Episode 59 - Pale Blue Dot

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[Music] hey everybody quick reminder to not wait until the last second to book your liturgist gathering tickets last time there were a bunch of people that couldn't get in because it sold out before they could buy so those dates again are september 15th and 16th in los angeles october 6th and 7th in boston and october 27th and 28th in seattle it's going to be such a good time make sure you get your tickets quickly also gunger my band is going to be playing some full band shows i'm really excited about because we haven't done that in a while i'd love to invite you out to those we're going to be in dallas texas july 12th we're going to be in new york city uh july 28th and we're gonna be in nashville august 5th we're also doing a number of acoustic stops on the tour where lisa and i do like a stripped-down acoustic show take questions and have a lovely time with the always fascinating people that are you for the acoustic shows we will be in san antonio july 16th new cumberland pennsylvania july 30th philadelphia august 2nd cary north carolina august 3rd denver august 7th colorado springs august 9th omaha nebraska august 11th indiana august 16th ohio august 17th there are actually several more of those dates that will be posted on the website over the next week or two as well if you'd like to see a slightly less musical in a certain way but certainly every bit as nerdy event with science mike he's actually going to be doing some dates in the uk he's going to be in london birmingham and edinburgh on october 11th 13th and 17th he's going to be in dublin on october 21st and that's a lot of stuff but please do come out and see us you won't regret it or you will or you will realize that regret is a mostly useless construct an emotion and just let that go and enjoy being present in another moment either way consider yourself invited all right onto the show we're here with an amazing filmmaker whose genre of film would be like existential space films i like that i'm gonna use that from now on um yeah welcome to the podcast oh yeah there's a small technicality hello my name is guy reed my full name is actually guy charles barrington read but i never tell anyone that's a fancy one it is a fancy name and my friends call me gcb but um barrington is also weirdly enough a big jamaican name so i've got like props in the jamaican community as well but i rarely go by it so guy is fine all right there we go thanks it sounds good it doesn't love it you know yeah i sound like i should put lord in front of it in fact a friend of mine strangely enough he actually bought me some land in scotland my main business partner kristoff for a birthday present it did actually give me the ability to use lord and i just got my driving license in america apparently i can actually use it so i'll be lord guy charles barrington reed oh my god on the end it's pretty good yeah and it's probably just like an aldi car park up in glasgow like it's like it's meant to be like some land that i can camp on i'm i'm pretty sure there's no there you're still the lord of the land yeah yeah a lot of fun science mike and i sat down with lord guy charles barrington reed and our friend jacob marshall while we were in washington dc recently lobbying with some leaders who have influence with christian millennials trying to encourage some gop congress members to pay more attention to climate change to see how it's not just a partisan issue but an issue for all human beings and all life this conversation that you're about to hear about planet earth is one of my personal favorites that we've ever had on this show we think you're gonna enjoy it as well welcome to the literature's podcast [Music] sorry i am a filmmaker that's true i make films about astronauts and ecology and uh the big questions so existential it's a podcast so we can't show you the film but we'll put the link in the show notes on this episode too guys film overview which is just a pretty solid head trip and is is premised on this really incredible phenomenon called the overview effect tell us what you know about the overview effect well i don't know much about it because i haven't been to space not yet although actually i probably i'm not interested in going it looks rather dangerous and there's a one in 60 chance now we're dying right now no problem yeah right now you've got to talk to the astronauts there and find out what actually happens because it sounds pretty rubbish actually the first part of it and the last part of it the bit in the middle is when they have this supposed phenomena called the ov effect so i came across it that term when i was 15 years old i grew up in a city called bristol in the uk and my friends and i used to um to skateboard hang out do what most 15 year olds do but my friend steve and i were really interested in finding out the you know about the big questions in life we used to get high quite a lot i don't know if i'm allowed to say that we used to get started that's the thing that people do that's cool yeah i mean i think it's quite healthy at 15 gets you you know opens the mind so we we used to um we used to get high a lot and talk about big things and we we used to go to second-hand bookshops and go through the dusty shelves and try to find stuff that would blow our mind and steve came back one day with a book which was called the awakening earth and it was published in 1982 by a british kind of rogue physicist called peter russell and in it the invitation at the beginning was this beautiful description of the earth from space from an astronaut edgar mitchell who was on apollo 14. so to put that in context he's the guy that after apollo 13 they were like who who who wants to go and dear or edgar went me so he's that kind of nutter because everyone knows what happened on apollo 13. so he he had this adventurous spirit went to space and then as he was coming back he was the lunar module pilot so he landed on the moon right they went back up and they went back to earth and he had a lot of time looking out the window and as he looked out the window he saw the heavens the the sun and the moon on rotation and he had a background in cosmology looked down at his hands and realized that all the molecules in his body and his crewmates and the craft all part of this same evolutionary continuum this cosmological continuum and he had this kind of incredible moment this kind of ecstatic moment where he felt profoundly interconnected with everything so we're high 15 years old reading this going dude why has no one told us this we've been at school for ages now and no one's told us about how cool this is you know and so it was this amazing idea of joining all these disciplines together so at the time i didn't know it was called the ovi effect and we read about this and it was kind of amazing and we we said right everyone's gotta read this book so we got this book went to the skate park gave it to a friend said dude this book will get you high you don't even need anything else just read this book and uh no one read the book disappointment humanity not soul so we said okay let's make a film so we mapped out the basis of a film we finally made that film but when we were doing the research into the film we came across this term the ovi effect which was coined by a harvard professor called frank white in 1987 and um he wrote this book came up with a term interviewed bunch of astronauts from all over the world and they kind of describe this profound experience of seeing the earth from space and there's a spectrum edgar on apollo 14 who i mentioned earlier his was like far out there and then there's guys that go up and they're like hey that's nice and then there's this wonderful spectrum in between and really i think what it is is it's it's a peak experience of some sort that is grounded in this physical experience of being weightless of nearly dying on the way up and then looking back and having this profound recognition of home and they talk about this idea of you know seeing home first as new york or texas and then there's america and then there's north america and then suddenly it's just a planet [Music] i have this quote as my cover photo on my my personal facebook profile you develop an instant global consciousness of people orientation an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it from out there on the moon international politics looks so petty you want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck grab him a quarter of a million miles out and say look at that you son of a bitch edgar d mitchell did you see what happened the other day with a tweet so about a week ago someone wrote a tweet saying look at that you son of a bitch at the current president 45 45. he tweeted it then he printed the tweet out cut it out and attached the tweet to a balloon and sent it into space and recorded it so that quotes were going about you can google it it's pretty cool we saw it and we were like i like it it's appropriate so yeah that's great when you've talked to astronauts about their experience what do they describe to you as what it's like to view the earth from that vantage point well it varies so i had the pleasure of interviewing jim lovell tom hanks plays him in apollo 13. but he was on a previous mission on a previous apollo mission apollo 8 which is my favorite space mission out of all of them because apollo 8 is this kind of remarkable mission that left it was the first mission where we left the earth's gravity and circled the moon and came back and on the fourth orbit of the moon these three pretty wonderful