Episode Notes
Episode summary
Guest info and links
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The guest Jason Sauer can be found on twitter @jasonrsauer. He is involved with another podcast, Future Cities, that you can find wherever you listen to podcasts.
The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Transcript
Margaret
Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the times. I’m your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or their pronouns. And this week I’m talking to Jason about what is involved in building resilient cities, like not just resilient homesteads or whatever, but like what—what are the actual sort of engineering steps that cities can and usually aren’t taking to mitigate the effects of climate change? And we talk a lot more about other things besides and his take on how climate change is going and what we might do about it or not do about it. And I think you’ll get a lot out of it. I really enjoyed this conversation. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And here’s a jingle from another show on the network. Hi, could you introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then a little bit of your background in what we’re going to be talking about today?
Jason
Sure, so my name is Jason Sauer, pronouns he/him, although I’m not picky, and I—my background is in—it’s like, somewhere between climate change and, like, adaptation research is how I would describe it. So most of my work is focused on adapting cities to extreme weather events, either in the present day context, or looking at the future of the climate for the region. And figuring out how—what we need to change and how best to change it in order to keep places livable.
Margaret
And I’m so excited to ask you about all that stuff. Because so much of what people talk about preparedness or even, like, mitigation kind of forgets this level of scale. Either people talk about, like, saving the world, like stopping climate change, which I do in the past. Or people talk about, like, how to, you know, either you have your, like, bunker mentality people who are like, oh I’m just gonna hold up the food, or you have even the people who are like, you know, well, me and my 10 friends on the farm are going to somehow ride it all out. And I think that there isn’t enough that talks about this level that you’re talking about on this sort of, like, community or city-wide level. And so, I guess, I think my main question is like, what do you resilient cities look like? How do we build resilient cities?
Jason
So, I mean, good question. It’s somewhat like a temporal issue, like thinking about, are we looking for resilient cities for now, given the present conditions, which we’re still not great at managing? Are we looking at it for like 20 years in the future? Are we looking at it, you know, in the more deep, uncertain—or deeply uncertain—like, you know, by 2080 2100, whatever, or even beyond, although I’ve never really heard anyone seriously engage anything sort of growth beyond like 2080. I don’t know why that’s the limit, but that is the limit. So I actually had to pull up the academic definition of resilience. That’s probably that I think it’s probably the most accurate version of what myself and my colleagues are kind of looking at. And since this is behind a paywall anyway, I figured it might be kind of interesting to even bring up what the academic definition is, in this context. And so this comes from a paper by one of my colleagues here at Arizona State University where I’m a PhD candidate, hopefully soon a doctor but we’ll see. So one of my colleagues Sarah Miro and two other authors, Joshua Newell and Melissa Stoltz, wrote this paper on defining urban resilience in particular. So resilience in the city in urban context. And so, the specific definition they use is, like, urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system and all its constituents socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity. There’s a lot of, I don’t know, generations of resilience thinking that have kind of impact into that sort of definition. But it’s kind of just looking at making cities—or making it so that the people in cities and the systems in cities, once impacted by like an extreme weather event or from climate change, can respond appropriately in terms of, like, the type of response and then also, like, the amount of time it takes for that response to sort of happen. And then also to allow for sort of this concept of, like, transformative change of, like, you can build a city that is relatively resilient now, but it’s not necessarily going to be resilient in the future. So you need to, when you’re building these systems, allow for the possibility of the thinking to change or for climate change, you know, the effects to become more fully realized and be like, okay, so we did not plan for the sort of contingency, we need to be able to adapt to that, basically. And so every city, it looks different, you know. So I live here in Phoenix, Arizona. Most of my research isn’t focused here but, I mean, this is a desert city. And we are kind of juggling the dual problems of extreme heat in the summer and, of course, like major water limitations, which are increasingly becoming a problem. And so resilience here is largely focused on basically counteracting, like, the, the extreme heats that we’re facing. I mean, it gets up to like 120 degrees a couple days, a year, sometimes, and what does it—actually, I can give some quick stats on that.
Margaret
Yeah.
Jason
I think we are currently over 100 days a year where we have have a maximum temperature of above 100 degrees, and then by, like, 2050, 2060, something like that, it’s gonna be 180 days a year of over 100 degrees. Which is like, I mean, we’re already at 100 now, so I guess it’s not like that on the thinkable. But, you know, it’s really tough to imagine, like, what that’s going to be like. And then of course, like, you know, average temperature is going to rise, but then also potentially the extreme temperatures are going to rise. So the city is really concerned about keeping this place viable in many different respects, given our current extreme heat, but then also the projections of extreme future heat. And so, like, you know, for example, I think the city of Phoenix is planning on increasing its tree canopy cover, you know, to like, provide increased shade, particularly in like critical areas, by which I mean, like, public transportation network—so like, you know, there’s not a whole lot of structures for shade out here. And so, you know, like, a job of someone like me working in resilience would be, like, okay, so you want to increase shade, like, here’s where you need to do it. And that’s along like public transportation networks, things like that, where people are relatively exposed to, like, this extreme heat and sunlight during the worst months. And you can either do that through like built structures, or you can do it through tree shade. And if the city of Phoenix wants to pursue tree shade, then they also need to balance that with their, like, water needs. So more trees means more water. And so then you start getting into this discussion about, like, well, which trees provide the most shade and the least amount of water? You know, this is the sort of, like, nuanced discussion that the city and people in the academy are kind of having about this sort of issue.
Margaret
This is kind of an aside, but if you read The Water Knife, this novel about Phoenix?
Jason
It’s on my shelf. Yeah, the author, what is it, Paolo Bacigalupi, I think?
Margaret
I don’t know how to pronounce his last name, unfortunately. Yeah. So I— what was his previous one? He had this one that was like— The Wind Up Girl.
Jason
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, that was a dodge of saying no, I haven’t read it. It’s on my shelf. I haven’t actually looked at it.
Margaret
Okay, well, there’s a book in it that it references all the time. It’s about Phoenix becoming unlivable due to heat. And I mean, it’s also about like assassins and like water mafias and stuff, right? But it’s, it’s about a society collapsing because of lack of water. And the people who go around and basically, like, enforce water law and things like that. But there’s a book in it that everyone references called Cadillac Desert.
Jason
Yes, yeah. Okay.
Margaret
So I don’t know anything about this book. But all of the characters in this other book are obsessed with this book, Cadillac Desert, basically being like, this is the writing on the wall. This is how we all should have known that Phoenix needs to be abandoned.
