Katharine Hayhoe 2020 Keeling Lecture

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: good afternoon everyone welcome to the charles david lecture charles david killing lecture i'm jeff trapp professor and head of the department of atmospheric sciences here at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign and for those of you who are new to zoom we ask that you please keep your sound muted and video off so before i introduce our speaker for today i'd like to give you a little background about the keeling lecture this event is named for charles david keeling a 1948 university building a graduate from the department of chemistry he determined how to make extremely precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide these measurements clearly indicated that the atmospheric concentrations were and still are increasing leading to the recognition that human activities could have a significant impact on the earth's climate system after receiving his phd in chemistry from northwestern in 1954 keeling spent most of his career at the scripps institution of oceanography until his death in 2005. as the first to confirm the accumulation of atmospheric co2 he produced a data set now known widely as the keeling curve and his measurements are renowned as the single most important environmental data set taken in the 20th century each year collaboration between academic units on campus results in a lecture on climate to honor keeling's legacy typically during earth week which this week's this week's this year's lecture is co-sponsored by the department of atmospheric sciences and the institute for sustainability energy and environment and our lecturer is dr catherine hayhoe dr hayhoe is an accomplished atmospheric scientist who studies climate change and why it matters to us here and now she is also a remarkable communicator who has received the national center for science education's friend of the planet award the american geophysical union's climate communication prize the sierra club's distinguished service award and has been named to a number of less including time magazine's 100 most influential people foreign policies 100 leading thinkers fortune magazine's world greatest leaders and the united nations champion of the earth in science and innovation catherine has served as lead author on the second third and fourth national climate assessments she also hosts and produces the pbs digital series global weirding and serves on advisory committees for a broad range of organizations including the smithsonian natural history museum the earth science women's network and the american association for the advancement of science today catherine is the political science endowed professor in public policy and public law and co-directs the climate center at texas tech university she has a bsc in physics from the university of toronto and an ms and phc in atmospheric sciences from the university of illinois we're excited to welcome her back virtually to deliver the 2020 keeling lecture climate science and a fact free world please join me in welcome welcoming catherine kail thank you so much jeff it is a pleasure [00:03:27] Speaker 2: to be with you here today i am just going to go ahead and mute everybody all right um and i'm delighted to see we have well over 200 participants i think this is probably more than the number of people who would have squeezed into that room at the university of illinois so i'm going to be talking specifically about science about climate and a little bit of course about the pandemic as well in which we find ourselves today because those topics are all related let me go ahead and share my screen with you here just a second and uh what i'm going to do is i'm going to be doing something that i like to anyways whether i'm in person or virtual and that is get you to be part of this so if you're watching on your computer this is going to be easy you can do it on your phone or your computer i want you to go to pollev.com that's pollev.com it'll ask you to enter something you want to enter texas tech all one word no capitals that is the name of my university and it is the name that goes with my account i couldn't change it to u of i just for this talk i'm sorry much i would love to and if it asks your name don't worry about that anonymous is fine so p-o-l-l-e-v.com you enter texas tech and then it's going to ask you the first question and a lot of you have already gotten to this typically i'm going to say undergrads get out ahead on this because you're so fast with your fingers but it looks like the well it looks like the graduate students are catching up to you oh the faculty are starting to pull ahead this almost feels like a primary hold doesn't it faculty it takes us a little bit longer to get on board but oh it looks like the faculty are holding steady in the lead and we have a healthy representation from our community members as well oh faculty it really took you a while to get get with it but you are definitely in the lead now all right so we're at about 40 faculty about 25 graduate students and it looks like undergrads and community members are now in a tie all right now time for question number two this one is a little more difficult you're going to have to touch or click on a map ready oops just a second here oh my map isn't working i had a map that was actually going to ask you where you are physically located because so many of us today are not necessarily in the same place that activity unfortunately is not found let's just make sure come on i had it here it was a map of the u.s where what you can do is you can actually touch in the place where you are or if you're on the computer you click and then you can see where everybody is watching from whether we're all in illinois or around the world it's not liking that though so we're going to have to move on without that map okay oh just a second oh no oh here it is it it you know it's a monday sometimes it just takes a little while to get its act together but here we have the map so go ahead and either if you're on your phone you can touch if you're on a computer i think you're gonna have to click and tell me where you are tuning in from today are you actually in illinois or are you somewhere else and if you're not in the united states that's okay you can actually click off the map in the direction that you're in is this working let's see i'm not seeing any dots appear yet i'll go there myself and see if it's if we're getting the map up if not i think we're just gonna have to assume that people are mostly in um in the in the us somewhere [00:07:02] Speaker 3: and uh in illinois let's just see if i can get it myself here we go okay it looks like it's still stuck on the last one i'm sorry about that all right so moving on and [00:07:22] Speaker 2: thank you for everybody who was commenting on that i appreciate that oh good oh that's perfect you guys are commenting in the chat so this is actually great we've got people a ton from canada that's awesome the yukon that's fantastic uh florida illinois new zealand urbana lagrange ohio massachusetts not working in ireland yes vancouver this is awesome even norway so we've got people from around the world even just next door to me here in texas in new mexico and australia okay it's official we are covering the whole globe with this jeff this is pretty awesome you might consider a virtual talk in the future because this is pretty cool wherever we live though we sort of feel like calvin does today i