My guest for this installment is Dennis Slotnick… representing the Toledo chapter of the Climate Reality Program. The Climate Reality Program works toward a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action a necessity.
Staying in Contact with London Mitchell
Guest: Dennis Slotnick, Climate Reality
Staying in contact. I'm London Mitchell. Each week we take a few minutes to examine and issue in our community and introduce individuals working to address those issues. Admittedly, sometimes we do get into the weeds, but hopefully you'll leave each installment with some food for thought and maybe the inspiration to roll up your sleeves and join an effort. My guest for this installment is Dennis Slachnik, representing the Toledo chapter of the Climate Reality Program. The Climate Reality Program works toward a global solution to the climate crisis by making urgent action a necessity. Dennis is a former science and biology teacher. So Dennis, give us some background on the Climate Reality Program. Climate reality started when Al Gore was not elected as president and he felt that of all the concerns in the world that climate change and climate disruption and the impact human beings have on burning fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is something we can fix, something that is universally understood as based on science. He's the only senator who has a science degree, by the way, and he has traveled the world and is still traveling the world, training people to speak on climate concerns. So we have a group in Toledo that has trained leaders and we go on visits with people and do the tour, do the information, do the actions, take legislative positions, and rally support for getting off fossil fuels as soon as we can. Talking about the environment, are there more important issues to think about regarding the environment than others? For example, I might talk about air pollution, I could talk about water pollution, I could talk about these super big factory farms that are polluting the water. Where's the focus? What's exciting about climate work is that it integrates all of them, London, it's both short term and long term, and it affects every human being even though they may not feel it right away. So if you take something like Lake Erie's algae blows, which you might say is the hot topic here, if you look just under the surface, you'll find climate change as a major piece of this, because every time you increase the temperature of the planet, Lake Erie increases its temperature. And we know that exponentially, algae grows in warmer water. If we take the issue of factory farms, which you mentioned, CAFOs, are primarily cattle, but also hogs, and when we use modern agricultural techniques of large tracts of land with petrochemicals and using farm equipment that's run by diesel and emphasized that particularly beef is very high, methane producing, we immediately see just under the surface real climate action potential, because if we take small farms locally, it distributes the methane, it doesn't emphasize apostle field use for production, and if people were to trim their beef habit, beef eating habits, we'd have major change in the methane production of beef, and methane is the strongest greenhouse gas. So every topic you think of in environment, let's say it's air pollution, the warmer the temperatures are in urban areas, the more aggravating the chemicals are because of the ozone effect, and that is all, it could be all rendered down to the way we use fossil fuels and the way we drive our cars and use of diesel and all that, and so in doing climate work, we encompass almost all environmental issues, and it's really an education tour to understand how climate is related to all of them. Great question, really. Well, here's another good question for you, and I'm sure you've debated it on and off, but to make the changes, to change the way we drive our cars, or to eat less meat, these are major lifestyle changes, not to mention major economic changes that would have to be made, and I'm not so sure that we think in long-term results, as much as we do in short-term, I don't want a carpool, so I'm not going to give up my car. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, I would agree with you in the sense that we have life habits, and these are comfortable for us, and it's preferred, and yet the life habit of not being able to go outside in the summer because it's too hot. The life habit of a drought striking our food supply, the life habit of running out of drinking water is much more inconvenient than shifting our diet or shifting to an electric vehicle or putting solar on our homes or schools. And I think that we're in for some big habit changes, whatever we do. And some of them are going to be inconvenient. In fact, Al Gore's statement is inconvenient truth, shifting over to a little lower temperature setting at night on your thermostat. Maybe a little simple switch, but with major consequences and fossil fuel use, and just a little bit of awareness, some of these changes are really quite simple. So let's go on to the heat island effect question, if you don't mind. The heat island effect is a sleeper because we don't realize in urban areas how gradually our temperatures are increasing compared to countryside and near water and places that have lots of trees. And what occurs is that the elders, the children that have respiratory problems, and that people who are compromised with asthma are the ones who are really suffering from this. And are hospitalized in much larger numbers when the temperatures go up into the 90s nearing 100. And we don't see them so much. But the temperatures are increasing in Arizona, for instance, in Phoenix are dramatic. When we talk about, you know, little life changes, it's not a little life change in Phoenix, if it's 117 degrees and is over 100 degrees for 100 days last year. So worse, the people in Phoenix are seriously considering not living there. And it's only continuing to be worse. You know, London, the last 10 years have been the hottest years on record. Now that that's way beyond what statistics would suggest. So coming back to the idea of making life changes, we're going to make changes anyway and many of them are going to be dramatic and serious. A hurricane is a dramatic serious change to hurricanes in a row is a double dramatic change. So shifting to an electric vehicle, turning down the heat, planting trees, doing some less driving, maybe taking trains instead of a plane. I know these are sometimes inconvenient, but the question is, can we make these few changes as a whole population shifted over and avoid the big collapses. So we're not necessarily talking about huge major changes all at once, but maybe small things that build upon themselves that can really make an impact. Yes, yes, yes. Let's look at heat island effect again. When we have urban areas that have asphalt and black roofs, and we have buildings that are very close together. And we have no trees and we have no waterways and less parks. The temperatures can get them as much as 10 or 15 degrees warmer than they would out in the countryside. And so the small changes that are done in urban heat island effect mitigation is to change the color of the roof. Now, it may seem like simple, but when your new roof is needed, you can put a white roof in. There's, you know, there's, or light color roof. And in the case of an urban designer, one could choose concrete, which reflects light, as opposed to asphalt, which absorbs heat. If it has to do with landscaping, or a park design, add more trees. If it has to do with traffic, using buses instead of cars reduces the impact of the air pollution and the. And the fossil fuels on streets and highways and stuff. There's a whole list of ways that urban heat island effect can be mitigated with just simple changes, more ventilation, natural ventilation instead of air conditioning and heat. There's, you know, green space that can be created where there's an area that has no. Buildings and vacant lots quite, you know, there's some quite a lot of places in Toledo. It's a long swan creek where we have potential for reforestation. In fact, Toledo has a plan to put in a million trees 10,000 each year for the next decade and going up. And that's a very aggressive plan. Because anywhere there's trees, they are cooling, not only in shade, but what's called respiration, in the operation of water off the leaves is a cooling effect. And it gives a breezes, because there's a temperature difference between shade and not shade. And anytime you have breezes and moving air, you're distributing the urban heat. These are kind of simple changes. They take some thought. They take a few resources, but they take a lot less energy than increasing your heating and cooling bills. So this is what we advocate is practical simple changes that in a big picture can make a major difference in hospitalizations in urban, urban heat days. Dennis Slatnik is with a climate reality project. He has more to say, including why he believes the term climate change creates a misunderstanding. More with Dennis next week. I'm London Mitchell, hoping you'll accept this invitation to join us again next week as we continue staying in contact. I'd love to get your emails, contact me through my website, LondonMitchell.News, or follow me on Blue Sky. Previous episodes of staying in contact with London Mitchell are available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Podbean, the Suite 419 app, and LondonMitchell.News. (gentle music)