Webinar: Natural History on the Big Screen – Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops
Aired March 25, 2021
Scott Wing:
All right. Looks like we can get started. Hi again. I'm Scott Wing, paleoclimatologist in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History. Today's program is offered in collaboration between the National Museum of Natural History and the Environmental Film Festival in the nation's capital. And it's our pleasure to welcome you to this event. This is our final program as part of the festival, but you can watch all the films and live discussions we have offered online, and we'll add a link to those in the chat. The museum has been a proud partner of DCEFF for the past 29 years, and we'd like to thank the Environmental Film Festival for being a great partner, not only during this festival, but throughout the year. We are excited to welcome everyone to the panel discussion of "Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops." "Feedback Loops" is a five-part film series narrated by Richard Gere, featuring the world's top climate scientists.
We're also excited to announce that tonight, with the introduction film and conversation, marks the kickoff event of a four-part series we'll be offering in May through August. For this series, we'll host a virtual screening of each short and follow up with a conversation. The four films explore permafrost, forests, Earth's atmosphere, and oceans, and I've seen them and they're each really wonderful. We'll make sure to send information about the series when it's on our website. Before we get started, I wanted to say a few housekeeping notes. This discussion offers closed captioning, they can be turned on via the settings or gear icon in the lower right hand corner in Eventive. If you have a question you'd like to ask our panelists, please use the chat box in Eventive. We'll be watching submissions throughout the program, so feel free to ask your questions at any time and we'll get to as many as we can during the audience Q&A portion at the end. Also, if you have a question for someone specific, please let us know when you submit the question. So let's get going.
Our panelists tonight include Nichola Minott, Dr. Jennifer Francis, Bill Moomaw, and Lake Liao.
So let's see. And let me make introductions of them if I might. Dr. Minott holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is currently at Boston College and her research interests in teaching focus on the nexus between conflict and natural resources, climate change policy, and also global climate politics. Additional research interests include examining approaches to race, justice and environmental agreements. Dr. Jennifer Francis is a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center where she previously served on the President's Council. She received her Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington. She's a world-renowned for her research on Arctic climate change impacts and the resulting effects on weather in other regions of the world. Dr. Francis's research has focused specifically on the connections between the rapidly warming Arctic and a weakened jet stream. And I understand that she is joining us this evening from a boat, so if there are any slowdowns in her connection, please know that we're doing the best we can.
Dr. Moomaw is Emeritus Professor of International Environmental Policy and founding director of the Center for International Environmental and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School of Tufts, and currently serves as co-director of the Global Development Environmental Institute at Tufts, which he co-founded. He chairs the board of directors of Tufts Climate Science and Policy Organizations, the Climate Group North America and Woods Hole Research Center. He began working on climate change in 1988 as the first director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute in Washington. And he has been a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. The IPC shared the Nobel Peace Prize for its climate work in 2007. He's currently working on natural solutions to climate change with a focus on increasing carbon dioxide removal and sequestration by forests, wetlands, and soils.
Lake Liao is the founder and hub coordinator of the Troy Michigan Hub of the Sunrise Movement. He is focused on engaging local, middle and high schoolers in understanding climate science and environmental policy activism through actions like increasing public awareness of the climate crisis and the necessity of decarbonization, educating Hub members about the implications of climate change on socioeconomic inequality, campaigning for Green New Deal champions, and climate action. He is also on the Sunrise Movement's Hub Council where he is a national representative body of hub leaders who are formally consulted on high level movement decisions and a space for movement collaboration. So let's, without further ado, bring them all along. And I don't know if they are all on or not, but they appear to be all on. They're nodding their heads.
So to Jennifer, for the audience and those who might not have seen the film yet, could you please give a brief explanation of feedback loops in general? And describe some of the predominant destructive feedback loops related to Arctic melting and warming.
Jennifer Francis:
Sure. Thank you Scott, and thank you all for being here. I want to apologize if my Internet isn't behaving. We've been having trouble with it today, but we'll keep our fingers crossed. So the basic idea behind feedback loops is that there's some change in a system that triggers other changes. And if those other changes make the first change worse, then we call that a positive feedback, which sounds backwards because usually in the climate system anyway, that's not a good thing. But it can also go the other way. So the original change may actually be reduced by the changes that happen elsewhere. So as an example, it turns out the Arctic is really home for many of the major feedbacks that are happening in the climate system. One of the easiest ones to understand is, we are putting all this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, all these greenhouse gases, it's trapping a lot more of the Earth's heat. It's warming our air, it's warming our oceans. That is melting the sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean.
