63: Facing an Uninhabitable Earth with David Wallace-Wells

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Right. I think we're likely to see the same pattern playing out with the coronavirus. And I would like to see that change. Going forward, you know, I have to say, I've been surprised to this point, as I said earlier, at how much solidarity has been shown and how much concern for the health of others. But I don't, especially if we're talking about a story that will be playing out over the course of a year or 18 months, I doubt that we'll see this level of concern. On the other hand, I would just say, you know, the most effective thing we could have done in helping those who will soon be suffering in the Southern Hemisphere and around the equator from coronavirus would have been to get a handle on it as quickly as possible. So if we had taken as dramatic action as we could have possibly imagined in early January or even late December in China, not waiting until late January, not waiting in other parts of the world until deep into February and into March, the ultimate shape of the disease would be a lot different and the impact all around the world would be much smaller.

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Christiana Figueres: David, can I just ask you a question about that? Because I'm timing, right? Timing in the response to climate change is also absolutely critical. There's nothing as important as, well, time and scale. Same thing as the coronavirus.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Sooner is always better than later.

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Christiana Figueres: Sooner is always better. Prevention is always better than curing. And, you know, the same argument that you have made for coronavirus, absolutely the same argument we can make for climate change. Had we started reducing emissions when we first understood that we were heading toward a crisis, we would actually be in a much better shape. So what do we learn from this? I mean, this is very present experience for us right now, right? And I think we're all appraised of the fact that sooner is better and that prevention is better than curing. So it's a very, very present lesson that we are learning. Is that something that is applicable? Do you think we have the capacity to take that lesson from where we are right now and apply it to climate in an effective way?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Well, one perverse aspect of this is that we are now at a place with climate change where I think some amount of meaningful prevention is possible for the nations of the global north. It is already the case that most of the nations in the global south and especially around the equator are already suffering quite intensely from climate change. There, we have to think about mitigating, limiting the amount of damage that is done, but we also have to think about how to adapt and prepare and help those people live relatively comfortable, relatively prosperous, relatively healthy lives in spite of the warming that they are already experiencing. I do think that there are some lessons and some encouraging signs for people hoping for dramatic climate action coming out of the corona crisis. I do think in places like the US especially, it does really vividly illustrate how much more open our political landscape really is when we allow ourselves to think ambitiously and dramatically and with real moral urgency. The amount of changes that have been instituted, even if only temporarily, in countries of the West over the last few weeks obviously dwarf what anybody ever thought was possible to do even on incredibly long time scales to deal with climate change and yet we've done them very quickly. Now, I don't think they are going to be comfortably permanent measures, but as a sign of how quickly we can move when we do want to move, they're a reminder that we are capable of enormous change when we choose to try to bring about that change. But how we bring about that change and what choices we make, especially when we're on the other side of this crisis, is to me very much an open question and I'm not all that optimistic about how we answer it. My understanding is most informed by the experience of the US and in the US, we have a long history of incredible concern or even concern trolling, I would say, about deficit spending and the size of the federal debt. We are likely to emerge in 2021, possibly with a new Democratic president, conceivably, although it's not at all any kind of safe bet, with the support of both houses of Congress. Yet, having come off a year in which the federal government spent a literally unprecedented amount of money, multiples more than they spent in 2009. And I'm not sure what the political appetite will be there to engage in large scale policy innovation of any kind, let alone on climate, which has already, because of a generation of disinformation, is understood by many parts of the voting public as involving a trade-off between economic growth and climate action. I think it's possible that the experience of the next year teaches the American public, and indeed the world at large, that deficit spending in times of emergency is necessary, and not something we need to worry about nearly as much as we worried about it in decades past. I think in general, the economic conventional wisdom is moving in that direction already. But I worry that some of these old habits and old habits of mind die hard, and that we'll find ourselves in the aftermath of this crisis, kind of exhausted by what it took to get us out of it, and feeling like our resources have been exhausted too. And what that means for climate action is, I think, quite scary. Now, on the other hand, you could imagine the response to coronavirus encoding a lot of climate response as well.

