Our three panelists, john value, the author of fire a true story from hotter world. Hes a serial joined us. A serial writer of bestsellers and gatherer of awards, fire weather is a finalist or short list finalist winner of most of all, the awards it it is it can be submitted receive it set an astonishing success and not least has shown an uncanny to the point a preternatural sense of timing coinciding the largest fire season in canadas history and one that managed to smoke in major cities and centers of the literary public. Im only a smidgen jealous, john, but for john homesteaded in alaska, worked on fishing boats in the bering sea, sailed to hawaii, skied across the beartooth, taught learning disabled children, pursued vampires and transylvanian giant crocodiles in india, tigers in siberia, forest fires in alberta and california. Hes lived on a remote uninhabited island with. Juvenile delinquents. Apparently, juvenile delinquents make uninhabitable. Hes ridden a motorized powered by a corvette engine. Ill bet that was something swam with beluga whales hudsons bay and with sharks in the florida keys participated in two home births driven on in and sailed over the arctic ocean. Hop trained eaten whale camel and polar bear meet. I hope not all at once gotten drunk at the romanian shepherds convention and had to put a cherry on this banana splits on day of adventuring. He is with us today at the tucson festival the books john. Next we have jeff goodell where the heat will kill you first. Great title, by the way another prolific writer successful both critically and commercially was born and raised in Silicon Valley. A grad of uc berkeley with an mfa from columbia. Hes written about Silicon Valley as a place in a memoir, but also another name for the world have created. Hes been a professional motorcycle racer, an Apple Employee and a blackjack dealer in tahoe. Began writing as a crime reporter. New york city. And then he introduced environmental face with a trilogy on Climate Change, a big call. And an milwaukee and term if you will, flood and fire with, the water will come first. And our particular concern today, the heat will kill you first, for which he has traveled world. Hes held a guggenheim fellowship, a fellow at new america and the Atlantic Council and a frequent commentator. Energy and Environmental Issues for all the major media. Even the Oprah Winfrey show. You grabbed the brass ring. Jeff, congratulations. And. And david lipski, the parrot and the igloo climb it and the science of denial. So we have themes here on Climate Change. Weve got fire, heat and now idea. Well, when you start with or introduction superlatives you consume wear them out but this panel we need to continue david has degrees from brown and Johns Hopkins he writes both and nonfiction both successfully hes published in all the right places. One the major awards and teaches writing at new york university. His two previous nonfiction bestsellers are absolutely american and of course, you end up yourself, which became the basis for the movie the end of the tour. He seems to have had the geographically adventurous research or at least what he is willing to reveal to us. But i would argue he may be the most adventurous of the lot, and i think we hope to spend some time talking to him about that. Okay. With that, john, steve. Why Fort Mcmurray . Well, Fort Mcmurray, i will tell you in a moment. But first, i need to acknowledge stephen j. Pine. If you dont know who stephen j. Pine is, hes this man down here in the dapper corduroy jacket and i spent seven years writing about fire. But you cannot write about fire going through stephen j. Pine and he is the most prolific and eloquent chronicler of fire, i think probably who ever lived. Hes got a shelf about this wide of amazing about fire all over the world and. Richly deserved and he happens to be local also so youre lucky and i hope you dial into his work because i certainly have and anyone in this business is standing on his shoulders to some degree so and actually after the Fort Mcmurray fire which ill tell you about in a second, steve coined the term the piracy ring age, the age of fire that we appear to be entering and Fort Mcmurray, you know was a signal to me too in this way. I live in british. Fort mcmurray is in alberta. Its the texas of canada. Fort mcmurray, if youve never heard of it, 600 miles north of the montana border, deep in the boreal forest. But its the largest source of foreign oil imports into the united states, to the tune of about. 4 Million Barrels a day. And thats coming out of Fort Mcmurray, not really in the form of oil. Dont drill it up there. They mine out of the out of sand tar sand that they have to heat to extraordinary temperatures with natural gas, which is a perfectly viable fuel but theyre rendering this tarry substance into something that eventually after many more aggressive becomes sinful crude that then makes its way down into refineries, some of which are owned by Koch Industries on the on the northern u. S. Border to be turned into products that were burning in various ways down here. So about 90,000 people live and work there and may three, 2016, it was overrun by a wildfire. The whole city and was on that day, the site of the largest, most evacuation due to fire in modern. 90,000 people streamed out of their firefight. Fighters and water Truck Drivers and heavy Equipment Operators were left behind. And to deal with a fire that did not burn for a few hours a day or two, but was in this city for weeks, just moving back forth with the wind. It never cooled down. The rain never. And what made that fire burn differently and what made it generate a pyro cloud, which youre familiar with down here . These are 45,000 foot tall fire storm systems that generate their own lightning. They generate their own hail. Theyre absolutely biblical forces. So the the conditions up there were despite the fact being 2000 kilometers away from here, were very much like arizona. The relative humidity was about 11 . The temperature was in the low nineties. And you put that into an already fire prone forest system like the boreal and you dont just get a forest fire you get an explosive live conflagration and the heat coming in to the neighborhoods of Fort Mcmurray was around 9 to 1100 degrees and it caused houses you know, these are two story half, three quarters of 1,000,000 kind of oil rich homes, if you will, to burn from the roof to the basement. 