WHEN FACTS WORK
So does that mean facts are useless? No. Facts are incredibly important because they explain how the world works, whether we like it or not. They are often essential to changing our minds if we are not polarized on the issue. They can even change our minds if we are polarized, but only if they can be shared in a way that is able to sidestep the polarization. You saw that already with the story of Tim, the scientist who is also a Christian, like me. Let me give you two more examples.
Kirstin Milks is a high school science teacher in a small, Midwestern university town. Some of her students are the children of university professors; others come from families who self-identify as “rust belt,” “hillbilly,” or “country.” It’s like living in—and teaching in—a microcosm of America’s political and social divide with respect to issues such as race, climate change, and religious freedom.
She engages her kids on climate change in two effective ways. First, she lets them ask the questions. “I ask my students, ‘What do you need to know about climate change?’ ” she says, “and then we frame our learning on climate from those submitted student questions.” Previous questions have included “How can our world’s adults treat our future this way?” and “What place on Earth is dying the fastest?” and “Do we still have time to change our ways?”
Kirstin tapes these questions up on her cabinet and points to them all semester. The posted questions let her say, “Today we’re going to answer this question you asked.” She’s found this to be very motivating, especially for students who haven’t previously seen themselves as knowing about, or caring about, science.
Her second strategy is to give her students the opportunity to carry out the same types of experiments that climate scientists do—by analyzing synthetic ice cores that they build in Pringles cans, or graphing data collected from pond core sediments, or modeling temperature rise with different amounts of greenhouse gases in a computer simulation. Once students see they can follow the lines of reasoning used in the (admittedly more technical) work done by climate scientists, they feel empowered and are much more likely to find climate data trustworthy. “If kids feel like they can do the science themselves,” says Kirstin, “it’s not a black box anymore.”
Extended interaction and engagement with the information, especially when it addresses misconceptions or misunderstandings, can have a tremendous impact: not just on kids, but on their parents, too. Danielle Lawson studies science education. She wondered what impact teaching kids about climate change might have on their parents. So she designed an experiment where middle school students in coastal North Carolina—a relatively conservative part of the state, but one that is exposed to sea level rise, stronger hurricanes, and flooding—were divided into two groups. The teachers for one group integrated climate change instruction into their classes for an extended period of two years; the others didn’t.
Before the experiment started, Danielle surveyed the students’ parents. Did they think climate change was real? Human-caused? Serious, and we should fix it?—or not? Two years later, Danielle polled the parents again. It turned out that teaching kids about climate change made their parents more concerned about it. Conservative parents changed the most, and daughters were particularly effective at changing their hard-nosed dads’ minds. The kids were able to sidestep the polarizations and reach right into their parents’ hearts—and minds.
So yes, it’s important that we understand and be able to explain that climate change is real, and it’s human-caused. But most of the time facts alone are not enough to change people’s minds on an issue that touches so profoundly on our identity and morality, that triggers so many of our deepest hopes and fears. So what do we do next?
I. In 2005 there were twenty-seven named storms, ending with Zeta. In 2020 there were thirty named storms, ending with Hurricane Iota, a category 5 storm in mid-November.
II. Of course there were wildfires in western Canada, but maps based on U.S. federal data only show U.S. wildfires.
III. This measure refers specifically to general scientific knowledge and analytical capabilities, not climate-specific knowledge. People who score high on climate-specific knowledge do tend to be more concerned about climate change.
6 THE FEAR FACTOR
“Climate change contains none of the clear signals that we require to mobilize our inbuilt sense of threat.”
GEORGE MARSHALL, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT
“You do not need to live in fear to get shit done.”
TALI HAMILTON, KATHARINE’S STUDENT
As a climate scientist I see things in the data that I find disturbing, concerning, and even frightening. At scientific conferences, we still present esoteric treatises on foraminiferal temperature proxy records and internal variability in multi-model ensembles. But now there are also presentations simply titled “Is the Earth F*cked?,” a title so stark that I assume other scientists are feeling this, too.
Satire hits close to home, like the article in The Onion describing “a weary group of top climatologists [who] suddenly halted their presentation, let out a long sigh, and stated that the best thing anyone can do at this point is just try to enjoy the next couple decades as much as possible… [so] they would be skipping the remainder of the conference to get completely shit-faced at the nearest bar.” When I shared this with a roomful of climatologists during a talk to the American Association of Geographers and asked “Who’s with me?” 40 percent said they were right behind me; 20 percent said they were already there; and the remainder claimed they just suppress their anxiety.
We shared a fraught laugh and I continued my talk, but it’s true that what we see in our scientific work gives us the very opposite of hope. For hundreds of years, we’ve been living as if there’s no tomorrow, running through our resources, putting our entire civilization at risk. And climate scientists are like physicians who have identified a disease that is affecting every member of the human race, including themselves, and no one wants to listen to them.
