For a complete schedule go to go to our website booktv. Org. You can also follow us on facebook, facebook. Com book tv, on twitter booktv and on instagram at book underscore tv for lots of behindthescenes images and videos. This is book tvs live live coverage of the Los Angeles Times possible of books and will begin with the author panel on the environment. Im alex. I do the morning edition on 89. 3 mac. [applause] i am thrilled to have the three wonderful guests who are with us this morning to discuss a very important topic, environment, surviving the future. Ill tell you a little bit about each one of them starting to my far left, lee van der voo is an independent journalist and one of my cities in the planet, portland oregon. The author of the fish market inside the bigmoney battle for the ocean in your dinner plate. Sitting next to her lets hold our pasta the very end, sitting in the middle is miriam horn the author of several books putting the New York Times bestselling earth, the sql. She works at lives in new york city and her latest title is rancher, farmer, conservation heroes of the american heartland. Last but not least my ebd left is steve early, communitybased activists based in california. Hes a past contributor to publications like the la times, boston globe, usa today, the nation, the progressive and many more. He also helped. He also helped initiate labor for bernie and belongs to the richmond which is americas most successful municipal reforms organizations. His latest book is refinery town, big oil,big money and remaking american city. Now, a big round of applause. [applause] i wanted to start off our discussion by talking about when it comes to the environment why books . Especially in this day and age where so much of our news and information via broadcast, tv spots, radio spots, twitter, facebook. These things take a long time to read and certainly, a long time to write. Id love to hear from each of you and steve, lets start with you. Why are books about the environment important in this day and age . Im blown away by the scale of this event. I want to applaud everyone for choosing this particular item on the smorgasbord of the book festival. And for coming out. Ive done three previous books, never been to a book festival and the idea that more than a hundred thousand people would come to a weekend of book chat and book buying and grappling with the issues that officers of various types raise in the books vindicates my own personal decision, with the help of publishing a fourth book. I salute you who are all here. I think certain topics the complex issues involving race and class and environmental justice, community safety, economics, injustice injustice that i try to deal with in refinery town are not easily addressed in a tweet. Im sticking with the book format [for the time being. Miriam, we still have imagine you. Your book is a movie. There can be additional ways and other mediums for addressing Environmental Issues. What is the importance of environmental books in 2017 . I love this person. It gets at what i set out to do with this book which was to try to move beyond the simplistic and ideological ways they get engaged. My book is about red state conservationist and i wrote it with the intention really of reaching two diametrically opposed audiences. I wanted to reach audiences on the left to dispel the myth that the only good approach to Food Production is small in local and organic. And retrieve some of these people who get regularly demonized. I wanted to speak to the right and remind them how deeply conservation values run in this country and how deeply conservative those values are. I wanted to suppress an honor to these characters to win their trust and keep the conversation going. The only way to do that, i settled on telling five stories, very deeply. Trying to do it through heated language and anecdote, it just reinforces the divides and the way to bridge the divide is to reveal the scientific complexities, all the tradeoffs, like a kansas farmer is actually saving up to and balance so getting deep enough into the science but getting deep enough into these families and their values to help people understand the depth of their commitment. Will get back to. Having read miriams book, you get the sense that i feel like i could drop by one of these peoples homes and introduce myself. I could stay your house because i know them so well. Lee, what about you . Whats the value of an entire book . You were not planning on writing a book necessarily. No, i was not. I let my ill echo what my fellow panelist said. Theres enough space to do these topics does this. I came very much an article writer and then an investigative journalist for 18 years and i had somewhat followed the discussion about our nations approach to sustainable seafood and policymaking and when it came time to write it i thought i didnt have the space or marketplace. After meeting with the topic both on contracts for magazines and is a fellow for a couple of years i felt that the story was much deeper than what we were seen in general media and i wanted to be able to tell it. Everyone up here today has a very personal connection to their story. Id like to kind of help reveal that to everyone here today. Miriam, well will stick with you and have you read a passage. Lee basically lost a bet and thats how she wrote a book. Which is sometimes how the best books come to be. Could you share a passage . I did indeed