meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Notes from America with Kai Wright

Promises to Help the Climate Keep Breaking

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who’s breaking them, and why? Coming off of COP26, we talk to journalists Elizabeth Kolbert and David Wallace-Wells about the real cost of the climate crisis and who is paying the price. Learn about climate reparations, hear answers to listener questions, and discover what’s left for us to try to move forward as a global society. Plus, revisit the history of the 1992 Earth Summit that we discuss in the episode: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/episodes/united-states-of-anxiety-season-2-podcast-epiode-2 Companion listening for this episode: Nothing You Do Alone Will Save the Climate (9/20/2021) New science finds we’ve got less than a decade to avoid catastrophe. Activist and author Bill McKibben says the only solutions that can beat that deadline are collective. “The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC. We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Twitter @WNYC using the hashtag #USofAnxiety or email us at anxiety@wnyc.org.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

World leaders have just finished a meeting in which they tried to agree on a plan for saving the planet.

0:07.0

But to a lot of people outside the conference, much of what happened inside, missed the point.

0:11.0

I live in Kampala, Uganda, a country that has one of the fastest changing

0:18.8

climates in the world. In the past few years I have seen more and more how the climate crisis is

0:28.4

affecting the African continent which is ironic given that Africa is the lowest emitter of

0:36.2

serial two emissions of all continents except for Antarctica.

0:41.0

That's one of many ironies, each of which beg hard questions.

0:45.2

Who's going to pay for the damage already done? And why are we on the 26th

0:49.2

global meeting and still waiting for action? We'll tackle these questions and take your calls on the United States of anxiety.

0:59.6

How much or how little do you think about climate change on an everyday basis?

1:04.4

I think about it every day, multiple times a day.

1:07.1

I'm the same way.

1:07.9

I think it needs to be the number one issue that our policy makers are acting on.

1:13.0

How has climate change affected your day-to-day life or the way you go about living your life?

1:18.5

I have always tried to be environmentally conscious, but it is an everyday issue.

1:23.2

A lot of my friends, like their apartments flooded this year.

1:26.2

When my friends and I talk about the politics of having a family,

1:29.5

we're seeing a lot of time stamps with like 2030, 2040, 2050. So the idea of bringing another human into the world is

1:38.0

hard to think about.

1:39.4

It's hard because we deserve to have the families that we want.

1:44.3

It's actually not on a pregnant mom.

1:46.9

It's really on the corporations. Welcome to the show, I'm Kai Wright and a lot of us are probably just starting to think and talk about climate change in the first person as something directly impacting our own lives and

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.