Climate Conversations S1E3: The Conflicts of Climate Stakeholders

[00:00:00:00] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:00:07:03] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Welcome to Climate Conversations, I'm Rajesh Kasturirangan, I am the resident Grinch for today.

[00:00:13:26] DAVE DAMM-LUHR And I'm one of his partners in crime, Dave Damm-Luhr, glad to be here.

[00:00:18:01] CURT NEWTON: And Curt Newton. I think I'd like to be the dog, the little dog.

[00:00:22:21] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Wait, you mean like--

[00:00:24:16] DAVE DAMM-LUHR As in arf, arf, or what?

[00:00:26:12] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:00:26:25] DAVE DAMM-LUHR Woof, woof.

[00:00:27:23] CURT NEWTON: The one who stands on the edge of the sled. We're talking about the Grinch, the Grinch who stole Christmas, right?

[00:00:31:26] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Oh, got it. OK.

[00:00:33:02] CURT NEWTON: Let's just jump right into it.

[00:00:34:07] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: We have a wonderful opportunity today. We've been thinking for a while that we need to, once every few episodes, just take stock of what's happening and where we're going. And we got an opportunity to do that this time.

[00:00:49:03] CURT NEWTON: So we wanted to share with you a little bit more about where we're coming from, what our biases coming into this climate change conversation happen to be, because lord knows, we've all got them.

[00:01:02:23] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Well and also, I think--

[00:01:03:19] CURT NEWTON: We're going to take the gloves off a little bit. We're going to interrupt each other more than we used to.

[00:01:06:27] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Like I just did.

[00:01:08:12] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:01:08:27] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: All right, I'm going to start with a pet peeve. Remember, I'm the Grinch. And my pet peeve is-- for the day, since I won every day, I think-- is the term stakeholder. Can I tell you how much I hate it?

[00:01:22:00] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:01:22:10] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Go for it.

[00:01:22:29] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:01:24:01] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Where I see it used a lot is in policy-making circles. As in, we should bring all the stakeholders together. Except that one of those stakeholders is a humongous corporation and another stakeholder is some poor farmer.

[00:01:40:05] CURT NEWTON: So I was just wondering, what does this have to do with climate change, Rajesh? You've told us.

[00:01:46:10] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: It's got everything to do with climate change, because I think that in many policy-making circles, people use, say, ExxonMobil as a stakeholder, and contrast them with some community, let's say, in Haiti.

[00:02:04:10] CURT NEWTON: We're all stakeholders.

[00:02:05:24] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: They're all stakeholders. But we're not.

[00:02:08:18] CURT NEWTON: It's not equal, let put it that way. Stakeholders is a leveling, right? Is an attempt to sort of level it out.

[00:02:13:17] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Yes. Some of them have a stake skyscraper and the others have just a stake stick.

[00:02:18:13] CURT NEWTON: In the dirt.

[00:02:19:08] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Can you give me a specific example that particularly tees you off?

[00:02:23:19] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Oh.

[00:02:26:18] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Where you thought this was an egregious difference in power position and this is really just window dressing, or--

[00:02:32:21] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Let's see, who-- let's see if I can really offend someone.

[00:02:37:01] CURT NEWTON: Dakota Access Pipeline?

[00:02:38:16] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Yeah, exactly.

[00:02:40:04] CURT NEWTON: I don't know. Sorry, I didn't want to put words in your mouth.

[00:02:42:11] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: No, go ahead. I bet you that if we took a few minutes to go on Google and see how the Dakota Access Pipeline is formulated, it will say, oh, we intend to bring all stakeholders together.

[00:03:00:27] CURT NEWTON: Well, and the illegal framework that allowed Dakota Access Pipeline to go ahead requires all of these meetings that have to happen. We've heard all of the stakeholders. But then there's absolutely nothing that says you have to do anything with what you've quote, "heard" from the stakeholders.

[00:03:18:03] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: So what's the fix? How do you make that different? You're not going to tell people they can't use the word or they're in prison.

[00:03:24:24] CURT NEWTON: Oh, come on, we're just venting right now.

[00:03:27:16] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Exactly, exactly. I feel like there is no easy fix. Changing language use is a hard problem.

[00:03:36:22] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: That's for sure.

[00:03:38:22] CURT NEWTON: And it's all too easy to just change the language but not change the underlying situation.

[00:03:43:04] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Oh, I wish.

[00:03:44:14] CURT NEWTON: You paper over what's actually going on with oh, we changed the term. And we can kid ourselves that oh, we're behaving differently.

