“Take action. That’s why we elected you, okay? But you have to give them guidance. How can a mayor know everything about what to do? There are so many issues. So we have to have organization from the bottom up. I call it societal transformation.”
Catherine Du, a rising sophomore at Hunter College High School in NYC, interviews Veerabhadran “Ram” Ramanathan, a pioneer of climate science and Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Climate Sciences and Physical Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
Dr. Ramanathan added crucial understanding to the science of climate change with his discovery, in 1975, of the greenhouse effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Continuing his groundbreaking research in aerosol pollution in later decades, he has also advised governments and global leaders, including the Governor of California and two Popes, on the urgent need for effective worldwide climate policies.
Dr. Ramanathan’s goal now is to create a million climate champions, focusing on young people between the ages of 15 and 35, to help lead solutions throughout the world. With this intention he led the development of the interdisciplinary climate program for the University of California campuses, Bending the Curve.
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Ram Ramanathan 00:00
By 2030, when the warming crosses a degree and a half, I call that the COVID moment. Remember, COVID was in your living room. You might not have got COVID, but you knew somebody who had. Right now, in climate change, we don’t know anyone around who has experienced, lost their homes. See, right now, climate change is not in your living room. Okay, it’s in the living rooms of a few unlucky people, about 5% – 10%. By the time you go to one and a half, it’ll be 50%. The truck is at our doorstep four years from now. When I say 50%, I’m not saying 50% of the homes are going to be destroyed. No, you will know somebody who is personally affected. So it’s no more hearing some scientific stuff from Professor Ramanathan. So you know, the science was correct.
Catherine Du 01:12
Welcome back to another episode of Bridging the Carbon Gap. My name is Catherine Du, and I’m a rising sophomore at Hunter College High School. Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Ram Ramanathan, professor of climate science at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a member of the Pope’s Academy of Sciences. Dr. Ramanathan spent over 50 years studying the atmosphere and discovered that besides CO2, there are other gasses 1000s of times more potent that we can actually cut much faster. His message is urgent, but surprisingly hopeful. The climate crisis is solvable, but we need a million young people to lead the solution.
Catherine Du
In the theoretical setting where I was the mayor of New York City, if you had 20 minutes to explain the climate situations and the implications for New York City and the people within it, what will the next 10 or 15 years be like? How should we spend our time, and what should we aim for after that?
Ram Ramanathan 02:26
Right now, the approach in New York City, major cities, is that we have to cut down emissions. It’s extremely important we cut down emissions, but so far we have not achieved that. It’s still going up. Number one. Number two, the climate is responding in ways, just in the last 10 years, the Anthropocene has taken off in the last 10 years, surprising, with many things combining. The impact of that is we have to broaden our approach. Okay, what do I mean by that? There are three things here.
Trying to deal with climate mitigation, that’s cutting down emissions.
The second is adaptation, adapting to changes which are unavoidable. Okay, in five years, all of this is going to change. Everyone would be talking about climate change, but the issue is the change would be in full force. Right now, what we are seeing is extremes are picking up. They are all becoming larger in scale and more intense, and coming too often. So what we thought are bizarre events, low probability events, are going to become the norm. All right, that’s why we’ll all come to know.
So what we need is first, protect the poor. They have no protection. Okay, what am I going to do if a heat wave comes, and fires, I’m just going to increase my air conditioning. Most people don’t have that, particularly, go to places like India in villages, they don’t even have electricity. So what I would like New York City to do, I don’t know if it is just up to the mayor, Catherine. You are in school. By the time you finish college and get a degree, this is the major problem you’ll be addressing. But it’s a solvable problem.
We are not solving this problem not because we have no solutions. You yourself would have solutions on how to address the climate change problem. We are not doing this because we don’t have public support. A mayor can dictate laws, but if the public doesn’t support it, so the public support is key. And if I were to address the mayor, be it New York mayor or my own here, I work with our governor here, is that we have to plan for adaptation.
So when you go talk to anyone, right, climate change, we have to cut down emissions, we have to do this, we have to do that. Yes, we have to do all that, but it’s already here. How are you protecting the people? So that is what I would want to see in New York City. I know you have excellent universities. Columbia has a major program, and I know still at State University New York at Stony Brook, Cornell, everywhere. I would like the group of people like you, school students, all the way from 15 to 35 is what I’m targeting. Okay.
Catherine Du 05:45
Dr. Ramanathan has a goal of educating a million climate champions, and in New York City, high schools are a place to look.
