Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.
Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.
Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.
This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization advancing opportunities so 57 million Americans with a disability can fully participate in all aspects of community. She shares her personal story struggling with dyslexia and ADHD, and what drew her to this cause. She reviews the various kinds of disabilities that people live with, and the strides our society is making to integrate and accommodate disabled citizens into everyday life. She offers thoughts on how well K-12 education generally serves students with special needs, and improvements she would like to see. She discusses how disabilities contribute to students’ achievement gaps in schools and colleges, and what can be done to educate people about and help remediate this. They also explore how assistive technologies and artificial intelligence can be used to help people with disabilities, and the importance of showing students with disabilities examples of great historical figures, heroes, and celebrities with disabilities who were able to accomplish remarkable feats and overcome their challenges.
Stories of the Week: 50CAN’s Derrell Bradford connects the dots between election outcomes in New Jersey and Virginia and parents’ dissatisfaction with their children’s in-person learning time in those states. A Wittgenstein Centre report covered in EdNext shows just how significant a role educational advancement plays, especially among women, in raising the standard of living and civic engagement in developing countries.
Guest:
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is the President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. She has published dozens of op-eds and publications on disability issues and has provided testimony in every state. She has met 1-1 with 48 of America’s governors, as well as leaders in Washington on education, skills and jobs for people with disabilities. RespectAbility also is working in Hollywood so that entertainment media will highlight what people with disabilities CAN do. Mizrahi is also the co-founder/director of the Mizrahi Family Charitable Fund and has supported over 100 terrific nonprofits over the last two decades. A graduate of Emory, Mizrahi recently got her third certificate from the executive training programs at Harvard. She is dyslexic and has ADHD and has won awards for her work at the United Nations and in many other forums.
Tweet of the Week:
New neuroscience research suggests exercise can buffer adolescents against social-emotional damage from distancing.https://t.co/bQkzr8gXFm
— Education Week Teacher (@EdWeekTeacher) November 5, 2021
News Links:
Virginia, New Jersey and steamed parents/Derrell Bradford of 50Can
Educating Girls Will Be Our Most Powerful Force for Global Change
https://www.educationnext.org/educating-girls-will-be-most-powerful-force-global-change/
Read a Transcript of This Episode:
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hey listeners. It is Kara. I am here with Gerard we’re back for another week of the learning curve. I’m coming to you from daylight savings time, Massachusetts, we are recording this right now at 4 31 and the son has. So it’s that time of year. It’s that time of year Gerard, you’re going to be having to wake me up from my nap to record our weekly episode of the learning curve.
[00:00:24] but it’s all good as we get ready to hibernate, but boy, , politics don’t stop. So last week we were talking about a particular governor’s race. I think if I recall my friend, you did not predict the outcome of your state’s gubernatorial election. We might have to go back and check the tape, but, Virginia has a new governor and it is not McAuliffe.
[00:00:46] What’s going on.
[00:00:48] Gerard Robinson [GR]: Well, we do have a new governor and, I was wrong. and not the first time because I, supported, Youngkin, in terms of my own work. But when you talk [00:01:00] about, the sun going down some, see it is going down on business as usual. And the same thing also happened in New Jersey, even though.
[00:01:10] Remained in place. And so this leads to my story that week, which is from Derrell Bradford, who is not only the president of 50 can. He’s also been a host here on the learning curve, really good piece in the daily news. And it’s from November 8th and of course, readers and listeners, you’ll find it on our webpage.
[00:01:30] He takes a look at both states and most people have no idea that Virginia and New Jersey are off cycles. And bellwether in many ways, Virginia, more so than New Jersey, but they were both bellwethers for different reasons. So Derrell says, listen, he’s got a pretty good idea about why, Terry McAuliffe, who was a former governor in a purple state, that in fact is the only Southern state to go blue in three presidential elections, flip this time for Youngkin.
[00:01:58] And he said, it’s because of critical race [00:02:00] theory and white grievance. And he said, Those are these two factors as to why that happened, but New Jersey has stated, he knows. Well, in fact, I believe he went to boarding school, in New Jersey and he said, but New Jersey is a little different while Virginia May be purple in New Jersey.
[00:02:18] You have twice as many Democrats as you do Republicans. And only a year ago by. New Jersey was 60% of the votes. Now the governor of course won again, but it was really closer than people expect. And so when you looked at both spades, either there’s these two things we should think about in terms of why we’re so close.
[00:02:36] We’re number one, he identified that Virginia had the seventh fewest days of in-person learning last year across 50 states. Guess what? New Jersey was a 10th fewest. And so. That was definitely a factor in terms of people not going to school, but that leaves the part two. He said there were a number of teacher unions and [00:03:00] associations who for a host of reasons, either decided not to open on time.
[00:03:04] Or if they did to ask for certain concessions. And so he said, but that’s just not on the east coast. He said, or even in blue states, he says, when you look at strikes and school closures, for teacher unions, that was a tactic to do things differently or to get attention, he said, but when you had quote, a spate of state wide job actions in red states, like Kentucky and Oklahoma and West Virginia, that brought public school system to a standstill.
[00:03:31] People began to ask questions. So why are the unions in fact doing this? And then you have Chicago and LA as two systems who decided to use their power in ways they thought worked best for them. Constituents, but when all was said and done, he said those two things didn’t work in favor of both democratic governors, but then he put it into a larger context of money.
[00:03:53] And we’ve talked about the American rescue plan on this show. A number of times you think about the fact to date the Biden, as he [00:04:00] said, said $123 billion. To the public schools and it’s trickling down. And yet public schools, for example, in Montclair, New Jersey or Fairfax county, Virginia, where private schools were open for most of the time, he says, well, many of your public schools were closed and why.
[00:04:19] And so parents began to ask very different questions and media of these. right wing Republican parents. Many of these in fact are true blue Democrats. And so when it’s time to go to the ballot box, they took a look at their children and took a look at their schools. They took a look at the money coming from the federal government.
[00:04:37] They took a look at what was in the classroom, what was outside. But then he said, and this is where, he really hits home in terms of optics. And he said, McAuliffe chose to have the face of school closures, AFT president Randi Weingarten B his campaign serum. Oh, the final resort while he dismissed the role of parents and education.
[00:04:59] And earlier in the [00:05:00] article, he said, really, McAuliffe’s challenge was, he said what he thought, but he did not read the audience after he said it. So a week ago we thought they were going to be. two blue governors is not one that to blue, in a state where some of the house and Senate seats flipped in New Jersey, something we haven’t also talked about.
[00:05:19] And in Virginia, we also have our first, statewide elected black woman, and we have an Hispanic as attorney. And Republicans also won the house. So a lot of good things going on, but real Bradford’s article is one worth reading because he picks up as easily. Does some really good nuances that often get lost in the noise of Paula.
[00:05:42] Cara: Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it. We can call derail a little bit like the king of nuance. And I also appreciate your analysis here. talking about his work, in fact that like at the end of the day, a lot of parents, you might identify as Republican or Democrat or something in [00:06:00] between, but.
[00:06:00] That doesn’t mean you always vote that way. And absolutely parents are looking at their own, kids are asking questions. and it seems like I, you know, it, Daryl’s always pretty good at pointing out the hypocrisy of the alphabet soup. Like that’s one of his strong suits, I think, but, , I didn’t even realize.
[00:06:19] ’cause, you know, I live under a rock sometimes here, cause it’s so dark up at 4:00 PM in Massachusetts. that Randi Weingarten had been out campaigning at those last days from a call up. But it’s a really important take. I also appreciate you are that you’re elevating that when so much of this country is going, oh my gosh, what does this mean for the VIN terms?
[00:06:36] And you know, this guy elected here and that guy limpid there and also pointing out too, that increasingly we are elected. Diverse candidates across this country. We are electing folks from racial and ethnic. And, , females, right? who’ve never been elected before, not in the kinds of numbers they are now.
[00:06:55] it’s so important to watch the local and not just get [00:07:00] wrapped up in this large swath politics and try and make predictions about what it means. Most of the. Experience politics more on the local level. The rest of it’s just sort of loud noise on my TV at night. I don’t know my husband’s flipping through the channels, but thank you for that, Gerard.
[00:07:16] is a good piece. And maybe next time Derrell. When you’re on vacation, of course not that you get to do that very often. he can talk about a little bit more of these nuanced issues. My story of the week is a bit of a hard pivot. We’re going international. And we took this one from the ed next blog this week.
[00:07:34] It’s from Christopher Thomas the title of it is educating. Girls will be our most powerful force for global change. I was drawn to this Gerard because I had, interestingly I wasn’t qualified to teach this, but in my days, working in teaching at BU I actually taught a course in child labor, which I.
[00:07:51] Study a lot, but we talked a lot about girls’ education. Interestingly, I was very pregnant when teaching course child labor. I was thought that was kind of funny, but, it’s this, [00:08:00] idea that, here in the U S is very recently, on this show, we’ve been talking about the education gap when it comes to boys and how women are outpacing men in terms of college going and college graduation and, girls outperform.
[00:08:13] their male counterparts on standardized tests and in graduation rates, all of the above. And I think, myopically, we think about these things and we easily forget that there are so many places across the globe where, , girls and women. Do not have access to education and it’s a huge problem.
[00:08:34] And one that, if we don’t pay attention to it is going to lead to a lot more problems. So this blog in this blog, it cites a Wittenstein center report that draws on 70 years of research to sort of perse out and highlight , what could happen. What are the, consequences of failing to educate such a large portion of the world population and what would happen?
[00:08:58] We actually did. if we [00:09:00] work together and, started to elevate this issue even more and ensured that young women in the places where they have the least access. So places like Africa, Melanesia and Southern Asia, that these are the places that the report names is, where. Women. And young girls had the least access to education.
[00:09:17] What would happen if girls were educated and there’s plenty of research. I’m sure you’ve seen a jury. I’m sure of listeners have seen it about like what happens economically if you give, women, micro-grants no offense here, my friend, but instead of men and that, women will, manage the money better.
[00:09:33] they’ll do more with it. They won’t spend as much they’ll save it. They’ll grow. It they’ll care for their families. And that’s, I see in a lot of developing countries when through micro grant programs, for example, but this long-term. Says, basically the same thing that if we were to educate all of the girls in this world, that we would enhance economic productivity and that that alone would improve [00:10:00] development outcomes to a huge extent.
[00:10:02] That it would also, it has implications for, for example, the global population, , when women are more educated, with some scholars are quite worried about, overpopulation, when women have access to education, they have fewer children for various reasons that we don’t need to get into now, but just really fascinating stuff in for me to regard.
[00:10:21] It was a really great reminder that, the stuff that’s going on in our own front and backyard. Oftentimes just so very different. I’m sure you could hardly imagine if the young women in your household, and I know you are surrounded, you are outnumbered, in your house. didn’t have access to school as you.
[00:10:40] Flourish and thrive. And in a reminder, too, that we are so often focused on access to primary education and talking about, educating young children and that this is really an issue about access to primary and secondary education. So that the countries shouldn’t just be able to tick a box and say, [00:11:00] oh, sure, yeah, , we’re allowing women in compulsory education, or we’re going to make education compulsory up until, you know, grades.
[00:11:06] Or grade five up until a child is 11 or 12 years old, that all humans, women and men need, access to a sound pre-K to 12 education. And that outcomes for the world would be much better. So I really appreciated this article, Gerard. I thought it was a great reminder. And at next blog always has some really cool stuff.
[00:11:27] What do you think?
[00:11:28] GR: I like the fact that you put it in an international. point of view, we’ve talked about the education of women and girls, primary schools, middle, well, primary of course, but also higher ed. So I really can’t add much more than to say.
[00:11:43] Cara: Yeah, it’s good stuff. , I hope that we hear more about this and we will bring it to our listeners as we read about it.
[00:11:48] Okay. Gerard, it’s sort of related. We’re going to be talking next to a really cool guest. I know that she is a friend of yours and, speak to her. We’re going to be talking [00:12:00] to Jennifer Mizrahi, who is the founder of an organization called respectability and her life work is dedicated to uplifting and ensuring that people with disabilities have access to all of the things that they need to live a happy and healthy life.
[00:12:18] And, she’s also philanthropists. And so investing in. Her foundations money in the causes that are near and dear to her heart. , she’s a really cool lady. And, looking forward to the conversation right now.
[00:12:52] Learning curve listeners today, we are so pleased to have with us. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. She is the president of RespectAbility, a [00:13:00] nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunity. So people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. She has published dozens of op-eds and publications on disability issues and has provided testimony in every state.
[00:13:15] Wow. She’s met one-to-one with 48 of America’s governors, as well as leaders in Washington on education skills and jobs for people with disabilities. Respectability is also working in Hollywood so that entertainment media will highlight what people with disabilities can do. Mizrahi is also the co-founder director of the Mizrahi
[00:13:34] Family Charitable Fund, and a supported over 100 terrific nonprofits over the last two decades. A graduate of Emory, Mizrahi recently got her third certificate from the executive training programs at Harvard. She is dyslexic and has ADHD and has won awards for her work at the United nations. And in many other forums, Jennifer Mizrahi, welcome to The Learning Curve.
[00:13:55] Jennifer: I am so glad to be with you today. Thank you so much for hosting. [00:14:00] Oh yeah.
[00:14:01] Cara: We’re excited to have you. And I know that you know, my partner in crime here at Gerard Robinson quite well. , so you know, your bio is just, wow. We have, a lot of people on the show with pretty fantastic bio’s but I’ve not seen one like this before.
[00:14:14] It’s pretty cool. So in the day-to-day I don’t meet many people who do this work. I would love to know more about. How you came to it and in what it is you do, like what’s the intersection here of sort of reform and philanthropy for you. So
[00:14:29] Jennifer: it’s a great question that you ask. So first of all, it’s really important when you work on solving problems that the people that you work with actually having lived experience with those problems.
[00:14:42] So. Up I’m dyslexic and have ADHD, as you mentioned, which means I have learning disabilities. I also grew up in North Carolina and in the time when I grew up, not very many people knew what dyslexia was and so it was not diagnosed. when I was a [00:15:00] child and I am very tall people who are listening to a podcast, they can’t tell that I’m a little over five 10.
[00:15:07] And guess what? I’ve been a little over five 10 since I was. Over years old, which means I got to be five, 10 before I learned how to read. so a lot of people really, called stupid or lazy, because I was really having a quote unquote, failure to thrive. And so I really. So people who have some sort of barrier to everyday living, when people think of disabilities, they usually think of, people who are blind or they use a wheelchair or they’re deaf, they have a physical disability that you can physically see.
[00:15:39] But actually the majority of the , 57 million people in America who have disabilities, you can’t say. Their disability. So I’ve really come to this because a lot of people have been taught that disability means no ability. And the thing is that disability means there’s one or more things that you can’t [00:16:00] do, but that doesn’t mean you’re not really good at lots of other things.
[00:16:04] And so one thing that I’ve seen is that, really hard bigotry of low expectations, where when they think of disability, They think pity instead of empowerment and most people with a disability, they want a hand up and not a handout. And that’s what respectability is all about is helping people with disabilities, find their abilities and achieve their dream.
[00:16:30] Cara: what an amazing story, , 5, 10, before you say you could really learn how to read and that’s, you know, I think that we all now at some point, and know when I was kid that dyslexia and other forms of, as you might put it disabilities that you can’t see were not things that people discussed or talked about.
[00:16:49] And now we have to say that as a parent, these things are much more at the four, so I’m really curious for your take on, like, if we’ve learned anything, in recent decades, [00:17:00] it sounds like through your work we have, but I also want to pick up on something here and that is, , We have a lot of, children in this country, with different learning needs and some might have different abilities when it comes to learning.
[00:17:14] And many of those kids either couldn’t be served or for some reason weren’t being served, during the pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about this particular moment in your work? And maybe also tell us a little bit about How you’re thinking about what needs to happen now, philanthropically.
[00:17:34] Jennifer: So what a good question. First of all. There are about 7 million students in America’s public schools that we know have disabilities 7 million. And because this country is becoming more and more diverse. and so our school children are more and more diverse. The majority of those students are also children of color.
[00:17:56] they might be African American, they might be an [00:18:00] immigrant themselves or their parents might’ve been imminent. If you were an English language learner, let’s say your parents came from Mexico to try and achieve the American dream. And you’re having difficulty due to this SIA. The teachers might not know is that child not learning because their parents aren’t speaking English at home or because there’s a learning discipline.
[00:18:24] If they’re in a school district that is underfunded, and this is very common because the way we pay for schools in America is through property taxes. So if you live in a wealthy neighborhood, you’re going to have a lot more resources for early intervention, for diagnosis, for speech therapists, for, learning specialists, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:18:46] If you’re in a poor neighborhood, you might not have. Any of those resources to help child. And also let’s be honest. Most marriages or most children are being raised in a single parent [00:19:00] family. I was incredibly lucky because I had a two parent family and my mom could spend a lot of time. Fighting for me to figure out what was wrong and how do I overcome it.
[00:19:12] And she personally was able to give me a lot of time to help upskill me. And if you’re in a single parent household, or if your parents are working molt, suitable jobs, who’s going to play that role. So these 7 million children. Disproportionately are finding that they might not get the right diagnosis, or if they get the right diagnosis, they’re not getting the right.
[00:19:36] What’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them to meet their needs, or they’re not implemented. And so they might get really frustrated in school and behave badly, and then they get suspended. And then once they’re suspended, they’re so far behind in their schoolwork, they might fail out or drop out.
[00:19:56] And so we see this huge correlation in [00:20:00] America with disabilities. And with incarceration because these kids will often, you know, get in trouble. And so they enter that school to prison pipeline. So America’s over 2 million people who are incarcerated a disproportionate number of them, literally a majority of people in jail or people with disabilities.
[00:20:22] Cara: I want to pick up on something that you said, Jennifer, and I know I’m going a little bit off script here, what we talked about before the show, but, , it’s really interesting to me that you bring up this point of parents and how, a lot of just amazing single parents out there doing the work and it’s so much work.
[00:20:40] And so I think to the point that you’re making to have more than one adult in your life that can not only, support. Children with whatever their unique abilities are, but also navigate the system. , in this country, it’s what, something like 12% of students in this country, we say have special needs now who knows?
[00:20:58] You probably know better [00:21:00] than I have. That’s the real number , we say here in Massachusetts, that about 17% of our students have IDPs, but that doesn’t mean that every parent. Is well-equipped to navigate all that comes with what is actually, it’s a legal process, right? And IEP is a legal document and students are do services under federal law.
[00:21:19] Could you for the parents out there, and for those who are interested in policy, talk a little bit about what parents and family members need to know about their.
[00:21:29] Jennifer: it is really hard. So I, myself, I’m a parent. as a parent, I know what it’s like to parent a child with a completely different set of disabilities than my own.
[00:21:40] And so I feel like I had to get like a master’s degree in that particular kind of disability and read a lot on the web. Luckily there’s a. Mendez amount of information for parents now on the web, including a lot of videos and tutorials and toolkits, but what if you [00:22:00] don’t have access to the internet?
[00:22:01] There are also every state has a parent regional. , center and it’s really important to also have grandparents or aunts and uncles or mentors or clergy who can help, but also to find people who are older and successful and have the same disability who can mentor a child with a disability to show them that there is a path forward to skills, jobs, and a better future, people with disabilities, they want to love, learn and earn.
[00:22:31] Just like anyone else. And so ha I’m in good role models can be extremely helpful, but the internet is a friend and it is true. There are legal rights. A child with a disability has legal rights to get what’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them. And then to have that plan implemented, which might mean that they’re in a smaller class size, it might be an extra teacher in the classroom.
[00:22:57] It might be, some social skills [00:23:00] training. It might be a school bus will come and pick up that child and take them to totally different school. That’s better equipped to meet their needs. So it is really important to get your legal rights and to have them taken care of and all across the country.
[00:23:16] There are actually, , free lawyers who can help, , through, , some different centers. , and people can always email me at Jennifer M at respectability dot. And I’ll try and hook them up to try and help them out.
[00:23:30] GR: So, Jennifer, speaking of technology, we live in a society where technology is driving a lot of what we do.
[00:23:38] Could you talk to our audience about how modern technology inclusive, assistive technologies and even AI is being used to help people with discipline.
[00:23:48] Jennifer: Gerard. This is such an important question because it is been such a big boost in new innovations in this space. So one of the most common [00:24:00] disabilities is that as people age, they start to lose their hearing.
[00:24:04] And now. Necessarily, , impact a child, right? Because they’re not getting old and losing their hearing. but their parent or their grandparent who might be tutoring them, who might be watching videos with them needs captions. And what’s beautiful is that if you take a video and you put it on YouTube through this AI, it will instantly generate captions automatically instantly for my favorite price, which is.