5 minutes. And firefighters could not fight that. They had never seen anything like that. They were watching whole blocks of homes, many of which they themselves and lived in themselves disappear before their eyes. And that got my attention. And this was happening while were literally car sized blocks ice sitting on the athabasca river which through town winter had just there were still lakes frozen over on the outskirts of town. Yet these incredible temperatures were achieved. And so that was 2016. There was a quaint time compared to what we see now in australia in and up and down the west coast of the u. S. And canada and thats what really felt a more innocent time. And now were really into this piracy and edge that steve called correctly right after. Fort mcmurray burned. John you in part of your research you toured lots of other places i mean there were some tremors before the eruption in canada but you as almost epiphany your experience with the fire tornado at redding could you describe that for sure in 2018 this is two years after Fort Mcmurray burned and before australias terrible fire season their black summer of 2019 2020. The carr burned through redding, california really idyllic Northern California town. It was start in the most innocent of ways really by a flat tire throwing sparks the wheel rim through some sparks outside whiskeytown two days later this fire swept redding a similar population to Fort Mcmurray. 40,000 people were evacuated in a single day as the cal fire folks said to me, the firefighting effort quickly turned into a life saving effort and of the more Bizarre Creations out of that fire was actual ef three tornado. Now, now this is not a fire whirl, which very common in wild fires. This a full on tornado that swept through neighborhoods, tore houses off their foundations. One firefighter who was cut his vacation short, he was driving down one of insurable hard. And as you 40 to 50 i think it was this tornado lifted his truck off the ground and threw him and the truck into the before incinerating him and right near there i walked at ground saw where that truck landed and it really they just looked like theyd been rolled and tumble and incinerated. There were 100 foot high tension transmission lines with. Two inch cable draped over them, which was many tons. These were torn out of their foundations and thrown into the forest. And it was the most massive and also granular violence ive ever experienced. I found cast pans hundreds of meters away from the bare house slabs, and the handles were broken off. There were holes punched through them trapped steel tractor seats crumpled up like paper plates. It was. It was a very specific total kind of violence that honestly, frankly, scarring. Behold, you know, id seen pictures like that of nagasaki and hiroshima id never seen and this and this came out of the fire. There was not a tornado that joined the fire. The fire generated this and this is new on earth. Its happened once before in australia. Yeah, in 2003. But you know, were in a new age now and fire tornadoes are now the menu of possibility. I think one of the things that i find particularly about that, but also perhaps is that were used to tornadoes, used to large fires. What were seeing the current era are fusions. Yeah. Hybrid stations. Yeah. These things which produce different effects. What we would separately be able to do. Yeah. Your account, the fire very vivid. A lot of people write about not a lot of people, but a number of people write fire or include fires. Its a disaster, something a disturbance to things along or whatever. But you have tried to make fire occur richter and i think theres theres one one aspect of that is what you aptly call the paranormal or excuse me parricide and typically yeah yeah freudian slip. Parasite typically the sense of fire is it alive or not . But the other is how do you make fire a literary character, not just something that an external event can you do that you seem to have wanted to do to try what what did that take to make happen for you . Well, desperation really, because this fire was so big, there was no single character, no single firefighter, official or citizen who carried all the way through the fire, burned for a couple of it, actually was not declared fully out until the following year. It burnt for 15 months. Technically up there, you know, in northern alberta. So there was no through character. And so i felt like i was really violating kind of breaking a promise that good nonfiction writers generally keep. And i just didnt have the the the character. And i thought, you know, maybe my research had failed or i was unlucky. And then i realized was kind of in front of my face and it was fire. And i really of the questions i pose in chapter five is, you know, is fire and and got much more. I bought down on this this relationship that you and i have fire which is ancient it actually predates sapiens. Theres theres evidence of hearth hearth fires in south that date back close to a million years before there were. So fire has been with all the time and we have this kind of mutually enabling that has really gotten to the hold my beer stay age and and what nothing really amp that up like patrolling home and since 1870 you know we have been on an absolute bender humans and fire just tearing across the landscape up and i counted many fires humans make daily and it runs into the trillions and the engineering around fire and the marketing around fire as energy has been so superb herb that we dont really think about our