This week on the Carbon Removal Newsroom podcast, Nori's Head of Methodology Radhika Moolgavkar hosts Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University of Buffalo, and the Director of Sustainability at Bushel, Allison Nepveux. They discuss the Colonial Pipeline hack, how we can extract ourselves from our fossil fuel dependency, the impact of agricultural financing and crop insurance, and we hear some pushback on the Growing Climate Solutions Act.
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom for Friday, May 25th. I have with me this week, Holly Buck, Assistant Professor of Environmental and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo. Hi, Holly. How are you doing? Cute haircut.
Holly Jean Buck: Hi, I’m doing great. Thank you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Perfect for the summertime. And I also have with us a special guest because our normal panelist, Chris, couldn’t join us today. So with me today, I have Allison Nebu, Director of Sustainability at Bushell. Allison, thanks so much for joining us today.
Allison Nepveux: Yeah, excited to be on with you guys.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’re looking forward to getting your perspective because I know you’ve been involved in Washington policy circles for a long time before you started at Bushell. So I think you’ll have great things to add. And then it’s me, myself and I, Radhika Moolgavkar, Program Manager for Supply and Methodology at NORI as our third panelist this week. So today I just wanted to start with something a little different because as we all know, heat waves are happening more frequently. The seas are warming. And on one of my least favorite things is the ragweed pollen is increasing because it makes my allergies terrible.
But last Wednesday, the 12th, the EPA finally returned science to their website and they have an indicator report of 54 different things that are happening out there in the sustainability space that we should be all tracking. That data was missing for the last four years, so I encourage all our listeners to go check it out and see what it tells them and kind of rejoice in that returning to the EPA website. With that, I will turn it over to the topic at hand this week, which first off is Colonial Pipeline.
Which I’m sure as most of our listeners know, they had a ransomware attack, which took the pipeline down and caused all sorts of economic and supply chain impacts. And we’re all aware of that. I think that’s been in the news. But what kind of caught my eye this week, and we’re seeing similar things in Michigan and Minnesota, these battles over the pipelines, is how do we stop our dependence on oil? I mean, it’s a huge question, right? But how do we stop our dependence on oil? When we can’t even go three days without having mass panic about it.
So Holly, what are you thinking about that? And I have a follow up question after you think about that for a second.
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, the short answer is that we need a planned phase out, not an ad hoc phase out. So that’s really the crux of the matter. It’s going to take a few decades. That said, the International Energy Agency put forward a report this week about how to get to net zero by 2050, which caught a lot of attention because they said that actually we need no new investment in fossil fuels from the state forward. So starting that planning process by not developing new fields would be the first step.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What I’m wondering though, is the infrastructure is old. I mean, this was talking about software infrastructure, but how do we do a phased approach without, we’re going to have to do work on that infrastructure too. So how do you balance, how do you think we should balance the needs of keeping these things running with also phasing them out?
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, it depends on how quickly new supply comes online, right? So there’s, it’s very intricate Synchronous dance we have to do with bringing new supply online, phasing out old stuff. That said, a lot of people made a lot of different things out of the colonial pipeline, which was really a governance issue from my point of view, more than an infrastructure one. So You know, there’s this report by the GAO government body in 2019 that pointed out that there were only six staffers at TSA dedicated to pipeline security. So there’s a bunch of questions, right?
What agency is taking care of cybersecurity stuff, pipeline security more broadly? How well is it staffed? I mean, these are like human variables that we could change. That said, the article you mentioned, Radhika, had another example, which is the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline. And that really is a maintenance issue. So what’s going on there is the governor of Michigan would like to shut down this pipeline. It’s a pipeline that takes oil from the tar sands in Canada, goes through Michigan, through this street between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. And goes back to Canada.
So it kind of transits the U. S. and hence is an international issue about, you know, trying to shut it down. But it was built in 1953. It needs to be replaced. So what do you do, right? We need to replace it soon. They want to build a new one. We don’t want to build new infrastructure. It’s a really tough spot.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, Allison, from your kind of days in Washington DC, do you have any insight on what you think is happening behind the scenes in those government agencies trying to balance very different constituencies right now? You’ve got the unions who are very pro keeping these pipelines up and you’ve got these environmental groups who are like, no, you got to phase them out immediately.
Allison Nepveux: I don’t know that I’m qualified in this space to chime in on what’s going on with pipelines. I did see though, you know, just to add a new layer of complexity over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal did a big report on the electrification of everything and some of the challenges with moving to electric vehicles. So I think it’s important in all of these conversations to take into account, you know, there are There’s trade-offs to everything. There’s challenges with everything. And so I don’t know what that means for pipelines and reducing our dependence on oil.