And so as we lose the sea ice, which of course is very white and it reflects most of the sun's energy that hits it, because we've lost so much of that sea ice, in fact, in terms of the coverage, we've lost about half of it in only 40 years. It's a huge change in the climate system. And you can think of it as losing part of the Earth's mirror. So as we lose the sea ice, instead of reflecting all the sun's energy, we now have instead a lot of open water. That open water is very good at absorbing the sun's energy. And when it does that, it gets warmer. And what happens? It melts more ice, creates more open water, absorbs more heat, warms that ocean even more. So you can see how this is a vicious cycle. There are other feedbacks that happen in the Arctic as well. As the Arctic warms much faster than elsewhere because of these positive feedbacks in the system, we're also losing the thickness of that ice, so not just the coverage, but also how thick it is.
And as the ice gets much thinner, excuse me, during the winter when there isn't any sunshine at all, it allows more of the heat to escape from the ocean up into the atmosphere. And so it makes it warmer in the winter there as well, which slows down the freezing process of the sea ice in the wintertime. And one more that, and you can read, you'll see more about all of these feedbacks in the other "Feedback Loop" films that have been made and they're really well done, so I really encourage you all to go look at them, involves another form of ice that occurs in the Arctic and that's called permafrost. It's the frozen soils that are ubiquitous almost around the high latitude land areas in the Arctic region. And as that permafrost thaws, because the Arctic is warming so fast, the microbes in the soil can start munching away on the organic matter that's contained in the soil. And as it does that, it releases more carbon dioxide and more methane into the atmosphere. Both of those are heat-trapping gases, and so that increases the warming that happens in a global sense.
So there's a lot of carbon that's stored in the permafrost soil. And so this represents a potentially huge increase in the amount of warming that could happen if we continue on the path that we're on. So as I mentioned, those other feedback loop films that have been made go into much more detail in some of these Arctic feedbacks.
Scott Wing:
Thanks very much. My next question was going to go to Bill. And it's just that the film highlights the urgency of responding to Earth's changing temperatures. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the solutions that you see and since I'm a paleobotanist, I have to ask you, could you kind of give a little bit on the role of forests and the sort of durability of sequestering carbon and forests? Thanks.
Bill Moomaw:
Good. Well, I began working on climate change in 1988 and spent about 20 years looking at technological solutions. And these are the ones you always hear about, We've got to reduce the release of these heat-trapping gases. They're caused by technology and so we need to change the technology and everything will be fine. That turns out to be overly simplistic, but let me just give an example of how that works. Carbon dioxide and water are the products of combustion of coal and oil, natural gas, burning wood. All of those release carbon dioxide and that traps heat. And of the so-called greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping gases, carbon dioxide is responsible for two thirds of the warming. But another third is due to other gases. It's methane as Jennifer mentioned, from natural systems and leakages from natural gas. So natural gas, you burn it and it doesn't make as much carbon dioxide as coal, but then in the production and transport and everything, it leaks a lot. And so that often negates some of the benefits of natural gas.
We can reduce the demand for energy, and I'll talk about that maybe later on, by the way, we do things. We have done things in very energy wasteful ways, and then we can use technologies like solar energy for example, to make electricity directly without any emissions at all. Wind power can generate electricity without any emissions at all. Using heat from the Earth, both geothermal and stored solar heat in the ground can provide us with the energy we need and we just need ways of extracting those. And so we build wind turbines, we build solar panels, we build various kinds of devices to extract heat from the Earth. And those are all ways in which we can address this, but that's only half the problem. It turns out, if we look at all the emissions we create, it turns out that there's about 11 billion tons of carbon that's carbon dioxide that we emit every year. And that includes one and a half billion tons from deforestation and land conversions.
