Starbucks is finding new mountains to grow coffee on, agribusiness is developing drought resistant seeds, and the governments are building seawalls. So what can individuals and families do to adapt themselves?!
This week Ross is joined by David Pogue, CBS News Sunday Morning correspondent, former New York Times weekly tech columnist, and author of How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos.
How do we adapt to the safety risks of major disasters? Should we embrace firearm ownership for when society breaks down? Or is a tactical flashlight a better idea? How much food and water should you have in your cellar?
Ross and David discuss the ins and outs of climate adaptation: maybe you shouldn’t be where you are… If you have a choice, there are some climate geographies much more resilient than others (hint: here comes the Rust Belt renaissance and the Midwest’s time to shine.)
The conversation delves into the psychology of adaptation: certain demographics are not yet ready to admit that the planet is radically changing, while 40% of middle schoolers are now convinced that the world will end in their lifetime. Will adaptive actions actually make us feel better about the climate future?
Tune into this episode to learn what you can be doing to adapt to climate change and to learn which state is the most flooded (another hint: it’s not on the coast), why disease may be the most underrated climate risk out there, how the climate-concerned may invest, and how you can talk to your children about climate adaptation.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
How to Prepare for Climate Change book
National Flood Insurance Program
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast with Nori. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m one of the co-founders of Nori, and I’m the Director of Creative and Marketing here. And Nori is a carbon removal marketplace based in Seattle, Washington. And today I have with me David Pogue, whom you may know from his weekly New York Times tech column, his many books, or his work on CBS Sunday Morning. His latest book is How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos. Thanks for being here, David.
David Pogue: My pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: This book seems like a break from your regular beat. Why did you write it?
David Pogue: It isn’t. It isn’t. I mean, I’ve been doing more and more climate and environment stories for CBS Sunday Morning, and I guess the one overarching theme of my career is that I’m an explainer. So I wrote for 13 years for the Times, a technology column, and then I wrote for 10 years for Scientific American. And, you know, I wrote seven of the blah, blah, blah For Dummies books. So I fancy myself an explainer. And it just — this topic seemed like a good pairing of my environmental interests and my explainer interests.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I think it’s a successful book at explaining quite a lot. This topic is not without controversy, though. Climate activists often think that focusing too much on survival or other types of adaptation leads us to give up on mitigating, give up on trying to stop and reverse climate change. Do you think they’ve made a wrong turn on that supposition?
David Pogue: I understand the impulse, and I agree that that used to be a concern. I don’t think there are many climate experts anymore who don’t think we need to do both mitigation and adaptation as hard as and fast as we possibly can. The inspiration for the outline came from this John Holdren quote. He was Barack Obama’s science advisor, and he said, you know, when it comes to climate change, there’s mitigation, there’s adaptation, and there’s suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is how much.
Right. So mitigation is all anyone talks about. It’s in the title of your podcast. It’s how to cut down on our emissions. You know, eat less red meat and fly less and take public transportation, and on and on. But there’s just nothing — I mean nothing — about adaptation, which is, as you say, coping with what we’ve got. I mean, there are probably 300 books about mitigation and zero except for this book about adaptation. And governments and corporations are adapting all the time. You know, Starbucks is finding new mountains to grow coffee on because the old ones won’t grow anymore. And, you know, Monsanto is developing drought-resistant seeds and the government is building seawalls. So my question is, why shouldn’t individuals and families have the right to do some adaptation themselves?
Ross Kenyon: What exactly are you advising the average family or individual to do?
David Pogue: It’s super common sense stuff. One thing I really didn’t want to do is write a book for rich people to dodge the disasters that affect poor people.
Ross Kenyon: So, like, go to New Zealand and start a compound and that whole thing.
David Pogue: Exactly, exactly. So there’s none of that. The most extreme I ever got — I did interview some survivalists, and to my amazement, perhaps embarrassingly to my amazement, they were super able to channel their beliefs into a more, you know, a more everyday populist version of what they’re doing. In other words, like in Hurricane Katrina, as you may know, New Orleans just broke down. There was no order. The police themselves were looting stores. And so there’s a chapter in the book where we ask the question, should we consider gun ownership for when society breaks down? And of course that’s a very electrifying topic, and it depends on your culture and how you grew up.
But the survivalists who are gun owners told me, I don’t think it’s guns. I don’t think that’s a great idea, because having a gun in the home definitely, you know, doubles or triples the rate of accidental shootings and suicides. Better idea, they told me, if you’re worried about home invasion or societal breakdown, is get yourself a tactical flashlight. These are these unbelievably bright lights that the military uses and the government uses, the police. And, you know, if somebody’s coming up your lawn at night, it blinds them, it stops them in their tracks. So things like that.