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
But your job is to make sure that people don’t have to abandon Phoenix. Well, I’m—yeah, I mean, I have I have more complicated feelings on that, you know, like, there’s a term in like resilience and resiliency like adjacent fields called “managed retreats.” And that’s like also just an accepted term in a lot of, like, disaster management and so forth. Like, I think it’s mostly surrounding. I mean, I think, I don’t remember exactly where the origins are. But I used to see it mostly applied to like flooding from, like, rivers that are getting, like, extremely flooded because of weird precipitation, and because of processes of development and urbanization or whatever. But you just have, like, these homes that are too close to the rivers that are like behaving pretty erratically or flooding more often than the city, you know, wants to provide aid for. And so they’re just like, we got to move these people back away from the river. But I mean, it’s also something that’s happening in coastal areas like Miami, where you have people trying to move a little farther back onto higher elevation. But in a place like Phoenix where you just, it’s hot everywhere, you know. Like, there’s parts of the city that are hotter than others, and we have some controls over it. But yeah, I mean, it’s tough to really figure out what the long-term plan is here. And water being, you know, correctly identified in those books as being such a major limiting factor here. I mean, what are we—what’s the long-term plan? Like, I’ve read strategies that include canal systems from like the Mississippi, you know. Like this—which would be a scale of engineering and water delivery, that would just be, you know, enormous. We already get water from the southern Colorado River, which we shouldn’t be getting water from, in terms of its natural flow. But, you know, we’re doing that anyway. Right.
Jason
Yeah. So I guess, short-term I’m certainly focused on that. But, you know, I’m sort of agnostic as to whether or not it’s going to keep people here or keep things viable. But it’s just like, well, what are the problems that we have? What can we do about, you know, this situation, given our current limitations and so forth, and trying to square the circle, basically.
Margaret
My own, um, before I lived—I moved to a house in the mountains. But before that, I was living in a cabin in the woods. And one of the main reasons that we all moved off of the property that we were living on is that we are next to this creek. And it was 100-year floodplain. And it became a five times a year floodplain. We’d have engineers come out and they’d be like, well, it’s not supposed to do this. And then we’d be like, what do we do? And they’re like, well, it’s just gonna get worse. Climate change is just going to make it worse. And, basically, I mean, I had one of the only houses that was physically safe from it up on the up on the hill but then, like, you know, my driveway, and, you know, my access in and out would be waist-deep and water sometimes, and all kinds of stuff coming down the creek that turns into this massive river several times a year. That’s not supposed to. So I the managed retreat, that’s what, you know, 10 of us just did so. Yeah, I mean, it can happen at the individual scale, it can happen at like the city planning scale, you know, there’s there’s a bunch of different ways. “Coerced retreat,” you know, maybe another description. I don’t know that that exists in like the literature but, you know, like, there’s good argumentation for moving because it’s physically becoming too difficult to live in this area. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, I’m not from Phoenix, I’m originally from, like, the—I’m from a suburb of Kansas City, Johnson County, which is like a, you know, wealthy, middle class neighborhood. So I’m, you know, not even from this area, I came here for graduate school. And I mostly came here for graduate school because there was an opportunity to work abroad in southern Chile. So, you know, my relationship with Phoenix is like, yeah, I don’t know what you’re gonna do here. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to be here under normal circumstances, I’ve come to like it, you know, in some ways, and can certainly, you know, empathize with my neighbors and so forth down here. But my stance on Phoenix is a little more complicated because just like, yeah, you’ve got some problems. And I don’t know what to tell you about 120 degree weather and, like, the number of 100 degree days that are increasing, and you’re—this place has already like an engineering, like, it’s only possible because of extreme hydrological engineering. And now there’s no additional water sources to pull from so, you know, what are you—what are you really trying to do here? Yeah, no, there’s like a—there’s like moral questions. I don’t quite know how to untangle about like, you know, I’m not trying to judge anyone, but I don’t think I would move to Phoenix. I don’t think I would move to a city that probably certainly shouldn’t exist at the scale that it’s at currently. But I, you know, I understand that—but that’s—then you get into this idea of, like, why everyone has different reasons to be different places. And it’s really easy to be like, oh, you can’t go do that. And you’re like, well, I’m from here, or this is where the school is that I need to go access or, you know, there’s a million reasons why someone may need to go somewhere, so. Yeah, I mean, the majority of people moving here is probably just because real estate in California got too expensive and cost of living in Phoenix which is also like a right to work state, you know, so there’s cheap and unprotected labor here. You know, there’s a lot of less noble reasons or less understandable reasons for, like, why the city is growing. And you look at how like water usage is, you know—currently, what water usage looks like here on the grounds. And there’s definitely, you know, like, some movements toward like, get all the grass out of your lawn, like, plant species—it’s called xeroscaping here, where you actually just like plant cacti and brittle bush and, you know, various species that are actually native to the region, or do really well with very little or no water input and can handle the heat. But, I mean, there’s pools, and fountains, and golf courses, and all these other things where you’re like, yeah, I mean, I don’t know how long this is gonna go. And there’s a lot of people who live here because they can golf, like, year round. So, you know, is that the worst thing to get rid of? No. So resiliency means get rid of the golf course. Well, you know, this—if I say yes to that I can guarantee I won’t get a job here. Okay. Okay, so—but to move away from from heat stuff, some of your work has been around flooding, right, which obviously is an interest of mine, for some strange reason. It’s absolutely part of why I picked a house on the top of the hill. Like, I bought a house on top of a mountain, because I’m like, no, I’m good. This is where—Maybe, I mean, I’m sure there’s all kinds of other problems like wind or something that I just—and there’s like no soil here, it’s all rock. There’s a reason it was cheap, you know. But so, some of your work, let’s see, you talk about how you use natural landscape features to make cities more resilient to flooding. I’m really interested in that, like, what does that look like? How do—like, what are the practical steps that communities and cities are taking to protect themselves from climate change?
