welcome. and i am excited to really interesting speakers. stories that we don't often talk about here and that we really should be covering more often. thank you for joining us. we had been around as a special project for over ten years now. we are a rapidly growing project were on facebook, twitter and on the web and on the way to radio across the country. some really great markets. definitely right here in the bay area as well is also our podcast. i was growing. we do have exclusive interviews that are only on our podcast. it runs for about an hour. the first 40 minutes we will listen to the conversation between greg and i guess. we give you an opportunity to make a line in front of that screen right there. we trust trust in you to use your judgment if i can direct your attention to billy in the back there. i can help you get signed up for membership if you don't already had one at the club. you can talk to him more about that. but that we will go ahead and get started with a short video. climate change is the issue of the day. it's our jobs, our economy. the challenge of our generation and the next generation. but with the challenges can come incredible opportunities while trading grading opportunities. it's not a choice between a healthy environment. there is thoughtful middle ground here. it should be win-win for all side of the political spectrum. and then to scientific effect. science is not political. were you gonna shift the needle on the problem of climate change. and figure out intelligent ways of addressing this problem we need a savvy electric. the things we do are so obvious. no reason why i can get them. we come from very different backgrounds. we only had one planet. my hope becomes really from the human spirit. i think people are genuinely good and want to do the right thing. it's about all of us. welcome everyone. from that the commonwealth club of california. with the energy economy and environment. in 2007 and went to the arctic on a global warming expedition with scientists and journalists for the russian icebreaker. changed my life. all of the systems around us. our food system, our water system. our ecosystem in our economy. climate changes everything. a number of americans who work in the solar industry is double the full and part-time people working in coal. that's good news for supporters of a clean energy economy but many of those workers are proud of what cole has contributed to the global economy they want to keep it going. they will be part of the energy mix for decades to come. on the show today we will hear about people producing fossil fuels and what they think about climate change. the people in fence line communities. the national director of green for all. it is founded by the activists. commentator jones. to fight the trumpet administration's budget in dismantlement of environmental protections. he won the 2005 national book award for fiction in the novel europe and central. the latest books are the carbon ideologies extensive works on that mass and the people that drive the global energy system. please welcome him to climate one. you write a lot in your first book about nuclear power. so take us to fukushima. he went into the dead zone over seven years after that nuclear disaster so take us to that. at the very beginning you would see potted plants that had just begun to weld maybe someone's umbrella and the in the doorstep of the had fallen down. and as the years went by the vines and grew up. the radioactive wild boar started breaking and to buildings. just get got creepier and nastier. were you concerned about radio active exposure. should must shall be concerned about that. i don't have a growing personality. i think you're safe michelle. i reproduced so i didn't really care much i have a dosimeter and then a pancake frisk or so they can measure the dose in that pancake frisk or can tell you right where i am right now. this is dangerous but if i go three steps away from the that drainpipe and quite safe. it measures carbon dioxide and methane. simply. i think we would be a lot better off. i think in knowing what the exposures are. in some of the communities that we work with. the communities of cover that it's not just enough to educate them about that. but to empower them to be able to do something about it. were all about education and tools in the hands of people so that they are aware of the dangers but also that there there's a viable option. where are you a on nuclear power. it does not send kids to the hospital with asthma. there is no admissions. what it nuclear power be a good thing for the people that you care about. it's really about building a great economy. more than just climate change. more than just carbon pollution. and for them to get around from place to place. we are looking at how do we fight poverty and pollution. health access. all of these things at the same time. did going to fukushima change your minds. the massive scientist. what he think after being in fukushima. >> i think all four of the major fuels are about the same. nuclear, cool --dash -- coal, oil and natural gas they are all a very dangerous and the only solution is to reduce the demand for everything we can't go from one to the other of these fuels. but you go to bangladesh re- talk to people it's wrong to deny them that. the bangladeshis probably admit something like 42 times less from fuel combustion than we do. one simple solution would be more birth control for americans. does it involve sacrifice. living with less. is at the path. if we did more to invest we would actually help bridge the echo dividers. a lot of our foods in produce come from the central valley. i talked to residents who are on poverty wages. he's in his 60s. he has two grandkids. it's triple digit weather out there every summer and so once july came his energy bill