Solving the Climate Crisis w/ Dr. John Berger

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There are few things that make people successful.

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Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some

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time to get there.

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How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?

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Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.

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Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.

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Now here is Chris Meek.

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Hello, I'm Chris Meek, and you've tuned to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward.

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As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

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Our special guest today is Dr. John Berger.

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Dr. Berger is an environmental science and policy specialist and a senior research fellow

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at the Pacific Institute.

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Dr. Berger is the author of Solving the Climate Crisis, Frontline Reports from the Race to

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Save the Earth, a book he spent more than six years researching as he traveled nation

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and abroad to gather a sweeping array of perspectives.

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A graduate of Stanford and the University of California, Dr. Berger has written more

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than 100 articles on climate change and transition to clean energy for such publications as Scientific

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American, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe.

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He's also been a consultant to the National Research Council of the National Academy of

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Sciences, Corporations, Utilities, and Congress.

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Dr. John Berger, welcome to Next Steps Forward.

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Thank you very much for inviting me, Chris, I appreciate it.

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It's a real pleasure and honor to have you with us.

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We've got a lot to talk about today, especially when it's been 75 degrees here in Connecticut

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the last week, so there's no such thing as climate change, but we'll get into that.

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All right.

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So John, let's start by setting a benchmark for a conversation.

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People hear about global warming every day and may have a general idea of what it is

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and why it poses such a danger, but please share the details of what's happened over

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the past few centuries and what's happening now and what it all means.

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Okay.

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Well, I'd like to make a suggestion, Chris, that we just take a moment to explain what

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climate change actually is, because I think that that will help us understand what the

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changes are that have been occurring.

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So climate can be understood as long range weather.

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That means long-term trends in temperature and precipitation over large geographic areas,

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and those determine the likelihood of our experiencing certain maximum, minimum, and

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average temperatures and precipitation and wind speed throughout the day and night and

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seasonally.

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So climate change is a change in this climate system, but it's an intricate system, and

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so it's a little hard for people to understand because it's comprised of the interactions

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of oceans and land and atmosphere and what's known as the cryosphere or the frozen parts

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of the earth.

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And so these components of the climate system all interact with each other and with solar

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energy coming into the earth from the sun and then leaving the earth in the form of

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infrared radiation from everything on the earth.

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So that's how we get climate and temperature and precipitation.

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And when you change the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which you do from burning

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fossil fuel, you thereby change the, let's say, the transparency of the atmosphere to

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heat, and you make it more like a blanket over the earth rather than, let's say, a mesh

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where heat can easily escape from the planet.

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So when you add more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, it acts as a regulator, which

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leads to more water vapor being in the atmosphere, and water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.

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And so the CO2 and the water vapor together raise temperature.

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The reason I say it's a regulator is because as you increase the temperature, you increase

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the amount of water vapor by about 7% for every degree centigrade.

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So there's more, in effect, heat blocking effect.

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So this is what climate really is, and it's affected long term by astronomical variations

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in the position of the earth and the tilt of the earth on its axis, the wobble of the

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earth around that axis, and the shape of the earth's orbit around the sun.

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And collectively, all of those astronomical cycles are called the Milankovitch cycles.

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And then there are other shorter term things like El Niño-Southern Oscillation and North

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Atlantic Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole.

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So you wanted to know what happens to climate over the centuries, and we're getting up to

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the present time.

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But over the centuries, Earth's climate has been relatively stable from the end of the

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Ice Ages about 11,700 years ago to the start of human civilization about, you know, well,

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civilization began pretty much with the end of the Ice Age.

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But the climate has been pretty stable throughout that time until roughly the last 50 years.

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So what's happened in that time that caused the climate to change?

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So we're now experiencing very rapid and radical climate change because the earth is

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warmer now than it's been at any other time in the past 125,000 years.

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And on the average, it's about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than at any previous time.

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And not coincidentally, we have more heat blocking greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

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than at any time that we've ever had in the last 4 million years.

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Before we started industrializing and burning lots of coal and oil and natural gas, there

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were about 280 parts of CO2 per million parts of the atmosphere.