Jason
Yeah. And I’m glad that you kind of divided that into two potential sources for that. There’s, you know, like individual preparation, and then there’s like city-wide, you know, or city-sponsored preparation. And so there’s been a movement in the, like, engineering and urban planning spheres toward what’s known as green infrastructure. And there’s a bunch of different terms for it. But green infrastructure is basically, like, either designed, adapted, or incorporated natural landscape features, or natural-esque landscape features that can do many of the same jobs that more traditional, like, constructed infrastructure would do. Plus, it looks nice and provides habitat and potentially has all these other sort of, like, co-benefits to it that, you know—like, the LA canal is kind of like a good example of a traditional infrastructure sort of approach toward dealing with flooding issues. And so it’s this huge canal where you can dump all this water, and it moves water through the system really quickly. But of course, it’s like this giant chunk of concrete that’s dry most of the year and, number one, it’s not aesthetically that attractive. Number two, it’s also like a major source of heat, you kind of get all this concrete in urban areas and it absorbs sunlight during the day, admits it at night, and contributes to, I mean, high heat during the day, but especially heats a major issue in cities across the country because of night temperatures in particular have increased. And it’s basically because you have all this, you know, concrete infrastructure that’s free radiating the heat, you know, for hours and hours and hours. So nights just become like more uncomfortable, and there’s a lot of morbidity and mortality stuff associated with that. But then, like here in Phoenix, and there’s a funny example, there’s this area called Indian Bend Wash. And so something like Scottsdale to Tempe was having like major flooding issues, particularly during the monsoon season. Yeah, we get monsoons out here that come up from like the Sea of Cortez or the Gulf of Mexico. And so during the summer months, which is when we get the majority of our rainfall, it just comes in these like huge sheets and these, like, you know, burst events of extreme precipitation that totally overwhelm the ability of, like, soils to allow for infiltration and for the, like, drainage system at the city to deal with it. And so they were like, we got to put this water somewhere and it’s kind of got to be a zone that can regularly flood or whatever. And the Scottsdale-ites, you know, who have some amount of wealth and therefore power in the city were just like, no, we’re not going to build a canal like LA. It’s really ugly and unattractive. And so designers came back with this idea called Indian Bend Wash which is this sort of multi-use, like, greenway, I think is how it be described. So it’s like in parts it’s like a golf course, but then in other parts it’s just, like, straight up a park. And, like, place where you can take your dogs, do picnics or whatever. And then just, you know, for a couple of weeks out of the year, it’s flooded. That’s just how it is. And but at least it’s like multi-use The community really likes it. And it’s green, you know, which is nice in a sort of desert city. I’m holding any judgment on green versus not green out here, of course, but yeah.
Margaret
So it’s gonna keep it watered when it’s not monsoon season.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. And so that’s kind of an example of more of an engineered or sort of created green infrastructure practice, but at least it provides aesthetic, you know, aspects to it that the sort of other infrastructure doesn’t. I primarily work on like wetlands and other things that are—there’s like a whole bunch of other structures designed to deal with flooding that also potentially increase, like, biodiversity in cities, that can remove pollutants through natural processes, provide habitats, and things like that. So the majority of my research is actually focused on wetlands in particular, and I was looking at this city in southern Chile that has just—they had an earthquake in 1960. It’s the greatest magnitude earthquake ever recorded. The city is called Valdivia, if anyone wants to look it up. And so like portions of the city just sunk, like, several meters, I think like 10 meters in some portions. And so just—and, like, they’re on the coast, they get like 98 inches of rain per year. They’re at like the confluence of these like three rivers. So those things just filled up with water and became this wetland system. And so instead of just like paving over the wetlands and pretending like everything was going to be normal forever after that, once they rebuild, they just decided to keep the wetlands around in most cases. There’s been some wetland loss, but not a whole lot. And it actually serves as a natural drainage system for the city. So a lot of just, like, the urban areas, and the suburban areas drain into these wetlands. And the wetlands have definitely been affected by it. And we’re still studying, like, the effects of doing something like that to a wetland system. But they certainly provide a lot more biodiversity and kind of keep this sort of endangered habitat, a wetlands, alive in the city. So I’ve studied the utility of constructed and natural wetlands and modified wetlands toward increasing flood resilience and cities, basically.
Margaret
And it works.
Jason
Yeah, yeah. They’re wetlands work incredibly well. I mean, probably in part because they’re not engineered. So like, if you have a city that’s, like, thinking about building a wetland or something like that, then they have a budget, and they—and the budget is going to require some, like, design constraints and stuff like that. But these like natural wetlands are just, you know, whatever size they were naturally. And they themselves, like, just don’t really flood under even like 100-year return period storm event, which is just like a storm that’s so large that you only get one of them, like, once every 100 years or something like that. And they work great. And the wetlands are like part of the urban identity as well. Like they support a lot of charismatic species, like swans and these like particular kinds of birds. Theoretically they support otters, but I’ve never seen an otter like that far into the city. Maybe they exist. I don’t know. But, yeah, so they do all these things that like traditional infrastructure that we, you know, started doing since, like, the 1940s, just doesn’t do well at all.
Margaret
I mean, it’s funny because it’s like, there’s a move within scientific fictions—I have to think about everything point of view of fiction—but there’s like a movement within science fiction right now to move towards, like, solar punk, and towards these ideas of—I guess, I would say that, like, in many ways, science fiction got everything backwards and wrong, right? It was imagined these, like, positive societies where we, like, control everything.
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
But it sounds like from what you’re saying, and from everything else I’ve, like, read across things, the secret is to instead, like, integrate the things that we make into the natural systems, rather than, like, go out and like recreate all of the systems ourselves.
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
But then it does lead to the logical conclusion that the best way to be resilient against climate change is to not have already destroyed everything.
Jason
Yeah, and cities definitely struggle with that.
Margaret
Yeah. Because most have already destroyed everything.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, particularly with wetlands too. I—the estimate keeps changing, so forgive me, you know, I think it’s like safe to say we’ve destroyed like 70% of wetlands in the US since, like, the mid-1800s. And those are industrial processes, those are agricultural processes, which are all, you know, ultimately, you know, issues of urbanization, and meeting urban needs and so forth—in a lot of cases, not necessarily all of them. But yeah, I mean, so like, you’re telling like a city, hey, just have some wetlands, you know. Like, historically it’s like, you mean the thing that they drained in order to, like, build the city in the first place? Like, that’s? And it’s just kind of silly being like, well, step one is don’t do everything you’ve done for the past, like, 150 years and you’re gonna be spending a lot of money reversing that, actually.
Margaret
Yeah.
Jason
Yeah, there’s a concept in infrastructure called, like, safe to fail. And I don’t want to, like, get too much into it, because I don’t have the definition on hand for me, but it’s basically the idea of, like, this sort of, like command to control concept of like infrastructure and, like, perfect knowledge and so forth, just doesn’t work. It’s not true in the present day, there’s always, like, you know, freak storm events and things like that. But it’s certainly not going to be true in the future where the climate is changing and models are so uncertain about it. So the best thing you can do is allow for a lot of flexibility with your design, and to figure out, you know, like, areas where, like, this sort of like quote/unquote failure, or like flooding in particular, like with Indian Bend Wash, is totally acceptable. Like society’s just like, yeah, you can’t use that area a couple of times a week, but like, no one’s really being impacted by it in any sort of, like, major way. You’re just, like, yeah, that’s just, that’s just how it goes.
