In her new book “H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z,” Elizabeth Kolbert writes that “to say amazing work is being done to combat climate change and to say that almost no progress has been made is not a contradiction. It’s a simple statement of fact.” In this episode of ESG Currents, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author joins Bloomberg Intelligence Director of ESG Research Eric Kane to talk about this paradox, why she was drawn to writing about climate change and biodiversity, the timeline of earth’s history, whether we can reach net zero when we keep inventing new ways to consume energy and much more.
This episode was recorded on April 22.
ESG has become established as a key business theme as companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition, social megatrends, mounting regulatory attention and pressure from other stakeholders. The rapidly evolving landscape has become inundated with acronyms, buzzwords, and lingo, and we aim to break these down with industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, brought to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, your guide to navigating the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time. I'm Eric Kane, director of ESG Research for Bloomberg Intelligence, and I'm your host for today's episode. Today we're talking with Elizabeth Colbert, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe, The Sixth Extinct, Under a White Sky, and most recently, h Is for Hope, Climate Change From A to Z. Elizabeth is also a staff writer for The New Yorker. Elizabeth, thank you so much for taking the time to join the podcast.
Thanks for having me so Elizabeth.
I mentioned this too when I initially reached out about the podcast, and certainly my team has heard the story but for our listeners, I wanted to just share a little bit of personal history here. Elizabeth's three part series in The New Yorker called The Climate of Man, which was published in two thousand and five and was ultimately adapted into the book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, was one of the first in depth pieces of reporting on climate change that I read, and it actually inspired me to pursue a career that focused on the topic almost twenty years ago. So in addition for thanking you for joining the podcast, I want to thank you for the inspiration and for your work in general.
Oh well, thank you, thank you.
I mean, I do want to say that one of the most ratifying things for an author to hear, obviously is that she's you know, actually impacted people's lives. So I'm very I.
Hope you're happy with how things have played out.
I know that a career in thinking about environmental problems has its upsides and downsides.
Has that, yes, I would certainly agree, I think upsides and downsides, but it's important work. So so with that, Elizabeth, you started writing about climate change in two thousand and five. I'm curious as to what drew you to the topic. And whether you thought at the time we'd still be struggling to address the issue, you know, nearly twenty years later.
Well, it's interesting to sort of as we speak, I'd say it's it's really almost exactly twenty years since I embarked on that series. You know, that series took a whole year to report and write before it actually appeared in The New York or so. I started in the spring of twenty fourteen, I mean, two thousand and four and what inspired me at the time was a sense you know, this was shortly this was during the George GW. Bush administration in two thousand and one. Bush had withdrawn the US from the Kyoto Protocol, which you know, was designed to give developed countries real targets for cutting emissions. And the response to that at the time.
Was sort of muted.
And I myself didn't know a tremendous amount about climate change, and I was trying to find out sort of whether this was you know, a huge, huge problem that we were sort of ignoring or not. And that's why I embarked on the series to sort of lay that out for people once and for all. And what I very quickly found in my reporting was indeed, this is a huge, huge problem that we are ignoring. And I guess my goal was, you know, as so many journalistic projects like this AH have the same goal, which is to say to people, you know, wake up, pay attention.
And you know, twenty years ago, did you think we would have made more progress and solving the challenge by now?
I certainly would have thought we would have made more progress in acknowledging the problem. Has that I think that what is you know, truly astonishing and surreal for someone who has been covering the problem for twenty years and has watched it play out, has watched the climate change you know, in the course of a very short amount of time, by a very dramatic amount. And we're talking you know, not just in human terms, but in geological terms, and everyone and still you know this, and I'm using air quotes on air, you know, debate over whether climate change is happening, and still this kind of you know, whistling past the graveyard attitude, as if this problem somehow is going to you know, solve itself, which I can assure you it is not.
So I am not, I mean, even at that time.
And one of the pieces in the series was about, you know, what can we do about this? And already it was very clear in two thousand and four that this is a you know, very very heavy lift. You know, we are a society that's completely dependent on fossil fuels, completely dependent on you know, large streams of energy which we primarily get from fossil fuels. But you know, still that being said, I am astonished by the general sort of still fair amount of public you know, apathy, and I think.
