Media Shakeups + Who’s Behind the Climate Crisis — with Bill McKibben

0:28Support for this show comes from Aura Frames. Steel is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so orders you now to get it in time for the holidays and support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

0:45Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Episode 247. 247 is the calling code assigned to Ascension Island, an isolated volcanic island. In 1947, the Roswell UFO incident occurred, which was when the U.S. Army recovered a flying disc from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, and became the center of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories.

1:28I was abducted by aliens and they used an ale probe on me. And then I realized they were just speaking my language. Go, go, go!

1:46Welcome to the 247th episode of The Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. We discussed with Bill the state of climate change, specifically how he ended up in such a precarious position. Precarious means fucked for those of you out there who aren't pedantic. We also hear about Bill's latest book, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon. A graying American looks back at his suburban boyhood and wonders what the hell happened. Bill has a nice way of kind of couching all of this in fairly, I don't know, easily digestible terms.

2:26Okay, what's happening? Some big shakeups in the world of media. Tucker Carlson is leaving Fox News. Okay, there you go. I don't think I've ever seen a full episode of Fox News or Tucker Carlson. I was on, actually, Tucker's show. I believe in going on Fox. I used to go on a lot. It was fine. No big shakes. Anyways, as always, I've managed to figure out a way to bring this back to me. In addition, not to be outdone on the left, as we need balance in the universe for every action there's a reaction, Don Lemon was ousted from CNN. And Jeff Schell, the CEO of NBCUniversal, is stepping away due to an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company.

3:02Okay. There you go. Fox News said Carlson and the network have agreed to part ways and that his last program was Friday, April 21st. However, it's apparent now that Carlson was fired and, according to the Wall Street Journal, was notified just 10 minutes before Fox made the announcement. The firing comes shortly after Fox settled the Dominion voting case for$787 million. The Washington Post also added there's a few reasons that are likely at play here, including how the Dominion case made Carlson's private text public, where he was being critical of Fox management and using misogynistic language.

3:34Not only that, a former booking producer on Carlson's show is pursuing legal action against the network, alleging she faced discrimination and was subjected to vile, sexist stereotypes. Well, there you go. Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.3 million viewers in 2022. For context, Fox's overall network averaged 1.5 million viewers last year. That's up 12 % year on year. Whereas MSNBC averaged 733 ,000. That's down 19%. And CNN averaged 568 ,000 viewers. That's down 27%. I mean, think about that. Fox gets about triple the number of viewers. I know that Anderson Cooper, who's sort of the star of CNN, gets about a million viewers on average.

4:15And Tucker garnered$3 million. So there's just no doubting the power. What was interesting is CNN usually was able to get higher or greater revenues. Why? Because the people who watch Fox are crazy and old, which is licensed for they don't buy shit. They're cheap. They're buying Life Alert and oxygen tanks. And I don't know. I'm trying to think of whatever else, CPAPs. Whereas people who watch CNN are a touch bit younger, i.e. in their 80s, not their 90s, and buy things like cars, or if they're young, make stupid decisions and buy things like coffee and tennis shoes and smartphones and other high-margin products.

4:49Anyways, the NYT's dealbook reported that Fox stock dropped 3 % on the day of the news, which was more than it did after the firm settled the Dominion case. Eh, eh, it's not a big deal. Over at CNN, Don Lemon found out about his termination from his agent and said in a statement, I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN, I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly, oh, Don, poor fucking you, Don. What were you making, five or 10 million bucks a year? And they didn't, something tells me that's bullshit. That's bullshit, that Don is imagining things.

5:21Maybe he's past his prime. Maybe he's in cognitive decline. Truth is, most anchors on CNN really hit their cognitive prime or their peak in their 20s or 30s. Anyways, I like Don mostly because I think he's a good-looking guy. And I think it's important to have good-looking anchors. I mean, for God's sakes. Anyways, Don goes on to say, in no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network. What about when you really fucked up and everyone was saying, oh, you really fucked up and you might lose your job? Did that kind of tip you off, big deed?

5:52CNN Communications tweeted, Don Lemon's statement about this morning's events is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management, but instead released a statement on Twitter. Okay, so there's a few things here and a few learnings. The first is you can work your ass off. you can be really good at what you do. And that's about 50 % of your brand. And the other 50 % happens in about an hour. And that is how you behave, how you acquit yourself during the hour when you find out that you've been fired. And here, Don Lemon is basically shitting all over his legacy by being, for lack of a better term, kind of a bitch in terms of, is that sexist or homophobic?