Margaret
So is there, like, because this—this concept really excites me, right, because like a lot of my, you know, political understanding, a lot of my understanding philosophically and all these other ways, is based on this idea that, like, trying to have absolute control as a losing game, and probably one that we should just admit we’re losing, and instead find ways to, like—I’m going to use words that have scientific meaningss that I’m not using correctly—more chaotically. Like, accept that all of this natural, organic, or chaotic processes are going to happen, and take those into account in our engineering, like, in how we build cities and things like that. For me, this also applies, like, socially. Like recognizing that we can never have a system of complete control of people, and instead—so it’s not, like, let everyone go do whatever they want, therefore. But instead this, like, way of engineering, or structuring things, that takes that into account is, like, something that I’m very excited about. So I’m really excited about this the safe to fail concept, then.
Jason
Yeah, it’s something that’s definitely taking hold in engineering, and actually seems to be getting through to a lot of design people. So engineers—or at least in the world of academia—certainly get the idea of it. And you can get—you can convince cities also to adopt it, but it’s sometimes an uphill struggle. And then also you just have, like, competing construction interests, like maybe there’s been a design firm or something like that, that hasn’t adopted it, but like gets the majority of contracts in a city or something like that, that they’ve already got a relationship with. So there’s like some amount of inertia on that point. But it certainly has hold within academia and research, and my experience working with some cities has been, they’re certainly open to it and thinking about it more. Because they’re certainly paying a lot for disaster relief and disaster, like, repairs and so forth every year, and they’re, frankly, you know, like desperate to lower that part of their budget. So, you know.
Margaret
Yeah. So besides planting trees for heat and increasing wetlands for flooding, what are other simple steps? “These five simple tricks to make your city immune to climate change!” Like, what else are people doing or thinking about to respond to crisis?
Jason
So like, I’m trying to think of how to answer this question. So there’s—like, I could go into, like, other engineering structures and so forth that we’re kind of using to do a lot of this sort of management, like, more locally and through like natural systems—like bioswales, I don’t don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it.
Margaret
So a swale is like a thing that moves water in a field, right?
Jason
Yeah. And so, like, a bioswale, like an urban area it’s just, like, so you have water that’s on the street or whatever, and then you just kind of like divert it to the side area, basically, that’s usually like soil and some plants and maybe there’s a tree in there too. And the soils and the plants and so forth filter the nutrients out of that storm water before it hits—by nutrients I mean pollutants too—I come from a background where everything is like a nutrient, not necessarily like a pollutants—but I mean, stuff like nitrogen—
Margaret
That’s kind of awesome.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I can maybe go into that in a second. But like, so you have all these things that are flowing off of yards and off streets. And if you try to treat that before it gets to the water system, or like the canals, or whatever that you’re using to evacuate water from the city, that’s a lot of stuff to have to filter out. And so, but if you build these things kind of around the city, these like bioswales, they do a lot of the filtering, like, on site. And so, you know, over time, they sequester a lot of like nitrogen, phosphorus, organic carbons, whatever, heavy metals too also can get filtered out of that. And then, you know, like, I don’t know, I don’t know what the repair system is like for that. But I mean, you just swap those soils out eventually, like, because bacteria and so forth can treat some of that locally. And plants can also, you know, use some of that locally, too. But then you just have like soils or something like that, that you’re kind of like swapping out because maybe they’re too heavy in metal support the plant life or something like that. But that ends up being like a cheaper and sort of, like, more innovative solution then, you know, send it all to a central processing plant, and then spend all this money like filtering out through chemical and mechanical processes. Yeah. And then also, you get some like green stuff in your neighborhood. In terms of, like, things that individuals are doing, a lot of it is just, like, swapping out—I mean, like, here in Phoenix, I talked about the sort of xeroscaping process by which people are replacing, like their grass lawns, you know, which they were used to in the, you know, like, northern Michigan or something like that, you know, wherever they move to escape the cold that was, you know, the reason they left in the first place, but they still want some of, like, the feel of where they lived, they’ll plant grass or whatever. And then, you know, there are now—there’s movements across the city, at least in the less extremely wealthy places to do this sort of xeroscaping process where you take out your lawns and replace it with, like, either like gravel or something like that and then plants, like, naturally come up through that, or I mean, just literally leave it as the normal dirt surface here—that promotes like, infiltration locally as well, dirt ends up being, you know, or at least the natural soil here—I should use proper terms—ends up, you know, allowing a lot of infiltration that would otherwise just like go to runoff or things like that, basically, are what people are kind of doing locally. And but, I mean, a lot of these issues, like flooding in particular, is—it’s like a city-wide sort of issue. And a lot of it just has to be treated kind of in a centralized way because there’s, they own most of the substances—I mean, you know, there’s buildings and roofs and stuff like that, that cause runoff, and, you know, houses are on top of soil. And so, because they’re on top of soil, they’re blocking infiltration that would naturally happen in the region. So homes are contributors to flooding in cities, but, you know, there’s not much you can do about that.
Margaret
Are there like ways to, like, encourage infiltration into the soil? Like, I’m imagining little like, little holes you dig, like, almost like that holes or something to, like, allow more percolation or something?
Jason
You know, I’ve never actually thought about, like, local retention, you know, like, if we just built divots in everyone’s like front yard for, like, you know, like a small pond that’s dry most of the year, I wonder how much that would actually do it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a study that’s even considered that. That would be interesting as like a thought experiments. And I’m sure, you know, like a modeling experiment.
Margaret
Well, thank me in the acknowledgments when this study—
Jason
Yeah yeah. Green roofs are kind of another way that this stuff is being retained and dealt with locally. And that also has impacts on, like, the amount of heat that your home absorbs from the sun. And so that’s, you know, if you own your house, or if you have like a tenants association with enough power to, like, pressure your building owner to install these sorts of things, those are certainly things that will benefit the flood risk in your city and also potentially deal with heat too. But the majority of places that are contributing to, like, extreme heat and flooding, it’s like parking lots, roads, all this sort of like hard infrastructure that businesses and development practices and cities themselves have to kind of manage. So the pressure ends up being with them in a lot of ways.
Margaret
I mean, that makes sense. Like, that’s like one of—I feel like the current sort of generation of, like, people maybe under 40 or so, like, one of the things we’re railing against—I say as someone who’s barely under 40—is this idea that we were told we could stop climate change by like changing our lightbulbs while, you know, while being forced into car culture and while watching the US military, like, pollute more than anyone and, you know. So it—I get excited about individuals—they’re not even like solutions, right—but like individual approaches to like mitigate certain effects?
