Latest / The Action Catalyst / Life As We Know It, with Bill Weir (Climate, News, Storytelling, Author)

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Life As We Know It, with Bill Weir (Climate, News, Storytelling, Author) · The Action Catalyst

0:00
Stephanie Maas: Welcome to the Action Catalyst. Today's guest
0:07
is Bill Weir, an award winning journalist, Chief climate
0:50
correspondent for CNN, host of the CNN original series, the
0:54
wonder list, and now author of the new book Life as we know it
0:58
can be stories of people climate and hope in a changing world.
1:05
Hey, Bill, how are ya?
1:06
Bill Weir: Hi, Stephanie. How are you?
1:08
Stephanie Maas: I am doing great. Thanks for being here.
1:11
Bill Weir: My pleasure. Great to meet you.
1:13
Stephanie Maas: Hey, you too. Is that is that a sunny New York. I
1:16
see the backdrop.
1:16
Bill Weir: It is a gorgeous, gorgeous New York. Love that
1:19
sunshine for the mood, right?
1:21
Stephanie Maas: Absolutely.
1:22
Bill Weir: Where are you?
1:23
Stephanie Maas: Nashville.
1:24
Bill Weir: Awesome. I love nashvegas I was just down there.
1:28
Yeah.
1:28
Stephanie Maas: What brought you to town?
1:29
Bill Weir: Taylor Swift. I brought my daughter to see her
1:34
this summer and it was epic. We had a great time.
1:37
Stephanie Maas: How old is your daughter?
1:38
Bill Weir: She is 20.
1:39
Stephanie Maas: Wow. Okay. Yeah. And you know what? I don't care
1:42
what people say about her. That girl is hard working. I give her
1:47
props all day, every day.
1:49
Bill Weir: Let me tell you something. I've been to hundreds
1:52
of festivals in my life. I'm a huge music nerd. And I've always
1:55
liked was you know, ambivalent about our catalog. I love my
1:58
daughter loved her. And I love that she's a really good human.
2:00
But this show in Nashville. It was delayed a couple hours by
2:03
pouring rain. And she played until her whole set until one in
2:07
the morning and leaned into it like Prince at the Superbowl and
2:10
it will go down as one of my top three. I saw Guns and Roses when
2:15
their first album came out, right? Like I've seen every big
2:18
act, you can imagine she will go down by far on the Mount
2:21
Rushmore of live performers. I've seen her like four times
2:24
with my kid. I have such respect for her.
2:27
Stephanie Maas: Yeah, super fun. So in preparing for our time
2:29
today, I want to hear about your book and kind of where it came
2:32
from what you're hoping to achieve. I really want to put
2:34
some legs under that table. Walk us through the genesis and
2:40
evolution of this book.
2:42
Bill Weir: Absolutely. So I have to back up a little bit. I've
2:46
been sort of a journeyman journalist, I started as a
2:49
sportscaster and came up through, you know, bigger and
2:51
bigger markets until I got my big break with ABC News and
2:54
spent 10 years there. And that was the first time somebody
2:57
said, actually was Diane Sawyer, who said, here's some strange,
3:00
interesting things are happening in China. Why don't you go
3:02
explain China to us. And this is like 2004, you know, and it's
3:06
the first time someone just gave me carte blanche to explore a
3:09
place. And that was the biggest gift I ever got in my career.
3:13
And I decide more if I can do this as much as possible. And so
3:16
I started angling towards that sort of exploratory journalism,
3:20
big picture stuff, global trends. And I moved to CNN.
3:24
Right around the time Anthony Bourdain had arrived, and they
3:27
were looking to do more original series like that globe trotting
3:30
series. And I, you know, came over to do a typical studio show
3:34
on cable news. But the first month I was on the air, the
3:37
Malaysian airliner went missing, and we're talking about the same
3:39
story every night, I thought I'd made a horrible mistake. And my
3:42
boss said, Well, what maybe you should do an original series,
3:44
what would you do? I said, I know exactly what I want to do.
