Host Geoff Sheffrin reviews the successes and failures of COP 27 and discusses Climate Tipping Points and the catastrophic impact they’ll have on the environment, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He’ll also look at “green-washing” and how many corporations may be rebranding costs savings as environmental leadership.
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Host Geoff Sheffrin reviews the successes and failures of COP 27 and discusses Climate Tipping Points and the catastrophic impact they’ll have on the environment, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He’ll also look at “green-washing” and how many corporations may be rebranding costs savings as environmental leadership.
Subscribe on your favourite podcast app and don’t miss an episode!
Also available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTMDHlF8N8lVIWzyPl4yhw?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087081536326
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mothernature_podcast/
Peter Reynolds 00:18
Hi, I'm Peter Reynolds, and welcome to Mother Nature Doesn't Give a Crap with Geoff Scheffrin. And joining us, as always, is our resident Professional Engineer, climate activist and firebrand. Geoff Scheffrin. Geoff, good to see you.
Geoff Sheffrin 00:33
Peter, thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm working on the firebrand piece. And I think of the OSPE conference, it could be that I certainly wave the flag somewhat in that direction that which was entertaining. But we'll get to that much later. In the podcast, I had a couple of comments about that.
Peter Reynolds 00:49
Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about the conference and your participation in it. It's interesting, you know, when I call you a firebrand, but I think we need more firebrands out there, because as we spoke in the last episode, it's not just about climate change. This is a climate emergency.
Geoff Sheffrin 01:06
Correct. Absolutely. And you know, from the previous podcast, you know why I'm pushing 2030. My view is, Mother Nature doesn't have a calendar. And why am I pushing through the engineers? Because we have a group who technologically can make a difference. Right? So I'm trying to reach out to... trying to reach out to everybody that's listening. But I'm trying to reach out to the engineers because we have to roll our sleeves up, and figure out how to make our contributions as professionals to get this problem under control.
Peter Reynolds 01:38
So it's been a month since our first episode, can you give our listeners and our viewers a bit of an update on what has or hasn't happened?
Geoff Sheffrin 01:49
I'm going to try and touch on three things. One is, obviously the COP27. That just finished a about a week ago. So I want to talk about that. I also want to talk about something that I came across over the weekend, a scientist who has credentials in the environmental area, who claims to be a contrarian. I want to talk a little bit about that, because I don't fully agree with her views. But I also want to talk about another piece that I've done some research on, it's called Climate tipping points. These are the events that are going on around the globe, which are moving the weather patterns and getting us into what is becoming the crisis, the emergency and eventually will become a disaster as I see it.
Peter Reynolds 02:40
So maybe we can start with the contrarian. It seems to me, a lot of people might put scientists or individuals into two categories. People that accept that climate change is real and happening, and climate deniers. But I guess on the scientists side, not everybody agrees on the same approach.
Geoff Sheffrin 03:03
That's true. I mean, the last podcast, I think we talked about the 97% of scientific opinion, is absolutely on the same page with reference to climate crisis, as we currently see it is caused by human activity. When I dig into that a little bit further, as I have done during this past few weeks, you can see that you can frame pieces of that question in several different ways. And when you look through, I think over 80,000 Scientific documentation that's been peer reviewed, and accredited over the last couple of decades, what you get is different opinions. And in some cases, you'd say 80-85% of the scientists agree with that view. And in other cases, 99% of the scientists agree with that view. Right. So they there's different levels of agreement, the number that's being bandied around, because it's a good marketing number is 97%. Well, you know, so my view is, it is clearly up there. That means there's 3%, or depending how you frame the question, there could be 15%, who don't agree, which then gets me to this contrarian piece. One of our viewers very kindly sent me a YouTube clip, of a scientist, who's a PhD. PhD was from quite a few years ago, quite a while ago, but working in the environmental field, all of her career. And I listen to this podcast, and I had some concerns with it, because she many times emphasized that going wind and going solar is not going to solve our problems. Well, I can't disagree with that. But when she kept harping on wind and solar, I'm saying, what about all the other green things? And I agree with it, wind and solar isn't going to get us there. Right now. Globally, wind and solar is probably less than 4% of the world. If I'd be surprised if in a decade or two from now, if Mother Nature lets us go that long. Within