Save the Earth? (ft. George Carlin)

In this episode, Ralph and Luc listen to a stand-up routine by comedian George Carlin about environmentalists. We engage with Carlin’s pontifications and his ingenious framing by providing context from a scientific perspective. We also gesture at disarming some of his cynicism while steering clear of fully explaining away what made his take comedic in the first place.

This episode contains 4 brief excerpts from George Carlin's "Jammin' in New York" special.

Erratum: we said microplastics were found in the blood of 99% of people tested – in fact, plastic was found in the blood of 17 of 22 subjects tested (77%).
• original article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258
• and a write-up in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/microplastics-found-in-human-blood-for-first-time.

Creators & Guests

Host

Luc Lewitanski

Tech journalist covering politics and power.

Host

Ralph Levinson

Academic physician and environmental activist.

What is Your Planet, Your Health?

"Your Planet, Your Health" strives to summarise the science behind earth's climate and our existence on it –
Our aims are to contextualise the history of discourses and ideas about the environment and to debunk misinformation –
We share positive stories, and explore the knowledge and tools that we can use to be good earthlings.

This podcast on planetary health is hosted by Ralph Levinson, MD Health Sciences Professor (emeritus) School of Medicine, UCLA, and Luc Lewitanski, a journalist covering technology, politics and power.

Planetary health is about how the environment affects us and the people and the beauty in the world we love.
Read more at https://www.planetaryhealthforbusypeople.com/

Ralph Levinson: I'm Dr. Ralph Levinson, Health Sciences Professor Emeritus at UCLA.

Luc Lewitanski: And I'm Luc Lewitanski, a French journalist covering technology, politics, and power.

Ralph Levinson: Welcome to Your Planet, Your Health, where we share stories about the environment without falling prey to despair. In these conversations, we explore the knowledge and tools that we can use to be good earthlings. In today's episode, we ask the question, why your planet, your health? What are we talking about?

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, I think this is really getting to the crux of the question, you know, this idea of what is your planet, your health about? Are we trying to save the earth? Are we trying to save ourselves? What is behind this notion of earthling? Who are we really thinking about protecting here? At the end of the day, what do we actually care about here?

Ralph Levinson: And that really is the heart of the issue, isn't it? I think the best framing of that I saw was in the title of a Planetary Health textbook by two professors, Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin. They titled their textbook, Planetary Health, Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves. And I really like that perspective.

Luc Lewitanski: I think that's a really helpful framing. Actually, it reminds me of this old piece of stand-up, funnily enough, from the year I was born, 1993, by George Carlin, in which he's sort of making light of this idea of environmentalists, you know, the people who care about saving the bees, the trees, and etc. and almost sort of the hubris of such a project. Maybe some things have aged better than others, but maybe we should take a listen. Let's see how this echoes with this notion of protecting nature to protect ourselves that spoke to you so much in Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin's book. Let's see.

George Carlin: We haven't learned how to care for one another. We're going to save the fucking planet. Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are fucked. Difference.

Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years.

Do you ever think about the arithmetic? Planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years.

Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat, that somehow we're going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a floating around the sun.

Luc Lewitanski: So, Ralph, I guess that was a little shocking. But what do you have to say about that? What do you think?

Ralph Levinson: Well, I think he has a really strong point. There's a big dose of arrogance. Now that doesn't mean that I'm against saving whales. I'm a big advocate of saving things we want to save. But when we're looking big picture, I think he has a point. The conceit of that we're going to save the planet when we could barely take care of ourselves, I think that's real. I mean, the planet's really put up with a lot, and he does go into that as well. Why don't you go ahead and play that?

George Carlin: The planet has been through a lot worse than us, been through all kinds of things worse than us, been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference.

Luc Lewitanski: So, perhaps that's one of the parts that hasn't aged in the same way. I think actually this is a useful point for us to cut into, Ralph, with your scientific perspective. I think we can actually add a little bit more context to this sort of litany that he's drawing up. Obviously the crescendo there is sort of this humorous idea that back to the hubris of thinking that plastic bags are the major change that we've done. But I think this is where I think your scientific insights can bring more of a context of this idea of the Earth having been through things way before humans were alive.