don't know if you're familiar with calvin but as calvin said we live in interesting times we don't trust the government we don't trust the legal system we don't trust the media we don't trust each other interesting is a wild mild way of putting it he says yes it's like a six-year-old's dream come true the idea that there's a war on science that people deny the basic facts is not a new one there are plenty of books written on this topic and if you pick up these books some of them don't even mention climate change they talk about a multitude of areas where we are rejecting information we've known for a long time and in this last book one of my favorite quotes here is people who can't find north korea on a map will tell you with authority exactly what our policy there should be this is the age that we live in but it isn't as new as we think back in 1980 isaac asimov who's a famous science fiction writer said there is a of ignorance in the united states and there always has been the strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life nurtured by the false notion that democracy means my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge back in 1964 richard hofstadter the winner of the surprise wrote a book called anti-intellectualism in american life and before that adlai stevenson said unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought because thinking implies disagreement disagreement disagreement implies non-conformity non-conformity implies heresy and heresy implies disloyalty so obviously thinking must be stopped you might think this was written in 2020 but no it was written in 1945 or sorry 54. so does that mean that what's happening today is no big deal just because we've had this going through our society for decades no if anything it's a bigger deal today than it has been before if you just look at the news here's a running list of all the hoaxes that have been spreading about the coronavirus pandemic and there was an interesting essay just recently fake news in the time of coronavirus how big is the threat the author said the main issue and this speaking specifically to the pandemic i think it applies equally to climate change as well the main issue isn't that people accept everything they're told it's that they fail to absorb recommendations helpful warnings go unheeded and advice is ignored people believe the information is mistaken or even manipulative some mistrust politicians and it's a pattern that we see going all the way back to for example when people didn't evacuate new orleans when the hurricane was coming this relates directly to where people get a lot of their information on science these days they get it from what people in the social science literature sociologists call elite cues what does that actually mean it means thought leaders typically politicians and pundits who share people's ideology and values and it turns out if you look at the social science literature that they play an outsized role in determining people's opinions and perspectives on climate change as well as on other aspects of science that are perceived to be controversial here's a study that was published a couple of years ago and what they found is that elite cues in other words what the politicians and the pundits say as well as advocacy efforts and how cold or hot it is outside and economic factors are the factors that influence public concern they found that sharing information on climate change with the public had no effect they also found that information-based science advocacy had only a minor effect political mobilization and efforts by advocacy groups turns out to be critical to informing our levels of concern and a more recent paper that was just done last year uh party cues elite opinion leadership found that cues from party elites so republican or democrat are associated with what people think about climate change and so their results suggest that we should see people's opinions on climate change not lack of education or lack of knowledge or lack of intelligence or lack of science but rather through the lens of what the people who they agree with the elites are saying and when we look at what politicians are saying we see that they're saying some things that just aren't true for everyone who thinks it's warming i can find somebody who says it isn't in my own state of texas a large theories on climate science originate with scientists who operate outside the principles of the scientific method and if you're in illinois don't think you're getting away with it over the thousands of years that have been recorded we've had colder and warmer times it so happens that we're coming out of a warmer time and now we're actually going to be getting a little bit cooler well if we're being controlled by natural factors that is actually true but since we're not being controlled by natural factors have been controlled by human factors this statement is 100 percent false so we think if they just knew the facts surely they changed their minds right because we have the facts the scientific literature has the facts if you go to google scholar and you type in climate change you get 2.6 million scientific studies the ipcc has the facts they're working on their sixth assessment report right now the national climate assessment has the facts i helped to co-author the second third and the fourth the fourth was so big that it was released in two volumes volume number one was 500 pages volume number two was 1600 pages and yes we've actually really checked a couple of years ago together with some colleagues we took 38 studies that have been published in the last 10 years that said either that climate wasn't changing your humans weren't responsible and we re-analyzed every single one of those from scratch when i say we it was really our lead author rasmus benestat who did most of the work and he even put his analysis online so anybody can go through the code and check it and we found an error at least one error a false assumption a missing factor sometimes a calculation error we found an error in each paper that if you corrected it brought that study into line with the thousands of others that agree climate is changing humans are responsible these facts have been communicated by many experts this is just one example of a letter that was signed by 11 000 scientists last year clearly and unequivocally warning of a climate emergency these facts have been communicated over centuries these are pictures of some of the early scientists doing research on climate we have to put a little asterisk there on unis foot because we're not a hundred percent sure that that is her we're still looking through the smithsonian archives we've got pictures of her husband or two daughters we're looking for a photo that we can say for sure is her but this is one of the possible candidates she in the 1850s put a bunch of gases in jars and actually measured the fact that co2 traps more energy than other gases and she speculated in 1856 that if the planet were warmer that or sorry that if co2 levels were higher that the planet warmer john tyndall beside her actually tied that to coal mining of the day arenius who is a very distant cousin of greta thunberg something like third cousin five times removed or something like that he calculated how much the world would warm if we doubled or tripled levels of co2 in the atmosphere and guy calendar was the first person to actually collect all the thermometer data around the world and show that the planet was indeed