Your birthday. I'm starting to record birthday with your best friends sharing interesting shit.
Lisa:And share interesting shit.
Drea:Yes, so we're going to share interesting shit again tonight. Although I don't know if it'll be interesting to you guys. Like sometimes I was interested and then sometimes I wasn't as interested.
Meags:But the question is, are you accidentally high?
Drea:no, no, I'm not accidentally high. So I know
Lisa:know.
Drea:it's a reasonable question.
Meags:Yeah. I
Drea:reasonable
Meags:so. Well,
Drea:It's becoming, it's becoming a more prevalent, like, relevant question for a lot of people. I saw somewhere that pot is legal in 23 states, like, for recreational use.
Lisa:Recently legalized here in Missouri and there's a dispensary close to my house, I've learned the other day.
Drea:Well, I don't understand, like, Missouri is just as, Missouri is, I don't know, I think of it as being just as, like, red as Texas, but how did it manage
Lisa:It has, it's, it's has become about as red as, when I was growing up, it was always a purple stakes. There's a big, it was a big union, sector, it has gotten more conservative. I think money has driven it. In fact, it passed to be legal, and then most, the recent election, they passed that, like, my St. Louis County is taxing it, so it's just a big money, you know, make money for the state, for the county, type thing, so.
Meags:the amount of money they initially made in Colorado was very, attention getting to a lot of States. I think that might not have been interested as Colorado, where they were the first, like made an incredible amount of money and they, of course they, you know, they funded all kinds of interesting things, but they made an incredible amount of money. But I know they, they legalized it here because historically it's always been the number one cash crop. Way, way bigger than blueberries or apples or anything else and the state never got a piece of it. Now the state gets a piece of it,
Drea:I have a feeling it was like that in California too,
Meags:I'm
Drea:so, but we don't know what's going to happen with these crops now. Because of climate change, but we're going to get into talking about some things
Meags:Look at that
Drea:to climate change.
Lisa:a,
Meags:Woo! That
Lisa:that a segue, Andrea?
Drea:now you fucked it up!
Meags:Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Drea:Everybody knows, I segwayed, wasn't planned, it came all natural, no, but seriously, it is a problem, like, where are, where are crops going to grow if we have a bunch of deserts? So, you know, but that's, so, so what I really wanted to talk about today was about geoengineering, and like, how we're gonna manage our problem until we can get out of our problems. So, I did want to start with a trigger warning for anyone who doesn't believe in climate change, this is probably going to, like, fry your brain, you will not want to listen to it. So,
Kathy:So get the fuck out.
Drea:just, just go ahead and turn it on. Just, I mean, turn it off, turn it off, unless you want to have a fit. It can be apoplectic. One of my favorite words.
Meags:pretty
Lisa:may want to a math person.
Meags:that's one of those crowds that's into being angry, but
Drea:Oh, well then they're gonna just, they're just gonna have a heart attack.
Meags:There goes our, there go our podcast numbers through the roof.
Drea:I know! It's true. It's true. Let's piss someone off. So, anyway. Okay, you guys ready? You're ready. You're ready. You're ready.
Meags:As we all nod silently. Yeah.
Drea:yeah, so anyway, okay, we all we've agreed that climate change is real. So I did. I was like, well, you know, I usually start with some facts. So I thought I would go and get a few limited number of facts about, like, the past and carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, but I don't, I don't expect any of you to remember this. Just like, I don't expect you to remember anything else. in 1640, Johann Bapista von Helmholtz, he's a Flemish alchemist. He figured out that the air is a mixture of gases, back then, and he also, he called carbon dioxide spirit of wood, because it was, it gave off, bleh. Because it was given off when he burned wood, he's like, that's kind of cool. So 1640, they're getting on top of it. And so long. So, for like, the next 200 years, the scientists kept learning shit about greenhouse gases and I'm not going to talk about that part because I thought it was boring. And so then in 1856. Eunice Foote, she is a woman scientist, which I think is so cool. She figured out the carbon dioxide and water vapor that they warm up in sunlight. Which is kind of one of those things, you're like, didn't it take that long to figure it out? But it did. But Eunice did. She figured it out. So, so that's what happened in 1856. And then in 1896, and I, I consider this probably the, like, the biggest factoid from, that I, that I've learned, a Swedish chemist, Svante Arminius, uh, he figured out that burning coal actually did increase carbon dioxide being spewed, like, he figured out that it increased the carbon dioxide going out into the atmosphere, and that it could That it could warm the planet. So like, he's the guy who figured out, okay, greenhouse gas, oh shit, that's not my, but he didn't say oh shit at all, because he actually, his philosophy was, or he said that people might live under a milder sky, and less barren surroundings if the, if the earth warmed. So,
Kathy:Where'd this guy live?
