Download Otter for your meeting notes

Episode 13 | Otter.ai

Episode 13

Lisa Shen56min

Lisa Shen

00:00

Hello friends called open again this week to let you know that you can now access add free episodes of the podcast via our Patreon for $1 a month you will now receive our bonus mini casts and ad free shows to check out these perks and more visit patreon.com slash so you got a lifetime degree now onto the show. Hello and welcome back to so you got a lifestyle degree where your hosts Frida and Lisa to lifestyle undergrad students trying to navigate our future careers. This is Episode 13. And we're talking to Ben Moy about his work as an economist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. How are you doing today? Lisa? I'm doing good. I'm a little bit under the weather. I have a little booster juice next to me. So hopefully that will boost your mood. Yes, correct. word choice. I don't know if I mentioned this last episode, but I got a new laptop because my dictation software, they stopped supporting it on Mac. So I had to switch to Windows. And it's not like learning a new language. It's more like learning a different dialect of the language you know very well, kind of having to retrain my brain to use slightly different commands. Like instead of saying command Bravo to bold something, I now have to say control Bravo. And it's just it really trips you up. But in doing this process, I've discovered some cool tricks you can do on dragon. So they have this thing where you can add a new custom vocabulary word. So for example, you go and you click add new word. And there's two fields, the first field is the spelt form. And so for example, in there, I can type out my email like x@gmail.com. And then in the second field, they have the spoken form. So I can say insert email, and dragon doesn't know the difference. So if I say insert email, it will just type out like the my actual email instead of the words, right. And so this is how it's intended to be used. And I've done this for a while, and it's really great. But what I also discovered is that I can write anything. So I could put the name of someone I really dislike and the spoken for could be like doodoo head. Or even better, I can have a command that when I say that it shuts down my whole computer. And that command could be like Avada kedavra, like from her belly armus could be, you know, like turning off the mic or illumos could be increasing the brightness, which I thought that was really funny when I thought of it. That's pretty funny. It's just cool. Knowing that I can do it. Like it can literally be any word. I just find that really funny. Glad you're putting your dragon powers to good use. Yeah, really does make me feel like a tiny God. Yeah, I just wanted to write my name properly. Oh,

Unknown Speaker

02:29

I forgot to tell you.

Lisa Shen

02:30

I'm gonna tell you right now I have got it to be able to recognise your name when I say it for you. Yay. Okay. So you know, the reason I was not able to do this on the Mac version of Dragon is because that programme was super outdated and they weren't updating, it was very glitchy. And so wouldn't let me delete words from my vocabulary. But now with a new one, I can delete words. So what I did is I put your name in, and I trained it, you know, so like, I say it and then that's supposed to help it but it doesn't work. Because if I ever say for Rita, it will just leave out one of the A's or it will write something that's completely different. And so basically how I did this is just like, I don't know, is it called process of elimination or whatever we're just say for Rita. And if it wrote a word that was vaguely similar, I'd go into my vocab and delete that word. Go back to my dog, Frieda again, and they would put like another nonsensical word, I'd go delete that. So is that your name? doesn't sound very similar to any essential biology word. That's why this is able to work. Yeah. So I just want you to know, I value our friendship. Oh, yeah, that's actually a lot of effort. I like here's the thing. It's like, I actually don't know what words I deleted. So I'll never get those words back. If this all blows up, but anyways, how's your week? My weeks are going pretty good. Um, I just did my first hackathon this weekend. Oh, is there? Is there a word for that like hackathon up? Sure. An actual word? No, there's I don't know a NACA THON. And you know, that just sounds like you really have a knack for it. Like you're new. But you're also like really good at it. So sure, you maybe you're a hackathon. If that's the case, it might be kind of accurate, because you actually want one of the challenges

Unknown Speaker

04:08

to look into Oh,

Lisa Shen

04:10

I mean, it was like our team and they were I want to I want to give the thanks to our sponsors. And you know, everyone who works so hard to make this possible. No, for real, though.

Unknown Speaker

04:21

It was really great. Oh, no, I

Lisa Shen

04:22

know for you Everyone always means that. That's cool. Like, what was your I don't really know how hackathons work in great detail. So what was your project about? So it was basically based off the idea of dog Tinder that links together people who are looking to adopt dogs, which is a lot of people in COVID and animal shelters. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And then we have a couple more coming up. But yeah, should be fun. Oh, I was gonna say related to like how you train dragon to get my name right. I feel like your grandma's that's different though. Like because Yeah, you can't just Yeah, like tear out the vocal cord that makes that noise like, yeah, Florida no more. Oh no, I didn't delete Florida.

Unknown Speaker

05:17

Come on. Well,

Lisa Shen

05:18

I don't know. Okay, but here's the thing is that this is an ongoing process, right like every time I say except for it I mean how many times I definitely say for reta more than I say Florida so honestly, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. If it's somehow like types Your name is mitochondria like Nah, man like.

Unknown Speaker

05:36

Yeah, exactly.

