Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the results and the general vibes coming out of cop 26 or cop 26, and we're going to discuss more generally whether the level of urgency we are seeing as far as dealing with the environment matches the level of danger we appear to be facing. And later on, we're going to discuss the way in which our bodies are constantly emitting odors and how these odors actually tell a lot about you and your health, not just your hygiene.
Joining me today is a man who watches the whole world move in slow. Mo Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, Are you ready to tell the people how things are going to go like this until the end of time?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: No, if you say it's in slow motion, it will take a long time.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I like to plumber speed that up with the audio effect when we're all done.
Now we're recording this.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Good luck.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: We're recording this on November 15, 2021, and we've been hearing a lot recently about the COP26, or more formally, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
This conference took place over the past few weeks in Scotland and featured a lot of parties from all over the world coming together and trying to agree on ways to combat climate change.
Now, several agreements or collective efforts relating to emissions or fossil fuels and clean energy did come out of it, including what's been termed as the Glasgow Climate Pact. But many still worry that what has been agreed to is not enough. And beyond that, there remains no effective way to ensure everybody even sticks to what was agreed to.
So, Tunde, to get us started, what were your General thoughts on COP26 and the direction of the fight against climate change that we're seeing come out of it?
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Look, I don't know if I have thoughts.
I just think obviously these are things that need to be addressed.
I'm glad to see that there's an effort to do it, how it will be done and let's say, how much teeth it has in it. What does it mean for the rest of us in society? I guess remains to be seen. But I think there needs to be something done about something that's pretty obvious, which is that human action has caused some damage on the planet in various ways.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: I would say from my standpoint, I look at this climate change conference and this is the 26th one. That's why it has the number 26 with it.
We've seen the Paris Accords come out a few years back and this Glasgow climate Pack come out of this one.
I think that one, you know, like, through much of our adult life there's been like a.
Not something that. Is something you would take that seriously. But people are saying, oh, it's not real, and stuff like that. So it seems like the bulk of serious people are all on the same page, that this is real and this is something we need to deal with. And so what strikes me, though, is the level of collaboration that's needed across the globe. Like a lot of times in our local or national politics in the United States, we talk about this as, as, as if we're determinative. And then we have to do this and we have to do that and we have to do this and do that. But really, this is something the whole world needs to get on board with because we could try to do everything right here. And if, if everyone isn't brought on board, or at least the vast majority, a critical mass of the world is brought on board, then we'll still, we'll still be losing ground, we'll still be go sliding down the hill into the. Into oblivion, so to speak. And so the level of cooperation on a global scale is just. It's shocking to see, you know, and then. And that's hard to. Do you think it's hard to get consensus here just in one country? Like you're trying to get consensus over multiple countries, all have different interests and so forth and different approaches and bring all that together, and then you'll have people changing governments over the time and that may affect it. And the other thing that's related to this that I'd say is also how important leadership is. Like, this is an issue that it just seems like global leadership, like someone or some group is going to have to show the way, because right now things are very incremental. Which incremental isn't bad. I'm not here to say incremental is bad, but it seems like everything that's coming out right now is incremental. We're going to look more at this, we're going to try to do this, we're going to try to do that. And ultimately, though, we're going to probably need some nations or groups of nations to come together with bold action.
Maybe that's doing it themselves first and showing that it's viable and then trying to get others to adopt it once they show that it works and that you can make it happen. And I think that that's what's we're going to need that at some point. Basically, you know, like somebody's going to have to come through, do something major and lead, lead the way. You know, we need. This will be something where you need leadership partially because, or best in large part because it requires so much cooperation over so many people and so many different interests.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I am not so hopeful that we will find global leadership and that nations will kind of cooperate and get it together. So the Earth is going to hand it to us one way or the other.
One thing I wanted to do though, as we talk about this. Cop 26, like I said, the 26th one of these conferences, I came across some interesting information. I didn't realize how far back the, the science of CO2 in the air goes back.
This has been something that's been documented since the year 1850 is when the global scientific community began to document the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So we have again, we've talked about this on prior shows with other topics as related to the environment and meaning that certain information. I think when we did one on climate change a few months ago, the idea of global temperatures I think started to be calculated in 1895.
So now we have over 170 years of information and data about CO2 in the atmosphere. So one thing that they've said is that the human population over that 171 year period has pumped 2,500 billion tons. So I guess that would be 2 1/2 trillion tons of CO2 into the air. And we've talked about this in prior conversations too. I mean, that's why I recognize climate change is very hard to grasp because it takes a long time. The world is a big place. It's hard to imagine that US driving cars and flying planes could affect these things. But over 170 year period it's understandable that if you understand the nature of how a greenhouse works, and we've discussed this prior discussions, then 170 years of human beings in the industrial age pumping CO2s into the air.
And not only human beings, right, but our cattle, millions of cattle that weren't there under natural earth. Farting methane out doesn't help.
And all these other different examples out there, it stands to reason that we've got an issue. So who's responsible?
You've got the US with over 500 billion tons over that period and then China with around 275.
Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Germany, India, UK, Japan and Canada round out the rest of the top.
So this is something that there's a global responsibility. And when I say that the Americas is responsible for the most output, it's not to sit here and blame our country. It's more of a matter of fact because we have had the greatest economic output over the last 150, 170 years.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: And we, and that may point the finger at us being the ones that kind of need to take the lead here and get things going in a different direction, you know, and so less.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: If you wanted to be responsible, but.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Well, if you wanted to be responsible, if you wanted. I mean, it's less about whose fault it is and who's gonna take the lead and make something happen and you know, like.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: And it's also about who has the capability to lead. I mean, I would say proudly, we do. Right. So it's not about being our fault. That's what I mean. It's not about shaking our finger at the United States. It's saying that we've had the longest and greatest economy of the last hundred.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Years or so in large part because of this stuff.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Because we.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: And with great power comes great responsibility.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Correct. And think about it though, right? Standard Oil, you know, think about. We revolutionized the oil game in the late 1800s into the early 20th century.
So that created our economic engine that really boomed. And so we are thankful for that.
But we also know that we have now the technological resources that can help clean this up. So, you know.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's in the scientific advancements. I mean, that's something also that is going to have to come into play, as you see, and also just different approaches. I mean, one thing that I hope eventually, as we get leadership, becoming more bold with this, more innovative with this, is just different ways to go about it. You know, like it.
Countries that are able to protect forest, for example, probably should get benefit out of that. You know, if you're, if you're holding a big carbon sink, for example, in the same way that if you, if a company comes up with a way to sequester carbon. If we have, if you, if nations or, you know, certain regions have forests that act as carbon sinks, forests, then maybe that's something that they should be compensated for to keep alive. And that's, I'm not making that up. I mean, that's, that's ideas you hear floating around in terms of this. But my point in bringing that up is only that there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, so to speak. There are a lot of Ways that what it's going to take because it requires so much collective effort, it's going to take all of that, all of these different ideas. And so these type of conferences, the roundabout way to get here, these type of conferences are helpful in that even if the results of one isn't what you want or the results of the past five aren't what you want. But keep, you keep at it, you keep at it and things will emerge, ideally if you keep at it and people will emerge and leadership will emerge.
Because if you're not even in the game, if you're not even meeting, then definitely nothing's going to move in a positive direction. So I do want to get into, like you had talked about how this has been something that's developed over time. Obviously we couldn't make all this happen in five years, we as a species. But why do you think, or from your standpoint, what stands out as far as why it's important that societies continue to look more closely at this or take this more seriously and try to be sober about it and try to find ways that can protect the future for our children and our grandchildren and so forth.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: I think there are several long term costs that we're seeing play out now. I'll start with the health related costs for humanity and for animals. You know, so I, you know, we've read articles that pregnant women are starting to have issues due to climate change with, you know, the, the kind of microbiology that goes on in their bodies. I think to me pollution is important because there's a lot of pollutants in our water, in our bloodstream. Now we did a show I think last year about the amount of pharmaceutical drugs that are in American drinking water.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Just because we've done, we've done a show on the forever chemicals in us.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: And a show on the pharmaceuticals that are in. It's like.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: So we got pharmaceutical drug polluting us, you know, in our, in our, in our, in our food, in our water. We've got chemicals, we've got all this stuff going on and, and it's just, you know, at some point it does take a toll on the nature, you know, like the natural body, not only us, but of animals as well. So then we read the articles of things like bumblebees, you know, disappearing. I read one on the weekend actually about the monarch butterflies. Pretty sad because we have monarch butterflies in my, in my neighborhood in the summer and they're beautiful. And the population of monarch butterflies in the east coast of the United States has gone down 80% since the 1980s. I couldn't believe it. They said in the west coast of the United States, the population is 1/10 of 1% of what it was in the 1980s. So just 35, 40 years ago, they said last year, in 2020, when I guess the great migration is supposed to happen on the western side of the United states, they counted 2,000 butterflies. I mean, that's, that's like, you know, that's shoestring right there. So the point is, is that I think, number one, I don't think computers can yet pollinate plants. And again, I don't think most people in our society appreciate basic kind of science and biology like that.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Let's go there for a second. You mentioned the butterflies within, or, excuse me, the bumblebees, but then you moved on. The bumblebees are needed for our food supply. Like that's what I was getting. I wanted you to. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: And so, and I think not only just like main food supply, because actual wheat is pollinated by the wind. That's one of the rarer that just seeds blow in the wind. But most of the foods that we actually can eat, because I know that coconuts drop off trees and can produce a palm tree, but we don't eat palm trees. So the foods that we can, can eat, most of them are flowering plants, which it's necessary that an insect pollinates them, primarily bees. But then butterflies are the second most that do the pollinating out there. So what I think most people don't realize are the amount of flowering plants that we consume just out of enjoyment, not out of necessity. That's why I say wheat and water, rice, things like that. Yeah, those we could sustain on if we really had to. Beans and all that. But, you know, people seem to like chocolate, they like coffee, they like the taste of vanilla. You know, if you look at your bottle of French vanilla, I read it.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Was like 70% of produce if you go to the store, 70% required. Yeah. And that's like. So we're just willing to give all that up basically, if we're not going to preserve the bees in the butter. It's staggering to me, but go ahead.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah, and part of it, you know, part of it is several fold. That's what I mean. This isn't like just the climate change change only issue. Some of it is loss of habitat.
