>> Kevin Butterfield: Thank
you. I'm Kevin Butterfield,
the Director of the
John W. Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
The Kluge Center is
one of the sponsors
of this year's festival.
We're proud to help
bring America's
most beloved writers here.
The Kluge Center works to bring
scholars into residence to work
in the collections of the
world's largest library and to
do work of the sort that you'll
be hearing about today.
Welcome to everyone
who is joining us
live on C-Span as well.
We're proud to partner
with C-Span again this year.
This panel,
History is Heating Up:
Environmental Awakening
vs. Climate Change Denial.
Features Douglas Brinkley,
David Lipsky and Jenn White.
Seven of Douglas's books have
been New York Times bestsellers.
Six have been chosen as
New York Times Notable Books
of the year. His most recent
is "Silent Spring Revolution."
David is the author of two
New York Times bestsellers
and an artist in
residence at NYU.
Our moderator, Jenn White,
is host of the daily two hour
program 1A from WAMU
and National Public Radio.
Please join me
in welcoming them.
[Applause]
>> Jenn White: Good morning,
everyone, and thanks for
coming out for
this conversation.
As you're listening,
I hope you will form
your own questions because
we'll have some time at the end
of the panel and you can just
step up to the mic.
I'll let you know when to start
that process and you can ask
questions of our
authors as well.
It's always exciting to speak
to people as accomplished as
David and Douglas, but it gets
even more exciting when you get
on a phone call with them to
plan this conversation and you
realize they're such big fans
of one another's work.
They were absolutely delighted
to speak to one another.
So I want to just start this
conversation by having you each
give us a brief overview of
your work for people who haven't
read the books yet. Douglas.
>> Douglas Brinkley: My book
is "Silent Spring Revolution,"
and it's John F Kennedy,
Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon and the Great
Environmental Awakening.
And I had previously written a
book on Theodore Roosevelt and
conservation called
"The Wilderness Warrior."
And that's how TR saved 234
million acres of wild America.
A public lands through national
monuments and national parks and
federal bird reservations
and created
the National Forest
Service. On and on.
I consider that the first wave
of environmentalism.
Second wave.
I wrote a book called "Rightful
Heritage" about FDR's era
and how FDR was a tree planter.
In fact, whenever he would fill
out a form for occupation,
Roosevelt would write
Tree farmer.
Like, That's my job.
He was a scientific farmer
on the Hudson River.
Eleanor Roosevelt said he knows
every flower, nook, cranny of
the Hudson River of Dutchess
County, and I can rattle off
national parks FDR created
many like he created Big Bend on
D-Day. He didn't cancel the
meetings and was designing roads
and how to visit Big Ben Bend
Park in Texas while the Normandy
invasion was going on.
It's how deep he
was in all this.
But he also created 800 state
parks and they planted
the Civilian Conservation
Corps, 3 billion trees,
the first two waves.
The third wave is this book.
And it really is about
three presidents.
No Roosevelts.
But and really, I had to begin
it in 1945 after the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
birth of the atomic age.
We started blowing up
nuclear weapons,
willy nilly in Nevada.
We detonated 1054 nuclear
weapons in America between
1946 and 1991.
So there became this big anti
nuclear testing movement, which
Rachel Carson was part of, and
many others, Coretta Scott King,
Norman Cousins, Dr. Albert
Schweitzer on a global way.
But what was exciting as John
F. Kennedy had the vision and
temerity to sign the
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
And due to Kennedy's astute
diplomacy and ecological act of
great importance occurred, we
stopped testing nuclear weapons.
He made a deal with Khrushchev
and the Soviet Union and
Britain. So today we
can't test those weapons.
And in my book I end it.
I deal with Kennedy, who loved
Cape Cod, created Cape Cod,
National Seashore Point, raise
out in Marin County, beautiful
California, Padre Island,
Texas.
He was trying to save
shorelines before he was killed.
I deal with things like the
first big Clean Air Act of 1963
and the follow up in 1970.
Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson
had a rancher's view of
conservation. But as you know,
Lady Bird, her whole life was
about beautification and anti
billboards and really helped
save places like Redwood
National Park and create the
wild and scenic trail system
and our national river system
much more I can tell you about.
The Johnsons are in the book.
And then Nixon the unlikely
environmentalist.
You know, I always say,
what's your Walden Pond like?
What place are
you in the audience
nature speaks most to you?
You know, Kennedy was the
Cape Cod, Hyannis, the Atlantic
Seaboard, Johnson the
Pedernales River and the
beautiful hill country of Texas.
Nixon did not have one.
It wasn't his thing,
the environment.
But you guys, the public
demanded clean air, demanded
clean water to the point that
Nixon was really forced into his
credit, it created the
National Environmental Policy
Act in Nepa, which gives us
environmental impact statements.
Did the Clean Air Act
in 72, he didn't want to,
but he got it done, mainly
created the Environmental
Protection Agency in 1970
and put a really great man,
William Ruckelshaus, in charge
of it, who went after busting
polluters. And I'll end my
little talk there and just say,
you guys, we're all meeting
here at the National Book
Festival. It is 50 years ago
that the Endangered Species Act
passed where we have saved the
bald eagle, where we've saved
manatee, where we've we've
forever protected California
condor and whooping cranes and
sandhill cranes and alligator.
And, you know, it came back
with vengeance.
50 years ago we're
really successful.
But you realize what that
passed in 1973 with the vote was
in the U.S. Senate,
92 to nothing.