The apathy is something you know, we'll we'll turn back to later in the conversation. But you mentioned the idea of having witnessed, you know, the climate changing, and you know, for those like myself who you know, follow your work, you go to you know, a variety of different places to kind of witness the impacts of climate change, but also to explore some of the technologies that are being developed to potentially help address climate change. So my question is, you know, how you ultimately choose your subjects to write about within these you know, broader topics of climate change and biodiversity, Given the fact that there are so many examples of the negative impacts and so many examples of technologies that are under development.
I don't want to claim to have you know, sort of will proof system here. I think, like all journalists, I'm looking for stories that have certain elements. Either they have a really interesting character, they have something that.
Will really strike readers, is new.
You know, cutting edge technologies that are potentially have very broad ramifications. There's a lot of cutting edge technologies out there that are you know, they're they're fascinating and they are covered in the trade press, but they probably are not you know, interesting to alay audience. I'm always I am always trying to think about my audience.
What to my.
Readers who are a broad spectrum, you know, of the American public, who are not deeply involved in these issues, what is going to strike them as an interesting story. I love to go places that are hard to get to because I think that takes people to new you know, brings something to a story.
Something.
You know, what are people coming to a story for. They're coming to learn something, to experience something, and so going you know, deep into the rainforest can do that absolutely.
So maybe you know, one example, in your book Under a White Sky, you write about your visit to Australia and research that was being done there that I presume is still going on to try to breed coral that can withstand warmer temperatures, right, and recently we actually, I'm sure you saw the announcement that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the largest coral bleaching event ever was underway. So just curious if you can kind of describe that research for our listeners, what you observed, and ultimately how alarmed you are by this recent announcement.
So the attempt to breed more or heat resistant corals, you know, began several years ago and was spearheaded by two coral biologists, one in Hawaii who very sadly passed away a few years ago and won in Australia. And their idea was, you know, on some level, pretty simple. We know that hybrids are often more vigorous than their parents, you know, That's why we have a lot of hybrid crops, and if we could hybridize corals, we might find traits that you know, make the more heat resistance than their parents. And so the idea was to try to bring together corals. You know, when corels spawned. I should explain coils can reproduce asexually just by sort of budding, it's called. But once a year, many corals, many species of corals, engage in what's known as a mass spawning and they release these little beads. They look like little beads, and inside are both sperm and eggs, and they release these into the water and the site is amazing. I've seen a corresponding. It's an amazing sight. And then these sperm and eggs, you know, some of them find each other and they become coral larvae, and they settle and become new corals. And so the idea was, let's bring some of these crawls into the lab. They'll spawn in the lab. We'll mix up crawls that would not naturally meet there from different parts of the reef, and we'll see then we'll subject them to heat stress, and we'll see which ones are the most vigorous, and maybe we'll be able to sort of breed up generation of coral that's more vigorous. Now that's a great idea, but you know, when you think about it, it's also very difficult to imagine, you know, sort of reseating an entire reef.
The Great Reef is the size of Italy.
So we are talking about mass of amount of area here, and I don't think anyone realistically thinks that you could use.
Even if you bread a super.
Coral, as they become came known, they could realistically re seed a whole reef. And that's just one species of coral too, and the reef is extremely diverse. So there's a lot of limitations to this project.
And there's most.
Recent bleaching event I think shows us, you know, what is at stake here. I mean, the whole Great Barrier Reef, among other things, is at stake. And you know, I know that most of our listeners today have probably not been to the Great Barrier Reef. It never will go and that's completely you know, fine, obviously, as it should be. It's halfway around the world, but it is a source of the world's great variety. I have been fortunate enough to see it, to see parts of the reef that are still we're still healthy at least at that time, and it's you know, it's astonishing, and it makes you really what an amazing world we live in and how fragile it is as well.
Absolutely so, maybe shifting gears to your most recent book, HS for Hope Climate Change from A to Z. Within the book, you have a essay for every letter of the alphabet. For the letter C, you write about capitalism and kind of question its role in solving climate change, especially given the fact that capitalism has largely failed to implement any you know, carbon tax or cap and trade on carbon. So, you know, as ESG practitioners, I think we're fundamentally driven by the notion that capital markets need to play a role in solving this challenge. And I'm just curious to hear if you have a view on this or the idea of ESG investing at large.