[00:24:33] And now zoom has a button that you can press on zoom, and it will also put captions instantly on your zoom, which is also good, frankly, for English language learners or for people who have cognitive disabilities that need the visual reinforcement of the words on the screen. So the instant captioning has been incredibly effective.
[00:24:56] Additionally, almost every computer that you buy [00:25:00] off the shelf, no special kind of anything needed. If you buy a Mac or you buy a Dell, it has assisted technology built in so that it will read to you text. So you can go to a website and you can ask it to read it out loud to you. And it will, which is fantastic for people who are blind or have.
[00:25:21] Low vision. It’s just a wonderful solution. So there are so many different, , solutions that are out there. But I must say one of my favorites is just remote learning and remote work. Because if you have a disability that makes it impossible for you to drive like you’re blind, or you have disc or you have epilepsy, or if you have other reasons that you really need to stay home.
[00:25:47] You can go and learn online or earn online, which is really remarkable. And so.
[00:25:54] GR: Earlier, you talked about education and in the pandemic, millions of [00:26:00] students across the country, K-12, we’re out of school, but we rarely talk about, college age or adult age, uh, students who are also out, they were impacted.
[00:26:09] We talk about learning. We haven’t really spent a lot of time talking about how , having a disability impact student achievement gaps in schools and in colleges. And you’ve been pretty vocal about this with your work with not only governors and lawmakers, but just talking about what does it mean?
[00:26:25] So educate us about what that population is going through the K12 level, but particularly colleges.
[00:26:31] Jennifer: It has been really difficult for students with disabilities because a lot of times they did get their legal rights of getting extra tutoring or extra supports or notes, or perhaps extra time on a task.
[00:26:45] But when they moved to the home invasion, They didn’t give them the same accommodations. And so those students fell very, very far behind. Look, , it’s not like I’m angry at the school teachers and, you know, everybody was faced with a pandemic. They [00:27:00] didn’t really know what to do. There was no, , book they can pull out that says in case of, pandemic break glass, and here’s the magic secret to how you can do this easily.
[00:27:10] It was very hard to try and accomplish, but we saw students have. Mendez gaps in learning that if they’re a student with a disability were enormously magnified, whether they were, a high school student and elementary school student, or a college student for some of those students, it worked out very If they’re very self-motivated and they didn’t need certain kinds of accommodations. For other students, it really was a big gap. And in fact, as you know, Gerard we’ve asked in a number of states actually across the board that students be given extra time to complete high school, for example, because legally students can stay in school only until they’re a certain age, the age of 21 with which to get their high school diploma.
[00:27:53] And we’ve said, Hey, given the pandemic, if somebody needs. A year, give them that time. New Jersey has [00:28:00] done that other places have put summer school programs in place. There is a lot of learning gaps that we’re really, really facing and really challenging. But one of the nice things has been that, some of these community colleges and other programs are now available online, which for those, for whom it is convenient, it can be very helpful.
[00:28:21] GR: You talked about college students in K-12. Your organization did a wonderful job working with Congress as related to access to food. Talk to us about.
[00:28:32] Jennifer: sometimes government does everything right. And sometimes government just completely, totally lacks common sense. And in this particular case, there was a very simple solution to a life-threatening problem.
[00:28:47] So when COVID hit, there was no vaccine, you know, and people didn’t know if you wear a mask, if that was enough, if it was coming through touch or if it was through the air, they had no idea. But what we did see in the [00:29:00] CDC early data was that 80% of the people who are going into the hospital, all the people who were dying had an underlying condition.
[00:29:10] So these are by definition people with disabilities, not my disability cause ADHD doesn’t put me at a risk. , neither does dyslexia, but , certainly people who. Heart conditions who have obesity who have chronic health conditions. They were at really, really high risk people with intellectual disabilities at super high risk.
[00:29:30] So they couldn’t go to the supermarket without having a really big risk. And yet 11 million people in America with disabilities rely on snap, which is food stamps to eat 11 million. So we were telling people who were blind. That they have to go to the supermarket to produce their food stamps in person to buy things.
[00:29:55] They were not allowed to buy food online. So one of the things that we did was we [00:30:00] had to go state by state governor, by governor and get them to change it because if somebody is getting food stamps so that they can eat, why can’t they order the food online? Just like other people use Instacart or Walmart or.
[00:30:14] As on to order food, why couldn’t people use food stamps for online? It’s no additional money. And so fortunately 46 states have now changed that. And the only states that haven’t changed, it are states that are so rural that there’s not really a food delivery service in place. So over well, approximately 10 million people with disabilities no longer had to make a choice between.
[00:30:42] Eating and catching COVID. So this was just something that was common sense that needed to get done.
[00:30:48] GR: Well, as we close out my last question for you, you focused on government, you focused on K-12 and college, but we also know that Hollywood plays an important [00:31:00] role in shaping who we see what we think about them.
[00:31:04] Talk to the audience about the work you’re doing to diversify Hollywood in ways we often don’t think about when we hear diversity.
[00:31:11] Jennifer: I’m so glad you asked that question because if you see it, you can be it. And when people with disabilities are shown for what they can do, instead of what they can’t, their dreams get bigger.
[00:31:25] And people are more willing to let them have the opportunities that they achieve that they deserve to have to achieve. So the first one that we worked on was born this way on a Annie network, which won 13 Emmy nominations and three wins, including best reality series. Jonathan Murray, our board member made that series and it starts seven diverse people with down syndrome and it showed them getting jobs.
[00:31:51] And having friends and living as independently as possible, a followup season is currently available for free on peacock [00:32:00] core, born for business. It’s a terrific 10 part series that shows for people with disabilities who started their own successful companies and how they navigate running a. During COVID and then of course, there’s blockbusters.
[00:32:14] So check out the internals. The internals is the new Marvel movie, and you will see a fabulous character who is a deaf woman, super hero, who also happens to be African-American and really cool. And they’re even our dolls now for this character showing positive role models so that children can dream dreams about having better lives.
[00:32:37] And then they can go out reach.
[00:32:40] Cara: I have to say this new Marvel movies, all the hype in my house right now, my kids can’t wait
[00:32:46] Jennifer: to see.
[00:32:47] Cara: And one of them might not be old enough and it might let them anyway. I’ve already heard some great stuff about the character you’ve mentioned on various radio programs and newspapers.
[00:32:55] So really exciting stuff. , it’s so rare, , that we have, I [00:33:00] guess, Such breadth on this show. This is then a really wonderful, half hour for Gerard and for me, and we thank you so much, Jennifer for joining us today. Just great work and we’re so happy to be able to, elevate it and highlight it for our listeners.
[00:33:17] Jennifer: Well, thank you for having me and thanks for all you all do. It’s really traumatic. We try our best.
[00:33:25] Cara: You take care and stay safe and we’ll be on the lookout for all of your great work. And
[00:33:30] Jennifer: for those movies you mentioned. Thank you.
[00:33:54] Cara: And we’re going to close it out with our tweet of the week. I love this one because I’m always encouraging my [00:34:00] kids to get up and move. Especially when they’re screaming at me that they want to scream. And I’m evil mommy saying no, but this is from ed week. , yesterday, his tweet came out. So we are recording on the ninth.
[00:34:10] This is, November 8th, new neuroscience research suggests that kids are feeling isolate. P E can help them bounce back. So it’s just a really great article in ed week that in brief talks about the fact that yeah, the pandemic has isolated our kids. Isolation is not great for kids, but it also shows and anybody who’s an exerciser, as I am knows that, exercise can lower, your anxiety can lower your stress levels has great benefits for us cognitively.
[00:34:42] So it’s all about getting those kiddos up and out and getting them on the move. So schools, even as you think about, all of that learning loss and everything we need to do to catch kids. Let’s make sure they’re moving while they’re doing it. And they’re moving in between next week listeners. We are going to be speaking [00:35:00] with Paul Israel.
[00:35:00] He is the director and general editor of the Thomas Edison papers at Rutgers university. He’s also the author of Edison, a life of invention. What a great title for a great man. Take care of yourself. And, I’m actually gonna get to see you in person soon. We won’t say where, but I’ll get to see what person said looking forward to, to my friend, but we’ll talk to you before that and you have a great week ahead.
[00:35:24] GR: Take care.
[00:35:25] Bye-bye.
Recent Episodes:
On November 9th, 2021, William Smith, Pioneer Institute Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences, submitted the following testimony to the Massachusetts Legislature in support of House Bill 201, which addresses a number of flaws and infirmities in the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) methodology that is utilized by a number of foreign nations in evaluating the value of medicines.
This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks to Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., Professor of Climate Science at the University of Colorado, about the widening gap between the catastrophic predictions proffered at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, and the less dire observations contained in the UN’s own recent IPCC report.
Guest:
Roger Pielke with the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)
Roger A. Pielke Jr. is a political scientist and professor. He served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year. Prof. Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was director of graduate studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies. Pielke serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, retains many professional affiliations, and sat on the board of directors of WeatherData, Inc. from 2001 to 2006. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode:
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute a think tank in Boston. 2021 United nations climate change conference. The 26 conference of the parties also known as COP 26 is being held in Glasgow, Scotland between October 31st and November 12th leaders from around the world are meeting to coordinate policies to address the dangers of climate change. But policy choices are being largely based on the scientific findings compiled in the intergovernmental panel on climate change reports most recently released in August. This report was characterized by many leaders, such as UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as they quote code red for humanity, going on to say that the alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable. Greenhouse gas emissions are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. But this the newest IPC report actually support such a dire outlet, or if political leaders possibly motivated by desire to catalyze action on climate policy badly missed characterize the IPCCs report findings and in so doing damage, their public credibility and the prospects for productive climate policy.
Joe Selvaggi:
My guess today is Roger Pielke, Jr. Professor of the environmental studies program at the university of Colorado at Boulder, before joining the university of Colorado faculty, he was a scientist at the national center for atmospheric research. Professor Pielke is the author of eight books as testified on climate science before Congress and has contributed articles on climate to the financial times. And other news outlets, Professor Pielke’s work focuses on how science and public policy interact professor Pielke was shared with us. The findings of the most recent EPCC report and discuss in what ways it has diverge from its own earlier predictions. It will also describe the widening gap between scientific observations and the dire predictions made by many political leaders. The theme of professor Pookie’s recent work is that effective climate policy rests on confidence in the integrity of the climate science community. For that reason, science and scientists must not become politicized and climate policy leaders must adjust their rhetoric to match the reality of newer climate observations. When I return, I’ll be joined by university of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now joined by the university of Colorado at Boulder professor. Roger Pielke Jr. Welcome to Hubwonk, Roger. Thanks Joe. Good to be here. All right. Well this is a very timely conversation. This week 30,000 people, including many world leaders are meeting in Glasgow to discuss global policy steps to address climate change. I want to talk about the most recent scientific observations on climate change, the data that undergird the decisions at this time, but before we dive into the science I wanna, I want to talk about how you came to clients, climate science, you’ve written eight books you’ve testified before Congress. You’ve written in articles in financial times. You have a fantastic sub SAC account talking about climate. But what, what drew you to climate science back in the day?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I guess it’s a, I guess it’s in my DNA. My father is one of the leading atmospheric scientists of his generation and he pioneered three-dimensional numerical modeling of the atmosphere. And so I grew up hearing a lot about atmospheric science employment. I went into the policy direction and when I did my PhD in the early 1990s, I was looking for a really hard policy evaluation topic. And the topic I tick, which is very niche and esoteric at the time was how well does climate science relate to climate policy and really have studied the issue on and off in different dimensions for almost 30 years.
Joe Selvaggi:
I guess your goal was to ensure that the science informs policy and they’re all on the same song sheet. There’s not a big difference between what the science indicates and what policy makers are using.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
We want that our relationship to work well in two dimensions. One is one is we want science to inform policy, of course, but we also want to make sure that politics doesn’t corrupt or under undermine the integrity of science as well. So we want them integrated not separated, but how to do that can be often tricky, particularly on highly contentious topics.
Joe Selvaggi:
That leads me to my next question, which is you’ve seen science to climate science progress over 30 years. And you’ve said it’s, it’s gone from a, a lively disagreement amongst scientists, which is natural. That’s the nature of science to I’m moving more to the front pages of news and political journals. I don’t know if you would agree with me, but I read that it was somewhere around 2008, 2009. You saw an inflection point from where we were talking pure science and, and a lively debate on, on scenarios to something a little bit different. Can you describe to our listeners what you saw in 2008, 2009 as a, as a shift?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, the first thing to say is that the core findings of climate science have been remarkably strong and consistent since at least the 1980s, when the ITCC intergovernmental panel on climate change was first created that humans affect the climate system. Those effects can cause serious risks and we should definitely take some steps to do something about it that hasn’t really changed over time. What has changed is how that science gets overlaid on, on, on politics policy, the media and the public debate. And really the shift that I experienced and saw in this issue was more around 2006. It coincided with when Al Gore’s movie came out and inconvenient truth. And the idea that in order to, to gain traction on the climate issue with the public advocates would have to bring it home to people that means to, to make it relevant to their daily lives. And the way that that that was done was to associate extreme events and really every extreme event hurricane tornadoes floods with climate change to try to instill in, but the public mind that that’s what climate change is. It’s, it’s extremes very media friendly images of disasters and hurricanes. And that became a much more a focus in the years since about 2006, 2007 and generally motivated by a coordinated effort by, by funders and advocacy groups to, to bring climate to the public.
Joe Selvaggi:
So the public is an expert in science, mainly maybe an expert in data analysis, but they, they know the weather they see it every day around the world. So that brought it home to the ordinary citizen. Climate change is real and it’s causing so the inference goes climate change is causing a severe weather events. Is that what you’re saying?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And it’s I mean the, the public and policymakers have always been well out in front of the, where the sciences on that topic, very, very ready to accept that this or that event was caused by, by, by greenhouse gas emissions or climate change. Even when the science was more nuanced and, you know, obviously complex than that simple formulation. So it, it, it has not been a difficult argument to make in the public’s eye. It’s just that sometimes the science isn’t always there to back that up.
Joe Selvaggi:
So let’s take a step back and talk about the science. We’re as I said, the world leaders are meeting for the cup 26 meeting in Glasgow. It’s odd to me that they’re using the IPCCs most recent data as support for what I, you know, many are calling code red for planet earth or for mankind. But in reading your sub stack and your articles on the issue, you’ve heard the same report. It’s 3000 pages long. I’ll admit I have not read it. But you characterize the most recent IPC report is having fundamentally a good message. One that is trending more positive rather than indicating you know, the, the, the earth is doomed. Say more about that difference.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So, so the way that the IPC works and climate science generally is we generate scenarios of the future. The future is an uncertain place and we could, we can’t predict very well. What’s going to happen in five years, 10 years. So we have a wide range of scenarios to characterize plausible futures and then explore policy options, climate impacts, economic outcomes within that set of scenarios. And the biggest change really in the, the, the thinking about scenarios over the last 20 years is that the most extreme scenarios and by extreme, I mean that the world is going to burn all of the coal that we can find to, to generate not just electricity, but all of our energy consumption. We’re going to take coal and we’re going to turn it into liquids and put it into our car.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Those scenarios that, that once we’re thought where we were headed are now pretty much off the table as plausible futures. So, so where the world is headed is, is much less apocalyptic than was thought only six or seven years ago. Now that doesn’t mean that, that reducing fossil fuel use or getting to net zero carbon dioxide is any easier. It’s a huge, enormous challenge. But it does say that we have a future that’s, that’s a lot less scary than maybe we thought before, even as the rhetoric goes in a different direction.
Joe Selvaggi:
I want you to take a step back and talk about the weather phenomenon. Again, we’re equating or leaders that are, as you say, out in front of the science equating global warming with weather and in particular, again, this is I think it was the world health organization characterize global warming as the single greatest threat facing humanity, pretty bold statement. There’s lots of threats, and this is the worst. If we accept that the world has been warming, I think our listeners may all accept that at least for the less half 150 years, that’s this global warming equated to an increase in deaths, attributed to climate. In other words, there is a warmer world, more dangerous for the average human.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
So this is an exceedingly difficult signal to tease out because it’s not just the climate that changes. It’s how we live on planet earth, where we live, how we build the procedures we have for evacuation when there’s an emergency. One of the most remarkable and, and, and underappreciated science, technical policy success stories of the last century is the incredible drop in vulnerability of humans to extreme weather phenomenon. Vulnerability has dropped something like 99.7, 5% in a, in a century. It was not uncommon in the 1920s for millions of people to die in a single year due to extreme weather phenomenon. Now it’s, there’s still too many who die, but it’s, it’s in the tens of thousands, low tens of thousands or less. It’s a huge success story. And it’s due to science technology and things like meteorology weather, forecasting, evacuation and so on. So if you’re have a trend from millions to tens of thousands of sharp trend downward, it’s very difficult to say, well, deaths are increasing due to climate change. Now going forward are our progress on reducing vulnerability and, and, and the good news on depression may not continue. That’s, there’s no guarantee of that. But we do know as a global society, how to reduce vulnerabilities to, to weather extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’ve adapted. I think I read somewhere that as recently as a hundred years ago the average earthling member of planet earth had one in 1000 chance of dying from a weather event. And now given the population and the risk we’re at one in 400,000 risk of dying from a weather event, as you say, it’s a reduction of 99.7, 5%, that’s substantial, but what would you say to critics saying that sure, we’ve adapted. We’ve been able to anticipate hurricanes and move inland but we’re at the precipice of a inflection point that suddenly weather will will become much more extreme. We w this is the calm before the storm to torture cliche. What would you say to that?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, and I mean, this is where we go back from the, the, the, the very hot public debate. And, and the, some of the imagery you see in the media and what politicians may say, let’s go back to the IPC and see what that projects in, in coming decades for, for changes in extremes. And yes, there are some, some projected changes and most notably heat waves are expected to increase, become more severe in many places around the world. But on the other hand, take a phenomenon like drought or tropical cyclones hurricanes. It will be very difficult to even detect those changes for many, many decades. So the idea that we’re on a precipice, or we’re on a the edge of the apocalypse, and it just doesn’t stand up when you compare that to the science. But when I, you know, when I engage people in this topic if they want to believe that that that’s fine, it’s not my job to convince them that they’re wrong. But what that should, should lead to is an agreement among everyone that yes, we have to keep investing in adaptation in vulnerability reduction. We have to be better prepared for an uncertain future. So I don’t think the policy choices we would make are particularly sensitive to whether one has an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future. We just have to keep doing those things that we know have worked to reduce vulnerabilities to two extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
You break down extreme weather in your most recent book. I found it interesting and surprising, and frankly in there you break down which weather events affect human beings or kill human beings and talk about the trends, whether they’re going up or downward effect. I simply just assumed that events like hurricanes and tropical cyclones were becoming more numerous you know, just seems to be that way. That’s the narrative. What is your data? Let, let’s just briefly break it down by a phenomenon what’s going up and what’s going down, you mentioned heat waves, that’s, that’s going up. But what’s, what’s, what’s everything else doing.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And, and, and this is a timely question because the IPC just released its sixth assessment report you know, a month ago or so which went through phenomenon by phenomena trends in extreme weather phenomenon around the world. And as you say, heat waves have increased what’s called extreme precipitation. And we have to be careful with that because extreme precipitation is a scientific term that has increased in, in many places around the world. The ITCC is very careful to say extreme precipitation does not necessarily mean that flooding has increased. And that may be counterintuitive at first, but then you realize, well, you know, here, here in Boulder, Colorado, if we got an inch of rain today, that would be pretty extreme in the fall it can happen, but it wouldn’t lead to floods. And so that’s why the ITCC says with respect to flooding there hasn’t been an overall global increase with respect to tropical cyclones, there has not been an overall increase in the intensity or frequency of storms on a century timescale.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
And that comes as a surprise to many people on the IPC breaks down drought into several technical categories. But the types of drought that most people are aware of are what’s called meteorological or hydrological drought. And they find ones rainfall in ones surface flows of water, and they find that there are no trends globally in that type of drought. They do find there is a trend in what’s called ecological or agricultural drought, which refers to soil moisture. But then we get into a phenomenon like hurricanes tornadoes, straight line winds, winter storms and, and there is, is number one. There’s not great data everywhere on the world, but the ITCC has not detected upwards trends in, in any of those phenomenon. So, so when you, when you paint the whole picture and it’s really important to go phenomenon by phenomenon, because extreme weather is, is, is a big bin with a lot of different climate biological phenomenon. But when you go there, you, you find that the headline events that we often see in the newspaper particularly floods, hurricanes, tornadoes there’s not a strong evidence of upward trends over climate timescales. So,
Joe Selvaggi:
So if there’s no measurable trend attribution is impossible because you can’t attribute something to nothing, right?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the IP is, is quite explicit when it comes to attributing long-term multi-decade trends. And you know, obviously the increase in the global surface temperature has been detected and attributed to human caused climate change, but you can’t say the same for many extreme weather events. That’s not, that’s not at all surprising extreme weather events by definition are rare. And so the statistics of, of rare events are such that it takes a long time to detect changes. So, so really things are unfolding much as the IPC has projected. And if you actually do the math for something like tropical cyclones, we wouldn’t expect to be able to detect those changes till late in the century, if then even under some of the more aggressive scenarios of climate change.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to go back to the IPCs see the the different scenarios. I think they’re called representative concentration pathways are CPS, and there are different probabilities of different scenarios. They said the most extreme miss is very unlikely, largely based on the fact that it was deliberately designed to be worst case scenario where every, everybody burns all the coal possible on planet earth, very, very unlikely, but necessary perhaps from a scientific argument perspective. And yeah, as unlikely as that scenario is, it seems that in many times that scenario is brought up as sort of the core prediction. You’ve observed that the, the RPCC is observed that that’s a very, very unlikely in that afar, a different path is more likely. Why do you think policy makers anchor on worst case scenario is that by virtually all standards are highly unlikely or virtually impossible.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. This, I mean, this is, there’s a, there’s a fascinating story here. Like that gets into things like the sociology of science and communication and so on, but early on when, when the climate community said, all right, we need scenarios of the future to, to, to drive our climate models. What they said was, well, let’s have, let’s have a low one that has a very low greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Let’s have a high one with really a high ones emissions, and then let’s have a couple in the middle. That was it. There was no consideration of worst case of likelihood of plausibility. These were scenarios that were chosen to to help support climate research, which is really important, really legitimate completely justifiable. But when those four scenarios where were put into the research community and eventually into publish papers, going through university, press offices, press releases, media coverage, then finding their way into policymakers, discussions, and advocacy.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
In that process, the most extreme of those four scenarios became represented as the most likely path that we’re on called business as usual. There’s a lot of reasons for why that happened. But that is a core I would say a core shortfall in how scenarios are used by the IPC, because no one in that process has responsibility for evaluating the plausibility or likelihood of any of these scenarios. And so as research has gone on over subsequent 10 or 15 years, it’s been been discovered that this most extreme scenario of the set is highly implausible. And, and in fact, art, some of our research suggests that it’s already falsified that, that, that the world is so far from it in 2021, that it’s not at all appropriate as a guide to the future. So this sets up a very challenging situation for climate research and advocacy, because much of the discussion that we have about the long-term future is grounded in a vision of futures that just aren’t possible. And so that makes it really, really difficult, I think, to have a science, grounded discussion of the climate issue, because it’s been off track for a while now.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to dig deep, more deeply into why you’re using the wrong scenario is so harmful or potentially harmful, but let’s talk about why it’s implausible, what has changed in in recent years regardless, let’s start at the basics CO2 or, or fossil fuels burning create greenhouse gases and those have some correlation with rising temperatures and we’re, we’re going to attribute some, so we’re going to say it’s causation. But much of the world has changed their energy sources and the U S we’ve actually backed away from coal in, in, in in a different direction. I I’ve read some of your work, which says we’re at, we’re already past our peak CO2 output as is you know, much of the world is approaching. This is this largely why a you’re more, let’s say sanguine than the the most extreme predictions are we trending either in a better direction or in fact downward?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So I mean, if one’s vision of the long-term future is that greenhouse gas emissions are just going up, up, up, up. It makes the, the magnitude of the challenge of reducing them, which is already huge enough. It makes it look bigger than it actually is, and it can create a sense of helplessness. And, you know, there’s studies out there now that say that that youth are paralyzed by fear of the future. To say that the future is not apocalyptic doesn’t mean that it’s perfect and everything we can go about our business and forget about climate change. I’m, I’m a policy scholar. And what I teach my students is that if you want to solve a really difficult, complicated problem, the first thing you have to do is characterize the size of that problem accurately. And so I do think it’s highly problematic if we have misleading scenarios for the future guiding our policy responses.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Now the counter argument to that is, oh, well, yeah, maybe they’re wrong, but if they scare people and they motivate them, that might help the politics of climate change. And then this gets into issues related to the ethics of science and science communication. I’m, I’m a stickler for being accurate about the science and having policy justifications that, that, that are well grounded in, in science. The reason for that is we want science to be perceived to be legitimate and not just today, but for the next 20 years, 50 years. And if scientists are perceived as exaggerating threats that can’t be good for, for policy or politics.
