming century. So being on the cutting edge of that is is an important is important work. So thank you for for doing that. Yeah.

And thank you, Matt, fellow podcaster, I appreciate what you’re doing. And you know, having a platform for all these interesting, important people doing the climate work that they’re doing, yeah, yeah. Thanks to you. And thanks for having me on the podcast. Yeah.

And everybody check out Doug’s podcast. He said, America adapts the climate change podcast and follow him and all of his social media and all that, you get a lot of great info and Intel into this and and go out there and do something today. Everybody take some action and Doug. I’ll let you kind of answer that question on, you know, it’s the things that people can do to plug in to to this. And I guess Cesar Chavez said, hey, what can you spend on? Because every dollar that you spend is a vote as well.

Well, with adaptation, a lot of that has to do with planning, but what you can do is just find out what, what your community, what are sort of the climate threats in your community? And like most cities, actually, like most cities, actually have that kind of information, just take an interest in that. And then again, this is not as satisfying, but support politicians that actually take this seriously, because these things are macro level issues, even at the city level, but at the micro level, there are things you can do, like in Florida, you can storm proof your homes.

In California, people are increasingly thinking of how you design and construction of your houses when you think about wildfire, make the and some of this is probably going to be regulated, but there are things that you could do at the micro scale to make yourself more, I guess, resilient to some of these climate change. That are happening, but, but a lot of this stuff is community led, and this maybe there’s some local groups that you could join or support, because you need to have this kind of broader conversation.

And I just educate yourself on this with we still have a long way to go and and we’re just going to need public support on this. But yeah, having the right people in the right places helping make these decisions is critical.

Absolutely.

So thank you again, Doug, for being on the show and wishing you well, and certainly look forward to collaborating with you in years to come.

Awesome. Thanks, Matt.

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