Saving Us

by Katharine Hayhoe

  Research by another climate communication specialist, Matthew Goldberg, has also shown that the simple act of having a conversation triggers a true positive feedback effect. The more we know about how climate change affects us, the more concerned we are. The more we worry, the more we talk about it. And the more we talk about something, the more conscious we are of the need to act—and aware of the mountains of things others are doing already and the millions of hands already rolling that boulder down the hill.

  ANSWERING THE BIGGEST QUESTION

  “Okay, I can see that this is important and I’m willing to give it a try; but where do I start? And what do I say?”

  This is the number one question I get nearly every day, from almost anyone, anywhere. They’d like to talk about climate change. It’s at the forefront of their mind. But, as Nathan’s research shows, even if you feel that way, often you don’t think you can. Your sense of personal efficacy may be low: you don’t feel equipped to have a conversation that might take a deep dive into some science you’re not familiar with. And your sense of response efficacy may be even lower. Previous conversations haven’t been a pretty sight or yielded any positive results. Many have ended in frustration, or conflict, or maybe just depression, as participants agree it’s a problem, but what can we do? Nothing.

  I have good news. There is a way to talk about climate change that works. You don’t need a PhD in climate science. You don’t need a bulletproof vest. And you don’t need any antidepressants, either. In fact, chances are you’ll know more afterward than you did before; you’ll have a better understanding of the person or people you’re talking to than you did earlier; and you’ll be encouraged rather than discouraged by your conversation. So what is this secret formula? It’s this:

  Bond, connect, and inspire.

  I. Note he’s talking about shaming companies here, not shaming individual people.

  21 BOND, CONNECT, AND INSPIRE

  “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.”

  STEPHEN COVEY, THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

  “I never knew what to do about climate change before. But now that I know food waste is a big part of it, I’m going to make sure we eat all our Christmas leftovers!”

  TORONTO CHURCHGOER, AFTER KATHARINE’S TALK

  A few years ago I was attending the Christians in Science conference at Queens’ College Cambridge, in the U.K. I’d just given my talk on climate science, impacts, and why it matters to Christians and the conference was on a tea break. I was sitting outside in the courtyard with a group of women who were asking me about the gendered abuse I receive as a climate scientist, when a younger man I hadn’t met yet strode up to us. One glance at his face and I could tell: he was ticked.

  An engineering professor from a university in the south of England, Tom was incensed by the concept of certainty, the idea that scientists could know the climate was changing. He also disagreed with my assertion that yes, scientists really had checked every other option and humans were responsible. Our conversation got off to a rocky start and deteriorated from there. It left me with the sincere hope I would never see him again—and he probably felt the same way. I still remember the horrified faces of the women around the table after he stormed off. Our conversation had included an unexpected real-life illustration.

  The following July, I wasn’t planning to attend any conferences. But I was in Toronto, and the Canadian version of the same group, called the Canadian Scientific & Christian Affiliation, was meeting at a nearby university. My dad was giving a talk, so he invited me to come along for the day. The session went well, but over lunch we were ambushed by a retired astrophysicist who had disagreed with what my dad had to say about creation care and climate change. Like so many of the retired engineers whose large manila envelopes arrive in my mailbox with regularity, he was devoting his golden years to showing why those upstart climate alarmists from the last hundred years were dead wrong.

  At one point, when the astrophysicist was railing against “those IPCC scientists” and how they lied, I leaned across the table to him and said, “Hang on. Don’t you realize I’m one of ‘those climate scientists’? You are literally talking to one. Do you think I’m lying about this—and lying about being a Christian, too? Or do you truly think I’m a certified idiot—with a degree in astrophysics—who has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about?”

  From the flummoxed look on his face, it was pretty clear he’d never put a human face on “those climate scientists” before. When confronted with one in real life, he struggled with assigning to me the venality and dishonesty he’d labeled us all with. But it wasn’t enough to disrupt his train of thought, and he soon headed off on a different tack.

  As I talked about in depth in Section 1, there is no secret to a constructive conversation with a Dismissive. I don’t think it’s possible to have one, short of a genuine honest-to-God miracle. And although those do occur sometimes, in general the best you can hope for is to let them know you think they are wrong and disengage as soon as you can, unless you genuinely enjoy pointless argument. As fashion icon Coco Chanel famously said, “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

  This astrophysicist was clearly a wall, not a door. So, hoping to cool down on the walk back to the conference, I left my more patient dad behind to continue talking to him while I headed outside.

  BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

  Distracted by the replay of the conversation in my head (“Was there anything I might have said that would have made a difference? No. Could I have responded more graciously? Definitely.”) I walked out the wrong door. It slammed behind me; I tried to open it but it was locked—and there I was, on an unknown campus, with a dead phone and no idea where I was going.

  I stood there for a little while, still steaming over the lunch conversation and trying to figure out which direction to head in. Suddenly, I heard the door behind me open again—salvation! Someone else was coming, maybe they’d know which way to go.