Drea:Sweden.
Kathy:Not Texas.
Drea:Yes, not Texas. Cause how is Texas right now?
Kathy:Fuckin hot. Fuckin hot!
Drea:Fuckin hot. And how has Texas been for the last two fuckin months? Yes. So, and not
Kathy:gonna arrange for this like a minute today.
Drea:Yeah?
Kathy:Yeah. Don't get a little ditty tiny bit.
Drea:so anyway, Svante, he seemed to think it would be a good idea for things to warm up, but you're right. He lived in Sweden, and the rest of us do not think that's such a great, fantastic thing. so, but he didn't know any better. I'm certain he didn't know we would end up being where we got to. And what he didn't know is that we have increased the amount of carbon dioxide from 280 parts per million, which I don't really, I wish they could explain these things better, but it increased from 280 parts per million to over 400 parts per million in the last 250 years. So if you think about it, but that's like a 30 percent increase, just, just roughly that, right? Close enough. That's a lot. All right. Those are your facts. I'll have a few later, but I just wanted to ask you guys, like, for you, like, what is the most, like, what do you feel like is the most noticeable change in the climate? Like in your experience, like what you experienced in your day to day life between now and when you're a little.
Lisa:it, I have a memory of no occurring several times during the winter in St. Louis. Now we're, we get maybe, if we're lucky, we get one big snowstorm and by big, I mean a couple inches. So for Megan, I'm sure that's nothing, but I mean, you know, four or five inch snowfall when I was a kid, it was just, it would happen. Now it's like, the big excitement, it's kind of sad.
Meags:Yeah. See, like, yes, I agree that here like but every place is different. I respect other places that don't normally have snow, where I grew up, which is 45 minutes north of where I live now. we got lots of snow and generally very deep snow. so where I live now is much closer to the ocean. So it's, you know, there's a climate change. issue, but there's also a microclimate issue, but we get much less snow than we used to. And, you know, from what I'm hearing from my other relatives who live further inland, they also get less snow. the other big difference here is that, it's hot. I mean, it's not Texas hot. Don't get me wrong, but like it's hot and unlike Texas or Missouri, these are not houses that were built with AC. so like, I, you know, I did not say anything when you said you didn't have AC because I know that my experience is different, but like, I don't have AC. I never have AC. really, you know, because growing up, it was considered to be like ridiculous to have AC in Maine. Why? Like, you know, you might need it like three or four nights out of the summer. But generally it was cool enough at night to be comfortable to sleep. And now, It's hot. It's, it's real hot like our summer. The other thing is that our summer now seems to start later and go later. Our summer really used to be June, July and August and now it's really more like July, August and September. which is weird, but, but it's definitely Hotter in the summer and not necessarily warmer in the winter, but, less precipitation, less snowfall.
Drea:say you, Cathy.
Kathy:Oh, well, you know, around these parts, we get a lot of big floods, which, they happened before. I remember it happening when I was a kid. One. One happened when
Drea:Yeah.
Meags:Yeah.
Kathy:The med center flood. And now, what? I guess the first one that I remember like being really, really bad in my adulthood, which I know Andrea will remember because it messed up her birthday,
Drea:I remember it.
Kathy:So our subject, but, tropical storm Allison, and what was that? 2001.
Drea:Yeah. Yeah.