astronauts put their hasselblad camera out the window they didn't put it out the window they put it up to the window and they took a picture and that picture is subsequently known as earthrise and it was jim lovell frank borman and billanders and there was kind of a dispute on who took the photo i think it's now bill like pressed the button but jim lined it up you know there's a there's a bit of back and forth between them but i spoke to i interviewed um jim lovell and he said this remarkable thing he said that he's brought up with this idea of paradise that he'd been told about in a religious context and he said that when he was coming back from from the moon and looking back at the planet when he first got that glimpse of the whole earth he felt like this is the paradise our species has always been searching for and i think that was just such a remarkable thing for him to say we're making another film called orbital and i'm going to end the film with that i think because i think it's just like perfect on the nose and it's this idea that you know we went to the moon but actually what we found is the earth and the remarkable thing about most of the discussion around space and space flight it's about what you do in space how do you go to the lewin space what do you eat in space what experiments you do in space is it fun floating and of course most the astronauts are preoccupied with looking out the window and so the descriptions of the earth are really remarkable you know the azure blue waters deep tans of the sahara just this profound experience of beauty and that's the thing that really underlies the experience from the astronauts i've encountered this profound awe in the face of majesty [Music] and the interesting thing is they also look the other way and when you look the other way and you switch the lights off of your visor and you let you know your eyes adjust this infinity of worlds comes out of this velvet darkness and you you look one way and there's a fragile oasis it's blue pearl you look the other way there's an infinity of worlds and it's pretty amazing i think you start out with this idea of what it's going to be like and then when you do finally look at the earth for the first time you're overwhelmed by how much more beautiful it really is when you see it for real it's just like it's this dynamic alive place that you see glowing all the time it was truly incredible to be up there um doing what i always wanted to do my whole life and then to kind of glance back at our planet and see that view was just tremendous i can only describe what i've seen you know looking down at the earth and you see that that line that separates day into night slowly moving across the planet thunderstorms on the horizon casting these long shadows as the sun sets and then watching the earth come alive and you see the lights from the cities and the towns the events you see from space like flying over thunderstorms looking at them from the top were spectacular like a fireworks show going on and you're looking at it from the very top you know shooting stars going below us or or you know dancing curtains of auroras it's just um very hard to describe all the you know the colors the beauty the the motion [Music] friend of ours he has this great show called bella gaia can kenji williams he uh he had an encounter with an astronaut the astronaut had said this thing to him which led him to put on this amazing show inspired by this and he said that his favorite planet before going into space was saturn he loved saturn you know and when he went to space his favorite planet changed to this planet so i think there's this thing about this reality that's always there being unveiled yeah there's so much metaphor to take from it i mean first of all the experience of seeing from a different perspective seeing the connectedness of everything so many people have that experience whether it be through a mystical experience a drug experience oh whatever and it's it's interesting to i remember like talking about such things before i had like i had seen glimpses i think you can see little glimpses of how we're connected to each other and to everything and feel it you hear it it sounds like a nice beautiful idea i've had moments where you see it as clear as you can see anything else and it's world shattering it's you can't be the same after that it's like paul on the road to damascus mike's beach story when you see what you thought was ordinary what you thought was just the ground that you're standing on and it's glowing alive connected divine whatever words you want to use mystery beauty when i hear these stories of these astronauts there's part of me that's like oh i want to i want to see that from that perspective as well and i think how many of us have heard mike's beach story like i want to go to the beach and have a beach experience and you know what i mean these peak experiences that are like change everything it's fascinating to think of that as something you can actually physically changing your location in space and time can give you that same awareness that other people have experienced through different mediums one thing i would i would add to that is as we've gotten to to have these conversations with different astronauts the consistent takeaway for them is that we are quite literally in this together and i think when having a conversation about how a perspective shift like this leads to you know an increased desire to to be conscious about our consumption or to think about our planet and ecological systems when you can see it as a single kind of living breathing system of life supporting life that we've we've come out of this system of life and that we're we're dependent on it and dependent on each other you know they consistently describe their posture coming back into the world as one of a need like a like an existential need for radical collaboration and ron in particular tells these amazing stories about his background as being a fighter pilot he was an f-16 fighter and he'd been trained to shoot down the russians and all of a sudden he finds himself collaborating with the russians on the international space station they go from you know this context of while you were my enemy at one point in time to if we don't work together right now we'll never survive and that flip in perspective long outlives their experience in space and they come back and that's been you know ron's biggest message is that you know we are as a species as human beings we are all in this together and if we don't find ways to work with people who don't look like us who maybe don't think like us but if we can't find that shared humanity at the base of our existence and find a way to look them in the eye and work together on our common problems we're never gonna get out of it [Music] hi i'm omli and i'm six years old just like you i'm a human being who lives on planet earth i'm a really lucky kid because i have things like clean water to drink and healthy food in my refrigerator but if you adults don't start taking better care of the earth that might not always be the case here are some numbers for you one million humans net are added to the earth every four and a half days to feed all of those people we are going to have to produce more food in the next 50 years then we have in the past 10 000 years combined we need 600 million acres every single year for the next 30 years to do this and this is a big problem because we were actually losing twice that every single year some scientists say humanity only has 60 years of farming left at current world soil degradation rates one billion humans already walk a mile each day for fresh water at this rate of humanity's carbon footprint on the biosphere there will be 4 billion people who are short of fresh water in 10 years so as a kid who's gonna live my life in the future that you adults are building for me now please you have to learn how to work together take care of this beautiful home of ours so that it can keep taking care of us [Music] we've gotten to the place with our technology where and our weapons and climate change and all that that's happening the power of humanity up to this point we didn't really existentially need to see the other as connected to myself and in fact on some level we needed the ego of separation to survive up to this point out of you know in early humanity you needed to be like no i need my resources i'm going to kill that animal to feed you know there needed to be some of that me first me only nature to just evolve and survive but things have changed where if we don't learn to see that climate is not just an issue for polar bears and ice caps but and not even just for the poor but for every single one of us and that the issues in sudan or iraq or afghanistan or wherever are intrinsically connected you can't it's not just foreign aid because we need to be compassionate we are connected to all those things in this very thin biosphere in fundamental ways more fundamental ways than we can understand so it's become existential and important to our survival as a species to be able to transcend this these sort of small egocentric tribal centric even nation-centric perspectives or we're gonna we've always used the biggest weapons we've had we always have are we gonna be able to not use nukes are we going to be able to not nuke all of ourselves the hell to do so we have to evolve our consciousness and that's i've heard of stories of the earthrise picture and what that did that what that photo did in society did can you speak to that what yeah i mean it's kind of remarkable i mean i think that image because the most