Dive deep into the intricate links between our health, environment, and climate, and discover how every action triggers a chain reaction in our interconnected world.
From Local Actions to Global Impacts: Understanding the Profound Links and Letting Knowledge Drive Our Environmental Choices... | ONE Connected Planet | A Redefining Society Podcast Series With Rod Schoonover, Recurring Guests Deborah Thomson, Allison A. Sakara, Maurice Ramirez, and Host Marco Ciappelli
Guests:
Rod Schoonover, CEO and Founder at Ecological Futures Group
On LinkedIn |https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodschoonover/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/RodSchoonover
Deborah Thomson, Founder and CEO at One Health Lessons [@OneHealthLesson]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/dr-deborah-thomson-dvm
Allison A. Sakara, Executive Director, High Alert Institute [@High-Alert-Inst]
On ITSPmagazine | http://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/allison-a-sakara
Dr. Maurice A Ramirez, Founder and President, High Alert Institute [@High-Alert-Inst]
On ITSPmagazine | http://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/dr-maurice-a-ramirez
____________________________
Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
_____________________________
This Episode's Sponsors
BlackCloak 👉 https://itspm.ag/itspbcweb
Bugcrowd 👉 https://itspm.ag/itspbgcweb
Devo 👉 https://itspm.ag/itspdvweb
Episode Introduction
In our world, every piece is connected like a giant jigsaw puzzle. From our health to the trees in the forest, everything affects everything else. Hello, I’m Marco Ciappelli, and you’re tuning in to "One Connected World," a special series within the "Redefining Society Podcast."
With me are some amazing friends and experts who often join our discussions. There's Allison and Maurice from the High Alert Institute. They've gone from focusing on emergency response to understanding the broader picture – from saving aquatic animals to the mysteries of space. And there's Deborah, who beautifully explains how our health, the environment, and the lives of plants and animals are all woven together.
Today, we're also thrilled to have a special guest, Rod Schoonover. He's a brilliant scientist who delves into topics like climate change and its implications on our world's safety. Rod has worn many hats - a teacher, a government expert, and more, always emphasizing how the Earth's changes can shape our future.
Today, we're elated to introduce a remarkable voice to our dialogue, Rod Schoonover. Rod isn’t just a scientist; he's a visionary who dives deep into critical issues such as climate change and its ripple effects on global safety and stability. Throughout his career, Rod has donned various roles with immense dedication. As an educator, he's molded minds, providing insights into the intricate balance of our planet's systems. In his tenure with the government, he emerged as a trusted expert, advising on how environmental changes can influence geopolitics and broader societal structures. Above all, Rod consistently underscores a pivotal message: the transformations our Earth undergoes have profound implications, not just on the environment but on every facet of our lives, from policy to personal wellbeing. With his multifaceted expertise, Rod brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective that promises to illuminate and deepen our understanding of the world we inhabit.
In this series, "One Connected World," our mission is to unravel these connections. How does one action in one corner of the world affect something else far away? It’s like a domino effect, where one piece can make everything else move. With Allison, Maurice, Deborah, and guests like Rod, we explore these intricate links, diving deep into the stories and facts that make our world what it is.
So, join us on this journey. Each episode, each story is a step closer to understanding and caring for the world we share. Let’s figure out how to keep the pieces of our puzzle fitting together, creating a beautiful and harmonious picture.
Listen, enjoy, think, share, and subscribe to my podcast!
_____________________________
Resources
One Health Lessons
https://onehealthlessons.org
High Alert Institute
https://highalertinstitute.org
____________________________
To see and hear more Redefining Society stories on ITSPmagazine, visit:
https://www.itspmagazine.com/redefining-society-podcast
Watch the webcast version on-demand on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllTUoWMGGQHlGVZA575VtGr9
Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/advertise-on-itspmagazine-podcast
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
_________________________________________
[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Hello everybody, this is Redefining Society podcast with me Marco Ciappelli and this is one of the three series I've started so far so I can get to talk about important topic with people that knows what they're talking about but they have no enough time to have their own podcast. So I have recurring, recurring guests and they're actually co host with me, uh, Alison and Maurice and Deborah that, uh, I believe you who already You probably know because you heard it on the first episode and yeah, we brought a guest today that you're going to get to meet and we're going to focus this conversation that is on one connected world On the environment and I heard it's kind of like a weird word and I'm using right now.