warming not only have we communicated this over long periods of time though we communicate in many ways i keep a list for example on social media and we are now actually of today we are now up to over 3 000 scientists who do climate on this list that anybody can subscribe to so we certainly have the facts and now it's your turn and i want you to give me a word or multiple words but here's the thing you have to use a dot or a dash to join multiple words so if you're going to say ice sheet melting you say ice dot sheet dot melting or ice dash sheet dash melting you can't put words separately so go ahead and tell me what do you think is the most convincing fact on climate change and if you're going to use two words or three make sure you join them with a dot or a dash go ahead oh sorry about that it's a different type of question good all right oh i love that keeling curve is right there keeling curve ice sheet melting and you can vote for which one you think is best wildfires ocean heat content coral reefs rising sea levels ocean acidification ice core samples yes the keeling curve should be number one this is the keeling lecture right what experts say yes pollution in situ observations we have the facts and again i love the fact that the keeling curve is number one the keeling curve the keeling curve for those of you who don't know was the record of atmospheric co2 that began on mauna loa in hawaii which is a very clean environment so it wasn't polluted by any urban sources and it shows how over time each year co2 goes up and down and up up and down due to the biosphere but then year by year by year by year it tracks up and up and up all right so we think if everybody just understood the keeling curve right if everybody just understood global temperature surely they would change their minds right unfortunately the answer is not really why well you may think this is off topic but stick here with me for just a few minutes and you'll see back in 1994 this is what the political landscape in the united states look like we had republicans and democrats and the median democrat was closer to the median republican than they were to the tails of their own party then let's forward in time 2011 2017 and then if you remember that was an election year so if you only look to people who voted in 2017 this is what it looked like what has happened we have moved so far to the edges both parties not just one that today the median democrat and median republican are closer to the tails of their own party than they are to each other what does this have to do with climate change pretty much everything in 19 uh in 2019 a poll by the pew research center found that of all the issues on which democrats and republicans were most divided in the united states out of 30 issues they found that climate and environment was number three after gun policy and racial attitudes but when they redid this in 2020 this is what they found they found they found that the most politically polarized issues the issues where the red dot and the blue dot were the furthest apart were climate change and environmental protection it turns out that the number one predictor of whether we agree with the simple facts that climate is changing and humans are responsible is where we fall on the political spectrum and this is not only in the united states it is in the united states where climate change is more politically polarizing than traditionally hot button issues like the death penalty and abortion but it's also happening in canada we had an election in october and you could map the writings who voted conservative the conservatives actually had a climate plan but it would increase emissions you could map the writings that voted conservative on top of the writings where people said climate is not changing and humans are not responsible there's almost a one-to-one correlation it's happening in the uk where conservative members of parliament are five times as likely to vote against climate action it's happening in brazil it's happened in australia it is happening around the world now you might say all right catherine but is it really responsible for all of the stuff that you get i follow you on twitter and i see stuff like this all the time if you follow me on twitter you do see stuff like this all the time probably two or three times a day but before i block these people you know what i do i go to their profiles and you know what i see when i go to their profiles i will show you politics i see people in the united states who love the president people in canada who hate the prime minister people in australia who love the current prime minister and people in the uk want to separate from the eu that is the number one thing that people have in common who go out of their way to attack climate scientists on social media people don't really have a problem with the basic science and the social science shows us a study back in 2012 eight years ago by dan kahan i like to show you pictures so you know who these people are he is a professor at yale university and he said public apathy over climate change is often attributed to adapt and comprehension people don't know enough science and if they don't know enough science what should we do we should give them more science we conducted a study to test this and we found no support in fact members of the public with the highest degree of science literacy were not most concerned they were what most polarized people don't really have a problem either with lack of intelligence i see this all the time those people are stupid actually no and dan went on to study this he developed something he and his colleagues developed something called ordinary science intelligence it's just one measure of how people process information and data and he asked is there solid evidence of recent global warming due mostly to human activity now if you asked me that question i would actually say no because it isn't mostly human activity it is all human activity we should actually be according to actual factors but i don't think that's why anybody said no to this question i think most people said no because they thought it wasn't humans so he found a weak correlation from the first to the 99th percentile between whether people answered yes to this question and how they ranked on ordinary science [00:24:25] Speaker 3: intelligence but then he took this data set and he divided in half based on one thing what do you think it was [00:24:35] Speaker 2: yes political affiliation so what he showed here is that the smarter we are the better we are at cherry picking the information that will support what we already believe to be true if it connects directly to our identity to who we perceive ourselves to be the smarter we are the better we are at it and you know what we all do this we just might not do it with climate change but when something really matters to us when it's actually part of our identity the smarter we are the better we are at going and finding the information that would support why we are right it isn't a matter of intelligence and so what they concluded what they concluded is being smarter does not make us more accepting of science it just makes us better able to pick out the pieces we need to validate what we already believe and lastly people don't really have a problem with religious objections to climate change now at this point you might say katherine what are you talking about surely you've heard people in your own state i live in texas now saying climate