Perhaps you can lay out a little bit more of this sort of a planetary perspective, what is the history of the Earth reckoning with these giant shifts in how life has been organized on it? Absolutely.

Ralph Levinson: The plastic part is one of those things that haven't aged as well. We kind of understand plastic is a little more insidious than that. But the basic picture he's giving us is totally correct. There's been huge cataclysmic events and the Earth's time frame is so different from ours that indeed even plastic kind of pales in comparison. Now, geological time is the time the Earth lives with. It's 4.4 billion years old. As he mentions, we've been around a couple hundred thousand years or so, hominids, maybe 6 million.

So you go back, you go way back. And first of all, the atmosphere. When the planet formed over 4 billion years ago, the atmosphere first was just helium and hydrogen, just like most of the cosmos. And then it then became more an atmosphere of stuff that we would find totally toxic.

Yes, huge amounts of carbon monoxide, methane, and other volatile gases, sulfur compounds. Plants didn't evolve till just a few hundred million years ago. Earth was already almost 4 billion years old at that point. And oxygen was created by earlier organisms that did what's called photosynthesis, takes CO2, carbon dioxide, and spits out oxygen.

So about 2.7 billion years ago, that's when that really started taking off. We were at just, the atmosphere of the Earth was just about less than 1% oxygen. Now, we're at 21% oxygen. And oxygen is pretty toxic potent stuff. Think rust, think fires.

Luc Lewitanski: It's also essential to live.

Ralph Levinson: Well, it's essential for us to live. It's not essential for some other organisms. There are still organisms on Earth, bacteria, to whom it's totally toxic. This oxygen atmosphere, this beautiful blue skies, these aren't beautiful for anaerobic bacteria, that is bacteria that don't need oxygen.

And there's a whole aspect of life that isn't this nice blue, green surface that we know. So which planet are we saving? Which planet is healthy and healthy for who? And in fact, what we're really talking about is healthy for us.

Our health depends on the environment, the atmosphere, the climate that we evolved with, and the ecosystems we have had since the last ice age that we created our civilizations in. That informs what we see as natural and beautiful.

Luc Lewitanski: I mean, these are all highly subjective concepts. At the end of the day, you're thinking about all this from a very human-centered perspective. I think that's what Cardin's point ultimately is getting at.

Ralph Levinson: And George talked about some of that. He talked about ice ages. But again, the Earth's timeframe is so different from ours. It was about 700 million years ago, there was slush ball or snowball Earth where the Earth was virtually covered with either slush or ice.

The scientists are still debating just how cold it was. That lasted 100 million years. Life bounced back. And actually, it was after that that life as we know it really started taking off.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, it seems like we're thinking about for whom are we saving the planet? Doesn't seem like it's for the benefit of this rock floating through space, but rather the inhabitants. And frankly, a very small subset of the inhabitants that we happen to care about, the ones that we love and or think are cute and fluffy.

Seems to be a large part of it. I think our idea of what is natural has been informed by the things that we are familiar with. But not every organism has the same idea of what the most inhabitable Earth would be, obviously, so far as they can conceive such ideas.

Ralph Levinson: Yeah, it's hard to think of an anaerobic bacteria conceiving of ideas. But still the principle holds what we see as natural, what we see as beautiful is what we've evolved in. And very more specifically, what our civilization has evolved in for the last 10, 15,000 years with agriculture and settlements. That's all new. That's all brand new.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, and I think this informs the concept that scientists like to talk about the Anthropocene, which is trying to measure on a planetary scale what the changes that humanity has brought to bear.

Ralph Levinson: It's a very different perspective.

Luc Lewitanski: And for perhaps a little bit more of a silly one. One that's a little upset. Let's think through the logical conclusion of what humanity's contribution to the Earth might be, according to George Carlin, circa 1993.