So we'll discover if I'm If I'm, uh, if I'm allowed to say that or not, anyway, I think it's going to be, uh, an interesting conversation where we connect everything we can think of in, uh, in our planet, because everything is connected. And so let's connect with our co host and guests today. Um, Alison and Maurice, let's start with you a quick introduction about who you are and your organization.
And then. Make the ball go around.
[00:01:19] Allison Sakara: Certainly. Thanks, Marco. Of course. I am a nurse practitioner by trade. I am also a regulatory and medical affairs specialist. And, uh, I am co founder and executive director for the High Alert Institute, which is a 501c3 not for profit in central Florida. That got its start at dedicated in the education and support of disaster health care and has since expanded into all areas of the One Health One Nature framework from aquatic animal rescue.
To Environmental Stewardship, to Artificial Intelligence, to Space Industry.
[00:02:12] Maurice Ramirez: And I'm Dr. Maurice Ramirez. I'm an Emergency Room Physician, a Disaster Medicine Specialist. Uh, I, I'm also co founder of the Institute. We were founded after 9 11. Uh, to promote disaster healthcare and disaster security in healthcare.
And as Allison said, we've expanded into all areas of that All Hazards, One Health, One Nature environment. And our co host is Deborah Thompson.
[00:02:38] Deborah Thomson: Nice to see everybody. Uh, Deborah Thompson here. I am the founder and executive director of One Health Lessons. We're a non profit organization based in the D. C.
area, in the Washington, D. C. area. And we educate, uh, about One Health. One Health, in case you missed that last episode or previous episodes. One Health is that connection between public health and the health of the environment, animals and plants. And it also emphasizes the importance of working together across different disciplines, strengths, in order to protect communities at large.
Passing the baton over to our other co host, co host today,
[00:03:19] Rod Schoonover: Rod. Hi, I'm thrilled to be here. I'm Rod Schoonover. I'm CEO and founder of the Ecological Futures Group, which is devoted to analyzing and addressing and articulating the security. Implications of ecological change. I'm an adjunct professor at Georgetown University where I teach climate science.
Um, for a decade, I served in the US intelligence community working on ecological disruption and climate change as, uh, components of national security and foreign policy. And once upon a time ago, I was a full. Uh, professor, uh, at, uh, California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. I am a complex systems physicist, so...
Ready to nerd out with Debra and, uh, and the other guests on, uh, on science.
[00:04:15] Marco Ciappelli: Well, I think it's going to be a great conversation. I'm tempted to just lay back on my chair and, uh, and let you guys go. So I will probably do that. But I, I kind of said something at the beginning about the word environment because we were kind of chatting before, uh, starting recording.
And, uh, so I, I use it quite a bit. And I kind of smile and I get sad after I say that because I love the environment or anyway, whatever surround us, but kind of sad about thinking what's going on with it and what we're doing to it. So, but you, you said that you don't necessarily use that. That much, that word, uh, so why don't we start with that?
[00:04:54] Rod Schoonover: Yeah. Um, and it's not that there's anything wrong with the word environment. Um, who doesn't love the environment? Uh, but the, the community of which, uh, I used to work and still, uh, and still work, uh, on the outside of government in the security world, environment has a connotation, uh, of something that someone else does.
That's the work of the EPA. That is the work of NOAA. You know, the fisheries people. That is the work of someone else. It has nothing to do with my mission set, whether it's a general or an admiral or a secretary of state or defense. That's the historic externality that environment, uh, connotes. And I quite purposely quit using that while I was still in government, uh, and called myself, you know, an ecological security, um, analyst or, or whatever.
Um, for whatever reason, ecological doesn't have the same connotation yet. Um, uh, You don't, you, it's very quick when you study ecology, uh, you, uh, understand the deep connectivities and feedbacks, which is well represented in our security, uh, apparatus, uh, you know, homeland security, uh, national security, international security, human security.
And so, um, you know, the title is One Connected World. This is true in many domains. And so, um, so I, I tend to think of myself as trying to think about the socio ecological security issues. That are accompanied by, uh, unprecedented change, uh, in all of the dimensions that, uh, you guys have mentioned and others.