change is not a science it's a religion and lindsey graham tells us why it's because al gore did it he's the one who turned it into religion and if you look on the internet you can find images like this al gore leading the church of climatology and someone has even photoshopped my head onto the choir oh yes i am very aware of this i hear this every day but here's the thing does this truly reflect actual theology that is consistent with the religions or the faith traditions that people say that they espouse well if they're catholic it turns out not because the cath the pope wrote a giant encyclical five years ago all about climate change and he says it is caused by us we are responsible and it is affecting the poorest people on the planet what if we're evangelical well it turns out the national association of evangelicals beat the pope to it by four years yes they wrote a booklet in 2011 connecting the dots very clearly and unmistakably between a changing climate human agency and the impact on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world and in fact when you say okay well you know surely could set these people straight you look at the polling data and hispanic catholics it turns out are the most concerned people group in the united states about the impacts of a changing climate so you might say oh okay well clearly then this works but if you look down at the very bottom who is the least concerned you've got the white evangelicals and the white catholics in a neck-on-neck tie what did the encyclical do well this is my colleague ashley landrum she's right here at texas tech with me and her study actually looked at the effect of the encyclical and public opinion and she found that when we encounter new information what we do is we filter it through our pre-existing glasses so to speak of our prior beliefs our relevant social identities and messenger credibility so you might say well messenger credibility clearly who's more credible than the pope to a catholic right it turns out that elite cues remember those politicians and pundits turns out those are more credible to many catholics in the united states than the pope she found translation that if protestants or catholics already agreed with the pope before the encyclical came out that their opinion of the pope went up but if they didn't agree with the pope and then cyclical came out their opinion of the pope went down and this is really no surprise john evans another sociologist from uc santa barbara he said said or uc san diego sorry he said compared to not actively religious conservative protestants are likely to reject the conclusiveness of climate science but it's not where you go to church that causes this our opinions are rooted in our age and our political affiliations and in fact kind of the icing on the cake here the final nail in the coffin if you will galen carey from the national association evangelicals said this and i think he really hits hits the nail on the head he said why do people oppose action to slow climate change not on a religious basis but politically because they believe the government [00:29:22] Speaker 3: wants to take away their freedom [00:29:28] Speaker 2: so here's what we really do have a problem with we really have a problem with our identity politics our psychological distance and our solution aversion what are those three things let me unpack it just a little bit we've already talked about identity politics the idea that somehow the fact that a thermometer can give us a different number depending on how we vote because of the identity glasses the political glasses that we wear now you might say katherine surely that's an exaggeration it doesn't really give you a different number you know what it turns out people think it does this is some work by larry hamilton a sociologist in new hampshire in new hampshire they have seen some very warm winters and he did this study two ways he asked people about the last 20 years and then he just asked them about the previous january and he did this in february so we just asked them about the last month and he found that people's answers to was the past 20 years warmer which obviously they were they were pretty even depending on how old people were they were pretty even depending on what people were male or female they were pretty even even depending on how much education people had high school or less all the way to postgraduate three percentage points different and then he divided the responses out by what by now you can probably guess political affiliation conservative republicans only less than 40 percent said it had actually gotten warmer as measured by the own thermometers in their own backyards whereas 70 percent of democrats would say it what it did that's identity politics for you now what's psychological distance it's another one of those social science terms it means that we think something is far away we think it's far away in time or we think it's far away in space or we think it's far away in terms of what matters to us it doesn't matter to me it matters to that type of person but not to me and the yale program on climate communication has a series of maps that makes this crystal clear here we go every county here has a color if it's orange it means that more than 50 percent of people said yes to the question about like is global warming happening and the darker orange the more people said yes and if it's blue that means it's below 50 percent and the darker blue the more people said no so most people think that global warming is happening and if you zoom in on illinois which i did here there champaign county it's slightly above the average it's five percentage points above the national average 72 of people in champaign county you got a ways to catch up because chicago's a lot more but it's still above average so we think it's happening and we also think it will harm plants and animals in fact more people think it will harm plants and animals apparently don't think it's happening that's pulling for you will it harm future generations you might think this is the same map but it's not it's a different question most people say yes do you think it will harm people who live in other countries far away developing countries there's a little bit of blue here but most of it is still orange and then will it harm people in the united states there's quite a bit more blue here and if you zoom in though on champagne it's still looking pretty good we're still at 62 which is five percent above the [00:33:04] Speaker 3: national average but then here's the question do you think it will affect [00:33:12] Speaker 2: you look at this it is blue over almost the entire country except areas where there's a lot of hispanic catholics and also a lot of native americans those are a lot of the yellow counties there let's zoom in on chicago let's zoom in on illinois champaign county we've got 45 so less than half the people in champaign think it will affect them personally this is what i'm talking about with psychological distance we think it only matters to the polar bears we think it only matters to people who live far away from us like on low-lying islands in the south pacific we don't think it matters to us and the third problem we have is this solution aversion there was a senator from oklahoma who famously brought a snowball into the house of the senate a number of years ago and said look it snowed in washington dc so where's all that global warming but the same year in an interview with rachel