But to Holly’s point too, I think getting there tomorrow and just pulling the plug is unrealistic and trying to take a really pragmatic approach to the way that we do things. And at least from my perspective and where I come from in agriculture, One of the things that we see as a critical way to lower the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is by incorporating things like ethanol. So things that are maybe helping us with our oil supplies to be a little less carbon intensive.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. So Holly, maybe I’ll pitch the question I gave Allison over to you. How do you think about it as somebody I know who Who straddles both those kind of constituencies, the unions and the environmental groups. How do you balance that? How do you think a political administration should be thinking about it?
Holly Jean Buck: I think things are changing quickly because up until now, there wasn’t really a shared vision about what the future of oil and gas would be. And actually net zero and in some cases, carbon removal was kind of a workaround for actually talking about that, I feel. The fact that we do need to phase out fossil fuels, but now we see, you know, the IEA study, Spain this week passed their climate law, which says, you know, no new fossil fuel production in Spain going forward. So, There is a consensus changing. My concern is that we might have this like discursive or mental flip where we’re like, okay, this is the new reality.
We’re phasing out this stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily get followed up by material reality. So you can cancel fossil fuels online and in policy discourse even, but it’s a material substance, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: With a lot of vested interests in it as well, right? I mean, yeah, this is what I’m finding fascinating about the current conversation about the pipeline right now is this intersection between so many different groups with different priorities and needs and all fairly legitimate concerns. And I don’t think anyone has figured out the best way to Or has even given a lot of thought to how you phase this stuff out in a way that is effective. I don’t hear anything coming really out of the Biden administration in terms of the pipeline besides let’s, you know, let’s stop using it.
But I don’t think that’s a very effective, you know, meaningful policy statement because there are other, you know, there’s a long term, it’s going to be a long term phase out. And there are gonna have to be short-term decisions that will implicate keeping these pipelines up and running to your point, like the pipeline in Michigan, which has that infrastructure issue. So I don’t know, I’ve been thinking, I was just thinking a lot about that this week and how we bridge those gaps. Any insight from either of you about that? How do you bridge the gaps between such disparate kind of groups?
I mean, Allison, you work in that space a lot with the farmers, I would think.
Allison Nepveux: Yeah, I don’t, I mean, for this topic in particular, I don’t have great insights other than it’s really nuanced. And what I find, I will say, what I find maybe most positive about the conversation around carbon, it feels like for the first time, at least in that Tina, tiny part of the world. We’re trying to move in the same direction. And that’s often the challenge here, especially in Washington. As you mentioned, there’s all these different groups that have all these different perspectives and getting them to align around one common something.
At least it feels like for the first time, we’re all talking about Hey, we really need to do something about climate change. That conversation alone from a really high level has taken us way too long to get to. And now we’re at least all seem to be moving in the same direction. What used to be this really politicized thing and food and agriculture is now like, oh, we’re part of the solution. We do need to lower greenhouse gases. How can we do that? And so I think it’s finding those tiny spaces where we at least have alignment around definitions of what we’re trying to do.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, I like that, tiny spaces. That’s a good way of describing it. Holly, any closing or additional thoughts you might have?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I think that alongside infrastructure planning, there’s a cultural shift because ending fossil fuels manage decline. It sounds both boring and depressing, talking about a managed decline. It’s a scary thing. For some people, for some communities. So recognizing that. But I think what the IEA did was smart. They and many others are framing this as a huge growth opportunity, which I think in some cases it will be. And just figuring out to make a genuinely just transition, what policy instruments are going to support retraining of workers. I mean, there’s a lot there, but lots of people are working on it.
So I actually do feel kind of optimistic this week.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Wow. Well, I will just add that I spent three years living in Lexington, Kentucky and firsthand met some folks who were from Appalachia, as we all know, kind of whole country and one of the most poverty stricken areas in our country. And I really hope that there are people working on policies to help bring those communities along because it is a big, scary transition for them. I mean, I don’t want to sound, you know, that makes me, I don’t want to sound judgmental. That’s not my intent. But what I mean is that this has been their livelihood and their culture.