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Christiana Figueres: Exactly. I'm so glad you brought that up, because I was just going to ask you about that, Dave. That's the only way to do it, isn't it?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Well, I think in a vacuum, absolutely, you'd want to say, okay, we're going to be spending X amount of dollars or X amount of euros doing stimulus spending because the economy is not working and nobody can have a job. You say, okay, well, we'll put these people to work building out a new electric grid. We'll put these people to work building out new solar fields and wind power plantations and all the rest of it. That is possible, but it is, in my mind, determined at a national level, not an international level, by domestic politics.

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Christiana Figueres: Yes, correct.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Here in the US, we're going to be writing those stimulus bills with a Republican president and a Republican senate. Even in those parts of the world where leadership is considerably more progressive at the moment, there are still some concerns and roadblocks and barriers to the kind of ultimate aggressive climate action and being enacted as part of this program. I think there are some signs of hope. I imagine that, I actually don't know the details, but I imagine that the response that Justin Day-Heron will be putting together in New Zealand will be quite exciting. Just to name one world leader who I think is very much on the right page on all of this stuff. But this is a global problem which we have to solve globally, and several of the biggest players, the US and China, who make up together more than 40% of global fossil fuel emissions, have both already rolled back environmental regulations in an effort to try to stimulate the economy in the face of this economic pandemic crisis. That's a bad portent for what other nations of the world will do. But even taken just on the basis of those two countries, I think it's quite bad news. Because now in the US, that perspective, that approach could change as soon as next January. But January is relatively far away. And it's not at all certain that we'll be living in the US under a different president. And obviously, we know that in China, we'll be living under the same leadership that they're living under now. How do you see these questions?

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Christiana Figueres: No, we agree with you. And I wonder, I mean, delightfully, the UK and EU are doing exactly the opposite, right? They're already preparing their stimulus packages. And I'm sure Paul can give us more details on that. Paul, how is this working on the other side of the Atlantic?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Well, Christiana, thank you.

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Paul Dickinson: And David, we've had a great tradition in the UK of having a bipartisan consensus on climate change. So we've got some great stuff going on. I mean, one particular aspect of this crisis that I think is really interesting is our poor Prime Minister is actually in the Intensive Care Unit. And that kind of brings home, there's not this massive gap between policy and the problem when the leader of the government is essentially suffering the problem a lot personally. Can I ask you, David, the name of that epidemiologist who rang the alarm? What was their name?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): His name is Eric and his last name is hyphenated Feigl Ding, F-E-I-G-L-D-I-N-G.

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Paul Dickinson: I put it to you, David, that you are him. That with your fantastic book, The Uninhabitable Earth, you actually have been doing that, right? You've rung the alarm. So I can imagine your heart is with that individual quite strongly, right?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I wrote an article in 2017, which was explicitly about worst-case scenarios on climate change. And in the aftermath of that article, I got a lot of flak from scientists and journalists and climate advocates on a couple of different points. Some took issue with some of my presentation of the science, but we actually, within a few days, we published a fully annotated version of the article that showed where everything had come from and sort of answered those questions. But then we had a sort of a longer debate about whether it was responsible to talk in alarmist terms about climate or whether it was more effective to emphasize the optimistic end of the spectrum. I know this is something all of you have thought about as well. My own feeling about that is everybody's going to respond to this climate crisis in different ways. Some of us are primarily scared. It's certainly the motivation, the emotion that brought me to the subject was fear. I think we know from a lot of our experience with environmental advocacy and policy history, that fear can be a motivating force for public action and public concern. On top of which, the truth is, the science on climate change is alarming. As a journalist who thinks his main job is informing the public and reflecting his understanding of the subjects he's writing about, it felt to me like if I wasn't alarming my readers, given how scary the science I was reading was, I wasn't doing my job. In 2017, that was a little bit of a controversial position for someone writing about climate, and I did get a fair amount of flak for it, and ended up in a bunch of debates with some quite impressive and important people. By the time my book came out in 2019, I actually think the tide had turned in a quite significant way for a number of reasons. There's the major UN report, the 1.5-degree report, which took a much more alarmist tone than any report like it had taken before. There was the start of the global protest movements, the climate strikes by youths, but also others. There's more extreme protest movements like Extinction Rebellion. There was, I think, maybe most notably, finally, we were starting to see extreme weather unmistakably affected by climate change coming through in nations of Western Europe and the US. So we saw the California wildfires, we saw extreme heat waves in Europe.