maddow he said this he said do you realize that i was actually on your side of this issue when i first chaired the senate environment committee i was on your side till when till it snowed in washington dc no i was on your side until i found out how much it would cost to fix it and i swear i did not make this up this is a real real headline here is the senator from florida saying i do not want to destroy the economy for climate change and what does the subheader right under him say it says a million homes at risk due to climate change in florida we are afraid that somehow fixing climate change means that we have to return to the stone age so if you're like me you're probably thinking at this point how the heck are we supposed to talk about this right because i haven't gotten to the darkest blue map yet and here it is ready this is the one we already saw do we think it will affect us personally there's one darker blue map but here's where we're turning the corner so far we've spent a lot of time talking about the problems but in the last 10 minutes now before i take your questions in the last 10 minutes we're going to start talking about the solution and the solution is in these maps this one says we don't think it matters to us personally and there's one more map that is darker blue what do you think that [00:35:41] Speaker 3: one is the darker blue map says this do you ever talk about it do you ever talk about it no people don't [00:35:53] Speaker 2: talk about it now you can see champagne county there it's a little bit lighter blue than the surrounding area probably thanks to the university thanks to talks like this right but most people even in areas where people would 100 agree with the science most people would say no we don't really talk about it now just to be clear i am not advocating for this type of conversation where susie the scientist shows up with her massive pile of scientific data stacks it all up and uses it to hit calvin over the head that is not what i'm talking about those types of conversations just dig a trench rather than building a bridge and they generally end with one or sometimes both of our heads explode or they can just end by being so depressed that you never want to talk about this again i'm not talking about that type of conversation now in our global weirding series on youtube i lay this out in more detail if i just explain the facts surely they'll get it right and what i make very clear is that there's a certain group of people where this isn't going to work on i have a twitter thread where i go into this detail and i said contrary to what many people think don't spend my time talking to who to the last category of the six americas of global warming this is a really helpful tool from the yale program on climate communication it shows that we're not just yes and no on climate change we actually follow along a spectrum and the majority of us are alarmed concerned they're cautious about climate change but right at the very end we have the tip of the tail of the dog that wags public discourse people who are dismissed people who are the loudest voices online many of the loudest voices in washington dc the loudest voices on talk news radio and in the comment sections online people who are not going to change their minds my personal definition of a dismissive is somebody who if an angel from god with brand new tablets of stone saying global warming is real and foot high letters of flame appeared to them it wouldn't change their minds so why would we think 10 000 scientific studies would won't here's the good news though 90 of us are not dismissive and that means that we can have constructive positive meaningful conversations about climate change with the vast majority of us and since i don't like keeping secrets here's it is ready before we go there though i want to ask you and now you're going to have to give me one word or you are going to have to use a dot or a dash to join multiple words like brother or in law use a dash there who would you like to have a climate conversation with that went well i imagine there's probably a long list oh father-in-law is the first one up there oh father-in-law is the first one up there my church yes my mom politicians the president my nephew my neighbor my friends my parents students mother-in-law stepfather mitch mcconnell yes conservative uncle [00:39:07] Speaker 3: grandma neighbor republican friend extended family an oil company yeah senators athletics i like that [00:39:20] Speaker 2: the premier we all have someone that we would like to have a positive constructive conversation with and i think we're kind of halfway split here between our family members and politicians so here is a recipe i don't know if you like to cook there's a lot of people talking about all the cooking that they're doing with the pandemic i'm certainly doing a lot of that myself here is a recipe and this recipe is not going to work with dismissives but it will work with almost everyone else not instantaneously it's not a miracle but slowly and patiently over time it can make a difference and here we go step number one don't begin with something that you disagree with people on you have to begin the conversation with something you agree on why because that addresses the identity politics problem which drives us apart we have to begin together rather than beginning apart step number two connect the dots between what we care about and how a changing climate affects that that addresses the issue of psychological distance it turns out social science has shown that if we talk about solution or we talk about impacts that are the home as opposed to impacts that are far away that actually reduces the identity politics as well people are more willing to engage if we feel like the impacts are close to home and then what's step number three step number three is talk about positive actionable beneficial practical solutions to address the solution aversion where people think there's no way to fix this problem without shutting down the economy and killing off the babies and i'm not joking i've literally had people say that to me so bonding connecting and inspiring is the trifecta the three steps that combat our real problems of identity politics psychological distance and solution aversion let me give you a couple of examples just so you know what i'm talking about here what kind of things can we bond over i've bonded over we're knitting yes cooking the place where we live a shared faith military experience i haven't bonded over that personally because i don't have any but others you do our family and activity that we enjoy we're members of club i've bonded with people over the four-way test from the rotary club over their love of local food or birds or hiking over the city or the place where we live or love of family and then we connect the dots how does it matter to us how is it affecting the food that we eat how is it affecting our health how is it affecting our local economy how is it affecting the security of our homes we know that climate change is increasing the risk of flooding across the midwest it's increasing the risk of hot summers we know that the national climate assessment goes into detail it has a chapter specifically on the midwest where it talks about all the different ways that climate change is affecting us in the places where we live it has a chapter for each different part of the united united states too over in indiana they have at purdue they have this great assessment