Bob McDonald has been the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks since 1992 and is a regular science commentator on CBC’s News Network and The National. His book Measuring the Earth with a Stick was shortlisted for the Canadian Science Writers Association Book Award. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
In The Future is Now, Bob McDonald turns his focus to global energy sources, and shows how the global shutdowns may have been exactly what we needed to show us that a greener future is achievable. An exploration of the incredible technologies that our species can use to get out of the mess we’ve made for ourselves, this is a work of immense optimism.
Interviewed by Nancy Pearson
Nancy Pearson (NP): In your CBC Radio program Quirks & Quarks you have a unique talent for asking the hard questions to get deeper into facts, to make science accessible for those of us who can’t even remember the periodic table of elements we learned in high school chemistry. You’ve also tackled really big questions with your other books, like: An Earthling’s Guide to Outer Space: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Black Holes, Dwarf Planets, Aliens, and More.
With your new book, The Future is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today’s Technologies, you delve into perhaps the biggest—and most urgent—question of our time: What could a clean, green future actually look like “without crippling the economy, or sending everyone back to the caves and trees?” “Climate change is now in our face,” as you point out in the introduction. I’m wondering what was the tipping point for you that spurred you into taking on this topic and this approach to such complex information?
Bob McDonald (BM): It’s hard to say what the tipping point was because I’ve been covering this stuff since the 1970s, after the first energy crisis happened when the OPEC countries in the Middle East turned off oil to North America. We all went into shock. Suddenly gas prices were going up and some gas stations were simply out of gas. We realized that fossil fuels are limited, and we have to start thinking about other ways of getting energy. And there was a lot of energy research back then—solar and wind and thermal and all of these alternatives. We had that. Since then, the price of oil has stabilized somewhat and we haven’t made those transitions.
At the same time, the climate has been changing. I’ve also been reporting on climate change since the 1970s. And scientists have been warning, waving the red flag—”It’s going to go up, it’s going to go up.” We keep having these UN conferences. I was at Rio 1992, the first Earth Summit, where world leaders got together and said, ‘Yes, we’re going to do something about it. We’re going to set targets.’ Those targets were not met, so then they had more meetings. We’ve had meetings in Kyoto and Copenhagen and Glasgow. We’ve had twenty-six of these meetings, and every time we keep pushing the goalposts back and emissions are still rising.
Then I do environmental stories on Quirks or wherever and it’s all bad news. I think, oh my gawd, we’re losing ice in the Arctic. I just came back from the Arctic and could see it. And finally it was like, “Okay, when are we going to get off our butts and do something with this?” What happened to all that green technology that we looked at fifty years ago? So, you see, that’s why I wanted to write the book to see where are we. And I discovered that they’re still around, they’re improving, and they’re available. But we now have to do something about it.
NP: That leads into something you said in an interview with HazNet Magazine in 2017. You talked about the well-organized campaigns that aim to “cast doubt in the minds of the public” about climate change. Over the past five years we’ve certainly seen and experienced climate change in catastrophic and unprecedented ways here in B.C. alone, like the heat dome and atmospheric rivers of 2021. And the climate change deniers are still shouting loudly. Where do you see The Future is Now fitting into the dialogue to counter the misinformation of the doubt-casters?
BM: You cannot deny the truth. The climate deniers had their day and they put out the misinformation and they had a massive campaign. Some of them were funded by oil companies; we now know that. But, the forest fires, the floods, the droughts, the stronger hurricanes, the fires in Australia, the fires here. I’m a motorcyclist and I travelled around the province last summer and I had to turn back because the smoke was so thick. I think I inhaled an entire tree! It is in our face. I just stopped listening to them because they’re saying the same old things they’ve been saying all along. And meanwhile, the weather reports, the news reports are all showing us that the predictions the scientists made are coming true. They were right. So, let’s just ignore the deniers and let them say what they want, but get on with what needs to be done. Because all they’re doing is slowing down the process to keep things the same. That’s their strategy: you just delay the process. But the cost of delaying or the cost of doing nothing is far greater than any cost it’s going to take to implement new technologies. I don’t even listen to them anymore because I don’t hear anything new. Misinformation, unfortunately, is part of our culture “Alternative facts,” as they say. I find it very frustrating. Science—its job is to pursue the truth. How does the universe work? How does our planet work? And they’re identifying that and they’re also identifying solutions as to how we can turn this juggernaut around, so let’s get on with it.
