AUDIO:

The following is a rough machine transcript. Click the words to skip to that point in the audio.

TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews report, I'm your host this week, Tom wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, and I'm joined by my co-host this week -- Alicia Hamann, executive director Friends of the Eel River. Hey Alicia.

ALICIA HAMANN:

Hey Tom.

WHEELER:

Alicia, do you want to introduce our expert panel of guests?

HAMANN:

I would be happy to. We are also joined by your colleague at EPIC, Matt Simmons. Hey Matt.

MATT SIMMONS:

Hey Alicia.

HAMANN:

And Colin Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities.

COLIN FISKE:

Hello.

HAMANN:

Caroline Griffith, the executive director at the North Coast Environmental Center, and my colleague, Scott Greacen, from Friends of the Eel River.

WHEELER:

So we are only missing Jen Kalt, and then I would say that like these are all of my favorite people in Humboldt County together in one space. So I'm really excited to have this conversation. Let's let's get to the today's topic, which is how do we, as people who think about like ethical issues, environmental issues try to come to some resolution and move forward in this world. That is full of kind of gray areas Alicia does that kind of like summarize it.

HAMANN:

Well, totally, totally and let me give listeners just a little scope into my personal life and the kind of weird way that we came to the topic for today's show. Um my partner and I have started exploring the potential of investing in future technologies and thinking about, you know, what kinds of solutions do we wanna put our support behind in the hopes that they will be the solutions that allow us to continue having a future on this planet. Um and and we pretty quickly came up against the realization that we don't know very much my partner and I um and in general, I think as a society we, there's not a lot of um really reliable information and good sources to go to to figure out, you know, is is um like comparing options like for, you know, battery technology in the future is lithium mining? Okay. Are there green ways to do it? Should we be exploring additional, you know, new options in general? What about sodium ion? What about hydrogen fuel cells? Like there's so much potential out there and it's really hard to make these decisions and and that kind of led us to a broader conversation about decision making in general and how do we, how do we choose which path to follow, hoping that it'll take us where we want to go?

WHEELER:

Alright, so I'm gonna pick on the person who is the most wizened uh in this room. Uh, so Scott, you have been environmental professional here for what, over 20 years you've been doing this sort of? Yeah, so, so like we have a limited ability in our lives to decide what to do. Do you have any kind of maxims of like scott's decision making rubric? How do you think through like resource allocation? How do you decide what to spend your time on if that's not too big of a question.

SCOTT GREACEN:

Honestly, I think a younger me would be surprised by the extent to which I rely on my intuition and that's something that came to me um with just a lot of experience and, you know, piling up knowledge and soaking up other people's experience and watching them make decisions. Um I wish I could claim that that that leads me to tremendous insights. It usually doesn't, I point up barking up a lot of empty trees, but um I would encourage people to pay attention when something doesn't feel right, to try to think about why that is, you know, that's often really, really helpful. Um but I would like to put forward a proposition for this conversation that um over my time, at least in the environmental movement, I think I've seen um a very useful clarification about the sort of where we need to go level of this, this set of questions, you know, um when I started working on the extinction crisis, um you know, I wasn't focused on the climate crisis the way I think most of us are today. Um but we were all, you know, moving in a lot of different directions. Um you know, should we be pushing for recycling? You know, is this about, you know, ending the fossil fuel dependence, you know, lots of different directions and I think that having this intense awareness of urgency about the climate crisis has also helped us to sort of focus that set of questions Alicia was just asking like, what do we do individually, what do we do with groups, what do we do as people as communities um into, you know, hey, we need to electrify, how do we do that? Right? And, you know, it's like jazz, um there's a tremendous amount of creativity possible within the confines of, you know, a particular form, I should have said poetry, jazz isn't a really great example, but, you know, you know, knowing that we have to do this incredibly daunting thing, um I think may well get us to a place where we can um really get some insights and some creativity in in building new new things, new ways of doing things. Um and I'm encouraged, you know, that by that potential right now, in a way that I haven't been, you know, over the last 40 years. Well then,

HAMANN:

n exploring this topic, um Colin brought a different perspective to mind, to and that is that um you know, my approach is to seek new technologies and advancing, you know, solutions using, using future ideas. But is there an option for us to look maybe to the past to old technologies or even to exploring like our sociocultural approach to these questions, Colin do you do you want to weigh in on that?