for the whole state where they've divided it up by things that matter to people health agriculture tourism energy connecting the dots between things that matter to us so let me ask you and this is another one where you have to use a dot or a dash what matters to you yes i have a cat too what matters to you when it comes to climate change what things are affected by climate change that matter to you your food our water your security your family your safety your kids the incredible beauty and biodiversity of this world that's affected by um that's affecting our coral reefs our food production the suffering of the poorest food shortages human rights wildfire severity our daughters our kids skiing i like that one crops nature my future absolutely so look at this list this list is as diverse as the people on this webinar and you know what you don't have to have one thing you might be passionate about fixing climate change because you care about migratory birds somebody else might be passionate about about fixing it because you care about poor people who live in bangladesh somebody else might be passionate about it because they're kids somebody else because they love skiing whoever we are we already have the values that we need to care we don't have to change them we just have to connect the dots so can you do that when you talk to someone figure out something you have in common with them and connect the dots but lastly how can we inspire people to work together to solve this problem in positive ways that are compatible with our values here i find it super helpful to talk about what is already happening things that we already do ourselves whether it's the solar panels on my roof eating a more of a plant-based diet a plug-in car sure even replacing those light bulbs i like talking about what's happening where i live the fact that texas has more wind energy than any other state it has the first carbon neutral airport in north america dallas fort worth airport it has the biggest army base in the us that's no surprise to anyone i'm sure but you may be surprised to know it's been powered exclusively by wind and solar energy for two years now but it isn't just texas you can talk about illinois did you know that illinois has more clean energy jobs than any other midwestern state did you know that a farmer can put solar panels on 15 percent of his snowy cold cloudy land and he can actually earn the equivalent of his average crop yield off selling the electricity did you know that the city of urbana has a climate action plan i looked for champagne and i didn't find one the university has a climate action plan champaign county has a sustainability network churches and faith-based organizations have a great organization in illinois called faith in place it's all about sustainability and clean energy and the chicago climate action plan which don webbles and i both contributed to has been in place since 2008 for the city of chicago there's so much happening in every place where we live i like talking about what's happening in industry the fact that some of the biggest corporations in the world are transitioning to clean energy and microsoft has even promised to start sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere in faith communities across the country we're seeing changes where they're offering their roof for example as a solar garden to the community we're seeing changes in unexpected places like the kentucky coal museum or united airlines using biofuel already in their flights out of the la airport i love images and pictures from around the world whether it's a high schooler winning the intel science fair for growing algae biofuel originally under her bed i think her mom kicked her out into the garage when it got too big or solar energy revolutionizing some of the poorest places in the world where they don't have access to any other type of energy the fact that now we're six years in to where more clean energy is being installed around the world than fossil fuel based electricity that's been happening for six years already and project drawdown is a fantastic resource that goes through a hundred different solutions to climate change from biochar to clean cook stoves to educating women and girls to reducing our food waste which we can all do these are amazing things to talk about if you feel like you have nothing to talk about i've just given you like 10 good points here and you can look up project drawdown for more so this is my last question to you and then you get to ask me questions tell me what your favorite solution is use a dot or a dash what are you super excited about there's so many solutions there's no one silver it's going to fix everything i know some people often feel like there is but there isn't but there are all kinds of silver buckshot solutions some of those consist of clean energy some of those consist of policies somebody got one right up there some of those consist of new technology some consist of changing the way we live green business walk walkable communities plant-based diet circular economies there's no one solution that will fix it all but the good news is we need all of these solutions and i love that science is one of the solutions there too yes this is a whole set of solutions so just as the reason why we care was so diverse in the same way the solutions are so diverse as well and these are great things to talk about so now for the few skeptics who might still be wondering does talking make a difference it does this brand new study that was just released last june or july found that talking about it with friends and family helps people learn about it so we know more if we know more we're more concerned about it and if we're more concerned about it it turns out we talk about it more it's a true positive feedback loop talking about it kicks off the positive feedback loop what if we're a kid does that make a difference well there's a study that says it does they educated middle school children in north carolina which is a very conservative part of the country about climate change and they found that the parents levels of concern went up when their children were educated and here's the awesome part ready effects were strongest among conservative parents who displayed the lowest levels of concern before the kids learned about climate change and this is near and dear to my heart daughters were especially effective at influencing their parents aren't that awesome now you might say finally that's fine catherine but who's the best messenger why don't i just turn on bill nye because bill nye will talk about climate change with one person he will talk about it with three people he will talk about it with five people he will talk about it with anybody but it turns out that celebrities according to social science they are effective messengers but they're number 10 [00:50:04] Speaker 3: on the list of the top 10. what about politicians they're ninth faith leaders seventh health care workers [00:50:16] Speaker 2: third scientists are second four out of five americans trust scientists but scientists can be polarizing because democrats and independents tend to trust scientists more than republicans who's number one you you are number one people who share our values who speak a common language the more we know when we trust somebody the more effective they are does talking make a difference yes and who is the best person to do it you so using our voices to advocate for change is the most effective thing that every