6:29I don't know. When I say bitch, I mean someone that's just acting like, I don't know, poorly. Anyways, I think he's acting, I don't think he's doing himself any favors. People remember how you leave. And this is how you leave. You're gracious. It has been my honor to be here. I've loved working with my colleagues. I hope that I get the chance to work with them again. And I wish everyone in the network nothing but good things. And then by the way, if you really feel that you've been wronged, you lawyer up. But publicly, internally, you're gracious. People remember how you leave. It's tempting on the way out to stick up the middle finger.

7:03And guess what? This is what it means to be an adult. This is what it means to be a professional. Because guess what? Someone else has to hire you. And in the world of TV, once you get hired, it means they're going to have to fire you at some point. It's a very insecure profession. And they see how you are leaving and decide, do we really want to hire someone who's going to start shitposting us the moment we decide he's the wrong guy or gal for the moment. These people make a shit ton of money. I mean, cry me a river. That's how it happens here. The other thing to keep in mind here is that people will always, always inflate their value relative to the platform.

7:38What, you're killing it at Goldman Sachs? Yeah, some of it's you. A lot of it is Goldman Sachs. People are really impressed by you and return your call because you're calling from the White House or government. Well, guess what? That's a really good card to have. And when you're at CNN, you have a platform. And when you're at Fox, you have two very, very powerful platforms. And here's the deal. Anyone here from Glenn Beck, Bill O 'Reilly, Shelley Long? Remember Shelley? She was too big for Cheers. She needed to go on and make movies. So did McLean Stevenson at MASH. The platform is more powerful than you thought, and you are less powerful than you had hoped.

8:13If you can find the alchemy of a great platform that leverages your strengths, you want to be very thoughtful about whether or not it's you or the platform. Look at Chris Cuomo, who is remarkably talented and was the number one anchor on CNN. Chris, you know, has gone on to do, and who knows, he may build a big presence, but for the most part, he has been kind of, I don't know, the invisible man, if you will. These platforms are incredibly powerful. More than anything, more than anything, though, this represents a structural decline in ad-supported media. You're just going to see more of this shit.

8:47But uptimes wallpaper over a lot of bad behavior and downtimes make people much less prone or much more woke. What do I mean by that? They get offended more easily and are looking for reasons to fire you. And times are bad. And times are bad in ad-supported media. The cable industry is now in full-throated structural decline. And that is there are so many options around streaming. You know what really struck me or really highlighted or brought into sharp relief? How incredibly bad of value cable television is? I like to watch live television. I'm an old guy. I like to watch Anderson Cooper. Occasionally, I watch Neil Cavuto on Fox.

9:23I think he's a quality journalist. But I like live TV. I enjoy just kind of pinging around and seeing Goodfellas for the 89th time. I also like live news. To get live TV on Hulu, I think was like 70 or 80 bucks. So that's the cost. That's the value. 70 or 80 bucks to be able to watch, to be one of the million people watching Anderson Cooper every night. Or with that 80 bucks, what could I do with streaming? What is that? Netflix? Disney Plus? Hulu? Peacock? I don't know. Discovery Plus or whatever they call it. Discovery Plus. HBO Max. HBO Now. HBO Joey Bag of Donuts, by the way. Don't get me started on that brand architecture nightmare.

10:01But you could basically subscribe to almost every streaming network, get tens of billions of dollars in content, and still, still be paying less than you pay to have cable television, which shows you what happened. Cable television, incrementally because they had a monopoly, by running a regulated monopoly, regulatory capture, they convinced the government that there should only be one or two cable companies. These guys could basically increase affiliate fees. They had differentiated content and slowly but surely you woke up and your cable bill was$200. And who came in and just with a fist of stone tag them on the chin, the mother of all chins, Netflix.

10:41At 12 bucks or 10 bucks, oh my God, that's literally, what is a better bargain? And it's kind of ruined it. Netflix has kind of fucked it up for every other consumer subscription company. And that is, okay, the consumer does the math and says in the back of their mind or has a reference point in the back of the mind, anytime I pull out my credit card and agree to a monthly recurring revenue payment, I need a billion dollars in content in exchange for one dollar per month. I mean, that is not easy. And as you've seen, newspaper companies are going away. Do you get a billion dollars in content to get, I think the New York Times is 150 bucks a year.

