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Listen on Apple PodcastsListen to the 'Here's Why' podcast: - on Apple : https://apple.co/3Lg3RGn - on Spotify : https://spoti.fi/3LiIX9q - or Anywhere : https://bit.ly/3xYsHHy . Each episode of 'Here's Why' uses experts at Bloomberg to explain one news story in just a few minutes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We explore airline mergers, COVID boosters, and the impact of generational wealth. We also discuss how loyal customers are to their favorite restaurants. Columnists FD Flam, Brooke Sutherland, Allison Schrager, and Bobby Ghosh join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We take a closer look at fossil fuels, cancer drug development, and the pros and cons of buying American. Plus, just how dangerous are hair straighteners for your health? We explore it all with the Bloomberg Opinion team. Columnists Lara Williams, Romesh Ratnesar, Lisa Jarvis, and FD Flam join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Artificial intelligence threatens jobs, but will it enable people to think critically? We explore that topic, along with vaccines, housing, and the negative health effects of ultra-processed foods. Bloomberg Opinion columnists Allison Schrager, Lisa Jarvis, Conor Sen, and Bobby Ghosh join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We dig into economic sentiment and consumer spending in the US, reliance on science during the pandemic, and experimenting with food. Columnists Conor Sen, Faye Flam, Jonathan Levin, and Howard Chua-Eoan join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Taylor Swift's Eras Tour confronts the climate crisis - what can she and others do to take action. We discuss that story, science reliability, trust in government, and the fiscal apocalypse. Columnists Lara Williams, Faye Flam, Clive Crook, and Kathryn Edwards join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We discuss whether credit card penalties are ethical, and whether they should be legal. We also examine electric vehicle subsidies, Donald Trump's take on healthcare, and the intelligence of rats. We speak with Bloomberg Opinion columnists Erin Lowry, Frank Wilkinson, Chris Bryant, and Faye Flam. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We examine the effectiveness of generic drugs and over-the-counter decongestions, and how COVID anxiety is still in the minds of many Americans to this day. Also, would passing marijuana legislation be useful to President Biden's re-election campaign? Bloomberg Opinion's Jonathan Bernstein thinks so. He joins us, along with columnists Rachel Rosenthal, FD Flam, and Lisa Jarvis. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We examine remote work and its impact on women, families, and office spaces, and also discuss the state of the Senate. Columnists Betsey Stevenson, Jonathan Bernstein, Beth Kowitt, and Justin Fox join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We discuss the effect of inflation on small businesses and restaurants, and how soon the US will reach 2%. Also, we dig into generational economic anxiety. Bloomberg Opinion's Jonathan Levin, Jessica Karl, Erin Lowry, and Justin Fox join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Matt Miller and Hannah Elliott have a new podcast focused on cars. Listen for drive reviews, news updates and dealership details from auto industry insiders. If you like this episode, download more and subscribe on Apple , Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts . Apple: http://apple.co/4935eTf Spotify: http://spoti.fi/3MaWkJT Anywhere: http://bit.ly/3QqrPC2 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We explore the worker exodus from major cities, weight loss drugs, and developing America's risk-takers. We also dig into a debate around eSports - should it be an Olympic sport? Bloomberg Opinion's Adam Minter thinks so. Adam Minter joins us, as do Bloomberg Opinion columnists Conor Sen, Lisa Jarvis, and Allison Schrager. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We examine some key topics in the healthcare space, from the effectiveness of telehealth , to the ineffectiveness of recent vaccine rollouts and some COVID-19 prevention strategies . We also talk about the latest developments in working-from-home. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Sarah Green Carmichael, Justin Fox, Lisa Jarvis, and F D Flam join the discussion. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Scientists say climate change is accelerating, but their voices are getting drowned out . Might using the drier while doing laundry be counterintuitive, or helpful, in slowing climate change. We also dig into the effectiveness of traffic cameras and Gen Z's relationship with live sports . Lara Williams, David Fickling, Justin Fox, and Adam Minter join. Amy Morris hosts. Transcript: 00:01Speaker 1 You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. On this week's show, we'll look at what's better for the planet running the dryer or using a clothesline. The answer might surprise you. Plus, since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic deaths in the US have risen sharply. What will it take to get those numbers back down? And finally, if Taylor Swift can't bring gen Z to the NFL, who can? But we begin with the heat. The global temperature continues to rise and scientists are beside themselves. Officials from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say this past July was the hottest month for the Earth on record. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson certainly is self evident that the Earth is heating up. And what we find is that July of this year the temperatures are the hottest ever on record, and last month was the hottest September on record by far. This past June the warmest June ever recorded. Yeah, we're seeing the trend. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams, who covers climate change, and scientists are using some pretty unscientific language to describe the temperatures that they're seeing. If your column is any indication, Laura, what have you heard? Yeah, so we've had dobsmackingly bananas. We've had astounding, staggering and nerving, bewildering, flabber dusting, dusting, distrioting, dobsmacking. Scientists have been really, really surprised by the kind of the level of heat that we saw in September compared to previous records. It is a bit alarming that they seem so surprised by this because they've been calling attention to climate change and climate change issues and the effects for years. Why did this catch them so off guard? Yeah, it's just because it's half a degree celsius higher than the previous record in twenty twenty, and so when we see these records getting broken, they're not usually broken by that margin. And so it is a kind of market in Greece, and it looks like it could be. Some are saying an acceleration in the rate of global woman which would be worry. Yeah, I wondered was this an outlier, was just this is a one time thing. Is there's something that caused it specifically, or are we seeing an acceleration. It's going to just get hotter and hotter and hotter in the next few years. So that's something that scientists are debating. So there are two camps of scientists. The first camp and I spoke to sociologists and he'd kind of terms these guys accelerationists, and they are concerned that this is an acceleration. Basically, what we've seen, particularly this year, is there are these sulfur dioxide emissions which are comes from like crew like cruise ships and you know, ships like taking all our stuff across the oceans, and they've cleaned up their act and so we're seeing way fewer aerosols being emitted into the atmosphere. So that's a good thing for our health. But those aerosols have historically served to mass human induced climate change because they reflect the Sun's heats back into space, and so the fewer thing fewer of those that we have, the more solar radiation reaches the earth surface. The scientists that think that we've seen an acceleration point to that trend of you know, sulfur emissions going down, and point to the trend of you know, these these huge temperature records that we've seen over the past few months and say that it could be an acceleration. Now, I would argue that the other team of scientists, the observationists, are right in that this is just you know, it's a few data points, and there's there's lots of things that could be making this. You know, this the Earth a lot warmer right now, a lot of temporary things. So of the September that we've just seen was one point seventy five degrees celsius warmer than pre industrial temperatures. Now that's very scary. Number. One point two degrees celsius of that we know is down to US burning fossil fuels. The remaining zero point five degrees celsius or so is due to with a combination of different factors, and so it could be aerosols, but it should also be the fact that we are in an l Nino cason, which is a naturally occurring climate pattern that warms global temperatures. It should also be that, you know, there was this huge underwater volcano which held an immense plume of water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere last year, and that would be enough to temporarily elevate global temperatures for a few years. It would be partly aerosols, and it should partly be the fact that we'll see we've got we've had reduced ice at the poles this year. So the more dark sea that's exposed, the more heat that's absorbed by the water. Oh, there's a lot there. Yeah. But no matter which side they're on, whether they believe that this is an acceleration or they believe this is just par for the course, the observationists, if you will, is there a new sense of urgency? Now? Well, I think that there's always a sense of urgency, and I you know, whether it's an acceleration or not, the overwhelming trend is that the Earth is just in warmer and that we are still not doing enough to combat that warming. And so if it weights people up and is a reminder that we actually need to, you know, take some severe action to stop this trend, then I guess that, yeah, there could be a call for a renewed sense of urgency. The urgency was needed all along, but yeah, I suppose that this would be a weight of call. We are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Laura Williams about the quote gob smackingly Banana's heat, as scientists describe it, and as it's listed in your column on the Bloomberg terminal. Laura, it was a great read, very interesting to see how they are using terms that you might you might hear among the laypersons such as myself, you don't usually expect to hear from people who study this for a loving What do they believe this could mean for the coming winter months. Are we going to see a milder than usual winter or because it's an extreme, where we going to see a colder winter. That's a good question, and I guess we'll find out when the data comes out, But I think for now, October is looking to be warmer than average. And I would say that with you know the fact that we're in an El Nino that tends to make things warmer. It actually tends to make parts of the world, So I think Europe might be might be CNA holder slightly tolder winter if their only pattern holds true. But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if we saw a warmer than average October and November. So there may be some disagreement about what these temperature trends are telling us right now among signs, but they do agree on one thing, and that there's an issue with political will. There isn't enough of it. Where does that stand? Yeah, so you know, I would say that the fissure between science and political will is huge. We need to be deterbinizing with farmer urgency. So according to the website the Climate Actioning Tractor, which takes stock of all of the promises and policies of countries around the world, and then not a single country in the world is taking action that's compatible with limiting warm into one point five degree celsius above pre industrial temperatures. The UK has rolled backs and that zero tardets. Germany's approved bringing toll fired power plants back in line over the winter. US oil production is running at an all time high. It's not really how you'd expect country is reacting to climate crisis to be acting. Is that in part because of the geopolitical climate that we are dealing with right now, what's going on in uk and now what's going on in the Middle East, and what it's going to mean for heating fuel being shipped out to those areas. Yeah, I think, I think definitely the geobilistal you know, environment is not helping. And we've also got a you know, really high