single one of us can do today and through doing so through talking not only about why it matters but how we can fix it that is what gives us hope so how do we talk science in a fact-free world my answer to that question my title is we start by bond where our shared values we connect the dots to why it matters to us but we need to find ways that we can work together to act because in the words of one of my favorite scientists jane goodall it is only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony that we can achieve our full potential if you want more it's in my ted talk this was not my ted talk but i'm ready to take your questions now and how you can do them is you can type a full question here no dots or dashes needed full question and here's the cool thing you can upvote the questions that you want me to answer so i know a lot of people have been typing into the chat i will do my best to look at that later but right now we're going to be taking questions like this so if you typed a question into the chat go ahead and type it in now at poll ev please and what you can also do is you can upvote the questions that you want answer most so if you see a question in the chat that you really like even if it's not your question go ahead and type it in here that's totally fine everything's anonymous nobody will know that you poached the question and go ahead and give it an upvote i see people are getting the hang of it this is awesome i like doing this because then rather than going through in order i see we had over 100 comments this way i can focus on the questions that have the most upvotes at the top now i know that this one is near the bottom how will my cat be affected but i have a kitty his name is dr evil and he certainly matters to me with cats we know unfortunately the cats are one of the major sources of songbird kills in the united states so in the interest of maintaining biodiversity what i would say with cats is keep your cat indoor if possible and if not make sure that they have a nice big bird collar on when they go outside there's these big multi-colored bird collars that they've shown to to reduce bird kills significantly so it isn't so much cats being affected by global warming it is global warming and biodiversity being affected by cats all right so let's go to the top are there good example scripts for talking with our conservative friends well i i teach a class and i actually go through scripts with my class first of all you start by talking about something that you agree on and if you don't know what you agree on then just talk to them you know have a conversation and then when you find something you can connect the dots on connect the dots and then bring up be prepared to bring up a positive constructive solution that you know that they will get on board with something that a conservative organization supports or a faith-based organization supports or military organization supports in my ted talk i go through a couple of different examples and there is also why i love having my computer here is i'm going to go out of here for just a second i also have a really good resource called it's called talking climate and it's by an organization called just a second here an organization called climate outreach in the uk they have a fantastic resource here that i strongly recommend you check out it's called the talking climate handbook and for some reason the page isn't opening let's see if this one will open um and they go through here it is this handbook by climate outreach really goes through and talks about how do you have these conversations and i'm going to go ahead and put this link in the chat here that makes it a lot easier to see just a second here here is the link to the climate outreach manual all right back to our questions here that was a really good question and again if you're typing questions into the chat please go ahead and add them to the slide as well so that people can upvote them this presentation will be made available it is being recorded and it will be posted afterwards and that was the second question there um what do you believe the role of citizen science will be in the coming years um i love citizen science because we need millions of eyes around the world keeping uh keeping up with what's happening when are the trees in our backyard flowering how are the insect and bird populations we see changing how are our skies changing as the pandemic slows down our carbon and our air pollution emissions citizen science is really important to report back to scientists to help us keep our thumb on the pulse of the planet but citizen science is also really important why because it decreases psychological distance it actually helps us be part of the process of tracking and monitoring and observing the changes that are happening to our planet so citizen science is really important in both directions to inform the science and then also to bring us in and engage us on this issue are climate change discussions relevant at the time of the pandemic that's a really good question we made two special global weirding episodes um specifically on climate change and the pandemic if you go to global weirding online just a second here let me show you the global weirding global weirdingseries.com is our series on youtube and you can see here that our first two episodes are specifically on the pandemic um it's it's not a time to beat people over the head for sure because we are all just doing our best to survive right now but at the same time i think the pandemic has showed us a few key things first of all all comes down to it no matter who we are no matter where we live no matter what language we speak no matter where we fall on the political spectrum when it all comes down to it what matters to us all is the same thing our health and our safety that of our family our loved ones our friends our community that is why we all care about the pandemic and here's the thing that is exactly why we all care about climate change too the challenge though is that the pandemic unrolls over days to weeks climate change unrolls over years to decades in terms of where we were back in the first days of march with the pandemic maybe the first week or the first 10 days of march that's where we stand with climate change today but my very real fear is that we will be too far down the road with climate change before the impacts hits every single one of us in the eyeballs in an unmistakable way the way the pandemic did before we take action and that's why having those conversations to bond act and inspire with solutions that we can implement today is so important because the reason we care about climate change is the same reason why we care about the pandemic today thanks for asking that question now there's a well this relates directly to the pandemic as well what we have already seen what we already know is that pollution of air water and soil is responsible for one out of every six deaths around the world on an annual basis air pollution kills nearly nine million people per year in poor countries it's primarily air pollution from indoor cooking over brush or dung because they don't have access to either a solar cooker or natural gas in developed countries and in urban centers it's primarily due to fossil fuels in the united states 200 000 people die each year from air pollution and who are those people they are predominantly people who live in lower income neighborhoods they live in places where they are exposed to air