[00:06:57] Deborah Thomson: I think it's fascinating how a single word like that could be used, uh, in so many different environments and it has more weight in some environments, environments than other places. I'll say it like that. Say, for instance. Uh, with One Health Lessons, when we teach children as young as six years old about the environment, and it's a really long word.
We ask, what is the environment? And then some people will say, no, the forest. Well, what's your environment in the classroom? I say, it's your surroundings. So it's really fascinating to see what works and what doesn't work in different places when we're all trying to reach the same goal.
[00:07:41] Maurice Ramirez: Yeah, Debra, you're exactly on point.
We're involved in a project right now. Looking at environmental, social, and genomic, genetic determinants of health. And that's an area of great interest in another department at, uh, in Government Health and Human Services right now. Looking at what are the environmental impacts. On healthcare, healthcare spending and therefore healthcare policy.
And earlier this year, well, there was a very condemning report reviewing the progress of that documentation. Looking at all of the data, looking at many of the databases that we have from census to NOAA, as you mentioned, to NASA data, uh, to some declassified intelligence data and unfortunately health and human services and no, no.
Indictment of them, but healthcare industry as a, as a whole has chosen to take a sociologic approach or to. To dealing with social determinants of health. They asked the patient, well, what's the murder rate in your community? And then try and correlate that to traumatic death or to incidents of heart attack.
Uh, and, and the results is as a complex system physicist, Rod, I'm sure you can recognize instantly the, the, the resulting data is turned out to be tenuous at best 95 percent inaccuracy rate. I've never seen a report. Before from an industry from an industry group that admitted that five years of their effort and yield 95 percent inaccuracy overall.
Uh, but that was what was stated, uh, by the, by the, uh, healthcare IT community into in February of this year. So we're starting over, we're taking. That ordinal data, the databases, and there's 256 exabytes of data at a sensor, you know, a signet level to speak intelligence talk for a moment, you know, that signal level data that can be correlated against, uh, almost, almost a pentabyte of healthcare outcomes data over time and looking at doing a massive data analysis analysis.
To see what are the correlations so that when Deborah on One Health Lessons is teaching people about ecological or environmental factors and we start discussing, well, what are those impacts for health care that we actually know? Yeah, it's pretty easy when the outdoor air temperature is 126 degrees and people are falling over with obvious dehydration to correlate that.
You probably don't need a prospective study now that you could ever get one approved anyway. To test that, to test that. And we have industrial environments that have proven that correlation of, of environmental heat and heat exhaustion, uh, and heat stroke. But what are the impacts over time of, for instance, the environmental and, excuse the language, and habitat change that comes from cyclical geologic global warming, a rise of global average temperature of 10 degrees Celsius on the food chain.
On the fact that the food chain will contract, that we will have species loss over time, some in the food chain, some that are sentinel. Event sentinel animals for the transition of disease from animal models over to the human population. And when we lose that, what happens and what happens to our survival capabilities?
What are our adaptations over time? You mentioned national security. Yeah. Most of our founding board for the Institute are founding Homeland Security members as well. Homeland security officers. When we look at the global security issues that come from the fact that we start losing biodiversity. And what are, as you know, what are the implications moving forward for conflict, for economic stressors, for economic collapse, for increases in healthcare issues?
Because, yeah, great, you eat, you eat asparagus and you get lots of selenium, except that we keep growing it in the same place because of irrigation issues and after five or six or seven years, the soil is now fully micromineral depleted and so basically you're eating demineralized lettuce in the shape of.
And the flavor of asparagus and what is that impact? On long term health care, on reproductive health, on, yeah, on growth and development of our children.
[00:12:17] Deborah Thomson: I'd like to, um,
[00:12:19] Rod Schoonover: Boy, am I on the right podcast.
[00:12:21] Deborah Thomson: Yeah, I'd like to hear about, you know, national security and, and putting a country at risk because of the environment.
Maybe this goes to Rod. Um, what are the steps moving forward as a country or as a population at large?
[00:12:40] Rod Schoonover: Well, uh, let's start with the easy questions, uh, at the beginning. Um, well, the one thing that I talk about a lot... Um, is really risk analysis and how do we assess, assess risk, right, for a changing planet?
