Hello and thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

Why is there such a divide in our country over climate change?

Why are Republicans and Democrats at odds over the Biden infrastructure bill?

Should the U.S. be energy independent or is the new normal?

Depending on other countries for our oil and paying insane record gasoline prices throughout the nation?

How can we bring environmentalists and polluters together?

We're going to find all that out later in the broadcast.

First, though, if you have not visited the city of Long Beach recently, it's worth a visit.

If for no other reason to tour the Aquarium of the Pacific.

A nonprofit aquarium is basically a giant classroom with thousands of visitors each day and where environmental challenges in search of sustainable solutions are explored.

So let's begin with a tour of the aquarium.

If you've never gone deep sea diving or visited a tropical island or explored the ocean, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, is your next best option.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is all about the conservation and the building of nature, the interaction of marine life and people, and the 12,000 animals that include a shark lagoon, a penguin habitat, a forest and an animal care center.

The aquarium also offers educational programing for people of all ages, as well as lectures series with leading scientists through their online academy.

We took a tour of the aquarium to find out about some of the science you can study here.

This is the coral reefs nature or Underwater Cities exhibit.

This basically explains what coral reefs are, why they're threatened, and what you can do to help save them.

On display is a green sea turtle here.

There are also flashlight, fish and a variety of life corals cultured on site with a tropical reef habitat and coral predators aquarium available to the public worldwide via a live webcam.

As we learned during our tour.

Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse areas in the world Ocean.

They are vital among ocean ecosystems, with about 25% of all marine fish species living within coral reefs.

The reefs are also highly valuable, generating billions of dollars through tourism and serving as fishing grounds, distributing fish to millions of people.

This is the Pacific Vision Exhibit, which tells stories about ways to achieve a sustainable future amidst climate change.

This presentation helps visitors explore things like energy and water choices and how these resources are affected due to a changing climate.

This exhibit is the Honda Blue Cavern, and the design replicates a popular dive site off Catalina Island, featuring marine life native to California as kelp forests and a breeding pair of giant sea bass.

This is the John Keys penguin habitat here, the aquarium, home to nearly two dozen Magellanic penguins native to the coast of Chile and Argentina.

This exhibit is part of a cooperative effort with a species survival plan, a program that the Association of Zoos and Aquariums administers.

Part of the purpose is to help manage threatened or endangered species.

And this is the world famous Ocean Science Center, where visitors can learn about things like sea levels, marine life sustainability and extreme weather conditions with the help of this gizmo here.

This is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science Ionosphere.

Science Ionosphere displays live data sets, for example, sea surface temperature and storm systems, which help explain how the earth, the ocean, the atmosphere and humans are all interconnected.

First interview stop on our tour, a discussion with Kassandra Davis.

Cassandra Davis is a manager of volunteer programs at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

Cassandra is explaining the sea turtle monitoring program within Southern California's San Gabriel River.

There is a local population of Pacific green sea turtles considered threatened.

This local sea turtle population has been recovering with the help of the aquarium and its monitoring program.

A rescue team works with the aquarium.

The aquarium then provides veterinary care, medical treatment and rehabilitation of injured sea turtles.

As Cassandra explains, for many years, sea turtles found injured or stranded across southern California have been brought here to the aquarium for rehab and then sent back into their local habitat once LP Over the years, scientific data has been collected and then shared with various scientists, local agencies and aquarium officials.

We get a better picture of what the sea turtles are doing here in Southern California, what their populations look like and how we can help support them and create better habitats for them.

Most people don't think of sea turtles being in a city like Los Angeles, but it turns out we have a lot of amazing urban wildlife both in the city and in the ocean nearby.

The green sea turtle population that we see is a population that does exist in more tropical waters.

Many of them are nesting and originating from nesting beaches in Mexico.

But we are seeing part of the population here along the Long Beach and SEAL Beach border.

It is the northernmost known population of the green sea turtles.

These are reptiles.

They need warmer water.

We have a couple of different sources of warmer water here in southern California.

Cassandra says a sea turtles are part of our ecosystem and are essential to what is known as the wetlands, habitat and seagrass.

Seagrass is an amazing thing.

It's basically a lawn underwater, but it does a lot for us.

It filters the water and gives us oxygen.

It takes in carbon dioxide, which is more important than ever these days.

And the sea turtles, they help to trim the seagrass, this algae, and they help to create a healthier sea bed.

