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In this highly industrial decade,
just how pure is our air?
To what degree are we contaminating it by oil and gas fumes?
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Pollution and over pollution, unless checked,
could so warm the Earth in 200 years
as to create a greenhouse effect...
This land that is ours together
is a great and a good land.
It is in that spirit that I address myself
to those great issues facing our nation,
which are above partisanship.
Will your policies become more, say, pro-environment now?
They've always been pro-environment.
Anyone who allows political bickering
to weaken our progress against pollution
does a tragic disservice to every American.
We have worked as one people, for 25 years as one people.
One of the key strategies was to sow doubt about climate change science...
There has been consideration both of scientific certainties and uncertainties.
We do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate
may have had on warming.
No one in the scientific community disputes that this would be catastrophic.
The science is screaming at us.
If we set our minds to it,
we could, in this country, produce 100% of our electricity.
I said before the world
that we needed a strong global agreement.
The United States will withdraw
from the Paris Climate Accord.
We're getting out.
We're gonna build an anchor.
I'm gonna, um,
go over this top roll on belay.
And then, um,
we'll go from there.
One...
Two...
Three.
Whoo!
All right.
How much more rope?
Yeah, that's probably your last turn.
Okay.
Uh!
All right, Jeremy.
Be careful.
One, two...
Traditionally, when we think about climate activists,
we might think about conservationists,
we might think about people who have
dedicated their lives to protecting the environment,
or we might think about people who live along the coasts.
But the truth is that climate change is impacting everyone.
The environment wasn't always a divisive issue.
And at the end of the day, what we're fighting for is,
clean air and clean water
and a sustainable future for kids.
So why is that so polarizing?
How do we get there?
You know, when I started Protect Our Winters,
I had no idea that the, um,
the front lines would be here in Washington, DC,
but it just became clear
that real action needs to happen at the policy level,
at the federal level, at the international level.
Winter as we know it will be half in 2050.
And by 2090, 80%,
which means winter as we know it will be three weeks long.
That is heartbreaking.
The winter sports community represents $72 billion,
695,000 jobs,
which, I point out, is 70,000 more jobs
than the extraction industry.
As bad as that is,
and the thought of not having winter
as we know it absolutely breaks my heart,
we realize the global effects
on the importance of snow for our water.
California, 60% of its water comes from snowmelt.
The Sierra is this perfect aquifer.
The alarms are everywhere.
This is the challenge of our time.
We represent a huge audience
and they want action on this.
But we are running out of time.
I definitely never thought of myself as an environmentalist.
I was not looking to be a so-called environmentalist,
but my whole life is committed to the mountains.
I ended up having a lot of success
going to the world's most beautiful mountains
and figuring out how to ride those.
The best lines are the ones that you are, like,
right on the edge of life and death.
Big mountain riding is about exploration
and figuring out what's around the next corner.
You know, that's where a lot of the buzz comes from.
It was through that time and spending time amongst the glaciers
that I started really seeing this change.
I'm seeing the glaciers recede.
I am seeing more consistent rain.
I mean, it's nothing's more heartbreak
than rain to the top of the mountains in January,
At that time I had a massive carbon footprint.
I realized even though my career was just cranking,
I couldn't justify that my love was having this just blatant,
obvious impact on the planet.
The other key factor is
I was finding the edge of the boundaries.
If I can figure out how to walk for days on end
and live out in these mountains
and hike up these mountains,
I have 90% more of the world's mountains to choose from.
My first foot powered trip in Alaska,
I got this whole new group of people
and I've sold these other people on the idea that,
"Hey, we're gonna go out there and we're gonna camp
and we're gonna hike these things."
See you later.
The problem was I didn't know if I could do it.
Holy-- We should get out of the way.
Oh, my God!
Oh!
Are we gonna go worked right here?
I don't think so.
When we shifted to foot powered snowboarding,
it brought in so much more complexities.
And in many ways it was more dangerous
because instead of being on a slope for one to two minutes,
we're on a slope for one to two hours.
You are forced to let everything strip away
and give the mountains your attention.
Yeah, can somebody check here real quick?
One, two, three.
These windows of opportunity
when this unridden, big, serious mountain
is safe to ride.
That window opens and closes with these really little subtleties.
Dropping.
Whoo!
Line of my life, man.
I'm alive today because of my intimate connection with the mountains.
So, naturally, I saw changes to the mountains,
and it coincided with what scientists were telling me.
