>> Every decade now is warmer than the decade before, and we -- you know, we're seeing the damage pile up.

It's not -- You know, this is not a secret here.

♪♪ >> Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

If the pandemic is the global crisis of the moment, today we're discussing what has been called the crisis of our lifetimes -- climate change.

How urgent is the situation, and what is actually being done about it this year, in the United States and around the world?

I'll ask The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert, who has been covering climate change for decades.

And later, it's puppets.

>> This is Supreme Leader of North Korea.

I thought you might want to know what I have in mind for my nuclear weapons.

>> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... And by... ♪♪ >> The summer of 1969.

There's a reason it launched so many songs and books and TV shows.

It was one of the most eventful periods in modern U.S. history.

Woodstock, The Stonewall riots, we landed on the Moon.

Or did we?

No, we're not going there.

So much of how we live today stems from those iconic moments, and it's fitting that today's story begins there, as well.

That same summer, a fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, set an entire movement ablaze.

>> It was kind of unusual when somebody would yell fire and tell you to run away from the river.

>> One of Time magazine's August issues that year featured the story along with dramatic images of smoke and flames ripping across the river.

Turns out the pictures were actually from another fire in 1952.

There had already been dozens of them in industrial waterways across the country.

But the article became the spark the nation needed to finally take conservation seriously.

It led to the Clean Water Act, creation of the EPA, and the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.

We've learned a lot in 50 years, and the environmental movement has grown far beyond cleaning the rivers and streams to tackling the global problems of carbon emissions and temperatures that continue to climb.

The latest climate report from the United Nations has been called a red alert.

Record levels of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, the hottest decade in history, rapidly melting Arctic ice, and species rapidly disappearing from the planet.

>> You have run out of excuses, and we are running out of time.

>> Citizens of the world agree.

In a survey of more than a million people across 50 countries during the pandemic, 64% said climate change is a global emergency.

Now comes the hard part -- politics.

President Biden made good on his promise to bring the United States back into the Paris climate agreement.

And the White House is hosting a summit on Earth Day, gathering dozens of world leaders.

It will be the most important diplomatic effort on the global stage of President Biden to date.

But all eyes will really be on four nations, the top carbon emitters in the world -- China, the United States, India, and Russia.

The White House has signaled a desire to lead on goals of eliminating carbon emissions -- net zero, as it's called -- by 2050.

But there will be roadblocks in Congress and resistance from Beijing.

And in a G-zero world, does anybody really cooperate anymore?

Is net zero truly attainable?

And how can nations come together to get there when they've been so far apart for so long?

My guest today, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Elizabeth Kolbert.

Her new book, "Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future," examines ways to turn the crisis around before it's too late.

Elizabeth Kolbert, thanks so much for joining me today.

>> Oh, thanks for having me.

>> So, I want to get to all of the solutions and some of the insane ones that you're talking about in your book.

But before I do, turning to where we are today, I saw the United Nations put out a report just in February that said that we are nowhere close to achieving the climate goals that we would need to be on a 1.5 or even 2 centigrade degree trajectory for global warming.

It was a red alert, from their perspective.

In your words, how screwed are we?

>> [ Chuckles ] Pretty, pretty screwed.

Every year, basically, the U.N. puts out a report that's the emissions gap report, which is the gap between the trajectory we're on and the trajectory we ought to be on.

And, unfortunately, every year, the gap is quite large.

>> Biggest change, of course, from the Trump to the Biden administration has been on climate.

We are now looking at trillions of dollars of infrastructure in a new proposal.

But a lot of that is also about renewables.

It's also about climate.

How significant are the changes that you see in the United States right now?

>> I think the answer is, we don't know yet.

Biden has signed a slew of executive orders, including on his very first day in office, that could have a significant impact on emissions just through executive order.

He also, as you mentioned, has proposed a very large infrastructure plan that has a lot of different -- you know, tons of different moving parts.

Some of those are potentially very significant for climate, but we haven't seen whether those are going to pass.

So we really just don't know at this point.

But as you say, it's certainly a very significant change in the rhetoric coming out of the administration.

>> Do you think that the change in trajectory in the United States, have we passed the tipping point, in terms of awareness and momentum, that we are we are transitioning out of fossil fuels, or is it way too early to say that?

>> I don't in any way want to minimize that we're at some kind of watershed.

Whether we're really at an inflection point where emissions are going to start not just flatlining, which they have basically been flatlining in the U.S., but really going down at a very rapid rate, which is what we really need to see.