Ram Ramanathan 05:53
I think a million is enough because each of you can spread the message to about 100. We educate these warriors what projects can be done. It’s no more theoretical knowledge. I’m not talking about teaching them climate science, but you have to give them confidence in the science. Okay, that is important, and there are ways to do that. But arm these champions with solutions. So imagine them, young people like Catherine, going to their community. Hey, we do this. She’s not talking to them anymore about, you are polluting the planet. You are doing this now. All of us collectively did that.
Without fossil fuels. I’d still be sitting in my village in South India, suffering from a heat wave. There, in villages where I grew up, the main problem was you can’t even have fans because there’s no electricity, and it was like that until 15 years ago. I don’t know. I think they say things have improved, but that’s another – I’m talking about at the individual village level, individual cities like Chennai, New York, that goes to the large scale. So what we need is public assembling together. You folks have to come with the solution, not the mayor. Then you tell the mayor what to do.
Catherine Du 07:16
Incorporating the expertise you have from designing the Bending the Curve curriculum, how would you envision an ideal climate curriculum for high school students in New York City and beyond for them to garner this public support?
Ram Ramanathan 07:29
Bending the Curve is now taught in Coursera. Anyone can take it, but me and my colleagues designed it about 10 to 15 years ago. Okay, it has to be updated. If you take that course, it’s going to say ‘cut down the emissions, we are in good shape.’ Not anymore. Okay, and I’ll tell you why. This is the thing I used to show as a video. My slogan is emissions anywhere on the planet is global warming everywhere, and I did this by a simple study. I said, “I’m emitting emissions traveling here in California. I asked myself which are the regions which are most affected. California was the least. New Delhi got the brunt of my emissions. Do you know why? Once you emit these, they stay for 100 years, so they cover the entire planet like a blanket. The CO2 I emit in San Diego is spread uniformly everywhere, and then the regions which are susceptible to that heat trapping will warm. So we are never ever going to solve this problem by pointing fingers. China is doing this. India is doing this. No, we have to work together, and in fact, I would like to see big cities in America getting together. Hey, we are having this big truck coming on our way, and we work collectively on this. Can we share experiences? Can we share resources? And in America, the heads of Google, heads of Apple, Nvidia have to pitch in. They have the resources, they have the expertise, so we need to put our heads together. It’s not about taking the bus anymore. What are the mechanisms we have to work together? Say, if New York City was the only one cutting down on emissions, and the rest of the U.S. doesn’t, you’re going to get hurt just as much as the rest of America. So I’m not saying use my statement to stop. We have to cut emissions. There’s no question. Otherwise, it becomes unmanageable.
Catherine Du 09:57
So in terms of the nuts and bolts level of a lot of climate law, New York State’s climate law, which is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or the CLCPA, has fallen apart despite New York operating on a democracy. So, how do you think democracy and public support in general can enact climate policy?
Ram Ramanathan 10:16
I think you put the word democracy. That’s where the bottom-up efforts. okay. Again, break the problem into three problems: cutting down the emissions to keep the efforts, climate efforts manageable, but that’s a global effort. New York City cutting will do nothing, but it will set the example how to do it? Okay, then adaptation. How are we going to adapt to massive heat waves flooding for you? Even hurricanes are a threat because they’ll go further north because the ocean is heating up. Okay, how are we going to deal with that? That’s adaptation. And in a democracy, neither of the two is going to happen without societal transformation. The people have to call for it. If people have to assemble, and I think of this group which is come, that’s the People’s Assembly. That’s what they need. You have to get educated. I’m not talking about just waving flags, striking, and all that-it’s too late for all that. What we need is constructive actions. You get educated, and then you will know how. What are the issues here? Okay, and one of the issues of-I think we address it in Bending the Curve. We have to think in terms of there is no one solution. I want to say that first. Before one solution works, now we have to think of multiple.
But we need to now start spending time on how are we going to protect the people. And I think of organization. This is where I, people like me, come in. We are academics. We have worked on this problem 50 years, plus years. Not all of them. There are few 80-year-olds like me, and we have to work with your group. Tell you what are the issues that academics can play a large role because people trust their local professors, right? I’m not talking about young professors because they have to worry about their own career. Those who already got the tenure, they can be part of it. Okay, the issue is when the one and a half degree is five years. I am hoping and I am thinking that there will be a hue and cry from the public to people like your mayor. Take action. That’s why we elected you, okay? But you have to give them guidance. How can a mayor know everything about what to do. There are so many issues, so we have to have, and the organization from the bottom up to me is, I call it societal transformation. So you need all three.
Catherine Du 13:13
Maybe any specific solutions that you have in mind?