inflation, which is you know, stretching people's wallets, and whether we like it or not, we have to admit that, you know, sometimes net zero action is going to cost people more in the in the short term. In the long term, you'd hope that it would, you know, eventually bills should come down. We rolled out renewables enough, but certainly in the short term we're feeling in our wallets. Have they been able to get any traction with this, to get the attention of those lawmakers and those leaders who would be able to take the lead on this, or are they being shouted down, if you will, or drowned out by what is going on in the rest of the world and the really urgent need in the rest of the world for things like heating fuel because of what's happening in Ukraine and Israel. For sure, I think that at the moment, it definitely feels like, you know, the scientists are being drowned out just because of the urgency of these other prices. It will be really interesting to see at COP twenty eight in Dubai in December, what kind of happens there, you know, whether we're able to kind of come around the table and re you know, set our sights on more ambitious climate action there and kind of you know, center ourselves around that, or whether indeed, you know, the under end conflicts kind of again makes it another kind of non event, all right, and we're going to watch it with you. Thank you so much, Laura for bringing us up to speed on this. Thank you very much for having me. Larah Williams a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She covers climate change and coming up, we're going to continue this climate change conversation. We'll talk about what's better for the earth. Using a clothesline to dry your clothes or just run the dryer might surprise you. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com. The iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Okay, what's better for the planet running your clothes dryer or hanging your clothes on a line outside? It might depend. We welcome Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling, who covers energy and commodities. David, thank you for taking the time with us. Your column starts with this intriguing thought when running the dryer maybe actually be better for the planet. And this is all about solar power changing how grids operate bring us up to speed. Yeah, sure, well, I mean this literally was a dilemma that confronted me a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon when I'd just done a load of laundry and it was a lovely day for putting laundry out on the line. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny spring day. I'm in Sydney, of course, so it's spring here at the moment. But then I am someone who regularly writes about energy, and so a thought occurred to me, which is, if the weather is so good for the sun drying clothes on the line. It's probably also very good for powering solar panels, and Australia is one of the most heavily solar rooftop solar dense places in the world. You know, per capital, we have more solar panels than any other country. And so of course what this means is, in the same weather conditions, you're actually going to have a surge of solar generation hitting the grid, which is possibly going to be too much for the grid. I had a look at the website of the grid operator and it turned out that at that point the price of electricity wholesale in the market was about minus seventy Australian dollars about minus fifty US dollars per per meguar tower. So it was a negative price there was. You know, normally, obviously you have to pay for electricity, but this was the opposite because there was so much solar hit hitting the grid at this point that they were essentially the market was prepared to pay people like me. Of course, I was not actually going to get any money from this because of the way bills are structured, but it was prepared to pay users to take the electricity off their hands. So this completely changes the calculus of it, because if you want to have strong grids, and if you want to have also a you know, a financially viable renewables sector paying into the grid, you actually you want to be running the dryer at the middle the middle of the day. You don't want to be putting the stuff on the line because you actually want these imbalances in the grid to sort themselves out. So the balance of power then in the most hyper local energy infrastructure within your own home hyper local, that's got to be a challenge because you have to pay attention to that. You have to pay attention to how much is hitting the grid. I mean, I should say hardly anyone is paying attention to this, and there's several reasons for that. I've actually I used to have pounds on my roof at my current place. I only moved in about nine months ago, so I don't actually have that at the moment, So it doesn't make any difference to my electricity costs. I pay the same tariff regardless of the time of day. That makes no difference at all. In addition, in almost every market that the wholesale price of electricity does not reflect the retail price of electricity, and the only extent to which it does is actually something that in a lot of markets is very anachronistic. I can get a I can get a an electricity tariff whereby it cost me less to run appliances at night. I get a cheap off peak tariff at night, and I'll get a on peak tariff, particularly you know, at the peak in the evening, it'll be the highest. Now, it's probably right that it's highest in the evening, but actually night is not really a time when you want to be making it cheaper to get electricity, because in places like Australia and other places. You know, California is actually the first market that really saw this, and we've seen it in Germany and other places as well. It's the middle of the day when the sun is shining most brightly and all those cellar panels are just pumping out electricity. That's actually the time when you really need to fix some of these imbalances that are happening in the grid. We are talking to Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling about how to manage power from the solar grid and how sometimes running the clothes dryer could be good for the planet. Okay, So David, would it be the up to the consumer to adjust that imbalance that you were describing, or is this just one of the growing pains