skyrocketed to over 70 but dollars a month. it is about their income and he can afford to pay it. their power was shut off for weeks. they have to send their kids down to's mother family. they tried to keep cool. like you would see your animal our pets do at home. he has been able to get into a low term education program. you can run all day and if it's an old unit it still is it making the house very cool. weatherize the home. all that can step. they've been able to get the power back on. when i think do we need to sacrifice. i think of all of the committees communities that are already sacrificing a lot. with our climate dollars. in these areas not having ac when it's 120 degrees outside is not an option. it's not safe. so how do we actually make sure that they can get off of the grid also. the redistribution with a hardship right now. they are a lot of people that are doing those things less. do you think people ought to tighten their belts as they head in the past to buy a smaller car. eat less meat. literally there is something that everybody can do. this is a problem. we didn't necessarily create. everybody has something that they're selling. it is been put on the consumer. we can all do our part. but how about we all focus on some of these big corporate polluters and stop letting them pollute for free. you talked to the ceos of energy suppliers. including the retired ceo. you write that you actually like some of these guys. i personally liked and admired him. sam hughes who was a vice president. with the bank of oklahoma for energy loans. and one of the things that sam said as is you know what bill, if you challenge someone's ideology. he will either hate you or walk away from you. we don't need to hate or walk away from each other. all of the people involved. like the coal miners. of west virginia. they feel really despised or ignored. we are grateful to you. and for letting us turn on our lights and air-conditioners. we never want to compensate you for what you've done. we want to retrain you. the third greatest number of trees. they want to cut down a bunch of trees and put in furniture factories. why not made in america solar collectors. people like these oil executives they honestly believe that they had worked hard all their lives to give us something that benefits us. when i was in japan writing against the nuclear power i turned on the nuclear powered air conditioner. i don't want to be a hypocrite. we have to figure out some way to say let's make it part of the future. i just want to say to the point about the coal miners. was to actually stand up for the health benefits of retired coal miners. this was after trump was elected. in 24,000 coal miners were about to lose their benefits in the united states. they did not want to get involved in business. they have employed them for all of these years. standing up and doing the right thing. but we actually have a lot more in common with communities that are just trying to put food on their table. they go down hundreds of feet into the dirt to dig up what essentially turns on our light bulbs. when i say we need to build an inclusive great economy. i think of communities that are bearing the brunt of communities. 68 percent of african-americans in the united states live within 30 miles of a coalminer plant. those people think that we have no need use for them. they don't like us either. and i really think we can turn that around and work together. they are mad that people are angry at them. this is under what a lot of them tapped into. it looks at the region that people don't care about. they feel like it is a heritage. you folks might have noticed that by once you start the war. if you want to continue that were all you need to do is get some soldiers on your site it killed. suddenly, we have to live up to their sacrifice. that is sort of how it works in a place like appalachia. my grandfather was killed in a coal mine. how dare you say that they are sacrificing and it was in vain. it's really quite interesting. >> if you're just joining us were talking about the clean energy economy. the national director of the green for all. tell us about some of the dead coal mining towns. you think they have some parallels to some old mining town. they had contracted someone in the united states. i remember the town of jaeger. in the downtown was just crawling with fines. there was hardly anybody around. i met a guy who told me back in the 60s, you should have seen how i was. my mother have a restaurant. no one comes. so often i heard from the sons and daughters of coal miners. you should've seen how great the coal company store was. i got my wife's prom dress there. the really nasty thing about the industry i would say is that it has continued to automate its more more productive with fewer and fewer workers in addition west virginia as very proud of its low corporate taxes. that means that it is really not giving back to the community. they get more and more abandoned. the most typical thing you might see in one of these towns as was a dialysis center. all you can find to buy in the store's junk food. a lot of our water in the southern counties because coal is often chemically bonded with iron and it turns into fuels in gold. people drinking tap water will get ulcers. it will brought their teeth. it also dissolves heavy metals. so that in the rivers the gills of the fish start hemorrhaging in the town of north folk for the librarian said there has been no water there for five years. just to bring back her bottles of drinking water. it's quite a nightmare. i'm not sure you're reporting how it was before and after. but did that change. trump tapped into. are you able to see before and after the election of the impact. with some skepticism about whether he's really bringing back some coal as he promised. the sorrel --dash