And, you know, when it comes to — I live on the East Coast. I’ve been through a couple of these hurricanes where there was no power, heat or cooling or internet for a week. And so there’s discussion of how much food should you have socked away that will keep. And it’s just — it’s common sense stuff. I mean, you can have tuna and beans and some stuff that’ll keep for a long time in the back of the cabinet and just know that you’re covered.
Ross Kenyon: I grew up in Mesa, Arizona, which at least at the time of my living there was the second biggest LDS community after Salt Lake City, and the Mormons are big on keeping their basement loaded with stockpiles for events. In fact, if you look, a lot of preparedness companies, especially food-related ones I’ve seen, are actually LDS. You’ll see the [unclear] angel with the trumpet there if you look.
David Pogue: Did not know that.
Ross Kenyon: It always seems common sense to me too. It doesn’t have to be survivalist culturally. You could also just make sure — hey, do you have a week’s supply of water and food if you couldn’t leave your house, if there’s [unclear]? Doesn’t mean that you have to have palisades set up and watchtowers and arm yourself necessarily. It may come to that. Maybe it’s good to think about, depending on where you are. But I don’t think that’s the first recourse, and it doesn’t seem like your book reflects that either.
David Pogue: No, really not. I mean, the book is everything I could think of that is entailed in preparation. And that’s not just the physical stuff like food and water and shelter. It’s also how to insure your house and how to invest and how to talk to your children and how to keep your garden growing when none of the seeds will grow the way they used to. So there are more areas of life that are affected by the climate crisis than just staying alive.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, much of it is pretty quotidian. We should get into some of that — more tactical, how to insure and things like that — down the road. But I think before people make a decision about how to make the best of where they are, a lot of your book does focus on maybe you shouldn’t be where you are, or maybe if you’re thinking of investing in property, some places are better than others. How do you introduce that without scaring the hell out of everyone?
David Pogue: Yeah, I mean, I was astonished to find out the statistics on how many Americans move every year. It’s on the order of 40 million people. So they’re changing jobs, they’re getting married or divorced, they’re getting out of college, getting out of the military. A lot of people move. And increasingly, where we should move to, where the climate crisis won’t devastate our lives, is becoming a factor. So yeah, Chapter 2 is where to live, if you have a choice. There are some places that are much better than others. You know, everybody wants to know, well, where is that?
And if you just think about it, you know, on the West Coast you’ve got the horrific wildfires, the smoke, drought. Oh man, drought is a very untelegenic, unsexy climate crisis. But I mean, the entire western half of the United States is, as you know, Mr. Arizona, are really starting to worry about drinking water. And then, you know, in the South, you’ve got unbelievable heat, you’ve got hurricanes. On the East Coast, you’ve got sea level rise and hurricanes and ticks that are just exploding their populations because the winters aren’t cold enough to kill them off in between seasons.
So where that leaves you is the Great Lakes areas. So Cleveland, Buffalo, Duluth. The great old Rust Belt cities are poised for a renaissance, and they know it too. There are ad campaigns already in formation in these great old Rust Belt cities to welcome the climate refugees that will soon be coming.
Ross Kenyon: I’m blown away that I haven’t seen anecdotally more evidence for that at this point, despite knowing many people. I just live in California too. I don’t know anyone that has left California yet for climate reasons, even though I’ve known people that have been affected by fires, or the fires have come quite close to their homes, dangerously so. And then also I know people in Florida, and I’ve even met people that have bought property in Florida recently during the boom, when actuaries are saying that we are no longer going to insure your property, or if it costs so much that it’s no longer economical. I don’t understand how those signals aren’t maybe landing correctly so that they are adjusting. It’s really mind-blowing.
David Pogue: I mean, on the first point, they are definitely moving out of California in the six figures a year. We interviewed a couple of these families for a CBS Sunday Morning story a couple years ago. That is the one example where it’s what you would expect. But you’re right. I mean, the floods into Arizona and Florida have not slowed down, and it is just boggling to me. You are moving into the two worst climate crisis hotspots. All I can figure is that people think, oh, it won’t happen to me. And they may well be wrong.
Ross Kenyon: It’s amazing that the real estate industry, from what I’ve seen from Zillow and Redfin, both price climate risk. We’re starting to take that into account with their metrics. Riskfactor.com, that I use via your book — this information is out there. And yet markets — I typically think markets are very smart and encourage people to do things through incentives fairly efficiently. It doesn’t seem to have changed prices. Or even if the real estate industry knows that these are not good places to be moving, the fact that people don’t know about it means that they actually don’t have an incentive to steer people away from earning more money, because maybe they just get to sell that house later and move them to another house. That sounds kind of conspiratorial.
David Pogue: There are a few elements to this idea. I mean, first of all, there is some evidence that real estate prices in Miami, for example, near the shore are beginning to drop. You know, the same house 100 feet back from the water is more expensive in Miami by 7% than the one on the water. So some studies are starting to show that turnaround.