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Christiana Figueres: Australia.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Yeah, well, that came later and was even more dramatic. Those fires dwarf the things that we thought we should have been scared about in California. But absolutely, it's been off the charts. And I think that that extreme weather has made it almost impossible to think about climate without thinking like an alarmist. And as a result, even by the time my book was published, which is only 18 months after I'd written that original article, I think that the job of raising alarm and the function, the value of alarmism had come to look quite different to the people who had been much more cautious about it a year or two earlier. And I feel the same way about Eric, you know, that Eric Fargo-Ding, the epidemiologist, in January, he seemed like he was a nutcase alarmist. And by March, you know, he's basically had the foresight that almost no one else in the West was able to muster.

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Christiana Figueres: Very interesting. David, that brings me actually to our last question that I'm going to be a little bit roundabout in delivering to you, because I was in Australia just before the worldwide lockdown. And so, of course, you know, I heard this argument about Australia is only responsible for 1.3% of the emissions, to which I actually think about it a little bit different coming from a country that has 0.01% of emissions. Of course, if every single country argued like that, then we would never do anything. The way I look at it is Australia has now demonstrated with these fires that it is actually one of the most highly vulnerable countries to climate change, something that we didn't know before. And so while they are only emitting, obviously, without their exports, 1.3% of the world's emissions, they are actually one of the greatest beneficiaries of global climate response. And if we were to say, right, actually, Australia, sorry, but since you are only emitting 1.3%, you can only have 1.3% of the benefits. Well, that's not the way it's going to be, right? We will all be benefited in irrelevant of how much we are emitting if we respond to climate in a timely fashion. So the reason why I brought that different perspective is the following, David. If we want to be very frank, and I think this is the moment to do it, you have been criticized for being overly fatalistic and using fear as a motivating force. We have been criticized for being overly optimistic and using a promising vision of the future as our motivating force. Now, here we are, right? Faced with reality. I would say that the fear that we have had, all of us, over the past few weeks has been an incredibly powerful motivating force short term. Look where we're all sitting. Everybody behind their four walls. Now, the question that I honestly cannot answer, and I would love you to answer for us, is do you think that fear and alarm can also be a long-term motivating factor? Because the fact is that the time scale with which we will address the health crisis and in fact even the economic disaster that comes as a knock-on effect is far shorter than the time period that we will have to have sustained response on climate change in order to be effective. So again, we come back to our topic of time, right? Can fear and can alarm be a long-term effective motivating factor? And I ask this with huge respect to you of the master of fear. Can we do it?