If we are, if the world has any hope of reaching those U.N. goals is very much an open question at this moment.

>> Do you think it's a mistake that so many of the numbers that we talk about, whether it's sea-level rise or whether it is the increase in average temperatures that we're talking about frequently, a baseline of what happens by the year 2100, when a lot of -- most people won't be alive?

We have a hard enough time thinking about what we're doing tomorrow.

>> You know, we sat on our hands long enough so that 2100 is not actually that far away.

A kid born today should still be alive in 2100.

So, you know, the longer we sit here twiddling our thumbs the closer 2100 approaches.

But I do think you're right, that people tend to think, you know, a decade, maybe, at the most, in front of them.

Unfortunately, though, we could be talking in decadal terms.

Every decade now is warmer than the decade before.

And we -- you know, we're seeing the damage pile up.

It's not -- this is not a secret here.

We saw the tremendous wildfire season in California last fall, the hurricane season in the Gulf.

These are all connected to climate change.

And we're just going to keep seeing more of that.

It's much more difficult to pinpoint exactly what kind of climate-related disasters you're going to see, in that sense, than it is to say what the average global temperature is going to be in 2100, but the evidence is, unfortunately, all around us.

>> I wonder, when we talk about climate and we talk about countries that are so much poorer, that are being so much more affected by these trends and that haven't yet had their chance to industrialize, how do you tell them, "Actually, no, we need you to do much more of the belt-tightening?"

>> Well, I mean, you could say, you know, the good news, I suppose you could say is, is we're not saying that to them.

I mean, if we want to meet, for example, the target set by the U.N., the big changes have to occur in those parts of the world that are the big emitters.

I mean, that's actually how the math works.

The U.S. is the single biggest emitter, in a historical sense.

>> Correct.

>> It's the second-biggest emitter now on an annual basis, but it's still the biggest emitter in a historical sense.

And we have to show that there are different ways of developing.

If we can't do that, as the most technologically advanced country in the world, then, A, it's sort of sad, and B, then we probably are in a pretty desperate situation.

>> But China is going to be the largest economy in the world in short order.

They are already the largest carbon emitter by a significant factor, in terms of annual right now.

And, of course, they're still a poor country.

India is going to be the second largest emitter in relatively short order.

They're an incredibly poor country.

Brazil, responsible for so much of the forest cover in the world, clearcutting it now with reckless abandon.

But, you know, they're still a poor country, and we're not prepared to pay them very much to stop doing that.

So how much of this needs to be an equity conversation from the wealthy countries with the poorer countries in the world?

And do you think that that is actually something that the rich countries are in any way prepared to do?

>> Well, I think you're absolutely right that equity is an enormous issue in climate change, and that is absolutely the great -- one of the great challenges of trying to imagine a way through to 2100.

But the alternative is just throwing up your hands and saying, "Well, this is the way it's going to be.

It's going to be a hellscape for our kids in 2100, or our grandkids."

And I don't think that most Americans, to start with -- I can't really speak for people in other countries.

I don't think that they really want to say that.

So these are the challenges that we're going to have to try to think our way through.

There's no other option.

>> How much does it bother you?

How much time do you think about the fact that the two wealthiest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, are spending a lot more time actually thinking about outer space than they are about climate on the planet we're on?

>> Well, I think -- I think it's a missed opportunity, let's put it that way.

I mean, Jeff Bezos has recently, you know, handed out a lot, a lot of cash in what, for the environmental community, counts as a lot of cash.

But as you say, both of them are pushing.

And, you know, you can hear Elon Musk talk about how we're going to have to all live off Earth.

And many people have made the point that it would be extremely difficult even if we really devoted ourselves to it, and we're doing -- you know, we're doing as much as we can to make life difficult on planet Earth for ourselves.

But there's virtually nothing we can do to make it as difficult as life on Mars, where there's, among other things, no oxygen.

So why very smart and very wealthy men -- I'm afraid they're usually men -- think that, you know, this is the way to go.

You're gonna have to ask them.

>> You talk about a lot of exotic solutions for climate change, technologically, from geoengineering to genetic engineering of coral.

Give us a little bit of the range of where you see technologies playing the biggest role in how we think about responding to climate change today.

>> I think we could sort of group them into three baskets.

We have technologies to reduce emissions.

We have technologies to potentially actually remove carbon from the atmosphere.

That's another huge research project right now, "Are we gonna have technologies that actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere?"