A decade or two from now, I'd be surprised if we have more than 15%, wind and solar. So she was on about that. But what really got me, which is where I now fall into disagreement with her, she was talking about a mini ice age that occurred between the First World War and the Second World War. And I'm scratching my head saying, what mini ice age? So I went back to my very reliable sources for data checking in two different formats. One of them gives me a beautiful graph, which gives me almost monthly data from around what was the date, it was around 1880, all the way up to 1920, sorry, 2020. And what it showed was that this graph, we certainly had a period of cooling, but through all of that, and I just need to check a couple of numbers here, in the period from about 1930. Around there, we were coming out of what she was referring to as a mini ice age. So I looked up the data from 1880, all the way through to 1930. The mini ice age she's referring to was if I take a zero datum line for temperature, zero degrees Celsius, datum line, her mini ice age was 0.2 degrees below that zero data. It's not exactly viewed as a mini ice age, it's very minimal. But when I then started falling into a disagreement with her is, since we started doing the current measurements about the climate crisis, you know, and we're in the 1950s 60s, when we first started talking about this, you can see that we are now at plus 1.2. So we're five times the level of warming versus the level of freezing that she was talking about. So I take umbrage in terms of what he was suggesting, but then I went a bit further. So I then started to review temperature change from the birth of Christ, Year Zero AD, all the way to today. So I'm looking at 2000 years of temperature change. And what's interesting about that is, through all of that we were just a hair or so above or below the zero line, until we get to a mini ice age around the Middle Ages. So for about three or 400 years, in the year 1300 1400 1500, we were about point two degrees below this zero line. And then we get out of it. And by the time we get into the period, between the two wars, we were at that level, we had a small peak when it went up again. But all the evidence shows now for 2000 years, we never actually had anything more than an average of point two degrees Celsius below that norm. I don't call that a mini ice age, even for an extended period of time. And when you then compare that to the 1.2 that we're at now, you know, this is chalk and cheese, we're in two different. So when she becomes a contrarian, absolutely entitled to her opinion, because that's the one thing I like about science. When science works, it's peer reviewed by an awful lot of skeptical scientists, right? Scientists don't take anything at face value, unless they've gone through it. And they've checked it very thoroughly. So when I go through that, and I'm seeing 1.2 versus an ice age, what ice age? And I'm seeing no consensus, that's there's disagreeing with the fact that we never had an ice age, you know, to be that's the contrarian piece that I take some exception to.
Peter Reynolds 08:31
And it's interesting, because I'm wondering what the motivation behind that is, because it sounds to me, when you use terms like ice age, you're basically trying to lessen the... essentially, you know, we're at 1.5 now. We had an ice age back in the 30s. It's not that bad. So it seems like trying to soften the emergency by saying stuff like that, and using words like ice age, because when people think Ice Age, they don't think of point 002. They think of glaciers covering Toronto.
Geoff Sheffrin 09:09
Yeah, exactly. So you know, so, in my opinion, a contrarian, I think is necessary, because it does allow us to bounce various views around, but I'm sorry, I think in terms of using an emotive term, like ice age, I think is inappropriate.
Peter Reynolds 09:26
No, it makes sense. I mean, you want some contrarian views, because obviously that pushes the story forward and science forward. And if everyone is thinking the same thing, there may be things sort of outside that box that we're not considering. But I found that that there's a lot of, we had this with vaccines, where you have people doing podcasts and posting websites that are sort of in the guise of pro vaccine or, but really, it's masking this. There's no pun intended, you know, sort of this anti Vaxxer mentality. And I think that can be in the environmental world as well. It's kind of being gaslighted. And I guess it's particularly dangerous if people have real credentials, like they really they have a PhD.
Geoff Sheffrin 10:24
Yeah. So, you know, that's my view on that. So you're in no way changes my priority. And, you know, as you will know, from the last podcast, I'm not talking about wind and solar. Yes, I am. But I'm talking about everything. You know, I want nuclear, I want hydro, I want every single thing that we can create, which is green based. Small modular reactors. We need all of this stuff, in my opinion, if she's stating overreacting, just to close off a point here. If she's right, and that we are overreacting, my view is I'd rather overreact and be prepared. So 2030 doesn't come and beat us over the head, then sit back complacently saying it ain't gonna happen. Because all the evidence suggests it's going to happen.
Peter Reynolds 11:10
Absolutely. So let's move on to COP27, which just ended and give me your your overall thoughts on that?