That's how bipartisan that was
because the public, after
Rachel Carson's book
"Silent Spring" came out
after people like
Walt Disney were showing
how to protect wildlife
on their movies
and how this Ralph Nader and
others were talking about
consumer advocacy.
And you had a group of
environmental senators, mainly.
The one I admire most from my
book is Frank Church of Idaho,
who was an original
thinker of wilderness.
And Lyndon Johnson signed
the Wilderness Act in 64.
And thank God he do, because
now we have millions of acres of
protected land that roads won't
penetrate, to at least give
species a place that they can
replenish and survive
with all of this, this helter
skelter of the industrial mall
that we seem to be hell bent on
propagating in North America and
destroying our scenic places.
>> Jenn White: Well, David,
your book is a little different
and explain first the title.
>> David Lipsky: So the title is
"The Parrot and the Igloo."
But before I do, Jenn,
two things.
When you mention endangered
species at a celebration of
books, it makes me
anxious as a reader since...
[Laughing]
And second thing, just from
one of the things that Doug
was saying is should FDR have
been focusing on a national park
on D-Day?
[Laughing]
I don't know if I was
the only person who had--
Yeah, please go ahead.
>> Douglas Brinkley:
Do you want me to?
Because they were
trying not to deflect.
He was a birdwatcher and FDR
went to Charlottesville and they
didn't want to be worried about,
they didn't want to
give the media a clue.
So when he was out birdwatching
in Charlottesville with some
military friends of his, it was
like Roosevelt's not doing much.
So when he came in, he kept
whatever his day's agenda was.
If you canceled it, the media
would think something big is
happening. So he happened to
have booked that day a long time
meeting with Amon Carter, who
if you go to Fort Worth, it's
the Amon Carter Museum.
He's one of the great art
collectors, rich guy down there
who had been crusading in
Texas to save Big Ben Park.
And Roosevelt wanted it to be
both a park that was between
Mexico and the United States,
with the Rio Grande in the
middle creating one big
biosphere really down along the
border. So he simply was going
through with his meetings to not
give anybody an idea that
there was something
going on, you know.
>> Jenn White: So back to "The
Parrot and the Igloo," David.
>> David Lipsky: But Nixon
also, there's a beautiful
bridge between the
two books because
my book really starts
right after Nixon comes in.
So when we were talking on
the phone, it seemed like you
could think of our books as
Godfather I and Godfather II.
[Laughing]
And Nixon is a
fascinating person.
And I love what Doug was saying
about what the Environmental
Protection Act shows about our
action as voters and as people
who take polls.
Nixon did not care about
the environment at all.
The famous thing is that when
he went to the beach, he would
wear dress shoes.
He would think that I was
showing too much skin if I
was on the beach, basically.
But he was forced to because
everyone in the country really
wanted their environment
cleaned up.
What he was saying the year
that he signed in the EPA,
The New York Times said it's one
of the really bright moments
in an otherwise dismal year.
And that same year, President
Nixon was telling two executives
from Ford Motor Company, the
environmentalists, what they
really want to do is go back
and live like a bunch of
damn dirty animals.
What they're really interested
in is destroying the system.
But since we wanted clean air
and clean water and clean skies
so much, he had to sign in as
President Nixon's ghost calling
in to say, it was Chrysler.
It wasn't Ford Motor Company,
but because we demanded it.
He actually is known to have
approved more significant
environmental legislation
than any president in history.
My book is about
ironies like that,
"The Parrot and the Igloo."
And the quickest way to
describe it is just to say
what the title is.
In 1956, American climate
scientists began speaking with
American reporters, and they
said, We've been tracking this
issue about carbon dioxide, and
there's a really good chance
that it will begin to
heat our atmosphere.
Roger Revelle, who is one of
the first really prominent
American climate scientists, he
gave it a year, he said in about
50 years from 1956, it could
have a violent effect on the
Earth's climate.
This sort of thing was covered
by the Times and the
Times that October,
Revelle had said that in May.
So they were working
different seasons.
The Times said, you know,
in the far future, if carbon
dioxide warming takes effect,
the polar regions will be
changed to tropical jungles
where tigers will roam through
the underbrush and gaudy
parrots will squawk from the
trees. So we had an astonishing
head start, which is one of the
things, the stories I wanted to
tell. In 2010, after the work of
tremendously effective mood
musicians, the people who decide
what tune they want your
opinions to play, and then find
a way to make you
hear that in your head.
So what you say harmonizes with
the effects that they want.
In 2010, one of the great denial
senators, Senator James Mountain
Inhofe of Oklahoma, he built an
igloo on the mall here in D.C.
because there had been a heavy
snowfall. And he put a sign on
top that said Al Gore's new
home and then honk if you love
global warming. And so the
story my book tells is how we
went from that
parrot to that igloo.
[Applause]
>> Jenn White: One of the
things I'm always curious about
when we look at history is what
lessons we can take,
especially lessons
that it doesn't
seem we've quite learned yet.
And David, just give us a brief
example of a lesson we should
take away from prior
environmental movements.
>> David Lipsky:
Listen to scientists.
[Applause]
In 1977, the most famous
warning that came in the 70s.
And it's because of the
warnings that I began reading
about when I was deciding
to write this book.
The most famous warning
from the 70s was from 1979.
But two years earlier, the
National Academy of Sciences did
the first big report on climate
change, and it was 270 pages, so
about half the length of this.