So if we stopped that part, that would help. If we got rid of some of those fossil fuels, that would help. But the amazing thing is, 11 billion tons going in and the increase in the atmosphere every year is only five. And so somebody's helping us out and the somebody turns out to be forests and other plants on land and the oceans. And putting it in the oceans causes real problems. If we could grow more of our forests more on land, that would help us a lot. And so those are kind of the two ends of the problem and we need to do both. And in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement in 2015, we have to do both. The IPCC, we did a report which made that very clear. We must and we must get to a point where the natural world is able to take out more than we're putting in. And if it does that, that's when we'll start being able to cool down the planet again.
Scott Wing:
The next question is for Nichola. On the topic of these feedback loops, one thing that they raise is the relationship of climate change and equity. And so I guess the questions are who are the groups that are disproportionately impacted by these feedback loops?
Nichola Minott:
Okay. Well first, it's important to note that these feedback loops exacerbate already existing communities that were vulnerable to stress multipliers. So for example, we're talking about poverty, political instability, drought, reduced agricultural output, population growth and vectorborne diseases. And all of these have negative implications for human health. So, not to muddy the waters further, structural racism that was created by colonialism, which is the foundational component of the current global political, legal, and economic systems, come into play. Because it creates an environment where the developing world, i.e. former colonies, are disproportionately impacted by these feedback loops. Many are poor, they have fragile political systems, infrastructure, educational, health system, which correlates with the feedback loops that are discussed in the film.
Additionally, indigenous communities, they face the burdens due to rapid deforestation, displacement, and in some cases political violence if they speak up. For small-island developing states and nations, sea-level rise threatens the very existence of these countries. So we're not just talking about a rise in water along the coastlines, we're talking about the decimation of homelands, of a culture, of a way of life. In addition to that land degradation resulting from climate change impacts, it also has an effect on agricultural outputs, water pollution, acidification, salinization impacts, marine life resources, which makes up the diet of over 3 billion people. And these people rely on the oceans as a primary source of their nutrition and protein. Then you're talking about air pollution, which impacts the poor even in developed countries, particularly as it relates to where polluting industries are placed particularly in minority communities in the United States. And I'm referring to black communities in Warren County, North Carolina, which spurred the climate justice and environmental justice movement in the state as well as what's currently going on right now with the Latino community in Southeast Side, Chicago.
Which are leading to health impacts such as cancer, asthma, high infant mortality rates, just to name a few of the issues that are occurring right now. So essentially some of these feedback loops, loops can have catastrophic implications and can disproportionately impact these communities.
Scott Wing:
Thanks. I see that Lake is nodding his head and I'm nodding my head so I'm going to ask him the next question. So speaking of representing a diversity of voices, the Sunrise Movement is an important convener trying to amplify the voices of young people across America. Can you tell us a little bit more about the organization and your role and what you see as the next steps?
Lake Liao:
Yeah, thanks Scott. So first I want to say everything that Nichola covered is very real. All the exacerbated injustices that we see rooted in racism, and that's something that Sunrise is very heavily based on -- justice for these communities that have been historically oppressed. So you asked what Sunrise does as an organization, as a movement. We're a mainly youth-led movement of hundreds of thousands of people around the U.S. and we're decentralized. So you think of organizations, you think of big national bodies, but we have a few hundred hubs, basically every state where local volunteers organize within their communities spreading a centralized message. And this is a pattern you see in many social movements, whatever their goal may be, overthrowing a regime, getting a policy passed. This decentralized model of building power where people are instead of a symbolic untangible notion of power is what works and what gets through to the people who do have power who can change these material realities.
And the things that Nichola pointed out about those injustices are very conscious of those. We are very closely partnered with a lot of indigenous justice and Black Lives Matter, those organizations on making sure that we center black, indigenous, people of color in our work and listen to them to attempt to combat that culture of white supremacy and colonialism that has hurt us so much. And another one of our main values is building a multiracial cross-class movement because the past failures of other environmental movements that we saw, maybe in the early 2000s, are that they appealed to white middle class people. They didn't reflect the material realities of poor people of color or other marginalized identities and they didn't build people of power they needed to create actual legislative change that would help all of these very scary and unfortunate events like feedback loops caused by inaction. Just because there was not enough support when you're only appealing to a very specific group of people. You're not advocating for collective liberation of all and you're not going to build the people power that you need.