Ram Ramanathan 13:16
I was waiting for you to ask this question. I’ve been waiting. Let’s talk about mitigation. Okay, this is my own work, and you should have others talk about this so you get a balanced view.
At the time I got into this, scientists were thinking it’s only carbon dioxide. Okay, what is carbon dioxide? Your fuel is carbon and hydrogen. That’s why we call them hydrocarbons. Okay, when you light a fire to it, the carbon splits, attaches the oxygen, becomes carbon dioxide. One carbon atom, two oxygens. Okay, there are two potent things about them. Once you light it in the air, 50% stays for 100 years, and about 20% stays for 1000 years. That itself couldn’t have been a problem, but we are emitting in mass quantities. Do you know how many, how much carbon dioxide we have released since the 19th century? Two and a half trillion tons we have released.
Just imagine the air is holding the junk. How? Out of this, about 1.2 trillion is still out there. That’s the weight, I call it a blanket. That’s the weight sitting on your head. You have to get rid of it. It’s not going to be easy.
What I discovered was that in addition to CO2, there are numerous other gases that are 1000 times more potent. Then comes in methane, 100 times more potent, ozone, and soot. What comes out of diesel trucks? That’s about 2000 times more potent. I call them short-lived climate pollutants. So these stay in the air only for 5, 10, years. Okay, and then soot stays one to two weeks. What does that mean? You cut the emissions, they’re gone. CO2, you cut the emissions to zero. Everyone thinks, oh, the zero emissions. There’s still this 1.2 trillion ton sitting up there, blanket trapping heat. You have to get rid of that too. It’s going to take time. We have to do it.
Catherine Du 15:23
Removing short-lived greenhouse gasses is a top priority of Dr. Ramanathan’s. Different greenhouse gasses have different average lifespans within the atmosphere, which is influenced by many factors, including the chemistry of the gas and possible natural sinks of it. In addition, not all greenhouse gasses are created equal. Some greenhouse gasses, as Dr. Ramanoffan has mentioned, are more potent than others, which is measured with the global warming potential. Methane, for example, has a global warming potential of 28, and carbon dioxide has a global warming potential of one.
Ram Ramanathan 16:02
My focus is on what I call the poorest 3 billion. Okay, why? Because that 3 billion had nothing to do with the emissions, less than 5%.
We can’t saddle them with cutting down emissions. Give them whatever energy they need so that they can survive the heat waves, the droughts in their villages. Okay, so you get rid of the short-term climate pollutants. There are an abundance of solutions. California can show you how to do it. Do you know what it does to the warming? Cuts the rate of warming by about half a degree, cools down the planet.
Then the other thing is, for example, New York City. Like I said, the horrible climates would become the norm. They’re not horrible anymore. They’re becoming part of us, right? So I don’t know what the infrastructure is. I would pay attention to what infrastructure New York has, which would fall, which would collapse in these heat waves, floods. All right. So that would be my focus on the infrastructure, on the poor. I would like to have every street have cool water, and I would figure out how to protect those workers who are taking care of your home electricity, pumping, etc. How do you protect outdoor workers?
So it has to be nuts and bolts, and just, it’s just too many for a single person like a mayor to figure out. Somehow the public has to get organized, and we need to get donors, corporates, and others to help the public organize themselves. They can’t, the public can’t just come by themselves. You have to support them. So it’s going to take a community effort.
Catherine Du 18:02
I was curious what you thought about how reducing emissions of soot or other gasses that double up aerosols, which may have a cooling effect, would have on the planet’s overall climate.
Ram Ramanathan 18:12
You are asking what I think is the crux of the whole problem. In the case of soot and ozone, and even methane. Not much research is needed. One of the major sources of methane is food waste. We throw organics into the landfill, and there’s no oxygen, and the biomes heat it and convert the methane. Okay. Do you know how much food the Americans throw into the garbage? 45% And imagine how much carbon dioxide they put into the air, producing that food. Agriculture is a major emitter of these heat trapping gasses. What is the solution? Many people home compost it and use it as fertilizer [instead of] fertilizer that uses nitrogen oxide, which produces another deadly gas. So get rid of that fertilizer, compost, and the second is the edible food. Imagine how many people go hungry in San Diego. 1/3 of the children skip meals because they don’t have the money. The restaurants and the supermarkets, if a tomato doesn’t look beautiful, they throw it out. But that’s what I’m saying, see, it’ll be fun for kids to get involved. I want you to enjoy your life. I don’t want you to suffer to change, but just imagine getting involved in a food drive, find out what’s the edible food, and take it to the homeless. Okay, so that’s one.