I think it’s about that cultural aspect that sometimes we lose, that it’s more than just jobs and skills and retraining. It’s about communities that were built around these ideas and how you Transition them out of that thinking into a new thinking is a slightly different thing. And so I trust that there are people out there who are thinking about that within those communities, but I think it’s gonna be a long, hard conversation and I’m glad we’re at least starting it and having it because I think for a long time, we’ve just were pretending it wasn’t gonna be necessary, you know?
Holly Jean Buck: And maybe carbon removal can play a big role there.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I would hope so. I would hope so. I hope we could find... We can find a common discourse around things. So speaking of discourse, I wanted to take a little pivot in an article I sent to you both and about, I found interesting about Exxon’s manipulation of language and its comparison. I mean, I read the first line and my first thought was, the tobacco industry, it sounds just like what they did. And then that was like the second line. So it wasn’t as original as I thought. Holly, I was curious about your take on that article because I know you follow the oil and gas industry fairly closely and you’re a sociologist, so this might play into two areas of interest for you.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, so this was a paper published in One Earth by Jeffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, and they did a quantitative assessment of these documents from Exxon from 1972 up to 2014. I mean, methodologically, it was interesting from that standpoint, because now we have all these tools to analyze large scale bodies of texts. But anyway, they were comparing the public facing discourse that Exxon was putting out versus the internal discussions about global warming in the contrast there. In a way, I’m not sure it really tells us more than we would have known.
It’s cool to be able to quantitatively point to these things because otherwise people say, oh, you know, that’s just your opinion. And then you could say, well, here, I actually hear the numbers that quantify this discourse somehow.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So interestingly, it seemed like Exxon’s response to it was, oh, you authors are flawed because you have a vendetta against us as shown through your other scholarship and your legal things that you’ve been involved with in the legal system. And what did you think of that as an academic even, Holly?
Holly Jean Buck: I think it was super convincing. So they were pointing out to, you know, The rescues having ties to this law firm and being a conflict of interest, but she did three and a half hours of consulting for this law firm. It’s a very different thing than like, you know, being in their pocket.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I just found it fascinating that they could make that state. Oh, she, she did this work, but they didn’t have to back, you know, you don’t have to back it up with any facts. They just said it like it was the truth. And so, um, I thought that they are very good at manipulating language was just my, and I was impressed with, impressed and not really impressed by how they flipped the tables on the authors. But just something I wanted to bring up for our listeners so that they, as they listen to the language that the Exxon and BP put forward, really think about that because honestly, I was surprised when I read it about how much it had impacted me, how much I was like, oh, wait, when did, yeah, I did have this switch in the way I thought about what they were doing and their marketing and their advertising is really good at that.
And while I firmly believe we have to bring them along, we have to actually hold them to account for what they’re doing at the same time. And I realized I was one of those folks who got taken in.
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, one interesting thing about this is they were looking at text up to 2014, but now we’re kind of soaked in this media ecology. So I don’t know about you, but when I do searches related to carbon for my work, I always have Google showing me an ad about Exxon. And I always have Exxon in my Twitter feed with like their carbon capture stuff. So now they have a whole new set of tools to deploy upon people. I mean, it’s kind of scary. And I’m not sure that people who are climate advocates are thinking about it the same way or deploying those same sets of tools for their messages.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I don’t think they are. I don’t think they’re as sophisticated in that kind of messaging. And it maybe behooves them to start thinking a little bit more strategically around these things. Allison, not to put you on the spot, but I didn’t give you a chance to comment. So is there anything you want to add before we move on? Any thoughts you might have had?
Allison Nepveux: Well, I didn’t read that particular article, but I would say it sounds like it underscores the need to have common definitions and common language that we all agree to. Outside of oil and gas, which is a space that I don’t follow as closely, in agriculture, we’re starting to see what really defines something as low carbon versus not. And so I do see some parallels there with what we’re struggling with in the food and ag space as to Where is something greenwashing, which is something that for sustainability, especially in food and ag, is a concept we’ve struggled with for a long time.
So where are we greenwashing? Where is something real? Where is something valid? What can be verified? What might not be? And so I think there’s a real need for definitions and standards and common language.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so that is going to make me want to actually pivot to what I thought would be our last topic, but I’ll actually bring it up next because I think it’s a good segue, which is, you know, last week when Chris was on, it was all roses and sunshine because we were talking about the Growing Climate Solutions Act and how it was this bipartisan piece of legislation that everybody could get behind. But lo and behold, this week, we’ve been seeing some pushback. And so it’s really around this idea that somehow carbon voluntary markets might get the sheen of regulation, but could result in abusive behavior towards farmers.