civilization in being a fire powered civilization Petroleum Industry fossil fuel industry is a fire industry and so fire is really enabling us to do much of what we do and empowering us and also kind of goading on. And so now with our trillions of fires, if you count every combustion taking place in the combustion chambers of your vehicles as, you drive here and back. Its about 10,000 for a half an hour of driving the where and in turn have enabled fire which now burns more broadly across the planet it ever has. And so that gave me a sense of fire is ambition and i really thought of it more. Kind of a an ornery that is you know some in our control really wants to be on its own and so thinking of prospero and ariel aerial yeah. So i think of i think of fire as aerial and so the more i thought about fires, the more personality i saw it having. And then this fire, Fort Mcmurray was nicknamed the beast because it kept coming back in, this kind of grendel or moby like way. It didnt just sweep through the city way. Most fires do it. It like it wasnt done, it wasnt satisfied. And it seemed to come back for more. And so the firefighters who named it the beast developed a relationship to it and so that made me see it as as a as a monster and its a monster that that we have created through our fascination and allegiance to fire. And so its a really tangled symmetry and synergy that weve created here and that were now, you know, living were living it out together. Okay. Thank you. All right . We may be able to cycle back to the so we all have time maybe some questions john but jeff tell gathered as we are in one of the hottest cities in the states. Why should we dread the more than we already do, huh . Hmm. Thats a very good question. But before i answer, i just want do a quick shout out to the tucson festival of books for highlighting this panel on Climate Change in such a prominent way, its easy to dodge this or to put it aside, and its great. The festival brought us all together to talk about this so directly. So it is such an urgent and important story and in some ways difficult to talk about. So i just wanted to shout out on that. Why we be more terrified than we already are of heat. Well, i think one way to think about it is sort of let me tell you about how i thought about it and what happened to me. And maybe that will be a kind of way of thinking about this. So i started writing about Climate Change in 2001. So ive been doing it for 24 years now, right . And ive covered every of our energy world, our climate world. Ive been all over the world writing about it. And i, i never really thought about heat. I mean, obviously the word Global Warming, it gives you a kind of hint that heat has something to do with all of this, right its not like it was a secret, but it was actually in arizona in 2018. I was here to do some reporting for a different story. And i was in phenix downtown and it was 115 degrees and i had a meeting 20 blocks away and i had i called an uber, but my uber was late. As sometimes happens and i thought our hell with it, im just going to run. Yeah, i know. So i did. And by the time got, you know, 20 blocks, i was dizzy. My heart was exploding of my chest and had this little epiphany like, hey heat is dangerous. It could kill you and, you know, an epiphany like that for somebody whos been writing about Climate Change for 20 years, you know, suggest something about my level of insight into this. All. But that doesnt that doesnt reduce the importance of it right. It was like, oh, my god, this is dangerous. And that had never occurred to me before. And then that night i called a friend another and i said i hey, im a brilliant guy. I had is really big epiphany about Global Warming its dangerous it can kill you and but at that moment, i also realize that i didnt even know what heat was like. I knew a was i knew how we temperature but you i had written six books i had written for every publication in america about this and i could not tell you what heat was and so that was the moment that book was born on that walk in, because it gave me to understand thats why the book has same somewhat controversial title the heat will kill you first, which my publisher was basically. I mean, my editor it but there were some people, friends and others who were like, okay, jeff you want to hang yourself with this title of the book that nobody will read with this, you know, scare everybody away. But really thought it was important because i think that my experience and what im trying to communicate in the book is the urgency of this. This is, you know, we think about change and the risks that all these were talking about fire, flooding, you know, drought, all this stuff is often framed in a distal way, right . That its going to happen in future generations and that is going to in other places. And i really wanted to underscore two basic really, you know, expand over, you know, 350 pages, the story of what happened to me on that street in phenix and that urgency, that feeling that could, you know, that this is something that can you now if youre in the wrong situation and you do something dumb like i just i mean, obviously i could have i wasnt going to die. The streets of phenix of heatstroke, could have jumped into a bank or something. But nevertheless, you know, the urgency of and so to go back, your central question is one of the things that i came to understand is that there are a lot of people i would say a majority of people even people who like me, you know, had thought about climate, thought about the risks of heat, who really understand it, dont really understand how dangerous is, dont really understand it, does to your body, dont really understand how your body how important a stable temperature is to whole functioning of your body and more importantly, dont understand how important the sort of stable temperature is to a to all living things, not just us, but salamanders, alligators, corn crops, wheat crops you want to think of and infrastructure