As I've learned about the science
and how critical snow is to humanity,
I'm like, if we don't have snow,
the least of our problems is gonna be that a chairlift isn't spinning.
The ripple effects on that and the disruption of that,
I can't even imagine what that means on society on a whole.
Family is hugely important to me.
Now, my highs in the mountains,
they're generally tied to being out there with my kids.
I really started thinking like,
what is the planet my kids were coming up in?
Any parent wants to provide their kid with this safe,
opportunistic, sky's the limit kind of life.
The more that you look at the science,
it's really clear that we're doing a major disservice to the kids being born today.
I knew that, collectively,
we needed to come together to do something for it.
And that's what led me to start Protect Our Winters.
I hate conflict.
I pride myself in always finding common ground with people over anything.
My idea of a good time is not debating trolls out there.
I mean, there's 413 comments on here.
I don't even know where to start.
Well, here's the classic.
"You fly to Alaska into Alaska range probably all over the world.
And I bet you drive something that utilizes
said fossil fuels on a regular basis.
And those boards you ride are product made from fossil fuels as well."
Hashtag "hypocrisy," hashtag "bandwagon,"
hashtag "don't bite the hand that feeds you."
"Dude, don't say stupid crap. This planet is warming
with or without humans, it happens every 10,000 years.
We all wanna keep riding, bro."
"Coal is cleaner than wind generated."
That's "There's just no science."
"Why doesn't Jeremy Jones set an example and stop using fossil fuels himself?"
"No more helicopter flights, synthetic clothing
or epoxy or fiberglass."
My response to that is I live a very examined life,
chipping away at my personal footprint.
It is important for us to embrace ways to reduce our personal footprint.
But we also need large scale,
systemic change to get the reduction that we need.
It's just not getting there with just personal choice.
The Earth may or may not be heating up,
but there's no debate that the fight over man-made climate change certainly is.
We're now at 17 years and eight months of no global warming.
Carbon dioxide has not caused
weather to become more extreme.
We just had two of the coldest years,
the biggest drop in global temperatures.
Bottom line. Big tornadoes F3 and larger since 1950s have dropped dramatically.
Bottom line, we've gone the longest period without a major US category three
or larger hurricane hitting the US.
Bottom line.
This isn't about science.
It's not about facts.
This is really about government controlling almost every aspect of your life.
-And 97% of all scientists believe-- -It's just a bogus number.
-It's so not a bogus number. -It's so a bogus number.
Okay, yours is, mine is yours is...
A lot of these scientists are driven by the money that they receive.
If there was no climate change,
we'd have a lot of scientists looking for work.
What about the scientists who say it's worse than ever?
Uh...
I don't think your party's passionately committed to science
or to fighting global warming
or dealing with the scientific facts we live with.
I think the science is very mixed.
It became clear to me that I live in a bubble
with like-minded people,
and that there was a large population of this country
that have different views when it comes to climate.
I wanted to know where the spin was coming from.
So, I decided to reach out
to some of the most prominent climate deniers in the country.
People that have spent their whole professional career
trying to discredit this mountain of scientific evidence.
But they're not actually scientists.
Okay, I'm recording.
Hello?
Hey, Marc. How you doing? Jeremy--
One second, I can't hear you. Let me get the sound.
You see me? You don't see me yet?
I don't see you, though. I'd love to see you.
-Hold on. Hold on. -Oh, wait. I got you.
Cool. All right.
To kick things off again, it's pretty clear
that you don't believe in the impacts of climate change
and I guess just getting some background behind why?
Well, good question.
Uh, I won't go too far into my background.
Essentially, I come at this as an investigative reporter, not a scientist.
I like to joke that I sometimes play one on TV, a scientist,
but I look at climate as essentially a political movement,
using the latest environmental scare
to lobby for politics.
When you testified before the House Select Committee on Climate,
that is one of the most anti-freedom,
most regulatory things.
They're excited about the prospect
of government regulation.
So, that's where this debate goes off the rails.
I mean, I couldn't agree more
the facts should not be political.
Hate the fact that it's a partisan issue.
I guess, as you've dug into the science,
I mean, what is...
Science gets in line behind the preferred policies,
and we see this with the National Academy of Sciences.
Oh, this is the body founded by Abraham Lincoln,
this august science body, no.
It's literally 100% dependent on government funding.
Do you have kids?
I have four kids.