like the the so-called war on coal. and then you just read back. it was all the fault of clinton. it just goes back and back and back. now they don't have to think so anymore. i think it went to some place in kentucky. and said the war on coal is over. everyone is happy. when we went to actually do that. he wasn't out there free. we make sure that they're taking care of. there was not of that. i think campaign promises are one thing. i think it two things i want to say. one is just about the narrative and how the conversation has been shaped. we want to make sure it doesn't fall into the same pitfall there. in the environmental movement they don't like that. and vice versa right then. they come out with a black lung disease. they would prefer that life to one where they could put food on the table. have a quality job that is cannot deteriorate their health. i just think their actual much more in common. then we have different. i think trump has capitalize on the economic fears and that plaguing the country. we are seeing the wealth gap widened. one thing you mentioned was the artificial component. the job loss is not losses not to come from the green economy. we know there is job growth is there. it is a net positive. it will be a risk factor for everybody. we need to really figure out was social safety net. even thinking about our education system. what you do when were no longer automated human beings they have become automated to place that in place certain functions. that as a society. the sun was working in the minds. mines. he was training to become an ent. are there other examples what is a 40-year-old coalminer supposed to do. what are the paths to go from the brown to the green economy for individuals. we know as states and companies. what is the individual half. we put out a toolkit that shares some case studies with how they have there. and how they have dealt with some of the closures of plants and how they had addressed the issues with workers. for some retraining as a viable option. and maybe providing a benefit package that will help usher them into retirement without having to think about actually starting a whole new career over which is probably not very realistic. some people would say the universal basic income that comes from the left. it doesn't necessarily find coal miners. i think actually, we are going through such a big shift in our economy that we need to really think about the social safety nets. and the other opportunities for changing out some of those businesses and communities like you said. we don't want to remember that. we want the glory days to be in front of people for all communities. you've written that there is a bit of a shell game going on by some politicians and countries. they moved manufacturing offshore and then claim take, we released that. everybody wants to take credit for something easy. the whole problem is so complicated. why is it for instance that if you look at nitric acid production this is an important industrial chemical in grace it takes something like 35 times more greenhouse gases to make a unit volume of nitric acid than it does in the united kingdom. there is this crazy patchwork of stuff which means that possibly some of that shell games could work if you sent something from a high admission place to a low admission place. but the fact is we either need fewer people or we need very detailed overall regulations of all of these agricultural and industrial processes and nobody is cannot do it. edges can be a nightmare. as more regulation the answer. >> there should be rules around how much pollution you can dump into a community and for free really, i think that's what's really blows my mind. i remember sitting on my couch here in the bay area one day and i was watching the news on the local anchor reporter was basically saying there had been a chevron oil refinery explosion just north of uc berkeley. everyone who lived that was called to shelter in place. they were telling you to get towels and blankets and whatever you could find to shove in the crack of your door. that was how unsafe the air was right outside that wall to breathe. it blew my mind because i have not grown up in a community like that i have a friend to who lived there. i said did you hear the news. are you in safe -- are you safe. she actually laughed at me this is happening so close to where i live. she laughed and said she have lived there for about 20 years there had been about 16 of these incidents. the city has an alarm system so when something like that happens they can hopefully hurriedly make their way inside. every time it sends thousands of people to the hospital. it's become normalized for some in the idea that it would be okay is unacceptable. while it's become normal while some are sort of do's dealing with it on the day-to-day. they are poisoning our air and her while her and our soil. it's not okay. i forget what your question was. that's the answer. were talking about the clean economy and fossil fuel economy. with a national director. author of the carbon ideologies. michelle, let's talk about the conversation. claimant is very polarized its thought to be not brought up in polite conversation. we talk about climate in a way that's relevant to the communities that you engage with. i imagine you don't talk about glaziers. no trees. a couple years ago i did not consider myself an environmentalist. to be a racial and economic justice act. i don't get all of this that you're doing but if you're working on it and must be good. in four weeks into my stent she sent me to flint michigan. the city that was plagued by leg pores and water. it was allowed to go on for over a year. it just became so real. i think the way that we talk to communities about this is not at all talking about pollution. not at all about climate change. climate