FISKE:

Yeah, sure. So, I guess I've always been a little skeptical of the what they call the techno optimist approach, you know, the idea that we will invent a new technology or a new set of technologies that will solve our problems uh partly because I see, you know, at the root of our environmental problems as well as, you know, social and economic problems are not the technologies that we're using, but the the way that we are using them, um you know, the set of uh you know, social and economic constraints and expectations and cultural norms that we have. So yeah, I I tend to approach these big questions more from a social change perspective and just kind of, you know, take the technologies that are available uh you know, and use them as as we can not to say that there's not a lot to be gained from certain potential future technologies probably also a lot that, you know, a lot of harm that can be done so, and as you were saying earlier, it's hard to know the future with technology. Um but I tend to be one who who thinks we can solve the problems with the technologies we have if we choose to.

CAROLINE GRIFFITH:

Um and I tend to agree with that and I think that, you know, Scott what Scott said about this being an opportunity to rethink how we do things. Um I think it's an opportunity to rethink why we're doing certain things really and how like we absolutely need to um de carbonized our energy sources, but we also need to rethink like why we're using energy, what we're using it for. You know I have been advised by folks much wiser than me and older than I to really think about how what kind of world we want to be living in right? So like what do we want the world to be like in 100 years? And I doubt that any of us would think, gosh, I really like hope in 100 years we get to spend more time on the internet and that's a huge store. Like that's a huge draw of energy right there. You know, I've read some estimates that upwards of 20% of our energy consumption is the I. T. Industry. So that's the internet that's streaming, that's making all of the things that we use to access the internet. Um and I think that you know in conversations that I have with a lot of folks individually they see the harm of living this way and how it how it harms us psychologically socio culturally is calling was saying and also in terms of the environment. So here's a really great opportunity for us to think about what we actually want to see the world as in 100 years and kind of move in that direction. And I tend to think that it would be like yes there are technologies that are helpful and necessary and help us live better lives. There are also some that are harmful. That it would be really great if we could just cut those out and really focus on what's important

HAMANN:

that, that makes me, um,

WHEELER:

that kind

HAMANN:

of makes me think of the, um, the saga that we've seen the issue of recycling go through, you know, at maybe 30 years ago or so. It was like, yes, recycle and today it's well, no, we should reduce, we should reuse, we should repurpose, which I think there's like, what, five or six Rs or something and um, yeah, so the way that we think about our solutions, it changes over time as well,

FISKE:

you know, this reminds me, trust me to bring it back to transportation, but there's, there's a huge debate in the, in the transportation world about, you know, what, what impact will autonomous vehicles have. Um, and there are people who think that they'll solve all of our problems and there are people who think that they'll make our problems way worse. And um, I think what happens will largely depend on what we as a society choose to do. You know, if we just sort of plug and play autonomous vehicles into our current system, it will probably be a lot worse if we change our relation to transportation and vehicles. Um, if we, you know, give up personal car ownership and use fleets. Uh, you know, it could be a lot better, but that depends on how we interact with the technology.

WHEELER:

I think that this gets us to a root of some of the division or some of the kind of camps of environmentalism though. One of which is, you know, we know we need to reduce the number of vehicle miles we travel regardless of whether it's by a fossil fuel powered automobile or an E. V. So how do we go about doing that? Right? So there's the cultural approach where we change hearts and minds, we get individuals to reform their own actions and uh the impetus should be, you know, we should invest our resources there, that's what we should do. Uh And then there's the other camp of environmentalism, which I think uh Epic has been more well known for which is, well let's force these people to do the thing that needs to be done right. This is the kind of uh top down approach which is uh taking a look at society and imagining, well can I can I think that I can convince my neighbor who drives a big diesel pickup truck and leaves it running every morning for a half hour and disrupts my sleep. Uh, not to use a real life example. Uh, can I, can I get him to to radically change the way that he thinks about transportation or do I just need to ban these stupid large trucks that are just like £7000 of death and metal and the gnashing of teeth. Uh

HAMANN:

yeah this is this is what I always think of as and I think many of us think of as the carrot or the stick, like which which of the tools in the tool belt do we want to use? And um you know, I have to say that this really brings me to um to a thing that I hear a lot being the director of friends of the ill river who is known for our wonderfully successful litigation, bringing about big wins for the environment. Um people are often critical of that thinking that we use litigation as like a money making tool. Oh my man, if only if only that were the case litigation is so expensive and is often just kind of the last tool that we have to resort to like tom said to to bring about the meaningful change. That's um that's necessary to turn things in the right direction

WHEELER:

matt. No offense. Um and I'll pick on both of us because I think that whereas Colin is what might be called a Luddite by some of the folks who hate us. I think that uh we are you and I are among the, the techno optimists uh in this group. If if you, I don't think we would we would self identify under that term just to be clear. But I think that we are some of the more optimistic about the ability for technology to like save our butts. Um do you have a perspectives as like the youngest person in this conversation as well? I don't think that you identify as gen z, but I identify you as gen z. Uh do you have any thoughts like the youth of uh, on these subjects?