So they really do serve at least one key purpose that we know of that benefits us.

In conjunction with the sea turtle program.

Cassandra says the aquarium also leads the Wetlands Restoration Program as Cassandra tells us.

Researchers estimate that California has lost about 90% of its natural wetlands areas.

Wetlands are a crucial habitat for many animals and migrating bird species.

They also protect coastal communities from flooding, and wetlands naturally filter water.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is working with the Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewardship Program to restore nearly 70 acres of wetlands.

The lost Cerritos wetlands are located near the aquarium on Pacific Coast Highway, bordering both Los Angeles and Orange County's.

Cassandra says these environmental restorations provide habitat for the sea turtles, as well as many types of birds, animals and plants.

Basically, all kinds of wildlife, including toads, snakes, frogs and many insects that can be found in the wetland ecosystem.

If we can hold on to those last remaining wetlands and start to rebuild them, start to restore them, then we have a potential for a lot of different what we call ecosystem services, a lot of different things that those wetlands are going to do that help us as individuals and help our planet as a whole.

Madeline Waldman sure knows all about people.

Madeleine is the assistant social media manager for the Aquarium of the Pacific, and she is the next stop on our tour.

Back in January 2020, the aquarium launched its Tick tock account.

Since then, the aquarium has built about two and a half million followers.

This is the most popular account of any zoo or aquarium on Tik-tok.

Social media allows us to connect with people worldwide and educate them and engage with them and really get them to learn more about the ocean and the amazing animals we have here at the aquarium.

We want to create videos and content that is accessible to everybody.

We want, no matter your education level or your age or where you come from.

We want to teach you something.

So it's really important for me to make all of our social media super accessible and really fun.

Madeline says their posts on Tik Tok can reach millions of people in just a few hours.

She says this is an ideal opportunity for the aquarium to share ocean science education content with people around the globe.

Madeline creates the aquariums TikTok posts, working closely with the animal care and education departments to help generate ideas, as well as the photos and videos.

And we're able to kind of hook our followers in and get them really interested in science and get them to learn more about the conservation efforts at the aquarium.

As a part of, we gained over two and a half million TikTok followers by storytelling and letting our animals here at the aquarium, the Pacific, really shine their incredible creatures and they make my job pretty easy.

Our highest engaging content is definitely anything to do with our sea lions.

They are just such interactive animals and they're not only hilarious, they are adorable, and there's so much to learn about them.

Like they developed black teeth over their lifetime, and that's 100% okay, and it's really healthy for them.

So there's all of these things to learn about the animals here at the aquarium, and we're able to create these videos in a way to get people to learn even more.

Anthony Brown knows all about learning.

Anthony is the vice president of finance and the chief financial officer for the Aquarium of the Pacific.

He helps lead a most unique curriculum known as the African-American Scholar program launched back in 2020.

Now, an aquarium could sound like an odd place to launch a program that involves increasing diversity awareness and helping people of color succeed with their university education.

Yet, Anthony says there is no better place than the aquarium.

Its goal was to attract African-American students with careers that focused on the aquarium field.

So that includes marine biology, life support facilities and even business management to offer them an opportunity to earn a scholarship to help with their studies.

The beauty of the program is that it's not just a scholarship of funds, but we have made it a point to find students and actually involve them in meetings in initiative here at the aquarium.

This program is vital for future scientists because it brings diverse minds together to meet the challenges that our world faces, the challenges of ocean acidification, sea level rise and global warming.

Anthony believes that this program, while identify an African-American students who are studying marine sciences, really helps everyone.

Well, we believe it will help the entire community.

The the world is an ocean planet.

The communities that are by the ocean are stakeholders.

And so we want to bring the best minds to the table to solve the challenges that we face in the future.

Anthony says the program has been a great success so far, with the program committee selecting ten winners for the first year.

Scholars who are each awarded $10,000 to help pursue their career.

The Aquarium of the Pacific people helping people.

And thank you to the good folks at the Aquarium of the Pacific for those interviews.

Now, to further increase, really broaden out this discussion.

Joining us is Dr. Peter Riva.

Peter is the president and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific and one of the most renowned environmentalists and science scholars in the US.

Peter was formerly the director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and also the former vice president of science for the Nature Conservancy.

Peter, thank you so much for being here.

Quite an honor, sir.

I'm really looking forward to talking with you.

We have a lot to talk about.