I think part of that, the reason I wanted, I pivoted to it is I think part of that idea is to create common language around these things. But Allison, I’d be curious about your perspective on the pushback and if you agree with it or what you think, you know, we need to be thinking about.
Allison Nepveux: I think it’s been said on this podcast before, you know, the devil is in the details. And, you know, details really matter, especially in this space. So a lot of folks are talking about carbon or carbon markets from a very high level perspective. But as things get ironed out, I think those details really dictate whether or not it is beneficial to farmers, whether or not it’s something that the market can act on. Overall, my perspective about the growing Climate Solutions Act and some of the pushback, I think it’s important to know that, well, I’ll come out and say I’m really supportive of the bill and the concepts around it.
Especially living in Washington over the last several years, it’s nice to see a bipartisan effort in general. So let’s celebrate that. But also, I think it’s important to remember that Carbon markets in agriculture and voluntary carbon markets are still really new. There’s a lot of questions. There’s a lot of things that haven’t been ironed out. I think that having USDA play a role of sorts similar to a referee and to say, hey, like we think that this thing is valid and we’ve verified that this thing is [inaudible] You know, I think USDA being a part of this is a way to also bring farmers along and help them feel more comfortable about the places that they can play.
So I see this bill, yes, maybe there are some things that long term we have to work through, but I think it’s a really positive step in the right direction that’s very much needed in food and agriculture to get the people we need on board, on board.
Radhika Moolgavkar: There’s not enough detail in this act to really know what it’s going to create, but If we’ve got a lot of support, let’s leverage it to create something good versus just pretending, you know, they’re not doing anything. But it does lead me to a follow-up question with you is when you’re talking to farmers, I don’t know if you talk to them about the Growing Climate Solutions Act, but when you talk to them about like this marketplace and what it means, like, what are you hearing from them? Because I know my conversations tend to be there, you know, I may be more in depth.
So I’m curious what you’re hearing from the farmers.
Allison Nepveux: Well, I’ll take a step back. So previous to joining Bushel, you know, I worked for the US corn industry and helping move exports overseas. And part of that work covered sustainability and how we talk about sustainability in overseas markets and how we match up, you know, what customers expect of their products. And sustainability as a bucket term was the fastest way to shut down a conversation. No one wanted to have that conversation ever. And so from a positive, really optimistic note, I feel like talking about incentives and talking about voluntary marketplaces, I think that we’re still in a stage of early adopters.
I think there’s still a lot of questions about What that means on an individual farmer basis, I think a lot of them are waiting to see how things shake out before they jump into any particular program. But I have seen it change just the general dynamic of the conversation because it doesn’t feel anymore like, oh, a downstream customer is telling me to do yet another thing in an environment where everything I do is unpredictable and out of my control. And so here’s a space where I can participate. And be incentivized for doing good things.
And so I’m just happy that the conversation is shifted just ever so slightly towards where we want to go so we can hit some of the goals and metrics that we’ve set as a nation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I hope they continue as they develop out these regulations that it is not a telling of farmers what to do, but it’s more a, here are some practices that can benefit you and benefit others. So It’s a win-win, as we like to say. Holly, I want to pivot because one of the other big things that, you know, generic criticisms of the carbon marketplace is sort of this moral hazard issue, right? That if you let people offset, they’ll never clean up. You know, I was wondering if you had any reactions to that, you know, as it relates to this act that’s coming through.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I’d say my concern is about whose emissions are being compensated for. So sorry to keep bringing up this IEA report. I guess I’m kind of excited about it. But that’s a scenario where it actually got residual emissions, so the leftover positive emissions from industry and transport, to be really low. You know that they were looking at 1. 9 gigatonnes of carbon removal to compensate for those, but it’s much lower than a lot of scenarios. And so then you need to make sure that those leftover emissions are coming from industry and transport.
And so if you’re just, you know, you’re trying to offset something beyond that, With the land sector, I mean, there’s going to be eventually like a finite supply of land sector removal. So I think we need to be thinking a couple of decades out here. I mean, it’s great to get started. I’m all for getting started, but we don’t want to be locked into some sort of system where all these removals are going to the wrong sectors or, you know, just the highest bidder or whatever. There needs to be more planning in my view.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So, Elaborate on what you think the right sectors would be to apply these credits for. Are they just the ones like that are hard to decarbonize potentially like airlines and things like that?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I mean, every scenario for 1. 5 is like our only emissions are from these really hard to decarbonize sectors. And right now we have no system for making sure our removals are compensating for those sectors, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I got you.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, the default is that so-and-so wants to fly their private jet, and they’re the ones who can buy the removals, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Did you read Bill Gates’s book? Because that’s exactly what he talked about, how he buys offsets to compensate for his private jet. I guess it’s fine, but most of us don’t live in that reality. That’s an interesting, I never thought about it like that, actually, Holly. I just, you know, I was more thinking about that there’s no incentive to stop emissions, right? Like when I think of the moral hazard argument I led, but I like how you reframed it in a different way. Do you have thoughts on the best way to approach something like that?