pollution and they can't afford to live in better places they don't have adequate health care that would take care of them when they already start to suffer from asthma or respiratory disease or heart issues and environmental racism is already built into our system and then along comes a pandemic and did you know what the coronavirus pandemic the covid 19 specifically disproportionately affects people whose lungs are already weakened by exposure to air pollution and so in the united states we know that african-american populations have a much higher impact rate from the pandemic than other populations we don't know for sure but a number of medical experts suspect that it's directly related to the endemic environmental racism of air pollution and lack of quality health care not only that but when you look around the entire world i have these maps i wish i could show you but i don't have them with me right now when you look at the whole world and you look at who has produced all of the carbon that's causing this problem and then you look at what countries are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change those two maps are a mere image of each other climate change is profoundly unjust it is disproportionately affecting the poorest people who have done the least to contribute to the problem so i'm so glad you asked that question and that personally is the reason why i care because many of them do not have the voice to talk about it so because of that i think those of us who do have the voice to do so have even greater responsibility to use our voice all right um how do we find the right people to have climate conversations with when we're increasingly spending more time with like-minded people that is a great question um i would say first of all we have seen you remember those maps i showed even people who totally agree this is a real problem they don't think it matters to them so you might be surprised that people you know would be like oh yes of course climate change is important but then when you start talking about solutions they'll be like oh well you know i don't do that or i don't think that's a big deal or i don't think it matters so you might be surprised who you could have a good conversation with you might just be taking for granted that they share everything that you do but i would say in general if you're looking for people to have conversations with look to organizations groups that you're part of um it might be your family it might be your cycling club it might be other parents at your kids school it might be your church it might be a community organization i had one man come up to me recently when i spoke at a university in california he came up to me afterwards he said i've been trying to reach out to local churches because i know it's so important to reach churches but i can't get my foot in the door he said what should i do so i said well the best thing to do is start with a church that's most similar to to your own faith tradition so you know do you go to church if so where do you go he said oh no i don't go to church i'm an atheist so i said i don't think you should be reaching out to churches i said what do you do what do you enjoy doing who are you and he said well i'm a scientist i said yes i know but what else do you enjoy doing and so it took us a little while but eventually i said you know i said do you enjoy hiking are you a birder you remember the rotary club no no no but eventually he said well i am a diver i said oh a diver he said yes actually i have some records for some deep dives i said well there you go what about reaching out to patty certificate programs in your area because he lives along the coast and offering your services to talk to people who are doing the education on how climate change is affecting the oceans and what they can do to help so think about who you are think about what you enjoy doing and think about who that connects you to and again it is worth having this conversation with just about anybody as long as they're not a dismissive because even if they're as alarmed as you are we all need to engage with each other and hear hopeful information because we feel like we're the only person who cares sometimes and hearing that somebody else cares and there's somebody else that's doing something that gives us hope to help going to to help keep going so don't discount those conversations as well um lots of other great questions i think i gave you kind of one of my surprising conversations about climate change there um with that scientist um what organizations can i get involved with to create political will um you can get involved with an organization that shares your value jeff if you mind meeting people that would be great um get involved with an organization that shares your values and there are organizations for everybody for parents for skiers for birders for young evangelicals for people who live in illinois there are organizations for everyone even for us scientists like the union of concerned scientists get involved with an organization that shares your your identity that shares your values that shares your interest and they will help you amplify your voice all right and how do we combat negative rhetoric that's really hard because just throwing money at it is not the answer but i think that really engaging with our communities engaging with organizations that represent who we are and advocating for change at every level including with our elected officials by bonding connecting the dots and giving them a positive solution that is endorsed by somebody that they might actually agree with surprisingly that is the way that we as individuals can truly make friends i want to close with one story and it is this let me stop sharing my screen with you i want to close with one story we often think well the most important thing i can do is change my light bulbs uh stop driving a car get an electric vehicle or solar panels become a vegan and those are all essential ways to reduce our personal carbon footprint but three years ago there was a young girl a high schooler who became very concerned about climate change so she convinced her family to stop she convinced her family to eat a plant-based diet she convinced her family to reduce their carbon footprint but if that is all she had done none of us would know the story the reason we know the story is because she did one more thing she took a piece of white cardboard and she painted some words on it that said school strike for climate and she went and sat outside a building and used her voice and because she used her voice everyone in the world knows her name now and her name is Greta she knows that talking about climate change is the single most effective thing that everybody can do and she also knows as the title of her book goes that no one is too small to make a difference thank you so much for having me thank you for your awesome questions this is absolutely going to be recorded and available and i will post your answers to the questions which were fantastic on twitter if you're [01:05:33] Speaker 1: interested in having the graphics thank you thanks very much katherine uh yeah and and just to reiterate as as we've shown in the chat we'll get the recording of this talk on the isee website as soon as we can well thanks so much for your inspiring words today katherine hopefully you've sufficiently motivated all of us to begin having conversations with others on climate change be well everyone and have a great evening