Geoff Sheffrin 11:22
Well I found that obviously, I've been tracking it daily as the conference was going on. And I have to say a lot of credit to them for the loss and damage piece. Last come through and record on that's been on the table for over 20 years. Matter of fact, I think it was even raised in the first call.
Peter Reynolds 11:37
Geoff, can you give a little bit more detail on what that is, loss and damage,
Geoff Sheffrin 11:44
Loss and damage is a fund that they're looking for the developed world to provide funds to the world, the lesser developed world that is struggling with climate change initiatives, and doesn't have the financial resources to get things done and fixed. Loss and damage, I think the fact they've actually come to an agreement that it needs to exist. The USA apparently in the Congress was one of the big holdouts, but they agreed in the end. So we've got this loss and damage fund potentially available. Great. What I don't like about it is, I don't see the teeth. I don't see the accountability. I don't see the timelines. I don't see dollars. There's some dollars thrown around, but I don't see anything attached to it, which makes it real. So to my mind, big hurrah. We've got lost and damage. To me, big failure. What the hell of a bloody matrix.
Peter Reynolds 12:32
For those people, I'd like to back up a little bit. Geoff and talk just about what is COP for those people listening? Who might not have ever heard of it or didn't know what's happened?
Geoff Sheffrin 12:43
Yeah. COP is called strange acronym, copies Conference of the Parties. Set up originally in I think 1995. That's when COP One occurred, set up by the United Nations. So what you get these days is Antonio Guterres, head of United Nations. He's out there waving the flag, and he's very diligently and very fervently pushing. Guys, we're running out of time. 2030 is becoming a problem. We need to get on with this. So COP is the Conference of the Parties. There are over approximately 40,000 delegates, burning up tons of jet fuel to get to Egypt, right. In that conference, they were well over 600 I have number one number I saw was 636 delegates from the fossil fuel industry. I wonder what agenda they were pushing? I don't know, I didn't get into the details. But I'm curious, you know. So, you know, we've got COP27. And it's supposed to deliver a shopping list of things. Coal, I've said in the last podcast and say, again, is our biggest detriment to the climate issues. Because we generate a significant amount of CO2 from burning coal, for power for heat for everything. We have to get off it. Right. So when I look at that, in that COP summary, and I went through the summary in some detail, there's no mention of coal. Matter of fact coal is actually being expanded in China. And whilst India says, We want to get off coal, they have no choice at the moment. They're burning a lot of coal to generate power. And we're not alone, dear, oh, Canada is mining and selling coal to other countries because they need the coal. So we're busy exporting it. So you know, it didn't get mentioned in that you've got mentioned, but it's a sideline, there's no teeth, no commitment. The 1.5 gone. You had a question?
Geoff Sheffrin 12:43
Yeah. No, I was just it's interesting, because in what I've sort of been reading, is that it seems like coal, particularly Canada, we seem to be on board in terms of phasing out coal but when natural gas and oil was raised, our politicians kind of put up their hands, the idea being that that's a tough sell, and kind of stepped away from it and seems like a failure, considering the crisis that we're in the middle of. But one can understand that trying to sell something like that politically would be challenged.
Geoff Sheffrin 15:23
Yes. And that gets back to one of the earlier discussions about the political leadership, which is the biggest piece that's missing in our three platform agenda of technology, money, and leadership. But let's go back to COP for a couple of minutes. So there's nothing about that 1.5 degrees, that too, would appear to have been in jeopardy at the conference, there was a lot of people trying to back away from it. The Paris Accord in 2015 was the 1.5 benchmark that was set. We're halfway between that and 2030. And we're at 1.2, we've made no progress. So over the next seven years, the other half of that 15 year timeframe, we're going to try and mitigate the global circumstances? So we don't bridge that last point three degrees and get across that threshold? We'll come to that in the climate tipping points later. But to me, that's another failure. And it was a risky item, the fact that it was being watered down. Then there were other things in there, one of the positives a real positive, which is a sustainable, politic positive, they actually had a youth delegate conference there. Youths have always been on the outside protesting this time they were in the conference as part of it. That's a big step forward. I like that. We need it, we need those voices. But then when we look a little bit further at other things, the Saudi countries were pushing to declare natural gas as green. Give me a freaking break, since when is a fossil fuel ever going to be green? I know why they want it to be green, because greenbacks get attached to it. But that's the wrong green.
Peter Reynolds 15:32
Maybe it's the right green Geoff, maybe it's the right because money seems to be what's driving all of this.