Kathy:which we got, I don't even know like officially what the cumulative total was, but I just remember checking, well, I was at my parents house and going out because my dad is a weather nut and he was flying back from somewhere on a trip. And we thought his plane landed and we kept calling the airport trying to have him paged, tell him not to leave because people are flooding on the freeway right outside the airport and we couldn't get in touch with him, not realizing he got an earlier flight. So his flight he was on landed and he would have stranded at the airport. But instead he was on an earlier flight which we didn't know and that one got diverted to Lake Charles. But anyway, so I was there and I was going out and checking their rain gauge and at their house alone, we had 24 plus inches of rain in about 6 hours, 5 or 6 hours.
Meags:That's crazy.
Kathy:So I was going out and every couple, like every like 20, 30 minutes and dumping it and logging it down because I knew he would want to know. It was crazy. I'd never seen, I'd never seen any heavy rainfall or Prior hurricane that hit Houston before that. I'd never seen the water come over their curb and it was there on peer and beam. So they're 3 ft up from the highest ground level of their property and it was about a half an inch from coming up over the top step, which I've never seen. And since then, I mean, I couldn't even begin to count what we had 45 major, major ones.
Drea:Yeah. I know.
Kathy:Plus
Meags:they what they used to call 100 year flood.
Kathy:100 year flood that happens every
Drea:I thought, well,
Kathy:years.
Meags:now seems to be happening a lot more often is what all the. Meteorological type say.
Drea:Harvey was like a thousand year flood.
Kathy:yeah, Harvey was like a thousand years old. That was like 50 something inches of rain. But over, I'm like, I was over a broader time span than the, than Allison. But yeah, it was just rain and rain and rain and rain.
Drea:Yeah. So, and do you guys feel like, I'm just curious. This is more of a curious, curiously thing. Do you guys feel like it's, like the changing of the climate has progressed a lot in the last five years or so, like five to 10 years, like it's I think it's probably the way what I'm looking for.
Kathy:I mean, look at our summer this year in Houston. It's been, I remember when we were kids, it was like. Were you kids and even like early adulthood, like my 20s, whatever it was, maybe, maybe a couple times a summer, it would get into like 100, 100, maybe up to 102, like, oh, my God, it's 102. We broke a record this summer of 109, a couple weeks ago. And then, but it's, we've had, like, over 30 something days straight of over 100 temperatures, which is not a thing for
Drea:No, no,
Kathy:because we're close enough to the coast that we usually. You know, get enough of a break from that. And it's, you know, the
Drea:yeah, it's funny that you say that like, it was being, it being super hot. I was visiting someone who's a climate denier and we're talking, just talking and she was like, talking about how hot it was. And how it's been hot like this before and, you know, like, you know, like back in 1818 or, you know, like 1918 or whatever, like, oh, it's been in the hundreds before and I was just like, I knew I was like, you're just trying to start shit with me. just trying to start shit.
Meags:What, what do we say about people who like to be angry?
Drea:They're gonna want to listen to this.
Meags:Yeah. And they're going to start shit when they talk to you. So that's the other part of that.
Drea:Gotta be careful. Gotta be careful. well, anyway,
Lisa:know, so it's, it's interesting though, like we get less snow, but then it happened the most, the longest it happens like 12 years ago, because Tommy was kindergarten, he ended up having an extra week off of school because we were like in this deep Arctic freeze.
Drea:Mm hmm.
Lisa:It was like the opposite extreme. And I remember thinking, I'm like, if it was like this before, you know, I moved back to St. Louis and even though I really enjoyed living in warmer climates and, but I'm like, this isn't that bad anymore kind of thing, not that it's good necessarily for the environment, but for me, it was better, but. That I was like, if it was like this when I first moved back to St. Louis, when I stayed, I mean, it was horrible, I was so cold for like a month, I just could not get warm, it was horrible. I mean, not to say that, you know, I mean, we had a well heated house, that sort of thing, but it just, I just always felt cold. Like, my kids couldn't play out in the snow because it was so cold. It was just miserable.
Meags:Yeah. An Arctic blast is really its own thing. And I really wonder how much more we see of that because of things like deforestation and other stuff that we've done as. Humans over the years, because like, like, you know, here it, an Arctic blast happens probably once or twice a year, like it gets real cold here on its own, but every once or twice a year, like my kid was in a play and it was the weekend of, we had an Arctic blast and it was like negative 20, negative 30. It was like,
Drea:Yeah.
