San Diego’s Climate Action Campaign Launches Speakers Series On Green New Deal

Speaker 1: 00:00 The green new deal is a political framework that recognizes the responsibility of the federal government to address the threat climate change poses to the u s its supporters, including most of San Diego's congressional delegation outlined the necessity for the country to help achieve net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 among other investments in green infrastructure and jobs. The San Diego nonprofit climate action campaign is launching a new series of public events tonight, inviting the community to learn more about the green new deal. Renowned climate researcher Rom Rama. Nathan is speaking at tonight's event as part of the KPBS climate change desk. I caught up with Ramen nothin outside his office at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla this week for a preview. Ron Ramanathan, thank you so much for joining us today. What's the first thing that you noticed about the air today? Was clean, clean today, right? Climate change impacting that at all? Not yet, Speaker 2: 01:00 but in some many places it is because when you heat the air, it traps more of the pollution, but there's also a big symbolism when this kind of looks so good. Most of us think when is climate change, right? So I think that's one of the reason we sort of feel in an ambivalent mall is it such a big problem? Right. And that's because climate change is happening. Some distant place in Sacramento, hundreds of miles away. I'm predicting that in what, 10 years the planet is going to hit by another 50% half a degree and climate change will be in everyone's living room. Speaker 1: 01:52 Well, and you know, recent developments in climate change research really support the urgency for the green new deals. 10 year timeline. What can you tell us about that? Oh, Speaker 2: 02:01 it's, it's a perfect timeline. I completely agree with that. As a scientist, I think worked on this problem for 45 years. Uh, it's not come to a stage where we have a narrow window to avoid this climate change, to become a disruptive crisis. It's heading there, but we still have that 10 year window to divert it. Speaker 1: 02:34 And one of the tenants of the green new deal is to power the United States at 100% through renewable zero emission energy sources. What did you find out about how this would really impact public health? Yeah, Speaker 2: 02:49 he's lovely. Huge, huge impact. Positive impact on public health because air pollution, the dominant source of air pollution is burning fossil fuels, coal, primarily gas and oil. And I teamed up with scientists in Germany and UK and we did the study. What, what are the benefits to the world I'm put to America. If he switched, completed completely renewables and be phone number, 140,000 lives can be saved. They are dying each year. They inhibited fossil fuels. And the benefits of that in terms of how much Americans are willing to pay for clean air is about a trillion dollars a year. And that's exactly what they need to switch from fossil to renewable. So to pay for itself, Speaker 1: 03:48 right? I mean and bring it home for me. I mean you, we've got thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who are dying because of bad air. That's asthma. What else? Speaker 2: 04:00 Regular asthma as one baby, the deaths are caused by heart, cardiovascular diseases, lung disease, weight. So those are the two. And the more insidious thing which is coming out is that this pollution gets into lungs and getting into our brains. So it's just not one or two ways, multiple ways until you're just counting the people who die because we can statistically do that. But in terms of people hurt, kids not able to breathe properly, allergies, there are so many. Speaker 1: 04:43 And outside of the health benefits of switching to renewables, you also found that the switch to renewables could also bring a financial benefit. Uh, explain how you came to that conclusion. Speaker 2: 04:54 The financial benefit comes from, again, different sources. First is the health benefits, the willingness to pay of Americans in terms of few million dollars. But life secondary is the air pollution destroys millions of tons of crops. Ozone destruction. So our agriculture productivity would increase tremendously. And uh, and what does that mean? Simply we'd, we need less water to grow the same food. So there's just the, the benefits are every sector possible, health, food security, air pollution. So there are multiple sectors which benefit from this. What could turn out to be the biggest benefit of all is slowing climate change, less homes, burning less homes, getting flooded just last week, 200 million are exposed to hundreds of a hundred degrees of more heat waves. Okay. So right now the evolution agriculture benefits is a major piece. In about 10 years, the climate benefits could be trillions Speaker 1: 06:16 and one way that you're helping to deliver that message to people is through your talks. And so on Thursday when you give your talk, what do you hope people walk away with? Speaker 2: 06:27 I think what, what I liked him too, this, uh, particularly this marquis Aleksandra crushed your car test LLCs bill, is that they have the timescale, right? We have won the 10 years before a lot of people get hurt. Number two, it's going to save lives. It's going to improve people's health and lives. And you know, America has over 40 to 50 million wonderful people, poor. They've no access to clean energy. This bill would provide energy access in a democratic way. Everyone has access. So overall, I don't see a single negative thing. One thing which has been pointed out at that bell. Oh, it's gonna bring the economy down, right? California and San Diego, we should be proud with the Republican mayor. We are leading this energy revolution. We have shown it doesn't hurt the economy. Our GDP has growing up while our carbon emission is going down. So there's just no basis for any of these claims about how it's going to hurt the economy. All we know is if anything, it helps the economy. That's the message I want them to take back. Ron Romanoff and thank you so much for taking time to talk. Speaker 3: 07:58 Okay.