[00:03:52:01] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Yeah.

[00:03:53:24] CURT NEWTON: So.

[00:03:55:13] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Having said that, now--

[00:03:59:16] CURT NEWTON: Rajesh, why does a particular word get you so upset? Where does that come from? What was going on in your younger years that would bring you to this sort of response?

[00:04:16:25] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I just think I'm very particular about words. And I feel like I use words precisely. Maybe it's in my training as a mathematician. I think that using words to mean exactly what you want them to mean and not something else is something I find important.

[00:04:35:06] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: I'm guessing that there's also-- I'm hearing in what you were saying earlier-- a pretty strong feeling about power differences, and that language is a way to express those. And that you would maybe suggest that there ought to be a little more equality in the conversations about energy and all that sort of stuff.

[00:04:58:26] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I agree. Except when I like to be King. No, just kidding.

[00:05:02:04] [LAUGHTER]

[00:05:03:27] CURT NEWTON: Well Dave, I wanted to ask you--

[00:05:05:18] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I don't want to be a stakeholder, I want to just be the holder.

[00:05:10:09] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: You want to call the shots, got it.

[00:05:11:21] CURT NEWTON: Well stakeholder certainly expresses that there are a whole bunch of people who have claim to a shared something, and sometimes that's hard to accept. I mean Dave, you have a planning background, right? And that's a place where I think the concept of stakeholders and bringing stakeholders together really plays out very strongly.

[00:05:35:25] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Right.

[00:05:36:09] CURT NEWTON: Are you a fan of the stakeholder concept? I want to see you push back on Rajesh a little bit here.

[00:05:40:14] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Yes.

[00:05:42:03] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: I'm not sure that's possible.

[00:05:43:07] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Fight, fight, fight, fight.

[00:05:45:28] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: No, I was thinking it could go either way, is my experience. So it can be papering over differences, treating everybody as theoretically equal and everybody's got a stake in this, but in fact, there are proportions of stakes, and power positions that you have to acknowledge. So my interest is in getting the conflicts surfaced, out on the table, in a way that they're discussable. So that's the key.

[00:06:15:14] So I've had many years of professional experience in trying to bring folks together around a common interest. And obviously, in almost every single case, there are some folks that have more power, more money, more wealth, more something or other, to influence the outcome. But my observation is that if you can get folks together in a room and see each other as human beings who share an interest in a possible outcome, then it makes a significant difference.

[00:06:46:15] CURT NEWTON: Now reflect on some of the recent experiences. The successes of a group like Mothers Out Front, who-- it's a very effective, grassroots-driven community that has taken on some of the challenges with, for instance, the natural gas system and utility companies that absolutely have a lot of power, politically and financially. And they've been able to sort of come to the table and work with them in a way that seems to be having some good results. It could be fantastic if we can get somebody with Mothers Out Front connections to come in in a future podcast and tell us a bit more about how they managed to pull that off. We do know a few of them, and let's see--

[00:07:38:13] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: And I want to tag onto what you just said, Curt. I think one of the things that I take away from observing and listening to folks in Mothers Out Front is they place an enormous value on relationships. With the utilities, with state regulators, with all sorts of people, and it would be very easy, I think, for us all to slide into we/them, we/they kind of--

[00:08:04:19] CURT NEWTON: Stop yelling at them.

[00:08:06:04] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Right. And that they're human beings. They may have a lot more power and wealth than we do, but they do listen, and sometimes take things personally. So building that relationship is what I observe Mothers Out Front to be doing very systematically and consciously.

[00:08:23:10] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: It really brings me conflict that I am feeling more acutely as the days go. Which is on the one hand, you want to say everybody's equal, we are all on the same table. That's a principle. But at the same time, you absolutely want to acknowledge that different parties come to that table with very, very different levels of access to resources, to decision-making. So how do we do both? Because there is a principle of equality, but there should also be, simultaneously, a principle of difference. Right? And--

[00:09:08:03] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Acknowledging it as real and existing, and not hypothetical.

[00:09:12:11] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: --because we are not living in an ideal world, and we have to acknowledge that, I think,

[00:09:18:09] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: And I think if you have a closer look at what Professor Larry Susskind and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT has been doing over the years--

[00:09:27:25] CURT NEWTON: See our recent video on ClimateX--

[00:09:30:04] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Right.

[00:09:30:15] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Indeed.

[00:09:31:12] CURT NEWTON: --just went up. Good interview with him.