lose a bet in a bar and that was how i wrote the first set of articles in the theory that led to this book. I had done a piece about salmon and salmon fishing in oregon where i live and i was in a bar loudly complaining about how its never going to do it again that i didnt think people were interested in seafood topics, that it turned out always be a dustup between who gets what, mostly fishermen and someone there, a friend of mine, that he could get me to do it and started telling me about catchers. I was doing a lot of food and sustainability writing at the time so the idea of policy eating wasnt new to a journalist. Greenwashing was a consumer plague of the millennium and organic foods do to the main hippie food. Organics were 25 billion industry in industry in the United States, one in which fair trade and eventually conscious brand were garnering a premium. Consumers who didnt want their eggs laid by caged chickens or their beef. [inaudible] i was already covering an enormous. [inaudible] i was given that the seafood counter was the place inside the Grocery Store where people looked the most lost seemed like a reasonable venue for hood winking. [laughter] steve, you are one of the few lucky to buy a house in california these days. Most people as you know, its no small feat in southern california, certainly no small feat in southern northern california. Not long after that a little happen and that prompted your book. Can you tell us what happened . I can show some of the people what happened. You have to be careful about who your industrial neighbors are when you move into certain communities in california including richmond california. Has anyone been to richmond . My god. This is the richmond dais for a period of former richmond resident to my right who lived in the city during her graduate school years at uc berkeley and miriam is a graduate of kennedy high school, if you can believe that. A hardcore richmond night. Anyway, Richman Richmond civic life has been dominated for centuries by big oil. This is what the citys shoreline look like on a big oil bad hair day like the one in august of 2012 when due to the companies longstanding practice of putting profits and productions ahead of worker safety, environmental health, community safety, there was a major pipe fire, huge tiring of toxic smoke covering cities in the east bay, 15,000 refinery neighbors were sent scrabbling for medical assistance. Every emergency room, clinic in the area, the company copped a plea to various civil and criminal penalties and was assessed the longest ocean fine in the history of the state. They havent paid. The city is suing them over this, damaging impact on Property Values including the property of recent people who had recently moved in. It got me thinking about the history of big oil, his relationship to the community for the labor, history struggles in the last ten or 15 years people have risen up to challenge big oils control over city hall. Just because its compelling detail, can can you show where your wife was when this happened. This is personal. You cant quite see our garden in the picture but she was in the garden and im not sure if everybody is familiar, maybe the richmond people are, Public Safety protocol shelter in place. She grew up in the 1950s living under the shadow of a Nuclear Attack and you did a few drilled in elementary school. You crouched under your desperate in place is what youre supposed to do on the same scale of effectiveness when you have a fossil fuel catastrophe or accident like this. The siren sounds and you go into your house and you tape your doors and windows, my wife was in the garden and she didnt know this protocol and she was told by a neighbor, get in the house. That lasted about five minutes and we jumped in the car and raced off to berkeley. Likewise, miriam, you have a very personal connection. I feel like its a little less dated by. [inaudible] ill figure out whats going on. When i first read about your book, the thought that went through my mind was what a nice girl living in new york city doing all the spending time along the Mississippi River which is the thread that connects all of your stories. The passage of selected illustrates the importance of the core of it. Would you read it . There is a personal connection. Was rather tell me the personal perspective. Tell both. Start with the passage because it talks about the importance of this area. As i said, itsa journey to the mississippi water, the Third Largest river in the world, drained almost half of the United States, its been absolutely critical to american both history and Natural History california has lot of of Natural Resources but mississippi watershed holds the vast majority of our mineral wealth and food wealth. I was interested in it for all of those reasons but also because it mapped perfectly to red state america and because i had come to know that the people who worked these landscapes were playing a Critical Role in their destinies. America depends on these grand lake working landscapes and in turn they depend on a number of people. The families who live by harvesting their bounty. Farmers and ranchers make up 1 of the Us Population but manage two thirds of the nations land. Agriculture has greater impact on water, land and terrestrial diversity than any other human enterprise. Thats true everywhere making this region a bottle for the world. Half of earths ice free land is in pastor or farm. Crops now