If you don't make those voices centered, if in your organizing in predominantly white spaces, you leave it like that and aren't consciously fixing this culture that's ingrained so deeply in all us, not just white people. And I would encourage everyone watching this, when you think about social movements and their roles and how you can plan to them, please don't think of movements been like Sunrise as black boxes of activists who feel disconnected from things that you do in your everyday lives. We're normal people, many of you probably live very close to one of our hubs and the people organizing in those hubs are just like you. They're people who care about their friends, their families, and that community building within our hubs.
And as well as when we're trying to reach out to our communities and talk to them about what we're fighting for, whether that's good jobs for all or any other legislation that could help advance progress against combating the climate crisis, we assume best intent. And we talk to people as people who, regardless of their beliefs, believe that everyone has the right to a dignified life. And the key to building more power and building an actual multiracial cross class movement is having those conversations. So if you want to get involved, our website has a map, Sunrise Movement website has a map of all our hubs. Reach out to your local ones and just start building those relationships. Because organizing and building power isn't some grand thing that you can only do if you're in a position of political power, it's the thing that you can do with the people you know.
When you follow structure-based organizing. When you build community and people who care, that's when the real change happens on a scale of hundreds of thousands of people. So anything, just know that every big change that has happened in society is because of grassroots power and grassroots movement and there's nothing stopping you from getting involved, whoever you are. Like I'm a sophomore in high school and I've been involved with this for years already and it's really a grassroots, anyone can do a thing and don't be scared to jump in and meet new people and just see how you feel about it because we need millions of people actively acting on this. A political scientist Erica Chenoweth did a case study and found that over the past 120 years, every movement that's sustained an active 3.5 percent support from the area or country's population has won their goals.
And that's not a concrete threshold, but when you're thinking about getting politicians to listen to us, to sever ties with the fossil fuel corporations that have so much power in the systems that we all live in, that's not something that we can achieve just through skill and tactic. That's something that's going to take an exponentially multiplying amount of people actively pushing for telling the people in power that we're awake, we know what's going on and we're not going to stop pushing until they listen to us. Because these are our lives, our livelihoods on the line, marginalized communities livelihoods on the line. And that's just the message that needs to be right in their faces if we want to achieve material change.
Scott Wing:
Thank you very much. I think it might be interesting to turn ... I'm trying to make a connection between the environmental justice aspect of what we're talking about here and the science aspect. And it seems to me that one of the places where that's most evident is in extreme weather events that are sort of the result of changes in atmospheric circulation. And I wondered if Jennifer could tell us just sort of a little bit more about the connection between particular destructive events that often land hardest on disadvantaged communities, but are the result of feedback from global changes.
Jennifer Francis:
Sure. Yeah. So we have been, my research focuses on extreme weather and how it's connected to climate change, and particular changes in the Arctic and what we're seeing, and it's not just we, the scientists, but also business organizations like insurance companies are already being able to measure that there has been a significant increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, particularly. In fact one insurance company has measured the increase of about a tripling of weather related extreme events just since 1980, so that's just in the last 40 years. It's a real thing, we know that many extreme weather events are directly connected to climate change. Some of those connections are very well understood. Things like heat waves, increased droughts, increased heavy precipitation events. These are the kinds of things that we have been expecting to occur. We know they're going to happen even more frequently in the future if we don't change our ways. But some connections are a little less well known and they are the focus of a very active research right now.
So for example, understanding, you mentioned Scott, changes in the circulation of the atmosphere. The weather that most of us experience in the Northern Hemisphere for example, is controlled by this river of wind high over our heads called the jet stream. And the jet stream is there because the Arctic is so cold and areas farther south are much warmer. But as I mentioned earlier, the Arctic is warming much, much faster. And so that difference in temperature between those two regions has been getting smaller and that means there's less force to drive the winds of the jet stream. And that's resulting in the jet stream taking a very different path as it travels around the northern hemisphere. It takes bigger swings northward and bigger dips southward. A great example is the terrible cold and snow that happened in Texas and neighboring states just last month in February where one of these big southward dips in the jet stream allowed the Arctic cold air to plunge into regions that just aren't equipped to deal with that kind of cold.