[00:09:33:19] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Yeah, exactly. And he and his colleagues in the Department of Urban Studies, as well as other units in which he's involved, have done a fabulous job of bringing people together and doing just-- Rajesh-- just what you were suggesting, of making the conflict visible and talking about it. And he's done amazing work recently with coastal communities and bringing the different--

[00:09:59:26] CURT NEWTON: Stakeholders.

[00:10:00:17] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: --the evil word, stakeholders together--

[00:10:02:24] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Beep.

[00:10:06:03] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: --so that you can reach a conclusion or some policy recommendation that really reflects that deep listening of all the different parties. I would like to put a topic on the table that we have not really touched on a whole lot, either in the posts or on the ClimateX website or here in these conversations. And that's transportation. I know a thing or two about that--

[00:10:31:11] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Take us there.

[00:10:31:22] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: --having worked for the Federal Government in the USDOT, and I'm really struck by the conversations that are happening around electric vehicles these days. Have you guys seen any of those?

[00:10:43:17] CURT NEWTON: Which ones do you have in mind, which conversations?

[00:10:46:03] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Well I'm thinking the Bloomberg Energy Financial Network, or whatever it's called, put out a report the other day that says contrary to earlier projections, it looks like in 2040, that electric vehicles will make up the majority of vehicles that are sold in the United States at least.

[00:11:08:15] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, I'd like to take Michael Bloomberg at his word there. You know, there was also recent news from Volvo announcing that in two years, I think it is--

[00:11:19:29] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, 2019. That's right.

[00:11:21:14] CURT NEWTON: They will stop making petrol-based-- purely petrol-based engines.

[00:11:26:27] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Did you see what that did to Tesla's stock?

[00:11:31:24] CURT NEWTON: It will probably bounce back. And I'd love to have an announcement like that coming from some of the bigger automakers as well. But it's an interesting sort of momentum-building situation. Certainly a promising--

[00:11:45:20] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Can you imagine like a Toyota just saying, that's what we will do?

[00:11:49:13] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:11:49:23] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I mean that would-- it could happen. I mean, you know.

[00:11:53:12] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: So there are a lot of things in play here.

[00:11:56:02] CURT NEWTON: In the spirit of taking the gloves off here, since we're talking about electric vehicles, one of the things that's been in the back of my mind, in all the renewable energy conversations and projecting forward all this storage that we're going to need, it was brought to my attention about a year ago through a pair of stories in the Washington Post, the kind of horrifying environmental and cultural consequences of where lithium and cobalt are being mined. And I don't think--

[00:12:28:21] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Olivia, for example

[00:12:30:17] CURT NEWTON: --and the Congo. Yeah. There's a pair of articles, I'm going to dig out and we'll put links to those on our website. People have no idea how horrifying the mining situation is, and what happens in the communities where these minerals are being extracted. And--

[00:12:46:28] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Congo's serious civil war.

[00:12:48:03] CURT NEWTON: And to build out the storage infrastructure 1,000 fold, 10,000 fold, from the amount of minerals that are being extracted right now, we've got to watch out, and we've got to, as a world, jump in and figure out a more equitable way. Because stuff ain't free.

[00:13:12:00] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: That's for sure.

[00:13:12:21] CURT NEWTON: It comes at a real cost.

[00:13:13:25] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: And when we talk about renewables-- so I want to add to that with two-- so I got my first instance, you could say, as a student, of being environmentally-active was a protest movement against a huge series of dams in Western India. And if you now read about-- hydropower is now the good guy, right. It's renewable energy. But actually historically, it's been one of the most anti-- one of the most unequal forms of development.

[00:13:55:19] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Certainly if you look in China, the Three Gorges--

[00:13:59:11] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Like who is--

[00:14:00:27] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: That was the case--

[00:14:01:19] CURT NEWTON: Who's the recipient of that flooding?

[00:14:05:23] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Exactly.

[00:14:06:26] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, in fact that connects us back to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Somebody should fact check me on this, but my understanding is that that particular tribe, that reservation, that community, 50 or 100 years ago was basically kicked off of their agricultural land when a dam was built just on the outside of their reservation. And the legacy of basically being forced off of their land, forced to try to farm in way, way substandard other places because the Army Corps of Engineers decided they need to build a dam. They were stakeholders, they were ignored.

[00:14:54:13] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I think that that has been the history of large dam making.