But I mean, I spent a lot of time working on this book in the psychology of climate change. You know, the first chapter is called How to Acclimate to Climate Change. It’s how to cope with eco-despair. And, you know, there’s this whole concept of the climate denier and so forth. To admit that the planet is in trouble is a gigantic change. People are not comfortable with something that radical changing in the middle of their lives. Like, if you grew up knowing that, you know, the sun will implode in billions of years — I mean, that we can sort of shove down into our psyches and live with it. But to be an adult and to be told actually what you thought was forever might not be forever, it is so hard to accept.
Especially because there’s another element of this, which is we’ve been bred to have pride in the American way. Consumerism, manufacturing, acquiring more stuff is how you measure your success, right? That’s the whole program. And all of a sudden we’re being told, oh no, actually you caused the problem with your consumption. I mean, it’s almost impossible to handle easily if you’re already just trying to get through life. So in some ways I understand it. In some ways I know it’s going to be a long, slow transition at this point. What did the studies say? 40% of middle schoolers are now convinced that the world will end in their lifetimes.
So there’s a generational shift that’s going on. For them, it isn’t something that hit them in the middle of their lives. For them, they grew up with this problem. And so, as people my age die off and younger people take the positions of power, I am 100% confident that there will be an even greater rush to decarbonization that’s already, you know, underway. But in terms of the psychology of it, it is really complicated and really deep in a lot of people.
Ross Kenyon: Those are both such horrific pendulum swings as well — that there’s no problem, or accepting this is too painful for me to face, versus everything is going to collapse around me. Have you even seen things that shows like The Sopranos have become popular among Gen Z? Because there is this attitude — Tony even says, I think in the pilot, that he was born in the wrong era. He was born past the golden age of being in the mob, and it’s no longer time.
So shows like this, that show that sort of anti-heroes above all else, are so popular, and living in that era past the golden age. You know, it’s wooden clogs on the way up, silk slippers on the way down, and we’re on the way down. Hopefully your book steers us closer to the middle ground, where we’re not just doomers and we’re not just unrecognizingly optimistic or naive.
David Pogue: I mean, let me tell you, I wrote this book during the waning years of the Trump administration, and I don’t care what your politics are, it is true that that administration deleted the phrase climate change from all federal websites, pulled out of the Paris Accord and so on. I mean, that was a dark, dark time if you were hoping for improvement in the emissions scenario. So compared to then — I mean, we elected a president. I mean, even Obama didn’t talk about climate change in his stump speeches, but this president campaigned on doing something about the climate crisis and got elected on that basis, and then passed the biggest bill in, you know, governmental history to address climate change.
There’s so much now going on to fix the problem in big, big ways compared to just three or four years ago. It’s no longer a matter of depression for me. Now it’s much more a matter of hurry up and spread the word.
Ross Kenyon: Are you making many of these personal moves yourself right now? Are you fully adapted at this point?
David Pogue: Yeah, we did a lot of these things. And, you know, I’m fond of pointing out that this book has a stealth mission. Part of it is, yes, to protect you and your family and your house, to make you less susceptible to fires and flood and hurricane and so on. But the other stealth mission is to make you rest easier at night. It turns out that depression, as it was explained to me, is not just the feeling that, oh, my life sucks. It’s my life sucks and I’m helpless to do anything about it. I cannot change my situation. So anytime there is something you can do to change your situation, that is a cure to address depression.
There’s this great study in a federal prison where they have, of course, tremendous mental health issues. And so they tried an experiment where they let these inmates take turns arranging the chairs for movie night. They gave them that much control over their environment, and even that resulted in an improvement in the depression statistics. People had some control. So if you take the steps to adapt and prepare, then you worry less that something will come and wipe you out.
So yes, we took a bunch of the steps. First of all, we got an electric car in 2018. And man, those things are, if anything, undersold. It is not only so much fun to drive, and not only do you never buy gas again, but the thing’s got like no moving parts. Like, it’s a Tesla Model 3 and it has 20 moving parts in the drivetrain, as opposed to 2,100 — 100 times more — in a gas car. So there’s nothing to go wrong anyway. So we did that. We made go bags, bug-out bags. I did that with my son. It was kind of like a Boy Scout mission. We scurried around and put together a backpack that could sustain us for two days outside the house. You know, snacks, water, first aid, flashlight, copies of our IDs, stuff like that.
Ross Kenyon: A lot of people in California already have go bags. Like, this is just a common, everyday thing that everybody’s got, because fire, right?
David Pogue: And so we did that. And honestly, once I read about the red meat issue, I literally have not eaten red meat since that chapter. I can’t do it. And for those who aren’t aware, cows are the worst. A single cow farts out five to eight gallons of methane per hour, and methane is like carbon dioxide but 80 times worse. It is the worst greenhouse gas, and we are dedicating so much of the planet to raising these cows.