that weve built because have built our world, in what i phrase, i stole from scientists study life on other planets in this sort of goldilocks where the temperature is this certain range, which is what basically what civilization has has lived in involved in in the last 10,000 years. And we are moving out of that goldilocks zone. And that is problematic all kinds of ways. So my book tries to do two things. One is, look at heat, on the microscale and that or in the human scale to talk how your body manages heat, how its dangerous, how the mechanisms of sweat and all that kind of thing work, what heatstroke is, what it does. Your body. One critic compared my to a horror novel, which i took as a compliment, but it really talks about, i hope hope, a compelling detail how when your body temperature rises inside of your body basically melts and it literally melts. And the whole process and step by, step, process. So i look at all of that, but i look at the, the, the other part of it is the sort of macro picture of heat. I look, i talk about heat as the sort of engine of chaos for Climate Change when when john talks about the fires that he about and talks about so compellingly, the ultimate driving force of that is heat. Right . Heat raising temperatures, driving out, you know, intensive flying the risks of a fire making them more intense when burn. Same with hurricanes, droughts, all these things are driven by these rising temperatures. So books that attempt to look at the effects of heat on the human scale and the living things scale and on the macro scale. And the reason i think that, you know, people should be not terrified more, aware, is i think that theres a lot of ignorance how dangerous it really is. And even for people who live hot places dont really understand how how dangerous it is. Well well, one of the besetting flaws of academic writing is abstract. And i mean, thats part of what academics bring to the table. And reading this, i have the sense of heat, like the old physics concept of an ether. There is this infinitely subtle medium out there, which you cant really has to be there to make the mechanics work. But if i didnt exist, this sure does. But youre faced a similar problem. This was very and the way you solved that, i think, is by giving us lots of concrete examples, particular and particular people was one or two that really you particularly enjoyed in your or you found revelatory. Android. I would say maybe i think as a as a writer, maybe, you know, i kind of thought of this think of this book as a sort of biography of a ghost because you cant he one of the difficult things about heat and one of the reasons we dont really understand it is unlike other events like as john very powerfully talked, you know, fire is not something it is a secret. I mean, its pretty obvious its theres the visual representation of it is very clear. Our minds register it. Were aware of it, you know, same with hurricanes, things like that. When im sitting at home, austin, looking out my window, i cannot tell if its, you know, 70 degrees or 120 degrees outside. Theres no visual clues. And so we dont register in in same way. So for me the whole, you know, i of the book as a sort of collection of stories looking at it from different ways, trying to make the invisible visible, trying to make this ghost visible and, you know compelling, you know, powerful stories. You know, i think that briefly one of the ones that you know i cant not think about is the first chapter of my book is about a family who went for a hike on hot day in the foothills of the sierras. They were the husband was, 42. His wife was 35 or something. They had a one and a half year old child that they had in their carrier and a dog and they went for a seven mile hike near not a mile from their house on a hot day. And they were in good shape. Theyre perfectly Healthy People and not that they were experienced hikers. And not only that the brother of the who went on the cyc had had a conversation with brother. The two brothers talked. The night before and his brother was Outward Bound leader and really experienced in wilderness and everything. And he said, hey, its going to be hot tomorrow, be careful, you know, its going to ive the the forecast is going to be, you know, 102, which is hot but not, you know, and richard, the guy who was going on the hike said, yeah, yeah, i understand, we got water. Well be fine. Were going early. Well, did they went out early. They went for a hike hike down to a river but to them he said river spend some time down there and then had a three mile climb up a south facing slope steep switchback with no because there had been a wildfire there the the year so theres basically no shade and to make a long story short you can read whole detail in the book, but long story short is the that the friends and family who were trying to call them that night to ask how the hike was. They didnt answer phones. Nobody answered. It was like, whats going on . The next morning, his brother called the sheriff and said, what happened . You know, the my my brother didnt come home. I cant reach him. They said out a search party the entire family was dead on the trail about halfway up, including the dog. And sadly, of course, the child. They were all just there. And its a terrible story, but it was a mystery for it took the sheriffs department, you about six weeks to figure out what had happened because, you know, heat is not like a gunshot. It doesnt leave a wound. That same kind of way. And so there was a concern to the people that this family drinks something in the water that was some kind of bacteria was their carbon from an abandoned mine that they came across Something Like that and it took them six weeks to figure out know they died of heat stroke more or less simultaneously. Its not exactly clear what the order was but you know i that story in in some a lot of detail because i really wanted it to underscore this thing that i mentioned earlier this risks to everyone i