And it was really debilitating for the people there. Of course it also snowed and there was ice and it disrupted the energy system in that area. So these bigger swings in the jet stream are the kind of thing that we're trying to understand how it's connected to both Arctic warming, changes in the tropics as well. It's very complicated and it's always difficult to know exactly how much climate change might be playing a role in a particular extreme event like that one. But that's where the research is going. We know that as we go forward in time and we continue on this path that we're on right now, hopefully the solutions that Bill mentioned will actually come to pass, so we will be able to control our emissions of greenhouse gases.
These kinds of extreme events are just going to become more common. They're going to affect more people. And what we really need to drill down on is try to figure out which types of extreme events are going to become more likely in particular regions. So the decision makers and the people who live in those regions can prepare for the kinds of events that we expect to see happen more often.
Scott Wing:
Thanks. Let me, if I could, I've got, I think time for a couple of more questions here, fairly quick ones and then we'll go to the audience's questions. But I was going to ask Nichola, what are your thoughts on how to achieve buy-in from marginalized groups who may have other more pressing concerns who may think climate change is something that happens a long ways away and doesn't affect them directly? And what are some of the aspirational goals of getting more participation? But I think you're muted.
Nichola Minott:
Can you hear me now? Okay, apologies. So before we get to the heart of that question, I want to first bring it back to the film and feedback loops. The film talks extensively about tipping points and according to research, in order to reverse and mitigate the damage we've got to decarbonize approximately 70 percent of the world's economic system. So we're talking about steel, cement, transportation systems, fertilizer production, and so much more. But what does that look like for marginalized groups? What does that look like for the developing world? And what does that look like for the poor people of color who make up a large part of the developing world? Because all of these solutions are cost-prohibitive to countries and marginalized communities. Particularly when you factor in the immediate problems facing the poor and the vulnerable no matter where in the world that they're located. Which is, for example, how do I feed myself and my family? And how do I provide the basic necessities?
So to get back to your question is, how do you buy-in? How do you incentivize these communities to make the solutions and economic benefit for them, not at the expense of them. So that means essentially heavily investing in education on the issues. Listening to their feedback on what will work for them and what will not work for them within their social, within their economic and within their cultural context. As well as listening to their concerns and respecting their inputs. And yes, money. We sometimes shrug and think of it as a dirty word, but money is key, funding these initiatives from an international level to a regional level to a national and local level as well. So all of those factors come into play when you're talking about incorporating and including the participation and having those groups see value in this issue.
Scott Wing:
Thanks. I know we are all agreed that the changes that are needed to respond to the climate crisis are in large part societal changes. They are changes that happen because we change the way we do business in the world as, as societies. However, even knowing that that's true, I can't resist asking about a story that is a more personal story. And I understand, Bill, that you've been able to do some pretty amazing emissions reduction in your own life. And even though I completely agree that this is not, we can't all go out and do maybe what you've done, I still would like to hear about it because I think it's inspiring to know that, some people can take individual action in addition to all of the broader things that you've worked on.
Bill Moomaw:
What Scott's referring to is a project that my wife and I started about 15 years ago. We had the opportunity, we were going to be moving out of a home which we could sell, in the Boston area and which was built in 1920s. And build a 21st-century home somewhere else with the proceeds from that. And we were at the forefront of this, our house was the first engineered, zero-net energy house built in the northeast. Could withstand Northeast winter temperatures and so on. And the principle is, and I will say since we went first it was more expensive. The good news is that solar panels cost only something about a third of what they cost us back then. And in fact, solar energy is cheaper than any fossil fuel energy you can use today, certainly for electricity. And we started with making the building to demand as little energy as possible and to gain as much passive solar energy as possible.
So that greatly reduced our total demand and it's very well insulated. And to heat it, which we have to do in this temperatures, which still the global warming, we have temperatures of 10 below zero occasionally, and it'd be nice to stay warm and we do. But the sun has been beating on the Earth for all spring, summer, and fall, and there's a lot of heat stored in the Earth and you can extract that heat by running tubes through it, put a liquid through it and brings it into the house. Now that temperature of that is about 55 degrees on average, it's the average temperature year round. But it's very easy to raise that temperature with what's called a heat pump from 55 to a comfortable 75. That's only 30 degrees, that's not a lot, that's not a heavy lift. And so that's how we managed to do it and to use every light bulb, every appliance, every computer, everything is among the most efficient we could find. And so our demand is really low, that also saves money on doing things.