Joe Selvaggi:
So those who would perceive it as a noble lie to to exaggerate the threat would say it is indeed noble lie because that’s what we need to do to shake the ordinary citizen out of complacency and address this issue. They, they justify the exaggeration by saying the ends justify the means.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, we see that a lot. And I mean, that’s often how politics works and, and, you know, I, I’m not of any illusion that, that we experts can, can shape how politicians behave. But what we do have control of is how we behave in the scientific community and, and by avoiding the noble lie or trying to campaign based on research, we know is dated or flawed. We can help keep the integrity of science solid going forward. And honestly, the science of climate change is robust enough. The futures are scary enough by being accurate that we don’t have to exaggerate. We don’t need to. And so I see it as a, as an entirely unnecessary debate and what we should be doing in the, in the expert community is just updating and fixing the scenarios and moving on and why we have this debate and why people defend bad science is is, is, is interesting. And it’s story in itself,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed we both have started, or you have scientifically asserted that global temperatures are rising. It’s largely attributable to gases. So that’s what we to labeled either of us as climate deniers. Let’s, let’s, let’s establish that we both certainly accept that that trend. So what are the solutions that you’ve explored or that the science or the general climate science community we often talk about renewables, wind and solar to my reading, these are challenging and their own, right. There’s the physics of the, of the thing. They, you know, the wind doesn’t always blow. And certainly we know the sun doesn’t shine even there in Boulder all the time. Is this our way out of this challenge?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Well, there’s a burst, it’s always sunny in Boulder. It’s beautiful. So at a very simple level, the answer is yes. And, and then you start getting into some of the complexities and the answer’s no, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the mathematics are really straightforward that if we’re going to stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, our emissions of greenhouse gases in total, but in particular carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have to go to zero and we may want them to go below zero in the sense that we start taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The only way that we get emissions to go to zero is we replace oil, natural gas, and coal with alternative energy sources. And I, in my book, the climate fix, I call for a stance of technological agnosticism.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Once you get into energy technology discussions, you’ll find that every energy technology has a constituency, and they think that their technology is the solution, whether it’s wind or solar or nuclear or geothermal or carbon capture or whatever it happens to be. And I’m very much of the view that the more carbon free or low carbon technologies we have on the table, the greater our chances for success. And in fact, as we’re learning with the energy crisis in the UK and in Europe a diversity of supply is a good thing and not just for climate reasons, but for reliability reasons, for cost reasons for geopolitics. So, so when I see the debate on climate change, getting wrapped up in the debate over closing nuclear power plants, for example I think that’s, that’s a bit frustrating because nuclear is a good solid option to have on the table, not uniquely, but alongside with renewables and other technologies. When you do the math you realize that an energy transformation of the global energy system, it’s not something that you’ve accomplished in a year in a decade, even in a couple of decades, this is a challenge of the century. And getting to net zero CO2 will be a policy focus throughout the 21st century. It’s not a quick turnaround sort of issue. I am quite optimistic though that because it’s a technological challenge humanity’s up for it.
Joe Selvaggi:
You, you mentioned every energy source has its constituency. Maybe I might put myself in the nuclear camp, I’m perplexed that particularly those people who are apocalyptic about the future and see it an existential threat to humanity and to earth clearly nuclear has virtually infinite power potential and zero CO2 emission. Why would the environmental community, maybe this is not a fair to take it, but why do they seem to be so reticent to adapt nuclear with it with both arms?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a long history of concerns about nuclear power that goes back to, to, you know, really, you know, my parents generation and folks from the 1960s with nuclear energy, getting wrapped up with concerns about war and weapons. Of course, you know, it’s three mile island and Chernobyl and every energy, every energy technology has risks. Nuclear is risks are, are, are what are called dread risks because radiation and meltdowns are really scary. But when you burn fossil fuels, you put particulate air pollution into the atmosphere, and that creates risks of premature deaths from bad air quality. It’s not as dreadful as a nuclear power plant. So there’s a lot of reasons. I, what I tell people in an environmentalist and my students is it’s perfectly legitimate to conclude that you’re more afraid of nuclear power than you are of climate change or vice versa.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Just realize that when you take nuclear off the table, you have then made the challenge that much bigger to to decarbonize the global energy system. But let me say, I, I think that, that the debates over nuclear power have to have taken a turn. Just this week, China has announced they’re going to build a 150 new nuclear power plants. There’s a lot of research going into what’s called advanced nuclear energy. So I do think that we will see you know, in my children’s generation and their children’s generation a recommitment to nuclear, because it just offers such a massive amount of clean energy that you can’t get presently from anywhere else. And it’s complimentary to renewables like solar and wind.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. And here in Boston, across the river in Cambridge, we’re working on actually the potential of a nuclear fusion, which we would actually not have any waste. So who knows what the future brings. It’s very exciting. We’re getting close to our end of our time together. I want to talk about, of course, we’re talking about energy production and alternatives for energy production, but there are other ways we could address the CO2 in the atmosphere. One of which is perhaps taking it out with some sort of carbon sequestration that doesn’t seem to be much conversation about that. That seems like an as an exciting technological alternative. And even again these, these topics are considered taboo G geoengineering that is to perhaps make the earth a little less absorbent of, of sunlight and reflect a little more back into space. We do have some ideas on that. Why are we not going towards running towards these ideas? And, you know, we’re, we’re a curious species that likes to solve problems. Why, why aren’t we running headlong into those kinds of alternatives?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. The technologies of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or taking it off the top of a smoke stack and a fossil fuel power plant, these technologies are, are fundamental to the scenarios of the IPC. So when you look to the future, there’s a big bet that these scenarios are going to pan out. And you’re exactly right, that the, the amount of attention and research funding that’s paid to them is, is a lot less than the role that they’re expected to play in the future. That’s going to have to turn around. I’m a big supporter of investments in innovation, all along from the, you know, the basic research to the deployment and, and bringing to market because it’s through technology that will address this, this issue. So that’s going to have to change it. And who knows whether fusion or carbon capture technologies will pan out, but we can be sure they won’t pan out if we don’t invest in them.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Geoengineering, I think is a whole different, whole different category of issues that involves not mitigating climate change of trying to compensate for it. By putting particulates up in the high atmosphere by, by seeding the ocean or changing the albedo of the earth in some ways by brightening clouds from where I sit, you know, I wrote a chapter on this in my book. It’s just a bad idea because if we’re worried about climate change due to human influences, do we really just want to add another layer of human influence on the climate system rather than removing that influence? We’re not really good at anticipating the current consequences of climate change. Do we think that if we try to intentionally modulate the earth, it’s going to work out great for everyone? So, so it’s, it’s kind of a Dr. Strangelove sort of, sort of path forward. And it, for me, it’s, it’s, it’s just not the the smartest move given that we’ve already made progress, as you’ve said you know, reducing coal use in many places around the world, not everywhere. And, and we do have some optimism that we can continue to decarbonizing the energy system.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, you and I were not invited to Glasgow this week. And but let’s say you were her and you were the head speaker and a, you have to have the 30,000 or so people sitting in front of you listening intently to your recommendations. If you have that speech and you were to speak to those leaders, what would you want to see as the, let’s say, low hanging fruit? What could we do that would be the most impactful and perhaps if you can most politically feasible again, considering the global, not just what we do in the U S but globally for nearly a billion people.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. One of the, one of the secrets of the, the framework convention process and cop 26 in Glasgow is that the simple act of having the meeting is a success. It’s not what people say or decide there. Obviously global governance is very difficult. It’s not binding, but the Paris agreement creates an expectation that countries will act domestically, bring those commitments to a meeting like Glasgow, show them to the world. And there’s a shared commitment to action. So what really matters under the framework convention process is what happens in individual countries. So holding the U S government accountable to its commitments is really important, holding China accountable to their commitments, really important. India came out just this week with a commitment to net zero by 2070, which some people have criticized because it’s not 2050, but at the same time, India has a lot of poor people and uses very little energy compared to everyone else.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
It’s a remarkable accomplishment. And so ensuring mechanisms of accountability to commitments is the key to keeping political pressure on this topic. The other thing I will say is none of this is possible unless there’s a sustained insignificant investment around the world and energy technologies. We don’t have all the technologies we need presently. And we’re going to have to invest much more in energy, similar to like what we do on defense say where the, the world invest you, trillions of dollars in, in national defense. Energy is just as important. And we’re going to have to realize that it’s not just something that the market takes care of.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, I, I like what you had to say there. In fact, I like what you’ve written in, in many different forms, where do you go for your information, which scientists I, you can’t do all the primary research yourself, which organizations do you find most trustworthy. And we’re perhaps again, I’m leading our listeners, where would they want to go? To find, let’s say the separate, the signal from the noise.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the climate space is, is, is enormously flushed with opinions and views and so on. You know, at, at, at the core, the IPC is is held up as the consensus view on science impacts economics. But again, you have to realize that the IPC is not, you know stone tablets brought down from the mountain and it can be criticized and improve. You know, I, I hesitate to, to give a laundry list of groups. It’s really, really difficult, I think on climate, like many other global issues for people to rapidly get up to speed on the, on the topic. So I would say you know, pay attention but be critical of the people on the most extreme sides of the debate. People who say, oh, it’s, don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem. Or people say, it’s the apocalypse, the world ends in 2030. There is, there is better knowledge out there, but how best to get it? Maybe that’s something we can work on. It it’s really, really
Joe Selvaggi:
Well. I find you to be a wonderful steward in this space. I, I you, you, you point me in the right direction to, to, to, to do a deeper dive if I like it. So I really appreciate the work you’re doing on, whether it be Twitter or sub stack very, very useful. So before we end our conversation, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, how can they find you? How can they find your books and learn more about you and keep up with your, your finding in the future.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Thanks, John. Let me just say, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of our work I’m readily. Find-Able, I’m not one of those academics. Who’s was very public I’m on Twitter at Roger Pelkey, Jr. P I E L K E. I did a book about a decade ago called the climate fix, which has stood up pretty well on these issues. And people are welcome to email me. They can find me on my campus, colorado.edu, and if they have questions or, or feedback, I love to hear from, from people who take these issues seriously.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Well, that’s a great way to end our show. I appreciate your time professor pokey. This is wonderful. I hope our listeners learned quite a bit from, from you today, and thanks for taking time out of your rest Sunday morning and in Colorado.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, if you want to make it easier for others to find how long it would help, if you would offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, it also helps if you share us with friends and family, if you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to reach out to me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
Related Posts:
In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.
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This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization advancing opportunities so 57 million Americans with a disability can fully participate in all aspects of community. She shares her personal story struggling with dyslexia and ADHD, and what drew her to this cause. She reviews the various kinds of disabilities that people live with, and the strides our society is making to integrate and accommodate disabled citizens into everyday life. She offers thoughts on how well K-12 education generally serves students with special needs, and improvements she would like to see. She discusses how disabilities contribute to students’ achievement gaps in schools and colleges, and what can be done to educate people about and help remediate this. They also explore how assistive technologies and artificial intelligence can be used to help people with disabilities, and the importance of showing students with disabilities examples of great historical figures, heroes, and celebrities with disabilities who were able to accomplish remarkable feats and overcome their challenges.
Stories of the Week: 50CAN’s Derrell Bradford connects the dots between election outcomes in New Jersey and Virginia and parents’ dissatisfaction with their children’s in-person learning time in those states. A Wittgenstein Centre report covered in EdNext shows just how significant a role educational advancement plays, especially among women, in raising the standard of living and civic engagement in developing countries.
Guest:
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is the President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. She has published dozens of op-eds and publications on disability issues and has provided testimony in every state. She has met 1-1 with 48 of America’s governors, as well as leaders in Washington on education, skills and jobs for people with disabilities. RespectAbility also is working in Hollywood so that entertainment media will highlight what people with disabilities CAN do. Mizrahi is also the co-founder/director of the Mizrahi Family Charitable Fund and has supported over 100 terrific nonprofits over the last two decades. A graduate of Emory, Mizrahi recently got her third certificate from the executive training programs at Harvard. She is dyslexic and has ADHD and has won awards for her work at the United Nations and in many other forums.
Tweet of the Week:
New neuroscience research suggests exercise can buffer adolescents against social-emotional damage from distancing.https://t.co/bQkzr8gXFm
— Education Week Teacher (@EdWeekTeacher) November 5, 2021
News Links:
Virginia, New Jersey and steamed parents/Derrell Bradford of 50Can
Educating Girls Will Be Our Most Powerful Force for Global Change
https://www.educationnext.org/educating-girls-will-be-most-powerful-force-global-change/
Read a Transcript of This Episode:
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hey listeners. It is Kara. I am here with Gerard we’re back for another week of the learning curve. I’m coming to you from daylight savings time, Massachusetts, we are recording this right now at 4 31 and the son has. So it’s that time of year. It’s that time of year Gerard, you’re going to be having to wake me up from my nap to record our weekly episode of the learning curve.
[00:00:24] but it’s all good as we get ready to hibernate, but boy, , politics don’t stop. So last week we were talking about a particular governor’s race. I think if I recall my friend, you did not predict the outcome of your state’s gubernatorial election. We might have to go back and check the tape, but, Virginia has a new governor and it is not McAuliffe.
[00:00:46] What’s going on.
[00:00:48] Gerard Robinson [GR]: Well, we do have a new governor and, I was wrong. and not the first time because I, supported, Youngkin, in terms of my own work. But when you talk [00:01:00] about, the sun going down some, see it is going down on business as usual. And the same thing also happened in New Jersey, even though.
[00:01:10] Remained in place. And so this leads to my story that week, which is from Derrell Bradford, who is not only the president of 50 can. He’s also been a host here on the learning curve, really good piece in the daily news. And it’s from November 8th and of course, readers and listeners, you’ll find it on our webpage.
[00:01:30] He takes a look at both states and most people have no idea that Virginia and New Jersey are off cycles. And bellwether in many ways, Virginia, more so than New Jersey, but they were both bellwethers for different reasons. So Derrell says, listen, he’s got a pretty good idea about why, Terry McAuliffe, who was a former governor in a purple state, that in fact is the only Southern state to go blue in three presidential elections, flip this time for Youngkin.
[00:01:58] And he said, it’s because of critical race [00:02:00] theory and white grievance. And he said, Those are these two factors as to why that happened, but New Jersey has stated, he knows. Well, in fact, I believe he went to boarding school, in New Jersey and he said, but New Jersey is a little different while Virginia May be purple in New Jersey.
[00:02:18] You have twice as many Democrats as you do Republicans. And only a year ago by. New Jersey was 60% of the votes. Now the governor of course won again, but it was really closer than people expect. And so when you looked at both spades, either there’s these two things we should think about in terms of why we’re so close.
[00:02:36] We’re number one, he identified that Virginia had the seventh fewest days of in-person learning last year across 50 states. Guess what? New Jersey was a 10th fewest. And so. That was definitely a factor in terms of people not going to school, but that leaves the part two. He said there were a number of teacher unions and [00:03:00] associations who for a host of reasons, either decided not to open on time.
[00:03:04] Or if they did to ask for certain concessions. And so he said, but that’s just not on the east coast. He said, or even in blue states, he says, when you look at strikes and school closures, for teacher unions, that was a tactic to do things differently or to get attention, he said, but when you had quote, a spate of state wide job actions in red states, like Kentucky and Oklahoma and West Virginia, that brought public school system to a standstill.
[00:03:31] People began to ask questions. So why are the unions in fact doing this? And then you have Chicago and LA as two systems who decided to use their power in ways they thought worked best for them. Constituents, but when all was said and done, he said those two things didn’t work in favor of both democratic governors, but then he put it into a larger context of money.
[00:03:53] And we’ve talked about the American rescue plan on this show. A number of times you think about the fact to date the Biden, as he [00:04:00] said, said $123 billion. To the public schools and it’s trickling down. And yet public schools, for example, in Montclair, New Jersey or Fairfax county, Virginia, where private schools were open for most of the time, he says, well, many of your public schools were closed and why.
[00:04:19] And so parents began to ask very different questions and media of these. right wing Republican parents. Many of these in fact are true blue Democrats. And so when it’s time to go to the ballot box, they took a look at their children and took a look at their schools. They took a look at the money coming from the federal government.
[00:04:37] They took a look at what was in the classroom, what was outside. But then he said, and this is where, he really hits home in terms of optics. And he said, McAuliffe chose to have the face of school closures, AFT president Randi Weingarten B his campaign serum. Oh, the final resort while he dismissed the role of parents and education.
