After a late-summer break, The Overstory is back with a new episode. We talk with energy reporter Antonia Juhasz, who explains why the COVID pandemic may be the nail in the coffin for the global oil and gas industry. Juliet Grable, a frequent Sierra magazine contributor, talks about what it was like working as a volunteer firefighter battling the recent wildfires in Oregon. And our advice columnist, Ms. Green, has tips for how to recycle old underwear and socks.

Transcript

Jason Mark: I'm Jason Mark. Welcome back to The Overstory. Hope you all had a safe, enjoyable staycation kind of summer. I myself am lucky to say had a really restful and restorative August until well, September came. And with it, fire season, which as you know, this year has been something of a waking nightmare, as the epic wildfires tore through California, Oregon, and Washington, taking lives and destroying homes and livelihoods, and then casting a toxic pall of smoke from San Francisco to Portland, to Seattle.

News Clip: The state of emergency in Northern California's wine country triggered just as hundreds of homes go up in flames and more than 20,000 are still under-

News Clip: Tonight, firefighters racing to gain the upper hand on the glass fire North of San Francisco.

News Clip: Oh, that's hot, hot, hot, oh my God. I can feel it. God, it's so sad.

Introduction (0:00)

Introduction (0:59)

Jason Mark: On this episode of The Overstory, we're going to hear from Juliet Grable. She's a regular contributor to Sierra Magazine. She's also a volunteer firefighter and she's going to talk to us about what it was like fighting the fires around Ashland, Oregon.

Juliet Grable: I could see through the trees on the other side of the creek, this incredible orange glow. It was just a really strong image that I'm not sure I'll ever forget.

Jason Mark: We've also got some good news of sorts, some signs of positive change on the horizon. Antonia Juhasz, an energy reporter, is going to tell us why the end of oil is near.

Antonia Juhasz: The rapid decline in the industry, its size, its pervasiveness, its political power, but it's going to take work to unwind the planet from its dependence on oil.

Jason Mark: And as always, we've got some news you can use. We'll share some tips for the best naturalist apps out there.

Corrinne Bishop: Take a picture. And then once you get a couple of confirmations, it becomes like a research grade data point.

Jason Mark: All that and more on this episode of The Overstory.

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The End of Oil is Near (2:13)

Jason Mark: Amid a continuing pandemic and the undeniable evidence of climate change and a federal administration that nonetheless seems in denial of both, there are still some positive signs of change on the horizon, some glimmers of hope. In a recent article for Sierra Magazine, it was our September, October cover story, reporter Antonia Juhasz declares that the end of oil is near. For an industry that's long been headed to the grave, the pandemic might be the final nail in the coffin.

Jason Mark: Hey Antonia, how are you doing?

Antonia Juhasz: I'm doing great. How are you, Jason?

Jason Mark: I'm well, minus all the wildfire smoke here in the second week of September.

Antonia Juhasz: You left one place where you were going to encounter terrible fires and went to a place where you then encountered terrible fires. I'm sorry.

Jason Mark: It's okay. I guess it's just a reminder that in the age of a global climate crisis, there's no way.

Antonia Juhasz: Indeed.

Jason Mark: But let's talk about your story because it's so important and it's so revelatory and illuminating. Right before we published your story online, when it came out in our September, October edition, but after you'd already written it and the issue had gone to press, we got the news that for the first time, in like 92 years, ExxonMobil had been dropped from the Dow Jones industrial index. And it got a lot of attention and a bunch of chatter. And it seems such a part of your story, which is titled, The End of Oil is Near. And I'm wondering if you could explain what that moment meant to you, what it reveals about the global oil and gas industry, that ExxonMobil no longer has the valuation it once had.

Antonia Juhasz: Yeah, it's pretty historic. ExxonMobil is the direct descendant of the two largest breakup pieces of Standard Oil, and Standard Oil is the original oil company, not only in the United States, but in the world. And at the founding of the Dow Jones industrial average, one of the founding companies was Standard Oil of New Jersey. So for the entire 80 some years of the Dow Jones industrial average, there's been a piece of Standard Oil or a piece of ExxonMobil, however you want to look at it, as a key marker for how we value the American stocks. What are stocks that are the most important that tell us how the economy is doing and how the stock market is doing and what are the stocks that need to be in there to make us understand the US economy?