And there's nothing that we want to do that we can't do. Now at night, of course we don't generate anything. We haven't gone to battery storage yet because they were A, too expensive, and B, we didn't want to use lead-acid batteries. But there's more and more batteries are getting less expensive and more effective, that's becoming more possible. But what we do at night is we buy from the grid, but we buy specifically from non-carbon producing sources. Over the year we produce more electricity than we buy from the electric company. And we generate a surplus and it goes out over the grid and they don't pay us, but they don't charge us obviously for that.
And so we've gotten to the point now, and by the way, two years ago we bought a battery-powered electric vehicle, which we charged with our solar panels. I love driving on solar energy, you just feel better. As a friend of mine said, "There's nothing that makes you feel better than taking a solar heated shower." You just feel cleaner. It's amazing. And so all of these things can be done now and what was complicated and expensive then is now within the reach of, and contractors are actually building affordable housing using the principles they learned here.
So that was very a useful thing from our point of view. It was my experiment I wanted to do. And it turned out to have lots of applications. And so now there are a lot rehabs. We're working with a friend now and they're going to take a house that was built about a hundred years ago. It's a modest house and it will be zero-net energy that would've been impossible even 10 years ago. And it's possible and being done today. So that's great.
Scott Wing:
That's great.
Bill Moomaw:
And then in combination, if we could manage the natural world better, and if we could, I just read the other day that since the Paris Agreement to keep temperatures from rising excessively was in invoked in 2015, the 60 largest banks have invested $3.6 trillion in fossil fuel investments. That's almost twice as much as the rescue plan that the United States has just passed in Congress and so on. I just find that quite intolerable and the consequences for people where the pollution from these facilities are and from the destruction of forests, I'm working with social justice groups where they are suffering the consequences of deforestation that's occurring because the government is paying them to make wood to use for making electricity. Which is crazy because solar panels do it without any emissions at all and without any deforestation at all. So we really need to have an integrated approach at all levels. And you had asked earlier, how long is it stored in forest? On average it's stored forever. As long as we don't cut it down.
Wetlands, 10,000 years of accumulated carbon that can be released in a week or a month when those are disturbed. And the same is true with forests, it's released immediately when they're cut down. In the U.S., cutting down forest releases as much carbon as the entire building sectors in the United States uses every year. And only half of what you cut actually ends up as boards and things to build with. So we really do need to change the way we do things and I think with information and with goodwill and with an understanding of the consequences of not doing it, and with the help of young people like Lake and others pushing very hard, I think we have all the tools we need to address this in a serious manner.
Scott Wing:
Thank you. We, let's get a few questions from the audience here. There's a couple of questions from Patricia and a related one from Joseph that I think are basically directed toward Dr. Francis. The question as there's more fresh water from melting Arctic ice flows into the North Atlantic, how might it affect the Gulf Stream? How long would it take to stop this if something happens? And related to that at the other end of the Earth, is there a similar jet stream loopiness that's happening in the Southern Hemisphere?
Jennifer Francis:
Both very good questions. The Atlantic issue was in the news a lot in the last couple weeks because a major new publication had been published talking about this major current system. It's a global current system, actually, it's called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation because it really starts in the Atlantic. It starts in the region just south of Greenland where warm water flows in from the south basically, it cools and in that area it cools to the point where that water becomes very dense and so it sinks and that creates the motion in the vertical column of the ocean that starts this whole circulation that extends all the way down to the southern hemisphere and then comes back. And the Gulf Stream is sort of part of that large scale circulation, although it's driven -- the Gulf Stream is a little bit separate because it is actually driven by wind currents more than this sinking water.
And so the story in this recent paper and others before that is that, this region where that cooling and the sinking occurs has become fresher in the last couple of decades. And the reason it's fresher is because, we're melting a lot more of the Greenland ice sheet that's putting a lot more fresh water into that region and we're seeing a lot more fresh water come out of the Arctic Ocean because of the sea ice melting that I talked about and also more discharge from the rivers that empty into the Arctic Ocean. That freshening in that particular area south of Greenland is really key because that fresh water floats on top of the saltier water below it and it resists that mixing or that sinking of that cooling water that I mentioned. And so that is really what's slowing down this whole north to south, in fact global circulation.
