Climate Changes Everything | Episode 1 | Welcome & Introduction

The speaker introduces himself as Lincoln Blevins, an executive in the global electric power business. He talks about his career journey and his current role in running sustainability and resilience for a university. He emphasizes the importance of addressing climate change and its impact on humanity. He compares climate change to previous global threats and explains that climate change is different because it affects the entire planet. He highlights that our actions have consequences within the closed system of our planet, with no opportunity for a fresh start. He discusses the interconnectedness of climate change and its impacts, mentioning sea level rise as an example. Climate changes everything. That's quite a statement, let alone a title for a podcast. Many of you are nodding sagely, but at the same time wondering what I can add to an already overwhelming cacophony of sustainability this and climate that. I get it, you're saying to yourself, but who is this guy in his ambitiously titled podcast anyway? Or you may be tilting your heads quizzically. He can't mean everything, like everything, everything, can he? Or maybe you're thinking a few more storms, a little more air conditioning, and those movie stars might have to move their homes a little bit further back from the beach. Big deal. And some of you are ruefully or perhaps mockingly shaking your heads, thinking that climate change is just the latest distraction to the real business of living. No matter where you're coming from, I hope that climate changes everything will resonate with each one of you. Welcome. My name is Lincoln Blevins, and I'm coming to you from beautiful Half Moon Bay, California, just over the hill from Silicon Valley. I've been fortunate to have been an executive in the global electric power business for almost three decades now, with a lot of water, waste management, and now sustainability and resilience in the mix. And what a mix it's been. Some folks have careers that resemble well lit, beautifully paved super highways. From entry level something to junior same something to senior same something. Destination most definitely known, start to finish. I don't begrudge that, but my career has been exactly the opposite. More twisty mountain road than super highway. Sometimes paved, sometimes not. Often dark and sometimes raining. Destination truly unknown, even now really. From the wild west of emerging market power plant development to the intense pragmatism of 24-7 operations. From startups and deal making to long-term strategic planning. The crazy thing is, none of these jobs I've had really existed when I graduated from college in 1989, but that's a story for another episode. These days, I have the honor of running sustainability, resilience, utilities, infrastructure, and a whole bunch of other things for one of the world's greatest universities. Making sustainability innovation real, resilience innovation real, is a fundamental part of operations. And outside of that, advising climate tech startups around the world as they seek to do both good and do well as entrepreneurs. And all I've learned in my crazy roller coaster of a career comes together now as we enter this new age of climate change in earnest. I look forward to sharing my experience and insights with you and getting yours in return. So that's who I am. Here's where I'm coming from. Climate change is humanity's first geography agnostic existential threat. Think about that for a second. Of course, there have been other massive threats. The Black Plague and the Spanish Flu, the First and Second World Wars, even the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. They all seemed like global existential threats at the time, especially to those of us in the most developed parts of the world who did face the brunt of those challenges, but also saw the world in quotation marks as our own particular slice of the planet and not the whole thing. Climate change is different. Climate is a function of this finite system we live in, a dense, enclosing atmosphere around a very thin layer of biological activity on the surface of a giant ball of rock, and of course, oceans covering almost three quarters of that surface. As a result, what we have done here and are doing here stays here, kind of like a planetary Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and what happens on Earth stays on Earth. And also like a planetary Hotel California, too, especially if you're a little bit more like a planetarium, you can never leave part. With you being both humanity, a few space curious billionaires accepted, and the residue of our lives. From greenhouse gases and other pollutants, to waste, to species and habitat, and an infinite number of other impacts, what we've done here has stayed here. With no real opportunities, even for those few billionaires, to really check out, leave, and start fresh. Which is another way of saying that we live in and impact a closed system, full stop. And rightly or wrongly, we inherit the world our ancestors created. No clean slates, no do-overs. From the first time hominids ever figured out fire, and that's the next episode, to the Industrial Revolutions, right down to today. Anything but a blank slate. And our system is tipping over the edge now in real time, with consequences for our existence as a species that we are only beginning to understand, let alone let ourselves believe. And, as we'll discuss in future episodes, the populations who have benefited the least from that drive to that tipping point will be the most impacted by its effects. All of these things are true because climate change, by its very nature, is again a geography agnostic threat. The whole closed system of our planet shares our closed system of climate and its impacts. Add in multipliers like endemic, a renewed drive for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, and a rising Generation Z that won't take no or even slow for an answer. All the causes, all the effects. Wherever you go, there you are. Sea level rise is not coastline by coastline. It's everywhere. Malibu and Bangladesh or an ocean near you.