Lisa Shen

05:37

Alright, let's get to the interview. This episode is sponsored by study buddy. Study Bunny is a free focus timer app available on Android and iOS. With the help of an adorable studious, funny by your side, you can set your study time earn in game coins and use them to buy items to customise your body. They also have other helpful in app study tools like flashcards and a to do list. We've actually mentioned study buddy on the podcast before in our mini cast to be specific even before they decided to sponsor us. Personally, I use it to track what kinds of work I'm doing throughout the week and for how long I love seeing my steady metrics visualise in a colourful schedule at the end of each week. Meanwhile, Lisa uses the app to set timers when studying to ensure she won't fall into the among us rabbit hole. Pun intended. Download the app today on Google Play or the App Store. You can also follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at the links in the show notes for updates and periodic cuteness. This podcast is also sponsored by kick it back alpaca ranch chicken back alpaca Ranch is an alpaca farm near Collingwood, Ontario that's run by Carolyn and Doug Lilian. They raise beautiful alpacas offer close up alpaca tours and create wonderful products from alpaca fibre. At the moment. Other tours are in small groups and lasts between 45 and 90 minutes. During this time, you'll get the chance to pet the alpacas feed them treats and take lots of photos. You even get to learn all sorts of interesting facts about the species like why they don't like it when you touch their heads. Plus, after the tour, you get to visit their store and check out some cute alpaca products. I was surprised to see the range of items they offer including socks, dryer balls and get this alpaca plushies made using real alpaca fibre. I myself have visited their ranch this past summer. My favourite part of my tour was without a doubt seeing all the cute baby alpacas who are also known as Korea's they're just so so adorable. My favourite Korea was pipsqueak who is a small fluffy white alpaca but lately I think I'm taking a real liking to Paisley who is a young alpaca that looks like she always has a tiny smile on her face. It's especially fun getting to feed them treats the feeling of their mouths, nibbling against your palms is just such a delight. kicking back alpaca Ranch is open year round and are currently following all government protocols regarding COVID-19 you can book a tour at WWW dot alpaca tours.ca. Their alpaca products are also available for purchase online@www.lastline.com that's lslyn.com or at the link in the show notes. You can also follow him on social media at the links in the show notes for cute alpaca photos, but most importantly, book a tour and pay those q alpacas a visit. Ben is an economist at Environment and Climate Change Canada before his current position, he did environmental economic consulting at auto case in Toronto, Ben holds an honours degree in biological sciences from the University of Guelph, a master's in economics from Simon Fraser University and a Master's of environmental sustainability from Western University. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Ben, thank you for having me. So just to get started, can you just tell us what your job is and what you do?

Speaker 1

08:48

Sure. Like Lisa said, I'm an economist at environmental climate change Canada, where I work in the economic analysis Directorate. So we're basically the economics hub for Environment Canada. So we work on all of the economic analysis that has to do with environmental policies that come out of Environment Canada, my team specifically works more on the policy side in more of a qualitative role rather than quantitative modelling, but that's done in other teams that typically would be working near us on our floor. But in actuality, our you know, everybody's working from home now. My team specifically right now is working on staying up to date on different policies that can be used in a green recovery. If the plan is to build back better, what are the policies that we should be investigating further and trying to implement? We're also currently working on setting up the think tank and academia priority of the environmental damages fund climate action and awareness fund. So we're setting up a an RFP to get some money out into the think tank ecosystem, particularly thinking focused on, you know, environmental policy as we have some funding from the Volkswagen fine. And yeah, that's kind of what I do.

Lisa Shen

10:07

All right, cool. Do you want to maybe give us a bit more detail? And actually let us know what an average day of work would look like for you? So what time well, assuming before COVID, what time would you arrive and leave work, how many hours you would spend there, and then like lunch breaks, just that kind of thing?

Speaker 1

10:22

Sure. It's pretty, pretty standard eight hour day, I'm one of the earlier our morning people on my team. So I'm typically one of the first people in, I'd be in around eight, and it's an eight hour day. But first thing I would do in the morning is review some new scans, part of our role is to stay on top of the most current policy relevant and climate change relevant news, because we're responsible for making sure like our director general knows what's going on. So any any big news like that we'd pass up right now, we have a highly focused weekly scan, where we're looking at any news that comes out on green recovery. So I'd be the first thing that I would do start by reading through what comes over the wire to us. And then I'm also responsible for checking out or maintaining an understanding of what a couple think tanks are producing content for that's relevant to our work. So I'd then go on to check to see if anybody's published anything recently, that needs to get looked at. And then from there, this is where it starts to get a little bit up in the air, like anybody will say, you don't really have an average day. So depending it could be meetings around planning for how we're going to produce our RFP, it could be work on writing up summaries based on if there were some relevant things in the news that we think need to be passed up. And then lunch half hour break, come back the afternoon actually tends to be more more meetings heavy, just I think that's partly because my team is more of an afternoon, rather than a morning team, which is good. And yeah, hopefully, if there's not too many meetings, I do tend to do more of my writing in the afternoon. Like if I'm writing up any memos or policy, briefings, anything like that, that's typically more in the afternoon, once I have a better handle on what's coming down the pipe, as we are a team that tends to get stuff sporadically or unexpectedly in the middle of the day from other teams who are looking for input from the economic analysis Directorate, a lot of the time that gets passed to my team to like, write something for them and give it back. Yeah, that would be a typical average day. And then I leave at four and head on home or you know, leave at four and I'm already home.

Lisa Shen

12:31

This is kind of a quick follow up question. Where do you get your news about, like the latest environment related stuff?

Speaker 1

12:38

Yeah, good question. So there is a team at Environment Canada that publishes internal news releases to people who want to be on their mailing list. We also actively scan while they're different people who are there different teams, sorry, I should say, who actively scan particular news outlets that they find have relevance to them. And sometimes we get included on their mailing list. They say like, Hey, we're passing a summary of things that happened today up to somebody above them, but they'll pass it over to our team as well, just to keep us in the loop. And then like I said, I do look out on a couple think tanks. And so I just go to their websites and see if they've published, you know, blog posts, briefing memos, or larger reports. And these could be I say, think tanks, but it's also international organisations like I in charge of the International Energy Agency. So I check out what they've got going on. And the UN environmental programme, who also publishes stuff fairly regularly.