[00:14:59:12] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, so let's talk for a minute about individual action then, because I was just thinking about my home electric service here in Massachusetts. I get it from an organization called mass energy. One of the things that I try to do to be a good climate citizen is tell people how easy it is to do green up your energy supply. I can't put solar panels on my roof, but hey, it's great, I can get this stuff from somebody else. And I'm currently getting one of their renewable portfolios that's actually 3/4 hydro.

[00:15:28:15] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: From Quebec?

[00:15:30:08] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Most likely.

[00:15:30:25] CURT NEWTON: Up north, yeah. And there's a service that's a little more expensive it's 100% wind. You know? I should check myself on that and think about--

[00:15:44:07] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: There may be some nuclear in the mix as well.

[00:15:46:15] CURT NEWTON: No nuclear.

[00:15:47:04] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: No nuclear?

[00:15:48:13] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I mean, I feel like we can let other forms of injustices slide just because they meet some renewable-- like, some label that we currently find attractive. I feel like we need two kind of additional senses. One is for what is the actual impact of the so-called green energy. Like, who is it? Energy has to be extracted from something somewhere, right? And the other is what are the numbers? I feel like we need both the moral and the mathematical calculus somewhere in this.

[00:16:27:26] CURT NEWTON: I wanted to ask you guys, are there a couple of things that come to mind when you think about individual, personal actions that you've been taking lately that you feel good about?

[00:16:38:00] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: I walk a lot more rather than get my car. Yeah.

[00:16:44:10] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, good.

[00:16:47:20] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Individual actions. I think what I've been doing more off, which I'm actually happiest about, is talking to my daughter more.

[00:16:59:01] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:16:59:20] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Not just about specificities, but how to-- like her views actually teach me--

[00:17:09:08] CURT NEWTON: Well kids are amazing at pointing out the BS, you know, the fairness meter is strong.

[00:17:17:05] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Also the clarity meter. What is that you just said? I don't remember--

[00:17:21:24] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: And I think--

[00:17:23:06] CURT NEWTON: How old's your daughter?

[00:17:24:08] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: 11. And I feel like by being-- there is the professorial side of me that wants to teach my daughter. Never happens. And I think that's great. And at the same time, I feel like being able to see the world from her point of view, invaluable.

[00:17:45:07] CURT NEWTON: Mm-hmm. Yeah, couldn't agree more.

[00:17:47:21] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: What about you, Curt, what individual actions pop up for you?

[00:17:50:11] CURT NEWTON: Well, I've been thinking about my kids a lot too, actually. They're a little older, 18 and 20 if I calculated that right. Yeah, that's right. And I've been trying to-- and it's actually pretty easy, they get it. They get it, the actions that you take every day actually are important. So it's pretty easy to get them to think about, can I bike where I need to get to or do I need to drive?

[00:18:19:27] Some of the bigger picture things about, hey, let's get involved in our community and push our legislators. I've been started to do that recently and that's actually been really interesting. really gratifying. I've been to the State House a couple of times, I'm going again and in a few days. And having that sort of contact with the people who are in these different positions of power and authority, and having your voice be heard. I've been trying to share with them what it's been like, and they seem genuinely interested. I would love it if they start to come along.

[00:18:57:09] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: That's great. So you're putting your body where your heart is.

[00:19:00:15] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, yeah. The other thing is I know buying carbon offsets is yucky in a lot of ways, it's a license to pollute, but I finally started putting money into that. And especially when I've got airplane flights, which a single flight basically doubles my footprint per the year.

[00:19:24:25] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Right, but you can check-- people were concerned, I know, a years back, I had that conversation with friends and relatives. And they were saying, well, you have no idea whether this organization you're sending money to actually does what they say they're going to do. But it turns out that there are some really good monitoring organizations.

[00:19:40:25] CURT NEWTON: There are, The Gold Standard and a few others. And I also have to admit, I'm coming to this from a position of privilege that I have the disposable income to throw at this increased cost.

[00:19:52:19] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Indeed.

[00:19:53:14] CURT NEWTON: But hey, it's a thing I can do.

[00:19:59:07] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: What about you, Dave?

[00:20:00:09] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Well, I think it's really important to show up and be part of things. So a couple of weeks ago, I was at a listening session in Winthrop, which is near Logan Airport, in which a state senator who's been really instrumental over the last 10, 12 years in pushing climate-favorable legislation in the state of Massachusetts. And it was really encouraging to hear the testimony of a lot of regular citizens representing a lot of different viewpoints, as well as an oil and gas representative, just to hear what he had to say. So showing up, I think, matters. To pick those events and show up. Whether it's at the State House or your local climate action group in whatever community you live in or whatever.