A third of the entire planet’s non-frozen surface right now is cattle grazing land. A third. Is that what we want to do with the planet? And then in Brazil, of course, they’re burning down the rainforest to make more cattle grazing land. So eating red meat is just a total disaster, not fantastic for your health either. So if individuals want one mitigation step to take that will have the most impact, that’s probably it. Less red meat.
Ross Kenyon: And specifically for adaptation, though, assuming that you can’t just pick up and move to Duluth, go bags are probably a good place to start. That could be earthquake related, that could be pretty much anything. You should probably just have one.
David Pogue: I think so. I mean, the climate crises are hitting more and more people in weirder and weirder ways, even people that you wouldn’t expect. For example, flooding — both flooding claims and the size of those claims to the federal government have doubled in the last 20 years. Everybody’s filing claims. As you hinted before, the Allstates of the world and the MetLifes of the world no longer insure for flooding. So your home insurance does not cover flooding. You have to get flood insurance from the government, because all the private insurance companies got out of the business.
So of the 10 states that had the most federal flood emergencies declared, eight of them are not on the coast. And the number one most flooded state — Arkansas. I mean, it’s nowhere near the ocean. And why is that? Well, because we’re in this new pattern of super hot, dry periods where the ground gets all dried out and hard, and then torrential historic rains, and the water has nowhere to seep in. So it just runs down the hard, dry ground and into our basements and into the businesses and the main streets. And so they wind up filing these flood claims that are just massive. So yeah, it’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t in some way susceptible to some of these disasters that come along with increasing frequency.
Ross Kenyon: Your book has some of the most boring yet practical advice I’ve ever taken, which is to read my insurance policy more closely. The problem where I live — on Riskfactor.com, that you point people to, that’s a great website that takes your address and shows what kind of risk that your property may or may not face. We’re on the top of a hill in Seattle, but we’re not at the very top of it. So there is water that comes down the grade of our property. And we have a flooding ditch that was dug when we bought the property, and a sump pump.
I’m like, what if my sump pump fails? Because when there’s a lot of rain, the power might go out. If the sump pump dies, do I have battery backup? If it does flood, how much am I entitled to the insurance for this? So I’ve been going back and forth with my insurance agent. Are you proud of me? Can you just step in as a paternal force for me right now?
David Pogue: Very proud of you. My wife jokes that I’m aghast at parties because I’ll stand there for 90 minutes talking to people about the National Flood Insurance Program. It is boring, but it’s also, like, fascinating boring. Most people bought their home insurance for the cheapest price they could get when they moved in and haven’t looked at it again.
Ross Kenyon: And you really like — yeah, 15 minutes can save you 15% or more.
David Pogue: Yeah, but 15 minutes is not enough. You really need to look at the declarations page and see what it says. I was astounded to find that our own insurance plan — I mean, it had stuff we didn’t need in it. We cut down our insurance by looking at this policy. But yeah, you’ll discover, you know, that it doesn’t cover floods. So that’s one thing. It may cover things you don’t need. It may not cover things that you need.
And the whole story of the national flooding — so I mentioned that the private insurance companies got out of the flood insurance business, and guess what else they’re getting out of now? They’re all out West. They’re all getting out of fire insurance. Like, hundreds of thousands of people are being dropped from their California insurance plans because they include fire insurance and the insurers will no longer cover that. So it’s a real crisis out West.
But once the private insurers got out of the business, the government stepped in. FEMA stepped in and set up a governmental flood insurance program called the NFIP, the National Flood Insurance Program. And it has been a total disaster, because they never raise your rates no matter how many times you file. So in the book I mention there’s a house in Texas that’s been flooded something like nine times since 1985, to the tune of three and a half million dollars of reimbursements. And the government just keeps paying and paying and paying and rebuilding and rebuilding, and their rates have never gone up.
And the rates are also calculated based on your general area, not the specifics of your property. So it’s based on your zip code. So if you have a house right down by the water, you pay the same as a house that’s up the hill from you. It makes no sense. It’s not tied to market pricing. And for years, people have wanted to change the National Flood Insurance Program so that it reflects real risk, so that what you pay is reflective of the actual risk your property takes. And over and over again, Congress has failed to change things.
And I love this because it’s totally about psychology and politics. Let’s say they agree. Well, everybody who’s got flood insurance, one of two things will happen. Either their rates will jump up because they’ve been paying too little all this time and they’ll be furious and won’t reelect their Congress people. Or their rates will drop because they’ve been paying too much all this time, and they’ll be furious because — you’ve been ripping me off for decades, I’m not reelecting you. And so for Congress people, it’s an absolute no-win to revise this program. And yet they finally are. This is the year. It’s called Risk Rating 2.0. And they are finally easing in, making people pay the appropriate amounts for their flood insurance. So come on, isn’t that interesting?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s fascinating. I also think this is one of those areas that left and right can come together on, because this is an area where free market pricing actually encourages the right kinds of behavior in a very decentralized kind of way. There are some fairness issues — to some people, maybe, who ended up in poorer parts of town that are more prone to risk, and that extra help needs to be accorded to them for fairness reasons. But overall, we should not be subsidizing at taxpayer expense homes that need to be rebuilt over and over and over and over again. And there’s like, there’s [unclear], no private insurer would tolerate that. They would either drop them or say one-time payout, it’s time for you to move. We just can’t do it anymore.