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Now we've increased that by about 50% just in our lifetime to over 400 parts per million.

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And we're seeing the Earth's temperature increasing at a rate that we haven't seen in many

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thousands of years. It's changing 10 times faster than the average rate of warming that we

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have seen over millennia.

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And we, as I mentioned, have more water vapor in the atmosphere, which has some very major

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impacts on the climate.

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It means that the rainfall events can be more severe and sea surface temperatures also

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become, well, let me just say, as a result of greater moisture in the air, we have more

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downpours, more spates and higher sea surface temperatures at the same time fuel more

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powerful hurricanes.

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So we have, as humans, raised the concentration of greenhouse gases and those

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concentrations are increasing 250 times as fast as from natural sources that we know have

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occurred throughout millennia since the last ice age.

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So we're also seeing snow and ice cover diminishing.

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We're seeing sea levels rising at an accelerating rate and we see the oceans becoming

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more acidic. Soils are becoming hotter and drier and their organic matter containing

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carbon, which is the basis for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is oxidizing into the

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atmosphere faster.

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So soils that used to be a good sink to suck carbon out of the atmosphere are now

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reversing course and releasing carbon at a greater rate, causing more greenhouse gases.

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We're also seeing rivers and lakes and streams seasonally having less water and getting

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hotter, which is bad for cold water fish.

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And notably, although we've seen this average temperature of the Earth increase somewhat

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more than two degrees Fahrenheit in the Arctic, we've seen temperatures increase four

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times the average and on land one and a half times the average that we see over the entire

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planet because the surface of the Earth is 71 percent covered by ocean water.

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So this is kind of like the context for how this is impacting human beings.

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And I'll just say one or two more things about the science of what we know about the

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changing climate.

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We've seen that Greenland has lost 8.6 trillion feet, cubic feet of ice since 1993.

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That's barely more than 30 years.

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And Antarctica has lost over 4.6 trillion cubic feet of polar ice.

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And so this is beginning to have a major effect on ocean circulation, which is very

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significant because ocean circulation takes heat from the tropics and it brings it to

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the northern latitudes.

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And conversely, it takes cool water from the polar regions and distributes it throughout

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the ocean to the tropics.

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So if we stop this circulation, then the tropics begin to overheat radically and we begin

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to see extremely cold temperatures, previously long unknown, kind of like ice age

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temperatures happening in northern Europe.

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So what does this all mean in terms of human impacts, Chris?

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The climate is really a wicked problem because it impacts every aspect of our lives and

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our livelihoods.

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It impacts our homes, our jobs, our food supply, our places of work, pretty much

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everything. And we're seeing people all around the world now facing multiple climate

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catastrophes from things like extreme drought to extreme floods.

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Things that used to be floods that might have occurred once in a thousand years or once

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in 500 years are now sometimes occurring once every five years.

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And we're seeing huge, unprecedented wildfires.

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All of these things are exceeding previous records in terms of scale and frequency.

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And this is creating really an existential crisis.

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It's not just an existential crisis for nature when you destroy ecosystems like forests,

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for example, or Arctic ecosystems that depend upon frozen ground and cold temperatures.

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So what I'm saying is it's not just like you're taking a sledgehammer to delicate

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ecosystems and to natural resources systems, but we depend on these natural resource

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systems like agriculture and the oceans.

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And this climate change that I've been describing is like a multiplier of all the

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threats to ecosystems that are being presented already by expanding human populations and

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by development.

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It's also exacerbating national security threats and risks to infrastructure.

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For example, as sea level rises, we have trillions of dollars of property along the

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coasts. This includes pipelines, transmission lines, toxic waste dumps, garb, landfills,

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industries, transportation links like rail lines and highways.

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And this is all at risk of flooding from sea level rise because, as I said, sea level rises

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increasing rapidly and we're seeing already we've had about eight inches average sea level

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rise, but it's not uniform in some areas.

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It's much greater and the rate is increasing as well.

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So we are in a position where we're going to be seeing more frequent and extreme weather,

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more severe hurricanes, more raging wildfires, more severe droughts, more crop failures,

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higher food prices, higher property insurance costs, if we can even get insurance, and then this

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more torrential rains and worse air quality.