And what they said is we have
to start acting now.
We can't wait until we are
sure, because it takes a whole
generation to change
energy sources.
And if we don't act now
for all practical purposes,
the die will be cast.
So listen to scientists.
>> Jenn White: Douglas,
what about for you?
>> Douglas Brinkley: And to
your point, David, in 1960,
Time magazine chose scientists
as their person of the year
meaning Kennedy had in the first
year in the White House like a
70 plus approval rating.
And so there was this notion
that we did listen to the
experts. So, for example,
when Rachel Carson wrote
"Silent Spring" in 1962 warning
about DDT and pesticides being
detrimental to your health,
having a carcinogenic effect on
animals and potentially humans.
Kennedy was asked at a press
conference, What about
Rachel Carson's articles
in The New Yorker?
And he said, Well, I'm going to
put in a scientific panel
advisory panel where I'll look
into her research and if it
holds up and he found the best
scientist you can, they came up
with a pretty quick fashion, a
report that proved that Carson's
research was accurate, and yet
it took a decade to ban DDT.
It was not until 1972.
Rachel Carson dies of breast
cancer in 64, and Kennedy,
of course, is dead in 63.
But there became this movement.
That's why I call it
Silent Spring Revolution.
And the big turning point
in my mind was the birth of
environmental law in the 60s.
Even as late as 1965 and 66,
it was called conservation.
Lyndon Johnson's program was
the new conservation, but
environment started kicking in
due to Barry Commoner, and
scientists were using the term
environment and it really
kind of took hold.
And DDT got banned by Nixon
and Ruckelshaus in 72.
And and the big lesson of all
of this is it's the people,
we have to speak up.
On the cursing of
climate chaos today.
These reports are all there.
I mean, I deal with them in my
book like David, I mean,
with Revelle in the 50s talking
about and Kennedy administration
had a loose document going
around about what were climate
change. Johnson in 65, tried to
give a speech about it
as early as 65.
But, you know, he had Medicaid
and Medicare and Vietnam and
civil rights acts. Voting
rights, just kind of got buried
in the media flow.
I print almost verbatim
in the book a memo that--
Any of you remember,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
New York senator, brilliant guy.
Moynihan writes John Ehrlichman
of Nixon's domestic adviser for
Nixon, that he's done
investigation and said if
the scientists are saying we
are in big trouble due to CO2
emissions. In the letter, it
says, what does this mean?
It means goodbye Miami
and New York City forever.
Verdict on Seattle unknown.
Truly. I mean, there it is
in the White House and then
you'll find other presidents,
Jimmy Carter trying to put solar
panels on the White House and
get up global reports for
2000. But the truth
is we failed.
We're sitting here today.
There is no climate hero
president for the reasons that
David marks in his book,
the Oil and Gas, Petroleum
Industry started organizing
starting in 1973 with the Arab
oil embargo. And gas prices
went up and they had their own
groups to start attacking
environmentalists.
And they even said in
the famous Powell memo, it'll
take about 30 years to
undo all the wins of the
environmentalists of the
60s in the early 70s.
What they don't like the
companies was federal
regulation. If you're a mining
company, you don't want to be
regulated. You don't want the
federal government. And this
movement in the 60s, as David
Brower, head of the Sierra Club,
said, not only did they win,
they had fun.
They stopped a dam in the Grand
Canyon and a dam and dinosaur
national monument dams
that were stopped through
protest hikes.
William O. Douglas Supreme
Court justice hiked 186 miles
here in Washington
to save the CNO Canal.
From D.C. to Cumberland,
Maryland, and to stop a highway
from coming in.
Win after win after win after
win in that period.
But by 73 and certainly by 80,
the Reagan revolution kicks in.
And now if you're
an environmentalist,
you're seen as a Democrat.
And if you're vilified
by the Republicans and
the Republicans are seen as
a captive of the oil and gas
industry and these new
foundations that were born like
Federalist Society and Cato
Institute and Heritage
Foundation, whose
goal it was to undo
Rachel Carson.
>> Jenn White: David, it makes
me wonder in your research
for your book, what
you discovered about
how the American
public viewed the
government's role in addressing
global warming, whether our
perception of the role the
government should play changed.
>> David Lipsky: It didn't,
which I found really reassuring
and heartening
because it is a story
that's pretty much all irony.
I just wanted to say, I just
always love talking to Doug.
How odd that the Republicans
are seeing that way.
What a terrible mystery that
they would be seen as working
with the fossil fuel industries
to help them
continue to make profits.
It just is very mystifying.
[Laughing]
But what--
The game has been to
make us change our minds
basically, just
what Doug was saying.
Once it was clear that we could
as a people demand that
we get environmental
regulation so that even
then Governor Reagan, who had
such a ruinous effect when he
was President Reagan I hope I'm
not offending anybody who
likes that fine airport.
But in about 67, 68, he was
saying when the movement was
starting scene one redwood seen
them all, so you should cut them
for highways. But then by 69
and 70, the environment became
what reporters then would
call a motherhood issue.
The idea being who's against
motherhood, right.
And so then Governor Reagan
was saying we need an all
out war to stop the debauching
of the American environment.
When people saw the effect that
Americans could have, when the
fossil fuel industries and the
people who work with them and
also helped to design their
strategies there's human beings
who resemble AI in saying,
here's the best way to do it,
they decided to kind
of try to change us.