So before I get into everything, just take about a minute.

60 seconds to tell me about your new venture at the aquarium, the Pacific, and some of what you folks are working on over there.

And then we get to all the issues.

Okay.

Well, you know, the Aquarium of Pacific is unique and in a couple of ways, it's really community based.

You know, it really serves the Long Beach community.

And so a lot of what we do is community science, citizen science projects.

A thousand volunteers from the community make us work.

So it's it's got that community engagement.

And then we have this brand new theater.

I don't know if you've seen it, David.

It just opened then and got close for COVID, but it's spectacular and we haven't tapped into it.

But the idea is to not just have live animals, but short videos, short digital media to tell stories.

We will have to take another visit out there.

Now to all the issues affecting so many Americans.

Give me a minute.

Just to sort of set the stage for this interview, sort of a comprehensive question to analyze all this.

And then the floor is yours.

We're going to focus on climate change to begin, Peter.

And obviously, there's a massive divide in the U.S. over, let's say, the immediacy of climate change solutions.

No one's saying whether it is or is not climate change anymore.

Pretty much everybody agrees or acknowledges there is climate change.

But using the President Biden infrastructure bill, Peter, as an example, this has divided so many.

The Republicans are questioning all of this now, shall we say, climate change related infrastructure that's been bundled right bundled into the bill.

Is that really infrastructure?

My definition of infrastructure, at least it used to be the roads, the bridges, the tunnels, the freeways.

Yes, Democrats have sort of amended their infrastructure bill, this trillion dollar bill, but there's certainly others on the way, massive spending bills we, the taxpayer, are going to have to spend for for these environmental friendly infrastructure modalities.

So the question really is a two parter.

Talk about that.

But then also, when so many folks are struggling during COVID, they can't pay the rent, they can't pay the mortgage, they can't pay their bills.

They're trying to survive.

Many are arguing, Peter, that the Democrats and the environmentalists are disconnected with a part of the US public.

Give us both arguments that centrists sort of take.

You always give us it's it's yours to talk about.

Okay, that's centrist.

Take a right.

Well, you know, I think you you set this question up well by pointing out that we no longer debating about whether or not climate change is happening.

That's behind us.

And so it's really about the urgency of it and what tradeoffs and sacrifices we should make to combat it.

So that's the debate.

What do we have to give up to solve the climate problem?

And that's probably at the crux of the debate between the partizan divide, as you say.

And I think both sides kind of missed the point.

And they missed the point because they make it an either or question either.

We're going to address climate change or we're going to take care of economic development and jobs.

And it's not an either or question.

In fact, I thought it was interesting the way you used the word infrastructure, and then you kind of said, well, what's climate got to do with it?

And sort of a little Tina Turner moment there for you.

What, what, what, what, what what climate has to do with it is climate is a form of infrastructure, infrastructure.

It allows us to be comfortable in our habitat.

It allows us to move from place to place.

And so climate is a bit of infrastructure.

But more to the point, the the Republicans who chastise this spending bill for also including a lot of investment in climate solutions are off the mark when they claim that this has nothing to do with all the economic suffering people do because climate causes economic suffering.

You know, people are the most recent heat waves.

People that go out and buy air conditioners that they never had to buy before.

They pay for electricity, they never had to pay for storms caused damage.

So climate is tied to it and the other hand, the Democrats can be a little bit myopic because they can say climate is this existential threat.

And above all else, we got to solve that.

And these other problems are kind of trailing problems and they're also equally misguided.

So it's it's it's an absence of, you know, it's kind of like the card.

Yeah, chew gum and walk at the same time.

We can do investment in climate solutions and we can take care of the economy at the same time.

But we can't be symbolic about it.

It's got to be really serious and hard work.

And we shouldn't you know, we shouldn't cover up how much work it's going to take it.

It is going to take sacrifice.

Staying along the lines of climate change, is it an existential threat?

I've heard you use those terms before.

Others use them.

You know, if you listen to, let's say, AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, some of her progressive liberal colleagues on Capitol Hill, they basically say, listen, the world is going to implode in 12 years due to climate change.

Is this what you might say is a liberal talking point?

Is this fear mongering?

Is it a message of doom and gloom?

Or on the flip side, is this dire?

And must we take this seriously, Peter?

Well, it is dire and we must take it seriously.

But it's not a threat to human existence.

It's probably not even a threat to total biodiversity in a sense, and species will evolve and other ones do exist.

