Science Friday
Hosted by Flora Lichtman
Original podcast
Elizabeth Kolbert has been writing about the environment for decades. And right now, she isn't feeling optimistic.
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Hey, it's Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday. We are talking to one of my journalism idols. Elizabeth Kolbert has been writing about climate and the environment for decades. I remember being awed in the early 2000s by her groundbreaking series in The New Yorker on climate change, and the wannabe science writer that I was was really moved. Kolbert's writing takes you all over the world and shows you how these giant existential threats are playing out for people, animals, and ecosystems. And she takes you inside the messy business of trying to solve these problems that we've created.
Kolbert won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. The Science Friday Book Club is currently reading her latest book, Life on a Little Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World. It's a collection of essays she's written over the years, and today, we're diving into some of those stories and reflecting on her career that has shaped the way we think about climate and the environment. Elizabeth, welcome back to Science Friday.
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
There's a story in the book that starts with you whacking a bush with a stick. What were you doing?
I was out with an entomologist named Dave Wagner, one of the world's leading caterpillar experts, and we were looking for caterpillars. I would like to say that before I started out with Dave, before I headed out to Texas with Dave, I did not know that that was how you search for caterpillars. But it turns out that what you do is you take what's called a beading sheet, which sort of looks like a kite, and you put it under a bush or a plant that you're interested to see what's eating off of, and then you whack it with a pole, and whatever is on there, caterpillars mainly, also leaves and just bits of debris, falls into this beading
sheet, and then you have to sift through it to see what you've got. And it's a little bit like going on a treasure hunt.
It's a little violent sounding.
It's a little violent sounding, but I think no caterpillars were really harmed in making this film. Whatever falls in there... Uh, most of it just gets released because it's not terribly interesting and makes its way back onto the bush. If something's very interesting, it does get put into a vial for study. So I guess some caterpillars do, do sacrifice their lives for the sake of science.
Yeah, and some get squished under a shoe in a hotel room.
Yes, unfortunately, that also happens.
You know, caterpillars seem to be a little undersung. What do people miss about them?
Well, caterpillars, which are just the larval stage of any moth or butterfly, they are hugely important to ecosystems. They transfer a tremendous amount of energy from leaf matter, so photosynthesis basically, to the animal kingdom because they're a huge food source for many other creatures, particularly birds. And yet, a great deal is not known about what caterpillars need, what food sources they need. So in a sense, you could argue the conservation of a lot of species of moths and butterflies depends on knowing that entire life cycle.
Wagner, the scientist who's, who you profile, is working on this four-volume encyclopedia of just Western North American caterpillars, which like struck me as like my struggle caterpillar version.
That's a very, that's a very, very apt analogy. I really like it. But yes, let's just say a deep dive, encyclopedic, supposed to be, you know, the definitive source on, on Western caterpillars. And there are many, many of them, you know, probably many more than even Dave will be able to collect in one lifetime or describe in one lifetime. But I think that's just a- Testimony to how little is known about caterpillars. Such a work does not exist. It does exist for, you know, many, many other creatures.
Well, let's zoom out for a second. I mean, like much of your work, we start somewhere intriguing and delightful and end somewhere really depressing. This caterpillar jaunt takes us to the insect apocalypse. I mean, obviously, that's powerful branding, but is that truly what's happening?
Well, the news from the insect world is, is really
bad. It's very, it should be very disturbing to all of us because insects are, make up, you know, the majority of species on Earth. I mean, there is a famous joke that to a first approximation, all species on Earth are insects. They, they just, this number of insect species just, you know, really dwarfs all other groups. And they are what makes the world run. They, they disperse seeds, they pollinate, they decompose. They're a huge food source for, for many other different groups. So if you're starting to lose your insects, you are really doing something very serious to the planet.
And just about everywhere that people look, they find very serious declines in insect numbers. And that should really be a much bigger story than it's, than it has been.