You know, some of it is, is, is pesticide use. Right. So there's, there's a lot of factors that go into this. But, but the climate is Obviously one of them. And that's why I say pollution in general. Because pollution, you could rope in things like the chemicals, sprays that they use for bugs and all that kind of stuff.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Because I think you got to look at the environment piece kind of collectively, I would say, because yeah, you're correct. Like it's not per se climate change, but, but you destroy a habitat that could affect climate change, but more directly, you just wiped out all the habitats where the bees could have been, for example. So it actually has a more direct negative effect in addition to any effect it might have on climate change.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And the thing is, so that's one thing that could be a cost and the other is what I mentioned, like when I said, like it's funny, the older I get, I just get pleasure off little stuff. Like, it is funny when I go walk into my neighborhoods and I see a few of these butterflies. I just stop and look at them and think, wow, those are pretty. And that's what I wonder. Like, I wonder when my kid's 70, are butterflies gonna exist for them to look at? Are elephants gonna be there anymore? Are this or that, you know, and.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: So are they gonna eat food or are they just gonna eat like in the Matrix, like just get porridge and stuff?
[00:16:04] Speaker A: No, you're right. And so it's just. But those are things that could be of reality. And so that's where I think, you know, there are costs. I know that there are some solutions that we'll get into, but I do think those are some of the long term costs we could see is changes to our food supply. And also that would cause, I think, social unrest amongst humans. That's another issue.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: That's where I was gonna go.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: I think we talked about it offline that the Arab Spring, as much as everyone thought it was about, or let's put it this way, as much as even our politicians wanted to say it was about the want for democracy in the Middle east, from my understanding, it really started due to a famine in Yemen and which, you know, scientists have argued is partly due to climate change.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: So. Well, that's where I wanted to go with this actually, is that, yes, I think it's a huge deal in terms of the Earth providing us with so many different options and things that we can use as far as diet, as far as just our food supply, like not just what we eat, but what our, our livestock eat or things like that. But the Earth continues to get more. There's more and more people here all the time at all, you know, like it's this, the population's still going up. And part of that's part of the driver of this, of, of the climate change. If we still had the same number of people in the Earth that we had in 1850, then we probably could get a better handle on this more quickly. But we don't. And we, in fact, we have many, many, many more people here. And so it seems like we're heading to drive or driving off a cliff, basically, because what's going to happen if your population in the world keeps growing and the Earth is telling us right now that, hey, the things you're doing now may not be viable much longer? At a certain point, it seems like we hit a cliff where it wouldn't happen all at once, conceivably, in the world. But various places, like you said, various places that are habitable now become no longer habitable, whether that be because of sea level rise or a change in the type of climate in an area like this isn't, to the extent we know this isn't because of human activity. But the Sahara Desert used to be like a savannah or like an area that was lush and people lived there and it was nice, it was cool, you know, like. And then it becomes uninhabitable, like this huge area that becomes uninhabitable. And now that. So what happens if that happens in the central United States, for example, just all of a sudden because of climate change factors or whatever else is going on, because the Earth isn't going to.
They talk about average temperature, like, oh, yeah, it's going to go up 1.5 degrees Celsius on average. But it doesn't play out like that, where just uniformly the temperature everywhere would have been 80 degrees today, but now it's 83. Like, that's not how it works. Like, the climate and the environment in certain areas, certain areas will get much hotter or much drier or something like that. And so it'll change the nature of certain areas. And that is going to cause problems with the, you know, with population that may either in those areas or that rely on those areas for something. And that's something like you've mentioned before, the, the intelligence report that they used to do every year. They cancel, I guess, you know, Trump canceled it, you know, past couple of years or something like that. But the intelligence report that that was one of the things they always would mention is that, hey, you know, this climate thing, it's going to cause migration. It's going to cause, you know, it's going to destabilize regions because people aren't going to be able to produce food here or there anymore. And you don't know exactly where it's going to be, but you just can see this happening. So to me, like, we don't want World War three to happen because climate change fundamentally changed where people can and can't live. And that creates such a.
That becomes such a destabilizing factor that, that everything is turned upside down. And that, to me, is where, like a huge concern on top of just the changes that are gonna happen if we lose bumblebees or whatever. Yeah.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: And I think, you know, and that makes me think of something else that I've heard in recent weeks. You know, this is where I do think it's gonna be a heavy lift for us as a society, just not only our country, but globally, because for whatever the motivations are, and I think there's many different motivations that coalesce onto some of these things. So I'm not gonna try and paint a brush for everybody that might have some of these concerns. But I've recently started here in the U.S. unfortunately, seeing some of our politicians attack our own military for being woke because they talk about climate change as a risk.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: So.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Some people then are placing almost like somehow that the military itself is being a tree hugger and some sort of weakling.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Because they're concerned about climate change. When for you and I, hearing something like that from the intelligence community is not about that. They're tree huggers and they're lefties that are trying to do the bidding of some, you know, I don't know, whoever has an interest in getting off fossil fuels that one doesn't agree with.