And to say that ExxonMobil is no longer part of that valuation is just this clear marker that the oil industry, what had been for decades, the largest company on the planet, and now it doesn't even live up to being able to be in the Dow Jones. And I think that's a clear message that as the title of the article reads, the end of oil is near, with just the weakening of this, what is and has been the power horse, the power center of the oil industry, ExxonMobil.

Jason Mark: So Antonia, you write in the piece that the precipitating event that's caused this crisis is the coronavirus pandemic, that is global demand for oil and gas went off a cliff as most of the world sheltered in place and as global transportation and travel came to a screeching halt this past spring. You write, and I want you to explain this for us, that the oil and gas industry was in a fundamentally troubled place from a profit standpoint, long before the pandemic happened. So walk us through that. Why were these big companies, like ExxonMobil, and Chevron and Shell and BP, why were their profits already in decline well in advance of the coronavirus slipping into civilization's bloodstream?

Antonia Juhasz: Yeah, the coronavirus pandemic just took everything that was already weak about the oil industry and made every element of it much worse because the whole that the industry was in very much preceded this pandemic and its value has been falling for many reasons. And what I point to is the linchpin for those reasons in the article is an awakening to listening to those people who live where oil and gas operations take place and hearing the detriment of those operations, and that made even more people not want to stay on oil.

Obviously, the climate crisis made more people not wanting to stay on oil. The movement to replace oil with other resources and other fossil fuels with other resources, gaining momentum and support, making alternatives both accessible and affordable, a strong push to weaken the political prowess of this industry and a push to get banks and other financial backers to start to pull away from the industry. All of these combined to see the growth in demand of oil start to fall and particularly precipitously starting in 2015.

At the same time that all of these forces are conspiring to reduce the interest in oil, you still have a number of companies and countries that are dependent on producing oil for the bottom line. And so they kept pumping and particularly in the United States, we were pumping at record amounts, particularly when the Trump administration came in. So you had a fall in demand, a fall in price at the same time, more production, which created this massive glut. The glut further puts pressure down on price. As price goes down, the profits of the companies go down, but they still have to try and make as much money. So they pump even more oil and that reduces the value of their product. And they're caught in this spiral, which is they're producing more and more and more of a product that we want less and less and less of, and they're getting smaller returns for it.

So their profits go down, the return to investors go down and investors, banks, those that are putting their money behind these companies start to withdraw that money, particularly as the political support and public support goes away as well. And you have this perfect death spiral that the only things left propping up the industry at this point are enormous quantities of government expenditures, $5 trillion annually in the world in subsidies. And you still have those banks and those hedge funds continue to being its backstop. And we are really at this point where if it wasn't for those supports, those artificial essentially, support mechanisms, this industry, I think would pretty much already be in the grave.

Jason Mark: I want to come back to that in just a minute to those supports and especially how it plays out in the US. But you say there's been a reduced interest in oil, and this is important, right? It's not that global demand for oil had begun to decline, it's that the growth in demand for oil had declined, the year to year growth and demand had started to drop. So does that mean that we've reached a plateau for global oil demand?

Antonia Juhasz: There's many estimates that are coming out now estimating that we have hit peak oil demand in 2019, meaning demand for oil will never be as high again as it was in 2019. And I think that the piece to make clear is the world still remains hardwired for oil. The planet is hardwired for oil. But what we are seeing right now is just the rapid decline in the industry, its size, its pervasiveness, its political power, but it's going to take work to unwind the planet from its dependence on oil, particularly countries that produce, that are deeply dependent on oil as a resource for their entire government economy, which is many countries in the world.

And particularly poor countries. You don't want to send poor countries even further into poverty by immediately eliminating the resources in which they are dependent. And so the decision to allow the industry to follow its natural path right now, which is towards its demise, needs to be thought through and done carefully. And that's the other piece I describe in the article is how to choose a managed process of decline. Now oil is so cheap that producer nations are not making enough money and that is contributing to a further economic tailspin that the world's already in right now.