David Pogue: I mean, there are places where FEMA has bought people out. It’s not very many. It’s 15,000 homes or something, where they were literally saying this house is not worth rebuilding over and over again. We’re buying the property and letting nature take it over. I suspect that’ll be happening more in the future. It’s a simple dollars and cents equation.
Ross Kenyon: Many stories about the process of buying out and the justice issues and the quarrels over it, and whether or not there’s actually a replicable thing to do at scale, because how much of Florida would essentially have to be bought out at this point?
David Pogue: Yeah, I mean, a trillion dollars. Who knows? Florida is a tough situation because a lot of it, like Miami for example, is built on permeable ground. You can’t build a seawall around Miami because the water is coming up from underneath you. They have now 100 days a year of sunny-day flooding. This is where the streets are flooded and it hasn’t even rained. Like, they have these storm drains in the streets, these sewer grates that were intended to let water drain out of the street, down into the ocean. But guess what’s happening now?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it goes the other way, up through the storm drains.
David Pogue: Yeah, it’s kind of a nightmare.
Ross Kenyon: So what’s going to happen there? Are they going to be able to adapt, or is it really better to just start thinking about how to move out of there?
David Pogue: They will adapt, I think. I mean, already you can’t build — I mean, nobody in Florida likes to talk about, you know, the climate crisis, but quietly the government is putting in regulations about how you build. You know, they’re building on stilts. They’re building higher, taller homes off the ground. I did a story this summer when we had that historic heat wave, when Phoenix, for example, went — what was it, 31 days in a row with temperatures over 110 degrees? Never happened in history. And spent a couple days out there.
It is uncomfortable in Phoenix, but they say, well, we have air conditioning. We’re air conditioned everywhere except for like 30 seconds between the office and the car. Whatever. And as long as you’re not somebody who doesn’t have air conditioning — and there are people who don’t — you are fine. I’m confident in saying that life in Phoenix would be literally gone overnight if air conditioning were not available. So that’s a form of adaptation. And Florida, same thing. Oh, one more thing: in Phoenix, they keep oven mitts in the car because the steering wheel is too hot to touch when you get back into the car. This is how life has become extreme in Phoenix.
But in Florida, same thing. There’s adaptation, right? There’s learning where you can build and how to build to prevent this stuff, to withstand against hurricanes. So it’s hard for me to see people abandoning land in Miami, but easy for me to see that they will just keep reinforcing their buildings.
Ross Kenyon: I forgot where I first read this. It might have been in Jeff Goodell’s new book. But about Florida essentially being unpopulated or relatively unpopulated until air conditioning was mainstream, and that was sort of, I think, mostly a postwar innovation that led to everyone — you know, New York is moving down to Boca and stuff like that. That wouldn’t have been possible in the previous century. It was just too hard to deal with. That is climate adaptation.
David Pogue: It’s absolutely true. It is climate adaptation. There’s a chapter in the book on how to build. So if you’re renovating your house or building a new one, there’s some really cool tricks that we used to know as a society for keeping your house cool. Like, you think of the old plantation houses of the South. They had a few characteristics we don’t do anymore. They used to have really high ceilings because heat rises, so heat would rise basically over your head. And they also used to design the house with a smart layout so that there was a central corridor front to back of the house with no doors on it, to encourage breezes to blow through.
And they all have those wraparound porches, right? That’s not just pretty. That was for heat reasons, so that the sun is kept off the walls of the house by the overhanging awning, your hanging porch. And it also creates an outdoor zone for you where you are shaded. So some of those ideas should be making a comeback.
Ross Kenyon: What’s it going to look like if people do move to the Midwest? Is the Midwest broadly already climate adapted, or will architecture have to change even in the perfect spot for North America as well?
David Pogue: I mean, I have to be a little careful, because one of the sweet spots for climate havens, according to the book, is like Burlington, Vermont. It’s a beautiful town. It’s right on this 500-mile lake, Lake Champlain. So it feels like a seaside town, but it’s not ocean, so you don’t have sea level rise. And it’s very low crime rates, very educated populace, really good ice cream, a lot of things. And then what happened this summer? Freak flooding in Vermont.
Ross Kenyon: It’s like all these angry emails, like you said.