It's because of what I said earlier a few minutes ago, which is, I mean, let's look at the Arab Spring again.
2011 or 2012, 2013.
That leads to. Then we've got people from Yemen to Syria in the streets causing unrest.
Then you've got their governments coming back at them and you've got all this, remember the president of Egypt was ousted, all that type of stuff, and the Muslim Brotherhood was put in.
And then what happens is you have the Syrian conflict, which escalated over that time, and then you have all this migration to Europe, which was then used by certain people who wanted to destabilize the kind of political situation in the greater.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: The rollback democracy.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Rolling back democracy.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. They were able to fan the kind of fears and tribalism and all that in the European sphere. And then with the Internet, there were Kindred spirits here in the US that got that the fames were flying, fans were flamed for. So we could look back in this past decade and see that from something like a famine in the Middle east and drought conditions causing destabilization of the population there, because when people can't eat, they're in the streets, then it got so bad that they start trying to escape. And where are they going? Obviously they're going to somewhere they think is better, which is Europe. And that creates a whole destabilization of the politics in Europe. And that kind of spills over to the United States because of the media ecosystem and the Internet and social media.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: So one thing, let me add on to that, because like the Middle east, for example, is already an area that has very limited capacity as far as food production. So a drought in an area that's already limited can have serious effects. To your point. But imagine something like that in an area that normally produces a lot of food, that a lot of different areas rely on, not just the area, the immediate vicinity, but like I said, central United States or something like that, the breadbasket, like that could cause destabilization. Not just localized in a certain part of the world, but in many different places, even that aren't geographically contiguous. That could throw off a lot of things all of a sudden. And so that's the kind of the risk I think we have to look at. And to your point, on the, unlike the military, for example, being called woke, and what that is, is trying to create or attach this concern with an issue of emotional resonance for some, you know, people that, well, they can be, it's a trigger, basically, that we can trigger you to be against this by using certain terminology that goes back to your marketing point, by the way, that you have to be able to combat that. Like, you can't just say, hey, that's not fair. Don't try to use this terminology that's going to trigger people in ways that's kind of not, that's kind of dishonest.
You're going to have to come up with counter messaging, you know, to be able to combat that, to get people to understand this, this is all, this is something that affects us all, you know, or, or potentially. And if things go really wrong here, it could go really wrong for all of us. And you know, it, it, you would think that this is the type of thing that could be galvanizing over for large groups of people because it's going to be really hard to escape this if things go really bad here. It's not going to be something that's like, oh yeah, poor those people, you know, like, oh yeah, an ice storm hits somewhere and oh yeah, we'll donate to the Red Cross and hopefully they'll help them out. But like, this is something that could affect us all in ways that aren't totally foreseeable.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Well, let's bring it closer to home because you bring a good point about the areas of mass food production.
So let's come home to our beautiful country and the west coast of the United States, primarily California.
I mean, I don't know whether a lot of Americans know this or not, But California represents 25% of all the agricultural produce in the United States.
Most of that we consume a lot of it. We export too, to other countries. And so that's why California has the fifth. I shouldn't say that's the only reason why, but one of the main reasons why California has the, the fifth largest economy in the world if it were its own country.
So when you look at then the effects of climate change, and this is why I think this is gonna be a heavy lift, think about just in our own country, forget about talking about China and Russia and trying to get on board with other countries like that that we already have beef with, right? But in the United States, when California suffers these devastating forest fires, unfortunately in the last few years, what do we see? It becomes a political issue, right? Is because certain people have been convinced not to like California for political reasons. So when there's a fire there, they just kind of laugh at it. Like, ha, ha, you see it as California. They didn't do whatever they needed to do. Now I never knew a fire, just like I never knew a virus to care about human politics.
But the point I'm making is that climate change doesn't necessarily cause the direct fire because California has a history of forest fires. But what climate change has done has exacerbated the conditions under which the fires are worse because it's drier and because there's less snow and less kind of really cold winter. The, the snow peaks on the mountaintops that usually have flow rivers down in the spring and all that, they aren't, they aren't producing the same amount of water. And that's why you're seeing forest fires starting to come all year round in California, not only in fire season.
So one of the things that, that can affect fire burns things, right?
So let's assume fire can burn crops. So that's why this isn't really that funny. And it's not A political, you know, for people to be pointing it at each other like we're somehow enemies in our own country. If California fires keep raging like they are, there's going to be no ability to produce crops. And if the water keeps drying out in the western part of the United States, there's not going to be ability to water the crops.
And then you're right. And then that's what it's gonna look like when a mass producing food area breaks down.