Jason Mark: Which I guess brings us to this topic, which we've talked about with other guests on The Overstory before, of a just transition. If we're able to have a managed decline and a rational retreat from oil and gas, we're more likely to have a transition that will help take care of the communities and the workers who are in the oil and gas industry, right? As opposed to, I guess, just a chaotic decline in which there's more likely that communities and those workers will be hurt.

Antonia Juhasz: Ending the power of the industry and our ability to embrace alternatives is a process that has to be managed. It's not going to happen overnight and it has to be done through conscious decisions. And what I've proposed is essentially using the Paris climate agreement mechanism, which already exists, whereby wealthy countries have already pledged $500 billion to assist lower income nations to make that transition and to actually have additional funds that are specifically keep it in the ground funds, we will pay you to keep your oil, natural gas, coal in the ground. And then bring in the international monetary fund, and canceling the debts owed of poor countries, forgive debts for those nations that specifically implement keep it in the ground policies to facilitate that process. And that's applying an equity lens and a justice lens to the global transition off of fossil fuels.

Jason Mark: It's funny because there's one thing I can imagine some listeners trying to wrap their minds around, which is that we want a thoughtful managed decline and that's different from what we're seeing now, which is just a bailout, right? What we have right now is not a strategic industrial policy that's focused on making the transition. It's just propping up the current actors. You wrote an online story to accompany the big print story about how all of the oil and gas companies or how many of the oil the gas companies had gotten government bailouts from the COVID relief packages. The care legislation, the PPP, they were supposed to help people in need. But what you found is that there were hundreds, I guess, thousands of oil and gas companies that appear to have gotten bailouts while not actually keeping people on the payroll. Can you talk about the reporting you did for that story?

Antonia Juhasz: Yeah. I think it's important to start that story where I had grounded it, which is just down the road from where I live, which is in Weld County, Colorado, which is where 90% of all the oil is produced in the state. And with the story of Patricia Nelson, who's a mother who lives in the heart of Weld County, her family are Mexican immigrants. They've worked in Weld County for three generations and is a family that suffers from the health impacts of being surrounded by fracking operations, which they are. And that type of pollution is also, new studies keep coming out each day and a new one was published by ProPublica, finding the correlation between the type of pollution that is released by oil and gas operations, refineries, cars, increasing the likelihood of death from COVID-19 and contracting COVID-19, because it's a respiratory disease and these pollutants harm respiratory system.

She's been fighting health impacts of living and surrounded by fracking operations for years. And now her family and her community have also been rocked by COVID and she lost her job before the pandemic hit. So she wasn't eligible for unemployment benefits. Her husband lost his job. They have spent out her entire 401k because she hasn't been able to get another job. And so she has not received the necessary assistance from the federal government to help her. But the same companies that she's been battling in her community did get bailed out. So the bailout that has benefited the oil and gas industry has actually been quite extensive.

So remember, we started off this conversation saying the oil industry was in great trouble prior to COVID-19. A lot of these companies, they're natural order of things, they were producing a product that people don't want and they're getting ready to go the way of the typewriter. And 90% of all defaults on corporate debt in 2019 where US energy companies. 90%. So now walk in the Trump administration. And now, you and I, the American taxpayer, through the federal reserve, through a new program that the federal reserve set up, we now own debt of pretty much every major fossil fuel company. And we are now directly propping up this industry in an unprecedented move of the federal reserve, that's never happened before.

Jason Mark: The oil and gas industry just needs the money. One of the things that I thought was interesting in your story, and I've read this before, but you illustrated it so well, is the degree to which the fracking firms, they're just surviving on constant debt infusions. It's like they're on an IV drip of debt that's keeping them alive. And without that debt, I don't know, maybe too strong a word, but it's like a giant debt Ponzi scheme in a way. Maybe that's overstating it, but some of these small fracking companies, they just keep leveraging themselves more and more to keep pumping, especially as their wells decline. They need the debt to get to the bottom of the well.