famous one is the blue marble which was taken actually on the last trip back from the moon so the first one earthworks was taken on apollo 8 going first trip the blue marble was taking up probably 17 and overview our film was actually it was a to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the blue marble but the interesting thing with earthrise is that i think on that day christmas eve 1968 when that image was taken we suddenly entered a new epoch of humanity because before we had these two-dimensional maps it's like a kind of like a game of risk you've got the nation-states resources you're gonna get them and everyone's devised all these maps you know and all these strategies and based on this kind of territory yep i always started in africa we don't need to misguide the conversation we shouldn't get into wrist strategy because i'm pretty good at it i'm just saying those [Laughter] such a nine so that day going back to uh 1968 which amazingly was a exactly a year after dr king gave one of the most profound sermons a sermon of peace where he talks about the interrelated structure of all reality december 24th 1967 he gave that sermon exactly one year later with king no longer here those three astronauts took that picture and they i mean more importantly they saw it themselves lovell bulman anders they looked out the window they were the first human beings you know if you could imagine some kind of body sat for angel whatever looking at the planet from a deep time perspective they're looking at life evolve right lava all right barbara evolves starts to sing opera they're like wow this is cool that's from brian swim a mentor of mine you know he's an evolutionary cosmologist he says lava becomes opera which i think i love that yeah so they're looking at this lava becoming opera and they're like wow that's cool and then they see this little blip something leaves because there's all this stuff leaving and going around and then something leaves and goes all the way to the moon wow and it's not just the first human beings it's the first to acknowledge it's the first part of earth part of life right yeah right wow and if you think of human beings as being embedded within this living dynamic biosphere what's our function you know we're of the planet not on it yeah that was the realization i had at 15 that gave me my peak experience i just realized wow we haven't been made over here and the planet made over here and then just dropped in and then no we've actually grown you know we're a self-reflective aspect of the biosphere itself it's like alan watts talks about the the the planet is a peopling planet yeah so in a weird sort of way that astronaut that jim lovell is in a weird sort of way is the is the from one perspective is the biosphere the planet itself looking back at itself right and for me that was a really big moment that's what happened at 15 i was like whoa i'm the guyer it's not the gaia this theory of james lovelock and if you guys talk about on the show but you know this idea of the planet being like a meta organism that we are you know the planet has this kind of like homeostatic homeostasis where it regulates life and the conditions for life itself and that we've always been thought of you know the environment or the planet is there humanity's here but suddenly that boundary going and realizing that's non-human nature yeah you know i'm an aspect of that same evolutionary life continuum but just in this kind of bipedal self-reflective form and so what happened on that day right a year after king's sermon on christmas eve when they look out the window they take that picture that two-dimensional board game suddenly changes and it becomes this fragile oasis that's one of that's ron jay garan our partner that's his term for it and what happens suddenly is we move into a new period of time where our civilization suddenly is completely and utterly out of sync with that reality yeah and those of us that there was people before that of course realized this but we now have an image suddenly we're like well we are totally out of sync and in 2018 right next year christmas eve next year is the 50th anniversary so what we're doing is bringing together a bunch of international astronauts to talk about that and to imagine what is the next 50 years like because we need a new earthrise but this is the crazy and trippy part we don't need to look at earthrise 1968. we don't even need to look at earthrise i feel like my voice should get deeper [Music] so what i mean by that is that what we need to do is we need to look at earthrise again but this time instead of looking 50 years backwards we need to look 50 years forward and and what we need is we need a visionary future we need a visionary future that inspired king to inspire president kennedy and that visionary future of 2068 that's what we need and the great thing about it is that astro underscore ron ronald j garen from yonkers new york who went to space twice spent six months once on sts-128 two weeks with the space shuttle it was a nice easy ride landed very lovely the next mission 2011 expedition 28 he went with the russians and they uh went on the soyuz which is like three dudes getting into the back of a vw beetle and plummeting through the atmosphere and smashing into the kazakhstan rocks so with rocket breaks yeah so you don't crash right before you land there's just a rocket explosion so ron and i and jacob and a number of other people we're putting together this this group called constellation which is this group of international astronauts but we're also and ron's putting on this they call it a mooc massive online course something or other and it's called earthrise 2068 and he wants to crowdsource a vision of that future because instead of being saturated by the dystopias of our science fiction right i feel like blade runner came out was very successful and everyone was like let's do that just keep doing that and the star trek vision completely lost so we need to bring back the star trek vision right damn right i'm a big big tricky by the way there we go i knew it i you know what i knew it and i mean that in the nicest possible way because people there's people that like star trek and there's people that don't like star trek and i was like that guy i've got the technical manual do you know man i got the blueprints nice nc 1701 bro the d let me just ask you about that is it enterprise which enterprise is it which one for you gotta be the d people go with the e nonsense the e that's no that's like i lived on the d you know what i mean i feel like after watching tng i feel like yeah i lived on the beach let me loose right now in a scale replica of the enterprise d and i could navigate i could go anywhere in the ship i got a new hero right now have you seen uh the new bridge crew game coming to vr dude we were on it but the future of storytelling we did it and i looked round no dude it's so cool i look round and my mate mike had ceased to become mike and he was a black vulcan woman in a red outfit doing the phases yes and i just went i was like this is the greatest day of my life so you've got to do it dude it's coming out of a playstation oh my gosh we should do it together i want to see your face actually yeah yeah this is what could be called a nerdgasm what just happened right there oh dear but just one last point on star trek so many one we also released a film called planetary um which had two astronauts it's kind of an eco philosophy film she released at south by and and we started with two different astronauts one of them's ron the other is mae jemison it's one of the first african-american women to get a space she is also the only person on star trek to have actually gone to space she played a transport chief on like i think it's like season two or season three and she like just called them up and was like can i be on star and they trek like yep so the first question when i when i sat down with her to interview her she's a she's an incredible she's like one of these remarkable women she was like i was like was gonna space difficult she's like no going to sierra leone after the u.n left and doing triage was difficult and i was like oh right you're one of those like remarkable body sat for angel humans so anyway the interesting thing about it was i i said to her i was like what was it like being on the enterprise not the space shuttle so we had a laugh we had a laugh anyway sorry sorry sorry i feel like the nerdgasm is happening [Music] yeah [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using betterhelp that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over one million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists we've been evolving from the beginning of civilization to a larger and larger perspective of life on the earth but the next natural evolution is understanding the life in space that is the fact that the earth as buckminster fuller used to famously say is a spaceship spaceship earth we are in space already it's just that we haven't brought that into our perspective as we live here on earth the overview effect is simply the sudden recognition that we live on a planet and all the implications that it brings to life on earth [Music] i've got an idea for you guys yeah i don't know if you're still talking to any republican congressman but i've got a really i think i've got a good idea about it the earth deficit you know they're obsessed with the deficit yeah like that's the thing that like gets them out of bed in the morning the the real deficit is the earth deficit because the interesting thing about that the the the whole basis of our