Kathy:90s.
Meags:real like dangerous situation, for a lot of. People,
Lisa:Mm
Meags:you know, they, they have to open warming centers and they have to do all kinds of stuff, but that, you know, people always die because there's somebody trying to heat their, you know, get extra heat in their house with their oven or something else. Dumb. but I
Kathy:the car in the garage and leaving the door open to the house.
Meags:Yeah.
Lisa:I always have homeless people trying to stay warm and abandoned homes, starting fires and then they fall asleep or something happens and, you know, it's
Meags:yeah, here it's like when it's that cold, it's dangerous to have, exposed skin outside. So like there's all kinds of issues with frostbite and things like that. So there's a real push to. Get people inside when it's like that, because it's just, vicious and inevitably like that, that level of cold boilers start breaking, you know, like, you know, they can have issues with line snapping. If it's not, it's not good at all. And I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure how that ties into everything else, but I'm sure it ties into everything else. I'm
Lisa:Well,
Meags:educated person could tell me
Lisa:yeah, well, I, I, not to broach what Andrea's research, but I mean, it's not just the warming, it's just weather extremes. You know, from criminal and I, you know, people get, Oh, see, you're this is the cold. It's been in St. Louis and decades. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's weather extremes is the issue. It's not just warmth.
Drea:Yeah.
Meags:that's why I'm glad the marketers changed it from, Global warming to climate change.
Lisa:yes,
Meags:It's a much, much more accurate term for most places.
Drea:So, yes. So climate change. So, okay. So when I was working at green and I'm going back a bit, when I was working at green mountain ages ago, I was working with,
Lisa:right?
Drea:yeah. And there was this lady who I worked with that was an environmental scientist. And she told me that, Whatever we were admitting right then that we weren't going to, it wasn't going to affect us, but it was going to be affecting us in 20 years. And so then if you think about it, like, every year, it's every year that we're emitting carbon dioxide, it's building up. Right. It's like, it's like a layer on top of a layer on top of a layer. And so we've got 250 years of of layers of carbon dioxide. And so it didn't really like, it really didn't like, I mean, she that kind of lodged in my head as a fact. but then, like, a couple of years ago, I had this aha moment. Because it's like we, you know, like there's this, there's this big push to stop emitting anything by 2050, right? Which is fine, except that we still have all the shit in the air that we already put there. And so I was like, fuck. When they started talking about like, like, so I started hearing about carbon sequestration or, you know, and I was like, oh shit, we have to. We have to actually suck this shit back out of the environment. Like it's not just, it's like, it's not just stopping, it's, it's removing. And so, and so then I was, and so then I was like thinking like, well, how the, how the fuck are we going to do this? You know, how are we going to do that? And of course, I knew for sure I was not the first person to be thinking of this. and so there's basically this thing called geoengineering, and, what, like, geoengineering is, you know, I guess, defined as us trying to replicate some kind of, something that the environment already does, but like, at a massive scale, so that's us, like, trying to, you know, be a forest, or something like that, like, and so, there are basically, like, two approaches, different approaches. To, to, I guess, to geoengineering. And the first one is what I was just talking about this, carbon sequestration, carbon removal, basically sucking it out of the air. you know, but it's just like I said, it's not quite as natural as trees. So, so I'm just going to, like, go into them kind of quickly, First one is carbon burial, where basically, like, from what I could tell, it wasn't, the thing wasn't written very well, but we would capture CO2 from, like, an industrial complex, and then we would, like, shove it deep inside the ground for storage, so that's one. So carbon burial, ocean fertilization. Which is where we would dissolve iron or nitrates into the ocean. and then basically, those would create an area for plankton plant plankton, to live on the surface of the water and then that would use, you know, of course, the, it would suck up the carbon dioxide. And then, half of the surface. And so then, you know, it was most of that carbon would eventually sink down to the bottom of the ocean. But the problem with this, or actually, I could go into the problems with this because there are a lot of problems with carbon sequestration. So, then the last one I was gonna talk about is this direct air capture. and so basically, like, they're what what happens is you would have, like, these big, almost like fans, but they would, like, suck in carbon dioxide. And then within the fan is this, like, a chemical. That will help turn the CO2 into salt or some kind of acids and then all that shit's going to get shoved back into the, between the layers and the rocks. So, I think it's kind of interesting and I'd like to know what you guys think. Is that when you think about this, we're basically taking what we put out into the air and then shoving it back where we found it.