mean if, its very clear that, you know, some people are more vulnerable to heat than others. If you have a weak heart, if you have circulatory problems, if, you know, pregnant women, lots of if youre on certain kinds of drugs make you more vulnerable to heat. But everyone is vulnerable. And in where even when you think youre prepared, even when you think youre okay even when you think you have enough water, you can die very quickly like, you know, a kind of almost like a kind of lightning bolt of of of heat and so that is one story that sticks me. Well, it is a horror story. Yeah. Im waiting to see how hollywood is going to turn heat into a slasher film. Maybe. Yeah. Will not. All right, david. Steven, the parrot in the igloo, an enigmatic that you deliberately you us at the end, that youve held it off to the end. Are you to tell us now what it what its about . Why did you choose that i, i the balance of my time to john valiant, the one youre not thats not good enough. Come. I was like it was like sitting next to a network show that was amazing. And he looks like, hes on like like a like a magnum p. I. Update. So i dont know. I think we should all just agree to give our time to john. He can tell us more stories. But if you guys want me to talk about the title, so okay, ill do it. My book doesnt offer biography of a ghost or its doesnt have any ordinary sprites in it. What its about what brought all of us into room, which is that were all aware that has been some problem with climate, and that we want to show our concern it. And for me what made me begin writing this book. This is a long way to get to what the title means has to do with the weird moment when found out how long weve known about Climate Change. Anyone here now . When we first started finding out about Climate Change, whats your sense . 1990s. 1890s . Actually a little. Okay, 18. Okay. And let me just let me just do one more follow up because because my my colleague jeff goodell, we were colleagues at rolling stone. He mentioned the goldilocks. And its interesting because the goldilocks effect is, one of the things that thank you so much to, its one of the things that radicalize the first generation of popular climate scientists in america. The people who worked on the venus landers in the seventies, they were shocked by how burning hot. The ordinary sprites had become venus. Venus is about 800 degrees on the surface, so like lead melts on venus. And so venus is too hot and it a very heavy greenhouse effect. Mars is too cold because it has a very light greenhouse effect. A greenhouse effect will keep the suns warmth on your planet and earth . This is what they mean by the goldilocks effect is just right for life. And so when these scientists, a famous one named james hansen, saw what happen when there was a runaway greenhouse, they became very involved in this issue. But yeah so 1890 is one of the answers. I got. 1824 is when a french scientist foray first starts talking about why our earth is warm at all, why we have the goldilocks here by 1850, the if you guys do you know tyndall street where gentle bends is we had a wonderful event there last night. It was funny for me saying that because tyndall was he was like the main scientist in england of his time and he proved which which elements of the atmosphere were keeping the heat in. He learned that it was Carbon Dioxide and it was water vapor. And then years later, a swedish scientist named 70 are haney us who later directed the nobel labs. So this was always established. It wasnt mavericks, it was people who were leading the parade. He thought, okay, we now Carbon Dioxide is roughly thermostat, although he wouldnt have used that metaphor because there were no thermostats. But but he said, okay, would happen. Let me just do the math. If we lowered Carbon Dioxide, what would happen it would re trigger the ice ages and we raised it temperatures would up if we doubled it, theyd go up about 4 to 9 degrees fahrenheit. And he, as a swede, very happy because sweden is very, very cold. And so some of his friends what they wanted to do was take abandoned coal mines and light all the coal on fire so they could speed the process up by. The 1920s, people were noticing things were really, really hot in the country. It was the headline on the times and this is how far back this goes. This is 34. On one side of the story was were going to shut down al capone, have to close all these speakeasies. And on the other side, the times think got this story wrong. Nazis. Nazis promised to end poor behavior in the reich. And so them between hitler and between hitler and capone is a headline unprecedented rise in temperatures. Red line has been going for 34 years. Experts, no theories. One of the first one of the first of our modern climate scientists proposed to the british Metrological Society in the late thirties. Hey, i think this has happening and someone who is writing his work in the forties said we are fighting a world war when its over. Ill on another bogey. But at the moment have to fight. The japanese and the germans. 1954 1956. Rather it was in time magazine. And thats why i this book and ill get to the title a second steve i dont want a very slick i dont think well this mark twain in little jims really but it wasnt it like underground data it wasnt in the journal of applied meteorology it wasnt cocktail chatter at a at the navy High Research center at hopkins. It was just in time magazine. And the headline wasnt subtle. It was one big greenhouse and professor dr. Revelle. Professor dr. Revelle, thats quite title, but professor revelle said in 50 years this could have a violent effect on the earths climate. The first hearings in dc were held that spring. Now science takes science slow. Its sort of like approving a new drug and 79. You guys know who the jasons were okay, jasons are great. You guys know who the jasons are, right . Theres a jasons. Did you guys see oppenheimer . Yeah. Okay. Youve got great scientists. Theyre doing valuable, dangerous