cover an area the size of south america and livestock, graze and expand as big as africa. Together they use 70 of all freshwater. Fishermen have an equally enormous impact harvesting 90 Million Metric Tons of fish annually. Equivalent is to pulling the human weight of china out of the sea every year. As these productive landscapes grow increasingly precarious, over graves, over hills come over fish, threatened by Invasive Species development, illconceived piece of engineering and extreme weather it is the families that run the tractors and barges and fishing votes who are stepping up to save them. Theirs is the most consequential efforts to restore americas grasslands, wildlife, soils, rivers, wetlands industries. The vast rich bounty that shapes our National Character and sustains our way of life. Interpersonal connection. Its having grown up in el cerrito, in california i spent as much of my childhood in a farm in winters which is west of davis. With a farsighted farming family. They were farming a very large scale come about 5000 acres but were already this is in the 60s and 70s and were already looking forward to anticipating the struggles that california was going to face in terms of more extreme weather and water challenges and they were acutely aware of the impact the downstream impact that everything they did had and so they were my first real teachers on these complex tradeoffs and really thinking across space and time in wayne though sprayed us. I then in my 20s ducked out of college for seven years and worked for the us forresters in colorado and there i had a really similar experience in this case with ranchers and loggers and even some minors. Again, coming to experience the depth of knowledge and love and commitment that people who live and work on these lands it really bring to the task. Does anyone here remember the old sesame street where they say this so was brought to you by the letter and we would say this panel is brought to you letter by the p. We have a particular lens to this panel. For steve it was a place, richmond and the focus of his book. For miriam it was people, her story was told the individuals that she met along the way and lee, your ps practice. It was really important, id love to see a quick raise of hands of people who have eaten a fish of some variety, any variety in the past 15 months . Great. Second followup question and its okay if the answer is no. How many of you feel like you have a very strong understanding of where that fish came from and how it was caught and who was catching it . Okay. With that in mind, youll youll want to hear what lee has to say. Lee, can you explain but in lehman turns what is this policy and practice you write about . Sure. Absolutely. The United States sets limits on how many of us could come of the water in every given year. The fish we catch any today we want them to be here tomorrow, ten years from now, 15 years now. Now. How that cap is an force can vary. A catcher is one of those tools and how it works is essentially, taking the pie of all the fish that can be caught in a given year and slicing it up and giving it ownership to various pieces to qualifying fishermen, corporations and the particular structure in that region for that particular fish. The bet is that if you give the people a stake in ownership they will take care of it, theyll have an interest in conservation because the longterm gain will off on and also be theirs. Its a little bit of a gamble. Its like giving 100 people houses and betting that everyone will cut their grass. You dont really know. Ownership means Different Things to different people and so the effect of this has been a little mixed. Lots of people who are owners became good stewards and they are the folks that are bringing us some of the incredible pieces of products that we have today and theyre innovating the seafood supply chains so that more people when that chris comes around where it is her first come be able to raise her hands. But many folks did opt to become landlords in the system. They rent the rights to go fishing from their share. They dont miss anymore and that makes it tough for the young fishermen to climb in the system. Its like trying to buy that house from the landlord that can raise the rent on you. Its difficult. As investors and corporations and equity groups become the next owners of these shares to go fishing, that is upsetting the Small Business tradition that has unmarred fishing and coastal, sorry, been the foundational of pitching in coastal communities for many years. Lee, your book is about a practice but its also about very much about people and you get a sense of what these fishermen are up against. There so many . I hate to sound trite today but. [inaudible] could you maybe tell us about one of the many that you mention who began to make you question is this really thebest policy that we can come up with . One of the most interesting variances i had in writing the book was being aboard a vote in alaska and i spent four or five days with the captain and crew, captain was vernon crane and he was a great guy. Veryinteresting, and fun to hang around with. The dynamics of that particular fishery are that the ownership rights have become controlled over years and years by folks who dont this anymore. Vernon is a renter. Alaska put some sideboards on these programs years ago with the intent of encouraging fishermen to divest as they age out of the system. What happened is that