It's been measured in several different ways. And so, we don't really know how long it might take to actually stop this circulation. It probably will take a long time, but we know that it has stopped in the past as a paleoclimatologist, Scott, you probably know about that. But not a lot is known about where that tipping point is in the system that might stop that. So quickly, the second question is a lot easier to answer. In the southern hemisphere. We really don't see these impacts on the jet stream like we do in the Northern Hemisphere because those feedback loops are really not happening in the Southern Ocean. And that's because Antarctica is a continent with a couple of miles of ice sitting on ... Did with the loss of sea ice particularly. And then that warming the oh, [inaudible 00:46:08].
Scott Wing:
Yeah, we lost you for a second.
Jennifer Francis:
Okay, sorry.
Scott Wing:
Yeah, you back.
Jennifer Francis:
I'll wrap it up quick here. The reason is because the sea ice around Antarctica melts back to the coast every year and during the summertime. And so you don't have this opportunity to melt yet more ice and absorb yet more energy from the sun like you do in the Arctic. And so we just don't have the same kind of feedback loops there and we don't see a rapidly warming Southern Ocean or Antarctica because of that.
Scott Wing:
Thank you. We have a question next for Lake and it's how does the public perception of the environmental movement being youth-based and led affect its political and social credibility? What do you see as the root causes and implications of those dynamics?
Lake Liao:
Yeah, thanks Scott. So I think there's a massive disconnect in the general public between the causes of why there's thousands of people organizing for this. Thousands of young people in this case specifically, which is hard science. IPCC reports and everything that we've been talking about today. These very empirical things that should be socially accepted and are intense and credibility. You see a lot of criticism online, especially of youth movements like Sunrise being a bunch of kids who don't know what they're doing. Being able to kids who we shouldn't listen to because they have no life experience which one, completely negates the fact that as younger people, our future's on the line, and two, is objectively not correct. You don't need to have extensive life experiences to understand these injustices we face and the magnitude of the problem and how billions of people are going to be hurt by this.
And I think it's really important to change the narrative, change our general conversation for a political people, people who aren't super involved in this, even though they may be passive supporters or even people on the opposition of why we're doing this. And it's not because we want to be allowed or radical, it's because it's necessary. And that's a conversation that people need to be thinking about having because we're not going to get anywhere if we keep viewing these people who are pouring their lives into this as uncredible and inexperienced. And that's a cultural shift that needs to happen if we're going to get anything done.
Scott Wing:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's take another question. This one's for Nichola. Your work highlights the critical questions surrounding who gets to participate in the discourse and whose voices are heard regarding the creation and framing of solutions. So are the current conversations taking into consideration those voices or is it a continuation of the developed world's focus dictating what's best for the developing world?
Nichola Minott:
Okay, well short answer, no. They are not taking into consideration those voices. And yes, the paradigm of the developed world dominance continues. However, an even shorter and more complex answer is it depends on the country, on the political structure. For example, in our own current administration, the EPA has stated that it will focus on marginalized communities to combat climate change. In essence, one election shifted the focus 180 degrees in a matter of months towards equity and the consideration of marginalized communities. But if you consider other countries where to be an environmentalist from a marginalized community could be a death sentence. Also, who holds the purse strings? Who benefits from the status quo and how much power do they have to maintain it, et cetera?
But not to end on a pessimistic note, I do sense a shift. And that shift presents itself in a willingness to listen to marginalized voices, to historically weaker voices, to less conventional voices, to give space for them to speak. And I've seen it more pronounced in the past year with the rise and the international prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement to address racial injustice, which also incorporates environmental justice issues. Now, whether or not that translates into long-term change, that remains to be seen. Because essentially change is a hard boulder to push forward and a tough pill to swallow. So hopefully it will, but it remains to be seen.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. I think we probably have time for one more question. Each of you has offered a unique perspective on the critical issues that surround climate change. So could you quickly comment on what you're hopeful about? Do you see positive things? Because I know I've been told this many times in putting together exhibits and talking to the public that we have to present a hopeful vision of the future in addition to calling out why change is needed. So on my screen, Lake is first and then Nichola and then Jennifer, and then Bill. But we're going to have to keep it pretty quick. Maybe just a few sentences or paragraph.