[00:20:48:11] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:20:49:04] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: So I want a final anecdote on the nature of power.

[00:20:55:04] CURT NEWTON: Do you have something in mind, Rajesh?

[00:20:56:26] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Yes, I do. I don't know if you remember or know this, there was a very famous Congress of the Soviet Communist Party-- I think in 1956-- when Khrushchev denounced Stalin. For the first time, he publicly acknowledged the excesses of the Stalin era. And so someone in the audience shouted, why are you doing this now? Where were you when it was actually happening? Why didn't you speak up? And Khrushchev says, who is it who is saying this? Total silence. Come on, tell me, who has this question? Total silence. Now you understand why I didn't speak up either.

[00:21:47:05] [LAUGHTER]

[00:21:51:16] CURT NEWTON: It can hurt to speak up.

[00:21:53:06] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Exactly. And I think that my biggest problem with the term stakeholder is that often, even the people who are termed stakeholders, if they're too afraid to speak up, it doesn't really matter whether they're called stakeholders or not. All righty.

[00:22:13:13] CURT NEWTON: Well, I'm still thinking about the G20 meeting that finished this last weekend in Hamburg, Germany. And there are all the political powerbrokers for the top 20 countries across the world. And yet, they were able to be real clear about their differences, and the 19 out of the 20 united in saying that the Paris Climate Accord was not negotiable. That it was something that they all agreed on, and they acknowledged the difference that was in the room, particularly to President Trump of the United States. And they're moving on without the United States. So even in those cases where the power positions are really clear, folks are nonetheless acknowledging the difference and moving forward.

[00:23:07:17] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: I think that's progress for sure. Whether-- what I don't know and we have absolutely no way of predicting is, what's going to happen because 19 out of 20 are on the table while the 20th is not?

[00:23:26:13] CURT NEWTON: Yeah, that's quite interesting.

[00:23:28:09] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Well they're-- I think China, Europe, maybe India are all promoting, aggressively, renewable energy in their various countries.

[00:23:38:11] CURT NEWTON: Out of one side of their mouth. And out of the other side, they are-- China, for instance, is building coal plants all over the rest of the world. Right?

[00:23:47:20] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: It's true, there are a lot of contradictions there. They're also aiming to be a leader in EV, in electric vehicle production.

[00:23:53:18] CURT NEWTON: It goes back to the-- we need some of the data, too.

[00:23:57:01] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Exactly.

[00:23:57:13] CURT NEWTON: Just because I say I got green energy doesn't mean we solved the problem.

[00:24:00:22] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: It's true. In India, building coal, mining coal, importing coal--

[00:24:06:21] CURT NEWTON: Vigilance, vigilance is required.

[00:24:08:26] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, or something like that.

[00:24:12:25] CURT NEWTON: Yeah.

[00:24:15:20] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: We should--

[00:24:16:27] CURT NEWTON: I just have a final thought about power and its relationship to all of these kind of things. That watching the US National Environmental framework being systematically dismantled, just points out to me how fragile coming to these sort of agreed, seemingly positive directions can be. And that how easy it is for a shift in power, that is as ill-advised, can dismantle this stuff. And so that definitely motivates me. If it's not keeping me awake at night, it's getting me out of bed in the morning to take this on.

[00:25:04:06] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Right. And look at how at least in the United States, the states and cities are taking leadership positions. Jerry Brown, the governor of California, is convening an international meeting around climate action.

[00:25:16:17] CURT NEWTON: So Supreme Court, there's a lot of stuff that's coming your way. We'll see how this plays out.

[00:25:22:29] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: That's for sure, the challenges are in the courts.

[00:25:25:27] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Well, with that thought, I think we had a pretty lively conversation, how's that?

[00:25:33:13] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Yeah, that's fair to say.

[00:25:36:09] CURT NEWTON: So we invite you to join the conversation. Visit us on the web at climatex.mit.edu. Reach out to us through the feedback in that system or through any of our social media feeds, and we really look forward to hearing your thoughts on what you've heard here, or any of the other resources that we've got on the site.

[00:25:55:14] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: And feel free to post a comment on any of the topics that we've got related to climate change on the website and/or make a comment on an existing post. Whatever, we'd love to have you jump into the conversation.

[00:26:09:21] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Indeed. Well, with that thought, we're signing off.

[00:26:13:24] CURT NEWTON: Farewell.

[00:26:14:16] DAVE DAMM-LUHR: Take care, until the next time.

[00:26:16:06] RAJESH KASTURIRANGAN: Bye.