Lisa Shen

13:34

So you kind of walked us through the general outline of your work, and also, you know, like your hourly schedule, but we wonder if you could also give us some examples of specific projects you've worked off,

Speaker 1

13:43

for sure. So I'll give you a specific example from my co op. So I did a co op term before working in the private sector. So I did a co op term with the team that I'm on now then went and worked in consulting for a year and then came back. So one of the projects that I worked on during my time as a student, which would still be relevant now, it would still be something that would have been done by somebody in a similar role to me if it was as relevant at the time was to review other countries, mid century strategies. So what they are so in the Paris Agreement, everybody has contribution agreements for you know, how much they're going to emit, how much they're gonna reduce their emissions by and they also have a mid century or they have a an agreement to create a mid century strategy. So mid century being 2050. So that's the long term deep decarbonisation strategy outlook. And my team formerly has been responsible for developing Canada's mid century strategy, the long term deep decarbonisation strategy, but as things have changed now, like we have a net zero 2050 target, so that's kind of in flux, and that's superseded what we had said previously, which was an 80% reduction by 2050. But back in 2019, I was reviewing all of the other countries, mid century strategies and comparing them to ours. Ours had several key building blocks. And so we wanted to see what other countries were doing in those building block areas. Because at that time we were we had released our mid century strategy in 2016. We were thinking about updating it, which is something that we're supposed to do, according to Paris Agreement. And so we wanted to see, you know, what's the level of ambition that's out there in the world right now? And do other people have, you know, really good ideas for what they're trying to do? And we say, hey, that's a great idea, you know, we should do something more along those lines, particularly for countries that are more relevant to our context. But yeah, that would be an example of, and it's again, it's, you know, reading through and trying to understand what their policies are, and see how they would apply to us in the Canadian context. That way, you know, if needed, we'd be able to suggest something else, or brief people on whether or not our level of ambition is meeting with the rest of the world.

Lisa Shen

15:48

So would the output that you're producing from that be like some kind of a written report that you give to someone to write policies based on or like, what what does that lead to basically?

Speaker 1

15:56

So that is a great question. In my time there, as a student, I'll be honest, it didn't lead to much it ended up being like a written report and an Excel file just to like, quick, easy visual, like, boom, here's where here are our building blocks, here are the other countries. And here's what they're doing in each of the building blocks. So you can you can see a pretty good snapshot, and at the time that was done so that we had it for reference. And I actually remember when I was when I was leaving, as a student, I'd asked my manager if she could review my resume. And she was she was great. She's like, yeah, I'll do that. And I had mentioned, you know, reviewed other countries, midcentury strategies, and I had said something like, for future reference for organisations and stuff. And she said, You don't know what this is going to become, it might be useful. And since then, it's actually been something that's been highly relevant to a couple other teams so that as we look at trying to get to net zero by 2050, we have a good reference point for Okay, here's what everybody else was going to be doing. So it like you suggested ends up being passed around to other people. So they can read up and see what's going on

Lisa Shen

16:52

might say, that seems like a big chance to work on what do we suggest to do to get Canada to net zero or to reduce our emissions by 2050? And so along those lines, what was it like for stepping into that role and having to be like, wow, like, I have to make these suggestions. Like you said, it's

Speaker 1

17:09

a little intimidating. But one of the things that reduces that intimidation, I would say is in government, there's lots of layers. And by that, I mean, like I work, and then I pass something up to my manager who passes something up to our director and passes something up to our Director General, who passes it up to the Assistant Deputy Minister compasses up to the Deputy Minister. So yes, it's intimidating to start. But if you realise, and this is, I think, is great as a student coming in knowing like, Okay, I'm going to do something, I'm going to put my best effort into this and really try to make it right. But if it's not as good as it could be, somebody above you is gonna say, hey, great start. But here's some things we can improve on. And they'll pass it back down and let you work on that.

Lisa Shen

17:46

So you mentioned this is all during your internship experience. I think that segues well into just asking why you chose to study the biological sciences, when you're going into undergrad at the time, what did you envision for your future career? And maybe if you could walk us from that point until where you are now? Sure.

Speaker 1

18:03

So as you mentioned, in my degrees, it's kind of been a bit of a wandering. So I started off in biological sciences, which is, you know, good, because otherwise, I wouldn't been able to get this exciting invitation to be on a podcast with you guys. But yeah, so I started in, in biological sciences, I did always have an interest in political science and economics and the reason like coming out of high school in grade 12. And I was like, oh, what do I do? What do I do, I applied to tonnes of different programmes, including stuff in social sciences and ended up going into biological sciences because I was like, Okay, I can start here. And if I'm wrong, and don't want to be here, it's easier to switch from a science degree to an arts degree. And that was, that was my thought. And so I started off in in bio, and I did really enjoy bio, I have a strong passion for genetics. And so going into that I was very interested in it. And I was looking at, you know, either going into research or seeing what that led to I did fully realise that a biological science degree or like, like a BSc is typically not a terminal degree, it's a stepping stone to get to something else. So the plan was to do that to get to something else. But I ended up taking first year economics as an elective purely because in high school, I had taken economics as an elective, purely because I was on the badminton team, and the badminton coach was the teacher for economics. And he was like, Ben, you should take my class. I was like, okay, sir, why not? But really enjoyed it in high school. So it's like, I'll take it as an elective. It'll be great. I already know a lot of the stuff. It'll be easy ended up doing quite well in first year economics. And so I kept taking it as electives with the intent of doing a minor in it, which I ended up completing. And in second year, I actually like looked at switching into economics and out of biology, but it was faster to graduate just with the minor and I've talked to some profs, and they said, Yeah, you can still do a master's in economics, if that's what you want to do as long as you take these key courses. So that's what I ended up doing and the switch from biology to economics was really Because I started becoming more and more interested in climate change, and I felt very strongly that the science was there. And as much as it's important to have good climate science, so this was six years ago, we were at a point where I felt we already had the science down. What we needed now was like, what do we do next? Now we have we need to do something, what are the actions that we need to take and economics I found answered a lot of those questions, or at least provided a direction for them. And so I felt that if climate change was something that I wanted to work on, in order to make the biggest impact, I needed to move from science to economics. And so that led me to pursuing the masters of economics, where I really focused on trying to learn things about environmental economics and economic development, which I think are important from a climate change perspective, then, so that's a lot of the masters of economics was really good from like a technical perspective, as a highly technical degree, do lots of math, lots of stats, a little bit of programming, like it's great challenging, but but super rewarding, in that it's one of the hardest things that I've ever done. I suspect most people who do it, that'll be one of the hardest things that they've ever done, but then it helps prepare you with some, you know, mental fortitude, and some really good hard skills for, for moving out into the workforce. But at that point, I was, to be totally honest, I was a little too scared to go get a real job. So I was like, I'll do I'll do one more master's degree, you know, do one, do a one year degree and try to try to round out my knowledge a little bit. So I went to Western to do their masters of environmental sustainability, which was an interdisciplinary programme, which was something that really drew me to it, because like, I do have a strong science background, I have a strong economics background now. And I wanted to interact with people from different disciplines and different backgrounds who are all interested in the climate field, because I felt like from my own interdisciplinary knowledge of looking at bio, looking at economics, seeing the overlap, seeing where things worked, and where they didn't, I felt that really informed me. And so working with people with other diverse backgrounds, I thought, well, that's only going to help me learn more things about more things. And so that degree was much more breadth degree, I would say, like I learned a lot about or a little bit about a lot of different things in the climate change space. And it had a co op component, which I was very excited about. And that's where I ended up at Environment Canada for pool. Thank