economy is based upon resources which are ever renewed by the biosphere and as soon as you actually go into an earth deficit where those resources don't renew then you're talking about a real deficit then it gets really scary and the interesting thing about it is when the astronauts go to space and they look out the window and we call this thing the flip they see an iridescent biosphere which is that's a direct quote right a living planet then they're like oh there's a species that's part of that planet and embedded within that us right and in turn we've created a society and an economy so it's planet people economy and the really trippy thing is that we think it's exactly the opposite right we think that the primary system is the global economy right that's the primary system and then and then humanity and then you know we've got to take care of the environment as well like like think you're like cleaning up your room right exactly but the reality is it's literally the opposite yeah and we need this kind of flip and once you see it like that you're like yeah it's so obvious of course they don't see the global economy and of course we're like this you know we're a species that's very intelligent and we created this you know amazing global economy but it's kind of like a frankenstein's monster we've forgotten what it actually is it's a construct by us right and we are in turn part of the planet you know kind of in some ways this kind of manifestation of the planet and it's kind of it gets really trip because then you're like wait a minute because i studied sustainable development and i spent my whole master's program trying to figure out how i could explain sustainable development and that's how i that's what i came up with i was like you look out the window you're national it's boom boom boom and then you flip it and it's like yeah we're in this monumental moment where as soon as we start realizing that it's like whoa when we look down at the earth from space you know we see this amazing indescribably beautiful planet it looks like a living breathing organism but it also at the same time looks extremely fragile because you go outside on a clear day and it's the big blue sky it's like it goes on forever right and and how could we possibly you know put enough stuff into it to fill it up with things that really change it and yet you see it from space and it's this thin line which is just barely hugging the surface of the planet [Applause] anybody else who's ever gone to space says the same thing because it really is striking and it's really sobering to see this paper thin layer and to realize that that little paper thin layer is all that protects every living thing on earth from from death basically from the harshness of space so today i am so honored to talk with a person who i met i guess last year and immediately became one of my heroes because she is a woman working in the traditionally male dominated world of the sciences and she is specifically working in climate science but also it has a knowledge of it a background in astrophysics and is a person of faith so catherine hayo is here with us talking about climate change today and i just couldn't be more excited thanks for coming on the program thank you for having me let's let's start with just the really obvious stuff you know since you're an actual climate scientist with an actual doctorate i just thought maybe we could start with some of the basics here for people who aren't sure where they are in understanding how our climate is changing or what role humanity is playing in that process how do we know that the climate is changing at all i mean is there really a scientific consensus there is and this is one of the first questions that my husband and i first started talking about and when we first got married we just didn't realize that we were not on the same page here because he came from a very traditional christian home grew up going to a traditional christian school and he had always heard from people he trusted that this wasn't a real issue it was just being made up by those liberals as part of the united nations plan for world domination with the antichrist pulling the strings behind the scenes so how do we know this thing is real well global temperature records from tens of thousands of weather stations around the whole world are what we use to measure global temperature and when we look at these records that go back the oldest records actually go back to the 1600s we see that temperature goes up and down from year to year that's normal that's weather but over climate time scales of at least 20 to 30 years we see a long-term increase now people would say well but those are thermometers i mean and you know i don't really trust thermometers well then all we have to do today is look in our own backyards because if we look around the entire world today we look at when trees are budding when flowers are coming out what types of insects and birds and animals we have in our backyards how long the growing season is when we look in our own backyards all around the entire world there's over 26 and a half thousand different independent lines of evidence in god's creation telling us that yes the planet is getting warmer if the climate is warming and if we see all of these signals that it is why does it seem that winters seem to be getting colder with more severe blizzards if a warming pattern is the norm that's a great question long term winters are warming in fact for many areas like the us northeast as well as where i live here in texas winters are warming fastest of any other season but winter weather is also getting more variable climate change exacerbates the weather risks that we already face in the places where we live and in many cases it's kind of amping up our natural weather patterns and so we're seeing much more crazy wild swings from hot to cold and wet to dry and in places where it's cold enough to snow in the winter as it is across much of the united states in some of those places we're even seeing more snow because in a warmer world water evaporates faster out of oceans and lakes and rivers and so when a normal storm comes along as it always does there's more water vapor sitting up there in the atmosphere for the storm to pick up and dump on us and if it's above freezing it falls as rain if it's below freezing it actually falls as snow that's that's one of the reasons why our our pbs series we have this little pbs series called global weirding we call it global weirding because that's one of the things that most of us notice when we have lived in a place for a certain amount of time or whether we go home to where we used to live we say something's weird it is just not the same as it used to be and that's what we're seeing all around us is this type of global weirding thing i've actually noticed that when i talk to people who maybe um because of their political orientation would say they don't believe in climate change and certainly don't believe in man-made climate change it's interesting how many in the same breath if you talk about the local weather patterns and say say for example it's a farmer who's been working in farms and agriculture for 20 or 30 years and they will tell you that the last eight to ten years have been incredibly bizarre compared to what they learned throughout the rest of their life that there is definitely this weird phenomenon why do you think there's that disconnect between like accepting weather has been weird lately and we have a trend towards climate change over time i see the same thing i mean i was just waiting to pick up my son from sunday school the other day and this other parent came up to me at church and he said can i ask you a question and i said sure he said do you think the weather is getting weirder here in texas and i said well yes it actually is i've looked at the data and it is getting more extreme and he said i knew it he said i've lived here for 30 years and i knew it's getting weirder so we've gotten to the point where you're right we can't deny the evidence of our own eyes often although some of us still can but then making the connection between something is changing and humans are responsible is where the barrier exists not because we really have a problem with the science connecting the fact that when we burn coal and oil and gas that produces carbon dioxide which is a heat trapping gas and that heat trapping gas is building up in the atmosphere wrapping an extra blanket around our planet and that's why our planet's temperature is warming i mean the physics that we use to figure out how much our planet is warming is the same physics we use in designing airplanes and in using our fridges and stoves every day so we don't really have a problem with the science i mean if we did we'd have to throw out our fridges and our stoves and our iphones and probably even our cars but what we have a problem with is the fact that we've been told that if it is humans who are responsible for this warming then the only solution is to drink the al gore kool-aid to join the global warming cult to destroy the economy and to let the government run our lives we have been told that those are the only solutions and most people would rather cut off their arm than agree with those solutions how do we know that human activity is driving climate change and to what extent is human activity driving climate change i mean couldn't it be the sun couldn't it be natural fluctuations we know that in the age of the dinosaurs there was no ice on the earth we know that the earth has been a snowball at different points in its history so isn't it normal for