NP: I can hear the frustration in your voice.
BM: I’m actually optimistic, you know. I’m actually optimistic. I believe we can move forward. And I think in the public mind we’re seeing it. Gas prices are going up. All the manufacturers are producing electric cars now; they’re getting cheaper. So, you can see the momentum. You can see that it’s really starting to take effect. I think we’re at a turning point, a tipping point, now.
NP: You’ve written and hosted award-winning science programs for children, and you’ve said that eight- to twelve-year-old kids are your favourite age group. The Future is Now will be a brilliant resource for budding scientists, but it seems to me that your audience for this book is quite different. Could you tell me about who you had in mind when writing The Future is Now?
BM: Yah, I’m hoping that maybe some kids will read it. You’re right, they are the future. They are the future scientists, the politicians, the decision makers. We need at least scientific literacy. I’m not saying all kids should become scientists. But we need a society that’s scientifically literate so that when we make some of these decisions, we know what we’re talking about. I wrote this book for those who have a vision for the future, but also for those who might be scared or afraid that it’s going to be too expensive, it’s going to be too hard—’we’ll have to give up our lifestyle’, ‘we’ll have to give up all our comforts that we have’—but that’s not the case. It doesn’t have to be that, right? I guess it’s both. I’m trying to inject a little hope here. It’s not all doom and gloom, that there is a clear path out. And like I say at the very beginning of the book, the good news is, the technology already exists. We don’t need any new inventions. The stuff is sitting there. Let’s use it. And we have to get past this big elephant in the room, which is the fossil fuels which are so incredibly convenient. They’ve given to us for so long. I give my pyramid analogy of how many pyramids we burn a day. So, we’ve been spoiled with that and there’s no easy substitute for oil or gas or nuclear. So, okay, we have to find another way. But there’s no shortage of energy. There is no ‘energy crisis.’ I don’t like that term. There might be an oil crisis, but there’s not an energy crisis. It falls from the sky every day.
NP: My last question flows from something you just said that’s that the green technologies you write about offer hope for a “new green age,” and you show ways that individuals and corporations can make changes to reduce fossil fuel use. How hopeful are you that governments, in particular, will step up to the plate to put policies and funding in place to save our planet?
BM: Yah, I go back and forth on that. I feel the change is going to come from the ground up, rather than from the top down. Because, as I say, these United Nations conferences where governments get together and pledge, they don’t meet their pledges. And, at the same time, from an economic point of view people who invest in green technologies get a payback in the long term (it’s one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy), the public is realizing that this stuff is available. People who put solar panels on their houses, in several years are finding they’re saving energy. You actually save money. It might not look like it up front, but in the long term, they’re saving money. And then the environmental implications are in our face. So, those factors are coming together and I think it’s going to come from the public who say, ‘Hey, look government, let’s do more here.’ I’m not sure we’re going to continue subsidizing the old technology and invest in the new. That’s gradually happening. We have to believe it. I find very often when I talk to people about this subject, they always come up with reasons not to do it: ‘Oh, it’s too expensive.’ ‘Windmills kill birds.’ ‘Solar panels take up land.’ ‘What are we going to do about recycling solar panels?’ Yes, every technology that produces energy has its cost. But we’ve been putting up with incredible costs for oil, including all the people who die every year from emissions, and we just accept that. I’m trying to paint a picture here that there is an alternative. There is an alternative. I’m hoping that it will come from the ground up with good education and that people will start looking into it.
NP: And this book will certainly provide a lot of this information.
BM: I hope so.
NP: Is there another big, pressing question on your mind, Bob, that we can look forward to reading about?
BM: Will we have time? The clock is ticking. And I don’t know how much more land we can set on fire. How many more rivers and lakes can dry up? How much more our population can grow and continue to eat up and burn up everything in sight before we clean up our act. The environment is changing faster than what’s been predicted in the past, so I just hope that we don’t let it come to a crisis before we act. That we can have foresight. That we can look ahead and say, ‘Alright, let’s think about this and deal with this now.’ And start moving now and not wait until it becomes a crisis. That’s my big question: Can we do it in time? I believe we can. If common sense prevails. Let’s not get depressed about it. Let’s not get depressed about all the environmental stuff. There are a million reasons why not to do things. That’s just fear. Let’s think about what it will take to do things in a positive way. Let’s think positively rather than negatively. I hope we have time.