Let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about another story in the collection. You wrote back in, in 2008. It's about this small Danish community that goes carbon neutral. Tell us about it.
So that story's about an island called Samsso. The people who live on Samsso are, are mostly farmers, potato farmers and strawberry farmers. And, and there's a fairly significant tourist industry as well. But as they all put it to me, you know, they were not unusual people. They were just ordinary people. And the-
Message of the piece really was that a small group of people that put their minds to it and really had a plan and some smart policies also on a national level. So it was a very hopeful story and it was an example of what can be done when people put their minds to it. And one of the things that has sort of shocked me, to be honest, in the interim of almost 20 years is how few communities have followed that example.
You know, what was interesting to me is that, like you said, it was a community of ordinary people. They didn't identify as sort of like energy ideologues. But what happens is that energy use becomes a kind of sport on the island.
Yeah, I think it showed the power of just focusing attention on something. If you just sort of get people to focus on something. And it became almost, as you say, a game. How can we do this? How much energy can we save? How can we make this transition? But coupled with that, you know, I have to point out, were policies that made it make economic sense. So this is an island, you know, and it has a lot of wind power. It's a very windy place. And so there were policies in place that really encouraged farmers to put up turbines on their own land. And then they put up some really significant offshore wind. And I actually, as part of the piece, I climbed a wind turbine.
I climbed to the top of a wind turbine, which was a really interesting and terrifying experience, but quite exciting.
Coming up after the break, I want to get a little personal and sort of reflect on your career and how you think about the urgency of these issues that you cover and how you handle it. Are you up for that?
Sure.
An enthusiastic sure.
I'll try.
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So you have devoted, you know, a huge chunk of your career to covering climate and the environment. How depressed are you right now?
Well, I'm certainly, it's hard to look at what's happening in the world right now and in the US right now and not be dispirited if your concern is climate change and the environment. I think that's, I think that's very difficult. I think a lot of people, you know, are trying to maintain a hopeful attitude and, you know, there are glimmers of hope. I don't, I certainly don't want to suggest that there aren't, but the political situation and simply the numbers are very, very daunting right now.
I mean, I asked you, we were at an event together recently, and I asked you what, what gives you hope? And you quoted James Hansen, and he said, "I hope you're listening." So I wanted to talk about that. Like, I got the impression that hope is not the framework that you use, at least when you're thinking about these issues. I mean, can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, I think it's become a kind of a, it's become sort of a, almost a...
Cliché, almost, that we should end these stories on a hopeful note. And I think that the theory behind that is, if you give people a bunch of bad news and you suggest that it's hopeless, they're not going to work to make the situation better. And I certainly understand that, and I completely believe in working to make the situation better, that it couldn't be more urgent. That is one of the reasons I wrote the piece about SAMSSO, to show people that there are paths forward, and there certainly are paths forward. And the good news is that many of the technologies that we need to address climate change, I
never use the word "solve" climate change, because climate change is something that doesn't go away, even once you stop emitting carbon, you don't get the climate back that you had. But we really need to stabilize the climate, that is what we need to do. And the technologies, solar, wind, various batteries, these have all come down tremendously in price since I started working on this issue. And that is a huge boon, that is a huge positive, and shows that there are tools and there are toolbox to address this. Now, that being said, the current administration is doing its darndest to promote the use
of fossil fuels, which is exactly what we shouldn't be doing. So, we are living at this very, very strange moment, where the tools to really make a big, big difference are there, and they are affordable. But in fact, we're doing our best, in the US at least, to try to strangle them.
Do you feel like the window is closed for averting real crisis?
Well, I think that, you know, what climate scientists would tell you is we are, you know, basically leaving the climate envelope under which humanity evolved. You know, humans have not lived, humans, modern humans are not that old a species, you know, few, few hundred thousand years old. And the climate for most of that period has actually been a good deal colder than it is now. And we've had these interglacial periods in there, like the ones we're in now, which have been, you know, roughly as warm as we are now. And now we're pushing beyond that into a hotter world that, you know, even our distant ancestors haven't experienced.