[00:04:59] And earlier in the [00:05:00] article, he said, really, McAuliffe’s challenge was, he said what he thought, but he did not read the audience after he said it. So a week ago we thought they were going to be. two blue governors is not one that to blue, in a state where some of the house and Senate seats flipped in New Jersey, something we haven’t also talked about.
[00:05:19] And in Virginia, we also have our first, statewide elected black woman, and we have an Hispanic as attorney. And Republicans also won the house. So a lot of good things going on, but real Bradford’s article is one worth reading because he picks up as easily. Does some really good nuances that often get lost in the noise of Paula.
[00:05:42] Cara: Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it. We can call derail a little bit like the king of nuance. And I also appreciate your analysis here. talking about his work, in fact that like at the end of the day, a lot of parents, you might identify as Republican or Democrat or something in [00:06:00] between, but.
[00:06:00] That doesn’t mean you always vote that way. And absolutely parents are looking at their own, kids are asking questions. and it seems like I, you know, it, Daryl’s always pretty good at pointing out the hypocrisy of the alphabet soup. Like that’s one of his strong suits, I think, but, , I didn’t even realize.
[00:06:19] ’cause, you know, I live under a rock sometimes here, cause it’s so dark up at 4:00 PM in Massachusetts. that Randi Weingarten had been out campaigning at those last days from a call up. But it’s a really important take. I also appreciate you are that you’re elevating that when so much of this country is going, oh my gosh, what does this mean for the VIN terms?
[00:06:36] And you know, this guy elected here and that guy limpid there and also pointing out too, that increasingly we are elected. Diverse candidates across this country. We are electing folks from racial and ethnic. And, , females, right? who’ve never been elected before, not in the kinds of numbers they are now.
[00:06:55] it’s so important to watch the local and not just get [00:07:00] wrapped up in this large swath politics and try and make predictions about what it means. Most of the. Experience politics more on the local level. The rest of it’s just sort of loud noise on my TV at night. I don’t know my husband’s flipping through the channels, but thank you for that, Gerard.
[00:07:16] is a good piece. And maybe next time Derrell. When you’re on vacation, of course not that you get to do that very often. he can talk about a little bit more of these nuanced issues. My story of the week is a bit of a hard pivot. We’re going international. And we took this one from the ed next blog this week.
[00:07:34] It’s from Christopher Thomas the title of it is educating. Girls will be our most powerful force for global change. I was drawn to this Gerard because I had, interestingly I wasn’t qualified to teach this, but in my days, working in teaching at BU I actually taught a course in child labor, which I.
[00:07:51] Study a lot, but we talked a lot about girls’ education. Interestingly, I was very pregnant when teaching course child labor. I was thought that was kind of funny, but, it’s this, [00:08:00] idea that, here in the U S is very recently, on this show, we’ve been talking about the education gap when it comes to boys and how women are outpacing men in terms of college going and college graduation and, girls outperform.
[00:08:13] their male counterparts on standardized tests and in graduation rates, all of the above. And I think, myopically, we think about these things and we easily forget that there are so many places across the globe where, , girls and women. Do not have access to education and it’s a huge problem.
[00:08:34] And one that, if we don’t pay attention to it is going to lead to a lot more problems. So this blog in this blog, it cites a Wittenstein center report that draws on 70 years of research to sort of perse out and highlight , what could happen. What are the, consequences of failing to educate such a large portion of the world population and what would happen?
[00:08:58] We actually did. if we [00:09:00] work together and, started to elevate this issue even more and ensured that young women in the places where they have the least access. So places like Africa, Melanesia and Southern Asia, that these are the places that the report names is, where. Women. And young girls had the least access to education.
[00:09:17] What would happen if girls were educated and there’s plenty of research. I’m sure you’ve seen a jury. I’m sure of listeners have seen it about like what happens economically if you give, women, micro-grants no offense here, my friend, but instead of men and that, women will, manage the money better.
[00:09:33] they’ll do more with it. They won’t spend as much they’ll save it. They’ll grow. It they’ll care for their families. And that’s, I see in a lot of developing countries when through micro grant programs, for example, but this long-term. Says, basically the same thing that if we were to educate all of the girls in this world, that we would enhance economic productivity and that that alone would improve [00:10:00] development outcomes to a huge extent.
[00:10:02] That it would also, it has implications for, for example, the global population, , when women are more educated, with some scholars are quite worried about, overpopulation, when women have access to education, they have fewer children for various reasons that we don’t need to get into now, but just really fascinating stuff in for me to regard.
[00:10:21] It was a really great reminder that, the stuff that’s going on in our own front and backyard. Oftentimes just so very different. I’m sure you could hardly imagine if the young women in your household, and I know you are surrounded, you are outnumbered, in your house. didn’t have access to school as you.
[00:10:40] Flourish and thrive. And in a reminder, too, that we are so often focused on access to primary education and talking about, educating young children and that this is really an issue about access to primary and secondary education. So that the countries shouldn’t just be able to tick a box and say, [00:11:00] oh, sure, yeah, , we’re allowing women in compulsory education, or we’re going to make education compulsory up until, you know, grades.
[00:11:06] Or grade five up until a child is 11 or 12 years old, that all humans, women and men need, access to a sound pre-K to 12 education. And that outcomes for the world would be much better. So I really appreciated this article, Gerard. I thought it was a great reminder. And at next blog always has some really cool stuff.
[00:11:27] What do you think?
[00:11:28] GR: I like the fact that you put it in an international. point of view, we’ve talked about the education of women and girls, primary schools, middle, well, primary of course, but also higher ed. So I really can’t add much more than to say.
[00:11:43] Cara: Yeah, it’s good stuff. , I hope that we hear more about this and we will bring it to our listeners as we read about it.
[00:11:48] Okay. Gerard, it’s sort of related. We’re going to be talking next to a really cool guest. I know that she is a friend of yours and, speak to her. We’re going to be talking [00:12:00] to Jennifer Mizrahi, who is the founder of an organization called respectability and her life work is dedicated to uplifting and ensuring that people with disabilities have access to all of the things that they need to live a happy and healthy life.
[00:12:18] And, she’s also philanthropists. And so investing in. Her foundations money in the causes that are near and dear to her heart. , she’s a really cool lady. And, looking forward to the conversation right now.
[00:12:52] Learning curve listeners today, we are so pleased to have with us. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. She is the president of RespectAbility, a [00:13:00] nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunity. So people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. She has published dozens of op-eds and publications on disability issues and has provided testimony in every state.
[00:13:15] Wow. She’s met one-to-one with 48 of America’s governors, as well as leaders in Washington on education skills and jobs for people with disabilities. Respectability is also working in Hollywood so that entertainment media will highlight what people with disabilities can do. Mizrahi is also the co-founder director of the Mizrahi
[00:13:34] Family Charitable Fund, and a supported over 100 terrific nonprofits over the last two decades. A graduate of Emory, Mizrahi recently got her third certificate from the executive training programs at Harvard. She is dyslexic and has ADHD and has won awards for her work at the United nations. And in many other forums, Jennifer Mizrahi, welcome to The Learning Curve.
[00:13:55] Jennifer: I am so glad to be with you today. Thank you so much for hosting. [00:14:00] Oh yeah.
[00:14:01] Cara: We’re excited to have you. And I know that you know, my partner in crime here at Gerard Robinson quite well. , so you know, your bio is just, wow. We have, a lot of people on the show with pretty fantastic bio’s but I’ve not seen one like this before.
[00:14:14] It’s pretty cool. So in the day-to-day I don’t meet many people who do this work. I would love to know more about. How you came to it and in what it is you do, like what’s the intersection here of sort of reform and philanthropy for you. So
[00:14:29] Jennifer: it’s a great question that you ask. So first of all, it’s really important when you work on solving problems that the people that you work with actually having lived experience with those problems.
[00:14:42] So. Up I’m dyslexic and have ADHD, as you mentioned, which means I have learning disabilities. I also grew up in North Carolina and in the time when I grew up, not very many people knew what dyslexia was and so it was not diagnosed. when I was a [00:15:00] child and I am very tall people who are listening to a podcast, they can’t tell that I’m a little over five 10.
[00:15:07] And guess what? I’ve been a little over five 10 since I was. Over years old, which means I got to be five, 10 before I learned how to read. so a lot of people really, called stupid or lazy, because I was really having a quote unquote, failure to thrive. And so I really. So people who have some sort of barrier to everyday living, when people think of disabilities, they usually think of, people who are blind or they use a wheelchair or they’re deaf, they have a physical disability that you can physically see.
[00:15:39] But actually the majority of the , 57 million people in America who have disabilities, you can’t say. Their disability. So I’ve really come to this because a lot of people have been taught that disability means no ability. And the thing is that disability means there’s one or more things that you can’t [00:16:00] do, but that doesn’t mean you’re not really good at lots of other things.
[00:16:04] And so one thing that I’ve seen is that, really hard bigotry of low expectations, where when they think of disability, They think pity instead of empowerment and most people with a disability, they want a hand up and not a handout. And that’s what respectability is all about is helping people with disabilities, find their abilities and achieve their dream.
[00:16:30] Cara: what an amazing story, , 5, 10, before you say you could really learn how to read and that’s, you know, I think that we all now at some point, and know when I was kid that dyslexia and other forms of, as you might put it disabilities that you can’t see were not things that people discussed or talked about.
[00:16:49] And now we have to say that as a parent, these things are much more at the four, so I’m really curious for your take on, like, if we’ve learned anything, in recent decades, [00:17:00] it sounds like through your work we have, but I also want to pick up on something here and that is, , We have a lot of, children in this country, with different learning needs and some might have different abilities when it comes to learning.
[00:17:14] And many of those kids either couldn’t be served or for some reason weren’t being served, during the pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about this particular moment in your work? And maybe also tell us a little bit about How you’re thinking about what needs to happen now, philanthropically.
[00:17:34] Jennifer: So what a good question. First of all. There are about 7 million students in America’s public schools that we know have disabilities 7 million. And because this country is becoming more and more diverse. and so our school children are more and more diverse. The majority of those students are also children of color.
[00:17:56] they might be African American, they might be an [00:18:00] immigrant themselves or their parents might’ve been imminent. If you were an English language learner, let’s say your parents came from Mexico to try and achieve the American dream. And you’re having difficulty due to this SIA. The teachers might not know is that child not learning because their parents aren’t speaking English at home or because there’s a learning discipline.
[00:18:24] If they’re in a school district that is underfunded, and this is very common because the way we pay for schools in America is through property taxes. So if you live in a wealthy neighborhood, you’re going to have a lot more resources for early intervention, for diagnosis, for speech therapists, for, learning specialists, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:18:46] If you’re in a poor neighborhood, you might not have. Any of those resources to help child. And also let’s be honest. Most marriages or most children are being raised in a single parent [00:19:00] family. I was incredibly lucky because I had a two parent family and my mom could spend a lot of time. Fighting for me to figure out what was wrong and how do I overcome it.
[00:19:12] And she personally was able to give me a lot of time to help upskill me. And if you’re in a single parent household, or if your parents are working molt, suitable jobs, who’s going to play that role. So these 7 million children. Disproportionately are finding that they might not get the right diagnosis, or if they get the right diagnosis, they’re not getting the right.
[00:19:36] What’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them to meet their needs, or they’re not implemented. And so they might get really frustrated in school and behave badly, and then they get suspended. And then once they’re suspended, they’re so far behind in their schoolwork, they might fail out or drop out.
[00:19:56] And so we see this huge correlation in [00:20:00] America with disabilities. And with incarceration because these kids will often, you know, get in trouble. And so they enter that school to prison pipeline. So America’s over 2 million people who are incarcerated a disproportionate number of them, literally a majority of people in jail or people with disabilities.
[00:20:22] Cara: I want to pick up on something that you said, Jennifer, and I know I’m going a little bit off script here, what we talked about before the show, but, , it’s really interesting to me that you bring up this point of parents and how, a lot of just amazing single parents out there doing the work and it’s so much work.
[00:20:40] And so I think to the point that you’re making to have more than one adult in your life that can not only, support. Children with whatever their unique abilities are, but also navigate the system. , in this country, it’s what, something like 12% of students in this country, we say have special needs now who knows?
[00:20:58] You probably know better [00:21:00] than I have. That’s the real number , we say here in Massachusetts, that about 17% of our students have IDPs, but that doesn’t mean that every parent. Is well-equipped to navigate all that comes with what is actually, it’s a legal process, right? And IEP is a legal document and students are do services under federal law.
[00:21:19] Could you for the parents out there, and for those who are interested in policy, talk a little bit about what parents and family members need to know about their.
[00:21:29] Jennifer: it is really hard. So I, myself, I’m a parent. as a parent, I know what it’s like to parent a child with a completely different set of disabilities than my own.
[00:21:40] And so I feel like I had to get like a master’s degree in that particular kind of disability and read a lot on the web. Luckily there’s a. Mendez amount of information for parents now on the web, including a lot of videos and tutorials and toolkits, but what if you [00:22:00] don’t have access to the internet?
[00:22:01] There are also every state has a parent regional. , center and it’s really important to also have grandparents or aunts and uncles or mentors or clergy who can help, but also to find people who are older and successful and have the same disability who can mentor a child with a disability to show them that there is a path forward to skills, jobs, and a better future, people with disabilities, they want to love, learn and earn.
[00:22:31] Just like anyone else. And so ha I’m in good role models can be extremely helpful, but the internet is a friend and it is true. There are legal rights. A child with a disability has legal rights to get what’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them. And then to have that plan implemented, which might mean that they’re in a smaller class size, it might be an extra teacher in the classroom.
[00:22:57] It might be, some social skills [00:23:00] training. It might be a school bus will come and pick up that child and take them to totally different school. That’s better equipped to meet their needs. So it is really important to get your legal rights and to have them taken care of and all across the country.
[00:23:16] There are actually, , free lawyers who can help, , through, , some different centers. , and people can always email me at Jennifer M at respectability dot. And I’ll try and hook them up to try and help them out.
[00:23:30] GR: So, Jennifer, speaking of technology, we live in a society where technology is driving a lot of what we do.
[00:23:38] Could you talk to our audience about how modern technology inclusive, assistive technologies and even AI is being used to help people with discipline.
[00:23:48] Jennifer: Gerard. This is such an important question because it is been such a big boost in new innovations in this space. So one of the most common [00:24:00] disabilities is that as people age, they start to lose their hearing.
[00:24:04] And now. Necessarily, , impact a child, right? Because they’re not getting old and losing their hearing. but their parent or their grandparent who might be tutoring them, who might be watching videos with them needs captions. And what’s beautiful is that if you take a video and you put it on YouTube through this AI, it will instantly generate captions automatically instantly for my favorite price, which is.
[00:24:33] And now zoom has a button that you can press on zoom, and it will also put captions instantly on your zoom, which is also good, frankly, for English language learners or for people who have cognitive disabilities that need the visual reinforcement of the words on the screen. So the instant captioning has been incredibly effective.
[00:24:56] Additionally, almost every computer that you buy [00:25:00] off the shelf, no special kind of anything needed. If you buy a Mac or you buy a Dell, it has assisted technology built in so that it will read to you text. So you can go to a website and you can ask it to read it out loud to you. And it will, which is fantastic for people who are blind or have.
[00:25:21] Low vision. It’s just a wonderful solution. So there are so many different, , solutions that are out there. But I must say one of my favorites is just remote learning and remote work. Because if you have a disability that makes it impossible for you to drive like you’re blind, or you have disc or you have epilepsy, or if you have other reasons that you really need to stay home.
[00:25:47] You can go and learn online or earn online, which is really remarkable. And so.
[00:25:54] GR: Earlier, you talked about education and in the pandemic, millions of [00:26:00] students across the country, K-12, we’re out of school, but we rarely talk about, college age or adult age, uh, students who are also out, they were impacted.
[00:26:09] We talk about learning. We haven’t really spent a lot of time talking about how , having a disability impact student achievement gaps in schools and in colleges. And you’ve been pretty vocal about this with your work with not only governors and lawmakers, but just talking about what does it mean?
[00:26:25] So educate us about what that population is going through the K12 level, but particularly colleges.
[00:26:31] Jennifer: It has been really difficult for students with disabilities because a lot of times they did get their legal rights of getting extra tutoring or extra supports or notes, or perhaps extra time on a task.
[00:26:45] But when they moved to the home invasion, They didn’t give them the same accommodations. And so those students fell very, very far behind. Look, , it’s not like I’m angry at the school teachers and, you know, everybody was faced with a pandemic. They [00:27:00] didn’t really know what to do. There was no, , book they can pull out that says in case of, pandemic break glass, and here’s the magic secret to how you can do this easily.
[00:27:10] It was very hard to try and accomplish, but we saw students have. Mendez gaps in learning that if they’re a student with a disability were enormously magnified, whether they were, a high school student and elementary school student, or a college student for some of those students, it worked out very If they’re very self-motivated and they didn’t need certain kinds of accommodations. For other students, it really was a big gap. And in fact, as you know, Gerard we’ve asked in a number of states actually across the board that students be given extra time to complete high school, for example, because legally students can stay in school only until they’re a certain age, the age of 21 with which to get their high school diploma.
[00:27:53] And we’ve said, Hey, given the pandemic, if somebody needs. A year, give them that time. New Jersey has [00:28:00] done that other places have put summer school programs in place. There is a lot of learning gaps that we’re really, really facing and really challenging. But one of the nice things has been that, some of these community colleges and other programs are now available online, which for those, for whom it is convenient, it can be very helpful.
[00:28:21] GR: You talked about college students in K-12. Your organization did a wonderful job working with Congress as related to access to food. Talk to us about.
[00:28:32] Jennifer: sometimes government does everything right. And sometimes government just completely, totally lacks common sense. And in this particular case, there was a very simple solution to a life-threatening problem.
[00:28:47] So when COVID hit, there was no vaccine, you know, and people didn’t know if you wear a mask, if that was enough, if it was coming through touch or if it was through the air, they had no idea. But what we did see in the [00:29:00] CDC early data was that 80% of the people who are going into the hospital, all the people who were dying had an underlying condition.
[00:29:10] So these are by definition people with disabilities, not my disability cause ADHD doesn’t put me at a risk. , neither does dyslexia, but , certainly people who. Heart conditions who have obesity who have chronic health conditions. They were at really, really high risk people with intellectual disabilities at super high risk.
[00:29:30] So they couldn’t go to the supermarket without having a really big risk. And yet 11 million people in America with disabilities rely on snap, which is food stamps to eat 11 million. So we were telling people who were blind. That they have to go to the supermarket to produce their food stamps in person to buy things.
[00:29:55] They were not allowed to buy food online. So one of the things that we did was we [00:30:00] had to go state by state governor, by governor and get them to change it because if somebody is getting food stamps so that they can eat, why can’t they order the food online? Just like other people use Instacart or Walmart or.
[00:30:14] As on to order food, why couldn’t people use food stamps for online? It’s no additional money. And so fortunately 46 states have now changed that. And the only states that haven’t changed, it are states that are so rural that there’s not really a food delivery service in place. So over well, approximately 10 million people with disabilities no longer had to make a choice between.
[00:30:42] Eating and catching COVID. So this was just something that was common sense that needed to get done.
[00:30:48] GR: Well, as we close out my last question for you, you focused on government, you focused on K-12 and college, but we also know that Hollywood plays an important [00:31:00] role in shaping who we see what we think about them.
[00:31:04] Talk to the audience about the work you’re doing to diversify Hollywood in ways we often don’t think about when we hear diversity.
[00:31:11] Jennifer: I’m so glad you asked that question because if you see it, you can be it. And when people with disabilities are shown for what they can do, instead of what they can’t, their dreams get bigger.
[00:31:25] And people are more willing to let them have the opportunities that they achieve that they deserve to have to achieve. So the first one that we worked on was born this way on a Annie network, which won 13 Emmy nominations and three wins, including best reality series. Jonathan Murray, our board member made that series and it starts seven diverse people with down syndrome and it showed them getting jobs.
[00:31:51] And having friends and living as independently as possible, a followup season is currently available for free on peacock [00:32:00] core, born for business. It’s a terrific 10 part series that shows for people with disabilities who started their own successful companies and how they navigate running a. During COVID and then of course, there’s blockbusters.
[00:32:14] So check out the internals. The internals is the new Marvel movie, and you will see a fabulous character who is a deaf woman, super hero, who also happens to be African-American and really cool. And they’re even our dolls now for this character showing positive role models so that children can dream dreams about having better lives.
[00:32:37] And then they can go out reach.
[00:32:40] Cara: I have to say this new Marvel movies, all the hype in my house right now, my kids can’t wait
[00:32:46] Jennifer: to see.
[00:32:47] Cara: And one of them might not be old enough and it might let them anyway. I’ve already heard some great stuff about the character you’ve mentioned on various radio programs and newspapers.