its become almost a retirement package to go fishing. You have to be on the vote in order for your fish to be caught but instead of saying the objective was you have to be actively fishing but thats not what happened anymore. Vernon is one of these guys who in southeast alaska, beginning of the fishing season, nail out brightly colored fires trying to entice these older folks to come on their votes and ride with them while the fish are caught and they do things like say, come on my vote i got a 500 dvd collection that you can watch while im fishing and ive got loose meat and i will give you quality grubs and you can have my washer and dryer. They put themselves out for this marketplace. I spent a few days while their landlord essentially got 65 of the of the value of that trip, rode with us and spent a lot of time sitting in the galley reading. Hes a super nice guy and came out and helped periodically as he could but those relationships . They dont always look like that. That was one of my more interesting experiences with seeing how vernon has to navigate that and make sure that hes running a crew and a ship that young people want to work on. Miriam, you also have some truly fascinating characters but theyre also real people. It was so compelling about the earliest settlers again, ill give you free choice because there so many good ones to choose from. Can you tell us about one of the people that you encountered in the midst of your writing . And also, how did you choose the people . You could have profiled any number of folk and im just curious how you selected the ones you chose. Maybe ill give up brief on each of them. Another asset on answer to this question is the Mississippi River gave me an opportunity to show the interdependency. The book begins at the further most headwaters of the mississippi which is the northern missouri lewis and clarke country. A fourth generation rodeo, dusty he was a successful bronc rider and was flying all over and seeing what had happened to this amazing landscape where the Rocky Mountains made the great plains and that it turned into suburban sprawl. He went home and understanding this rare foiled landscape that helived in the largest unaltered landscape in the 48 and rich in wildlife. He got active in saving both those epic private ranches in the big public lands that were in a worse position. I then moved down to kansas to a largescale wheat farmer and we. [inaudible] also a fifth generation. His swedish ancestors settled right after the civil war and transformed his way of farming. He no longer plows soil, he hasnt plowed in more than 30 years and we can talk about more that later but why he makes that choice but i go on to the Mississippi River with a ceo of a bart company that navigates all the inland waterways and the Intracoastal Canal and the impacts of Climate Change jeopardizing his vessels and mariners and has stepped up to lead from the Business Community to lead the effort to restore the louisiana wetlands. I then have a vietnamese temper, sandy a refugee who is the advocate for a very vulnerable community, on the leading edge of vulnerability as a protective landscape has dissolved into the gulf. Then i end with a red snapper fisherman, lee and i have very different views of catch shares. I end with a fisherman wayne warner out in the gulf of mexico who was instrumental in transitioning that fishery and has helped bring that fishery back from having been beaten back to 4 of start population levels and a level where fishing families were going bankrupt and fishing communities were collapsing to the red snapper being halfway back to rebuilding levels. The fisheries value has increased more than ten times and employment has gone up and the bike kitchen waste. [inaudible] theres been huge ecological benefits as well. You mentioned the creationist christian and one of the things that i found fascinating in reading your book was how spirituality and religion informed people ideas around the land, creatures living on it and how they should be treated. It wasnt necessarily a universal approach there were those who firmly believe that their faith told them that man had dominion and do whatever he or she wanted to and that these things, creatures, working for our benefit and there were others thought in a different way. Can you talk of how theyve guided those can be what you called stewards of the land . Dusty talks about what he calls the drill it and kill it crowd. He talks about people neighbors who do invoke this idea of dominion as these resources are here for man and that was why they were put here. For us to exploit. His response is well, we do have dominion, he quotes a passage in the bible about having dominion over all creatures and he says to me, thats a warning, not a permission slip. You have to uphold this responsibility and you have to rise to the occasion. Justin, his whole family has this deep faith that goes back many generations and his view . He sees his approach to farming is emulating christ. The effort to return to restored the garden to some degree, to go back to much as possible the kind of native harmonies that existed before we broke all of that great plan of god. That translates on the ground into mimicking and working with nature in this incredible way. In particular, the complex soil ecology, ecology, microbes that live in the soil into critical things for his crops and for everything else. For creating oxygen, stabilizing soil, capturing