But the American people, their
polling was always the same.
In 1997, after the foes of the
first international climate
warming protocol, when
they said, look, it's not fair.
China isn't going to
have to kick in.
India is not going
to have to kick in.
It's not global. It won't work,
was their very catchy slogan.
They polled Americans and 65%
of us said we want to control
our carbon dioxide no matter
what other nations do.
And in 2007, after another ten
years of the fight, when the
IPCC said, just like the
scientists told you in 56 and
79, this is happening and we're
the ones responsible across the
board. Republicans, Democrats,
independents, they all wanted
action to be taken on climate
because everyone has to go
outside, even if it's just to
get in their car.
So it's something
that unites everybody.
And the incredible holding
action, an astonishing
one that was done by the fossil
fuel people and their hired
scientists was just to stand
in the way of our opinion.
Basically.
>> Douglas Brinkley:
You know, sometimes disasters,
environmental natural disasters
wake people up. Like as we're
here this afternoon, our
hearts go out to Hawaii, what's
happening in Maui, and 80 dead
and just the largest natural
disaster in history.
And yet you can almost feel
more of these coming.
You can just feel it.
And in fact, the reason we have
an EPA in 1970 was
the Santa Barbara oil spill.
And it was color TV,
like Walter Cronkite's news
broadcast went color in
1967 for the first time.
So in color, in your living
rooms, you're seeing Paradise,
Santa Barbara, California, with
tar balls and goo, or a bird
stuck in oil.
And Nixon at first minimized it.
First instinct was not that big
a deal, but he listened to
Walter Hickel, his interior
secretary, who went to the
ground in Santa Barbara,
and immediately called the
White House and told Nixon,
Don't minimize it, it's bad.
Plus, we've only been
in the office seven days.
Blame it on Johnson.
[Laughing]
But that summer,
Nixon was very startled that
when Neil Armstrong was walking
on the moon, Time magazine was
writing about the Cuyahoga
River in Ohio on fire and the
Rouge River on fire.
And then Gaylord Nelson, a
senator from Wisconsin who saved
the Apostle Islands,
22 beautiful islands up in
Wisconsin. He did so much more
Gaylord Nelson, but he came up
with the idea of Earth Day, and
Nixon started finding out this
Earth Day. And he was
suspicious of it because at
every college campus, there
suddenly was a little Earth Day
office. And Nixon asked the
obvious question, Who's paying
for this? How do these spring
up like mushrooms on every
college campus Earth Day?
Where's the money coming from?
And he got a big answer.
You know who paid for that bill
of Earth Day, April 22nd, 1970,
the first, Walter Reuther, the
United Automobile Workers,
because there was a green labor
alliance back then and Reuther's
view was working
people may not be
able to go to Yosemite
or Yellowstone.
They're going to be living in
Flint, Michigan, or they're
going to be living in
Ypsilanti. And we need clean
lakes, clean ponds, places
to fish, picnic areas.
And really, he was talking
about what today we call
environmental
justice issues and in
American history, we take our
industrial debris, our waste,
our toxins, our
poisons and dump
them in neighborhoods of people
of color and you get cancers
clusters, you get spikes.
So in the 60s, you start seeing
the birth of an environmental
justice movement with people
like Cesar Chavez and Dolores
Huerta out in the San Joaquin
and Imperial Valleys protesting
pesticides that are deforming
Mexican American children
working the agricultural fields.
Dr. King gets killed, the
Memphis sanitation strike.
And people don't realize
because of nuclear fallout,
Dr. King said, what good does it
do to segregate a lunch counter?
I mean, to integrate a lunch
counter like Greensboro,
North Carolina if the milk we're
drinking has sodium 90 in it,
that the environment had to be
grow and seen as a
civil rights issue.
Andy Young, I talked to for my
book and Andy said he looked at
the Montgomery bus boycott
as an environmental issue.
The Black Diesel of the buses
in a hot days in Alabama were
coming in through the back.
So that was where you don't want
to sit because of the air.
And so there's a linkage
between it and John Lewis
becomes one of the leaders of
the environmental justice
movement in the 60s, but
particularly in the 80s, where
he pushes the issue and forces
President Bill Clinton, who
didn't nobly started addressing
how do we do remediation, how do
we do cleanups, how can we help
not poison lower income people
in the United States, whether
they're Latino or Latinos,
whether they're Native
American, you know, living
around uranium mines or whether
they're black Americans in urban
centers where their
local neighborhoods
are becoming the dump zones.
>> Jenn White: I'm a Detroit
native and was still in Michigan
during the Flint
water crisis and so
lived through and
watched the results
of that industrial dumping,
years, decades after the
automotive industry had left
Flint, but the effect
still remained. David, it makes
me wonder when we look
at the overarching history of
environmental movements, have
there been missed opportunities?
Have there been people
who were left behind?
Had different parties
come together?
We might have been able to
maintain some of the momentum
we saw earlier.
>> David Lipsky: Yeah, I
just had this lovely moment
of thinking that I was sitting
next to the national memory.
Just hearing Doug speak is just.
[Applause]
But yeah, there were huge
missed opportunities.
One funny one, which I sort of
forgot when I was researching,
was in 97.
There was this incredible fight
to try to get the first global
treaty where Europe and all the
Americas and Australia would all
regulate their carbon dioxide.
And it took so long to get
people to that meeting and had
first been discussed at
the Rio summit in 91 and 92.