Soot. It’s the simplest of solutions. The main source of soot is, of course, burning, open burning, and diesel cars, diesel trucks. Put filters. There are filters which cut off that diesel emission. They’re expensive, so don’t get me wrong. And many truck drivers may not be able to afford to do it. We have to find the money for them. Okay, so the solutions are there. They are expensive for the people who we are asking to do this. This is where the mayor and city councilors can help by passing laws, right? Same thing with ozone. But America has the best expertise in cutting down ozone emissions. It’s there. The issue is affordability and enforceability. Who is that enforceable? Make sure that people are not burning their polluted stuff. Cutting emissions is only one of three you have to do.
Okay, I would talk about the health benefits. I would talk about local benefits. Okay, to get people’s attention, and then go from there. We tried the top-down approach. Okay, 10 years ago, if Richard called me, I would have told him, “I don’t want to waste my time with you. I’m talking to the presidents of countries”. It didn’t take us there, now we are realizing it has to come from bottom up. It’s an ecosystem, but what’s missing in this ecosystem is bottom up, okay, and I’m hesitant to call it a movement. Immediately, that gives the impression striking. Like I said, this is the time to bring people together, not separate peoples with different groups. So I’m thinking. This is where the idea germinated. These public groups. First, you have to educate them on what needs to be done, arm them with knowledge, and hopefully there will be a two-way interaction. There can be industry folks. I’m personally trying to get the fossil fuel industry to join us. We have pointed fingers at them. We have called them enemies. This, that, none of that worked. Naming and shaming. It’s too late for all that. We need everybody together. Why? If you can get your oil industry folks in India, hey, we’re going to suffer. What is your solution? Okay. So it’s time for bringing people together at the local level, and it’s not easy.
Catherine Du 23:01
Thank you. One of the questions in the chat was from Callista, who was asking what solutions in agriculture there are to mitigate emissions, especially of the methane in the agricultural sector.
Ram Ramanathan 23:15
Thank you. I think that’s one of the most important topics. I didn’t bring up agriculture. I don’t know why we are not focusing on food waste. Agriculture puts about 1/3 of the total pollution. I can cut that by avoiding food waste to zero. India throws out 1/3 of the food. Internationally where the loss is not people throwing the food or restaurants, it’s that in the transportation it just falls off the trucks. Oh, and the third is, and it’s also in Africa too, the food is in storage, the rats get to it, okay.
So that’s a kind of gut pleasing solution you have individuals do. They will see the effect immediately. And of course, everyone talks about methane emissions by cows. All that separates us, divides us. I just don’t want to have solutions which are going to divide us. In the U.S. I don’t see any hope of solving this problem if we don’t bring our brothers and sisters from the skeptical side to make them see this. We have treated it by calling names, and our media is completely polarized. I’m working with churches, Catholic Church, because I am a member of Pope Leo’s Science Academy. So I’m using the Vatican’s help to reach out to churches in the U.S.
Catherine Du 25:08
Enhanced rock weathering is a type of carbon dioxide removal technology that aims to amplify the existing capabilities of rocks to absorb carbon dioxide from carbonic acid H2CO3, which is produced when carbon dioxide reacts with water. Currently, Project Drawdown rates the solution as “keep watching, especially given the cost and the possible lack of scientific consistency, while balancing the possible plus sides, which include its ability to be used on land and in water, and to protect crop yields, as Dr. Ramanathan will discuss.
Ram Ramanathan 25:44
My colleague, his name is Professor Ben Houlton. He’s the Dean of the College of Agriculture Science at Cornell. Cornell is a major agriculture school. They have tremendous numbers, and they have come up with this. They have tested it. If you spray certain rocks, pulverize them. and spread it on agricultural fields, they suck up CO2 and put that CO2 in the soil. Okay, and it also fertilizes the soil.
I’m all for rock weathering simply because it’s a source of income for the poorest 3 billion. See, in America, a lot of the agriculturists are big companies, but go to places in India, two thirds are individual farmers. Imagine, [a farmer] throws the salt and says, “I’ve taken up about 100 pounds of CO2 out of the air,” and we all pay him carbon credit.
Okay, so that’s one. And the second I would say is, I am hoping that if it is possible to take it to that level, he says yes, and I don’t see any reason why not, and it will show up in the measurements, not in solar radiation. If say half of India does it, it will show in the CO2 measurements. The rate of increase of CO2 will come down.
Catherine Du 27:18
On the topic of geoengineering, I was curious about your perspective on solar radiation management, a proposed method of geoengineering that focuses on spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce the warming effect of the sun.