  I turned around, and my jaw dropped, because there was Tom: the Tom from the tea break at Cambridge; the Tom whom I’d devoutly hoped I’d never see again; the Tom who, if I absolutely had to encounter him again, could it at least please God not have happened directly after an infuriating lunch with a Dismissive astrophysicist who’d just called me and all my colleagues venal liars to my face?

  But there I was, and there he was, too, and there was not another human in sight as far as the eye could see. So I took a deep breath, and I could see him do the same. It was clear we were both mentally resolving to be civil and avoid the topic of climate change at all costs.

  It was his first time on that campus, too, but he thought he knew the right direction, so we set off together: I in silence, still trying to swallow my lunch, metaphorically speaking, and he struggling to find a neutral topic of conversation.

  Looking down, his eye alighted on my bag, where a pair of knitting needles were poking out. He brightened instantly and asked, “Do you knit? I knit, too.”

  I was surprised; while one sees the occasional woman scientist knitting at scientific meetings, this was the first time I’d had a man express interest. I replied that I was making a scarf for my mother’s birthday in a few days.

  “That’s great,” he said with genuine enthusiasm, “I do the same. In fact, I don’t think we should buy presents for people we love. Who needs more plastic from China? We should make all our gifts. It’s much more meaningful.”

  He went on to say that was what his family had done for Christmas last year, and when I genuinely told him how wonderful I thought that was, he warmed to his theme. He didn’t just recycle, he said, he “upcycled”—building their furniture from packing pallets and refurbishing cast-off furniture he’d salvaged. His family lived in a small apartment near the city center, so they didn’t own a car and hardly ever had to drive. He only traveled to one international conference a year t
hat required a flight.

  “And wasn’t it my luck it was this one,” I thought.

  But listening to him, I realized that what he was describing was an incredibly thoughtful, sustainable, and low-carbon lifestyle. It was rich in what really mattered—family, friends, and life itself, not the goods and materials that we so often use to define ourselves. In fact, if all of us lived like he and his family did, we’d not only be healthier and in better shape, we’d be living true to our values. This revelation struck me with the force of a locomotive. Here was a fellow academic who wasn’t on board with the science, but his life was an example to us all.

  I absorbed this remarkable revelation and, as we reached our destination—because this unexpectedly harmonious conversation had carried us all the way across campus—I turned to him and told him sincerely, “I know we disagree about what climate science is telling us about our planet. But I’d rather everyone thought the same way you do, and lived the same way you do, than agreed with me but lived the way many of them do.”

  “Really?” he replied, clearly gobsmacked by what I had said.

  “Yes,” I said emphatically, “I mean it.”

  He smiled, we walked in the door, and I never saw him again. But as I finished knitting my mom’s scarf during the next session, I began to digest one of the most important lessons I’ve learned to date: that we don’t really have to agree on the science, as long as we agree on something that matters more.

  HOW TO BOND AND CONNECT

  Whoever we are, we are human. And as humans, we have the power to connect with one another across many of the broad, deep lines scored across our societies and our psyches. We can’t do this by bombarding people with more data, facts, and science showing they’re wrong, or heaping on the judgment and guilt. Instead, we have to start with respect, and with something we both agree on: bonding over a value we truly share, and then making the connection between that value and a changing climate. By doing so, rather than trying to change who someone is, instead it can become clear that the person you are talking to is already the perfect person to care about and act on climate change. In fact chances are they probably already care, they just might not have realized why, or known what to do about it if they did.

  The only reason I care about a changing climate myself is because it affects everything I already care about. My child. The future of our family. The places where we live—and how those places are being affected by more intense hurricanes, rising seas, stronger droughts, heavier rain. The food we eat, where we grow it, and how much it costs. The air we breathe and how clean—or dirty—it is. The economy, national security, justice, and equity, every single Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations, the future of civilization as we know it. The list is endless. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to find something that you can connect to climate change, once you start looking.

  If you’re wondering where to start bonding with someone and connecting on climate change, ask yourself, “Because of what we both care about, why might climate change matter to us?” A sense of place is always a key connection. If you both live along low-lying coastlines—in the eastern U.S. or the British Isles or Southeast Asia—you’re already seeing flooding on sunny days. If you’re farmers in Texas or East Africa or Syria, you’ve witnessed firsthand how climate change is shifting your seasons and amplifying your natural cycles of drought and flood, and hitting you right where it hurts, in the pocketbook. In southern Australia or western North America, bigger wildfires are putting your homes at risk. Do you live near the mountains? Shrinking snowpack is endangering your water supply. A northern country? All kinds of invasive species and pests are moving poleward as your winters warm. All through this book I’ve talked a lot about why climate impacts and climate solutions matter—to our health, to our hobbies and our homes, to the economy and our food and water, to people less fortunate than us, and more. Did anything there connect with you?