change is everywhere and nowhere. it's feels like the thing that's far off into the future. my individual person trying to make ends meet he's not thinking about how to save the planet. he sings about think about how to save his family. you talk to them talked to them where they're at what resources they have and what resources they need to enter that economy. in other situations his son talking about even the pollution. going back to the rural community it's a farmworker town. here in california. there is an amazing program they are creating this clean shared mobility program that is helping people be able to get to a hospital an hour and not for ours. because the public bus systems currently. take four hours one a way. it is the hospital that serves any of the kids that have asthma. you become stranded if you miss your last bus back. they are able to give rights. getting into these incentives where they can now had electric vehicles to do this where they can come file a vehicle and help on the route. whether you have a car or not. it's good to be a cleaner vehicle to do this. and sent actually it's actually about the pollution issue. it's about the health access. it's about being able to do any of their business visit people in jail schedule their appointments any business that they had is in the downtown area. it's about talking about how these solutions will meet the needs that they currently had. what do they think about climate change. do they feel guilty for contributing to it. most of the people in coal country don't believe in it. the people in bangladesh had never heard of it the guestworkers don't really understand it just last weekend i went up near the oregon border. to cover the big car fire and the smoke was really thick. it actually bothered me more than a lot of the locals. there was only one person i could find including firefighters who are willing to say there is absolutely climate change. so i feel very pessimistic i know i haven't done my work will enough and i really admire you michelle and theirs can be more and more need for people like you as we all become more impoverished. i think things are going to rapidly get worse he might find wildfires from mexico to canada on the west coast we does have a let nightmare to look forward to. how are not making were not making any real progress unfortunately. you are a little dark and gloomy but there is a sense it seems like every year that this is a breakthrough moment. hurricane katrina first. and those who talk about this is the breakthrough year. because of the heat and fires. it's turning. is this the breakthrough year. i think people are realizing they need to get up and take part in the action and the people who make the decisions can really make things better or worse. i would hope to see more engagement this year with a b in it be in the election and all. but in terms of people all the sudden getting climate change. i know the weather is doing something really weird. it is really exacerbating a lot of the problems we've artie seen. for folks in florida who experienced hurricane maria it's like as experiencing an earthquake here in california. there's big once and it does a lot more damage. there are hurricanes that happen every year. to say that there seen dramatic changes in of the weather will be enough. the weather is always changing. they don't think it's happening safe the weather is always changing. this is the way it is. this is the part where instead of having affair based message. and using a solution based message. is it can be hotter or colder in the summers and winters are we going to be fear feel up all of the bad things that are happening and well that motivate people or we can be inspired by the solutions that can actually help us now when it's going to get a lot worse. it's can be painful there will be poverty created where are you in that moment when you say that. what you do with that. in the 70s my dad thought the sierra club was a very subversive organization and then earth first came along and suddenly it didn't look so bad. so maybe if i can frighten a few people solutions will look even better but what i think about is anywhere from two to 8,000 years if we were to stop all of our admissions today the oceans would keep rising the planet would keep warming at best until something like 2580 unless we can figure out someway to pull carbon out of the atmosphere with technology that doesn't exist. so, i'm in the position of saying we are not even beginning to do enough and my attempt to be of service is to say we really should be frightened and we really had to change. the comparison i like to make as with a young couple was bought a nice house and they get behind on their mortgage. we are getting more and more behind on the mortgage interest and penalties are kicking in so pretty soon there will be the penalties of biology but that's nothing compared to the penalties of physics we don't really want is penalties. i hope we can have them off before it's too late. you live in the mountains. you don't use e-mail to prepare of the frightening future you have laid out. i have plenty of bullets in my gun. >> do you think it'll get to that. that's right. i can't control the president he is making everything worse and worse as far as i can see it's wonderful some of the progress that the eu has made but that's not enough so all i can do is point and whine and complain. that's my service. it's really not as nice as what michelle is doing i have a daughter so sane i gave up isn't something i would like to tell her one day. and that's part of the reason why we launched the campaign lester. everybody has a stake in this. we were able to show by organizing mom's around the country who are raising their kids and some of the most polluted parts of the country that we could actually take on