work. And, you know, its like great band. Its like the beatles. Why should they break up some people thought that about oppenheimers team . And so in the early fifties they were brought together under title jason and, they were going to be used by both the white house and by the military to examine problem scientifically and. So they are taking extremely. And in the spring of 1979, we had an environmental conscious president. They had been looking at the climate issue. I think for a year and the leader of their study said this is going to happen. Weve been talking about it since 1895. Weve been talking it publicly since 1956. Weve looked at it and the quote in the times wasnt subtle. It was, this is going to go out of control unless mitigating actions are taken. And the jasons saying that means something to the white house. So they went to the National Academy of sciences. You guys know what that is . Okay. Who started it . You guys are so clever. Who started the National Academy of sciences . Lincoln that not incredibly cool. Like that is another amazing thing. Lincoln did so National Academy of sciences. President carter turned to them and said the nation that the jasons just freak me out. Is this going to happen. And i just. I was i wasnt texting during the the presentations. I just did. I wanted to read this because this is the reason i did the book and then ill go to the title and ive been a very quick, sideways way in the second run out the clock. Whats whats okay. So no, thats okay you know ill leave the title enigmatic then so that the group that met in is this is 45 years ago in july of 1979. And they met at the cape cod research, the National Academy of sciences. I imagine a very lovely place to work. The charney panel, a guy named jules charney, who is a Climate Change skeptic, was leading the panel. The charney panel had taken care find. This is from their report. Quote, unvarnished, unbiased viewpoints. This important and much studied issue. They reported the conclusions of this brief but intense investigation and may be comforting to scientists but disturbing to policymakers. If Carbon Dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that Climate Changes will result and no reason to believe those changes will be negligible so that was 45 years ago, and Nothing Happened, right . We had an amazing head start and Nothing Happened and. So thats the reason that i this book and im happy to get to the title later because what what an story like here we are into it really like we lead planet right and know that were the most sophisticated people who ever walked on this distracted globe and we had a 45, 45 year head start and. Weve done zero. That was just a thrilling story to write. No, no sprites, no go. Spam biography. Just a biography of all of us being surprised. Our eyebrows higher and higher as the years click down. So that is not a description of a power to negative, but thats what the actually means. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Well, i wanted i wanted to give a prompt to you guys and have you run with would you really ram it really round. Well, no, myself. No, were were still weve still have time. Youre not through yet. Youre right that i wanted it the book to work like a novel like Great Expectations if the hero were an idea so youve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this as a literary creation, not just an idea. The way that idea might be expressed. And one im curious about is the organized action. You have three parts inventor, scientists and deniers, but then you invite the reader to shuffle them up. It doesnt matter. Well, that doesnt sound like a 19th century novel to me. I dont remember shuffling his chapters that way. So im interested in how you think about it in that term, but also the prose and what i would call your simile is adjective, which saturates things. I want to read just a small section actually builds on what you left off with this and you write you can feel the word coming theres always and except with Global Warming the string of cans knotted to its tail its like dieting or giving cigarets or joining a gym except in this case was five foot nine had tight rhino eyes and the jimmy olsen haircut was named john sununu. Sununu had 180 points of iq. He responded to queries he didnt like with small minds as questions he made blunders under listening overreach committed mostly by people who know to be very smart. Longtime republican strategist ed rollins called sununu living proof that you shouldnt give children their iq test results for this ad, you can pick it up. I just picked this more or less at random. It turns to be helpful in this case, but this this saturates your prose at sentence after sentence page, page. I dont know how you keep it up, but the result is a kind of textual immersion. Not quite faulkner in, but i also wonder if working style like can morph into mannerism. And what do you say to critics . I know if anyone has criticized you for it, in a sense your estheticism you disgust me. Well i get to be special again. I get the. No, i just i was curious if it would be accused of estheticism the horror. In other words, that its all fizzle and foam that your muddle of the argument. I dont think so but i could see that criticism being and i wonder if if you follow that muddling argument, what do you mean . Well, yeah, im muddling the muddied argument as im getting old. Thats my universal reply. No, i was wondering if if it gets the not necessarily. Weve had very vivid even Horror Stories about things and this is a part that have you in the sense disguised some of that by this. No thats not an accusation. Course no no no in the horror speaks for itself we had a 45 year head start from the jason ur and from our National Academy of sciences and we didnt do anything. So no, like all you have to do is tell that story. And it is funny and, disturbing and doesnt speak entirely well of us as a culture. But i want to get back to the dickens thing you