Antonia Juhasz: A lot of these companies I think are in some ways Ponzi schemes. It is not a bad word. They're owned by hedge funds. They're owned to make money off of the trading in their debt. And they have to feed off of the overproduction of this resource to just keep pumping and pumping and pumping, even if it's oil that isn't wanted. And it is, in many ways, essentially a sort of giant Ponzi scheme in which the fracking industry has lost 200 to 300 billion because money is being made in the trading of their debt. In their losses, money is being made. And we are paying the consequences, right? So anyone who, like me, lives in the middle of a fracking state and we're suffering the environmental costs, the health costs, et cetera, at the end of the day, it's not going to be enough money. Government policy making, not just the subsidies are also what the industry is dependent on to keep it going.

Jason Mark: Which I think brings us to the conclusion of your piece. You write at the end of your article, that whether the oil industry continues is quote up to us. What does that mean when you write it's up to us?

Antonia Juhasz: I think it's demonstrating public will and organizing that drives policy that meets that necessity. So, the public has essentially clearly said, "We're no longer interested in this industry. We want to see alternatives. We want to be moving away from fossil fuels and we want to be implementing keep it in the ground policy." The other part that a Green New Deal introduces is a more holistic approach to say, how do we do an equitable, just transition to help communities transition off of fossil fuels? How do we put in place essentially an alternative economy? There's now all these studies that have been done and saying what have been the best economic policies for rebuilding that have sustained economies the best. And those have been green policies. It also makes clear the intention of equity and justice in the transition.

Jason Mark: Antonia, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and to share with us the analysis, reporting from your cover story in Sierra Magazine. I really appreciate it.

Antonia Juhasz: Well, thank you so much for having me and thank you for all of your help in writing these wonderful pieces.

Jason Mark: It was a lot of fun. Stay safe out there.

That was Antonia Juhasz. She's an investigative journalist who covers the oil and gas industries. You can find her most recent article, The End of Oil is Near, in the current issue of Sierra Magazine and online, Sierramagazine.org.

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The App for Aspiring Naturalists (20:07)

Jason Mark: On recent episodes, we've talked about different ways to take advantage of staying local during these pandemic quarantines. Well, you have to keep your chin up and find some silver linings, right? Well, I've been trying to do that myself. My family and I do a ton of hiking and I consider myself a bit of an amateur naturalist. I'm pretty well versed in the plants and the bird species I see on those walks. But I'll admit that my curious five-year-old daughter, she sometimes stumps me. Well, like many things these days, there's an app for that. Sierra Magazine's adventure and lifestyle editor, Katie O'Reilly talked to reporter Korrin Bishop about a new app for all you aspiring naturalists and plant curious hikers.

Katie O'Reilly: Welcome to The Overstory. Korrin, where are we reaching you today?

Korrin Bishop: I am in Asheville, North Carolina.

Katie O'Reilly: All right, well hello from San Francisco, California. And so you have your friend, Steph, who is a naturalist, who you got in the habit of sending all your, what is X, Y or Z plant photos too?

Korrin Bishop: Yeah, so I used to live in the Black Hills of South Dakota and that's where I met Steph. She was working for the park service there as a naturalist. So I just send her various stuff throughout the Black Hills. One, I remember in particular, was this really what I thought was this cool plant, sort of like alien looking almost like these really tall stocks, yellow flowers bursting out. And I was like, "Ooh, this must be something really cool in South Dakota." And I sent it to her and she responded that it was Malane, which was actually an invasive plant to that area that was not native.

Katie O'Reilly: What are some of the most common invasive species that we probably see so often, we don't even realize they're not native?

Korrin Bishop: Yeah. So when I moved over to Asheville, I started walking the Greenways here because the pandemic kicked in and that's pretty much all I had to do. And I started using the app there and I was really surprised that so much of what I saw was actually invasive, exotic species. So some of the ones were Japanese knotweed and Multiflora rose, which are along a lot of those Greenways in Asheville, they suck up a lot of the moisture in the area. So we're seeing them along creek beds and that can really dry out the soil there. And they overcrowd habitat, pushing out a lot of the native plants there. And instead of having this really rich biodiversity, you end up with this monoculture of this one plant and it really starts to change the environment. So garlic mustard is another big one. There are some like English Ivy is another one people see a lot. So they're all over if you start to hone in on them.

Katie O'Reilly: Can you tell us it's a little bit about how the app works, give sort of a play-by-play?