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
But I think you’re right that, like, the larger infrastructure is something that needs to be controlled in a way that actually is useful for mitigating climate change.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, I’m with you. I’ve also—we’re probably same generation—so I, like, I just grew up with the whole idea and, like, the, like, the needs for, like, personal lifestyle change and so forth, in order to effect these sorts of, like, change. And of course, you know, like, I’ve been doing this for, you know, since I was like 17 or 18. And so I’ve got a lot of years into this sort of individual, like, behavioral change and, you know, emissions are up, like, what do you—what else am I supposed to do at this point, you know. I ride my bike most places but, like, there’s got to be this sort of, like, systematic sort of change to it. And like, I say that but I’m also—so I’m also a vegan and so, like, my—
Margaret
Me too.
Jason
Oh, cool. My general thought with it is just like, I know it’s not a systemic change, but like, the amount of suffering that I’m causing through my actions is less, you know, as a result of it. And ultimately that is important to me, at least for, like, living with myself, you know.
Margaret
Yeah, totally.
Jason
Like, maybe it’s not having this sort of large structural change. But also, you know, theoretically I’m, you know, some extremely small decimal point of less meat consumption in the US. And that, you know, that’s—
Margaret
Which affects water. It’s not just an animal issue.
Jason
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there’s many, many, many reasons to go vegan for—but I mean, it’s the same thing with, like, carbon emissions and so forth too, where I still, even though I’m like, it’s a systemic thing. I’m like, well, yes. But, I mean, if I get in my car and drive, that’s carbon that’s in the atmosphere. And it’s going to be there, you know, as part of the collective problem to eventually have to deal with in the future. And so, like, I still feel like I got to do something, in spite of the fact that I don’t—I in no way think that I’m solving the problem.
Margaret
No, that’s such an interesting perspective towards it. Like, I think about it a lot of, like—like, I drive a giant pickup truck, and I defend it out of, well, I used to live in a cabin built myself, and, you know, I live really rurally. And like, I use my giant pickup truck for giant pickup truck stuff all the time, right? But I also get 14 miles to the gallon. And like, that doesn’t feel good, right? And I mean, I would love to have an all-electric one. But you know, I also have, like, you know, don’t love coal or all these other things, right? But it does, it seems like it’s less about, like, beating up on people to, like, make individual changes as much as, like, maybe like everyone kind of looking at their own circumstances and saying, like, what can they pull off? Like, if you’re in a good place where you can just mostly ride a bike, mostly ride a bike. If you’re, like, in a place where like—like, I don’t know, I spend all my time thinking about, like, whether I’m going to start DIY turning plastic into diesel fuel. Because because it can be done and recycling seems to be fake right now since COVID hit. It was always a little bit fake, but like, it seems extra fake right now. And I’m like, well that’s sucks. I still want to recycle, even though I know it doesn’t save the world, you know. So I guess it takes both.
Jason
I’m totally with you. And recycling was like another huge blow, like, you know, it was just like, I trusted that the system was like doing this well. And then, you know, probably along with a lot of people in the last like, two years or whatever there’s been, you know, more writing and probably documentaries about it. And you’re just like, come on, like, that was, that was the thing that I was like really good at and I made a point to, like, rinse my stuff out. And it’s just a lie. You know? Like, it’s in the clothes, it’s getting in through, you know, like, my washing machine and my dryer, like, decomposing the plastics out of there. You know, it’s just like, okay, if it’s not—if it’s not a systemic change, when, or how is it going to happen? You know, like, I was doing the thing that I was supposed to do, and it’s still, you know. Yeah.
Margaret
I mean, that brings us back to the resiliency stuff, right? Because like there’s—we’re not going to win. Like, I mean, we should keep trying to stop the worst effects of climate change. And like, there’s probably a difference—we’re probably facing a tipping point between like, you know, life on earth and no life on earth at some point. Well, okay, actually—that is actually one of my main questions for you. It’s actually how I first ran across you is I basically asked the internet being like, who can I ask about climate change? Like, I mean, obviously, everyone’s thinking about it right now. But who can I ask who thinks about it in ways that are useful for this show in this audience? And I know you don’t specifically—you’re not like whole thing is not studying climate change and its effects in a grand scale. But I think you have more of a sense of the grand scale of climate change than, say, I do, or most people who are listening to this might. So, the fuck is about to happen? What’s the—even if it’s not your research, like what are people say? Like what? You know, is it, like—there’s a version of the world that, like—I’ve always been a little bit doom and gloom—I see a version of the world by like 2045 where we’re living underground and growing food in controlled environments because the earth is uninhabitable. And I don’t think that that’s, like, the thing that’s going to happen. But that’s like at one end, right? Then there’s the, like, oh, well, just there’s gonna be, you know, some coastal cities are in trouble and we’ll have a little bit more hurricanes and flooding than we used to, but overall, the, you know, everything will keep on going on. Like, what do you think is about to happen? Or what do people think is gonna happen?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, the—so I mean, just to be clear about this, so, you know, of course, these are my views and certainly not the views of Arizona State University or any of my, like, colleagues or whatever. Because, I mean, there’s a lot of variation, even within the community that, you know, does climate change studies, or that works with climate change data. And what I was going to be clear about was that I am someone who works with climate data, I’m not like a climate change expert. I don’t know all the models that get used for atmospheric circulation, or oceanic circulation, or whatever. So I’m the person who like looks at the data and then, like, looks at the city, and tries to, you know, figure out what can we do to match the goals of the city with the reality of potentially what we’re going to be facing. And so, I mean, but even then, you know, I’m probably less gloom and doom than I think some people that I’ve run into who are more lay on the subject, like, but there’s so many caveats to say with this one. So my life personally, you know, like, if things probably are going to get weird in terms of how the climates going to look, and how we end up having to respond or whatever, but I perhaps, you know, incorrectly feel like I’m going to be somewhat more insulated from the effects than some other individuals or whatever, you know. Like, have money? Then you can throw it out the problem and it won’t necessarily, like, fix it, but it will make your life potentially a little more comfortable than it would be for people with less money. And that’s how the—that’s how it works. You know, like, that’s just how the country and capitalism and so forth have worked. So, like, it’s really the marginalized communities that are gonna, you know, really be facing the brunt of it. So I mean, like, Phoenix is a perfect example of this where, like, extreme heat, you know, who is it a problem for? And what are we defining as problem? So in a future where we’re getting like 180 days a year where it’s like over 100 degrees, the majority of people in the city have AC and the majority of deaths from extreme heat and dehydration and so forth, are usually from marginalized communities, particularly homeless people. And so, like, what a city is going to look like when it’s over 100 degrees for 180 days a year for, like, the homeless population is absolutely devastating. And it’s already hard enough to live here. Like, the relative dryness of everything, like, you’re constantly drinking water and, like, Arizona is not a kind place if you don’t have—I mean, it’s not kind in general, like, if you don’t have money, like, and it’s, I don’t know, this sort of conservative ideology here, it just really promotes, I don’t know, like absolute amounts of—like, if you’re having a problem then you’re kind of the person who has to get you out of it, or like the immediate people around you are responsible for getting you out of it. And there’s not necessarily this sort of, like, societal connection. So—sorry, this is a long way of saying, like, I don’t know. It’s gonna be weird for a lot of people. But in terms of, like, my faith and our ability to manage it is maybe the better question, because I don’t think there’s gonna be, you know, in some places with, like, ocean level rise and extreme heat or whatever, it’s just going to be unlivable and unsustainable for some populations of people. But like, say you’re living in a place that doesn’t face one of the imminent, like, climate threats, like sea level rise or whatever that’s just going to physically displace you, there’s a lot to manage in terms of agriculture, in terms of people’s daily lives, you know. Like, if we’re pushing public transportation as a way to, like, cut emissions and so forth, then here in a place like Phoenix, where it’s this hot all the time, then you also need to pair that with, you know, measures to make public transportation more usable and more accessible. So a lot of my answer is just, like, how much faith do I have in the systems to get us there, as opposed to like, is the planet just going to become like poisonous and ruinous, and, you know, unlivable? Because I don’t necessarily think that’s what’s gonna happen. I’m more just like, well, you know, is the city going to step up? Is the country going to step up? Is, you know, as an international collective, is that going to step up? Or whatever, in order to make things more manageable. And I think my answer pre-COVID would have been different than than post-COVID where—
Margaret
I’m guessing you’re more cynical now?