So, yeah, you know, not to say that we can solve it by. If everybody said, okay, now I believe in climate change, that's gonna solve. I think it's, well, those people are.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Already out at this point.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah. No, what I'm saying is the damage is so far done. What I think is we probably have the human ingenuity and the ability to solve these issues going forward, but that's where we all need to come together. And you reminded me of something that I know we talked about as well, is there's the hydroelectric, sorry, big words here. Hydroelectric dam in Colorado that is in Lake Powell.
And there is a 34% chance based on estimates that by 2023, so just in two years, this, this dam may no longer be able to produce enough electricity for the 5.8 million houses and businesses that it currently, you know, gives power to in Colorado and other regions of the Southwest.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Which directly relates to the point you just made about the water not being the Snowtop Mountains and the Rockies and then they're not feeding the things, they're.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Not feeding the lakes down anymore. Yeah, and that's my point, like, and this is what I'm saying, like, let's say it doesn't happen in two years and someone says, oh, tunde, I got you. Would that dam still produce water? Okay, what if it stops? You know, what if they're off by five years and by 2028 or something, it stops producing. My point is, is that the fact we're here is not good.
And the fact that it's taken 170 years to get here means again, we're not going to be able to turn this around immediately. But if we want to see something done about it, then we should, you know, like you said, find a way to come together. But I do agree with you 100% that trying to convince people of something they don't believe in is a waste of time. So I do think those that take climate and pollution and just helping the environment much more serious would do better in figuring out how to do messaging and a narrative in A different way than.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Well, but here's where I go with that. Like, I think the. If you're saying that climate change isn't real, you're just out of the conversation now. But see, even acknowledging climate change is real, it's still hard to come up with solutions. Like, so that's what I'm saying. You can't even spend time with people who don't think it's real anymore. Like, that it's over. You know, like, we had. We have nations meeting and we're trying to figure this stuff out. You're just out of the conversation if you can't accept that it's real and. But it's still that. Accepting that it's real is not getting us anywhere with a solution, you know, so we have to put all of our energy into that at this point. And. Yeah, you're not. Even if somebody's not convinced at this point, you know, that that's how it is sometimes. Sometimes, you know, you just miss the boat and you're out on a conversation and you just have to wait and you. Maybe you can get in later if you want. But. So, I mean, I think it's good that it does seem like the conversation has moved beyond that. Like, we're not. We're not seeing things, people trying to convince people that it's real at this point. Like, it's all about, can us and China agree to do stuff that will slow this down? Or, you know, is China and India going to say, no, no, we're not giving up coal or we're not. Like, those are the fights that are happening now, which are actually the ones that we need to get solutions for, to actually make a difference here, because we can all admit it, and that's not going to help a thing.
So. But I want to. Is there anything that. We're talking. All this dire stuff, but is there anything that gives you hope, you know, anything out here that gives you hope? Anything you've seen that things can get better, that we can at least change the trajectory here a little bit?
[00:30:41] Speaker A: No, because I learned in preparing for today that Australia has lost 30% of its koala bears in just three years.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: That being years.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
And it's really because they've had such. I mean, I think the primary fires, too, though. The fires. Yeah. And you know, those bears obviously can't escape. Raging fire that's traveling at 70 miles an hour.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: And even if they escape, where are they going to go? Like if the forest is gone.
Yeah.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: And so. And so. And that's My point, like, you know, rarely that I think a species like a koala bear was in danger because, you know, I know people don't hunt them and you know, it's not that those things aren't, are seen pretty much left alone and seen as cute, you know, representations of that, of that country. And you know, it just kind of reminded me of how dire this is all.
I know it's scary stuff and most people don't want to think of it. Me either.
But you're right, I mean, what can we do to ring this bell more? I don't know. And I think it's just the world is gonna help us figure this out one way or the other. That's it.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: I think that it's something that like, it's almost like if you want to look at this in a positive way, it almost is a matter of faith.
You have to believe that solutions that we don't have yet, that we don't know yet are or that aren't operational yet will come in and help us turn the tide. The fact that we have these conferences that even if they're not, even if the resolutions coming out aren't binding, but people are trying to address it, what that means is that people are starting to put skin in the game, so to speak, in terms of trying to solve this. And not just the people who are willing to just set the world on fire for our kids. There's people out there that are willing to do that as long as they can make a buck. And they'll cost our kids 10 bucks as long as they can make one. There are people out there that'll do that. We see that all the time. I mean you talked about, it's not really on topic here, but the flint water thing, like they saved a couple of bucks and poisoned a bunch and then now they poisoned a bunch of kids and now they're going to pay over a half a billion dollars in damages. Somebody's going to pay tax, taxpayers are going to pay over half a billion dollars. They didn't save that much money when they switched the water supply.
And so these short sighted decisions, the people who are making those, if more people get invested, and like I said, it is happening, more people get invested in trying to solve the problem. Even if the progress is slow initially.
I don't think it matters how fast the progress is right now because the answers that we're gonna need we don't have yet anyway. So as long as we can get more people wanting this to happen where they'll be Upset if it doesn't. And so therefore progressively they will start wanting it more and more and more. You start getting baked in. This is the outcome I want.