Lisa Shen

22:12

you for telling us your whole life story. There you go. The next question that we would like to ask you, I guess, kind of going off of how you're passionate about climate change, or rather passionate about stopping climate change, which I always think is like, kind of funny when people say I'm passionate about climate change. But yeah, like I, you know, I feel like a lot of people our age like in their 20s right now or so feel that way. And based on your work, you're kind of in a position where you can be a bit more quantitative or specific about this. And so what do you think are some of the main challenges that Canada faces in terms of being able to reduce our emissions by enough by 2050? And if like, if possible, what do you think are some of the things that we should really be doing to try and overcome those challenges? Big question. I like it, I know we were almost like, should be asking,

Speaker 1

23:05

might as well. So okay, I'll start with some positives to set the stage for Canada, in that we have a highly decarbonized electricity system, over 80% of Canada's electricity is generated with zero carbon emissions. So we're in a very good place, if we can electrify a bunch of things and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels that way, the big challenges for Canada are the transportation sector, the building sector, and the oil and gas sector. The last one, surprise, surprise. So for transportation, that's a big challenge, partly just because of the geography of the country, there are very few countries in the world like other than US, Australia, and the US really, who are so far spread out, and were built at a time where the invention of the car was pretty close. And so you're in cities, in Europe, everything is much more compact, because it was hard to travel farther distances, but Canada and the US and Australia much easier when things were being built. So we don't have that same benefit of being, you know, tightly packed together. And we're used to being able to like take a two hour car drive to like go to the next city or you know, if you're in Toronto, drive out to Hamilton or out to gwelf, whatever, those aren't two hours, but you used to be able to make these longer journeys that other places would find to be like a quite long journey. So there's a bit of a culture of that kind of car transportation, which is challenging. The good thing is substitutes for internal combustion engine vehicles or IC E's are becoming more and more popular and have higher and higher market penetration, which is same way of saying they're becoming more and more popular, I guess. And so there's a light potentially at the end of the tunnel for decarbonizing there. The challenge there, again, is getting more and more electric vehicles into the market so that consumers are using them and also building out charging infrastructure because a lot of people have range anxiety about Like how far can I get on one charge? You know, am I going to end up stranded somewhere and say, okay, we build these chargers, then maybe you won't have that as much the building sector is also challenging, particularly in urban centres. I know, in Toronto buildings are the number one source of emissions. But in most urban centres, it's similar. This has a lot to do with construction, concrete is very emissions intense, I think it used to be 8% of emissions globally, were from cement and concrete production. That's an older statistical, it's probably a couple years out of date. And so changing how we build buildings, and also how we keep them particularly relevant for Canada is another challenge. And then shifting out of the oil and gas industry and into more low carbon or zero carbon industries is the final piece of the puzzle, I think there. And like I said, At the start, because already so much of our electricity is generated from zero carbon sources, we have a very good opportunity to electrify a lot of things and not be worried like they are in the States, if you you know, or let me use China's a much better example, electric cars are much more popular in China. But if your electric car is charged by electricity that is generated by a coal fuel power plants, you're actually worse off than just driving regular gas car from an admissions perspective. So Canada is in a good place in that a lot of our power is already clean. And so if we do switch to, you know, electric vehicles, electric heat pumps and buildings to heat things, we can do that in a low carbon way. Quite rapid.

Lisa Shen

26:28

I was very specific. So thank you. Yeah, I was super impressed. Yeah, also just more of a comment. But I never really thought about that, at least not concretely about car culture, and how you mentioned that we're used to having to drive two hours, but I remember I've like looked at travel, you know, like before the pandemic travelling to France, and just being like, Oh, God, like this whole country is like the size of Ontario or, you know, like, it takes like, X number of hours to drive across the whole country, which is, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's true. We are like a country that's very spread out and like specifically spread out along the south.

Unknown Speaker

26:57

So yeah,

Lisa Shen

26:58

you've never thought about it concretely. Ah, you're so funny. So one of the things that I've been looking into recently is, unlike me, and for you to have kind of talked about this on the podcast, but how to be more smart about how you donate to charities, or how to pick charities that have good impact, or just how do you pick and so I was wondering for you in terms of impact per dollar, what are your recommendations? If you don't know about charity, specifically, even just like actions as an individual? Okay,