Jason
Oh, my God. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s so cynical that, you know, me complaining about this administration. My parents are like, I didn’t know you’d like Trump. And I’m like, I don’t like Trump. I’m just this disappointed with like the Biden administration handling of it. Like, it’s one of those things where I’m like, well, okay, like, these were the adults in the room. And like the best and brightest, this is what like the meritocratic neoliberal system has produced as, like, the people who should be running the disaster response, and who spent the Trump administration, you know, dunking on social media and whatever, and on television, and through all media accessible, and then just step up to the plate and it’s like, what, what are you doing? Like, you’re not even consistent with—I mean, like, it’s just incredible. Like, I’m now just, like, I’m not listening to anything the CDC says ever again. Like, it’s—I’m just so amazed that the CDC was, like, turned into the propaganda wing for the administration in power, you know, like, what does the administration want to do? It wants to reopen schools, it wants to get people back in the workplace, and the CDC is gonna say whatever the hell it is that’s gonna, like, be necessary to get people in there. And it’s not going to be scientifically informed. So like, you know—
Margaret
So what’s the point of having this institution if it’s not scientifically informed?
Jason
Yeah, that’s—those are the professionals. Those are the public health officials, and like Fauci is being like, we got to consider the economic impact of having a 10-day quarantine. And it’s like, that’s not your job, that’s somebody else’s job on the economy side to, like, combat what you’re saying about it. And so, like, you know, I can just imagine a climate person in the same position as like—you know, Miami is flooding and, like, New York City’s getting battered by hurricanes or whatever—and being like, just like, you know, climate change is not a big deal and it’s, like, personal responsibility, and so forth. And if you adopt—if you get your electric cars and change your personal lives and so forth, it’s not going to be that bad or whatever. And, you know, it’s just not. It’s going to require sort of coordination and so forth. And I would say there’s a lot of good research happening, and there’s plenty of good stuff, you know, from academia, and from scientists and so forth coming out about, like, strategies, it’s just like, are we going to pick them up? Are we actually going to follow through with them? Is there going to be money, you know, to actually, to do any of this?
Margaret
Have you seen—it’s as pop culture thing—have you seen? Don’t Look Up on Netflix?
Jason
It’s on my list! I really want to.
Margaret
Well, one of the things that happens in it is you have this—because people have always used—well, you know, I mean, like Watchmen use this, a bunch of other things have used this—like, we’d all come together if we were facing this apocalyptic threat from outside, you know?
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
That would be what finally brings everyone together is banding together for our own mutual interest or whatever, right? And then like—and what climate change and COVID show is that that’s just not something we can count on reliably. And I think there would be ways to shift public discourse in ways that do have it. I mean, you have some countries where the vaccination rate is substantially higher without necessarily having, like, a higher, like, enforcement or whatever of it. To my understanding, I could be wrong with this. And yeah, I don’t know, it just the sense of like, at the beginning of COVID it really felt like, oh, we’re all coming together, and like, you know, mutual aid organizations are everywhere, and then instead all the sudden people decided to just become Nazis and then run around and, like, yell at everyone and—I don’t know, and then it all just disintegrated from there. And then, yeah, watching the Democrats fail at the one thing that theoretically they were going to do. I mean, the main thing that they were going to do is, like, not be literal fascists, and I guess they successfully accomplished that. But the other thing that they were supposed to do is be, like, the adults in the room. Yeah, like you’re talking about. Because like Trump and his are like petulant crying children and—actually, no offense to children—children have much better excuses.
Jason
I’ve known less spiteful children, certainly.
Margaret
Yeah. No, I don’t know it. I don’t know. Okay.
Jason
Yeah. So I haven’t seen the movie. Sorry. I was gonna comment on. Yeah. And like—but I mean, I know what it’s about. I read like the criticism, I follow David Sirota on Twitter, and have certainly read a lot of criticism. And I’ve certainly seen a lot of stuff about the presentation of the material. And like, maybe the metaphor being a little heavy-handed or whatever. But-and like maybe, yeah, it’s not, it’s literally like a meteor about to hit earth or comet or whatever. And, you know, it’s the news being like, well, whatever, it’s a bunch of different institutions coming together to tell you that it’s not something you really need to worry about, or, you know, like, mobilize over, I guess, I haven’t seen it, again.
Margaret
It’s not a complex movie. You basically got it.
Jason
Yeah. And so, I mean, I can—certainly I won’t claim, like, I’m above aesthetics of a film or whatever, a good film, you know, should accomplish that. But it’s one of, like, the most wide-reaching climate change parables, you know, currently in existence. And I have to say, from what I’ve heard about a lot of it, it’s certainly not too far off from what we’re experiencing. And like, in a pre-COVID world, maybe it would have like, felt a little heavy-handed or something like that. But I, you know, I get the gist of it. I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of what we’re doing. Like, what do you—like, you know, they’re not even telling us to turn the fountains off or like, you know, or anything like that around here into Phoenix, and we’re literally in the middle of establishing water shortage measures. Like agriculture, out, you’re done here in Phoenix. I think we are—we just upgraded this—
Margaret
No one needs that stuff.