Our planet has a fever, caused by our lifestyle choices since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The news is bad: Antarctic glaciers are accelerating into the ocean, coastal towns are flooding, polar bears are starving, forests burning, islands are disappearing, and species are going extinct. If we aren’t able to change our habits at the fundamental, systemic scale needed, the consequences for humanity will be incalculable.
SHOULD WE BE AFRAID?
Let’s stop for a minute and look at this litany of negative news. Is it accurate? Is climate change truly that bad?
I’m a climate scientist and I have to be honest, the answers are: usually, and yes.
We are conducting a truly unprecedented experiment with our planet. And the faster things change, the greater the risks of some really nasty surprises happening. If the Greenland ice sheet destabilizes and totally melts, sea levels will rise by up to seven meters, or twenty-three feet. If enough permafrost in the Arctic thaws, massive releases of heat-trapping methane could put an end to any chance of meeting the Paris Agreement’s targets. If ocean circulation slows down too much, from freshwater flowing into the Arctic from melting land-based ice, it will disrupt local climate around the world.
Not only that, but we scientists have a well-known problem: we tend to “err on the side of least drama.” If you compare climate predictions with what really happened over the past few decades, you will find that the scientific community gets the changes in global temperature right. But studies have found that it tends to underestimate other observed changes and their resulting impacts. This is especially true of the conclusions of big scientific assessments with hundreds of authors. Why? They all have to agree on their conclusions before they can be published, and scientists are naturally very cautious. We don’t like to say something is so, unless we are very, very sure it’s going to happen—like 99 percent sure. And we absolutely hate being called alarmist; so that means, these days, we’d prefer to be 99.999 percent sure about anything bef
ore we open our mouths.
As I and my coauthor Bob Kopp wrote in “Potential Surprises,” the last chapter of the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment, “the systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change.” In other words, chances are that things are going to be worse than scientists say, not better. The planet will survive; the question is, will we?
So, yes: as a scientist it is my considered opinion that there is a very good and entirely objective reason to be afraid. But as a human I believe it’s what we do with that fear that makes all the difference.
IS FEAR USEFUL?
When we see people who don’t seem to care about climate change, or appear apathetic, we might think, with the best of intentions, “They need to be scared. Let’s focus on the worst (true) things we know. Surely this will change people’s hearts and minds and spur them to action, right?”
Under some circumstances, it may. First, sharing factually scary information can be an important first step for people who are complacent, who don’t think climate change poses a serious threat—or is even real. If you’re not worried about climate change, why would you want to fix it? Studies show that pessimistic messages increase risk perception, even among conservatives, and people’s belief that they could make a difference. In other words, if they originally thought it was no big deal, learning that it really was a big deal made them more concerned and more willing to support action: as it should.
Second, fear works well when coupled with uncertainty to induce inaction rather than action. This explains why those who oppose climate action use fear-laden messaging and why they devote such a great deal of effort to trying to cast doubt. “Scientists aren’t sure,” they say, so why take action on such a questionable issue if the only choices are terrible? “They will destroy the economy and take away our personal freedom to drive cars, eat steaks, and take foreign holidays.” Not only that, but we assign a much greater cost to things being taken away from us than we do to obtaining new things. So when we are confronted by something uncertain and fearful, the solutions to which involve personal loss, nothing is exactly what we are wired to do.
Third, communicating scary information can also be effective when we’re functioning as the “ideal man” envisioned by Plato. If we are making decisions rationally, with emotion following after we’ve processed the information, then scary facts will cause us to seek a solution rather than to shut down. Often, we like to think that’s how we think (despite large bodies of psychological research to the contrary). I suspect that’s why so much environmental messaging uses a fact- and fear-based approach. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, though, there is a substantial emotional cost to receiving information, which often leads us to metaphorically cover our ears. We’d rather not know about it if we don’t think there’s anything we can do. And this leads directly to the fourth situation in which fear-based messaging can work: if we do know what to do.
THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH EFFECT
Fear-based messaging can motivate us very effectively if we know how to turn that fear into tangible action. A practical application of this concept is the following: if negative news about climate change is immediately followed with information explaining how individuals, communities, businesses, or governments can reduce the threat, then this information can empower rather than discourage us. Sometimes we are even able to do this ourselves, internally.
It was fear that motivated New York journalist David Wallace-Wells to write his best-selling 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth. Perhaps the most exhaustive (and most well-written) compendium of doom-laden climate-change facts outside of the scientific literature, his book doesn’t exaggerate or spin the science. It just lays out possible worst-case scenarios in clear, unmistakable, and dire prose, unhampered by scientists’ tendency toward hedging our bets and erring on the side of least drama.