the climate to change dramatically over time it is normal for climate to change but it's not normal for it to change this fast if you look back as far as we have in what we call natural thermometer records or paleoclimate records which include tree rings and pollen records and ocean sediments and even stalactites and stagnolites in caves contain records of past climate when we look as far as we can back we have never seen a change happening at the speed that it's happening today so the speed is very unusual that's warning sign number one and then warning sign number two is when we look at all the natural causes of climate change and that's actually what climate scientists do many people are surprised to learn that climate scientists study natural variability and natural cycles that's who doesn't in fact i i would like to find this out but i would kind of guess just based on what i and my colleagues do that we probably spend more of our time studying natural reasons why climate changes than human reasons because natural reasons are much more interesting and much more complicated but the reality is is that when we look at the sun we see that the sun's energy has actually been going down over the last 40 to 50 years not up so according to the sun we should be cooling right now not warming when we look at natural cycles like el nino that operate within the earth's climate system those natural cycles just move heat around they don't create it or destroy it and so the whole when we look at the planet we see that the oceans are warming the atmosphere is warming the land surface is warming the whole planet is warming it can't be a natural cycle just moving heat around and then people say well what about volcanoes volcanoes produce carbon dioxide don't they they do but they only produce one percent of what humans do and then the last main factor that's caused climate to change in the past are the cycles in the earth's orbit that bring the ice ages and the warm periods like we're in today so a last natural question would be aren't we just warming after the last ice age but when we look at the natural thermometer data we see actually that warming after the last ice age peaked about six to eight thousand years ago and since then our earth's temperature was on a very very gradual but long slow and consistent slide down because according to orbital cycles the next thing on our geologic calendar was another ice age until we hit the industrial revolution and all of a sudden temperature just went straight back up so we look at all these natural factors they have an alibi there's not a single natural factor anybody can point to that could create a change big enough to what we see happening right now and in addition they'd have to explain how carbon dioxide the heat trapping properties of which have been known since the 1850s how carbon dioxide is not actually trapping heat nobody's been able to explain that either here are some more unpleasant climate change numbers since 1914 99 of the rhinos are gone 97 percent of tigers gone since 1914 90 of lions since 1993 gone ninety percent of sea turtles gone since nineteen eighty ninety percent of monarch butterflies gone since 1995. 90 of big ocean fish gone since 1950 over half of the great barrier reef gone since 1985. if the ocean plankton keeps declining at a rate of one percent per year that means 50 percent of it will be gone in 70 years and at the current rate of things more than one percent is likely our crop and pasture lands cost 80 percent of all land vertebrate species extinctions 50 of land vertebrate species died off in the last 50 years [Music] if we don't change things another 50 percent of the land vertebrates on earth will be set to die in the next 40 years if that goes up of 50 that's unstoppable irreversible mass extinction catherine what kind of effects do we think that climate change are going to have on humanity how extreme is is this problem for humanity one of the biggest problems we have in fact perhaps the biggest problem i think we have when we talk about climate change is not whether we think it's real or not because the vast majority of people across the entire united states do recognize that climate is changing and there's this awesome set of maps at the yale program for climate communication if you google the yale climate opinion maps you can see these maps by congressional district by county across the u.s and by riding in province across canada so the majority of us agree something's different but when we start to ask people do you think it's going to affect the polar bears most people would say yes do you think it's going to affect future generations many people would say yes do you think it's going to affect me most of us the vast majority of us say no we think it's this issue that's only really about the polar bears but the reality is is that we care about a changing climate because it exacerbates the risks we already face today in the places where we live if we live in a place that is prone to heavy rainfalls and flooding guess what climate change is exacerbating that pattern because the warmer the world the faster evaporation happens the more water vapor is available for those storms to pick up and dump if we live in a part of the world that's prone to drought those are also being exacerbated by a changing climate why because it's warmer water evaporates faster out of our soils but there's this high pressure system camped out over us keeping that drought alive and it doesn't let any storms come through to pick up and dump the water back on us if we're at risk from hurricanes hurricanes are getting stronger because they feed off warm ocean water if we're at risk of heat waves heat waves are getting more frequent and though thankfully cold snaps are getting less frequent but heat waves are particularly dangerous because they affect people in developing countries who don't have air conditioning who don't have ways to adapt we care about a in climate because it takes whatever risks we face whether it's water shortages crop yields and famine disease it takes the risks we already face and it exacerbates them and it's gotten to the point now where we can't fix huge global issues like poverty and hunger and diseases that nobody should be dying from in 2017 if we leave climate change out of the picture because climate change is exacerbating those issues all around the [Music] world if there's so much consensus among scientists about this issue how is it that so many people still are that there's a conversation still happening about it i mean when i tweet about it i still get people that are like you know this is not a complete scientific consensus on it so is there a complete scientific consensus and if so why is the american public so divided on this issue on climate change if you ask scientists who actually study this issue do you agree not just that climate is changing and not just that humans are responsible but that humans are the main reason why climate is changing and in fact the reality is is that humans are responsible for all of the observed warming and then some because according to natural factors we should be cooling right now not warming if you ask scientists that over 97 of scientists agree and if you look at the scientific literature which is tens of thousands of independent studies dating back to the 1850s you see that there's over 99.9 agreement i think on this so why is there such a debate and why when you ask people do scientists agree people say no i don't think scientists agree because every time you turn on a tv whether it's cnn or fox news or any other channel what do you see you see bill nye who has an undergraduate degree in engineering but he's not a scientist you have bill nye debating somebody else who isn't a scientist either and one's saying climate change is real the other thing it isn't and you're like oh well who should i believe let's just wait till they work it out part of the problem is you know it's interesting for us to see people arguing but unfortunately they're arguing over something that doesn't have a basis for argument but the second reason why we have so many doubts about this issue is because those doubts are being deliberately sewn what do i mean by that i mean that there are organizations and i know these organizations because they have actually attacked me personally that are channeling money from fossil fuel industry from the koch brothers channeling money into these think tanks to actually deliberately spread false information there are websites that publish reports all the time that are deliberately intended to mislead people and as a christian that is what angers me the most i mean i'm all for disagreeing about stuff i'm all for hashing out dissenting opinions that's what makes the conversation interesting but i am not about perverting the truth of what god's creation is telling us for financial gain and i'm certainly not about deceiving christians which these people are deliberately doing they're not christians but they are feeding talking points and messages to people we trust and respect that we get our information from in order to deliberately mislead us on this issue and there's actually a great book and a movie about this called merchants of doubt if anybody wants to know more about that it talks about how some of the very same lobbyists who used to work for the tobacco industry when the tobacco industry lost its battle against having to say that you know tobacco causes cancer many of those same lobbyists moved right over to the think tanks that are aimed at sowing doubt and discord on the issue that climate is