11:16Do you get$150 billion worth of reporting? No, you don't. And nor do you get anything resembling that, nor do you get$80 billion in content from cable companies when you spend$80 a month on Hulu. The difference here, the price value equation is just, just remarkable. Axios reported the primetime viewership dropped 14 % last year collectively across Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. I mean, that's just staggering. That means basically every three years, it's getting cut in half. That is just absolutely crazy. You know how you can tell that cable TV has just jumped the shark? Look at the ads. The ads are basically like, hey, we know life hasn't worked out for you and that you're poor and old and sick and we're gonna start pelting you.

12:01With ads about your restless legs or your opioid-induced constipation, is that what we have to look forward to? Seriously? Is that it? Is that what's waiting for us on the other end of 40s and 50s? We're going to see more and more pain in the ad-supported ecosystem. We're going to see all sorts of consolidation. And by the way, it's leaking into digital. It's leaking into digital. All of a sudden, Google looks tired. Overnight, they look as if they've been poorly managed for the last 10 years when chat GPT-4 comes along. And it ends up that actually Google had it. Talk about the innovator's dilemma.

12:32Let's go a little bit off script here. One of the brightest companies in the world, greatest concentration of IQ, more access to capital. They come up with some of the fundamental technologies that go into AI, and they don't leverage it because they don't want to fuck with this$150 billion toll booth called Search, which, by the way, has not only not gotten better the last 10 years, it's gotten shittier and shittier. And now your entire first page on some search results don't take you to the best place. They take you to another place they can further monetize. It is the premier example of modern-day innovators dilemma where they said we can't risk our core business by coming up with new ideas or introducing new ideas that might cannibalize our existing business.

13:09Bob Iger, Biger, if you will. I don't know how I got here. Cable. By the way, Bob Iger, this fight with Disney, this is Governor DeSantis going a bridge too far. Very strong political instincts, felt that the woke mob had gone too far and then found soft tissue around COVID, around loosening COVID restrictions. Florida got it right. I hate to admit it because I was a critic in the beginning. Florida got it right about the same per capita mortality from COVID as every other state, but kept the schools open or reopened them sooner, sequestered seniors and tried to let the majority of people who weren't at risk have regular lives.

13:47And guess what? You got to give it to Governor DeSantis. That was the right call. going after trans people, making stupid laws that are trying to figure out what offends the far right as opposed to actually what affects people and passing these hateful laws and then taking Florida back to old Spain by banning abortion. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on in my home state of Florida? Seriously, what is going on? And this is a perfect example of minority rule. The majority of Americans believe in the right to choice. The majority of Americans believe in some sort of gun control. And they basically, Forda said, you can now carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

14:26Come on already. Literally, come on. What is going on here? What is a bridge too far? What has cost him probably the Republican nomination? Getting into a pissing match with Disney. One of the key tenets of a democracy is that once you are elected to higher office, you don't take your personal vendettas and start trying to go after your political enemies. That is a fascist play. That is a page out of the fascist playbook when you go after your political enemies. You also don't target companies. You pass laws. And the notion that Disney was getting special tax breaks or wasn't in fact complying with the same laws or being held to the same standards as other companies, that is a worthwhile conversation you should have on a systemic level and make sure that any changes apply to Rider or Carnival Cruises or some of the other great companies in Florida.

15:15But to target Disney with this bullshit because they weren't supportive of your political, ideological, radical agenda that you're using to inflame the right, hoping that they will take you to more straws in Iowa, that is very short-term stupid thinking. And going after Disney, what does the Florida brand mean? What does the great brand of Florida mean? What are the underlying associations that pulse against the brand Florida? One, the weather. Two, we have the capital of Latin America in the form of Miami, a fantastic diverse culture. The Latin culture, the Latin vibe, that awesome feel that you're in Latin America when you're in certain parts of Florida, that is what makes America great.

15:58And it makes Florida great, a diverse community. We have a wonderful gay community in Florida. What else is amazing about Florida? Disney. Disney. They employ 80 ,000 people, tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in economic growth. And DeSantis wants to go after Disney. What the fuck? The mouse is going to bit slap you so hard, you're going to be smacked back to Knott's Berry Farm, a much inferior tourist experience where in 11th grade, Scott Galloway had to go because I didn't have the money for my birthday to go to Disneyland. That's right. Bush Gardens, Bush Gardens, where you get free beer and you go on a log ride.