And then, on the cutting-edge, more sci-fi, right now, we have the idea of geoengineering, of re-engineering the atmosphere to counteract the ways that we have re-engineered the atmosphere.

>> Since we're sort of moving into the realm of near-future and science fiction, I suspect -- I haven't asked you this, but I suspect you've read the book "Ministry of the Future," by Kim Stanley Robinson.

>> Yes.

Yes.

>> So, I just finished it about a month and a half ago.

And it's obviously very on point with your recent book in the sense that it starts, in addition to this mass-death event in India because the temperatures are unlivable for masses outside -- and they have started to geoengineer.

They have started to shoot all of these sulfur particles into the sky to try to reduce the global temperature because people have not done enough, people haven't moved fast enough.

And otherwise, they're just -- they're not gonna have a country, basically.

When you read that, how did it affect you?

>> Well, it was -- it was interesting.

I think it's a really interesting book.

In that book, as you say, India sort of single-handedly decides to geoengineer, to shoot reflective particles into the stratosphere, on a sort of short-term basis to alleviate suffering, massive suffering in the country.

I don't -- You know, science fiction has -- is a wonderful way to think things through.

I don't think that, from a geopolitical or even geophysical point of view, we should take that as the most realistic scenario.

How's that?

Geoengineering isn't something you do in your garage.

It's something that requires a fleet of airplanes that can reach the stratosphere.

If other countries didn't want India to do this, they wouldn't allow it to happen.

>> They'd be shot down.

They'd be stopped by the economic sanctions and all the rest.

But the interesting thing about this, and, again, you write about it in your book -- Bill Gates has been trying to do some research around it -- is that, of all of the engineering on a planetary scale, this is not only scientifically possible, but it's comparatively cheap.

Right?

I mean, you're talking about tens of billions of dollars.

You're not talking about trillions.

And basically you're replicating the impact of a massive volcano, in terms of bringing down temperatures with all sorts of knock-on effects that have never been scientifically modeled out.

When you think about the future of where we are heading, how likely do you think we are going to start grasping for solutions that are, let's say, very deeply suboptimal?

>> I think that's one of the great questions of our century.

And I -- you know, I don't have a crystal ball.

I think we're going to hear more and more conversation.

I guess -- I guess my crystal ball extends that far.

There was recently, just the other day, a report from the National Academies about a research agenda for geoengineering.

That sort of crossed a threshold that I think a lot of people, even just a few years ago, would not have thought the National Academies would do.

The leaders of that panel were very adamant and tried to make, as vigorously as possible, the point that this cannot substitute for emissions cuts.

Even if you were to go forward with some kind of geoengineering research agenda, you should not take your foot off the gas, in terms of emissions cuts, because -- >> Bad analogy, but yes, yes.

>> Yeah, sorry, sorry.

Excuse me.

Forgive me.

But I think that -- you know, I do think we're going to hear more and more conversations about it in both scientific and political circles.

And if we actually see a hundred million dollars worth of research, that's a huge step.

>> If you think about the fact that over the past 50 years, what have we been doing but geoengineering?

We've been pushing enormous amounts of growth by taking carbon out of the earth and shooting it into the atmosphere.

We haven't been doing it with intention or with strategy, but we've -- I mean, human beings' history on the planet has been a history of geoengineering.

Wouldn't it be reckless not to be spending an enormous amount of money researching how that can be done in a strategically useful way?

>> The fact that we have unwittingly geoengineered the planet puts us in an extremely awkward position.

And you can say -- one way to go is to say, "Well, we've unwittingly geoengineered the planet.

Let's try to think this through rationally, and can we come up with technologies like solar geoengineering to mitigate or counteract our own reckless geoengineering?"

Or you could say, "Would you trust this group that completely willy-nilly re-engineered the climate -- would you trust them to re-engineer it in a rational way, this group that can't even get its act together to cut emissions?

So I think both are pretty compelling arguments.

>> When you think about all of the new technologies that are being developed now, what are the ones that strike you as having most promise, most potential to be game-changers?

>> Well, I mean, they're not as -- you know, they're not nearly as sexy as, you know, shooting particulate matter into the stratosphere, but I think that there are technologies -- For example, how are we going to store energy?

We have a huge issue of renewables.

The renewables we have right now -- at least solar and wind -- that are intermittent sources.

We need lots and lots of energy storage if we're going to sort of keep the lights on at night or on days when there's -- when there's no wind.

So we need probably breakthroughs in battery storage.

