Climate Change Activists vs Skeptics: Can They See Eye To Eye?

-In the reference of
landfills, okay,

maybe you don't
have to pay for it now,

but in 20 years
when they're full,

you're still going to
end up paying for it,

so why push that responsibility
onto someone else?

-But don't you
think the citizens--

-It's irresponsible.

- --have a right to decide
if they want to go along with this?

-I don't think that
citizens have the right

to be wasteful more than
someone else.

[♪ drums ♪]

-My name is Don.

I'm a professor of geology and a
professional climate scientist,

have published in the field
for many years.

-My name is Andrew.

I studied environmental
science policy and management.

I'm a consultant that specializes
in sustainable tourism.

-My name is Natalie.

I'm a local
government consultant,

and I believe that anthropogenic
climate change is real.

-My name is Michael.

I'm the vice president
of a nonprofit

that concerns itself with
the threats to western civilization.

-My name is
Dr. James Enstrom.

I'm a physicist
and epidemiologist

and I'm passionate
about scientific integrity.

-My name is Keith Hardine.
I'm a constitutional rights activist,

and I'm concerned about the
future of the next generations.

-{moderator] May I please
have my activists to the left

and my skeptics
to the right.

[dramatic whoosh
sound effect]

-[moderator] "I believe global warming
should be our number one concern."

-There's obviously a lot of issues
that our politicians deal with,

and that, as a society,
we can care about,

but if our earth is moving in a direction
to where our species cannot survive,

then homelessness, then all of the
other issues that are out there,

are going to be irrelevant,
because we won't have a place to live.

-I agree that there are many issues
that are important at the local level,

and we are not doing a great job
with a lot of things,

but things like extreme droughts,
extreme heat waves,

and devastating
hurricanes and tornadoes

are going to make
life harder on us

no matter where
we come from,

no matter what our
economic background.

-Really if you want to look at it
as an issue of health,

I don't see why everyone
wouldn't be concerned

and everyone wouldn't
be participating in ways

to reduce the impact of climate change
or reverse global warming.

[whoosh-tap sound effect]

-No matter what
the United States does,

it's not going to make an impact on the
worldwide greenhouse gas emissions

as long as China and
other parts of the world

are increasing the
greenhouse emissions.

It puts the United States
at an economic disadvantage

when we try to
transform our lives,

and the other countries just
simply ignore these efforts.

-The United States seems to be
the most held responsible

for the global warming,
for doing something about it,

and that's what
bothers me.

You know,
we have a Constitution,

and nobody ever
considers that Constitution,

the importance of protecting the
natural rights of the individual,

and I think global warming is
an infringement on those rights.

When I say global warming, at least
the agenda of the political aspect of it.

-I think it's time to
change how we live.

I really do.

Which we have seen
how changing our habits,

changing the resources
that we use

and what we
pump into the air

and how we reversed
that hole in the ozone,

we've seen how it can change
and we can change it,

but we're going to
have to make changes.

-Well, I don't believe that climate
change is our biggest problem

because I don't believe that
man has anything to do with it.

Climate has changed since before
man existed on the planet

and will continue
when man is gone.

-As a professional climate scientist
who's done this for 50 years,

I'm afraid
you're not correct.

The climate evidence
is very, very clear,

and probably the
clearest evidence of all

comes from ancient records
where we can actually see

what the planet was like
before humans were involved.

This is why climate
scientists, 99%,

on almost every study
of climate scientists,

shows that we're as unanimous
as the scientific community ever gets,

and that this evidence is real,
and that it's happening,

and it's happening on every scale,
from the ice caps to the ocean,

every place we look,
we get the same answer.

-No, I'm not a climate scientist,
but I know a lot of them,

and I've heard exactly
the opposite argument made.

Thousands of scientists,
just in the United States,

signed a letter saying man has little if
any effect on climate, so that's clearly--

-[Don] But are they all climate
scientists? That's the point.

-[Michael]
Oh, yes, they are.

-No, actually doing climate
research and publishing in it.

-Yes, they are.

-I don't believe it.

-[Michael] Yes, they are.
[whoosh]

-[moderator] "I know people who have been
affected by environmental regulations."

-Yes!

-[Don] Wow, everybody agrees
on this one. [chuckles]

-I have a very good friend.
He is a trucker.

He was able to be successful
and maintain a career for 40 years.

He was stopped in that career
because of claims

that his diesel truck was killing
people through the exhaust.