And what that world is going to look like is very, is hard to know exactly. All we have to go on is history. And we don't have, you know, in the whole history of the planet, basically, or certainly for many, many millions of years, an analog for what we're doing to the climate right now. So we are sort of pushing into the unknown and we're doing so, we're sleepwalking into the unknown. And that, I think, is a pretty dangerous situation to be in.
I mean, you can read in your writing how moved you are by the natural world. And it's one of the things that I admire so much about your work. You've described the Great Barrier Reef as a place you love. Take us there.
So the Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest reef. I once had the amazing experience of, of living with some researchers on this tiny coral island that had basically, you know, been formed out of little bits and pieces of the reef, just sort of poking above the waves. And when the researchers weren't out there doing their research, they were snorkeling off this island. And that experience of looking down into this extraordinary profusion of life, you just, you just can never see that many different species of animals on land. It's just impossible. But when you look through the sort of kaleidoscope of life, from the sharks, you know, to the
sea cucumbers, to the amazingly beautiful fish, who are just all these fantastic colors, it really... Gives you a whole new view of of life itself, I think, that we here who grew up, you know, in the temperate regions in this, also, I should say, sort of impoverished ecosystems that most of us inhabit, it really tilts your worldview.
Well, I want to avoid the trope of ending on something inspiring and hopeful, so we should just say the Great Barrier Reef also takes us somewhere very depressing, right?
Yeah, coral reefs are a very threatened ecosystem, you know, scientists believe they could sort of be functionally extinct by the end of this century, and that's a huge, huge, that would be just a phenomenal loss. If you raise the water temperature sort of out of their comfort zone, what happens is that they expel their symbionts. They basically have these algal symbionts that live inside them and provide them with a lot of their nutrition. And they expel them, they turn white, that's the phenomenon known as coral bleaching. And we've had really serious coral bleaching events, global coral
bleaching events, several of them in the last several years. And then you have, you know, these big dead patches in the reefs. Now, I don't want to end on a cliched, hopeful note either, but I will say that, you know, there are, there is some really fascinating work going on in terms of, you know, could we sort of breed up or encourage corals to take up symbionts that are more heat tolerant. And I was actually just in Miami, at the University of Miami, and some scientists there were doing some really interesting work on this, and we're achieving some, some success. The, the problem is, the Great Barrier Reef, just to name one reef, is, is huge, is the size of Italy. So, doing anything
at the scale of the size of Italy is really difficult. So, but a lot of scientists are trying to think about, you know, how can we sort of try to scale up some of these efforts that might assist corals, you know, to get through the next century?
And look, you know what this is telling me, this story? We can't help but fall into the hope trap.
Yes, I think that, you know, I think-
Obviously, humans have, you know, we've gotten through, you know, some really hard times for our species. And there have probably been moments, you know, when the number of humans on Earth was really pretty small, you know, after some major volcanic eruptions, for example. It's theorized that the human population was really pretty tiny. And so we have gotten through. And what has gotten us through? Well, we are a species that can foresee the future, that can, you know, worry, that can take action, that can be very creative. And we have gotten through pretty hard times in the past. So maybe there is something in our wiring, and maybe it will come to our rescue again.
That is certainly the hope, that we're very, very ingenious creatures. And here we all are. So maybe there is something, you know, deep in our wiring that will preserve us. And maybe we have to believe that. Maybe that is how we got here. And I guess the open question is, you know, will it get us to where we need to go through the rest of the 21st century?
Elizabeth Kullbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of several books, including "Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World." Thank you so much for joining me today.
Oh, thanks for having me.
The Sci-Fry Book Club is diving into Elizabeth's latest book. To read along with us, head to sciencefriday.com/bookclub. This episode was produced by Rasha Aridi. We'll catch you next time. I'm Flora Lichtman.
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