They're being taught that,
you know, my old 14-year-old jeep is not a weather machine.
It's not. Your SUV does not control the weather,
that we're not in unprecedented times of any kind.
And I tell them not to worry about climate one ounce.
It's terrifying for me what I'm seeing happening with snow.
It's tough as a business.
I worry about my kids. It keeps me up at night.
The idea that we're faced with climate catastrophe is not happening.
The idea of a climate emergency is a political construct.
When I hear you say about the volatility, of the extremes,
that's called weather, that's called climate, it does that.
You can't predict anything.
It's just that when people tell you that, you know, "The climate's changing,
we're causing it. This is a record here record there,"
it's meaningless.
I think the important thing is
to understand what it is that divides,
uh, climate activists and climate skeptics.
Really, what it boils down to
is are we creating a climate crisis?
Are we creating a climate where we have
much greater negative impacts than positive impacts?
You guys recognize
that the earth is warming.
You're not sure what the most effective way
to address that or how much humans are playing a role in that?
I think your question, it presupposes
that a warming climate is bad
or a warming climate is something that we must fight.
Where I live, we get our water from snow in the mountains.
Not having snow would affect our water source.
Well, you make a few points there
that we see statistics and facts that contradict this.
So, for example,
well, first of all, about the snow,
if you go to Rutgers Snow Lab,
what they say is for the past 30 years,
the data that they have is that
there has been increasing Snow Cover Extent.
Well, I guess just to back up that,
you know, I am not a climate scientist,
but I am someone whose life
literally revolves and watches every drop of snowfall
in my range and the stuff I do in the mountains
is really based around having a really good understanding of snow.
And so...
It's easy if you think that if you've heard in the media
or from other people, from activists
that global warming is causing decline in snow,
uh, to therefore look around
and try to get a little confirmation bias on that.
But the evidence is what the evidence is.
On average, the amount of snow cover that you're going to see today
is greater than it was 10 years ago,
is greater than it was 20 years ago,
is greater than it was 30 years ago.
And I'm just amused that you would laugh at that
when you're just going on subjective thoughts
and I'm going on scientific evidence.
Misinformation and propaganda works
because it's based in reality,
but it's not real.
Reading a scientific paper
and pulling one fact that supports your narrative
is how the game works.
Because, really, how many people read the science?
It's only when you dive deeper that you find the real facts,
and facts don't lie.
Satellite data has shown
a slight increase in snow cover in the fall,
but the average snow cover throughout the year
has decreased year after year after year.
I've seen it firsthand,
and I've heard it from real climate scientists.
We can choose not to listen,
or we can choose to do something,
but we can't ignore the facts.
It's science, facts are the facts.
So I have been talking, uh,
recently to these professional climate skeptics, deniers,
what have you.
And the consistency of the messaging
has been impressive.
The fact that many of these people
have the same talking points is not a coincidence.
Almost all of them are funded through right wing and libertarian think tanks,
and those think tanks are themselves
funded by the fossil fuel industry.
So, there's a very conscious and very deliberate effort
to pump out disinformation.
It's always been about discrediting the science,
trying to make us think
that the scientists don't know what they're talking about
or that scientists are just in it for the money or the attention.
Besides trying to discredit the science,
climate change deniers have really played on identity politics.
They've tried to make conservatives think
that they should not accept the evidence of climate change
because if they do,
it will lead to higher taxes
or bigger government.
Have you had any success
in changing someone's mind on climate?
There are some people who are really, really recalcitrant
but in the middle there's a very wide range of views,
people who maybe kind of get the issue,
but they don't really understand why it's important
or they've heard these things about,
maybe it's a liberal hoax, and so they're not that happy.
And I feel like most of my work is in that space.
It's trying to explain to people this is not a liberal hoax.
It's not a hoax of any kind.
Nobody invented climate change
as an excuse to expand big government
or raise taxes.
But we have this problem and now we have to figure out what the solution is.
And then the other thing is just
to remind people of conservative
and Republican solutions.
We have models of successful conservative interventions,
and so then the question becomes,
"So why has the fossil fuel industry
been denying these models?"
Why does the fossil fuel industry
tell you that climate change is a hoax,
rather than telling you, "Oh, we could fix this with emissions trading,
just as we did for acid rain."
And then that brings to the third important point,
which is that this is a big lie.
That's actually a con game.