  HOW TO INSPIRE

  No matter how carefully you prepare, there will still be conversations that don’t progress. But even some of them, as you saw with Tom, can take an unexpected turn when we start to talk about our lived experience rather than abstract data and facts. That’s why I think the last step, to inspire each other with real-life, practical, and viable solutions, is the most critical.

  Ask yourself: What solutions can I bring up that whoever I’m talking to might get excited about? Would they be interested in a free market solution to climate change from former congressman Bob Inglis’s republicEn organization? Do they live in an agricultural area like Matt Russell where smart farming techniques to put carbon back in the soil might be of practical use to people? Would they like to hear more about Solar Sisters or Sulabh or other programs that are revolutionizing the lives of the energy-poor? Do they have a pet, and might they like to hear about cricket-based food?

  Would solutions at the intersection of racial, gender, and indigenous justice catch their attention? Maybe they’d just like to hear about how you love your LED lightbulbs or your new plug-in car. Or perhaps there’s a volunteer effort they could be involved with in the community, cleaning up a watershed or picking up garbage. Possibly they could come with you to an interesting presentation hosted by the local chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby or the local university. You could start (or join) a creation care group at your church, or form a craft club to knit or crochet warming stripes.

  The list of solutions is virtually endless. And being able to offer some up is essential for these conversations. The social science I talked about in Section 4 is clear: if we present people with a problem or a challenge, even one that has no politicization or controversy associated with it, but we don’t offer an engaging solution, people feel disenfranchised and powerless. That is true whether we’re talking about the simple fact that eating trans fats is bad for us, or discussing how we should be saving more for retirement, or speaking about the need to tackle climate change. If we don’t offer a solution, things start to look insurmountable. Our brain’s natural defense is to try its best to forget that the problem exists.

  CONVERSATIONS I’VE HAD

  Wherever I go, I have climate conversations. Each place is different, each uniquely vulnerable to climate impacts. But people in each place are the same: worried about the impacts they see today, anxious for the future, and full of ideas for how we can work together to fix this.

  In California, I hear from colleagues who’ve had to evacuate their homes due to the latest wildfire. I meet graduate students who are passionate about protecting the urchins and whelks that populate the cold channel waters, and the local fishing and seafood industry whose jobs depend on them. I talk to schoolkids who have some of the best questions and ideas I’ve ever heard. (Is there any way we could hand the world over to them a little earlier?)

  In Paris, I meet with Engie, a large multinational utility company that’s planning to be the first carbon neutral energy provider in the world. I mention Project Drawdown, an inspiring organization that has researched and studied nearly a hundred different practical climate solutions. “Oh yes,” says Jan Mertens, their chief science officer, thoughtfully. “I reviewed that list the other day and I think we’re already implementing 40 percent of them.” Because they are a pioneer rather than a follower, Engie is running into one challenge after another as they lead by example and commitment. But they are not giving up, and their work encourages me as well.

  In Ireland, colleagues say, “I’m not sure if you’ve heard this before, but people here say, ‘We’re such a small part of the problem, nothing we do makes a difference.’ How would you address this?” I laugh, because I hear this everywhere I go: Canadians and Norwegians, even Americans say, “What about China?”—while in China people say, “Per person we’re emitting hardly anything compared to the Americans.” We use the same arguments because as humans we think the same way. But the truth is, we can only fix it together. So I make sure to emphasize that in my presentations, with facts and figur
es specific to the country where I am.

  In India, state hazard planners ask for information they can use to prepare for stronger heat waves, shifting rainfall patterns, and dwindling water supplies. They’re worried about their cities, their farmers, their small villages, and the future of their states. I say yes, because I’m already working on the same type of data for Houston, Texas. There, my colleague Gavin recently called in to our meeting on climate impacts from a parking lot. He was stuck there for the day: he couldn’t go home or to the office as the flooding—the fifth five-hundred-year flood event in five years—was too severe.

  In my home city of Toronto, I give a sermon at one of the biggest churches in the area, connecting our Christian values to why we care about climate change. As people leave, I overhear one woman talking to another. “I never knew what to do about climate change before,” she says, “so I did nothing. But now that I know that food waste is a big part of it, I know what to do—I’m going to make sure we eat all our Christmas leftovers!”

  And at Stanford University, I meet with Kameron and a big group of other graduate students. They’re all supersmart. They’re mostly very worried. And they want to talk about climate change—but they don’t know how. Kameron’s already been through dozens of conversations with his dad, a conservative Christian who rejects the science, so he knows how frustrating it can be. But he also knows that the antidote to anxiety is action. So he’s gotten the graduate students together to start building an app. It’s called Climate Mind and it will help people figure out how to talk about climate change: what to bond over, what impacts to connect to what you care about, what science-sounding arguments people might bring up that you can briefly respond to, and finally what positive, constructive solutions you can talk about and engage in together. It’s already online, if you want to check it out.