There was a program in Los Angeles
called the Clean Truck Program

that basically
put him out of work,

because he couldn't
afford to buy a new truck.

So this is the kind of environmental
regulation that hurts real people,

especially here in
southern California.

-I'll say also that many of
the people who own homes,

they're not allowed
to water their lawns.

Why? Because of environmental
regulation laws, which are suppressing--

again, suppressing the
natural right to use water.

-It seems like an underlying issue
with you guys is money, power, choice,

and I grew up on a farm where
there was a lot of regulation--

agriculture is
very regulated--

and then eventually there was this
regulatory thing that came in

called the conservation
reserve program

where we had to convert
a part of our lands to prairie.

At the time my dad was very angry
because we lost money from that,

but that conservation area
also created a buffer

between the farm fields and the water
to capture eroding soils,

that it didn't go into the water
and decrease the water quality.

So I think there's
certain regulations

that we need to
look at more long-term,

look at the
bigger picture,

and although we may
be losing money now,

we could be earning it
greater in the future.

We need to look at it
a bigger picture.

-I really like your point about
the water and the regulation of water,

because I can remember that
from a few years ago,

and the reason they
put that regulation in

was because the snowpack
wasn't there for that year.

It's not like it was a random year
where the government just said,

"Start charging
people for water."

It's because the effect
of climate change--

one of the aspects of it is that
we are not seeing consistent seasons,

and I completely agree
with a regulation that,

you know, limits
the amount of water,

the amount of precious resource
that we have, to consumers.

-A regulation
a lot of us didn't like

when the cost of gas
went up here in California,

and we all had to have
catalytic converters,

but we've all agreed
in this group

that we're grateful
that the air is clean

like it wasn't
when I was a kid,

and we don't want
those laws reversed

because we'd be back to the smog
we had when I was a kid.

So those regulations may not
have been great at the time,

they may not have
made people happy,

but we've all learned to live with it,
and now we're grateful.

-I'd like to bring up my concern
about China again.

On some days,
the pollution levels in China

can be 10 to 50 times what they are
here in southern California.

They simply assign their
citizens to wear gas masks,

and then they take the jobs,
the manufacturing jobs,

that used to be in this area,
have now gone to China.

-I might be missing it,
but are you saying that

you would rather have that
manufacturing be in California,

and that we all wear
gas masks all the time?

Because that regulation
that we have here

that makes it expensive
to have manufacturing here

is what keeps us safe.

That is what
makes it expensive.

-No, I think you're
misunderstanding me.

You could bring
manufacturing back

just like President Trump has done
in various parts of the United States

by just making
the economics work.

So we can still
keep the clean air,

but we don't need to
keep beating down.

Some of the
regulations now

are more severe than
they were 50 years ago,

and what you need to do is talk to
some of these businessmen

that are faced with this
on a day-to-day basis.

[whoosh]

-[moderator] "An eco-friendly
lifestyle is expensive."

[skeptics chuckling]

-We all know we're paying
twice as much for gas

as the rest of
the country.

I pay an enormous amount for energy
in my little tiny one-bedroom condo.

Wind and solar
have been subsidized,

so, I mean, we've already
paid a fortune for it all.

-You know, why not put some of
these regulations to a vote?

Instead of the EPA and all the rest
of these administrative arms

placing these
regulations on us,

taking more and redistributing
more of our wealth

or more of our money
to pay for something

that we're not even going
to use or benefit from.

[whoosh-tap]

-An eco-conscious lifestyle
does not need to be expensive.

There are incentives
that are built into our policy

that encourage people to live
a more eco-conscious lifestyle.

Because you have
control over that.

A lot of things
we don't have control over,

but you have control over how much
you're buying at a grocery store

and how much you're
deciding to throw away.

And minimize that,
scale it back, in all regard.

In how far you're driving,
in the water, in the electricity,

in all of the different sectors
that impact climate change.

So you have the decision to make
of how much you're going to use,

and there are direct cost savings
with not being so wasteful.

-I'm also an
example of that.

I drive an electric car,

and it's not that hard in
Los Angeles to get it charged,

and in the future it's
going to be much easier

for more and more people
who have electric cars

especially as the cost of internal
combustion engines keeps adding up.

I spend a tremendous
amount of time

recycling plastic,
recycling aluminum,

and about every six months
I go to the recycle yard myself

and it pays off very handsomely--
aluminum is extremely valuable.