Jason
Yeah, exactly. We don’t need this local stuff. That’s now Mexico is problem. Also, we’re not delivering water to Mexico anymore. So, you know, like, there’s so many things, we’re just like, okay, so you’re not handling this at all. And we’re not supposed to be concerned about it, for some reason
Margaret
To go back to something you brought up at the very beginning. You know, you’re talking about how climate change models don’t really go past 2080 right now. Or like, you know, it’s talking about what’s going to happen best 2080. And you’re like, I have no idea why. And I have two answers to that, and one is more cynical than the other. And one, the—I mean, the most cynical one is, like, that’s because like, who knows if humanity is going to be around after 2080, certainly in a meaningful way. And then, but the other is, like, the just the, you know, everyone who’s thinking about it assumes there’ll be dead by 2080, even naturally. So why would we care about, like, what our children have to deal with, you know?
Jason
Yeah.
Margaret
Like, I was born in the early 80s. So I assume I’ll be dead by around 2080. If I’m lucky. So, who cares about after that? I mean—actually, it’s funny, one of the most cynical things my dad says on a regular basis—my dad has four kids and none of us have kids—and he’s like, he actually does care about climate change—but he’s like, I don’t care about climate change. I don’t have any skin in the game. I don’t have any grandchildren. Family line’s over whatever.
Jason
Yeah, exactly. Like, you’re literally telling this to your children, being like, I’m not here.
Margaret
I’m gonna be dead before it’s a problem. I’m like, I’m not. Actually, you’re not either.
Jason
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, number one, he gave up already on living forever. And that’s, you know, just—I’m not, I don’t think I’m ever gonna do that. So, you know, I’ve got skin in the game, you know, as long as the planets around.
Margaret
Yeah, fair enough.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, that’s literally the reason that people give on some of this investment stuff into, like, green infrastructure into, you know, dealing with climate change. It’s just like, I mean, sure, that’s like a theoretical thing that we, like, could have to deal with it. But like number one, I’m not even going to be here. And number two, you know, whatever goes in the other reasoning. But it’s not an uncommon thing for someone to be like, mortality, I’m dead, like, what do you want me to do? So, yeah. And like, part of it is, you know, just the limits of modeling. Like, they’re uncertain even as, like, 10 years ahead. And so you kind of like increase the amount of uncertainty, like, as you expand that time out. But like, honestly, I just think it’s so horrifying to, like, look at it, and we’re just like, okay, well, we used to think that population was going to peak, you know, by like, 2040 or 2060. I forget, like, what the actual peak date was going to be. And then like, you know, suddenly the models are just like, yeah, we don’t really see a stop to that. And so it’s like, okay, so we’ve got a changing climate, and we have a population that’s going to keep increasing indefinitely, and no one’s got a plan for like resource usage, for anything along those lines. And, you know, to be clear, this is not me being like, overpopulation is a problem. It’s more like we need to plan, you know, like, there’s not—we’re not doing a good job with the number of people we have on the planet currently and, you know, management or not, people and our, you know, resource usage put major pressures on systems. And because I, you know, mostly think in terms of ecology and, like, natural systems, even though I’m in an urban area, I’m always thinking about, like, you know, regardless—I could do a million things in a given day—I’m already a vegan, I already tried to ride my bike as much as I can, I try to do all these things, but like, I’m still impacting the environments. And, you know, like, at the end of the day, me being here is impacting natural systems. And so now I’m always thinking about, like, biodiversity loss and the things that we’re, you know, also contributing to just in, you know, even though I’m a relatively low hum of activity, compared to some people, but, you know, we got to really be thinking about that, because otherwise, you know, it’s not going to resolve itself. It’s not just going to be like, oh, it turned out to not be a problem.
Margaret
Right? Well, that’s what I feel like some people are sitting around waiting for the, you know—I think it might almost help for them to realize that scientists at this point, engineers at this point, are less thinking, how do we stop climate change and instead how do we mitigate its effects? You know, I mean, I guess people thinking about how to, like, stop the worsening of it, right? But it’s like, you know, people who are waiting around for this sort of magic bullet of, like, cold fusion power mixed with carbon capture or whatever, mixed with Mars colonization or, you know, whatever various things, like—
Jason
We’ll mine comets. Greenly.
Margaret
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Jason
Yeah, no. There’s just a lot of things that need to be wrangled. And we need to actually, like, do planning for it. And, like, I—as someone who’s done a lot of stuff in my personal life to really try to manage some of this stuff, I mean, I work on—I’m a systems thinker and I work on this as, like, a system whole. And it’s like, I mean, what—how are we going to get people to, like, change behavior. Advertising, things like that? I mean, that’ll get some people, but then, you know, like, it’ll get perverted and politicized and whatever. So this sort of individual approach to dealing with everything is not going to be the case. And, I mean, the term “transformation” was in that definition of resilience, and I think a lot of transformation just needs to happen. And, you know, like, I’m anticapitalist and so, you know, my version of transformation is like, you know, what’s a major problem for resiliency for a lot of people? It’s money and not having enough of it, or not having a society that values them because they don’t have enough of it. So we need to get rid of that. Because all these studies that talk about, like, who are the most vulnerable populations, all this stuff is tied to poverty. It’s in poverty directly, or it’s all tied to poverty. And so if I’m talking to a city person about, like, well, you know, what you can do is like add some wetlands to your city or whatever, you also have to, like, realize that’s not going to be everything. Like, you’ve—there’s going to be flooding, there’s gonna be some amount of, like, unmanageability unpredictability to these systems. And the best way that you can deal with a lot of this is just deal with, like, inequality and this, you know, insane system of creating classes and things like that, and reinforcing them in subtle and less subtle ways. And until you deal with that, you know, you’re—it’s totally incomplete. The picture that you’re, I don’t know, the picture that you’re seeing and that you’re actually engaging with, like, you cannot leave out a lot of these issues of inequality in the way we consume things and everything.
Margaret
No, I really like that way of tying class and all of that into this as, like, all part of it. I don’t know. One of the things that I think about, one of my better friends and engineer, whenever I talked to her about these issues, one of the things that always comes up is that I think about like—like when you talk about the concrete canal in Los Angeles, which of course makes for dramatic movie sets—I had no idea what that thing was, it’s just in every movie and eventually figured it out it’s a canal. But it’s just bad engineering if you don’t take into account all of the context that the thing that you’re creating sits within. And so like, that’s always been like my argument against a lot of the, like, quick fix technological stuff coming from engineers—and I say this as a lay person—but I’m like, it’s just badly engineered. It does not work. It solves an immediate problem, but it doesn’t work in the larger context. So it doesn’t work. And the stuff that you’re talking about, about like—so a resilient city is one that’s, like, interfaced with nature, interfaced into its local context, and not just like assuming that the style of building that you use in the north is the style of building you should use in the south, and the style of greenery you have in Michigan should be what you have in Phoenix. But then also one that fights inequality, and that’s how you build a resilient city. I like that.