Ram Ramanathan 27:33
Yeah, good question. In science, it’s okay to have a bias if you declare it. Okay, I tell my students, bias is your gut instinct. Come by all means, but declare it. So I’m declaring I’m biased against solar geoengineering, but I’ll give you my scientific reason for it.
Let’s talk about the particles. They are one of the main reasons why the warming is accelerating, because there are two types of pollutants: gasses, CO2 is a gas, methane is a gas. Unfortunately, our eyes cannot see gas. If only we can see a gas, there is no way CO2 would be 1200 billion tons. The sky will look junk. Okay, I forgot to tell you how you can relate to this 1200 billion tons. It’s just too much, right? But if you look at the solid waste, everything we throw-our old shirts, old couches, all this–that’s about 2 billion tons. So 600 times the solid waste of a year is up in the air.
Okay, imagine that. If you go to the landfill, you see nothing but junk, but [worldwide] that’s only 2 billion tons. So that’s the issue. Particles, your eye can see. Clouds are particles. And you see a hazy sky as particles. What they’ve been doing is they reflect sunlight back, and had a cooling effect which has masked the warming. Okay, about 1/3 of the warming. If you get rid of all the air pollution in the world today, the planet would heat up by a degree of that masking, another degree.
But why are people cutting air pollution? Because it kills you. Air pollution, you inhale, 8 million people die each year. China was on the forefront of cutting down air pollution last 15 years.
So think of the blanket as the gasses, and your air pollution is mirrors on the blanket. The mirrors have reflected sunlight, prevented light from coming in. That’s why we want to use the particles as geoengineering. Okay, and India is cutting air pollution. India has to. India loses about a million and a half healthy Indians to air pollution deaths, particularly in the north. It’s called the Indo-Gangetic Plain. So, and the world is on, Africa’s on pace to cut down air pollution, and that is where I am predicting that unmasking is going to hit the planet rapidly.
The way to counter it is to cut these short-lived climate pollutants. Okay, I want to be loud and clear. We have to cut air pollution. They cause deaths. They cause a lung disease, COPD. They hurt heart problems. Everything you can think of, okay. So that’s an issue. And the geoengineering, the problem myself with that, thinking of putting it in the stratosphere, okay, there are suggestions of putting it in the lower atmosphere. That’s a disaster. Okay, it will disrupt the rainfall pattern. I don’t know about air pollution issues.
Catherine, the other problem I have is that, who’s going to put it up there? Do you trust your country? Some say, oh, I’m going to put it to cool my region. Do you trust? Who’s going to manage it? That’s my problem. I don’t see a structure, okay. And I don’t think we have the structure to manage such an intervention with the planet’s life, because putting sunlight, cutting sunlight down, will cut evaporation of moisture through the ocean. So I worry about droughts in certain regions, particularly in the tropical regions, say in Africa and southern in southern part of South Asia. Okay, and then parts of South America, the sunlight is needed for plants. So there are many issues there, and I have not seen any detail. There’s a lot of work done, but I told you I am biased against it. I don’t have a definite proof that they’re going to cause harm. My concerns are all socio-economic concerns. The system I don’t see organized to do something like that.
Catherine Du 32:26
Ahana asked, “How do you think climate education can acknowledge the wealth imbalance without undermining the idea of collective responsibility?
Ram Ramanathan 32:35
Fantastic question. I think that my understanding is I don’t know yet. Okay, so how to say it so that I’m not pointing fingers at the wealthy 1 billion? We need them to solve the emissions issue, mitigation issue. We need them to solve the adaptation. It’s going to take a lot of money to adapt the infrastructure. I need the help of city influencers, social scientists. I’m not going to pretend I know how to do it. I don’t know. Scientists like me are very good in telling what to do. We are horrible in telling how to do it. So you shouldn’t trust me, even if I tell you how to do it.
Catherine Du 33:25
After speaking with Dr. Ramanathan, something really stood out to me. I’m currently a high school student graduating in the class of 2029, and the threshold that he mentioned, crossing 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030, 2030 is the year after I graduate high school, I found it shocking that he calmly and with conviction delivered this prediction about what our world will be in four years. I believe that students and people in general should hear this because many people don’t realize how close climate change really is. Dr. Ramanathan has worked on climate science for 50 years, and it’s been a topic much longer than that. Yet it’s still not taught to students as a part of general education, despite efforts from Dr. Romanathan and others.
Helena Rambler 34:18
Thank you for listening to our tiny podcast about a giant topic. We’ve learned we have listeners all over the world, and we’re curious who you are and what you would like to hear on the show. So, if you’d like, please send us an email at podcast@thecityatlas.org. That’s podcast@thecityatlas.org. Thanks for listening.