Geoff Sheffrin 17:10
And that gets me onto the other topic about, we only ever measure success through money. When we figure out how to actually include sustainability in a measurable way on balance sheets, that's when we might start making some progress. And we're never ever going to get off the green part of the money. But if we can get sustainability, nevermind, that's a whole nother topic. Let's move on.
Peter Reynolds 17:29
This is something we definitely can can dive into more because this idea of greenwashing with companies pretending or at least outwardly looking greener than they are, then it occurred to me, as I'm looking at all these products, you either have green in the title or have a green box. And you just think, oh, they must be sustainable. They must be organic, they all these things that you think of, and I don't know, maybe the naive side of me, you know, looks at Starbucks getting rid of plastic straws. And the naive, the naive side of me says, you know, what they've taken corporate responsibility to help the environment. And then the cynical side of me says, No, somewhere on a balance sheet somewhere. They made the decision that you know, what the winds are turning with our customers, and we can turn this into a marketing opportunity.
Geoff Sheffrin 18:32
Of course.
Peter Reynolds 18:36
Am I too cynical, Geoff?
Geoff Sheffrin 18:38
No, I'm on your page. Peter I'm sorry. That's exactly what's happening. I know people who quite you know, you use these paper straws in a product. I very rarely buy fast food products. But you know, if you leave it in the drink too long, it goes soggy and you can't use the straw very well. I know people who actually will take a plastic straw, wash it and bring it back next time they're in a fast food place. So they use their plastic straw, they then take it home, wash it and use it again. Okay, that's environmentally friendly. I like that.
Peter Reynolds 19:10
Well, I read somewhere that when hotels started this whole environmental push with their towels. And when you go into a hotel now, it says, you know, if you still want to use the towel, hang it up. And it also has a little card that says if you don't want your bedsheets changed, you know, place it on on the bed. And it's this whole sort of environmental push. If you think about it for just a moment, think of the millions that they're saving in laundry fees, in staffing, so yeah. And although that's cynical, maybe a more realistic way of looking at it. I'm wondering if maybe that's not ultimately the solution that you can look for.
Geoff Sheffrin 19:56
I would agree with the last call, I think Sorry of the last episode that we did. We talked a little bit about that. And you know, one of the things we said at the end was if every single individual did just a teeny little piece, you get a billion people doing a teeny little piece, and you have some substance beginning to emerge. By themselves as individual activities, they're largely greenwashing.
Peter Reynolds 20:21
Can we talk, a word or phrase that gets used a lot during COP and when they talk about targets, when it comes to carbon emissions. Is Net Zero, people moving towards Net Zero? Can you define Net Zero?
Geoff Sheffrin 20:39
Yeah, Net Zero, is the ability to generate zero emissions and offset them against those emissions that are already generated. So a net zero is a trade off. And my view is, Net Zero is a worthy goal to get us down the road. But it's not the endpoint, it can't be because Net Zero still has us emitting too much CO2. Eventually, we've got to be at 00. Right. And that ain't gonna happen for decades.
Peter Reynolds 21:10
Just so I understand, if you have a factory that is, you know, emitting or producing a certain amount of carbon, and they plant the equivalent amount of trees, then the idea would be is that they're at Net Zero.
Geoff Sheffrin 21:29
Yep.
Peter Reynolds 21:29
But they wouldn't have had to do anything to make their factory more environmentally friendly.
Geoff Sheffrin 21:36
Correct.
Peter Reynolds 21:37
Which, again, on sort of paper looks good, but ultimately, is not the solution.
Geoff Sheffrin 21:44
It's not the solution. So you know, it's a worthy goal. To me, it's another one of many steps on the path to getting us to sustainability.
Peter Reynolds 21:54
Any other thoughts on COP? Before we go?
Geoff Sheffrin 21:57
Well, in spite of all the rhetoric and the report. With the report, the various things I've criticized in the report, they actually phrase it relatively positively in within their closing report. In terms of things that were achieved. Gutierrez in his closing video statement, was also quite supportive of the many things that were accomplished, particularly the loss and damage piece. But he was still pushing very clearly, we've only got till 2030. And we're not doing enough. You know, he made it clear in his closing speech that from the Paris accord to 2030, we've moved 1.1-1.2 degrees up the scale of 1.5 with the target. And we've got another seven years, and we're not going to exceed that threshold? I think he was making the point quite clearly, we're not on track, and we're not. So that would be my closing comment on COP.