Uh, because that's step one. It's usually not the first step, but it should be step one, uh, to assess the risk. Uh, because you will never get the policies correct if you do not have the risk assessment. And so because of, uh, because of so many things happening at once throughout the Earth systems, uh, pretty much every Earth system, atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, even the geosphere is changing under anthropogenic stress.
Um, and so how do we think about those stresses? On, uh, things like our, our national interests, on, uh, social stability, uh, I do a lot of speaking and a lot of thinking about political stability, uh, in, uh, in the world, including in the United States. Um, and so when you think about it, it's really a question and when I talk to audiences, I oftentimes, uh, have them think about three ways that climate change, just narrowly talking about climate change, because there's eight other big things happening, uh, planet wise, but just look, focusing on climate change and maybe the listeners to this podcast can Thank you.
You know, what are three ways that human beings will be affected by climate change? And, you know, and I usually just pause, uh, and, you know, and then I don't ask, you know, put anyone on the spot, but, uh, I say most people will think of heat. Most people will think of extreme weather events, especially if we just had one.
Um, how many of you thought about the increase in antimicrobial resistance? How many of you thought about the increase in zoonotic spillover? This audience, you, my co panelists here probably did, but most people don't. Uh, how about, uh, increase in, uh, agricultural pests? So, uh, there was a, um, there was a study in Nature Climate Change a couple years ago where the authors did this meta study on climate change.
Just climate change, because I'm happy to talk about the other seven or eight problems. Um, but they enumerated 467 pathways by which climate change affects human beings. And so, if you think of climate change, and there are people in the security community who are looking at climate change. Uh, there's not enough of them, and they're thinking about it typically in a very narrow way, right?
It's usually a very abiotic way, C level rise, which is bad, but it's not in my top 10, uh, security issues. Um, they think, they think about it in a, um, typically, not large, not, uh, not to the person, uh, but in a very narrow way. And so my... My, uh, you know, my brother in Kansas, right, I grew up in Kansas, doesn't think that climate change affects them because they don't live on the coast.
That kind of thinking still permeates, right? We've had, you know, we've understood climate change for what, you know, 40 years? Let's be, you know, it's probably 120 years, but let's just say 40 years. You can almost excuse these people because for decades it was only discussed in terms of sea level rise and storms and heat and not the other ways.
And so I think one way Uh, to shift the conversation and shift more people into action is to understand that this is not external. This is in everyone's mission set, right? It is in the military's interest and the intelligence community's interest, in addition to all of those environmental agencies and science agencies that we talked about.
So that's my take on it, trying to shift the conversation So that presidents of whatever country can legitimately... address these in saving their own skins.
[00:17:45] Maurice Ramirez: And Rod, to your point, it's not just the presidents of countries, but the presidents of companies. Uh, yeah, this is, this is one of those places where a small percentage of companies are beginning to understand the importance of environment, government, governance, our social, uh, social and governance policies, but, and a few investment groups.
But the vast majority still think, Oh, climate change. Well, I don't, I don't burn coal. I don't make plastic. Yeah. I just, you know, mine Bitcoin doesn't matter. And yeah. And yet I can't, I came up in the, in the it community before medicine. So yeah, I remember when we had to keep, uh, computer rooms below 68 degrees or the systems failed.
Okay. Well now they're more heat tolerant. They can handle 130 degrees, 150 internal chip. Temperature 170 what? But that's all relative to a room temperature. That's somewhere around 78 to 80, which take, which if you're pushing against an outdoor temperature of a hundred degrees isn't that big a gradient.
Make the outdoor temperature 125. And you're not going to maintain an 80 degree interior temperature and still run a profitable business. Now, yes, that's a stress on your people. You know, they might have to live, they might have to live and work in 90 or 95 degree temperatures indoors. But your hardware isn't going to sustain that.
And now you, and now you're generating massive amounts of heat because you're Bitcoin mining, or you're doing large data processing, or you're doing massive AI vocal recognition to turn some of these light switches on and off in their home. And you're now fighting, you're now fighting an energy issue, all because, oh that environment thing that they talked about for the last, well at that point it'll be 60 years.
Should have listened 30 years ago. Should have designed differently. A discussion that Allison was leading with the Institute earlier today on the fact that we designed for a very different Yeah, just talking about temperature, we designed for a very different planet.