led off with. You guys read dickens. You skipped some right there, maybe some section that you really want get to. So i was i think, you know, honestly, replicating the experience of dickens but when, when you were speaking i realized, have you guys read catch 22 . I realize that thats what i should have said in the opening. As much as i love dickens, it is just catch 22. Do you guys remember . I forget which element is talking the air force doctor. And he says some catch that catch 22 and the doctor its the best there is. We live extremely in the modern world and we live well because of fossil fuels and, nobody wants to give them up. No polity wants to give them up because its unpopular. And yet we do want to express we would like things to work out better both for ourselves and for our descendants. We are in catch 22. So it seems to me that i should have actually said catch 22 and and not dickens. One more thing before i get to really apt question of style. What i also have said is just you guys know that nothing is likely be done on climate, right . I mean, you guys have seen this issue for 20 or 30 years, right . And people come up and they say theyre going to do something. And then there is an a congressional action or theres a president ial election and they begin to back away. Biden was the first president who did amazingly good stuff on this and he right now is being argued with by his Campaign Advisors saying talk about it in terms of jobs. Dont talk about it in terms of climate. The same thing happened to obama really understood the issue. So maybe not catch 22. Have you guys ever seen roadrunner cartoon so the coyote seems to be close to the roadrunner it seems its going to go his way. Youre watching seven as for the cartoon and. Climate action is right there. And then it turns out that he has run off the cliff and is going to swoop down with a wonderful whistling sound effect to unpleasant. And that been a fairly good history of this period. But now to answer stephens question, its a great story. And i wanted to read it and i love i love lorrie moore. I love john cheever. And i wanted to write something thats fun to read as it is to read them. So that was the idea, because i thought that was the thing i could do, which is weve lived this insane story and write it right. It is something that people could read for fun as opposed as a certain kind of virtuous homework. Okay, thank you. We leave out. What a great trio. Huh . Okay, we now opportunity for questions from the audience please go to the mic so we can hear you and please ask questions not not offer comments. Yes. During the recent republican debates. Was there a signal question that related to climate and what is done to help activate and motivate the Younger Voters about climate, about change . Thats a great question. There were some in the beginning when there were more candidates, aside from the large room suffocating one who apparently is going to be their choice, as the questions were. You agree its , right . Then everyone on stage said, yeah. So that was the extent of the republican examination of climate. Um, whats being done it is totally fascinating how the scientists have responded to this issue. I mentioned jim hansen. Hes the one who was radicalized by venus. He worked closely every president and was himself, even though he was a big voice on this issue, registered. Then he became an independent. Scientists in general tend, not to be democrats because they want to be sort of they often lone wolves. And so they will register as independents anyway, he really had hopes for obama. And then when obama broke his heart he said that is he called obama. Its so sad to read because love president obama but he called his presidency a dismal failure and then he said that we can only really expect relief, the courts and not politics. And i always think hansen dr. Hansen is a wise person to follow. And what else else if not . You dont have to. Its not mandatory. Okay lets lets go to the other side. So last week, the securities and Exchange Commission just published new rules requiring Public Companies mandate Climate Change disclosures been looked forward to for a long. So very exciting thats out there. Just wanted to get each of your opinions on what impact you think that will have not only on the businesses themselves but possibly industries and investor. The scc has been so good at regulating the Financials Services industry that im sure do great with climate as well. But i would just add that it does bring up an interesting question about. You know, does more disclosure help . I mean, does more is it we need more information. We need to know really, you know, exactly how many tons exxonmobil is response before . I mean, we know who the players, we know whats kind of going on. I disclosure is really important. I think things like methane satellites are up there now that are you know being able to detect methane from space and being able to point out things like leaky wells and other kinds of discharges of methane are really important, but its one of the things that i wrestle with as a journalist writing about this is especially in our political culture now, is like does more information. I mean, you know, we all know whats going on. David, weve known this since, you know, weve done this for 45 years. So i think its a more complex political question than just sort of information and knowledge its more about, you know, how do you turn information and awareness into Political Action . How do you actually shift political conversation . So, you know, you dont have, you know, an entire you know, but one of the two u. S. Parties who whove thinks of this whole thing as a hoax and any hope of any kind of large action, which is what we right. Were not going to completely solve this by just recycling bottles and buying teslas. Right. We need we need large government, not just on the emissions side, but on the adaptation side. And so the large is what is the political, you