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Well, my answer is that on no time scale do I think that fear should be the only messaging strategy or the only form of public communication. We always need to be talking about what can be averted, what can be restored, what can be secured. I think that's vital even at the talking about a two-week or a two-month timeline, but certainly on the scale of two decades or two centuries, which is the kind of thing we're thinking about with climate change. But I do think that even on those longer time scales, we need to keep in mind what is possible and what is quite scary about that possible future. Because what I worry about as much as the lack of public concern, or lack of public motivation, lack of political energy to drive climate action, is the social phenomenon of normalization. That is a sort of a horrifying response to have when, in fact, we have thousands more people dying every day than the day before. And even my own reflex towards normalization, I think I find kind of morally abhorrent. But I spent some time last spring in California, in the aftermath of their horrifying 2018 fire season. And I spoke with a lot of people who, you know, I went out there thinking I was going to be reporting a story that was essentially a postcard from our climate future, when many more people would be crippled with climate anxiety and really deeply worried about whether the place they had made their lives was a place that they could continue to live. And in fact, what I found much, much more than that were people who said things like, we've always had fires in California. This is normal. And I would say, no, no, no, but they have fires in LA last year were twice as big as the next biggest one in LA history. And you know, they've grown fivefold since 1970 in California generally. I met a woman who lived in Malibu long enough that she had lived through nine fires. And I said to her, how could you possibly continue to live on this landscape and know that that is going to happen again at some point? And she said, you live in New York, right? And I said, yeah. And she said, you guys had Sandy. And you know, she was right. And one of the ways I think we can guard against normalization and guard against the impulse that we all have to adjust our expectations as we go along is by keeping in mind the longer time frame and keeping in mind the more dramatic possible outcomes that are, you know, are conceivable on that time frame so that we're not always just saying, oh, well, you know, maybe next year rainfall is going to be 3% worse. We're talking about 20 years from now, rainfall being 40% worse or hurricanes being 50% more intense or more common. Beyond all of which, I would just say, you know, you all probably have a slightly more optimistic read on what's possible. But the way I look at the timeline that we have and the amount of decarbonization that we need to do, I don't think it's possible that we avoid 2 degrees Celsius of warming. And everything I know about what that level of warming would mean is on its own deeply alarming, which means since I come to the subject, I'm now starting to think of myself a little bit as a kind of a climate advocate, but mostly I think still think of myself as a journalist and an observer. And if what we know about what I think is an inevitable level of warming is terrifying, then I think it's responsible to process that alarm, process those scary futures and do what we can to communicate them. So at the very least, we have a collective understanding about the future that we might be heading into, in part to help motivate us to avoid it and make other choices. But in part, just as a matter of public information, I think that generally speaking, very few people on the planet, a very thin sliver of the public understands just what is in store for us. And I think first of all, if they did know that they would want to do more to prevent it, but also just in the sense of reckoning with the future of their own lives, it's useful to communicate to them.

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Christiana Figueres: No, we totally agree with you on that one, David. And I guess the way that we have resolved this is actually to try to paint a very, very vivid picture of both realities, right? The terrible reality.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): That's one of the great things about your book, yeah.

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, yeah. In the book, we write these two chapters. One reality is the terrible reality that we will all be living under if we do not do our job ASAP. And then, of course, there is the other possibility. And what we are trying to motivate people to do is to be aware of both, really apprised of both, and force the choice, force the decision, so that no one should say 30 years from now, oh, well, we landed here, but we didn't know that we could have done something differently. So we agree with you, actually, on the importance of showing people the terrible future that we could have had. And I guess we're just a tad more confident that humanity still does have the capacity to make a right choice. But let's see where we go.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Let's hope.

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, let's see where we go. David, thank you so much. This has really been a very thoughtful conversation, sobering indeed, but very, very thoughtful and very much appreciated. And I just think we should continue to work together from different perspectives in order to, you know, David, I think in little pictures, and I just thought of a huge herd of cattle or sheep or whatever that are being herded by two dogs, one on one side and one at the other. So, you know, you can herd from one side, we can herd from the other. And then hopefully we will go through the gate in time.

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Paul Dickinson: And David, David, let me just also say that, you know, I think at the moment when the world is truly feeling a vulnerability, a sense of vulnerability it's not felt before, particularly the industrialized world, thank you so much for ringing the alarm so clearly and so loudly. And for your leadership, it's really greatly appreciated.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Well, I'm in awe of all of you and just glad to be in conversation with you. So I hope we can talk again in the future and continue to work to make this a better world.

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Christiana Figueres: Indeed. Thank you very much, David. Good to talk to you today. Thanks for taking the time.

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David Wallace-Wells (guest): Thanks again.

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Paul Dickinson: Thank you. Bye bye.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We've wanted for a long time to speak to David. How wonderful that you guys got to sit down and talk with him. What a thoughtful and just reflective person on this whole situation that we find him in, and deeply responsible in terms of his role as a journalist. What did you leave that conversation with?