And it was going to
be the centerpiece for
President Clinton and
Vice President Gore.
It was going to be something
that Gore was going to run on.
And President Clinton,
when Kyoto passed at the
11th hour, the delegates there
were sacking out on tables.
It was right down
to the last minute.
And when it was forwarded
for adoption, these hardened
diplomats were
crying and applauding.
And then it was
coming back to America.
And America tends to need to
take the lead on those things,
because at that point,
we were the head emitters.
We were that Saudi crown.
And so President Clinton was
giving interviews to the Times
saying it's going to take an
incredible amount of
presidential energy and
presidential focus,
but we can get this done.
And then 17 days later, 18 days
later, there was a story in
Drudge Report about an error
that President Clinton had been
making for a long amount of
time with Monica Lewinsky.
And so what could have been, and
that became a very different use
of presidential attention and
presidential energy.
So they're keeping moments like
that throughout the history of
this debate, this problem.
In 1979 the thing we were
talking about earlier,
National Academy of
Sciences was asked,
give us your best
second opinion.
Will this happen?
And they only needed five days.
They were like the jury that
brings back a quick verdict.
And they said this will be
comforting to scientists, but
it will be disturbing to
policymakers.
If the carbon dioxide
release continues,
this panel finds no reason to
believe climate changes will
not occur and no reason to
believe those changes will be
negligible. When scientists
went to brief lawmakers about
this, and this is how this city
works, and I think it's also a
weakness in a way that we have
as people, the lawmakers ask
some of these scientists, when
are these changes going to
occur? And these scientists
in 1979 said, you know,
give or take 40 years.
And the policymakers said,
well, get back to us in 39.
So, yes.
>> Jenn White: It also
makes me wonder, Douglas,
what are the conditions
under which presidents
are more likely to include
major environmental change
in their agenda or
the conditions that
make them back off of that?
>> Douglas Brinkley: Well,
it's a great question because
we looked at it intensely.
Some of you probably
remember the great
naturalist, E.O. Wilson.
If you haven't, look
him up, brilliant.
Harvard, especially, was ants
in a way. But he talked about
biophilic people,
people that love nature,
love the natural world.
Some people that need to have a
cat or a dog around them or
wildlife around them or they're
not fully complete.
And he said others just don't
care about that issue.
So when you look at presidents,
I mean, we've had only one--
Theodore Roosevelt who has said
that we're going to put natural
resource management protection
of America, the beautiful as the
top national priority.
And that's how he got so much
done because he prioritized it.
Presidents often only get 1 or
2 things that they can really be
big on. He, thank
goodness, did that.
And then FDR elevated
it quite a bit.
Nobody since those two
has the love of the natural
world and wanting to know
everything about it quite like
them. And so Barack Obama,
a president that did the
Affordable Care Act, once
he got that done.
And a big, big thing,
historic, significant.
There was no gas left in the
tank for climate, as your
book points out. Rahm Emanuel
saying, you know we're
dealing with voters,
not dolphins
or something to
that effect. Right.
>> David Lipsky:
But what Rahm said was,
I think the Dolphins will
be okay for another year.
[Laughing]
>> Douglas Brinkley: It's just,
you know, how do you prioritize?
I think most sane people would
like to see the beautiful land
stewardship, water stewardship.
And but the politicization
right now is frightening.
>> Jenn White: Well,
what about the economy?
Because we're talking so much
about inflation and interest
rates. How does that fit
into a presidential agenda?
>> David Lipsky: It's a
sad thing, but we can all
feel it in our own lives. Right.
One of the aphorisms that
people in the environmental
movement have is that no
important environmental
legislation has ever been passed
during bad economic times.
It's just like in the same way,
if you have a downturn at the
kitchen table, you will get rid
of Netflix or you'll get Hulu
with the ads, right?
One of the things that
we do is, you know what?
You know the Dolphins will
be okay for another year.
It's just we can make fun of
the government for making that
choice. But that's the
choice that we make.
We tend to make, too.
And one of the snake bit things
about this issue is in 1977 and
79, when the science really did
mature, that was during
a terrible energy crisis.
And so we chose ways to get
more oil and more coal at a time
when the Earth was asking for
less oil and
especially less coal.
>> Douglas Brinkley: Rachel
Carson, who's a big figure
in my book, I don't know if you
realize she worked for
U.S. Fish and Wildlife. She
wrote three extraordinary books
about the sea. If
you haven't read
Rachel Carson and the Oceans,
you must, her home is here
in Silver Spring, Maryland.
They're turning it into a park.
And Maine was her Walden.
But she started getting
information about DDT and
pesticides that got greenlit in
World War II and the hurry up
and win. And nobody
ever regulated them.
But they were crop
spraying these chemicals.
For example, Jimmy Carter,
who's on hospice right now.
And, you know, and his
birthday will be this October 1
and he'll be 99.
But everybody in his family
died of pancreatic cancer.
His mother, Lillian, his
father, his sister Gloria, his
sister Ruth, his brother Billy,
because he had left to go to the
Navy Carter. But in that part
of Sumner County, where they had
peanuts and cotton,
they were spraying that.
So it's a cluster belt of
people that died of pancreatic
cancer there.
So Rachel Carson's enters this
battle because of a woman
named Marjorie Spock.
Is anybody remember
Dr. Benjamin Spock?
The baby doctor. This is
the baby doctor's sister.
And she owned a big piece of
land in Suffolk County,
New York, Long Island.