[00:20:08] Allison Sakara: Certainly. And you were saying about involving all industries, not just the ones that have been traditionally connected into environmental or habitat fields.
The field of engineering has a whole lot to do with how we're going to be able to manage. The consequences of, of climate change and what it's doing to all habitats. The infrastructures that we have, whether you're talking about roads, bridges, dams, power companies, all of those, uh, buildings, streets, schools, they've all been engineered.
And the failure modes that have been considered didn't, for the most part, have not involved issues of, of climate change. And they, we have entirely new stressors and we're seeing those things on the news every single week. We're seeing something new that has failed, that has fallen, that has flooded, that has caught fire, and all the repercussions out of all, out of that.
We have to, we're going to really have to very quickly change how we're thinking about all of these things and putting that into every single field. It's the whole thing behind One Health, One Nature, One Lessons, All Hazards. Everything is connected, everyone is connected, whether you're plant, animal, person, or habitat.
There is nothing that can be left out of that fabric that Rod was speaking of.
[00:21:43] Deborah Thomson: It's interesting, before starting this recording we were thinking, well are we going to go doom and gloom? Are we going to bump it up to think about solutions and things like that? And we're like, well, let's just see how this conversation goes.
And we'll go from there, but okay. We all know the starting. We all know where we are sitting in 2023, right? Something that actually earlier today, I was having a lot of conversations about, uh, trying to identify the gaps in our knowledge throughout all of the health sectors and then work on mitigating those gaps and working together across all of the health sectors to promote, um, education in what's known as planetary health within the medical field.
Um, so. What was interesting is that there was a 2020 study that was discussed out of IFMSA. IFMSA means the International Federation of Medical Students Association. It was looking at medical schools in 112 countries and what they found, going back to what Rod was talking about with climate change and such.
With this study, remember 112 countries, medical schools in 112 countries found that only 15 percent of medical schools actually actively talked about climate change. Isn't that just mind blowing? That was in 2020. Let's see if there's any progress in 2023. So now moving forward... There are going to be a lot of different global associations scattered all throughout the health sector.
I'm talking veterinary health. I'm talking about human health and public health, global health. We're trying to see all at the same time. Where are the gaps in our knowledge, in our teaching, in order to meet the needs of a changing, not environment, a changing world, a changing planet. So that's the path forward.
We have to number, number one, be humble and know where our gaps are in knowledge. And number two, fix those gaps and learn from each other moving forward. So, silver lining, at least there's progress in this.
[00:24:00] Marco Ciappelli: I have a question. I'm first of all, I'm fascinated. I'm really like taking notes here for all ideas for other show. But, um, so , when complexity become overwhelming for, the everyday person that, you know, it's not my problem is not my industry is not this is not that, um, many people just give up.
But, you know, we're done. It's too late. Um, but, but we don't want it to be too late. We know we can still do something, at least from what I understand. But I'm wondering, is it an approach where each one needs to do their little things, each industry take care of their own self? Or do we really need like a cultural change, like really a commitment from everyone?
Because... Little pieces here and there. I am afraid it's not gonna do it. Um, I'd love your opinion on this, Rod.
[00:25:02] Rod Schoonover: Um, uh, Individual actions do matter, but they're insufficient. Um, you need big, you need enablers, uh, to push, uh, things. One of the, we kind of brushed on it, but let me just be very specific. Um, talking, you know, when you study Earth, when you study complex systems physics, the two real world examples that you're drawn to immediately are ecological systems and the climate.
And, and so the climate, I have been, um, you know, reading climate science journal articles for three decades. Um, it's clear that the planet that we live on is not the planet on which Infrastructure, social infrastructure, values, education, all the things that we built in the 20th century. That planet doesn't exist anymore, right?
It's a planet of the past. And that's, uh, going to be true, independent of whether we recognize it or not, right? There is a truism. Uh, we could make it worse. Uh, it is probably not something that is solvable. It is something that needs to be navigated. Right? Uh, to have as soft a landing, soft a hard landing as possible.