Meags:I mean, it seems like as good of an idea as any,
Kathy:Yeah, I don't hate it.
Meags:you know, like, like, what are we going to send it into space? Like, there's only so many places we can put this much stuff and sending it to space seems rude, personally, I think. It
Kathy:it all on a space ball and shoot it off. You know, let the aliens deal with it.
Drea:But what if we
Lisa:already a bunch of space trash up there.
Drea:if we need
Kathy:Not near us, like, shove it way far away. Like, shoot it on a trajectory that
Meags:What if we need it? What do we need it for?
Drea:I don't know, but what if we have like some need for carbon or oxide and
Meags:Or two oxides, dioxide. Oh boy. I thought you were the science kid. Come on.
Drea:Hey, I'm doing my best
Meags:Yeah. Well, then I think, I think that, you know,
Kathy:we sure you're not accidentally stone
Lisa:Right. Hold on a second.
Drea:Let me guess. No, not accidentally stoned.
Meags:But I feel, I feel like this is one of those things that lots of people are working on fixing. Right? I mean, this seems to be, so I feel like science people be sciencey. Great. Awesome. Do your thing. Come on. Get with the program.
Kathy:feel like it's dozens and dozens of people.
Meags:I was kind of hoping it was a bigger number than that, Kathy.
Lisa:Hundreds. I'm hoping hundreds.
Drea:Have you ever wondered though? Like if we would just read kind of like with wars, right? You redirect all of your energy towards must win war must win war. And so then you go and like everybody, like retrofits the, the still mill to make, you know, Torpedoes or whatever. Like, why haven't we retrofitted anything to fit climate change? Fixing it.
Meags:Because it's way better just to make it sound like you're doing stuff like, you know, making things carbon neutral and buying carbon credits and things like that.
Kathy:yeah,
Lisa:Yeah.
Meags:To, you know, act as a salt on your, on your, on your poor brain when you're like, oh man, I'm flying again and it's fucking up the environment but oh wait, I can buy these carbon neutral credits and then I feel better. Like,
Kathy:it.
Meags:Yeah, I'm like, I'm not sure that's really how that works, but okay.
Drea:Yeah, that's true.
Meags:But I was reading something super interesting the other day because, I when I was a kid and I'm obviously sure that this was happening when you were all kids too.'cause we're all kids at the same time. acid rain was the thing.
Drea:Mm hmm.
Meags:A big thing. It's a huge thing. I did a science, I did a science project on it and it's like you never hear about acid rain anymore. And that's because we as humans pretty much fixed most of acid rain by passing all kinds of laws to deal with. Emissions and pollution. So, like, we certainly have it in us to fix things.
Lisa:Right,
Drea:Yes.
Meags:I'm not sure, you know, like, I'm not sure what the difference is between this thing and, I mean, obviously, acid rain is a smaller issue, but I mean, it's still a big issue. It's like stuff that falls from the sky.
Drea:yeah, but it's
Lisa:something along those lines, and maybe this is a stupid question, but when we, also like when we were kids, high school, there were holes in the ozone layer, and it was really bad, right, but there's still holes in the ozone layer, and we just don't talk about it anymore?
Meags:Well, they're not over us, so we don't have to worry about it. That's a problem for, that's a problem for Australia to deal with.
Lisa:okay,
Kathy:it's still
Lisa:good to know.