that we're finding as more places are converting to more renewable sources of energy. Is this this part of it, it's not going to be really for the consumer to sort of out. It's a hard thing for the consumers. Sort of the easiest way you can you can fix it as a consumer, but this will only apply to fairly affluent consumers. Certainly people in Australia and California and Germany would apply. Is of course, to attach a solar to a battery to your solar system. The time the toughest time, well, the two to toughest times for grids at the moment, or of course, the middle of the day, which we were talking about, and the evening the sun goes down. Everyone gets home, they switch on appliances, air conditioning, televisions, you know, or manner of things, and of course the solar that was there in the middle of the day is no longer there within your own home home solars, you know, home system. If you attach a battery to it you can be charging it in the middle of the day and discharging it in the evening, and that that potentially works quite well. But across the you know, across grids as a whole, things much more ambitious need to be done than that, and it's and it's a significant problem. You know, we're seeing things like here in Australia, for instance, there is a very big pumped pumped hydro project being built at the moment, which essentially what happens is when there is too much electricity in the middle of the day, a load of water is pumped uphill to a lake high up on a mountain just sort of southwest of Sydney, and then during the evening, when all that electricity is needed, then the water goes down through turbines like a standard hydroectionri dam and it will do this day after day. And there are lots of places, I think in California the same thing applies. There are lots of places where pump hydro is being used. And of course batteries as well for dispatchable power will be you know, utility scale batteries will be more active. But I think one of the problems that we're facing over the coming years. Is that the speed with which households are installing are installing solar power is faster than the sort of utility scale storage solutions can catch up. And dispatchable power, of course, dispatchable power, by which I mean you can switch on and off, you know, with the flick of a switch, which of course is not the case with any renewable power, also not really the case with is not the case with nuclear either. With dispatchable power, you know, most of it is fossil fossil fired, and that's a real problem because of course we want to get rid of fossil fossil fire electricity right now. And so it sounds like the two big things that need to be resolved would be managing the storage issue, the battery, making sure that those can be not only a portable but easy to acquire and quickly charged. And the infrastructure as a whole. Yeah. I mean one other solution, of course, which is again a lot of this depends on having the right market settings in place, and regulators I think in many ways have been somewhat slow to catch up on some of these things because it is all changing so very fast. But of course one thing to bear in mind is is we're seeing surging cells of electric vehicles. Electric vehicles another thing that should be sucking up power in the middle of the day and potentially could be used to discharge electricity in the evening, but at the moment in most markets there is very little regulation that would allow people to do that, you know, so instead we're seeing things like in South Australia, one of the states in Australia which has a particularly high volume of solar. Basically, the grid operator can switch off rooftop solar panels when there is too much of it, which is something that's possibly necessary to stop to stop stress on the grid. But ideally you want to find ways to use it. You don't want to be reducing the amount of zero carbon power that you're producing. You want to be using it more productively. So we're seeing a lot of these teething pains at the moment. David, this is just fascinating. Thank you for taking the time with us today. No, it's lovely to talk. Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickleing covers energy and commodities. Don't forget We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion. You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may you Morris Now. Since the beginning of the pandemic, traffic depths in the US have risen sharply, and during the high ight of the pandemic shutdown, speeding related accidents actually increased. At the time, Pamela Fisher of the Governor's Highway Safety Association explained, why fewer cars on the road, you should have fewer crashes. But the behaviors that were happening out there. People were seeing open highway, open roadways, local roa
We discuss work-from-home myths, the latest vaccine rollout, and science celebrity culture. We also dig into why women are a neglected asset in the inflation fight. Columnists Claudia Sahm, Sarah Green Carmichael, Lisa Jarvis, and FD Flam join. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week, we discuss child care affordability and legislation. We also examine the causes of natural disasters, a dysfunctional housing market, and biking to work. We're joined by Bloomberg Opinion's Sarah Green Carmichael, Conor Sen, Lara Williams, and Justin Fox. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We discuss the state of labor in the US, the outlook for the GOP and Democrats, Miami's potential tech boom, and genetics and AI. Columnists Betsey Stevenson, Jonathan Bernstein, Lisa Jarvis, and Jonathan Levin join. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We discuss why Americans are pessimistic on the economy despite a drop in inflation. We also dig into Moderna and vaccines, climate change's relationship with farming, and being black in America. Claudia Sahm, Justin Fox, Lara Williams, and Lisa Jarvis join. Lisa Mateo hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We talk Hurricanes, manufactured homes, and the relationship between weight loss drugs and alcohol. Bloomberg Opinion columnists David Fickling, Jonathan Levin, and Lisa Jarvis join for those discussions. We also talk tipping with editor Bobby Ghosh. Amy Morris hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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