That the reason we're confused and divided
is because the fossil fuel industry
has been trying deliberately to confuse and divide us.
ExxonMobil is laughing all the way to the bank,
making trillions of dollars in profits off this con game,
and we're stuck paying the bill.
We have to vote.
We have to vote in people
who will represent our interests
and not the fossil fuel industry.
After a decade of going to Washington, DC
with Protect Our Winters,
I've learned that these elected officials don't actually lead,
they follow the people.
And there are a handful of purple states that are equally divided
Republican or Democrat
that can go either way.
These are states that swing elections,
and these are the places that will choose our course on climate action.
But a recent New York Times poll
showed that climate is the most divisive issue in our country,
even more than guns.
So much weight is put on these elections
with the hope that people just take 10 minutes
out of their day or an hour out of their day
every two to four years
and just check a box for what they believe in.
I live in the blue state of California,
just 30 minutes from Nevada.
And Nevada is one of those crucial states.
It's actually the most mountainous state in the lower 48.
So, I started exploring Nevada
just to get a feel for it.
All right, man, we might just have to start exploring.
Oh, I just really missed carrying a heavy pack.
As a country, we used to agree
that the environment was worth protecting.
Conservation used to be a bedrock issue for conservatives
not that long ago.
Richard Nixon championed
a lot of our environmental laws.
He signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Act
and created the EPA.
Why has it become so polarizing
that people have made it their job
to troll people like myself
that are fighting for clean air and clean water?
It's just amazing how divided we have become.
Yeah.
Just totally blown away
at the raw wilderness in Nevada.
Everywhere I look,
protected land covered in snow
that provides water
for farmers, family and a healthy ecosystem.
It's what I live for.
Seeing new mountains,
picking out what really calls your name
and figuring out how to climb them.
One thing that probably gets under my skin
more than anything is when I'm being attacked as being Un-American,
because I'm very proud about the country I live in.
Patriotism isn't just about waving the flag around.
It's about coming together as a nation
and working hard to solve these key issues.
America is based on people
standing up for what they believe in.
It's based on people having different opinions
and coming together and finding common ground.
What we stopped doing as Americans and society
is talking to each other.
Big badass mountains.
Love my Nevada board.
The whole point of the climate change advocate alarmism is shame
to get you to stop behaving in ways they say are destroying the planet.
That's how they've succeeded in it.
I always wondered if we are as divided as they say we are.
I think everyone wants a clean, healthy environment for their family.
We just gotta figure out how to get there.
I decided to go to one of the most conservative counties in rural Nevada,
and talk to these people that love the mountains as much as I do.
Right here we're about a half a mile from the base of the Ruby Mountains.
From our backyard, we can hike basically from here to 9800 ft
and ski back to the house in the wintertime.
It's a winter wonderland here.
I've been involved with National Ski Patrol for 23 years.
You know, I grew up in the Sierra foothills and the mountains are my home.
That's where I find my peace.
It's been a great place for my kids.
Skiing is the one hobby that really challenges us.
But all of us take an interest in reviving old Volkswagens
or old dune buggies and bringing them back to life.
Those are things that bring our family together
and keep our family connected.
-Oh, that's a simple fix. -Ah...
Looks like we need a new hose clamp.
-- Oh! -- Mm.
Many of my friends have been born and raised here.
I think coming from a place that's very different than this
has given me a lot of insight.
Like the cool thing around Elko County is trucks, horses and cows.
I mean, I agree those are all cool,
but there's a lot of other cool stuff too.
Skiing, rocks.
I don't think anyone else in my class of like 200
is going into geology.
Right now with the climate change,
I think it comes down to our groups.
Just like high school, we have our little social groups
and we want to fit in.
If you agree with another group's perspective,
your group might say, "Hey, we don't like that," and kick you out.
I think a lot of people don't speak up.
They just go with the group mentality of,
"They believe this, so I will also."
Volkswagen people are their own group. It has no lines.
They share a love of driving their old tin cans.
Skiing is very similar.
They come from all different backgrounds, all different beliefs.
But when it comes down to it, like, skiers just want to ski.
I'm psyched to be out on your home mountain.
Yeah, this is the big Elko Snobowl.
Patrolled here for a long time.
It's definitely a great place for local families to learn how to ski.
-We have our one chairlift.-And how much is the lift ticket?
Twenty dollars for a lift ticket here, $20 for a rental.