After the book came out, David and I discussed it at Climate One, a public forum for conversations about climate change. “The more I learned about the science, the deeper I got into it… the more scared I was,” he said. But here’s where the critical step occurred: rather than curling up in the fetal position, he was motivated to use his skills as a journalist to tell the story, so that other people would have the same reaction.
So, did they? That depends on whether they, like David, already knew what to do about it.
Xiye Bastida is a young climate activist who grew up in the small town of San Pedro Tultepec, about forty-five minutes west of Mexico City. At an early age she began to learn from her father, a member of the indigenous Otomi nation, how to live with the Earth, not from it, and how to protect it in return. But when the lagoon their village depended on for fish was pumped out to supply the big city with water, extended drought and flood soon devastated the local economy and upended her people’s way of life. Her family moved to New York City, where they arrived just in time to experience Superstorm Sandy, a record-breaking storm strengthened by unusually warm ocean water and sea level rise. It took a while for Xiye to make the connection to climate change, she said. But when she did, it galvanized her into becoming an activist. She even created a training program for other young people concerned about climate change.
Some years later, in a discussion with environmental journalist Andy Revkin, she said, “I was reading The Uninhabitable Earth on a beach and learning that we could be headed towards 7 degrees [Fahrenheit] of warming. It made me sad that my children might never see a beach.” It also made her realize, though, that there is a huge difference between a warming of 1, 2, 3, and even 4°C. Even if the world fails to meet the Paris targets, action can still make a big difference, and that’s what inspired her.
“I’m not doing this [activism] because I’m sad,” Xiye concluded, “but because I’m optimistic about our power to change our course and our ability to come together.” She had seen her parents and others responding to environmental issues since she was a child. She was already taking action herself. Recognizing that the worst is not yet inevitable propelled her into further action. That fear worked.
WHEN FEAR DOESN’T WORK
For most of us, though, once fear has called us to attention, we don’t know what to do next. And when we’re stuck at that point, piling on additional catastrophic stories just fuels our collective sense of helplessness and futility. Take the man Andreas met on the train, for example.
Andreas Karelas is a clean energy expert whose organization, RE-volv, helps nonprofit organizations shift to solar energy. In his book Climate Courage, which focuses on positive solutions and actions people are taking to solve climate change, Andreas talks about how he saw an elderly man with a big white beard reading The Uninhabitable Earth on the train in California.
“I couldn’t help but ask, ‘What do you think of the book so far?’ ” Andreas says.
The man replied, “Extraordinary. Even if you are liberal and know about climate change, you realize how uninformed you are.”
Curious to hear more, Andreas asked the man how this made him feel.
“Hopeless, because we’re not gonna stop it,” he said. Then he got off the train.
Many of us might identify with that man. When we start to truly understand the magnitude of the threat climate change poses and the solutions that are needed, our natural response is often fear. Climate change is frequently presented as one of two apocalyptic visions. If climate change continues unchecked, there will be countless millions of refugees, massive droughts and floods, and entire land areas rendered uninhabitable. If we do fix it, many conservatives argue, the economy will be destroyed, and socialism will rule the world. In both visions, no one will be able to eat meat or drive or travel or have children anymore.
Neither sounds great to most people, and the fear and anxiety these possible futures induce are often more conducive to just getting back into bed and pulling t
he covers over your head than to sustaining long-term action. If we are overexposed to fear-based messages, we can become desensitized. Moreover, there’s little evidence that, in and of themselves, they are effective at sustaining long-term action. Rather, fear-based messaging can trigger awareness of our own mortality, invoking our finely tuned package of defenses against the notion of considering our own death—distraction, denial, and rationalization.
MOVING PAST OUR FEARS
To be human is to be a bundle of contradictions—and to have an aversion to anxiety. “We do not accept climate change because we wish to avoid the anxiety it generates,” George Marshall writes in his book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. As humans, we are prone to tuning out repeated bad messages if they do not relate directly to our lives, or if we feel like fixing them would be even worse for us than letting them run their course. Our emotional bandwidth is limited.
Digging beyond our emotions into the actual wiring of our brains, hundreds of experiments have shown that humans are literally hardwired to move toward pleasure and away from pain. Translating this into a message directly relevant to climate change, neuroscientist Tali Sharot says, “The human brain is built to associate ‘forward’ action with a reward, not with avoiding harm, because that is often the most useful response. We’re more likely to execute an action when we are anticipating something good than when we are anticipating something bad.” And fear also hampers our ability to think creatively. As environmental engineer and eternal optimist Katie Patrick reminds us: “When the body releases stress chemicals, the brain shuts down the hippocampus region and you lose about 30 percent of your brain function, including the creative thinking faculties. Fear and doom shut down your brain capacity for creative thinking. Vision and optimism super boost it.”
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