3:47
I just had realized that my daughter Olivia is going to turn
3:50
my age in the year 2050. So I want to go to the wonders of the
3:53
world and wonder what will be left in how many elephants in
3:56
Botswana? How much ice in the Alps? Will Venice still be above
4:01
water? And so they said yes. And I got to do this the show called
4:04
The Wunderlist. And we shot in 24 different countries around
4:07
the world in that in nothing like that kind of travel,
4:10
immersive travel to shake your American ego centrism and start
4:14
thinking about all the ways we could do things better. And then
4:18
2016 that the election there, it sort of changed the landscape on
4:21
CNN, and the original series kind of drifted out of the
4:25
tension and they decided to create a climate desk at CNN,
4:29
and I for most of my career headed had avoided being pigeon
4:32
holed into a beat. I love politics. I love entertainment,
4:35
but I don't want to eat either one of them every day, you know,
4:38
and so, but I realized that climate is the one beat that
4:42
includes everything. Everything in our lives depends on a
4:45
livable planet. We think about it like a list. When pollsters
4:48
come around election. How important is the climate to you?
4:51
I mean, it's the whole restaurant, every menu item,
4:53
foreign policy, health care, justice, social justice, food,
4:57
shelter, transportation is tied to a livable ecosystem, an A,
5:02
and we just happen to be born in this Goldilocks moment on the
5:06
one planet that supports life as we know it. And we just we take
5:10
that that for granted, right? So I sort of leaned into that. But
5:13
then it was hugely depressing once you go deep into this, and
5:17
you really sort of drink from the fire hose of peer reviewed
5:20
dread every day and see what is happening and then go cover
5:23
disaster after disaster. So when my son was born in 2020, he was
5:28
a surprise. My partner, you know, was down to one ovary,
5:32
it's 42 years old, we didn't think this was in our cards. But
5:36
here we go. And when he arrived, it was such a joy, such a treat.
5:41
But at the same time, I had all this new information about what
5:44
kind of world this kid was going to grow up in. And the idea that
5:47
my little boy river is going to see the 22nd century. And so I'm
5:51
holding him height of the pandemic covering the George
5:54
Floyd riots, you know, between feedings. And so I just sat down
5:58
and started with Welcome to the world, I'm sorry. And so I
6:03
started distilling these into earthday letters to him, just an
6:06
assessment of things, how things were going awry. But over time,
6:10
I also became leaned into the innovation and the hope and the
6:15
organization and the possibility of a better world that we don't
6:19
really talk about in this space, you know, and Dr. Martin Luther
6:22
King didn't say I have a nightmare, everybody was living
6:25
the nightmare, he had a dream, you know, and we don't talk
6:28
enough about what life could look like if we do everything
6:33
that scientists encourage for us. technology and human
6:38
creativity is so powerful right now. And there's so much sort of
6:42
waste built into the way I grew up in our in our world, that by
6:46
eliminating these things, people wouldn't notice a difference in
6:49
lifestyle. I've seen now proof of communities from the first
6:53
solar town in Florida, that survived Hurricane Ian, and
6:57
they've never lost power to other, you know, societies
7:01
around the world, that I just sort of putting these little bit
7:05
of wonder a little bit of dread, you know, you have to be clear
7:08
eyed about what's happening. I structure the book around
7:12
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I took for granted,
7:16
never thought about the bottom of my pyramid, food, water, air
7:20
temperature, but I argue the top of the pyramid of needs, which
7:24
is love and esteem and sort of self actualization that I argue
7:28
if we pay attention to each other around the bottom of the
7:30
pyramid of needs, that it will fulfill us in ways that
7:34
supersede sort of what we get out of modern life.
7:37
Stephanie Maas: Part of what I hear you saying is, you know,
7:40
there's definitely hope. But there's also some dread. And I
7:43
think this is a topic that can be really polarizing, there is a
7:47
way to bring us all together.