David Pogue: Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, I can’t predict the future. But anyway, so I have to be a little bit careful. But in general, the Great Lakes area is just sitting pretty, right? It doesn’t have the hurricanes, it doesn’t have the sea level rise, doesn’t have the flooding, doesn’t have the ticks, doesn’t have the fires, doesn’t have the drought. I mean, they’ll have their own problems. There are cold winters at this point, but even that is changing.
You know, they’re expecting the coldest winters in Madison, Wisconsin, which is one of the sweetest of the sweet spots, to rise seven degrees in the next 10 years. So the winters are not going to be so cold. You do get heat waves, and we do have to worry about the lakes themselves, algae blooms and so on. But it’s nothing like the crushing climate disasters that are hitting the coasts and the South.
Ross Kenyon: Whereabouts are you located?
David Pogue: I live in Westchester County, so about an hour north of New York City, and I live on a hill, so I think I’m pretty much in a sweet spot myself.
Ross Kenyon: Are you? Is that a pretty good place to live? And if you’re outside of New England and you’re outside of the Midwest, you think even, you know, suburban or exurban New York, that’s also not even a terrible place to be.
David Pogue: We just actually moved. We’ve only been here six weeks. And — you asked earlier, did I follow any of my own advice in the book? And yes, we became empty nesters in August and we did this consciously, to avoid, you know, sitting in the coastal town where we used to be. But I mean, this county escapes most of it, but we still have a big tick problem, big mosquito problems. And of course we are still technically in the hurricane zone because we’re not so far from the East Coast. But again, it depends on the individual property, and I feel like we’re on a hill, so flooding shouldn’t hit us too badly.
Ross Kenyon: People don’t speak that much about the disease element of climate change. You’ve mentioned ticks a few times. Should people be more concerned about this than they are?
David Pogue: Oh man, absolutely. First of all, you know, as you know, some ticks — not all of them, but some ticks carry Lyme disease. And Lyme disease, oh, you really don’t want it. It’s just so frustrating because there’s no good test to see if you have it. You don’t even know if you have it. And the symptoms are different for everybody. It’s kind of like long COVID. It reminds me of — you’ll have doctors telling you you’re imagining it. There’s really no good treatment for it. So it’s kind of a nightmare.
And there’s some really fascinating stuff about ticks. For example, I’ve heard people say, you know, they sit up in the tree and wait for you to walk underneath them during your hike, and they jump down on you. And that’s actually total horse doo-doo.
Ross Kenyon: I’m glad to hear that. Sounds terrifying.
David Pogue: But yeah, they do not fly, they do not jump, they do not even have eyes. So they’re not sitting up on branches watching. They’re sitting down low on the brush as you’re walking, waving their little forearms, hoping to grab onto some critter walking by. That’s what happens. Also, you can’t get Lyme disease unless the tick has been embedded in you for 36 to 48 hours. So if you are at all concerned, first of all, put on DEET, the bug spray. It’s not a poison, it’s very safe. It just smells bad to the ticks. And second, when you come in, throw your clothes in the dryer, because heat and dehumidity — and, well, heat and low humidity — kill ticks instantly. And while you’re standing there naked, look over your hairy parts for anything embedded in you and pop it off with a pair of tweezers, and you’re golden.
But otherwise, even so, the number of Lyme disease cases and ticks being spotted are much higher than they were, and they’re spreading northward. I mean, they’ve been seen in Canada now because the cold winters are not cold enough to kill them off between generations anymore. Sometimes we’re getting two generations in a single year. So yeah, ticks and mosquitoes are a big problem on the East Coast.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I read Ross Douthat’s book on Lyme disease and it thoroughly scared me. It does not seem like something to trifle with, and especially if the range of these critters is expanding with the change in climate. That’s something that people should probably underrate the value of that, or underrate the danger of that, relative to something like floods, hurricanes, fires, having a go bag — stuff that we’re talking about, when really maybe a commensurate amount of attention should just be focused on wearing the correct attire and DEET.
David Pogue: Yeah, it’s funny you should mention sickness, and this part about like under-attention. Sickness is a big part of the new era that also does not get a lot of love from the media because it’s not very filmable. But, you know, one of the reasons Cleveland, for example, makes a great climate haven for people to retire, whatever, is they have fantastic medical facilities, hospitals. So you want to think about that when you’re considering where to live.
And also there’s a really cool website called CDP. It used to stand for the Carbon Disclosure Project — CDP.net. And the idea here is they have 10,000 corporations listed in here, and they grade every company on earth according to its vulnerability to the climate change and its contribution to it. So it’s been developed for investors, so they know before they invest in the company whether they’re being idiots and they’re becoming sitting ducks. For example, it turns out that all of the cruise line companies — all of them — are in Miami. So they are increasingly going to be facing a tough time with their headquarters and their workforce and so on.