[00:32:55] So really exciting stuff. , it’s so rare, , that we have, I [00:33:00] guess, Such breadth on this show. This is then a really wonderful, half hour for Gerard and for me, and we thank you so much, Jennifer for joining us today. Just great work and we’re so happy to be able to, elevate it and highlight it for our listeners.
[00:33:17] Jennifer: Well, thank you for having me and thanks for all you all do. It’s really traumatic. We try our best.
[00:33:25] Cara: You take care and stay safe and we’ll be on the lookout for all of your great work. And
[00:33:30] Jennifer: for those movies you mentioned. Thank you.
[00:33:54] Cara: And we’re going to close it out with our tweet of the week. I love this one because I’m always encouraging my [00:34:00] kids to get up and move. Especially when they’re screaming at me that they want to scream. And I’m evil mommy saying no, but this is from ed week. , yesterday, his tweet came out. So we are recording on the ninth.
[00:34:10] This is, November 8th, new neuroscience research suggests that kids are feeling isolate. P E can help them bounce back. So it’s just a really great article in ed week that in brief talks about the fact that yeah, the pandemic has isolated our kids. Isolation is not great for kids, but it also shows and anybody who’s an exerciser, as I am knows that, exercise can lower, your anxiety can lower your stress levels has great benefits for us cognitively.
[00:34:42] So it’s all about getting those kiddos up and out and getting them on the move. So schools, even as you think about, all of that learning loss and everything we need to do to catch kids. Let’s make sure they’re moving while they’re doing it. And they’re moving in between next week listeners. We are going to be speaking [00:35:00] with Paul Israel.
[00:35:00] He is the director and general editor of the Thomas Edison papers at Rutgers university. He’s also the author of Edison, a life of invention. What a great title for a great man. Take care of yourself. And, I’m actually gonna get to see you in person soon. We won’t say where, but I’ll get to see what person said looking forward to, to my friend, but we’ll talk to you before that and you have a great week ahead.
[00:35:24] GR: Take care.
[00:35:25] Bye-bye.
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On November 9th, 2021, William Smith, Pioneer Institute Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences, submitted the following testimony to the Massachusetts Legislature in support of House Bill 201, which addresses a number of flaws and infirmities in the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) methodology that is utilized by a number of foreign nations in evaluating the value of medicines.
This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks to Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., Professor of Climate Science at the University of Colorado, about the widening gap between the catastrophic predictions proffered at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, and the less dire observations contained in the UN’s own recent IPCC report.
Guest:
Roger Pielke with the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)
Roger A. Pielke Jr. is a political scientist and professor. He served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year. Prof. Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was director of graduate studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies. Pielke serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, retains many professional affiliations, and sat on the board of directors of WeatherData, Inc. from 2001 to 2006. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode:
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute a think tank in Boston. 2021 United nations climate change conference. The 26 conference of the parties also known as COP 26 is being held in Glasgow, Scotland between October 31st and November 12th leaders from around the world are meeting to coordinate policies to address the dangers of climate change. But policy choices are being largely based on the scientific findings compiled in the intergovernmental panel on climate change reports most recently released in August. This report was characterized by many leaders, such as UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as they quote code red for humanity, going on to say that the alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable. Greenhouse gas emissions are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. But this the newest IPC report actually support such a dire outlet, or if political leaders possibly motivated by desire to catalyze action on climate policy badly missed characterize the IPCCs report findings and in so doing damage, their public credibility and the prospects for productive climate policy.
Joe Selvaggi:
My guess today is Roger Pielke, Jr. Professor of the environmental studies program at the university of Colorado at Boulder, before joining the university of Colorado faculty, he was a scientist at the national center for atmospheric research. Professor Pielke is the author of eight books as testified on climate science before Congress and has contributed articles on climate to the financial times. And other news outlets, Professor Pielke’s work focuses on how science and public policy interact professor Pielke was shared with us. The findings of the most recent EPCC report and discuss in what ways it has diverge from its own earlier predictions. It will also describe the widening gap between scientific observations and the dire predictions made by many political leaders. The theme of professor Pookie’s recent work is that effective climate policy rests on confidence in the integrity of the climate science community. For that reason, science and scientists must not become politicized and climate policy leaders must adjust their rhetoric to match the reality of newer climate observations. When I return, I’ll be joined by university of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now joined by the university of Colorado at Boulder professor. Roger Pielke Jr. Welcome to Hubwonk, Roger. Thanks Joe. Good to be here. All right. Well this is a very timely conversation. This week 30,000 people, including many world leaders are meeting in Glasgow to discuss global policy steps to address climate change. I want to talk about the most recent scientific observations on climate change, the data that undergird the decisions at this time, but before we dive into the science I wanna, I want to talk about how you came to clients, climate science, you’ve written eight books you’ve testified before Congress. You’ve written in articles in financial times. You have a fantastic sub SAC account talking about climate. But what, what drew you to climate science back in the day?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I guess it’s a, I guess it’s in my DNA. My father is one of the leading atmospheric scientists of his generation and he pioneered three-dimensional numerical modeling of the atmosphere. And so I grew up hearing a lot about atmospheric science employment. I went into the policy direction and when I did my PhD in the early 1990s, I was looking for a really hard policy evaluation topic. And the topic I tick, which is very niche and esoteric at the time was how well does climate science relate to climate policy and really have studied the issue on and off in different dimensions for almost 30 years.
Joe Selvaggi:
I guess your goal was to ensure that the science informs policy and they’re all on the same song sheet. There’s not a big difference between what the science indicates and what policy makers are using.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
We want that our relationship to work well in two dimensions. One is one is we want science to inform policy, of course, but we also want to make sure that politics doesn’t corrupt or under undermine the integrity of science as well. So we want them integrated not separated, but how to do that can be often tricky, particularly on highly contentious topics.
Joe Selvaggi:
That leads me to my next question, which is you’ve seen science to climate science progress over 30 years. And you’ve said it’s, it’s gone from a, a lively disagreement amongst scientists, which is natural. That’s the nature of science to I’m moving more to the front pages of news and political journals. I don’t know if you would agree with me, but I read that it was somewhere around 2008, 2009. You saw an inflection point from where we were talking pure science and, and a lively debate on, on scenarios to something a little bit different. Can you describe to our listeners what you saw in 2008, 2009 as a, as a shift?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, the first thing to say is that the core findings of climate science have been remarkably strong and consistent since at least the 1980s, when the ITCC intergovernmental panel on climate change was first created that humans affect the climate system. Those effects can cause serious risks and we should definitely take some steps to do something about it that hasn’t really changed over time. What has changed is how that science gets overlaid on, on, on politics policy, the media and the public debate. And really the shift that I experienced and saw in this issue was more around 2006. It coincided with when Al Gore’s movie came out and inconvenient truth. And the idea that in order to, to gain traction on the climate issue with the public advocates would have to bring it home to people that means to, to make it relevant to their daily lives. And the way that that that was done was to associate extreme events and really every extreme event hurricane tornadoes floods with climate change to try to instill in, but the public mind that that’s what climate change is. It’s, it’s extremes very media friendly images of disasters and hurricanes. And that became a much more a focus in the years since about 2006, 2007 and generally motivated by a coordinated effort by, by funders and advocacy groups to, to bring climate to the public.
Joe Selvaggi:
So the public is an expert in science, mainly maybe an expert in data analysis, but they, they know the weather they see it every day around the world. So that brought it home to the ordinary citizen. Climate change is real and it’s causing so the inference goes climate change is causing a severe weather events. Is that what you’re saying?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And it’s I mean the, the public and policymakers have always been well out in front of the, where the sciences on that topic, very, very ready to accept that this or that event was caused by, by, by greenhouse gas emissions or climate change. Even when the science was more nuanced and, you know, obviously complex than that simple formulation. So it, it, it has not been a difficult argument to make in the public’s eye. It’s just that sometimes the science isn’t always there to back that up.
Joe Selvaggi:
So let’s take a step back and talk about the science. We’re as I said, the world leaders are meeting for the cup 26 meeting in Glasgow. It’s odd to me that they’re using the IPCCs most recent data as support for what I, you know, many are calling code red for planet earth or for mankind. But in reading your sub stack and your articles on the issue, you’ve heard the same report. It’s 3000 pages long. I’ll admit I have not read it. But you characterize the most recent IPC report is having fundamentally a good message. One that is trending more positive rather than indicating you know, the, the, the earth is doomed. Say more about that difference.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So, so the way that the IPC works and climate science generally is we generate scenarios of the future. The future is an uncertain place and we could, we can’t predict very well. What’s going to happen in five years, 10 years. So we have a wide range of scenarios to characterize plausible futures and then explore policy options, climate impacts, economic outcomes within that set of scenarios. And the biggest change really in the, the, the thinking about scenarios over the last 20 years is that the most extreme scenarios and by extreme, I mean that the world is going to burn all of the coal that we can find to, to generate not just electricity, but all of our energy consumption. We’re going to take coal and we’re going to turn it into liquids and put it into our car.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Those scenarios that, that once we’re thought where we were headed are now pretty much off the table as plausible futures. So, so where the world is headed is, is much less apocalyptic than was thought only six or seven years ago. Now that doesn’t mean that, that reducing fossil fuel use or getting to net zero carbon dioxide is any easier. It’s a huge, enormous challenge. But it does say that we have a future that’s, that’s a lot less scary than maybe we thought before, even as the rhetoric goes in a different direction.
Joe Selvaggi:
I want you to take a step back and talk about the weather phenomenon. Again, we’re equating or leaders that are, as you say, out in front of the science equating global warming with weather and in particular, again, this is I think it was the world health organization characterize global warming as the single greatest threat facing humanity, pretty bold statement. There’s lots of threats, and this is the worst. If we accept that the world has been warming, I think our listeners may all accept that at least for the less half 150 years, that’s this global warming equated to an increase in deaths, attributed to climate. In other words, there is a warmer world, more dangerous for the average human.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
So this is an exceedingly difficult signal to tease out because it’s not just the climate that changes. It’s how we live on planet earth, where we live, how we build the procedures we have for evacuation when there’s an emergency. One of the most remarkable and, and, and underappreciated science, technical policy success stories of the last century is the incredible drop in vulnerability of humans to extreme weather phenomenon. Vulnerability has dropped something like 99.7, 5% in a, in a century. It was not uncommon in the 1920s for millions of people to die in a single year due to extreme weather phenomenon. Now it’s, there’s still too many who die, but it’s, it’s in the tens of thousands, low tens of thousands or less. It’s a huge success story. And it’s due to science technology and things like meteorology weather, forecasting, evacuation and so on. So if you’re have a trend from millions to tens of thousands of sharp trend downward, it’s very difficult to say, well, deaths are increasing due to climate change. Now going forward are our progress on reducing vulnerability and, and, and the good news on depression may not continue. That’s, there’s no guarantee of that. But we do know as a global society, how to reduce vulnerabilities to, to weather extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’ve adapted. I think I read somewhere that as recently as a hundred years ago the average earthling member of planet earth had one in 1000 chance of dying from a weather event. And now given the population and the risk we’re at one in 400,000 risk of dying from a weather event, as you say, it’s a reduction of 99.7, 5%, that’s substantial, but what would you say to critics saying that sure, we’ve adapted. We’ve been able to anticipate hurricanes and move inland but we’re at the precipice of a inflection point that suddenly weather will will become much more extreme. We w this is the calm before the storm to torture cliche. What would you say to that?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, and I mean, this is where we go back from the, the, the, the very hot public debate. And, and the, some of the imagery you see in the media and what politicians may say, let’s go back to the IPC and see what that projects in, in coming decades for, for changes in extremes. And yes, there are some, some projected changes and most notably heat waves are expected to increase, become more severe in many places around the world. But on the other hand, take a phenomenon like drought or tropical cyclones hurricanes. It will be very difficult to even detect those changes for many, many decades. So the idea that we’re on a precipice, or we’re on a the edge of the apocalypse, and it just doesn’t stand up when you compare that to the science. But when I, you know, when I engage people in this topic if they want to believe that that that’s fine, it’s not my job to convince them that they’re wrong. But what that should, should lead to is an agreement among everyone that yes, we have to keep investing in adaptation in vulnerability reduction. We have to be better prepared for an uncertain future. So I don’t think the policy choices we would make are particularly sensitive to whether one has an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future. We just have to keep doing those things that we know have worked to reduce vulnerabilities to two extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
You break down extreme weather in your most recent book. I found it interesting and surprising, and frankly in there you break down which weather events affect human beings or kill human beings and talk about the trends, whether they’re going up or downward effect. I simply just assumed that events like hurricanes and tropical cyclones were becoming more numerous you know, just seems to be that way. That’s the narrative. What is your data? Let, let’s just briefly break it down by a phenomenon what’s going up and what’s going down, you mentioned heat waves, that’s, that’s going up. But what’s, what’s, what’s everything else doing.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And, and, and this is a timely question because the IPC just released its sixth assessment report you know, a month ago or so which went through phenomenon by phenomena trends in extreme weather phenomenon around the world. And as you say, heat waves have increased what’s called extreme precipitation. And we have to be careful with that because extreme precipitation is a scientific term that has increased in, in many places around the world. The ITCC is very careful to say extreme precipitation does not necessarily mean that flooding has increased. And that may be counterintuitive at first, but then you realize, well, you know, here, here in Boulder, Colorado, if we got an inch of rain today, that would be pretty extreme in the fall it can happen, but it wouldn’t lead to floods. And so that’s why the ITCC says with respect to flooding there hasn’t been an overall global increase with respect to tropical cyclones, there has not been an overall increase in the intensity or frequency of storms on a century timescale.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
And that comes as a surprise to many people on the IPC breaks down drought into several technical categories. But the types of drought that most people are aware of are what’s called meteorological or hydrological drought. And they find ones rainfall in ones surface flows of water, and they find that there are no trends globally in that type of drought. They do find there is a trend in what’s called ecological or agricultural drought, which refers to soil moisture. But then we get into a phenomenon like hurricanes tornadoes, straight line winds, winter storms and, and there is, is number one. There’s not great data everywhere on the world, but the ITCC has not detected upwards trends in, in any of those phenomenon. So, so when you, when you paint the whole picture and it’s really important to go phenomenon by phenomenon, because extreme weather is, is, is a big bin with a lot of different climate biological phenomenon. But when you go there, you, you find that the headline events that we often see in the newspaper particularly floods, hurricanes, tornadoes there’s not a strong evidence of upward trends over climate timescales. So,
Joe Selvaggi:
So if there’s no measurable trend attribution is impossible because you can’t attribute something to nothing, right?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the IP is, is quite explicit when it comes to attributing long-term multi-decade trends. And you know, obviously the increase in the global surface temperature has been detected and attributed to human caused climate change, but you can’t say the same for many extreme weather events. That’s not, that’s not at all surprising extreme weather events by definition are rare. And so the statistics of, of rare events are such that it takes a long time to detect changes. So, so really things are unfolding much as the IPC has projected. And if you actually do the math for something like tropical cyclones, we wouldn’t expect to be able to detect those changes till late in the century, if then even under some of the more aggressive scenarios of climate change.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to go back to the IPCs see the the different scenarios. I think they’re called representative concentration pathways are CPS, and there are different probabilities of different scenarios. They said the most extreme miss is very unlikely, largely based on the fact that it was deliberately designed to be worst case scenario where every, everybody burns all the coal possible on planet earth, very, very unlikely, but necessary perhaps from a scientific argument perspective. And yeah, as unlikely as that scenario is, it seems that in many times that scenario is brought up as sort of the core prediction. You’ve observed that the, the RPCC is observed that that’s a very, very unlikely in that afar, a different path is more likely. Why do you think policy makers anchor on worst case scenario is that by virtually all standards are highly unlikely or virtually impossible.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. This, I mean, this is, there’s a, there’s a fascinating story here. Like that gets into things like the sociology of science and communication and so on, but early on when, when the climate community said, all right, we need scenarios of the future to, to, to drive our climate models. What they said was, well, let’s have, let’s have a low one that has a very low greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Let’s have a high one with really a high ones emissions, and then let’s have a couple in the middle. That was it. There was no consideration of worst case of likelihood of plausibility. These were scenarios that were chosen to to help support climate research, which is really important, really legitimate completely justifiable. But when those four scenarios where were put into the research community and eventually into publish papers, going through university, press offices, press releases, media coverage, then finding their way into policymakers, discussions, and advocacy.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
In that process, the most extreme of those four scenarios became represented as the most likely path that we’re on called business as usual. There’s a lot of reasons for why that happened. But that is a core I would say a core shortfall in how scenarios are used by the IPC, because no one in that process has responsibility for evaluating the plausibility or likelihood of any of these scenarios. And so as research has gone on over subsequent 10 or 15 years, it’s been been discovered that this most extreme scenario of the set is highly implausible. And, and in fact, art, some of our research suggests that it’s already falsified that, that, that the world is so far from it in 2021, that it’s not at all appropriate as a guide to the future. So this sets up a very challenging situation for climate research and advocacy, because much of the discussion that we have about the long-term future is grounded in a vision of futures that just aren’t possible. And so that makes it really, really difficult, I think, to have a science, grounded discussion of the climate issue, because it’s been off track for a while now.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to dig deep, more deeply into why you’re using the wrong scenario is so harmful or potentially harmful, but let’s talk about why it’s implausible, what has changed in in recent years regardless, let’s start at the basics CO2 or, or fossil fuels burning create greenhouse gases and those have some correlation with rising temperatures and we’re, we’re going to attribute some, so we’re going to say it’s causation. But much of the world has changed their energy sources and the U S we’ve actually backed away from coal in, in, in in a different direction. I I’ve read some of your work, which says we’re at, we’re already past our peak CO2 output as is you know, much of the world is approaching. This is this largely why a you’re more, let’s say sanguine than the the most extreme predictions are we trending either in a better direction or in fact downward?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So I mean, if one’s vision of the long-term future is that greenhouse gas emissions are just going up, up, up, up. It makes the, the magnitude of the challenge of reducing them, which is already huge enough. It makes it look bigger than it actually is, and it can create a sense of helplessness. And, you know, there’s studies out there now that say that that youth are paralyzed by fear of the future. To say that the future is not apocalyptic doesn’t mean that it’s perfect and everything we can go about our business and forget about climate change. I’m, I’m a policy scholar. And what I teach my students is that if you want to solve a really difficult, complicated problem, the first thing you have to do is characterize the size of that problem accurately. And so I do think it’s highly problematic if we have misleading scenarios for the future guiding our policy responses.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Now the counter argument to that is, oh, well, yeah, maybe they’re wrong, but if they scare people and they motivate them, that might help the politics of climate change. And then this gets into issues related to the ethics of science and science communication. I’m, I’m a stickler for being accurate about the science and having policy justifications that, that, that are well grounded in, in science. The reason for that is we want science to be perceived to be legitimate and not just today, but for the next 20 years, 50 years. And if scientists are perceived as exaggerating threats that can’t be good for, for policy or politics.
Joe Selvaggi:
So those who would perceive it as a noble lie to to exaggerate the threat would say it is indeed noble lie because that’s what we need to do to shake the ordinary citizen out of complacency and address this issue. They, they justify the exaggeration by saying the ends justify the means.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, we see that a lot. And I mean, that’s often how politics works and, and, you know, I, I’m not of any illusion that, that we experts can, can shape how politicians behave. But what we do have control of is how we behave in the scientific community and, and by avoiding the noble lie or trying to campaign based on research, we know is dated or flawed. We can help keep the integrity of science solid going forward. And honestly, the science of climate change is robust enough. The futures are scary enough by being accurate that we don’t have to exaggerate. We don’t need to. And so I see it as a, as an entirely unnecessary debate and what we should be doing in the, in the expert community is just updating and fixing the scenarios and moving on and why we have this debate and why people defend bad science is is, is, is interesting. And it’s story in itself,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed we both have started, or you have scientifically asserted that global temperatures are rising. It’s largely attributable to gases. So that’s what we to labeled either of us as climate deniers. Let’s, let’s, let’s establish that we both certainly accept that that trend. So what are the solutions that you’ve explored or that the science or the general climate science community we often talk about renewables, wind and solar to my reading, these are challenging and their own, right. There’s the physics of the, of the thing. They, you know, the wind doesn’t always blow. And certainly we know the sun doesn’t shine even there in Boulder all the time. Is this our way out of this challenge?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Well, there’s a burst, it’s always sunny in Boulder. It’s beautiful. So at a very simple level, the answer is yes. And, and then you start getting into some of the complexities and the answer’s no, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the mathematics are really straightforward that if we’re going to stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, our emissions of greenhouse gases in total, but in particular carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have to go to zero and we may want them to go below zero in the sense that we start taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The only way that we get emissions to go to zero is we replace oil, natural gas, and coal with alternative energy sources. And I, in my book, the climate fix, I call for a stance of technological agnosticism.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Once you get into energy technology discussions, you’ll find that every energy technology has a constituency, and they think that their technology is the solution, whether it’s wind or solar or nuclear or geothermal or carbon capture or whatever it happens to be. And I’m very much of the view that the more carbon free or low carbon technologies we have on the table, the greater our chances for success. And in fact, as we’re learning with the energy crisis in the UK and in Europe a diversity of supply is a good thing and not just for climate reasons, but for reliability reasons, for cost reasons for geopolitics. So, so when I see the debate on climate change, getting wrapped up in the debate over closing nuclear power plants, for example I think that’s, that’s a bit frustrating because nuclear is a good solid option to have on the table, not uniquely, but alongside with renewables and other technologies. When you do the math you realize that an energy transformation of the global energy system, it’s not something that you’ve accomplished in a year in a decade, even in a couple of decades, this is a challenge of the century. And getting to net zero CO2 will be a policy focus throughout the 21st century. It’s not a quick turnaround sort of issue. I am quite optimistic though that because it’s a technological challenge humanity’s up for it.