Speaker 1

27:27

lots of options here. So okay, I'll come up with a couple different ways. And like, really, I think there are lots of good nonprofits and NGOs, non non government organisations in the environment and climate space, even in Canada specifically, that are really good and would make great use of any charitable donations that you can give. I'm not going to give you specifics, because I think it's really a personal thing. But I will say, look for places that are taking action that you believe in, I think that's far more important than saying, Oh, this is the place that's doing this pinpoint the best thing, if you are somebody who really feels that we need to work on conservation in order to have a better society, one that's more aware of climate issues, because we're more in touch with nature, one that uses nature for nature based solutions, and like carbon sequestration, from forests, and wetlands, and all that good stuff. Somebody who thinks that, you know, if people don't experience nature, they're not going to care about it, then look for the organisations that are working in the conservation space and give them money. If you're somebody who really thinks that is the energy transition. That's that's the key thing that we need to get right in order to solve climate change. Then even in Canada, we've got great organisations, we're looking into that if you think it's academic research that's going to like push technologies over the edge to get us those solutions that we're looking for. Look for think tanks that are focused on academia. The great thing about climate change is there's no silver bullet, there's no one right answer. And so we have to pursue all options simultaneously, just because of the timeline that we have. And so I would really say whatever moves your soul that's where you should put your dollars on a more personal note actions that people can take individually a big one that I'm gonna say is easy but for a lot of people might not be is looking at your Diet and Reducing red meat consumption, meat consumption in general. I'm vegetarian my housemate is vegan, I stopped eating beef when I was working at Environment Canada the first time so two years ago, and then like transition that slowly into not having meat when I cooked and then it became not having meat, like I would still you know, go to the restaurant and get get meat but then after that now, it's just pretty much fully vegetarian. But that's, I think, something very tangible that people can do. And again, I'm not saying like my housemate is vegan, I am not like I'm not saying that everybody has to make it all the way if you can just reduce the amount of consumption even like I'm not saying fully cut out beef, but just say, Hey, I'm not having beef Mondays or on the weekend, you know, saving it for the weekend. So I can Celebrate a little bit, I think that's a good way to go. I would also suggest this is one that I have found quite meaningful, I don't own a car. And if you can make your housing decisions so that you live close to where you work, the need for your car is much lower. When I lived in Toronto, I commuted into work on the bus and then jog home after work, which was great, you know, good for your health. But then also, you get to know the city you live in better, you get some fresh air, it's a clear break, then between when you're working, and when it's your time, you get a little bit refreshed at the end of the day. So I'm a big fan of that. And like using active transports, it doesn't have to be running, walking, cycling, all that good stuff. But these are things that are much more available in a city, if you're in a suburb or farther away, I totally understand that it's harder. But if you're somebody who's coming out of school, and like looking for that first job, and you get that first job, and you're like, Oh, I gotta move to this new city, where am I going to live? If you can consider, hey, is there a way that I can do this, that I don't need to own a car, you'll save tonnes of money. First of all cars, cars are kind of money pit, but also you'll do some good for the environment. So those are like the two big things I would say. And I like them because it's like your life choices that you're changing. It's not necessarily as aggressive as going out and protesting though I have done that in the past too. And I think there's definitely a time and place for that. I would also say like giving money to places that you think are doing good work is another way to take some take some personal action on climate change. Yeah, I

Lisa Shen

31:24

agree with a lot of that, especially the diet thing because my sister has done this, she's, you know, sat down at the dinner table. She's like, okay, mom, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be vegetarian. And I'm like, okay, but like being vegetarian is not like you suddenly go poof, it's not an identity. It's just eat less meat. And I feel like that makes it easier. So

Speaker 1

31:43

yeah, I describe that as like going to low meat diet. And there's, there's a saying came out of the waste group, I guess. But it's that, you know, we don't need 1000 people being perfect at being zero waste. We need a million people doing it wrong. And so like if we can get lots of people just making that incremental change, that's better than like a few people doing a big jump.

Lisa Shen

32:05

Yeah. You mentioned that you just moved to a new city. This is because you started working for the government. So can you explain if you feel like there are any differences working for the government versus working for a private company? I know also, the type of work has changed. So maybe that has an influence. But yeah, if you could speak to that. Sure.

Speaker 1

32:21

So I have recently moved to Ottawa. I'm totally working from home though. And my boss was actually like, why did you move like you don't you don't need to be here yet. But I like my lease was up in Toronto. So I moved back in with my parents for like December, because I was like, Oh, it's the holidays, whatever. And it was like, okay, we've done a month of this now, like, I'm ready to be on my own again. So that's why I'm in auto. I just want to clarify, nobody was pushing me from the government entity to get into the city or anything. But yeah, so it isn't it is relatively new job. I've only been with Environment Canada since the beginning of December, I was working, like you guys mentioned in the in the private sector previously doing consulting. And my work, as I've described it in the public sector with E Triple C, that's environment and climate change. Canada right now is much more qualitative, whereas my previous work was much more quantitative. When I was working at auto case, I was doing a lot of cost benefit analysis, particularly what we called it was triple bottom line cost benefit analysis, where you're looking at not only the financial implications of a project, but also the social and the environmental implications, and then building out very complex Excel models to try to get at these things in dollar terms that we can compare everything on an apples to apples basis. And then at the end, you know, you write up a report or your client, maybe it's a two page document, maybe it's a 30 page document, but a lot more technical modelling and a lot less technical writing, I would say big differences between the working for the public sector and working in the private sector are more probably lifestyle stuff, like with the government, they are much more acknowledging of like the hours that you're supposed to be working. Whereas in the public sector, sometimes there's a bit more like, okay, like, you got to this has to get done, we're going to do it. And especially in the consulting world, because you're working for a client, if they give you a deadline, that's that's the deadline. So like, I've worked 13 hour days, I've worked three to four weekends in a month in the private sector. So that's, that's a bit of a difference. Also, like I mentioned, the government has a lot more layers, and so you need a lot more approval to get things done. So there's a difference there as well. And I would say so somebody who I was talking to recently who's getting close to their retirement in the public sector, but used to work in the private sector, I think explain it really well in that in the private sector, you have a lot more ownership of your work, you get a project, you do the project, whereas in the public sector, it's much more like a team job where everybody's going to touch that one file and you know, you might be the one who starts it but somebody else is going to come in and help you somebody else is going to come in with this comments and then you're going to send it over to another team because they do real work related to it. And they're going to give you their expert advice. And that's going to change the shape of things. So it is less of you owning the file and more of you being a part of the team that works on the file. I think that's probably the biggest difference, do you

Lisa Shen

35:14

have a preference between those are pros and cons to having it strongly beating based or strongly based on an individual.