Jason
Yeah, no. And that’s a critical message that I’ve, like, tried to put into like book chapters and so forth, where it’s like, look, we have a good idea of, like, what causes, you know, people to be vulnerable to climate change, and to extreme weather events. It’s the same thing that’s made them vulnerable for the last, you know, like, you know, since the 1800s, and like, you know, the major rise of capitalism and industry and so forth. Like, you have all these engineering and tech solutions to things, but, you know, at the end of the day—I mean, so I also do surveys and stuff like that, about flooding and communities too. And so I have some idea of how people are actually adapting and preparing to this sort of stuff. And, you know, it’s a n- brainer. You get a wealthy person who has like flooding in their house, like, yeah, I paid a guy to pump it all out. And then I had, you know, my walls redone or whatever to deal with the flood damage. I replaced all the furniture that got damaged by the flood. Then you have like a person who doesn’t even own the home that they live in, they’re like a renter on top of it, and they could be facing eviction, you know, during the, the flood repairs, if it gets repaired, you know. And, like, it’s—there are so many things where it’s like, okay, so this person’s like a temporary refugee within their own city because, you know, their home flooded, and there’s like renovations or whatever. And that’s not going to be solved, you know, necessarily by a tech solution. You might get statistically less flooding, either in terms of like depth or frequency. But like, it’s gonna happen, like, there’s just failures in these systems and people living, you know, hand to mouth, they’re not going to be able to recover in the same way as, you know, wealthier people are, or people who have—who live in like a city or in a social governance system that actually cares about helping people recover, like, on an individual basis. Like, you just can’t ignore that. I mean, certainly install more wetlands. I’m not going to tell you not to do that, but…
Margaret
Right, totally. It’s like, it’s good to ride your bike, it’s good to eat less meat, it’s good to you know, and increasing biodiversity is a very valuable thing. Like, it’s a more valuable thing than riding a bike. But like, what, um—okay, well we’re coming up on time. And I’m wondering if you have any final rousing thoughts or something that you wish I had asked, or any final thoughts. Uh, yeah, I mean, it’s really tough, because I don’t want to just be like, the problems are systemic, and the system sucks. It’s not doing its job. So there’s nothing you can do about it up until it happens.
Jason
Yeah. I mean, like, there’s really good work at the community level, and, you know, tenant organizations and so forth, that have kind of like, pushed toward organizing and improving their own resiliency. And so I always, you know, try to remember those sorts of movements. And the fact that, like, academia is pretty responsive to that. Like, if nothing else, like the the push for novelty in academia, like, has kind of been like, oh, well, this is like another form of resilience. It’s like understudied or whatever. And so it gets, like, proper attention and study and appreciation in academia. And then like, you know, the pipeline from there as we talk to city officials or whatever who we’re partnered with, and then get them thinking about this sort of stuff. But it’s like, it’s kind of, it’s not a definite sort of thing. It’s like a tenuous relationship. It’s not successful all the time. But like, it is cool that it exists sometimes and in some places, you know, like, there’s work that I’ve done where I, you know, I can go point to an individual wetland that I’m personally responsible for, like, telling the city something about and they’re like, I guess we got to protect it then. It’s like, wow, cool. And, you know, I can go back and it will still be there, but it was already, like, getting zoned for housing and so forth. So like, stuff does happen, and there is good work on it. And you should do these sorts of, like, personal measures toward, like, reducing carbon footprint and all of that. But like, I don’t know, I think you described it as, like, climate nihilism in a in a previous podcast episode, I think with a restoration ecologist maybe.
Margaret
That part’s not true. Yeah, that sounds right. I have a terrible memory. But that sounds right.
Jason
Where, you know, it’s kind of about a, you know, nihilism is a bad thing in that you’re just like, everything’s fucked, or whatever. But like, for me, it kind of takes the form of just, like, accepting that stuff is going to change and figuring out, like, what you can do about it in the immediate term, you know. Like, if we’re able to stop climate change to some degree, great, awesome. And I’m trying to do what I can to support that effort. But I think also it felt really good to kind of let go of that expectation, because that allowed me to think about, we can actually do a lot of stuff, you know, societally, individually, to make things more livable, even if climate change didn’t, you know, isn’t real, you know, for that matter, or, you know, didn’t happen in the way we see it or to the degree that we were seeing it. There’s, there’s a lot you can do that we are capable of doing. It’s, you know, a matter of creating the will and having the imagination to actually do it. And that’s, you know, that’s how I go back to work every day and look at climate projections and so forth. And like, oof, looks pretty difficult out there. But, you know, there’s stuff you can do.
Margaret
Yeah. Okay, well, is there a way that people can either—can engage with your work, or follow you on the internet, or how would you like people to engage with you if they like what you’re saying?
Jason
Hire me. That’s the number one thing I would like them to do. Because I’m graduating this semester, theoretically, so please hire me. But otherwise, so my Twitter handle is @jasonrsauer, that’s S-A-U-E-R, you know, on Twitter. And that’s the only social media I’ve got going for me right now. Otherwise—oh, I’m sorry, I also have a—alright, so my research network runs a podcast as well called Future Cities.
Margaret
Oh cool.
Jason
Where we talk with professionals and other researchers about urban resilience and so forth, and do deeper dives into particular subjects like green gentrification and, you know, engineering, resilience, and so forth. So they can certainly check that if they want to. It’s pretty nerdy stuff.
Margaret
Okay. Well, thank you so much.
Jason
Yeah, thank you. I really had a lot of fun.
Margaret
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, you should tell people about it. You should tell people about it on the internet, or in person. I say the same thing every week. I try to come up with new ways to say the same thing every week. Isn’t that fun? It’s fun for everyone. It’s fun for you. It’s fun for me. Hurray. But it really does mean a lot for the show when you tell people about it, it’s pretty much the only way that people hear about it. And you can also support the show by supporting our publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is supportable at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There’s not a lot of stuff behind a paywall, but if you pay a certain amount a month, you’ll get a mailed print zine every month. And either way, you’re helping support a whole bunch of different read projects that are going to be coming out this year. I’m really excited to show you all what we’ll be doing. And in particular, I would like to thank Nicole and David, Dana, Chelsea, Starro, Jennifer, Eleanor, Natalie, Kirk, Hugh, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog for your support. You make this show possible. And so just everyone for listening because if no one listened, I probably wouldn’t do the show, which is maybe terrible. Maybe I should be willing to scream into a void. But I’m not. I prefer talking to an audience. Even though I’m actually just talking to a microphone in a closet. It’s somehow the same, or different? I don’t know. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you continue to do well.
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