Drea:so, okay, so we have the carbon sequestration. And, but the problem with all of it is it's going to, that's going to take like many, many years, like 100 years. But then I feel like, well, we did take 250 years to make this problem. So, if it takes us a couple of 100 years to get out of it, then so be it. but like I was talking about earlier, so we know that even if we stop, we stop emissions in 2050, it's going to continue to get hotter because those layers are going to keep building up. And so there's this other option for cooling shit down, that is basically, reflecting sun rays back up into the sky. So, there's a, so here, like, there are a few ways to do it, there are a few ways to do it. I don't know, you guys can comment on this idea at all, but there's one called, we could raise the albedo, or albedo, I don't know how to say it, that's not that hard though, the albedo is the reflectiveness of surface areas. So, So they're like, right now, scientists are thinking about, like, spraying out glass beads on, across the ice. So, it reflects, it reflects, like, 90 percent of the sun back instead of 60 to 70%. So that's one thing that could be done. we can, we can whiten our clouds. I didn't know about this whole cloud whitening thing, but basically the idea is to, like, you'd be misting the air above the ocean with seawater. And then the scientists, see, this is the thing is like a lot of this is not tested. So especially this part, they don't really know if it's going to work, but they think that if you were to miss The air above the ocean with seawater that the salt crystals will like, will stay in the air, and then they'll also turn into clouds eventually. So that's, that's what whitening clouds would be. and then there's another idea that we could just Send small reflective objects into orbit around the, around the world. It's just like a cluster, like what I can tell it's like a cluster of mirrors that would mirror, sunlight back.
Kathy:A bunch of space disco balls?
Drea:Yeah. Yeah. Bunch of space disco balls.
Lisa:That's what we need.
Meags:I like it.
Drea:Like you said, Lisa, more, why, why not add more to the orbit party? Didn't you say
Meags:there you go. There
Lisa:We need more shit up there.
Drea:We do. We need some more shit up there. Why not? Some, some, disco balls and then, and this is actually my favorite, my favorite option, and this is, this is actually the reason I started looking into geo engineering at all was that like, I was listening to something somewhere about stratospheric sulfur injection. And, basically the idea is that we would put together a fleet of airplanes that would fly. into our stratosphere and spray sulfur dioxide. into it and then that would like cool everything down
Kathy:Hmm.
Drea:and they got this idea because they're that's what happens when like a huge volcano eruption happens is that it spews sulfuric acid up into the stratosphere and cools the, cools the earth and that happened in 1991 somewhere in the Philippines and they think that it actually cooled the earth for a couple of, I don't know, two or three years for us. So. Yeah, volcano in Philippines. So I don't know. What do you guys think of this? This is a fairly like this whole idea of particularly this last idea with the spring. The sulfur, the sulfur dioxide into the air is pretty controversial, but I don't know if you guys have heard of this before. Do you have any thoughts about it?
Kathy:seems like it would solve one problem, but, and I don't know what the other problems would be, but it seems like the kind of activity that could create other problems.
Lisa:Because I mean, when volcanoes erupt, I mean, it causes other issues, right? So,
Kathy:Well, I mean, a lot of that's like
Lisa:putting that
Kathy:people burning to death in lava and shit, but,
Lisa:right? I mean, but if you're putting that stuff out there, I mean, just would it possibly cause other issues that we just don't
Meags:Air, air quality and
Lisa:Yeah,
Drea:Yes, there's an air quality issue, but I think that, like, to me, my biggest concern is if you particularly did that. Mhm. It's a relatively low cost. I don't want to call it fix. but like it could disincentivize us from reducing our emissions
Meags:Yeah, I feel like it's an interesting idea that we made this problem and we're going to try to fuck up the environment to fix it. Like, I'm not really sure that's our best route, but I'm sure it's the fastest route and it's the one that involves the least effort from us. So I'm sure it's the popular option, but it just seems like, you know, you're. Gonna mess one thing up to and then you're, you know, the, the law of unintended consequences, but you know, it's gonna all spiral, but it's hard to know. That's why we need sciencey people and not dozens, thousands, lots, lots of sciencey people.
Drea:Yeah, I just I don't know like I have really mixed feelings about it because I would I just I think about how things are literally burning up like burning up and
Meags:Well, I mean, essentially this is a problem that will eventually solve itself. It will create enough uninhabitable earth that the population will shrink and therefore make less emissions. And this problem will dissipate over time would be my guess.