7:49
Bill Weir: Absolutely. That's sort of a sweeping theme that I
7:52
have is truly what makes us special as human beings. It's
7:57
not our opposable thumbs. You know, chimpanzees have those,
8:00
it's not our ability to work together in groups, because
8:03
orcas and ants, you know, and wolves do that. But they've yet
8:08
to land a rover on Mars, or build a stock market and
8:10
repeatedly crash it. The thing that makes us special is
8:13
stories. And so everything in our lives, currencies, flags,
8:18
borders, religions, all of these are just the stories we've
8:21
agreed upon. And they're always under revision, right. And so,
8:26
the story, for example, there's a story that you should spend
8:29
three months salary on a diamond for the person you love, because
8:32
they're this rare thing. Now, there are quadrillions of tons
8:36
of diamonds, there was just a new deposit found there to
8:38
diamonds, rain on other planets, the rarest substance in the
8:42
known universe is wood, we've got the only planet where trees
8:46
grow, you know. And so the stories we tell around energy
8:50
supplies, and modern life and sacrifices, and all of that have
8:54
been told by a very few people who have very vested interests
8:59
in that status quo. And so the story now is changing in ways
9:03
that, you know, we've been burning fuel, the kinds of fuel
9:07
using the kinds of fuels that burn forever, because that was
9:09
the cheapest alternatives. You know, we went from peat to coal
9:14
to whale oil, you know, we burned whales for light at some
9:18
point. And I think that our kids are going to look back and say,
9:20
Wait, you at one point had poisonous gas pumped into your
9:24
house and you burned it to cook food, you know, like you didn't
9:27
have a house with a battery? It'll seem so sort of archaic,
9:32
but my experience is that if you connect with people about what
9:36
it is they love, they might be a fisherman. They might be a duck
9:40
hunter, they might be a farmer, they might be somebody. And if
9:44
you can just connect with them on the changes they're seeing
9:46
and not tie it to the politically loaded words that
9:50
get used in campaign ads. And just by saying the word climate
9:54
change that has been so loaded, on just connect with people over
9:58
cash, you know, I don't hear As many Meadowlarks as I did when I
10:02
was growing up, and take it from there level outward, and break
10:06
down those barriers by usually just starting with, what's your
10:10
story, but what gives me hope is there was a study out of Yale in
10:14
2022. If you had asked the average American, give me the
10:17
percentage you think of your fellow country, men and women
10:21
who care about climate change and action, most people of both
10:25
parties would guess between 33 and like 42%. In actuality, it
10:31
is between 66 and 80%. You are surrounded by allies in this
10:36
space that you don't even know you have. Because nobody wants
10:39
to talk about climate change at the potluck. No one wants to
10:42
Yeah, in the Punchbowl party, but change happens, just by
10:50
those opening those conversations.
10:52
Stephanie Maas: In this journey for you, where has the hope come
10:56
from?
10:57
Bill Weir: There's a great painting by Hieronymus Bosch,
11:00
the Garden of Earthly Delights, on one side is just the the most
11:04
depraved human behavior is happening in the middle. It's
11:07
sort of like the Garden of Eden and then over to the right earth
11:10
as it is, and then over to the right. It's what it could be
11:13
right. And so I oftentimes I think about what point of this
11:16
am I focused on every day, and it's really easy to get dark.
11:21
But when I start to feel sorry for myself, I think about the
11:25
Civil Rights Movement, I think about indigenous folks around
11:27
the world who are getting up and raising their kids every day in
11:30
much worse conditions that I have it here in the first first
11:33
world, the developed world, to try to knock myself out of that
11:36
sort of sense of Doom or ism. And then the best advice I ever
11:40
got came from Mr. Rogers, who taught me that when you see
11:44
something scary on TV, look for the helpers, there's always
11:48
helpers in, it's in a after a tornado or hurricane. Now I get
11:52
to actually meet those helpers when I go into these places. And
11:55
so I look for the helpers on the big scales, I look for a folks
12:00
like Andrew ponic, a guy just profiles who created a thermal
12:03
battery company. And you know, I got to visit the nuclear fusion
12:06
labs out at Livermore, after they had successful ignitions.