trump when he was try to rollback funding for the epa and when. something that no one in the environmental community that was possible. they thought if he wants the budget cuts that were can be over a third of the funding deeper than any other federal agency that this is going to be a fight about how to lessen the bleeding on how to have the least amount of rollback. we were able to unite people and show them mom's moms care about their kids. and a lot of republican legislators that went to bat for the funding a lot of them came forward in congress as part of that. we did not frame this as an r issue or your issue. it's all of our issue. this is something if you care about your kids in your community matter where you're from this is something that's good to touch you. it's again talking about what we head in common and our shared humanity than me or them or us or they. and all of that. so i say figure out what you can do in your community work with the environmental justice group working on just transition issues from may happen with some of the workers. whatever speaks to you start there. because when you think about how big the problem is it can be easy to say what's the point and give up. and i think that is the most common way we give up any of our power. >> a lot of our campaign start with attacks and delineation of suppliers not sure if green fraud does that. but a lot of waste to mobilize that. write a check we will take down those bad guys. i think accountability is really important i think we are not anti- corporations by any means. i think there's some great companies that are doing great work. here is a global green products company. they provide jobs here in the united states in greece. the accountability is really important. your part they are profiting off that pollution. there is a racial and economic layer to this where they're able to get away with it in some communities and not others and i think that it's only fair i don't think about it as a delay rising anyone but satan look, you need to pair your fair share here. has been subsidized. the subsidy that we are paid in our health care in our increased grocery bills even with the job effect on agriculture in our act actual shortened life span. when they come in and in so many ways when you can't even give your kid clean drinking water. to say you know what you actually ought to pay for the dema chair. got to pay to reinvest in the committees that have been the side effect of your profit. when you say that some of them had profited are you talking about cap and trade in california and the main way that they're trying to reduce carbon pollution. >> we are involved in carbon pricing campaigns in and a number of states. there is some issues with trading and a cap and trade system. it allows you to pollute here and not elsewhere. we want to make sure that we are forcing everyone to clean up and clean up everywhere it not just in some places. with the cap and investor program to ratchet that down and also to use the revenues basically to generate investment so bringing them to communities that need it. there is legislation in oregon that we will hopefully see past the coming year. in an initiative 1631. it will be on the ballot this november. james baker, the chairman of walmart. even i think trent lott has come out in support of the republican. with some kind of carbon price. what is a carbon ideologue. the coal companies are evil or god put coal in the ground for us to use. both of those are examples of ideology. we can't really argue with those in a rational way and yet those are motivations for going forward and whatever action we take. as sam he was said to me were all ideologues and as this issue becomes more and more important to us we are going to encounter more and more extremists on both sides and that's why we have to work together we have to say all right, this is my ideology and this is yours. let's try to be in the middle otherwise if we just get more and more balkanized we are going to have even less hope. at addressing this addressing this very pressing problem just a bubble with all of your eco- friends. you try to check yourself whether its not participate in certain phone calls or what you do to make sure that you're not in an echo chamber they are not my spaces to be. i think just back to myself two years ago i personally am not compelled by the same talking points that her own movement put out there. and just remembering that what actually motivates me and talking to my own friends and family and talking to them about some of these things and seeing see how it lands with them. on the left he lefty one in our family. and so seeing how it resonates. and doesn't actually move real people were are we just talking jargon and policy speak. and why are environmental circles not your favorite places to be. it's nothing new it's really important. i think a part of the work that's necessary is to build a broader tent. using the same messages that we've used for decades we have probably saturated at this point. we really need to get creative about how we reach other segments of the population and motivate them to join this movement because it needs to be a human movement. how are we engaging moms. the higher rates of all of the bad stuff. and not the good stuff. probably all of the post apocalyptic science fiction step of the writers who are dead. can stanley robinson he's living. he has a little bit of hope i feel sorry for him. any other living writers that you respect or are you too busy writing your own books that you can't read others. we are going to invite you to join the conversation to go to the microphone. will place out there. for 11 part comment or question. i'm here to help you keep it brief if you need some help. this is often the best part of our engagement here. >> eve made a couple