Um, and so I find myself in a weird position, because I understand the argument that if you paint a picture that's too bleak, that disincentivizes people from action. I, I get that. Uh, I'm, I think maybe a little bit more worried about the sleepwalkers. Who think that there's a, um, a silver bullet around the corner and we can just, uh, keep going on.
We can pay attention. We can just do business as usual, uh, without recognizing that the planet we are on is different. Um, and so. Um, the community that I work with, the security community, uh, are sleepwalking. So, uh, so I, I think that, and, you know, others probably are much better at scientific messaging and communications than I am, but I, I suspect that the arguments are a little bit different, uh, depending on the communities that you're trying to, uh, get action out of.
But, uh, We have really difficult times ahead, uh, that will be made worse if we don't have some fundamental changes. In decision making. And, you know, we, uh, it's not that we don't understand the problem. I mean, there's the, uh, you know, in the security world, we would love to be able to know what China and Russia are doing 20 years from now.
We would love that, but we can't do that because it's not modelable. But we know that in some of, uh, a number of our earth systems, we know, uh, basically the trajectory. So we would, we have that, but we have, and we, as you guys know, we have other things, uh, keeping us from making decisions. Um, I can never get very far in a discussion about national security without talking about disinformation, uh, which I see as a crucial national security issue, anything that.
Um, especially when it's funded and, and, and used by outside actors to divide, uh, and to keep, uh, countries from, uh, or communities, uh, from solving the problems. These are security issues. We should call them that, and we should recognize them as that. Um, but you know, we, we have a real decision making crisis because of our information crisis.
Uh, and that keeps us sleepwalking. Um, towards, uh, you know, towards some unpleasantness. Um, and if I may, can I just mention, uh, earlier this week, uh, the Stockholm Resilience Center, which is this fabulous science, science institute that looks at, um, a number of ecological environmental issues, uh, published a paper in Science Advances.
Uh, that, uh, it's the Planetary Boundaries Framework that some of you may be familiar with, but, uh, they, they published something this week, Earth Beyond Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries. So, as bad as climate change is, uh, this study shows novel entities, which is plastics and pollution and other things.
Biosphere disintegrity, uh, and biogeochemical flows, nitrogen and phosphorus imbalances, all being worse than climate change, uh, in terms of existential threats to the future of humanity. So I love to talk about climate change and I can do it all, you know, uh, all hour and I do, uh, but it's one of a basket of dangers.
That just but if we solely focus on climate change, these are things these other things, uh, and I think Probably are even bigger contributors to one health stressors Um, and so just throwing that out there,
[00:31:09] Maurice Ramirez: you know and rod it's interesting because what you describe is exactly what we What we try and teach to medical students, nurses, uh, in healthcare.
And I would imagine also to in veterinary medicine that you might recognize one illness. Something brought you to the emergency department. You came into the emergency department because you were sweaty, peeing a lot, and felt lousy. And we find your blood sugar is elevated. So now I get the great job of walking in and informing you that you have diabetes.
Okay, I have just become the least popular person in the room, uh, with your family and with you, okay? I am that person immediately retracts into their maslobian Uh behaviors they look at okay. Yeah. Do I have enough air water food? What am I going to eat? I'm diabetic Oh my goodness. What do I have to learn?
They begin to get into the panic spiral and they resort to my physical safety Uh to marco's point they they retract from the the bigger issue But as we know, as public health, as television, as, as actors on television remind us that diabetes isn't the end of the issue. There are the cardiovascular impacts.
There's the risk of losing limbs because of the vascular impacts and circulatory impacts. There's the social, there's the economic impact. Ever try to pay for a continuous glucose monitor if you don't qualify? It's not a cheap prospect. So does your care now be, is your care impacted by your wallet, by your coverage, you start to make other decisions about socializing, about environment, situations in which you socialize, all of these complex other factors.
And that's before we start considering the other body systems in the, in your example, the other planetary systems that are codependently impacted. And it just happened that we noticed. The diabetes. That's what brought you to, what we call, brought you to care in healthcare. But very seldom is what brought you to care the biggest issue.
You know, what caused you to have diabetes? Was it genetic? Did you have, did you have islet cell failure? Because you're actually a late blooming type 1. Are you obese? Do you have insulin resistance? Do you make plenty of insulin and it's not working? Do you not make enough insulin but if we give you some it's going to work great?