And I think then we're going to need, like, we'll need some luck, you know, and where people, innovation, you could call it luck, you call it human ingenuity and innovation. You know, like the population wouldn't be as big now as it is if we didn't have innovation that would have got us there either. We couldn't support this many people on the earth as it was 1850 without technology, with 1850s technology, we couldn't have this many people on the earth right now. So you kind of, in my mind, you have to bake that in to the analysis. It's a blind kind of, okay, yeah, we got to keep doing what we do, but that is what we do as humans, you know, so we come up with stuff, but people just have to be invested in the idea that there can be a solution.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things, when you talk solutions, I think part of it is top down, you know, we need leadership that, that wants to have this as part of the primary focus and agenda of the nation. Kind of like when we talked in a show a long time ago about Kennedy saying we're going to go to the moon and eight years later, Neil Armstrong's boots hitting the moon. Right.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: And he said that when we didn't have the capability to get there.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so, and so that's what I mean is that because that, you know, leadership's important.
And so that was the mark of a leader saying this is what we're going to do as a country, we're going to the moon. And we did it with, you know, a lot of hard work and a lot of hands on deck to do that. And I think, you know, obviously we've had presidents that have said we're going to do things about climate and we've had others that say we're not going to focus on climate. And I think that's where as a nation we need to figure out where we want to be. Just like, you know, the last true unification we probably had where a leader said something and we all said, yeah, it was when Bush was standing on the rubble at 911 and yelled into bullhorn. You know, all these people, you know, these people are going to hear from all of us.
And so we had that determination and 10 years later, bin Laden is in the bag. And so if we have that national determination, we could probably make this happen.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: And it's interesting to me, I think that it kind of relates to, I mean, you got cop 26, you have all types of things that are happening. You see esg, as far as in investing, where that's a factor now, I think from a cultural standpoint, and this is going to start with the wealthier nations. And so it's good that it's starting. But from a cultural standpoint, being stewards of the environment is starting to enter into the kind of mentality or thought process more.
And so it's moving too slow. Like I said, that goes to my point of that we're going to need a couple catch a break here or there for us really to make the kind of progress we're going to need to make.
But the where there's a will kind of, there's a way, but I guess more important, if there's no will, there's no way. And so at least we're getting to the point now where it's something that people, serious people care about and are at least trying to figure out ways. And again, it may not be enough yet. And we're not going to. There's no silver bullet, especially with, you know, what we have now. But I think that's a big deal that, so the mentality, the cultural, the mindset changes that we've just seen in our life. It encourages me and like I said, I still think that we're going to need to catch a break here or there for us really to get a good handle on it. But that doesn't mean you sit down and just sit there and just wait for something to break your way that means you, you do you hit some singles and doubles and you, you, you, which you could look at, you know, the, the, the Glasgow Climate pack is, you know, that's a single, you know, it's not great. You know, we could have done a lot more, but it's hit some singles and doubles and keep the momentum going and then that gives us an opportunity basically where if, if something does break our way, we'll be in a position to take advantage of it. So that kind of the general motion to me gives me some hope that we're not, it's not all doom and gloom, you know. So we'll see, man, we'll see. Because our lifetime, you know, it's. It's our lifetime, it's our kids lifetime, that a lot of this stuff seems to be coming to a head. And as we've said many a time, the earth is going to be okay. You know, this is all. The Earth has been hot and I'm.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Going to die one way or another, so.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: But I've had a nice ride so.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Far, so hopefully we don't take the rest of. Take the rest of humanity down with us.
That's kind of cool.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: You know, it's funny, just before we jump, I was watching this show on Apple tv, this series with my wife, and it's, you know, it's called Foundation. So it's about space and they go to different planets and all that.
And I was thinking, like, there's absolutely no way that we're going to another planet anytime soon. And I was just thinking about the likelihood of finding a planet exactly the same size as Earth that has a moon that rotates around it. So we would have a similar gravitational situation, you know, and tides and things. Like we evolved to live on this planet and anywhere else. Like we talked about on one of these shows that the folks that spend six, seven months in the space station lose 30% of their bone density.
So it's, it's just, you know, we need to figure out how to keep this planet safe because this idea of us just taking some spaceship and going light speed to somewhere else isn't happening.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that'll. That'll settle your mind a little bit. But it's not really realistic, you know, of a solution.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: But. Well, no, the second topic today that we want to get into is fascinating topic. It's dealing with our bodies and how we work, which we like to get into from time to time. So basically we read a piece about how humans, we're animals, but we're always emitting odors. And it's not just what you think about in terms of hygiene, but we all have a baseline odor that our thumbprint, basically our fingerprint is unique to us.
And within our odor also is. It tells you thing about our environment, our diet, you know, things like that. And it's just surprising to hear, you know, because oftentimes, you know, in big groups you smell perfume or you smell, you know, people deodorant and whatever, but just this baseline odor that we all have. So what was your reaction to reading this and thinking, is this something you knew all along? And it's just, oh, yeah, of course, yeah, I smell people all the time when I walk by and be like, oh, yeah, that guy or that, that, that girl or whatever. What's your thought, man?