Korrin Bishop: Sure. Yeah. So you can actually use iNaturalist for all sorts of species. So plant life, animals, insects, bird calls. You take a picture of whatever you're looking at, or you can upload a recording as well. And there's some technology there that will give you a best estimate of what it thinks you're looking at, just based on other uploads and that sort of thing. And so then if you find what you think you're looking at, you can ID it as that. And then that gets uploaded to the database and other users of the app will look through for anything that only has one ID to it or no IDs, and will help you either confirm what you saw or give some other suggestions for what it might be. And then once you get a couple of confirmations on what you're looking at, it becomes a research grade data point.

Katie O'Reilly: So the app is really actually serving scientists.

Korrin Bishop: The park service looks at the citizen science data set through iNaturalist and some other apps as well, such as Edmaps, which is specifically focused on invasive species. And it helps them just monitor new crop ups, look at whether old ones are coming back, figure out if they need to do more education at trail heads to get people to clean their boots to make sure seeds don't come into the park. So there are all sorts of ways that they can use these data.

Katie O'Reilly: So it's not just about collecting the data, it's about taking that next step and acting to preserve biodiversity.

Korrin Bishop: Definitely. Yeah. And I think especially living near the Smokeys now, I've been on hikes before where people from out of town will be like, "Where's the next overlook?" People are used to hiking and parks for this panoramic scenery and in the Smokeys, you can find that. But I think what makes the park particularly special is that biodiversity. It has so many different flowers and trees and mosses. And to think about invasive species coming in and wiping that out and all the little details that make that park so beautiful is definitely what gets me about using something like iNaturalist and taking that next step to protect the land.

Katie O'Reilly: Well, thank you so, so much for joining us Korrin.

Korrin Bishop: Thanks so much.

Jason Mark: That was Katie O'Reilly, Sierra Magazine's adventure editor, talking to reporter Korrin Bishop.

(Not in transcript: Read article about this app)

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Ms. Green on Recycling Clothing/Intimates (26:12)

Jason Mark: Seasons are changing. Fall is finally in the air for much of the country. And if you're a little bit more organized, well than I am, you're probably sending your summer clothes to the attic. What do you do with all those old swimsuits and socks and underwear, things that you'd probably send to the dump? Because well, even the most sustainably minded among us doesn't want to wear used socks. Well, Jessian Choy, AKA Ms. Green, has got some ideas for how to avoid sending those old intimates to the dump. She shared her tips with Liz, from Los Angeles.

Liz: Hi, my name is Liz and I'm calling from Los Angeles and asking questions regarding recyclables, recyclable intimates.

Jessian Choy: There are a few ways to recycle stained, even holey, or what I like to call sexy textiles, underwear, socks, swimwear, bras, lingerie, and even pantyhose. And my top, personal top tip, is I'm going to try to bring sexy back, like that song, with stained holey underwear and socks. Aside from that, if that's not your thing, the most sustainable solution is to urge manufacturers to stop overproducing textiles or buy longer lasting certified fair trade and organic clothes. That means that they're thick, 100% cotton, hemp or linen, not fabric from trees like bamboo, which by the way, I hope someone will ask me to write about because that's a longer discussion. And for longer-lasting to make your clothes last longer, wash your clothes less and use cold water on the delicate cycle and avoid stretching elastic. And natural fabrics are actually more recyclable and they do not shed up to 1.5 million toxic plastic microfibers per laundry load that can't be filtered out by our water filters. If you have textiles that need mending or resizing, there are tailors that will even mend your underwear.

Liz: Oh, my goodness.

Jessian Choy: Especially fancy undies.

Liz: Oh my goodness. That's great.

Jessian Choy: Yeah. Personally, when I have holes in my things, I just wear them and then it's really easy to mend. You don't need a sewing machine. Like ironing a matching patch on holes, there's some really creative funny looking do-it-yourself patching. There's iron-on. So there's easy ways to mend things, either pay someone or do it yourself. If you need to get rid of usable intimates, things that can be worn again, even those thrift stores might not, they tend to not accept intimates. People buy used intimates, swimwear and socks on poshmark.com.

Liz: They sell intimates.