And so therefore the solution at an individual basis is also different for the same problem. And that gets to the, to Marco's question. What can I do? To Rod's point, you know, first thing is what are your, what are your regional risks? What are the things that are going to stress your system where you are?
Some of those will be planetary and global. Some will be very specific. I'm in Lake Wales. We have a, we have a 110 foot wind turbine here. The risk, the risk assessment for that wind turbine is two strikes every 10 years. How do we know that? Because Disney and Universal put up lots of things that are taller than everything else, and every 10 years those things get struck twice.
So we know. That doesn't mean we won't get three, four, or ten hits in 10 years. But we know that that's a really high risk. What's my risk of blizzard in Lake Wales, Florida? Really low, but not zero. It snowed here, yeah, it has snowed here twice in the last three decades. Not enough to be anything significant, but not enough to make it zero.
You would think being in Central Florida, we deliberately are at the intersection of most of the, of the uh, named storms that cross the peninsula of the state, because we test equipment here. You would think that would be our highest risk and it's way down at number five Because there are other risks that deal with infrastructure.
Yes, Deborah
[00:35:03] Deborah Thomson: Um about existential crises and things that problems that you just can't see right you were talking about diabetes Um rod was talking about climate change and marco and I what it was this months ago. We were talking about how to communicate about, about really complicated science to people who just don't see it right in front of them.
It's exceptionally difficult, so we have to personalize the message. If we don't have photographic evidence or even better video, Um, we have to personalize and humanize the message so that it can become more relatable.
[00:35:41] Marco Ciappelli: Not only that But the the message Now I come from my advertising background. It cannot be the same depending on the target that you have So there is not a unique message that is going to work And I'm glad that you went there, Deborah, because I was just thinking about this, like Maurice, you know, you brought a couple of examples, like what is relevant for me.
Yeah, I don't care what is relevant for the other, maybe I don't care. So then when we, we know that there is a problem, well, there is a ton of problem connected altogether, and we probably, I'm assuming we have the technology and the resources to at least. Slow it down. Maybe while we bring better technology, it's kinda like, let's buy ourself time.
But by sleepwalking, I love the terminology there. You know, it's like, uh, yeah, well I wanna do electric car, but we're gonna go on strike because you know, we need to postpone electric car. Well go tell that to the other problem. What are you gonna postpone? So how do we make a message? really works. I feel like there is a political.
And you want to go gloom, I can go there. You know, I think there is a political lack of interest and an action into really wanting to do something like preserving something now versus the big problem that will come. And that's like, well, that will be me in a hundred years from now, which is probably not my problem.
[00:37:19] Rod Schoonover: I think one characteristic of a person, a community or a country. Uh, that is overwhelmed, uh, is it, it stops he or she or the country stops, um, planning strategically and just goes into reactivity mode. And this is where, this is where we are. We are just answering the inbox, reacting. It's very difficult to address complex systems holistically.
In that mode, right? And so the soft landing that we might've, um, you know, been able to have right after the 1992 Rio convention, if we got, you know, serious. You know, we're not, that's not a possible future. So all of that, all of that gloom, let me also put, uh, a spin on this. Uh, and it turns out, uh, it's something I actually believe.
Um, there are a few times. That humanity gets a chance to correct some very deep seated wrong, some deep seated injustice. We're living in it. Uh, this summer, uh, just to take one piece of it, uh, this summer I had the, um, opportunity to visit San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and here in my home city of Washington, D.
C., my new home city. Uh, we have a terrible unhoused problem. Uh, To a point, we have just factored it in. Uh, an unhoused problem, a homelessness problem, is a, is a, uh, uh, future, and maybe not distant future, humanitarian crisis. And that's just one piece of it. There is just so much inequity, so much injustice.
The planetary crisis, and, and I, I think we should... Accept that word. It's not rhetoric. It is a crisis. It is a social ecological crisis. And then you can put the question, are people around us, industries, businesses, institutions, governments, acting? Like it's a crisis or are they acting incrementally, right?
Cause there's a lot of good happening. Uh, but you know, in physics, you learn speed and direction are both important. The direction is not enough, right? You have to have the speed. And so the speed of change has to match the speed of change that the risk landscape, uh, is presenting. And so. Uh, you know, if we could address somehow, and I don't have good answers on how to address the information crisis.