12:09
The idea that we could build manmade little stars and boxes,
12:13
using fuel that is essentially seawater abundant with no waste,
12:16
no risk of meltdown, once you throw yourself into that world,
12:20
and you and you tap into people, really smart people who are
12:24
trying to pull carbon out of the sea and Scott in innovative ways
12:27
who are leaning into nature based solutions. Those ideas
12:31
really get me excited.
12:33
Stephanie Maas: Very interesting. I also hear out of
12:35
that a lot of empathy, where we're really starting to see a
12:39
difference being made as folks to say, hey, it is about the
12:42
bottom line, but it's not. And that's really what spawning a
12:45
lot of this change to tell me you're in my barking up the
12:48
right tree there, talk to me about that.
12:50
Bill Weir: Absolutely. But I do think we've reached a point
12:52
where even if you care nothing about habitats of the manatee or
12:59
you know, any or anything, just the natural world, maybe you
13:03
don't, maybe you hate going outside whatever the case may
13:06
be, we've now reached a point where profit motive is as much
13:12
of a as much of a motivator as as anything, right? So let me
13:17
give you an example. I just interviewed two guys, who are
13:20
the lab partners at MIT, both from India, one grew up hauling
13:24
water and buckets and thinking about, you know, the basic
13:27
bottom of his pyramid of needs, literally on a daily basis. And
13:31
they decided to lean into cleaning up the dirtiest water
13:35
you can imagine, in semiconductor fab location
13:39
plants, or pharmaceutical plants, the kinds of places that
13:42
just use hundreds and 1000s of tons of water a week. And
13:48
they've figured out ways using various different technologies,
13:51
a suite of technologies, where a factory like that can recycle
13:55
95% of its water. So they can not only not take water from
13:59
nature, but put it back, those guys are going to be
14:03
trillionaires. You know, the business model is completely
14:07
different in the renewable space. That's why all the new
14:10
power plants that are coming online, they realizing that once
14:13
you build a solar array, or a wind farm, or a geothermal
14:17
plants, the energy delivers itself to you. You don't have to
14:21
go around the world digging and pumping for it. And once you use
14:25
your fracking skills from the oil legacy to dig super deep
14:31
geothermal wells and tap into the sun, which is beneath our
14:35
Earth, and use that heat to spin turbines instead of burning
14:39
stuff. Well, the business model is, you know, how do you capture
14:43
the rents on that versus charging you per barrel of oil,
14:46
you know, so it's going to be a different economic system. And
14:50
this is the biggest hardest thing that humanity will ever do
14:53
is sort of like changing out the engines on a 747 in flight we
14:57
don't want to make especially folks At the bottom of the
15:01
financial pyramid suffer because we're taking away readily
15:06
available energy sources, but much the way the developing
15:10
countries like India leapfrog the landline, they went right
15:14
from no phone to cell phones, you know, the hope is that with
15:19
help from the developed world, we could still get rich doing
15:22
that. But what's happening is a whole generation of new
15:25
consumers is changing the way they fill their pyramid of
15:29
needs. It's changing how they think. Right? So you've on
15:33
shanaar, the, the founder of Patagonia, famously would say,
15:37
to his own customers, before you buy that puffer jacket, are you
15:42
cold? Or are you bored? Do you really need that that? Or do you
15:46
or, you know, could you wear your old one for another year or
15:50
something? If you need the jacket, great, go for it, I
15:53
don't have any advice on how people should change their
15:56
lifestyles around this idea other than just thinking about
15:59
the hidden costs of filling our pyramids.