Well, I certainly think that, you know, given the way the world is is organized according to capitalist you know principles, that ESG has an enormous role to play. And you know, it's really you know, kind of appalling, particularly at this moment in time, to see you know, political forces that we're trying to undermine. ESG investing.
I think it's you.
Know, super important tool to use to try to solve some of these problems, you know, within the economic system that we have.
Now.
You know that being said that that little you know, C say takes on what is a big, you know, sort of debate. I would say in climate circles and and and more in other countries than in than in the US. I would also say that much more in Europe than in the US. But you know, this question of whether capitalism, which is sort of devoted, or our system of capitalist I'll say that which is has as it's sort of at its heart, this idea that we can have, you know, endless economic growth. And the question of whether you can have endless economic growth on a finite planet is an open one. It's very much an open one. So there are you know, people who argue, and I don't have an answer to this. I'm not an economist, and I don't know the answer to this. I don't know whether we will be able to deal with these issues better you know, with a capitalist system what's called green growth, you know, or whether we are going to face a moment where you know, de growth, this idea we're going to have to stop growing is going to be either thrust upon us or we're going to you know, have to reckon with that. So I don't have the answer to that, and that essay, but that essay raises that question.
Absolutely. Perhaps another example of this idea that you just mentioned of you know, endless economic growth on a finite planet comes in another recent piece of yours, which I believe appeared in the New Yorker, where you're looking at the strain that AI will ultimately put on the electric rid And in that piece you raise the question, which I think is a very good question and relates to the answer you just gave. You raised the question of you know, how can the world reach net zero if it keeps inventing new ways to consume energy?
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that this does get to the heart of the matter. And you know, when people plot out and these are always, you know, astonishingly rosy scenarios. You know how we're going to get to net zero? They don't. They sort of are dealing with the energy needs and projected energy needs. I don't want to say, you know, they're not stupid, but they're dealing with the projected energy needs based on a baseline of today. Then you keep you know, adding, you know, so, okay, so we're going to move all the vehicles to the grid. We're going to move you know, all the uh, you know, broilers to the grid, et cetera. But then when you start adding things huge new energy demands that you have to add to the grid as well. The math just becomes, you know, that much more difficult. How do you how do you get those those numbers to add up? And I don't have the answer to that either, unfortunately.
Yep.
Yeah, I don't think any of us do, which is the challenge, I guess, so maybe shifting gears a little bit. You've you've written a lot about the concept of the anthropascene, most recently in an article called the epic row over a New Epoch, which addresses the vote by the International Union of Geological Sciences against adding this term to the official timeline of the art's history. I'm wondering if you can kind of describe what the means for our listeners and then your thoughts on that recent decision.
So the anthropasscene, or as the British pronounced anthroposcene you can choose.
You know, it's a term that.
Was invented about or put into circulation about twenty five years ago by Paul Krutson, who's a Dutch chemist who is one of the people who want a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone depleting chemicals, and the idea was simply, you know, we we live technically in what's called the Holocene. This is the period since the end of the Last Ice Age. In geological terms, it's a very short epoch. Most epochs geologically are much longer. So Crutson's thought was, well, we don't live in the Holocene anymore. We are departing from the conditions of the Holocene. The Halo scene, you know, is an interglacial.
We are.
Already carbon die already when he proposed, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were way way higher than they'd been in previous interglacials. You know, we are altering the nitrogen cycle very, very dramatically. He listed a lot of ways in which we were changing the planet on a geological scale, and that really struck a lot of people as true, and the term, you know, really just took off. And then the question became, okay, you know, queston paulcast is not it was not a geologist, he was a chemist. Did this term make sense truly on a geologists? Just to Tiggerfers, who maintained the official geological timetable, and there was a huge there's been a years long fight over that with some people you know, saying no, it did not reach that term, and that geologists can't deal with the president. It's simply incapable of dealing with the president. It's not set up for that, and some saying, yes, we can already see that the changes that we're affecting will be visible to the geologists of the future, whoever or whatever they are, you know, many millions of years from now. And the nerve forces, you know, officially won that debate recently and voted down the anthropsty and as an official epoch and geological history. I suspect that that is a generational thing, that this will keep coming back. Many of the people who voted against it were you know, older, let's put it that way. And I think there's a lot of conservatism in most fields of like sort of protecting the principles of the field. But I guess if I were placing bets, I would say that, you know, this is certainly not going away as an argument in geology, and the term is certainly not going away as just a term that's used informally to refer to this human altered planet that we live on. That's time period of a human altered planet that we live.