Joe Selvaggi:
You, you mentioned every energy source has its constituency. Maybe I might put myself in the nuclear camp, I’m perplexed that particularly those people who are apocalyptic about the future and see it an existential threat to humanity and to earth clearly nuclear has virtually infinite power potential and zero CO2 emission. Why would the environmental community, maybe this is not a fair to take it, but why do they seem to be so reticent to adapt nuclear with it with both arms?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a long history of concerns about nuclear power that goes back to, to, you know, really, you know, my parents generation and folks from the 1960s with nuclear energy, getting wrapped up with concerns about war and weapons. Of course, you know, it’s three mile island and Chernobyl and every energy, every energy technology has risks. Nuclear is risks are, are, are what are called dread risks because radiation and meltdowns are really scary. But when you burn fossil fuels, you put particulate air pollution into the atmosphere, and that creates risks of premature deaths from bad air quality. It’s not as dreadful as a nuclear power plant. So there’s a lot of reasons. I, what I tell people in an environmentalist and my students is it’s perfectly legitimate to conclude that you’re more afraid of nuclear power than you are of climate change or vice versa.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Just realize that when you take nuclear off the table, you have then made the challenge that much bigger to to decarbonize the global energy system. But let me say, I, I think that, that the debates over nuclear power have to have taken a turn. Just this week, China has announced they’re going to build a 150 new nuclear power plants. There’s a lot of research going into what’s called advanced nuclear energy. So I do think that we will see you know, in my children’s generation and their children’s generation a recommitment to nuclear, because it just offers such a massive amount of clean energy that you can’t get presently from anywhere else. And it’s complimentary to renewables like solar and wind.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. And here in Boston, across the river in Cambridge, we’re working on actually the potential of a nuclear fusion, which we would actually not have any waste. So who knows what the future brings. It’s very exciting. We’re getting close to our end of our time together. I want to talk about, of course, we’re talking about energy production and alternatives for energy production, but there are other ways we could address the CO2 in the atmosphere. One of which is perhaps taking it out with some sort of carbon sequestration that doesn’t seem to be much conversation about that. That seems like an as an exciting technological alternative. And even again these, these topics are considered taboo G geoengineering that is to perhaps make the earth a little less absorbent of, of sunlight and reflect a little more back into space. We do have some ideas on that. Why are we not going towards running towards these ideas? And, you know, we’re, we’re a curious species that likes to solve problems. Why, why aren’t we running headlong into those kinds of alternatives?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. The technologies of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or taking it off the top of a smoke stack and a fossil fuel power plant, these technologies are, are fundamental to the scenarios of the IPC. So when you look to the future, there’s a big bet that these scenarios are going to pan out. And you’re exactly right, that the, the amount of attention and research funding that’s paid to them is, is a lot less than the role that they’re expected to play in the future. That’s going to have to turn around. I’m a big supporter of investments in innovation, all along from the, you know, the basic research to the deployment and, and bringing to market because it’s through technology that will address this, this issue. So that’s going to have to change it. And who knows whether fusion or carbon capture technologies will pan out, but we can be sure they won’t pan out if we don’t invest in them.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Geoengineering, I think is a whole different, whole different category of issues that involves not mitigating climate change of trying to compensate for it. By putting particulates up in the high atmosphere by, by seeding the ocean or changing the albedo of the earth in some ways by brightening clouds from where I sit, you know, I wrote a chapter on this in my book. It’s just a bad idea because if we’re worried about climate change due to human influences, do we really just want to add another layer of human influence on the climate system rather than removing that influence? We’re not really good at anticipating the current consequences of climate change. Do we think that if we try to intentionally modulate the earth, it’s going to work out great for everyone? So, so it’s, it’s kind of a Dr. Strangelove sort of, sort of path forward. And it, for me, it’s, it’s, it’s just not the the smartest move given that we’ve already made progress, as you’ve said you know, reducing coal use in many places around the world, not everywhere. And, and we do have some optimism that we can continue to decarbonizing the energy system.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, you and I were not invited to Glasgow this week. And but let’s say you were her and you were the head speaker and a, you have to have the 30,000 or so people sitting in front of you listening intently to your recommendations. If you have that speech and you were to speak to those leaders, what would you want to see as the, let’s say, low hanging fruit? What could we do that would be the most impactful and perhaps if you can most politically feasible again, considering the global, not just what we do in the U S but globally for nearly a billion people.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. One of the, one of the secrets of the, the framework convention process and cop 26 in Glasgow is that the simple act of having the meeting is a success. It’s not what people say or decide there. Obviously global governance is very difficult. It’s not binding, but the Paris agreement creates an expectation that countries will act domestically, bring those commitments to a meeting like Glasgow, show them to the world. And there’s a shared commitment to action. So what really matters under the framework convention process is what happens in individual countries. So holding the U S government accountable to its commitments is really important, holding China accountable to their commitments, really important. India came out just this week with a commitment to net zero by 2070, which some people have criticized because it’s not 2050, but at the same time, India has a lot of poor people and uses very little energy compared to everyone else.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
It’s a remarkable accomplishment. And so ensuring mechanisms of accountability to commitments is the key to keeping political pressure on this topic. The other thing I will say is none of this is possible unless there’s a sustained insignificant investment around the world and energy technologies. We don’t have all the technologies we need presently. And we’re going to have to invest much more in energy, similar to like what we do on defense say where the, the world invest you, trillions of dollars in, in national defense. Energy is just as important. And we’re going to have to realize that it’s not just something that the market takes care of.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, I, I like what you had to say there. In fact, I like what you’ve written in, in many different forms, where do you go for your information, which scientists I, you can’t do all the primary research yourself, which organizations do you find most trustworthy. And we’re perhaps again, I’m leading our listeners, where would they want to go? To find, let’s say the separate, the signal from the noise.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the climate space is, is, is enormously flushed with opinions and views and so on. You know, at, at, at the core, the IPC is is held up as the consensus view on science impacts economics. But again, you have to realize that the IPC is not, you know stone tablets brought down from the mountain and it can be criticized and improve. You know, I, I hesitate to, to give a laundry list of groups. It’s really, really difficult, I think on climate, like many other global issues for people to rapidly get up to speed on the, on the topic. So I would say you know, pay attention but be critical of the people on the most extreme sides of the debate. People who say, oh, it’s, don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem. Or people say, it’s the apocalypse, the world ends in 2030. There is, there is better knowledge out there, but how best to get it? Maybe that’s something we can work on. It it’s really, really
Joe Selvaggi:
Well. I find you to be a wonderful steward in this space. I, I you, you, you point me in the right direction to, to, to, to do a deeper dive if I like it. So I really appreciate the work you’re doing on, whether it be Twitter or sub stack very, very useful. So before we end our conversation, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, how can they find you? How can they find your books and learn more about you and keep up with your, your finding in the future.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Thanks, John. Let me just say, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of our work I’m readily. Find-Able, I’m not one of those academics. Who’s was very public I’m on Twitter at Roger Pelkey, Jr. P I E L K E. I did a book about a decade ago called the climate fix, which has stood up pretty well on these issues. And people are welcome to email me. They can find me on my campus, colorado.edu, and if they have questions or, or feedback, I love to hear from, from people who take these issues seriously.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Well, that’s a great way to end our show. I appreciate your time professor pokey. This is wonderful. I hope our listeners learned quite a bit from, from you today, and thanks for taking time out of your rest Sunday morning and in Colorado.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, if you want to make it easier for others to find how long it would help, if you would offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, it also helps if you share us with friends and family, if you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to reach out to me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode:
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hey listeners. It is Kara. I am here with Gerard we’re back for another week of the learning curve. I’m coming to you from daylight savings time, Massachusetts, we are recording this right now at 4 31 and the son has. So it’s that time of year. It’s that time of year Gerard, you’re going to be having to wake me up from my nap to record our weekly episode of the learning curve.
[00:00:24] but it’s all good as we get ready to hibernate, but boy, , politics don’t stop. So last week we were talking about a particular governor’s race. I think if I recall my friend, you did not predict the outcome of your state’s gubernatorial election. We might have to go back and check the tape, but, Virginia has a new governor and it is not McAuliffe.
[00:00:46] What’s going on.
[00:00:48] Gerard Robinson [GR]: Well, we do have a new governor and, I was wrong. and not the first time because I, supported, Youngkin, in terms of my own work. But when you talk [00:01:00] about, the sun going down some, see it is going down on business as usual. And the same thing also happened in New Jersey, even though.
[00:01:10] Remained in place. And so this leads to my story that week, which is from Derrell Bradford, who is not only the president of 50 can. He’s also been a host here on the learning curve, really good piece in the daily news. And it’s from November 8th and of course, readers and listeners, you’ll find it on our webpage.
[00:01:30] He takes a look at both states and most people have no idea that Virginia and New Jersey are off cycles. And bellwether in many ways, Virginia, more so than New Jersey, but they were both bellwethers for different reasons. So Derrell says, listen, he’s got a pretty good idea about why, Terry McAuliffe, who was a former governor in a purple state, that in fact is the only Southern state to go blue in three presidential elections, flip this time for Youngkin.
[00:01:58] And he said, it’s because of critical race [00:02:00] theory and white grievance. And he said, Those are these two factors as to why that happened, but New Jersey has stated, he knows. Well, in fact, I believe he went to boarding school, in New Jersey and he said, but New Jersey is a little different while Virginia May be purple in New Jersey.
[00:02:18] You have twice as many Democrats as you do Republicans. And only a year ago by. New Jersey was 60% of the votes. Now the governor of course won again, but it was really closer than people expect. And so when you looked at both spades, either there’s these two things we should think about in terms of why we’re so close.
[00:02:36] We’re number one, he identified that Virginia had the seventh fewest days of in-person learning last year across 50 states. Guess what? New Jersey was a 10th fewest. And so. That was definitely a factor in terms of people not going to school, but that leaves the part two. He said there were a number of teacher unions and [00:03:00] associations who for a host of reasons, either decided not to open on time.
[00:03:04] Or if they did to ask for certain concessions. And so he said, but that’s just not on the east coast. He said, or even in blue states, he says, when you look at strikes and school closures, for teacher unions, that was a tactic to do things differently or to get attention, he said, but when you had quote, a spate of state wide job actions in red states, like Kentucky and Oklahoma and West Virginia, that brought public school system to a standstill.
[00:03:31] People began to ask questions. So why are the unions in fact doing this? And then you have Chicago and LA as two systems who decided to use their power in ways they thought worked best for them. Constituents, but when all was said and done, he said those two things didn’t work in favor of both democratic governors, but then he put it into a larger context of money.
[00:03:53] And we’ve talked about the American rescue plan on this show. A number of times you think about the fact to date the Biden, as he [00:04:00] said, said $123 billion. To the public schools and it’s trickling down. And yet public schools, for example, in Montclair, New Jersey or Fairfax county, Virginia, where private schools were open for most of the time, he says, well, many of your public schools were closed and why.
[00:04:19] And so parents began to ask very different questions and media of these. right wing Republican parents. Many of these in fact are true blue Democrats. And so when it’s time to go to the ballot box, they took a look at their children and took a look at their schools. They took a look at the money coming from the federal government.
[00:04:37] They took a look at what was in the classroom, what was outside. But then he said, and this is where, he really hits home in terms of optics. And he said, McAuliffe chose to have the face of school closures, AFT president Randi Weingarten B his campaign serum. Oh, the final resort while he dismissed the role of parents and education.
[00:04:59] And earlier in the [00:05:00] article, he said, really, McAuliffe’s challenge was, he said what he thought, but he did not read the audience after he said it. So a week ago we thought they were going to be. two blue governors is not one that to blue, in a state where some of the house and Senate seats flipped in New Jersey, something we haven’t also talked about.
[00:05:19] And in Virginia, we also have our first, statewide elected black woman, and we have an Hispanic as attorney. And Republicans also won the house. So a lot of good things going on, but real Bradford’s article is one worth reading because he picks up as easily. Does some really good nuances that often get lost in the noise of Paula.
[00:05:42] Cara: Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it. We can call derail a little bit like the king of nuance. And I also appreciate your analysis here. talking about his work, in fact that like at the end of the day, a lot of parents, you might identify as Republican or Democrat or something in [00:06:00] between, but.
[00:06:00] That doesn’t mean you always vote that way. And absolutely parents are looking at their own, kids are asking questions. and it seems like I, you know, it, Daryl’s always pretty good at pointing out the hypocrisy of the alphabet soup. Like that’s one of his strong suits, I think, but, , I didn’t even realize.
[00:06:19] ’cause, you know, I live under a rock sometimes here, cause it’s so dark up at 4:00 PM in Massachusetts. that Randi Weingarten had been out campaigning at those last days from a call up. But it’s a really important take. I also appreciate you are that you’re elevating that when so much of this country is going, oh my gosh, what does this mean for the VIN terms?
[00:06:36] And you know, this guy elected here and that guy limpid there and also pointing out too, that increasingly we are elected. Diverse candidates across this country. We are electing folks from racial and ethnic. And, , females, right? who’ve never been elected before, not in the kinds of numbers they are now.
[00:06:55] it’s so important to watch the local and not just get [00:07:00] wrapped up in this large swath politics and try and make predictions about what it means. Most of the. Experience politics more on the local level. The rest of it’s just sort of loud noise on my TV at night. I don’t know my husband’s flipping through the channels, but thank you for that, Gerard.
[00:07:16] is a good piece. And maybe next time Derrell. When you’re on vacation, of course not that you get to do that very often. he can talk about a little bit more of these nuanced issues. My story of the week is a bit of a hard pivot. We’re going international. And we took this one from the ed next blog this week.
[00:07:34] It’s from Christopher Thomas the title of it is educating. Girls will be our most powerful force for global change. I was drawn to this Gerard because I had, interestingly I wasn’t qualified to teach this, but in my days, working in teaching at BU I actually taught a course in child labor, which I.
[00:07:51] Study a lot, but we talked a lot about girls’ education. Interestingly, I was very pregnant when teaching course child labor. I was thought that was kind of funny, but, it’s this, [00:08:00] idea that, here in the U S is very recently, on this show, we’ve been talking about the education gap when it comes to boys and how women are outpacing men in terms of college going and college graduation and, girls outperform.
[00:08:13] their male counterparts on standardized tests and in graduation rates, all of the above. And I think, myopically, we think about these things and we easily forget that there are so many places across the globe where, , girls and women. Do not have access to education and it’s a huge problem.
[00:08:34] And one that, if we don’t pay attention to it is going to lead to a lot more problems. So this blog in this blog, it cites a Wittenstein center report that draws on 70 years of research to sort of perse out and highlight , what could happen. What are the, consequences of failing to educate such a large portion of the world population and what would happen?
[00:08:58] We actually did. if we [00:09:00] work together and, started to elevate this issue even more and ensured that young women in the places where they have the least access. So places like Africa, Melanesia and Southern Asia, that these are the places that the report names is, where. Women. And young girls had the least access to education.
[00:09:17] What would happen if girls were educated and there’s plenty of research. I’m sure you’ve seen a jury. I’m sure of listeners have seen it about like what happens economically if you give, women, micro-grants no offense here, my friend, but instead of men and that, women will, manage the money better.
[00:09:33] they’ll do more with it. They won’t spend as much they’ll save it. They’ll grow. It they’ll care for their families. And that’s, I see in a lot of developing countries when through micro grant programs, for example, but this long-term. Says, basically the same thing that if we were to educate all of the girls in this world, that we would enhance economic productivity and that that alone would improve [00:10:00] development outcomes to a huge extent.
[00:10:02] That it would also, it has implications for, for example, the global population, , when women are more educated, with some scholars are quite worried about, overpopulation, when women have access to education, they have fewer children for various reasons that we don’t need to get into now, but just really fascinating stuff in for me to regard.
[00:10:21] It was a really great reminder that, the stuff that’s going on in our own front and backyard. Oftentimes just so very different. I’m sure you could hardly imagine if the young women in your household, and I know you are surrounded, you are outnumbered, in your house. didn’t have access to school as you.
[00:10:40] Flourish and thrive. And in a reminder, too, that we are so often focused on access to primary education and talking about, educating young children and that this is really an issue about access to primary and secondary education. So that the countries shouldn’t just be able to tick a box and say, [00:11:00] oh, sure, yeah, , we’re allowing women in compulsory education, or we’re going to make education compulsory up until, you know, grades.
[00:11:06] Or grade five up until a child is 11 or 12 years old, that all humans, women and men need, access to a sound pre-K to 12 education. And that outcomes for the world would be much better. So I really appreciated this article, Gerard. I thought it was a great reminder. And at next blog always has some really cool stuff.
[00:11:27] What do you think?
[00:11:28] GR: I like the fact that you put it in an international. point of view, we’ve talked about the education of women and girls, primary schools, middle, well, primary of course, but also higher ed. So I really can’t add much more than to say.
[00:11:43] Cara: Yeah, it’s good stuff. , I hope that we hear more about this and we will bring it to our listeners as we read about it.
[00:11:48] Okay. Gerard, it’s sort of related. We’re going to be talking next to a really cool guest. I know that she is a friend of yours and, speak to her. We’re going to be talking [00:12:00] to Jennifer Mizrahi, who is the founder of an organization called respectability and her life work is dedicated to uplifting and ensuring that people with disabilities have access to all of the things that they need to live a happy and healthy life.
[00:12:18] And, she’s also philanthropists. And so investing in. Her foundations money in the causes that are near and dear to her heart. , she’s a really cool lady. And, looking forward to the conversation right now.
[00:12:52] Learning curve listeners today, we are so pleased to have with us. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. She is the president of RespectAbility, a [00:13:00] nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunity. So people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. She has published dozens of op-eds and publications on disability issues and has provided testimony in every state.
[00:13:15] Wow. She’s met one-to-one with 48 of America’s governors, as well as leaders in Washington on education skills and jobs for people with disabilities. Respectability is also working in Hollywood so that entertainment media will highlight what people with disabilities can do. Mizrahi is also the co-founder director of the Mizrahi
[00:13:34] Family Charitable Fund, and a supported over 100 terrific nonprofits over the last two decades. A graduate of Emory, Mizrahi recently got her third certificate from the executive training programs at Harvard. She is dyslexic and has ADHD and has won awards for her work at the United nations. And in many other forums, Jennifer Mizrahi, welcome to The Learning Curve.
[00:13:55] Jennifer: I am so glad to be with you today. Thank you so much for hosting. [00:14:00] Oh yeah.
[00:14:01] Cara: We’re excited to have you. And I know that you know, my partner in crime here at Gerard Robinson quite well. , so you know, your bio is just, wow. We have, a lot of people on the show with pretty fantastic bio’s but I’ve not seen one like this before.
[00:14:14] It’s pretty cool. So in the day-to-day I don’t meet many people who do this work. I would love to know more about. How you came to it and in what it is you do, like what’s the intersection here of sort of reform and philanthropy for you. So
[00:14:29] Jennifer: it’s a great question that you ask. So first of all, it’s really important when you work on solving problems that the people that you work with actually having lived experience with those problems.
[00:14:42] So. Up I’m dyslexic and have ADHD, as you mentioned, which means I have learning disabilities. I also grew up in North Carolina and in the time when I grew up, not very many people knew what dyslexia was and so it was not diagnosed. when I was a [00:15:00] child and I am very tall people who are listening to a podcast, they can’t tell that I’m a little over five 10.
[00:15:07] And guess what? I’ve been a little over five 10 since I was. Over years old, which means I got to be five, 10 before I learned how to read. so a lot of people really, called stupid or lazy, because I was really having a quote unquote, failure to thrive. And so I really. So people who have some sort of barrier to everyday living, when people think of disabilities, they usually think of, people who are blind or they use a wheelchair or they’re deaf, they have a physical disability that you can physically see.