changing it is humans it is serious and we need to do something about it that's so dark that's about to say yeah i'm sorry how do those people sleep no not you i don't know i mean i just shake my head sometimes like talk about evil if if you actually literally know that what you're saying is not true but you just do it anyways because you can make a pretty dollar doing so it's so funny because one of the biggest accusations i get and my colleagues get all the time is you're just in it for the money and they don't realize that you know what i could be having a career in astrophysics making the same amount that i do today and if you look at who's making the money do you think fossil fuel companies make more money or do you think professors at universities make more money i mean it's just like where on earth does this idea come from oh man yeah that's real dark i was just imagining like a guy he goes home at night he kisses his kids and they keep growing up he worked for the tobacco industry suppressed evidence about lung cancer it finally imploded he's like i gotta find work maybe i'll convince people that one of the largest existential threats to the species isn't really happening like that's just that's exactly it and i'm glad you said that because again why do we care about climate change we care about it because we have seven and a half billion people on the planet almost you know back a thousand years ago if sea level rose three feet or even six feet and if you lived in new orleans or shanghai or new york you know you just pick up your tent and move no big deal but we have two thirds of the world's biggest cities within a few feet of sea level now and we can't pick them up and move them we can't just say oh well i don't have any water here now so i'm just going to pick up my tents and move to some place that does have water well guess what somebody else already owns that water that's why we care about climate change because it poses as you said an existential threat to human society as we know it you may have noticed that unlike most podcasts the liturgist podcast never really advertises um actually to my knowledge we've never had a paid ad from anybody before and the reason that's the case is because we really value this space we've always wanted this space to be a safe space for people to let their guard down and engage their heart and sometimes throwing a toothpaste ad in the middle of it just doesn't feel right that said we have a team that works on this show and it takes a lot of time energy and resources to make a show like this far too much time to just have everybody volunteer so we've got expenses uh we're a corporation now we have recording equipment and travel expenses and all sorts of things and the way that we came up with figuring out how to pay for this was first of all to ask you for help and we started this thing on patreon where you could support us for any amount per month that you would like and that was very helpful and then we eventually figured out that patreon has an app and we have this ability to deliver content to those of you who subscribe give to this program and do the work that we do with the 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earth perspective i think is the true symbol of this age and i believe that what's going to happen is there's going to be a greater and greater interest in in communicating this idea because after all it's key to our survival we have to start acting as one species with one destiny we are not going to survive if we don't do that [Laughter] we're seeing very clearly that if the earth becomes sick then we become sick if the earth dies then we're going to die people sense that something's wrong but they're still struggling to go back and find out what the real roots of the problem are and i think what we need to come to is the realization that it's not just fixing an economic or political system but it's a basic world [Music] view yeah that vision and see like when you see the the biosphere as rear earth looking at earth that's when things like climate change it is calling it like a partisan issue is so ridiculous it'd be as silly as thinking about trying to make your leg healthier without worrying about exercising or your diet or like thinking that it's disconnected i'm not so concerned about my heart my lungs really my leg i need my legs my right leg my right leg i need that to be healthy like will it take care of your body you want jobs you want america to thrive and be a good like take care of the world in which america is a part can you you can't make people see it though that's so frustrating can you lead them to see it you can invite them i mean i think i think there's people listening right now who've had the flip listening to us have the flip on this program and i don't think you can force anyone but i think you can just continue to invite people to see the world more as it is there's this idea with the overview effect that it can take you to a beautiful place or kind of a dark place you look at the earth and look so fragile you realize like we're one good-sized meteor away from the void as a species and the the earth instead of seeing seeming vast seems fragile and delicate and small i mean i saw this week another image came back from cassini showing the earth from the perspective of saturn you've got the rings of saturn and this little blue dot and it's so beautiful and so tiny i have a key i wear around my neck that jacob gave me that says orbital perspective when we have these moments when we have these flips when we see our true perspective in the world whether it takes you to a light place or a dark place at first it should ultimately take you to a place of perspective where in every moment in every decision in everything you buy or consume or recommend or every action you take you can for a moment in your mind look out that spacecraft window at this little blue marble [Music] and maintain that kind of a perspective and for if i have any goal i'm not trying to lead people to a certain place with god god forbid i'm not trying to lead people towards a particular ideology but there's one thing i hope people get from engaging this work is the understanding of and importance of taking an orbital perspective to the human experience and i think it should be all of our mission is to like find a way to integrate that with everything absolutely everything and uh we're going to hit up against some some realities pretty soon where it's going to become dramatically apparent that we need to reorganize ourselves as a species and what's interesting is a context for that reorganization is exactly that perspective we've done events all over the place to really different demographics and everyone loves astronauts it's kind of trippy no one's ever been like astronauts no way mate they're not coming in here i saw this week 45. was like super thrilled and proud to be in the presence of astronauts and like pretty genuinely humbled well because they've been to space we did an event down at kansas city missouri ron and i a couple years ago and we were kind of really apprehensive about it because it was a crowd that was you know socially conservative republican climate change deniers mostly you know it was a very different event from we'd normally sing into the choir kind of thing and so we were like man it's gonna it's gonna be a bit weird doing it you know because we have this like live documentary and we go up and we kind of narrate it so really we did this event i speak five minutes about images as a filmmaker ron speaks about what his first experience i talk about some more images he talks about a second experience it's kind of simple but we talk about climate change without ever saying it we talk about social equity without ever saying it talk about all of these green social democratic ideas without ever being explicit about it you know we trojan horse it through the experience and and runs a golden country and apple pie and f-16 we've got a standing ovation and at the end like the mayor comes out gives us his medal we're like thinking did anyone did they really listen but we talked about the we talked about instead of talking about climate change we talked about the fragility the atmosphere yeah from the big blue sky right the sun's in the blue sky big blue sky let's go let's do whatever we want and then you go into space and it's like and every astronaut says this it freaks everyone out how thin the atmosphere is and in the audience when you show that everyone goes because it's tiny and you think it's this other thing and then you're like no it's that bit and you're like and you can hear the gasp i read that ratio wise it's like a globe and the the gloss on a globe basically right yeah and then you see the sun in a black sky suddenly it's not the sun anymore suddenly it's our local star and then suddenly we're in a solar system and then suddenly we're in a galaxy so there's this immediate cosmological shift and there's a higher center and then another higher center and suddenly it's like well it's like this kind of shift and what was interesting is after the event all these people came up to us and they were like can i do my can i do my kansas city impression i'm going to apologize i've just got generic southern so it's not you won't offend me but i couldn't you shouldn't be more excited about it they came out to us and they were like gee where's that was one of the greatest things i ever did here i did you gave yourself away and i did but other than that's pretty good okay [Laughter] it was crazy like all of these people were coming up and they were like and