Lisa:well, we're slowly killing ourselves, so then there'll be less people to make the problem.
Meags:I mean, that's definitely one fix for this problem.
Drea:You're human beings.
Meags:Is fewer human beings. I mean,
Lisa:I'm not sure I'm for that way of
Meags:no, I'm, I'm not, I'm not advocating for that. But I'm saying if we don't do anything, then this is a problem that has a cer certain amount of, self adjusting that it's going to in impact us that you
Lisa:right, like a lot of low lying areas, you know, and countries, you know, eventually they'll have to migrate somewhere to try and live, and, you know, we're such a welcoming country, I'm sure we'll welcome them with open arms here,
Meags:yeah. Well, trust me, the Midwest is definitely gonna be psyched when the entire East Coast goes underwater and we all show up. I can tell you that right now. so
Lisa:over country no more,
Meags:Yeah, yeah, they're going to get theirs. but I think, you know, I think that from a scientific perspective on this is very interesting, but I think that the philosophical and ethical perspective is also really interesting because this is 100 percent our problem.
Drea:I know
Meags:this is not anything that anybody else did. Or, you know, like just how things are. So it's like, it's interesting to you know. To see the different ways they're trying to attack it, but I, you know, I don't know enough about science to shake a stick at any of it, but it's interesting to think about how, you know, like maybe, you know, are we, are we really examining all the ways that we could fix this? Are we just examining the ones that are easiest for us?
Drea:Well, some of these are definitely not easy, like, I don't know, putting the, I don't know, the idea of putting the, disco balls out into the, you know, that, that, that seems kind of wild to me, but it is actually, to me, that seems like a, like an astrophysicist idea of like a really fun project that maybe they can get funded by NASA.
Lisa:right?
Kathy:But like, we're, I don't know, I guess it doesn't, I mean, if it's not to us, I guess there's the whole, well, why do we care? But, like, same thing, like you put these like... mirrored satellite things out there and you're reflecting sun's rays. So, you know, is it going to hit some other planet or their moon? And then what does that do to that thing? And then is that, you know, it's like, seems like most every solution potentially cause some problem other problem down the line, you know, that's going to be like, Oh, shit. Now, chunks of Saturn are sitting towards the earth, right? You know,
Meags:yeah.
Kathy:how are we going to do that? Now we got to go out there and blow those chumps up before they hit us.
Meags:Well, and I, I feel like that's part of how we got here too. I feel like there was a point where people were like, look at this cool thing I made that we could ride around in, and it would save us all this time. We could really save a ton of time if we used cars instead of horses, and wouldn't it be better for horses? And like, oh, well, look where that got us.
Lisa:Right.
Meags:Like, you just never know how things are going to shake out.
Kathy:But where would life be without road trips?
Drea:I know.
Lisa:would be boring without road trips. So, it is funny that what happened, like, so then they had these things called like, you know, streetcars that like got people around cities. and then at some point people decided, you know, everyone's just going to get a car anyway, just take these down, you
Drea:No, I don't think that's what happened. I think that oil, and of course this is totally me being, I think that the oil and gas industry intentionally squashed, at least here, streetcars and, and mass transit so they could have streets and cars and oil and gas.
Lisa:Yeah, I mean, we used to have three car factories here. I can't remember who. Which ones they were. Ford, I think, is still here, but Chrysler used to be here. That's how we used to have all these unions. but those jobs aren't, a lot of those jobs. So, oh, I'm sure once those companies came in here, they pushed cities, city of St. Louis, to get rid of the streetcar system here.
Drea:Yeah.
Lisa:Definitely. But it just, now it's like people talk about using public transportation, but there's barely a public transportation system left. Mm
Meags:Well, and I think that too goes towards like, So much of all of this is how you sell it and they, they spent a lot of time being very profitable in the forties and fifties selling the idea of, you know, every, every car, every, every home with a car in the garage and, you know, you needed to have a car to have really to have the American dream and to be doing your thing. and people, people bought in. so, you know, it's like, could we, could we come up with something to, you know, sell people that would help. you know, that people could buy in on that would help out with this whole climate change issue. And unfortunately, I think we've created now created a problem that's not quite so easy to get people to buy in on.
