Episode 025: Rebuild:LA - Rebuilding Our City in a Changing Climate with Probable Futures Founder Spencer Glendon, Part I

This week’s guest is a thought leader taking on the daunting task of teaching people about climate change and how best to adapt to it. Spencer Glendon is the founder of Probable Futures, a non-profit that is helping businesses and communities understand that our weather is no longer something we can rely on, but instead is causing increased risk to our safety. The Palisades and Eaton Fires are just two examples of that increased risk. Glendon brings his expertise in Engineering, and Economics, as well as his experience as an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and a Senior Fellow at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, to the conversation. He and host Cameron Barrett start this two part discussion with the last 100,000 years of weather and human development, and end in next week’s part two of the conversation, discussing = what we need to do today in the wake of our twin climate disasters - the Palisades and Eaton Fires - to rebuild LA.

Resources:

• Probable Futures
• The 2025 Equinoxes Essay
• The History of Risk Markets and Urban Fires
• Fortune article on Fire Insurance
• Harvard Business School article on the LA Fires

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:40 Probable Futures
• 6:25 Our climate used to be stable
• 9:15 Why it's so hard to accept climate change
• 12:10 Dealing with the effects of a changing climate
• 15:30 What does climate change look like in SoCal?
• 18:25 Squeezed between an ocean and a desert
• 19:45 SoCal's perfect "lack" of weather
• 22:10 Why Hollywood is in SoCal
• 23:15 Wait! Doesn't weather service us?
• 26:00 Resetting expectations in the wake of the fires
• 27:40 House fires created insurance