Somini Sengupta on Climate Change

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, climate change has dominated the headlines this year. Wildfires devastating California. Yellow vests anger at a carbon tax in France. Schoolchildren protesting by cutting class from Sweden to Australia. But what about nations not making headlines like Vietnam or Somalia? How are they bearing the brunt of the ticking climate clock? Our next guest, Somini Sengupta reports on the human toll of climate change from all corners of the globe. She is part of [13:40:00] “The New York Times” team dedicated to climate coverage. So as the year wraps up, Somini took our Michel Martin on a global climate tour.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Somini Sengupta, thank you so much for talking with us.

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: “The New York Times” is one of the only news organizations to have a team dedicated to covering climate change. Why is that?

SENGUPTA, INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: We have a team dedicated to covering climate because it’s a really important issue for our audience. And this year in 20, you’ve seen that our coverage has done really three kinds of stories. We have explained the science of climate change. We have borne witness to the impact of climate change on the lives of ordinary people all over the world. And we have doggedly probed, investigated what the U.S. government is doing.

MARTIN: This whole argument that there actually is an argument, when did “The Times” decided that that has to be over? Because in mainstream journalism, the way that most of us deal with things that are sticky or uncomfortable is to make everything a matter of opinion, right. To say, well, some people think this and some people think that. And “The Times” has just said enough with that, we’re going to establish this is a fact and we’re going to deal with it as it is a fact. When did that happen and why do you think that’s important?

SENGUPTA: You know, there’s — the simplest way to explain this is there is no debate among scientists about what happens when we inject greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. You inject greenhouse gases, the average temperature rises. That’s not really a matter of debate. The science is very clear about that and so our coverage is very clear about that. There can be debates about what policy measures you take. But on the actual science of how climate change impacts the planet, there is scientific consensus including in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which consists of hundreds of scientists from all over the world, including the United States. So you know, we don’t think it helps the public, it doesn’t help our readers to not get it straight.

MARTIN: What are the biggest climate change stories of the year?

SENGUPTA: I am part of a team of roughly a dozen reporters and editors. And so we have looked, for example, at the human toll of climate change in all kinds of ways. So we’ve written about — I went to Northern Kenya not so long ago to write about pastoralist communities who for generations made their living raising animals. But because the droughts have gotten so severe, so prolonged, repeated year after year, and that definitely has a climate change fingerprint. That I was talking to men and women who are saying, “You know one week, I wake up and five of my animals are dead. Next week, 10 of my animals are dead. By the end of the season, I’ve lost my herd. I borrow some money. I replenish my herd. Next year, the same thing happens.” So it’s a way of life and livelihoods that are threatened among some of the poorest people in the world.

MARTIN: You’re talking about whole communities.

SENGUPTA: Whole communities. Some of whom are the most vulnerable. Some of whom have a very small carbon footprint, right. Let’s face it. They are not driving cars. Some of them don’t have access to electricity. So we have covered those kinds of stories all over the world. My colleague went up to Canada to write about how backyard skating rinks, ice skating rinks were fading. This is also — you know, it’s a way of life. We’ve done a whole series about our shared cultural heritage and the risk that climate change poses. There’s fantastic stories about Easter Island which is a very small island off the coast of Chile with ancient stone carvings that are now facing the risk of sea rise and eroding away. The Cedars of Lebanon also being endangered by climate change as the heating up of that area. So we’ve looked at how individual lives are changing. We’ve looked at how communities are being affected. We’ve looked at the economic costs. Sea rise, of course, affects coastal cities. Some of our most important cities around the world. Stock markets and airports are on that coast. So many of your viewers will have flown into Shanghai or Rome or San Francisco, New York. All of these are barely five meters above sea level. And we’ve written about how that’s going to be affected if you have a rising sea.

MARTIN: How many of the world’s conflicts in the current moment are tied to climate change would you say?

SENGUPTA: It’s extremely difficult to draw a straight line between climate change and conflict. However, if climate change exacerbates water scarcity or just the ability to grow food, it will lead to — it is likely to lead to some forced displacement of people. It could lead to conflict. The clearest example that I can refer to is perhaps Somalia. After recurrent years of drought, many Somalis had to leave their homeland. They had to, you know, find —

MARTIN: Find somewhere to go.

SENGUPTA: Find somewhere to go, find new ways of making a living. Al- Shabab certainly took advantage of that.

MARTIN: But there is a major growing consensus in the international community about the need to deal with this. I mean there was just this major meeting that just wrapped up in Poland.

SENGUPTA: Oh, absolutely. So we are three years after the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement was an aspirational global accord whereby every country around the world recognized first that climate change is a reality. And that everyone, every country should do their part to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions. These were voluntary pledges. Every country said, “OK, by this year, we’re going to ratchet down our emissions” or “We’re going to peak our emissions. If we’re a growing country, we’re going to peak our emissions and then we’re going to bring them down.” Where do we stand on that right now? Well, two of the biggest economies, also the biggest emitters, China and the United States, grew their emissions in 2018, kept rising. Even as the science got sharper and sharper, right. Even as the scientists kept saying, “Wait, you know, this train is already, you know, hurtling towards the cliff.”