16:35The log ride was the bigger. What on earth is a brewer doing with an amusement park? Anyways, take me back. 11th grade. That's what I did for my 16th birthday. What did you do? Anyways, Bob Iger is smart. He's disciplined. And he is going to tag this guy over and over and over. What is the summary of Disney versus Governor DeSantis? One is threatening to build more prisons next to a company, a private company, and some sort of weird fascist fucked up target the company. without any real notion or intention of systemic change. The other guy, the other guy is celebrating his LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

17:14So in sum, Bob Iger for president. By the way, daddy is at the World Retail Summit in Barcelona. The light here is beautiful. I'm always happy when I come to Spain. I think Spanish is the most beautiful language in the world. It just feels happy and optimistic. And I know that there's probably ham involved at some point in my near future. I absolutely, I'm at the Hotel Arts. Very fancy. I've stayed here several times. I've got a view. And I'm on a fucking podcast. It's beautiful outside. I'd like to be out. I would be recognized here and people come up to me and say hi. This nice Scotsman in the elevator said, hey, did your dad ever go to the Kohl's Yard?

17:48Because he knows my dad's Scottish because he's seen my podcast. Lovely guy. Lovely guy. I think it was called Kohl's Yard or Salt Kohl's Yard. Anyways, I forget. Not that my dad would remember anyways. My dad's struggling. My dad's struggling. He called me last night and he asked me to come get him. First off, he thinks I'm his brother, not his son. And he's worried. He says there's guns in the facility. Chances are at the Wesley Palms retirement facility, there aren't a lot of guns. And he's scared. And this is very upsetting. I don't know how I got here. Anyways, we'll be right back for our conversation with Bill McKibben.

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20:48Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. Bill, where does this podcast find you? I'm in the Green Mountains of Vermont. That sounds nice. So let's talk about climate change. How did we get here, Bill? Well, the very long answer is we got here by burning a hell of a lot of coal and gas and oil and putting a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. But the slightly shorter answer is we really got in trouble when we ignored the clear warnings from scientists 30, 35 years ago.

21:24I wrote the first book for a general audience about climate change way back in 1989. And we knew everything basically then that we know now. Our understanding of the problem and of the solutions hasn't changed in fundamental ways in all those years. It's just that we haven't done anything because some combination of inertia and mostly vested interest have kept us from taking the clear and obvious steps we should have been taking. I keep reading that there's kind of the windows closing, that if it goes much longer, there's a point of no return. What are your thoughts on this quote-unquote point of no return where the curve becomes parabolic and there's no reshaping the curve?

22:07Well, there's no, I don't think, singular failure point. It's not like other political problems that we deal with, in that you go past particular moments along the way from which there's no retreat. So, for instance, we're more than halfway through melting the sea ice in the summer Arctic. And it turns out that's having extraordinary effects on the operation of both the jet stream and the Gulf Stream. So we're monkeying around in very profound ways with some of the biggest forces on planet Earth. The Gulf Stream, the flow of the Gulf Stream is 100 times the flow of the Amazon. We're not going back on that.

22:49No one's got a plan for how we're going to refreeze the Arctic anytime soon. So as we go past those tipping points, our options get fewer and fewer, and the damage gets higher and higher, and the ultimate outcome gets worse and worse. I don't think we're going to go past a point where there's nothing that can be done to keep things from getting worse, but we're already in pretty bad shape and we've only increased the temperature of the earth a little more than one degree Celsius. We're on a trajectory to increase at three degrees Celsius in the next few decades. And if that happens, we probably won't have civilizations like the ones we're used to.

23:32As we think about a cure or as we think about ways or means of addressing this, what are the common misconceptions about the biggest culprits around carbon emissions? Because I just read the other day, I think that kind of plant-based foods to beef is responsible for 8 % of emissions. I don't know if I had that right. And that that was equivalent or that beef was basically as big a perpetrator here as transportation. And I may have that wrong. So set me straight here. Stack rank the culprits here. Well, burning fossil fuel is about three quarters of all the emissions that go into the atmosphere, probably a little more.