Anyway, on CDP.net you can look up any company and read these reports that they have written about their susceptibility. And for example, Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, says, oh, we’re sitting pretty, because in the next 20 years we see a 35% increase in illness and that’s great for our business, you know. So it’s all kinds of wild stuff you can learn by prying up the sod under these corporate entities. But yeah, illness is a big, quiet killer of this. And also mental illness. You know, I’m sure you’ve read that five years after Hurricane Katrina, you know, a huge percentage of residents were still suffering from PTSD. It’s nasty.
Ross Kenyon: If not enough attention goes to ticks, then even less attention, I think, goes to PTSD coming off of natural disasters like that. I don’t think the average person even — I think part of it’s probably just when you watch movies and you watch Twister or something, you don’t really see the six months or five years from now Jodie Foster dealing with that trauma. Is that even Jodie Foster? Who’s in that?
David Pogue: No, but I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. That isn’t like a part of disaster in pop culture. They really don’t. And when it comes to the climate crisis, first of all, there are now climate therapists and climate therapy groups that are increasingly important to handle people who are freaking out.
There are, as it turns out, three kinds of mental health issues caused by the climate crisis. One, of course, is PTSD, when you’ve lived through a disaster. One is pre-traumatic stress disorder, and that’s worrying about what’s coming. And that’s what a lot of young people are going through right now. My own kids can tell you all about that. And then there’s a third one I’d never even heard of, called solastalgia. And that is defined as mourning a place that doesn’t exist anymore, that you’ve never left.
In other words, here in New York State, you know, the turning of the fall leaves used to be a stunning, beautiful event that would last a month. The bright reds and yellows and oranges. And now, first of all, that period is very short — it’s, you know, a couple of weeks — and the colors aren’t as bright anymore because climate change has changed the chemistry in these leaves. And so you don’t get the same thing. So I grew up in Cleveland, and we used to love sledding, and we had a nearby sledding hill we’d always go to. And now, I mean, ski resorts are shutting down. Sledding hills don’t exist anymore because there just isn’t snow in general.
Ross Kenyon: So, solastalgia — missing a place that you are still in? What’s going to happen to the inevitable Drew Carey Show reboot?
David Pogue: I didn’t know that one.
Ross Kenyon: That’s one of the things I associate with Cleveland. Sorry.
David Pogue: Oh yeah, I see.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’ve — sorry, I had to. I had to throw in one pretty silly question in there. Have you had much of a response from either the climate-concerned community or, alternatively, from more proper thoroughgoing survivalists?
David Pogue: You know, not really. I think that most experts probably skip a book like this because they assume that everything in it they already know, and maybe they do. Again, I was just really impressed by the survivalists I spoke to, their ability to acknowledge that not everybody is going to be a prepper like they are. And yet there are things that they’ve learned that the average person could learn. You know, like the gun guy I mentioned, he pointed out that for 10 bucks at Home Depot you can get a solar-powered lawn light for your property. So, you know, a well-lit home is not one that’s going to be robbed, right? So very cheap, inexpensive things like that.
So yeah, no, I guess I haven’t really heard much from them. I hear from a lot of individual readers who have little questions about how to execute one thing or another. But so far it’s been very satisfying, and I’m still surprised there isn’t more attention paid to adaptation.
Ross Kenyon: I enjoy writing and thinking from people who are concerned with preparation and survivalism. I always think a lot of it is pretty useful information. You don’t have to go and live in the woods to take it seriously. And even if it’s just keeping your family safe for however long it takes for a natural disaster to pass and its aftermath, I think it’s just good general advice.
And I’ve even seen more conventional preppers or survivalists talk about climate change increasingly. Marty Raney, who has the Homestead Rescue show — I read his book not long ago, and he has a section in there about climate change and takes it seriously and thinks people should be planning for — you know, if you’re building a homestead for family legacy and whatever comes the next couple decades, you need to be doing this or you are doing your family a disservice. It doesn’t help to not concern yourself with this.
I think the practical ramifications of this are now that it’s more here, we’re seeing more natural disasters. And I think once actuaries — I’ve seen this on the show before — once actuaries are no longer insuring properties, that’s not Al Gore grandstanding, that’s not Greta Thunberg, right? That’s nerds with calculators. They don’t care about grandstanding. Once that happens, it’s a lot harder to argue with, I think. So I think people in general are taking this more seriously.
David Pogue: Yeah, they are. And you know, the Yale — there’s a climate, they have a think tank called the Center for Climate Change and Opinion, and every six months they measure public opinion about climate change. And one of the questions is, do you think human activity is causing the climate change? And every time they do the survey, the number of nos drops by another 5% or so. The latest measurement was 29% of Americans think that this is a natural phenomenon, it is not human caused. Which seems alarming. And as I point out when I give talks on this topic, remember that 20% of Americans think that aliens walk among us. So, you know, 29% is actually pretty good.