And if you're just doingthe rope tow and you're just getting going,
it's cheaper. Cheaper yet.
What's up, Justin? Nice to meet you.
Gosh, pleasure to meet you.
You're a geologist?
Yeah, that was... That was what I went to school for.
Mostly what I'm doing now is project management in mining...
Yup.
Both here and doing quite a bit over in Kazakhstan as well.
Wow, there's some mountains there, huh?
Yeah.
-Thank you, sir. -Welcome.
It's awesome to get out here with you.
You know, someone who makes their living as a hunting guide.
And as I learn more and more about conservation,
I've learned that hunters are really the original conservationists,
you know, through the Roosevelt era.
And quite frankly, I think the outdoor community has a lot we can learn from
the hunting community when it comes to protecting these public lands.
What were you doing when-- You were boring holes underground?
Yes, in New York, they were fixing the old aqueduct to supply
500 million gallons a day to New York City.
We came in, dropped like a $15 million machine down there and put it together
and then drove away from the existing aqueduct,
went underneath the Hudson, tied back in.
So we go down the bottom of the shaft, get on a locomotive,
go into the tunnel boring machine,
and then you'd just be sitting there mining and building rings, all shift.
I'm assuming you must have tons of engineers, like, the science and engineering,
to do something like that is cutting edge.
It's almost like going into space.
I had a great time, but like I said, it was either
I do that and, like, focus on a career and money and, like, a powerful position.
Or I come out and just focus more on life and living.
I'm stoked you hit me up.
Yeah, I was surprised. I'm like, man, there's thousands and thousands
of riders like, pro riders that probably
would wanna go ride with Jeremy, I don't know
-why he's calling me, but... -Dude, this is your range, man.
You spend more time here than anyone.
You're the only local split border I know in this area.
I have no doubt climate is changing.
-I mean, that's a no brainer. -Right.
I guess my question to you is,
why is it that, like here we're standing on ground that was
considerably warmer, maybe a tropical climate at one point?
I mean, a lot of this stuff was ocean, which is amazing.
So the Earth has had several cycles, it's always changing.
You're totally right. Glaciers move and shrink, and I mean,
-they shaped these mountains. -That's right.
-Um, it's just that the speed is why the alarm is coming. -Okay.
You know, records show that it's happening 100 times faster than it ever has.
Like your world operates on peer reviewed science
from the best universities in the world,
and that science is from the same universities
-that the climate science is coming from. -Right.
There's massive consensus from the scientific community
that burning CO2 is warming the planet.
I mean, imagine you going down 900 feet down and being like,
98.8% of the scientists are telling you to do it this way.
The rest are saying you do it that way,
-you know, you're gonna die. -Yeah.
I would assume you guys are going with the 98 percent.
I'm definitely not, um, like, kind of fighting.
saying no, no, it's not happening.
-You don't fight the science? -No, No, But it's just tough
around here because, you know, the climate
talk gets lumped into a bunch of other policies
that are mostly in the liberal agenda.
A lot of times that comes with a lot of other stuff
that affects their business and their livelihood.
-- And their ideology, -- For sure, yeah,
I'm a single-issue voter, as you can tell.
I'll get past everything. If you're like serious about climate,
you can get elected, I'm all in.
So one of the things that we tried to do is to unify
what we call the outdoor state, which is,
all these outdoor enthusiasts,
hunters and anglers, people that really relate
to the outdoors, that rely on a healthy environment,
to come together to fight for the environment.
And specifically we recognize that long-term, climate change is the biggest threat.
Yeah, because I mean it is a common, common thread.
I mean yeah.
I think it should be a no brainer that it's a non-partisan issue.
I mean, it's just, uh, just a human issue.
Unfortunately, I think we're gonna need something borderline catastrophic,
if not catastrophic, to wake people up,
and to make serious positive change, unfortunately.
That's what I feel in my heart.
I mean, my daughter is only nine years old.
I'm genuinely scared for her future.
-Yeah. -Genuinely. I mean,
it's no joke.
It's hard because the last thing you wanna do is, like, tell your daughter
that you know, it's like everything's fine,
like you don't wanna freak them out,
but it's like...
I'm laughing because I've already told her that.
There are numerous coal fire power plants here,
in northern Nevada.
Held to really strict regulatory standards, emission standards.
You look at the emissions coming out
of those coal fire plants in those 2nd and 3rd World countries,
and it's a black cloud coming out of it,
-and it's nothing that... -Yeah.