MARTIN: So when you say the science got sharper, what do you mean?

SENGUPTA: The scientists understand much better the risks of climate change. There was a landmark report that my colleague wrote about earlier this year about what happens if the current trajectory of emissions goes up at this current pace. We have continued since the beginning of the industrial age to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Temperatures have already risen since the start of the industrial era. There’s this very cool story that one of my colleagues worked on where you can hit your hometown at the year of your birth and see how many hot days, like days above 90 degrees, there were in your hometown at the year of your birth, how many there are now, and how many scientists are projecting to be there when you’re 80. And that’s just a really incredibly stark way to see what’s happening even in our lifetimes in places that we recognize. So earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put out what to me was really just a very stark report that showed if our emissions continue at this current trajectory by 2040, the world faces much more heightened risks of severe droughts, much more extremes in rainfall. So both too much rain, too little rain, wildfires, coastal flooding because of sea level rise by the year 2040. 2040 is my lifetime. I have a 10-year-old kid. 2040 is when, you know, she’s just kind of establishing herself, right, as an adult. Scientists also said this is not inevitable. None of this is inevitable. There are things that we can do to bend the curve but that has to be done really quickly. So three years after the Paris agreement, where are we in bending the curve even as scientists have been warning us, ringing the alarm bells? Well, as one scientist sad in the big international talks in Poland, he said, “Look, scientists have been raising the alarm but world leaders, presidents, and prime ministers keep hitting the snooze button.”

MARTIN: Why do you think though some people still advance this argument that there is an argument about it? Like what is that about?

SENGUPTA: There are powerful industrial interests. There are powerful industries with interests in fossil fuels continuing to play the role that they have. I went and traveled recently to do a story about coal and coals abiding influence in the world. It’s still — it has fired the modern age of course, right. I mean everything around us, the modern industrial era is fueled by coal but it’s also the dirtiest fossil fuel around. And we are now at the point where we know, scientists know, they are very clear on this that the [13:50:00] way to avert the worst effects of climate change is to get the world off of coal. And yet there are very powerful interests that keep us invested in coal. It still accounts for 40 percent of global electricity. I was in Vietnam where both Chinese and Japanese companies were competing to promote coal in Vietnam, a fast-growing economy. It’s a powerful incumbent. It’s hard to knock it off its pedestal

MARTIN: And what about the United States? I mean what role do you think the United States is playing in the climate change?

SENGUPTA: In a big picture.

MARTIN: In a big picture conversation right now.

SENGUPTA: Yes. On coal, I just want to point out that in the United States, coal consumption has markedly declined in part because of the abundance of natural gas. But as my colleagues have shown, there has been a real effort to rollback, for example, the Clean Power Plan which would force old — the older, most polluting coal plants to shut down. Overall, the United States has, of course, announced its intention to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. And just to be clear, the Paris Climate Agreement is not other countries telling each country what to do, but each country voluntarily setting its own pledges on how to bring down emissions. The U.S. has said it is not its interest. This administration has said it intends to pull out of the Paris Agreement but that actual exit doesn’t take place until 2020. It’s just the way, you know, the agreement is crafted. This year, the United States sent a delegation to these international talks in Poland and promoted fossil fuels at a side event but also took part in the negotiations because United States States still remains in the negotiations. There is a great deal of concern about the Trump administration’s position that it will not contribute the kinds of money that the United States was expected to contribute to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change. Most importantly, what you’re seeing at home is the rollback of a host of environmental protections. And we did a story not long ago that showed 76 separate environmental rules that the Trump administration has pulled back on. And it includes things like, you know oil and gas companies not having to report their methane emissions anymore, for example, or rolling back fuel efficiency standards. And, of course, the Clean Power Plan.

MARTIN: I was curious though if you’ve ever spoken to anybody who’s deeply connected with those industries and ask them what planet they think they’re going to live on if the policies that they continue to defend and brace continue?

SENGUPTA: My colleagues have done incredible work drawing the line between particular environmental rollbacks that this administration has pursued and the interests of industries. And they’ve done incredible work showing that ties the former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, for example, to coal interest. The current EPA administrator is, of course, a former coal lobbyist. And so my colleagues have done incredibly dogged work on that. It’s also the case that there are many industries, many sectors that are now realizing that there is public pressure. There is shareholder pressure. There is policy pressure to ratchet down their own greenhouse gas emissions. And we’re seeing that from shipping companies and fast food companies and lots of other company to at least set targets. Now, the proof is in the pudding. Are they going to be able to retool their businesses fast enough to save us from this brink of catastrophic climate change?

MARTIN: Somini Sengupta, thank you so much for talking with us.

SENGUPTA: Thank you.