[00:15:39] But actually the majority of the , 57 million people in America who have disabilities, you can’t say. Their disability. So I’ve really come to this because a lot of people have been taught that disability means no ability. And the thing is that disability means there’s one or more things that you can’t [00:16:00] do, but that doesn’t mean you’re not really good at lots of other things.
[00:16:04] And so one thing that I’ve seen is that, really hard bigotry of low expectations, where when they think of disability, They think pity instead of empowerment and most people with a disability, they want a hand up and not a handout. And that’s what respectability is all about is helping people with disabilities, find their abilities and achieve their dream.
[00:16:30] Cara: what an amazing story, , 5, 10, before you say you could really learn how to read and that’s, you know, I think that we all now at some point, and know when I was kid that dyslexia and other forms of, as you might put it disabilities that you can’t see were not things that people discussed or talked about.
[00:16:49] And now we have to say that as a parent, these things are much more at the four, so I’m really curious for your take on, like, if we’ve learned anything, in recent decades, [00:17:00] it sounds like through your work we have, but I also want to pick up on something here and that is, , We have a lot of, children in this country, with different learning needs and some might have different abilities when it comes to learning.
[00:17:14] And many of those kids either couldn’t be served or for some reason weren’t being served, during the pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about this particular moment in your work? And maybe also tell us a little bit about How you’re thinking about what needs to happen now, philanthropically.
[00:17:34] Jennifer: So what a good question. First of all. There are about 7 million students in America’s public schools that we know have disabilities 7 million. And because this country is becoming more and more diverse. and so our school children are more and more diverse. The majority of those students are also children of color.
[00:17:56] they might be African American, they might be an [00:18:00] immigrant themselves or their parents might’ve been imminent. If you were an English language learner, let’s say your parents came from Mexico to try and achieve the American dream. And you’re having difficulty due to this SIA. The teachers might not know is that child not learning because their parents aren’t speaking English at home or because there’s a learning discipline.
[00:18:24] If they’re in a school district that is underfunded, and this is very common because the way we pay for schools in America is through property taxes. So if you live in a wealthy neighborhood, you’re going to have a lot more resources for early intervention, for diagnosis, for speech therapists, for, learning specialists, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:18:46] If you’re in a poor neighborhood, you might not have. Any of those resources to help child. And also let’s be honest. Most marriages or most children are being raised in a single parent [00:19:00] family. I was incredibly lucky because I had a two parent family and my mom could spend a lot of time. Fighting for me to figure out what was wrong and how do I overcome it.
[00:19:12] And she personally was able to give me a lot of time to help upskill me. And if you’re in a single parent household, or if your parents are working molt, suitable jobs, who’s going to play that role. So these 7 million children. Disproportionately are finding that they might not get the right diagnosis, or if they get the right diagnosis, they’re not getting the right.
[00:19:36] What’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them to meet their needs, or they’re not implemented. And so they might get really frustrated in school and behave badly, and then they get suspended. And then once they’re suspended, they’re so far behind in their schoolwork, they might fail out or drop out.
[00:19:56] And so we see this huge correlation in [00:20:00] America with disabilities. And with incarceration because these kids will often, you know, get in trouble. And so they enter that school to prison pipeline. So America’s over 2 million people who are incarcerated a disproportionate number of them, literally a majority of people in jail or people with disabilities.
[00:20:22] Cara: I want to pick up on something that you said, Jennifer, and I know I’m going a little bit off script here, what we talked about before the show, but, , it’s really interesting to me that you bring up this point of parents and how, a lot of just amazing single parents out there doing the work and it’s so much work.
[00:20:40] And so I think to the point that you’re making to have more than one adult in your life that can not only, support. Children with whatever their unique abilities are, but also navigate the system. , in this country, it’s what, something like 12% of students in this country, we say have special needs now who knows?
[00:20:58] You probably know better [00:21:00] than I have. That’s the real number , we say here in Massachusetts, that about 17% of our students have IDPs, but that doesn’t mean that every parent. Is well-equipped to navigate all that comes with what is actually, it’s a legal process, right? And IEP is a legal document and students are do services under federal law.
[00:21:19] Could you for the parents out there, and for those who are interested in policy, talk a little bit about what parents and family members need to know about their.
[00:21:29] Jennifer: it is really hard. So I, myself, I’m a parent. as a parent, I know what it’s like to parent a child with a completely different set of disabilities than my own.
[00:21:40] And so I feel like I had to get like a master’s degree in that particular kind of disability and read a lot on the web. Luckily there’s a. Mendez amount of information for parents now on the web, including a lot of videos and tutorials and toolkits, but what if you [00:22:00] don’t have access to the internet?
[00:22:01] There are also every state has a parent regional. , center and it’s really important to also have grandparents or aunts and uncles or mentors or clergy who can help, but also to find people who are older and successful and have the same disability who can mentor a child with a disability to show them that there is a path forward to skills, jobs, and a better future, people with disabilities, they want to love, learn and earn.
[00:22:31] Just like anyone else. And so ha I’m in good role models can be extremely helpful, but the internet is a friend and it is true. There are legal rights. A child with a disability has legal rights to get what’s called an IEP, an individualized education plan for them. And then to have that plan implemented, which might mean that they’re in a smaller class size, it might be an extra teacher in the classroom.
[00:22:57] It might be, some social skills [00:23:00] training. It might be a school bus will come and pick up that child and take them to totally different school. That’s better equipped to meet their needs. So it is really important to get your legal rights and to have them taken care of and all across the country.
[00:23:16] There are actually, , free lawyers who can help, , through, , some different centers. , and people can always email me at Jennifer M at respectability dot. And I’ll try and hook them up to try and help them out.
[00:23:30] GR: So, Jennifer, speaking of technology, we live in a society where technology is driving a lot of what we do.
[00:23:38] Could you talk to our audience about how modern technology inclusive, assistive technologies and even AI is being used to help people with discipline.
[00:23:48] Jennifer: Gerard. This is such an important question because it is been such a big boost in new innovations in this space. So one of the most common [00:24:00] disabilities is that as people age, they start to lose their hearing.
[00:24:04] And now. Necessarily, , impact a child, right? Because they’re not getting old and losing their hearing. but their parent or their grandparent who might be tutoring them, who might be watching videos with them needs captions. And what’s beautiful is that if you take a video and you put it on YouTube through this AI, it will instantly generate captions automatically instantly for my favorite price, which is.
[00:24:33] And now zoom has a button that you can press on zoom, and it will also put captions instantly on your zoom, which is also good, frankly, for English language learners or for people who have cognitive disabilities that need the visual reinforcement of the words on the screen. So the instant captioning has been incredibly effective.
[00:24:56] Additionally, almost every computer that you buy [00:25:00] off the shelf, no special kind of anything needed. If you buy a Mac or you buy a Dell, it has assisted technology built in so that it will read to you text. So you can go to a website and you can ask it to read it out loud to you. And it will, which is fantastic for people who are blind or have.
[00:25:21] Low vision. It’s just a wonderful solution. So there are so many different, , solutions that are out there. But I must say one of my favorites is just remote learning and remote work. Because if you have a disability that makes it impossible for you to drive like you’re blind, or you have disc or you have epilepsy, or if you have other reasons that you really need to stay home.
[00:25:47] You can go and learn online or earn online, which is really remarkable. And so.
[00:25:54] GR: Earlier, you talked about education and in the pandemic, millions of [00:26:00] students across the country, K-12, we’re out of school, but we rarely talk about, college age or adult age, uh, students who are also out, they were impacted.
[00:26:09] We talk about learning. We haven’t really spent a lot of time talking about how , having a disability impact student achievement gaps in schools and in colleges. And you’ve been pretty vocal about this with your work with not only governors and lawmakers, but just talking about what does it mean?
[00:26:25] So educate us about what that population is going through the K12 level, but particularly colleges.
[00:26:31] Jennifer: It has been really difficult for students with disabilities because a lot of times they did get their legal rights of getting extra tutoring or extra supports or notes, or perhaps extra time on a task.
[00:26:45] But when they moved to the home invasion, They didn’t give them the same accommodations. And so those students fell very, very far behind. Look, , it’s not like I’m angry at the school teachers and, you know, everybody was faced with a pandemic. They [00:27:00] didn’t really know what to do. There was no, , book they can pull out that says in case of, pandemic break glass, and here’s the magic secret to how you can do this easily.
[00:27:10] It was very hard to try and accomplish, but we saw students have. Mendez gaps in learning that if they’re a student with a disability were enormously magnified, whether they were, a high school student and elementary school student, or a college student for some of those students, it worked out very If they’re very self-motivated and they didn’t need certain kinds of accommodations. For other students, it really was a big gap. And in fact, as you know, Gerard we’ve asked in a number of states actually across the board that students be given extra time to complete high school, for example, because legally students can stay in school only until they’re a certain age, the age of 21 with which to get their high school diploma.
[00:27:53] And we’ve said, Hey, given the pandemic, if somebody needs. A year, give them that time. New Jersey has [00:28:00] done that other places have put summer school programs in place. There is a lot of learning gaps that we’re really, really facing and really challenging. But one of the nice things has been that, some of these community colleges and other programs are now available online, which for those, for whom it is convenient, it can be very helpful.
[00:28:21] GR: You talked about college students in K-12. Your organization did a wonderful job working with Congress as related to access to food. Talk to us about.
[00:28:32] Jennifer: sometimes government does everything right. And sometimes government just completely, totally lacks common sense. And in this particular case, there was a very simple solution to a life-threatening problem.
[00:28:47] So when COVID hit, there was no vaccine, you know, and people didn’t know if you wear a mask, if that was enough, if it was coming through touch or if it was through the air, they had no idea. But what we did see in the [00:29:00] CDC early data was that 80% of the people who are going into the hospital, all the people who were dying had an underlying condition.
[00:29:10] So these are by definition people with disabilities, not my disability cause ADHD doesn’t put me at a risk. , neither does dyslexia, but , certainly people who. Heart conditions who have obesity who have chronic health conditions. They were at really, really high risk people with intellectual disabilities at super high risk.
[00:29:30] So they couldn’t go to the supermarket without having a really big risk. And yet 11 million people in America with disabilities rely on snap, which is food stamps to eat 11 million. So we were telling people who were blind. That they have to go to the supermarket to produce their food stamps in person to buy things.
[00:29:55] They were not allowed to buy food online. So one of the things that we did was we [00:30:00] had to go state by state governor, by governor and get them to change it because if somebody is getting food stamps so that they can eat, why can’t they order the food online? Just like other people use Instacart or Walmart or.
[00:30:14] As on to order food, why couldn’t people use food stamps for online? It’s no additional money. And so fortunately 46 states have now changed that. And the only states that haven’t changed, it are states that are so rural that there’s not really a food delivery service in place. So over well, approximately 10 million people with disabilities no longer had to make a choice between.
[00:30:42] Eating and catching COVID. So this was just something that was common sense that needed to get done.
[00:30:48] GR: Well, as we close out my last question for you, you focused on government, you focused on K-12 and college, but we also know that Hollywood plays an important [00:31:00] role in shaping who we see what we think about them.
[00:31:04] Talk to the audience about the work you’re doing to diversify Hollywood in ways we often don’t think about when we hear diversity.
[00:31:11] Jennifer: I’m so glad you asked that question because if you see it, you can be it. And when people with disabilities are shown for what they can do, instead of what they can’t, their dreams get bigger.
[00:31:25] And people are more willing to let them have the opportunities that they achieve that they deserve to have to achieve. So the first one that we worked on was born this way on a Annie network, which won 13 Emmy nominations and three wins, including best reality series. Jonathan Murray, our board member made that series and it starts seven diverse people with down syndrome and it showed them getting jobs.
[00:31:51] And having friends and living as independently as possible, a followup season is currently available for free on peacock [00:32:00] core, born for business. It’s a terrific 10 part series that shows for people with disabilities who started their own successful companies and how they navigate running a. During COVID and then of course, there’s blockbusters.
[00:32:14] So check out the internals. The internals is the new Marvel movie, and you will see a fabulous character who is a deaf woman, super hero, who also happens to be African-American and really cool. And they’re even our dolls now for this character showing positive role models so that children can dream dreams about having better lives.
[00:32:37] And then they can go out reach.
[00:32:40] Cara: I have to say this new Marvel movies, all the hype in my house right now, my kids can’t wait
[00:32:46] Jennifer: to see.
[00:32:47] Cara: And one of them might not be old enough and it might let them anyway. I’ve already heard some great stuff about the character you’ve mentioned on various radio programs and newspapers.
[00:32:55] So really exciting stuff. , it’s so rare, , that we have, I [00:33:00] guess, Such breadth on this show. This is then a really wonderful, half hour for Gerard and for me, and we thank you so much, Jennifer for joining us today. Just great work and we’re so happy to be able to, elevate it and highlight it for our listeners.
[00:33:17] Jennifer: Well, thank you for having me and thanks for all you all do. It’s really traumatic. We try our best.
[00:33:25] Cara: You take care and stay safe and we’ll be on the lookout for all of your great work. And
[00:33:30] Jennifer: for those movies you mentioned. Thank you.
[00:33:54] Cara: And we’re going to close it out with our tweet of the week. I love this one because I’m always encouraging my [00:34:00] kids to get up and move. Especially when they’re screaming at me that they want to scream. And I’m evil mommy saying no, but this is from ed week. , yesterday, his tweet came out. So we are recording on the ninth.
[00:34:10] This is, November 8th, new neuroscience research suggests that kids are feeling isolate. P E can help them bounce back. So it’s just a really great article in ed week that in brief talks about the fact that yeah, the pandemic has isolated our kids. Isolation is not great for kids, but it also shows and anybody who’s an exerciser, as I am knows that, exercise can lower, your anxiety can lower your stress levels has great benefits for us cognitively.
[00:34:42] So it’s all about getting those kiddos up and out and getting them on the move. So schools, even as you think about, all of that learning loss and everything we need to do to catch kids. Let’s make sure they’re moving while they’re doing it. And they’re moving in between next week listeners. We are going to be speaking [00:35:00] with Paul Israel.
[00:35:00] He is the director and general editor of the Thomas Edison papers at Rutgers university. He’s also the author of Edison, a life of invention. What a great title for a great man. Take care of yourself. And, I’m actually gonna get to see you in person soon. We won’t say where, but I’ll get to see what person said looking forward to, to my friend, but we’ll talk to you before that and you have a great week ahead.
[00:35:24] GR: Take care.
[00:35:25] Bye-bye.
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Climate’s Brighter Future: COP26 Ignores Its Own IPCC Report
/in Featured, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffThis week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks to Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., Professor of Climate Science at the University of Colorado, about the widening gap between the catastrophic predictions proffered at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, and the less dire observations contained in the UN’s own recent IPCC report.
Guest:
Roger Pielke with the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)
Roger A. Pielke Jr. is a political scientist and professor. He served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year. Prof. Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was director of graduate studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies. Pielke serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, retains many professional affiliations, and sat on the board of directors of WeatherData, Inc. from 2001 to 2006. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.
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Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute a think tank in Boston. 2021 United nations climate change conference. The 26 conference of the parties also known as COP 26 is being held in Glasgow, Scotland between October 31st and November 12th leaders from around the world are meeting to coordinate policies to address the dangers of climate change. But policy choices are being largely based on the scientific findings compiled in the intergovernmental panel on climate change reports most recently released in August. This report was characterized by many leaders, such as UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as they quote code red for humanity, going on to say that the alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable. Greenhouse gas emissions are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. But this the newest IPC report actually support such a dire outlet, or if political leaders possibly motivated by desire to catalyze action on climate policy badly missed characterize the IPCCs report findings and in so doing damage, their public credibility and the prospects for productive climate policy.
Joe Selvaggi:
My guess today is Roger Pielke, Jr. Professor of the environmental studies program at the university of Colorado at Boulder, before joining the university of Colorado faculty, he was a scientist at the national center for atmospheric research. Professor Pielke is the author of eight books as testified on climate science before Congress and has contributed articles on climate to the financial times. And other news outlets, Professor Pielke’s work focuses on how science and public policy interact professor Pielke was shared with us. The findings of the most recent EPCC report and discuss in what ways it has diverge from its own earlier predictions. It will also describe the widening gap between scientific observations and the dire predictions made by many political leaders. The theme of professor Pookie’s recent work is that effective climate policy rests on confidence in the integrity of the climate science community. For that reason, science and scientists must not become politicized and climate policy leaders must adjust their rhetoric to match the reality of newer climate observations. When I return, I’ll be joined by university of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now joined by the university of Colorado at Boulder professor. Roger Pielke Jr. Welcome to Hubwonk, Roger. Thanks Joe. Good to be here. All right. Well this is a very timely conversation. This week 30,000 people, including many world leaders are meeting in Glasgow to discuss global policy steps to address climate change. I want to talk about the most recent scientific observations on climate change, the data that undergird the decisions at this time, but before we dive into the science I wanna, I want to talk about how you came to clients, climate science, you’ve written eight books you’ve testified before Congress. You’ve written in articles in financial times. You have a fantastic sub SAC account talking about climate. But what, what drew you to climate science back in the day?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I guess it’s a, I guess it’s in my DNA. My father is one of the leading atmospheric scientists of his generation and he pioneered three-dimensional numerical modeling of the atmosphere. And so I grew up hearing a lot about atmospheric science employment. I went into the policy direction and when I did my PhD in the early 1990s, I was looking for a really hard policy evaluation topic. And the topic I tick, which is very niche and esoteric at the time was how well does climate science relate to climate policy and really have studied the issue on and off in different dimensions for almost 30 years.
Joe Selvaggi:
I guess your goal was to ensure that the science informs policy and they’re all on the same song sheet. There’s not a big difference between what the science indicates and what policy makers are using.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
We want that our relationship to work well in two dimensions. One is one is we want science to inform policy, of course, but we also want to make sure that politics doesn’t corrupt or under undermine the integrity of science as well. So we want them integrated not separated, but how to do that can be often tricky, particularly on highly contentious topics.
Joe Selvaggi:
That leads me to my next question, which is you’ve seen science to climate science progress over 30 years. And you’ve said it’s, it’s gone from a, a lively disagreement amongst scientists, which is natural. That’s the nature of science to I’m moving more to the front pages of news and political journals. I don’t know if you would agree with me, but I read that it was somewhere around 2008, 2009. You saw an inflection point from where we were talking pure science and, and a lively debate on, on scenarios to something a little bit different. Can you describe to our listeners what you saw in 2008, 2009 as a, as a shift?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, the first thing to say is that the core findings of climate science have been remarkably strong and consistent since at least the 1980s, when the ITCC intergovernmental panel on climate change was first created that humans affect the climate system. Those effects can cause serious risks and we should definitely take some steps to do something about it that hasn’t really changed over time. What has changed is how that science gets overlaid on, on, on politics policy, the media and the public debate. And really the shift that I experienced and saw in this issue was more around 2006. It coincided with when Al Gore’s movie came out and inconvenient truth. And the idea that in order to, to gain traction on the climate issue with the public advocates would have to bring it home to people that means to, to make it relevant to their daily lives. And the way that that that was done was to associate extreme events and really every extreme event hurricane tornadoes floods with climate change to try to instill in, but the public mind that that’s what climate change is. It’s, it’s extremes very media friendly images of disasters and hurricanes. And that became a much more a focus in the years since about 2006, 2007 and generally motivated by a coordinated effort by, by funders and advocacy groups to, to bring climate to the public.
Joe Selvaggi:
So the public is an expert in science, mainly maybe an expert in data analysis, but they, they know the weather they see it every day around the world. So that brought it home to the ordinary citizen. Climate change is real and it’s causing so the inference goes climate change is causing a severe weather events. Is that what you’re saying?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And it’s I mean the, the public and policymakers have always been well out in front of the, where the sciences on that topic, very, very ready to accept that this or that event was caused by, by, by greenhouse gas emissions or climate change. Even when the science was more nuanced and, you know, obviously complex than that simple formulation. So it, it, it has not been a difficult argument to make in the public’s eye. It’s just that sometimes the science isn’t always there to back that up.
Joe Selvaggi:
So let’s take a step back and talk about the science. We’re as I said, the world leaders are meeting for the cup 26 meeting in Glasgow. It’s odd to me that they’re using the IPCCs most recent data as support for what I, you know, many are calling code red for planet earth or for mankind. But in reading your sub stack and your articles on the issue, you’ve heard the same report. It’s 3000 pages long. I’ll admit I have not read it. But you characterize the most recent IPC report is having fundamentally a good message. One that is trending more positive rather than indicating you know, the, the, the earth is doomed. Say more about that difference.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So, so the way that the IPC works and climate science generally is we generate scenarios of the future. The future is an uncertain place and we could, we can’t predict very well. What’s going to happen in five years, 10 years. So we have a wide range of scenarios to characterize plausible futures and then explore policy options, climate impacts, economic outcomes within that set of scenarios. And the biggest change really in the, the, the thinking about scenarios over the last 20 years is that the most extreme scenarios and by extreme, I mean that the world is going to burn all of the coal that we can find to, to generate not just electricity, but all of our energy consumption. We’re going to take coal and we’re going to turn it into liquids and put it into our car.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Those scenarios that, that once we’re thought where we were headed are now pretty much off the table as plausible futures. So, so where the world is headed is, is much less apocalyptic than was thought only six or seven years ago. Now that doesn’t mean that, that reducing fossil fuel use or getting to net zero carbon dioxide is any easier. It’s a huge, enormous challenge. But it does say that we have a future that’s, that’s a lot less scary than maybe we thought before, even as the rhetoric goes in a different direction.