Drea:Yeah.
Meags:Although, I will say, just because we were talking about it a minute ago, I looked up where the ozone hole is, Lisa, and it's mostly over the Antarctic now. But because the science y people got on their science y stuff and we got rid of CFCs and we all messed up our hairspray. It is now much better than it used to be. It has healed significantly and by 2050, it will be the same size it was in 1980. So
Drea:Yay! Yay! Yay!
Meags:sciencey people, we can do this, but I just, I need, I need a, I need focus. I need you guys to come up with something that we can get behind and help out with. Because like, yeah, you want to screw up my hair products, save the ozone hole. Absolutely.
Lisa:that making science stuff so freaking political people just get it done.
Meags:Yeah, I agree.
Drea:Yeah, I'm with you. Okay. Well, that was what I had to talk about this evening. I thought it was I don't know. I think it's interesting. I do think that some of these things I think a lot of these things are going to happen with or without the United States. I would be at all surprised. I mean, like I know China already did the kind of the well, they, I think they seeded clouds for, which is a little bit different than this, but they seeded clouds before the Beijing Olympics to clear out the, to clear out the, I guess, pollution, the air pollution. And so,
Lisa:didn't they shut down factories for a while too,
Drea:I don't know, I don't know, but that would be a good thing. They believe in science. So they probably would know that was a
Meags:Yeah, if, if only, if only they weren't quite so into the capitalist part of it,
Lisa:yeah. think what's the Olympics were over, they came back and turn all the factories back on and start polluting their,
Drea:Oh, sure.
Meags:I can tell you that they're, they're a shocking number of Chinese people immigrating to where I live in part because Maine is really known for having clean air. And that is the first thing they all tell me and they're all busy sending their kids to private schools here so they can buy land here so that they can eventually move here because they are all sure that, you know, the air quality in China is already so bad and it's only going to get worse, which is an interesting, you know, it's interesting. I feel like we also get really super USA focused on the whole thing. It's interesting to see how things are in other places.
Drea:Yeah.
Kathy:in industry has a way, you know, it's not even so much the government that if industry started making, well made more change, some industries have, you know, we, we see it. I mean, LEED for construction, I mean, LEED came out probably 20 plus years ago. And now, I mean, you have, I mean, you can't build commercially something without following very stringent energy codes. you're hard pressed to find a material that isn't made in a very sustainable way. You know, whether you're going for lead or not, all, pretty much all the lights that we've been making and putting in commercial businesses because of the energy codes have been led for 10, 10, 12 years, you know, and so like industry.
Lisa:or they even stopped making the other kind of light bulbs, but
Kathy:Yes, they have, but that was driven that was driven not by the government. That was driven by industry. Industry pushed it, and then the government followed suit because they started, well, because they decide which codes, building codes to use, but the building codes had already changed
Lisa:mm-hmm.
Kathy:follow what the industry was doing. So, you know, I mean, industry has a way, it's just that, you know, the people that are in industries that are causing problems need to realize it and stop what they're doing and change their, their practices and their tactics. Got it.
Meags:And I think too that it, you know, we're back to the law of unintended consequences where like electric electric cars are great like the battery technology they're making is great, but the rare metals that they need that they've based it all on. Less than ideal. So like, it's always a, it's always a six to one, half dozen on the other kind of situation I feel like, but like everybody has to be on the same page that, you know, you can't, if there's no planet B, we gotta, this is it. Don't, don't fuck this one up because we aren't all going anywhere else.
Lisa:All right.
Drea:it's definitely not. So yeah, it'll be interesting. I do. Kathy, you're definitely Thanks for pointing out that there are industries that are changing. So there's so many problems to fix. It's a little time There's something I wanted to say like like minutes ago, but I cannot for life and maybe remember what they were. But anyway well, thank you for for Listening to me and talking to me about this and I will talk to you guys later Good night, babies
Lisa:Sounds good. Bye. Good night.