it was like this this light bulb went off in my head and i was like man we can we can speak to everyone and let's get an iranian astronaut and a japanese astronaut and a russian astronaut and let's get muslim and jewish and christian and humanist astronauts together and point to this common reality at the un on the 50th anniversary of earthrise and let's see what happens the one other thing that i guess kind of ties all of this together from our perspective or the work that we're doing comes back to i think you guy as a 15 year old reading a book and encountering somebody sharing an idea in a way that went into your head and went into your heart and then became a part of your life and that's what's really stood out to me is at some point what humans do with each other is we we share life through stories through culture through music over food there's a exchange that happens and the most powerful exchanges are the ones that produce or awaken a new kind of empathy and a recognition of our common humanity in someone else and the most powerful vehicle for that empathetic exchange that i've found is is through music and through stories and we've all been inundated with these images of you know the worst possible outcomes and there's such a hopelessness around a lot of the conversations with climate and it doesn't have to end that way i think that's the message that inspires us and gets us out of bed every day it doesn't have to end there like there's actually another way that we can live and be together in this planet and in order to even spark that idea in a 15 year old guy he had to encounter someone expressing that and so part of the power i think and and why we're dedicating so much time and energy into this is because the astronauts are amazing storytellers and they have experienced something with their body that has affected the way that they see the world and interact in the world we're not stuck in this version of reality like we can change it you can change it but in order to even begin to know how to do that it helps to have the sparked and to have something to aim for and right now i'm at a loss for for anyone presenting like this really a beautiful imagined version of what our reality could be like and i think part of why the astronauts are so effective is because they aren't asking you to change your religion or your political orientation your national identity all those things are are part of you who you are but they don't have to be the foundation or the starting point like you are a human being and we're all going to come from different cultures and different stories and different families but if you can look at someone who looks nothing like you and whose experience on the planet has been very different from yours and start with the fact that you're both human beings your primary identity is human and all these other things your secondary and tertiary identities they're part of who you are the astronaut story isn't asking you to change anything about that aspect of your identity all it's asking you to do is just like examine yourself and the world and your neighbor from a slightly different vantage point which is frankly the truth of what they've experienced looking down at all of us riding through space together on a living rock and pretending like we're not in it together if we can have some kind of moment through narrative through a conversation where that's that that version of reality becomes present in our lives and it helps us reorient how we navigate on a daily basis all those petty differences like fade away it's not as important we have a chance to build a version of the world and of how we live in the world that is just different and it's better than the way that things are i don't know how to do it personally but i know that if we're in it together if we're having these types of conversations where we're a better way forward and we're sharing our stories and sharing our dreams and sharing our ambitions that's the first step towards realizing a better future [Music] part of that growth and that better future it calls me back to that story that he told the beginning of moving towards the moon like humans are focused on out there we got this task ahead of us we're always doing that we're always just like got the things got our things to do and we're trying to get our lives better we're moving forward into something and the growth and the change happens when you just pause for a moment and take a look out the window and whoa where are we and what are we doing and you like take a moment to consider and look from a different vantage point at home and at your heart and that your essence and yourself in that moment it really can it can change everything so just taking a moment to ground yourself in a little deeper story and broader perspective and from there all the stuff falls and again that's when that's when it's not a political partisan issue climate change or how the wording doesn't like you're just being what you are your natural instinct is somebody throws a ball at your head to move your head you know it's like you're naturally you don't have to think about it should i i'll keep my head intact when you can see oh this earth it's not only my home it's the soil i am the tree coming out of this soil i am this is me this is when you can feel that then all the policies and the advocacy and the decisions you need to make in your personal life they all fall into place from an understanding that's that's more at your heart than just falling into some sort of i'm going to become more liberal and fall on this issue or this policy all that stuff comes more naturally when you can take a moment and look and feel and experience what you really are and how connected to this earth you really are amen nice man what about that is that better hey man i ain't lovely that's good thanks so much jacob marshall and lord guy charles barrington reed for being on the show if you want to follow their work on social media you can find jacob at be art i am art all of those words just spelled out and then guy is at we are planetary talking about global climate change can be really scary to the point that it's easy to feel overwhelmed and disempowered i mean it sounds like the world is going to end right it can create a temptation toward fatalism and even an urge to grab a bucket of popcorn and just watch the world burn and i think even worse is when our convictions about the urgency of our situations keep us from having productive conversations with people who don't believe that climate change is really happening or that human activity is causing it that this may be the most dangerous part of climate change it's a cycle that includes behaviors driven by social cues social identity and the ways that human beings interact with each other there's an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that human activity is a significant factor behind it but there's not actually a consensus on how severe climate change will ultimately be and how quickly it will happen in other words there is no scientific consensus that it's too late or that we're in an irreversible mass extinction event in fact there's some good news carbon emissions in the united states have declined in recent years telling us that human actions really can mitigate human driven climate change if you take anything from this podcast take this it's not too late it's not too late to act it's not too late to protect this pale blue dot but it is time to act climate change is already impacting the most poor and vulnerable in our global society climate change is already driving famine the spread of disease and water availability for people who believe in a christ-centered life i believe it is a core missional theological imperative to do something about climate to protect the poor and the vulnerable [Music] so catherine how does your faith come into play there i think i've heard a lot of christians that somehow the faith that they have seems like to justify ignoring it rather than pushing them into it which doesn't make any sense to me i guess it's that escapist sort of theology like you know we're here temporarily this world's not our home this is this doesn't have to concern us too much but it sounds like you're a person of faith and you keep talking about god's creation and such how does your faith actually influence not only your understanding of climate change but your engagement with it and how we ought to respond to it it's the reason i do what i do i was you know well along the way in pursuing astrophysics with you know intending to go to grad school and eventually become a researcher but i grew up as a daughter of missionaries in south america and i you know sort of accidentally probably not accidentally took a class just before i graduated on climate science just to you know finish out around out my degree and i was completely stunned by the fact not just that this was real because growing up in canada i knew it was real every other country in the world you know you know you're taught in school yes this is real but i didn't realize it was so big and i didn't realize that we wouldn't be able to fix these other issues like hunger and poverty and disease and water scarcity if we left climate change out of the picture and so i was really convicted i don't think there's any other word for it i was convicted that i actually have the exact skills you need because physics and even astrophysics is the exact science that goes into the climate models we use to figure out how this thing's going to affect people in the future i have this exact skill set to study this issue and so