Speaker 1

35:21

I think there's pros and cons to both like if it's highly individual, you can set your own pace a little bit more like if you know that these are the things that you're working on. And the only one stopping you from getting them done is you then you can prioritise your time and run through things quickly, or at the pace that you you see fit. But then it's also like all on you if there are any errors, or if you need to really understand a concept. You can't go to somebody else and say, Hey, like you are an expert in this, can I take 10 minutes of your time and get you to either explain to me or the you know, review what I'm working on. So I would definitely say there's pros and cons to both. There's a reason why in the government, it is the way it is because when we produce a document, it has to be correct, because we're the government, whereas in the private sector, you know, it's still it still has to be pretty right. But there isn't the same scrutiny on the final product. And so I definitely think it's personal preference. And I definitely see the the pros and cons to both.

Lisa Shen

36:16

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I want to follow up on something that you said earlier, when you're answering the last question was, you mentioned the difference between qualitative and quantitative analyses? And I don't think I have a strong understanding of what qualitative analysis would look like. So maybe you could explain that a little bit more?

Speaker 1

36:33

Sure. So quantitative, there's numbers in it. Qualitative is a little bit more more words based. And I would say like, the best way that I think of it most intuitively, is if you think of like case studies, and you say, this is what happened in this case, and this is what happened in another case, that's probably how I would think about qualitative analysis. Personally, as an economist, like I struggle with the concept of qualitative analysis, because all of my analysis has been pretty quantitative. But I guess really what I mean by qualitative work, and what I do is it's more taking the numbers that somebody else has produced, and then saying, Okay, now that we know this about the transportation sector, or the building sector, what do we do with that in terms of policy, and so it's moving from the numbers to the words to get to action? Like I'm very much a numbers guy, like as much as knowing that there's 8% of the world's emissions come from cement and concrete. That's great, you know, that number, but like, what do you do with that now? So like, the next steps are, okay, we've acknowledged this now, what are some ideas for tackling that problem? And that'll probably end up being something that's policy and words and qualitative, I guess, and I don't really think that that answered your question. But hopefully, I talked long enough that you'll accept it.

Lisa Shen

37:48

I think it actually cleared up a lot. So I think you did a good job. Thanks. Something I did want to ask you is you mentioned that, you know, at some point, you started getting more interested about, you know, mitigating climate change and that sort of thing. Do you want to just talk about why you love nature? Essentially, like what what are you into climate, you know, caring about the climate kind of thing?

Speaker 1

38:08

Sure, you've painted a very lovely picture there. Like why you why you love nature and all this stuff. I care about climate change, because if we don't fix it, we're all gonna die. Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty, pretty motivated by by that, I would say, but also. So that's kind of oblique and not useful answer. But in my mind, climate changes is the challenge of our time, the challenge of our generation, surely. And if if you're at a time in history, where you get faced with like such a monumental challenge, how can you not want to participate in that and try to solve that? I think that's so exciting. I also think that because climate change is so far reaching in our society, we have a chance to touch every aspect of our society through climate policy. And so anything you look outside and you look outside at society today, and you're like, man, poverty, that's not great. How do we fix that? You can wrap that into climate change policy. You know, you look outside and you don't like dense urbanisation and the brutalist architecture of downtown's, how do you make that more green that goes hand in hand with fixing climate change. You don't like seeing that air pollution out there, because you're choking on and when you're trying to run home from work behind a car, like tackle climate change, it fixes that to gender inequality, all of this stuff, everything is touched by climate change, because it is so pervasive, and its impacts throughout our society. So in my humble opinion, I can't think of a reason to work on any other topic, because this covers all of them.

Lisa Shen

39:34

Yeah, I definitely feel that and it does feel like one of those things that, you know, I mean, to be a little person, it's like, if we make it 100 200, whatever years, they'll kind of look back and be like, this was a major time in Earth's history where there's a lot of loss of biodiversity and we almost didn't make it as a species. And kind of going into that. My next question is, do you think we're gonna make it as a species or to be a bit more elaborate about it, just can you tell us about how you feel about Our current situation with respect to climate change, like at the end of the day, do you feel hopeful? Like, do you think we're gonna make our goals? Or are you kind of preparing yourself for the worst? So we're asking you some real easy questions super hard.

Speaker 1

40:14

Yeah, no, no easy answers to climate change questions, let me tell you. So let me let me start with, like the question of, are we gonna make it or not? I really think that, like, and this is partly because of the way I answered your previous question. I don't think it's as cut and dry. As you know, humanity is just gonna gonna be dead like 50 years from now, if we don't get this right, it'll just be that we'll be living in a world that we don't like living in as much as the one that we live in today. And, and so will we make it or not? I suspect either way, we'll make it. It's just the quality of life that we'll have, how many people will be around where those people will be what they can do, will be greatly diminished if we don't meet the challenge that's at our feet. And your other question of how do I feel about it. So my sister, actually, right now is doing a master's in climate change. And her and I have spoken recently about climate grief and climate anxiety, which is something that is particularly relevant once you're doing like graduate work on climate change. You're like, oh, man, like this does not look good. But I am somebody who's definitely optimistic because there's no point in stopping. And so even if there is a major setback, you have to keep going. And you have to keep trying, because like, the alternative is like we lose, basically. And so I do think there's a lot to be positive about. I don't know if you guys are following Joe Biden, in the States today, he released a bunch of executive orders, you know, some good stuff out there. And that's, that's a huge shift, and could really help set the stage globally. I think that Canada has got some good stuff in the works. And I think like, if you look at the UK, they've got some great stuff going on there. They're one of the only nations that's like rapidly decarbonizing, I'm pretty sure Scotland is currently fully powered by renewable energy. That's super cool. They're great positive stories out there. And the way that climate change has been portrayed, has has purely been that like doom and gloom, which is totally fair. But there are also in my mind, so many things to be positive about in that, like I said, like, I see things in society that that that I don't think are great, and we can tackle climate change simultaneously with a lot of those. And so I see that there are, I think that there's a lot to be not necessarily optimistic about, but a lot to be looking forward to in solving the challenges of climate change. All right, thanks

Lisa Shen

42:33

for that. We're gonna we're gonna leave it on that positive note. Is there anything else you would like to add? Before we wrap up, thanks

Speaker 1

42:39

for having me. It's been fun. And it's great that you guys are so interested in talking all the different people that you've talked to, and I really hope that it helps you guys out and you know what you're doing next? And yeah, cuz you got you while you're asking good questions, at the very least, and I appreciate you bringing me on.