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Well, without me making far jokes right now, I.
It's interesting. I've known of this. It's not the first time I've heard a study like this. So I would say, yes, I've heard of this in the past, but I would say I've known of it naturally just from. Because what had stuck out to me was when they're talking about babies and I can smell my kid right now at 10, he smells. Exactly. If I go into his hair and put my nose in his head and smell him, he smells exactly the same as the day he was born to me.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: And I've noticed that along the years, as he's gotten bigger, it's just one of those things where.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: I used to think about. Man, there's some weird connection. Just like I remember the day he was born. I heard his cry in the delivery room. And then, you know, they move him out and cleaning him up. And then, you know, they go clean. You know, my wife gets kind of cleaned up and all that. So I end up back in the.
In the maternity room. And I'm on the maternity floor with nothing but crying babies, right.
And I swear, the minute that my kid was on that floor, I knew it. I told her, they got him on here, and 30 seconds later, the lady willed him. And. And I. Because I just. The minute I heard that first cry in the delivery room is like. It was seared into my brain.
So that's the. That's the thing that when I so. Understanding that I had that experience, let's say through sound and then through the smell, I kind of knew that we as human beings, and we've talked about this in other ways.
You know, again, we are creatures of nature. So there's a lot of senses that we once had that.
Or that we have, that we were once as a. As a human race, if you want to say it, or species, very in tune with. When we didn't have all this other distractions and noise.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, we paid more attention to that stuff.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so I think we. What I found more interesting.
Well, I should say more. I mean, this whole thing is interesting. What I found just as interesting was how muted these all must be in our modern society, like you just alluded to at the beginning of the lead in, which is whether we wear perfume and we have deodorants that suppress the ability for our glands to smell, you know, the sweat glands to secrete the certain scents.
So there's a lot of stuff that we aren't naturally kind of picking up as cues from other people when we're around them that we would have at other points in human history.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: So I found that interesting too. Like, what does that mean when it's kind of disrupted now through our artificial way of living with all these fake smells we have around us?
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's part of. One of the things that was very interesting to me in this piece is in the Wall Street Journal. We'll have a link to it, but was the fact that, like, from. From partners, you know, like spouses or, you know, just not necessarily a spouse, but, you know, romantic partners, that there can be attraction through that, which you kind of know, but then you don't give much thought to, you know, like the, the sense, particularly, like you said, because people put so much effort into covering up whatever smell and to only smell like, you know, whatever commercial fragrance that they want to smell like or something like that. And the thought, like, I knew that. And the idea that your smell as far as your diet, as far as your health, your immune system function, I knew there was something going on with that. And that's old. Like, apparently that's old. Like people who have tuberculosis have a certain smell that you can identify and so forth. Even recently, like, we read about people training dogs to be able to sniff out Covid, you know, or. And they could always tell if somebody didn't have it. And like 90 some percent they could tell if they did, you know, which is pretty impressive. So I was always aware of that. The thing that really, that got me. But it makes sense, like you said, even with the infant thing was like with your, with your children or whatever, is this baseline fingerprint smell. Like, it's just you. And that in your, your, your diet and environment lays on top of that. And then whatever else you do with your skin lays on top of that. So this multilayer. So you, this. The fact that you can have like, you have your own unique smell based from a genomic. It goes down to a genomic point.
It was very shocking to me, very surprising. And that almost from the standpoint of. And I go back to the partner piece, that selecting a partner or something, if you're in tune with this stuff, whether you are aware of it or not, it was mentioned that you might select a partner that kind of. Is that you smell as complimentary to yourself, you know, which is just wild to me. But obviously if you're covering that all up, you might miss all that, you know, like, it's. So if you're doing it on the Internet, you miss it all for sure.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Like, you know, like, we have Zoom meetings now to do Business with each other. Right. And maybe there's certain odors that, you know, just subconsciously people pass between each other that give off cues that actually make or break a deal in business. And how does that work? Other things.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: Remember, like, there was stuff in there about how this fear comes out, emotion can come out, fear or things like that.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: And so what was interesting about that one is there was a documentary I was watching, I think, on National Geographic about dogs. And it was fascinating because they did the same thing. I saw this a few months ago with dogs where they had people watch different scenes from movies. So you had the scene, the famous scene of Jack Nicholson coming through the door in Psycho, supposed to be a little more scary, intense. Then they would show him a scene from, like, you know, the Lion King or something, which is more relaxed and happy.
And they would put, like, you know, a little cotton ball or something under a person's armpit while they're watching this. And the dogs would react to whatever this, like, the scent of the cotton ball directly as to whatever the emotion of the person had at the time. So it was amazing. They would put the cotton balls that were sweated on when the people were in a stressful situation, and the dogs, literally, the tails would go in between the legs, their heads would go down. They'd be looking for the corner of the room like they were scared.