...you see coming out of the ones here.
Like I say, the regulation in the US
is far and above the regulation across the rest of the world.
We had this whole Paris climate accord, we pulled out of it.
It was pretty much for that reason
was you know, the US didn't want to pay for these other countries
to say that, "Oh yeah, we care about the environment,
but we're not gonna do anything about it."
What bothers me, I think with some of the climate change legislation
stuff that's going on, is it really affects just our country
and we're still doing business internationally.
Here we cripple our industry, but we still
contribute to pollution by still buying those products
from someone else that's just gonna pollute the environment.
My big issue with it is, you know, the US
extracts more fossil fuel than any country in the world.
We heavily subsidize it, a ton of it is on public land.
And we know that the burning of fossil fuels
is a major contributor to warming of the climate.
We do know ways to create clean energy.
I just would like to see the country embrace that more.
At the very least, I'd just love to see an even playing field.
It's gonna have to be phased out eventually.
You know, just because I mean, we're gonna run out of those resources.
The main word there is transition
and it's not a light switch. You can't just shut it off.
Hundred percent, there is not a single plan like,
"Shut off all coal and oil tomorrow."
Just depending on who you listen to. Yeah.
I mean, there are some radicals on either side.
-Right. -In reality,
everybody's probably looking at something down the middle
that everyone can agree on.
But politics has become a game recently.
-A sporting event. -Yeah, exactly.
I think the big thing is solutions for it, you know?
That's where people get hung up, it's easier to blame,
like there's no problem.
Well, I think debating solutions is a great debate.
We have half the country, that is poking holes in the science
when we need 100% of the people figuring out solutions.
Yeah, no, it's for sure.
You know, I like to think about it like climbing a mountain.
Like I'm not saying we have the summit ridge.
We have our Hillary Step, to equate it to Everest,
figured out, but we know which way the summit is,
and we're still in base camp arguing about
how to finish the summit ridge.
And it's like maybe we should just start walking to camp one.
We definitely know how to get to camp one.
We actually know how to get about three quarters of the way.
Let's start just going one step at a time.
You know, I think there's a lot we have in common.
-Yeah, I agree. -You're hunting in the mountains
As I am, I'm just hunting for different stuff.
You're hunting for the ultimate turn, I guess,
and I'm hunting for the elusive mule deer.
I don't know if I could take the shot,
because, full disclaimer. I don't eat meat.
Well, full disclosure, I'm a carnivore, so I'll take the meat.
We get some epic sunsets in this state, that's for sure.
-We're lucky to be here. -We are lucky to be here.
I appreciate the conversation, it's good.
I have more questions than I have definitive answers.
I'm not opposed to someone proving me wrong.
I don't have that big of an ego where I feel that I'll never accept information.
I just want to see it presented to me in a fashion that seems credible.
I think if you step back, you know,
we're all on the same team, team planet Earth.
Classic coulee.
Yeah, man, we're doing it.
-Love this stuff. -Yeah. Great.
You got a nice backyard, Danny.
That's right.
What dreams are made of.
Good old fashioned boarding.
Dropping, baby. Yeah.
Yeah, buddy.
Keep it going.
Whoo!
You wouldn't think that a hard rock miner
from Northeast Nevada and a pro snowboarder from California
would ever really meet up, talk about everything and go snowboard in the mountains.
That's not something that's normal.
But, it's the type of communication and interaction
that I think we need to get out there more, get different opinions.
Coming from a bigger city or a different state,
you got different things that push your buttons, different things are important to you.
And just because I haven't thought about it,
and it's not important to me doesn't mean that
it's not a big issue.
Yeah, Jeremy.
I met some great people in Nevada,
even made some new friends, had some great conversations.
And it turns out we are a lot closer on many of these issues.
-Yeah, yeah. -Yeah. Whoo!
But the heartbreaking reality
is that unless some conservative leaders
change their mind on climate,
there's no candidates that these conservatives who care about
the environment can vote for.
It made me wonder if a conservative leader
could get past identity politics and take climate serious.
Are you afraid of the climate crisis?
If I only listened to politicians like Al Gore,
I'd be afraid too, very afraid too. Very afraid.
So I came out of the precincts of the right is a young man.
I found myself working at the Cato Institute in 1991.
I was hired to oversee their energy and environmental policies.
For the better part of the next 23 years
I spent my time at Cato arguing against the case for climate action.