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So the impact will be that more people will be rendered homeless and we're going to see more and

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more stress on our social safety net, which is already arguably fraying.

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But if we think it's bad now, when you have, let's say, 20 million global refugees, imagine what it

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will be like in 2050 or 2070 if we don't change course, because there are projections by reliable

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sources indicating that we'll have something like 200 million global refugees.

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And I will be glad to explain why that is, because there are some very clear reasons why that's

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going to happen. But I kind of gloss over the fact that we're also in the process of threatening

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millions of species with extinction.

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As we raise global temperature, we drastically increase the rate of extinction, which is

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already tremendous.

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And we've already seen that the abundance of wildlife is decreasing radically.

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The abundance of vertebrate species, for instance, has declined by 70 percent just in the last 50

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years or so. And we're already experiencing these record high temperatures.

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When I gathered some of this information that I'm relaying to you, back in July, for example, the

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world had its hottest day ever and multiple U.S.

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states were under heat advisories.

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And in April and May, we saw parts of the United States with temperatures over 120 degrees and 127

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degrees in India and Pakistan.

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Monkeys falling dead out of the trees in Central America because of heat exhaustion.

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So the real existential crisis comes here as a result of this impact of extreme weather.

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Heat actually is the most lethal of the forms of extreme weather impacts.

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And by 2070, millions of our fellow Americans and one to three billion people elsewhere

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periodically will be exposed to unsurvivable combinations of extreme humid heat.

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And that means that you have high temperatures like 90 degrees, but you also have very high

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humidity. So the body cannot perspire and get rid of this heat.

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And the core temperature of the body begins to rise.

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And in three to five hours, you begin to experience organ failure unless you're able to get

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cool by some means.

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We already see thousands of people in the U.S.

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dying prematurely every year because of exposure to high heat.

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And this death toll from heat waves is rising.

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It was nearly 6,000 people a year between 1997 and 2006 in the United States.

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So this is a real serious problem.

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And we just can't continue making portions of the world uninhabitable and expect that we're

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going to be OK when we do that, because like I said, this is going to affect significant

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portions of the southeast and southern United States as early as 2070.

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So I'm trying to be the canary in the coal mine here and and calling attention to this,

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that we just cannot ignore this and pretend that this isn't happening or deny that it's

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happening. I mean, we're also going to be exposing an additional billion people on earth

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to the spread of mosquito borne diseases, because as we spread tropical conditions where

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there previously were temperate conditions, mosquitoes can then make their way to these

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temperate areas and and threaten people.

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And we're already seeing globally, you know, millions of acres in the Midwest flood in

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recent climate related extreme events and millions of acres of the American West subject

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to really prolonged drought and to very, very damaging, intense wildfires.

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So that's that's kind of the situation and it's a long response to your question.

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But the question is really a very serious one that deserves serious and greater

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attention. I mean, those statistics you gave us in terms of the amount of trillions of

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cubic feet of ice lost in Greenland, in Antarctica, you said that there are 70 vertebrate

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species that are now extinct.

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No, I said that 70 percent of the abundance, in other words, not that the species

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persists, but it's more rare and harder to find as a result.

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You know, so I live in Connecticut, we are at a level two drought, drove upstate this

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weekend for a baseball tournament for my son, and I've never seen the reservoirs as low as

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they are. We have wildfires in Connecticut in my 23 years living here, we've never

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experienced that. In your book Solving Climate Crisis, you call for a national climate

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plan. I mean, obviously, based on the scientific data, we need one.

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What would that look like?

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Well, it would look like a very methodical set of scenario studies that would examine

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the different pathways to a clean energy economy using different combinations of solar

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energy, wind energy, geothermal power, hydropower, ocean power and energy storage to

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provide for all of our energy needs in this country without having to rely on the burning

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of fossil fuel, which creates more greenhouse gas and which worsens the problem of

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climate change. So this is the path forward that we need to be following.

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Does that does that address your question?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And, you know, we just went through.

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You know, there's one other thing.