In so this idea of human altered or you know, examples of changes that were affecting is clearly pronounced in the work that you've done around, you know, biodiversity and the impacts on biodiversity. Obviously, climate change and biodiversity are interlinked, and you've written about both, including your twenty fourteen book The Sixth Extinction, for which you want the Pulitzer. I'm just curious if you think there's a difference in the reception that you get when you write about biodiversity versus climate change.
Well, you know, it's interesting on the level, you know, to go back to what we were sort of, you know, talking about at the beginning of the program, you know, sort of the politics around climate change, which it becomes so you know, I would argue kind of ridiculously polarized, and which did not start out ridiculously polarized. I should also mention that, I mean, one of my sources for my first book and for the series, you know, back in the mid auts was John McCain, who was a big champion of climate legislation back in the day. So this, you know, along with the polarization of everything else, you know, climate change has gotten become very polarized. I would not say that the same is true for discussions about biodiversity. It probably is true when you get to on the ground, you know, what should we be doing to you know, the Endangered Species Act, for example, which is one of the few tools we have really to you know, really put resources into protecting a species that's you know, in deep trouble. That is is very that is the discussion around that is also quite polarized. Many many Republican lawmakers would like to revisit that, Many Democratic lawmakers like to revisit it that the Act is not up to The Endangered Species Act is not really up to protecting species against something like climate change. It doesn't have the mechanism to do that. And as we see more and more species are going to be threatened by climate change, we should revisit the Endangered Species Act to you know, revise it for new era. It's it's fifty years old now, but we can't. No one, you know, no one would say let's revisit the Endangered Species Act because it would quite possibly end up gutted and you know, just sort of lying there dead on the floor.
So we.
In that sense, the debate you know, in that sense, the conversation even about biodiversity loss is but I think is politically charged and polarized. But I think that people you know, intuitively do have a relationship certainly to the landscapes.
And the.
Fauna and flora of where they live or where they grew up that transcends.
Goal divisions.
Mhm. It's it's interesting. We've we've been having some conversations recently on the podcast with you know, some of the folks who are leading the work being done by the Task Force for Nature Related Financial Disclosure, for example, And in conversation we were talking about the fact that, you know, just as you mentioned, it seems like for a lot of people, the connection with biodiversity and the impacts there is more tangible, uh than climate change, which you know, to me is interesting just because I think of them as that's so interwoven. But I guess, you know, maybe it gives us a little bit of hope that, you know, as you suggested, there could be more work done on biodiversity.
Yes, And I think I mean one interesting thing that I'll just interject, because I know that a lot of your listeners you know, probably are practitioners in this field is that, you know, they recently I read a study where they did lots and lots of different messages. You know, what are the message that actually does, you know, once again transcend transcend these political divisions on climate change, and the message that they found sort of tested the best was we need to.
Preserve what we love.
And that does, as you say, bring together a lot some of these strands.
Now, then when you.
Tell people what it will take to preserve what they love, you know, then then the divisions may may reassert themselves. But perhaps if we could at least agree on that, we could see some movement.
So you've mentioned a couple times the term, you know, ridiculously polarized to describe the political discussion. It's not a debate really, but political discussion around climate change. And in your recent book HS for Hope, you actually include a pretty alarming statistic which I think brings this idea to light. You mentioned that in twenty twenty two, during the summer, during a heat wave, the New York Times did a poll of registered voters and asked them to name the most important problem facing the nation at the time. Twenty percent said the economy, fifteen percent said inflation, eleven percent said partisan divisions and only one percent said climate change, and for Republicans zero percent said climate change. So I think this clearly articulates, you know, the divide that you're alluding to. And I guess my question is, you know, given this alarming statistic, given the ridiculously polarized nature the conversation, you know, what role do you think climate will ultimately play in the upcoming election.
I did cover politics for a while before I sort of turned to the environment and climate change. I covered al any politics, so I have some you know, understanding of how the political system works, but I don't want to claim to have any particular insight right now.