And the Suffolk County Mosquito
Control and the USDA were just
blanket spraying all the crops.
Well, she was an organic farmer.
So she was ahead of her
time with it, but I want
organic produce.
And she sues and it goes all
the way to Supreme Court that my
right to be an organic farmer
is being taken away from me.
She loses.
But in her loss at the Supreme
Court, William O. Douglas
writes a dissent that gets
published in Reader's Digest.
And and it begins.
Douglas starting to push and
Carson that we need--
Douglas would call it a
wilderness bill of right, but
that we all have a God given
right in the United States to
clean breathing air
and clean water.
And that should be built
into our system.
And for a while in the 60s, it
looked like that could happen.
But alas, that opportunity
is missed.
And we now live in a country
where there's pockets that are
poisoned and other pockets that
aren't, instead of it being a
guaranteed
fundamental birthright.
>> Jenn White:
In our earlier conversation,
when we were
planning this panel,
I was surprised to hear from
you, David, about polling data
around where Americans are
right now when it comes to
global warming, the effect of
mis and disinformation.
And you shared that it's not
that people don't believe global
warming is real, but that
there's another element
at play in how we're processing
the moment we're in right now.
Explain that.
>> David Lipsky: Well,
there was a great editorial--
Do you guys read Paul Krugman?
Like he just seemed
obviously brilliant.
You guys need me to tell you
that a Nobel winning economist
who writes for the Times
is worth reading,
I should be off this panel.
[Laughing]
But he wrote a great thing
last week and he just said that
and we can all feel it,
that climate change has
joined the culture wars.
So even people who know,
they're like, okay, the other
side cares about the climate.
You know what? I hope it gets
even hotter, you know,
and I don't like snow anyway.
So in fact, one of the
fascinating things about
denialism is that it was never
designed to win the argument.
And the people who became the
climate deniers were trained by
tobacco to learn how to attack
scientific studies.
And it was the same with
tobacco. They knew they would
lose. But if they could delay
the loss by ten years, 20 years,
they had 10 or 20 years
more to make the money.
A lot of the life of this issue,
you did have people who would
believe the denier arguments.
That's all gone now.
You can fool some of the
people 16 times, 32 times
when you get to 33 or 34.
And we have a summer like the
last couple, there, like I guess
the scientists were right.
And so now the question is, you
know what, I still don't want to
do anything. I remember when we
were on the phone, one of the
ways the deniers would take
preexisting ideas you have and
then apply them to this issue
is there's a fellow who a guy
named Patrick Michaels, who
would complain to CNN, you don't
put enough skeptics on the air.
And so finally, CNN got
impatient and they checked,
okay, who's the scientist we
have most often on air talking
about climate change?
It was Patrick Michaels and
Patrick Michaels when he would
go out to small events in
places like small towns in Maine
and try to get people to not
want action on climate.
He would say, forget
all the science.
What they really want to do is
take money that you earned and
give it to people
who didn't earn it.
>> Douglas Brinkley: What is
incredible about David's book
and why you all have to read it,
one fear I had as a historian,
somebody wants to
document America.
I was worried these climate
denying bastards weren't going
to pay for it in history.
His book nails them.
[Laughing]
[Applause]
When you read his book,
there's no escaping
a legacy of idiocy from
some of these people.
And I mean it.
And charlatanism and lying
and being corporate captive by
people. It's it's a bunch of
buffoons that gave birth to
this climate denial movement.
And I think David's right.
It may have ended.
The denial is you
can't deny it anymore.
But now there's just this
saying, well, so what?
What can we do? But the age
of denial is, I think, over.
But his book keeps it so people
will realize that we used to
have such bad faith citizens
and politicians that were
willing to go that
build the igloo route.
>> Jenn White: So what do we
do about? So what about it ism?
Because this is something we
run into a lot on our show when
we do programs about
environmental policy, people say
there's nothing I can do
individually to make a
difference. There has
to be policy change.
It's up to the corporations to
change their practices.
And I just want to pause for a
moment and say, if you have
questions for our panel, we've
got about 15 minutes left, so
please make your way to the
microphones and we'll get
through as many
questions as we can.
But what do we do about that?
>> David Lipsky: I don't
want to say anything else
because it can just lower you.
It'll lower me in
your estimation,
because anything
I say will make me
seem less smart than Doug.
He did me the kindness
of making me seem.
I really respect
climate scientist
named Katharine Hayhoe,
and speaking to this because
the question is, what do we do?
So I thought that I would
just read her prescription.
She said, "When it comes to
climate action, individual
choices matter, but
systemic change is key.
That's why the most effective
thing we can do is to advocate
for action where we work,
study, live, and invest.
By using our voice, we can
truly make change contagious."
Because one of the--
Do I have time for a story?
>> Jenn White:
Yes, you've got time.
>> David Lipsky: Okay.
So do you guys remember
the Keep America Beautiful
ad with the first peoples--
He's walking in buckskin beside
a highway and people are
throwing their fast
food out the window.
Maybe they didn't get the right
order in the drive through,
but people are just tossing
garbage out the window
and it falls at this Indian.
It was the name that they use
for him in the 70s.
And he looks down and then
the camera pulls in close and
one tear slides down that's
referred to as the
most famous tear ever shed.
Apparently this tear that
people have done studies,
it's been most famous,
tear visibly shed.
It's been seen something like
5 or 6 billion times that year.
