Tornados in France and other adventures

An unpredictable climate will come for all of us, including (and especially) our vacations. Plus: NY Climate Week plans and a small podcast vacation!

First, a programming update. Everybody in the Pool is on vacation (can’t you tell by this newsletter? I’m not very good at vacations)! We’ll be dark this week and next week, with new episodes resuming the week of August 12. If you’re new to the pod, take this opportunity to get caught up on older episodes! 

Some other updates now, since I’ve been a bit unpredictable with the newsletter this summer — let’s just say I have a lot of thoughts about elder care in America, and none of them are good. And with my Marketplace hat on, trust me that this is going to become an even bigger conversation as Boomers continue to age and GenX realizes that while our parents may have voted themselves a lot of tax cuts and things, they didn’t manage to crack affordable senior care like, at all. And please send your well wishes to my mother, care of me. Sigh. 

Anyway, the work goes on. I am excited to report that I’m working on an event for New York Climate Week that, drawing on my long history of going to things like CES, aims to show people cool climate solutions, with a panel discussion to highlight the innovation, ingenuity, and sheer inventiveness of the solutions that are already being built. (Yes, this is inspired partly by attending 23 straight CES shows, but let’s just say I’m going for a very different vibe.) If you’re interesting in sponsoring the event or being a demo company, get in touch between now and Aug. 3 — space is going fast!

Like CES, but you know. Classy.

And the final update: I’m in France at the moment, visiting friends and trying to make it to Paris for the Olympics. And the thing that’s been on my mind during this trip (other than pink wine, la Med, and the funny little Olympic hat mascot) is, well, climate change. Today, I’m hours delayed meeting up with my son in Paris because a tornado in eastern France caused a tree to fall on the TGV tracks, and then a high-speed train hit that tree (thank god no one seems to have been hurt), and so I’m waiting out the quite literal storm in a Starbucks in Nice, because it has air-conditioning and the whole region is also under a severe heat alert.

Updates on the TGV situation while I try something called a "Refresha," in cool lime. I'm not proud, but I am cool.

All of this, my friends, is our new travel normal. It’s been creeping in this direction for a while, and it’s probably time to start considering it in your plans — especially if they take place in the summer. Last summer, in fact, the New York Times (gift link) wrote about the heat domes, flooding, wildfire, and thunderstorms that are disrupting and will continue to disrupt summer travel. And they didn’t even get to the flight turbulence or the for-now future problems like carbon taxes making flights (rightfully) unaffordable and people setting personal carbon allowances or shaming themselves and each other into flying less.

Lest you be tempted to think these are only first-world problems, remember that global tourism is about a $12 trillion market and growing — for now. Much like the pandemic disrupted and closed hotels across the world, climate change will almost certainly do the same. And even the trips you manage will have more heat, more disruption, more insect-borne illnesses, and so on.

I should pause here and acknowledge two things: one, I flew to France. What kind of climate hypocrite am I? This is fair. In some ways, I believe I’m traveling while I still can, and I did my best to choose the least carbon-intensive routes and to take trains whenever possible. I’m also packing a couple of years’ worth of adventures into this one trip, knowing that I haven’t done a big summer vacation in a while and I don’t know when I will again. But some of that is cheap rosé, I know. My personal carbon budget isn’t too bad, but flying to Europe is an indulgence and one that won’t be explainable for much longer.

Second, you may be wondering, where are the solutions, for crying out loud? Well. For some things, we just won’t have them, other than traveling in shoulder seasons, finding different destinations, staying closer to home, and continuing to push for transportation solutions like electrified or hybrid-electric planes and alternative transportation for short trips, hydrogen fuel advances for long-haul travel, and fusion energy for a currently sci-fi future of limitless clean energy for everything from travel to desalination to carbon capture to space exploration.

But once in a while, friends, I gotta give it to you straight. The world is changing. Climate change doesn’t care if you believe in climate change. It’s here, and even this wonderful trip with wonderful dear friends has me heavily contemplating the “change” part of climate change. We’ve changed our world, and we’re going to have to change along with it.