i felt absolutely compelled to do it my heart just went out realizing that the poor and the vulnerable are those who are most affected by a changing climate but the reason why many of us put up what i think of as religiously sounding smoke screens you know god wouldn't let this happen if god's in control and it gets bad enough all we have to do is pray the world's gonna end anyway so why do we care god gave us dominion over this planet god promised noah he would never flood the earth again we throw up these religiously sounding smoke screens but that's all they are because 99.9 of the time our real objections have nothing to do with the science and they don't actually have anything to do with the theology either their objections to the perceived and i want to emphasize that word perceived solutions because we've been told by people we trust that the only solutions to global warming are destruction of the economy total government control ruinous taxation and possibly the return of the antichrist and no no christian worth their salt would want that to happen um and so that's why it's so important to talk solutions because when we try to argue these religiously sounding objections and i address a lot of these in one of my little videos called what does the bible say about climate change because you know at the beginning of the bible it says we have responsibility or dominion or stewardship over every living thing on this planet and even if you want to say dominion well what would you think of a ceo who had dominion over a company and ran it into the ground we wouldn't respect that person and then all through the bible we have god's care and love for creation and then also the new testament we have caring for others loving for others especially the least fortunate and then in revelation we have a verse saying god will destroy those who destroy the earth so the bible addresses all these smoke screens very succinctly but the most important thing to talk about is solutions because if we recognize that there are solutions that we can agree with without changing who we are without changing our identity without changing our ideology then we're much more likely to accept the reality of the problem and so that's why i talk so frequently about how there are free market solutions to climate change there are economic job-growing solutions to climate change there are libertarian solutions to climate change there are solutions across the whole spectrum to this issue and what we should be arguing is not whether it's real or not because scientists have known that it's real for over 100 years that's how long we've known that humans are changing this planet and how much the temperature the planet is going to warm we should be arguing over what are the best solutions because there are solutions at every part of the spectrum and by republicans in the united states especially by conservatives counting themselves out of the solutions conversation by default it means the only solutions being suggested the only viable solutions that are being suggested will be ones that come more from the liberal side of the spectrum yeah so one last question like what would you say to someone who says i totally agree climate change is a problem and it's caused by human activity but there's nothing i can do as one person we have a video about that too in our global weirding series that is such an important question because often we feel overwhelmed by this huge issue and i've even seen many people just burn out feel like it's impossible to cope with nothing's changing it's just getting worse i can't do anything and so we just burn out on this the reality is there's a lot we can do about it and one of the most important things we can do is probably one we wouldn't think of and that is talk about it one of the most important things we can do is talk about climate change i don't mean arguing the science and i don't even mean arguing this theology the most effective way to talk about climate change is to talk solutions isn't it amazing that texas has gotten almost a quarter of its electricity from wind since january that's incredible isn't it amazing that we have two times more jobs in the renewable energy industry across the entire united states than we do in the fossil fuel industry isn't it amazing that china is investing 360 billion dollars to create 13 million new jobs in the renewable energy industry in china isn't it incredible that people innovators are bringing solar energy to africa through pay-as-you-go solar panels that they drive around from place to place when there's a billion people who live in energy poverty today so talking solutions can make such a difference because then we realize wow stuff is happening changes are happening and one of the biggest changes happening right here in the united states believe it or not is the fact that there is actually a bipartisan climate solutions caucus in congress you can't join it unless you have a partner from the other party so there's 38 members now it's growing month by month and 19 of those are republican 19 or democrat it's the brainchild of citizens climate lobby which is one of my favorite organizations i serve as their science advisor because i think they're so effective they have respectful hopeful solutions oriented conversations with people across the whole political spectrum and they welcome people of faith to join them and those are the type of conversations i feel like we need to be having dr catherine hey ho thank you so much for your time today we'll have links to more resources that dr heiho has provided for us in the show notes on the liturgispodcast.com as well as more information about the climate solutions caucus and how you can contact your legislative representative thank you so much great chatting with you so what can you do what can you one person do to affect a global problem well 29 percent of carbon emissions in the united states come from generating electricity every watt that you don't use in your home is a watt that doesn't have to be generated in a power station and it's carbon that does not get released into our atmosphere the biggest energy hog in most homes is the cooling system so bump up your thermostat a degree or two when you're home get used to it acclimate to a little bit warmer temperature and when you leave the house bump it up a lot or turn off the air conditioner all together you can replace one light bulb in your house every month with an led bulb led bulbs have come down in price dramatically and they're way more efficient than incandescent or halogen bulbs about 10 percent of your home's energy use probably goes to lighting and led lights will cut that usage dramatically of course 27 of us carbon emissions come from transportation so basic car maintenance makes your car more efficient and saves you money on gas so check your tire pressure regularly you'll find a sticker in the frame of your driver's side door with the recommended pressures for your front and rear tires also check clean and replace if necessary your car's air filter every three to six months it makes your engine more efficient and also helps you burn less fuel anytime you walk bike carpool or take mass transit you dramatically lower the co2 emission rate one person and one car is terribly inefficient and it makes traffic worse too so walk when you can bike when you can ride with a friend take the bus take the train anytime you do that you're lowering carbon emissions of course agriculture is a major contributor to carbon emissions and in addition to carbon dioxide also produces a lot of methane which is a very potent greenhouse gas you can eat less meat especially beef cows are one of the major producers of methane gas in our atmosphere so start by going meat free for one meal a day and then maybe do a day a week without meat maybe two the point here is not to eliminate meat from your diet i understand that's very difficult but reducing your meat consumption makes a big difference not only for emissions but also for your health that's just four things you can do that are easy and inexpensive lights thermostat car meat and it's just the beginning what you buy and how it gets to you what you plug in at home what you throw away and where there's dozens of things each of us can do to reduce our impact on the climate and if you feel like hey it's just me what difference will my actions make there are hundreds of thousands of people listening to this podcast and that they are going to take action too it's not too late and you yes you can make a difference so go to the liturgist.com slash climate action to learn more more things you can do more ways you can change more ways to encourage others to do so you'll find additional resources for information on climate change and really importantly you can also learn how you can influence your elected leaders to take action on climate change all right everybody well that's our show let's not let it stop at the podcast please come see us at one of our live events this fall we are doing three liturgist gatherings in boston seattle and los angeles check those out at theliturgists.com also you can find our other dates from science mike and my band gunger my name is michael gunger and this episode has been produced by myself and greg nordin thanks as well to corey pig and madison chandler we'd like to thank all of our guests for being part of this as well as the patrons for making what we do here at the liturgists possible the music on today's show was by gunger paperchaser and on earth science mike and i have been your hosts thanks so much for listening everybody [Music] you