Not Cool Ep 5: Ken Caldeira on energy, infrastructure, and planning for an uncertain climate future

Planning for climate change is particularly difficult because we're dealing with such big unknowns. How, exactly, will the climate change? Who will be affected and how? What new innovations are possible, and how might they help address or exacerbate the current problem? Etc. But we at least know that in order to minimize the negative effects of climate change, we need to make major structural changes — to our energy systems, to our infrastructure, to our power structures — and we need to start now. On the fifth episode of Not Cool, Ariel is joined by Ken Caldeira, who is a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Department of Global Ecology and a professor at Stanford University's Department of Earth System Science. Ken shares his thoughts on the changes we need to be making, the obstacles standing in the way, and what it will take to overcome them. Topics discussed include: -Relationship between policy and science -Climate deniers and why it isn't useful to argue with them -Energy systems and replacing carbon -Planning in the face of uncertainty -Sociopolitical/psychological barriers to climate action -Most urgently needed policies and actions -Economic scope of climate solution -Infrastructure solutions and their political viability -Importance of political/systemic change