comments on universal basic income being a potential solution for the economy. how feasible do you think that is to implement politically and how would we pay for it. how feasibly politically. i think what we need to do to prepare society for an economy that goes more and more towards automation. when i am in close to that. i think the politics show that because we really need to be beef up our social safety net it's not something they like to do is to fund social safety net programs. in a situation where everybody needs a social safety net because as i can be enough jobs for the number of people i don't think we are there politically. i don't know if it's even worth entertaining how we pay for question. but we need to find a way to get there. it's everything about how were treating our kids in schools its drill and kill its multiple choice. and remembering facts and regurgitating them. it works for a society where after four invented the security line we had been automated in a way what happens then when the machines take over the automation role. are we even prepared for that. welcome to the claimant one. can capitalism address climate change given that it is driven by the drive for profit and is facing now apocalypse from so many areas automation climate change globalization division of wealth and the rise of a ruling elite. while, i would say that we certainly see with our healthcare system how ugly it is when taking care of people is subjected to the profit motive. and i begin to think that we have to at least reduce -- reduce the profit motive and we have to make sure that the people who provide us with our fuels get a decent wage but they should be able to make money despite purse pushing this or that honest. i have quite a bit of sympathy for your position. there is a case that compounded quarterly growth. and were all complicit in this. people listening to this. want the retirement plan to go up. that's with the what the stock market is predicated on. it's more, more, more. we talked a lot about messaging today. how you can improve the messaging towards that. how can you maybe take the financial reality for some of those things that we've talked about today. so the focus shifts towards things that i think our more important? >> we are a nonprofit so funding is a great idea to get them to more people is important. this speaks to the layers of role that money plays in the systems and structures in place. but truthfully, the reason that some of these ad campaigns or communications campaign or messaging work maybe not be the messages that will move new people or the masses even, they have to do with who you had access too. who's giving money there. so i would say how do we actually help some of these other messages reach the broader end of this. so we can actually do this work and get out to more people. the reality is that when stock markets crash for example donations to organizations like green for all go down. we are all part of the system as you say were all tied into this thing. and it's after the great recession. the philanthropy was really hit. and a lot of organizations were sort of locked into the system that's hard to see. 1960. that was the first time i have seen that. a college course in 1967. >> i was rather surprised whether it's an article about climate. and they are cross purposes as to whether the earth is warming or not. i think by the end of the 1970s it was fairly well-established i read a book by some scientist at scientists at oak ridge that said, we know the earth is born to warm there is more and more co2 in the atmosphere but fortunately no one is going to have to worry about that until the 21st century. it's really quite discouraging to see how we keep kicking the can down the road but that was the premise of the recent new york times magazine article with losing earth. the decade by the late 70s people new and it was bipartisan and the information was there. but if i could add one thing to what you and michelle were saying if we wanted to get the message out i think it has to be a different message in each place, in west virginia and needs to be through the churches and if we got the various pastors on board with doing something whether or not we call that climate change they would listen. and in bangladesh it needs to be with the local activists and elders. i just think it has to be told differently in each place for people to really feel like it is an issue affecting them. >> the trusted messengers are really key for sure. not out white organization. in thinking that that's can work. it's the trusted messengers who actually speak to the communities that understand these issues. that is the message that comes from the real experience. it is referred to as a bridge fuel. a lot of people would say it can be done cleanly, and responsibly. what is your take on that. natural gas has a higher inherent energy value than call and it doesn't burn more cleanly however, the problem is that a lot of natural gas leaks from the pipelines there was a guy i was talking to who did remediation in colorado when and you said look at bill, .. .. gradually it turns into carbon dioxide and then it's just moderately worse. so, unburned methane is a real nightmare. >> america's supplying a lot more oil than it used to. i think it's by some measures surpassed saudi arabia. a lot of that happened under barack obama so, william vollman you take on whether that's a good thing because it's produces here where there's stronger environmental regulations. if it's not here it's going be in nigeria or some other country where the environmental regular layings are loser. your take on america's oil boom. >> well, i guess i would say something that relates generally to that. what i heard from a couple of these oil executives and from someone in the west virginia coal