And it made a generation
of, my generation,
it made us very conscious of
the environment and conscious
about things like litter.
The actual thing
that it was for.
It was being paid for.
Keep America
Beautiful. I see this.
This gentleman is nodding.
It was Keep America Beautiful
was funded by the beverage and
packing industry.
It was by the people who make
the bottles for Pepsi and
the cans for Coke and
then the cans for Coors.
And they were very anxious in
the early 70s about recycling
bills which would
cost them money.
And so the slogan of that ad,
which seemed very
thrilling to us,
"People start pollution,
people can stop it."
What the corporation
there, what those
corporations are saying
is you have to do it.
We're not going to do anything.
And so whenever the corporation
suggests that we should take
independent action, it's a way
of them dodging their financial
obligation. And
it's also a way for--
[Applause]
>> Douglas Brinkley: And
the Native American actor
was Sicilian. He's from Sicily.
He was just a hired actor
on the lot Louisiana Sicilian
heritage with...
>> Jenn White: Well, I want
to make sure we get to
as many questions as possible.
So we'll just ping pong
back and forth starting here.
>> Thank you so much
and amazing conversation.
You're both brilliant and I'm
really looking forward to
reading your work. My quick
question is, what are your
thoughts on the Montana youth
that tried to sue over climate
change and do you think that
approach is a worthwhile one?
>> David Lipsky:
Can I take that one?
It's a great question.
Professor James Hansen, who
I think is a great, great hero,
and it was an honor
to tell his story.
He thinks that's one of the
great ways. After the--
When Democrats came back into
power and until President Biden,
they didn't make lasting
change, he began to think that
the only way to actually be
effective on this issue was
through the courts.
So, yes, absolutely.
>> Jenn White: Next question.
>> Hello. So you guys talked
about the economy and
climate being seen as like the
separate issues for a lot of
politicians, especially with
the Obama example and this idea
that like the Dolphins can
wait.
But first, we need to,
you know, help people with
health care and have also
talked about this focus on
like conservation
and saving nature.
And now I feel like in a lot of
climate movements, there's sort
of this shift to like focus on
people's lives and how we're all
imperiled because of this.
And especially with like
climate change joining the
culture wars. So I guess I was
wondering, do you think that
going forward there will be a
shift for politicians and for
getting policy done in shifting
towards talking about like
economic issues, also as
climate issues and like,
you know, the health care costs
that comes with climate issues
or the cost of rebuking a city
after a natural disaster.
Do you think that there's a
path forward where it's not seen
as just like this liberal, you
know, Save the Trees thing, but
where like it's intertwined
with economic equality?
>> Douglas Brinkley:
What a great question.
Really stunning question.
The best question you could
have asked, of course.
In the sense that a lot of our
solutions are going to come
through innovation.
Finding new technologies,
how to--
I was just up in Rhode Island
with the biggest offshore wind
farm. And what are we doing
with solar and new experiments
with hydrogen fuel cells.
And it's a very robust way.
And we're going to have to be
as environmentalists, climate
activists arguing the
money imperative that we cannot
not keep going the
route we're going.
We're going to have to be
rebuilding city after city after
city, burning,
dislocation, global cost.
And so it's always good to
make that leap and connect it.
I think that's the hope. So
California, for example, by just
picking on that state or say
Washington's with them right
now, but 20, 30, you're not
going to be able to get fossil
fuel fill up in California.
And what does that mean?
You're not going to be able to
get your go and fill up.
It means that Ford and GM are
starting to really amp up.
How can we--
That's a big market.
California. It's something like
the sixth largest economy in the
world. Ford doesn't
care, soon sell
electric car or another kind of
car. They're not wedded to
the gasoline world.
So I find hopeful
things going on.
And I think the key is going to
be to keep reminding
people of the economics of
that green business is smart
business. It's the future.
It's American leadership.
And also, the only thing I'll
say very quickly, I tell young
people, don't get
depressed pretty hard.
Don't become a climate activist.
We don't need moody,
sour, dark people.
Talk about how we can save
the planet, be positive, join
groups, have fun saving Earth,
and join a small group. If you
don't have the time to get into
some, you know, some of your
majoring environmental science
or environmental engineering,
great. But others can just join
a group that's trying to save a
local wetlands or trying to
help a particular species
survive or trying to get a
better air quality standard in
their state. There's so much
to do, but I think if you join
something and get engaged,
we're going to grow.
You're going to be so many
citizens and win and
there'll be a moment for what
I'm calling the fourth wave.
It will kick in because the one
thing we've done well, us baby
boomers, we deserve to be
criticized for a lot.
But we did get the terms
ecology and environmental
science, environmental
law going.
I don't know a university
now that's not prioritizing the
environment and hirings
and looking at buildings,
green building standards.
We're getting there.
It's just our attention
span. As Americans
we like things quickly
and particularly
with our iPhone and
instant information.
And we're now to get out of
this industrial revolution and
move to the green.
It's it's taking time.
And so you've got to be in for
the long haul and just love the
Earth and the planet so much
and fight for it in really
exciting ways.
Be excited about it.
No depression.
No no psychological meltdowns.
I know it gets horrible to
watch the--
I get ill watching
Hawaii right now.
I really. I do.
But I don't want to start
being a teacher saying,
oh, we're doomed.
We screwed it up.
The planet's disappearing.
The Book of Revelations is true.
What good's that going to do?
>> Jenn White: Let's get through
a couple more questions.