Peter Reynolds 22:48
So Geoff, what are CTPs
Geoff Sheffrin 22:50
CTPs are as the acronym for Climate Tipping Points. It's an acronym that tries to capture those various things that are happening on the planet that are having an impact on our weather patterns, ultimately, to our detriment. Right, so climbing tipping points, was first looked at in some detail by a group of scientists in the year 2008. And they published a fairly detailed, well respected, peer reviewed report on climate tipping points. At that time, they had nine of them. Just this past couple of months, a fresh version of this report has been published in the Science Journal, the Science Journal is administered under the American advancement of the American advancement of science, I've forgotten what the AAD stands or AADS. American advancement, nevermind, whatever it is. So you know, it's a reputable organization that is overseen by sciences peer group reviewed. And they've now come up with about 16 of these climate tipping points, because we're further into this crisis. So we're seeing more impact of those things that are happening. What's interesting is from the 2008 report, the climate tipping points that were identified then, five of them are real. Now they're occurring, because we're at the 1.2 level. So from the zero that we talked about earlier, up to 1.2. Nine of these climate tipping points are already happening, and five of them are, we're in the middle of them occurring. These are the sorts of global events, these are the shifting of ocean current patterns, the shifting of the Jetstream. The melting of the ice caps, the increase in ocean temperature, and we said at the last podcast, we've gone from the datum of zero to plus 0.7 degrees Celsius above, right? It doesn't sound significant, but when you think about the whole globe, two thirds of it, is water. That's now point seven degrees higher. that allows for more evaporation, more condensation getting into clouds, more atmospheric rivers and flood waters being moved in different directions because the jet stream has moved as well. So it's always important to remember the amount of water on the globe has never changed. Go Back billions of years, it probably was different. But the amount of water we have to deal with on the planet is exactly the same. It's a question of where is it? Is it in the ocean has evaporated? Is it in clouds? Is it moved somewhere else? Is it being dumped on Pakistan? Or is it causing a flood in Europe? Is it causing a drought somewhere in Central Africa or China or elsewhere? Where is the water, the water is always there. It's just in different quantities in different places, because it's being moved around by the tipping points that are in the climate. And when I look at those tipping points, a number of them are in the northern hemisphere, because we're getting the ice caps melting. And we're talking about boreal deteriorations, etc. So, there's several of them that they've talked about as being within this tipping point threshold, which are real, and they're now and they're what's causing the current problems we get with some of the weather changes. And you could argue, we're not getting more frequent weather changes. And I said in the last podcast, I don't see that we're getting more frequent of these weather events. But it's very clear that we seem to be getting some of them that are much more severe than we've had before. So we're getting you know, what used to be one in 100 years is now becoming a one in 10. And I predict we're gonna see some of these happening quite regularly over the next number of years.
Peter Reynolds 26:43
So with tipping points, Geoff, so what happens when we tip, what is the urgency of avoiding these tipping points?
Geoff Sheffrin 26:52
Well, avoiding the tipping points is to stop polluting the atmosphere and stop creating this heat shield that we've created for ourselves by having too much carbon dioxide up there. If I go back to this earlier study, when I was talking about the contrarian, the CO2 level globally, if I go back 2000 years, was under 200 parts per million. We're now at over 400 parts per million. So we've already polluted a lot of the atmosphere. And we're just continuing to add. So Net Zero doesn't take us away from adding more. We just have some offsets, which allows us to greenwash the fact that, you know, we got a problem and yeah, we have it under control netzero carbon sequester? You know, absolutely, we need to do those things. But let's not greenwash it, let's call it what it is, let's stop bullshitting society with the implications of what we can apparently fix. When really we're not fixing it. The fixing it is the cause. The cause is let's get off those things which generate excessive amounts of CO2, and don't deliver enough return on the heat energy that we use them for.
Peter Reynolds 27:58
No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we're, we are getting to a point and maybe have passed a few points, where we're starting to lose species and climate is changing. And we kind of are...people are getting used to it. And as we spoke last episode, we are starting to... what's the word that you hate when we're...?
Geoff Sheffrin 28:22
Adaption.
Peter Reynolds 28:23
There it is.