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Sure. There's no like one size fit all formula in terms of a climate plan that would be

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regionally adapted and would have regional input.

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But the idea is that this challenge is too important to leave to haphazard market forces

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and to allow, you know, a hit or miss approach to getting to a clean economy.

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We need the most cost effective, most efficient path to a clean energy economy that that

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will save the public money and will save the government money and will will reduce the

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deficit for reasons that we can get into perhaps later in the show.

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So so this is it's an optimal path solution to the problem.

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It's trying to to be rational about it and set quotas for how much greenhouse gas we

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allow to be emitted and then to gradually constrict those quotas so that we begin to

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reduce the carbon that we're putting into the atmosphere and the methane and other

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greenhouse gases and then reach a point where we zero out additions to the greenhouse

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gas burden of the atmosphere and then subsequently begin actually drawing down that

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excess greenhouse gas.

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When we begin to reduce the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, that's when

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global temperature can begin to to to sink, provided that by that time we haven't so

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disturbed global ecosystems like forests and soils that they begin to release more

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greenhouse gas than we are capable of compensating for.

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At that point, climate change goes out of human control and then we will see

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temperatures inexorably rise and we won't be able to do anything about it.

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And that will be basically a catastrophic civilization ending scenario that we want to do

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everything possible to forestall.

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So we just had an election last week and there were more than a few candidates and

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winners that are climate change deniers.

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Why do you think climate change denial persists, even with such overwhelming scientific

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data? I think that it is really clear why it persists, Chris, and it persists because the

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fossil fuel industry has tremendous political and economic power and contributes huge

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amounts of money to to lobbying efforts and to misleading advertising and misleading

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research. And politicians are basically subverted by this political and economic power.

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And in this country, there is no countervailing political and economic force that can

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stand up to this political and economic powerhouse, which is earning trillions of dollars

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a year from selling fossil fuels that we have to keep consuming because once you burn the

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fossil fuel, you have to replace it in order to have heat and power the next minute.

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However, if you have fuel free renewable technologies that use the sun and the wind and

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the heat of the earth, you don't have to keep buying fuel.

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So it's not so profitable for these companies.

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And that's why they're in the fossil fuel business and not primarily in the solar energy

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business or in the wind or geothermal business.

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The way to deal with this really is that we need to have a very powerful coalition of all

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the major interests groups that would stand to benefit in this country from having a

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renewable energy transition on an accelerated basis.

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And there are relatively few people in the fossil fuel industry.

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There's an ocean of other people out here in the labor movement, in the public health

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movement, in the environmental movement.

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I think that the environmental movement hasn't spoken terribly effectively to the general

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public about climate change, and they tend to talk often in terms of narrow, factional

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interests. There's one group that's concerned with saving the whales and another group that's

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concerned with protecting wildlife or conserving land or national parks.

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But this coalition, this disparate set of factions needs to coalesce and have a single

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coherent message to deliver to the American people, showing the relationship of climate

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change to the two commonly held values and to kitchen table issues like affordable food,

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like affordable home insurance, like affordable utility bills.

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Ultimately, we make the transition to an energy efficient, renewable energy economy and

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our utility bills will fall.

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Ultimately, our energy bills will fall because our economy will be more efficient and

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because electrical technology is inherently more efficient due to laws of

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thermodynamics, then if you take a fuel and you burn it and two thirds of it roughly are

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lost as waste heat and only one third of the fuel is converted to useful electrical energy,

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for example, or to some other useful form because energy is lost as it changes its state.

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So that's that's my thinking along those lines.

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In your book, you state that in America, we're wasting between 30 and 50 percent of the

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energy used in buildings today.

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Is that possible to fix?

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It is absolutely possible to fix.

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And it's not something that we're going to do overnight, but it's something that we really

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need to set goals for and and make a point of doing on an accelerated basis.

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It's not as expensive to, as you might think, to retrofit a building.

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It's easier to build it correctly the first time.

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But if you have a building, the problems usually are correctable.

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For example, you can improve the insulation in a building.

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You can improve the leakage rate and seal around doors and windows.

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You can replace energy inefficient lighting.