16:03
Stephanie Maas: That's a pretty simple, good way to live. One of
16:07
my favorite quotes is with great power comes great
16:10
responsibility. And to your point, you know, it's
16:14
interesting about the two guys from MIT tying this back to your
16:18
hierarchy of needs, he was in a position where he had to fight
16:23
for those basic needs by carrying buckets of water. And,
16:28
you know, again, he'll make plenty of money, the money will
16:30
take care of itself. But that burned within him to go solve
16:35
that problem. And most people that are in that situation,
16:39
trying to figure out that bottom level of needs, they're not. But
16:42
when you are gifted with all the talents and the resources to be
16:47
a part of the solution. I think that's where the responsibility
16:50
really comes in. But that's I think, where the day to day
16:55
person can really bring some impact is holding those with
16:59
great power to the responsibility. Absolutely. But
17:04
it definitely seems like this next generation cares a whole
17:09
lot more about that than I've ever heard of a generation
17:12
before us.
17:13
Bill Weir: Absolutely. Because they are smart enough to read
17:17
the science and do the math in terms of the calendar and seeing
17:20
what is happening and how fast things are changing. And then of
17:24
course, they've also whether intentionally or or it's
17:28
inferred that you're the generation that's going to save
17:31
the world, like, that is so unfair. It's no, the baby
17:37
boomers have all the money if they're not at the you know,
17:39
they, they, they have to be part of this, but it should be multi
17:43
generational as well.
17:44
Stephanie Maas: And the world is so much smaller today. At mean,
17:47
candidly, you know, you think about the travels that you've
17:49
experienced in your lifetime. And I don't know the answer to
17:52
this. I mean, what were your parents background, what kind of
17:55
traveling did they do?
17:56
Bill Weir: I had a very bizarre background. My parents divorced
18:00
when I was a baby. And my dad was a cop and Milwaukee and my
18:04
mom was a secretary who had a very zealous, passionate
18:07
conversion to evangelical Pentecostal Christianity. So she
18:11
announced one morning when I was nine years old at breakfast,
18:15
that she'd had a dream from God. And God wanted us to leave
18:19
Milwaukee and move to Texas, so she could go to Bible school and
18:23
become a televangelist. And she put me on the phone with my dad
18:27
to negotiate out of joint custody. And my dad said, Yes,
18:31
and, and so we moved, but the dreams kept coming. So I went to
18:35
17 different schools and six states, mostly around the Bible
18:39
Belt, and would then go back to spend summers and Christmases
18:43
with my dad, the out atheist outdoorsman. And so I was
18:47
pendulum in between these very different worldviews, which
18:51
turned out to be great training for a job in journalism, when
18:55
you're perpetually the new kid, learn how to read a room, you
18:59
learn how to empathize. And so I have friends in red states and
19:03
blue and and, you know, probably have a better lens into politics
19:07
of the day as a result of that. And, you know, I was the first
19:11
one for my family to go to college, and definitely the
19:15
first one to get a passport and actually start, you know,
19:19
expanding my horizons. So I consider myself incredibly,
19:22
incredibly blessed and lucky to have you know, such a transient,
19:26
you know, exposed me to so much. But as sort of another example,
19:31
I write about this in my book, you know, as I get into the
19:34
loving and the Esteem Needs, it gets more autobiographical,
19:38
because I was trying to fill my love and esteem needs in my
19:42
career and in different ways, and it's constantly changing,
19:46
right? And stories are so powerful, they're more powerful
19:50
than family. I've been estranged from my mom for years because
19:54
her her belief system is so strong in a different world that
19:58
we just she doesn't communicate with me anymore. And that's
20:02
heartbreaking. But my chosen family, my stepmother, but my
20:06
other people are actually hugely inspiring, right? And so again,
20:10
we are products of the stories we marinate in. And every now
20:14
and then if we poke ourselves out of that bubble and say,
20:18
what's your story and try to understand and connect on that
20:22
level, I willing to one thing I sort of realization that came to
20:26
me while writing the book was because of my mom's, you know,
20:30
fervent belief and her interpretation of, of a
20:33
particular faith turned me off so much. But I threw the baby
20:37
out with the bathwater by not engaging with a community, a
20:41
church, and that around that those ideals, and never
20:44
appreciated how valuable that is that sort of connection with
20:48
neighbors around higher ideals, and connecting with
20:52
congregations and picking out communities of people with
20:55
shared values, but that just makes you stronger, and lifts
20:59
you up. This is this whole thing we're into is a team sport. You
21:03