You're not that worried.
Not particularly. There have been about 13 studies.
Four of the estimates are that the economy would actually improve...
But I found my ability to make a convincing case
just completely fell apart over time.
It's a monumental move that very few people have made.
What changed your mind?
It was not any one thing.
It was a series of three or four things.
The first thing was my lack of faith
in the overarching scientific narratives we were telling.
It also became clear to me that I had not been doing my due diligence
in really putting a critical eye
to the arguments I wanted to believe to be true,
that seemed, intuitively, pretty strong,
and I found over and over and over again
I was seeing variations of exactly this kind of thing.
Sometimes, it was cherry picked data sets.
Sometimes it was misrepresenting the position
that was actually being taken by the mainstream scientific community.
I'd love to just ask you a couple quick fire questions on
what they're telling me, what I'm consistently hearing.
So climate change is natural. We've seen fluctuations
throughout history.
That's like saying death is natural.
We've seen people die all through history.
That doesn't mean that Bob shot Jim.
The kind of argument is that? I'm sorry. I'm being... It's Friday.
That's great.
Okay, next one, there isn't a consensus amongst climate scientists
on human-caused climate change.
Screaming total out of this world goddamn lie.
Every single survey of credentialed,
peer reviewed published climate experts
shows a near absolute consensus.
Earth is old. We only have 100 years of data.
Yeah, both true,
but we know how to estimate temperatures from the past
based on, you know, carbon rings
and all kinds of sediment analysis and ice core.
We're not, like, making this crap up or go playing on a Ouija board.
Addressing climate change will ruin the economy.
Yeah, these things will not be cheap.
It's going to cost, depending upon your estimates,
and your policy preferences, between six and $20 trillion in global decarbonizing.
But, what are the costs of not globally decarbonizing?
Well, there'll be a ton more.
I can tell you my biggest take away
is just how blown away I am on their utter
and total certainty that there is no problem here.
It was actually, like, really hard to
have a conversation with them because
they're so cemented in their points of view.
Risk management is not about picking
the most likely scenario based on what we know
and saying, policy needs to be determined on that scenario.
You have to weight the probabilities of each of these
scenarios coming to play, coming to pass,
and looking at the costs and benefits that follow from each of them.
If you do that, it is absolutely unmistakable
that we need to decarbonize as fast as possible.
'Cause if we're wrong about the scenario,
we don't get the more likely scenario,
we get a low probability, high impact scenario,
it's game over. There is no other planet.
There's no other way to, you know, we're just, we're completely effed.
Right in here.
Under this eye. Yeah.
-Yeah.
Hold on. Okay.
I got you. You're good.
All right, we're off.
So just we want to move through the convex rolls
mm, with speed and kind of be a little light on them.
and then, Cass, with your line, we just,
I want to dally in with a cornice entry.
-Okay. -Umm...
There will be sluff.
So if you do have to stop or you fall or something in the fall line,
you expect some sluff coming down on you.
Three, two, one, dropping.
First crux of the day.
Mia Jones, dropping.
Make some nice heel turns to the toe.
Nice air.
You should get some Mom power.
Yeah, Mom!
It's not hard to understand what's at stake here,
but sometimes you gotta step back and realize
what the fight's all about.
We don't have to agree on everything.
But we do need to stop arguing,
and start working together on solutions.
We have an opportunity to make real change.
Change is scary, but change is constant.
And with change comes opportunities.
-Cass. -Yeah.
Are you going cornice or the rock or you crossed?
Cornice.
Okay, make sure you have your direction perfect.
Ready?
So close.
Good try.
I think it was Martin Luther King
who said you can't beat hate with hate.
You can't,
you know, beat darkness with darkness.
It requires light.
You see in the media, online,
everything is all about, like, how can we get everyone
as mad at each other as possible?
I want to do this.
The end goal is to try to connect us around clean air,
clean water and a sustainable future.
The path we're on is a path of destruction.
It's unsustainable,
you know, there's a real sense of urgency, and that's gonna take a lot of work,
and that's what we're pushing for.
The only way I'm looking my kids in the eye in 20 years is going,
"I fought like hell, to try to get us on the right path."
At the end of the day, we need climate champions leading our country.
We don't need the whole country on board.
We just need 51% in the right places.
And if I can do that, one voter at a time,
that's how it starts, just like climbing a mountain,
one step at a time, one voter at a time.