Lisa Shen

42:53

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's not about you. We just want to be podcast famous, you know, there you go. No, kidding. Well, you're not in it for that. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. So how'd you feel about that? I felt great. It. I think I mentioned this in the interview. But it's just really nice to talk to people who are very serious about climate change and understand the gravitas of the problem. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think in an ideal world, I would have his level of understanding, but it's not really my field, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's just nice to know, like things you can do. And hopefully you're working your way towards them. Yeah. Especially when he was talking about climate anxiety. And I feel like there's a lot of doom and gloom that comes with climate change. And I think I said this in the interview, but for some reason, I felt more optimistic about our ability to, if not like, completely meet our goals, or at least make a lot of improvement. And I think that came from hearing him talk about the things that Canada is doing well, and that it made it less doom and gloom for me. And so that almost makes me wonder if pushing this over, we're gonna miss our deadline, everything's getting warmer. That almost makes me wonder if that kind of story is not very helpful to kind of motivate people to actually do something personally. were politically Yeah, I think that's pretty interesting. I think there's actually been a lot of attention brought to this recently, I've seen a couple like climate change. youtubers talk about those how their climate change you that's the most 20 they work on climate science as scientists and became YouTubers. Bring that more to the public. So yeah, they are still climate change youtuber doesn't change what it is. Yeah. But yeah, they're talking about how like, there's a glimmer of hope. And yeah, it's not usually useful to talk about doom and gloom all the time. So kind of echoing exactly your points. Yeah. And just to give them a shout out, you should go watch Simon Clark and climate Adam. They're pretty good. Yeah. But yeah, also related to this. I was listening to a podcast episode where the guy wrote like a rock song about climate despair and like how he was just like yelling at Everyone cuz he didn't feel like people were taking this seriously enough around him like a death metal. Basically, just talking about how terrible 2020 is bad and like how climate change is gonna be terrible in the future and all this stuff. Yeah. And then he was talking about this with his co workers on the podcast, and one of them runs a climate change related podcast. And he was kind of saying, like, the climate scientists don't act like this, right? Like, they are kind of like there is change being made. And we need to focus on that. And there is things we can do and significant steps we can take. And so he was kind of like annoyed at this guy for writing this song, because it's kind of exactly what you said, like, we can't just throw up our hands and like not do anything. And it's usually not productive. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, this whole climate grief type stuff is super real. Yeah, it makes me think during the Cold War, it was way before you and I were born. But I think people at the time, they talked about this over laying sense of fear, or a sense of doom or something, because you never know, like, any second, something might happen. And I feel like for us, basically, since age eight, or since I first learned about climate change, like as a child, I just have this feeling of guilt for my impact on the environment, or just guilt for where we are headed as a society and biodiversity loss and all that stuff. And again, I'm not saying that Oh, man, like, it sucks for me that I have to live with this guilt. I think it's appropriate, because I think it's well deserved, but it would just be so interesting to live in a society that's actually you know, carbon neutral, and the pandas aren't dying. And I don't have this over arching sense of horribleness. about that. We've kind of actually talked about this. It's like the Sarah Anderson comic where it's like, it's getting warmer, and the weather is nicer. But also in the back of your mind. You're like, Oh, my God, this is coastal climate change. Yeah, I know. I know. I feel like I never let anyone comment on the weather now. someone's like, Oh, it's cold. And I'm like, climate change. Yeah. Oh, it's unseasonably work climate. Yeah, I'm that person. It did really surprise me, though, to hear that 80% of Canada's electricity comes from renewable sources. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know the number was so high. Yeah. Are you that in Ontario? We get a lot from hydro. Yeah, Quebec as well. But yeah, Canada's pretty lucky relative to other countries. I feel like in terms of its stocking of natural resources. Oh, yeah. Yeah. freshwater we got fresh. Yeah. You all lakes, we got lakes. I feel like another one of the things that I never let people get away with anymore is being like, Oh, my God, this year was so bad, like 2020 Yeah, because we saw it coming. For years, we saw that there was a chance of a pandemic happening. We knew we weren't ready and we didn't do anything about it. So it's not like this year suck. It was all of our actions over the past decade led to this and it's the same thing with everyone's like, Oh, God, like it sucks so much. Australia is on fire. Like

Lisa Shen

47:51

someone opened Pandora's box. No, man, we knew about it. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that kind of gives me about this is that people talk about 2020 being like, Oh, this year so terrible. We're moving forward. It's not gonna get better guy, right. I'm like, this is the star.

Unknown Speaker

48:09

Yeah,

Lisa Shen

48:09

well, at least the basketball players have died yet. As of January. Is it? Okay, I feel like you just have to like not say stuff like that. Otherwise, it's like gonna happen in the future like it's just drinking it for sure.