water, preventing disease, preventing disease, all of these things. So, again, its a sense of responsibility to creation how much of this gift that we been given and also a sense, he says he doesnt do, its not Sustainable Farming its restoration farming its trying to restore some things that have been badly broken. Steve, i want to turn to you. One of the things that is interesting about your book and maybe, unlike the others next to you, we follow and see the environment as being one issue and maybe the economy is a separate issue. Maybe healthcare is a separate issue and in richmond we see how so many other issues on the surface of it may not seem like quote unquote Environmental Issues become a part of this environmental tale and the story of richmond. Can you talk about how all of these things come together in the story of richmond . Very definitely. Interms of a working class hero by mike smith, an oil worker and a former chevron employee, how many of our here at the discussion because you support an environment of growth . Show of hands. How many are members of a union . Notbad. You can see, one of the things we need and i advocate for in the book is building what i call blue green alliances. Bringing people together from the labor andenvironment movement with corporations like chevron and big oil, where possible. On the labor labor side of that equation that is difficult. When you are in elected representative of workers whose livelihood is dependent on the extraction, transportation, refining and use of fossil fuel in some forms. One of the heroes in my book is a guy named mike smith who was one of the critics of the chevron Safety Practices that led to this environmental disaster in 2012. Not long after the fire. Two years ago, the Oil Worker Union he is part of had a nationwide campaign and strike and one way they rallied environmentalist to their side is through framing issues in a way that resonated with refinery neighbors and people in the broader community. Demanding curbs on contracting out, demanded better staffing, limits on forced oversa poverti. Refinery operators are forced to work 1618 hours a day sometimes. Not a safe practice. They demanded the right under their Union Contract to refuse unsafe work. If a processing unit pipe springs a leak that unit is shutdown and workers refuse to respond to the scene of the action until they can make repairs safely. These issues resonated with the Environmental Community in east bay and during a 67 week strike at one of the Oil Industry Giants two years ago this winter we were on the picket line supporting mark smith and sisters and brothers. Members of green piece, 350. Org, friends for the earth and communities for better environment. I think we have to find ways to bridge the bluegreen divide and bridge alliances and elected leaders at the state, local and federal level when they think the answer to Global Warming and problems Workplace Safety is a total program of deregulation. There was another alliance that happened in richmond i found fascinating and that happened with People Living in ecuador. Can you explain that . Chevron acquired a company that had a pretty bad record of drilling for oil in the rain forest section of ecuador. A group of peasant farmers have been involved in high profile global litigation against chevron. They won billions in damages at various points and chevron has spent hundreds of millions litigating this case and our green mayor, surprisingly was the largest city in the country with a green mayor, and met with the previous president and established a Strong Border relationship against litigation over big oil and adverse impacts. We have a Sister Country it was pointed out. Moderator there is controversy tackled in the books and i heard you do not want to pardon upon debate about a tax share but i would like to hear from each of you because a rot of time Environmental Issues of the debates and you talk to someone on the opposite side and in the end it seems like each one of you has come to a certain conclusion. I would love to hear from you as writers and journalists how you got through it all to come to the position at the end. Lets start with you lee. Nay are not central and black and white. As miriam mentioned, we have different not that different but i think we actually agree about quite a few things with regard to environmental policy. I would like to go back a moment and say i do think the methods of preassigning how we fish in the United States do improve Ecological Health and make fishing safer and increase the mount of money fisher men get for catch. I simply disagree about whether there should be private property right associated with getting there. I think we can accomplish most of those gains without it. I am an independent journalist and came to this as a story like i do most things. I spent five years going to catch markets allaround the United States. I have been to every federal catcher in the country. I have walked the docks and talked with people for years, i am sure. I have written on their vote and spent time in their homes and rigged the science and policy deeply. I am not i didnt come to this with any particular point of view. And after that first story, i am seeing fishermen renting themselves out i came to this cynically when i decided to write the book and pushed myself to spend time with the supporters to try to move the needle on my thinking. I came away as i said in the beginning