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Paul Dickinson: I mean, it was a while ago. It was a reminder for me that during the COVID crisis, our Prime Minister was in the intensive care unit, you know, very, very ill. So it took me back to a slightly more intense time of the COVID crisis, not to say that there aren't people suffering now, and the second wave and all the rest of it goes out to the United States. But there was something visceral about that particular memory for me. But just generally, I thought it was quite interesting, the duty of a journalist, should journalists be scaring people? There was a famous TV presenter in the UK called Peter Sissons from Channel 4 News, and I saw him once saying, look, if I'm telling people what the news is, and they're kind of committing suicide, that's my job. I'm here to tell people what the news is. It's quite difficult to process that. I do think that David has done a fantastic job in helping us kind of guard against normalization. And he does make this point, which I said before the interview, only a very thin slither of the planet really know what's in store. And I think that's the key. We've got to kind of find a way for everyone to kind of just, you know, take this on board and re-prioritize.

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Christiana Figueres: The feeling that comes up for me after listening to this interview again is admiration of courage. And courage, because I think it takes a heck of a lot of courage to either be alarmist and truly deeply concerned and communicate fear about climate change, or to communicate hope about climate change. Either side of that spectrum, it takes courage to take a public stand at either side. The easy piece is to just stay somewhere in the middle and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I know, you know, things are happening, but so what kind of thing? You know, the indifference to the fate of humankind, the fate of the planet. And it takes courage not to just disappear into, I think, a very broad space for indifference and take a stand. And he does that so eloquently and so compellingly, right? I mean, both in his interview as well as in the book. And also, I have to say, for those of us who choose to take the other side of the gamut, if we didn't have people like David Wallace-Wells raising the voice and the flag of alarm, we could not take a hopeful position because it would be completely irresponsible. We actually are mutually dependent on each other to be able to communicate both sides of that gamut. And hopefully, you know, most people would be exposed to both sides of the gamut and then can draw their own conclusions. But, you know, fundamentally, those of us who believe that action is actually more likely to happen with the pull of optimism and of hope, rather than with the push of fear and alarmism, we depend on the push side because honestly, it would be completely irresponsible to think that optimism and hope and positive thinking is going to be what gets us out of this. We actually totally need both. Well, and so there we are. That's why this podcast is called Outrage and Optimism.

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Paul Dickinson: Amen.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So I'm reminded, and I was reminded as I listened to the interview of something you said, Christiana, in an earlier podcast, actually, where you said that your favorite definition of intelligence was understanding two opposing perspectives and understanding them both to be true and accepting them both at the same time. Because the point you made at the end of that conversation, that he is known for presenting an alarmist perspective, and you or we are known for presenting an optimistic perspective. And I listened to his interview and I didn't disagree with the word he said.

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, correct.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And I didn't disagree also with the other perspective that we can have a gritty realistic determination to rise to meet this challenge and change that trajectory. And I think that that definition that we need to hold both of those, if we ignore what David is saying and is so brilliantly explained in his book and echoed here, we are entirely abdicating our responsibility as human beings at this moment. At the same time, we feel we have made a choice that we want to face this moment with a sense of gritty determined optimism because we feel that that gives us the best chance to be everyone that we want to be at this moment and meet this challenge in the best way that we can. Others may not make that choice, but the reality has to be faced and we all have to find our way through that. And I thought actually, I don't think he'd disagree with what I just said at all. I thought he was very reflective about all of that as well.

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Christiana Figueres: Yes, agree.

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, I know I've said it before and I'll say it again, we have to define and resolve paradoxical duality and we will. And thinking of those...

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That has to be your third tweet, Paul. Define and resolve paradoxical reality. Duality. It will go wild. Duality. It will go wild.

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Christiana Figueres: Hold on, Paul. I think actually what Tom and I are saying, now we're going to go into the philosophical part of this conversation, is not resolving the duality, but actually holding it in the same space.

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, but I've learned just to talk rubbish in moments like this. So actually the holding of that duality is the resolution of it. Now, that may not be true, but if I say it in this kind of voice, you may believe it's true.

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Christiana Figueres: Thank you, Dickinson.