SIMMONS:

I'm a young millennial tom you can look it up. Um Yeah, so I have, I have two very divergent thoughts about techno optimism. I think on the one hand, you know, we've seen a ton of progress on some things that, You know, 30 years ago, no one thought we would have the level of progress that we've had, like solar panels produce more electricity now than anyone thought they would 30 years ago. Um when

WHEELER:

energy is cheaper, wind power is cheaper than uh than coal. That has fundamentally been the reason that we have gotten off coal.

SIMMONS:

Um despite being, you know, sabotaged by the car industry, electric vehicles are, you know, becoming mainstream and you know, becoming more and more common and cheaper every day. And so I think that that does give me some hope and, and you know, Collins on the call. So I have to say that like electric vehicles won't solve all of our problems, right? Um but it's, you know, a step, a necessary step, right? Necessary, but not sufficient to solving our issues. At the same time. I have encountered people that seem to wholeheartedly believe that like any day now some sort of new carbon capture technology will be invented that can just, you know, suck all the carbon out of the air and stop and, and basically mean that no one has to change anything or do anything. And to me that is just pure wishful thinking, like it's it's it's actively harmful to go around telling people that because you're basically telling them, they don't have to change anything about their life or work to change, you know, the system. Um if you guys want to talk more about that, I have lots and lots of thoughts about like systemic change versus personal responsibility. Um, but the techno optimism that hopes for, you know, carbon capture is, is bad for both of those solutions, right? Because you're telling people like you don't have to do anything, the system doesn't have to do anything magic, you know, fairy dust will come and solve all of our problems. Um and then there's even sort of a techno cynicism right? Like I don't know if you guys know about geoengineering this idea that will, will shoot like dust into the sky and block out the sun like they did in the matrix and that will solve our problem. I know people who are spending all of their time thinking about that and thinking about the, you know, the legal implications of which countries should get to decide what temperature to set the world thermostat at, you know, and so it can get pretty sci fi and pretty um cynical pretty quickly. And so I think it's important to just pull back every once in a while and be like, okay, technology can be helpful. We shouldn't rely on it as a crutch and we certainly shouldn't, you know, rely on it to such an extent that we sort of, you know, lose the thread. Yeah, tom

WHEELER:

So we are all in somewhat unique positions that we have quite a bit of privilege because we have quite a bit of power as as leaders of environmental organizations. We okay, Scott scott is indicating with his fingers that it is only a minuscule amount, which okay, perhaps I'm overstating, but I have more power than my neighbor does. Um, to determine what is the kind of course of climate action within Humboldt County We aren't necessarily members of environmental groups. We are leaders of environmental groups. Uh, so does that place of authority, does that place of power, does that give you, do you feel a sense of responsibility? And does that sense of responsibility alter what you're kind of? Risk analysis might be when when thinking about things. So for example, um, I will use the idea of barred owl control for northern spotted owls. Um, as this thing that Like 18 year old tom would have found like absolutely obnoxious right that we're going to kill one owl in order to benefit another. Uh gilda barred owl in support of the northern spotted owl. But now that I'm at the helm of epic. I feel like this strange moral urgency and responsibility to be this like barred owl killing fanatic because I, I recognize that there's like that the ability for the government, the ability of private timber companies, the ability of private individuals to go forward and do this controversial action is limited by kind of like the social license that we allow. And so like there needs to be somebody like myself a vegan who says, yeah, it's really awful and like here's a shotgun like please, I beg of you go do this. So do you all have other similar feelings? Scott?

GREACEN:

Well I just say, first of all, that's not strange. It may be uncomfortable, but that's what we rely on you to do. That's your job. We need epic doing that. Um, so don't feel down, but you know, that's that's exactly the courageous place that I think environmental organization needs to be in but that I don't have so much a counter anecdote as a, a sense of like we are now in the space of talking about the really difficult choices we have to make and less about the, you know, broad philosophy of technology, which I think we could spend a lot of time spinning our wheels in. Um, and you know, I think Alicia said in a previous conversation about this, that we're really in a place of triage a lot of the time and you know, for those who are unfamiliar with the concept, the basic ideas, you know, you're in an emergency medical situation and you have to divide your attention between the urgent situations that need your full attention right now, um the situations that can wait and those that you cannot help even with all your energy, you know, and you've got to be able to decide between those that first case, you know, the ones you can help and must help and those you can't, and and that to me is the place that's really, really difficult in our work because I see a lot of that latter situation um marbled murrelets anyone, you know, But

HAMANN:

yeah, or or an example from the fish world that I think about a lot is, you know, trying to keep fish populations even hatchery populations in watersheds whose habitat has been decimated and just pumping millions and millions of dollars to keep fish in a place that we have designed for fish not to be able to live in anymore. Um um you know, at some point, I feel like we're unfortunately in a position where we need to make the call that we can't save that anymore and we need to put our resources resources, um because they are so limited, we need to put the resources to a place where they will actually do some good. Um, but boy is that that is a heartbreaking call to have to make.