Unknown Speaker

48:22

Yet

Lisa Shen

48:25

do not have the resources to take down a six foot tall, powerfully built fellow. But also like random tidbit about people not being prepared. Apparently Wimbledon had pandemic insurance. So they made think during the fender, what's Wimbledon, the tennis associate? Oh, sorry, I listened to Dear Hank and john. And so I thought you're talking about AFC Wimbledon, the third year English football team. I also noticed your little EA plug in there. But EA plug sorry, effective altruism, like oh, my god do? You can? Sure enough, how hard is it to say effective altruism, it's so many syllables. And if you're trying to get it out fast, you just like to interject about acronyms. I liked it when Ben was like, oh, at the E Triple C, which means it only ever said a Triple C once and so it was actually useless. I mean, it's good to know because I feel like I do refer to Environment and Climate Change Canada very often. Sometimes you actually Yeah, when I'm talking about stuff related to climate change sometimes with my friends. Yeah, you know, like on Friday nights when we get together and have deep conversations. Okay, full disclosure before we had to prep for this interview. I knew there were a bunch of words related to climate and like Canada and like all those things. I didn't know what the specific words were so it actually used to be Environment Canada and then last couple years it got turned to Environment and Climate Change Canada haha like that. Because like a more of a problem. We have to add it. Yeah, and like next There is going to be like climate and environment. Yeah, I think I've mentioned to you once before about how I wrote climate in one of my emails, and then it immediately tried to add on chain. Oh, God, that's sad. Yeah, yeah. But also predictive email suggestions. Like what I've switched to Gmail now. And I have that. And it's to see what's scary is how often it actually predicts what I was genuinely going to say. Yeah. I mean, I think people are very predictable in their email pattern. That's true. Especially in email, especially in a professional context. Yeah, exactly. That to me, thank you for your response. Yeah, this is a little random, but to my friends that I have this group chat on LinkedIn that it started just like someone messaged just fooling around. And then everyone else only use the automatic responses. Now with like, 50 messages, which just people automatic. But back to my original point, I was gonna, I was just about to bring it back. Yeah, back to the effective altruism point and plug that you made in the interview, I was actually listening to a podcast episode Oh, people talking about effective altruism, charities and stuff like that. And one thing that they pointed out was that climate change related charities and organisations are actually very, very underrated on effective altruism skills and stuff like that. And the reason being is that they're really hard to measure the impact, right? It's hard to measure what this one random action is gonna have on the amount of carbon reduced, and then what the amount of carbon reduced converts to in terms of human lives, right. So and a lot of it is based on like, live saved. And so this actually kind of relates to what Ben was saying is that you kind of do need to find something that you think is important, and support that which it almost goes a little bit against what EA is for. But you should think about those metrics with a grain of salt type of thing. Yeah, I mean, not gonna lie. I didn't find it super helpful when he was like, Oh, just like, go for it. Because I'm like, What I care about Orca is but how best to help the orcas. Yeah, yeah, I think you can decide what charity you want to donate to or what you want to do, given that you've taken the time to research and inform yourself. And that's like the copy on. You kind of need to know what's going on before you can be like, Oh, yeah, I want to do this. Yeah, so no, easy way. Oh,

Unknown Speaker

52:23

yeah. I don't know.

Lisa Shen

52:24

I think you'll ask Ben about why he was interested in climate change. And I think his answer was essentially something equivalent to you literally can't have enough hands on for it. I just feel like whatever you're doing, you shouldn't do it early enough.

Unknown Speaker

52:39

Yeah,

Lisa Shen

52:40

yeah. Cuz that's also kind of touched on something that I feel strongly which it bothers me when people I feel like even now, the main message about being eco friendly is like, we need to save the Earth. But I feel like politicians or whatever, people should just push the message of like, we need to save our economy, because it's so intertwined. Yeah, yeah. I think that's starting a little bit now. Like, so the Bank of Canada has seriously started looking into like climate research. And like the Bank of Canada. Yeah. But how is that related to climate change? Because they started using, like, climate change research to talk about the economy. Oh, I see. Yeah. So they're, like, starting to take that seriously. I mean, I think a little bit late for all change action, but at least there is some stuff kind of getting the message out that climate is obviously gonna impact the economy. And we really need to think about this. Yeah. And it already is, because with things like wildfires, you lose cropland, and it causes a lot of infrastructure damage that you then have to repair. And that's expensive. So yeah, yeah. I feel like in our podcasts whenever we start talking about climate change the entire episode, my brain, yeah. I thought it was funny how Ben kept describing working for the government, like having a lot of layers. And at one point, he said, like I said, we have a lot of layers. That just made me laugh for several, several reasons. because on one hand, it is it's almost like you're saying, Yeah, like we're so deep. We're just we're very nuanced, like, but then it also reminded me of that, that scene in Shrek.

Unknown Speaker

54:07

Yeah. But yeah, essentially,

Lisa Shen

54:09

because of that every time you said we have layers, my brain just finished the sentence with like an onion. Yeah, I actually laughed at that point. But I think he was just confused, because I didn't understand what was funny about the government having. It's hilarious. Yeah, right. But yeah, I think I mean, I'm not opposed to working for the government. I'm not especially motivated to but yeah, seems like it wouldn't be a bad job. I think I'm especially motivated. Two reasons. Part of it is that a lot of economics jobs are very business focused or just not really what I'm into. And so the government is like one place where it's like, oh, you're like doing really cool work. And there's definitely other firms that do do cool work, but it's just harder to find or they're not as well known. And that also like, yeah, I really like continuing To learn and like, the ideal for me is to be working but also have something I'm like learning some kind of project. So I I've heard that the government is like very good about that from other people as well. So that's really appealing to me. And they have like nice benefits, you know? Yeah. I also wonder if the job is more stable than others generally, I think so. Yeah. Which has its ups and downs. has its pros and cons. what's what's the con, the con is that people who are maybe not as competent stay around for much, much longer. Oh, okay. And this is like a government stereotype. But I don't know if that's true. A lot of people who work for the government are also very motivated people like Ben. Yeah, exactly. This has been another episode of so you got to like said agree with Ben Moy about working as an economist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, you want to give special thanks to our crew of lovely patrons, including our little leaf patrons. nyeem, the Neil Shafiq and shamima and our fantastic foliage patrons Stephanie. If you would like to become a supporter of this podcast, you can visit our patreon@patreon.com slash so you got a lightside degree. You can also rate us on Apple podcasts using the link in the show notes. Music you're hearing is no regrets from audio hub.com Thanks for listening and see you next time.

00:0000:00