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Paul Dickinson: You know, we need to build a house where there is room enough for all to have this great move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. And if we hold those positive visions, they shall come.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's a fascinating question as to whether Paul knows what he's talking about, isn't it?

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Paul Dickinson: It's not a question of knowing what you're talking about, but just continuing to talk onwards and onwards.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay. Well, I mean, I thought that was amazing. And we've wanted to have David for such a long time. And I'm sure we'll have others who present that challenging view of reality. And we should listen to them and we should pay every attention. We should have scientists on because there's nothing in there that we disagree with. Paul, you want to say one more thing?

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah. No, I would just a big shout out for what you said earlier, Christiana, about us being dependent upon David and sort of the, you know, in the whole kind of messaging wars and what's the best way to talk about climate change, it's kind of very complicated and people got different points of view. But I think that you're the, you know, fantastically optimistic communicator, Christiana, who I've seen you inspire vast crowds. And yet at the same time, you acknowledge your debt to those who, you know, have to kind of build the foundation that that flower will grow. Do you grow flowers out of foundations?

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Christiana Figueres: Or fertile soils anyway.

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Paul Dickinson: Who would have turned the soil that that beautiful flowers will grow from?

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Christiana Figueres: You know, just as a fun aside, yesterday I recorded an interview with David. In this case, he was interviewing me for a podcast that he's participating in and that will be made public sometime in the near future. But the fun thing is that he was interviewing me with very much the similar questions, at least the same spirit with which we interviewed him. But I was giving my version of the answers, right? And at the end of this, David said, well, you know, Christiana, I'm actually feeling much more optimistic. And I'm like, oh my God, please don't do that.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We need you.

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Paul Dickinson: We need you to stay where you are.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We should have some sort of alarm system, actually. If David gets too optimistic, then we're going to have to find Christiana getting, you know, going deeper into the case.

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Earth, Fine, Actually and, you know, How to Paint Model Soldiers by David Wallace-Wells, you know, book two.

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Christiana Figueres: Well, when his, it's not his podcast, but when that podcast is made public and comes out, we will definitely let our listeners know.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We'll let you know, yeah. Okay, so I have to say the other thing that I was very impressed with when I was away was the music. I think the music is going great on this podcast. I think it's adding a huge amount. How are you guys enjoying it?

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Christiana Figueres: I have a comment to make on that, but let me allow Paul to speak first.

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Paul Dickinson: Well, I would say I am completely been in love with almost all forms of music since I can remember. And you are the music whilst the music lasts. And I love to be taken to all these fantastic places. So I'm loving it.

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Christiana Figueres: Right. I'm also enjoying it. However, I have noticed Mr. Tom Rivett-Carnac, your brilliant idea, has actually made this podcast stretch way over one hour. And I do remember that way back when, more than a year ago, we started this conversation that we haven't finished yet, about what is the ideal length of a podcast. So I actually think, and I've always been more for short podcasts, you've always been more for long podcasts. If it were up to you, we would do seven hour podcasts, I'm sure. 14. 14.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hours.

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Christiana Figueres: Hours, every day, probably. Anyway, Tom, I just wanted to be very upfront about the fact that if this was your backhanded way of stretching the time of the podcast, I actually recognized your little strategy. It happens to be, the addition of musing happens to be something that I really enjoy, but I have noticed that you have, at least for the time being, won the discussion of having a podcast.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's very funny because I must know you very well, Christiana, but I entirely anticipated this concern and I have some numbers to share with you. Yeah. So last week, the podcast was one hour and 14 minutes long with a six-minute song, and I had nothing to do with that. So you were in the chair, were you not? Which was the longest podcast we've had. So when I was away, the podcast got at least 10 percent longer.

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Paul Dickinson: Yes, you see, Christiana.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I've been living in terror of long podcasts.

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Paul Dickinson: You point that finger, Christiana. You point that finger, Christiana, and you know what happens is it comes back and it points at you.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: But what I would say-

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Christiana Figueres: Who designed this music edition?

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I don't know, but I'm just pointing out-

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Paul Dickinson: It was.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It was. It's now been a four-minute conversation about how long the podcasts are, just as a reflection.