Like how you limit the buyers or push the offsets in the right direction?
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, not, not that I could explain very briefly, although I do think that a lot of scenarios would assume that, you know, one of the biggest things leftover is going to be emissions from agriculture associated with agriculture, like from fertilizer like nitrous oxide and actually a lot of carbon removal. It’s going to be compensated for other greenhouse gases because a lot of these ambitious scenarios just assume that the power sector is fully decarbonized and what’s left over is aviation, some industry, and fertilizer. So you could say, OK, here, ag is compensating for ag.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, look at almost like a sector by sector kind of thing. Yeah, it’s because then the Microsofts of the world who want to go carbon negative Their road is a little different in your scenario, I would think, because they want to go beyond and remove from their historic emissions. So a really interesting thought to ponder, Holly. I don’t have anything else to add. Allison, anything you want to throw in? She’s got me totally stumped right now.
Allison Nepveux: All right. I think that’s a really interesting perspective because there is this supply constraint. I mean, at least where I only deal in agriculture, so all of my reference points are agriculture, but there is a limited amount of land and there are a limited number of farmers that can make a limited number of practice changes. So how do you, in that context, how do you frame this conversation and this discussion? I just really like the perspective.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I guess the one thing I could think of is nature-based solutions probably only get, as we all know, only get you so far. So you do really need to get to Holly’s vision. It’s you need to get to that industrial level of carbon removal. So we use the nature-based solutions for the next 20 years and we get those technologies up and running and then we can get really specific maybe into the sectors is kind of what I’m thinking. But I like thinking about the long, Goal and keeping that in mind as we move forward.
So nice thought, Holly. That was cool. That was put me in a whole different frame. So I appreciate it. Last thing I wanted to talk about is financing, which, you know, I don’t think a lot of people really have given it much thought. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I hadn’t really given it much thought. I mean, obviously financing plays a part of everybody’s life every day, but How you think about the impacts that the environmental changes are having on the financial sector and the increase in risks that they’re taking, and particularly how it relates to farmers who are now dealing with all of these terrible weather events from heavy rains, wildfires, deep freezes, and my new favorite weather term, derecho, the inland hurricane, and its disproportionate impact on farmland, and how financial industries will React to that and its impact on farmers.
So Allison, you know, again, from your current role and your days in Washington, have you thought a lot about that and you have any insight?
Allison Nepveux: Insights, no, but we have thought about this a lot. So, you know, the Dirac Show really last year devastated a number of farmers. And when we, when I spent some time talking to farmers after that, it was really interesting. And this is a story we’ve heard over and over again about some of the practice changes that we’re recommending. It’s not just for carbon removal. I think we’ve seen early adopters for a number of years see the benefits of practicing no-till or practicing reduced till or planting cover crops. And I think that last year’s weather events in particular really highlighted the resiliency that comes along with adopting some of these practice changes.
And those are stories that often have been word of mouth. And so I think it’s interesting that there’s just now this other incentive. So outside of being able to withstand extreme weather events by doing some of these better things, which we’ve known for a long time in food and agriculture, there’s now other incentives for adopting them. And we have been thinking a lot about how does that intersect or coincide with things like crop insurance. And one of the really interesting in the policy space here in DC, there’s a group called The Food and Ag Climate Alliance.
So it’s a number of organizations that have gotten together to make recommendations to USDA about how they could be thinking about these things. And one of their recommendations that they made to USDA was, hey, we really think USDA should do a study on how these practices and how better soil health, you know, whatever you’re doing for soil health, whether that is cover crops or no-till, How does that impact insurance premiums? How does that impact liabilities? Because in my view, this is a perfect way to incentivize if you’ve made a practice change, why can’t you have a lower crop insurance premium so that the system is shifting and is set up so that those institutions are taking on less risk at the same time that farmers are doing things that make them more resilient in the long term.