Geoff Sheffrin 28:25
Absolutely essential. But for Christ's sake, let's not hang our hat on adaption because that ain't gonna get us there. We've got to do it. Because we have to survive the mess we've already created. We have to adapt. But that's the you know, you can't make that the be all and end all the goal is not adaption. The goal is fix the freakin cause.
Peter Reynolds 28:42
Let's talk about your appearance at the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers conference back in early November. What were you doing there?
Geoff Sheffrin 28:53
Well, I was I was delighted to be invited by OSPE to come and be one of the panelists on the climate crisis section. And the conference was about a number of things related to OSPE, and their engineering, advocacy, etc. There are over 600 delegates there. And over 2000 delegates online doing it virtually. And I was one of the panelists on their end, we were charged with talking about or getting into a discussion on the climate crisis, and what should be happening and my colleagues talked about those things. They're all in industry in one form or another. I was the only one that's not directly in industry. So I was waving the flag on along the same lines is the podcast. And one of my opening comments was Mother Nature doesn't give a crap. And I was allowed to... Sandro the president of OSPE allowed me to plug that. So I said Mother Nature doesn't give a crap. She doesn't have a bloody calendar. She doesn't know that she's not on Outlook. She doesn't know about 2030, 2050, Net Zeros. You know, we're the ones doing that. And she doesn't give a damn, she's gonna beat us. So that was my theme in terms of various comments. So we've got an hour and a half on a panel discussion answering questions and delivering some thoughts about what it is we need to do and trying to engage the engineering community to say, Guys, we are the potential solution. Because if we've engineered everything in our world to get us to where we are today, we have to re-engineering everything in our world to get us out of the mess that we've inadvertently and I say inadvertently, we haven't deliberately tried to go down to get to this point. It's just happened. Robert Louis Stevenson created a bloody steam engine, and somebody shoveled coal in it to generate steam, so the locomotive would work. Okay, that's not quite 200 years ago, but that's what started all of this. So we didn't do that, because we were trying to make a climate crisis.
Peter Reynolds 30:43
What was the reaction from the audience?
Geoff Sheffrin 30:45
It was quite interesting, actually. I was told afterwards that it was certainly at the Congress, I was the only panelist that actually got two rounds of applause during my comments. And I was told afterwards by one of the organizers that was monitoring the onlines, that even the online group gave me another round of applause somewhere. So clearly, I must have been pushing a few buttons, because the people were receptive to what I was trying to say. So I think the response generally was positive, the response from the whole conference was positive.
Peter Reynolds 31:17
And how does that make you feel about the potential for solving this crisis? Before 2030?
Geoff Sheffrin 31:24
When I see the sort of positive response we get from engineering delegates at the conference. Now, to me, that's reassuring. I think the engineers understand that we are the ones to make a contribution. And the more we do this sort of thing like this podcast discussion today, I think the more we push that clarity of understanding of the engineers to think about how can they make their contribution? Because ultimately, we got to do it. I'm of the generation that "Did I caused this problem?" No. But I was certainly in the evolution and everything I did, wasn't in the early days mitigating this problem. So what can I do about it? Well, I can try and raise the profile of the urgency of what we need to do to fix it. And if I can get more engineers talking about that, and other podcasts, we're going to be talking about nuclear, we're going to be talking about SMRs. I've got a potential speaker lined up to on the nucleus mrps, I may have another speaker available to me on nuclear power itself. I'm looking to try and get Seth Klein, who wrote the book, The Good War, about how to finance these crises. And, you know, he wrote an excellent book on that subject. So and we talked about that in the last podcast. So you know, we're trying to sort of create some momentum, and we're trying to get the engineering community involved. There will be deniers in the engineering community, some of them will be compromised, because they work in the fossil industry. And they're scratching their head saying, How do I do what I need to do to contribute to avoiding the climate crisis without getting fired? So you know, we're all a little bit different.
Peter Reynolds 32:56
You said, 660 delegates at COP from the fossil fuel industry?
Geoff Sheffrin 33:01
Over. The COP conference, one number I read was 636. So clearly over 600 delegates,
Peter Reynolds 33:08
So I guess that's keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
Geoff Sheffrin 33:13
That's what I would cynically observe, I can't imagine that we had 600 delegates from the fossil industry, who were all waving green flags. I just don't see that that was the one that was happening. But then I don't know what was going on, because I wasn't at the conference.
Peter Reynolds 33:29
So as we wrap up, episode two, are there any sort of positive things that we can talk about, or that you're seeing out there in terms of kind of taking on this climate crisis head on?