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Christiana Figueres: I wonder if we should get a vote. This is a question. I wonder if we should get a vote from our listeners. Do you want a podcast that goes over an hour or do you want a podcast that goes under an hour?

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Paul Dickinson: Would I be able to see the results before I pass them on to everybody else? So we can just, so I can organize them.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Please write to paul at cdp.net.

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Clay (podcast producer): How about you tweet? Yeah, Paul tweet the results.

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Paul Dickinson: You can tweet, Paul. If I get more than a hundred responses, I will make my third tweet. Now, if I could just observe one thing, which is that- I've actually forgotten what it is, but I'm about to remember. Oh, yes. So we know from our algorithm that many, many of our listeners are either in the gym or they're running or walking, and therefore, the longer the podcast is, the better and better shape people are going to get into. Just think of it that way.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Nice. That's an angle I had not thought of yet. That's a very good point. Neither did I. Yeah. Right. People, this week, we have Billy Bragg. He's famous.

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Paul Dickinson: He's just incredibly famous and a wonderful kind of political singer, a songwriter, a great privilege and honor to have him.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So Billy wrote this song. It's called King Tide and The Sunny Day Flood. And the motivation for writing it was a report that he read about a phenomenon in Florida whereby seasonal tides were causing low lying areas of Miami to be flooded due to rising sea levels, inhibiting the normal drainage of water. The colloquial term for that situation is a sunny day flood. And it's not the result of a storm surge. So he was very inspired by a particular phenomenon to go ahead and write this. And he also, he's a really deep thinker about the role of the artist. He wrote to us that his perspective is that the role of the artist is to offer a different perspective on events, to encourage the listener to engage in the issue at hand and help to focus on solidarity and activism. He has just been at this for so long. He's such a deep thinker. He's such an amazing artist. I think this is a beautiful song. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening this week. We so appreciate you participating, listening each week, joining us. I'm thrilled to be back. You guys did a great job in my absence. I'm appalled to say, but it's great to be back with you.

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Paul Dickinson: Appalled. Welcome back, Tom. Welcome back.

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Christiana Figueres: Welcome. We missed you, Tom.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Thank you very much. Enjoy the song. We'll see you next week.

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Christiana Figueres: See you next week.

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Clay (podcast producer): Bye.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Bye.

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Clay (podcast producer): Hey everyone, Clay again. This week, before I close with the credits, I wanted to take a moment to honor the life of Congressman John Lewis, who was a civil rights icon, the conscience of Congress, and a vocal champion for climate action. Mr. Lewis just passed away this month after a battle with cancer at the age of 80. The famous march on Washington, 1963 is largely remembered for the optimism in the civil rights movement that emerged from Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, but if both outrage and optimism were represented in speeches that day, the outrage, or as Christiana also describes it, blessed anger, was voiced from the speech John Lewis gave about demanding freedom, equality and justice. Not eventually, not when it's convenient for some people, not in the near future, but right now. Now, Mr. Lewis lived his life committing his body to his ideals, pursuing the fulfillment of the idea that all are created equal. And when I say committing, I mean nearly losing his life on many occasions during nonviolent protests when he was beaten by segregationists, white supremacists and the police. This level of physical and psychological resistance did not stop Mr. Lewis from continuing on and his outrage led him to a full life of activism and public service. He served in the US House of Representatives for 17 terms, 1987 till 2020. As I was reflecting on his life, I remembered about 10 years ago watching the ceremony when he was awarded the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Barack Obama, who at the very end of his speech, just before awarding Mr. Lewis the Medal, said this about him.

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Barack Obama (archival clip, 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom speech): In generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind. An American who knew the change could not wait for some other person or some other time, whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now.

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Clay (podcast producer): This urgency John penned in an essay he wrote shortly before his death to be published upon the day of his funeral, which was yesterday, Thursday. He wrote, When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. The injustices that he bore witness to compelled him to say something now, to do something now, to get himself into good trouble now. May we have the courage and the fearlessness to do the same.