Lake Liao:
Yeah, I can quickly go. So I think just for our own spirits and sanity, having hope about things like the technology that can advance us and the millions of people who are awake about this and actively pushing it is a very hopeful thing. But I do want to caution optimism without action, which sometimes calls, well, it's an actual [inaudible] optimism that stems into action that's what's going to actually help achieve those optimistic goals. Just being hopeful about the technology we have without acknowledging the vast political systems that are preventing them from being used in solving these problems is going to propel us further into this crisis. So just hope is not enough here.
Scott Wing:
Thanks.
Nichola Minott:
And to add to what Lake was saying, I think I'm hopeful for all the initiatives that are taking place, not just in the United States, but globally as well. I think that the commitment is still there to move forward in the climate agreements. And I think we're starting to see an amalgamation of young people who, as Lake pointed out, there seems to be a bias that they don't have life experience. Well, they got a lot of time and they have a lot of passion. So that's also going to be a key part of pushing the initiatives and the progressive actions forward. And also in terms of industry, I mean, just recently you have General Motors that signal that they're willing to address fuel economy standards. You also have Exxon, BP who are now advocating for working on the climate and Paris Agreements and being a part of the solution. Obviously I'm not overly optimistic, but there has been a shift and I think that shift is helpful. Whether or not we can maintain it remains to be seen.
Scott Wing:
Thanks, Jennifer can.
Jennifer Francis:
Okay. Two really quick things, as I see we're almost out of time. The first, just following up with Nichola's comments is that, the economic drivers are now really happening. I mean, they're pushing in the right direction, it's cheaper to build an electric source from solar or wind than it is from coal. Now that is ... And there's many things like that, including the automobile industry. The second thing is, I think the public perception has shifted. We're not ...
Scott Wing:
I think we just lost Jennifer.
Jennifer Francis:
And I think I just froze.
Scott Wing:
Yeah. You did. Just, want to say us one more sentence there and then hand it on to Bill. I think we missed just the last thing you said.
Bill Moomaw:
Oh, again.
Scott Wing:
Bill, you said that you'd talked a lot [inaudible 00:56:34].
Jennifer Francis:
Move on to Bill.
Scott Wing:
Maybe you can finish it off for her. Sorry.
Bill Moomaw:
I think she's back, Jen.
Jennifer Francis:
Sorry. No, Bill, you go ahead. There's one minute left, so you take it.
Bill Moomaw:
Okay. All right. Well, as I say, it's easy to be optimistic about the technology because there's plenty of it here to use and the prices are dropping and we can all use it. I think we can be optimistic because we do have this push from the youth and younger people who recognize they're going to be living in this world a lot longer than I'm going to be living in this world. And therefore they have a bigger stake in it, I guess, than I do. I haven't given up on thinking that it isn't important. I think it's hugely important and I plan to go out still working on this, that'll be the last thing I'm doing. And I also think we know that natural systems are working day and night, whether if we will just let them. Could easily, the cheapest thing to do is let our existing forest grow. Far, they will absorb more carbon than planting all the trees we can plant between now and the next 30 years.
And we don't have to do it for all of them. And so there's just these things that just make so much sense that at some point we're just going to have to do it. And then I think the justice argument is compelling and we can have this positive thing where we are all working together rather than having something that divides us. We have something that should unite us to work on this together.
Scott Wing:
Thanks very much to all of you. I think we are really pretty much out of time. I want to also thank the Environmental Film Festival, the "Feedback Loops" film team, our donors and volunteers, the production team who helped out behind the scenes, Monica and Amanda and Naimah and all the partners who help us reach, educate, and empower millions of people around the world. Please stay tuned for future programs from Natural History, we hope you'll join us again. We have some exciting things coming up, so we've put a link in the comments where you can find information. And you'll also see a link to a survey in the chat, please fill out the survey. It helps us do more of what you want us to do. Thanks again to our participants and to the audience. See you soon.