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You can have energy efficient appliances.

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You can use a heat pump, which uses a lot less energy than a gas furnace.

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And by doing this kind of a national program, ultimately, you would have to spend some

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hundreds of billions of dollars to retrofit the entire 110 building building stock in

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the United States.

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But it would pay off like a trillion dollars every decade because of the energy saved.

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So because this is something that will be a sound investment with a good return on

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investment, it makes sense for the money to be loaned by government and by the private

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sector. Now, the private sector has a short time horizon when it comes to investments

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and they want to make money fast and get out.

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And investments in energy efficiency typically may take a longer period of time to pay

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off than some investors looking for a quick high return will find.

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The answer to that is not for government to step in and absorb the entire cost of, let's

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say, retrofitting the building, but maybe stepping in and providing a low interest loan

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to the building owner so the building owner can make the change necessary.

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This is true if you own your own home, let's say, and you just need some capital because

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you don't have the money sitting around to make this kind of discretionary investment.

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But if somebody lends it to you at a rate that is less than the energy, the value of the

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energy savings, you're going to ultimately be making money as you pay off that loan and

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you're going to be putting money in the bank.

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So it sounds a little abstract, but it actually will be beneficial.

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Things are more complicated when a commercial building is owned by a landlord, but the

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utility bills are paid by the tenant.

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And here there are systems available that could create financial flows of billions of

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dollars to retrofit the building sector.

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I talk about that in a chapter of my book, Solving the Climate Crisis, Frontline Reports

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from the Race to Save the Earth.

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It's a little complicated and I really think it'd be better not to try to delve into all

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of the details, but it's something that's clearly laid out in the book and it rests

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upon the idea of monetizing energy efficiency and treating energy efficiency as a

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resource equivalent to electricity coming into the building and so forth.

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We can definitely retrofit buildings.

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And if we do that, we're going to be creating millions of jobs and a great deal of

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economic activity, plus major energy savings, plus savings of atmospheric discharges of

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greenhouse gases.

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So it is truly a win-win situation.

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You might wonder, Chris, if this is economically beneficial, why haven't people done

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this already? Why haven't corporations done this?

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And the answer is simply that it's in the nature of renewable technology that the fuel

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is free, but the cost comes up front when you have to, let's say, build a wind turbine or a

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wind farm or a solar power plant or put solar and a new inverter on your roof or buy an

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electric vehicle.

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These are first costs that for many people are hurdles.

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So even though on a lifecycle basis, you pay far less for an electric vehicle over 12

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years than for a gasoline vehicle, when you factor in all of the fuel costs and the

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maintenance costs and operating costs, you still might buy the cheaper gas car if that's all

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you can afford at the moment, even though, I mean, this is a special case, but electric

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vehicles are coming down in price and they will be at parity, maybe even cheaper because

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they're inherently simpler than gasoline vehicles with their hundreds of moving parts and

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multiple systems that you don't need an electric vehicle.

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So we need, through policy, to provide financing to make it possible for renewable

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investments to be made because, as I say, they will be profitable, they generate economic

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activity, they will generate tax revenue, they will pay for themselves several times over.

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This is probably the very most profitable investment we can make as a nation long term in

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this type of economic transition.

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We'll also increase our global competitiveness if we go all in on manufacturing solar and

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wind and geothermal power plants and energy efficiency technology and manage to lower

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those costs, we'll be able to export them and we will create an economic stimulus in the

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U.S. and plenty of good paying jobs, as well as make the nation more competitive in terms

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of its own exports.

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A few moments ago, you talked about, I'll call it the Frashford coalitions in terms of

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Save the Whales and Save the Amazon Rainforest.

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Who should be spearheading this global coalition?

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Should it be the United Nations?

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And then the second part is, what responsibility does the U.S.

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have when it comes to solving the climate crisis?

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Well, the United States is more responsible than any nation for having put legacy greenhouse

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gases into the atmosphere, and these gases, largely CO2, are very long lived and therefore

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having been responsible for most of the problem, even though today our emissions are only

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about 15 percent of the problem, we, as the wealthiest, most powerful economy on earth,

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have a greater responsibility than, let's say, Botswana to solve the climate crisis.