know, you, you had a really inspiring former Navy SEAL as a
21:07
guest recently, I was listening on the podcast where he talked
21:11
about how SEAL teams picking each other up, you know,
21:15
everybody's got a weakness. And the key is being paired with
21:19
somebody who doesn't have that weakness. So you get it
21:22
together, I that's such a great metaphor for fighting the
21:26
climate fight for connecting with neighbors around these
21:30
things, and it's not just a matter of, you know, maybe I
21:34
could get into an alternative energy company and and make a
21:37
million dollars. It's also is can be motivated about just
21:41
strengthening the community for what's coming. I met an amazing
21:45
woman who she was an NFL wife, married her husband in Seattle,
21:50
he played for the Seahawks, a retired moved down to the
21:53
panhandle of Florida, she had her baby, three weeks later,
21:57
Hurricane Michael comes ashore and she's googling in her house,
22:01
can my home survive a category four hurricane and realize that
22:05
the building codes were not up to snuff, they survived and
22:09
everything was okay. But it rattled her so much, that
22:13
without any experience in construction, she went down a
22:16
rabbit hole to try to figure out how to build a hurricane proof
22:20
home and ended up importing this technology from Italy. That is
22:25
basically a sprayed concrete wall that is bomb proof
22:28
bulletproof and is now just trying to build safer homes for
22:32
her community in Florida. I find that incredibly, sort of
22:36
inspiring, and, and those kinds of characters are going to make
22:40
all the difference in the communities of the future.
22:43
Stephanie Maas: I think though, I really appreciate your
22:46
willingness to share some of what you just shared, it really
22:50
brings this full circle. I think it's a really beautiful story.
22:54
And it's a perfect example of what you're talking about. It's
22:58
the human story. And that is where our answers live. That's
23:02
where our hopes lie. I know, I gotta be super mindful of time.
23:06
Is there anything else that you were hoping we would discuss or
23:10
get to in our time together?
23:12
Bill Weir: Um, not really, this has been a delight talking to
23:14
you. I'd like to say that there's no fix for climate
23:17
change without culture change. And I don't mean culture, ethnic
23:21
culture, or religious culture, you know, the things that are
23:24
really precious about human society I love, you know, the
23:28
quilt of different ideas. And and the melting pot of that is
23:33
the United States at its best. When I say culture, I mean, the
23:37
culture of endless consumption, mindless, mindless consumption,
23:42
and taking for granted the bottom of the pyramid, I think
23:46
there's so much joy, there's so much light, there's so much
23:49
mental health that can be found by rallying around communities,
23:54
and rallying around each other and nature and connecting with
23:58
the best parts of both, you know, there's been a lot of
24:03
policy changes recently, trying to come out of Washington,
24:07
depending on the party and power of the one idea that actually
24:11
was part of the inflation Reduction Act that excites me
24:14
the most, and I don't have a dog in the fight of policy. And I,
24:18
you know, I'm a neutral journalist on all of that stuff.
24:21
But I'm really excited about the idea of a civilian conservation
24:24
corps, where kids from the Bronx, and Wyoming and Maine
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come together and spend six months working on trails out
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west or bringing back mangrove habitats, you know, in the
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southeast. And the thing that I really believe will save us we
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have to get the youngest generation engaged with nature,
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getting them appreciating how special this planet is, and how
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quickly things can go away if we don't pay attention to them. And
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with those connections that we make, to heal, you know, one
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little patch at a time Mmm it's not just Earth repair itself
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repair it is it is. It is good for the soul, the mind the body,
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the spirit and, and the land around us. That's my dream. And
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that's what I hope this book inspires people to think about.
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Stephanie Maas: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much Bill.
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This has been incredible time together sincerely appreciate you.
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Bill Weir: I hope so, it's really easy to talk to you,
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Stephanie. Thank you for your time.