But once again, if I.
Had to bet, I would say it would play a very little role because I think that if you look at and this is you know, very nitty gritty, but if you look at where you know Biden thinks he needs to win, I don't think he you know, if you look at swing states, I don't think that Biden feels that, you know, sort of announcing his that you know that he's tried to take action on climate change, which you know, to a certain extent, is true. He is I'd say, the administration has been sort of somewhat schizophrenic on the issue, but there have been big, you know, big steps taken, certainly Inflation Reduction Act, et cetera. But I don't think he wants to point to that because you know, he wants to win. You know, Let's say Pennsylvania is crucial, and there are parts of the state that are very you know, attached to fracking and get a lot of economic benefit from fracking, although also a lot of environmental problems from tracking. So you know, I think if you look at the I don't think Biden necessarily will phil it's in his best interest. Though he might want to rally younger voters who are you know, pissed off at him for all sorts of reasons, and maybe that would help him. So they're going to have to do a very careful calculation. I see that he is during an Earth Day event today in Virginia, so maybe maybe I don't know exactly what their pulling is showing them. And certainly, you know, Donald Trump is just going to be out there, you know, making fun of electric cars and you know, telling them that they're coming for your you know, light bulbs and just you know, not putting forward and I don't think I'm even being partisan here, although I'd be happy to be partisan, you know, not putting forward anything like an agenda that would address climate change just completely, you know, using it as a as a as a punchline. And so I think that I don't expect the conversation, let's put it that way, to be advanced by this election cycle.
Interesting and of course upsetting. But speaking of upsetting, and going back to your recent book, Ith Just for Hope, I mentioned the idea that you know, you have an essay for every letter of the alphabet with the exception of D, and you write D is for despair and suggests that it's unproductive and also a sin. You also state later in the book that to say amazing work is being done to combat climate change and to say that almost no progress has been made is not a contradiction. It's a simple statement of fact. I guess. Given this fact, and you're a constant immersion in the impacts of climate change, how do you avoid despair and maintain hope? As the title of the book suggests.
You know, as you say, the book is sort of an ABC of climate change, is sort of an attempt to break down climate change and all of the also look look at it from many different angles, including you know, our emotions towards it. So as you say it is for despair, I would say that's an essay. It's just a very very short essay. And uh, you know, and ages for hope, and you know there's a lot of you know, practical entries to that are you know, that are much more nitty gritty about you know, the grid and and and technological developments. And i'd say, you know that in the end of the day, you know, I think kind of one of the messages of the book, perhaps ironically, is you know, it doesn't matter how we feel about this problem.
It is. It is here.
It is only going to get worse until you know, we take fantastic amounts of action, uh to try to to to prevent it from getting worse. And that means reaching that zero. This problem is going to continue to get worse, as I'm sure your listeners know, until we reach net zero, at which point the climate will should stabilize at a new higher, you know, hotter world. But that doesn't mean that the effects of climate change are going to stop. You know, the ice caps are going to continue to melt, sea levels are goinging to continue to rise. Those things are not stopping for you know, hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. So you know, this is a problem, I would say, you know, on a scale that humans have not dealt with before. You know, in part because we have been smart enough, you know, to avoid blowing ourselves up with a nuclear war. But you know, short of all out nuclear war, this is this is this is our challenge, and it is it is a massive one. And I don't you know, I don't want to on some level advice people to be hopeful or to be despairing. I want to just say we are dealing with this one way or the other. We can deal with it as smartest and most intelligent way, and I'm sure that that is what most of your listeners are committed to. Or we can deal with it in the stupidest and most destructive ways, which is, to be honest, you know pretty much what we're doing right now. You know, if you actually look at what's actually happening on the ground, and you know the difficulty is that line that you read about amazing work being done and nothing being done that I consider to be sort of the heart of the book. One of the most important lines in the book. You know, people are doing great work. A lot is happening. Meanwhile, you know, lots of parts of the world. Meanwhile, we keep inventing new ways to use energy, and many parts of the world that are energy poor want energy and are now turning to the same sources of energy that we turn to in this stage, in that stage of our development, and emissions in places like India arising extremely rapidly, and it is a very very very difficult problem to do with.
A very very difficult problem. Indeed, Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It is a great conversation.
Thanks for having me so.
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