Geoff Sheffrin 33:46
And I think there are some positives. To my mind, the engineering conference, and OSPE and what OSPE is trying to do is a positive. I've been asked by us to OSPE to be the Interim Chair of the Climate Crisis Task Force. We had the first meeting of that group last week. So we're trying to find ways of handling the OSPE agenda. They've also asked me to keep an overview of the other OSPE Task Force is to pull out those things, excuse me, those things, which are climate related, to make sure we have a coherent umbrella over the climate issues from all of our task forces. So I see that as something very positive, because it allows us, OSPE, to reach up to 20,000 Professional Engineers in Ontario, which also means I'm reaching 20,000 out of approximately 80 odd 1000 Professional Engineers in Ontario, who are PNGs, but not necessarily OSPE members. So you know, there's another 60,000 we potentially reach, 170,000 in Canada. I'm trying to reach the engineers. And if in the process through this sort of thing, we can create some profiles so other interested users scratch their head about, okay, there's a climate crisis. I can understand that and then what can I do? That's back to that little discussion about, okay, I'm recycling, I've taken my incandescence out, you know, and I've got LEDs in my lighting, and I've reduced my electricity, and maybe I've got a solar panel, maybe I'm gonna thinking of buying a heat pump, individually, not very much, collectively become critical points of the collection, making the sum of the whole, far more than the sum of the parts.
Peter Reynolds 35:28
100%. Geoff. I think for myself, we were talking again, about even what I can do personally, because, you know, other than recycling, sort of up until this point, I was sort of very uneducated, and I started to think to myself that being educated and educating yourself, is really one of the biggest things that you can do. Because as I've been working on this podcast with you, you start to become aware, and I was thinking, again, getting back to money, this idea of trying to identify those companies that are that are trying to do a better job, that are leaders. I just read somewhere that IKEA, for example, has put 2 billion towards sustainability. And they have like 750,000 solar panels, they built 450 wind turbines. So they definitely seem like a company that is trying to be a leader in this area.
Geoff Sheffrin 36:28
I would agree,
Peter Reynolds 36:29
Vote with your wallet and make your voice heard that way.
Geoff Sheffrin 36:33
Yes. And I would say somebody like Ikea as a company is way ahead of the curve. And they're not greenwashing, they actually are serious behind the scenes, which I think it's helpful. The more we do that, the better you are, when we're in a situation where, you know, investment panels, and, you know, pension plans, and so on, talk about ESG and talk about where they're going to invest and how they want to see the divestment out of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels aren't going to go away. You can't arbitrarily throw that stuff out. But you've got to fine manage what you're accomplishing to get us to the point of sustainability. And I think all of these things individually, they're all little pieces, but we do enough of it collectively, we'll get there. So I you know, the to me, the positive is the hope we've got. And through the OSPE conference, you know, the engineering engagement, it's out there, and we have the technologies for goodness sake, we just need a lot more of it. Give me $40 trillion, and we'll fix this bloody problem.
Geoff Sheffrin 36:44
Do you take an e-transfer Geoff?
Geoff Sheffrin 37:36
Well, yeah, I might actually restrict what I can transfer.
Peter Reynolds 37:42
We'll have to do a GoFundMe for the earth and try to raise the money that way. Geoff, thank you so much for your insights again this week.
Geoff Sheffrin 37:51
Peter, thank you. A delight working with you. I think you and I spark off each other very nicely on this. So thank you for the patience and the time and the guidance.
Peter Reynolds 38:00
No, no, it's a wonderful journey we're on and I'm looking forward to it. And thank you to the listeners and the viewers who have joined us for this episode. We'd like to remind you that if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, we are on YouTube as well as a video podcast and the link is in the description. So please be sure to like and subscribe and share. Get this knowledge out there that's going to be the biggest help for us is sort of multiplying that message through you. And of course if you have questions for Geoff or any of our guests coming up, by all means, reach out to us via through our social media channels. We absolutely would love to hear from you. And raise those questions and answer those questions in the next episode of our podcast. So for Mother Nature Doesn't Give a Crap, I'm Peter Reynolds with your host Geoff Sheffrin. Thank you so much for watching.
Geoff Sheffrin 38:56
Remember one thing. Movers make things happen. Everyone else is a spectator. Go and be a mover. Thank you Peter.
Peter Reynolds 39:05
We'll see you next time.