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And we need to be prepared to extend a helping hand to less developed nations and less

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prosperous nations, not just for humanitarian purposes, but because many of these areas

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like Africa are growing rapidly in population and will have growing energy needs.

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And as they grow, should they rely upon coal power plants and natural gas plants that will

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further aggravate the climate crisis and make it even more difficult and intractable for

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developing nations to offset that type of increase in global warming impacts and global

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warming gases? So we have this historic responsibility.

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We have an ethical and a moral responsibility to help other nations leapfrog the fossil

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fuel age and go directly to clean energy technology.

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It will be more efficient and economical for them.

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They will save money.

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Their operating costs for their energy system will be lower if they make this transition as

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quickly as possible.

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But for the same reason that we haven't been able to pass policies in the United States

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that really facilitate a rapid clean energy transition here because we've been blocked by the

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fossil fuel industry and their allies in their lobbying work.

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It's difficult in many other countries that are committed to fossil fuels because there are

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political interests through crony capitalism and oligarchy that make enormous amounts of money

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by perpetuating the fossil fuel industry.

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Unfortunately, major global banks are continuing to finance expansion of the fossil fuel

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industry. And if you look at reports that have been done by financial analysts of the

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banking industry, they reveal that just since the Paris climate talks of 2015, trillions of

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dollars have been provided by the major banks of the world, banks like Bank of America, Wells

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Fargo, J.P.

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Morgan. And they'll talk about their concern for the climate while, with the other hand,

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providing investment capital in the form of loans to companies that are striving to expand their

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production of fossil fuels.

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So unless we regulate the banking industry and prevent this kind of financial flow

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continuing without restraint, we are going to see a continuation of the worsening of climate

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conditions. We have to somehow regulate the banking industry, raise the capital reserve

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requirements for risky investments in fossil fuels.

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And we know they're risky because they're inherently unsustainable.

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And these investments being unsustainable will at some point implode because we cannot continue

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with fossil fuels.

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At some point, the world will begin to constrain the use of fossil fuels and we already see

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there's an acceleration in the spread of new technologies and most of the new generating

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capacity, the vast majority is now renewable because it is cheaper to create a kilowatt with

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solar power and wind power than it is by building a coal power plant or a natural gas plant.

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It is much cheaper to use these renewable technologies and it's cheaper on a lifecycle basis.

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And utility economists are concerned about that.

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As dire as this conversation is in terms of the state of the world, one thing you're optimistic about is

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something called regenerative agriculture.

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Please tell us what that is.

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Well, regenerative agriculture is a very different agricultural model from the model that most

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American large farms are practicing today.

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It involves making the health of the soil the most central feature of your objectives rather than

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focusing on yield per se.

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The focus is on soil health because soil health is more fundamental than yield.

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Ultimately, healthy soil will yield healthy crops, healthy livestock, healthy food and healthy

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people who eat the healthy food.

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Now, what's going on here in regenerative agriculture?

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Let's take a look at the conventional factory farm model where you douse the land with

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herbicides and with pesticides and with artificial fertilizers and you expose the soil through

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plowing to forces of the sun and the wind.

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These are kind of expedient measures that give you higher yield as long as you keep putting in these

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expensive inputs, which in the case of artificial fertilizer is made from fossil fuel, from natural

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gas. So there are some vested interests, especially agribusiness suppliers who want to continue

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selling these chemicals, herbicides and pesticides.

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The ultimate effect, though, is to kill off soil fungi and bacteria that are vital to a healthy soil

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ecosystem. The healthy soil ecosystem produces healthy plants and healthy plants, through photosynthesis,

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increase their rate of absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide and through photosynthesis, the

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incorporation of that carbon dioxide into their own tissue, meaning their leaves, their stems and their

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roots particularly.

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The roots are especially important because as the roots decay, they become part of the soil complex and the

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presence of fungi interacts.

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There are fungi called mycorrhizal fungi, which create little channels or tunnels that pass nutrients

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back and forth from plant roots to the soil and take away waste.