So it's it's not the end of the world, but we have to take it seriously because it'll mess with our lives.

You know it it'll mean there are many, many days in in the summer when you can't go outside.

It's just too hot.

I'd like to, you know, when I.

When I used to do some work at Texas, I used to kind of tease my anti-climate change friends and say, look at all the football practices got canceled because of hot weather.

So it's going to and it's going to do more serious things.

It's going to exacerbate food shortages and it's going to add extra expense.

And those of us who are affluent, that's not going to be a big deal.

But for the poorer people, it is going to be a big deal.

So it's our species is not at risk.

Our planet is not at risk, but it's a disruption that can change life as we know it, I guess.

And so in that sense, changing life as we know it, I guess you could call that existential.

Peter, are there challenges for you as an environmentalist when there are certain folks, often conservatives, I've heard them say it in my stories before, they sort of I don't want to say reject the science.

I don't want to label them a science denier.

But you believe in a certain proven science, as do your colleagues.

What are the challenges when dealing with all this, particularly with regards to the environment and climate change?

Peter You know, I think the whole notion of how science sort of plays into making these really major policy decisions is troubling because it's not helping us as much as it should.

I think we all realize that when we talk about fake news that people are denying science.

But I in some sense, I think our institutions just haven't caught up to where society's at is.

So it's less of a you know, everybody uses fear mongering to promote their agenda, both liberals and conservatives.

So to me, it's just that we don't have the institutions to allow an ordinary citizen to gather information and be able to detect what is a totally unreliable and and ridiculous source and what is not and what is a, you know, a really reliable and authentic source.

We don't have the institutions to do that when there are only two networks or three networks.

You just watched, you know, Walter Cronkite believe.

Yeah.

Or something.

And so we don't have institutions to guide us through the information overload that science is.

And that's what I see.

The problem I actually think it's a it's a major source of you know, it's a major problem for society.

Peter, if there ever were a person I wanted to ask this next question to, it is you, because I really want to get your centrist opinion on all of this.

Very fair, unbiased opinion.

The Aquarium of the Pacific, you're Aquarium has I mean, it's phenomenal.

Nearly two and a half million followers on Tik Tok.

That's insane.

Especially how the aquarium is able to use social media to teach people about science and the environment, not just here in the US, really all over the world.

Yet With that said, as you know, big tech is basically censoring anyone they disagree with, So they agree with your science and they certainly want to hear about all your science.

But in this new era of cancel culture, political correctness, for example, I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

I am making no judgment.

However, if you approve of President Trump, you're censored.

It's done.

You're you're off social media.

If you question the science of COVID, you're canceled.

If you even dare have a question or a question, a vaccine, social media cancels you.

Yes, this is an amazing tool for the aquarium, gets your message out.

How do you walk again, another fine line when social media does so much good, but it also is quelling the voices, particularly conservative voices, when they want to be here.

What's your opinion about all this, Peter?

Well, one person's cancel culture is another person's accountability culture, so that it's you know, I don't think the problem actually is tech in this.

I think the problem is the lack of conversation that we can't talk to anybody who thinks differently than us.

And, you know, that's what I think I like to do at the aquarium.

If I worry about tech, it's the surveillance culture of tech that they're horrified me.

That's what people should be going after him for.

The fact that they gather all this information in a nontransparent way to manipulate your behavior.

And they have it.

And we don't.

So that's not where I wouldn't go after tech for the cancel culture.

I would go after society for not being able to have institutions and venues for real conversations.

Why aren't we having those real conversations, Peter?

Why can't liberals, why can't conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, corporate America, mainstream?

You say, why can't we be in this together and find solutions and just talk to each other, not talk over each other, just talk to each other?

Well, I think there I suppose that is partly social media is a problem because social media to go allows us to construct our conversation circle and control it to such an extent.

We're only talking to people that are like us.

You can't walk into a bar and sit down and have that control.

You can't go to a ballgame and have that control with respect to who's sitting next to you and you're going to talk to.

But if all our conversations are digital, you can control who you're talking to.

So get out in the real world or talk to somebody.

Talk to a stranger.

Well, I am talking to you and it is greatly appreciated.

Dr. Peter Cory, but thank you so much for a great discussion.

Thank you, David.

And now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions and comments or story ideas so we can hear from you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on a PBS mobile app for All Things sustainable.

Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.