association, is, look, suppose we make these unilateral improvements to our emissions, and other countries don't do that. how badly is that going to affect our economy? in way that's a more fundamental version of the question you were asking. the answer is i don't know, but i'm quite cynical that people producing any particular fuel in our country are going to do it more carefully. when i was in weld county, the most fracked county in the u.s., i could smell all kinds of volatile organic compounds coming out of the various frack pads. i meat guy who, with his family, was constantly sick. every time the kids would go outside, they would get a bloody nose, and the company of course was not helpful. he decided he would maybe bake a bunch of cookies in the house cover up the smell and sell it. >> someone who sold the mineral rights on their property and then had remorse for leasing the land to fracking? >> most people in -- at least in greeley, colorado, and most people in west virginia, too, do not own the mineral rights. >> host: under their land. >> right, they never thought about it. there was guy in binn, west virginia, who dug a well and he actually went through three different coal mines on the way down. his coffee tasted really, really bitter and they said it's the water coming up out of your coleman, coal mine and then they dug another coal mine under his house there was a big woman and that was the end of his water and he had no recourse. >> did you talk to miami who had seller's remorse -- a lot of people cashed in big-time on leases for natural gas. talk to any people who had sellers remorse. >> no. just talked with a lot of people who had no idea they did not own the mineral rights and so it never occurred to them that it would be a problem until it was too late. >> michelle, romero, final words on the path forward. dark days, all these fires and problems. what gets you up in the morning and gets you motivated and excited. >> yeah. well, you know, we turned the lights on for decades the way we have. no use in talking how bad that was and maybe we did or didn't know how bad it would be but there's a better way now. so fighting for a fewer that is truly sustainable and green for everyone and getting our way to renewable energy. >> william vollman. >> said you have a lot of bullets in your gun and wasn't clear whether you were talking about what you were -- i uses wag sarcastic, maybe i'd miss the first time, be too anxious. i don't have a mean bone in any body. i wouldn't kill anybody else. >> your idea for at the pathed burden, you painted a dark picture, you think the odd are long for us. your idea for the path forward. >> well there should be a map hat tan project for -- manhattan project for carbon capture. maybe there's some way to use plants or some plant-based technology to use the sun's energy to capture carbon, because the basic definition of a fuel is an energy-rich substance which, when combusted, gives off an energy poor substance. you burn coal you get a lot of co2, co2 is an energy poor substance so with the current technology you have to put more energy into taking the carbon out than you did in the flirts place when you were using your fuel. it's not going to work. so we have to find some way to save ourselves and in the meantime, i think that what michelle is doing is very, very important and what i would like to do is to keep trying to scare people into thinking that it's really time to wake up and put aside our differences. >> some people would say that fear paralyzes. rather than mobilize. >> i think it depends on how much fear. >> a little bit of fear gets you going fast, and you -- >> a little shock fact you're. >> fear can motivate for a long time. but it's hard to run a marathon on fear. >> in fukushima you see people living near the red zones just getting very, very blase about radiation. they say, you'll know-doesn't make my. i. i can't see it. i can't feel it. marsh i'll get cancer but what ick do? you have to say, what can they do? who can blame them for not feeling miserable all the time. we just have to live our lives and do our best and that's when you get to something like resignation, which has had such sad results in west virginia. >> if basically if you're a little bit afraid by what williams is saying, hurry before you have burnout, and you get depressed, and go to green for all.org and sign up to volunteer and making changes in your unit. >> now you're talking. >> thank you for the climbed one crew who makes thus all happen. give them a round of appreciation for -- [applause] >> have to listen to this, the threat -- the depressing stuff all the time. we have been talking about the global energy sim with michelle romero, national director of green for all, an environmental justice version, and william vollman, author of the new book the carbon ideology. another lively conversation podcasts are available wherever you get your new episode. thank you for joining us. see you next time, everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> c-span launched booktv 20 year ago on c-span 2. and since then we have covered thousands of authors and book festivals. totaling more than 54,000 hours of programming. the late phyllis schapply offered many books and appeared on book tv dozens of times. here she is in 2000 on our depthprogram. >> i grew up believing i wanted to be educated and train so i could always be able to support myself and that's why i worked my way through college and got a masters and went to work and developed a little career on my own. i never said anything but marrying well but it is a fact that married people are better and better economically and the children are better off. >> you can watch this and many other book tv programs from the past 20 years online

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