Go ahead.
>> I don't know how brilliant
this question is, but
I'm struck by your passion
and I'm curious at what age
and how did you get
interested in the environment?
>> Douglas Brinkley:
Thank you for that.
My mother and father, my dad
just died a couple of months
ago, but my mom and
dad were teachers and
I had the luxury
of having a trailer.
We had a coachman trailer and
we got to visit the national
parks and state parks and go
camping all around our beautiful
country. So I fell in love with
the badlands of North Dakota and
the Redwood Forest of
California and the Tetons
and, you know,
the Mojave Desert.
And so my whole life then
became kind of American
preservation, conservation.
It's what I love.
So I owe it to my mom
and dad and those travels.
And since we're at a book
festival, I have one--
On my book, Silent Spring,
I did one of those things
for The New York Times
where they asked me
who would I like to
go to dinner with?
Which is a daunting
question of--
what writers would you most
like to have a dinner with?
And I thought hard.
And my first choice
was Henry David Thoreau.
I just loved Walden as a kid
growing up and his book Cape Cod
in the Maine Woods. And then I
added Rachel Carson, who I've
learned to love her thinking so
much, and Charles Darwin,
to show that good
writing can be matched
with science and exploration.
>> Jenn White:
David, your background,
what brought you to this?
>> David Lipsky: I thought you
were gonna ask about the dinner.
[Laughing]
>> Douglas Brinkley: I want
to know now. The dinner.
>> David Lipsky:
The dinner. I don't know.
I've lost relatives
recently, so I would
always go. The first thing I
would do is just be with some
people who passed. My father
passed during Covid, so
I'd probably have
dinner with him.
But I would like to sit
down with Roger Revelle
and say, God, you
are exactly right.
You said 50 years
and it was 50 years.
But what got me into the
environment, I just couldn't
believe we screwed up this way.
And I wanted to tell the story.
I also wanted it so that it
said nothing like this would
happen again. Just
what Doug was saying.
Like we had an incredible
head start and we didn't act.
And so that seemed like a story
really worth telling because
there are so many great things
that we do as a people, but
sometimes we don't.
We don't always pay the bills
that we don't like paying on
time. And so this was a great
way to remind people that
that's a good thing to do.
>> Jenn White: We have
time for one more question.
>> Thank you both.
Just one quick question.
So you talk about, of course,
the political battle between
Republicans and Democrats, but
also there's the context of the
urban rural divide and the fact
that a lot of rural communities
do rely on natural resource,
fossil fuel industries to keep
their communities afloat
and their economies going.
So how do you think we can have
these conversations that are
productive that will lead to
fundamental, lasting change
within the environment?
>> Jenn White: I'd love to
hear from both of you on that.
And we've got just a couple
of minutes left. Douglas.
>> Douglas Brinkley:
If I go to Toledo, Ohio,
and talk to an audience of
largely Trump supporters,
and if I avoid using
the word environment
and instead say, don't we
all want Lake Erie clean?
Yeah. Don't we want to fish the
Maumee River again?
Yes. Don't we all
want clean air?
Yes. But I start seeing the
word environment.
They see your stalking horse
for liberalism
or the Democratic Party.
They might let you say it once,
but you could feel
their rigidness.
And if you start saying climate
change and environment,
they're out.
You're the enemy team.
They see you as the big
Democrat on the side.
And so some of it is the
way we talk to each other.
But the best--
I'm sorry. We're at a book
festival as I keep thinking of
wanting to mention writers.
But read Wendell Berry if you
have it yet. Wendell Berry and
the agrarian vision
and how his view was.
You go back to a small town,
set of all of the intellectuals
in New York and Los Angeles go
back to where you're from in
Ohio or Indiana or Minnesota
and work in that community and
build trust on environmental
issues and show what
sustainable farming is like or
how to restore burned out land
the way Aldo Leopold did
in a Sand County Almanac.
And it's hard to do what
Barry's suggesting, but it's
really a beautiful
to read his thinking.
He's one of my favorite
writers alive today.
Wendell Berry.
>> Jenn White: David, briefly.
>> David Lipsky:
Sure. And then just because...
Thanks, Jenn. Just because Doug
was talking about writers,
it was so well known by
mid-century that you guys know,
like the Nabokov's novel
"Lolita," which came out in 55
but was being written in the
late 40s. When Nabokov needed a
scientific expedition for
Humbert Humbert to go on.
He sends him to the Arctic to
check out to research climate
change. That is how long
the science has been with us.
And so writers
are always kind of a
great way to chart the
progress of something.
But the three of us had
a great conversation about
environmental justice last week.
So I would flip your question
and look at it from the
point of view of people in the
cities talking to people in the
country. One of the things that
made me really anxious is that
the divide that we've seen
already and that Doug wrote
about really beautifully in
Silent Spring Revolution.
People with money will be able
to, if we continue down this
road of painfully heating
landscapes, the people in the
cities will be able
to go to the country.
Essentially, money will offer
protection from the climate
changes, from the immediate
discomfort, and that is
something that will be very bad
both for us as individual
people and also
for us as a people.
>> Jenn White: Well, David
Lipsky is the author of
"The Parrot and the Igloo."
He will sign his book at
table 13 at noon today.
And Douglas Brinkley
is the author of
"Silent Spring Revolution."
You can have your book signed
by Douglas at table 12 at noon.
Douglas, David, it's
been such a pleasure.
Thank you.
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]