with a few that, you know, this is close to being a great policy. I certainly, you know, i come to it just through thinking and spending time and an awful lot of very careful thoughts. Miriam, same question to you. How do you sort through the different sides and if i could tack on for everyone who may not have the wonderful opportunity spending months and talking to the people and seeing the world through they do how can we sort through it . I am tempted to talk about the farming issues because those really resonate with people but i want to say a little more about captures because i guess i worked the Environmental Defense fund for 13 years and as you will discover, if you read lees book, that edf has been a prime mover in this policy schihift a did so we dont consider private Property Rights but a revocable access right like grazing. We have a history in this country of harvesting our Public Resources by giving individuals access rights and trying to manage those access rights as a way to control overuse. We do it across minerals and water and every public resource you can think of. And edfs whole reason for being on this, we have an incredible if you are interested i would highly recommend you go to our fishery Solutions Website which is a giant archive of hundreds of thousands of scientific studies, many of them done in Santa Barbara which is a center of the science demonstrating how eff t effective these have been for recovering fisheries and fishermen and communities. And tackling the legit concern lee brings up about equity. So, for instance, a lot of these places, thes shares are not owned by individuals that are owned in california that are owned by the community. So that you dont end up with anything that resembles an individual property right at all. In some places they have been effective in undoing the harms. Long before capturing, fat cats were buying up a lot of these resources and controlling this resource so the west coast ground fish fishery, i will stick with the pacific since we are on the pacific, it had gotten so bad it was declared a disaster area. When the capture was put in place they put in place a cap on how much any one person or entity could own. No one could own more than 2. 5 of the fish and that broke up a big corporate ownership of that resource. It is all about how things get designed and as lee pointed out politics comes into the that. Politics comes into every decision we make as democracy and our view is, you know, you dive in. You fight in a way to protect the fix and the water. You dont, you know, they are never perfect. That is a unifying thing in all of this. There is no perfect way to farm or fish or ranch or any of these things. They are constant about being challenges and when it was a pesticide or we could engage for weeks and months. In a few minutes we will turn it to audience q a so if you have question said start to formulate that in your mind. I want to ask because your book is the only one that is hundred percent focused and anchored in california. We were talking about real estate in the area and it made me think about something that aired on kppc. The homes surrounding the gas leak and concern said about health and affect on the environment and jury is still out on that. You would think given that people may not want to buy houses in the area. Think again. It is california where it is really hard to find and afford a house and i just love to hear from you because it sound like there is a similar situation in richmond. You would think about what can and has happened folks would shy away but there is real estate. Richmond was referred to by snotty neighbors as the armpit of the east bay. Today it is hailed as a progressive city. How does that happen . How did it become a magnet for people fleeing unaffordable housing line in San Francisco and berkeley. It happenedbies happened because people went local in politics. They decided if their city was cleaning and greener and safer and healthier they had to localize locally. They started running for office since 2004 progressive candidates in richmond have won 1016 elections for city council or mayor. The Multi Movement has a 57 member super majority on the council. Last fall by a 21 margin, richmond became the first to drop rent control, roll back rent back to the level they were this is a moment of great darkness and despair for people who are concerned about what is going on inside the belt way in many capitols and sacramento. At the local level there are opportunities to organize in grassroots fashion and transform the most badly scarred and previously dysfunctional roles and cities. Richmond was known for crime and corruption and people over the last 1015 years in very challenging circumstances and have overcome those challenges and made their place a city i want they want to belong to. If you have a question, raise your hand. We have folks here with a microphone and they will come your way. A reminder if you could make sure your question is a question and let you know when panelist you would like to pose it to. I would like you to show my book. Show my book . Sure. It is now a documentary film. We have been on the festival circuit and premiered at sun dance and premier on discovery in august. One of my favorite books is the short history of merely everything and me mentions the cod fisheries off the coast of boston. Have you dealt with that . How they destroyed the cod fishery . Do you know about that . I do know about the cod fisheries, yes. I dont spend a tremendous amount of time in my book in new england but i am familiar with it. It is in a Catcher Program and rebuilding and i think there is more happening there than simply overfishing although overfishing has a history there. It is also i think there are Environmental Issues as was just discovered in the last year there was fraud in the marketplace that may have promoted continued overfishing and that is being prosecuted now. It is hard to know how much that impacted the stuff. You know, it is a very it is such a historic fishery and right now i think if you go out to cape cod at coastal new england and look for cod you will get a lot of imports which is too bad. There is still some folks fishing in common hook and line pool fisheries that are able to bring cod to market but, you know, right now it is very hard to find and the collapse of it is one of these things that have driven real disuption in new england. Thank you for that. I think we have a question here. I had a question for miriam. It seems like in many cases you hear about people in the sort of systems you are working in who should be concerned about these issues and Climate Change and environmental problems but because of identity politics and the way they selfidentify it seems like they dont. There is an article on cnn earlier about this in louisiana. People know they have trouble but are not it couldnt be Climate Change. Did you encounter these types of folks when you were researching your book . That is a great question. It was really the thing i thought most about how to navigate and i started with kind of a policy when i would go out and first meetings with these people i would never be the first to talk about climate chan change. I would let them chose to time and terms they wanted to. What i saw was the people i was talking to, what i saw was, and this changed over the course of working on the book, but i saw a very careful way of conducting the conversation where for instance, justin my farmer, when i met him four years ago, he said we were down in the thorough pit and he was showing me alfalfa roots because he doesnt plow create deep water trenches. He said if the weather is getting more extreme this will be helpful. As the time went by, it got easier and easier. He took me to meet his professors at kstate and they were direct about talking about Climate Change but when talking to legislatures they dont use those words. They started sending articles in the mainstream Agriculture Press that were coming out of closet on Climate Change. They were being more direct talking about the reality farmers are dealing with and we will have to become resilient to. The most startling example of the shift i was watching was the American Farm bureau, which is as conservative as it gets, recommended my book to all of their entire membership and invited me to come speak to all 50 state farm burrows and the book is candidate about Climate Change. I think i was watching a shift in candor happen. I think the people still often there was a times piece that jumped off the book and as far as i am concerned that is fine. I personally think it is fine. I think it shows the power of who you know in your immediate circle to try to have debates when we have them on the internet where you can suit up whatever you want to say without personal reprecussion. I believe a group of guys you talked about were the first to admit we see things in a different way but were able to be civil with each other because they knew each other. It goes back to the question of why we need to get away from this flaming headlines approach because he came out to new york and it was the first time he came to new york and i was moved he and his wife came out to say we feel like we were honored. This book tells the truth of our lives. And i think most people dont feel like they. They feel like they get used as a puppet show. Their investment of the time. The chevron enrichment says anything we try to do to slow Global Warming or decrease dependence on fossil fuel is harmful to the low income communities of color. The company uses what jane mayor and her book dark money calls recognized fill antra and deals out money to to schools. Doesnt want to pay fair share of taxes. It does that to win hearts and minds and win over in a predominantly nonwhite foreign working Class Community people who otherwise it is in their direct downwind from the refinery self interest to be standing up for, fighting for and demanding safer workplace conditions and Higher Standards of health and more environmental protection. This strategy the Koch Brothers are fructopushing it and you se impact where it has been effective in thwarting measures designed to address Climate Change by targeting corporate democrats, black and latino, lavish Campaign Contributions on them richmond style. Chevron Campaign Spending and it thwarted key legislation we need. My question is for miriam and i appreciate the great work you and your colleagues have done. I appreciate you are trying to create a dialogue between ranchers and farmers but wouldnt agree the overarching conversation has been a conversation about the renewable fuel standards being founded on the premise there is a scapeable, sustainable path to ethanol. That sustainable ethanol can be scalable when in fact that has been demonstrated that is not the case for 20 years. What we have ended up with is the record of severe top soil depletion, the gulf of mexico being essentially the ecosystem collapsing because of algae plumes, indirect use of land in brazil because of the soybean overproduction which is driven by the agricultural dedication to foreign ethanol. 