know, levers that are that are going to shift this conversation and. Disclosure is important, but i dont think thats like a silver bullet. Okay. Yeah, i have a more specific question. My wife and i live on an environmental corridor, southeast wisconsin. Thats mostly hardwood forest, oak hickory, cherry, maybe a few cedars in there. But weve had drought in our summers the last several summers and the last summer was probably the most severe. And does hardwood forest have any special protections over . Conifers is basically do we need to worry . Im about such a thing. Yeah. Who can really answer this is stephen jay pine. But im going to wade in here. I think under normal circumstances in a in a less, less dry climate. I mean, what youve had red flag warnings for fire in wisconsin already, as i understand it. And so under in a in an ordinary holocene stable world, this deciduous would be, you know, much less fire prone. But i really think, again weve tweaked the system enough so that these new kind of chimerical possibilities are now on the table in a very real way. And if i lived in wisconsin or michigan or minnesota or ontario or southern quebec, i would be very concerned this summer, even if i, you know, lived in a sugar maple forest. I saw photos from wisconsin of a guy sugaring, tapping his trees. And theres just dry leaves on the ground. Theres no snow. So were at this in the second half of an el nino cycle thats, you know, typically hotter and drier than the previous year. Weve also had now decades steady heating, which, you know, generates greater evaporation. So all that all as you know, this named dennis cotillo from alberta said to me when i interviewed him about the Fort Mcmurray fire, he said the curves are all going one way and i think for wisconsin theyre theyre going toward a more flammable deciduous forest and i would keep head up and be watching the smoke this thank you okay sir this is a question for john you tell the story of this disaster in Fort Mcmurray im wondering what the cultural and governance wisdom learned from this experience was i how how has the government of canada reacted that they down fossil fuel production Something Like that. No doubled down they doubled down. So as i said at the beginning, alberta is the texas of canada so they dont talk about theyre they have a very climate denying government who is completely beholden to the fossil industry to the point that they imposed a moratorium on wind and solar so that they could study the Environmental Impact and by doing that they alienated of dollars of investment and alberta does have a lot of friends and texas was one of their friends and they have alienated literally driven billions of dollars investment out of that province, which is right now in stage four drought has 50 wildfires was burning and you look at the photos of reservoirs and rivers there and it looks like a desert and theyre going to have one hell of a summer. And you cant drill for oil when theres rolling smoke. And one of the side effects of the Fort Mcmurray fires that shut all the tar sands mines literally had been running 24 seven 365 since the late seventies. They had never shut down. But smoke shut them down. It turned it into ghost town and for a period of time. And then they came back and now, you know, they just crossed as i said, the 4 million barrel mark. Thats thats ultra max, super tanker that wont even fit through the panama every single day coming of Fort Mcmurray into the northern u. S. States. So theyre going to it till the wheels come off or till it burns down. And the other of canada are more progressive. But canada in general, of all the g7 countries, is laggard. And its Climate Action closer to russias, frankly. And thats know, thats not a concept that americans often carry about about canada. But thats you know, thats part of a more complex reality. So i just want you up texas. I want to say one thing in defense of texas, a recently arrived texan wind and solar are going hard now. Exactly. So as you pointed out, texas is the fossil fuel ancestral home in america, right . Well, and theres a lot of the same politics. The john song about there. But theres also the you know massive changes that are going on, you know, kind of under radar. So the last week ive been checking we have our own grid in texas of course, doing because were our own little nation. Right. Were still the republic. Texas, in their minds. And so we have our own grid and last two weeks, ive been checking what the mix is on the grid. Basically. 60 to 70 of the grid power in texas right now is solar. And wind or renewables, its and its not because we have progressive governor whos like worried about the fate of the planet and. You know, that is not whats driving this whats driving this is economics and when so its you know, this is because wind and solar are begotten so much cheaper. And one of the you know things that has happened we have done some things and one of the things weve done is made solar and wind really cheap. Ten years ago you know, i would have arguments with fossil fuel guys and they would say, well, if you want to, you know, raise the level of development you need cheap energy. Cheap energy comes from coal and gas. Now its the opposite. If you want cheap energy. Its wind and solar. And if you you know, thats the fossil fuels that need subsidizing. So i just want to, you know, point out that the the the the the changes here are happening in in ways that are sometimes subtle. And im said and sometimes more complicated than we think. Some think two things, to paraphrase ben franklin, two things you can always rely on death in texas. So, okay, ive been given our two minute warning. So im sorry. Well have to close down the questions you can pursue the authors to the book sales and author signings which we hope you will, and read their books buy their books at the u. S. Bookstore tent and a special thank you for our panelists. A thank you to all the readers in attendance stay safe and be well thank