There's a question of are we going to get breakthroughs in nuclear power, safer nuclear power?

We're not building any nuclear now because, you know, it's very expensive, and we don't have anywhere to put all of our -- of the nuclear waste that we've already made.

Are we gonna get nuclear fusion?

You know, that has always been the energy source of the future and maybe always will be the energy source of the future.

But a breakthrough on that front would certainly be huge for climate change.

>> You know, you didn't mention carbon capture.

Is that because the scale -- it's too expensive, it seems just too out there right now?

>> Well, I mean, carbon capture is something that we know how to do.

It's not, you know -- It's not -- It doesn't even require tremendous breakthroughs.

It just requires a lot of energy, and it requires a huge infrastructure.

And so if you are saying, "Well, we're gonna just keep burning fossil fuels, then you capture the carbon," then you need a carbon-capturing infrastructure that's on the scale of your fossil-fuel-burning infrastructure.

And that's just humongous.

>> Whenever I look at the range of what's responsible for putting carbon into the atmosphere, I'm always struck by how little of it is individual consumption directly and how much of it is about industry and infrastructure and the rest.

How much do you think it really matters for the average person to be thinking carbon footprint as opposed to be thinking about, we just need our government and our companies to be looking very, very different?

>> Well, I think that's a big sort of debate right now in environmental circles.

I guess my answer would be, you know, both are true.

If we're going to make big changes in our emissions, it is going to require, I think, changes in the way we live.

We all have to take our share of that infrastructure, as it were.

If you were doing carbon accounting, yes, there are some companies and corporations that are huge emitters, but we all then go and burn the gasoline or whatever that ExxonMobil is refining.

So we all have to move -- be moving in the same direction here.

But, certainly, if you ask me, you know, "What is your number-one priority?

What would you do to try to move this battleship in a new direction?"

it requires public-policy levers and it requires, unfortunately, probably -- I don't see any way around it, though I would be willing to be convinced otherwise -- some pretty serious legislation.

And that brings us back to the question of the Biden administration and a very evenly divided Senate.

Are we going to be able to see any legislative action, meaningful legislative action on climate change?

>> Yeah, yeah.

Obviously, it's challenging in a 50/50 situation where West Virginia, as the most powerful senator on the Democratic side, I get you.

Tell me, of all the things that you think about your own life personally, since you say we all have to do more, what's the thing that you're doing right now that you really should stop if -- to feel more personally responsible on, in terms of our our future on this planet?

>> Well, I mean, if I look at my own sort of -- you know, my own carbon footprint as a journalist, I travel a lot.

I fly a lot.

And if I were -- you know, if everyone did that, the world would be in even worse shape than it is now.

So I think that that is something that I think about a lot.

You know, do I -- Every trip I take to report -- most of them are for reporting.

But that is probably one area of my life where it's very difficult to reduce the emissions from those flights.

It's impossible for me to do that.

I would have to not take them.

>> Elizabeth Kolbert, thank you so much for joining me.

>> Oh, thanks for having me.

>> And now to "Puppet Regime," where after four years of beautiful letters to then-President Trump, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is having trouble striking up his relationship with President Biden.

Roll that tape!

>> I'm sending a clear message to the world -- America is back.

>> America is back?

Ha!

My ass.

I will show this guy.

[ Ringing ] >> Hi, there, it's Smokin' Joe.

Leave a message, but no malarkey.

[ Beeps ] >> This is Supreme Leader of North Korea.

I thought you might want to know what I have in mind for my nuclear weapons.

I will be waiting for your call.

[ Laughing ] ♪♪ This clown wants to ghost me?

I'll show him ghost.

[ Ringing ] >> Guys, guys, quiet.

I think it's him again.

Shh!

[ Beeps ] >> Hello?

Joe?

I know you are there, Joe.

I know you are listening.

Pick up the phone, or I will... say very, very mean things about you.

>> [ Laughs ] >> Hello?

Hello?

Joe?

Joe?

So what did you think of "WandaVision"?

>> Wanda?

Who's Wanda?

Do we have a Wanda on staff?

>> That's it!

I have not been treated with such disrespect by an American president in at least three years.

I'm calling the one American dotard who truly sees and loves me.

[ Cellphone rings ] >> Hello?

>> Oh, Donald.

How are you?

>> Sorry.

New phone.

Who's this?

>> What?!

>> ♪ "Puppet Regime" >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see and you care about the planet, and of course you do, what's the best way to show it?

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... And by...