Joe Selvaggi:
I want you to take a step back and talk about the weather phenomenon. Again, we’re equating or leaders that are, as you say, out in front of the science equating global warming with weather and in particular, again, this is I think it was the world health organization characterize global warming as the single greatest threat facing humanity, pretty bold statement. There’s lots of threats, and this is the worst. If we accept that the world has been warming, I think our listeners may all accept that at least for the less half 150 years, that’s this global warming equated to an increase in deaths, attributed to climate. In other words, there is a warmer world, more dangerous for the average human.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
So this is an exceedingly difficult signal to tease out because it’s not just the climate that changes. It’s how we live on planet earth, where we live, how we build the procedures we have for evacuation when there’s an emergency. One of the most remarkable and, and, and underappreciated science, technical policy success stories of the last century is the incredible drop in vulnerability of humans to extreme weather phenomenon. Vulnerability has dropped something like 99.7, 5% in a, in a century. It was not uncommon in the 1920s for millions of people to die in a single year due to extreme weather phenomenon. Now it’s, there’s still too many who die, but it’s, it’s in the tens of thousands, low tens of thousands or less. It’s a huge success story. And it’s due to science technology and things like meteorology weather, forecasting, evacuation and so on. So if you’re have a trend from millions to tens of thousands of sharp trend downward, it’s very difficult to say, well, deaths are increasing due to climate change. Now going forward are our progress on reducing vulnerability and, and, and the good news on depression may not continue. That’s, there’s no guarantee of that. But we do know as a global society, how to reduce vulnerabilities to, to weather extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’ve adapted. I think I read somewhere that as recently as a hundred years ago the average earthling member of planet earth had one in 1000 chance of dying from a weather event. And now given the population and the risk we’re at one in 400,000 risk of dying from a weather event, as you say, it’s a reduction of 99.7, 5%, that’s substantial, but what would you say to critics saying that sure, we’ve adapted. We’ve been able to anticipate hurricanes and move inland but we’re at the precipice of a inflection point that suddenly weather will will become much more extreme. We w this is the calm before the storm to torture cliche. What would you say to that?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, and I mean, this is where we go back from the, the, the, the very hot public debate. And, and the, some of the imagery you see in the media and what politicians may say, let’s go back to the IPC and see what that projects in, in coming decades for, for changes in extremes. And yes, there are some, some projected changes and most notably heat waves are expected to increase, become more severe in many places around the world. But on the other hand, take a phenomenon like drought or tropical cyclones hurricanes. It will be very difficult to even detect those changes for many, many decades. So the idea that we’re on a precipice, or we’re on a the edge of the apocalypse, and it just doesn’t stand up when you compare that to the science. But when I, you know, when I engage people in this topic if they want to believe that that that’s fine, it’s not my job to convince them that they’re wrong. But what that should, should lead to is an agreement among everyone that yes, we have to keep investing in adaptation in vulnerability reduction. We have to be better prepared for an uncertain future. So I don’t think the policy choices we would make are particularly sensitive to whether one has an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future. We just have to keep doing those things that we know have worked to reduce vulnerabilities to two extremes.
Joe Selvaggi:
You break down extreme weather in your most recent book. I found it interesting and surprising, and frankly in there you break down which weather events affect human beings or kill human beings and talk about the trends, whether they’re going up or downward effect. I simply just assumed that events like hurricanes and tropical cyclones were becoming more numerous you know, just seems to be that way. That’s the narrative. What is your data? Let, let’s just briefly break it down by a phenomenon what’s going up and what’s going down, you mentioned heat waves, that’s, that’s going up. But what’s, what’s, what’s everything else doing.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. And, and, and this is a timely question because the IPC just released its sixth assessment report you know, a month ago or so which went through phenomenon by phenomena trends in extreme weather phenomenon around the world. And as you say, heat waves have increased what’s called extreme precipitation. And we have to be careful with that because extreme precipitation is a scientific term that has increased in, in many places around the world. The ITCC is very careful to say extreme precipitation does not necessarily mean that flooding has increased. And that may be counterintuitive at first, but then you realize, well, you know, here, here in Boulder, Colorado, if we got an inch of rain today, that would be pretty extreme in the fall it can happen, but it wouldn’t lead to floods. And so that’s why the ITCC says with respect to flooding there hasn’t been an overall global increase with respect to tropical cyclones, there has not been an overall increase in the intensity or frequency of storms on a century timescale.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
And that comes as a surprise to many people on the IPC breaks down drought into several technical categories. But the types of drought that most people are aware of are what’s called meteorological or hydrological drought. And they find ones rainfall in ones surface flows of water, and they find that there are no trends globally in that type of drought. They do find there is a trend in what’s called ecological or agricultural drought, which refers to soil moisture. But then we get into a phenomenon like hurricanes tornadoes, straight line winds, winter storms and, and there is, is number one. There’s not great data everywhere on the world, but the ITCC has not detected upwards trends in, in any of those phenomenon. So, so when you, when you paint the whole picture and it’s really important to go phenomenon by phenomenon, because extreme weather is, is, is a big bin with a lot of different climate biological phenomenon. But when you go there, you, you find that the headline events that we often see in the newspaper particularly floods, hurricanes, tornadoes there’s not a strong evidence of upward trends over climate timescales. So,
Joe Selvaggi:
So if there’s no measurable trend attribution is impossible because you can’t attribute something to nothing, right?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the IP is, is quite explicit when it comes to attributing long-term multi-decade trends. And you know, obviously the increase in the global surface temperature has been detected and attributed to human caused climate change, but you can’t say the same for many extreme weather events. That’s not, that’s not at all surprising extreme weather events by definition are rare. And so the statistics of, of rare events are such that it takes a long time to detect changes. So, so really things are unfolding much as the IPC has projected. And if you actually do the math for something like tropical cyclones, we wouldn’t expect to be able to detect those changes till late in the century, if then even under some of the more aggressive scenarios of climate change.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to go back to the IPCs see the the different scenarios. I think they’re called representative concentration pathways are CPS, and there are different probabilities of different scenarios. They said the most extreme miss is very unlikely, largely based on the fact that it was deliberately designed to be worst case scenario where every, everybody burns all the coal possible on planet earth, very, very unlikely, but necessary perhaps from a scientific argument perspective. And yeah, as unlikely as that scenario is, it seems that in many times that scenario is brought up as sort of the core prediction. You’ve observed that the, the RPCC is observed that that’s a very, very unlikely in that afar, a different path is more likely. Why do you think policy makers anchor on worst case scenario is that by virtually all standards are highly unlikely or virtually impossible.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. This, I mean, this is, there’s a, there’s a fascinating story here. Like that gets into things like the sociology of science and communication and so on, but early on when, when the climate community said, all right, we need scenarios of the future to, to, to drive our climate models. What they said was, well, let’s have, let’s have a low one that has a very low greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Let’s have a high one with really a high ones emissions, and then let’s have a couple in the middle. That was it. There was no consideration of worst case of likelihood of plausibility. These were scenarios that were chosen to to help support climate research, which is really important, really legitimate completely justifiable. But when those four scenarios where were put into the research community and eventually into publish papers, going through university, press offices, press releases, media coverage, then finding their way into policymakers, discussions, and advocacy.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
In that process, the most extreme of those four scenarios became represented as the most likely path that we’re on called business as usual. There’s a lot of reasons for why that happened. But that is a core I would say a core shortfall in how scenarios are used by the IPC, because no one in that process has responsibility for evaluating the plausibility or likelihood of any of these scenarios. And so as research has gone on over subsequent 10 or 15 years, it’s been been discovered that this most extreme scenario of the set is highly implausible. And, and in fact, art, some of our research suggests that it’s already falsified that, that, that the world is so far from it in 2021, that it’s not at all appropriate as a guide to the future. So this sets up a very challenging situation for climate research and advocacy, because much of the discussion that we have about the long-term future is grounded in a vision of futures that just aren’t possible. And so that makes it really, really difficult, I think, to have a science, grounded discussion of the climate issue, because it’s been off track for a while now.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I want to dig deep, more deeply into why you’re using the wrong scenario is so harmful or potentially harmful, but let’s talk about why it’s implausible, what has changed in in recent years regardless, let’s start at the basics CO2 or, or fossil fuels burning create greenhouse gases and those have some correlation with rising temperatures and we’re, we’re going to attribute some, so we’re going to say it’s causation. But much of the world has changed their energy sources and the U S we’ve actually backed away from coal in, in, in in a different direction. I I’ve read some of your work, which says we’re at, we’re already past our peak CO2 output as is you know, much of the world is approaching. This is this largely why a you’re more, let’s say sanguine than the the most extreme predictions are we trending either in a better direction or in fact downward?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. So I mean, if one’s vision of the long-term future is that greenhouse gas emissions are just going up, up, up, up. It makes the, the magnitude of the challenge of reducing them, which is already huge enough. It makes it look bigger than it actually is, and it can create a sense of helplessness. And, you know, there’s studies out there now that say that that youth are paralyzed by fear of the future. To say that the future is not apocalyptic doesn’t mean that it’s perfect and everything we can go about our business and forget about climate change. I’m, I’m a policy scholar. And what I teach my students is that if you want to solve a really difficult, complicated problem, the first thing you have to do is characterize the size of that problem accurately. And so I do think it’s highly problematic if we have misleading scenarios for the future guiding our policy responses.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Now the counter argument to that is, oh, well, yeah, maybe they’re wrong, but if they scare people and they motivate them, that might help the politics of climate change. And then this gets into issues related to the ethics of science and science communication. I’m, I’m a stickler for being accurate about the science and having policy justifications that, that, that are well grounded in, in science. The reason for that is we want science to be perceived to be legitimate and not just today, but for the next 20 years, 50 years. And if scientists are perceived as exaggerating threats that can’t be good for, for policy or politics.
Joe Selvaggi:
So those who would perceive it as a noble lie to to exaggerate the threat would say it is indeed noble lie because that’s what we need to do to shake the ordinary citizen out of complacency and address this issue. They, they justify the exaggeration by saying the ends justify the means.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, we see that a lot. And I mean, that’s often how politics works and, and, you know, I, I’m not of any illusion that, that we experts can, can shape how politicians behave. But what we do have control of is how we behave in the scientific community and, and by avoiding the noble lie or trying to campaign based on research, we know is dated or flawed. We can help keep the integrity of science solid going forward. And honestly, the science of climate change is robust enough. The futures are scary enough by being accurate that we don’t have to exaggerate. We don’t need to. And so I see it as a, as an entirely unnecessary debate and what we should be doing in the, in the expert community is just updating and fixing the scenarios and moving on and why we have this debate and why people defend bad science is is, is, is interesting. And it’s story in itself,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed we both have started, or you have scientifically asserted that global temperatures are rising. It’s largely attributable to gases. So that’s what we to labeled either of us as climate deniers. Let’s, let’s, let’s establish that we both certainly accept that that trend. So what are the solutions that you’ve explored or that the science or the general climate science community we often talk about renewables, wind and solar to my reading, these are challenging and their own, right. There’s the physics of the, of the thing. They, you know, the wind doesn’t always blow. And certainly we know the sun doesn’t shine even there in Boulder all the time. Is this our way out of this challenge?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Well, there’s a burst, it’s always sunny in Boulder. It’s beautiful. So at a very simple level, the answer is yes. And, and then you start getting into some of the complexities and the answer’s no, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the mathematics are really straightforward that if we’re going to stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, our emissions of greenhouse gases in total, but in particular carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have to go to zero and we may want them to go below zero in the sense that we start taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The only way that we get emissions to go to zero is we replace oil, natural gas, and coal with alternative energy sources. And I, in my book, the climate fix, I call for a stance of technological agnosticism.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Once you get into energy technology discussions, you’ll find that every energy technology has a constituency, and they think that their technology is the solution, whether it’s wind or solar or nuclear or geothermal or carbon capture or whatever it happens to be. And I’m very much of the view that the more carbon free or low carbon technologies we have on the table, the greater our chances for success. And in fact, as we’re learning with the energy crisis in the UK and in Europe a diversity of supply is a good thing and not just for climate reasons, but for reliability reasons, for cost reasons for geopolitics. So, so when I see the debate on climate change, getting wrapped up in the debate over closing nuclear power plants, for example I think that’s, that’s a bit frustrating because nuclear is a good solid option to have on the table, not uniquely, but alongside with renewables and other technologies. When you do the math you realize that an energy transformation of the global energy system, it’s not something that you’ve accomplished in a year in a decade, even in a couple of decades, this is a challenge of the century. And getting to net zero CO2 will be a policy focus throughout the 21st century. It’s not a quick turnaround sort of issue. I am quite optimistic though that because it’s a technological challenge humanity’s up for it.
Joe Selvaggi:
You, you mentioned every energy source has its constituency. Maybe I might put myself in the nuclear camp, I’m perplexed that particularly those people who are apocalyptic about the future and see it an existential threat to humanity and to earth clearly nuclear has virtually infinite power potential and zero CO2 emission. Why would the environmental community, maybe this is not a fair to take it, but why do they seem to be so reticent to adapt nuclear with it with both arms?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a long history of concerns about nuclear power that goes back to, to, you know, really, you know, my parents generation and folks from the 1960s with nuclear energy, getting wrapped up with concerns about war and weapons. Of course, you know, it’s three mile island and Chernobyl and every energy, every energy technology has risks. Nuclear is risks are, are, are what are called dread risks because radiation and meltdowns are really scary. But when you burn fossil fuels, you put particulate air pollution into the atmosphere, and that creates risks of premature deaths from bad air quality. It’s not as dreadful as a nuclear power plant. So there’s a lot of reasons. I, what I tell people in an environmentalist and my students is it’s perfectly legitimate to conclude that you’re more afraid of nuclear power than you are of climate change or vice versa.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Just realize that when you take nuclear off the table, you have then made the challenge that much bigger to to decarbonize the global energy system. But let me say, I, I think that, that the debates over nuclear power have to have taken a turn. Just this week, China has announced they’re going to build a 150 new nuclear power plants. There’s a lot of research going into what’s called advanced nuclear energy. So I do think that we will see you know, in my children’s generation and their children’s generation a recommitment to nuclear, because it just offers such a massive amount of clean energy that you can’t get presently from anywhere else. And it’s complimentary to renewables like solar and wind.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. And here in Boston, across the river in Cambridge, we’re working on actually the potential of a nuclear fusion, which we would actually not have any waste. So who knows what the future brings. It’s very exciting. We’re getting close to our end of our time together. I want to talk about, of course, we’re talking about energy production and alternatives for energy production, but there are other ways we could address the CO2 in the atmosphere. One of which is perhaps taking it out with some sort of carbon sequestration that doesn’t seem to be much conversation about that. That seems like an as an exciting technological alternative. And even again these, these topics are considered taboo G geoengineering that is to perhaps make the earth a little less absorbent of, of sunlight and reflect a little more back into space. We do have some ideas on that. Why are we not going towards running towards these ideas? And, you know, we’re, we’re a curious species that likes to solve problems. Why, why aren’t we running headlong into those kinds of alternatives?
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. The technologies of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or taking it off the top of a smoke stack and a fossil fuel power plant, these technologies are, are fundamental to the scenarios of the IPC. So when you look to the future, there’s a big bet that these scenarios are going to pan out. And you’re exactly right, that the, the amount of attention and research funding that’s paid to them is, is a lot less than the role that they’re expected to play in the future. That’s going to have to turn around. I’m a big supporter of investments in innovation, all along from the, you know, the basic research to the deployment and, and bringing to market because it’s through technology that will address this, this issue. So that’s going to have to change it. And who knows whether fusion or carbon capture technologies will pan out, but we can be sure they won’t pan out if we don’t invest in them.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Geoengineering, I think is a whole different, whole different category of issues that involves not mitigating climate change of trying to compensate for it. By putting particulates up in the high atmosphere by, by seeding the ocean or changing the albedo of the earth in some ways by brightening clouds from where I sit, you know, I wrote a chapter on this in my book. It’s just a bad idea because if we’re worried about climate change due to human influences, do we really just want to add another layer of human influence on the climate system rather than removing that influence? We’re not really good at anticipating the current consequences of climate change. Do we think that if we try to intentionally modulate the earth, it’s going to work out great for everyone? So, so it’s, it’s kind of a Dr. Strangelove sort of, sort of path forward. And it, for me, it’s, it’s, it’s just not the the smartest move given that we’ve already made progress, as you’ve said you know, reducing coal use in many places around the world, not everywhere. And, and we do have some optimism that we can continue to decarbonizing the energy system.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, you and I were not invited to Glasgow this week. And but let’s say you were her and you were the head speaker and a, you have to have the 30,000 or so people sitting in front of you listening intently to your recommendations. If you have that speech and you were to speak to those leaders, what would you want to see as the, let’s say, low hanging fruit? What could we do that would be the most impactful and perhaps if you can most politically feasible again, considering the global, not just what we do in the U S but globally for nearly a billion people.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. One of the, one of the secrets of the, the framework convention process and cop 26 in Glasgow is that the simple act of having the meeting is a success. It’s not what people say or decide there. Obviously global governance is very difficult. It’s not binding, but the Paris agreement creates an expectation that countries will act domestically, bring those commitments to a meeting like Glasgow, show them to the world. And there’s a shared commitment to action. So what really matters under the framework convention process is what happens in individual countries. So holding the U S government accountable to its commitments is really important, holding China accountable to their commitments, really important. India came out just this week with a commitment to net zero by 2070, which some people have criticized because it’s not 2050, but at the same time, India has a lot of poor people and uses very little energy compared to everyone else.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
It’s a remarkable accomplishment. And so ensuring mechanisms of accountability to commitments is the key to keeping political pressure on this topic. The other thing I will say is none of this is possible unless there’s a sustained insignificant investment around the world and energy technologies. We don’t have all the technologies we need presently. And we’re going to have to invest much more in energy, similar to like what we do on defense say where the, the world invest you, trillions of dollars in, in national defense. Energy is just as important. And we’re going to have to realize that it’s not just something that the market takes care of.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, I, I like what you had to say there. In fact, I like what you’ve written in, in many different forms, where do you go for your information, which scientists I, you can’t do all the primary research yourself, which organizations do you find most trustworthy. And we’re perhaps again, I’m leading our listeners, where would they want to go? To find, let’s say the separate, the signal from the noise.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. I mean, the climate space is, is, is enormously flushed with opinions and views and so on. You know, at, at, at the core, the IPC is is held up as the consensus view on science impacts economics. But again, you have to realize that the IPC is not, you know stone tablets brought down from the mountain and it can be criticized and improve. You know, I, I hesitate to, to give a laundry list of groups. It’s really, really difficult, I think on climate, like many other global issues for people to rapidly get up to speed on the, on the topic. So I would say you know, pay attention but be critical of the people on the most extreme sides of the debate. People who say, oh, it’s, don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem. Or people say, it’s the apocalypse, the world ends in 2030. There is, there is better knowledge out there, but how best to get it? Maybe that’s something we can work on. It it’s really, really
Joe Selvaggi:
Well. I find you to be a wonderful steward in this space. I, I you, you, you point me in the right direction to, to, to, to do a deeper dive if I like it. So I really appreciate the work you’re doing on, whether it be Twitter or sub stack very, very useful. So before we end our conversation, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, how can they find you? How can they find your books and learn more about you and keep up with your, your finding in the future.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Yeah. Thanks, John. Let me just say, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of our work I’m readily. Find-Able, I’m not one of those academics. Who’s was very public I’m on Twitter at Roger Pelkey, Jr. P I E L K E. I did a book about a decade ago called the climate fix, which has stood up pretty well on these issues. And people are welcome to email me. They can find me on my campus, colorado.edu, and if they have questions or, or feedback, I love to hear from, from people who take these issues seriously.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Well, that’s a great way to end our show. I appreciate your time professor pokey. This is wonderful. I hope our listeners learned quite a bit from, from you today, and thanks for taking time out of your rest Sunday morning and in Colorado.
Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr.:
Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, if you want to make it easier for others to find how long it would help, if you would offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, it also helps if you share us with friends and family, if you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to reach out to me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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