George Carlin: The planet isn't going anywhere. We are. We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam, maybe a little styrofoam. Planet will be here. We'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

Ralph Levinson: And let's be honest with ourselves. That's the point. That's what the planetary health people were saying with their title. We're saving nature to save ourselves.

Luc Lewitanski: Right, it's not about saving the Earth, it's about protecting us from being zished by the Earth.

Ralph Levinson: Now this is a comedy routine and we promise that we're not going to go into despair and doomism and so I feel compelled. Yeah, what happened to that? Well, yeah, maybe we shouldn't promise, make promises we can't keep, but I think the point here is that it's not too late. The Earth isn't either going to shake us off, it's only if we shake ourselves off by not taking care of ourselves.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, ultimately we are the causes of our own suffering in this matter. I mean, that's the crux in here, you know, coming back to the center of this routine. Why should we care? Well, you know, because we've got a lot to lose here as a civilization.

Ralph Levinson: You know, when we're talking about plastic or forever chemicals, we're talking in our time frame. These things may last tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, but let's remember the planet and life on Earth thinks in terms of hundreds of millions of years and they don't really care about whether there's big brained creatures like us messing the whole thing up. From the rest of life's point of view, maybe we're the problem. Well, not maybe we're the problem, we're definitely the problem.

Luc Lewitanski: Now, but that means we're also the solution. That's exactly right.

Ralph Levinson: Going back to framing here. Absolutely, we're the only possible solution, short of us going away and then the Earth recovers, but most of us don't want that. So what do we actually want? Well, we want to be able to have the things that will sustain us. We want a life where there's enough biodiversity to feed us. Now, it's clear we want air that's clean to breathe, water that's safe to drink, a vibrant soil that'll grow our food. So obviously we have to care about other organisms. We don't want the bees to go away.

They pollinate 30 percent of our crops. So it's really important that we're making a point here. This is a comedy routine we're quoting from. We're making a strong point with this planetary health perspective. But it's not.

Luc Lewitanski: I think I think the classic saying is comedy dies in fact checking. But I think that's a useful context to bring with the bees, actually. You're right. There's a reason to care about the bees, even if we are being anthropocentric. If we're not putting humanity's interest first. Yeah, this seems quite crucial.

Ralph Levinson: But and to go on and to save the whales, they're great carbon sinks. You know, they take up carbon and store it for decades and decades if we leave them alone.

So there's a lot of reasons to have this eco-centric view that we're protecting ecosystems and biodiversity and saving species from extinction for their own sake. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm very partial to that. Yet this other perspective, I think, is one that just I'll be honest, just motivates me more.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, I think that's what we're trying to share here. Our personal connection to invest us here. And I mean, even if we're not going into the doomism, I think there are legit emerge reasons to be concerned about a future in which climate catastrophe takes over the world. You know, just for our ability to live, thrive and survive in the current world. It's going to create a lot of fighting over scarce resources in the immediate future. And that's going to lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering to put it lightly.

Ralph Levinson: And it's already happening. And yet. Well, that's pretty doomism, isn't it? So. But the point is that it's not really.

Luc Lewitanski: The point is we won't say it because it's too too.

Ralph Levinson: The point is the stuff we can still do. We we still have agency. We still have things we can do. And it's really important to us to recognize that. Otherwise, it does become doomism. It we're just not going to fall into that, are we? We're going to take responsibility and we're going to be talking about what it is that we can do to save this planet, to save ourselves.

Luc Lewitanski: Because ultimately, that's what makes life meaningful. I mean, you know, we can choose to rationalize our way out of caring about anything if we really wanted to get down to it.

And ultimately, I think that's the less meaningful life to live. I think trying to reckon with these big issues and doing our part is the way in which we try to carve our mark. And that's all we're here for in the end.

Ralph Levinson: And it really is our responsibility now, isn't it? I mean, you know, the real fact of the matter is our website is called Planetary Health for Busy People. Not everybody needs to do this full time.

You don't have to become an eco-warrior. But it's kind of incumbent, I think, as earthlings to recognize that we do have agency, that we do have an ability to make a difference here.