And one thing that’s changing minds is people living through climate disasters. That has an amazing effect on your view of whether something is going on — having to live through one. So there’s an amazing statistic put together by Climate Central: how many days go between billion-dollar natural disasters. So in 1980 we would go 120 days between billion-dollar disasters. So that’s four months. As of the end of 2021, it was 18 days. So we’re now having a billion-dollar natural disaster on average every 18 days somewhere in this country. So more and more people will have the privilege of seeing the results of this stuff firsthand, and it’s [unclear].
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Your point about it being natural or not — climate change, it in some ways doesn’t even matter. Someone could think that our emissions don’t matter at all because CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere or whatever stat they want to quote. But that could still also mean that the natural climate changing that is happening is still something that you need to prepare for and take seriously. It doesn’t even winnow out the possibility of action on your behalf, right?
David Pogue: And when it comes to this book, like, I don’t care what you think is causing it. I don’t care if you think that it’s a man-made problem or a Chinese hoax. The point is, almost everybody agrees that something is changing. I mean, if you look out the window and tell me this is the same weather we had in 1980 — I mean, that’s on you, my friend. That’s crazy. So when it comes to people — people say, what about climate deniers? And I’m saying I’m not sure there are any anymore, in the definition of somebody who thinks that nothing has changed. There are climate deniers in the sense of they don’t think it’s emissions related, but even those numbers are dropping. I hardly ever see outright climate denial, except on YouTube comments that will probably never change.
Ross Kenyon: But probably not. But besides that, most of the people I know that are skeptical of environmentalists or the left or climate change, whatever, I think they’re mostly concerned that the interventions that will be undertaken will not actually help and will be inefficient, and we should actually be focused entirely on adaptation and not bother at all with mitigation, since it’s quite ineffective. And actually it’s not going to cost that much in terms of GDP to adapt in the next century. And that’s probably the most serious case I see that is closer to climate denial or skepticism. I almost never see anyone at this point say the climate science doesn’t make sense.
David Pogue: Right. Right. I mean, again, I think that’s a false choice, right? I mean, we obviously need to slow down our emissions, and we have — almost every form of emissions we make, we have the technology to eliminate it, right? We know about electric cars, we know about plant-based meat, we even know about electric planes. I did a story a couple weeks ago — we filmed the story, it hasn’t aired yet — about the first all-electric passenger plane. And it carries six people and it’s got a 300-mile range. So that’s not, you know, a Boeing 737 going from New York to LA. But battery technology is improving about 7% a year, so that compounds. And if you look ahead, you know, 10 years, then we’ve doubled the range and the capacity.
And I asked the CEO, will I fly in a commercial airliner across the country on electricity in my lifetime? And he said 100% guarantee. So I was greatly reassured, because I thought that was the last great problem that hadn’t been solved. But nope, there are electric planes flying right now.
Ross Kenyon: I was going to start us in the conclusion process by asking you if you would advise people to start leaving various states at this point. But will not that technological curve come to them too? Will we not see massive innovations in desalinization that will occur, or even pulling moisture out of the air like in Star Wars on Tatooine? How much should we trust technological evolution, and how much should we be making moves right now?
David Pogue: The one thing I know from having been a technology reporter for 35 years is that it always takes longer than you think, right? Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? We were supposed to have been settling other star systems by 2001. You know, remember 1984, the novel written in 1948 that predicted that big corporations would track our every move and the government would manipulate — oh, wait a minute, that really did happen. Never mind. Just kidding.
Ross Kenyon: I was wondering where you were going with that one.
David Pogue: OK, yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, we tend to over-predict the arrival of new technologies. So I would say — I mean, the great thing is that the move to a decarbonized society is fortunately also generally good for the economy, right? And there’s five times as many jobs in solar right now as there are in coal. So I mean, trillions of dollars are going to be changing hands in the great decarbonization. So it’s a chance for entrepreneurs, it’s a chance for existing businesses, it’s a chance for ordinary individuals to do well. So I don’t really see from an intellectual standpoint why anyone would object to the great decarbonization. From an emotional point, I do understand. I do understand it’s stunningly difficult to reimagine yourself and America and consumerism, you know, in this new reality.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks for being here, David. I really enjoyed your book. I think of all the survival-oriented books, preparation books that I’ve read, I think this offers a good mix of classical survival advice. But the parts which I think are especially valuable are the forecasting ahead, for how to plan for your family for years, decades ahead of time. And also the focus on very mundane things that survival books don’t typically deal with — insurance, and how to document your house ahead of a disaster so you can get reimbursed correctly and on time, and things like that.
I think people are too focused on the glamour, defending your home from raiders kind of approach. Your book I think actually is a really nice addendum to many in the genre. So thanks for writing it, and I think it’s a great book. And if you’re listening and you enjoyed the show, you should definitely pick it up.
David Pogue: Well, I appreciate that. Thanks for reading it so thoroughly and for inviting me on. That’s been my pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