So it’s a conversation that’s being had and at least in like the DC policy circles. And so I think it’s nice to know that we’re trying to rethink a lot of the existing systems that are set up and the things that exist to support farmers.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, you know, crop insurance just came up yesterday as I was talking to a farmer about how, but we were more talking about the fact that Early adopters of these practices are also cut out of the carbon marketplaces many times because their carbon is too old. They’ve been doing the right thing for the right reasons for a long time. And unfortunately, we can’t get them into the marketplace. But crop insurance is one way to reward them. Another idea that came up from somebody much smarter than me was the government could be the buyer of these older carbon credits to help kind of Not incentivize these people because obviously they’ve already participated, but just as almost like a thank you or almost like you did something before you had to and we can’t give you the same financial resources that the new adopters can, but there are ways to help now.
And so I have been thinking a lot, which I never thought I would, about crop insurance and these things. And I hope that Under the growing Climate Solutions Act, under all of these bipartisan things that we’re seeing, that we can move some of these programs forward. The other thing I was wondering if you had any insight into, but it might be a little bit far afield, is the small local banks who are really key in lending to the farmers and the credit unions that are kind of more in the handshake deal of the world.
Has there been any conversations about how these banks are weathering All of these natural disasters and the farmers who are unfortunately unable to pay back their loans.
Allison Nepveux: I don’t have insight into that. I do separately applaud your use of weathering in that sentence as we talk about weather. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. But I do think that overall, you know, it’s not just farmers that are impacted by extreme weather events. A lot of times, you know, you do go to your local bank. Where I grew up was a very small town in Texas. And we went to a bank that doesn’t even have, you know, an app, right? So my parents still every day, they like drive to the bank and they cash their checks.
And that’s a world that a lot of people live in rural America. And you don’t have to be participating in agriculture to experience that. And I think we’re getting to a point with climate change to where, unfortunately, those extreme weather events are impacting a lot of people on a regular basis in their everyday lives. And it’s not just something that you’re reading about in the news that happens in some far off land. These are real problems that we’re dealing with that we have to come up with real solutions to. As far as how that impacts their ability to finance, I don’t know, but it’s a worthy conversation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, for sure. Polly, anything you want to add before I actually fully turn the stage over to you to talk about your positive moment of the week?
Holly Jean Buck: Not really. I’m terrified about some of these risks to the financial system. But hopefully more people are identifying them as things go on. Yeah, hopeful. I’m sorry, I’m so terrified about what I’ve been hearing about the mega drought and, you know, people just not bothering to plant this year.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, you’re talking about on the California-Oregon border or, yeah.
Holly Jean Buck: And in New Mexico, like really big regional.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, I will say that California-Oregon water issue, for people who are not aware, California and Oregon sort of share some water resources each year. Government agencies allocate them. And it has been such a dry winter. And there’s competition from the resources, fish resources as well, which obviously need water to survive. And they’re already, I think, predicting something like 70% of water. Less than normal or it’s terrible and it will likely lead to farmers who can’t farm, forest fires and fish whose habitat is ruined. So I think about that a lot, Holly, and I read about that obsessively because I live in Seattle and the wildfire smoke really impacts my summer selfishly and because I worry about all those folks down there and what’s going on.
But I don’t want to end on that. I want to end on what you’ve been talking about this whole podcast, but now it’s your floor to really explore it and tell us all about it. So go for it.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I don’t know if I want to go too much into detail about this IEA report, but I mean, the big deal, I think, for a lot of people is not just that they laid out a vision for An energy system compatible with 1. 5 degrees Celsius. It’s that they were the ones saying it. I mean, they have this roots, you know, in the fossil fuel industry. And now apparently we’re at this moment where you can normalize this idea of phase out and transformation at this, you know, this very top level, right?
So I’m excited about that. It’s like a One step closer to getting rid of this taboo about talking about the end of this industry. Not that they said there would be an end of fossil fuels. There’s obviously petrochemical production. We could get into the details of some of their discussion. But I’m excited about this turn.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s like we’re finally getting people to acknowledge. I mean, I think it’s always nice to have that moment where You see what you’ve seen for so long a group that has not acknowledged it finally acknowledges it’s just it’s a big step forward I think in all of these conversations and getting the language the same to Allison’s point. So it was a great report. And I think we were all heartened that it came out. With that, thank you both. Holly, as always, lovely to see you. Allison, you are a fantastic pinch hitter.
We will definitely let you know and have you come back on at some point. So thank you so much. And to everybody who’s listening out there, thank you. And we will see you next week.
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