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And this causes the plant to be more capable of absorbing atmospheric nitrogen.

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So instead of having to put artificial nitrogen fertilizer into the soil, the healthy soil ecosystem sucks

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nitrogen that it needs out of the atmosphere and enriches the soil that way.

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So the soil carbon is like the energy fuel for the soil ecosystem, and the more the plants take carbon

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dioxide out of the atmosphere and put it into the soil, the darker the soil becomes in color and the richer it

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is and the more capable it is of holding water and growing healthy plants and animals.

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So it's also cheaper for the farmer long term to rely on, let's say, a mixed regime of growing cover crops and

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then having livestock graze that, let's say, a herd of sheep come and graze that cover crop off.

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Some of the cover crop enriches the soil, let's say clover, which is a nitrogenous crop, and then the animal

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manure provides natural fertilizer.

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So this is kind of like replicating the natural prairie ecosystem that existed before farmers came along.

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And when the buffalo roamed, then their hoofs did a little bit of soil tillage and their fertilizer created,

439
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:08,680
along with the grasses, created a healthy and deep, rich, prime agricultural soil.

440
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Dr. Berger, we have just a few minutes left.

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Can you take us into our conversation with your perspective on why we should have hope in the face of climate

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change?

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I think that we should have hope because we have a very, very strong case here, and we outnumber the bastards

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basically.

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Is that scientific speak?

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But we need to get our act together and we need to do better organizing.

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We need to work with other people.

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We need to do less navel-gazing and worrying about our climate angst, which any reasonable person would have.

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But we have to go beyond that and realize that if we work alone, we're just like a drop of water.

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But if we work together with others, we're like an ocean.

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And the case is very clear.

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And it's really beneficial to this country in economic terms to clean up each economic sector, the

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transportation sector, the industrial sector, the commercial sector, the residential sector, and the

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agricultural sector.

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We know how to do this.

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We have all of the technology we need.

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We just need to scale it up rapidly.

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And we need to talk to people to help them to make the connections between human health, environmental

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health, economic health, and a clean, healthy, renewable energy system.

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I bring in health because I already talked about the risk that mosquitoes provide.

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And then there are other risks to health from fossil fuel-induced air pollution, which globally kills at

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least 10 million people a year and sickens hundreds of millions of other people.

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And if you want to put a dollar value on it, Chris, I mean, that's trillions of dollars if you value a human

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life at any reasonable level.

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But we're also in this country spending a trillion dollars a year, $1.2 trillion, to be more exact, buying and

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burning fossil fuel.

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It's just like we're lighting money on fire.

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00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:32,360
And instead, we ought to be investing that money in a new clean energy infrastructure.

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We have in this country a very,

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We have in this country three multibillionaires who have as much money as the bottom 50% of the American people

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and the top 1% of the wealthiest people own as much money, as much wealth, I should say, as 80% of the rest of the

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public. Why not have a wealth tax on the super wealthy?

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2% of our $27 trillion worth of collective wealth that's held largely in the hands of these super rich people would

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provide $500 billion a year, which could be used to have a very speedy and elegant and economically profitable energy

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transition. And dollars invested in this kind of a transition would pay off four times the initial investment in terms of

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the energy savings and all the other benefits, plus the avoided costs of an aggravated climate crisis.

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Dr. Berger, author of Solving the Climate Crisis, Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth.

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Thank you so much for being with us today.

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It was a real pleasure and honor, and we have to have you back because there's a lot more to get into here.

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00:48:57,560 --> 00:48:59,680
Okay, thank you very much, Chris.

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And people who want to find out more about this can go to johnjberger.com or to solvingtheclimatecrisis.com.

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And all of the details are spelled out in my book, Solving the Climate Crisis.

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And it's published by Seven Stories Press.

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Terrific. I'm Chris Meek.

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We're out of time. We'll see you next week.

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Same time, same place.

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Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.

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Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.

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Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m.

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Pacific Time and 1 p.m.

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Eastern Time on The Voice America Empowerment Channel.

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This week, make things happen in your life.

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Next Steps Forward

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NextStepsForward.com