Jessian Choy: I've actually bought bras on Poshmark, used bras. But if all that won't work for you, the next best thing, knickey.com. So that's knickey.com. They will give you a free shipping label and they'll send you a pair, a new pair, not used, of organic underwear. And also if you have other unwearables or unusable textiles, even shoes or home linens like towels and curtains, you can drop them off or mail them to greentreetextiles.org in the Bronx, in New York.

Liz: Yeah. That's phenomenal and I'm so happy you're doing this because this has been an interest of mine for so long and I didn't have the courage to pursue it, and I'm so happy that you're doing it. And it gives me courage to continue.

Jessian Choy: Oh, it's never too late. And I give away all my secrets, like in my articles or if it doesn't fit in the Sierra print or online issues, I give away all my secrets on my social media and it's really not as hard as people might think. It's just asking questions. And thank you for your question and I hope to hear from you again.

Liz: Oh, absolutely.

Jessian Choy: Thank you so much, Liz.

Jason Mark: Thanks to Jessian Choy, our own Ms. Green, for her tips on how to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. You can check out her column at sierramagazine.org or follow her on social media, @realMsGreen, where you can ask her pretty much any question about how to green your lifestyle and maybe even get featured on our show.

Fighting Fires in Ashland (30:53)

Jason Mark: Finally, a story from Juliet Grable. She's a regular contributor to Sierra Magazine, and she's also a volunteer firefighter and she's going to talk to us about what it was like fighting the fires around Ashland, Oregon.

Juliet Grable: As we were driving down in our rigs, listening to the radio traffic, it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a large incident. And that's why we were being called. It was all hands on deck. Several of our crew were in a mobile home park that was right next to Bear Creek. And the fire was threatening that park. It had crossed the creek and was starting to crawl up the banks and starting to catch some of the small trees on the edge of the park on fire. So as we were putting those out, I could see through the trees on the other side of the creek, this incredible orange glow that I know was multiple structures on fire. And it was really pretty scary. It was just a really strong image that I'm not sure I'll ever forget.

There were lots of people who say they didn't get alerts on their phone and that the only way they knew to evacuate was someone knocking at their door at the last minute or a neighbor coming and getting them saying, "We need to get out now." So I think it was just a terrifying, confusing scene. And when you see these videos showing dozens of houses burning, and there's no firefighters around, I think people understandably wonder what's going on here and what was happening. It was too much for the number of personnel we had, and they were doing everything they could, truly heroic effort to, like I said, get everyone out and keep the fire from spreading any further. But I think there were instances where there was just nothing they could do but basically you get out of the way. I think confronting that kind of power is really challenging.

It was absolutely surreal. I would say that's the best word to use because there were all these juxtapositions. There were these houses that were perfectly intact with the vegetation all around them next to lots where the houses had burned completely to the ground and were nothing but just piles of smoking ash. And then there were quite a few neighbors who hadn't evacuated and were trying to protect their own homes or their neighbor's homes. An episode or an incident like Paradise, California is not, unfortunately just an anomaly anymore. We're having these catastrophic fires that are really impacting communities and not even just communities right in the wild land and urban interface, communities like Santa Rosa, where entire neighborhoods are taken out.

There's this ongoing debate about, "Oh, is it forest management?" Or "Oh, is it climate change?" But I think the basic facts are that temperatures are increasing, fuel loads in forests and elsewhere really high. So it's just a dangerous combination. I don't think you can really ignore those facts, those very basic facts. There's all sorts of arguing you can do about the details, but I think the basic facts are indisputable.

I think if there's anything that we all agree on, it's that we love our first responders and we hail them as heroes, but do us a favor and help us a little bit by taking action on some of these things and becoming more aware of your own role, which can mean anything from joining a CERT team community, community emergency response. If you own property, figuring out how to make it more firewise and also work with your neighbors so that you can become a firewise community because one property by itself doesn't do a whole lot that a bunch of neighbors working together can actually make a big difference.

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Notes And Thank Yous(35:32)

Jason Mark: That's it for this episode. The Overstory is produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects Media with help from Daniel Roth. Our theme music is by Jeff Brodsky. This episode was mixed by Merritt Jacob. I'm Jason Mark, and you've been listening to The Overstory.

What's Next?

 Season Two, Episode Six, The Future Is Bright, takes a look at the future of environmental activism and clean energy.