GREACEN:

And again, I would offer the perspective, but I think climate change usefully limits our options and if we're really brutally realistic about how climate change is going to affect, you know, the world, 12345 decades out, um you know, we start to have to see like, okay, you know, here's something we can help, here's something we can't.

WHEELER:

So, so you had a proposition that climate change, the climate crisis has clarified the scope of right actions. I sometimes think that climate change has muddied things even further to me where, um, you know, let's let's go back to the, I hate, you know, I also love to talk about the tarragon example, right? Um, we had an onshore proposed wind turbine farm that was going to generate 100 and 50 megawatts of electricity and it was in frankly a worrisome spot for certain wildlife. Uh, you know, at at one point, um absent climate change, this would have been an easier project to see to think through um, with climate change, there, there are these like abstract and impossible to answer questions of how do you weigh the site specific impacts, the localized impacts versus something that, you know, is going to produce a bunch of uh a bunch of low carbon power, but it wasn't going to solve the climate crisis. It was a drop in the bucket and solving the climate crisis, but like lots of drops end up filling a bucket. Right? So this, this project somewhat divided the environmental community and like it is somewhat clarified the right course of action, climate change, the climate crisis, but it is also deeply muddied it on some traditional areas of environmentalism and I think that as environmental leaders, we see a schism between some of like our our members who are climate activists, who are climate focused and some folks who are more rooted in the historic biodiversity defense O. G. Environmentalism of the eighties and nineties.

GRIFFITH:

Well, I think that um 11 aspect of this is uh the idea of justice as well. Um and I think and I want to name you know, one of the privileges that we all also share is we are all white, we are all coming from, you know, I don't know everybody's socio economic background, you know, but I think that we're all coming from places of privilege. Um and so we are, you know, traditionally part of the classes of people who have been making a lot of these decisions and one of the really beautiful things about the, you know, what has come out of climate change and that movement is the idea of justice and the idea of communities who have been very deeply impacted by very like on everyday impacts of the climate crisis and of fossil fuel extraction and all these things are now really having a lot more of a voice and that does um just like anything that is more democratic with a small d um that does add for more complexity because there are more voices involved and there are more people who need to be a part of the conversation. I think that in the long run, once you sort through all of those voices, we can come up with better solutions that actually serve a larger group of people, but it is a lie longer process. Uh and one that I think, you know, when you're talking about the carrots and the sticks, um I feel like there's something in between those, you know, something that's also kind of in between the individual action and the systemic action, right, That is more of a bottom up systemic change. That comes from a lot of people making individual actions,

HAMANN:

you know, I think what we see between the carrots and the sticks um is the need for trust and you know, tom when you mentioned um tarragon being an example of something that is kind of a small drop in the bucket or something we can do locally that affects climate change. 11 thing that is really present on my mind lately is like, well if our community does these small things, well other communities also do their small part and and can I trust that others elsewhere are, are doing these same pieces so that all these drops add up or are, are drops just going to evaporate and not ever matter that we did them and that's um you know, that's a that's a huge question that's ever present for me and I just, I don't know where to go with that really

GREACEN:

observation, I think that, um, you know, both the incentive idea, the carrot and regulation, the stick are the sort of situation, normal business as usual, poles of life under capitalism, you know, it's one or the other. And I think what you're pointing to, um is, you know, maybe a whole different thing, which is that human society generally has other ways of organizing ourselves in addition to those, um, you know, relatively blunt instruments and, you know, um, taboo used to function um, in a lot of societies to really strongly limit um, how people behaved doesn't seem to do so much anymore in our society, but point being that I think we can, you know, think about and start to work on, you know, ways of behaving, you know, that aren't just carrots and sticks, of course, you know, I think we'd all be a lot better off with a lot more sticks, but

HAMANN:

I mean, I'd argue that some carrot cake could be thrown in there too. You,

SIMMONS:

I was just on the subject of trust, you know, the causes of climate change are not equally distributed around the globe, right? And so, you know, coming from a nation that is disproportionately responsible for emissions, I think we sort of have a responsibility to like take the leap in in trying these new things to change and to reduce our emissions and to demonstrate that it's possible. I mean, you know, a lot of um honestly I don't know what the current terminology is, but when I was growing up, we said developing nations and so that's what I'm gonna say, a lot of developing nations are currently, you know, still constructing coal plants and and doing all the things that you know, the U. S. And europe did in order to jump start their industrial revolution. And there was this idea that like okay, well developed, you know, solar panels and wind farms and batteries and we'll we'll have them skip that sort of carbon intense industrialization and it's not happening or at least it's not happening at the rate that it needs to to prevent climate change. And you know, as someone who lives in a country that, you know, is more capable of making that transition. I think we really have a responsibility to sort of to do it and and to show that it's possible because just looking across the world and saying, oh well they aren't doing it yet, We don't have to, everyone in the world is going to do that and then no one will do anything and you know, we'll keep the status quo, which we all sort of have a bias towards doing, but the status quo right now is us, you know, heading towards an iceberg, right? And so I think we gotta make sure we don't do that,

WHEELER:

matt icebergs won't exist in the future, buddy, don't worry about that. It's not a problem. Alicia. And then then I have a question for the group.

HAMANN:

Yeah, well, funny enough, I actually have a question for the group and um you know, matt, you mentioned um the need for us to take this leap and you know, so, so my question to the group is um, it appears to me with the limited knowledge I have about how to take this next sleep of um, you know, electrifying and um and reducing our carbon use, um that that we're not quite, we don't quite have the tools and resources to do that in a smooth and you know, in a smooth way that has no impact. Like we're gonna have to have some impacts to get there right. If we if we want to develop more um sources of electrical generation, well, we have to use the gas powered things, we have to make that stuff happen. And it's kind of this cart before the horse situation. And what do you all think about that? Is are we in a position where it's ok to um to accept causing some moderate harms if it's, you know, trade off for more extreme harms.

WHEELER:

Mr Fiske.

FISKE:

Yeah, so I guess I have two thoughts. One is um more specific and one is maybe a little more philosophical, but um, you know, I think we uh what you're talking about, Alicia is, is an example of um to me the problem of trying to just plug in, you know, a slightly better technology into the system that we have and and believing that that will solve the problem, you know, where certainly we need to, you know, electrify everything so that we're not burning fossil fuels anymore. But in order to avoid at least some of the problems you're talking about, we also need to just use less energy. Um, you know, we need to drive less and, you know, we need to have more efficient buildings and so forth. So I think that that's important to, you know, to always be sort of questioning the way that the problem is framed. Um, and and as a more general point, I think something we've been kind of talking around a little bit is that um, we as activists as advocates, you know, are constantly having to perform this task of keeping two things in mind at once. You know, one is the place that we know we need to get for something like climate, you know, the end result and the other is the fact that um however much influence tom thinks we have, we we don't have the influence to get us there as individuals or as organizations. And so, um we have to take advantage of the opportunities that do exist on a day to day basis to move us incrementally there and to be prepared for when there might be bigger opportunities that we don't have the power to create ourselves. Um so I think that's a real challenge, knowing where we need to go having the vision, but not you know, only being able to move us sort of slowly and incrementally there and not fast enough

WHEELER:

Matt and then we are approaching the end of the show. Unfortunately the time has just flown by.

SIMMONS:

Yeah, so to Alicia's question about sort of accepting uh impacts in order to prevent more severe impacts, I think a measuring stick that I always try to use is am I actually stopping those lesser impacts or am I just moving them somewhere else? Right? Because I think that a lot of environmental activism unfortunately can sort of be a, you know, I'm gonna protect my sphere and make sure nothing happens here, but I want to keep using energy and doing the things that caused the environmental impact in the first place. And so it's okay if that happens somewhere else and we'll just ship in the power or the resources or whatever. Um and so I think that that when you're doing this calculus about comparing impacts, you've got to you've got to make sure that you're thinking about all of the impacts to everybody because otherwise you're just, you know, playing defense for your own little patch of earth and not thinking about everyone else and it's exactly that sort of thinking that it's gotten us into this problem in the first place. Um and that can be thinking from the environmentalist side and from the sort of extractive side. So just a thought,

WHEELER:

Alright, everybody, this has been a wonderful Econews Report. I ... throughout the show, I I realized why I always love working with these folks, because there's such thoughtful, wonderful people, and I hope that that came through in today's show. Also, join us, join us again on this time and channel next week for more environmental news from the north coast of California.