50 of the corn obviously going into the corn ethanol. With that very sad history and lessons about the failure of renewable fuel policy and support it got from edf and nrdc, ed and essentially the National Honor associations wouldnt you agree with those organizations that owe environmentalists an apology for that failed 20year experiment and do you also believe we really need to recognize that sustainable ethanol is in fact a mythology and is a partisan problem of bob dole and believe in the rfa lobby machines, the farm lobby was a critical part. Sir, i am sorry to interrupt but we have just a few moments left. Ethanol yeah, so, i actually think you are misunderstanding environmental funds. My last book had two chapters on bio fuels and came out in 2008 and was clear on the fact corn ethanol is bad idea. As far as i know, edf going back as far as i have been there, has never supported corn ethanol. It doesnt work out. The Energy Budget doesnt work out. If we could have made it use we would have. We have time for one more question here in the front. Hi, when pushing prescribed grazing and you know, like you said, no till cultivation in cover crops that cut down nitrate use. Have you noticed the farmers and ranchers beginning to for economic reasons see the benefits of no till . Yeah, the economic benefits i mean it can be a tough couple years of transition. But just in kansas, i talk about this extreme swings that kansas has been dealing with and how conventional yields have gone like this with the weather and the notill fields have stayed high and stable and gives them greater Economic Security for the farmers. There is many reduced inputs. They do one tractor pact instead of five so add far less fertilizer and pesticide so they save at that end. The economic case is really becoming clear. 20 of heart land farmers are now notilling. Well, you know, i just wonder about the future and all these efforts are remarkable. But how about when you have the government picking decisions that are against and how can we fight it . That is the main thing my son is managing editor of the cr club and spends hours and hours writing and he is walking on thursday in washington. And i wonder, i said gosh, what are we going to have some results because of all these efforts . We jus have about one minute left i will let each panel with this huge question one piece of advice everyone can walk away this earth day weekend, march for science weekend, los angeles book time festival weekend, if they want to do something on the big picture to keep the planet in tact what would that one thing be . We will start with steve. It will take me a minute. Lee, we will start with you. I would say vote for your dollars. People ask me all the time how do i buy . Just know that the United States has some of the most sustainable features in the world regardless of the social justice issues we discussed here. Buy domestic. Secondly, if you want to go a little further and under whether or not the fisherman catching fish for you are fairly treated know your fisherman and try to under where this particular fish came from. And if you are members of ngo look deeply at how these organizations are spending your many. They are as capable of running consultantled campaigns and media blitz to force a particular direction as are the businesses steve discussed today. Understand where your dollar is going and use them well. Steve, you ready . You got it . Yes. There are things people can do as individuals, an consumers, for example that will have an impact. One richmond example i site in the book involves something called Community Choice aggregation. We can unplug from fossil fuel sources of energy and sign up for something called marine clean energy. Thousands of richmond electricity users have done that and are getting 50100 of their power from renewable sources. It is spreading to other communities and throughout the state. I recommend people checking into that if they want an alternative to invest their own very fossilfuelled dependent electrical utility company. Mary aikey aikee mariem . I would say recognize the heroes among us and how they present a model by coming together across the seemingly unbridgeable divide in politics and history how you really can make changes to the system. So just really remain open to people different from you. I would like at starting a pen tell program. Old fashion. If you have ideas, questions, for any of the fabulous authors i want to let everyone know there is a book signing following this session. It is located at signing area 1 which is an area noted on your festival map in the event program. You can also look for any one of the fabulous volunteers you see in the purple shirts. My thanks to our panelists and my thanks to you all for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] and this is booktv on cspans live coverage of the los angeles time festival of the book held on the campus of the university of southern california. In about half an hour or so the next author panel will begin and that is a panel on california issues. The authors have all written about different issues facing california. So we will be bringing that to you live. Full day of coverage ahead here