There's a lot of small choices
and a lot of larger choices,

and you can make
those choices quite easily.

I mean, our entire yard is now
all drought-resistant plants.

-That is your choice,

but what you are talking about
is making choices for me.

-[Natalie] No, you can
choose to keep using water,

but you're going to
pay for it.

You can choose to
still have your green lawn.

No one is coming around
and saying you cannot do that,

but you are
going to pay for it.

-Lookit, we can have
a middle ground on this.

There's a lot of people that
believe in these things

that are totally separate from
the role of climate change,

and a lot of these recycling and
energy-efficiency policies are very good,

and I think most people
would agree with them,

and most of people
are trying to adhere to them.

I think what we're talking about,
again, is the imposition,

whether you force people
to have drought-resistant lawns

or you force people to have
solar panels on their roof.

I don't see any reason

why people can't make choices
like that on their own.

-When it comes down to it,
like those choices we make,

what we buy,
whatever we vote on,

is-- doesn't have to
be expensive.

But what
we're trying to do

is prevent these costs
from getting bigger long-term.

I mean, I think we just simply need to
change some of our choices

and be a
little altruistic.

[whoosh]

-[moderator]
"I worry about our future."

-Yes, I definitely
worry about our future.

It's something
I think about a lot.

Because I watch and because I work
with the data from climate science

all over the country
and all over the world,

and I especially worry because
I have three young sons.

One of them just has
his birthday today,

and I'm very worried that
the planet they're going to inherit

is already going to be much,
much more difficult to live on

than the one I inherited
or the one my parents gave to me.

-The Constitution Preamble--
the last part of it says

"to secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity."

I'm concerned about them
having liberty, having the freedom.

Some people think that we
don't have the right to choose,

you know,
how we should live,

I mean, because you want to
enforce your way of life on others.

-I have four grandsons
that I love more than life.

I fear for their future,

that they are going to be
living in a socialist country,

because this is
what this leads to.

I don't have a voice
in this state, at all.

I have no voice.

-I worry about the future because
I have four nieces, a nephew,

and I'd like to have a family
of my own someday and have kids,

and so I think about the future and how
degraded the environment could be,

or how the amount of CO2
we're putting into the air

and greenhouse
gases increases,

but I'm hopeful,
because I've found that

there are people living in
way worse conditions than I am,

and they're full of hope,

because they understand
that they have choices

that they can work hard to
make a better life for themselves.

I don't know about you guys,
but at least for me,

I'm going to make choices
that improve the environment,

improve the public health,

and leave this place better
for the future generations.

[whoosh-tap]

-Hi, Natalie.

-Hi, everyone!

-[Keith] Natalie, where--?
Why is she--?

[all chuckling]

-I'm just, I'm not--
I'm not in fear.

I have made the choice
to not have children,

and I honor that decision,
and we all have that choice,

and I don't operate
from a place of fear.

A big question that I don't know
if we've addressed today,

or if we ever
will address,

is who takes responsibility for
the impact that we're having,

because we know
that we have an impact.

So I just believe in
using our purchasing power,

our political power
through our vote,

through supporting policies that are
going to create healthier communities,

and basically doing
the best that we can

so that we can continue to
enjoy our environment now

and for future generations.

-Hey, everybody.
-Nice to meet you.

-Thank you, Professor,
interesting.

-Good to meet you.

-Very nice, nice meeting you,
nice meeting you.

-Mother Nature, alright.

[laughing]

-Nice meeting you.

-Hey everybody, thank you for watching
another episode of Middle Ground.

My name is Erin,
and this is Dan,

and we are both
Jubilee directors.

-I think, you know, we obviously
have our own beliefs

that we carry through
our own lives,

and then when you are directing
an episode of Middle Ground,

what's interesting is when you start
reaching out to cast members

to be in
the episode.

You start talking from people
who you actually disagree with.

I wouldn't say it makes you
agree with them always,

but you do empathize
and listen a lot more.

You can't just
dismiss it completely.

You have to see the human being
coming with that opinion.

-Well, if you guys
have any thoughts

on what you've learned
from Middle Ground,

please comment below.

-Be sure to follow us
on Instagram.

That's where you're
going to find out

a lot more of what's
coming up next in our videos

as well as behind-the-scenes
stuff with us,

and we'd love to get to
know you there.

So, see you then.

[♪ gentle music ♪]