Um, I do think I see ways that our democratic crisis, democracy crisis, um, can be strengthened, can be offset. Uh, But you can't get to those other, you can't get to, uh, meaningful, uh, Earth system action without some of those. We, we've seen how much disinformation skews everything. We basically have, in the United States, one branch of government that does not work.
Because of, I think, largely, because of our information, uh, epidemic, information, whatever, crisis. So, I don't know. I tried to go, uh, positive and then I took a turn, uh, again.
[00:41:26] Deborah Thomson: Well, I think, um, going back to your analogy about, um, direction and speed, I'm not a physicist, okay, Rod? So, grant me some leeway here, but what about the degree of force?
As in the summation, if we're all trying to work towards a common goal, I think that would be pretty powerful.
[00:41:49] Rod Schoonover: Absolutely. And there are tipping points in the other direction as well. There are sociological tipping points. We, uh, this country does not smoke, uh, like it used to, right? Uh, something tipped, right?
It was, uh, it was a turn away. We largely solved the ozone pro problem, uh, Because of a multilateral tipping point that was forced from, from below. And so I, I think that's a really important point. So, uh, but whatever we do, we, we got, we have to back away. We have to get off the, um, incrementalist track.
Incrementalist, uh, uh, incrementalism in a, uh, period of discontinuity. is, uh, is, uh, not a good direction, so.
[00:42:50] Marco Ciappelli: And we're all thinking here, like, okay, how deeper can we go in this gloom? No, I, I, I like the, the, the fact that you mentioned the tipping point, and, and, um, if I learned something from the book, the tipping point, from, uh, Malcolm Gladwell, is that many times you have to look back and see what actually causes that tipping point.
Because it's not very clear. So it's, it's hard to say, okay, uh, this is the campaign that is going to work. I mean, I wish I had that smokey the bear, and which is not, you know, it's working, but you know, there's still fires. That's a different story. But I think that as the information is, uh, not helping a lot nowadays in a lot of aspect of our life.
I think information is also the solution in terms of we need to probably address that. And I think everybody here has mentioned and pinpoint the fact that either scientific divulgation and, you know, talking to the right people at the government, uh, talking to, I don't know, I mean, literally. Kids need to grow up understanding this thing because apparently there's been a gap generational that a few gap generational that we didn't, we didn't care.
I don't know. It's, it's kind of, uh, it's kind of weird. We need to
[00:44:16] Rod Schoonover: care.
I mean, caring is important. Caring is, uh, my, my five and a half year old daughter, uh, makes the caring is bearing and will make bear. So, um, the, the thing is knowledge in and of itself, uh, is only partially useful. It's only good to the point it leads to decisions, right?
And so, uh, while we, and. I think we pretty much understand the problem, you know, IPCC assessment report six didn't sharpen that much more from five and four and three and two, right? Uh, you know, we, we know we were getting into the fine tuning of our understanding. Uh, but since the very first report and arguably before that.
There was a compelling enough case for climate action that George Herbert Walker Bush spearheaded the Rio Convention in 1992 to deal with biodiversity loss, to deal with climate change. And so, you know, that kind of decision making, right, is something that is sorely needed, uh, now. Right? And so, uh, there comes a point when data...
Without methodology, uh, and information without decision, uh, falls far short of the problem.
[00:46:00] Marco Ciappelli: For sure. Uh, I think we could keep talking, but we're going to call it off. Um, I think, uh, I think we, I hope we can contribute to some people that listen to this, that now they're thinking a little bit more about it, but I do agree with Rod, you know, thinking is good, but action is, it's a lot better. So, um, I think we would like to have you back, if you want to.
It's certainly not a conversation as many of the conversation we have lately that 45 minutes or half an hour. It's certainly not enough. I wish we could resolve a problem with that and we don't have the intention to resolve the problem. I want just to Talk about it and make people think. So, uh, Alison, Maurice, Deborah, Rod, thank you so much for joining the conversation and, uh, I would ask everybody to share it if you like it.
Subscribe and stay tuned for more. I don't know what the next topic will be, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be interesting. So thank you, everybody.
[00:47:08] Maurice Ramirez: Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Rod. Thanks so much.