Luc Lewitanski: And well, along those lines, as we hope to wind down this conversation, we thought we would leave you with a little bit of Karlin's perspective shift again on, perhaps, you know, we're thinking about this idea of humanity leaving a mark. What are his ideas about what humanity's contributions to the planet might be? Let's have a listen.

George Carlin: The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we're gone, and it will heal itself. It will cleanse itself, because that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover. The earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm, the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old, egocentric, philosophical question, why are we here?

Luc Lewitanski: Plastic. At the risk of a comedy death by a thousand fact checks. Ralph, perhaps you can enlighten us a little bit about why this idea about plastic might have its limitations.

Ralph Levinson: In fact, I love that rap. And just the very idea that we have arisen from the clay in the mud to make plastic for a plastic hungry earth.

Luc Lewitanski: I suspect this was the subject of a lot of existential philosophy just resolved in a few minutes there.

Ralph Levinson: And more than a little bit of naval gazing. So and as one who's dedicated to meditation, I take that one to heart. So I love it. And the reason it does age so well is because we know that well, first of all, in the long run, when we take the hundred million year snowball earth perspective, he's absolutely right. I think the real issue is we know a lot more about plastic now. We know about microplastics. And we know when it breaks down, it becomes these little bits of plastic that get into our bloodstream.

Luc Lewitanski: There's a lot more to say about plastic. About 99 percent of people having microplastics in their bloodstream. Yeah.

Ralph Levinson: When you hear 99 percent, you know, it's 100 percent. But scientists and physicians are always afraid of saying 100 percent because the margin of error.

George Carlin: Yeah, exactly. It has to be some margin of error. But, you know, the real fact that's that's. I think a topic for another podcast. But the point is he's making a good point. He's making light of it. But what can I say? I love it. We'll take plastics maybe a little more seriously than he does, though.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah. I mean, it is killing a lot of creatures at the end of the day. It is. Yeah.

Ralph Levinson: And creatures that that that that increase biodiversity, that that even if we're being. Totally into the perspective of planetary health, protecting ourselves includes not destroying the life we depend on. And plastic can wreak a lot of havoc.

Luc Lewitanski: On that note, and that wraps up today's episode of your planet, your health. I think we hopefully shocked people a little bit. Hopefully it was a nice inroad and explaining a little bit of what we what we're trying to do here with the planetary health perspective. I thought this was a sort of a humorous illustration of the perspectives that we can have and and why ultimately it's in our own interest to act on these environmental issues. But ultimately, even if we're being selfish, you know, thinking at the level of the species is the only way in which we can act collectively to try and stem this, you know, this giant change. And ultimately, it's trying to stem the ties of something that's already happening. But I think there's a lot of room between potential scenarios, depending on whether or not humanity as a species gets its act together or not. And yeah, what do you think, Ralph?

Ralph Levinson: I think George Carlin is a great conversation starter.

Luc Lewitanski: Yes, by no means an endorsement of his views. We want to make that very clear. Right.

Ralph Levinson: Although, although some of them and that's the point of comedy, isn't it? It's to challenge you to wouldn't be funny if it didn't challenge you a bit, I think. So thank you, George, and wherever you are. And I look forward to further conversations.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah. So perhaps we can tease next week for our listeners. I think you've been reading Michael Mann's book, The New Climate War. Perhaps that might be a jumping off point for conversation.

Ralph Levinson: Absolutely. It's a great book. And he goes into the history as do other books, of course, and other authors of how we got here. And the forces that are still basically gaslighting us into inaction. But we have to know what the forces are arrayed against us. What stops us from getting this done? It's clear it needs to be done. Why isn't it happening? And so for that, we'll dip a little into the history.

Luc Lewitanski: Yeah, we'll learn how this happens, you know, who benefited and perhaps how to counter it, you know, maybe we can use the bad guys tools against them. And on that note, you know,

Ralph Levinson: it's a little teaser on that note next week. You guys stay safe, stay healthy, stay planet. Don't know what that means. See you, Luc. Well, all right, stay planet. I actually, I kind of like that. All right. See you.