And then when they would show, let's say, or give them the cotton ball, the smell that was shown to the human when they were watching, let's say, the Lion King or some comedy movie, the dog's tail would start wagging. And it was just fascinating because, you know, I think anyone who's owned a dog understands that dogs have certain senses that we don't normally pick up on. So that's why, again, yeah, their sense of smell is.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: It's not just that they pay attention to it. It's much stronger than ours. No, let me tell you this one interesting thing about the dog piece. I think dogs illustrate this more readily than, you know, like, humans, so to speak, because dogs are just bold with it. Like, now their sense of smell, again, is better than. A way better than.
But dogs, they do communicate with each other through smell. And in large part, like dogs, like anybody who's had a dog, if you had a male dog, he's always. Who's. Particularly until they're fixed, or if they're not fixed early, they're intent on putting the smell of their pee in as many places as they possibly can. Like, they're like, yo, I'M gonna leave this here. So the next guy who comes, the next dog comes around is gonna smell me. And like, they're very in tune. And so they, they walk up, they meet, you know, dogs meet new dogs. And they, first thing they do go to get all up on smelling them all types of places, you know, like. So it's like they operate like that. And with humans, conceivably, if you go back to earlier hominids, for example, there may have been more of that.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: But I was going to say language didn't pee on a rock.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: But language, though, also kind of stands in from that language and I guess, you know, written things and visual things, because instead of, for example, peeing on a rock, you might have a flag or you might have like, you might have other things that signify your territory. It's the same kind of baseline thing, but it's not sound based. It might be visual based or it may be oral or something that. Like that. So like I say, I say it in that sense that dogs illustrate kind of this, but it's something that exists at a very animal level. And we may have just come up with either because our sense of smell isn't good enough alternatives, or because language may be more efficient to say something about yourself than having everybody smell you. You know, like, language can substitute in that. So it's very interesting to look at the dog example though, because, I mean, also think about like this, they use their nose a lot more. That could be part of the reason why their noses. Like, conceivably, if humans were doing all this for the last fifty thousand, a hundred thousand years, maybe our noses would be better, you know, if we were more inclined to do that kind of stuff.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah, and you're right. I mean, we do have. I mean, I think human facial expressions are unique in the animal world, you know, in terms of the. Our ability to read each other just through things like that. Yeah.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: They have to have a word for it, like micro expressions as well, like.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: No, that's what I mean.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: They're imperceptible, but we can pick it up.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And no other animal has as many as we have to communicate with. So. But then one thing I found interesting too, which is just within some of the stuff I was reading, is that it's interesting that women could tell the scent of gay versus straight men.
They had just gay men and straight men wear T shirts for a few hours and walk around and all that. And then took all the shirts and jumbled them up and within 90% accuracy, straight women were able to tell which men they felt were gay and which men they felt were straight. And they said that it worked with gay men on gay men as well, that they did the same experiment, gave the shirts to gay men, and the gay men could tell which guys were gay and which guys weren't to some sort of accuracy like that. 90%.
And then here's an interesting one I wanted to read. It says straight women preferred the body odor of straight men whose immune systems were different enough that any offspring would have healthy immune systems. So this is the key. For most of human history, infectious disease has been our greatest threat. And I found that interesting too, because until our pandemic, we've been pretty lucky as our recent last hundred years or so of humanity, that we haven't really dealt with pathogens in the way that most of humans have dealt with them in history.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Very interesting point.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: And so, and so for women to be able to sense out the immune system of their. Of a potential mate that gets into like, you're saying, like peeing on the rock. Literally, like when you see the big lion, the male lion sitting there peeing all over the place and he's in heat, he's trying to attract the women they're over there smelling. What's this guy about, you know, how strong is he, how healthy is he? So on and so forth. And I just found that fascinating.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: And you can't fake that in that sense, you know, like that's kind of just, you know, like that's what I'm saying.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Like, like that. That evolved in humans, where human females are actually the way they pick up odor. Because the article doesn't say that men do it to women is specifically women looking for a mate are doing that. And I guess that probably comes like, just like the lions that, you know, a woman is. Is making a big, much more of a commitment when she chooses a mate than a male mammal that can just spread its seed all over the place.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: And so, and so I just found that fascinating.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: I mean, not this, the biological.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: That's through evolution that, you know, our infectious diseases were so damaging to humans that women developed a way to actually suss us out as men out.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: It's an adaptation, like a, like a.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Subtle way so they could just sniff us and be like, nah, I'll pass.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: It's an advantageous adaptation.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: But you know what, that's what I was thinking.
So where then does deodorants and all that fall into that factor for women? Right.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Hey, I love the playing field. It makes the weak men just as on the same as the stronger men. So but that is what it is. You know, it's one of those things that, like, the biology stuff is always very interesting. You know, again, so that's and humans are animals. So, you know, we're not wild animals, but we definitely, you know, we're not above the animal kingdom as well. Like, so, you know, learning about these things, it's interesting stuff. We learn about ourselves. So.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: But no, we can wrap it up from there, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I See It. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: I'm Tunde Lana.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: All right, subscribe rate review.
Tell us what you think about the podcast, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Sam.
